DOC LANTRY closed his eyes only fitfully at best that night, and then against his will. Thin and bony and with an undermined constitution, he had no reserves of stamina. It had often been said of him that sheer cussedness made him tough; but no amount of morose fortitude could help him now. Tortured nature made his head drop on his knees in a shivering doze; dread of the unknown jerked him broad awake a dozen times.
It seemed to him that dawn would never come. Yet when its first gauzy tentacles streaked the east, he was sorry. It meant that he must go forward again, while the freezing night and the terrors of solitude had so weakened and demoralized him that he was afraid to move.
Gradually the sky became gray and the formless granite stood up about him with its cold menace. He went to the mouth of the crevice and stared gloomily at the narrow ledge which he must negotiate. It was so bad ahead that he doubted whether he could manage to pass it himself, let alone with his pony.
“I can’t go back,” he muttered perplexedly, his teeth chattering. “It was bad enough gittin’ here—the hoss’ll never make it back down that slope!”
He was loath to part with the horse. It meant continued freedom—perhaps life. Indecision kept him chained to the spot, while the light strengthened. A wind-blown rattle of loose shale along the ledge trail brought him up short. He darted a stealthy look. Reb Santee appeared some distance down the ledge, advancing carefully and steadily. He was without a mount.
Lantry sucked his breath in sharply. His last hope—that Reb had been eluded—was gone. A recklessness surged up in him like brutal anger: he flung up his six-gun and from the corner of the crevasse sent three wild shots at the advancing figure.
Wind whipped the faint cracks away, but Reb heard the dull smack of slugs on the granite, the fierce buzz as they tore glancing into space. It told him his quarry was near. He looked ahead coolly, marking the spot whence the shots had come, and without hesitation, without haste, continued to work his way forward.
Gripped by rising panic, Lantry fired again, feverishly attempting to steady his aim. His muscles were flabby. His thoughts were so scattered that he gave the wind no heed. He yelled a warning at Santee. He could see the other’s face clearly as he punched out the used shells and fumblingly reloaded: to his consternation Reb looked as if he were serenely occupied with some endeavor of particular interest which he had no thought of abandoning.
“I’ll smoke him off that ledge!” Doc raged wickedly.
He fired again rapidly. Reb shrank together and waited for it to end. Then he came on once more, inexorable. He did not even have his gun out of the holster, using both hands to pull himself over the uneven obstructions in his path. Plainly he meant to pursue Lantry into his crevasse, to force him into the open where they would have an equal chance at each other.
Doc had never seen an exhibition of sheer nerve to match it. It left him in the grip of a cold grue which he was unable to fight off. Drops started out on his forehead, his breath came in gasps.
“Gawd!” he ripped out. “Nothin’ll stop ’im!”
He fired a third time, holding the gun hard on Santee’s compact frame and driving the bullets with concentrated hate. When the smoke whipped away, Reb still clung there, the tightness of his lips visible now. Lantry lashed himself into a frenzy, thrusting head and shoulders forward around the rock.
“Go back!” he bawled. Then, with a wild endeavor to command himself, he thought: “Why tell him that? I want to polish him off! Let him walk into it!” But he could not whip up the lethal determination, the iron-cold rage he craved. The ague in his limbs told, if his heart did not, that he feared this white-haired puncher as he had never feared anyone or anything in his life.
If Reb heard Doc’s wind-shredded warning, he gave no sign that he intended to heed it. In plain sight he threw up his head and, incredibly, tauntingly—laughed. It was the laughter of the devil, of a madman, immune to the impulses of caution and bent only on destruction—or so it seemed to Lantry. He jerked back and made frantic supplication of the steely morning sky, the cold gray rocks. There was indeed no way for him to turn.
Santee was scarcely more than fifty yards away now. Doc shrank from the moment when he should close in. He flung down his six-gun, sprang for the rifle in its boot on the saddle of his horse. That would tear Santee loose from the rocks, tumble him into space, with no more ceremony than that with which Doc had disposed of Ike Lucas’s body.
Even as he tugged at the gun-stock a rattling clatter sounded near the mouth of the crevasse. He could not see the ledge to which Santee clung, from here; but it was easy to imagine the other’s impending arrival. Doc’s shattered nerves were ready to account for anything to his inflamed brain, darkened already with the portent of disaster. He had no way of knowing Reb had thrown a fragment of rock forward, and he wheeled, expecting to see that hated face behind the threatening guns on the instant.
For a moment the forces of stark insanity tugged the man this way and that. He knew his hour had come—was about to strike. There was no way on earth to avoid it. The only clear thought that came to him was the wild hope that he could take Santee with him to his doom. How was it to be accomplished?
In a satanic flash he had it. He gathered his frame, facing the mouth of the crevasse and the ledge, as he made ready. The instant Reb showed himself, silhouetted against space and without any inkling of what was to come, Doc meant to fling himself forward, grapple his enemy, and carry them both over the gaping edge.
His eyes were distended now, his knotted expression less than human. His breath came in rasping gulps to feed his racing pulse.... Again came that nerve-tearing clatter on the ledge. A pebble stirred at the side of the crevasse mouth, as though kicked. Lantry drew in a sharp breath and plunged, his legs driving him forward, intent on smashing into Santee before he had time to pull trigger.
He came to the mouth of the crevasse hurtling like a rocket. There was no one there, no whip-hard body to oppose. Doc’s eyes widened in horror. His frame stiffened, he tried to stop himself on the ledge. For a bated breath he tottered on the brink—then with a piercing, wind-whipped scream he lost his balance and plunged downward, arms and legs flying.
Twenty yards away along the ledge, Reb Santee leaned back against the rock in a squatting position and gaped, his jaw dropping. He had expected no such result after he had tossed that second rock. Now, sitting there curiously bereft of object, he pieced it out in his mind, reconstructing as he had done before the steps by which Lantry had slowly and surely approached his fate.
“I’ll be damned,” he said softly, when he saw it all.
It was three days later that Reb rode out on the high crest of the Owl Creek Mountains and let his gaze run down the broad trough of Wind River Basin. He had taken his time on the return trip from the Teton wilds, making his way by easy stages, for the pursuit of Lantry and Lucas had taken a lot out of even him.
It had taken so much out of him that there was little left, for the time being, save a fixed idea: to wait only for the return of the Sundance Kid to the Basin and then pull out of Wyoming forever.
For a week he had dwelt grimly on nothing but the perfidy of Doc Lantry and on the settlement Doc must meet for his mistake. That account was closed; with the backwash came all of Reb’s old problems and disappointments. Had it not been for the Logans, he would not have returned to the Basin at all, for there was just one thing that country meant to him now—Ronda Cameron, soon to be Ronda Farragoh.
He planned not to see her again. That would be the best way, despite his aching desire. Accordingly, it was a shock to him when he rode down into the Basin late that afternoon, that the first person he met should be Ronda herself.
It was on the grassy divide that marked the boundary between the C 8 range and that of Lantry’s ranch, that Reb saw the girl riding forward. She had seen him first, and advanced with some driving urgency in her demeanor.
“Reb!” she burst out, when she came close. It was an exclamation of relief. “I have been watching for you.”
“For me?” He scanned her features closely, too tired to exercise his smile; noted the faint lines of care at her brow, the steady, troubled regard of her gray eyes. She hesitated over her next speech.
“Reb, a good deal has happened in the Basin while you’ve been gone,” she began in a regretful tone. “I scarcely know how to tell you—”
“What is it, Ronda?” They were riding toward the wooded course of Rebel Creek. The late sun cast their long shadows far ahead. “Nothin’s gone wrong with yore dad, I hope?”
“No, it’s a rancher over west.... Have you heard that over fifty head of Star A steers were rustled last week?”
Reb hadn’t heard. He elicited the details, a sober gravity on him. Easy enough for him to determine where the blame rested! There flashed through his mind the memory of a speech made by Gloomy Jepson, days ago: “Wal, Doc, we got ’em away—” Stolen steers were what he had been talking about, not fighting bulls.
“And that’s not all,” Ronda went on. She faced him squarely. “You have got to go away, Reb. It’s why I’ve been riding over this way every day—to warn you.” They had reached the line of willows. She drew up in that cover, turning her pony as she spoke.
He stared at her, arrested at hearing from her lips that he must leave. “What do yuh mean?” he got out quickly. “What is it?”
“Reb—” her voice broke in spite of her—“the Ghost Creek ranch has been taken over by Sheriff Ward. He is waiting there, with his deputy, to arrest you and Mr. Lantry!”
The blow had fallen, in some incredible manner. Reb looked away, his face slowly whitening, the freckles standing out. But arrest was not what he feared in this moment. He scarcely thought about it, gripped by the realization that Ronda should be the one to warn him; that she should know—
“The Star A steers were traced almost directly past the ranch and into the hills,” she hastened on. “Three men have been caught—Mr. Jepson among them. They would tell nothing, but Sheriff Ward says he is certain of you and Doc Lantry.... Reb,” she burst out, “isn’t there some way you can prove your innocence of this rustling? I am sure you know nothing about it!” She was taking it as hard as he did, pleading with her eloquent eyes.
It was a sad moment for Reb. He hated to trust himself to say anything. But silence would not do. “No,” he managed slowly, “I don’t know the first thing about this rustlin’ business, Ronda.” It was easy to comfort her that much, for it was strictly true. But how much would she learn later—how much would come out about other things, if he were to be apprehended?
Ronda studied him worriedly. “Reb, I don’t know what to say,” she returned; “what to tell you to do. I believe you, of course; but it doesn’t quiet my fears. I meant to beg you to leave at once, but it would be terrible if you were captured before you got away. Nothing would convince a jury that you were innocent then.” Her face brightened momentarily. “But you’ve many friends who will stand by you. If you will give yourself up, Billy will defend your case—”
Reb shook his head. What she suggested brought back the old stab once more, a hundredfold sharper. “I’m afraid I can’t see my way to go that far,” he said, trying to keep his eyes away from her soft, appealing face. “I’ll never be tried for rustlin’ if I can help it.”
“Throw up yore hands,” commanded a masculine voice behind him, with startling distinctness. “This is one time, mister, you ain’t goin’ to be able to help it.”
Ronda gasped, the blood draining away from her cheeks. Reb’s hands started to move in a flash; he caught them in time. They paused, and went up slowly until they were level with his shoulders. He kneed his pony around. Bob Calverly, Ward’s deputy, pushed through the willows with a gun trained on him. His grin was good-natured.
“Oh, Reb!” Ronda cried. “What have I done to you?”
“You didn’t do nothin’ that could’ve been avoided, Ronda,” he assured her quickly. “Just forget about it.”
“That’s right,” Calverly seconded. “I didn’t depend on yuh, ma’am. If it wasn’t this way, it would’ve been some other way.” He seemed very assured in his tanned young strength, but Reb was grateful to him at least for the relief his words brought to the girl.
The deputy relieved him of his gun. “Wal,” said Calverly comfortably, as he resumed his horse, “now we’re all here, what’ve yuh got to say to the law about this rustlin’, Reb?”
But Reb was not saying anything. His lips had drawn into a thin line; he shook his head shortly, his eyes bleak, revealing nothing of the hurt behind them. Even when Ronda left hurriedly to carry the news of what had happened to her father, and he was taken to Ghost Creek where the sheriff waited, he kept his peace. Ward proved amiable if cynical, Calverly joked with him; but no questioning could draw from Reb the whereabouts of Doc Lantry. It was decided finally that he should be taken to Lander.
Ward remained on Ghost Creek; it was Calverly who accompanied the prisoner south. Reb loosened up then; they smoked cigarettes and chatted as they rode. Late the next day Reb was lodged in a cell. He had been doing a lot of thinking behind his cheerful mask on the way to Lander, and he was not easy in his mind. He knew it would be only a matter of hours before Billy Farragoh visited him at the jail.
The night passed, and Billy did not appear, although a number of other friends stopped by to pass a word. Few men seemed to hold it against him that he should be in custody.
In the morning Reb was arraigned and his trial set for the following week. Still Billy did not come to him, but Reb found some relief in the fact that the charge against him was for rustling—a crime of which he need have no hesitation about declaring his innocence before any man. He wondered whether it might be a technical charge, on which they would hold him while they sought grounds for prosecuting his real offenses.
There were half-a-dozen cells in the Lander jail, containing three other prisoners at the time. On his return after arraignment Reb found them buzzing among themselves. When things quieted down a bit he asked what it was about.
“D. A. died las’ night,” said a strapping cowboy who had been picked up for being drunk and disorderly. “Apoplexy, I hear....” He went on to give details.
Reb thought fast. “That means that trial dates’ll be shoved back,” he mused aloud.
“No they won’t. They appointed a man already to fill the D. A’s office.”
“Who?” Reb could not suppress a quiver of premonition as he put the question.
“Young Farragoh.”
The name fell on Santee’s ears like the clang of a knell. The district attorney dead—Billy Farragoh to fill out his term of office! It was like an added stroke of fate. There no longer was any mystery why Billy had not come to see him. He would not come at all, now. The next time their eyes met it would be across a counsel table, and Billy would be marshaling his forces to obtain a conviction of his friend.