The Max Brand Megapack (234 page)

“Look here,” said Silas Treat, in the same singular calm. “I ain’t got any call for lying or playing in with the rest of them swine outside. I done my part. They didn’t do theirs. I’m through with ’em. All the good ones are done for, anyway, and Moon’s band is busted up. Kent and Bush are dead. Corrigan’s dead. Craig is dead and others along with him, and Baldy McNair is lying on his back nearer death than living. Moon’s band is busted up, and Moon himself has beat it off with a piece of calico. I’ll never trust or foller another man so long’s I live!”

“Gag him!” commanded Ronicky. “Gag him so’s he can’t yell. Hugh, we got to make our break, and we got to make it now. First: Where’s the hosses?”

“Over in the woods behind the third shack.”

“Any of ’em saddled?”

“Three or four, I guess.”

“That’s all!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Escape

At the word Dawn clapped the gag, which he had meantime improvised, between the teeth of the captive and secured it firmly.

“Now,” said Ronicky, “run for it!”

And he darted through the door, followed at his heels by the older man. Half the distance to the trees they had covered with flying haste when there was a yell behind them—a yell from Silas Treat, who had so quickly worked out the gag that silenced him. Then—he must have burst the cords that held him by an exertion of his tremendous strength and scooped up a fallen revolver—a storm of bullets was driven after the fugitives.

But the distance was great, and Ronicky set the example of dodging from side to side as he ran. In a moment, though, the bullets still whistling and crashing through the boughs around them, Ronicky had reached the safety of the forest and turned panting to Dawn.

“Safe?” he asked.

“Thank Heaven! And you, Ronicky?”

“Make for the hosses. Get two and come back. I’ll keep ’em dancing to our music while you get ’em!”

Dawn disappeared, and Ronicky faced the enemy. There was a new confusion of shouts. The enormous voice of Silas Treat was giving directions. The rest of Moon’s shattered crew was coming to the firing line, and a scattering of shots was pumped toward the place where Ronicky had disappeared. He must give them the opinion that he and Dawn were preparing to make at least a short stand in this direction. Accordingly, he began to run from tree to tree, firing two shots in quick succession and then two more from another place, so as to give the effect of a pair of fighters working along the edge of the forest. He was aiming at the flashes on the far side of the clearing, but he had no hope of striking a target, and he was not surprised when no cries of pain greeted his attack. In a moment they would send a couple of men sifting around the edge of the clearing to make a flank attack, but now came Hugh Dawn leading one horse and riding another. One bound carried Ronicky into the saddle, and he and Dawn spurred recklessly into the heart of the woods.

Behind them rose fresh yells of dismay, and the firing ceased. Of course they would pursue, but unless Ronicky were hugely mistaken, they would not pursue far through the darkness of the woods. Dawn was indeed beginning in the east, but the pines were thick enough to shut out the scattered rays of light and leave deep night beneath the lower branches.

And to follow an armed enemy who had proved the sharpness of his teeth through such a thicket as this would probably overtask the worn nerves of the outlaws. Besides, he shrewdly guessed that they had had enough of fighting to last them for many days.

Another interest was larger in the mind of Ronicky. He plunged with Hugh Dawn straight up the slope until he came to the clearing where Treat had said Jack Moon had last gone with the girl.

It was quite empty, as he broke into the open space with his revolver poised. Drawing up his horse with a groan, he cried to Dawn: “Treat was right. The devil has taken Jerry.”

“Ay,” said the despairing father, “devil he is and doubly a devil, but well never get him tonight, Ronicky. He’s taken the grays. I seen that they weren’t among the rest of the hosses, though I looked for ’em. On the grays he’ll shake his heels in our faces, lad, or the faces of any hosses in these parts. They’ve got the foot. We can’t catch ’em!”

For answer Ronicky looked a moment in silence at his companion and then whistled a peculiarly high and piercing note, long held. Then he sat with his head canted a little to one side, listening intently.

“How come?” growled Hugh Dawn uneasily. “Calling up Moon’s gang of cutthroats?”

But far away, faint as a small echo, the answer came in the form of a neigh. Ronicky smiled and shook his head at his companion.

“You hear?”

“It’s Lou,” said the other, a little awed. “She’s like a man for sense, Ronicky.”

“Better’n most men,” answered Ronicky tersely and whistled again.

The answer this time was much closer. Then they heard a crashing in the underbrush, and the beautiful mare came like a bullet out of the trees and glinted in the dawnlight of the clearing. Beside Ronicky she drew up, snorting her pleasure at the reunion.

A change of saddles was quickly made, and now, on the back of the mare, Ronicky laughed with joy.

“Now let Jack Moon ride hard,” he said, “because, no matter how much foot the grays have, I’m going to run ’em into the ground—if I can ever pick up the trail. But Lord knows where they’ve gone. Can you guess, Hugh?”

“Can’t make a good guess,” the older man returned, watching with an appreciative eye while the bay mare danced in her eagerness to be off. “But how’m I to keep up with that little streak of lightning you’re on now?”

“You won’t keep up,” answered Ronicky. “Never come across a hoss in the mountains that could keep up, partner.”

Now the gray morning was brightening each moment, and already the light was so clear that they could look back into the heart of the hollow and see the clearing and the shacks. There was no pursuit apparently. Small figures of men moved here and there hurriedly. There was a knot of horses, looking as small as ants in the distance, in the central space.

“I knew,” muttered Ronicky Doone, “that there was a curse on that treasure of Cosslett’s. We ain’t the men that dug the stuff out of the ground in the first place, and neither did they give it to us. Hugh, they’s going to be a curse wherever that gold travels!”

“I got none of it,” said Hugh Dawn almost cheerfully. “Left it all behind in the shack. And I think you’re right, Ronicky. But now where do we head?”

“We can only guess. Where would a smart gent like Jack Moon go if he wanted to throw folks off the trail?”

“North was where he and the band expected to head.”

“That’s why he won’t head there. And over to the east the ground slopes too easy and smooth. That’s where folks would naturally think that Moon had gone trying to get away. But most like, just to throw us off, Moon has taken the west road, through those hills. The harder the road, the less chance we’d have to foller him on it. Ain’t that the way he’d think?”

“I dunno, Ronicky. But it sounds pretty reasonable, except that for my part I’d take the east road. That’s where he must of gone.”

“Take it if you want. I go west.”

“Take it, then. We’ll each try a road. And if we both miss?”

“I’ll see you in Trainor—if I come through alive.”

“Good-by, Ronicky—and Heaven bless you!”

Ronicky Doone waved his hand cheerfully.

“You look happy,” said the older man curiously, “like you was going to a party, son!”

“I am,” said Ronicky Doone. “I’m going on the trail of the gent I’d rather meet than anybody in the world. Good luck, Hugh!”

Hugh Dawn waved again and then watched Ronicky send his mare at a gallop down through the sparsely wooded slope leading toward the west. He kept on watching as the rider disappeared in the thicket in the lower hollow, and until Ronicky came into view again on the farther slope. He was still allowing Lou to keep a swift pace, and he was riding jauntily erect, as though he rode to a feast.

Then Hugh Dawn turned his face east and trotted down through the trees.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Threat

It was, indeed, down the western trail taken by Ronicky, that Jack Moon had urged his horses with Jerry Dawn at his side, and never before had the leader ridden with such high hopes of great success to lure him on. The weariness of the girl was a great part in his favor. He had well nigh convinced her of the honesty of his intentions during the first part of the ride, and now, as the long strain of anxiety and of physical effort during the past few days began to tell upon her, she turned to the strong man beside her automatically for assistance and guidance. If she had been in full possession of her natural keenness, she might have probed motives and probabilities far more deeply. But as it was, she took for granted, it seemed, in the mental fog that springs out of physical exhaustion, that Jack Moon was a rock of support.

She had ceased riding erect and lightly in the saddle by the time the sun pushed up out of the eastern trees and looked down at them as they twisted along a narrow trail on a mountainside. Now her head had lowered a little, and one hand rested heavily on the pommel of the saddle. Sometimes he thought that she was on the verge of falling asleep, so heavily she swung to one side or another as the big gray turned a sharp corner of the trail, but these swerves always wakened her a little and made her smile at her companion with dim amusement. The outlaw pressed close to her side to make sure that she should not fall.

In all his dark and cruel career he had never come so close to a good and pure emotion as he had come now. To him the girl in her weariness and helplessness was a more controlling power than a hundred men with guns rushing at him. The night of sleeplessness, with other dreary nights of watching before, had robbed her of all sprightliness of mind, all elasticity of body. She had become, mentally and physically, a child. He could mold her as he would. Should he take advantage of her now, to press on her the great desire which had been beating at his brain since he first saw her those few short days before?

Watching her wavering in the saddle, he decided that for very shame he could not trouble her with his importunities. But looking more closely again, and this time at her bowed face, it seemed to Jack Moon that there was nothing in the world so tender or so perfectly beautiful as the line of her profile, curving over brow and nose and lips and chin and rounded throat. Behind all the gentleness, he knew there was more courage than ordinarily comes to the lot of woman. All in all, it seemed to him that he had at last found a helpmate—the woman he wished to make his wife.

It must be said in justice to the man that in his associations with women he had ever played an honorable role. Whatever his ways with men, he had kept his trickery for them alone, and he had reserved for womankind as much reverence as he possessed. He was one of those odd fellows who, in the midst of a thousand crimes, retain a measure of self-respect by adhering to standards of one kind or another. It is not an unusual characteristic of criminals. There are murderers who kill for a price, and a cheap price, at that, who would scorn to commit an act of thievery. There are robbers who would not keep themselves from starving by descending to such a pitifully small act as picking a pocket. But with Jack Moon the exception had been a very large one—he had built a solid reputation as a man who never broke his word.

He writhed with shame and anguish of spirit to think that at last he had shattered the painfully acquired repute. He had betrayed his own followers, he had tricked and betrayed Ronicky Doone, he had betrayed Hugh Dawn. But he had lied and perjured himself for the sake of the girl, and he had the price of his sin with him. At least he had her presence. How far he was from having won her confidence, her affection, remained to be seen. In the meantime, she was here beside him, and as the miser, looking at his gold, makes small the privations he has endured to heap up the money, so Jack Moon, looking at the girl, sneered at the lost honor which she had cost him.

Yet, how much of her was his? How truly did she trust him? Might it not be that he had paid the terrible price simply for the sake of a single ride with her? All of these possibilities swarmed through the tormented mind of the outlaw, but he forced them away. It was too much to be considered. Never before had he laid siege to the mind of a man without eventually winning him over, and surely a single, weak woman could not endure against his persuasiveness!

But before she could even listen to him, she must be stimulated to complete wakefulness. He halted his party, helped the girl dismount, and built a camp fire hastily. Over it he made coffee, finding all the materials necessary in the pack which was behind the saddle on Jerry’s horse. Having prepared a steaming cup of the coffee, he gave it to the girl. Bacon and cracker sandwiches completed the meal, but they both ate ravenously; and before the brief repast was ended, the color was coming back into the face of the girl. Still he did not begin his talk, but waited until they were once more on the trail.

Of course there was not a chance in a thousand that he would be pursued—not a chance, unless Ronicky Doone escaped from the band—which was absurd—and then was able to guess what trail the fugitive leader had taken. But there was not a single danger in a thousand possibilities that Ronicky Doone, if he escaped from the besieged shack, would even be able to guess that the leader of the outlaws was a fugitive! Still Jack Moon preferred to make surety doubly sure. So he pressed steadily westward. Before long they would come down into the lowlands; they would begin to enter a district where the plain was green with irrigation, and where little agricultural villages were dotting the green here and there. In one of these, if his persuasions took effect, he could find the minister. In one of these the ceremony could be performed.

Still he delayed beginning the talk. It was hard to find the right opening. His heartbeat began to quicken; and he could have blessed her when she said suddenly: “It’s all like a happy dream, you know. We’ve been through a nightmare time; it’s unreal. I’ve been trying to convince myself that I’ve actually seen Cosslett’s gold, but I can’t.”