"Sure."
"How come?"
"I'll tell you how it was. He seen a gent coming. In fact he looked out
of the window of his hotel and seen Riley Sinclair, and he figured that
Riley had come to get him for what happened to his brother, Hal. Lowrie
got sort of excited, lost his nerve, and when the hotel keeper come
upstairs, Lowrie thought it was Sinclair, and he didn't wait. He shot
himself."
"You seem to know a pile," said Quade thoughtfully.
"Well, you see, I'm Riley Sinclair." Still he smiled, but Quade was as
one who had seen a ghost.
"I had to make sure that you was alone. I had to make sure that you was
guilty. And you are, Quade. Don't do that!"
The hand of Quade slipped around the butt of his gun and clung there.
"You ain't fit for a gun fight right now," went on Riley Sinclair
slowly. "You're all shaking, Quade, and you couldn't hit the side of
the mountain, let alone me. Wait a minute. Take your time. Get all
settled down and wait till your hand stops shaking."
Quade moistened his white lips and waited.
"You give Hal plenty of time," resumed Riley Sinclair. "Since Lowrie
told me that yarn I been wondering how Hal felt when you and the other
two left him alone. You know, a gent can do some pretty stiff thinking
before he makes up his mind to blow his head off."
His tone was quite conversational.
"Queer thing how I come to blunder into all this information, partner.
I come into a room where Lowrie was. The minute he heard my name he
figured I was after him on account of Hal. Up he comes with his gun
like a flash. Afterward he told me all about it, and I give him a
pretty fine funeral. I'll do the same by you, Quade. How you feeling
now?"
"Curse you!" exclaimed Quade.
"Maybe I'm cursed, right enough, but, Quade, I'd let 'em burn me, inch
by inch in a fire, before I'd quit a partner, a bunkie in the desert!
You hear? It's a queer thing that a gent could have much pleasure out
of plugging another gent full of lead. I've had that pleasure once; and
I'm going to have it again. I'm going to kill you, Quade, but I wish
there was a slower way! Pull your gun!"
That last came out with a snap, and the revolver of Quade flicked out
of its holster with a convulsive jerk of the big man's wrist. Yet the
spit of fire came from Riley Sinclair's weapon, slipping smoothly into
his hand. Quade did not fall. He stood with a bewildered expression, as
a man trying to remember something hidden far in the past; and Sinclair
fingered the butt of his gun lightly and waited. It was rather a
crumbling than a fall. The big body literally slumped down into a heap.
Sinclair reached down without dismounting and pulled the body over on
its back.
"Because," he explained to what had been a strong man the moment
before, "when the devil comes to you, I want the old boy to see your
face, Quade! Git on, old boss!"
As he rode down the trail toward Sour Creek he carefully and deftly
cleaned his revolver and reloaded the empty chamber.
4
Perhaps, in the final analysis, Riley Sinclair would not be condemned
for the death of Lowrie or the killing of Quade, but for singing on the
trail to Sour Creek. And sing he did, his voice ringing from hill to
hill, and the echoes barking back to him, now and again.
He was not silent until he came to Sour Creek. At the head of the long,
winding, single street he drew the mustang to a tired walk. It was a
very peaceful moment in the little town Yonder a dog barked and a
coyote howled a thin answer far away, but, aside from these, all other
sounds were the happy noises of families at the end of a day. From
every house they floated out to him, the clamor of children, the deep
laughter of a man, the loud rattle of pans in the kitchen.
"This ain't so bad," Riley Sinclair said aloud and roused the mustang
cruelly to a gallop, the hoofs of his mount splashing through inches of
pungent dust.
The heaviness of the gallop told him that his horse was plainly spent
and would not be capable of a long run before the morning. Riley
Sinclair accepted the inevitable with a sigh. All his strong instincts
cried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him and
flee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie's
own conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been his
executioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul near
by. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luck
would fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to brand him
with murder.
It was a bad affair, and he wanted to get it done. This stay in Sour
Creek was entirely against his will. Accordingly he put the mustang in
the stable behind the hotel, looked to his feed, and then went slowly
back to get a room. He registered and went in silence up to his room.
If there had been the need, he could have kept on riding for a
twenty-hour stretch, but the moment he found his journey interrupted,
he flung himself on the bed, his arms thrown out crosswise, crucified
with weariness.
In the meantime the proprietor returned to his desk to find a long,
gaunt man leaning above the register, one brown finger tracing a name.
"Looking for somebody, Sandersen?" he asked. "Know this gent Sinclair?"
"Face looked kind of familiar to me," said the other, who had jerked
his head up from the study of the register. "Somehow I don't tie that
name up with the face."
"Maybe not," said the proprietor. "Maybe he ain't Riley Sinclair of
Colma; maybe he's somebody else."
"Traveling strange, you mean?" asked Sandersen.
"I dunno, Bill, but he looks like a hard one. He's got one of them
nervous right hands."
"Gunfighter?"
"I dunno. I'm not saying anything about what he is or what he ain't.
But, if a gent was to come in here and tell me a pretty strong yarn
about Riley Sinclair, or whatever his name might be, I wouldn't incline
to doubt of it, would you, Bill?"
"Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn't," answered Bill Sandersen
gloomily.
He went out onto the veranda and squinted thoughtfully into the
darkness. Bill Sandersen was worried--very worried. The moment he saw
Sinclair enter the hotel, there had been a ghostly familiarity about
the man. And he understood the reason for it as soon as he saw the name
on the register. Sinclair! The name carried him back to the picture of
the man who lay on his back, with the soft sands already half burying
his body, and the round, purple blur in the center of his forehead. In
a way it was as if Hal Sinclair had come back to Me in a new and more
terrible form, come back as an avenger.
Bill Sandersen was not an evil man, and his sin against Hal Sinclair
had its qualifying circumstances. At least he had been only one of
three, all of whom had concurred in the thing. He devoutly wished that
the thing were to be done over again. He swore to himself that in such
a case he would stick with his companion, no matter who deserted. But
what had brought this Riley Sinclair all the way from Colma to Sour
Creek, if it were not an errand of vengeance?
A sense of guilt troubled the mind of Bill Sandersen, but the obvious
thing was to find out the reason for Sinclair's presence in Sour Creek.
Sandersen crossed the street to the newly installed telegraph office.
He had one intimate friend in the far-off town of Colma, and to that
friend he now addressed a telegram.
* * * * *
Rush back all news you have about man calling self Riley Sinclair of
Colma--over six feet tall, weight hundred and eighty, complexion dark,
hard look.
* * * * *
There was enough meat in that telegram to make the operator rise his
head and glance with sharpened eyes at the patron. Bill Sandersen
returned that glance with so much interest that the operator lowered
his head again and made a mental oath that he would let the Westerners
run the West.
With that telegram working for him in far-off Colma, Bill Sandersen
started out to gather what information he could in Sour Creek. He
drifted from the blacksmith shop to the kitchen of Mrs. Mary Caluson,
but both these brimming reservoirs of news had this day run dry. Mrs.
Caluson vaguely remembered a Riley Sinclair, a man who fought for the
sheer love of fighting. A grim fellow!
Pete Handley, the blacksmith, had even less to say. He also, he
averred, had heard of a Riley Sinclair, a man of action, but he could
not remember in what sense. Vaguely he seemed to recall that there had
been something about guns connected with the name of Riley Sinclair.
Meager information on which to build, but, having seen this man, Bill
Sandersen said the less and thought the more. In a couple of hours he
went back through the night to the telegraph office and found that his
Colma friend had been unbelievably prompt. The telegram had been sent
"collect," and Bill Sandersen groaned as he paid the bill. But when he
opened the telegram he did not begrudge the money.
Riley Sinclair is harder than he looks, but absolutely honest and will
pay fairer than anybody. Avoid all trouble. Trust his word, but not his
temper. Gunfighter, but not a bully. By the way, your pal Lowrie shot
himself last week.
The long fingers of Bill Sandersen slowly gathered the telegram into a
ball and crushed it against the palm of his hand. That ball he
presently unraveled to reread the telegram; he studied it word by word.
"Absolutely honest!"
It made Sandersen wish to go straight to the gunfighter, put his cards
on the table, confess what he had done to Sinclair's brother, and then
express his sorrow. Then he remembered the cruel, lean face of Sinclair
and the impatient eyes. He would probably be shot before he had half
finished his story of the gruesome trip through the desert. Already
Lowrie was dead. Even a child could have put two and two together and
seen that Sinclair had come to Sour Creek on a mission of vengeance.
Sandersen was himself a fighter, and, being a fighter, he knew that in
Riley Sinclair he would meet the better man.
But two good men were better than one, even if the one were an expert.
Sandersen went straight to the barn behind his shack, saddled his
horse, and spurred out along the north road to Quade's house. Once
warned, they would be doubly armed, and, standing back to back, they
could safely defy the marauder from the north.
There was no light in Quade's house, but there was just a chance that
the owner had gone to bed early. Bill Sandersen dismounted to find out,
and dismounting, he stumbled across a soft, inert mass in the path. A
moment later he was on his knees, and the flame of the sulphur match
sputtered a blue light into the dead face of Quade, staring upward to
the stars. Bill Sandersen remained there until the match singed his
finger tips.
All doubt was gone now. Lowrie and Quade were both gone; and he,
Sandersen, alone remained, the third and last of the guilty. His first
strong impulse, after his agitation had diminished to such a point that
he was able to think clearly again, was to flee headlong into the night
and keep on, changing horses at every town he reached until he was over
the mountains and buried in the shifting masses of life in some great
city.
And then he recalled Riley Sinclair, lean and long as a hound. Such a
man would be terrible on the trail--tireless, certainly. Besides there
was the horror of flight, almost more awful than the immediate fear of
death. Once he turned his back to flee from Riley Sinclair, the
gunfighter would become a nightmare that would haunt him the rest of
his life. No matter where he fled, every footstep behind him would be
the footfall of Riley Sinclair, and behind every closed door would
stand the same ominous figure. On the other hand if he went back and
faced Sinclair he might reduce the nightmare to a mere creature of
flesh and blood.
Sandersen resolved to take the second step.
In one way his hands were tied. He could not accuse Sinclair of this
killing without in the first place exposing the tale of how Riley's
brother was abandoned in the desert by three strong men who had been
his bunkies. And that story, Sandersen knew, would condemn him to worse
than death in the mountain desert. He would be loathed and scorned from
one end of the cattle country to the other.
All of these things went through his head, as he jogged his mustang
back down the hill. He turned in at Mason's place. All at once he
recalled that he was not acting normally. He had just come from seeing
the dead body of his best friend. And yet so mortal was his concern for
his own safety that he felt not the slightest touch of grief or horror
for dead Quade.
He had literally to grip his hands and rouse himself to a pitch of
semihysteria. Then he spurred his horse down the path, flung himself
with a shout out of the saddle, cast open the door of the house without
a preliminary knock, and rushed into the room.
"Murder!" shouted Bill Sandersen. "Quade is killed!"
5
Who killed Quade? That was the question asked with the quiet deadliness
by six men in Sour Creek. It had been Buck Mason's idea to keep the
whole affair still. It was very possible that the slayer was still in
the environs of Sour Creek, and in that case much noise would simply
serve to frighten him away. It was also Buck's idea that they should
gather a few known men to weigh the situation.
Every one of the six men who answered the summons was an adept with
fist or guns, as the need might be; every one of them had proved that
he had a level head; every one of them was a respected citizen.
Sandersen was one; stocky Buck Mason, carrying two hundred pounds close
to the ground, massive of hand and jaw, was a second. After that their
choice had fallen on "Judge" Lodge. The judge wore spectacles and a
judicial air. He had a keen eye for cows and was rather a sharper in
horse trades. He gave his costume a semiofficial air by wearing a
necktie instead of a bandanna, even at a roundup. The glasses, the
necktie, and his little solemn pauses before he delivered an opinion,
had given his nickname.
Then came Denver Jim, a very little man, with nervous hands and
remarkable steady eyes. He had punched cows over those ranges for ten
years, and his experience had made him a wildcat in a fight. Oscar
Larsen was a huge Swede, with a perpetual and foolish grin. Sour Creek
had laughed at Oscar for five years, considered him dubiously for five
years more, and then suddenly admitted him as a man among men. He was
stronger than Buck Mason, quicker than Denver Jim, and shrewder than
the judge. Last of all came Montana. He had a long, sad face,
prodigious ability to stow away redeye, and a nature as simple and kind
and honest as a child's. These were the six men who gathered about and
stared at the center of the floor. Something, they agreed, had to be
done.
"First it was old man Collins. That was two years back," said Judge
Lodge. "You boys remember how Collins went. Then there was the drifter
that was plugged eight months ago. And now it's Ollie Quade. Gents,
three murders in two years is too much. Sour Creek'll get a name. The
bad ones will begin to drop in on us and use us for headquarters. We
got to make an example. We never got the ones that shot Collins or the
drifter. Since Quade has been plugged we got to hang somebody. Ain't
that straight?"
"We got to hang somebody," said Denver Jim. "The point is--who?"
His keen eyes went slowly, hungrily, from face to face, as if he would
not have greatly objected to picking one of his companions in that very
room.
"Is they any strangers in town?" asked Larsen with his peculiar,
foolish grin.
Sandersen stirred in his chair; his heart leaped.
"There's a gent named Riley Sinclair nobody ain't never seen before."
"When did he come in?"
"Along about dark."
"That's the right time for us. You found Quade a long time dead, Bill."
Sandersen swallowed. In his joy he could have embraced Larsen.
"What'll we do?"
"Go talk to Sinclair," said Larsen and rose. "I got a rope."
"He's a dangerous-lookin' gent," declared Sandersen.
Larsen replied mildly: "Mostly they's a pile more interesting when
they's dangerous. Come on, boys!"
It had been well after midnight when Mason and Sandersen got back to
Sour Creek. The gathering of the posse had required much time. Now, as
they filed out to the hotel, to the east the mountains were beginning
to roll up out of the night, and one cloud, far away and high in the
sky, was turning pink. They found the hotel wakening even at this early
hour. At least, the Chinese cook was rattling in the kitchen as he
built the fire. When the six reached the door of Sinclair's room,
stepping lightly, they heard the occupant singing softly to himself.
"Early riser," whispered Denver Jim.
"Too early to be honest," replied Judge Lodge.
Larsen raised one of his great hands and imposed an absolute silence.
Then, stepping with astonishing softness, considering his bulk, he
approached the door of Sinclair's room. Into his left hand slid his .45
and instantly five guns glinted in the hands of the others. With equal
caution they ranged themselves behind the big Swede. The latter glanced
over his shoulder, made sure that everything was in readiness, and then
kicked the door violently open.
Riley Sinclair was sitting on the side of his bed, tugging on a pair of
riding boots and singing a hushed song. He interrupted himself long
enough to look up into the muzzle of Larsen's gun. Then deliberately he
finished drawing on the boot, singing while he did so; and, still
deliberately, rose and stamped his feet home in the leather. Next he
dropped his hands on his hips and considered the posse gravely.
"Always heard tell how Sour Creek was a fine town but I didn't know
they turned out reception committees before sunup. How are you, boys?
Want my roll?"
Larsen, as one who scorned to take a flying start on any man, dropped
his weapon back in its holster. Sinclair's own gun and cartridge belt
hang on the wall at the foot of the bed.
"That sounds too cool to be straight," said the judge soberly.
"Sinclair, I figure you know why we want you?"
"I dunno, gents," said Sinclair, who grew more and more cheerful in the
face of these six pairs of grim eyes. "But I'm sure obliged to the gent
that give me the sendoff. What d'you want?" Drawing into the background
Larsen said: "Open up on him, judge. Start the questions."
But Sandersen was of no mind to let the slow-moving mind of the judge
handle this affair which was so vital to him. If Riley Sinclair did not
hang, Sandersen himself was instantly placed in peril of his life. He
stepped in front of Sinclair and thrust out his long arm.
"You killed Quade!"
Riley Sinclair rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking past his accuser.
"I don't think so," he said at length.
"You don't think so? Don't you know?"
"They was two Mexicans jumped me once. One of 'em was called Pedro.
Maybe the other was Quade. That who you're talking about?'
"You can't talk yourself out of it, Sinclair," said Denver Jim. "We
mean business, real business, you'll find out!"
"This here is a necktie party, maybe?" asked Riley Sinclair.
"It is, partner," said big Larsen, with his continual smile.
"Sinclair, you come over the mountains," went on Sandersen. "You come
to find Quade. You ride down off'n the hills, and you come up to
Quade's house. You call him out to talk to you. You're sitting on your
horse. All at once you snatch out a gun and shoot Quade down. We know!
That bullet ranged down. It was shot from above him, plain murder! He
didn't have a chance!"
Throwing out his facts as he saw them, one by one, there was a ring of
conviction in his voice. The six accusing faces grew hard and set.
Then, to their astonishment, they saw that Sinclair was smiling!
"He don't noways take us serious, gents," declared the judge. "Let's
take him out and see if a rope means anything to him. Sinclair, d'you
figure this is a game with us?"
Riley Sinclair chuckled. "Gents," he said easily, "you come here all
het up. You want a pile of action, but you ain't going to get it off'n
me--not a bit! I'll tell you why. You gents are straight, and you know
straight talk when you hear it. This dead man--what's his name,
Quade?--was killed by a gent that had a reason for killing him. Wanted
to get Quade's money, or they was an old grudge. But what could my
reason be for wanting to bump off Quade? Can any of you figure that
out? There's my things. Look through 'em and see if I got Quade's
money. Maybe you think it's a grudge? Gents, I give you my word that I
never been into this country before this trip. How could there be any
grudge between me and Quade? Is that sense? Then talk sense back to
me!"
His mirth had disappeared halfway through his speech, and in the latter
part of it his voice rang sternly. Moreover he looked them in the eye,
one by one. All of this was noted by Sandersen. He saw suddenly and
clearly that he had lost. They would not hang this man by hearsay
evidence, or by chance presumption.
Sinclair would go free. And if Sinclair went free, there would be short
shrift for Bill Sandersen. For a moment he felt his destiny wavering
back and forth on a needle point. Then he flung himself into a new
course diametrically opposed to the other.
"Boys, it was me that started this, and I want to be the first to admit
it's a cold trail. Men has been hung with less agin' them than we got
agin' Sinclair. We know when Quade must have been killed. We know it
tallies pretty close with the time when Sinclair came down that same
trail, because that was the way he rode into Sour Creek. But no matter
how facts look, nobody _seen_ that shooting. And I say this gent
Sinclair ain't any murderer. Look him over, boys. He's clean, and I
register a vote for him. What d'you say? No matter what the rest of you
figure, I'm going to shake hands with him. I like his style!"
He had turned his back on Riley while he spoke, but now he whirled and
thrust out his hand. The fingers of Sinclair closed slowly over the
proffered hand.
"When it comes to the names, partner, seems like you got an edge over
me."
"Have I? I'm Sandersen. Glad to know you, Sinclair."
"Sandersen!" repeated the stranger slowly. "Sandersen!"
Letting his fingers fall away nervelessly from the hand of the other,
he sighed deeply.
Sandersen with a side-glance followed every changing shade of
expression in that hard face. How could Sinclair attack a man who had
just defended him from a terrible charge? It could not be. For the
moment, at least, Sandersen felt he was safe. In the future, many
things might happen. At the very least, he had gained a priceless
postponement of the catastrophe.
"Them that do me a good turn is writ down in red," Sinclair was saying;
"and them that step on my toes is writ down the same way. Sandersen, I
got an idea that for one reason or another I ain't going to forget you
in a hurry."
There was a grim double meaning in that speech which Sandersen alone
could understand. The others of the self-appointed posse had apparently
made up their minds that Sandersen was right, and that this was a cold
trail.
"It's like Sinclair says," admitted the judge. "We got to find a gent
that had a reason for wishing to have Quade die. Where's the man?"
"Hunt for the reason first and find the man afterward," said big
Larsen, still smiling.
"All right! Did anybody owe Quade money, anybody Quade was pressing for
it?"
It was the judge who advanced the argument in this solemn and dry form.
Denver Jim declared that to his personal knowledge Quade had neither
borrowed nor loaned.
"Well, then, had Quade ever made many enemies? We know Quade was a
fighter. Recollect any gents that might hold grudges?"
"Young Penny hated the ground he walked on. Quade beat Penny to a pulp
down by the Perkin water hole."
"Penny wouldn't do a murder."
"Maybe it was a fair fight," broke in Larsen.
"Fair nothin'," said Buck Mason. "Don't we all know that Quade was fast
with a gun? He barely had it out in his hand when the other gent
drilled him. And he was shot from above. No, sir, the way it happened
was something like this. The murderin' skunk sat on his hoss saying
goodby to Quade, and, while they was shaking hands or something like
that, he goes for his gun and plugs Quade. Maybe it was a gent that
knew he didn't have a chance agin' Quade. Maybe--"
He broke off short in his deductions and smote his hands together with
a tremendous oath. "Boys, I got it! It's Cold Feet that done the job.
It's Gaspar that done it!"
They stared at Buck vaguely.
"Mason, Cold Feet ain't got the nerve to shoot a rabbit."
"Not in a fight. This was a murder!"
"What's the schoolteacher's reason!"
"Don't he love Sally Bent? Didn't Quade love her?" He raised his voice.
"I'm a big fool for forgetting! Didn't I see him ride over the hill to
Quade's place and come back in the evening? Didn't I see it? Why else
would he have called on Quade?"
There was a round chorus of oaths and exclamations. "The poisonous
little skunk! It's him! We'll string him up!"
With a rush they started for the door.
"Wait!" called Riley Sinclair.
Bill Sandersen watched him with a keen eye. He had studied the face of
the big man from up north all during the scene, and he found the stern
features unreadable. For one instant now he guessed that Sinclair was
about to confess.
"If you don't mind seven in one party," said Riley Sinclair, "I think
I'll go along to see justice done. You see, I got a sort of secondhand
interest in this necktie party."
Mason clapped him on the shoulder. "You're just the sort of a gent we
need," he declared.
6
Down in the kitchen they demanded a loaf of bread and some coffee from
the Chinese cook, and then the seven dealers of justice took horse and
turned into the silence of the long mountain trail.
The sunrise had picked those mountains out of the night, directly above
Sour Creek. Riley Sinclair regarded them with a longing eye. That was
his country. A man could see up there, and he could see the truth. Down
here in the valley everything was askew. Men lived blindly and did
blind things, like this "justice" which the six riders were bringing on
an innocent man.
Not by any means had Riley decided what he would do. If he confessed
the truth he would not only have a man-sized job trying to escape from
the posse, but he would have to flee before he had a chance to deal
finally with Sandersen. Chiefly he wanted time. He wanted a chance to
study Sandersen. The fellow had spoken for him like a man, but Sinclair
was suspicious.
In his quandary he turned to sad-faced Montana and asked: "Who's this
gent you call Cold Feet?"
"He's a tenderfoot," declared Montana, "and he's queer. He's yaller,
they say, and that's why they call him Cold Feet. Besides, he teaches
the school. Where's they a real man that would do a schoolma'am's work?
Living or dying, he ain't much good. You can lay to that!"
Sinclair was comforted by this speech. Perhaps the schoolteacher was,
as Montana stated, not much good, dead or alive. Sinclair had known
many men whose lives were not worth an ounce of powder. In this case he
would let Cold Feet be hanged. It was a conclusion sufficiently grim,
but Riley Sinclair was admittedly a grim man. He had lived for himself,
he had worked for himself. On his younger brother, Hal, he had wasted
all the better and tenderer side of his nature. For Hal's education and
advantage he had sweated and saved for a long time. With the death of
Hal, the better side of Riley Sinclair died.
The horses sweated up a rise of ground.
"For a schoolteacher he lives sort of far out of town, I figure," said
Riley Sinclair.
"That's on account of Sally Bent," answered Denver Jim. "Sally and her
brother got a shack out this way, and Cold Feet boards with 'em."
"Sally Bent! That's an old-maidish-sounding name."
Denver Jim grinned broadly. "Tolerable," he said, "just tolerable
old-maidish sounding."
When they reached the top of the knoll, the horses paused, as if by
common assent. Now they stood with their heads bowed, sullen, tired
already, steam going up from them into the cool of the morning.
"There it is!"
It was as comfortably placed a house as Riley Sinclair had ever seen.
The mountain came down out of the sky in ragged, uneven steps. Here it
dipped away into a lap of quite level ground. A stream of spring water
flashed across that little tableland, dark in the shadow of the big
trees, silver in the sunlight. At the back of the natural clearing was
the cabin, built solidly of logs. Wood, water, and commanding position
for defense! Riley Sinclair ran his eye appreciatively over these
advantages.
"My guns, I'd forgot Sally!" exclaimed the massive Buck Mason.
"Is that her?" asked Riley Sinclair.
A woman had come out of the shadow of a tree and stood over the edge of
the stream, a bucket in her hand. At that distance it was quite
impossible to make out her features, although Riley Sinclair found
himself squinting and peering to make them out. She had on something
white over her head and neck, and her dress was the faded blue of old
gingham. Then the wind struck her dress, and it seemed to lift the girl
in its current.
"I'd forgot Sally Bent!"
"What difference does she make?" asked Riley.
"You don't know her, stranger."
"And she won't know us. Got anything for masks?"
"I'm sure a Roman-nosed fool!" declared Mason. "Of course we got to
wear masks."
The girl's pail flashed, as she raised it up from the stream and
dissolved into the shadow of a big tree.
"She don't seem noways interested in this here party," remarked Riley.
"That's her way," said Denver Jim, arranging his bandanna to mask the
lower part of his face from the bridge of his nose down. "She'll show
plenty of interest when it comes to a pinch."
Riley adjusted his own mask, and he did it thoroughly. Out of his vest
he ripped a section of black lining, and, having cut eyeholes, he
fastened the upper edge of the cloth under the brim of his hat and tied
the loose ends behind his head. Red, white, blue, black, and polka dot
was that quaint array of masks.
Having completed his arrangements, Larsen started on at a lope, and the
rest of the party followed in a lurching, loose-formed wedge. At the
edge of the little tableland, Larsen drew down his mount to a walk and
turned in the saddle.
"Quick work, no talk, and a getaway," he said as he swung down to the
ground.
In the crisis of action the big Swede seemed to be accorded the place
of leader by natural right. The others imitated his example silently.
Before they reached the door Larsen turned again.
"Watch Jerry Bent," he said softly. "You watch him, Denver, and you,
Sandersen. Me and Buck will take care of Cold Feet. He may fight like a
rat. That's the way with a coward when he gets cornered." Then he
strode toward the door.
"How thick is Sally Bent with this schoolteaching gent?" asked Riley
Sinclair of Mason.
"I dunno. Nobody knows. Sally keeps her thinking to herself."
Larsen kicked open the door and at the same moment drew his
six-shooter. That example was also imitated by the rest, with the
exception of Riley Sinclair. He hung in the background, watching.
"Gaspar!" called Larsen.
There was a voice of answer, a man's thin voice, then the sharp cry of
a girl from the interior of the house. Sinclair heard a flurry of
skirts.
"Hysterics now," he said into his mask.
She sprang into the doorway, her hands holding the jamb on either side.
In her haste the big white handkerchief around her throat had been
twisted awry. Sinclair looked over the heads of Mason and Denver Jim
into the suntanned face that had now paled into a delicate olive color.
Her very lips were pale, and her great black eyes were flashing at
them. She seemed more a picture of rage than hysterical fear.
"Why for?" she asked. "What are you-all here for in masks, boys? What
you mean calling for Gaspar? What's he done?"
In a moment of waiting Larsen cleared his throat solemnly. "It'd be
best we tell Gaspar direct what we're here for."
This seemed to tell her everything. "Oh," she gasped, "you're not
really _after_ him?"
"Lady, we sure be."
"But Jig--he wouldn't hurt a mouse--he couldn't!"
"Sally, he's done a murder!"
"No, no, no!"
"Sally, will you stand out of the door?"
"It ain't--it ain't a lynching party, boys? Oh, you fools, you'll hang
for it, every one of you!"
Sinclair confided to Buck Mason beside him: "Larsen is letting her talk
down to him. She'll spoil this here party."
"We're the voice of justice," said Judge Lodge pompously. "We ain't got
any other names. They wouldn't be nothing to hang."
"Don't you suppose I know you?" asked the girl, stiffening to her full
height. "D'you think those fool masks mean anything? I can tell you by
your little eyes, Denver Jim!"
Denver cringed suddenly behind the man before him.
"I know you by that roan hoss of yours, Oscar Larsen. Judge Lodge, they
ain't nobody but you that talks about 'justice' and 'voices.' Buck
Mason, I could tell you by your build, a mile off. Montana, you'd ought
to have masked your neck and your Adam's apple sooner'n your face. And
you're Bill Sandersen. They ain't any other man in these parts that
stands on one heel and points his off toe like a horse with a sore leg.
I know you all, and, if you touch a hair on Jig's head, I'll have you
into court for murder! You hear--murder! I'll have you hung, every man
jack!"
She had lowered her voice for the last part of this speech. Now she
made a sweeping gesture, closing her hand as if she had clutched their
destinies in the palm of her hand and could throw it into their faces.
"You-all climb right back on your hosses and feed 'em the spur."
They stood amazed, shifting from foot to foot, exchanging miserable
glances. She began to laugh; mysterious lights danced and twinkled in
her eyes. The laughter chimed away into words grown suddenly gentle,
suddenly friendly. Such a voice Riley Sinclair had never heard. It
walked into a man's heart, breaking the lock.
"Why, Buck Mason, you of all men to be mixed up in a deal like this.
And you, Oscar Larsen, after you and me had talked like partners so
many a time! Denver Jim, we'll have a good laugh about this necktie
party later on. Why, boys, you-all know that Jig ain't guilty of no
harm!"
"Sally," said the wretched Denver Jim, "things seemed to be sort of
pointing to a--"
There was a growl from the rear of the party, and Riley Sinclair strode
to the front and faced the girl. "They's a gent charged with murder
inside," he said. "Stand off, girl. You're in the way!"
Before she answered him, her teeth glinted. If she had been a man, she
would have struck him in the face. He saw that, and it pleased him.
"Stranger," she said deliberately, making sure that every one in the
party should hear her words, "what you need is a stay around Sour Creek
long enough for the boys to teach you how to talk to a lady."
"Honey," replied Riley Sinclair with provoking calm, "you sure put up a
tidy bluff. Maybe you'd tell a judge that you knowed all these gents
behind their masks, but they wouldn't be no way you could _prove_ it!"
A stir behind him was ample assurance that this simple point had
escaped the cowpunchers. All the soul of the girl stood up in her eyes
and hated Riley Sinclair, and again he was pleased. It was not that he
wished to bring the schoolteacher to trouble, but it had angered him to
see one girl balk seven grown men.
"Stand aside," said Riley Sinclair.
"Not an inch!"
"Lady, I'll move you."
"Stranger, if you touch me, you'll be taught better. The gents in Sour
Creek don't stand for suchlike ways!"
Before the appeal to the chivalry of Sour Creek was out of her lips,
smoothly and swiftly the hands of Sinclair settled around her elbows.
She was lifted lightly into the air and deposited to one side of the
doorway.
Her cry rang in the ears of Riley Sinclair. Then her hand flashed up,
and the mask was torn from his face.
"I'll remember! Oh, if I have to wait twenty years, I'll remember!"
"Look me over careful, lady. Today's most likely the last time you'll
see me," declared Riley, gazing straight into her eyes.