The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  “I’m done, I tell you,” he said querulously, as if raising the question crossed him. “Pay me for that many, and call it square.”

  “Bring in Macdonald,” Chadron demanded in firm tones.

  “I ain’t a-goin’ to touch him! If I keep on after that man he’ll git me—it’s on the cards, I can see it in the dark.”

  “Yes, you’re lost your nerve, you old wildcat!” There was a taunt in Chadron’s voice, a sneer.

  Thorn turned on him, a savage, smothered noise in his throat.

  “You can say that because you owe me money, but you know it’s a damn lie! If you didn’t owe me money, I’d make you swaller it with hot lead!”

  “You’re talkin’ a little too free for a man of your trade, Mark.” While Chadron’s tone was tolerant, even friendly, there was an undercurrent of warning, even threat, in his words.

  “You’re the feller that’s lettin’ his gab outrun his gumption. How many does that make for me, talkin’ about nerve, how many? Do you know?”

  “I don’t care how many, it lacks one of bein’ enough to suit me.”

  “Twenty-eight, and I’ve got ’em down in m’ book and I can prove it!”

  “Make it twenty-nine, and then quit if you want to.”

  “Maybe I will.” Thorn leaned forward a little, a glitter in his smoky eyes.

  Chadron fell back, his face growing pale. His hand was on his weapon, his eyes noting narrowly every move Thorn made.

  “If you ever sling a gun on me, you old devil, it’ll be—”

  “I ain’t a-goin’ to sling no gun on you as long as you owe me money. I ain’t a-goin’ to cut the bottom out of m’ own money-poke, Chad; you don’t need to swivel up in your hide, you ain’t marked for twenty-nine.”

  “Well, don’t throw out any more hints like that; I don’t like that kind of a joke.”

  “No, I wouldn’t touch a hair of your head,” Thorn ran on, following a vein which seemed to amuse him, for he smiled, a horrible, face-drawing contortion of a smile, “for if you and me ever had a fallin’ out over money I might git so hard up I couldn’t travel, and one of them sheriff fellers might slip up on me.”

  “What’s all this fool gab got to do with business?” Chadron was impatient; he looked at his watch.

  “Well, I’d be purty sure to make a speech from the gallers—I always intended to—and lay everything open that ever took place between me and you and the rest of them big fellers. There’s a newspaper feller in Cheyenne that wants to make a book out of m’ life, with m’ pict’re in the inside of the lid, to be sold when I’m dead. I could git money for tellin’ that feller what I know.”

  “Go on and tell him then,”—Chadron spoke with a dare in his words, and derision—“that’ll be easy money, and it won’t call for any nerve. But you don’t need to be plannin’ any speech from the gallus—you’ll never go that fur if you try to double-cross me!”

  “I ain’t aimin’ to double-cross no man, but you can call it that if it suits you. You can call it whatever you purty damn well care to—I’m done!”

  Chadron made no reply to that. He was pulling on his great gloves, frowning savagely, as if he meant to close the matter with what he had said, and go.

  “Do I git any money, or don’t I?” Thorn asked, sharply.

  “When you bring in that wolf’s tail.”

  “I ain’t a-goin’ to touch that feller, I tell you, Chad. That man means bad luck to me—I can read it in the cards.”

  “Maybe you call that kind of skulkin’ livin’ up to your big name?” Chadron spoke in derision, playing on the vanity which he knew to be as much a part of that old murderer’s life as the blood of his merciless heart.

  “I’ve got glory enough,” said Thorn, satisfaction in his voice; “what I want right now’s money.”

  “Earn it before you collect it.”

  “Twenty-eight ’d fill a purty fair book, countin’ in what I could tell about the men I’ve had dealin’s with,” Thorn reflected, as to himself, leaning against the mantel, frowning down at the floor with bent head.

  “Talk till you’re empty, you old fool, and who’ll believe you? Huh! you couldn’t git yourself hung if you was to try!” Chadron’s dark face was blacker for the spreading flood of resentful blood; he pointed with his heavy quirt at Thorn, as if to impress him with a sense of the smallness of his wickedness, which men would not credit against the cattlemen’s word, even if he should publish it abroad. “You’ll never walk onto the scaffold, no matter how hard you try—there’ll be somebody around to head you off and give you a shorter cut than that, I’m here to tell you!”

  “Huh!” said Thorn, still keeping his thoughtful pose.

  Man-killing is a trade that reacts differently on those who follow it, according to their depth and nature. It makes black devils of some who were once civil, smiling, wholesome men, whether the mischance of life-taking has fallen to them in their duty to society or in outlawed deeds. It plunges some into dark taciturnity and brooding coldness, as if they had eaten of some root which blunted them to all common relish of life.

  There are others of whom the bloody trade makes gabbling fools, light-headed, wild-eyed wasters of words, full of the importance of their mind-wrecking deeds. Like the savage whose reputation mounts with each wet scalp, each fresh head, these kill out of depravity, glorying in the growing score. To this class Mark Thorn belonged.

  There was but one side left to that depraved man’s mind; his bloody, base life had smothered the rest under the growing heap of his horrible deeds. Thorn had killed twenty-eight human beings for hire, of whom he had tally, but there was one to be included of whom he had not taken count—himself.

  As he stood here against the chimney-shelf he was only the outside husk of a man. His soul had been judged already, and burned out of him by the unholy passion which he had indulged. He was as simple in his garrulous chatter of glory and distinction as a half-fool. His warped mind ran only on the spectacular end that he had planned for himself, and the speech from the gallows that was to be the black, damning seal at the end of his atrocious life’s record.

  Thorn looked up from his study; he shook his head decisively.

  “I ain’t a-goin’ to go back over there in your country and give you a chance at me. If you git me, you’ll have to git me here. I ain’t a-goin’ to sling a gun down on nobody for the money that’s in it, I tell you. I’m through; I’m out of the game; my craw’s full. It’s a bad sign when a man wastes a bullet on a hired hand, takin’ him for the boss, and I ain’t a-goin’ to run no more resks on that feller. When my day for glory comes I’ll step out on the gallers and say m’ piece, and they’ll be some big fellers in this country huntin’ the tall grass about that time, I guess.”

  Chadron had taken up his quirt from the little round table where the hotel register lay. He turned now toward the outer door, as if in earnest about going his way and leaving Mark Thorn to follow his own path, no matter to what consequences it might lead.

  “If you’re square enough to settle up with me for this job,” said Thorn, “and pay me five hundred for what I’ve done, I’ll leave your name out when I come to make that little speech.”

  Chadron turned on him with a sneer. “You seem to have your hangin’ all cut and dried, but you’ll never go ten miles outside of this reservation if you don’t turn around and put that job through. You’ll never hang—you ain’t cut out in the hangin’ style.”

  “I tell you I will!” protested Thorn hotly. “I can see it in the cards.”

  “Well, you’d better shuffle ’em ag’in.”

  “I know what kind of a day it’s goin’ to be, and I know just adzackly how I’ll look when I hold up m’ hands for them fellers to keep still. Shucks! you can’t tell me; I’ve seen that day a thousand times. It’ll be early in the mornin’, and the sun bright—”

  The door leading to the dining-room opened, and Thorn left his description of that great and final day in his career hanging like
a broken bridge. He turned to see who it was, squinting his old eyes up sharply, and in watching the stranger he failed to see the whiteness that came over Chadron’s face like a rushing cloud.

  “Grab your gun!” Chadron whispered.

  “Just let it stay where it is, Thorn,” advised the stranger, his quick hand on his own weapon before Thorn could grasp what it was all about, believing, as he did, in the safety of the reservation’s neutral ground. “Macdonald is my name; I’ve been looking for you.” The stranger came on as he spoke.

  He was but a few feet away from Thorn, and the old man-killer had his revolvers buckled around him in their accustomed place, while his death-spreading rifle stood near his hand, leaning its muzzle against the chimney-jamb. Thorn seemed to be measuring all the chances which he had left to him in that bold surprise, and to conclude in the same second that they were not worth taking.

  Macdonald had not drawn his revolver. His hand was on the butt of it, and his eye held Thorn with a challenge that the old slayer was in no mind to accept.

  Thorn was not a close-fighting man. He never had killed one of his kind in a face-to-face battle in all his bloody days. At the bottom he was a coward, as his skulking deeds attested, and in that moment he knew that he stood before his master. Slowly he lifted his long arms above his head, without a word, and stood in the posture of complete surrender.

  Nearer the outer door stood Chadron, to whom Macdonald seemed to give little attention, as if not counting him in the game. The big cattleman was “white to the gills,” as his kind expressed that state. Macdonald unbuckled Thorn’s belt and hung his revolvers over his arm.

  “I knowed you’d git me, Macdonald,” the old scoundrel said.

  Macdonald, haggard and dusty, and grim as the last day that old Mark Thorn had pictured for himself, pushed his prisoner away from the chimney, out of reach of the rifle, and indicated that he was to march for the open door, through which the tables in the dining-room could be seen. At Macdonald’s coming Chadron had thrown his hand to his revolver, where he still held it, as if undecided how far to go.

  “Keep your gun where it is, Chadron,” Macdonald advised. “This isn’t my day for you. Clear out of here—quick!”

  Chadron backed toward the front door, his hand still dubiously on his revolver. Still suspicious, his face as white as it would have been in death, he reached back with his free hand to open the door.

  “I told you he’d git me,” nodded Thorn, with something near to exultation in the vindication of his reading of the cards. “I give you a chance—no man’s money ain’t a-goin’ to shut my mouth now!”

  “I’ll shut it, damn you!” Chadron’s voice was dry-sounding and far up in his throat. He drew his revolver with a quick jerk that seemed nothing more than a slight movement of the shoulder. Quick as he was—and few in the cattlemen’s baronies were ahead of him there—Macdonald was quicker. The muzzle of Chadron’s pistol was still in the leather when Macdonald’s weapon was leveled at his eyes.

  “Drop that gun!”

  A moment Chadron’s arm hung stiffly in that half-finished movement, while his eyes gave defiance. He had not bent before any man in many a year of growing power. But there was no other way; it was either bend or break, and the break would be beyond repair.

  Chadron’s fingers were damp with sudden sweat as he unclasped them from the pistol-butt and let the weapon fall; sweat was on his forehead, and a heaviness on his chest as if a man sat on him. He felt backwards through the open door with one foot, like an old man distrustful of his limbs, and steadied himself with his shoulder against the jamb, for there was a trembling in his knees. He knew that he had saved himself from the drop into eternal inconsequence by the shading of a second, for there was death in dusty Alan Macdonald’s face. The escape left Chadron shaken, like a man who has held himself away from death by his finger-ends at the lip of a ledge.

  “I knowed you’d git me, Macdonald,” Thorn repeated. “You don’t need no handcuffs nor nothin’ for me. I’ll go along with you as gentle as a fish.”

  Macdonald indicated that Thorn might lower his arms, having taken possession of the rifle. “Have you got a horse?” he asked.

  Thorn said that he had one in the hotel stable. “But don’t you try to take me too fur, Macdonald,” he advised. “Chadron he’ll ride a streak to git his men together and try to take me away from you—I could see it in his eye when he went out of that door.”

  Macdonald knew that Thorn had read Chadron’s intentions right. He nodded, to let him know that he understood the cattleman’s motives.

  “Well, don’t you run me off to no private rope party, neither, Macdonald, for I can tell you things that many a man’d pay me big money to keep my mouth shut on.”

  “You’ll have a chance, Thorn.”

  “But I want it done in the right way, so’s I’ll git the credit and the fame.”

  Macdonald was surprised to find this man, whose infamous career had branded him as the arch-monster of modern times, so vain and garrulous. He could account for it by no other hypothesis than that much killing had indurated the warped mind of the slayer until the taking of a human life was to him a commonplace. He was not capable of remorse, any more than he had been disposed to pity. He was not a man, only the blighted and cursed husk of a man, indeed, but doubly dangerous for his irresponsibility, for his atrophied small understanding.

  Twenty miles lay between the prisoner and the doubtful security of the jail at Meander, and most of the distance was through the grazing lands within Chadron’s bounds. On the other hand, it was not more than twelve miles to his ranch on the river. He believed that he could reach it before Chadron could raise men to stop him and take the prisoner away.

  Once home with Thorn, he could raise a posse to guard him until the sheriff could be summoned. Even then there was no certainty that the prisoner ever would see the inside of the Meander jail, for the sheriff of that county was nothing more than one of Chadron’s cowboys, elevated to office to serve the unrighteous desires of the men who had put him there.

  But Macdonald was determined that there should be no private rope party for Thorn, neither at the hands of the prisoner’s employers nor at those of the outraged settlers. Thorn must be brought to trial publicly, and the story of his employment, which he appeared ready enough to tell for the “glory” in it, must be told in a manner that would establish its value.

  The cruelly inhuman tale of his contracts and killings, his engagements and rewards, must be sown by the newspapers far and wide. Out of this dark phase of their oppression their deliverance must rise.

  * * *

  CHAPTER X

  “HELL’S A-GOIN’ TO POP”

  Chance Dalton, foreman of Alamito Ranch, was in charge of the expedition that rode late that afternoon against Macdonald’s homestead to liberate Mark Thorn, and close his mouth in the cattlemen’s effective way upon the bloody secrets which he might in vainglorious boast reveal. Chadron had promised rewards for the successful outcome of the venture, and Chance Dalton rode with his three picked men in a sportsman’s heat.

  He was going out on a hunt for game such as he had run down more than once before in his many years under Chadron’s hand. It was better sport than running down wolves or mountain lions, for there was the superior intelligence of the game to be considered. No man knew what turn the ingenuity of desperation might give the human mind. The hunted might go out in one last splendid blaze of courage, or he might cringe and beg, with white face and rolling eyes. In the case of Macdonald, Dalton anticipated something unusual. He had tasted that unaccountable homesteader’s spirit in the past.

  Dalton was a wiry, tough man who rode with his elbows out, like an Indian. His face was scarred by old knife-wounds, making it hard for him to shave, in consequence of which he allowed his red beard to grow to inch-length, where he kept it in subjugation with shears. The gutters of his scars were seen through it, and the ends of them ran up, on both cheeks, to his eyes. A knife had go
ne across one of these, missing the bright little pupil in its bony cave, but slashing the eyebrow and leaving him leering on that side.

  The men who came behind him were cowboys from the Texas Panhandle, lean and tough as the dried beef of their native plains. It was the most formidable force, not in numbers, but in proficiency, that ever had proceeded against Macdonald, and the most determined.

  Chadron himself had bent to the small office of spy to learn Macdonald’s intention in reference to his prisoner. From a sheltered thicket in the foothills the cattleman had watched the homesteader through his field glasses, making certain that he was returning Thorn to the scene of his latest crimes, instead of risking the long road to the Meander jail.

  Chadron knew that Macdonald would defend the prisoner’s life with his own, even against his neighbors. Macdonald would be as eager to have Thorn tell the story of his transactions with the Drovers’ Association as they would be to have it shut off. The realization of this threw Chadron into a state which he described to himself as the “fantods.” Another, with a more extensive and less picturesque vocabulary, would have said that the president of the Drovers’ Association was in a condition of panic.

  So he had despatched his men on this silencing errand, and now, as the sun was dipping over the hills, all red with the presage of a frosty night, Chance Dalton and his men came riding in sight of Macdonald’s little nest of buildings fronting the road by the river.

  Macdonald had secured his prisoner with ropes, for there was no compartment in his little house, built of boards from the mountain sawmill, strong enough to confine a man, much less a slippery one like Mark Thorn. The slayer had lapsed into his native taciturnity shortly after beginning the trip from the reservation to Macdonald’s homestead, and now he lay on the floor trussed up like a hog for market, looking blackly at Macdonald. Macdonald was considering the night ride to Meander with his prisoner that he had planned, with the intention of proceeding from there to Cheyenne and lodging him in jail. He believed there might be a better chance of holding him for trial there, and some slight hope of justice.