Even in his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert passes swiftly
from the fact of history into the dream of legend. The telephone and the
newspaper cannot bring that lonely region into the domain of cold truth.
In the time that followed people seized on the story of Andrew Lanning
and embroidered it with rare trimmings. It was told over and over again
in saloons and around family firesides and in the bunk houses of many
ranches. For Andrew had done what many men failed to do in spite of a
score of killings--he struck the public fancy. People realized, however
vaguely, that here was a unique story of the making of a desperado, and
they gathered the story of Andrew Lanning to their hearts.
On the whole, it was not an unkindly interest. In reality the sympathy
was with the outlaw. For everyone knew that Hal Dozier was on the trail
again, and everyone felt that in the end he would run down his man, and
there was a general hope that the chase might be a long one. For one
thing, the end of that chase would have removed one of the few vital
current bits of news. Men could no longer open conversations by asking
the last tidings of Andrew. Such questions were always a signal for an
unlocking of tongues around the circle.
Many untruths were told. For instance, the blowing of the safe in
Allertown was falsely attributed to Andrew, while in reality he knew
nothing about "soup" and its uses. And the running of the cows off the
Circle O Bar range toward the border was another exploit which was
wrongly checked to his credit or discredit. Also the brutal butchery in
the night at Buffalo Head was sometimes said to be Andrew's work, but in
general the men of the mountain desert came to know that the outlaw was
not a red-handed murderer, but simply a man who fought for his own life.
The truths in themselves were enough to bear telling and retelling.
Andrew's Thanksgiving dinner at William Foster's house, with a revolver
on the table and a smile on his lips, was a pleasant tale and a
thrilling one as well, for Foster had been able to go to the telephone
and warn the nearest officer of the law. There was the incident of the
jammed rifle at The Crossing; the tale of how a youngster at Tomo
decided that he would rival the career of the great man--how he got a
fine bay mare and started a blossoming career of crime by sticking up
three men on the road and committing several depredations which were all
attributed to Andrew, until Andrew himself ran down the foolish fellow,
shot the gun out of his hand, gave him a talking that recalled his
lost senses.
But all details fell into insignificance compared with the general
theme, which was the mighty duel between Andrew and Hal Dozier--the
unescapable manhunter and the trapwise outlaw. Hal did not lose any
reputation because he failed to take Andrew Lanning at once. The very
fact that he was able to keep close enough to make out the trail at all
increased his fame. He did not even lose his high standing because he
would not hunt Andrew alone. He always kept a group with him, and people
said that he was wise to do it. Not because he was not a match for
Andrew Lanning singlehanded, but because it was folly to risk life when
there were odds which might be used against the desperado. But everyone
felt that eventually Lanning would draw the deputy marshal away from his
posse, and then the outlaw would turn, and there would follow a battle
of the giants. The whole mountain desert waited for that time to come
and bated its breath in hope and fear of it.
But if the men of the mountain desert considered Hal Dozier the greatest
enemy of Andrew, he himself had quite another point of view. It was the
loneliness, as Pop had promised him. There were days when he hardly
touched food such was his distaste for the ugly messes which he had to
cook with his own hands; there were days when he would have risked his
life to eat a meal served by the hands of another and cooked by another
man. That was the secret of that Thanksgiving dinner at the Foster
house, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today,
as he made his fire between two stones--a smoldering, evil-smelling
fire of sagebrush--the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking his
lungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned his
stomach. At last he sat down, forgetting the bacon in the pan,
forgetting the long fast and the hard ride which had preceded this meal,
and stared at the fire.
Rather, the fire was the thing which he kept chiefly in the center of
his vision, but his glances went everywhere, to all sides, up, and down.
Hal Dozier had hunted him hotly down the valley of the Little Silver
River, but near the village of Los Toros the fagged posse and Hal
himself had dropped back and once more given up the chase. No doubt they
would rest for a few hours in the town, change horses, and then come
after him again.
It was a new Andrew Lanning that sat there by the fire. He had left
Martindale a clear-faced boy; the months that followed had changed him
to a man; the boyhood had been literally burned out of him. The skin of
his face, indeed, refused to tan, but now, instead of a healthy and
crisp white it was a colorless sallow. The rounded cheeks were now
straight and sank in sharply beneath his cheek bones, with a sharply
incised line beside the mouth. And his expression at all times was one
of quivering alertness--the mouth a little compressed and straight, the
nostrils seeming a trifle distended, and the eyes as restless as the
eyes of a hungry wolf.
Moreover, all of Andrew's actions had come to bear out this same
expression of his face. If he sat down his legs were gathered, and he
seemed about to stand up. If he walked he went with a nervous step,
rising a little on his toes as though he were about to break into a run
or as though he were poising himself to whirl at any alarm. He sat in
this manner even now, under that dead gray sky of sheeted clouds, and in
the middle of that great rolling plain, lifeless and colorless--lifeless
except for the wind that hummed across it, pointed with cold. Andrew,
looking from the dull glimmer of his fire to that dead waste, sighed. He
whistled, and Sally came instantly to the call and dropped her head
beside his own. She, at least, had not changed in the long pursuits and
the hard life. It had made her gaunt. It had hardened and matured her
muscles, but her head was the same, and her changeable, human eyes, the
eyes of a pet, had not altered.
She stood there with her head down, silently; and Andrew, his hands
locked around his knees, neither spoke to her nor stirred. But by
degrees the pain and the hunger went out of his face, and, as though she
knew that she was no longer needed, Sally tipped his sombrero over his
eyes with a toss of her head, and, having given this signal of disgust
at being called without a purpose, she went back to her work of cropping
the gramma grass, which of all grasses a horse loves best. Andrew
straightened his hat and cast one glance after her.
A shade of thought passed over his face as he looked at her. But this
time the posse was probably once more starting on out of Los Toros and
taking his trail. It would mean another test; he did not fear for her,
but he pitied her for the hard work that was coming, and he looked
almost with regret over the long racing lines of her body. And it was
then, coming out of the sight of Sally, the thought of the posse, and
the disgust for the greasy bacon in the pan, that Andrew received a
quite new idea. It was to stop his flight, turn about, and double like a
fox straight back toward Los Toros, making a detour to the left. The
posse would plunge ahead, and he could cut in toward Los Toros. For he
had determined to eat once again, at least, at a table covered with a
white cloth, food prepared by the hand of another. Sally was known; he
would leave her in the grove beside the Little Silver River. For
himself, weeks had passed since any man had seen him, and certainly no
one in Los Toros had met him face to face. He would be unknown except
for a general description. And to disarm suspicion entirely he would
leave his cartridge belt and his revolver with Sally in the woods. For
what human being, no matter how imaginative, would possibly dream of
Andrew Lanning going unarmed into a town and sitting calmly at a table
to order a meal?