Laramie Holds the Range Part 24

"You're surrounded, Abe. You can't get away. If you want to surrender, I'll guarantee your life. Come out unarmed and I'll meet you unarmed. If not, it's what Gorman and Dutch Henry got, for you, Abe."

The cabin gave no answer back. But Van Horn would not be baffled.

Knowing it would be suicide to venture closer he patiently sought his answer on the ground he now began to cover on his way back to the creek. And on the ground he found it.

"He's slipped us," Van Horn called out when Doubleday arrived, "but I've got his trail."

"Two hundred and fifty dollars to the man that gets him!" shouted Doubleday, huskily. Some of the boys gave a whoop and began to look around, but they did not scatter much.

Van Horn, losing no time, led Doubleday part way up the break along which he had crawled. Telltale traces of blood at irregular intervals, sometimes imprinted as if by a hand on the flat face of rock that bedded the wash; sometimes smeared on a starving bunch of gra.s.s, where it clung desperately to a crevice in the scant soil--all so slight and so well concealed that only the mere chance of Van Horn's crawling up the very break chosen by Hawk for his escape to the creek had revealed it to his pursuers. The tracker took the slender trail, followed the wounded rustler to the creek bottom and thence down the creek to its junction with the North Fork. There they lost the trail in a pool of water, nor could they pick it up again.

A mile below the fork of the Turkey stood Jim Laramie's cabin. The raiders had already entered on his land; his cattle and some of his horses were, in fact, grazing in and about the creek fork. The following of Hawk's trail had been a nerve-racking job. Hawk, his enemies knew, might be waiting at any turn in it and that meant, in all probability, death for someone. In consequence, the pioneering fell chiefly on Van Horn; even Stone showed little stomach for the job. But the trail was completely lost.

"There's a bunch of horses grazing at the fork," reported Van Horn, as Doubleday reached the front, "Laramie's, I guess--anyway, the trail's gone."

A council was held. Doubleday, long-headed and crafty, listened to all that was said. Van Horn finally asked for his opinion.

"I don't know no more than the rest of you; but a blind man can figure a few things out. He's. .h.i.t, ain't he?" Barb put the question as one not to be gainsaid and found none to say him nay. "He's looking for help, that's more'n likely, ain't it? He's a mile from Jim Laramie's cabin, not more; he's three miles from anybody else's--what?" he exclaimed, as Bill Bradley interrupted to suggest that it was less than two miles over to Ben Simeral's. "All right," shouted Barb, "Hawk's here, ain't he? He's close to Laramie. Laramie's his friend. Where would he go--what?"

Chopping his ideas out as with an ax, Doubleday showed his companions what they should have thought of without being told. "The thing to do," he added, "is to go down to Laramie's cabin and see what we can see--and find out what we can find out."

It was precisely what Bradley had feared would happen, but there was no escape from Doubleday's logic and no help for what others as well as Bradley feared might follow.

CHAPTER XVIII

HAWK QUARRELS WITH LARAMIE

On the morning the raiders entered the Falling Wall, Laramie had started with Henry Sawdy for the Reservation to appraise some allotted Indian lands. Laramie rode home that night; Sawdy, promising to stop at the ranch on his way down in the morning, stayed overnight at the Fort with Colonel Pearson. Laramie got home late. He was asleep next morning when a door was pushed open and a man walked unceremoniously in on him. To what instinct some mountain men owe their composure when disturbed in their sleep by a friend, as contrasted with the instant defense they offer in like circ.u.mstances to an enemy, it would be difficult to say--certainly there is a difference.

Laramie half opened his eyes to realize that Abe Hawk had come into his room and seated himself on the one chair. The sleepy man was not inclined to wake up. "You're early, Abe," was his only greeting. Hawk made no answer.

After a further effort the drowsy man roused himself to the attention that seemed demanded in the case: "Going somewhere?" he mumbled perfunctorily.

"Yes." Hawk's hard tone might have surprised his host for a moment; but if it did, drowsiness overpowered his senses once more and it was some time before he realized that his visitor was sitting silent at his side and that he himself ought to say something. In protest he shifted his comfortable position in bed: "Get your breakfast ready, Abe," he suggested, hospitably, but with his heavy eyes closed.

"I've had breakfast."

"Where you bound for today?"

"On a long trip."

"Which way?"

"Home."

"What do you mean, 'home'?"

"I mean h.e.l.l, Larrie--the home long waiting for me."

Laramie's eyes batted slowly. Not a half a dozen times in all their long acquaintance had Hawk shortened Laramie's name in speaking to him; and then only when he spoke as he rarely did from a depth always hidden from the men among whom his wasted life had been spent. Roused by something in the utterance of his guest, Laramie looked up.

If the sight was a shock, the mountain man gave no outward sign of it.

The lower right side of Hawk's face had been torn away as if by some explosion, and blood, darkened by clay and rude styptics, clotted the long beard that naturally fell in a glossy black. His disordered garments, blood-smeared and hanging loose--his coat sleeve and his shirt torn from his forearm for bandages, his soft hat jammed low over his eyes--for an instant, Laramie hardly recognized him. But the cold black eyes that looked out of the wreck of a man before him pierced so clearly the long shadows of the early light that Laramie had no choice but to realize it was Hawk and even the shock only served to restrain and steady him. He showed but little of his amazement when he sat up and spoke quietly: "What's up, Abe?"

"Night before last I was playing cards with Gorman over at Henry's.

After daylight Gorman went out for a bucket of water. We heard a rifle crack. I looked out the window. Stormy was tumbling.

"You know the draw that runs down past his corral? Barb Doubleday, Pettigrew, Van Horn, Stone and a bunch of cowboys and Texas men lay in that draw. It was h.e.l.l to pay from daylight till dark. The Dutchman got laid out cold right at the start. They tried to rush me. I stopped three of 'em and dug myself in. We went at it hammer and tongs. In the afternoon they put a hole through my whiskers. After awhile they clipped my shoulder. Then I got a bullet through my arm."

He held up his left forearm swathed in a ma.s.s of soiled and blood-soaked bandages. And he told of Van Horn's go-devil.

"The raid's on," muttered Laramie.

"Soon as it was dark, I began to dig under the sill," Hawk went on.

"They began lighting fires. I knew they couldn't keep those going a great while. About ten o'clock I crawled out under the front sill and got to the creek; I never was so gone for water in my life. I set a candle so it would fire the shack when it burned down and sneaked a horse from their bunch and got over to my place." He looked at his arm. "I tried to keep things bound up. Maybe I left a little red behind me. If I did, they'll be after me."

His story haltingly told; his utterance through his torn cheek thick and painful but savagely uncompromising; carrying a physical burden of wounds that would have overwhelmed a lesser man but with a deadly hate showing in his manner, Hawk, from sheer weakness, paused: "I went to my cabin to look for more cartridges," he added slowly, "and not a one was there left on the place." He hesitated again. "I didn't want to come here----"

Laramie sprang to his feet: "Where the h.e.l.l else would you go?"

Hawk heard unmoved the rough a.s.surance; perhaps his eyes flashed, for Laramie's voice rang strong and true. He already had his hand on Hawk's chair: "Come over here to the light," he said, "till we get some of this dirt off you. You need a bath, Abe. For a clean man you look like----"

Hawk put up his right hand: "I'll do for all the job that's left ahead of me."

"What job's left ahead of you?"

"You've got a rifle like mine, Jim; the Marlin you don't use."

"Well?"

"I come to see if you'd lend it to me again."

"Why not?"

"Got any sh.e.l.ls for it?" snapped Hawk.

"I guess so."

"I left the horse at the cabin to stand 'em off awhile. They'll lose a little time there. They'll come down the creek--can't come any other way. I'm going to wait for 'em in the timber."

"What for?"

"I'll finish with Doubleday and Van Horn, anyhow. Maybe I can with Stone."

"And they'll finish with you."

"After I get them three the rest are welcome to what's left of me.