There was no further attempt at challenging his authority. When he
ordered Clune and La Roche to bring in boughs for bedding--since they
were to stop in the shack overnight--they went silently. But it was such
a silence as comes when the wind falls at the end of a day and in a
silent sky the clouds pile heavily, higher and higher. Andrew took the
opportunity to speak to Scottie Macdougal. He told Scottie simply that
he needed him, and with him at his back he could handle the others, and
more, too. He was surprised to see a twinkle in the eye of the
Scotchman.
"Why, Andy," said the canny fellow, "didn't you see me pass you the
wink? I was with you all the time!"
Andrew thanked him and went into the cabin to arrange for lights. He had
no intention of shirking a share in the actual work of the camp; even
though Allister had set that example for his following. He took some
lengths of pitchy pine sticks and arranged them for torches. One of them
alone would send a flare of yellow light through the cabin; two made a
comfortable illumination. But he worked cheerlessly. The excitement of
the robbery and the chase was over, and then the conflict with the men
was passing. He began to see things truly by the drab light of
retrospection. The bullets of Allister and Clune might have gone home--
they were intended to kill, not to wound. And if there had been two
deaths he, Andrew Lanning, would have been equally guilty with the men
who handled the guns, for he had been one of the forces which made that
shooting possible.
It was an ugly way to look at it--very ugly. It kept a frown on Andrew's
face, while he arranged the torches in the main room of the shack and
then put one for future reference in the little shed which leaned
against the rear of the main structure. He arranged his own bed in this
second room, where the saddles and other accouterments were piled. It
was easily explained, since there was hardly room for five men in the
first room. But he had another purpose. He wanted to separate himself
from the others, just as Allister always did. Even in a crowded room
Allister would seem aloof, and Andrew determined to make the famous
leader his guide.
Above all he was troubled by what Scottie had said. He would have felt
easy at heart if the Scotchman had met him with an argument or with a
frown or honest opposition or with a hearty handshake, to say that all
was well between them. But this cunning lie--this cunning protestation
that he had been with the new leader from the first, put Andrew on his
guard. For he knew perfectly well that Scottie had not been on his side
during the crisis with La Roche. Macdougal sat before the door, his
metal flask of whisky beside him. It was a fault of Allister, this
permitting of whisky at all times and in all places, after a job was
finished. And while it made the other men savage beasts, it turned
Scottie Macdougal into a wily, smiling snake. He had bit the heel of
more than one man in his drinking bouts.
Presently La Roche and Clune came in. They had been talking together
again. Andrew could tell by the manner in which they separated, as soon
as they entered the room, and by their voices, which they made loud and
cheerful; and, also, by the fact that they avoided looking at each
other. They were striving patently to prove that there was nothing
between them; and if Andrew had been on guard, now he became
tinglingly so.
They arranged their bunks; Larry la Roche took from his vest a pipe with
a small bowl and a long stem and sat down cross-legged to smoke. Andrew
suggested that Larry produce the contents of his saddlebag and share the
spoils of war.
He brought it out willingly enough and spilled it out on the improvised
table, a glittering mass of gold trinkets, watches, jewels. He picked
out of the mass a chain of diamonds and spread it out on his snaky
fingers so that the light could play on it. Andrew knew nothing about
gems, but he knew that the chain must be worth a great deal of money.
"This," said Larry, "is my share. You gents can have the rest and split
it up."
"A nice set of sparklers," nodded Clune, "but there's plenty left to
satisfy me."
"What you think," declared Scottie, "ain't of any importance, Joe. It's
what the chief thinks that counts. Is it square, Lanning?"
Andrew flushed at the appeal and the ugly looks which La Roche and Clune
cast toward him. He could have stifled Scottie for that appeal, and yet
Scottie was smiling in the greatest apparent good nature and belief in
their leader. His face was flushed, but his lips were bloodless. Alcohol
always affected him in that manner.
"I don't know the value of the stones," said Andrew.
"Don't you?" murmured Scottie. "I forgot. Thought maybe you would. That
was something that Allister did know." The new leader saw a flash of
glances toward Scottie, but the latter continued to eye the captain with
a steady and innocent look.
"Scottie," decided Andrew instantly, "is my chief enemy."
If he could detach one man to his side all would be well. Two against
three would be a simple thing, as long as he was one of the two. But
four against one--and such a four as these--was hopeless odds. There
seemed little chance of getting Joe Clune. There remained only Jeff
Rankin as his possibly ally, and already he had stepped on Jeff's toes
sorely, by making the tired giant stand guard. He thought of all these
things, of course, in a flash. And then in answer to his thoughts Jeff
Rankin appeared. His heavy footfall crashed inside the door. He stopped,
panting, and, in spite of his news, paused to blink at the flash
of jewels.
"It's comin'," said Jeff. "Boys, get your guns and scatter out of the
cabin. Duck that light! Hal Dozier is comin' up the valley."
There was not a single exclamation, but the lights went out as if by
magic; there were a couple of light, hissing sounds, such as iron makes
when it is whipped swiftly across leather.
"How'd you know him by this light?" asked Larry la Roche, as they went
out of the door. Outside they found everything brilliant with the white
moonshine of the mountains.
"Nobody but Hal Dozier rides twistin' that way in the saddle. I'd tell
him in a thousand. It's old wounds that makes him ride like that. We got
ten minutes. He's takin' the long way up the canyon. And they ain't
anybody with him."
"If he's come alone," said Andrew, "he's come for me and not for the
rest of you."
No one spoke. Then Larry la Roche: "He wants to make it man to man.
That's clear. That's why he pulled up his hoss and waited for Allister
to make the first move for his gun. It's a clean challenge to some
one of us."
Andrew saw his chance and used it mercilessly.
"Which one of you is willing to take the challenge?" he asked. "Which
one of you is willing to ride down the canyon and meet him alone? La
Roche, I've heard you curse Dozier."
But Larry la Roche answered: "What's this fool talk about takin' a
challenge? I say, string out behind the hills and pot him with rifles."
"One man, and we're five," said Jeff Rankin. "It ain't sportin', Larry.
I hate to hear you say that. We'd be despised all over the mountains if
we done it. He's makin' his play with a lone hand, and we've got to meet
him the same way. Eh, chief?"
It was sweet to Andrew to hear that appeal. And he saw them turn one by
one toward him in the moonlight and wait. It was his first great
tribute. He looked over those four wolfish figures and felt his
heart swelling.
"Wish me luck, boys," he said, and without another word he turned and
went down the hillside.
The others watched him with amazement. He felt it rather than saw it,
and it kept a tingle in his blood. He felt, also, that they were
spreading out to either side to get a clear view of the fight that was
to follow, and it occurred to him that, even if Hal Dozier killed him,
there would not be one chance in a thousand of Hal's getting away. Four
deadly rifles would be covering him.
It must be that a sort of madness had come on Dozier, advancing in this
manner, unsupported by a posse. Or, perhaps, he had no idea that the
outlaws could be so close. He expected a daylight encounter high up the
mountains.
But Andrew went swiftly down the ravine.
Broken cliffs, granite boulders jumped up on either side of him, and
the rocks were pale and glimmering under the moon. This one valley
seemed to receive the light; the loftier mountains rolling away on each
side were black as jet, with sharp, ragged outlines against the sky. It
was a cold light, and the chill of it went through Andrew. He was
afraid, afraid as he had been when Buck Heath faced him in Martindale,
or when Bill Dozier ran him down, or when the famous Sandy cornered him.
His fingers felt brittle, and his breath came and went in short gasps,
drawn into the upper part of his lungs only.
Behind him, like an electric force pushing him on, the outlaws watched
his steps. They, also, were shuddering with fear, and he knew it.
Dozier was coming, fresh from another kill.
"Only one man I'd think twice about meeting," Allister had said in the
old days, and he had been right. Yet there were thousands who had sworn
that Allister was invincible--that he would never fall before a
single man.
He thought, too, of the lean face and the peculiar, set eye of Dozier.
The man had no fear, he had no nerves; he was a machine, and death was
his business.
And was he, Andrew Lanning, unknown until the past few months, now going
down to face destruction, as full of fear as a girl trembling at the
dark? What was it that drew them together, so unfairly matched?
He could still see only the white haze of the moonshine before him, but
now there was the clicking of hoofs on the rock. Dozier was coming.
Andrew walked squarely out into the middle of the ravine and waited. He
had set his teeth. The nerves on the bottom of his feet were twitching.
Something freezing cold was beginning at the tips of his fingers. How
long would it take Dozier to come?
An interminable time. The hoofbeats actually seemed to fade out and draw
away at one time. Then they began again very near him, and now they
stopped. Had Dozier seen him around the elbow curve? That heartbreaking
instant passed, and the clicking began again. Then the rider came slowly
in view. First there was the nodding head of the cow pony, then the foot
in the stirrup, then Hal Dozier riding a little twisted in the saddle--a
famous characteristic of his.
He came on closer and closer. He began to seem huge on the horse. Was he
blind not to see the figure that waited for him?
A voice that was not his, that he did not recognize, leaped out from
between his teeth and tore his throat: "Dozier!"
The cow pony halted with a start; the rider jerked straight in his
saddle; the echo of the call barked back from some angling cliff face
down the ravine. All that before Dozier made his move. He had dropped
the reins, and Andrew, with a mad intention of proving that he himself
did not make the first move toward his weapon, had folded his arms.
He did not move through the freezing instant that followed. Not until
there was a convulsive jerk of Dozier's elbow did he stir his folded
arms. Then his right arm loosened, and the hand flashed down to
his holster.
Was Dozier moving with clogged slowness, or was it that he had ceased to
be a body, that he was all brain and hair-trigger nerves making every
thousandth part of a second seem a unit of time? It seemed to Andrew
that the marshal's hand dragged through its work; to those who watched
from the sides of the ravine, there was a flash of fire from his gun
before they saw even the flash of the steel out of the holster. The gun
spat in the hand of Dozier, and something jerked at the shirt of Andrew
beside his neck. He himself had fired only once, and he knew that the
shot had been too high and to the right of his central target; yet he
did not fire again. Something strange was happening to Hal Dozier. His
head had nodded forward as though in mockery of the bullet; his
extended right hand fell slowly, slowly; his whole body began to sway
and lean toward the right. Not until that moment did Andrew know that he
had shot the marshal through the body.
He raced to the side of the cattle pony, and, as the horse veered away,
Hal Dozier dropped limply into his arms. He lay with his limbs sprawling
at odd angles beside him. His muscles seemed paralyzed, but his eyes
were bright and wide, and his face perfectly composed.
"There's luck for you," said Hal Dozier calmly. "I pulled it two inches
to the right, or I would have broken your neck with the slug--anyway, I
spoiled your shirt."
The cold was gone from Andrew, and he felt his heart thundering and
shaking his body. He was repeating like a frightened child, "For God's
sake, Hal, don't die--don't die."
The paralyzed body did not move, but the calm voice answered him: "You
fool! Finish me before your gang comes and does it for you!"