Kitabı oku: «The Ranchman», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXIV – A DEATH WARRANT
Carrington was not a coward; he was not even a cautious man. And the bitter malice that filled his heart, together with riotous impulses that seethed in his brain prompted him to go straight to the Arrow, wreak vengeance upon Taylor and drag Marion Harlan back to the big house he had bought for her.
But a certain memory of Taylor’s face when the latter had been pursuing him through the big house; a knowledge of Taylor’s ability to inflict punishment, together with a divination that Taylor would not hesitate to kill him should there arise the slightest opportunity – all these considerations served to deter Carrington from undertaking any rash action.
Taylor’s opposition to his desires enraged Carrington. He had met and conquered many men – and he had coolly and deliberately robbed many others, himself standing secure and immune behind legal barriers. And he had seen his victims writhe and squirm and struggle in the meshes he had prepared for them. He had heard them rave and wail and threaten; but not one of them had attempted to inflict physical punishment upon him.
Taylor, however, was of the fighting type. On two occasions, now, Carrington had been given convincing proof of the man’s ability. And he had seen in Taylor’s eyes on the latest occasion the implacable gleam of iron resolution and – when Taylor had gone down, fighting to the last, in the sanguinary battle at the big house, he had not failed to note the indomitability of the man – the tenacious and dogged spirit that knows no defeat – a spirit that would not be denied.
And so, though Carrington’s desires would have led him to recklessly carry the fight to the Arrow, certain dragging qualms of reluctance dissuaded him from another meeting with Taylor on equal terms.
And yet the malevolent passions that gripped the big man would not tolerate the thought of opposition. Taylor was the only man who stood between him and his desires, and Taylor must be removed.
During the days of Carrington’s confinement to his rooms above the Castle – awaiting the slow healing of the wound Taylor had inflicted upon him, and the many bruises that marred his face – mementoes of the terrible punishment Taylor had inflicted upon him – the big man nursed his venomous thoughts and laid plans for revenge upon his enemy.
As soon as he was able to appear in Dawes – to undergo without humiliation the inspection of his face by the citizens of the town – for news of his punishment had been whispered broadcast – he boarded a westbound train.
He got off at Nogel, a little mining town sitting at the base of some foothills in the Sangre de Christo Range, some miles from Dawes.
He spent three days in Nogel, interrogating the resident manager of the “Larry’s Luck” mine, talking with miners and storekeepers and quizzing men in saloons – and at the beginning of the fourth day he returned to Dawes.
At about the time Miss Harlan and Taylor were sitting on the rock on the bank of the river near the Arrow, Carrington was in the courthouse at Dawes, leaning over Judge Littlefield’s desk. A tall, sleek-looking man of middle age, with a cold, steady eye and a smooth smile, stood near Carrington. The man was neatly attired, and looked like a prosperous mine-owner or operator.
But had the judge looked sharply at his hands when he gripped the one that was held out to him when Carrington introduced the man; or had he been a physiognomist of average ability, he could not have failed to note the smooth softness of the man’s hands and the gleam of guile and cunning swimming deep in his eyes.
But the judge noted none of those things. He had caught the man’s name – Mint Morton – and instantly afterward all his senses became centered upon what the man was saying.
For the man spoke of conscience – and the judge had one of his own – a guilty one. So he listened attentively while the man talked.
The thing had been bothering the man for some months – or from the time it happened, he said. And he had come to make a confession.
He was a miner, having a claim near Nogel. He knew Quinton Taylor, and he had known Larry Harlan. One morning after leaving his mine on a trip to Nogel for supplies, he had passed close to the “Larry’s Luck” mine. Being on good terms with the partners, he had thought of visiting them. Approaching the mine on foot – having left his horse at a little distance – he heard Taylor and Harlan quarreling. He had no opportunity to interfere, for just as he came upon the men he saw Taylor knock Harlan down with a blow of his fist. And while Harlan lay unconscious on the ground Taylor had struck him on the head with a rock.
Morton had not revealed himself, then, fearing Taylor would attack him. He had concealed himself, and had seen Taylor, apparently remorseful, trying to revive Harlan. These efforts proving futile, Taylor had rigged up a drag, placed Harlan on it, and had taken him to Nogel. But Harlan died on the way.
To Littlefield’s inquiry as to why Morton had not reported the murder instantly, the man replied that, being a friend to Taylor, he had been reluctant to expose him.
After the man concluded his story the judge and Carrington exchanged glances. There was a vindictively triumphant gleam in Littlefield’s eyes, for he still remembered the humiliation he had endured at Taylor’s hands.
He took Morton’s deposition, told him he would send for him, later; and dismissed him. Carrington, appearing to be much astonished over the man’s confession, accompanied him to the station, where he watched him board the train that would take him back to Nogel.
And on the platform of one of the coaches, Carrington, grinning wickedly, gave the man a number of yellow-backed treasury notes.
“You think I won’t have to come back – to testify against him?” asked the man, smiling coldly.
“Certainly not!” declared Carrington. “You’ve signed his death warrant this time!”
Carrington watched the train glide westward, and then returned to the courthouse. He found the judge sitting at his desk, gazing meditatively at the floor. For there had been something insincere in Morton’s manner – his story of the murder had not been quite convincing – and in spite of his resentment against Taylor the judge did not desire to add anything to the burden already carried by his conscience.
Carrington grinned maliciously as he halted at Littlefield’s side and laid a hand on the other’s arm.
“We’ve got him, Littlefield!” he said. “Get busy. Issue a warrant for his arrest. I’ll have Danforth send you some men to serve as deputies – twenty of them, if you think it necessary!”
The judge cleared his throat and looked with shifting eyes at the other.
“Look here, Carrington,” he said, “I – I have some doubts about the sincerity of that man Morton. I’d like to postpone action in this case until I can make an investigation. It seems to me that – that Taylor, for all his – er – seeming viciousness, is not the kind of man to kill his partner. I’d like to delay just a little, to – ”
“And let Taylor get wind of the thing – and escape. Not by a damned sight! One man’s word is as good as another’s in this country; and it’s your duty as a judge of the court, here, to act upon any complaint. You issue the warrant. I’ll get Keats to serve it. He’ll bring Taylor here, and you can legally examine him. That’s merely justice!”
Half an hour later, Carrington was handing the warrant to a big, rough-looking man with an habitual and cruel droop to the corners of his mouth.
“You’d better take some men with you, Keats,” suggested Carrington. “He’ll fight, most likely,” he grinned, evilly. “Understand,” he added; “if you should have to kill Taylor bringing him in, there would be no inquiry made. And – ” he looked at Keats and grinned, slowly and deliberately closing an eye.
CHAPTER XXV – KEATS LOOKS FOR “SQUINT”
Neil Norton had been attending to Taylor’s affairs in Dawes during the latter’s illness, and he had ridden to the Arrow this morning to discuss with Taylor a letter he had received – for Taylor – from a Denver cattle buyer. The inquiry was for Herefords of certain markings and quality, and Norton could give the buyer no information. So Norton had come to Taylor for the information.
“The herd is grazing in the Kelso Basin,” Taylor told Norton. Norton knew the Kelso Basin was at least fifteen miles distant from the Arrow ranchhouse – a deep, wide valley directly west, watered by the same river that flowed near the Arrow ranchhouse.
“I can’t say, offhand, whether we’ve got what your Denver man wants.” He grinned at Norton, adding: “But it’s a fine morning for a ride, and I haven’t done much riding lately. I’ll go and take a look.”
“I’ll be looking, too,” declared Norton. “The Eagle forms are ready for the press, and there isn’t much to do.”
Later, Taylor, mounted on Spotted Tail, and Norton on a big, rangy sorrel, the two men rode away. Taylor stopped at the horse corral gate long enough to tell Bud Hemmingway, who was replacing a bar, that he and Norton were riding to the Kelso Basin.
And there was one other to whom he had spoken – when he had gone into the house to buckle on his cartridge-belt and pistols, just before he went out to saddle Spotted Tail. It was the girl who had tantalized him while they had been sitting on the rock. She had not spoken frivolously to him inside the house; instead, she had gravely warned him to be “careful;” that his wounds might bother him on a long ride – and that she didn’t want him to suffer a relapse. And she watched him as he and Norton rode away, following the dust-cloud that enveloped them until it vanished into the mists of distance. Then she turned from the door with a sigh, thinking of the fate that had made her dependent upon the charity of the man she loved.
To Bud Hemmingway, working at the corral gate about an hour following the departure of Taylor and Norton, there came an insistent demand to look toward Dawes. It was merely one of those absurd impulses founded upon a whim provoked by self-manufactured presentiment – but Bud looked. What he saw caused him to stand erect and stare hard at the trail between Mullarky’s cabin and the Arrow – for about two miles out came a dozen or more riders, their horses traveling fast.
For several seconds Bud watched intently, straining his eyes in an effort to distinguish something about the men that would make their identity clear. And then he dropped the hammer he had been working with and ran to the bunkhouse, where he put on his cartridge-belt and pistol.
Returning to the bunkhouse door, he stood in it for a time, watching the approaching men. Then he scowled, muttering:
“It’s that damned Keats an’ some of his bunch! What in hell are they wantin’ at the Arrow?”
Bud was standing near the edge of the front gallery when Keats and his men rode up. There were fourteen of the men, and, like their leader, they were ill-visaged, bepistoled.
Marion Harlan had heard the noise of their approach, and she had come to the front door. She stood in the opening, her gaze fixed inquiringly upon the riders, though chiefly upon Keats, whose manner proclaimed him the leader. He looked at Bud.
“Hello, Hemmingway!” he greeted, gruffly. “I take it the outfit ain’t in?”
“Workin’, Kelso,” returned Bud. Bud’s gaze at Keats was belligerent; he resented the presence of Keats and the men at the Arrow, for he had never liked Keats, and he knew the relations between the visitor and Taylor were strained almost to the point of open antagonism.
“What’s eatin’ you guys?” demanded Bud.
“Plenty!” stated Keats importantly. He turned to the men.
“Scatter!” he commanded; “an’ rustle him up, if he’s anywhere around! Hey!” he shouted at a slender, rat-faced individual. “You an’ Darbey search the house! Two more of you take a look at the bunkhouse – and the rest of you nose around the other buildin’s. Keep your eyes peeled, an’ if he goes to gettin’ fresh, plug him plenty!”
“Why, what is wrong?” demanded Marion. Her face was pale with indignation, for she resented the authoritative tone used by Keats as much as she resented the thought of the two men entering the house unbidden.
Keats’s face flamed with sudden passion. With a snap of his wrist he drew his gun and trained its muzzle on Bud.
“Wrong enough!” he snapped. He was looking at Bud while answering Miss Harlan’s question. “I’m after Squint Taylor, an’ I’m goin’ to get him – that’s all! An’ if you folks go to interferin’ it’ll be the worse for you!”
Marion stiffened and braced herself in the doorway, her eyes wide with dread and her lips parted to ask the question that Bud now spoke, his voice drawling slightly with sarcasm.
“Taylor, eh?” he said. “What you wantin’ with Taylor?”
“I’m wantin’ him for murderin’ Larry Harlan!” snapped Keats.
Bud gulped, drew a deep breath and went pale. He looked at Marion, and saw that the girl was terribly moved by Keats’s words. But neither the girl nor Bud spoke while Keats dismounted, crossed the porch, and stopped in front of the door, which was barred by the girl’s body.
“Get out of the way – I’m goin’ in!” ordered Keats.
The girl moved aside to let him pass, and as he crossed the threshold she asked, weakly:
“How do you – how do they know Mr. Taylor killed Larry Harlan?”
Keats turned on her, grinning mirthlessly.
“How do we know anything?” he jeered. “Evidence – that’s what – an’ plenty of it!”
Keats vanished inside, and Bud, his eyes snapping with the alert glances he threw around him, slowly backed away from the porch toward the stable. As he turned, after backing several feet, he saw Marion walk slowly to a rocker that stood on the porch, drop weakly into it and cover her face with her hands.
Gaining the stable, Bud worked fast; throwing a saddle and bridle upon King, the speediest horse in the Arrow outfit, excepting Spotted Tail.
With movements that he tried hard to make casual, but with an impatience that made his heart pound heavily, he got King out and led him to the rear of the stable.
Some of Keats’s men were running from one building to another; but he was not Taylor, and they seemed to pay no attention to him, beyond giving him sharp glances.
Passing behind the blacksmith-shop, Bud heard a voice saying:
“Dead or alive, Keats says; an’ they’d admire to have him dead. I heard Carrington tellin’ Keats!”
As the sound of the voice died away, Bud touched King’s flank with the spurs. The big horse, after a day in the stable, was impatient and eager for a run, and he swept past the scattered buildings of the ranch with long, swift leaps that took him out upon the plains before Keats could complete his search of the first floor of the house.
The two men who had searched the upper floor came downstairs, to meet Keats in the front room. They grimly shook their heads at Keats, and at his orders went outside to search with the other men.
Keats stepped to the door, saw Marion sitting limply in the rocking-chair, her shoulders convulsed with sobs, and crossed to her, shaking her with a brutal arm.
“Where’s that guy I left standin’ there? Where’s he – Hemmingway?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl dully.
Keats cursed and ran to the edge of the porch. With his gaze sweeping the buildings, the pasture, the corrals, and the wide stretch of plain westward, he stiffened, calling angrily to his men:
“There he goes – damn him! It’s that sneakin’ Bud Hemmingway, an’ he’s gone to tell Taylor we’re after him! He knows where Taylor is! Get your hosses!”
Forced to her feet by the intense activity that followed Keats’s loudly bellowed orders, the girl crossed the porch, and from a point near the end railing watched Keats and his men clamber into their saddles and race after Bud. For a long time she watched them – a tiny blot gliding over the plains, followed by a larger blot – and then she walked slowly to the rocking-chair, looked down at it as though its spaciousness invited her; then she turned from it, entered the house, and going to her room – where Martha was sleeping – began feverishly throwing her few belongings into the small handbag she had brought with her from the big house.
CHAPTER XXVI – KEATS FINDS “SQUINT”
Looking back after he had been riding for some minutes, Bud saw a dozen or more horses break from the group of Arrow buildings and come racing toward him, spreading out fanwise.
“They’ve seen me!” breathed Bud, and he leaned over King’s shoulders and spoke to him. The animal responded with a burst of speed that brought a smile to Bud’s face. For the puncher knew that Taylor and Norton couldn’t have traveled more than a few miles in the short time that had passed since their departure; and he knew also that in a short run – of a dozen miles or so – there wasn’t a horse in the Dawes section that could catch King, barring, of course, Spotted Tail, the real king of range horses.
And so Bud bent eagerly to his work, not riding erect in the saddle as is the fashion of the experienced cow-puncher in an unfamiliar country, where pitfalls, breaks, draws, hidden gullies, and weed-grown barrancas provide hazards that might bring disaster. Bud knew this section of the country as well as he knew the interior of the bunkhouse, and with his knowledge came a confidence that nothing would happen to him or King, except possibly a slip into a gopher hole.
And Bud kept scanning the country far enough ahead to keep King from running into a gopher town. He swung the animal wide in passing them – for he knew it was the habit of these denizens of the plains to extend their habitat – some venturesome and independent spirits straying far from the huddle and congestion of the multitude.
Bud looked back many times during the first two miles, and he saw that Keats and his men were losing ground; their horses could not keep the pace set by the big bay flier under Bud.
And King was not going as he could go when the necessity arrived. This ride was a frolic for the big bay, and yet Bud knew he must not force him, that he must conserve his wind, for if Taylor and Norton had yielded to a whim to hurry, even King would need all his speed and endurance to hang on. For the sorrel that had accompanied Spotted Tail was not so greatly inferior to King that the latter could take liberties with him.
Bud gloated as he looked back after he had covered another mile. Keats and his men were still losing ground, though they were not so very far back, either – Bud could almost see the faces of the men. But that, Bud knew, was due to the marvelous clarity of the atmosphere.
When the sides of the big hills surrounding the level began to sweep inward rapidly, Bud knew that the grass level was coming to an end, and that presently he would strike a long stretch of broken country. Beyond that was a big valley, rich and fertile, in which, according to report, the Arrow herd should be grazing, guarded by the men of the outfit, under Bothwell. But Kelso Basin was still nine or ten miles distant, and Bud did not yet dare to let the big bay horse run his best.
Still, when they flashed by a huge promontory that stood sentinel-like above the waters of the river – a spot well remembered by Bud, because many times while on day duty he had lain prone on its top smoking and dreaming – King was running as lightly as a leaf before the hurricane.
King had entered the section of broken country, with its beds of rock and lava, and huge boulders strewn here and there, relics of gigantic upheavals when the earth was young; and Bud was skilfully directing King to the stretches of smooth level that he found here and there, when far ahead he saw Taylor and Norton.
In ten minutes he was within hailing distance, and he grinned widely when, hearing him, they pulled their horses to a halt and, wheeling, faced him.
For Bud saw that they had reached a spot which would make an admirable defensive position, should Taylor decide to resist Keats. The hills, in their gradual inward sweep, were close together, so that their crests seemed to nod to one another. And a little farther down, Bud knew, they formed a gorge, which still farther on merged into a cañon. It was an ideal position for a stand – if Taylor would stand and not run for it; and he rather thought Taylor would not run.
Taylor had ridden toward Bud, and was a hundred feet in advance of Norton when Bud pulled King to a halt, shouting:
“Keats and a dozen men are right behind me – a mile; mebbe two! He’s got a warrant for you, chargin’ you with murderin’ Larry Harlan! I heard one of his scum sayin’ it was to be a clean-up!”
Taylor laughed; he did not seem to be at all interested in Keats or his men, who at that instant were riding at a pace that was likely to kill their horses, should they be forced to maintain it.
“Who accused me of murdering Harlan?”
“Keats didn’t say. But I heard a guy sayin’ that Carrington was wantin’ Keats to take you dead!”
The cold gleam in Taylor’s eyes and the slight, stiff grin that wreathed his lips, indicated that he had determined that Keats would have to kill him before taking him.
“A dozen of them, eh?” he said, looking from Bud to Norton deliberately. “Well, that’s a bunch for three men to fight, but it isn’t enough to run from. We’ll stay here and have it out with them. That is,” he added with a quick, quizzical look at the two men, “if one of you is determined to stay.”
“One of us?” flared Bud. He gazed hard at Norton, with suspicion and belligerence in his glance. Norton flushed at the look. “I reckon we’ll both be in at the finish,” added Bud.
“Only one,” declared Taylor. “We might hold a dozen men off here for a good many hours. But if they were wise and patient they’d get us. One man will light out for Kelso Basin to get the outfit. Settle it between you, but be quick about it!”
Taylor swung down from his horse, led the animal out of sight behind a jutting crag into a sort of pocket in the side of the gorge, where there would be no danger of the magnificent beast being struck by a bullet. Taylor pulled his rifle from its saddle-sheath, examined the mechanism, looked at his pistols, and then returned to where Bud Hemmingway and Neil Norton sat on their horses.
Bud’s face was flushed and Norton was grinning. And at just the instant Taylor came in sight of them Norton was saying:
“Well, if you insist, I suppose I shall have to go to Kelso. There isn’t time to argue.”
Norton wheeled his horse, and, with a quick grin at Taylor, sent the animal clattering down the gorge.
Bud’s grin at Taylor was pregnant with guilt.
“Norton didn’t want me to stay. There’s lots of stubborn cusses in the world – now, ain’t they?”
Taylor’s answering smile showed that he understood.
“Get King back here with Spotted Tail, Bud!” he directed. “And take that pile of rocks for cover. They’re coming!”
By the time Bud did as he had been bidden, and was crouching behind a huge mound of broken rock on the north side of the gorge, Taylor on the southern side, with a twenty-foot passage on the comparatively level floor of the gorge between them, and an uninterrupted sweep of narrow level in front of them, except for here and there a jutting rock or a boulder, they saw Keats and his men just entering the stretch of broken country.
The horses of the pursuing outfit were doing their best. They came on over the stretch of treacherous trail, laboring, pounding and clattering; singly sometimes, two and three abreast where there was room, keeping well together, their riders urging them with quirt and spur. For far back on the trail they had lost sight of Bud, though Keats had remembered that Bud had said Taylor had gone to Kelso Basin, and therefore Keats knew he was on the right trail.
However, he did not want to let Bud get to Kelso before him to warn the Arrow outfit; for that would mean a desperate battle with a force equal in numbers to his own. Keats fought best when the advantages were with him, and he knew his men were similarly constituted. And so he was riding as hard as he dared, hoping that something would happen to Bud’s horse – that the animal might become winded or fall. A man could not tell what might happen in a pursuit of this character.
But the thing that did happen had not figured in Keats’s lurid conjectures at all. That was why, when he heard Taylor’s quick challenge, he pulled his horse up sharply, so that the animal slipped several feet and came to a halt sidewise.
Keats’s unexpected halt brought confusion to his followers. A dozen of them, crowding Keats hard, and not noticing their leader’s halt in time, rode straight against him, their horses jamming the narrow gorge, kicking, snorting and squealing in a disordered and uncontrollable mass.
When the tangle had been magically undone – the magic being Taylor’s voice again, burdened with sarcasm bearing upon their excitement – Keats found himself nearest the nest of rocks from behind which Taylor’s voice seemed to come.
The jutting crag behind which Taylor had concealed his horse, and where Bud had led King, completely obstructed Keats’s view of the gorge behind the crag, toward Kelso Basin, and Keats did not know but that the entire Arrow outfit was concealed behind the rocks and boulders that littered the level in the vicinity.
And so he sat motionless, slowly and respectfully raising his hands. Noting his action, his men did likewise.
“That’s polite,” came Taylor’s voice coldly. “Hemmingway says you’re looking for me. What for?”
“I’ve got a warrant for you, chargin’ you with murderin’ Larry Harlan.”
“Who accused me?”
“Mint Morton, of Nogel.”
There was a long silence. Behind the clump of rock Taylor smiled mirthlessly at Bud, who was watching him. For Taylor knew Mint Morton, of Nogel, as a gambler, unscrupulous and dishonest. He had earned Morton’s hatred when one night in a Nogel saloon he had caught Morton cheating and had forced him to disgorge his winnings. His victim had been a miner on his way East with the earnings of five years in his pockets. Taylor had not been able to endure the spectacle of abject despair that had followed the man’s loss of all his money.
Taylor did not know that Carrington had hunted Morton up, paying him well to bring the murder charge, but Taylor did know that he was innocent of murder; and by linking Morton with Carrington he could readily understand why Keats wanted him. He broke the silence with a short:
“Who issued the warrant?”
“Judge Littlefield.”
“Well,” said Taylor, “you can take it right back to him and tell him to let Carrington serve it. For,” he added, a note of grim humor creeping into his voice, “I’m a heap particular about such things, Keats. I couldn’t let a sneak like you take me in. And I don’t like the looks of that dirty-looking outfit with you. And so I’m telling you a few things. I’m giving you one minute to hit the breeze out of this section. If you’re here when that time is up, I down you, Keats! Slope!”
Keats flashed one glance around at his men. Some of them already had their horses in motion; others were nervously fingering their bridle-reins. Keats sneered at the rock nest ahead of him.
The intense silence which followed Taylor’s warning lasted about ten seconds. Then Keats’s face paled; he wheeled his horse and sent it scampering over the back trail, his men following, crowding him hard.
