If Sheriff Pete Glass had been the typical hard-riding, sure-shooting
officer of the law as it is seen in the mountain-desert, his work would
have died with his death, but Glass had a mind as active as his hands,
and therefore, for at least a little while, his work went on after him.
He had gathered fifteen practiced fighters who represented, it might be
said, the brute body of the law, and when they, with most of Rickett at
their heels, burst down the door of the Sheriff's office and found his
body, they had only one thought, which was to swing into the saddle and
ride on the trail of the killer, who was even now in a diminishing cloud
of dust down the street. He was riding almost due east, and the cry went
up: “He's streakin' it for the Morgan Hills. Git after him, boys!” So
into the saddle they went with a rush, fifteen tried men on fifteen
chosen horses, and went down the street with a roar of hoof-beats. That
was the body and muscle of the sheriff's work going out to avenge him,
but the mind of the law remained behind.
It was old Billy, the clerk. No one paid particular attention to Billy,
and they never had. He was useless on a horse and ridiculous with a gun,
and the only place where he seemed formidable was behind a typewriter.
Now he sat looking, down into the dead face of Pete Glass, trying to
grasp the meaning of it all. From the first he had been with Pete, from
the first the invincibility of the little dusty man had been the chief
article of Billy's creed, and now his dull eyes, bleared with thirty
years of clerical labor, wandered around on the galaxy of dead men who
looked down at him from the wall. He leaned over and took the hand of
the sheriff as one would lean to help up a fallen man, but the fingers
were already growing cold, and then Billy realized for the first time
that this was death. Pete Glass had been; Pete Glass was not.
Next he knew that something had to be done, but what it was he could
not tell, for he sat in the sheriff's office and in that room he was
accustomed to stop thinking and receive orders. He went back to his own
little cubby-hole, and sat down behind the typewriter; at once his mind
cleared, thoughts came, and linked themselves into ideas, pictures,
plans.
The murderer must be taken, dead or alive, and those fifteen men had
ridden out to do the necessary thing. They had seemed irresistible, as
they departed; indeed, no living thing they met could withstand them,
human or otherwise, as Billy very well knew. Yet he recalled a saying of
the sheriff, a thing he had insisted upon: “No man on no hoss will ever
ride down Whistlin' Dan Barry. It's been tried before and it's never
worked. I've looked up his history and it can't be done. If he's goin'
to be ran down it's got to be done with relays, like you was runnin'
down a wild hoss.” Billy rubbed his bald head and thought and thought.
With that orderliness which had become his habit of mind, from work
with reports and papers, sorting and filing away, Billy went back to
the beginning. Dan Barry was fleeing. He started from Rickett, and nine
chances out of ten he was heading, eventually, towards those practically
impenetrable mountain ranges where the sheriff before had lost the trail
after the escape from the cabin and the killing of Mat Henshaw. Towards
this same region, again, he had retreated after the notorious Killing
at Alder. There was no doubt, then, humanly speaking, that he would make
for the same safe refuge.
At first glance this seemed quite improbable, to be sure, for the Morgan
Hills lay due east, or very nearly east, while the place from which
Barry must have sallied forth and to which he would return was somewhere
well north of west, and a good forty miles away. It seemed strange that
he should strike off in the opposite direction, so Billy closed his
eyes, leaned back in his chair, and summoned up a picture of the
country.
Five miles to the east the Morgan Hills rolled, sharply broken ups and
downs of country--bad lands rather than real hills, and a difficult
region to keep game in view. That very idea gave Billy his clue. Barry
knew that he would be followed hard and fast, and he headed straight for
the Morgan's to throw the posse off the final direction he intended
to take in his flight. In spite of the matchless speed of that black
stallion of which the sheriff had learned so much, he would probably
let the posse keep within easy view of him until he was deep within the
bad-lands. Then he would double, sharply around and strike out in the
true direction of his flight.
Having reached this point in his deductions, Billy smote his hands
together. He was trembling with excitement so that he filled his pipe
with difficulty. By the time it was drawing well he was back examining
his mental picture of the country.
West of Rickett about the same distance as Morgan Hills, ran the Wago
Mountains, low, rolling ranges which would hardly form an impediment for
a horseman. Across these Barry might cut at a good speed on his western
course, but some fifteen or twenty miles from Rickett he was bound to
reach a most difficult barrier. It was the Asper river, at this season
of the year swollen high and swift with snow-water--a rare feat indeed
if a man could swim his horse across such a stream. There were only two
places in which it could be forded.
About fifty miles north and a little east of the line from Rickett the
Asper spread out into a broad, shallow bed, its streams dispersed for
several miles into a number of channels which united again, farther
down the course, and made the same strong river. Towards this ford,
therefore, it was possible that Dan Barry would head, in the region of
Caswell City.
There was, however, another way of crossing the stream. Almost due west
of Rickett, a distance of fifteen miles, Tucker Creek joined the Asper.
Above the point of junction both the creek and the river were readily
fordable, and Barry could cross them and head straight for his goal.
It was true that to make Tucker Creek he would have to double out of the
Morgan Hills and brush back perilously close to Rickett, but Billy was
convinced that this was the outlaw's plan; for though the Caswell City
fords would be his safest route it would take him a day's ride, on an
ordinary horse, out of his way. Besides, the sheriff had always said:
“Barry will play the chance!”
Billy would have ventured his life that the fugitive would strike
straight for the Creek as soon as he doubled out of Morgan Hills.
Doors began to bang; a hundred pairs of boots thudded and jingled
towards Billy; the noise of voices rolled through the outer hall, poured
through the door, burst upon his ears. He looked up in mild surprise;
the first wave of Rickett's men had swept out of the courthouse to take
the trail of the fugitive or to watch the pursuit; in this second wave
came the remnants, the old men, the women; great-eyed children. In spite
of their noise of foot and voice they appeared to be trying to walk
stealthily, talk so softly. They leaned about his desk and questioned
him with gesticulations, but he only stared. They were all dim as dream
people to Billy the clerk, whose mind was far away struggling with his
problem.
“Pore old Billy is kind of dazed,” suggested a woman. “Don't bother him,
Bud. Look here!”
The tide of noise and faces broke on either side of the desk and swayed
off towards the inner office and vaguely Billy felt that they should
not be there--the sheriff's privacy--the thought almost drew him back to
complete consciousness, but he was borne off from them, again, on a wave
of study, pictures. Off there to the east went the fifteen best men of
the mountain-desert on the trail of the slender fellow with the
black hair and the soft brown eyes. How he had seemed to shrink with
aloofness, timidity, when he stood there at the door, giving his name.
It was not modesty. Billy knew now; it was something akin to the beasts
of prey, who shrink from the eyes of men until they are mad with hunger,
and in the slender man Billy remembered the same shrinking, the same
hunger. When he struck, no wonder that even the sheriff went down;
no wonder if even the fifteen men were baffled on that trail; and
therefore, it was sufficiently insane for him, Billy the clerk, to sit
in his office and dream with his ineffectual hands of stopping that
resistless flight. Yet he pulled himself back to his problem.
Considering his problem in general, the thing was perfectly simple:
Barry was sure to head west, and to the west there were only two
gates--fording the creek and the river above the junction in the first
place, or in the second place cutting across the Asper far north at
Caswell City.
If he could be turned from the direction of Tucker Creek he would head
for the second possible crossing, and when he drew near Caswell City if
he were turned by force of numbers again he would unquestionably skirt
the Asper, hoping against hope that he might find a fordable place as he
galloped south. But, going south, he might be fenced again from Tucker
Creek, and then his case would be hopeless and his horse worn down.
It was a very clever plan, quite simple after it was once conceived,
but in order to execute it properly it was necessary that the outlaw be
pressed hard every inch of the way and never once allowed to get out
of sight. He must be chased with relays. In ordinary stretches of the
mountain-desert that would have been impossible, but the country around
Rickett was not ordinary.
Between the Morgan Hills and Wago there were considerable stretches of
excellent farm land in the center of which little towns had grown up.
Running north from the country seat, they were St. Vincent, Wago, and
Caswell City. Coming south again along the Asper River there were Ganton
and Wilsonville, and just above the junction of the river with Tucker
Creek lay the village of Bly Falls. There was no other spot in the
mountain-desert, perhaps, which could show so many communities. Also it
was possible to get in touch with the towns from Rickett, for in a wild
spirit of enterprise telephones had been strung to connect each village
of the group.
His hand went out mechanically and pushed in an open drawer of his
filing cabinet as if he were closing up the affair, putting away the
details of the plan. Each point was now clear, orderly assembled. It
meant simply chasing Barry along a course which covered close to a
hundred miles and which lay in a loosely shaped U. St. Vincent's was the
tip of the eastern side of that U. The men of St. Vincent's were to be
called out to turn the outlaw out of his course towards Tucker Creek,
and then, as he struck northeast towards Caswell City, they were to
furnish the posse with fifteen fresh horses, the best they could gather
on such short notice. Swinging north along that side of the U, Wago
would next be warned to get its contribution of fifteen horses ready,
and this fresh relay would send Barry thundering along towards Caswell
City at full speed. Then Caswell City would send out its contingent of
men and horses, and turn the fugitive back from the fords. By this time,
unless his horse were better winded than any that Billy had ever dreamed
of, it would be staggering at every stride, and the fresh horses from
Caswell City would probably ride him down before he had gone five miles.
Even in case they failed in this, there was the little town of Ganton,
which would be ready with its men and mounts. Perhaps they could hem
in the desperado from the front and shoot him down there, as he skirted
along the river. At the worst they would furnish the fresh horses and
the fifteen hardy riders would spur at full speed south along the river.
If again, by some miracle, the black stallion lasted out this run,
Wilsonville lay due ahead, and that place would again give new horses to
the chase.
Last of all, the men of Bly Falls could be warned. Bly Falls was a town
of size and it could turn out enough men to block a dozen Dan Barrys, no
matter how desperate. If he reached that point, he must turn back. The
following posse would catch him from the rear, and between two fires he
must die ingloriously. Taking the plan as a whole it meant running Barry
close to a hundred miles with six sets of horses.
It all hinged, however, on the first step: Could the men of St. Vincent
turn him out of his western course and send him north towards Caswell
City? If they could, he was no better than a dead man. All things
favored Billy. In the first place it was still morning, and eight hours
of broad daylight would keep the fugitive in view every inch of the way.
In the second place, much of the distance was cut up by the barb-wire
fences of the farm-lands, and he must either jump these or else stop to
cut them.
A crackle of laughter cut in on Billy the clerk. They were laughing in
that inner office, where the sheriff lay dead. Blood swept across his
eyes, set his brain whirling, and he rushed to the door.
“You yelpin' coyotes!” shouted Billy the clerk. “Get out. I got to be
alone! Get out, or by God--”
It was not so much his words, or the fear of his threats, but the very
fact that Billy the clerk, harmless, smiling old Billy, had burst into
noisy wrath, scared them as if an earthquake had gripped the building.
They went out sidling, and left the rooms in quiet. Then Billy took up
the phone.
“Pete Glass is dead,” he was saying a moment later to the owner of the
general merchandise store at St. Vincent. “Barry came in this morning
and shot him. The boys have run him east to the Morgan Hills. Johnny,
listen hard and shut up. You got half an hour to turn out every man in
your town. Ride south till you get in the hills on a bee-line east of
where Tucker Creek runs into the old Asper. D'ye hear? Then keep your
eyes peeled to the east, and watch for a man on a black hoss ridin'
hard, because Barry is sure as hell goin' to double back out of the
Morgan Hills and come west like a scairt coyote. The posse will be
behind him, but they most like be a hell of a ways to the bad. Johnny,
everything hangs on your turnin' Barry back. And have fifteen fresh
hosses, the best St. Vincent has, so that the boys in the posse can
climb on 'em and ride hell-bent for Wago. Johnny, if we get him started
north he's dead--and if you turn him like I say I'll see that you come
in on the reward. D'ye hear?”
But there was only an inarticulate whoop from the other end of the wire.
Billy hung up. A little later he was talking to Wago.