From the first the wound healed rapidly, for Vic's blood was perfectly
pure, the mountain air a tonic which strengthened him, and his food and
care of the best. The high-powered rifle bullet whipped cleanly through
his shoulder, breaking no bone and tearing no ligament, and the flesh
closed swiftly. Even Vic's mind carried no burden to oppress him in care
for the future or regret for the past, for if he occasionally remembered
the limp body of Hansen on the floor of Captain Lorrimer's saloon he
could shrug the picture into oblivion. It had been fair fight, man to
man, with all the odds in favor of Blondy, who had been allowed to pull
his gun first. If Vic thought about the future at all, it was with a
blind confidence that some time and in some unrevealed way he would get
back to Alder and marry Betty Neal. In the meantime, as the days of the
spring went mildly by, he was up and about and very soon there was only
a little stiffness in his right arm to remind him of Pete Glass and the
dusty roan.
He spent most of his time close to the cabin, for though he had
forgotten the world there was no decisive proof that the world would
forget him half so easily; that was not the way of the sheriff. He had
been known to spend years in the hunt for a single misdoer and Vic
had no care to wander out where he might be seen. Besides, it was very
pleasant about the cabin. The house itself was built solidly, roomily,
out of logs hewn on the timbered slopes above and dragged down to this
little plateau. Three mountains, to the north, south and west, rolled
back and up, cutting away the sunlight in the early afternoon, but at
this point the quick slopes put out shoulders and made, among them, a
comfortable bit of rolling ground, deep soiled and fertile. Here, so
Kate Barry assured him, the wild flowers came even earlier than they did
in the valley so far below them, and to be sure when Vic first walked
from the house he found the meadow aflame with color except for the
space covered by the truck-garden and the corral. In that enclosure he
found Grey Molly fenced away from the black with several other horses of
commoner blood, for the stallion, he learned, recognized no fraternity
of horseflesh, but killed what he could reach. Grey Molly was quite
recovered from her long run, and she greeted him in her familiar way,
with ears flattened viciously.
He might have stayed on here quite happily for any space of time, but
more and more Vic felt that he was an intruder; he sensed it, rather
than received a hint of word or eye. In the first place the three were
complete in themselves, a triangle of happiness without need of another
member for variety or interest. It was plain at a glance that the girl
was whole-heartedly happy, and whatever incongruity lay between her and
these rough mountains he began to understand that her love for Barry and
the child made ample amends. As for the other two, he always thought
of them in the same instant, for if the child had her eyes and her hair
from her mother, she had her nature from the man. They were together
constantly, on walks up the mountain, when she rode Black Bart up the
steep places: on dips into the valley, when he carried her before him on
the stallion. She had the same soft voice, the same quick, furtive
ways, the same soundless laughter, at times; and when Barry sat in the
evening, as he often did for hours, staring at empty air, she would
climb on his knee, place his unresisting arm around her, and she looking
up into his face, sharing his silences. Sometimes Vic wondered if the
young mother were not troubled, made a little jealous by this perfect
companionship, but he never found a trace of it. It was she, finally,
who made him determine to leave as soon as his shoulder muscles moved
with perfect freedom, for as the days slipped past he felt that she grew
more and more uneasy, and her eyes had a way of going from him to her
husband as though she believed their guest a constant danger to Barry.
Indeed, to some small extent he was a danger, for the law might deal
hardly with a man who took a fugitive out of the very grip of its hand.
By a rather ironical chance, on the very morning when he decided that
he must start his journey the next day but one, Vic learned that he
must not linger even so long as that. Pete Glass and the law had not
forgotten him, indeed, nearly so well as he had forgotten the law and
Pete Glass, for as he sat in his room filling a pipe after breakfast
the voice of Barry called him out, and he found his host among the rocks
which rimmed the southern end of the plateau, in front of the house. To
the north the ground fell away smoothly, rolled down to the side of the
mountain, and then dipped easily to the valley--the only direction from
which the cabin was accessible, though here the grade was possible for a
buckboard. To the south the plateau ended in a drop that angled sharply
down, almost a cliff in places, and from this point of vantage the eye
carried nameless miles down the river.
“Are them friends of yours?” asked Dan Barry, as he stood among those
rocks. “Take a long look.” And he handed a strong pair of field glasses
to Gregg.
The latter peered over the dizzy edge. Down there, in the very act
of fording the river to get to their side of it, he marked five
horsemen--no, six, for he almost missed the leader of the troop, a dusty
figure which melted into the background. All the terror of the first
flight rushed back on Vic. He stood palsied, not in fear of that posse
but at the very thought of pursuit.
“There's only one way,” he stammered at length. “I'll--Dan, give me a
hand to get a saddle on Grey Molly and I'll laugh at 'em yet. Damn 'em!”
“What you goin' to do?” It was the same unhurried voice which had spoken
to Vic on the day of the rescue and it irritated him in the same manner
now. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering.
“I'm going down that slope to the north,” said Vic, “and I'll get by 'em
hell-bent-for-election. Once I show my heels to that lot they're done!”
He talked as much to restore his courage as from, confidence, for if
the posse sighted him going down that slope on the gray it would take a
super-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap.
Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye.
“Wait a minute,” he said, as Vic started towards the corral. “That way
you got planned is a good way--to die. You listen to me.”
But here Kate broke in on them. “Dan, what are you going to do?”
“I'm going to take the gray and go down the slope. I'm going to lead
'em off Vic's trail,” said Barry quietly, but it seemed to Vic that he
avoided his wife's eye.
The voice of Betty Neal, Vic knew, would have risen shrill at a time
like this. Kate spoke even more low than usual, but there was a thing
in her voice that struck a tremor through Gregg. “If it's death for him,
what is it for you?”
“Nothing at all. If they see me and head for me before the way's clear,
I'll let 'em come up and see they have the wrong man. If I get the
chance, I'll lead 'em away. And Vic, you'll hit between those two
mountains--see 'em?--and cut across country. No hoss could carry you
there, except Satan, and you couldn't ride him. You'll have to go on
foot but they'll never look for you on that side. When you get to the
easygoin', down in the valley, buy a hoss and hit for the railroad.”
Kate turned on Vic, trembling. “Are you going to let him do it?” she
asked. “Are you going to let him do it, again?”
He had seen a certain promise of escape held before him the moment
before, but pride made him throw that certainty away.
“Not in a million years,” he answered.
“You'll do what I say, and you'll start now. I got a better idea than
that. If you head just over the side of that north mountain you'll find
a path that a hoss can follow. It won't take you clear away from them
down below, but there ain't a chance in ten that they'll come that way.
Take my old brown hoss with the white face. He'll carry you safe.”
Vic hesitated. The fierce eyes of Kate were on him and with all his soul
he wanted to play the man, but liberty was sweet, sweeter than ever to
Vic. She seemed to give him up as he stood there with his heart, in his
throat; she turned back to Barry.
“Dan!” she pleaded.
She had not touched him, but he made a vague gesture as though brushing
away a restraining hand. She cried: “If you come close to them--if, they
start shooting--you might want to fight back--”
“They shot before,” he answered, “and I didn't fire once.”
“But the second time?”
To be sure, there would be danger in it, but as Barry himself had said,
if the way was closed to him he could surrender to them, and they could
not harm him. Vic tried in vain to understand this overmastering terror
in the girl, for she seemed more afraid of what Dan might do to the
posse than what the posse might do to Dan.
“This ain't a day for fightin',” said Dan, and he waved towards the
mountains. It was one of those misty spring days when the sun raises
a vapor from the earth and the clouds blow low around the upper peaks;
every ravine was poured full of blue shadow, and even high up the
slopes, where patches of snow had melted, grass glimmered, a tender
green among the white. “This ain't a day for fighting,” he repeated.
A shrill, quavering neigh, like the whinney of a galloping horse, rang
from beyond the house, and Vic saw the black stallion racing up and down
his corral. Back and forth he wove, then raced straight for the bars,
flashed above them, and stood free beyond, with the sunshine trembling
on him. He seemed to pause, wondering what to do with his new freedom,
then he came at a loose gallop for the master. Not Satan alone, for
now Black Bart slid across the plateau like a shadow, weaving among the
boulders, and came straight towards Barry. Vic himself felt a change, a
sort of uneasy happiness; he breathed it with the air. The very sunlight
was electric. He saw Kate run close to Barry.
“If you go this time, you'll never come back, Dan!”
The black stallion swung up beside them, and as he halted his hoofs
knocked a rattling spray of pebbles ahead. On the other side of the
woman and the man the wolf-dog ran uneasily here and there, trying to
watch the face of the master which Kate obscured.
“I ain't goin' far. I just want to get a hoss runnin' under me enough to
cut a wind.”
“Even Satan and Bart feel what I feel. They came without being called.
They never do that unless there's danger ahead. What can I do to
convince you? Dan, you'll drive me mad!”
He made no answer, and if the girl wished him to stay now seemed the
time for persuasion; but she gave up the argument suddenly. She turned
away, and Vic saw in her face the same desperate, helpless look as that
of a boy who cannot swim, beyond his depth in the river. There was no
sign of tears; they might come afterwards.
What had come over them? This desperation in Kate, this touch of anxiety
in the very horse and the wolf-dog? Vic forgot his own danger while
he stared and it seemed to him that the spark of change had come from
Barry. There was something in his eyes which Vic found hard to meet.
“The moment you came I knew you brought bad luck with you!” cried Kate.
“He brought you in bleeding. He saved you and came in with blood on his
hands and I guessed at the end. Oh, I wish you--”
“Kate!” broke in Barry.
She dropped upon one of the stones and buried her face in her hands and
Dan paid no more attention to her.
“Hurry up,” he said. “They're across the river.”
And Vic gave up the struggle, for the tears of Kate made him think
of Betty Neal and he followed Dan towards the corral. Around them the
stallion ran like a hunting dog eager to be off.