The Fighting Edge

by Raine, William MacLeod

  It made a great deal of difference to him which of these was true, more than it did to the little world in which he moved. Some of the boys might guy him good-naturedly, but nobody was likely to take the matter seriously except himself. Bob had begun to learn that a man ought to be his own most severe critic. He had set out to cure himself of cowardice. He would not be easy in mind so long as he still suspected himself of showing the white feather.

  He leaned on a fence and looked across the silvery sage to a grove of quaking asp beyond. How long he stood there, letting thoughts drift through his mind, he did not know. A sound startled him, the faint swish of something stirring. He turned.

  Out of the night shadows a nymph seemed to be floating toward him. For a moment he had a sense of unreality, that the flow and rhythm of her movement were born of the imagination. But almost at once he knew that this was June in the flesh.

  The moonlight haloed the girl, lent her the touch of magic that transformed her from a creature not too good for human nature’s daily food into an ethereal daughter of romance. Her eyes were dark pools of loveliness in a white face.

  “June!” he cried, excitement drumming in his blood.

  Why had she come to find him? What impulse or purpose had brought her out into the night in his wake? Desire of her, tender, poignant, absorbing, pricked through him like an ache. He wanted her. Soul and body reached out to her, though both found expression only in that first cry.

  Her mouth quivered. “Oh, Bob, you silly boy! As if—as if it matters why you were stunned. You were. That’s enough. I’m so glad—so glad you’re not hurt. It’s ’most a miracle. He might have killed you.”

  She did not tell him that he would have done it if she had not flung her weight on his arm and dragged the weapon down, nor how in that dreadful moment her wits had worked to save him from the homicidal mania of the killer.

  Bob’s heart thumped against his ribs like a caged bird. Her dear concern was for him. It was so she construed friendship—to give herself generously without any mock modesty or prudery. She had come without thought of herself because her heart had sent her.

  “What matters is that when I called you came,” she went on. “You weren’t afraid then, were you?”

  “Hadn’t time. That’s why. I just jumped.”

  “Yes.” The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in the hills blazing through mists. “You just jumped to help me. You forgot he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I reckon if I’d thought of that—”

  Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a virtue. She remembered a confidence Blister had once made to her.

  “T-Texas man,” she squeaked, stuttering a little in mimicry, “throw up that red haid an’ stick out yore chin.”

  Up jerked the head. Bob began to grin in spite of himself.

  “Whose image are you m-made in?” she demanded.

  “You know,” he answered.

  “What have you got over all the world?”

  “Dominion, ma’am, but not over all of it, I reckon.”

  “All of it,” she insisted, standing clean of line and straight as a boy soldier.

  “Right smart of it,” he compromised.

  “Every teeny bit of it,” she flung back.

  “Have yore own way. I know you will anyhow,” he conceded.

  “An’ what are you a little lower than?”

  “I’m a heap lower than one angel I know.”

  She stamped her foot. “You’re no such thing. You’re as good as any one—and better.”

  “I wouldn’t say better,” he murmured ironically. None the less he was feeling quite cheerful again. He enjoyed being put through his catechism by her.

  “Trouble with you is you’re so meek,” she stormed. “You let anybody run it over you till they go too far. What’s the use of crying your own goods down? Tell the world you’re Bob Dillon and for it to watch your dust.”

  “You want me to brag an’ strut like Jake Houck?”

  “No-o, not like that. But Blister’s right. You’ve got to know your worth. When you’re sure of it you don’t have to tell other people about it. They know.”

  He considered this. “Tha’s correct,” he said.

  “Well, then.”

  Bob had an inspiration. It was born out of moonshine, her urging, and the hunger of his heart. His spurs trailed across the grass.

  “Is my red haid high enough now?” he asked, smiling.

  Panic touched her pulse. “Yes, Bob.”

  “What have I got over all the world?” he quizzed.

  “Dominion,” she said obediently in a small voice.

  “Over all of it?”

  “I—don’t—know.”

  His brown hands fastened on her shoulders. He waited till at last her eyes came up to meet his. “Every teeny bit of it.”

  “Have your own way,” she replied, trying feebly to escape an emotional climax by repeating the words he had used. “I know you will anyhow.”

  He felt himself floating on a wave of audacious self-confidence. “Say it, then. Every teeny bit of it.”

  “Every teeny bit of it,” she whispered.

  “That means June Tolliver too.” The look in his eyes flooded her with love.

  “June Dillon,” the girl corrected in a voice so soft and low he scarcely made out the words.

  He caught her in his arms. “You precious lamb!”

  They forgot the rest of the catechism. She nestled against his shoulder while they told each other in voiceless ways what has been in the hearts of lovers ever since the first ones walked in Eden.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XLV

  THE OUTLAW GETS A BAD BREAK

  Houck crawled through the barbed-wire fence and looked back into the park from which he had just fled. June was kneeling beside the man he had shot. Some one was running across the grass toward her. Soon the pursuit would be at his heels. He dared not lose a second.

  He plunged into the sage, making for the hills which rose like a saw-toothed wall on the horizon. If he could reach them he might find there a precarious safety. Some wooded pocket would give him shelter until the pursuit had swept past. He was hungry, but if he must he could do without food for a day.

  The bandit was filled with a furious, impotent rage at the way fortune had tricked him. Thirty-five miles from Bear Cat, well back from the river, three horses were waiting for him and his dead companions in a draw. Unless somebody found them they would wait a long time. The way that led to them was barred for him. He would have to try to reach Glenwood or Rifle. From there he could perhaps catch a freight east or west. His one chance was to get clear out of the country. After this day’s work it would be too small to hold him.

  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 ston
e. 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 torment 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-tong
ue.”

  “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.