DUG DOBLE RIDES INTO THE HILLS
The booming of the guns died down. The acrid smoke that filled the room
lifted to shredded strata. A man's deep breathing was the only sound in
the heavy darkness.
Presently came a soft footfall of some one moving cautiously. A match
flared. A hand cupped the flame for an instant to steady it before the
match moved toward the wick of a kerosene lamp.
Dug Doble's first thought was for his own safety. The house door was
closed, the window blinds were down. He had heard the beat of hoofs die
away on the road. But he did not intend to be caught by a trick. He
stepped forward, locked the door, and made sure the blinds were offering
no cracks of light. Satisfied that all was well, he turned to the figure
sprawled on the floor with outflung arms.
"Dead as a stuck shote," he said callously after he had turned the body
over. "Got him plumb through the forehead--in the dark, too. Some
shootin', Shorty."
He stood looking down at the face of the man whose brain had spun so
many cobwebs of deceit and treachery. Even in death it had none of that
dignity which sometimes is lent to those whose lives have been full of
meanness and guile. But though Doble looked at his late ally, he was not
thinking about him. He was mapping out his future course of action.
If any one had heard the shots and he were found here now, no jury on
earth could be convinced that he had not killed Steelman. His six-shooter
still gave forth a faint trickle of smoke. An examination would show that
three shots had been fired from it.
He must get away from the place at once.
Doble poured himself half a tumbler of whiskey and drank it neat. Yes, he
must go, but he might as well take with him any money Steelman had in the
safe. The dead man owed him a thousand dollars he would never be able to
collect in any other way.
He stooped and examined the pockets of the still figure. A bunch of keys
rewarded him. An old-fashioned safe stood in the corner back of the desk.
Doble stooped in front of it, then waited for an instant to make sure
nobody was coming. He fell to work, trying the keys one after another.
A key fitted. He turned it and swung open the door. The killer drew out
bundles of papers and glanced through them hurriedly. Deeds, mortgages,
oil stocks, old receipts: he wanted none of these, and tossed them to the
floor as soon as he discovered there were no banknotes among them.
Compartment after compartment he rifled. Behind a package of abstracts he
found a bunch of greenbacks tied together by a rubber band at each end.
The first bill showed that the denomination was fifty dollars. Doble
investigated no farther. He thrust the bulky package into his inside coat
pocket and rose.
Again he listened. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The silence
got on his nerves. He took another big drink and decided it was time to
go.
He blew out the light and once more listened. The lifeless body of his
ally lying within touch of his foot did not disturb the outlaw. He had
not killed him, and if he had it would have made no difference. Very
softly for a large man, he passed to the inner room and toward the back
door. He deflected his course to a cupboard where he knew Steelman kept
liquor and from a shelf helped himself to an unbroken quart bottle of
bourbon. He knew himself well enough to know that during the next
twenty-four hours he would want whiskey badly.
Slowly he unlocked and opened the back door. His eyes searched the yard
and the open beyond to make sure that neither his enemy nor a sheriff's
posse was lurking in the brush for him. He crept out to the stable,
revolver in hand. Here he saddled in the dark, deftly and rapidly,
thrusting the bottle of whiskey into one of the pockets of the
saddlebags. Leading the horse out into the mesquite, he swung to the
saddle and rode away.
He was still in the saddle when the peaks above caught the morning sun
glow in a shaft of golden light. Far up in the gulches the new fallen
snow reflected the dawn's pink.
In a pocket of the hills Doble unsaddled. He hobbled his horse and turned
it loose to graze while he lay down under a pine with the bottle for a
companion.
The man had always had a difficult temper. This had grown on him and been
responsible largely for his decline in life. It had been no part of his
plan to "go bad." There had been a time when he had been headed for
success in the community. He had held men's respect, even though they had
not liked him. Then, somehow, he had turned the wrong corner and been
unable to retrace his steps.
He could even put a finger on the time he had commenced to slip. It had
begun when he had quarreled with Emerson Crawford about his daughter
Joyce. Shorty and he had done some brand-burning through a wet blanket.
But he had not gone so far that a return to respectability was
impossible. A little rustling on the quiet, with no evidence to fasten
it on one, was nothing to bar a man from society. He had gone more
definitely wrong after Sanders came back to Malapi. The young ex-convict,
he chose to think, was responsible for the circumstances that made of him
an outlaw. Crawford and Sanders together had exposed him and driven him
from the haunts of men to the hills. He hated them both with a bitter,
morose virulence his soul could not escape.
Throughout the day he continued to drink. This gave him no refuge from
himself. He still brooded in the inferno of his own thought-circle. It is
possible that a touch of madness had begun to affect his brain. Certainly
his subsequent actions would seem to bear out this theory.
Revenge! The thought of it spurred him every waking hour, roweling his
wounded pride cruelly. There was a way within reach of his hand, one
suggested by Steelman's whisperings, though never openly advocated by
the sheepman. The jealousy of the man urged him to it, and his consuming
vanity persuaded him that out of evil might come good. He could make the
girl love him. So her punishment would bring her joy in the end. As for
Crawford and Sanders, his success would be such bitter medicine to them
that time would never wear away the taste of it.
At dusk he rose and resaddled. Under the stars he rode back to Malapi. He
knew exactly what he meant to do and how he meant to do it.