Читать книгу Gunmen's Feud - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 6

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Sheriff Sturgis sent the pinto back to the road, and now the little horse broke from a lope into a gallop, still almost effortless, but nearly twice as rapid as his former gait. Once the sheriff glanced back; but the sun was comfortably high—it was not far past noon.

A full two hundred yards, or more, he had gone before he found the place where the pursued man had cut back onto the road again, and now the sheriff watched the tracks with a new interest. He found, as he had expected, that the gait was no longer a full gallop, but only a hand-canter, and Sturgis knew perfectly well that the long back and the fragile legs of such a horse could not stand the gait which was so natural to a cow pony.

The rider must have realized this, for presently the marks of the canter went out, and in its place was the sign of a trot. At this gait the animal went along much better. There was an ample distance from print to print, and the uniform size of the gap showed that he had still plenty of strength left. Or perhaps his strength was already far gone and the horse was traveling on nerve alone.

However that might be, the sheriff soon ceased to look at the tracks. Instead, he kept his eyes fastened far down the road, and wherever it rolled out of sight among the hills he sat straighter in the saddle and his gaze became more piercing. There were many places where a wary man could take shelter and watch a great stretch of the road behind him; and if the fugitive were anyone of this neighborhood, he would be sure to know the sheriff by his celebrated pinto. In that case a wise man would take no further chances, but pull his rifle and wait for a shot.

So the sheriff, as he went deeper into the hills, spurred the pinto to a faster gait; he looked back now and again, to the road, and saw in two places a milling of many tracks where the pursued had dismounted to breathe his horse; and now he came swinging over the shoulder of a hill, with a stretch of full three miles running straight ahead of him. It was quite empty—not a sign of any living thing in all its distance, but the sheriff swung the pony around with a jerk and headed back behind the hill.

He had planned to catch sight of the fugitive within the next half hour of riding unless the sign he had read had lied to him, and this gap of empty road startled him. For it told him either that he had not read the tracks correctly or that his quarry had left the road; and if he had left the road there could only be two reasons for it. One was that he had decided on a long rest for himself and his mount, which was quite unreasonable at this period of the day; the other was that he had seen the sheriff following, and had recognized the bright coloring of the pinto. The later reason was by far the best, and the sheriff acted upon it.

Leaving his pinto ensconced in a clump of trees on the far side of the hill, he skirted around the other edge. The road was a slightly graded cut on the side of a long, sharp slope, forested thickly, and the chances were great that the rider of the horse, if indeed he were a fugitive from justice, and if his mount were the chestnut of Jan van Zandt, would go either for rest or to spy on the pursuit among the trees above the road, where he could see everything and remain himself unseen.

It was on this side of the road, then, that Sturgis prepared to hunt, but he paused before beginning, partly because of the danger which lay ahead of him, and far more because, above all things in this world, he hated to go on foot.

It was while he stood among the brush at the roadside, summoning his resolution, and letting his bright little eyes rove everywhere among the trees, that the sheriff saw a man step out of the forest and go swinging down the road not fifty yards ahead of him. He was so set for the work in hand, however, that he had almost dismissed the stranger from his mind and started toward the trees when something in the gait of the man made him pause; it was a hobbling gait, short steps that were uneven, and the sheriff recognized through sympathy the pace of a man who generally moves only on horseback. More than this, he saw those strides gradually lengthen, as the walker swung into his work, and it convinced the sharp eyes of the sheriff that this was no random hunter, strolling over the mountains, but a man who had recently climbed from the back of a horse, and whose leg muscles were not yet all straightened out.

Not until he had noted all these facts, did the sheriff catch the gleam of spurs, but he had already made up his mind. When he left his horse, he had taken his rifle with him; now he deliberately dropped upon one knee behind a shrub and sighted among the branches.

With the stock squeezed into his shoulder and his finger curling on the trigger he shouted: “Halt!”

It brought an amazing result. Instead of turning with both hands held high over his head, as is the time-honored custom on such occasions, the stranger leaped to one side, at the same time pitching toward the ground and whirling about on his face; so that he struck with only his left elbow supporting his shoulders, and in that hair’s breadth of time, he had conjured a forty-five Colt out of its holster. He lay with the muzzle of the revolver tipped up and down, balancing for a snap shot in any direction.

“Not so bad,” called the sheriff.

The man with the revolver twisted to one side, and the revolver became rigid; for the echo from the hillside had made Sturgis’ voice seem to come from the opposite direction.

“Drop it,” continued the sheriff. “I’ve got a line on you, Bud. I’ve got your head in the circle, pal.”

The other hesitated for a single instant, and then scrambled to his feet, tossing the revolver into the dust.

“Well,” he said coolly enough, “what does all this mean?”

“It means that I want the other gun,” said the sheriff.

“What gun?”

“Don’t play me for a fool,” Sturgis retorted. “First, turn your face the other way.”

He was obeyed.

“Now, shell out your other cannon.”

The man produced a second weapon from somewhere in his clothes, and tossed it away.

“All right,” said the sheriff, stepping from behind the bush, “you can face this way, friend, after you’ve got those hands up high.”

The hands went up slowly, and with equal slowness the other turned. Sturgis, with intense interest, saw that the fellow had to fight, apparently, before he could force his hands above the level of his shoulders and up into the region of helplessness.

“If you want my money,” said the stranger without undue nervousness, “you’ll find my wallet in the left hip pocket.”

“Thanks,” said Sturgis. “Don’t mind if I do. Get up them hands!”

The arms of the other had, in fact, lowered a little as the sheriff came closer; but now he straightened them again and looked thoughtfully at Sturgis. He was in all respects a man of superior appearance, with a carefully tended mustache, kept clean of the lips, and a pale, rather handsome face with those square cheeks, somewhat puffy at the jowls, which betoken good living. Above all, he had that straight and penetrating glance which comes to men who have directed many others. He kept his hands high up while the fingers of the sheriff ran swiftly over him; he did not even quiver when Sturgis extracted a third weapon—it was a little, double-barreled pistol which hung under the man’s shirt suspended from a noose of horsehair.

Sturgis knew now why the man was so averse to getting his hands above his shoulders, for even if his thumb was as high as his throat he had still a chance to hook it under the little horsehair lariat and whip out the pistol for the two final shots.

“My, my,” sighed the sheriff, as he cut the string and pocketed the little weapon. “Kind of a walkin’ arsenal, ain’t you?”

“In this country, apparently,” the other replied, “a man needs to be.”

“Oh, we ain’t so bad around here,” said the sheriff. “For instance, we don’t lift hosses regular.”

There was not a flicker of the other’s eyes.

“Suppose you lead me where the chestnut is,” Sturgis said. “All right now. You can take your hands down.”

“Thanks,” said the man of the well-trimmed mustache, and he brushed it with his fingertips, studying the sheriff. “For a holdup man,” he said, “you talk in a singular fashion. What chestnut do you refer to?”

The smile of the sheriff widened to a broad grin. “I’m forty-five years old, partner,” he said. “If I was two years younger I think you’d get by, but today you’re out of luck. The seat of your trousers is all shiny, the way cloth gets when it rubs on leather, say; and they’s a sort of hoss smell about you. I say, lead me to that hoss and don’t be aggravatin’.”

The other shrugged his shoulders and gave up.

“It’s not worth seeing,” he said.

“Dead?”

“It was a show horse,” said the stranger. His jaw thrust out and his face changed. “The first time in my life that I’ve gone so wrong in judging a horse.”

“No stamina, eh?” murmured the sheriff sympathetically. “No guts at all; well, I ain’t surprised that you went wrong on him. When them hosses first come into the country they took my eye, too; then I seen what a day’s work does to ’em and I changed my mind. But I didn’t hear no shot; how’d you kill the hoss?”

“I couldn’t risk a bullet,” said the other. “Sound travels too far in this country.”

“And instead?”

“A knife turned the trick nicely—through the temple, you know.”

The sheriff opened both his mouth and his eyes. “You run a knife into that hossflesh?” he muttered, recovering himself. “Well, it’s time we started back; sorry you got to walk.”

“Not at all,” replied the other, apparently unmoved by the hardening of the sheriff’s voice. “I’m not going to walk, and I’m not going back.”