IKE LUCAS’s rifle came up with convulsive swiftness. The ringing shot echoed in the rocky crevasse. It did not stop Santee. He leaned back in the saddle as the roan took the slide, yanked his hat down and came on.
A series of crashes from Doc Lantry’s six-gun banged out. Then he was clambering hastily to the saddle. He knew what to expect at Reb’s hands, the second he laid eyes on him.
Lucas had disappeared behind a large rock. He reappeared, mounted. He and Lantry jumped their horses up the narrow canyon gorge. Reb had hoped to corner them here, but after a flashing glimpse of Lantry’s face, white now, the eyes like coals, they turned up a cleft and were gone. The hoofs of their horses clattered in a fast run.
Reb took the corner. There they went, up the choked gully at a gallop. His eye darted ahead. He saw then that they’d have a fair chance to escape, at least for the present. Half-a-mile above the canyon gave upon a maze of radiating gullies which worked up into the hills.
Fear drove them to flight—it seemed to drive the ponies also, for they pulled ahead. But Santee was playing his own game. There was something grim in the way he came on, undaunted by Ike Lucas’s wild shots, neither drawing up nor losing too much, his gun still in the leather.
Lucas and Lantry broke from the head of the canyon to more open ground. Still they attacked the slopes, climbing higher and higher. They hugged the aspens and the young pines, as if losing Santee to sight just across a grove were an aid to flight. At first they tried doubling back to gain time, or to lay an ambush, but as Reb doggedly pursued, glimpsing them from time to time, they straightened out and rode their hardest. Soon the tumbled folds of the Owl Creek Mountains were gathered all about them.
It had been at noon that Santee drove the fugitives out of the hidden canyon. It was four o’clock when he drew up on a high pass and saw the two sets of fresh tracks pointing straight over the gap and on. Behind lay the rugged backbone of the Owl Creeks. To the south and east, Wind River Basin fell away, spreading out and out down there, a vast panorama marked with rich shadow like water rising in a bowl. Ahead, over the pass, rose yet higher ground: a jumble of peaks stretching away west, gray, massive, silent, towering against the late afternoon sky as though they would hold it up.
“Strikin’ fer the Teton Peaks,” Santee mused, his mind fixed solely on the riders he followed. “I’ll hand it to them, they know what to look for when we meet.”
Nor was there any further hesitation on his part as to what it would be. He would crush them both as he would have smashed an insect. Neither had any claim on his mercy. Lucas had been warned to stay out of the country: he had not only returned, but proved he would take Reb’s life without compunction; and as for Lantry, he had engineered the attempted assassination, that was plain. He had confessed it by running. Moreover, Reb would never forget that it was Doc who put him outside the law. He would pay for it. It suited Santee’s plans that payment should be exacted, by Lantry’s own choice, deep in the wilds, where only the carrion birds would share the secret.
The trail led on and ever upward. Sunset came up like thunder, a blood red pageant that isolated the Teton Peaks in awful grandeur, melancholy with the aloof silence of death itself. Reb had not seen his quarry for half-an-hour when dusk fell. He was content to let them wear their horses out in the inexorable altitude.
“No chance of overhaulin’ them tonight, anyway,” he muttered. “An’ I don’t want to scare ’em into splittin’.”
Fortunately, the throw of the lofty slopes gave him an accurate idea of the course the two would take for several hours. He pushed on in the early darkness, rendered bleak by the lofty pines. Midnight brought him to a point at which he had thought he should have to pull up until daylight; but the palely brilliant light of a waxing moon discovered to him the trail he followed. He went on until it waned in early morning, and then drew up, unsaddled and hobbled the blue roan and himself sought rest.
He was on his way with the first streaks of dawn. Lantry and Lucas, he soon discovered, had not pulled up at all. Their tracks were three hours old or better, but as the morning lengthened, their lead diminished.
It was nearing mid-day when Reb saw them again. They had got above all but stunted timber now, clinging to the rocky slopes. With eyes turned constantly to the rear, they descried him almost as soon as he came in view.
Lucas swore luridly. “He hangs on like a buzzard!” he spat out. “Dammit, Lantry, yuh said we’d shake him in a few hours!”
“I thought we would,” Doc retorted. “Yuh needn’t jump me about it. Yuh ain’t hopin’ fer it no more ’n I am!”
Both of them were keyed to the pitch of jumpy nerves. Moreover, they were tired from the unremitting grind. Their breath came short; and the ceaseless wind which boomed over the high wastes snatched from their lips what little they had.
They pressed on in morose silence for an hour, watching closely that ominous blot behind them which they seemed incapable of shaking off. It was Lantry who opened the subject again, rasped by Lucas’s first explosive accusation.
“We wouldn’t be in this fix if yuh’d done yore work in the first place,” he snapped suddenly. “Lucas, if this is what yuh come back to the Basin fer, yo’re a blessed fool!”
Ike’s skin darkened under the ragged stubble. His darting stare was malignant and distrustful. “What would yuh call yoreself, then, fer leadin’ Santee straight to my hideout?” he flung out bitterly.
Doc denied that he had done so. “Don’t pass yore mistake off on me!” he growled. “Although I ain’t shore whether yuh can or not, this time.... If I ain’t mistook, it’s li’ble to come yet to the point where yuh shuffle off with yore boots on fer it.”
Ike’s suspicions leaped to life. They wrangled fiercely, then fell silent again, to strive onward and up in the desperate struggle to lose their relentless nemesis.
Reb, two miles behind them, watched carefully where they went but otherwise paid strict attention to the ground underfoot, grasping the chance of saving the roan by a switch-back or by heading a gully. Although born and raised on the untamed range, he had never ridden so lofty a trail; he knew he was fighting nature, no less surely than he meant to fight his quarry: that the outcome depended on endless care for details.
Wild and mountainous Wyoming lay about him in trackless confusion. No man, he told himself, had ever trodden these waste spaces before; no man would follow, perhaps for years. It lent an austere nakedness of human passions to the chase that only steeled his will.
Lantry and Lucas had disappeared over a rocky, barren shoulder which seemed to jut out into space. They were virtually on top of the world, and they were not hastening now, if they were wise, and neither was Santee. He toiled on, occasionally dismounting to lead the roan over a rough patch. His lungs felt tight, his thoughts hazy. The unceasing wind roared in his ears, tugging at him, hampering his advance.
“It’s as hard fer them as it is fer me,” he reminded himself, panting. He felt hot and worn out, the sweat evaporated from his flesh as fast as it formed, but he knew the two ahead were in no better case.
He reached the crest of the bulge. The pair were nowhere in sight. The ground fell away sharply, caught itself a mile or two ahead, then soared in breath-taking majesty, the way apparently blocked off by impassable cliffs of granite.
“They’ve run into an alley now!” he breathed. Something leaped in him, a violent readiness. “They can’t get past them rocks. Even a fly’d break his neck there.”
He plunged forward, ready for the show-down, until he realized what he was doing. Then he pulled in and went on at a more moderate pace. A quality in this thin keen air set up a grim elation in him. It could only be a matter of minutes now—five or ten at most.
He found the tracks of the two and followed them closely. The trail was faint, the ground was so flinty: a scratch here and there on stone, an occasional gouged fragment of moss. The way led over and down, unaltering, and worked along a slope of increasing steepness. Reb still could not see the fugitives, but broken upended rocks gave sufficient promise of cover for men at no great distance. He advanced warily now, the gun loose in his holster.
There came a time when Reb would have said that horses no longer could cling to the acclivity, that they must turn back. Still the marks of driven hoofs led on. They had been made only minutes ago. Yet no sound drifted back, nothing but the cold, lonely boom of the wind. Reb did not hesitate. His lips drew back in a grin which his foes would have found wolfish.
“Reckon I can’t follow if they take to wings,” he thought. “But I can make a stab at doggin’ ’em anywheres else they’re likely to go.”
Even as this passed through his mind, the trail petered out. He turned back patiently to his last glimpse of sign, spotted it, and worked forward again, without result. Then, dismounting for a closer scrutiny, he saw it—the unbelievable wild scratches where clawing hoofs had raked straight down over the bulging rock.
Reb straightened and stared. The drop, a few yards down, was almost sheer. He could see nothing—no sign of the fear-ridden men who had taken a desperate chance of escape here, whatever it was. He shook his head, frowning.
“It can’t be!” he ejaculated. “They couldn’t go ahead. They didn’t go back. Yet it’s plain enough—unless they jest fell over the edge—they couldn’t give me the slip in such a spot!”
But a careful search of the place revealed only that that apparently was what they had done.
When Ike and Doc passed over the crest of the barren hump, they were not far from panic. They could see the way quite evidently cut off to the fore. Massed jumbles of stone rose in their path, edged them to the south along the ragged slope.
It grew steadily rougher and more sheer. A dozen times in as many minutes Lantry was on the point of pulling up, seeking some other road; only the knowledge of the fate dogging his pony’s steps urged him forward. But the time came when his innate caution told him it was folly to go on. The declivity was so steep that it offered only disaster. He reined in.
“This is crazy, Ike!” he burst out. “We got to do somethin’ quick, if we don’t want to git stuck, an’ face that devil here on the edge of hell!” He shuddered at the prospect.
Lucas turned with a snarl. “We can git on,” he declared bullingly. “It’s better, yonder a piece.”
It wasn’t: hope was speaking, but still Ike raked his pony ahead. The animal stumbled and slid a yard, crouching like a cat. Ike hurriedly dismounted and, bridle in hand, essayed to lead onward. The pony balked. Lucas yanked impatiently. The shod hoofs flew four ways at once; the bridle was yanked out of Ike’s hand, and with a scream the horse slipped over the edge, pawing futilely in a last effort for a footing.
No sound came up of the beast’s fall, thousands of feet below. Only the ghastly silence, humming to the wind.
“Yuh damned fool!” Lantry raged. “Now where are yuh? Afoot, by God! I told yuh where you’d wind up!” He got out of the saddle himself, trembling.
There was a desperate light in Lucas’s scared face. He glared for a minute, then caught himself.
“Jest which way are yuh figgerin’ to leave here on a nag?” he flashed. “Because if yuh go back, yo’re goin’ alone!”
Doc’s worried eyes deepened. He looked back, driving himself to frantic thought, but said no more. A moment later, planting his feet carefully, he set himself to lead his mount straight up the slope. The pony slipped and caught itself, struggling gamely. It was no easy task; it looked impossible, but as the minutes passed Doc’s efforts began to show a gain. Lucas watched him disappear behind a bowlder and then started to clamber after.
They were out of sight and hearing when Reb reached the spot where Lucas’s horse fell. They were acutely aware of him somewhere near, however. They fought on. After a time they came to safer, if slower going. Lantry still led toward the frowning cliffs which appeared to cut them off. When they came to a little open space, Doc mounted and rode. Ike stumbled along at his side, sullen and wordless.
Fear surrounded them now like the endless rocks, for they knew they were making no time; but with it all, suspicion and distrust crept in too, and they watched each other furtively. The same thought was in the minds of both: one horse between the two of them. It was of little use now, but when it was—?
It was Lantry who made the discovery, at a time when they had all but resigned themselves to the inevitable—a narrow, humping ledge winding along the face of the cliff. He struck out for it, head up like a scenting dog. Even Ike’s face brightened. He seemed for the moment to forget his more fortunate companion.
“If we c’n only git around that fust shoulder, there, before Santee sees us—” he muttered. Hope was like strong drink in his tired, trembling limbs.
They started up, and now the horse was a real menace to them, delaying them, threatening to drag them into space, to fall forward on them and topple them off. Still Lantry clung to it stubbornly. Evening was drawing on when they completed the first leg of the precarious climb. They reached the turn and looked beyond.
“Gawd!” Lucas gasped. “Nothin’ but a crack to hang onto!”
Still they pressed on, climbing indeed like flies, until the cold, blustery dark closed in. They holed up for the night in a crevice barely large enough to accommodate them. Now Lucas became optimistic, for Santee had evidently been lost at last. He whistled softly as he broke up the gnarled branches of a dwarf pine.
“Don’t light no fire here!” Lantry rasped out. “D’yuh want to bring that hell-cat down on us fer shore?”
Ike stared at him. “Lantry, I’ve been itchin’ to tell yuh a few things fer a long time,” he retorted insolently; “an’ this seems like as good a place as any. I don’t eat, an’ I don’t ride,” he went on hardily, “but by God, I warm myself, if I know anything about it! Yuh c’n git warm with me, or yuh c’n go to hell—I unnerstand it’s plenty warm there!”
He dodged, at the end of this belligerent speech—but not quick enough. There was a flash and a bang, snatched and whipped away in an instant. Doc Lantry punched out the empty shell and stared down at the death thoes of his companion.
“Yuh had that due yuh, Ike,” he said coolly to the empty silence. “Maybe it’ll save yuh grief, comin’ now.”
But his hand shook as he sheathed the gun.