Читать книгу Six-Gun Country - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 4

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One cannot be forever cautious. Besides, when I left Mike O’Rourke, I was so full of my vow never to see her again, but to shut her firmly from my life, that I did not much care what became of me. I turned Roanoke up the valley and rode straight on at the lights of the town!

It was not such complete madness as you might imagine, because since it was so generally believed that the governor was about to grant me a pardon—what with the good offices of Sheriff Lawton and half a dozen other prominent people on the range—the boys were not so keen to hunt me as they had been before.

They could not be sure, you see, that when they risked their lives to get me, they were not hunting down a man whom a proclamation had cleared of all crime.

I was fairly sure, therefore, that I underwent no real risk in venturing into Sanburn. There was no reason why the people in that town should have a peculiar grudge against me! In fact, I could not recall that I had ever harmed any one of the citizens.

So I let Roanoke drift boldly into the little village, only pulling him aside from the main street and putting him through a side alley. We turned a corner into a huddle of noise and cursing. The Sanburn stagecoach was rolling down the street surrounded by a score of excited horsemen; and from the interior of the coach, now and then, heavy groans reached my ear.

I had only time to hear and see this much when someone shouted:

“He’s come back to see what trouble he’s raised! Let’s get him, boys!”

He who raised the shout fairly led the way by sending a .45-caliber slug through the brim of my sombrero. I could not imagine what the confusion was about, but I did not stay to ask questions. Roanoke turned like a cat, and I drove him through a narrow gap between two houses. There he wove back and forth among boxes and cans, leaped a high back fence, and took me into the open running beyond.

I heard the pursuit crashing and raving among the obstacles in that narrow alley. But the greater part of those hot riders had not tried the narrow pass at all, but spilled out on either side and came combing out after me by more roundabout ways. I gave Roanoke his head, and he streaked away.

He had as much foot as a good cow pony—but no more. When it came to a narrow brush like this one, I was much worried. I could only hope that there were no blood horses in that crew behind me to sprint up to us. There were some fast nags, however. Three men began to draw up with me, but they were in no hurry to close. I sent one bullet blindly into the sky above their heads, and they drew back.

By the time they had rallied enough heart to decide to rush down on me again, their fast horses were beginning to be half winded, whereas Roanoke was running as easily as ever. That extraordinary mule could not raise himself above a certain top speed, but he could maintain his top pitch for an uncanny length of time.

So it was now. He held them even for another mile, until we hit the foothills, and after that they were done.

What I wondered at, however, was the venom which had brought these fellows out humming after me. Still I could hear their angry shouts as I galloped Roanoke over the first hill crest. Then we sloped down into the dimness beyond, and I knew that I was safe.

However, I was not content with being safe. I wanted to know what lay at the bottom of this explosion. But I had to keep my impatience with me for a full three days before I learned what I wanted to know. Then I got it from the pages of the Sanburn newspaper.

They had spilled it across their whole front page. News was shy that week, I suppose, for they gave most of the issue to me and my unlucky career.

But they opened up with the following flare:

NEW OUTRAGE BY LEON PORFILO

OUTLAW TURNS STAGE ROBBER

SANBURN STAGE STOPPED

THREE MEN BRUTALLY SHOT DOWN!

That was the opening. What followed was enough to bear out the headlines. The Sanburn stage had been stopped by a tall man riding a mouse-colored mule like Roanoke. He wore a mask and announced that he was Leon Porfilo and that he was tired of waiting for the governor’s pardon, and had decided to fill his empty pockets.

Empty pockets, when I had more than four thousand in my wallet at that moment!

It appeared that my ghost had stopped the stage and ordered the passengers out. But these passengers had too much spot cash on them and too many guns and the courage to use them to submit calmly to such a summons. Someone paved the way by dropping to the dust of the road on his belly and blazing away at the sham Porfilo. There were two others who followed suit.

I gathered that if this imitator of mine were a grand liar, he was at least a great fighter, also. For he had dropped those three worthies one after another. Two were badly wounded. One was dangerously shot and might die.

That was the first item of this story. The rest was what might be expected. The governor not only refused to consider my pardon any longer, but he had issued a ringing declaration that he would see that the laws of this State were obeyed and that he would have Leon Porfilo, outlaw, robber, murderer, out of the mountains if he had to call up every man of the militia.

It made me sweat a little, but I could not help grinning when I thought of raw militia boys struggling through the mountains and broiling on the bleak mountains while I was tucked away securely watching the fun. I was not afraid that they would take me.

They had almost as much chance of taking an eagle with their bare hands, for I had been hunted over every inch of that range during the last three years, and I knew the whole country. I could take it to pieces in my mind and put it together again, you might say. Every bird’s nest in the region above timberline was pretty familiarly known to me.

Besides, and above all, I had that king of mules, Roanoke, to float me over cliffs like a bird on wings.

So I was not particularly disturbed by the governor’s threats. The last governor before him had made threats just as big and announcements just as cocksure. But there were other elements which were not so pleasant. In the first place, I had been robbed of my expected pardon. In the second place, there had been an instant response to this most recent Porfilo “outrage,” and the price on my head was a full fifteen thousand dollars!

Now, out West, where a man will work like a dog all of every day and a share of every night for a beggarly fifty a month, fifteen thousand dollars in a lump is like the dream of a gold mine. I knew that I should have to pass through a period like that which had tormented me long before when a price was first put on my head and the mountaineers had not yet learned to have some fear of me.

But what moved me most of all was rage at the scoundrel who had dared to use my name in order to help him in the robbery of the coach.

For my part, I had never attempted a deed so terribly bold as such a holdup. In the second place, I had never dreamed of such a thing as shooting down three inoffensive men who were merely striving to protect their own rights. I thought of the matter in another light, also. When Mike O’Rourke heard the story, she would believe that I had left her determined upon mischief, and she would believe that this bloodthirsty thing was all my work!

What I determined upon was to corner the rascal at once and wring a signed confession from him—or at the least have the satisfaction of filling him full of lead. No, to shoot him down would be no satisfaction at all. It would merely remove my last chance of proving my innocence.

I sat down to figure out the trail of the robber. That may seem odd to you, but as I have said before, I knew those mountains more intimately than any student can know the pages of a book. I closed my eyes and summoned the picture. Then I opened them again and drew out the scene in the sand. I had no sooner done that than one fact jumped into my mind at once—this robber was a fellow who did not know the country at all!

He had selected for the holdup site a spot where the trail dipped, beside the Sanburn River, into a long and narrow valley on either side of which gorges cut away from the river. But the ends of all those gorges were impractical for any animal less adroit of foot than Roanoke, say.

All that an organized pursuit would have had to do would have been to sweep up and down that valley at once and the robber was fairly bottled. The only reason that they had not adopted that measure was that they were fairly certain that if the robber were indeed Leon Porfilo, he would never commit a robbery in such a difficult spot.

If this man had really been aware of the nature of the country, he would have selected a spot on the road where it wound through the badlands of the upper plateau. I could have sworn that this stranger selected the eventual site of the holdup simply because he was sure those side ravines were routes by which he could easily ascend to the upper mountains.

The upper mountains, then, were his goal.

It was a bewildering region, as I knew by many a bitter experience, until I mapped it for myself. Even old mountaineers did not like to cross that section of the hills without a good guide, because the face of the land was knifed across by an intricate crisscrossing of ravines. Men had been known to wander about for half a month before they drew clear of those entangled chasms and blind alleys among the mountains; and in the cold of the winter more than one poor fellow had lost his life in that region.

As for the fellow who had dared to take up my role and play stage robber under my name, I could not help wondering just how he had solved the problem of the ravines! What I felt was that he would probably work grimly and patiently north, guided by the crest of one of the taller mountains. If he was cool enough to shoot three men in one fight, he was cool enough to stick by one landmark.

So, with all these things in mind, I cut across the high country and made straight for Danny Chisholm’s camp.