The Ranchman Part 26

But they were traveling fast when they reached the timber grove in which Carrington's men were concealed; and yet on the damp earth of the trail, where the sunlight could not penetrate, and where the leaves of past summers had fallen, to rot and weave a pulpy carpet, the rush of Spotted Tail's pa.s.sing created little sound.

Within a hundred feet of the spot where Carrington's men were concealed, Spotted Tail shot his ears forward stiffly and raised his muzzle inquiringly. Taylor, noting the action, and suspecting that instinct had warned Spotted Tail of the approach of another horse, drew the animal down and rode forward at a walk, for he felt that it must be Carrington's horse which was approaching.

Rounding a sharp turn in the trail, Taylor could look ahead for perhaps a hundred feet. He saw no rider advancing toward him, and he leaned forward, slapping the black's neck in playful reproach.

As he moved he heard the heavy crash of a pistol shot and felt the bullet sing past his head. Another pistol barked venomously from some brush on his right, and still another from his left.

But none of the bullets struck Taylor. For the black horse, startled by Taylor's playful movement when all his senses were strained to detect the location of his kind on the trail, had made an involuntary forward leap, thus whisking his rider out of the line of fire. And before either of the three men could shoot again, Spotted Tail had flashed down the trail-a streak of somber black against the green background of the trees.

He fled over the hundred feet of straight trail and had vanished around a bend before the Carrington men could move their weapons around impeding branches of the brush that covered them. There was no stopping Spotted Tail now, for he was in a frenzy of terror-and he made a mere rushing black blot as he emerged from the timber and fled across an open s.p.a.ce toward another wood-the wood that surrounded the big house.

Standing on the front porch of the big house, nervously smoking a cigar, his face set in sullen lines, his eyes fixed on the Dawes trail, Carrington heard the shots. He sighed, grinned maliciously, and relaxed his vigilance.

"He's settled by now," he said.

He looked at one of the chairs standing on the porch, thought of sitting in one of them to await the coming of the three men, decided he was too impatient to sit, and began walking back and forth on the porch.

He had thrown a half-smoked cigar away and was lighting another when he saw a black blot burst from the edge of a timber-clump beyond an open s.p.a.ce. The match flared and went out as Carrington held it to the end of the cigar, for there was something strangely familiar in the shape of the black blot-even with it heading directly toward him. An instant later, the blot looming larger in his vision, Carrington dropped cigar and match and stood staring with wild, fear-haunted eyes at the rushing black horse.

Carrington stood motionless a little longer-until the black horse, its rider sitting straight in the saddle, in cowboy fashion, reached the edge of the wood surrounding the house. Then Carrington, cursing, his lips in a hideous pout, drew a pistol from a hip-pocket. And when the black horse was within fifty feet of him, and still coming at a speed which there was no gauging, Carrington leveled the pistol.

Once-twice-three, four, five, six times he pulled the trigger of the weapon. Carrington saw a grim, mocking smile on the rider's face, and knew none of his bullets had taken effect.

Unarmed now, he was suddenly stricken with a panic of fear; and while the rider of the black horse was dismounting at the edge of the porch, Carrington dove for the front door of the house and vanished inside, slamming the door behind him, directly in the rider's face.

When Taylor threw the door open he saw Carrington, far back in the room, swinging a chair over his head. At Taylor's appearance he threw the chair with all the force his frenzy of fear could put into the effort.

Taylor ducked, and the chair flew past him, sailing uninterruptedly outside and over the porch railing.

Carrington ran through the big front room, through the next room-the sitting-room-knocking chairs over in his flight, throwing a big center table at his silent, implacable pursuer. He slammed the sitting-room door and tried to lock it, but he could not turn the key quickly enough, and Taylor burst the door open, almost plunging against Carrington as he came through it.

Carrington ran into the dining-room, shoved the dining-room table in Taylor's way as Taylor tried to reach him; but Taylor leaped over the obstruction, and when Carrington dodged into Marion Harlan's room, Taylor was so close that he might have grasped the big man.

Taylor had said no word. The big man saw two guns swinging at Taylor's hips, and he wondered vaguely why the man did not use them. It occurred to Carrington as he plunged through Marion Harlan's room into Martha's, and from there to the kitchen, and back again to the dining-room, that Taylor was not going to shoot him, and his panic partially left him.

And yet there was a gleam in Taylor's eyes that made his soul cringe in terror-the cold, bitter fury of a peaceloving man thoroughly aroused.

Twice, as Taylor pursued Carrington through the sitting-room again and into another big room that adjoined it, Carrington's courage revived long enough to permit him to consider making a stand against Taylor, but each time as he stiffened with the determination, the terrible rage in Taylor's eyes dissuaded him, and he continued to evade the clash.

But he knew that the clash must come, and when, in their rapid, headlong movements, Carrington came close to the front door and tried to slip out of it, Taylor lunged against him and struck at him, the fist just grazing Carrington's jaw, the big man understood that Taylor was intent on beating him with his fists.

Had it not been for his previous encounter with Taylor, Carrington would not have hesitated, for he knew how to protect himself in a fight; but there was something in Taylor's eyes now to add to the memory of that other fight, and Carrington wanted no more of it.

But at last he was forced to stand. Ducking to evade the blow aimed at his jaw when he tried to dart out of the front door, he slipped.

Reeling, in an effort to regain his equilibrium, he plunged into another big room. It was a room that was little used-an old-fashioned parlor, kept trim and neat against the coming of visitors, but a room whose gloominess the occupants of the house usually avoided.

The shades were down, partly concealing heavy wooden blinds-which were closed. And the only light in the room was that which came from a little square window high up in the side wall.

Before Carrington could regain his balance Taylor had entered the room.

He closed the door behind him, placed his back against it, locked it, and grinned felinely at the big man.

"Your men are coming, Carrington," he said-"hear them?" In the silence that followed his words both stood, listening to the beat of hoofs near the house. "They'll be trying to get in here in a minute," went on Taylor. "But before they get in I'm going to knock your head off!" And without further warning he was upon Carrington, striking bitterly.

It seemed to Carrington that the man was endowed with a savage strength entirely out of proportion to his stature, and that he was able to start terrific, deadening blows from any angle. For though Carrington was a strong man and had had some fighting experience, he could neither evade Taylor's blows nor stand against the impact of them.

He went reeling around the room under the impetus of Taylor's terrible rushes, struggling to defend himself, to dodge, to clinch, to evade somehow the fists that were flying at him from all directions. He could not get an instant's respite in which to set himself. Three times in succession he was knocked down so heavily that the house shook with the crash of his body striking the floor, and each time when he got to his feet he tried to fight Taylor off in an endeavor to set himself for a blow. But he could not. He was knocked against the walls of the room, and hammered away from them with stiff, jolty, venomous blows that jarred him from head to heels. He tried vainly to cover up-with his arms locked about his head he crouched and tried to rush Taylor off his feet, knowing he was stronger than the other, and that his only hope was in clinching. But Taylor held him off with savage uppercuts and terrific short-arm swings that smashed his lips.

He began to mutter in a whining, vicious monotone; twice he kicked at Taylor, and twice he was knocked down as a punishment for his foul methods. Finding his methods ineffectual, and discovering that covering his face with his arms did not materially lessen the punishment he was receiving, he began to stand up straight, taking blows in an effort to land one.

But Taylor eluded him; Carrington's blows did not land. Raging and muttering, roaring with impotent pa.s.sion, he whipped the air with his arms, almost jerking them out of their sockets.

Stiff and taut, his muscles accommodating themselves to every demand he made on them, and in perfect coordination with his brain-and the purpose of his brain to inflict upon Carrington the maximum of punishment for his dastardly attack on Marion Harlan-Taylor worked fast and furiously. For he heard Carrington's three men in the next room; he heard them try the door; heard them call to Carrington.

And then, convinced that the fight must be ended quickly, before the men should break down the door and have him at a disadvantage, Taylor finished it. He smothered Carrington with a succession of stiff-arm, straight punches that glazed the other's eyes and sent him reeling around the room. And, at last, over in a corner near the little window, Carrington went down flat on his back, his eyes closed, his arms flung wide.

Panting from his exertions, Taylor drew his guns and ran to one of the front windows. They opened upon the porch, and, peering through the blinds, Taylor saw one of the men standing at one of the windows, trying to peer into the room. The other two, Taylor knew, were at the door-he could hear them talking in the silence that had followed the final falling of Carrington.

With a gun in each hand, Taylor approached the door. He was compelled to sheath one of the guns, finding that it interfered with the turning of the key in the lock; and he had sheathed it and was slowly turning the key, intending to throw the door open suddenly and take his chance with the two men on the other side of it, when he saw a shadow darken the little window above where Carrington lay.

He wheeled quickly, saw a man's face at the window, caught the glint of a pistol. He snapped a shot at the man, swinging his gun over his head to keep it from striking the door as he turned. But at the movement the man's pistol roared, gla.s.s tinkling on the floor with the report. The air in the room rocked with the explosion of Taylor's pistol, but a heavy blow on Taylor's left shoulder, accompanied by a twinge of pain, as though a white-hot iron had suddenly been plunged through it, spoiled Taylor's aim, and his bullet went into the ceiling. As he staggered back from the door he saw the man's face at the window, set in a triumphant grin. Then, as Taylor flattened against the wall to steady himself for another shot, the face disappeared.

For an instant Taylor rested against the wall, his arms outstretched along it to keep himself from falling, for the bullet which had struck him had hurt him badly. The wound was in the left shoulder, though, and high, and therefore not dangerous, yet he knew it had robbed his left arm of most of its strength-there was no feeling in the fingers that groped along the wall.

He stepped again to the door and softly turned the key in the lock. He heard no sound in the room beyond the door, and, thinking that the men, curious over the shooting, had gone outside, he jerked the door open.

The movement was greeted with deafening report and a smoke-streak that blinded Taylor momentarily. In just the instant before the smoke-streak Taylor had caught a glimpse of a man standing near the center of the room beyond the door, and though he was rather disconcerted by the powder-flash and the searing of his left cheek by a bullet, he let his own gun off twice in as many seconds, and had the grim satisfaction of seeing the man stagger and tumble headlong to the floor.

Taylor peered once at the man, to see if he needed further attention, decided he did not, and ran toward the front door, which opened upon the porch.

He was just in time to see one of Carrington's men sticking his head around a corner of the house. It was the man who had shot him from the little window. Taylor's gun and the man's roared simultaneously. Taylor had missed, for the man dodged back, and Taylor staggered, for the man's bullet had struck him in the left thigh. He leaped, though limping, toward the corner, and when almost there a pistol crashed behind him, the bullet hitting his left shoulder, near where the other had gone in, the force of it spinning him clear around, so that he reeled and brought up against a porch column where it joined the rail.

Grimly setting himself, grinning bitterly with the realization that the men had him between them, Taylor stood momentarily, fighting to overcome the terrible weakness that had stolen over him. His knees were trembling, the house, trees, and sky were agitated in sickening convolutions, and yet when he saw the head of a man appear from around a corner of the house at his right, he snapped a shot at it, and instantly as it was withdrawn he staggered to the corner, lurching heavily as he went, and turning just as he reached it to reply to a shot sent at him from the other corner of the house.

A smoke-spurt met him as he reeled around the corner nearest him, and his knees sagged as he aimed his gun at a blurring figure in front of him. He saw the man go down, but his own strength was spent, and he knew the last bullet had struck him in a vital spot.

Staggering drunkenly, he started for the side of the house and brought up against it with a crash. Again, as he had done inside the house, he stretched his arms out, flattening himself against the wall, but this time the arms were hanging more limply.

He was seeing things through a crimson haze, and raising a hand, he wiped his eyes-and could see better, though there was a queer dimness in his vision and the world was still traveling in eccentric circles.

He saw a blur in front of him-two men, he thought, though he knew he had accounted for two of the three gunmen who had followed him to the house. Then he heard a laugh-coa.r.s.e and brutal-in a voice that he knew-Carrington's.

With heartbreaking effort he brought up his right hand, bearing the pistol. He was trying to swing it around to bring it to bear upon one of the two dancing figures in front of him, when a crushing blow landed on his head, and he knew one of the men had struck him with a fist. He felt his own weapon go off at last-it seemed he had been an age pressing on the trigger-and he heard a voice again-Carrington's-saying: "d.a.m.n him; he's shot me!" He laughed aloud as a gun roared close to him; he felt another twinge of pain somewhere around where the other twinges had come-or on the other side-he did not know; and he sank slowly, still pressing the trigger of his pistol, though not knowing whether or not he was doing any damage. And then the eccentrically whirling world became a black blur, soundless and void.

CHAPTER XXI-A MAN FACES DEATH