STRICKEN
At last something had been done. The sheriff and six deputies congratulated themselves, as they disarmed and bound their prisoners. This catch, of course, wouldn’t stop the howl of criticism going up. Nothing but the capture of Zion Jore would do that. But it would show that the law was still functioning.
It was more than they had expected to do, when they rushed into the Estrellas, following the old prospector’s report that Zion Jore had stopped at his hut the night before. Certainly, they hadn’t expected Zion would be anywhere around there, nor had they hoped much to pick up his trail. For the day-old trail of Zion Jore was about as nonexistent as a sidewinder’s after a sandstorm.
They had been as dumbfounded as their captives, when—approaching the hut, and seeing there the bay and roan described by the Black Spout gang as the animals the Jore confederates were riding—they slipped quietly up and threw their guns on the pair, the Reno Kid, right-hand man of the Jore gang and Zion Jore’s partner, and his associate, Race Coulter, whose connection with the Jores was a mystery, but who must be a bad one to be in such company.
Unceremoniously, they boosted their prisoners into their saddles, roped their feet under their horses, and, in sunset’s red afterglow, began their triumphal procession to the nearest jail, ten miles away.
“Talk up, kid!” The sheriff was questioning the young fellow they jostled among them. “Come on! Where’s Zion Jore? Where was you to meet him? What was your lay for breaking prison? Talk up! Don’t pull any more of that don’t-know stuff.”
“I don’t know,” insisted René.
“Who’s this hombre?” The sheriff hooked his thumb at Race, who was riding with head bowed down like a man on his way to be hanged. “Where does he fit into this picture?”
“No place,” declared René earnestly. “I told you, he just fell in with me. He was goin’ my way.”
“All the way, huh?” an official suggested coldly. “He’s come quite a spell. From ’way back East, I hear. Figger on usin’ him in that break? Come on … talk!” When René wouldn’t, he said shortly: “Waal, don’t then! We’ll find someone more expert in the art of stimulatin’ conversation.”
Giving René a rest, he went after Race. But Race couldn’t talk. He was scared too badly.
Riding along, painfully bound, racked by the jostling, while sunset’s red faded to dusk, René felt mighty sorry for Race. He had been a faithful trail mate through hazardous, heartbreaking weeks. He was a pretty good scout, for all his shortcomings. He just wasn’t accountable where Black Wing was concerned. His longing to possess the horse had grown on him, until it had got to be a craze, one that would never be realized now.
Oh, they’d let Race go eventually. They’d have to. Race had committed no crime. But he would lose Black Wing. For no one but himself could ever induce Zion to give up the horse. He couldn’t do that—behind bars. That’s where he’d be, for no jury would free him, after the things he’d done for the Jores. He’d be locked away in the same prison where Joel Jore had spent five years, in the same cell, maybe. Buried alive, as Joel had been, to eat out his heart with thoughts of the same dear folks in the Picture Rocks.
In steady progress toward that cell, his captors left the ridges and dropped into a narrow arroyo, riding between sheer rock walls that seemed to merge in the gloom, weighing and pressing on him, till he wished they’d spur up and get out of them. For, somehow, they symbolized his whole future—these grim, dark, imprisoning walls that seemed to come together at the bend in the trail just beyond and lock tight, leaving no way out. But he knew there would be a way out. Beyond that shoulder of rock, the arroyo would open up and continue to the smooth country south.
Might it not be so in his case? Might not some sudden turn of events open up a way for him? He despaired of anything like that and, despairing, was hustled around that bend at a fast trot and there his way confronted him.
With a muffled curse, the leaders yanked up, staring. The rest, riding against them, also halted and stared. Race Coulter’s head rose and froze that way, although his trembling body inclined to his captors as to safety. Wild hope filled René’s heart.
For, there in the trail, coolly sitting the golden horse of the Picture Rocks, was Zion Jore—there in the trail, an impregnable barrier, the big rifle at careless ease across his saddle, but so turned that the black muzzle seemed to point to the heart of each man. And seven pairs of hands went up, as if manipulated by one and the same string. And seven pairs of eyes looked to Zion Jore for life, while they watched—afraid to speak, afraid to stir, afraid it wouldn’t make any difference what they did.
Even René’s blood was chilled. For the Zion here in the trail, so dangerously cool, was a sinister being, not the Zion he had known in the basin. Even in the dusk that hid so much—yet did not hide his deadly weariness—René saw the change. There was a hard line to the jaw and in the restless blue eyes a cold blaze. René did not wonder that these men—brave men, they were—awaited his will in mortal fear. Zion had the look of a killer.
But there was, he saw, in that awful pause, no change in Black Wing. The horse was in perfect condition. Months, he had been in constant flight, through ordeals that would have killed an ordinary horse. But he showed no sign of them. That this was due to the care Zion took of him, the way he put Black Wing’s comfort before his own, René was to learn.
But at that moment, he marveled and thrilled to the stallion’s perfections, as he had the day he first saw him in the little green valley in the basin. Bright, in the dusk, gleamed his satiny skin as then. His head was held with the same high pride as when he’d kinged it over the mustang band. Proudly he stamped now, and René heard an iron ring. And wondered how in the world Zion had managed to get him shod?
As for Race, at this, his second close look at the stallion, all his first longing, with interest accrued in five years, swept him. But equally keen was his terror of the moment when Zion Jore would recognize him. He wanted to scream that he was René’s friend, so Zion would spare him. But that would identify him with the Jores to these officers. He was between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Zion took no notice of Race. Fastening his gaze on the sheriff, he asked, with a nod at René: “What are you doin’ with him? He ain’t done nothin’. It’s me you’re after … Zion Jore.”
At that cold, metallic tone, Race a thousand times preferred to take his chances with the law.
“You think you can take him to jail?” Zion’s wild laugh intensified that preference. “He’s my pardner!”
They stared, incapable of an answer. After a moment’s cool survey, Zion reined the stallion to one side of the trail, and motioned outward: “Drift!”
The deputy, leading René’s bay, dropped the rope as if it were a live rattlesnake and spurred out. The rest followed, all but the one leading Race’s roan, and he asked, with commendable courage: “How about this one? Does he stay?”
René was about to say yes, but Race got there first, screaming, as Zion’s eyes flicked to him: “No! I go! I go, I tell you! You can’t leave me here! I demand the protection of the law!”
But the deputy was taking his orders from Zion Jore.
Inquiringly, Zion looked at René, but, getting no sign, said shortly: “Take him along.”
René realized this was best. If Race left with Zion and him, he’d be classed with them, would be a fugitive, too, and if they were caught, pay the same penalty. This would convince them he wasn’t mixed up with the Jores, and they’d turn him loose. Race could hunt them, if he chose. Race knew he’d get Black Wing for him, if that could be done.
So René thought, as the riders vanished in the gloom. But Zion still sat the saddle, motionless as a sculpted figure, until their retreat had beat itself out on the night.
Satisfied, then, that they couldn’t get back in time to be dangerous, he rode back to René, changing as he came. No change he had undergone had ever been half so welcome. Suddenly, he was the old Zion; his face youthful, glowing with eagerness, his eyes reflecting the old worship, as, seizing René’s arms in their galling fetters, lovingly shaking him back and forth, he cried brokenly: “Gee, pard, you look good to me! You’d look good to me any time. But now … now I’m most wild to see someone from home.”
But Zion didn’t look good to René. Seen close, like this, there was a grayness and strain that didn’t come of natural fatigue, a look of physical suffering. His eyes were sunken. His cheeks were sunken. He looked the very ghost of Zion. He looked, René thought, with an awful tension about his heart, as he had looked when Zion carried him into the Picture Rocks.
Now, as the young fellow got down, it wasn’t with his old free, easy spring, but like an old man, carefully easing himself to the ground and doubling up, his face plucked with pain.
“Zion,” René cried anxiously, “you’re hurt!”
Gamely, Zion grinned. “Just so you could notice it.” He laid his hand on his right side. “Just nicked … here.”
But René knew it was more, and he said hoarsely: “Cut these ropes off me, so I can see.”
“It ain’t nothin’,” insisted the boy.
But when René was down and had pulled open Zion’s buckskin shirt, baring the wound, he was appalled by what he saw.
“Zion,” he tried to keep the fear out of his tone, “when did this happen?”
“When?” Zion stared at him, making an obvious effort to think. “Oh, I don’t know. About a week ago … up around Lasco. They were takin’ potshots at me. I felt a sting. Didn’t hurt much then. But”—reeling up to rest against Black Wing—“it does now … some.”
It must hurt a lot. It would have to—a wound like that. It hadn’t been much at the start. The bullet had entered his side and had been deflected by a rib, René found upon examination. It would have given little trouble with proper care. But it was badly infected now, red and ugly, getting in its poisonous work already. For, now that his need for action was over, Zion was so weak he could hardly stand and his mind was hazy.
“Zion.” René bent over him. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get to some safe place … so you can rest … give it a chance to heal. You can’t go on like this.”
But Zion wouldn’t hear to anything else. “No place is safe,” he said wistfully, “but the Picture Rocks. An’ I … can’t rest till I get back.”
His head sank to rest on the arm thrown over Black Wing’s neck. With sinking heart, René watched. Presently, Zion looked up. “Dad’s out,” he whispered. “Did you know that, pard? I’m done … out here. I was lookin’ for you, when they nabbed you up there. I knowed you was huntin’ me all along. But I was afraid you’d try to stop me from what I was doin’. Now …”
Too weak to hide the homesick longing it had once shamed him to show Black Wing, he sobbed. “Now … I want to go home. I want to see the folks and the ol’ paint rocks.”
That night, encamped in a safe place, miles from the arroyo—a place as safe as any place could be for a Jore, which wasn’t safe at all—the boy slept fitfully, and René sat beside him; sat, with leaden heart, under the brooding desert stars, his black eyes turned toward the Picture Rocks, hundreds of hostile miles to the north. Over Zion’s heavy breathing, he seemed to hear a distracted mother sobbing that the Book had said to let the dead bury the dead. And, sharp on night’s jet screen, he saw a sister’s face, imploring.
To that face, quiet, reverent, as a votary at the shrine of his saint, René vowed: “I’ll bring him home.”