It was not yet noon when he entered the gulch, he was part way up the
ravine when something moved at the top of the high wall to his right. He
guessed at once that it was a lookout signaling the main party of the
approach of a stranger, so Andrew stopped Sally with a word and held his
hand high above his head, facing the point from which he had seen the
movement. There was a considerable pause; then a man showed on the top
of the cliff, and Andrew recognized Jeff Rankin by his red hair. Yet
they were at too great a distance for conversation, and after waving a
greeting, Rankin merely beckoned Andrew on his way up the valley.
Around the very next bend of the ravine he found the camp. It was of the
most impromptu character, and the warning of Rankin had caused them to
break it up precipitately, as Andrew could see by one length of
tarpaulin tossed, without folding, over a saddle. Each of the four was
ready, beside his horse, for flight or for attack, as their outlook on
the cliff should give signal. But at sight of Andrew and the bay mare a
murmur, then a growl of interest went among them. Even Larry la Roche
grinned a skull-like welcome, and Henry Allister actually ran forward to
receive the newcomer. Andrew dropped out of the saddle and shook
hands with him.
"I've done as you said I would," said Andrew. "I've run in a circle,
Allister, and now I'm back to make one of you, if you still want me."
Allister, laughing joyously, turned to the other three and repeated the
question to them. There was only one voice in answer.
"Want you?" said Allister, and his smile made Andrew almost forget the
scar which twisted the otherwise handsome face. "Want you? Why, man, if
we've been beyond the law up to this time, we can laugh at the law now.
Sit down. Hey, Scottie, shake up the fire and put on some coffee, will
you? We'll take an hour off."
Larry la Roche was observed to make a dour face.
"Who'll tell me it's lucky," he said, "to have a gent that starts out by
makin' us all stop on the trail? Is that a good sign?"
But Scottie, with laughter, hushed him. Yet Larry la Roche remained of
all the rest quite silent during the making of the coffee and the
drinking of it. The others kept up a running fire of comments and
questions, but Larry la Roche, as though he had never forgiven Andrew
for their first quarrel, remained with his long, bony chin dropped upon
his breast and followed the movements of Andrew Lanning with
restless eyes.
The others were glad to see him, as Andrew could tell at a glance, but
also they were a bit troubled, and by degrees he made out the reason.
Strange as it seemed, they regretted that he had not been able to make
his break across the mountains. His presence made them more impregnable
than they had ever been under the indomitable Allister, and yet, more
than the aid of his fighting hand, they would have welcomed the tidings
of a man who had broken away from the shadow of the law and made good.
For each of the fallen wishes to feel that his exile is self-terminable.
And therefore Andrew, telling his story to them in brief, found that
they were not by any means filled with unmixed pleasure. Joe Clune, with
his bright brown hair of youth and his lined, haggard face of worn
middle age, summed up their sentiments at the end of Andrew's story:
"You're what we need with us, Lanning. You and Allister will beat the
world, and it means high times for the rest of us, but God pity
you--that's all!"
The pause that followed this solemn speech was to Andrew like an amen.
He glanced from face to face, and each stern eye met his in
gloomy sympathy.
Then something shot through him which was to his mind what red is to the
eye; it was a searing touch of reckless indifference, defiance.
"Forget this prayer-meeting talk," said Andrew. "I came up here for
action, not mourning. I want something to do with my hands, not
something to think about with my head!"
Something to think about! It was like a terror behind him. If he should
have long quiet it would steal on him and look at him over his shoulder
like a face. A little of this showed in his face; enough to make the
circle flash significant glances at one another.
"You got something behind you, Andy," said Scottie. "Come out with it.
It ain't too bad for us to hear."
"There's something behind me," said Andrew. "It's the one really decent
part of my life. And I don't want to think about it. Allister, they say
you never let the grass grow under you. What's on your hands now?"
"Somebody has been flattering me," said the leader quietly, and all the
time he kept studying the face of Andrew. "We have a little game ahead,
if you want to come in on it. We're shorthanded, but I'd try it with
you. That makes us six all told. Six enough, boys?"
"Count me half of one," said Larry la Roche. "I don't feel lucky about
this little party."
"We'll count you two times two," replied the leader. He added: "You boys
play a game; I'm going to break in Lanning to our job."
Taking his horse, he and Andrew rode at a walk up the ravine. On the way
the leader explained his system briefly and clearly. Told in short, he
worked somewhat as follows: Instead of raiding blindly right and left,
he only moved when he had planned every inch of ground for the advance
and the blow and the retreat. To make sure of success and the size of
his stakes he was willing to invest heavily.
"Big business men sink half a year's income in their advertising. I do
the same."
It was not public advertising; it was money cunningly expended where it
would do most good. Fifty per cent of the money the gang earned was laid
away to make future returns surer. In twenty places Allister had his
paid men who, working from behind the scenes, gained priceless
information and sent word of it to the outlaw. Trusted officials in
great companies were in communication with him. When large shipments of
gold were to be made, for instance, he was often warned beforehand.
Every dollar of the consignment was known to him, the date of its
shipment, its route, and the hands to which it was supposed to fall. Or,
again, in many a bank and prosperous mercantile firm in the mountain
desert he had inserted his paid spies, who let him know when the safe
was crammed with cash and by what means the treasure was guarded.
Not until he had secured such information did the leader move. And he
still delayed until every possible point of friction had been noted,
every danger considered, and a check appointed for it, every method of
advance and retreat gone over.
"A good general," Allister was fond of saying, "plans in two ways: for
an absolute victory and for an absolute defeat. The one enables him to
squeeze the last ounce of success out of a triumph; the other keeps a
failure from turning into a catastrophe."
With everything arranged for the stroke, he usually posted himself with
the band as far as possible from the place where the actual work was to
be done. Then he made a feint in the opposite direction--he showed
himself or a part of his gang recklessly. The moment the alarm was
given--even at the risk of having an entire hostile countryside around
him--he started a whirlwind course in the opposite direction from which
he was generally supposed to be traveling. If possible, at the ranches
of adherents, or at out-of-the-way places where confederates could act,
he secured fresh horses and dashed on at full speed all the way.
Then, at the very verge of the place for attack, he gathered his men,
rehearsed in detail what each man was to do, delivered the blow, secured
the spoils, and each man of the party split away from the others and
fled in scattering directions, to assemble again at a distant point on a
comparatively distant date. There they sat down around a council table,
and there they divided the spoils. No matter how many were employed, no
matter how vast a proportion of the danger and scheming had been borne
by the leader, he took no more than two shares. Then fifty per cent of
the prize was set aside. The rest was divided with an exact care among
the remaining members of the gang. The people who had supplied the
requisite information for the coup were always given their share.
From this general talk Allister descended to particulars. He talked of
the gang itself. They were quite a fixed quantity. In the last half
dozen years there had not been three casualties. For one thing, he chose
his men with infinite care; in the second place, he saw to it that they
remained in harmony, and to that end he was careful never to be tempted
into forming an unwieldy crew, no matter how large the prize. Of the
present organization each was an expert. Larry la Roche had been a
counterfeiter and was a consummate penman. His forgeries were works of
art. "Have you noticed his hands?"
Scottie Macdougal was an eminent advance agent, whose smooth tongue was
the thing for the very dangerous and extremely important work of trying
out new sources of information, noting the dependability of those
sources, and understanding just how far and in what line the tools could
be used. Joe Clune was a past expert in the blowing of safes; not only
did he know everything that was to be known about means of guarding
money and how to circumvent them, but he was an artist with the "soup,"
as Allister called nitroglycerin.
Jeff Rankin, without a mental equipment to compare with his companions,
was often invaluable on account of his prodigious strength. Under the
strain of his muscles, iron bars bent like hot wax. In addition he had
more than his share of an ability which all the members of the gang
possessed--an infinite cunning in the use of weapons and a
star-storming courage and self-confidence.
"And where," said Andrew at the end of this long recital, "do I fit in?"
"You begin," said Allister, "as the least valuable of my men; before six
months you will be worth the whole set of 'em. You'll start as my
lieutenant, Lanning. The boys expect it. You've built up a reputation
that counts. They admit your superiority without question. Larry la
Roche squirms under the weight of it, but he admits it like the rest of'
em. In a pinch they would obey you nearly as well as they obey me. It
means that, having you to take charge, I can do what I've always wanted
to do--I can give the main body the slip and go off for advance-guard
and rear-guard duty. I don't dare to do it now.
"Do you know why? Those fellows yonder, who seem so chummy, would be at
each other's throats in ten seconds if I weren't around to keep them in
order. I know why you're here, Lanning. It isn't the money. It's the
cursed fear of loneliness and the fear of having time to think. You want
action, action to fill your mind and blind you. That's what I offer you.
You're the keeper of the four wildcats you see over there. You start in
with their respect. Let them lose their fear of you for a moment and
they'll go for you. Treat them like men; think of them as wild beasts.
That's what they are. The minute they know you're without your whip they
go for you like tigers at a wounded trainer. One taste of meat is all
they need to madden them. It's different with me. I'm wild, too."
His eyes gleamed at Andrew.
"And, if they raise you, I think they'll find you've more iron hidden
away in you than I have. But the way they'll find it out will be in an
explosion that will wipe them out. You've got to handle them without
that explosion, Lanning. Can you do it?"
The younger man moistened his lips. "I think this job is going to prove
worth while," he returned.
"Very well, then. But there are penalties in your new position. In a
pinch you've got to do what I do--see that they have food enough--go
without sleep if one of them needs your blankets--if any of 'em gets in
trouble, even into a jail, you've got to get him out."
"Better still," smiled Andrew.
"And now," said the leader, "I'll tell you about our next job as we go
back to the boys."