Bruce of the Circle A Part 35

"I'll fool your friend!" he laughed, twenty minutes later when they had climbed a steep ridge and the winded horses had dropped into a walk.

"I'll fool him!"

He drew Bayard's automatic, which he had taken from Ann, and looked it over in crafty antic.i.p.ation.

Ann, after her night and her day of hards.h.i.+p, of ceaseless anxiety, could not cry out. A sound started but went dry and dead in her throat.

She sat lax in her saddle, worn and confused and suddenly indifferent.

She had been defiant yesterday afternoon for a time; she had been frightened later; with cunning she had scratched her warning on Abe's saddle and with like strategy she had managed to set the great horse free when they were preparing for their early morning start from the Boyd ranch. She had withstood her husband's taunts flung at her through their sleepless night, she had taken in silence his abuse when it became necessary to secure another horse; beside him she had ridden in silence down the valley, knowing him for a crazed man. And now sight of Bayard, the sense of relief that his nearness brought, the sudden fear for his safety at seeing the pistol, reduced her to helplessness.

"You wait here," she heard her husband say.

He followed the order with a threat of some sort, a threat against her life she afterward remembered, dismounted and walked away. At the time his departure left no impression on her. She sat limp in her saddle a long interval, then leaned forward and, face in her horse's mane, gave way to sobbing. The vent for that emotion was relief; how long she cried she did not know, but suddenly she found herself on the ground, looking about, alive to the fact that the silence seemed like that of death.

Cautiously, Lytton crept up over the rocks after he left Ann. His movements gave no hint of his recent weakness; they were quick and jerky, but certain. His lids were narrowed and between them his eyes showed balefully. He held his weapon in his right hand, slightly elevated, ready to shoot. Moisture formed on his forehead and ran down over his cheeks. Now and then his gun hand trembled spasmodically and then he halted until it was firm again.

He knew these rocks well and took no chances of exposing himself. He slunk from tree to boulder and from boulder to brush, always making nearer camp, always ready for an emergency. He attained a point where he could look down on the cabin below him and stood there a long time, half crouched, poised, scanning every corner, every shadow. The corral was hidden from him and Abe, lying under a spreading juniper tree, was out of his range of vision. He listened as he watched but no sound came to him. Then he went on, down the ragged way.

At intervals of every few feet he halted and listened, repressing even his own breath that he might hear the slightest sound. But no movement, no vibration disturbed that crystal noontime until he had gone halfway to the red-roofed house below the dump. Then a bird fluttered from close beside him: a soft, abrupt, diminis.h.i.+ng whirr of wings and the man shrank back against the rock, lifting his gun hand high, breath hissing as it slipped out between his teeth, the craven in him shaking his limbs, gripping his throat. Discovery of what had startled him brought only slow relief, and minutes elapsed before he straightened and laughed silently to shame his nerves to steadiness.

A stone, loosened by his foot, rolled down before him to the next ledge, rattling as it went, and he squatted quickly, again afraid, yet alert.

For he felt that noise emanating from his movements would precipitate developments. But nothing moved, no new sounds came to him.

He was not certain that Bayard had seen them out on the valley. He did not know of his wife's message for help; in his confused consciousness he had supposed that the cowman had ridden to the mine on some covetous errand and that Bruce was ignorant of the fact that he and Ann had left the Circle A. He did not even stop to remember that Bayard had come into sight and disappeared through the timber on Abe, and that the stallion had slipped away from them before dawn. He had leaped to the conclusion that Bruce would be in the log house down yonder or somewhere about the property. So he stalked on, lips dry and hot with the desire to kill....

Lytton approached to within ten yards of the cabin without hearing more sounds. There he straightened to his toes and stretched his neck to look about, peering over the tops of oak brush that flourished in the scant soil, and, as he reached his full height, the sharp sound of a chair sc.r.a.ping on the floor sent him to a wilting, quivering squat, caused his breath to come in gasps, made his hands sweat until the pistol he held was slippery with their moisture. His head roared with excitement, but through it he thought he heard the sound of a man's voice lifted in speech.

No window was visible to him from his position. The back door of the kitchen stood open, he could see, but his view of the room through it was negligible. At the other end of the room was a door and a window, but he dared not risk advance from that direction. He crouched there, panting, fearing, yet planning quickly, driven to desperation by the urge of the hate which rankled in him. Bruce Bayard had attempted to steal his wife, he repeated to himself, he had attempted to frighten him away from his other property, his mine, and he was roused to a pitch of nervous excitement that carried him beyond the caution of mental balance and yet did not stimulate him to the abandon of actual madness. He wanted Bayard's life with all the l.u.s.t that can be stirred in men by an outraging of the sense of possession and the pa.s.sion of jealousy ...

beyond which there can be no destroying desire.

No other sounds came from the house, but he was satisfied that the man waiting within was his man and he skulked from the brush, choosing his footing with care, treading on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, preventing the stiff branches from slapping noisily together by his cautious left hand.

Slow, cat-like in his movements, he covered the distance to the cabin, flinging out an arm on the last step as though he were falling and with it steadying himself against the log wall of the building, where he balanced a moment, becoming steady.

He strained to listen and caught sounds of a man's breath expelled in grunts. The doorway was not six feet from the place where he had halted and he eyed it calculatingly, noting the footing he must cross, licking his lips, eyes strained wide open. He took the first step forward and halted, hand against the wall still to maintain his balance; then on again, lifting the foot slowly, setting it down with great pains, putting his weight on it carefully....

And then nervous tension snapped. He could no longer hold himself back and with a lunge he reached the door, gripped the casing with his left hand and, crouching, swung himself into the doorway, pistol extended before him, coming to a halt with an inarticulate, sobbing cry that might have been hate or chagrin or only fright.... For the man he covered with that weapon was a stranger, an individual he had never seen before, sitting in a chair, back to him, his pale, startled face turned over the near shoulder, giving the intruder frightened gaze for frightened gaze.

For a moment Lytton remained swaying in the doorway, bewildered, unable to think. Then, he saw that the other man was bound to his chair, his hands behind him, and he let go his hold on the casing, straightened and put one foot over the threshold. He spoke the first words,

"Who are you?"--in a tone just above a whisper, leaning forward, sensing in a measure an explanation of this situation. And because of this intuitive flash of comprehension, he did not give the other opportunity to answer his first question, but said quickly, lowly, "What are you doing here?"

Benny looked at him, studying, a covered craftiness coming into his face to obliterate the anxiety, the rebelliousness that had been there. His semi-hysteria was gone, his cold, hard determination to carry his mission to its conclusion had rea.s.serted itself but covered, this time, by cunning. He realized what had happened, knew that Lytton had expected to find another there, he saw that he was ready to kill on sight, and in the situation the miner read a way out for himself, a method of attaining his own ends. So he said,

"I'm takin' a little rest; can't you see?"--ironical in his answer to Lytton's question, impatient when he put his own counter query.

He wrenched at the bonds angrily and, partly from the exertion, partly from the rage that rose within him, his face colored darkly.

Lytton stepped further into the room, approaching Lynch's chair, looking closely into his face, gun hand half lowered.

"Who tied you up?" he asked in a whisper, for his mind was centered about a single idea; the probable presence of Bayard and his relation to this man who was some one's prisoner.

Benny looked down at the floor and leaned over and again tugged at the knots for he dared not reveal his face as he growled,

"A d.a.m.n dirty cowpunch!"

The other man said nothing; waited, obviously for more information.

"His name's Bayard," Benny muttered.

He rendered the impression that he regarded that specific information as of no consequence, but he heard the catch of a sound in Lytton's throat and saw him s.h.i.+ft his footing nervously.

"How long ago?" he asked.

"Too d.a.m.n long to sit here like this!"--in anger that was not simulated, for with every word that pa.s.sed between them, Benny felt his reason slipping, felt that if this situation continued long enough he must rise with the chair bound fast to him and try to do harm to this other man.

"Where'd he go?"

Lytton bent low as he whispered excitedly and his gun hand hung loosely at his side.

Benny shook his head.

"I dunno," he said. "He went off some'res, but he won't be gone long, that's a good bet! He was up to somethin'--G.o.d knows what. Guess he thought I'd spoil it."

He looked up and saw the glitter of Lytton's eyes.

"Up to something is he?" Lytton laughed, dryly, repeating Lynch's words.

"Up to something! He's always up to something. He's been up to something for weeks, the wife stealing whelp ... and now if I know what I'm talking about, he's up _against_ something!"

"Wife stealer, is he?" Benny laughed as he put that question and was satisfied when he saw Ned's jaw muscles bulge. "That's his latest, is it?"

Lytton looked at him pointedly.

"You know him pretty well, too?" he asked.

"Know him! Do I know him? Look at this!"--with a slight lift of his bound hands. "That's how much I know him.... I seem to have a fair enough acquaintance, don't I?

"Say, _hombre_, you turn me loose an' set here an' I'll pack him in to you ... on my back ... if you're lookin' for him that way!"

Lytton looked quickly about; then stood still to listen; the silence was not broken and he stared back at the bound man, a new interest in his face, as he framed his hasty diplomacy.

"Do you mean you've ... got a fight with this man? With Bayard?"

Benny moved from side to side in his chair and forced a laugh.

"Have I?" he scoffed. "Have I? You just wait until I get loose an' get my fingers on _him_. You'll think it's a fight, party.... But I'm in a fine way to do anythin' now!"

He looked through the front doorway, out down the sharp draw that the trail to the valley followed. Lytton stepped nearer to him and as he spoke his voice became eager and rapid,

"I've a quarrel with him, too!" The craven in him drove him forward to this newly offered hope, the hope of finding an ally, some one to share his burden of responsibility, some one he could hide behind, some one, perhaps, who might be inveigled into doing his fighting for him. "I came here to hunt him down. When I came down that hill there,"--gesturing--"I thought he was in here because I heard your chair move on the floor.