Some time during the night Duane awoke. A stillness seemingly so thick
and heavy as to have substance blanketed the black willow brake. He
could not see a star or a branch or tree-trunk or even his hand before
his eyes. He lay there waiting, listening, sure that he had been
awakened by an unusual sound. Ordinary noises of the night in the
wilderness never disturbed his rest. His faculties, like those of
old fugitives and hunted creatures, had become trained to a marvelous
keenness. A long low breath of slow wind moaned through the willows,
passed away; some stealthy, soft-footed beast trotted by him in the
darkness; there was a rustling among dry leaves; a fox barked lonesomely
in the distance. But none of these sounds had broken his slumber.
Suddenly, piercing the stillness, came a bay of a bloodhound. Quickly
Duane sat up, chilled to his marrow. The action made him aware of
his crippled arm. Then came other bays, lower, more distant. Silence
enfolded him again, all the more oppressive and menacing in his
suspense. Bloodhounds had been put on his trail, and the leader was not
far away. All his life Duane had been familiar with bloodhounds; and he
knew that if the pack surrounded him in this impenetrable darkness he
would be held at bay or dragged down as wolves dragged a stag. Rising to
his feet, prepared to flee as best he could, he waited to be sure of the
direction he should take.
The leader of the hounds broke into cry again, a deep, full-toned,
ringing bay, strange, ominous, terribly significant in its power. It
caused a cold sweat to ooze out all over Duane's body. He turned from
it, and with his uninjured arm outstretched to feel for the willows
he groped his way along. As it was impossible to pick out the narrow
passages, he had to slip and squeeze and plunge between the yielding
stems. He made such a crashing that he no longer heard the baying of
the hounds. He had no hope to elude them. He meant to climb the first
cottonwood that he stumbled upon in his blind flight. But it appeared
he never was going to be lucky enough to run against one. Often he fell,
sometimes flat, at others upheld by the willows. What made the work
so hard was the fact that he had only one arm to open a clump of
close-growing stems and his feet would catch or tangle in the narrow
crotches, holding him fast. He had to struggle desperately. It was as if
the willows were clutching hands, his enemies, fiendishly impeding his
progress. He tore his clothes on sharp branches and his flesh suffered
many a prick. But in a terrible earnestness he kept on until he brought
up hard against a cottonwood tree.
There he leaned and rested. He found himself as nearly exhausted as he
had ever been, wet with sweat, his hands torn and burning, his breast
laboring, his legs stinging from innumerable bruises. While he leaned
there to catch his breath he listened for the pursuing hounds. For a
long time there was no sound from them. This, however, did not deceive
him into any hopefulness. There were bloodhounds that bayed often on a
trail, and others that ran mostly silent. The former were more valuable
to their owner and the latter more dangerous to the fugitive. Presently
Duane's ears were filled by a chorus of short ringing yelps. The pack
had found where he had slept, and now the trail was hot. Satisfied that
they would soon overtake him, Duane set about climbing the cottonwood,
which in his condition was difficult of ascent.
It happened to be a fairly large tree with a fork about fifteen feet up,
and branches thereafter in succession. Duane climbed until he got above
the enshrouding belt of blackness. A pale gray mist hung above the
brake, and through it shone a line of dim lights. Duane decided these
were bonfires made along the bluff to render his escape more difficult
on that side. Away round in the direction he thought was north he
imagined he saw more fires, but, as the mist was thick, he could not be
sure. While he sat there pondering the matter, listening for the hounds,
the mist and the gloom on one side lightened; and this side he concluded
was east and meant that dawn was near. Satisfying himself on this score,
he descended to the first branch of the tree.
His situation now, though still critical, did not appear to be so
hopeless as it had been. The hounds would soon close in on him, and
he would kill them or drive them away. It was beyond the bounds of
possibility that any men could have followed running hounds through that
brake in the night. The thing that worried Duane was the fact of the
bonfires. He had gathered from the words of one of his pursuers that the
brake was a kind of trap, and he began to believe there was only one way
out of it, and that was along the bank where he had entered, and where
obviously all night long his pursuers had kept fires burning. Further
conjecture on this point, however, was interrupted by a crashing in the
willows and the rapid patter of feet.
Underneath Duane lay a gray, foggy obscurity. He could not see the
ground, nor any object but the black trunk of the tree. Sight would
not be needed to tell him when the pack arrived. With a pattering rush
through the willows the hounds reached the tree; and then high above
crash of brush and thud of heavy paws rose a hideous clamor. Duane's
pursuers far off to the south would hear that and know what it meant.
And at daybreak, perhaps before, they would take a short cut across the
brake, guided by the baying of hounds that had treed their quarry.
It wanted only a few moments, however, till Duane could distinguish the
vague forms of the hounds in the gray shadow below. Still he waited. He
had no shots to spare. And he knew how to treat bloodhounds. Gradually
the obscurity lightened, and at length Duane had good enough sight of
the hounds for his purpose. His first shot killed the huge brute leader
of the pack. Then, with unerring shots, he crippled several others. That
stopped the baying. Piercing howls arose. The pack took fright and fled,
its course easily marked by the howls of the crippled members. Duane
reloaded his gun, and, making certain all the hounds had gone, he
descended to the ground and set off at a rapid pace to the northward.
The mist had dissolved under a rising sun when Duane made his first
halt some miles north of the scene where he had waited for the hounds. A
barrier to further progress, in shape of a precipitous rocky bluff, rose
sheer from the willow brake. He skirted the base of the cliff, where
walking was comparatively easy, around in the direction of the river. He
reached the end finally to see there was absolutely no chance to escape
from the brake at that corner. It took extreme labor, attended by some
hazard and considerable pain to his arm, to get down where he could fill
his sombrero with water. After quenching his thirst he had a look at his
wound. It was caked over with blood and dirt. When washed off the arm
was seen to be inflamed and swollen around the bullet-hole. He bathed
it, experiencing a soothing relief in the cool water. Then he bandaged
it as best he could and arranged a sling round his neck. This mitigated
the pain of the injured member and held it in a quiet and restful
position, where it had a chance to begin mending.
As Duane turned away from the river he felt refreshed. His great
strength and endurance had always made fatigue something almost unknown
to him. However, tramping on foot day and night was as unusual to him as
to any other riders of the Southwest, and it had begun to tell on him.
Retracing his steps, he reached the point where he had abruptly come
upon the bluff, and here he determined to follow along its base in the
other direction until he found a way out or discovered the futility of
such effort.
Duane covered ground rapidly. From time to time he paused to listen. But
he was always listening, and his eyes were ever roving. This alertness
had become second nature with him, so that except in extreme cases
of caution he performed it while he pondered his gloomy and fateful
situation. Such habit of alertness and thought made time fly swiftly.
By noon he had rounded the wide curve of the brake and was facing
south. The bluff had petered out from a high, mountainous wall to a
low abutment of rock, but it still held to its steep, rough nature and
afforded no crack or slope where quick ascent could have been possible.
He pushed on, growing warier as he approached the danger-zone, finding
that as he neared the river on this side it was imperative to go deeper
into the willows. In the afternoon he reached a point where he could see
men pacing to and fro on the bluff. This assured him that whatever place
was guarded was one by which he might escape. He headed toward these men
and approached to within a hundred paces of the bluff where they were.
There were several men and several boys, all armed and, after the manner
of Texans, taking their task leisurely. Farther down Duane made out
black dots on the horizon of the bluff-line, and these he concluded were
more guards stationed at another outlet. Probably all the available men
in the district were on duty. Texans took a grim pleasure in such work.
Duane remembered that upon several occasions he had served such duty
himself.
Duane peered through the branches and studied the lay of the land. For
several hundred yards the bluff could be climbed. He took stock of those
careless guards. They had rifles, and that made vain any attempt to pass
them in daylight. He believed an attempt by night might be successful;
and he was swiftly coming to a determination to hide there till dark and
then try it, when the sudden yelping of a dog betrayed him to the guards
on the bluff.
The dog had likely been placed there to give an alarm, and he was
lustily true to his trust. Duane saw the men run together and begin to
talk excitedly and peer into the brake, which was a signal for him to
slip away under the willows. He made no noise, and he assured himself he
must be invisible. Nevertheless, he heard shouts, then the cracking of
rifles, and bullets began to zip and swish through the leafy covert. The
day was hot and windless, and Duane concluded that whenever he touched
a willow stem, even ever so slightly, it vibrated to the top and sent
a quiver among the leaves. Through this the guards had located his
position. Once a bullet hissed by him; another thudded into the ground
before him. This shooting loosed a rage in Duane. He had to fly from
these men, and he hated them and himself because of it. Always in
the fury of such moments he wanted to give back shot for shot. But
he slipped on through the willows, and at length the rifles ceased to
crack.
He sheered to the left again, in line with the rocky barrier, and kept
on, wondering what the next mile would bring.
It brought worse, for he was seen by sharp-eyed scouts, and a hot
fusillade drove him to run for his life, luckily to escape with no more
than a bullet-creased shoulder.
Later that day, still undaunted, he sheered again toward the trap-wall,
and found that the nearer he approached to the place where he had
come down into the brake the greater his danger. To attempt to run the
blockade of that trail by day would be fatal. He waited for night, and
after the brightness of the fires had somewhat lessened he assayed to
creep out of the brake. He succeeded in reaching the foot of the bluff,
here only a bank, and had begun to crawl stealthily up under cover of
a shadow when a hound again betrayed his position. Retreating to the
willows was as perilous a task as had ever confronted Duane, and when he
had accomplished it, right under what seemed a hundred blazing rifles,
he felt that he had indeed been favored by Providence. This time men
followed him a goodly ways into the brake, and the ripping of lead
through the willows sounded on all sides of him.
When the noise of pursuit ceased Duane sat down in the darkness, his
mind clamped between two things--whether to try again to escape or
wait for possible opportunity. He seemed incapable of decision. His
intelligence told him that every hour lessened his chances for escape.
He had little enough chance in any case, and that was what made another
attempt so desperately hard. Still it was not love of life that bound
him. There would come an hour, sooner or later, when he would wrench
decision out of this chaos of emotion and thought. But that time was not
yet. He had remained quiet long enough to cool off and recover from his
run he found that he was tired. He stretched out to rest. But the swarms
of vicious mosquitoes prevented sleep. This corner of the brake was low
and near the river, a breeding-ground for the blood-suckers. They sang
and hummed and whined around him in an ever-increasing horde. He covered
his head and hands with his coat and lay there patiently. That was a
long and wretched night. Morning found him still strong physically, but
in a dreadful state of mind.
First he hurried for the river. He could withstand the pangs of hunger,
but it was imperative to quench thirst. His wound made him feverish,
and therefore more than usually hot and thirsty. Again he was refreshed.
That morning he was hard put to it to hold himself back from attempting
to cross the river. If he could find a light log it was within the
bounds of possibility that he might ford the shallow water and bars of
quicksand. But not yet! Wearily, doggedly he faced about toward the
bluff.
All that day and all that night, all the next day and all the next
night, he stole like a hunted savage from river to bluff; and every hour
forced upon him the bitter certainty that he was trapped.
Duane lost track of days, of events. He had come to an evil pass.
There arrived an hour when, closely pressed by pursuers at the extreme
southern corner of the brake, he took to a dense thicket of willows,
driven to what he believed was his last stand.
If only these human bloodhounds would swiftly close in on him! Let him
fight to the last bitter gasp and have it over! But these hunters, eager
as they were to get him, had care of their own skins. They took few
risks. They had him cornered.
It was the middle of the day, hot, dusty, oppressive, threatening storm.
Like a snake Duane crawled into a little space in the darkest part of
the thicket and lay still. Men had cut him off from the bluff, from the
river, seemingly from all sides. But he heard voices only from in front
and toward his left. Even if his passage to the river had not been
blocked, it might just as well have been.
“Come on fellers--down hyar,” called one man from the bluff.
“Got him corralled at last,” shouted another.
“Reckon ye needn't be too shore. We thought thet more'n once,” taunted
another.
“I seen him, I tell you.”
“Aw, thet was a deer.”
“But Bill found fresh tracks an' blood on the willows.”
“If he's winged we needn't hurry.”
“Hold on thar, you boys,” came a shout in authoritative tones from
farther up the bluff. “Go slow. You-all air gittin' foolish at the end
of a long chase.”
“Thet's right, Colonel. Hold 'em back. There's nothin' shorer than
somebody'll be stoppin' lead pretty quick. He'll be huntin' us soon!”
“Let's surround this corner an' starve him out.”
“Fire the brake.”
How clearly all this talk pierced Duane's ears! In it he seemed to hear
his doom. This, then, was the end he had always expected, which had been
close to him before, yet never like now.
“By God!” whispered Duane, “the thing for me to do now--is go out--meet
them!”
That was prompted by the fighting, the killing instinct in him. In that
moment it had almost superhuman power. If he must die, that was the way
for him to die. What else could be expected of Buck Duane? He got to his
knees and drew his gun. With his swollen and almost useless hand he held
what spare ammunition he had left. He ought to creep out noiselessly to
the edge of the willows, suddenly face his pursuers, then, while there
was a beat left in his heart, kill, kill, kill. These men all had
rifles. The fight would be short. But the marksmen did not live on earth
who could make such a fight go wholly against him. Confronting them
suddenly he could kill a man for every shot in his gun.
Thus Duane reasoned. So he hoped to accept his fate--to meet this end.
But when he tried to step forward something checked him. He forced
himself; yet he could not go. The obstruction that opposed his will was
as insurmountable as it had been physically impossible for him to climb
the bluff.
Slowly he fell back, crouched low, and then lay flat. The grim and
ghastly dignity that had been his a moment before fell away from him. He
lay there stripped of his last shred of self-respect. He wondered was
he afraid; had he, the last of the Duanes--had he come to feel fear? No!
Never in all his wild life had he so longed to go out and meet men face
to face. It was not fear that held him back. He hated this hiding,
this eternal vigilance, this hopeless life. The damnable paradox of the
situation was that if he went out to meet these men there was absolutely
no doubt of his doom. If he clung to his covert there was a chance, a
merest chance, for his life. These pursuers, dogged and unflagging as
they had been, were mortally afraid of him. It was his fame that made
them cowards. Duane's keenness told him that at the very darkest and
most perilous moment there was still a chance for him. And the blood in
him, the temper of his father, the years of his outlawry, the pride of
his unsought and hated career, the nameless, inexplicable something in
him made him accept that slim chance.
Waiting then became a physical and mental agony. He lay under the
burning sun, parched by thirst, laboring to breathe, sweating and
bleeding. His uncared-for wound was like a red-hot prong in his
flesh. Blotched and swollen from the never-ending attack of flies and
mosquitoes his face seemed twice its natural size, and it ached and
stung.
On one side, then, was this physical torture; on the other the old hell,
terribly augmented at this crisis, in his mind. It seemed that thought
and imagination had never been so swift. If death found him presently,
how would it come? Would he get decent burial or be left for the
peccaries and the coyotes? Would his people ever know where he had
fallen? How wretched, how miserable his state! It was cowardly, it was
monstrous for him to cling longer to this doomed life. Then the hate in
his heart, the hellish hate of these men on his trail--that was like a
scourge. He felt no longer human. He had degenerated into an animal that
could think. His heart pounded, his pulse beat, his breast heaved;
and this internal strife seemed to thunder into his ears. He was now
enacting the tragedy of all crippled, starved, hunted wolves at bay in
their dens. Only his tragedy was infinitely more terrible because he
had mind enough to see his plight, his resemblance to a lonely wolf,
bloody-fanged, dripping, snarling, fire-eyed in a last instinctive
defiance.
Mounted upon the horror of Duane's thought was a watching, listening
intensity so supreme that it registered impressions which were creations
of his imagination. He heard stealthy steps that were not there; he saw
shadowy moving figures that were only leaves. A hundred times when he
was about to pull trigger he discovered his error. Yet voices came from
a distance, and steps and crackings in the willows, and other sounds
real enough. But Duane could not distinguish the real from the false.
There were times when the wind which had arisen sent a hot, pattering
breath down the willow aisles, and Duane heard it as an approaching
army.
This straining of Duane's faculties brought on a reaction which in
itself was a respite. He saw the sun darkened by thick slow spreading
clouds. A storm appeared to be coming. How slowly it moved! The air
was like steam. If there broke one of those dark, violent storms common
though rare to the country, Duane believed he might slip away in the
fury of wind and rain. Hope, that seemed unquenchable in him, resurged
again. He hailed it with a bitterness that was sickening.
Then at a rustling step he froze into the old strained attention. He
heard a slow patter of soft feet. A tawny shape crossed a little opening
in the thicket. It was that of a dog. The moment while that beast came
into full view was an age. The dog was not a bloodhound, and if he had
a trail or a scent he seemed to be at fault on it. Duane waited for the
inevitable discovery. Any kind of a hunting-dog could have found him
in that thicket. Voices from outside could be heard urging on the dog.
Rover they called him. Duane sat up at the moment the dog entered the
little shaded covert. Duane expected a yelping, a baying, or at least
a bark that would tell of his hiding-place. A strange relief swiftly
swayed over Duane. The end was near now. He had no further choice. Let
them come--a quick fierce exchange of shots--and then this torture past!
He waited for the dog to give the alarm.
But the dog looked at him and trotted by into the thicket without a
yelp. Duane could not believe the evidence of his senses. He thought he
had suddenly gone deaf. He saw the dog disappear, heard him running to
and fro among the willows, getting farther and farther away, till all
sound from him ceased.
“Thar's Rover,” called a voice from the bluff-side. “He's been through
thet black patch.”
“Nary a rabbit in there,” replied another.
“Bah! Thet pup's no good,” scornfully growled another man. “Put a hound
at thet clump of willows.”
“Fire's the game. Burn the brake before the rain comes.”
The voices droned off as their owners evidently walked up the ridge.
Then upon Duane fell the crushing burden of the old waiting, watching,
listening spell. After all, it was not to end just now. His chance still
persisted--looked a little brighter--led him on, perhaps, to forlorn
hope.
All at once twilight settled quickly down upon the willow brake, or else
Duane noted it suddenly. He imagined it to be caused by the approaching
storm. But there was little movement of air or cloud, and thunder still
muttered and rumbled at a distance. The fact was the sun had set, and at
this time of overcast sky night was at hand.
Duane realized it with the awakening of all his old force. He would yet
elude his pursuers. That was the moment when he seized the significance
of all these fortunate circumstances which had aided him. Without haste
and without sound he began to crawl in the direction of the river. It
was not far, and he reached the bank before darkness set in. There were
men up on the bluff carrying wood to build a bonfire. For a moment he
half yielded to a temptation to try to slip along the river-shore, close
in under the willows. But when he raised himself to peer out he saw that
an attempt of this kind would be liable to failure. At the same moment
he saw a rough-hewn plank lying beneath him, lodged against some
willows. The end of the plank extended in almost to a point beneath him.
Quick as a flash he saw where a desperate chance invited him. Then he
tied his gun in an oilskin bag and put it in his pocket.
The bank was steep and crumbly. He must not break off any earth to
splash into the water. There was a willow growing back some few feet
from the edge of the bank. Cautiously he pulled it down, bent it over
the water so that when he released it there would be no springing back.
Then he trusted his weight to it, with his feet sliding carefully
down the bank. He went into the water almost up to his knees, felt
the quicksand grip his feet; then, leaning forward till he reached the
plank, he pulled it toward him and lay upon it.
Without a sound one end went slowly under water and the farther end
appeared lightly braced against the overhanging willows. Very carefully
then Duane began to extricate his right foot from the sucking sand.
It seemed as if his foot was incased in solid rock. But there was a
movement upward, and he pulled with all the power he dared use. It
came slowly and at length was free. The left one he released with less
difficulty. The next few moments he put all his attention on the plank
to ascertain if his weight would sink it into the sand. The far end
slipped off the willows with a little splash and gradually settled
to rest upon the bottom. But it sank no farther, and Duane's greatest
concern was relieved. However, as it was manifestly impossible for him
to keep his head up for long he carefully crawled out upon the plank
until he could rest an arm and shoulder upon the willows.
When he looked up it was to find the night strangely luminous with
fires. There was a bonfire on the extreme end of the bluff, another
a hundred paces beyond. A great flare extended over the brake in that
direction. Duane heard a roaring on the wind, and he knew his pursuers
had fired the willows. He did not believe that would help them much.
The brake was dry enough, but too green to burn readily. And as for the
bonfires he discovered that the men, probably having run out of wood,
were keeping up the light with oil and stuff from the village. A dozen
men kept watch on the bluff scarcely fifty paces from where Duane lay
concealed by the willows. They talked, cracked jokes, sang songs, and
manifestly considered this outlaw-hunting a great lark. As long as the
bright light lasted Duane dared not move. He had the patience and the
endurance to wait for the breaking of the storm, and if that did not
come, then the early hour before dawn when the gray fog and gloom were
over the river.
Escape was now in his grasp. He felt it. And with that in his mind he
waited, strong as steel in his conviction, capable of withstanding any
strain endurable by the human frame.
The wind blew in puffs, grew wilder, and roared through the willows,
carrying bright sparks upward. Thunder rolled down over the river, and
lightning began to flash. Then the rain fell in heavy sheets, but
not steadily. The flashes of lightning and the broad flares played so
incessantly that Duane could not trust himself out on the open river.
Certainly the storm rather increased the watchfulness of the men on
the bluff. He knew how to wait, and he waited, grimly standing pain and
cramp and chill. The storm wore away as desultorily as it had come,
and the long night set in. There were times when Duane thought he was
paralyzed, others when he grew sick, giddy, weak from the strained
posture. The first paling of the stars quickened him with a kind of wild
joy. He watched them grow paler, dimmer, disappear one by one. A shadow
hovered down, rested upon the river, and gradually thickened. The
bonfire on the bluff showed as through a foggy veil. The watchers were
mere groping dark figures.
Duane, aware of how cramped he had become from long inaction, began
to move his legs and uninjured arm and body, and at length overcame a
paralyzing stiffness. Then, digging his hand in the sand and holding the
plank with his knees, he edged it out into the river. Inch by inch he
advanced until clear of the willows. Looking upward, he saw the shadowy
figures of the men on the bluff. He realized they ought to see him,
feared that they would. But he kept on, cautiously, noiselessly, with a
heart-numbing slowness. From time to time his elbow made a little gurgle
and splash in the water. Try as he might, he could not prevent this. It
got to be like the hollow roar of a rapid filling his ears with mocking
sound. There was a perceptible current out in the river, and it hindered
straight advancement. Inch by inch he crept on, expecting to hear
the bang of rifles, the spattering of bullets. He tried not to look
backward, but failed. The fire appeared a little dimmer, the moving
shadows a little darker.
Once the plank stuck in the sand and felt as if it were settling.
Bringing feet to aid his hand, he shoved it over the treacherous place.
This way he made faster progress. The obscurity of the river seemed to
be enveloping him. When he looked back again the figures of the men were
coalescing with the surrounding gloom, the fires were streaky, blurred
patches of light. But the sky above was brighter. Dawn was not far off.
To the west all was dark. With infinite care and implacable spirit
and waning strength Duane shoved the plank along, and when at last he
discerned the black border of bank it came in time, he thought, to save
him. He crawled out, rested till the gray dawn broke, and then headed
north through the willows.