THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW VEILS ITSELF
"Do you mean me to believe," the old frontiersman drew himself up to
the full height of British superiority to everything outside the island
of its own circumscribed knowledge, "do you mean me to believe that if
any of these poor herders had escaped as witnesses, we'd not have been
able to send these blackguard murderers to the gallows?"
The Ranger had signalled for some of the road gang to ascend from below
the battlements to keep guard till the coroner could come. The little
pack mule to the fore, Wayland and Matthews were picking the way slowly
down the terra cotta trail of the Rim Rocks.
"It does not make the slightest difference in the world what you or I
believe, Sir! The facts are unless you could offer a witness money
enough to take him out the United States and to keep him for the rest
of his life, he would develop a good-forgetter, or else the same old
gag--'been blind folded,' 'didn't see,' and so on, and on, and on; you
can't blame them! I'll bet if every one of the herders had escaped
instead of festering there in the ash heap, they'd all be legging it
out of the country far and fast as they could go."
The little mule came to a stand at a bend in the switch back; and the
old evangelist sat ruminating silently on his broncho.
"Y' have a sheriff?"
Wayland laughed.
"He's like the Indian flies; a no-see-him. He'll ride over the hills
for weeks and if he tumbles over the top of his prisoner, he can't find
his man!"
The old Britisher looked doubtfully at Wayland, as much as to say, "I
don't believe you."
"You're no temptin' me to take the law into our own hands?"
Again Wayland laughed.
"My dear sir, you don't understand! I don't want to drag you into this
at all! For ten years, _the powers that stand for law in this country
have been marking time behind the firing line; while the other fellow
got away with the goods_. They have been marking time while Crime
scored, and what you call the Devil kept tally."
The old man nodded his head approvingly.
"That's all true!"
"You ask me if I intend to break the law? No, Sir, I do not; but _I do
intend to carry the law out beyond the firing line. The thief strains
the law to get away with the goods; I am going to strain the law to get
them back. The murderer strains the law to protect his damned useless
neck; I'm going to strain the law to break his neck_. Unless," he
added, "I break my own neck doing it."
The old man had drawn down his brows. "A don't just like the sound of
it; what's your plan?"
"To go out with a gun till I get them; the way your own Mounted Police
do up in Canada! _I'm going to quit monkeying with technicalities in
the twilight zone . . . and go out . . . after the man_."
The old Britisher sat thinking: "Wayland, if A was managing this thing,
first thing A'd do would be blow such a blast on your local press, the
authorities would _have_ to sit up, then--A'd go after your sheriff if
A had to tackle the coward by the scruff of his scurvy neck, A'd make
him ashamed . . . _not_ . . . to act."
"All right, Sir! Manage this thing . . . manage it just as you would
behind your hide-bound British laws! We'll pass the Senator's ranch in
ten minutes. You can telephone down to 'The Smelter City Herald.'
I'll get something ready to eat while you telephone. Then, we'll go
right along to the sheriff."
They kicked their ponies lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's
k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered
casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and shirt sleeves
but one; and he was in knickerbockers.
"That's the foreman, ask him!"
"'Twould oblige me t' have the use of your telephone?"
The man in the knickerbockers tilted his hat at a rakish angle, stuck a
tooth-pick in the corner of his mouth, put his thumbs in his jacket arm
holes, shot Wayland a quick look of questioning, grinned at the old man
and nodded towards a white pergola standing apart from the veranda of
the ranch house.
"Find it there," he indicated, "drop a nickel--then, ring!"
"Did you see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth,
as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference.
"Yes, but looks don't go with a jury."
"Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!"
For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh. What was
happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view?
"I'll go on down to the River and prepare grub."
What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; but _what_ was passing in
the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the
hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man's thumbs
and feet--could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit
reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?
At the River, the Ranger loosened the saddle girths and put a small
kettle to boil above a fire of cottonwood chips and grass. Then he
took out his note book and wrote the note to Eleanor which he gave to
one of the road gang for Calamity. The note said: "We are setting out
on the Long Trail . . . the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel
before Democracy arrives . . . the trail of the Man behind the Thing
. . . the Man Higher Up." How did the Ranger know what was going on up
at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at
one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?
There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited
the old man's return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the
fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness
of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could
she realize, did a woman _ever_ realize what her love meant to a man.
She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of
wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking
together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising
spring! . . . He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke--
"A somehow--didna' seem--to get--them clear! They answered; then--they
didna' answer! _Smelter City Herald_--ye said? 'Twas strange--'twas
vera strange--A got an answer plain asking my name--then central said
'ring off! ring off! can't get them, wire out of order'!"
This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order
since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant
place to a Nation's alarm?
They ate their bannocks--'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the
slap-jacks--in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and
dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched
the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to
ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of
reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland
saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through
the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.
"What's that, Wayland?"
"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the
Pass of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she
had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.
The horses cropped audibly over the grasses--waiting. The little mule
looked back--also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to
drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch--came
over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to
see her--just once before setting out on the Long Trail.
"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"
The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.
"We'll try y'r sheriff--at least, we'll try him _first_."
And again the Ranger laughed.
"Don't laugh, man! D' y' know what it means when men are driven
outside the line of law?"
The horses waded in midstream and reached down drinking, champing on
their bits.
"Well--what does it mean?"
He saw the blue of the mountain stream swirl and whirl and eddy over
the sun-dyed pebbles, singing the law of the far mountain snows.
"God knows," answered the old man slowly. "It means disrupture. We
slew our kings in olden times; but ye are a many headed king in this
land! It means--perhaps, ye call it Anarchy to-day."
The yellow noon-day light sifted through the cottonwoods jewel-spangled
on the crystal blue River. The Ranger always knew the character of the
mountains from the River: silty and milky-blue from glaciers; crystal
and green-blue from the snow. And they rode away up the Valley from
the ranch houses towards the Pass, out beyond the bounds of the
National Forests with the trees marked two notches and one blaze;
gradually up the narrowing trail fringed by the shiny laurel bushes;
with the mountains closing closer and the spiced balsam odor raining on
the air a sifted gold dust of sunlight. At intervals, came the dull
rumble of the snow slide, the far reverberation, the echo of the law of
the snow flake rolling away the stone; the smash of the great law
drama, the titans behind the mountains.
It was one of those frequent mountain formations where a Valley seems
to terminate in a blank wall. You turn a buttress of rock, and you
find the sheer wall opening before you in a trail that climbs to a
notch on the sky line between forested flanks. The notch of blue is a
Pass.
"Anyway, Mr. Matthews, we are splitting the air, now! We are doing
more than sawing air."
They had put their horses to a sharp trot along the trail winding up
the River. The water was gurgling over the polished pebbles with
little leaps and glints of fire. Presently, the mountains had closed
behind them. The River was tumbling with noisy rush in a succession of
cascades, and the trail wound back from the rocky bank through circular
flats or what were locally known as "bottoms."
"Sheriff live this way?" shouted Matthews; for the roar of the little
stream filled the canyon.
"Has a ranch at the foot of the Pass."
"It won't be wasting time, anyway," said the old Britisher.
Again, Wayland smiled. If it would _not_ be wasting time; then, they
were already in pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent
look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty
Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?
A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of
an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized
from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log
shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a
vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I
ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no scrap; so there, Dan Flood!"
Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It
opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl
papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist
had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.
"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.
"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover
tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile
played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!"
The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.
"Is he--_home_?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.
"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called
'way! Is there any message?"
Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the
frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed
her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as
a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a
pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob.
"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where
the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of
gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald."
"There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering
bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for
an outsider--"
"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about
it."
He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the
ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to
clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.
"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye
the sheriff's--woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the
faintest gloss came over the saffron skin--of what? It was the same
nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man
who had come out from the Senator's ranch.
"Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the
headlights reassuringly.
The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes.
"How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the
back door?"
"There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door
slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter.
"'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken
reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to
go back an' have him oot; but that--pot ash pate--" what else the old
man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age.
They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted
their horses.
"Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense
of law; but which way now?"
The old man left the reins hanging on the broncho's neck. The horses
began cropping the grass. The Ranger was fumbling at his stirrup.
"A'm sore puzzled, Wayland! 'Tis not in the blood of a British born to
go _outside_ law. Y'r no thinkin' that; are y', Wayland?"
"I am saying nothing! The law protects them in their lawlessness. It
doesn't protect us in our lawfulness. The American citizen is the
law-maker. There is only one thing for an American citizen to do--get
to work and enforce his laws--"
"Then--God's name, Wayland, go ahead and do it! Take the lead! A'll
follow! This trail go behind the mountain?"
"Yes, it brings us round behind! They have the start of us by three
hours; but they'll camp to-night somewhere along the Lake Behind the
Peak. Beyond that, there are some mighty bad slides. These rains have
loosened snows. They'll hardly cross the slides beyond the lake but by
daylight. If we can reach the lake to-day, we'll have a chance at 'em."
"Wayland, A'm on the last lap of _my_ trail! It doesn't matter what
happens to me; but have you thought what might happen when we catch up
on them? Those fellows are out to kill. We are out to arrest. Have
you thought what that might mean at close quarters?"
"It's close quarters I'm seeking," said Wayland, "though it's hardly
fair to drag you into the fight. All I want is a man as a witness
who's got red blood that won't turn yellow. This Nation has been
cowering behind the line of law, while the looters and skinners have
disarmed our very firing line. It's time somebody risked his neck to
reverse the order--"
"Git epp," said the old man roughly to his broncho.
The little pack mule took to the trail ears back at an easy lope; and
the riders set off up the Pass at the rocking-chair trot of the
plains-horseman. Gradually, the mountains crowded closer, in
weather-stained rock walls, with a far whish as of wind or waters
coming up from the canyon bottom; the sky overhead narrowing to a cleft
of blue with the frayed pines and hemlocks hanging from the granite
blocks, fragile as ferns against the sky. You looked back; the rocks
had closed to a solid wall; you looked down; the river filling the
canyon with a hollow hush had dwarfed to a glistening silver thread
with the forest dwarfed banks of moss. It was a sombre world, all the
more shadowy from that cleft of blue over head where an eagle circled
with lonely cry.
The Pass was like the passage of birth and death from life to larger
life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and
the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the
glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the
Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and
scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years--no sound but the
raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the
tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft
of blue smote the rocks with sunlight, the doors of the mountains would
open again to larger life in another Valley.
The horses were no longer trotting. They were climbing and blowing and
pausing where the trail of the Pass took sharp turns, back and forward,
up and up, till the eagle was circling below. Both men had dismounted
and were walking Indian file to the rear, Wayland carrying his own
cased rifle. The trail was now running along the edge of an escarpment
no wider than a saddle, sheer drop below, sheer wall above.
"How would they come out from the gully on this trail, Wayland? I have
been watching for the tracks. They're not ahead of us."
"Gully ends in a blind wall above. As I make it, they'd push their
nags up and come down on the Pass trail somewhere below the precipice
ahead. We can take our time; I have been watching. There are no
tracks ahead. The trail above is worse than this. Devil takes care of
his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and
forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the
trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old
punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with
their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them
there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."
"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in
the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these
precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the
stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese
navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to
save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so
he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"
"About 7,000 feet drop, I think. This is the top of the Pass. We go
down after we leave the precipice! See--? the horses know it! They
are taking their top-turn rest."
The two men glanced below. In the shadowed depths, they could see the
River tearing down a white fume, a pantherine thing leaping--leaping--;
and the hollow roar of water filled the canyon with a quiver that was
tangible. Far below, the eagle flew lazily, lifting and falling to the
throb of the canyon winds. Suddenly, the air was cut by a piercing
whistle. Both men jumped.
"It's only a marmot." The Ranger pointed over his shoulder to the
little gray beast sitting on the face of the rock. "Curious place,
this Pass! There is an echo here--if it were not that we don't want to
announce ourselves, I'd let you hear it. If you yell or sing, you can
hear the thing dancing along that opposite wall--Kind of uncanny, the
echo voice, in the mist here sometimes."
But the whistle of the marmot had also startled the horses. The tired
pack mule gave a hobbling jump and came to a stand. A stone no larger
than a horse-shoe kicked loose, tottered on the edge, and went bounding
over. It struck the tier of rock below with clattering echo, displaced
another stone twice its size, then bounced--bounced--and a slither of
slaty rock the size of a house wrenched out--shot into mid-air with
crash and sharp clappering echoes--Then the Pass was filled with the
thundering roll. They saw it sink--sink--sink and fade, while the echo
still rocketted amid the rock tops--sink--sink--sink--no larger than a
spool in the purple shadows, till with a plunge it disappeared.
"Whew, it _would_ be going if one went over." The old man mowed the
sweat from his forehead and drew a breath.
On the instant, the hollow chasm of the canyon split to the crash of a
rifle shot that rocketted and quaked and repeated in splintering
echoes; and a bullet pinged at Wayland's feet.
"That's splitting the air for you--Wayland."
"Drop down, Sir," urged the Ranger, pulling the old frontiersman to
shelter of the upper rocks. "They have come out above. They have
heard that cursed stone. That's only a chance shot to learn where we
are. They can't come behind. They have got to go down ahead--"
"And the fat's in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse,"
deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along
the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland
handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt
beneath the leather coat.
"They won't understand this pursuit at all," explained Wayland.
"Sheriff Flood is the guarantee of safety for any criminal in the
country side. They'll think it a citizens' posse. Where this trail
comes down at the end of the precipice is a crag. Will you hide behind
that, sir? I'll go above and head them down. I'm not asking you to
risk your life. They'll not see you till they gallop down."
"But you are risking your own life if you go up?"
"So does the fellow who has slipped on a banana peel," said Wayland.