IN THE DARK
It was a pitch black night, the stars hidden by dense drifting clouds,
and intensely still. Buck Thornton and Two-Hand Billy Comstock, riding
side by side with few words, turned straight out across the fields, the
marshal reining his horse close in to that other horse he could scarcely
see and leaving to the cowboy the task of finding their way.
They rode slowly until they turned into the level county road and then
swifter that they might come into Hill's Corners before it was midnight.
When at last the twinkling lights of Dead Man's Alley winked at them
Comstock struck a match and looked at his watch.
"Fifteen minutes of twelve," he said. "You're on time. And I guess you
can do the rest of your riding alone? So long. I'm apt to drop in on you
at the ranch any day."
Comstock had planned to ride straight to the Brown Bear saloon, to
invest in a stack of chips, and to spend the evening "seeing the town."
And Thornton, understanding that if the note from Winifred Waverly were
truthful in all that it said and in all that it suggested, it would be
as well if he were not seen tonight, turned out along the outskirts of
the village to come to Pollard's house without riding through the main
street.
"Easy, Comet, easy," he muttered to his horse, having no desire to come
to the appointed place before the appointed hour. "We've got fifteen
minutes and then won't have to keep the lady waiting. If she's there,
Comet!"
For even yet his suspicions were not all at rest, already he rode with
reins and quirt in the grip of his left hand, the right caught in the
loose band of his chaps. It lacked but a few minutes of midnight when he
entered the dark, silent street in which was Henry Pollard's house.
Here were a few straggling houses with many vacant lots between and no
single light to show that any were awake, no gleam from a window to cut
through the darkness which was absolute. Thornton drew his horse to the
side of the road where the grass had not been worn away by the wheels of
wagons and where the animal's footfalls were muffled, hardly to be heard
a score of paces away. Twice he stopped, frowning into the gloom about
him, seeking to force his eyes to penetrate the impenetrable wall of the
dark, straining his ears to catch some little sound through the silence.
But there was nothing to see save the black forms of houses and the pear
trees in Pollard's yard, shapeless, sinister shadows something darker
than the emptiness against which they stood; no sound save his horse's
breathing, the faint creak of his own saddle leather, the low jingle of
bridle and spur chain.
"Almost too still to be true," he told himself. "But," with a grim
tightening of his lips, "too infernally dark for a man to pick me off
with a shotgun if he wanted to!"
Fifty yards from Pollard's front gate he stopped his horse, swung down
noiselessly from the saddle and tied Comet to a tree standing at the
edge of the road; his jingling spurs he removed to hang them over the
horn of his saddle. Then he went forward on foot, walking guardedly, his
tread upon the grass making no sound to reach his own ears, and came to
Pollard's gate.
It was so dark under the pear trees that the obscurity was without
detail; he must guess rather than know where the tree trunks were; it
was hard to judge if they were ten feet or fifty feet from him. There
might be no one here to keep tryst with him, while on the other hand a
dozen men might be waiting.
For perhaps two or three minutes he waited, standing motionless at the
gate. No faint noise came to him, no hint of a shadow stirring among
those other shadows as motionless as they were formless. The night
seemed not to breathe, no sound even of rustling branches coming to his
ears from the old pear trees.
"It's twelve o'clock, and after," he thought. "If she's coming she ought
to be here now."
Still he waited. And then when he knew it must be ten or fifteen minutes
after the time Winifred had set, and remembering that she said
specifically "under the pear trees," he moved forward suddenly, jerked
the gate open and stood in Pollard's yard.
The little noise of the gate whining upon its worn hinges sounded
unnaturally loud. His footfall upon the warped board walk which led to
the front door snapped through the silence like a pistol shot.
"If there's anybody laying for me here he knows now that I've come," he
told himself. And with no hesitation now, yet with no lessening of his
watchfulness, he came on swiftly until he stood under the pear trees and
within ten feet of the front porch.
It was still about him, intensely still, and black-dark. He stood
leaning forward a little, peering into the darkness, listening for a
sound, any sound. He knew that it must be half past twelve, that for
close upon half an hour he had waited here. Half an hour filled with
quick, conflicting thoughts, suggesting a dozen explanations. Was the
note really from Miss Waverly? Had she acted in good faith in sending
it? What was the danger of which she spoke? Why had she not come, and
why had she set an hour like this? Was it a mere hoax?
"If I could only have a smoke," he muttered, "it wouldn't be so bad
waiting to see what the play is."
But still he waited, determined not to leave until possessed of the
certainty of there being no need of staying longer. Cautiously he
approached the house until he could have put out his foot to the first
of the steps leading up to the little porch. There he stopped, telling
himself that doubtless he was just playing Tom-fool here in his enemy's
garden. Less and less did he like the idea of prowling about the place
of Henry Pollard at this time of night.
But now at last there was a sound to vibrate against the empty silence
in his ears, a little sound which at first he could not analyse and
could not locate. He could hardly be sure whether his senses had tricked
him or if he actually heard it. It seemed rather that he had _felt_ it.
His body grew very tense as he tried to know where it was, what it was.
But again the silence was heavier and more oppressive than before.
At last, through the void of the absolute stillness, it came again. Now
he knew what it was although not even yet could he be certain whence it
came. It was a cautious step ... it might have been a man's step or a
woman's. No muscle of his rigid body moved save alone the muscles which
turned his eyes to right and left.
At first he thought that there was some one moving toward him from
behind, some one who had perhaps just come in through the gate or had
been hidden in the straggling shrubbery. And the next instant he knew
that the sounds were in front of him, that what he heard was some one
walking in the house, tiptoeing cautiously, and yet not silently because
the old boards of the floor whined and creaked under the slow tread. Had
the night been less still, had his ears been less ready for any sound
the faint creak-creak would not have reached him.
"Woman or man?" was his problem. "Winifred Waverly or Henry Pollard?"
There came a second sound and this he recognized; the scraping of dry
wood against dry wood, the moving of the bars which the countryside knew
that Henry Pollard used as the nightlock upon his doors. Thornton drew
back a little, step by step, slowly, silently, and stopped under the
pear trees. Now he was ten feet from the first of the front steps, ten
feet from the board walk.
When a man must trust everything to his ears for guidance his ears
may tell him much. Thornton knew when the bars were down and when the
door was opening very slowly. And then, suddenly, he knew that there
was a third person out here in the garden close to him, and that this
person ... man or woman? ... was moving with as great a slow caution as
himself and the other some one in the house. There was the crack of a
twig snapping underfoot ... silence ... slow cautious steps again.
The cowboy moved again, a bare two steps now, and stopped, his back
against the trunk of the largest of the pear trees, his eyes running
back and forth between the door he could not see and the moving some one
he could not see at the corner of the house. His widened nostrils had
stiffened, as though he would scent out these beings, and his eyes were
the alert eyes of an animal in the forest seeking its enemy through the
denseness of a black undergrowth.
The door was open, the soft step was at the threshold. The other step at
the corner of the house had stopped. In the new silence the cowboy could
hear his own deep, regular breathing. He could see nothing, he knew that
his body pressed against the tree trunk could not be seen, and his hands
were ready. He began to long for a pistol shot, for the spurt of red
fire, for anything that would mean certainty and would release the
coiled springs of his tense muscles.
But the still minutes dragged by and there was no certainty of anything
save that the some one at the door and the some one at the corner of the
house at Thornton's right were standing as still, as tense, as himself.
A little sense of the grim humour of this game three people were playing
in the dark, this Blind Man's Buff which he was waiting to understand,
drew his lips into a quick, fleeting smile.
Now at last came the first bit of certainty. The some one at the door
moved again, came to the steps and down into the garden, taking the
steps slowly, with long pauses between. This some one was a man. Dimly
Thornton saw the blur of the form, but more than his eyes his ears told
him that this tread, though guarded, was too heavy for a girl like
Winifred Waverly.
"Pollard," he told himself swiftly. "Not ten feet away. And if he comes
this way ..."
The man at the steps stopped and in the long silence Thornton knew that
the two other people playing this grim game with him were listening even
as he was, trying to force their eyes to see through the shadows. Then
the heavy tread again, and Thornton thought that it was coming nearer.
Then a pause, the step once more, and Pollard, if Pollard it were, had
turned the other way and keeping close to the house was moving toward
the far corner. The steps grew fainter as they drew farther away, and he
knew that the man had gone around the corner of the building.
That other person at the other corner of the house, at Thornton's right,
had heard and understood, too. The cowboy heard steps there again, quick
steps, almost running, soft, quick breathing not a yard away, and
bending forward a little, knew that Winifred Waverly had come to keep
her tryst with him.
"Miss Waverly?" he whispered softly.
She was at his side, close to him, so close that he could feel the sweep
of her skirts against his boots. She, too, had leaned forward, her face
lifted up to his, her eyes seeking to make sure who this man was.
"Buck Thornton?" she whispered back.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Here. Quick!" She had thrust a folded paper into his fingers, closing
them tightly upon it. "Now, go! Do what I tell you in it. Henry Pollard
suspects something; he is looking for me. Go quickly!"
She was already passing him, hastening toward the steps and the front
door.
"Wait!" he commanded, his hand hard upon her arm. "I don't
understand...."
"For God's sake let me go!" Only a whisper, but he thought he heard a
quiver of terror in it, he knew that her arm was trembling violently.
"He'd kill me. ... Oh, my God, go!"
"If there is danger for you..."
"There is none if you go now ... if he doesn't find me here. Please,
Buck...."
She jerked away from him and went swiftly to the steps. He could hear
her every step now so plainly his heart stood still with fear that
Pollard must hear, too. He heard her go to the door; she passed on, and
so became one with the blot of darkness within the house. Then he drew
back, slowly, half regretfully, back toward the gate, stopping for a
last time under the trees there. And after a very long time he heard
Pollard's steps again. The man had made a tour of his grounds, keeping
rather close to the house, and now mounted the steps with no effort at
silence, slammed the door and dropped the bars into place. It was as
though he had flung them angrily into their sockets. Thornton went out
of the yard and to his waiting horse.
"She says to go away, to leave her there alone with Pollard," he
muttered dully. "And something's up. She said he'd kill her if he knew
that she was talking to me..."
He hesitated, his horse's tie rope in his hand, of half a mind to go
back, to force his way into Henry Pollard's house, to demand to know
what was wrong, to take the girl away if there were real danger to her.
But then the urgent pleading in her voice came back to him, her
insistence that he go, that with him gone there would no longer be any
danger for her. Slowly, regretfully, he swung into the saddle. He had
made up his mind. He would obey her at least in part, he would go where
he could read the paper she had given him, and then perhaps he would
understand.
"Any way," he said under his breath, "she's a real girl for you."
He rode swiftly the five hundred yards through the dark street which ran
as nearly parallel with the main street as two such crooked streets
could approximate parallelism, until he was behind the Here's How
Saloon. Here he dismounted and, leaving his horse with reins thrown over
his head to the ground, strode off toward the side door of the saloon.
Under the window he glanced in swiftly. Chance had it that the cover was
off of the little used billiard table and that two men, in shirt-sleeved
comfort, were playing. Both men he knew. They were Charley Bedloe and
his brother, the Kid.
The Bedloe boys were intent upon their game, the Kid laughing softly at
a miscue Charley had made. Charley was chalking his cue angrily and
cursing his luck and neither of them glanced toward the window.
Thornton, drawing back a little so that he would not be seen did they
happen to look his way, unfolded the paper Winifred had given him.
"Watch me play out my string, Charley!" he heard the Kid call
banteringly. Then he heard nothing more from the room, nothing to tell
him of another man not ten steps from him in the darkness, for his whole
mind had been caught by Winifred's first words.
"I have wronged you from the beginning," she had written. "I thought
that I had seen you that day on the trail behind me. You denied it. I
thought that you were lying to me. While you were out after the horses a
man, masked, came into the cabin and robbed me of the five thousand
dollars I was taking to Henry Pollard. I _thought that it was you_! The
man was dressed as you were dressed, his grey handkerchief even was like
yours. Now I know it was a man named Ben Broderick who robbed me, and
that he wanted me to think that it was you.
"Can't you see the whole scheme? Broderick and the men who are with him,
have been committing these crimes. And pretty soon, in a few days, in
five days I think, they will be ready to make the evidence show that you
are the man who has done it all."
There was more; there were several sheets of paper, closely written.
Thornton saw the names of Henry Pollard, of Cole Dalton. But he read no
further. In one instant the mind which had been so intent upon these
things a girl's writing was telling him forgot Winifred Waverly, Henry
Pollard, Broderick--everything except that which was happening at his
side.
For, while he read, there had been the sharp crack of a revolver, he saw
the spit of angry reddish flame almost at his side, and as he saw he
dropped to his knee, Winifred's note in his left hand, his right
flashing to his own revolver. For his first thought was that a man had
crept up behind him, that it was Pollard, that he was shooting at him.
But almost with the flash and the report of the gun he knew that this
man was not shooting at him. There came the crash and tinkle of broken
glass, one of the small panes of the window beside which Thornton had
been reading dropped out, and almost before the falling pieces had
ceased to rattle against the bare floor he heard the sound of running
footsteps behind him. The man who had fired had made sure with one shot.
Then Thornton heard the Kid cry out, his voice hoarse and inarticulate,
and with the cry came a moan from Charley Bedloe. Charley staggered half
across the room, his two big hands going automatically to his hips. He
had come close to his younger brother, staring at him with wide eyes,
and then slipped forward and down, quiet and limp and dead.
Thornton's one first emotion, one so natural to a man who takes his
fight in the open, was a boundless rage toward the man who had murdered
another man in this cold blooded fashion, taking his grim toll from the
darkness and without warning. He whirled about, his own gun blazing in
his hand, and as fast as his finger could work the trigger sent six
shots after the flying footsteps.
The footsteps were gone. Again the cowboy looked swiftly in at the
window. He saw that Charley Bedloe was dead; the Kid, his face
contorted, hideously twisted to his blended rage and grief, stood
staring about him helplessly. Then, the moment of paralysis gone, the
Kid suddenly leaped over his brother's body and ran to the window.
"It's Buck Thornton!" roared the Kid. Both of his big guns were already
in his hands. "Take that, you...."
Then Buck Thornton, making most of an unforeseen situation, did a thing
that he had never done before in his life, which he never would do
again. He turned and ran, stumbling through the darkness into which one
leap carried him.
For he knew that the Kid had no shadow of a shred of doubt that he had
killed Charley Bedloe, he knew that if he did not run for it, run like a
scared rabbit now, why then he'd have to kill the Kid or the Kid would
kill him. He had no wish to meet his death for the cowardly act of
another man and he had no wish to kill Kid Bedloe because another man
had murdered his brother. If there were anything left to him but to run
for it, he did not know what it was.
He found his horse, leaped into the saddle and turned out toward the
north.
"The Kid sure had his nerve, running right up to the window after
Charley dropped," he muttered, with the abrupt beginning of the first
bit of admiration he had ever felt for a man whom he had appraised as
even lower in the scale than "Rattlesnake" Pollard. "The boy is game!
And now he's going to come out after me, and there won't be any talking
done and it's going to be Kid Bedloe or me. And," with much certainty,
but with a little sigh, half regretful, "the Kid is just a shade slow on
the draw. Sure as two and two I've got to kill him. Oh, hell," he
concluded disgustedly. "Why did this have to happen? Haven't I got
enough on my hands already?"