The Sheriff of Badger Part 44

"I'm going after a man I've hunted for sixteen years," he said.

"Steve Moffatt?"

"Steve Moffatt," his father replied. "How did you know? Him and me have been shooting each other up since we were old enough to carry a gun."

Lafe, Jr., turned to his task of repairing the cinch again, and said nothing more for a few minutes. His father was inside the corral, roping a fresh mount.

"You might catch me ol' Beanbelly, Dad," Lafe, Jr., cried to him.

"What for?"

"Why, you're going to take me along, ain't you? You're going to give me a chance at him, too, ain't you?"

"You're d.a.m.n whistlin' I am," said his father. "Come and get your horse."

CHAPTER XLIV

THE DUEL IN THE MALPAIS

For twelve days Lafe and his son followed the trail of the outlaw.

Sometimes they lost trace of him, but Moffatt could never refrain from trifling displays of bravado which betrayed his ident.i.ty everywhere he moved, so that Johnson was able to pick up his tracks without much loss of time. He was never more than three days behind Moffatt.

Evidently foreseeing that the telegraph of the entire continent would be put in service to capture him, Moffatt did not attempt to get out of the country by train or by any of the frequented roads of travel. He kept to the by-trails and the wildest regions. Instead of stealing over the Border, he headed north. Lafe heard of him one day in a mountain hamlet; the next at the home of a nester, in a deep valley thirty miles distant.

So with his son he followed him along the Border, up into New Mexico and across it, over the San Andres Mountains and onward towards the Capitan range.

At the Bar W headquarters near Carrizozo he learned that a man like the one he sought had taken dinner there and had later ridden onward into the Malpais. Accordingly Johnson and his son followed into these bad lands.

When they started, the sun was glaring ferociously from a pale blue sky and the dust of the flats rose like fine powder under their horses'

feet. On their one side was an expanse of baked clay, loose and flaky like a crust of pastry, that stretched away to the base of some foothills where were areas of green, dotted with grazing cattle. Beyond the hills a mountain gloomed, mist-capped. In the right foreground was a grove of trees with a red house nestling in the midst. A windmill rose beside the house, and not far off, standing naked on the parched plain, was an adobe structure, square, flat-roofed and with a single stove-pipe chimney. These were the Bar W headquarters.

Ahead of the two the level country terminated abruptly at a dull red line, and beyond that was a fit abode for lost souls--twisted, gnarled heaps of metal and rock, a torn land where nothing of life stayed voluntarily.

They had set out from the Bar W on Wednesday evening. On Thursday afternoon Johnson and Moffatt were taking pot shots at each other from behind heaps of lava far out in the Malpais. Near the sheriff was his son. Lafe, Jr., lay in a fissure behind a mound of slag-iron and endeavored conscientiously to shoot off the top of Moffatt's head as it bobbed for the fraction of a second from behind another mound a hundred yards away. They had abandoned their horses when they entered the Malpais, because the footing was so treacherous that they could make as good progress by walking. Moreover, there was nothing of sustenance for the beasts in all the forty miles of waste. Coming upon Moffatt unexpectedly as he was examining his jaded horse's feet, the sheriff had not been able to carry into execution his plan of hiding Lafe, Jr., in a position where he would be safe and could yet render a.s.sistance. So now Lafe, Jr., flattened out in his fissure in equal danger with his father, and exulting vastly. Of course, what the pursuers should have done, according to the best military tactics, was to separate and come upon the outlaw from two sides, thus exposing him to a shot. About the only objection that could be urged to this strategy was that they couldn't do it. Moffatt could see their every movement and they dare not budge from their shelter. Whatever the quality of his courage, n.o.body could deny that Steve was terrible with a rifle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "So now Lafe, Jr., flattened out in his fissure in equal danger with his father."]

"How about that one, Lafe?" the outlaw yelled, as a bullet from his 25-35 skimmed along Johnson's shoulder and back.

"Two inches too high, Steve," said Lafe, without resentment.

Shortly after this the two pursuers ceased firing, though maintaining a watchful eye for any movement of the fugitive, and partook ravenously of bread and cold beef, canned tomatoes and tepid water.

Night was creeping over the Malpais. Away to their right yawned the crater whence this monstrous flow of lava had anciently spouted. From its base to its rim was about two hundred feet. On every side were the distorted, grotesque knolls of melted rocks, brick-red in color, stretching for leagues like a slag-heap from the fires of giants. Not a moving thing had they seen in their progress through this region. A tiny shrub clung here and there in a fissure, where an inch or two of soil had been gathered by the winds, and once Lafe, Jr., had narrowly escaped falling into a devil's pincushion. About three miles to the south towered the highest point in the Malpais, a precipitous hill of scorched rock, crowned with a blunt shaft. Atop this shaft was a dark object.

Presently it soared into the heavens. It was an eagle.

Johnson scanned the western sky and the glory of the setting sun in its halo of gold and crimson and purple. Then he pointed to where the hosts of the storm kings were gathering above the pines just below El Capitan's peak. From the thickest of the ma.s.s a flash of lightning licked downward.

"The cook done told me yesterday," he said to his son, "that that ol'

mountain yonder is always raising h.e.l.l. If the lightning gets going strong, there're better places to be in than these here Malpais, son."

"I reckon you're right," said the boy, not without an anxious glance upward.

They exchanged shots twice with Moffatt before the dark came. With its coming they felt a warm splash of rain upon their faces, and in a leaping flash that illuminated the heavens, they beheld El Capitan swiftly despatching his cloud warriors over the country.

"It's getting blacker'n the wash basin at headquarters," said Lafe, Jr., with a nervous laugh. "Moffatt will give us the slip easy in the dark, Dad."

"He won't travel far in this storm, son."

Nor did he attempt it. The rain burst upon them in squalls that drove in regular procession like waves of the sea, and back of it, urging it forward, rode a hurricane of wind, shrieking and tearing among the mounds. From north to south the lightning flared; they could smell it.

The detonations of the thunder rocked the earth. A great jagged spear was hurled upon the pile where the eagle had sat his vigil, and their starting eyes had a momentary vision of the awful impact. Lafe, Jr., crawled close to his father. He was shivering.

"Do you reckon we'll be killed, Dad? Look at the lightning."

To right, to left, behind them and in front, the forked flashes played upon the metal heaps, the splitting strokes blinding them with blue and green glares. It was a carnival of fire. Johnson stared fascinated, his whole being numbed. A loafer wolf, his tail between his legs, whining dolefully, slunk past them to his den. He did not see or, seeing, did not heed, his hereditary foes.

An especially brilliant flash, followed on the instant by a shock of thunder, brought the sheriff half-way to his feet, so close did it feel.

In their ears sounded a wild, immeasurably plaintive scream, and he peered over the mound.

"That's a horse!" he shouted close to his son's ear. "They yell something awful when they're mortal scared. Yes, I swan there's Steve's horse laying on its side on a rock."

Lafe, Jr., was mumbling to himself, but his words were unintelligible, although Lafe afterward a.s.sured Hetty that he heard "Now I lay me,"

quite distinctly. However that may be, his son took heart and began to grope about in the dark behind him.

"What's the matter, Lafe?" asked his father anxiously. "Anything wrong, boy?"

"I'm looking for my slicker. I brought it along."

"What do you want your slicker for? You're soaked through now. You can't get any wetter."

"I'll feel sort of safer," said the boy obstinately. "Here it is. I'm going to put it on."

He got to his knees to don the sticky, clinging coat, and as he held it extended loosely in his hands to discover the armholes, a fierce gust of wind whipped it from his grasp and it flew high over their heads with a loud flapping, straight towards Moffatt's hiding-place. A shout, a shot and maniacal laughter came to them faintly against the tempest.

Peeping over their barrier, in a succession of flashes that lighted up the wastes for miles, they made out Moffatt standing on top of his mound with his hands raised to the sky. His hat was gone and his rifle he had thrown away. For a full minute he was blotted from their sight.

Then, in another illumination, they say him running towards them, laughing wildly.

"It's the angel of the Lord!" he shrilled to the contending skies. "It's the angel of the Lord. I seen him."

The renegade ran a dozen steps more, whirled dizzily and toppled to the earth. Shaking off his son's imploring hands, Johnson sprang into the dark. Three minutes later he was back, dragging Moffatt by the arms and shoulders.

"The lightning done hit him, I reckon," he panted. "Singed down both sides, he is. I reckon he got hit twice. He ain't dead--not him."

Moffatt regained consciousness in a few minutes, but the horror of it was still upon him, and his imagination peopled the night with avenging spirits. He cowered down between the two and endeavored to interpose the boy's body between him and the elements.