A Man Four-Square Part 43

"Yes. I had to save him. I knew he was innocent."

All the explanations she had intended shriveled up before the scorn in his eyes. He brushed past her without a word and strode out of the house.

Pauline went to her room and flung herself on the bed. After a time her father came in and sat down beside the girl. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"I know what you think, dad," she said without turning her head. "But I couldn't help it, I had to do it."

"It may make you trouble, ma pet.i.te."

"I can't help that. Jim didn't kill Mr. Webb. I know it."

"After a fair trial a jury said he did, Polly. We have to take their word for it."

"You think I did wrong then."

"You did what you think was right. In my heart is no blame for you."

He comforted her as best he could and left her to sleep. But she did not sleep. All through the night she lay and listened. She was miserably unhappy. Her head and her heart ached. Jack had promised that she should be the judge of what was right for her to do, and at the first test he had failed her. She made excuses for him, but the hurt of her disappointment could not be a.s.suaged.

In the early morning she heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the yard.

During the night she had not undressed. Now she rose and went out to meet her lover. He was at the stable, a gaunt figure, hollow-eyed, dusty, and stern. He had failed to recapture his prisoner.

"Jack," she pleaded, reaching out a hand timidly toward him.

Again he rejected her advance in grim silence. Swinging to the saddle, he rode out of the gate and down the road toward Live-Oaks.

With a little whimper Polly moved blindly to the house through her tears.

Chapter x.x.xII

Jim Takes a Prisoner

After Goodheart left the room where his prisoner was confined, Clanton waited a few moments till the sound of his footsteps had died away. He rose, moved noiselessly across the floor, and raised the trapdoor slowly.

The creaking of the rusty hinges seemed to Jim to be shouting aloud the news of his escape. The young fellow descended into the cellar and stood there without moving till his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. He groped his way to the door, which Pauline had left open an inch or two. Carefully he edged through and crouched in the gloom at the foot of the steps.

Not far away some one was whistling cheerfully. Clanton recognized the tune as the usual musical offertory of Brad. He was giving "Uncle Ned" to an unappreciative world.

The fugitive crept up the steps and peered over the top. Brad was sitting on a bench against the wall. Evidently he was quite comfortable and had no intention of moving. The guard was so near that it would not be a fair risk to try to make a dash across the moonlit open for the aspen grove.

He was so far that before the prisoner could reach him his gun would be in action. There was nothing to do but wait. Jim huddled against the sustaining wall while with the pa.s.sing minutes his chance of escape dipped away.

Pierre Roubideau came round the corner of the house and joined Brad. The guard made room for him on the bench. If Roubideau sat down, the man in the shadow knew he was lost. They would sit there and chat till Goodheart came back and discovered his absence.

The rancher hesitated while he felt for his pipe. "Reckon I left it in the kitchen," he said.

Brad followed him round the corner of the house. Clanton waited no longer. They might return, or they might not. He did not intend to stay to find out.

Swiftly he ran toward the aspens. Half the distance he had covered when a voice called sharply to halt. The guard had turned and caught sight of him.

The feet of the running man slapped the ground faster. As he dodged into the trees a bullet flew past him. Yet a moment, and he had flung himself astride the bronco waiting there and had electrified that sleepy animal into life.

The pony struck its stride immediately. It took the rising ground at a gallop, topped the hill, and disappeared over the brow. The rider plunged into the thick mesquite. He knew that Goodheart would pursue, but he knew, too, that the odds were a hundred to one against capture if he could put a mile or two between him and the Roubideau ranch. A man could vanish in any one of fifty draws. He could find a temporary hiding-place up any gulch under cover of the matted brush. Therefore he turned toward the mountains.

Since he was unarmed, it was essential that Clanton should get into touch with his a.s.sociates of the chaparral at once. Until he had a six-gun strapped to his side and a carbine under his leg he would not feel comfortable. All night he traveled, winding in and out of canons, crossing divides, and dipping down into little mountain parks. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he moved toward his destination in the line of greatest economy.

Morning found him descending from a mountain pa.s.s to the Ruidosa.

"Breakfast soon, you wall-faced old Piute," Jim told his mount. "You're sure a weary caballo, but we got to keep hitting the trail till we cross that hogback."

A thin film of smoke rose from a little valley to the left. Clanton drew up abruptly. He had no desire to meet now any strangers whose intentions had not been announced.

Swiftly, with a pantherish smoothness of motion, he slid from the cowpony and moved to the edge of a bluff that looked down into the arroyo below.

He crept forward and peered through a clump of cactus growing at the edge of the escarpment.

The camp-fire was at the very foot of the bluff. A man was stooped over it cooking breakfast.

The heart of the fugitive lost a beat, then raced wildly. The camper was Devil Dave Roush. A rifle lay beside him. His revolver was in a cartridge belt that had been tossed on a boulder within reach of his hand.

Clanton wriggled back without a sound from the edge of the cliff and rose to his feet. A savage light of triumph blazed in his eyes. The enemy for whom he had long sought was delivered into his hands. He ran back to the bronco and untied the reata from the tientos. Deftly he coiled the rope and adjusted the loop to suit him. Again he stole to the rim rock and waited with the stealthy, deadly patience of the crouched cougar.

Roush rose. His arms fell to his sides. Instantly the rope dropped, uncoiling as it flew. With perfect accuracy the loop descended upon its victim and tightened about his waist, pinning the arms close to the body.

Clanton, hauled in the rawhide swiftly. Dragged from his feet, Roush could make no resistance. Before he could gather his startled wits, he found himself dangling in midair against the face of the rock wall.

The man above fastened the end of the rope to the roots of a scrub oak and ran down the slope at full speed. In less than half a minute he was standing breathless in front of his prisoner.

Already shaken with dread, Roush gave way to panic fear at sight of him.

"G.o.ddlemighty! It's Clanton!" he cried.

Jim buckled on the belt and appropriated the rifle. His grim face told Roush all he needed to know.

There had been a time when Roush, full of physical life and energy, had boasted that he feared no living man. In his cups he still bragged of his bad record, of his accuracy as a gunman, of his gameness. But he knew, and his a.s.sociates suspected, that Devil Dave had long since drunk up his courage. His nerves were jumpy and his heart bad. Now he begged for his life abjectly. If he had been free from the rope that held him dangling against the wall, he would have crawled like a whipped cur to the feet of his enemy.

At a glance Clanton saw Roush had been camping alone. The hobbled horse, the blankets, the breakfast dishes, all told him this. But he took no chances. First he saddled the horse and brought it close to the camp-fire. When he sat down to eat the breakfast the rustler had cooked, it was with his back to the bluff and the rifle across his knees.

"This here rope hurts tur'ble--seems like my wrists are on fire," whined the man. "You let me down, Mr. Clanton, and I'll explain eve'ything. I want to be yore friend. I sure do. I don't feel noways onfriendly to you.

Mebbe I used to be a bad lot, but I'm a changed man now."

Go-Get-'Em Jim said nothing. He had not spoken once, and his silence filled the roped man with terror. The s.h.i.+fting eyes of Devil Dave read doom in the cold, still ones of his enemy.

Sometimes Roush argued in a puling whimper. Sometimes his terror rose to the throat and his entreaties became shrieks. He died a dozen deaths while his foe watched him with a chill stillness more menacing than any threats.

The first impulse of Clanton had been to stamp out the life of this man just as he would that of a diamond-backed rattlesnake; but he meant to take his time about it and to see that the fellow suffered. Not until he was halfway through the meal did the memory of his pledge to Pauline jump to his mind. Quickly he pushed it from him. He had not meant to include Roush in his promise. As soon as he had made an end of this ruffian he would turn over a new leaf. But not yet. Roush was outside the pale. His life belonged to Jim. He would be a traitor to the memory of his sister if he let the villain go.

The l.u.s.t for vengeance swelled in the young man's blood like a tide. It was his right to kill; more, it was his duty. So he tried to persuade himself. But deep within him a voice was making itself heard. It whispered that if he killed Roush now, he could never look Pauline Roubideau in the face again. She had fought gallantly for his soul, and at last he had pledged his honor to a new course. Not twelve hours ago she had risked her reputation to save his life. If he failed her now, it would be a betrayal of all the desires and purposes that had of late been stirring in him.