Guerilla Melody regarded the judge without expression. "Huh," he
grunted. "Huh."
The judge did not look at him. He had cheated Melody in a cattle deal
the previous year and had since found himself unable to look Melody in
the eye. Some villains are like that. They are usually of the cheaper
variety.
"It's good and dark now," observed Billy Wingo, "and the moon will rise
in another hour. We don't want it to be too high when we strike the
Walton ranch. Why the smile, Judge? Oh, I know. You think we'll be
seen by one of your friends when we're leaving, and he'll get to the
ranch ahead of us. I doubt it, Judge. You know we ain't going by way
of Main Street. No, we're going out back of the corral. The
cottonwoods grow right up close to the back of the corral, and if we
lead our horses and hug the posts, there ain't much chance of anybody
seeing us. No. Come along, Judge, lessee how my clothes fit you."
Within the quarter-hour they rode out of a belt of cottonwoods into the
Hillsville trail, three wooden-faced men and the wretched judge. The
latter rode in front, with head bowed on hunched shoulders.
Where the snow permitted they trotted, but most of the time they were
forced to walk their horses. Four times before they reached the draw
leading to the Walton ranch they floundered through drifts that
powdered the horse's shoulders.
At the mouth of the draw the trail to Walton's was clotted with the
tracks of a few ridden horses.
"I guess," remarked Billy Wingo, "that Skinny Shindle came this way all
right when he brought that note from Walton's."
The judge shivered, but not with cold. He was very miserable and
looked it.
The moon lifted an inquiring face over the rim of the neighboring ridge
and threw their shadows, thin and long, across the green-white snow.
"We turn here toward Walton's, Judge," suggested Billy, when the jurist
continued to ride straight ahead.
The judge pulled up.
"I'm not going to Walton's!" he cried aloud. "I'm not going, I tell
you! You can't make me! You can't."
His voice broke at the last word. He threw his arms aloft in a wild
gesture. The features of the face he turned toward Billy were
contorted with emotion. He gibbered and mowed at them in the
moon-light. He looked like an inmate of Bedlam. He was certainly in a
bad way, was Judge Driver.
Suddenly he lost his head. He clapped heels to his horse's flanks in
an effort to escape. But both Billy Wingo and Riley Tyler had been
waiting for precisely such a move ever since leaving Golden Bar. Two
ropes shot out simultaneously. One fastened on the red-and-white
pinto's neck, the other settled round the Judge's shoulders. The paint
pony stopped abruptly. The judge flew backward from the saddle and hit
the snow on the back of his neck.
The three friends dismounted and gathered around the judge. Riley
loosened his rope. The judge lay still and gasped and crowed. The
wind had been considerably knocked out of him. When he sat up, he was
promptly sick, very sick. The paroxysm shook him from head to heels.
It was half an hour before he was able to stand on his feet without
support. The three boosted him into the saddle, mounted their own
horses and proceeded along the draw.
Whenever the judge made as if to check his horse, which he did more
than once, Billy Wingo would crowd his horse forward and kick the
pinto. Their progress may be said to have been fairly regular.
A mile from the ranch house they climbed the shelving side of the draw
and rode across the flat to where a straggling growth of pine and
spruce made a black, pear-shaped blot along the smooth white slope of a
saddle-backed hill. The tail of this evergreen plantation ran out
across the flat from the base of the hill almost to the edge of the
draw they had just quitted. A tall spruce, towering high above his
fellows, formed the tip, as it were, of the stem of the pear.
Beyond and below this spruce, where the draw met lower ground and lost
its identity as a draw, was the Walton ranch house. On the flat the
evergreens barred the four riders from the eyes of any one watching
from the house.
The four men reached the trees, rode in among them. Three of them
dismounted and tied their horses. The fourth remained in the saddle.
Said Billy Wingo to the fourth:
"Get down."
The judge got down. Swiftly his hands were tied behind his back, and
his eyes were thoroughly blindfolded with his own silk handkerchief.
"Now, boys," said Billy, lowering his voice, "I guess we know what to
do. You, Judge, won't have to say anything, but if anybody else thinks
he has to say anything, he's got to do it in a whisper, and a skinny
whisper at that. Let's go."
As Billy uttered the last low words Guerilla Melody seized the judge's
right arm and forced him into motion. With Riley Tyler leading the
judge's mount, the three men scuffled in among the trees on the back
trail.
Billy Wingo stood silently in his tracks until the trio were out of
earshot, then he padded to the spruce and halted behind it. He removed
his overcoat. From a voluminous pocket he took what appeared to be a
roll of cloth. He shook out the roll and discovered the common or
garden variety of cotton nightshirt, size fifty.
"If whoever's in the house can pick me out from the snow after I'm
wearing this, I'll give his eyes credit," he muttered, pulling on the
garment in question over his head.
He buttoned the nightshirt with meticulous care, fished a washed flour
sack from a hip pocket and pulled it over his head. A minute or two
later he was joined by Riley Tyler.
"If I didn't know it was you," whispered Riley in a delighted hiss,
"I'd be scared out of a year's growth. Those eyeholes are plumb
gashly."
"I expect," said Billy grimly. "Get on your outfit. I guess you ain't
needed, but we can't afford to take any chances."
Riley Tyler threw off his blanket capote, dragged from an inner pocket
a disguise similar to the sheriff's and hurriedly put it on.
"Don't come till you see the signal," cautioned Billy, "and if you hear
any shots before I give the signal, stay right here where the cover's
good and drop anybody you see running away. Y'understand?"
"You bet."
"Judge swallow it all right?"
"Down to the pole. He thinks we're all three with him."
Billy nodded. "Better move along the draw about twenty yards," was his
parting order. "You can't see the side the cedars are on from here."
Boldly, without any attempt at concealment, he walked straight to the
edge of the draw. Below him barely fifty yards distant were the
snow-covered buildings that were the Walton ranch house, the bunk house
and the blacksmith shop. He could not see the corrals. They lay
beyond the crowding cottonwoods growing beside the little stream that
supplied the ranch house with water.
He half slid, half walked down the side of the draw and headed straight
for the ranch house. He could not see lamplight shining through any of
the windows. But there was a faint glow at the farthest of the windows
in the side of the house. This window he knew was one of three
lighting the front room, a room that ran clear across the house. This
side of the house was clear of young trees and bushes. But on the
other side of the house, the north side, Hazel had planted young cedars
to serve as a windbreak. These cedars grew within a yard of the house.
Without any fear of being discovered, so confident was he that it would
be impossible to see him against the white background, he approached
the blacksmith shop, slid between it and the empty bunk house and came
to the right angle end of the kitchen. His gun was out, be it known,
but he held it behind his back. He wanted no touch of blackness to mar
the hue of his costume.
At the corner of the kitchen he dropped on his knees and one hand.
Here behind the windbreak the snow was no more than two or three inches
deep, and he crawled along the side of the house toward the faintly
glowing window that was his goal, at walking speed.
Crouched beneath the window he laid his ear close to the window sill
and listened. For a space he heard nothing, then feet shuffled across
the floor and there was the "chuck" of a log being thrown on the fire.
Then the shuffle of feet again.
Silence.
Inch by inch Billy raised a slow head above the window sill. When his
eyes were level with the lower crosspiece of the sash, he paused. For
a long time he could see nothing within the room but the fire in the
ruddy jaws of the fireplace with its attendant pile of logs, and a big
chair over which had been thrown a buffalo robe. Then after a time he
saw, beyond the chair, the boot soles of a man lying on the floor. The
body of the man lay in the shadow cast by the big chair.
There was something about those boot soles that told Billy that the man
was dead.
"I figured it would be this way," Billy told himself. "I didn't see
how else it could be. Damn their souls! They don't stop at anything!"
He continued to stare unblinkingly into the room and after a time he
made out the dim lines of another man's figure sitting on the table
beside one of the front windows. The head of this other man was turned
away from Billy. He was watching the draw through the front window.
But there was no life in the draw--yet.
Billy waited. He continued to wait. His feet began to get cold. They
gradually grew numb. The hand that held the six-shooter began to have
a fellow feeling, or lack of it rather, with the feet. He changed
hands and stuffed the chilled hand under his nightshirt into his
armpit. A cramp seized his left knee. He straightened it gingerly and
ironed out the cramp with the back of his gun hand.
The cold crept up both legs. When it reached his middle a cramp fell
hammer-and-tongs upon his right knee, calf and sole of his foot. He
straightened that leg and dealt with it like a brother.
S-s-suschloop! A section of snow several yards square slid off the
roof and avalanched upon him. At the sound the figure at the window
turned as if shot. Billy, by a supreme effort of will, stifled the
impulse to dodge and held his body motionless. He was covered with
snow. Snow was down the back of his neck as well as on the window sill
in front of his mouth. To all intents and purposes and to any eye he
was a pile of snow fallen from the roof.
Swiftly the figure on the table walked across the room to Billy's
window and looked out. Billy remained with considerable less movement
than the proverbial mouse. The snow, while it covered his head, did
not completely conceal his forehead and eyes. But Billy reckoned on
the reflection of the firelight on the window-pane to blind somewhat
the man within. For a few seconds the man stood looking out the window
over Billy's head. The pile of snow he gave but the most passing of
glances.
But to the frozen nucleus of the snow pile it seemed that the few
seconds were hours and that the snow pile was subjected to the most
searching scrutiny.
The man returned to his post on the table by the front window, and
Billy breathed again. He had been unable to distinguish the man's
features. The light from the fire was not strong enough.
After another century of waiting Billy perceived that the fire was
again burning low. There was a small spurt of sparks as the remnant of
the log fell apart. The man slipped from the table and strode across
the room to the pile of logs and sticks beside the fireplace.
This was the moment for which Billy Wingo had been waiting. He
scrambled on hands and knees to the front corner of the ranch house.
Whipping a box of matches from a hip pocket, he lit one in a cupped
hand.
He let the match burn his fingers before flipping it down. He stood at
gaze, straining his eyes down the draw toward the Hillsville trail.
Even as he looked a dark object detached itself from some bushes
several hundred yards distant and moved toward the house.
Billy returned to his post at the window. Slowly he raised his head to
the level of the lower crosspiece of the sash. When his eyes again
became accustomed to the darkness of the room he saw that the man was
no longer near the fireplace. He was standing at the front window,
staring down the trail.
On account of the soft snow Billy did not hear the approaching horse
until it had almost reached the ranch house door. When the horse
stopped the man inside the ranch house moved quietly to the door and
stood at one side of it. His hand moved to his leg and came away.
The rider dismounted. Billy heard him rattle the latch of the door.
"Don't shoot!" he heard him say in an agonized whisper. "Don't shoot,
for Gawd's sake!"
Billy, watching at the window, saw the man in the room fling open the
door. For an instant the tall and hatless form of Judge Driver showed
black against the expanse of snow framed in the doorway. Again came
the plea for mercy--a whisper no longer, but a wild cry of "Don't
shoot! Don't shoot! It's me! Driver!" as the judge, realizing only
too well that any such outcry was tantamount to a confession of guilt,
plunged into the room. Obviously his purpose was to escape the fire of
the avenging rifles that he had every reason to believe were somewhere
in the brush along the draw. He was acting precisely as Billy had
reckoned he would act, and there was not the slightest danger of Billy
or any of his men shooting him. But a very real danger lay behind the
ranch house door. The judge's only chance lay in convincing the man
behind the door in time.
He convinced him. The man yanked him roughly into the room and slammed
the door shut.
"Thank Gawd! Thank Gawd!" babbled the judge, sinking back against the
door, "I thought you'd shoot me!"
"I damn near did," remarked the man, whose voice Billy now recognized
as that of a late arrival in town, named Slike. "If you hadn't jerked
your hat off so's I could see your face, I would have. When will Wingo
get here, and didja get him to come by himself all right? Huh? Why
don't you answer? Whatsa matter? Isn't he coming or what? By Gawd,
_you're wearing his clothes_! Where is he?"
"He's here!" gurgled the judge.
"Where?" Slike's voice was a terrible snarl.
"Here--up on the flat."
Slike promptly seized the judge by the throat. "Then you led him here.
What are you trying to do--double-cross me?"
"No, no!" gulped the judge, pulling at the other's wrists. "I couldn't
help it! He forced me to come!"
"Then you did lead him here, damn your soul! You white-livered cur, do
you think I'm gonna hang on your account? What did you tell him?
Answer me, damn you!"
To the accompaniment of a string of most ferocious oaths, Slike shook
the judge as the terrier shakes the rat. The judge fought back as best
he could. But he was no match for this man of violence. Tiring at
last, Slike flung him on the floor and kicked him.
"I'd oughta stomp you to death!" he squalled. "What did you tell him?"
"Nothing! Nothing!" cried the judge. "He must have guessed it!"
Dan Slike laughed. It was a laugh to make you flinch away. The hair
at the base of Billy Wingo's neck lifted like the hackles of a fighting
dog.
"Guessed it!" yelped Slike. "Guessed it! Aw right, let it go at that.
How far away is he?"
But the judge had his cue by now. "He's two or three miles back," he
said faintly. "If you start now you can get away."
"You know damn well there's too much snow," snapped Slike. "How many's
he got with him?"
"One--two."