Trailin'! Part 58

"What d'you mean?" cried Conklin. "Steve, are you goin' to leave us here to finish the job you started?"

"Finish it? You fools! Don't you see that Drew and Bard is pals now? If we couldn't finish Bard alone, how'd we make out ag'in' the two of them?

The game's up, boys; the thing that's left is for us to save our hides--if we can--before them two start after us. If they do start, then G.o.d help us all!"

He was already in the saddle.

"Wait!" called Conklin. "One of 'em's a tenderfoot. The other has left his gun here. What we got to fear from 'em?"

And Nash snarled in return: "If there was a chance, don't you think I'd take it? Don't you see I'm givin' up everythin' that amounts to a d.a.m.n with me? Tenderfoot? He may act Eastern and he may talk Eastern, but he's got Western blood. There ain't no other way of explainin' it. And Drew? He didn't have no gun when he busted the back of old Piotto. I say, there's two men, armed or not, and between 'em they can do more'n all of us could dream of. Boys, are you comin'?"

They went. The wounded were dragged to their feet and hoisted to their horses, groaning. At a slow walk they started down through the trees.

Evening fell; the shadows slanted about them. They moved faster--at a trot--at a gallop. They were like men flying from a certain ruin. Beyond the margin of the bright lake they fled and lost themselves in the vast, secret heart of the mountain-desert.

CHAPTER XLI

SALLY WEEPS

All that day, in a silence broken only by murmurs and side glances, Anthony and Sally Fortune moved about the old house from window to window, and from crack to crack, keeping a steady eye on the commanding rocks above. In one of those murmurs they made their resolution. When night came they would rush the rocks, storm them from the front, and take their chance with what might follow. But the night promised to give but little shelter to their stalking.

For in the late afternoon a broad moon was already climbing up from the east; the sky was cloudless; there was a threat of keen, revealing moonshine for the night. Only desperation could make them attempt to storm the rock, but by the next morning, at the latest, reinforcements were sure to come, and then their fight would be utterly hopeless.

So when the light of the sun mellowed, grew yellow and slant, and the shadows sloped from tree to tree, the two became more silent still, drawn and pale of face, waiting. Anthony at a window, Sally at a crack which made an excellent loophole, they remained moveless.

It was she who noted a niche which might serve as a loophole for one of the posse, and she fired at it, aiming low. The clang of the bullet against rock echoes clearly back to her, like the soft chime of a sheep bell from the peaceful distance. Then, as if in answer to her shot, around the edge of the rocks appeared a moving rag of white which grew into William Drew, bearing above his head the white sign of the truce.

In her astonishment she looked to Bard. He was quivering all over like a hound held on a tight leash, with the game in sight, hungry to be slipped upon it. The edge of his tongue pa.s.sed across his colourless lips. He was like a man who long has ridden the white-hot desert and is now about to drink. There was the same wild gleam in his eyes; his hand shook with nervous eagerness as he shifted and balanced his revolver.

Listening, in her awe, she heard the sound of his increasing panting; a sound like the breath of a running man approaching her swiftly.

She slipped to his side.

"Anthony!"

He did not answer; his gun steadied; the barrel began to incline down; his left eye was squinting. She dropped to her knees and seized his wrist.

"Anthony, what are you going to do?"

"It's Drew!" he whispered, and she did not recognize his voice. "It's the grey man I've waited for. It's he!"

In such a tone a dying man might speak of his hope of heaven--seeing it unroll before him in his delirium.

"But he's carrying the flag of truce, Anthony. You see that?"

"I see nothing except his face. It blots out the rest of the world. I'll plant my shot there--there in the middle of those lips."

"Anthony, that's William Drew, the squarest man on the range."

"Sally Fortune, that's William Drew, who murdered my father!"

"Ah!" she said, with sharply indrawn breath. "It isn't possible!"

"I saw the shot fired."

"But not this way, Anthony; not from behind a wall!"

His emotion changed him, made him almost a stranger to her. He was shaking and palsied with eagerness.

"I could do nothing as bad as the crime he has done. For twenty years the dread of his coming haunted my father, broke him, aged him prematurely. Every day he went to a secret room and cared for his revolver--this gun here in my hand, you see? He and I--we were more than father and son--we were pals, Sally. And then this devil called my father out into the night and shot him. d.a.m.n him!"

"You've got to listen to me, Anthony--"

"I'll listen to nothing, for there he is and--"

She said with a sharp, rising ring in her voice: "If you shoot at him while he carries that white flag I'll--I'll send a bullet through your head--that's straight! We got only one law in the mountains, and that's the law of honour. If you bust that, I'm done with you, Anthony."

"Take my gun--take it quickly, Sally, I can't trust myself; looking at him, I can see the place where the bullet should strike home."

He forced the b.u.t.t of his revolver into her hands, rose, and stepped to the door, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Tell me what he does."

"He's comin' straight toward us as if he didn't fear nothin'--grey William Drew! He's not packin' a gun; he trusts us."

"The better way," answered Bard. "Bare hands--the better way!"

"He has killed men with those bare hands of his. I can see 'em clear--great, blunt-fingered hands, Anthony. He's coming around the side of the house. I'll go into the front room."

She ran past Anthony and paused in the habitable room, spying through a crack in the wall. And Anthony stood with his eyes tightly closed, his head bowed. The image of the leashed hound came more vividly to her when she glanced back at him.

"He's walkin' right up the path. There he stops."

"Where?"

"Right beside the old grave."

"Anthony!" called a deep voice. "Anthony, come out to me!"

He started, and then groaned and stopped himself.

"Is the sign of the truce still over his head, Sally?"

"Yes."

"I daren't go out to him--I'd jump at his throat."

She came beside him.