Torrance hit the high spots streaking over to the King Cannon Ranch.
But he got only about half way, to the top of that pine-and-oak studded
knoll where some day the home was to be, when he rode into a sudden,
unpresaged rain. It was a rain of bullets, and the streaks of light
were orange-red flames from a rifle, and, like a man shot through the
head, he spilled out of the saddle. As he went down, untouched by any
of those flying leaden pellets, he snatched out a gun with one hand
while with the other he gave his horse a resounding slap to send the
animal racing straight on. And Torrance, striking earth and rolling
adroitly, brought up standing behind a thick-boled oak.
He had hardly come up erect on his toes when he glimpsed the man
shooting at him. His assailant was scarcely twenty steps away, sitting
a black horse in the shadows and all but invisible, and yet the wonder
remained that Torrance wasn’t killed and that he didn’t shoot the man
dead at the first shot. It was just one of those odd happenings which
so thickly besprinkle life wherever life is running strong and swift.
The heavy slug from Torrance’s forty-four, winged on its way by the
several chances of haste, uncertain light and moving figures, slammed
into the narrow margin of the other man’s rifle barrel, striking it so
near the trigger guard that the flying wrath of the bullet came next
door to raising a blister on the hardened trigger finger. It was like
slugging the gun with a sledge hammer; anyhow the rifle flew out of the
would-be killer’s hands and the man who thus relinquished his gun gave
voice to an involuntary howl of rage, pain and fright commingled. For
the fragment of a second he thought he had been shot--he didn’t quite
know where.
And he wasn’t granted much time to think about things. Torrance saw,
because of the star glint on steel, the flash of the weapon flying out
of his attacker’s hands, and then asked no better than to get the man
in his two hands. He had fired the one shot only; he had his gun up
for the second; he was nicely balanced on his toes. Obeying impulse, a
thing he did far more often than most men realized, he hurled himself
forward across the few steps intervening between himself and the man
who had just tried to kill him. And in some few seconds the two were
gripped together like two wildcats.
There in the dark, shot through with starlight, with their horses
snorting and stamping and watching and wanting to run away, yet not
moving out of their tracks, the two men fought as two men will when
there is only one thought in mind and heart and sinew, to win anyhow.
To win with a blow of a clubbed fist, with a strangle grip, with a
sudden knee or a brutal boot--to save your own life by beating the
other fellow into insensibility or by the directer method of killing
him. Yet, like a small bell beating in his brain, there was in Jim
Torrance the urge: “Get him, but get him alive so he can talk!”
It was Jake LeSarge whom Jim Torrance jerked down off his horse, though
at the time Torrance had not the least inkling of the man’s identity;
and Jake LeSarge, half Cherokee and sinewy and slippery, was as hard
to deal with as a young panther. He was like a snake for quick-darting
elusiveness, like a driving rod on the new western locomotives for the
blows he struck. Jim Torrance came to know all this within some ten
seconds, during which the two gave and took some measure of each other.
It just happened that Jim Torrance had what no other man that Sundown
ever knew had in the superlative degree, the something which made him
what he was, the one Town Marshal of Sundown whose memory will linger
a long, long time after so many other things mundane are forgotten. He
had the indestructible spirit. He took a smashing blow in the jaw and
reeled backward and tottered on his heels and took another blow under
his heart and felt the living breath jolted out of him, and all he did
was set his teeth and bore back into the tornado that had struck him.
Head down, chin protected, arms flailing and driving hard fists like
knobby clubs, he paid back in full for all he got.
He landed by chance, or luck, on LeSarge’s Adam’s apple, corded and
tight and hard, and the blow was like that of a sledge beating on an
anvil. Almost it broke young Jake LeSarge’s neck. It did knock him flat
at the same time that it choked him up so that he thought he was dying
for lack of breath. Before he could master his muscles and command
them to jerk his lean, battling body upright, Jim Torrance was on top
of him, battering him with merciless fists. Then Torrance’s hands,
the fingers like steel hooks, shut down on his throat until LeSarge’s
tongue lolled like a thirsty dog’s, and his eyes bulged. A tremor,
which the other man could feel, ran through his body from head to foot.
“Got you, damn you!” panted Jim Torrance.
Then his own head cleared. He kept a strangle-hold on the other man’s
throat, yet he no longer squeezed so hard; he remembered that he did
not want to kill but to ask his questions and get them answered.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “Quick, or I’ll put a bullet
square between your eyes!”
The other man, in sudden fear of death, answered:
“Me, I’m LeSarge, Jake LeSarge. I made a mistake--got the wrong man--”
“Sure!” said Torrance. “Sure! Now, where’ve you been? Down at the King
Cannon ranch, huh? Lie to me, and I’ll know it! I’ll batter your brains
out!”
“Yes,” said LeSarge. “Yes. At the Cannon ranch. I just come from there!”
“Bordereau sent you?”
“No! I swear--”
“I tell you I’ll batter your brains out!”
“Leave up on my throat, will you? Yes, then. Bordereau sent me. He told
me--”
He stopped there. Torrance eased up on him a bit, came into a
squatting position over his captive and said:
“He sent you to get me, didn’t he? He told you to snoop around the King
Cannon place, to ride over and meet up with me, or to get me over at my
place or wherever you could find me. Am I right?”
“I don’t even know who you are! I tell you I made a mistake; I was
looking for another man. Can’t you understand, pardner? I don’t even
know who the hell you are right now!”
“That’s funny,” said Torrance. He withdrew his hands then entirely from
the other man; balanced on his heels he was grinning the way a wolf
grins at the kill. He said, “It’s mighty funny.” He had jammed his
gun back into its leather; now he jerked it out and set its cylinder
spinning with its small-voiced metallic clicks. He said, “Tell me what
my name is and tell it fast, or so help me I’m going to kill you!”
Then, in all haste LeSarge, knowing the voice of fate when he heard it
beating on his ear drums, gasped out:
“You--you’re Torrance, Jim Torrance!”
“Sure.” Torrance shoved his gun back into its holster. He stood up.
“You’re coming along with me, LeSarge,” he said. “_Sabe?_ You’re coming
sweet and soft and willing, wherever I say. _Sabe?_”
“Yes,” said LeSarge. “Yes. I’ll come. You got me, Torrance.”
“You’re damn well right, I got you,” said Torrance. “Now watch your
step.”
“All right,” said Jake LeSarge. “All right. I know when I’m licked. I’m
playing good dog. Where do we go?”
“I don’t know!” said Torrance. “I don’t know. You see, I do know who
you are now; I know you for a crook and a yellow dog. But I don’t know
about you and Steve Bordereau. I don’t know how much he is paying you.
I don’t know how easy it would be to buy you, to get you to double
cross him. You ought to be cheap. Let me get you somewhere in the light
where I can look at you.”
“I’m on the square, Torrance. I’ve always been on the level--”
“Shut your trap, you dirty liar! Climb on your horse. Let’s ride. Never
mind about your rifle; I’ll take it for you.”
“Where’re we going?”
“It isn’t far to the King Cannon ranch house. We might as well look in
there.”
There was a light in the bunk house and as they rode nearer the hushed
and sentimental strains of a guitar floated out to them. Then a voice
was raised in song, a doleful rendition, and thereafter something was
thrown, no doubt at the musician; it sounded like a heavy piece of
crockery crashing against the wall.
“Dry up, can’t you?” said the voice of the man who had been goaded into
throwing things. “I’ve stood all I can.”
Torrance and his captive dismounted and went to the door.
“Here’s company, boys,” said Torrance.
Curly and Drennen and young Pardee--it had been Pardee strumming and
vocalizing--looked at them curiously.
“Hello,” said Drennen. “This is LeSarge you’ve got with you, Torrance.
What do you want him for?”
“I’m not sure. Is he any good for anything?”
“Absolutely not. Unless maybe we could chop him up and use him to
poison coyotes with.”
LeSarge, sullen and vicious looking, strove also to look bold and
defiant but remained furtive and couldn’t keep the apprehension out of
his restless eyes.
“I wanted a look at him by lamp light,” said Torrance. “So I’d be sure
and know him if I ever saw him again. Just now he tried to shoot me.
He’s been snooping around the ranch here tonight, I don’t know what
for. You boys wouldn’t know?”
No, they couldn’t figure it out. And they agreed there was no use
asking him; he couldn’t tell the truth even if he tried, even if you
played Indian with him and cut his hide into strips.
“What are you going to do with him?” asked Curly.
“I ought to have shot him while I had the chance,” said Torrance, and
sounded regretful. “At the time, though, I was sort of curious and--
Oh, we’ll let him go. You can go now, LeSarge. And you’re to keep on
going, _sabe_? And you’re never to come back this way. We’re asking
men like you to keep out of Sundown for good. I’m town marshal now; it
would be just a matter of duty to kill you on sight. Now, scat!”
LeSarge ducked out through the door, got onto his horse and was off
like a streak. From some little distance he screamed something back,
his voice high and breaking with rage.
“I don’t like his poking around here,” said Torrance. “He’s one of
Bordereau’s men.” He looked at Curly and Drennen and Pardee. “Sally
Dawn oughtn’t to be out after dark,” he said. “And whenever she is,
can’t one of you boys always be on hand?”
The three young fellows glanced at one another and seemed anxious.
“She’s already gone somewhere tonight,” said Dick Pardee. But none of
them knew where. “About half an hour ago.” They were of the opinion
that she had ridden into Sundown for something.
“I’m going into Sundown now,” said Torrance. He set down LeSarge’s
rifle and went to the door. “I’ll look for her. And it’s just as well
to follow LeSarge a ways; he’s headed back toward town.”
“It might be an idea if we rode along?” suggested Dave Drennen.
“It might. I won’t wait, though, for you boys to saddle. You’ll most
likely meet up with me.”