Life, the Trophy
To VB, at the sound of the stallion's neighing, came the realization of
his position--weaponless in the midst of men who, now of all times,
would shoot to kill! His righteous abhorrence of the murder Rhues had
done and in which the others had been conspirators did not lessen. He
did not falter in his determination for vengeance; but his thirst for
it did not detract one whit from his realization of the situation's
difficulties.
Seconds were precious. Just a lone instant he poised, looking quickly
about, and to his ears came again the cry of the horse, plaintive,
worried, appealing.
"Captain!" he cried, and started to run. "Captain! You didn't fail!
They _brought_ you!"
His voice lifted to a shout as he rounded the corner of the house, and
the Captain answered.
With the horse located, VB stumbled across the short intervening space,
one hand to his breast doing the double duty of attempting to still the
searing of that wound and hold fast to the money belt. He flung himself
at the door of the low little stable, jerked the fastening apart, and,
backing in, saw men run from the house, heard them curse sharply, and
saw them turn and look, each with his shooting hand raised.
VB drew the door shut after him, trembling, thinking swiftly. The
Captain nosed him and nickered relief, stepping about in his agitation
as though he knew the desperate nature of the corner into which they
had been driven.
"We've got to get out, boy," VB cried, running his numb hands over the
animal's face in caress. "We're up against it, but there's a way out!"
It was good to be back. It was good to feel that thick, firm neck
again, to have the warm breath of the vital beast on his cheek, to
sense his dominating presence--for it did dominate, even in that
strained circumstance, and in the stress VB found half hysterical joy
and voiced it:
"You didn't quit, Captain!" he cried as he felt the cinch hastily. "You
didn't quit. They--that woman! She brought you here!"
He flung his arms about the stallion's head in a quick, nervous embrace
at the cost of a mighty cutting pain across his chest.
Then the cautious voice of Rhues, outside and close up to the door,
talking lowly and swiftly:
"Julio, saddle th' buckskin! Quick! I'll hold him here till we're
ready! Then I'll shoot th' ---- down in his tracks! We got to ride,
anyhow--nothin' 'll make no difference now!"
Raising his voice, Rhues taunted:
"Pray, you ----! Yer goin' to cash!"
VB pressed his face to a crack and saw Rhues in the moonlight, close up
to the door. He also saw another man, Julio, leading a horse from the
corral on the run. Two other animals, saddled, stood near.
He was cornered, helpless, in their hands--hard hands, that knew no
mercy. But he did not give up. His mind worked nimbly, skipping from
possibility to possibility, looking, searching for a way out.
He reeled to the black horse and felt the animal's breath against the
back of his neck.
"We're up against it, boy," he whispered.
And the voice of Rhues again: "They'll find him to-morrow--with th'
belt!"
He broke off suddenly, as though the words had set in his mind a new
idea.
VB did not hear; would not have heeded had his senses registered the
words, because an odd apathy had come over him, dulling the pain of his
wound, deadening the realization of his danger. He sighed deeply and
shook himself and tried to rally, but though a part of him insisted
that he gather his faculties and force them to alertness, another
tired, lethargic self overbore the warning. Half consciously he pulled
the stirrup toward him, put up his foot with an unreal effort, and
laboriously drew himself to the saddle. There, he leaned forward on his
arms, which were crossed on the Captain's neck, oblivious to all that
transpired.
But the great stallion was not insensible to the situation. He could
not know the danger, but he did know that he had been led into a
strange place, shut there and left virtually a prisoner; that his
master had burst in upon him atremble with communicable excitement;
that strange voices were raised close to him; that men had been running
to and fro; that the sounds of struggling horses were coming from out
there; that some man was standing on the other side of the door, closer
than most men had ever stood to him. He breathed loudly; then stilled
that breath to listen, his head moving with frequent, short jerks as he
saw objects move past the cracks in the building. He switched his tail
about his hindquarters sharply, and backed a step.
Another voice called softly to Rhues, and Rhues answered:
"Dah! When I rolled him over his holster flopped out of his shirt,
empty. He dropped it in th' s'loon. If he'd had a gun he'd done fer us
'n there, wouldn't he?"
Then his voice was raised in a sharp command: "Help him, Julio! Hang on
to his ear an' he'll stand. _Pronto!_"
Sounds of men grunting, of a horse striving to break from them; a sharp
cry. These things--and emanating from a scene taking place outside the
Captain's sight! He half wheeled and scrubbed the back wall of the
stable with his hip, blowing loudly in fright. He stamped a forefoot
impatiently; followed that by a brisk, nervous pawing. He tossed his
head and chewed his bit briskly; then shook his head and blew loudly
again. He shied violently as a man ran past the door, wheeled, crashed
into the wall again and, crouching, quivered violently.
VB moaned with pain. When the horse under him had shied the boy had
pushed himself erect in the saddle and the effort tore at the wound in
his chest. The pain roused him, and as the Captain again wheeled,
frantic to find a way out of this pen, VB's heels clapped inward to
retain his seat, the spurs drove home, and with a whimper the horse
reared to his hind legs, lunged forward, and the front hoofs, shooting
out, crashed squarely against the closed door!
Under the force of the blow the door swept outward, screaming on its
rusty hinges. A third of the way open it struck resistance, quivered,
seemed to hesitate, then continued on its arc.
A surprised, muffled shout, the sound of a body striking ground, a
shot, its stream of fire spitting toward the night sky. Then the
vicious smiting of hoofs as the Captain, bearing his witless rider,
swung in a short circle and made for the river.
Rhues, caught and knocked flat by the bursting open of the door, was
perhaps a half-dozen seconds in getting to his feet. He came up
shooting, a stream of leaden missiles shrieking aimlessly off into
space. Julio and Matson, busy with the refractory buckskin, heard the
crash and creak of the swinging door, heard the shout, heard the shot;
they turned to see the black stallion sweep from the little building
and swirl past them, ears back, teeth gleaming, and bearing to the
north.
Still clinging to the buckskin's head, the Mexican drew his gun;
Matson, utterly bewildered, fearful of impending consequences, gave the
cinch a final tug, but before Julio could fire the water of the river
was thrown in radiant spray as the Captain floundered into midstream
with VB low on his neck.
Then Rhues was on them, putting into choking words the vileness of his
heart. He did not explain beyond:
"Th' ---- horse! Th' door got me!"
He seized the cheek strap of the buckskin's bridle and swung up, while
the others watched the horse running out into the moonlit river. The
pony reared and pivoted on his hind legs.
"Git on yer hosses!" Rhues screeched, yanking at the bit. "He can't git
away, with his hoss run down once to-night! An' if we let him--we
swing!"
Goaded by that terror they obeyed, hanging spurs in their horses'
flanks before they found stirrups, and the trio whirled down to the
water.
"He's goin' home!" Rhues cried above the splashing. "That's our way
out; we'll git him as we go 'long! We'll ride him down; he ain't got a
gun! An' they'll find him out yonder with th' money belt on him! We--"
He broke short with a laugh. "We could claim th' reward! Two fifty,
dead 'r alive!"
Matson snarled something. Then, as their horses struggled up the far
bank of the stream, completed it:
"---- with th' reward! What we want's a get-away!"
"We're on our way now," growled Rhues, and lashed his pony viciously
with the ends of his bridle reins.
Knee to knee they raced, the ponies stretching their heads far out in
efforts to cover that light ribbon of road which clove the cloudlike
sage brush and ate up the distance between their position and that
scudding blur ahead. Each had his gun drawn and held high in the right
hand ready for use; each, with eyes only for that before them, with
minds only for speed--and quick speculation on what might happen should
they fail.
The creak of leather, the sharp batter of hoofs, the rattle of pebbles
as they were thrown out against the rocks, the excited breathing of
horses: A race, with human life the trophy!
And VB, looking back, saw. With set teeth he leaned still lower over
the Captain's neck in spite of the raging the posture set up in his
torn breast. No will of his had directed the stallion in that flight
northward. His unexpected dash through the barn door, the quick
recognition of the point they had scored, the sharp pang which came
when VB realized the fact that the horse's, break for home had cut him
off from help that might have remained in Ranger, left the wounded man
in a swirl of confused impressions.
Behind all the jumble was the big urge to reach that place which had
been the only true haven of his experience. He felt a glimmer of solace
when he sensed that he was going home which quite neutralized the
terror that the glance at those oncoming riders provoked. The comfort
inculcated by the idea grew into clear thinking; from there on into the
status of an obsession. He was going home! He was on the way, with that
mighty beast under him! He raised more of his weight to the stirrups
and laid a reassuring hand on the snapping shoulder of his horse.
And on his trail rode the merciless three, their eyes following the
bending course of the road, hat-brims now blown back against the
crowns, now down over their eyes in the rush through the night. Rhues
rode a quarter of a length ahead of the others, and his automatic was
raised higher than were their gun-hands. Now and then one of the trio
spoke sharply to his horse and grunted as he raked with a spur, but for
the greater part of the time they did not lift their voices above the
thunder of the race. They knew what must happen; they held their own,
and waited!
"Go, boy, go!" whispered VB. "We'll run their legs off; they'll never
get in range!"
The Captain held an attentive ear backward a moment, then shot it
forward, watching the road, holding his rolling, space-eating stride.
VB turned his head and again looked back. They were still there! No
nearer--but he had not shaken them off. Two, perhaps three, miles had
been covered and they hung by him, just within sight, just beyond that
point where they might fire with an even chance of certainty. He
pressed his arm against his burning breast, crowding the treasured
money belt tighter against the wound. Somehow, it seemed to dull the
torment, and for minutes he held the pressure constant, still lifted to
supreme heights of endeavor and ability to withstand suffering by the
rage that had welled up from his depths as he stood back in the shadow
of the cabin and had the suspicion of how and why Kelly had met death
become certainty.
Another mile, and he turned to look back again. They still hung there,
making a blur in the moonlight, fanciful, half floating, but he knew
they were real, knew that they hammered their way through the night
with lust for his life!
"Captain!" he cried, apprehension rising. "Go it, boy; go it!"
He pressed a spur lightly against his side and felt the great beast
quiver between strides. The pace quickened a trifle, but VB saw that
the ears were no longer held steadily to the fore, that the head ducked
with each leap forward as he had never seen it duck before. And as the
thought with its killing remorse thundered into his intelligence, VB
sat erect in the saddle with a gasp and a movement which staggered the
running animal that bore him.
The Captain's strength had been drained! For twenty strides VB sat
there, inert, a dead weight, while grief came into his throat, into his
vision, deadening his mind. In all that melodrama which began when he
stared through the saloon door and saw Rhues standing in the moonlight,
gun ready, the reason for his presence in Ranger, the history of the
earlier night, had been obliterated for the time being. Now, as he felt
the beast under him labor, heard his heavy breathing, saw the froth on
his lips, it all came back to Young VB.
"Oh, Captain!" he wailed, leaning forward again, eyes burning, throat
choking.
And for a long time he rode as though unable to do else but hold his
position over the fork of the saddle.
He was stunned, beaten down by poignant remorse. The Captain had made
the long ride from Jed's to Ranger at a killing pace. VB remembered
acutely now that the stallion had staggered as he emerged from Clear
River and came into view of the saloon lights. And he had been there
how long? An hour of poker, perhaps; an hour more at the outside. Two
hours for the horse to regain the strength that had been taken from him
in that cruel ride--a ride taken to satisfy the viciousness which made
VB a man uncertain of himself!
The Captain had been wasted! He had gone, as had VB's heart and mind,
to be a sacrifice for hideous gods! In an hour of weakness he had been
offered, had been given gladly, and without thought of his value! For
had not VB gloried in that ride to Ranger? Had it not been the end of
all things for him? An end for which he was thankful? Had it not been
all conscious, witting, planned? It had--and it had not been worth the
candle!
The boy moaned aloud and wound his fingers in the flapping mane.
"Captain!" he cried. "It was all wrong--all false! I threw you away an
hour ago, and now--you're _life_ to me! Oh, boy, will you forgive? Can
you?"
No fear of death tapped the wells of his grief. There was only sorrow
for his wasting of that great animal, that splendid spirit, that clean
strength!
After a moment he sobbed: "You can't do anything else but go on, boy!
You're that sort! You'll go, then I'll go; anyhow, it will be together!"
And the great beast, blowing froth from his lips, struggled on, while
from behind came the sounds of other running horses--perhaps a trifle
nearer.