The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  Nothing had come out as he had planned it. The farthest thing from his hopes had been that he would have to fight his way out. He had not killed that fool Dillon of set purpose. He knew now that if his anger had not blazed out he might have made his getaway and left the fellow alive. But he had been given no time to think. It was a bad break of the luck. The White River settlers would not forgive him that. They would remember that Dillon had saved him from the Indians in the Ute campaign, and they would reason--the thickheaded idiots--that the least he could have done was to let the boy go.

  He plunged through the sand of the sage hills at a gait that was half a run and half a walk. In his high-heeled boots fast travel was difficult. The footgear of the cattleman is not made for walking. The hill riders do most of their travel in a saddle. Houck's feet hurt. His toes were driven forward in the boots until each step became torture. From his heels the skin peeled from sliding up and down against the hard leather.

  But he dared not stop. Already he could hear the pursuers. In the still night there came to him the shout of one calling to another, the ring of a horse's hoof striking on a stone. They were combing the mesa behind him.

  Houck stumbled forward. Vaguely there rose before him a boulder-strewn slope that marked the limit of the valley. Up this he scrambled in a desperate hurry to reach the rocks. For the pursuit was almost upon him now.

  Two outcroppings of sandstone barred the way. They leaned against each other, leaving a small cave beneath. Into this Houck crawled on hands and knees.

  He lay crouched there, weapon in hand, like a cornered wolf, while the riders swept up and past. He knew one palpitating moment when he thought himself about to be discovered. Two of the posse stopped close to his hiding-place.

  "Must be close to him," one said. "Got the makin's, Jim?"

  "Sure." Evidently the tobacco pouch was passed from one to the other. "Right in these rocks somewhere, I shouldn't wonder."

  "Mebbeso. Mebbe still hot-footin' it for the hills. He's in one heluva hurry if you ask me."

  "Killed Bob Dillon in the park, I heard."

  "If he did he'll sure hang for it, after what Dillon did for him."

  There came the faint sound of creaking leather as their horses moved up the hill.

  The outlaw waited till they were out of hearing before he crept into the open. Across the face of the slope he cut obliquely, working always toward higher ground. His lips were drawn back so that the tobacco-stained teeth showed in a snarl of savage rage. It would go ill with any of the posse if they should stumble on him. He would have no more mercy than a hunted wild beast.

  With every minute now his chances of safety increased. The riders were far above him and to the left. With luck he should reach Piceance Creek by morning. He would travel up it till he came to Pete Tolliver's place. He would make the old man give him a horse. Not since the night he had been ridden out of Bear Cat on a rail had he seen the nester. But Pete always had been putty in his hands. It would be easy enough to bully him into letting him have whatever he wanted. All he needed was a saddled mount and provisions.

  Houck was on unfamiliar ground. If there were settlers in these hills he did not know where they were. Across the divide somewhere ran Piceance Creek, but except in a vague way he was not sure of the direction it took. It was possible he might lay hold of a horse this side of Tolliver's. If so, he would not for a moment hesitate to take it.

  All night he traveled. Once he thought he heard a distant dog, but though he moved in the direction from which the barking had come he did not find any ranch. The first faint glimmer of gray dawn had begun to lighten the sky when he reached the watershed of Piceance.

  It had been seventeen hours since he had tasted water and that had been as a chaser after a large drink of whiskey. He was thirsty, and he hastened his pace to reach the creek. Moving down the slope, he pulled up abruptly. He had run into a cavvy grazing on the hill.

  A thick growth of pine and piñon ran up to the ridge above. Back of a scrub evergreen Houck dropped to consider a plan of action. He meant to get one of these horses, and to do this he must have it and be gone before dawn. This was probably some round-up. If he could drift around close to the camp and find a saddle, there would likely be a rope attached to it. He might, of course, be seen, but he would have to take a chance on that.

  Chance befriended him to his undoing. As he crept through the brush something caught his ankle and he stumbled. His groping fingers found a rope. One end of the rope was attached to a stake driven into the ground. The other led to a horse, a pinto, built for spirit and for speed, his trained eye could tell.

  He pulled up the stake and wound up the rope, moving toward the pinto as he did so. He decided it would be better not to try to get a saddle till he reached Tolliver's place. The rope would do for a bridle at a pinch.

  The horse backed away from him, frightened at this stranger who had appeared from nowhere. He followed, trying in a whisper to soothe the animal. It backed into a small piñon, snapping dry branches with its weight.

  Houck cursed softly. He did not want to arouse anybody in the camp or to call the attention of the night jinglers to his presence. He tried to lead the pinto away, but it balked and dug its forefeet into the ground, leaning back on the rope.

  The outlaw murmured encouragement to the horse. Reluctantly it yielded to the steady pull on its neck. Man and beast began to move back up the hill. As soon as he was a safe distance from the camp, Houck meant to make of the rope a bridle.

  In the pre-dawn darkness he could see little and that only as vague outlines rather than definite shapes. But some instinct warned the hunted man that this was no round-up camp. He did not quite know what it was. Yet he felt as though he were on the verge of a discovery, as though an unknown but terrible danger surrounded him. Unimaginative he was, but something that was almost panic flooded up in him.

  He could not wait to mount the horse until he had reached the brow of the hill. Drawing the rope close, he caught at the mane of the horse and bent his knees for the spring.

  Houck had an instant's warning, and his revolver was half out of its scabbard when the rush of the attack flung him against the startled animal. He fought like a baited bear, exerting all his great strength to fling back the figures that surged up at him out of the darkness. From all sides they came at him, with guttural throat cries, swarming over each other as he beat them down.

  The struggling mass quartered over the ground like some unwieldy prehistoric reptile. Houck knew that if he lost his footing he was done for. Once, as the cluster of fighters swung downhill, the outlaw found himself close to the edge of the group. He got his arms free and tried to beat off those clinging to him. Out of the mêlée he staggered, a pair of arms locked tightly round his thighs. Before he could free himself another body flung itself at his shoulder and hurled him from his feet.

  His foes piled on him as ants do on a captured insect. His arms were tied behind him with rawhide thongs, his feet fastened together rather loosely.

  He was pulled to a sitting posture. In the east the sky had lightened with the promise of the coming day.

  His clothes torn from arms and body, his face bleeding from random blows, Houck looked round on the circle of his captors defiantly. In his glaring eyes and close-clamped, salient jaw no evidence was written of the despair that swept over him in a wave and drowned hope. He had in this bleak hour of reckoning the virtue of indomitable gameness.

  "All right. You got me. Go to it, you red devils," he growled.

  The Utes gloated over him in a silence more deadly than any verbal threats. Their enemy had been delivered into their hands.

  CHAPTER XLVI

  THE END OF A CROOKED TRAIL

  In the grim faces of the Utes Houck read his doom. He had not the least doubt of it. His trail ended here.

  The terror in his heart rose less out of the fact itself than the circumstances which surrounded it. The gray dawn, the grim, copper-colored faces, the unknown tormen
t waiting for him, stimulated his imagination. He could have faced his own kind, the cattlemen of the Rio Blanco, without this clutching horror that gripped him. They would have done what they thought necessary, but without any unnecessary cruelty. What the Utes would do he did not know. They would make sure of their vengeance, but they would not be merciful about it.

  He repressed a shudder and showed his yellow teeth in a grin of defiance. "I reckon you're right glad to see me," he jeered.

  Still they said nothing, only looked at their captive with an aspect that daunted him.

  "Not dumb, are you? Speak up, some of you," Houck snarled, fighting down the panic within him.

  A wrinkled old Ute spoke quietly. "Man-with-loud-tongue die. He kill Indian--give him no chance. Indians kill him now."

  Houck nodded his head. "Sure I killed him. He'd stolen my horse, hadn't he?"

  The old fellow touched his chest. "Black Arrow my son. You kill him. He take your horse mebbe. You take Ute horse." He pointed to the pinto. "Ute kill Man-with-loud-tongue."

  "Black Arrow reached for his gun. I had to shoot. It was an even break." Houck's voice pleaded in spite of his resolution not to weaken.

  The spokesman for the Indians still showed an impassive face, but his voice was scornful. "Is Man-with-loud-tongue a yellow coyote? Does he carry the heart of a squaw? Will he cry like a pappoose?"

  Houck's salient jaw jutted out. The man was a mass of vanity. Moreover, he was game. "Who told you I was yellow? Where did you get that? I ain't scared of all the damned Utes that ever came outa hell."

  And to prove it--perhaps, too, by way of bolstering up his courage--he cursed the redskins with a string of blistering oaths till he was out of breath.

  The captive needed no explanation of the situation. He knew that the soldiers had failed to round up and drive back to the reservation a band of the Utes that had split from the main body and taken to the hills. By some unlucky chance or evil fate he had come straight from Bear Cat to their night camp.

  The Utes left Houck pegged out to the ground while they sat at a little distance and held a pow-wow. The outlaw knew they were deciding his fate. He knew them better than to expect anything less than death. What shook his nerve was the uncertainty as to the form it would take. Like all frontiersmen, he had heard horrible stories of Apache torture. In general the Utes did not do much of that sort of thing. But they had a special grudge against him. What he had done to one of them had been at least a contributory cause of the outbreak that had resulted so disastrously for them. He would have to pay the debt he owed. But how? He sweated blood while the Indians squatted before the fire and came to a decision.

  The council did not last long. When it broke up Houck braced his will to face what he must. It would not be long now. Soon he would know the worst.

  Two of the braves went up the hill toward the cavvy. The rest came back to their captive.

  They stood beside him in silence. Houck scowled up at them, still defiant.

  "Well?" he demanded.

  The Utes said nothing. They stood there stolid. Their victim read in that voiceless condemnation an awful menace.

  "Onload it," he jeered. "I'm no squaw. Shoot it at me. Jake Houck ain't scared."

  Still they waited, the father of Black Arrow with folded arms, a sultry fire burning in his dark eyes.

  The two men who had gone to the cavvy returned. They were leading a horse with a rope around its neck. Houck recognized the animal with a thrill of superstitious terror. It was the one about the possession of which he had shot Black Arrow.

  The old chief spoke again. "Man-with-loud-tongue claim this horse. Utes give it him. Horse his. Man-with-loud-tongue satisfied then maybe."

  "What are you aimin' to do, you red devils?" Houck shouted.

  Already he guessed vaguely at the truth. Men were arranging a kind of harness of rope and rawhide on the animal.

  Others stooped to drag the captive forward. He set his teeth to keep back the shriek of terror that rose to his throat.

  He knew now what form the vengeance of the savages was to take.

  CHAPTER XLVII

  THE KINGDOM OF JOY

  A prince of the Kingdom of Joy rode the Piceance trail on a morning glad with the song of birds and the rippling of brooks. Knee to knee with him rode his princess, slim and straight, the pink in her soft smooth cheeks, a shy and eager light in the velvet-dark eyes. They were starting together on the long, long trail, and the poor young things could vision it only as strewn with sunbathed columbines and goldenrods.

  The princess was a bride, had been one for all of twelve hours. It was her present conviction that she lived in a world wonderful, and that the most amazingly radiant thing in it was what had happened to her and Bob Dillon. She pitied everybody else in the universe. They were so blind! They looked, but they did not see what was so clear to eyes from which the veil had been stripped. They went about their humdrum way without emotion. Their hearts did not sing exultant pæans that throbbed out of them like joy-notes from a meadow-lark's throat. Only those who had come happily to love's fruition understood the meaning of life. June was not only happy; she was this morning wise, heiress of that sure wisdom which comes only to the young when they discover just why they have been born into the world.

  How many joys there were for those attuned to receive them! Her fingers laced with Bob's, and from the contact a warm, ecstatic glow flooded both their bodies. She looked at his clean brown face, with its line of golden down above where the razor had traveled, with its tousled, reddish hair falling into the smiling eyes, and a queer little lump surged into the girl's throat. Her husband! This boy was the mate heaven had sent her to repay for years of unhappiness.

  "My wife!" It was all still so new and unbelievable that Bob's voice shook a little.

  "Are you sorry?" she asked.

  Her shy smile teased. She did not ask because she needed information, but because she could not hear too often the answer.

  "You know whether I am. Oh, June girl, I didn't know it would be like this," he cried.

  "Nor I, Bob."

  Their lithe bodies leaned from the saddles. They held each other close while their lips met.

  They were on their way to Pete Tolliver's to tell him the great news. Soon now the old cabin and its outbuildings would break into view. They had only to climb Twelve-Mile Hill.

  Out of a draw to the right a horse moved. Through the brush something dragged behind it.

  "What's that?" asked June.

  "Don't know. Looks kinda queer. It's got some sort of harness on."

  They rode to the draw. June gave a small cry of distress.

  "Oh, Bob, it's a man."

  He dismounted. The horse with the dragging load backed away, but it was too tired to show much energy. Bob moved forward, soothing the animal with gentle sounds. He went slowly, with no sudden gestures. Presently he was patting the neck of the horse. With his hunting-knife he cut the rawhide thongs that served as a harness.

  "It's a Ute pony," he said, after he had looked it over carefully. He knew this because the Indians earmarked their mounts.

  June was still in the saddle. Some instinct warned her not to look too closely at the load behind that was so horribly twisted.

  "Better go back to the road, June," her husband advised. "It's too late to do anything for this poor fellow."

  She did as he said, without another look at the broken body.

  When she had gone, Bob went close and turned over the huddled figure. Torn though it was, he recognized the face of Jake Houck. To construct the main features of the tragedy was not difficult.

  While escaping from Bear Cat after the fiasco of the bank robbery, Houck must have stumbled somehow into the hands of the Ute band still at large. They had passed judgment on him and executed it. No doubt the wretched man had been tied at the heels of a horse which had been lashed into a frenzied gallop by the Indians in its rear. He had been dragged or kicked to death by the frightened horse.
<
br />   As Bob looked down into that still, disfigured face, there came to him vividly a sense of the weakness and frailty of human nature. Not long since this bit of lifeless clay had straddled his world like a Colossus. To the young cowpuncher he had been a superman, terrible in his power and capacity to do harm. Now all that vanity and egoism had vanished, blown away as though it had never been.

  Where was Jake Houck? What had become of him? The shell that had been his was here. But where was the roaring bully that had shaken his fist blasphemously at God and man?

  It came to him, with a queer tug at the heartstrings, that Houck had once been a dimpled baby in a mother's arms, a chirruping little fat-legged fellow who tottered across the floor to her with outstretched fingers. Had that innocent child disappeared forever? Or in that other world to which Jake had so violently gone would he meet again the better self his evil life had smothered?