ZION JORE—OUTLAW
Was this the terrible killer who had thrown half a state in panic? Was this the fiend around whom centered scores of hair-raising, blood-and-thunder adventures? Was this, according to the grisly fancy of the superstitious, the inhuman adept in black magic? He did not look it, this young fellow in buckskin, standing on a high butte overlooking Big Sandy. He did not look terrible. He did not look like a killer. But he looked very, very human—standing there, talking to his horse, a tender, whimsical smile on his lips, his long black hair blowing back from a wild, sweet, restless face that gave no hint of the ferocity and cunning accredited to him. He looked like any young fellow of his own age, but far, far wearier than most.
He didn’t look like an outlaw, any more than his superb, trim-limbed, creamy-skinned stallion looked like the king of a wild mustang band. Yet his cool self-confidence, gained in many victorious encounters, was clearly shown in his standing thus, with no sign of nervousness, only half a mile from the town where a determined sheriff, pilloried by an outraged populace, sought his life.
His weird blue eyes, narrowed against the glare of midafternoon, were on the town that sprawled below him like “a dark-hued lizard on the dark-hued sand.”
“It’s sleepin’,” he told the stallion, his fingers straying down that high-arched golden neck. “But we’ll wake it up. We’ll sure surprise ’em. They don’t think we’re in fifty miles of here. We wasn’t last night. They think we’d be a-scared to come back here anyway in wide open day. But we don’t scare, do we, pony? We go where we like. Nothin’ stops us. When the sun says three … we’ll go. It ain’t much after two yet. We got to wait. We got to time it right. At three. Then, if our scheme works, we’ll get Uncle Yance and Abel out of jail, so they can go home. They come out to find us. They thought I couldn’t take care of myself. But I can. And I’ll take care of them.”
Eyes still on the town and softly chuckling, as any child might envisage the working out of a prank. “We’ll stir it up, you bet,” he assured the horse, that was so tremblingly responsive to every word. “They say nothin’ does it like a bank robbin’. Just like René told me, folks is crazy about money. Store it … like bees do honey. We’ll rob their cache, and they’ll do like wild bees … take after the first movin’ thing. That’ll be me … and you, Black Wing. Somebody’ll git stung. But”—with a wild laugh—“it won’t be us!”
The horse stamped as if eager to be off, but young Zion soothed him. “Not yet, Black Wing. Not till three o’clock … that’s when banks shut up. That’s what that prospector we stayed with told us. Oh, he told us a lot about banks. He thought I was a fool not to know. But he’ll know who the fool was when he hears. He’ll know it was Zion Jore he was talkin’ to. He’ll feel green, the way he talked about me … not knowin’ who I was. Tellin’ me things I done, stretchin’ ’em out of all sense, makin’ up some. But we owe him a lot for tellin’ us how Pat Dolan got my uncles in that ol’ line cabin where I used to stop at. Bet that prospector’ll cuss he didn’t try to get me and get the reward he said was on me. There’s a reward on us, Black Wing.”
Strangely, his tired figure straightened, and his dark face beamed, as if a medal for valor had been pinned on him. “Jores,” proudly he informed Black Wing, “always has rewards on them. I’m worth something, too. Mebbe as much as Jerico.”
But he was glad the old miner hadn’t tried to take him. He’d have had to kill him, and he hated to kill anyone. “But,” he told the horse bewilderedly, “I can’t live out here, and not. I ain’t hurt anybody yet that wasn’t tryin’ to hurt me. Trouble is, everybody does, soon as they find out who I am. Lots of ways”—the words were dragged from him—“it was better in the basin.”
Almost against his will, his eyes were drawn back to the black mountain range, to the great cup against the burnished heavens, and fixed on it with awful longing, longing that had grown all the endless time he had been running wild, that kept the basin always in his mind. In times of peril—and most times were perilous—he would see the Picture Rocks. In comparative security, sheltered for the night by some unsuspecting host or stretched out with Black Wing in some lonely spot, sleep never brought such oblivion that he did not see the basin.
He would see it all green and glowing in the spring. He would see it all summer-tanned and riotous with autumn colors. He would see it when snow lay on the rims and the naked trees were clothed with frosty rime, all silver desolation. By the sun’s light, he would see it, by stars, and moon, and dawn. And when there was no light of any kind, he could see the basin, the blue and shimmering lake that was as variable in its moods as himself, the changeless painted figures. He would miss them and feel they missed him—as if they had the power to feel, the living breath that his imagination had always imbued them with. He would see …
“If I just could see Eden.” He faltered to Black Wing, heartsick for more than the mental image of his sister. “I’d sure listen to her. I’d tell her she was right.”
And his mother … “She’d be proud of me, I bet, if she knowed all the things I’ve done.”
Something hot and wet touched his cheek then. Furiously, he brushed it off with a buckskin sleeve. “You can’t hardly just ride off,” in broken apology to the horse. “Lovin’ folks is strings on a man.”
Wistfully, he thought, waiting there for three o’clock, how quiet and peaceful the basin was. In there he knew every tree and plant and bird, and they loved him. Out here, everything was strange and hated him. There was something wrong with him—some place. He didn’t know what it was. If he did, he could fix it. It hadn’t mattered in there. You had to think every minute out here. And it made his head ache to think. He pressed his hands to it now to ease the throb. It wasn’t fun running—now, he’d got his run out. No fun bein’ chased like a rabbit when the hounds got after it.
My pard’s in there, he thought. Somebody held the pass that day. It musta been René. If it was, Uncle Abel wouldn’t send him away. I could have fun in there with René.
A long moment he stood, his haggard face lifted to the Picture Rocks. Then, his lips quivering, “I’ll bet you’re homesick,” shamefacedly, he accused Black Wing.
Responsive to this, as to all else, the horse tossed his sleek head against Zion’s breast.
“Well,” Zion tried to restrain his eagerness, “we can go back … if you’re homesick. But”—he was firm about this—“not yet! We gotta go back with our tails up. We gotta finish our work out here. We’ll get Yance and Abel out of jail. Then we’ll get Dad out of that prison. Then”—his eyes flashing lightning—“I’ll kill Shang! I don’t mind that. He needs killin’. We’ll do them three things, Black Wing. Then we’ll go home.”
Three tasks as great as ever the twelve labors of Hercules, yet of no moment to him. To Zion Jore, it was as if they were already done. He saw himself riding home in triumph, saw the hounds bounding to meet him, saw himself surrounded by those who loved him.
“We’ll see the folks,” he whispered wearily to the horse, “and the lake, and the ol’ paint’ rocks. Then we’ll just lay down and rest.”
Zion Jore would go back to the Picture Rocks. But not like this.
His time nearly up, he inspected the six-gun at his belt, twirling the cylinders, looking at every working part. He took up the rifle, leaning on the rock beside him, and, ascertaining that it was in perfect order, slipped it in the scabbard under his stirrup leather. Then he turned his attention to his saddle rigging and, sure that everything was right, reset the saddle and tightened the cinch.
As he put foot in the stirrup, a transformation took place. All the regret, the dream, the tenderness, vanished from his face. His mobile lips were set in lines of terrible purpose. His blue eyes flashed a savage blaze. He looked capable of everything they had accused him of.
As he bounded to the saddle, the stallion reared like the wild king he was, eyes aflame in transformation as startling as Zion’s. Lightly, the young fellow’s spur touched a gleaming flank. With a half-snort, half-scream, the buckskin horse, bearing the young fellow in buckskin, plunged wildly down the slope toward town.