THE TEXAN TAKES THE TRAIL
At the mouth of the coulee, Janet McWhorter stared in astonishment as
the Texan swung into the saddle and headed the big blue roan up the
ravine at a run. A moment later the bay mare was following, the girl
plying quirt and spur in an endeavour to keep the flying horseman in
sight. The roan's pace slackened, and the bay mare closed up the
distance. The girl could see that the man was leaning far over studying
the ground as he rode. Suddenly, without a moment's hesitation he turned
into a side coulee, gained the bench, and headed straight for the bad
lands. The pace was slower, now. The Texan rode with his eyes glued to
the ground. She drew up beside him and, as she expected, found that he
was following the trail of two horses. The trail was easily followed in
the mud of the recent rains, and they made good time, dipping into
coulees, scrambling out, crossing ridges. Purdy had evidently wasted no
time in picking his trail, but had taken the country as it came, his one
idea evidently had been to gain the bad lands that loomed in the near
distance.
"What will he do when he gets there?" wondered the girl, as she glanced
into the set face of the man who rode with his eyes on the tracks in the
mud, "he can't follow him in. There won't be any trail."
True to her prediction, the Texan drew up at the edge of a black ridge
that cut diagonally into the treeless, soilless waste. Since he had
uttered Purdy's name at the mouth of the coulee, he had spoken no word,
and now, as he faced her, the girl saw that his face looked tense and
drawn. "You've got to go back," he said looking straight into her eyes,
"it's a blind trail from here, an' God knows where it will lead to."
"But--you--where are you going?"
"To find Purdy." There was a steely glint in the man's eyes, and his
voice grated harshly.
"But you can't find him!" she cried. "He knows the bad lands. Purdy's a
horse-thief, and if you did find him there would be others. He's one of
a gang, and--they'll kill you!"
The Texan nodded: "Maybe--an' then, again, maybe they won't. There's two
sides to this killin' game."
"But you wouldn't have a chance."
"As long as I've got a gun, I've got a chance--an' a good one."
The spirit of perversity that had prompted her to insist upon riding the
blue roan, asserted itself, "I'm going with you," she announced. "I've
got a gun, and I can shoot."
"You're goin' home." The Texan spoke quietly, yet with an air of
finality that brooked no argument. The hot blood mounted to the girl's
face, and her eyes flashed. Her lips opened to frame an angry retort but
the words were never spoken, for the Texan leaned suddenly toward her
and his gauntleted hand rested lightly on her arm, "For God's sake,
don't hinder--_help_!" There was no trace of harshness in the
voice--only intense appeal. She glanced into his eyes, and in their
depths read misery, pain, worry--the very soul of him was wrung with
torture. He was not commanding now. This strong, masterful man was
imploring help. A lump rose in her throat. Her eyes dropped before his.
She swallowed hard, and nodded: "All right--only--promise me--if you
don't find him, you'll return to the ranch tonight. You've got to eat,
and Blue has got to eat. I'll have a pack ready for you to start again
early in the morning."
"I promise," he said, simply. His gloved hand slipped from her sleeve
and closed about her own. Once more their eyes met, once more the girl
felt the hot blood mount to her cheeks, and once more her glance fell
before his. And then--he was gone and she was alone upon the edge of the
bad lands, listening to catch the diminishing sound of his horse's hoofs
on the floor of the black coulee.
The sound died away. Minutes passed as she sat staring out over the bad
lands. There was a strange ache at her throat, but in her heart welled a
great gladness. What was it she had read in his eyes--during the moment
of that last glance? The pain, and the worry, and the misery were still
there but something else was there also--something that leaped from his
heart straight to hers; something held in restraint that burst through
the restraint, overrode the pain and the worry and the misery, and for a
brief instant blazed with an intensity that seemed to devour her very
soul. Slowly she raised the hand that had returned the firm, gentle
pressure of his clasp and drew the back of it across her cheek, then
with a laugh that began happily and ended in a choking sob, she turned
the mare toward home.
She rode slowly, her thoughts centred upon the Texan. She had liked him
from the moment of their first meeting. His eagerness to return to the
aid of his friend, his complete mastery of Blue, his unhesitating plunge
into the bad lands to fight against odds, all pointed to him as a man
among men. "And, aside from all that," she murmured, as she reached to
smooth the bay mare's mane, "There's something about him--so
wholesome--so clean--" Her words trailed into silence, and as her
thoughts followed him into the trailless maze of the bad lands, her
fists clenched tight, "Oh, I hope he won't find Purdy. They'll kill
him."
She turned the mare into the corral, and entering the cabin, prepared
her solitary luncheon, and as she ate it her thoughts retraced the
events of the morning. She remembered how he had looked when she had
mentioned Purdy's name--the horrified tone with which he had repeated
the name--and how he had recoiled from it as though from a blow. "What
does he know of Purdy?" she asked herself, "and why should the fact that
Purdy had ridden away with his friend have affected him so? Purdy
wouldn't kill his friend--there had been no sign of a struggle there on
the river bank. If the man went with Purdy, he went of his own free
will--even a horse-thief couldn't steal a full grown cowpuncher without
a struggle." She gave it up, and busied herself with the preparation of
a pack of food for the morrow. "It seems as though I had known him for
years," she murmured, "and I never laid eyes on him till this morning.
But--Mr. Colston would never have made him foreman, if he wasn't all
right. Anyway, anybody with half sense can see that by just looking into
his eyes, and he's really handsome, too--I'll never forget how he looked
when I first saw him--standing there beside the haystack with his hat in
his hand and his bandaged head--" she paused and frowned at the thought
of that bandage, "I'll dress his wound tonight," she murmured "but--I
wonder."
From time to time during the afternoon, she stepped to the door and
glanced anxiously up and down the creek. At last, just at sundown, she
saw a rider pause before the gate of the corral. She flew to the door,
and drew back hurriedly: "It's that horrid Long Bill Kearney," she
muttered, in disappointment, "disreputable old coot! He ought to be in
jail along with other denizens of the bad lands. Dad sure picked a fine
bunch of neighbours--all except the Cinnabar Joes--and they say he used
to be a bartender--but he's a nice man--I like him."
Long Bill rode on, and glancing out the window Janet saw a fragment of
paper flapping in the wind. She hurried to the corral and removing the
paper that had been secured to a post by means of a sliver of wood, read
it hurriedly. The blood receded slowly from her face, and a great weight
seemed pressing upon her heart. She reread the paper carefully word for
word. This Texan, then, was a man with a price on his head. He was no
better than Purdy, and Long Bill, and all the others. And now she knew
why there was tatting on the bandage! She turned indifferently at a
sound from the direction of the barn, and hurriedly thrust the paper
into the bosom of her grey flannel shirt as McWhorter appeared around
the corner of the haystack.
* * * * *
Once into the bad lands the Texan slowed the blue roan to a walk, and
riding in long sweeping semicircles, methodically searched for Purdy's
trail. With set face and narrowed eyes the man studied every foot of the
ground, at times throwing himself from the saddle for closer scrutiny of
some obscure mark or misplaced stone. So great was his anxiety to
overtake the pair that his slow pace became a veritable torture. And at
times his struggle to keep from putting spurs to his horse and dashing
wildly on, amounted almost to physical violence.
Bitterly he blamed himself for Alice Endicott's plight. He raved and
cursed like a madman, and for long periods was silent, his eyes hot and
burning with the intensity of his hate for Purdy. Gradually the
hopelessness of picking up the trail among the rocks and disintegrated
lava, forced itself upon him. More than once in utter despair and misery
of soul, he drew the six-gun from its holster and gazed long and
hungrily at its blue-black barrel. One shot, and--oblivion. His was the
blame. He sought no excuse--no palliation of responsibility. This woman
had trusted him--had risked life and happiness to protect him from the
bullets of the mob--and he had failed her--had abandoned her to a fate
worse--a thousand times worse than death. Sweat stood upon his forehead
in cold beads as he thought of her completely in the power of Purdy. He
could never face Win--worst of all he could never face himself. Night
and day as long as he should live the torture would be upon him. There
could be but one end--madness--unless, he glanced again at the long blue
barrel of his Colt. With an oath he jammed it into its holster. The
coward's way out! The girl still lived. Purdy still lives--and while
Purdy lives his work is cut out for him. Later--perhaps--but, first he
must find Purdy. On and on he rode pausing now and then to scan the
horizon and the ridges and coulees between, for sight of some living,
moving thing. But always it was the same--silence--the hot dead silence
of the bad lands. With the passing of the hours the torture became less
acute. The bitter self-recrimination ceased, and the chaos of emotion
within his brain shaped and crystallized into a single overmastering
purpose. He would find Purdy. He would kill him. Nothing else mattered.
A day--a year--ten years--it did not matter. He would find Purdy and
kill him. He would not kill him quickly. Purdy must have time to
think--plenty of time to think. The man even smiled grimly as he devised
and discarded various plans. "They're all too easy--too gentle. I'll
leave it to Old Bat--he's Injun--he'll know. An' if Bat was here he'd
pick up the trail." A wild idea of crossing the river and fetching Bat
flashed into his mind, but he banished it. "Bat'll come," he muttered,
with conviction. "He's found out before this that I've gone an' he'll
come."
As the sun sank below the horizon, the Texan turned his horse toward
McWhorter's. He paused on a rocky spur for one last look over the bad
lands, and raising his gauntleted fist, he shook it in the face of the
solitude: "I'll get you! Damn you! _Damn you!_"
As he whirled his horse and headed him out into the open bench, a squat,
bow-legged man peered out from behind a rock, not fifty feet from where
the Texan had sat his horse. A tuft of hair protruded from a hole in the
crown of his battered hat as he fingered his stubby beard: "Pretty damn
lively for a corpse," grinned the squat man, "an' he _will_ git him,
too. An' if that there gal wasn't safe at Cinnabar Joe's, I'd see that
he got him tonight. It looks from here as if God A'mighty's gittin'
ready to call Purdy's bluff."