THE END OF THE ROPE
Pronto had chosen his own trail and gait back to the Three Star. It was
Goldie that Sandy rode under the stars toward Nipple Peaks. He was
alone, refusing any company of Sam or the riders. Molly's last kiss had
been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to
reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk
together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing
else. And she had been afraid--for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon
the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through
unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could
only be wiped out by his death.
Nipple Peaks he knew by sight, two high mounds of bare granite above the
timber-line, barring the way to a jumbled country of peaks and ravines
and cross canyons among which lay Plimsoll's Hideout. Spur Rock he knew
only by rumor. That there was a pass between the peaks he did not doubt.
And he rode to meet Plimsoll coming down out of it. To have returned to
the Hideout and attempted to follow a rock trail by moonlight, despite
its brilliance, would have been sheer folly. Plimsoll had from three to
four hours' start, he figured. And he calculated that, with luck, with
common luck and justice, he would pick him up before he reached the base
of the mountain, before he got into the timber. If not, sooner or later
he would cut Plimsoll's sign and follow it to the end.
As he rode over the finny ridge of Elk Mountain and saw the Nipple Peaks
gleaming above the black pines across the valley, with Elk River
gleaming in the middle, he realized that he had said nothing to Molly of
Keith, of the shutting down of the mine and his own action in her name.
While she had asked nothing of young Donald. For the time it had been as
if the rest of the world had been fenced off from them and their own
intimate affairs.
He compressed his knees and the mare answered in a lope that stretched
into a gallop, fast and faster as she reached the levels and sped toward
Elk River. Sandy was not going to waste time looking for a ford. The
mare could swim. The moon, sloping down toward the west, still above the
range, helped by the big white stars, made the valley bright almost as
day. He scanned the mountain toward the peaks, passed over the dark
impenetrable pines, surveyed the stretch of gently rising ground between
the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle
he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in
the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had
not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and
roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for the cut-off.
The mare took the cold river water about her fetlocks with a little
shiver, wading in to the girths, sliding to a deep pool where she had to
swim a few strokes before she found gravel under her hoofs and scrambled
out. Suddenly, while Sandy hesitated how best to arrange his patrol, a
horse came floundering out of the pines less than a quarter of a mile
away, a black horse, shining with sweat, tired to its limit, staggering
in its stride, the rider hunched in the saddle more like a sack of meal
than a man.
Before Sandy could turn the mare toward them three riders burst from the
trees like bolts from a crossbow, spurring their mounts, the two in the
lead swinging lariats. They divided, one to either side of the
foundering black stallion, one at the rear, gaining, angling in. The
ropes slithered out, the loops seemed to hang like suspended rings of
wire for a second before they settled down, fair and true, about the
neck and shoulders of the black's rider. They tightened, the lariats
snubbed to the saddle horns, the horses sliding with flattened pasterns.
The black lunging on, pitched forward as it was relieved of a sudden
weight and its rider jerked hideously from the saddle, hands clawing at
the ropes that choked his gullet, wrenching, sinking deep, shutting off
air and light with a horrid taste of blood and the noise of thundering
waters.
The ropers wheeled their mounts and galloped back toward the woods, the
limp body of their victim dragging, bouncing over the ground. The third
rode to meet Sandy. It was Brandon. He hailed Sandy with surprise.
"How'd you happen here this time of night, Bourke? Not looking for me?"
"No. I was looking for the man you've just caught. I was about a minute
too late."
Brandon glanced curiously at Sandy, caught by the grim note in his
voice. But he made no comment.
"Sorry if I spoiled your private vendetta, Bourke. You can have him,
what's left of him, if you want. We were going to swing him from a tree
with a card on his chest presenting him to Hereford County, with our
compliments. As it is, Bourke, I'd be relieved if you'd keep out of this
entirely. Even forgetting you'd met us. We're within our rights, but
we've done some cleaning up to-night that we might have to explain if we
stayed too long in the state. We got the goods on Plimsoll; one of his
men whose girl Plimsoll had stolen helped us to pin them on him. We met
him at Hereford. I'm going to send the facts and proofs to your
authorities. They may not approve of lynch law these days, but they
wouldn't act--and we did. I don't fancy they'll bother us any. He wasn't
worth the ropes he spoiled. Just as well you kept out of the mix-up."
Sandy said nothing. There was no need to mention Molly's adventure.
"Want to be sure it's him?" asked Brandon. "Let's look at the black
first. He gave us a hard chase, but we were too many for him and rounded
him up."
They found the black stallion stretched out on the turf with its neck
curiously twisted. Tired out, it had fallen clumsily and broken the
vertebrae. It was quite dead. Both men looked at it silently, with a
mental tribute to a good horse.
The body of Plimsoll lay at the foot of a big pine. The loops were still
tight about his neck. One of the ropes had been tossed over a bough. The
two men had dismounted. They nodded to Sandy as he came up with Brandon.
He had seen them before on their first unsuccessful trip to the
Waterline. They were horse-owners, responsible men, who considered they
had administered justice, who felt no more qualms concerning the dead
man than if his body had been the carcass of a slaughtered steer.
"Waiting for the rest of the boys to come up," said Brandon. "We'll hit
the trail home to-night. Bourke wants to identify the body, boys."
Sandy looked down at the contorted, blackened face, and his
disappointment at having been forestalled, sedimented down. The
gambler's features had not been made placid by death; they still held
much of the horror of the last moments of that relentless chase, his
horse failing under him, foreknowledge of sudden death and then the
whistling ropes, the jerk into eternity...! It was a thing to be
forgotten, a nightmare that had nothing to do with the new day ahead.
"It's Plimsoll," said Sandy shortly. "I'm ridin' back to Three Star. I
found him hangin' to a tree. Good night, hombres." He left them standing
about their quarry and turned the willing mare toward home. Peace
settled down on him under the stars that were fading, the moon below the
hills when he rode into the home corral.
A figure was perched upon the fence, waiting. It was Molly, and she
leaped down almost into his arms as he sprang from the mare. In the gray
dawn her face seemed drawn and weary. There were the blue shadows under
the eyes that he remembered seeing there the time they had ridden over
the Pass of the Goats. She came close to him, her hands up against his
chest.
"You're safe, Sandy. Safe!"
"I was too late," he said. "Brandon's men had been ahead of me."
"I'm so glad, Sandy. Your hands are clean of his blood. They are my
hands, now, Sandy."
He swept her up to him, kissing her mouth and eyes, the eager pressure
of her lips returning all with full measure. A streak of rose glowed in
the east behind the amethyst peaks. Her face reflected it like a mirror.
The tired lines were gone as he set her down.
"How long have you been waiting, Molly?"
"Ever since I got back. I slipped out of the house when the rest had
gone to bed. If you hadn't come back, Sandy, I should have died."
"I don't have to go back east," she said presently. They had left the
corral and were under the big cottonwoods by Patrick Casey's grave. "Do
I?"
"I don't reckon you can, even if you wanted to," answered Sandy. "I
forgot to tell you, Molly, that you're bu'sted, so far's the mine is
concerned. Listen."
She laughed when he finished speaking.
"Is that all?" She patted the turf on the green mound. "I'm sorry,
Daddy, for you, it didn't pan out bigger. But I guess what you wanted
most was my happiness--and I've got that." She turned to Sandy. The big
bell of the ranch boomed brassily. Molly put her hand in Sandy's. "It
may be most unromantic, Sandy dear," she said, "but I'm hungry. Let's go
in to breakfast."