Jim Waring of Sonora-Town Part 30

The wind died down suddenly. The sun, just above the horizon, glowed like a disk of burnished copper. The wagon ruts were filled with fine sand. Waring read the trail. The buckboard had traveled briskly. It had stopped at the line. The tracks of the fretting ponies showed that clearly. Alongside the tracks of the ponies were the half-hidden tracks of a single horse. Waring glanced back at the sun, and put Dex to a lope. He swung into the main road, his gaze following the half-obliterated trail of the single horseman. Suddenly he reined up.

The horseman had angled away from the road and had ridden north across the open country. He had not gone to Stacey. Waring knew that the horseman had been riding hard. Straight north from where Waring had stopped was the Starr Ranch.

He rode on, his heart heavy with a black premonition. The glowing copper disk was now half-hidden by the western hills.

At the brink of the arroyo he dismounted. He could see nothing distinctly in the gloom of its depths. Stooping, he noted the wagon tracks as he worked on down. His foot struck against something hard. He fumbled and picked Pat's gun from the sand. Every chamber was loaded.

"He didn't have a chance." Waring was startled by his own voice. He thrust the gun in his waistband. The twilight deepened rapidly. Rocks and ridges in the arroyo a.s.sumed peculiar shapes like those of men crouching; men p.r.o.ne; men with heads up, listening, watching, waiting.

Yet Waring's instinct for hidden danger told him that there was no living thing in the arroyo--unless--Suddenly he sprang forward and dropped to his knees beside a huddled shape near a boulder.

"Pat!" he whispered.

Then he knew; saw it all as clearly as though he had witnessed it--the ambushment in the blinding sandstorm; the terror-stricken Waco; the frightened ponies; the lunging and swaying buckboard. And Pat, left for dead, but who had dragged himself from the roadway in dumb agony.

The dole of light from the sinking sun was gone. Waring's hands came away from the opened shirt shudderingly. He wiped his hands on the sand, and, rising, ran back to Dex. He returned with a whiskey flask. Pat was of tough fiber and tremendous vitality. If the spark were still unquenched, if it could be called back even for a breath, that which Waring knew, yet wanted to confirm beyond all doubt, might be given in a word. He raised Pat's head, and barely tilted the flask. The spirit of the mortally stricken man, perchance loath to leave such a brave hermitage, winged slowly back from the far sh.o.r.e of dreams. In the black pit of the arroyo, where death crouched, waiting, life flamed for an instant.

Waring felt the limp body stir. He took Pat's big, bony hand in his.

"Pat!" he whispered.

A word breathed heavily from the motionless lips. "You, Jim?"

"Yes! For G.o.d's sake, Pat, who did this thing?"

"Brewster--Bob. Letter--in my coat."

"I'll get _him_!" said Waring.

"Shake!" exclaimed the dying man, and the grip of his hand was like iron. Waring thought he had gone, and leaned closer. "I'm--kind of tired--Jim. Reckon--I'll--rest."

Waring felt the other's grip relax. He drew his hand from the stiffening fingers. A dull pain burned in his throat. He lighted a match, and found the message that had lured Pat to his death in the other's coat-pocket.

He rose and stumbled up the arroyo to his horse.

Halfway back to the ranch, and he met Ramon riding hard. "Ride back,"

said Waring. "Hook up to the wagon and come to the arroyo."

"Have you found the Senor Pat?"

"Yes. He is dead."

Ramon whirled his pony and pounded away in the darkness.

Out on the highway two long, slender shafts of light slid across the mesa, dipped into an arroyo, and climbed skyward as a machine buzzed up the opposite pitch. The lights straightened again and shot on down the road, swinging stiffly from side to side. Presently they came to a stop.

In the soft glow of their double radiance lay a yellow-wheeled buckboard, shattered and twisted round a telegraph pole. The lights moved up slowly and stopped again.

A man jumped from the machine and walked round the buckboard. Beneath it lay a crumpled figure. The driver of the machine ran a quick hand over the neck and arms of Waco, who groaned. The driver lifted him and carried him to the car. Stacey lay some twenty miles behind him. He was bound south. The first town on his way was thirty miles distant. But the roads were good. He glanced back at the huddled figure in the tonneau.

The car purred on down the night. The long shafts of light lifted over a rise and disappeared.

In about an hour the car stopped at the town of Grant. Waco was carried from the machine to a room in the hotel, and a doctor was summoned.

Waco lay unconscious throughout the night.

In the morning he was questioned briefly. He gave a fict.i.tious name, and mentioned a town he had heard of, but had never been in. His horses had run away with him.

The man who had picked him up drove away next morning. Later the doctor told Waco that through a miracle there were no bones broken, but that he would have to keep to his bed for at least a week. Otherwise he would never recover from the severe shock to his nervous system.

And Waco, recalling the horror of the preceding day, twisted his head round at every footstep in the hall, fearing that Waring had come to question him. He knew that he had done no wrong; in fact, he had told Pat that they had better drive back home. But a sense of shame at his cowardice, and the realization that his word was as water in evidence, that he was but a wastrel, a tramp, burdened him with an aching desire to get away--to hide himself from Waring's eyes, from the eyes of all men.

He kept telling himself that he had done nothing wrong, yet fear shook him until his teeth chattered. What could he have done even had he been courageous? Pat had had no chance.

He suffered with the misery of indecision. Habit inclined him to flee from the scene of the murder. Fear of the law urged him. Three nights after he had been brought to Grant, he dressed and crept down the back stairs, and made his way to the railroad station. Twice he had heard the midnight freight stop and cut out cars on the siding. He hid in the shadows until the freight arrived. He climbed to an empty box-car and waited. Trainmen crunched past on the cinders. A jolt and he was swept away toward the west. He sank into a half sleep as the iron wheels roared and droned beneath him.

Chapter XVIII

_A Piece of Paper_

In the little desert hotel at Stacey, Mrs. Adams was singing softly to herself as she moved about the dining-room helping Anita clear away the breakfast dishes. Mrs. Adams had heard from Lorry. He had secured a place in the Ranger Service. She was happy. His letter had been filled with enthusiasm for the work and for his chief, Bud Shoop. This in itself was enough to make her happy. She had known Bud in Las Cruces. He was a good man. And then--Jim had settled down. Only last week he had ridden over and told her how they were getting on with the work at the ranch. He had hinted then that he had laid his guns away. Perhaps he had wanted her to know _that_ more than anything else. She had kissed him good-bye. His gray eyes had been kind. "Some day, Annie," he had said.

Her face flushed as she recalled the moment.

A boot-heel gritted on the walk. She turned. Waring was standing in the doorway. His face was set and hard. Involuntarily she ran to him.

"What is it, Jim? Lorry?"

He shook his head. She saw at once that he was dressed for a long ride and that--an unusual circ.u.mstance--a gun swung at his hip. He usually wore a coat and carried his gun in a shoulder holster. But now he was in his shirt-sleeves. A dread oppressed her. He was ready on the instant to fight, but with whom? Her eyes grew big.

"What is it?" she whispered again.

"The Brewster boys got Pat."

"Not--they didn't kill him!"

Waring nodded.

"But, Jim--"

"In the Red Arroyo on the desert road. I found him. I came to tell you."

"And you are going--"

"Yes. I was afraid this would happen. Pat made a mistake."

"But, Jim! The law--the sheriff--you don't have to go."

"No," he said slowly.

"Then why do you go? I thought you would never do that again.

I--I--prayed for you, Jim. I prayed for you and Lorry. I asked G.o.d to send you back to me with your two hands clean. I told Him you would never kill again. Oh, Jim, I wanted you--here! Don't!" she sobbed.