In Hal Dozier there was a belief that the end justified the means. When
Hank Rainer sent word to Tomo that the outlaw was in his cabin, and, if
the posse would gather, he, Hank, would come out of his cabin that night
and let the posse rush the sleeping man who remained, Hal Dozier was
willing and eager to take advantage of the opportunity. A man of action
by nature and inclination, Dozier had built a great repute as a hunter
of criminals, and he had been known to take single-handed chances
against the most desperate; but when it was possible Hal Dozier played a
safe game. Though the people of the mountain desert considered him
invincible, because he had run down some dozen notorious fighters, Hal
himself felt that this simply increased the chances that the thirteenth
man, by luck or by cunning, would strike him down.
Therefore he played safe always. On this occasion he made surety doubly
sure. He could have taken two or three known men, and they would have
been ample to do the work. Instead, he picked out half a dozen. For just
as Henry Allister had recognized that indescribable element of danger in
the new outlaw, so the manhunter himself had felt it. Hal Dozier
determined that he would not tempt Providence. He had his commission as
a deputy marshal, and as such he swore in his men and started for the
cabin of Hank Rainer.
When the news had spread, others came to join him, and he could not
refuse. Before the cavalcade entered the mouth of the canyon he had some
thirty men about him. They were all good men, but in a fight,
particularly a fight at night, Hal Dozier knew that numbers to excess
are apt to simply clog the working parts of the machine. All that he
feared came to pass. There was one breathless moment of joy when the
horse of Andrew was shot down and the fugitive himself staggered under
the fire of the posse. At that moment Hal had poised his rifle for a
shot that would end this long trail, but at that moment a yelling member
of his own group had come between him and his target, and the chance was
gone. When he leaped to one side to make the shot, Andrew was already
among the trees.
Afterward he had sent his men in a circle to close in on the spot from
which the outlaw made his stand, but they had closed on empty
shadows--the fugitive had escaped, leaving a trail of blood. However, it
was hardly safe to take that trail in the night, and practically
impossible until the sunlight came to follow the sign. So Hal Dozier had
the three wounded men taken back to the cabin of Hank Rainer.
The stove was piled with wood until the top was white hot, and then the
posse sat about on the floor, crowding the room and waiting for the
dawn. The three wounded men were made as comfortable as possible. One
had been shot through the hip, a terrible wound that would probably
stiffen his leg for life; another had gone down with a wound along the
shin bone which kept him in a constant torture. The third man was hit
cleanly through the thigh, and, though he had bled profusely for some
time, he was now only weak, and in a few weeks he would be perfectly
sound again. The hard breathing of the three was the only sound in that
dim room during the rest of the night. The story of Hank Rainer had been
told in half a dozen words. Lanning had suspected him, stuck him up at
the point of a gun, and then-refused to kill him, in spite of the fact
that he knew he was betrayed. After his explanation Hank withdrew to the
darkest corner of the room and was silent. From time to time looks went
toward that corner, and one thought was in every mind. This fellow, who
had offered to take money for a guest, was damned for life and branded.
Thereafter no one would trust him, no one would change words with him;
he was an outcast, a social leper. And Hank Rainer knew it as well
as any man.
A cloud of tobacco smoke became dense in the room, and a halo surrounded
the lantern on the wall. Then one by one men got up and muttered
something about being done with the party, or having to be at work in
the morning, and stamped out of the room and went down the ravine to the
place where the horses had been tethered. The first thrill of excitement
was gone. Moreover, it was no particular pleasure to close in on a
wounded man who lay somewhere among the rocks, without a horse to carry
him far, and too badly wounded to shift his position. Yet he could lie
in his shelter, whatever clump of boulders he chose, and would make it
hot for the men who tried to rout him out. The heavy breathing of the
three wounded men gave point to these thoughts, and the men of family
and the men of little heart got up and left the posse.
The sheriff made no attempt to keep them. He retained his first
hand-picked group. In the gray of the morning he rallied these men
again. They went first to the dead, stiff body of the chestnut gelding
and stripped it of the saddle and the pack of Lanning. This, by silent
consent, was to be the reward of the trapper. This was his in lieu of
the money which he would have earned if they had killed Lanning on the
spot. Hal Dozier stiffly invited Hank to join them in the manhunt; he
was met by a solemn silence, and the request was not repeated. Dozier
had done a disagreeable duty, and the whole posse was glad to be free of
the traitor. In the meantime the morning was brightening rapidly, and
Dozier led out his men.
They went to their horses, and, coming back to the place where Andrew
had made his halt and fired his three shots, they took up the trail.
It was as easy to read as a book. The sign was never wanting for more
than three steps at a time, and Hal Dozier, reading skillfully, watched
the decreasing distance between heel indentations, a sure sign that the
fugitive was growing weak from the loss of the blood that spotted the
trail. Straight on to the doorstep of Pop's cabin went the trail. Dozier
rapped at the door, and the old man himself appeared. The bony fingers
of one hand were wrapped around the corncob, which was his inseparable
companion, and in the other he held the cloth with which he had been
drying dishes. Jud turned from his pan of dishwater to cast a frightened
glance over his shoulder. Pop did not wait for explanations.
"Come in, Dozier," he invited. "Come in, boys. Glad to see you. Ain't
particular comfortable for an oldster like me when they's a full-grown,
man-eatin' outlaw layin' about the grounds. This Lanning come to my door
last night. Me and Jud was sittin' by the stove. He wanted to get us to
bandage him up, but I yanked my gun off'n the wall and ordered
him away."
"You got your gun on Lanning--off the wall--before he had you covered?"
asked Hal Dozier with a singular smile.
"Oh, I ain't so slow with my hands," declared Pop. "I ain't half so old
as I look, son! Besides, he was bleedin' to death and crazy in the head.
I don't figure he even thought about his gun just then." "Why didn't
you shoot him down, Pop? Or take him? There's money in him."
"Don't I know it? Ain't I seen the posters? But I wasn't for pressin'
things too hard. Not me at my age, with Jud along. I ordered him away
and let him go. He went down yonder. Oh, you won't have far to go. He
was about all in when he left. But I ain't been out lookin' around yet
this morning. I know the feel of a forty-five slug in your inwards."
He placed a hand upon his stomach, and a growl of amusement went through
the posse. After all, Pop was a known man. In the meantime someone had
picked up the trail to the cliff, and Dozier followed it. They went
along the heel marks to a place where blood had spurted liberally over
the ground. "Must have had a hemorrhage here," said Dozier. "No, we
won't have far to go. Poor devil!"
And then they came to the edge of the cliff, where the heel marks ended.
"He walked straight over," said one of the men. "Think o' that!"
"No," exclaimed Dozier, who was on his knees examining the marks, "he
stood here a minute or so. First he shifted to one foot, and then he
shifted his weight to the other. And his boots were turning in. Queer. I
suppose his knees were buckling. He saw he was due to bleed to death and
he took a shorter way! Plain suicide. Look down, boys! See anything?"
There was a jumble of sharp rocks at the base of the cliff, and the
water of the stream very close. Nothing showed on the rocks, nothing
showed on the face of the cliff. They found a place a short distance to
the right and lowered a man down with the aid of a rope. He looked about
among the rocks. Then he ran down the stream for some distance. He came
back with a glum face.
There was no sign of the body of Andrew Lanning among the rocks. Looking
up to the top of the cliff, from the place where he stood, he figured
that a man could have jumped clear of the rocks by a powerful leap and
might have struck in the swift current of the stream. There was no trace
of the body in the waters, no drop of blood on the rocks. But then the
water ran here at a terrific rate; the scout had watched a heavy boulder
moved while he stood there. He went down the bank and came at once to a
deep pool, over which the water was swirling. He sounded that pool with
a long branch and found no bottom.
"And that makes it clear," he said, "that the body went down the water,
came to that pool, was sucked down, and got lodged in the rocks. Anybody
differ? No, gents, Andrew Lanning is food for the trout. And I say it's
the best way out of the job for all of us."
But Hal Dozier was a man full of doubts. "There's only one other thing
possible," he said. "He might have turned aside at the house of Pop. He
may be there now."
"But don't the trail come here? And is there any back trail to the
house?" one of the men protested.
"It doesn't look possible," nodded Hal Dozier, "but queer things are apt
to happen. Let's go back and have a look."