The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 16

"It won't be wasting time, anyway," said the old Britisher.

Again, Wayland smiled. If it would _not_ be wasting time; then, they were already in pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?

A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no sc.r.a.p; so there, Dan Flood!"

Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.

"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.

"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!"

The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.

"Is he--_home_?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.

"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called 'way! Is there any message?"

Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door k.n.o.b.

"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald."

"There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for an outsider--"

"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about it."

He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.

"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye the sheriff's--woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the faintest gloss came over the saffron skin--of what? It was the same nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man who had come out from the Senator's ranch.

"Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the headlights rea.s.suringly.

The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes.

"How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the back door?"

"There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter.

"'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that--pot ash pate--" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age.

They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted their horses.

"Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense of law; but which way now?"

The old man left the reins hanging on the broncho's neck. The horses began cropping the gra.s.s. The Ranger was fumbling at his stirrup.

"A'm sore puzzled, Wayland! 'Tis not in the blood of a British born to go _outside_ law. Y'r no thinkin' that; are y', Wayland?"

"I am saying nothing! The law protects them in their lawlessness. It doesn't protect us in our lawfulness. The American citizen is the law-maker. There is only one thing for an American citizen to do--get to work and enforce his laws--"

"Then--G.o.d's name, Wayland, go ahead and do it! Take the lead! A'll follow! This trail go behind the mountain?"

"Yes, it brings us round behind! They have the start of us by three hours; but they'll camp to-night somewhere along the Lake Behind the Peak. Beyond that, there are some mighty bad slides. These rains have loosened snows. They'll hardly cross the slides beyond the lake but by daylight. If we can reach the lake to-day, we'll have a chance at 'em."

"Wayland, A'm on the last lap of _my_ trail! It doesn't matter what happens to me; but have you thought what might happen when we catch up on them? Those fellows are out to kill. We are out to arrest. Have you thought what that might mean at close quarters?"

"It's close quarters I'm seeking," said Wayland, "though it's hardly fair to drag you into the fight. All I want is a man as a witness who's got red blood that won't turn yellow. This Nation has been cowering behind the line of law, while the looters and skinners have disarmed our very firing line. It's time somebody risked his neck to reverse the order--"

"Git epp," said the old man roughly to his broncho.

The little pack mule took to the trail ears back at an easy lope; and the riders set off up the Pa.s.s at the rocking-chair trot of the plains-horseman. Gradually, the mountains crowded closer, in weather-stained rock walls, with a far whish as of wind or waters coming up from the canyon bottom; the sky overhead narrowing to a cleft of blue with the frayed pines and hemlocks hanging from the granite blocks, fragile as ferns against the sky. You looked back; the rocks had closed to a solid wall; you looked down; the river filling the canyon with a hollow hush had dwarfed to a glistening silver thread with the forest dwarfed banks of moss. It was a sombre world, all the more shadowy from that cleft of blue over head where an eagle circled with lonely cry.

The Pa.s.s was like the pa.s.sage of birth and death from life to larger life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years--no sound but the raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft of blue smote the rocks with sunlight, the doors of the mountains would open again to larger life in another Valley.

The horses were no longer trotting. They were climbing and blowing and pausing where the trail of the Pa.s.s took sharp turns, back and forward, up and up, till the eagle was circling below. Both men had dismounted and were walking Indian file to the rear, Wayland carrying his own cased rifle. The trail was now running along the edge of an escarpment no wider than a saddle, sheer drop below, sheer wall above.

"How would they come out from the gully on this trail, Wayland? I have been watching for the tracks. They're not ahead of us."

"Gully ends in a blind wall above. As I make it, they'd push their nags up and come down on the Pa.s.s trail somewhere below the precipice ahead. We can take our time; I have been watching. There are no tracks ahead. The trail above is worse than this. Devil takes care of his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."

"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"

"About 7,000 feet drop, I think. This is the top of the Pa.s.s. We go down after we leave the precipice! See--? the horses know it! They are taking their top-turn rest."

The two men glanced below. In the shadowed depths, they could see the River tearing down a white fume, a pantherine thing leaping--leaping--; and the hollow roar of water filled the canyon with a quiver that was tangible. Far below, the eagle flew lazily, lifting and falling to the throb of the canyon winds. Suddenly, the air was cut by a piercing whistle. Both men jumped.

"It's only a marmot." The Ranger pointed over his shoulder to the little gray beast sitting on the face of the rock. "Curious place, this Pa.s.s! There is an echo here--if it were not that we don't want to announce ourselves, I'd let you hear it. If you yell or sing, you can hear the thing dancing along that opposite wall--Kind of uncanny, the echo voice, in the mist here sometimes."

But the whistle of the marmot had also startled the horses. The tired pack mule gave a hobbling jump and came to a stand. A stone no larger than a horse-shoe kicked loose, tottered on the edge, and went bounding over. It struck the tier of rock below with clattering echo, displaced another stone twice its size, then bounced--bounced--and a slither of slaty rock the size of a house wrenched out--shot into mid-air with crash and sharp clappering echoes--Then the Pa.s.s was filled with the thundering roll. They saw it sink--sink--sink and fade, while the echo still rocketted amid the rock tops--sink--sink--sink--no larger than a spool in the purple shadows, till with a plunge it disappeared.

"Whew, it _would_ be going if one went over." The old man mowed the sweat from his forehead and drew a breath.

On the instant, the hollow chasm of the canyon split to the crash of a rifle shot that rocketted and quaked and repeated in splintering echoes; and a bullet pinged at Wayland's feet.

"That's splitting the air for you--Wayland."

"Drop down, Sir," urged the Ranger, pulling the old frontiersman to shelter of the upper rocks. "They have come out above. They have heard that cursed stone. That's only a chance shot to learn where we are. They can't come behind. They have got to go down ahead--"

"And the fat's in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse,"

deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt beneath the leather coat.

"They won't understand this pursuit at all," explained Wayland.

"Sheriff Flood is the guarantee of safety for any criminal in the country side. They'll think it a citizens' posse. Where this trail comes down at the end of the precipice is a crag. Will you hide behind that, sir? I'll go above and head them down. I'm not asking you to risk your life. They'll not see you till they gallop down."

"But you are risking your own life if you go up?"

"So does the fellow who has slipped on a banana peel," said Wayland.