There were three spots of white in the dim saloon, the faces of Stewart,
Lorrimer, and old Lew Perkins, and at the feet of Vic grew a spot of
red. Knowing with calm surety that no hand would lift against him even
if he turned his back, he walked out the door without a word and swung
into the saddle. There, for an instant, he calculated chances, for the
street stretched empty before and behind with not a sound of warning
stirring in the saloon. He was greatly tempted to ride to Dug Pym's
for his blanket roll and a few other traveling necessities, but he
remembered that the men of Alder rose to action with astonishing speed;
within five minutes a group of hard riders would be clattering up his
trail with Pete Glass at their head. An unlucky Providence had sent Pete
to Alder on this day of all days. There stood his redoubtable dusty
roan at the hitching rack, her head low, one ear back and one flopped
forward, her under lip pendulous--in a pasture full of horses one might
pick her last either for stout heart or speed. Even in spite of her
history Vic would have engaged Grey Molly to beat the roan at equal
weights, but since he outbulked the sheriff full forty pounds, he
weighed in nice balance the necessity of shooting the roan before he
left Alder. It was, he decided, unpleasant but vital, and his fingers
had already slid around the butt of his gun when a horse whinnied far
off and the roan twitched up her head to listen. She was no longer a
cloddish lump of horseflesh, but an individual, a soul; Gregg's hand
fell from his gun. Cursing his sentimental weakness, he lifted Molly
into a canter down the street. Still no signs of awakening behind him or
about; only little Jack Sweeney playing tag with a black-and-tan puppy,
the triumphant cackle of a hen somewhere to the left; but as he neared
the end of the street, where the trail swung into the rocks of the
slope, a door banged far off and a voice was screaming: “Pete! Pete
Glass!”
Grey Molly switched her tail nervously at the shout, but Vic was too
wise to let her waste strength hurrying up so sharp a declivity; that
dusty roan whose life he had spared would be spending it prodigally to
overtake him before long and Molly's power must be husbanded. So he kept
her at a quick walk by pressing the calf of one leg into her flank and
turned in the saddle to watch the town sink behind him. Sometime in the
vague, stupid past Marne had jog-trotted down this slope, but now he
was a new man with an eye which saw all things and a gun which could not
fail. Figures, singularly tiny and singularly distinct, swarmed into the
street from nowhere, men on horses, men swinging into saddles; here
and there the slant light of the afternoon twinkled on gun barrels, and
ludicrous thin voices came piping up the hill. As he reached the nether
lip of Murphy's Pass a small cavalcade detached itself from the main
mass before Captain Lorrimer's saloon and swept down the street, first a
dusty figure on a dusty horse, hardly visible; then a spot of red which
must be Harry Fisher on his blood-bay, with a long-striding sorrel
beside him that could carry no one except grim old Sliver Waldron.
Behind these rode one with the light glinting on his silver conchos--Mat
Henshaw, the town Beau Brummel--then the black Guss Reeve, and last of
all “Ronicky” Joe on his pinto; “Ronicky” Joe, handy man at all things,
and particularly guns. It showed how fast Pete Glass could work and how
well he knew Alder, for Vic himself could not have selected five cooler
fighters among the villagers or five finer mounts. The posse switched
around the end of the street and darted up the hill like the curling
lash of a whip.
“Good,” said Vic Gregg. “The damn fools will wind their horses before
they hit the pass.”
He put Grey Molly into an easy trot, for the floor of the pass dipped
up and down, littered with sharp-toothed rocks or treacherous, rolling
ones, as bad a place for speed as a stiff upslope. According to his
nicest calculation the posse could not reach the edge of the gulch
before he was at the farther side, out of range of everything except a
long chance shot, so he took note of things as he went and observed a
spot of pale silver skirting through the brush on the eastern ridge of
the gorge. There would be moonlight that night and another chance
in favor of Pete Glass. He remembered then, with quiet content, that
jogging in the holster was a power which with six words might stop those
six pursuers.
A long halloo came barking down the pass, now drawling out, now cut away
to silence as the angling cliffs sent on the echo, and Vic loosened the
rein. Grey Molly swung out with a snort of relief to a free-swinging
gallop and they swept down a great, gentle slope where new grass padded
the fall of her hoofs, yet even then he kept the mare checked and held
her in touch with an easily playing wrist. He did not imagine that even
the sheriff on the dusty roan would dream of trying to swallow up Grey
Molly in a short sprint but that assurance nearly cost Vic his life. The
roar of hoofs in the gulch belched out into the comparative silence
of the open space beyond and just as he gave the mare her head a gun
coughed and an angry humming darted past his ear.
Molly lengthened into full speed. He could not tell on account of the
muffling grass whether the pursuit was gaining or losing. He trusted
blindly to the mare and when he looked back they were already pulling
their mounts down to a hand gallop. That would teach them to match Molly
in a sprint, roan or no roan!
He slapped her below the withers, where the long, hard muscles rippled
back and forth. She was full of running, her gallop as light as the
toss of a bough in the wind, and now as he pulled her back to a swinging
canter her head went high, with pricking ears. Suddenly his heart went
out to her; she would run like that till she died, he knew.
“Good girl,” he whispered huskily.
The day was paling towards the end when he headed into the foothills of
the White Mountains. He drew up Molly for a breath on a level shoulder.
Already he was close to the snow line with ragged heads of white rearing
above him. Far below, a pale streak of moonlight was the Asper. Then,
out of that blacker night on the slopes beneath, he heard the clinking
hoofs of the posse; the quiet was so perfect, the air so clear, that he
even caught the chorus of straining saddle leather and then voices of
men. All this time the effects of the whisky had been wearing away by
imperceptible degrees and at that sound all his old self rushed back on
Vic Gregg. Why, they were his friends, his partners, these voices in the
night, and that clear laughter floated up from Harry Fisher who had been
his bunkie at the Circle V Bar ranch three years ago. He felt an insane
impulse to lean over the edge of the cliff and shout a greeting.