The nester was not visible to him. Gulping hard, Masten sent the pony cautiously forward. He skirted the corral fence, keeping the shack between him and the point at which he divined Catherson was then riding, and loped the pony into some sparse timber near the river.
His panic had grown. He had yielded to it, and it had mastered him. His lips were twitching; he cringed and shivered as, getting deeper into the timber, he drove the spurs into the pony’s flanks and raced it away from the shack.
He rode for perhaps a mile at break-neck speed. And then, unable to fight off the fascination that gripped him, doubting, almost ridiculing himself for yielding to the wild impulse to get away from Catherson, for now that he was away his action seemed senseless, he halted the pony and turned in the saddle, peering back through the trees. He had followed a narrow trail, and its arching green stretched behind him, peaceful, inviting, silent. So calm did it all seem to him now, so distant from that dread danger he had anticipated, that he smiled and sat debating an impulse to return and face Catherson. The man’s intentions could not be what he had suspected them to be; clearly, his conscience had played him a trick.
But he did not wheel his pony. For as he sat there in the silence he heard the rapid drumming of hoofs on the path. Distant they were, but unmistakable. For a moment Masten listened to them, the cold damp breaking out on his forehead again. Then he cursed, drove the spurs deep into the pony and leaning forward, rode frantically away.
Coming out of the timber to a sand plain that stretched in seeming endlessness toward a horizon that was dimming in the growing twilight, Masten halted the pony again, but only for an instant. In the next he was urging it on furiously. For looking back fearfully, he saw Catherson bestriding his pony, a dread apparition, big, rigid, grim, just breaking through the timber edge, not more than two or three hundred feet distant. Masten had hoped he had distanced his pursuer, for he had ridden at least five miles at a pace that he had never before attempted. There had been no way for him to judge the pony’s speed, of course, but when he had halted momentarily he had noted that the animal was quivering all over, that it caught its breath shrilly in the brief interval of rest, and now as he rode, bending far over its mane, he saw that the billowing foam on its muzzle was flecked with blood. The animal was not equal to the demands he had made upon it.
But he forced it on, with spur and voice and hand, muttering, pleading with it incoherently, his own breath coughing in his throat, the muscles of his back cringing and rippling in momentary expectation of a flying missile that would burn and tear its way through them. But no bullet came. There was no sound behind him except, occasionally, the ring of hoofs. At other times silence engulfed him. For in the deep sand of the level the laboring ponies of pursued and pursuer made no noise. Masten could hear a sodden squish at times, as his own animal whipped its hoofs out of a miniature sand hill.
The grim, relentless figure behind him grew
grotesque and gigantic in his thoughts
He did not look around again for a long time. Long ago had he lost all sense of direction, for twilight had come and gone, and blank darkness, except for the stars, stretched on all sides. He had never seen this sand level; he knew it must be far off the Lazette trail. And he knew, too, before he had ridden far into it, that it was a desert. For as twilight had come on he had scrutinized it hopefully in search of timber, bushes, a gorge, a gully—anything that might afford him an opportunity for concealment, for escape from the big, grim pursuer. He had seen nothing of that character. Barren, level, vast, this waste of world stretched before him, with no verdure save the repulsive cactus, the scraggy yucca, the grease-wood, and occasional splotches of mesquite.
They raced on, the distance between them lessening gradually. Masten could feel his pony failing. It tried bravely, but the times when it spurted grew less frequent; it made increasingly harder work of pulling its hoofs out of the deep sand; it staggered and lurched on the hard stretches.
Masten looked back frequently now. The grim, relentless figure behind him grew grotesque and gigantic in his thoughts, and once, when he felt the pony beneath him go to its knees, he screamed hysterically. But the pony clambered to its feet again and staggered on, to fall again a minute later. Catherson’s pony, its strength conserved for this ordeal, came on steadily, its rider carefully avoiding the soft sand, profiting by Masten’s experiences with it. It was not until he saw Catherson within fifty feet of him that Masten divined that he was not to be shot. For at that distance he made a fair target, and Catherson made no movement toward his gun. The nester was still silent; he had spoken no word. He spoke none now, as he hung relentlessly to his prey, seeming, to Masten’s distorted mind and vision, a hideous, unnatural and ghastly figure of death.
Catherson had drawn nearer. He was not more than thirty feet away when Masten’s pony went down again. It fell with a looseness and finality that told Masten of the end. And Masten slipped his feet out of the stirrups, throwing himself free and alighting on his hands and knees in front of the exhausted animal. He got up, and started to run, desperately, sobbing, his lips slavering from terror. But he turned, after running a few feet, to see Catherson coming after him. The nester was uncoiling a rope from his saddle horn, and at this sight Masten shrieked and went to his knees. He heard an answering laugh from Catherson, short, malevolent. And then the rope swished out, its loop widening and writhing. Masten shrieked again, and threw up his hands impotently.
* * *
Later, Catherson brought his pony to a halt, far from where the rope had been cast, and looked grimly down at his fellow being, prone and motionless in the deep sand at his feet.
Unmoved, remorseless, Catherson had cut short the pleadings, the screaming, the promises. He had not bungled his work, and it had been done. But as he looked down now, the muscles of his face quivered. And now he spoke the first word that had passed his lips since he had left the Flying W ranchhouse:
“I reckon you’ve got what’s been comin’ to you!”
He got down, unfastened the rope, deliberately re-coiled it and looped it around the saddle horn. Then he mounted and rode away. Grim, indistinct, fading into the blackness of the desert night, he went, half a mile, perhaps. And then, halting the pony, he turned in the saddle and looked back, his head bent in a listening attitude. To his ears came the sharp bark of a coyote, very near. It was answered, faintly, from the vast, yawning distance, by another. Catherson stiffened, and lines of remorse came into his face.
“Hell!” he exclaimed gruffly.
He wheeled the pony and sent it scampering back. A little later he was kneeling at Masten’s side, and still later he helped Masten to the saddle in front of him and set out again into the desert blackness toward the timber from which they both had burst some time before.
Many hours afterward they came to the river, at the point where the Lazette trail intersected. There, in the shallow water of the ford, Masten washed from his body the signs of his experience, Catherson helping him. Outwardly, when they had finished, there were few marks on Masten. But inwardly his experience had left an ineffaceable impression.
After washing, he staggered to a rock and sat on it, his head in his hands, shivers running over him. For a time Catherson paid no attention to him, busying himself with his pony, jaded from the night’s work. But after half an hour, just as the first faint shafts of dawn began to steal up over the horizon, Catherson walked close, and stood looking down at his victim.
“Well,” he said, slowly and passionlessly, “I’ve got you this far. I’m quittin’ you. I reckon I’ve deviled you enough. I was goin’ to kill you. But killin’ you wouldn’t have made things right. I expect you’ve learned somethin’, anyway. You’ll know enough to play square, after this. An’ wherever you go—”
Masten looked up at him, his face haggard, his eyes brimming, but flashing earnestly.
“I’m going back to Hagar,” he said. He shivered again. “You’re right, Catherson,” he added, his voice quaveri
ng; “I learned a lot tonight. I’ve learned—” His voice broke, and he sat there grim and white, shuddering as a child shudders when awakened from a nightmare. He almost collapsed when Catherson’s huge hands fell to his shoulders, but the hands held him, the fingers gripping deeply into the flesh. There was a leap in Catherson’s voice:
“You’re almost a man, after all!” he said.
They got on the pony after a while, riding as before, Masten in front, Catherson behind him, steadying him. And in this manner they rode on toward Catherson’s shack, miles down the river.
It was late in the morning when they came in sight of the shack, and seeing them from afar Hagar ran to them. She stopped when she saw Masten, her eyes wide with wonder and astonishment that changed quickly to joy as she saw a smile gathering on Catherson’s face.
“I’ve brought you your husband, Hagar,” he told her.
Hagar did not move. Her hands were pressing her breast; her eyes were eloquent with doubt and hope. They sought Masten’s, searchingly, defiantly. And she spoke directly to him, proudly, her head erect:
“If you’ve come ag’in your will—If dad had to bring you—” She paused, her lips trembling.
“Shucks,” said Catherson gently; “he’s come on his own hook, Hagar. Why, he asked me to bring him—didn’t you, Masten?”
And then he dismounted and helped Masten down, leading his pony forward toward the shack, but turning when he reached the porch, to look back at Masten and Hagar, standing together in the shade of the trees, the girl’s head resting on the man’s shoulder.
Catherson pulled the saddle and bridle from the pony, turned him into the corral, and then went into the house. A little later he came out again, smoking a pipe. Masten and Hagar were sitting close together on a fallen tree near where he had left them. Catherson smiled mildly at them and peacefully pulled at his pipe.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVI
A DREAM COMES TRUE
On the edge of the mesa, from which, on the day of her adventure with the injured ankle, Ruth had viewed the beautiful virgin wilderness that stretched far on the opposite side of the river, she was riding, the afternoon of a day a week later, with Randerson. She had expressed a wish to come here, and Randerson had agreed joyfully.
Seated on a rock in the shade of some trees that formed the edge of that timber grove in which he had tied Ruth’s pony on a night that held many memories for both, they had watched, for a long time, in silence, the vast country before them. Something of the solemn calmness of the scene was reflected in Ruth’s eyes. But there was a different expression in Randerson’s eyes. It was as though he possessed a secret which, he felt, she ought to know, but was deliberately delaying the telling of it. But at last he decided, though he began obliquely:
“I reckon there’s a set plan for the way things turn out—for folks,” he said, gravely. “Things turn out to show it. Everything is fixed.” He smiled as she looked at him. “Take me,” he went on. “I saw your picture. If I’d only seen it once, mebbe I wouldn’t have fell in love with it. But—”
“Why, Rex!” she reproved with an injured air, “how can you say that? Why, I believe I loved you from the minute I saw you!”
“You didn’t have anything on me there!” he told her. “For I was a gone coon the first time I set eyes on you! But is it the same with pictures? A picture, now, has to be studied; it ain’t like the real article,” he apologized. “Anyway, if I hadn’t kept lookin’ at your picture, mebbe things would have been different. But I got it, an’ I looked at it a lot. That shows that it was all fixed for you an’ me.”
She looked mirthfully at him. “Was it all fixed for you to take the picture from Vickers, by force—as you told me you did?” she demanded.
He grinned brazenly. “I reckon that was part of the plan,” he contended. “Anyway, I got it. Vickers wouldn’t speak to me for a month, but I reckon I didn’t lose any sleep over that. What sleep I lost was lost lookin’ at the picture.” The confession did not embarrass him, for he continued quietly:
“An’ there’s Masten.” He watched the smile go out of her face with regret in his eyes. But he went on. “I intended to kill him, one night. But he had no gun, an’ I couldn’t. That would have spoiled the plan that’s fixed for all of us. I let him live, an’ the plan works out.” He took hold of the hand nearest him and pressed it tightly.
“Have you seen Hagar since?” he asked.
“No,” she told him, looking quickly at him, for she caught an odd note in his voice. “I just couldn’t bear to think of going back there.”
“Well,” he said, “Hagar’s happy. I was over there this mornin’. Masten’s there.” He felt her hand grip his suddenly, and he smiled. He had talked with Catherson; the nester had told him the story, but it had been agreed between them the real story was not to be told. “They’re married—Hagar an’ Masten. Masten come to Catherson’s shack the day after I—after I brought you home from there. An’ they rode over to Lazette an’ got hooked up. An’ Catherson had been lookin’ for Masten, figurin’ to kill him. I reckon it was planned for Masten to have a change of heart. Or mebbe it was gettin’ married changed him. For he’s a lot different, since. He’s quiet, an’ a heap considerate of other folks’ feelin’s. He’s got some money, an’ he’s goin’ to help Abe to fix up his place. He asked my pardon, for settin’ Pickett an’ Kelso on me. I shook his hand, Ruth, an’ wished him luck an’ happiness. Don’t you wish him the same, Ruth—both of them?”
“Yes,” she said earnestly; “I do!” And now she was looking at him with luminous eyes. “But it was very manly of you to forgive him so fully!”
“I reckon it wasn’t so awful manly,” he returned, blushing. “There wasn’t nothin’ else to do, I expect. Would you have me hold a grudge against him? An’ spoil everything—nature’s plan included? It was to happen that way, an’ I ain’t interferin’. Why, I reckon if I wasn’t to forgive him, there’d be another plan spoiled—yours an’ mine. An’ I’m sure helpin’ to work that out. I’ve thought of the first of the month,” he said, looking at her, expectantly, and speaking lowly. “The justice of the peace will be back in Lazette then.”
“So you’ve been inquiring?” she said, her face suffused with color.
“Why, sure! Somebody’s got to do it. It’s my job.”
A little later they mounted their ponies and rode along the edge of the timber. When they reached the tree to which he had tied her pony on the night she had hurt her ankle, he called her attention to it.
“That’s where I lost the bandanna,” he told her. “It fell off my neck an’ got tangled in the knot.”
“Then you know!” she exclaimed.
“Sure,” he said, grinning; “Uncle Jepson told me.”
“I think Uncle Jep has been your right hand man all through this,” she charged.
“Why shouldn’t he be?” he retorted. And she could give him no reason why it should have been otherwise.
“It was a rather mean trick to play on me,” she charged pretending indignation.
“If you’d have thought it mean, you’d have told me about it before now,” he answered. “Patches was reliable.”
“Kester an’ Linton have sloped,” he told her as they rode away from the trees. “This climate was gettin’ unhealthy for them.”
“What makes folks act so foolish?” he questioned, later. “There ain’t no way to escape what’s got to be. Why can’t folks take their medicine without makin’ faces?”
She knew he referred to Masten, Chavis and Pickett, and she knew that this would be all the reference Randerson would ever make to them. But no answer formed in her mind and she kept silent.
When they came to the rock upon which he had found her, he halted and regarded it gravely.
“You had me scared that night,” he said. “Patches had most run his head off. I was mighty relieved to see you.”
“I treated you miserably that night,” she confessed.
“Did you hear me complainin’?” he asked with a gentle smile at her. “I expect, some day, when we’re together more, an’ you get to lovin’ me less than you do now, you’ll get peevish ag’in. Married folks always do. But I won’t notice it. I’ll get on Patches—if he’s alive, you wantin’ to put off the marriage so long—”
“Until the first!” she laughed, in gentle derision.
“Well,” he said, with pretended gravity, “when a man has waited, as long as I’ve waited, he gets sort of impatient.” He grinned again, and gave her this last shot: “An’ mighty patient after!”
And they rode on again, through the white sunlight, close together, dreaming of days to come.
THE END
* * *
ZANE GREY’S NOVELS
May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS
A New York society girl buys a ranch which becomes the center of frontier warfare Her loyal superintendent rescues her when she is captured by bandits. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightful close.
THE RAINBOW TRAIL
The story of a young clergyman who becomes a wanderer in the great western uplands—until at last love and faith awake.
DESERT GOLD
The story describes the recent uprising along the border, and ends with the finding of the gold which two prospectors had willed to the girl who is the story’s heroine.
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon authority ruled. The prosecution of Jane Withersteen is the theme of the story.
The Range Boss Page 20