"THE THIRD TIME"
Horton was essentially practical, and once he saw his way usually set
about the following of it without any of the misgivings which might
have proved a hindrance to more intellectual men. There were, however,
times when Seaforth wondered uneasily whether he was doing well, but he
decided that as the outlook could not be much more unfavourable any
variation would almost of necessity be an improvement, and that one
could not afford to be over-scrupulous in a struggle with a man of
Hallam's description. Accordingly he hoped for the best, and resigned
himself to Horton, who grew more assured of the beneficence and
legality of his proceedings during the journey to Somasco, where
Seaforth accompanied him, and as soon as he arrived there sent round
demanding the attendance of all the ranchers in that vicinity at his
store, in the name of the law. He, however, contrived that the summons
should not reach the few who, having refused to join the Somasco
Consolidated, were suspected of complicity with Hallam, until it was
too late, and though Seaforth ventured a few protestations, appeared
perfectly contented with himself.
"I'm put right here to scare off malefactors and encourage honest men,
and I'm doing it, the best way I can," he said.
The ranchers came, as did Captain Andersen, the venerable Scandinavian
constable, whose duties had hitherto consisted in keeping his
neighbours' gardens free of depredating hogs and improving his own
land. Horton also made a speech to them, and appeared somewhat
offended when some of them broke into the bushman's silent chuckle.
"We have," he said, "no use for fooling. This is the most serious and
solemn kind of thing."
"Oh, yes," said one of the assembly. "That's just what it's going to
be if Damer's friends stand by him. Damer isn't going to come along to
prison because Andersen tells him."
Horton regarded the speaker with a gravity that was tempered by
semi-contemptuous pity. "Then," he said, "because I'm going to swear
you in as special constables, you and the boys will make him."
There was another lapse into half-audible laughter and one of the men
touched Seaforth's shoulder. "I'm wondering what Harry would think of
this," said he. "It would sound kind of curious in the old country."
Seaforth smiled as he made a little gesture of resignation. "The point
is that he doesn't know. Anyway, we haven't done much to be proud of
while we acted sensibly, and now and then foolishness seems to pay as
well as wisdom."
"Well," said the other, grinning, "I wouldn't call old Horton a fool
altogether."
Horton interrupted him by calling up six of the biggest men, and very
gravely swearing them in, after which he produced a paper. "This," he
said, "is a warrant for the apprehension of one Roger Damer for
horse-stealing, and all you have to do is to go up and get him. You
will meet here at daylight to-morrow, every man with a horse and
provisions, but while I'll do the best I can for you I'm not quite sure
the Government will pay for them."
Once more there was soft laughter, but early next morning six silent
men, whose bronze faces bore no trace of merriment now, rode out of the
settlement, with rifles slung behind them, and four more followed later
leading heavily-laden horses by the bridle. Time was not of vital
importance, and though all of them were at home in the bush they
prospected for the easiest road, which led them through valleys few men
of their race had ever set foot in before. Twice a few of the Siwash,
who come down the rivers with the spring, awoke when the moon was in
the sky, and heard a trampling of horses high up amidst the pines that
shut in a lonely valley, and once a solitary prospector, camping close
beneath the snow, rose drowsily beside his fire, and wondered whether
he was dreaming as he saw a line of mounted men with rifles flit by and
vanish beyond a black hill shoulder. They rode in silence, and save
for the muffled ring of iron and faint jingle of steel, he could have
taken them for disembodied spirits in place of living men.
Horton, however, had in him a trace of the general, and did what his
mind could grasp with a grim thoroughness, while, as the result of it,
there was blank astonishment one morning in a mining camp as he and the
men who followed him appeared as by magic from amidst the pines
surrounding it. They were also armed, and the miners, who rose from
their breakfast, stared at them motionless in silence, that is, all
save one, who slipped into a tent and afterwards out through the back
of it. Horton, however, saw him, and his command was to the
point--"Stop him."
There was a rustle of branches, and Tom of Okanagan rose out of the
thicket the fugitive had almost gained, with a rifle in his hand. He
laughed somewhat grimly as he said, "Stop right where you are."
Then there was for a space a somewhat impressive tableau, that had in
it humorous as well as tragic possibilities. Hallam's men had
doubtless been chosen because of qualities which are more tolerated
farther south than they are in that country, but they had nothing handy
to enforce their protests with beyond their camp utensils, and it did
not appear advisable to make a move in search of more effective
weapons. Accordingly they stood silent, with the smoke drifting about
them, all save one of them, who, with impotent fury in his face, backed
step by step into the opening before their shanty, as Tom of Okanagan
beckoned him. Nobody else moved at all, for Horton's company were
commandingly posted beneath the surrounding pines, and there was a grim
twinkle in the eyes of one who carried a rifle, and had risen out of
the undergrowth between the shovels and axes and their legitimate
owners. How long the spectacle would have lasted Seaforth did not
know, but at last the man, who had backed away before Okanagan, tripped
on a tent line and went down headlong. That broke the silence, and the
big man, who had on a previous occasion spoken with Alton, stepped
forward.
"Now what the ---- is all this about?" he said.
"Stand back," said Horton solemnly as he drew out a paper. "It's the
hand of the law. Here's a warrant for Roger Damer, and it's his body
we've come for. You will put the handcuffs on him, Constable Andersen,
and if he tries to stop you Tom has full authority to pound the
wickedness out of him."
"Hold on," said the big man. "That's your way of it. Now has it
struck you that there are things we might do?"
"Oh, yes," said Horton with undiminished gravity. "You're going to
stop where you are, like lawful citizens, because there are enough of
us to make you if you don't want to."
The argument was incontrovertible, and there was only a growl of
protest as the venerable Scandinavian did his duty. Then while two men
stood on guard over their prisoner Horton turned for the last time to
the miners.
"I'm kind of sorry I don't know quite enough about you to take the rest
of you along," he said. "Still, if I can find out anything we'll come
back for you again. Well, boys, we'll be going. Hitch that lariat on
to the prisoner's wrists, and keep a good hold on it, Constable
Andersen."
Nothing more was said, for Horton's men marched out of camp as silently
as they had come, and it was only when the pines had closed about them
that a hoarse laugh went back in answer to the volley of vituperation
that rose out of the hollow behind them. Damer spoke no word to any
man all that day or the next, but when they camped on the second night
high up on the hillside he signed to Seaforth, who passed the fire
where he lay a little apart from the rest.
"Somebody is going to be sorry for this," he said. "Now a sensible man
would wonder what you expect to make by it."
"You mean that we can't connect you with the horse-stealing?"
"Yes," said the man, "if there was any. Now there are men behind me
who will make you and Horton very sorry you ever fooled with me."
Seaforth smiled outwardly and with his eyes, for he surmised that the
prisoner was willing to bargain for his freedom, but his lips were set
and he found it difficult to restrain the rage that welled up within
him.
"Well," he said, "I don't know that it is of any great importance
whether we do or not. It will be enough to hold you by until we find
out all that happened one snowy night when somebody fixed a lariat
across a trail, and there was another affair up in the bush."
The light of the fire was on them, and the man's face betrayed him,
though his words were bold enough. "You don't take me with a hand like
that!"
Seaforth trembled a little as his anger shook him, for he had seen
enough. "I think you are the man we want," he said.
He had desired to make quite certain and succeeded, but he afterwards
regretted it, for the effect of that speech upon the prisoner, who did
not answer him, was considerably more than he had anticipated. The
man, who appeared, as Seaforth decided later, suspiciously cowed and
dejected, said nothing to any of his captors all next day, and lay down
at night in apathetic sullenness, but when the rancher who slept beside
him awoke in the morning he had gone, and by way of ironical farewell
somebody had hung a pair of rusty handcuffs whose snap-spring was
evidently defective upon a neighbouring tree. One man had kept watch
beside the fire, which he had left for a few minutes to bring in more
wood, and another by the horses; but while neither of them had seen or
heard anything, the fact that their captive was no longer with them
remained, and half-an-hour spent in very pointed and personal
recriminations did nothing to solve the mystery. It was Horton who
terminated the discussion.
"We've no use for more talking, boys," he said. "The man was here last
night, and he isn't now, and it don't count for very much how he got
away. Head right away for the railroad, two of you. Another two will
strike for the pass in the main divide, and if you get through quick
enough you'll turn him off into the back country. The rest of you will
stop right here and help Okanagan to pick up his trail."
There was a hurried saddling of horses, four mounted men went crashing
through the undergrowth downhill at the risk of neck and limbs, and an
hour later Seaforth and Okanagan stopped a few moments breathless
beside a frothing stream.
"He'll have gone this way for the river, sure," said the latter. "You
can tell Horton to send Thomson and Andersen across to watch the canon."
Seaforth looked at the bushman, and his face was curiously grim. "You
know who he is, Tom? We must have him at any cost, and I think it is
my fault he got away."
Okanagan laughed a little almost silent laugh that had no mirth in it.
"If the boys can head him off from the railroad I'll find him sure," he
said. "Oh, yes, I think I know him. When we get him I'm figuring
we'll find the marks of Harry's knife on him."
Okanagan found the trail again lower down the valley, and he and
another tireless man headed for the river through a country no horse
could traverse all that day, leaving Seaforth behind them worn-out at
noon. He sat down to wait for Horton considerably disturbed in mind,
and his anxieties would not have been diminished had he known that
Alton was starting for Somasco by the Atlantic express that afternoon.
It was next day when Alton reached the settlement and found the few
women there in a state of excitement, while when he had heard their
story he borrowed the best horse he could find and rode out at a gallop
towards the ranges. He had also spent several days in the bush without
finding any trace of the party when he camped one evening on the edge
of one of the many deep ravines the torrents wear out of the hillsides.
It stretched, a dim shadowy chasm, across his path, and looking down he
could faintly see the firs that clung here and there to the sides of it
loom faintly black through the drifting mist. It was too dark to seek
for a way of descending or round the head of it, and he decided to
remain where he was until the morning. Twenty minutes sufficed to make
his simple camp, and he sat with his back to a cedar-trunk and a can of
green tea beside him, while the shadows crept higher up the hillsides
and night tame down to meet them out of the dimness of the east.
The fire crackled joyously. There was hope in all the smells of
spring, and the stir of life in every growing thing, while the chill
that came down from the white peaks fired the blood like wine; but
Alton sighed as he glanced up at the stars above him and his face was
sombre. There was, it seemed, no possibility of the railroad being
built to Somasco, he could only see disaster in front of him, and knew
that with the hope of prosperity a brighter one had gone. He would be
a poor man, and was a cripple, and--for he had not forgotten his
deficiencies--could have laughed at the folly which had led him to
grasp at that which could never be his. Then his slow, enduring
stubbornness came to his help again as he remembered that there yet
remained to him the fight with Hallam.
"I was a fool. She only wanted to be kind," he said.
Still, he groaned in a fit of passion as the memory of one moment at
midnight in Somasco ranch returned to him, for all his pulses throbbed
feverishly as he felt in fancy the warm white arm steal round his neck.
"I must have dreamt it--with the rest," he said. "And if I didn't,
that was enough to remember. God bless her for her gentleness."
Again he flung the memories from him with an effort that brought a dew
to his face, but the conflict which must be fought every day was over,
and he stretched his long limbs amidst the soft cedar-twigs and lay
down to sleep with a stolid acquiescence that if wholly free from
bitterness was but little brightened by the victory. The man's life
had been a struggle almost since its beginning, and he was stubborn,
but his own headstrong passions had been the most obdurate enemy he had
ever brought into subjection.
Sleep came and brought him forgetfulness. The fire sank to a lambent
flicker above the white-flecked embers, the pines sang their mystic
songs about him as a little breeze awoke, and their soft sighing was
answered by the growl of the torrent far down in the ravine. Now and
then the horse stamped restlessly and tugged at the lariat that was
pegged down within reach of Alton's arm, and once came up and looked
down on him. Alton usually slumbered lightly in the bush, but man's
primitive instincts reassert themselves in the wilderness, and because
it is possible that his senses were not wholly dormant and there was
some subtle sympathy between him and the beasts that served him he did
not awaken.
Then the horse grew restless and pricked its ears, stood still
snorting, and backed away to the length of its tether as a face looked
out from the undergrowth. The sinking light of the fire was on it, and
it was an evil face with the stamp of hunger on it, and malevolence in
the staring eyes. Again the horse snorted and trembled as an arm was
thrust out of the bushes and something glinted in the hand, but Alton
still lay motionless with the pack saddle under his shoulders.
Then a man crawled clear of the undergrowth, rose up, and stooped over
the lariat with a knife in his hand. He needed a horse badly, and one
stroke with the blade would give him one; but he needed food and a
saddle almost as much, and moving forward a few paces gazed at the
sleeping man. He saw the pack that had been seized to the saddle, and
guessed that there were several days' provisions inside it, while a
wolfish gleam came into his eyes as he straightened himself and stood
very still listening. His garments hung in thorn-rent rags about him,
weariness was in his very attitude, but his face had written on it the
cunning and courage of desperation, for he had been hunted by tireless
men who were then close behind him, and had travelled for the most part
starving and without sleep. With a good horse and provisions he could
yet escape his enemies, and the man looked scarcely human as he stood
watching the sleeper with a sullen glow in his eyes.
There was nothing audible but the sighing of the pines and the faint
sound of breathing, and moving a pace nearer he stopped again. The man
he watched was very still, but a little breeze fanned the fire, and
when the flickering radiance passed across his face the watcher almost
betrayed himself with a cry as he recognized him. There was only one
course open to him now, and with the muscles of his right arm
contracting and the lean soil-stained fingers he had clawed his way up
the ravine with closing on the knife, he crept forward another pace.
He had no great fear of anything Horton and the ranchers could do
without the help of this man who could condemn him, and he knew his
capabilities. Now one swift thrust would silence him forever, and once
he could reach the railroad there was a man who for his own sake would
help him safely out of the country with as many dollars as he might
demand. Still, he slipped out of the firelight next second, and the
knife shook a little in his hand.
Alton had lain with his right arm under him, and the starched shirt he
had worn when he left the city showing white where the jacket and
blanket had fallen apart, but now the arm was stretched across his
body. Still, his eyes were closed, and the man who surmised that he
must have moved while he glanced at the provisions closed with him
swiftly, crouching. He stopped again, stooping further, for the arm
and blanket were in the way, and he knew he might have no opportunity
for a second thrust. Something must be risked, and moving his eyes
from the sleeper's face he endeavoured to draw the blanket gently aside.
That was a blunder, for the soil-stained fingers had scarcely touched
the fabric when a fist was dashed full in his face, and as he staggered
backwards something hove itself partly upright and fell upon him.
After that neither of them knew all that had happened, but the knife
fell from a hand whose wrist yielded under a crushing grasp, and was
kicked away and trampled on. Then breathing stertorously they reeled
into a fir, and the assailant's hand was free again, while stones
rattled beneath them as Alton, half-suffocated, flung him almost at
arm's length from him. Then the ground seemed to slip away beneath
him, and he wound an arm about his adversary as he smote again.
Faint as he was with the blow, Alton did not, however, strive to shake
him off now, but grappled with him the more closely, and next moment
they had rolled crashing through a juniper. Then the other man came
down undermost and struck a stone, there was a swift glissade over
rattling shingle and through smashing undergrowth, and Alton lay still
alone, while something rolled on down the slope beneath him, until
hearing a splash below he rose with a little hoarse cry and swung
himself off the ledge which had arrested him. He rolled over several
times, but came down, as he discovered later, whole in limb, for he
could think of nothing then as he groped in and out amidst the pools
and boulders for his enemy. When he found him the man lay with his
face apparently in the water, and only moaned a little when Alton shook
him.
Then suddenly his passion fell from him, and with a gentleness that was
in no way akin to pity he dragged the limp body from the water, and sat
down to wait for morning with the wet head upon his knee. The morning
was also a very long while coming, but at last, when the stars were
paling and the dark pines slowly grew into shape and form, there was a
sound of footsteps on the heights above and a voice he recognized came
down:
"Come right along. Here's his fire, but the man has gone."
"Charley!" cried Alton, and there was an exclamation of astonishment
followed by a scrambling, and presently Seaforth stopped with a little
gasp by his comrade. Alton's face showed drawn and grey in the
creeping light, and there was another more blanched one in the wet fern
beside him.
"Good Lord!" said Seaforth. "What's the meaning of this, Harry?"
"Look at him," said Alton gravely. "You should know him. I think this
is the third time."
"Damer!" said Seaforth hoarsely. "We were trailing him, and knew he
couldn't be far off when we saw your fire. We took it for his. Is he
dead?"
"No," said Alton gravely, "I hope not. We have some use for him. Go
back and get the lariat, and we'll try to heave him up."