Chapter 6

Now his eyes roamed with relief across the valley. Heat waves blurred the hollow and pushed Sour Creek away until it seemed a river of mist--yellow mist. He raised his attention out of that sweltering hollow to the cool, blue, mighty mountains--his country!

Presently he had forgotten all this. He settled his hat on the back of his head and began to kick a stone before him, following it aimlessly.

Someone was humming close to him, and he turned sharply to see Sally Bent go by, carrying a bucket. She smiled generously, and though he knew that she doubtless hated him in her heart and smiled for a purpose, he had to reply with a perfunctory grin. He stalked after her to the little leaping creek and dipped out a full bucket.

"Thanks," said Sally, wantonly meeting his eye.

As well try to soften a sphinx. Sinclair carried the dripping bucket on the side nearest the girl and thereby gained valuable distance. "I'm mighty glad it's you and not one of the rest," confided Sally, still smiling firmly up to him.

He avoided that appeal with a grunt.

"Like Sandersen, say," went on the girl.

"Why not him?"

"He's a bad hombre," said the girl. "Hate to have Jig in his hands. With you it's different."

Sinclair waited until he had put down the bucket in the kitchen. Then he faced Sally thoughtfully.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you're reasonable."

"Did Jig tell you that?"

"And a pile more. Jig says you're a pretty fine sort. That's his words."

The cowpuncher caressed the butt of his gun with his fingertips, his habitual gesture when in doubt.

"Lady," he said at length, "suppose I cut this short? You think I ain't going to keep Cold Feet here till the sheriff comes for him?"

"You see what it would mean?" she asked eagerly. "It wouldn't be a fair trial. You couldn't get a fair jury for Jig around Sour Creek and Woodville. They hate him--all the young men do. D'you know why? Simply because he's different! Simply because--"

"Because all the girls are pretty fond of him, eh?"

"You can put it that way if you want," she answered steadily enough, though she flushed under his stare. Then: "you'll keep that in mind, and you're man enough to do what you think is right, ain't you, Mr. Sinclair?"

He shifted away from the hand which was moving toward him.

"I'll tell you what," he answered. "I'm man enough to be afraid of a girl like you, Sally Bent."

Then he saw her head fall in despair, as he turned away. When he reached the shimmering heat of the outdoors again, he was feeling like a murderer. His reason told him that Cold Feet was "yaller," not worth saving. His reason told him that he could save Jig only by a confession that would drive him, Sinclair, away from Sour Creek and his destined victim, Sandersen. Or he could save Jig by violating the law, and that also would drive him from Sour Creek and Sandersen.

Suddenly he halted in the midst of his pacing to and fro. Why was he turning these alternatives back and forth in his mind? Because, he understood all at once, he had subconsciously determined that Cold Feet must not die!

The face of his brother rose up and looked into his eyes. That was the friend of whom he would not speak to Jig, brother and friend at once. And as surely as ever ghost called to living man, that face demanded the death of Sandersen. He blinked the vision away.

"I _am_ going nutty," muttered Sinclair. "Whether Sandersen lives or dies, Jig ain't going to dance at a rope's end!"

Presently Sally called him in to lunch, and Riley ate halfheartedly. All during the meal neither Sally nor John Gaspar had more than a word for him, while they talked steadily together. They seemed to understand each other so well that he felt a hidden insult in it.

Once or twice he made a heavy attempt to enter the conversation, always addressing his remarks to Sally Bent. He was received graciously, but his remarks always fell dead, and a moment later Cold Feet had picked up the frayed ends of his own talk and won the entire attention of Sally. Riley was beginning to understand why the youth of that district detested Cold Feet.

"Always takes some soft-handed dude to make a winning with a fool girl," he comforted himself.

He expected the arrival of Jerry Bent before nightfall, and with that arrival, perhaps, there would be a new sort of attack on him. Sally and Cold Feet were trying persuasion, but they might encourage Jerry Bent to attempt physical force. With all his heart Riley Sinclair hoped so. He had a peculiar desire to do something significant for the eyes of both Sally and Jig.

But nightfall came, and then supper, and still no Jerry appeared. Afterward, Sinclair made ready to sleep in Jig's room. Cold Feet offered him the couch.

"Beds and me don't hitch" declared Riley, throwing two or three of the rugs together. "I ain't particular partial to a floor, neither, but these here rugs will give it a sort of a ground softness."

He sat cross-legged on the low pile of rugs, while he pulled off his boots and smoked his good-night cigarette. Jig coiled up in a big chair, while he studied his jailer.

"But how can you go to bed so early?" he asked.

"Early? It ain't early. Sun's down, ain't it? Why do they bring on night, except for folks to go to sleep?"

"For my part the best part of the day generally begins when the sun goes down."

With patient contempt Riley considered John Gaspar. "You look kind of that way," he decided aloud. "Pale and not much good with your shoulders. Now, what d'you most generally do with your time in the evening?"

"Why--talk."

"Talk? Huh! A fine way of wasting time for a growed-up man."

"And I read, you know."

"I can see by the looks of them shelves that you do. How many of them books might you have read, Jig?"

"All of them."

"I ask you, man to man, ain't they mostly somebody's idea of what life is?"

"I suppose that's a short way of putting it."

"And I ask you ag'in, what's better to take a secondhand hunch out of what somebody else thinks life might be, or to go out and do some living on your own hook?"

Cold Feet had been smiling faintly up to this point, as though he had many things in reserve which might be said at need. Now his smile disappeared.

"Perhaps you're right."

"And maybe I ain't." Sinclair brushed the entire argument away into a thin mist of smoke. "Now, look here, Cold Feet, I'm about to go to sleep, and when I sleep, I sure sleep sound, taking it by and large. They's times when I don't more'n close one eye all night, and they's times when you'd have to pull my eyes open, one by one, to wake me up. Understand? I'm going to sleep the second way tonight. About eight hours of the soundest sleep you ever heard tell of."

Jig considered him gravely.

"I'm afraid," he answered, "that I won't sleep nearly as well."

Riley Sinclair smiled. "Wouldn't be no ways nacheral for you to do much sleeping," he agreed. "Take a gent that's in danger of having his neck stretched, like you, and most generally he don't do much sleeping. He lies around awake, cussing his luck, I s'pose. Take you, now, Cold Feet, and I s'pose you'll be figuring on how far a hoss could carry you in the eight hours that I'll be sleeping. Eh?"

There was a suggestive lift of the eyebrows, as he spoke, but before Jig had a chance to study his face, he had turned and wrapped himself in one of the rugs. He lay perfectly still, stretched on one side, with his back turned to Jig. He stirred neither hand nor foot.

Outside, a door slammed heavily; Cold Feet heard the heavy voice of Jerry Bent and the beat of his heels across the floor. In spite of those noises Riley Sinclair was presently sound asleep, as he had promised. Gaspar knew it by the rise and fall of the arm which lay along Sinclair's side, also by the sound of his breathing.

Cold Feet went to the window and looked out on the mountains, black and huge, with a faint shimmer of snow on the farthest summits. At the very thought of trying to escape into that wilderness and wandering alone among the peaks, he shuddered. He came back and studied the sleeper. Something about the nonchalance with which Sinclair had gone to sleep under the very eye of his prisoner affected John Gaspar strangely. Doubtless it was sheer contempt for the man he was guarding. And, indeed, something assured Jig that, no matter how well he employed the next eight hours in putting a great distance between himself and Sour Creek, the tireless riding of Sinclair would more than make up the distance.

Gaspar went to the door, then turned sharply and glanced over his shoulder at the sleeper; but the eyes of Sinclair were still closed, and his regular breathing continued. Jig turned the knob cautiously and slipped out into the living room.

Jerry and Sally beckoned instantly to him from the far side of the room. The beauty of the family had descended upon Sally alone. Jerry was a swart-skinned, squat, bow-legged, efficient cowpuncher. He now ambled awkwardly to meet John Gaspar.

"Are you all set?" he asked.

"For what?"

"To start on the trail!" exclaimed Jerry. "What else? Ain't Sinclair asleep?"

"How d'you know?"

"I listened at the door and heard his breathing a long time ago. Thought you'd never come out."

Sally Bent was already on the other side of Gaspar, drawing him toward the door.

"You can have my hoss, Jig," she offered. "Meg is sure as sin in the mountains. You won't have nothing to fear on the worst trail they is."

"Not a thing," asserted Jerry.

They half led and half dragged Cold Feet to the door.

"I'll show you the best way. You see them two peaks yonder, like a pair of mule's ears? You start--"

"I don't know," said Jig. "It seems very difficult, even to think of riding alone through those mountains."

Sally was white with fear. "You ain't going to throw away this chance, Jig? It'll mean hanging sure, if you don't run now. Ask Jerry what they're saying in Sour Creek tonight?"

Jerry volunteered the information. "They're all wondering why you wasn't strung up today, when they got so much evidence agin' you. Also they're thinking that the boys played plumb foolish in turning you over to this stranger, Sinclair, to guard. But they're waiting for Sheriff Kern to come over from Woodville an' nab you in the morning. They's some that says that they won't wait, if it looks like the law is going to take too long to hang you. They'll get up a necktie party and break the jail and do their own hanging. I heard all them things and more, Jig."

John Gaspar looked uncertainly from one to the other of his friends.

"You've _got_ to go!" cried Sally.

"I've got to go," admitted Cold Feet in a whisper.

"I've got Meg saddled for you already. She's plumb gentle."

"Just a minute. I've forgotten something."

"You don't mean you're going back into that room where Sinclair is?"

"I won't waken him. He's sleeping like the dead."

Jig turned away from them and hurried back to his room. Having opened and closed the door softly, he went to a chest of drawers near the window and fumbled in the half-light of the low-burning lamp. He slipped a small leather case into the breast pocket of his coat, and then stole back toward the door, as softly as before. With his hand on the knob, he paused and looked back. For all he knew, Sinclair might be really awake now, watching his quarry from beneath those heavy lashes, waiting until his prisoner should have made a definite attempt to escape.

And then the big man would rise to his feet as soon as the door was closed. The picture became startlingly real to John Gaspar. Sinclair would slip out that window, no doubt, and circle around toward the horse shed. There he would wait until his prisoner came out on Meg, and then without warning would come a shot, and there would be an end of Sinclair's trouble with his prisoner. Gaspar could easily attribute such cunning cruelty to Sinclair. And yet there was something untested, unprobed, different about the rangy fellow.

Whatever it was, it kept Gaspar staring down into the lean face of Sinclair for a long moment. Then he went resolutely back into the living room and faced Sally Bent; Jerry was already waiting outdoors.

"I'm not going," said Gaspar slowly. "I'll stay."

Sally cried out. "Oh, Jig, have you lost your nerve ag'in? Ain't you got _no_ courage?"

The schoolteacher sighed. "I'm afraid not, Sally. I guess my only courage comes in waiting and seeing how things turn out."

He turned and went gloomily back to his room.

12

With the first brightness of dawn, Sinclair wakened even more suddenly that he had fallen asleep. There was no slow adjusting of himself to the requirements of the day. One prodigious stretching of the long arms, one great yawn, and he was as wide awake as he would be at noon. He jerked on his boots and rose, and not until he stood up, did he see John Gaspar asleep in the big chair, his head inclining to one side, the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its last beside him. But instead of viewing the weary face with pity, Sinclair burst into sudden and amazed profanity.

The first jarring note brought Gaspar up and awake with a start, and he stared in astonishment at the uninterrupted flood which rippled from the lips of the cowpuncher. It concluded: "Still here! Of all the shorthorned fatheads that I ever seen, the worst is this Gaspar--this Jig--this Cold Feet. Say, man, ain't you got no spirit at all?"

"What do you mean?" asked Gaspar. "Still here? Of course I'm still here! Did you expect me to escape?"

Sinclair flung himself into a chair, speechless with rage and disgust.

"Did you think I was joking when I told you I was going to sleep eight hours without waking up?"

"It might very well have been a trap, you know."

Sinclair groaned. "Son, they ain't any man in the world that'll tell you that Riley Sinclair sets his traps for birds that ain't got their stiff feathers growed yet. Trap for you? What in thunder should I want you for, eh?"

He strode to the window, still groaning.

"There's where you'd ought to be, over yonder behind them mule ears. They'd never catch you in a thousand years with that start. Eight hours start! As good as have eight years, kid--just as good. And you've throwed that chance away!"

He turned and stared mournfully at the schoolteacher.

"It ain't no use," he said sadly. "I see it all now. You was cut out to end in a rope collar."

Not another word could be pried from his set lips during breakfast, a gloomy meal to which Sally Bent came with red eyes, and Jerry Bent sullenly, with black looks at Sinclair. Jig was the cheeriest one of the party. That cheer at last brought another explosion from Sinclair. They stood in front of the house, watching a horseman wind his way up the road through the hills.

"It's Sheriff Kern," said Jerry Bent. "I can tell by the way he rides, sort of slanting. It's Kern, right enough."

Sally Bent choked, but Jig continued to hum softly.

"Singin'?" asked Riley Sinclair suddenly. "Ain't you no more worried than that?"

The voice of the schoolteacher in reply was as smooth as running water. "I think you'll bring me out of the trouble safely enough, Mr. Sinclair."

"Mr. Sinclair'll see you damned before he lifts a hand for you!" Riley retorted savagely.

He strode to his horse and expended his wrath by viciously jerking at the cinches, until the mustang groaned. Sheriff Kern came suddenly into clear view around the last turn and rode quickly up to them, a very short man, muscular, sweaty. He always gave the impression that he had been working ceaselessly for a week, and certainly he found time to shave only once in ten days. Dense bristle clouded the lower features of his face. He was a taciturn man. His greetings took the form of a single grunt. He took possession of John Gaspar with a single glance that sent the latter nervously toward his saddle horse.

"I see you got this party all ready for me," said the sheriff more amiably to Riley Sinclair, who was watching in disgust the clumsy method of Jig's mounting. "You're Sinclair, I guess?"

"I'm Sinclair, sheriff."

They shook hands.

"Nice bit of work you done for me, Sinclair, keeping the boys from stringing up Jig, yonder. These here lynchings don't set none too well on the reputation of a sheriff. I guess we're ready to start. S'long Sally--Jerry. Are you riding our way, Sinclair?"

"I thought I'd happen along. Ain't never seen Woodville yet."

"Glad to have you. But they ain't much to see unless you look twice at the same thing."

They started down the trail three abreast.

"Ride on ahead," commanded Sinclair to Jig. "We don't want you riding in the same line with men. Git on ahead!"

John Gaspar obeyed that brutal order with bowed head. He rode listlessly, with loose rein, letting the pony pick its own way. Once Sinclair looked back to Sally Bent, weeping in the arms of her brother. Again his face grew black.

"And yet," confided the sheriff softly, "I ain't never heard no trouble about this Gaspar before."

"He's poison," declared Sinclair bitterly, and he raised his voice that it would unmistakably carry to the shrinking figure before them. "He's such a yaller-hearted skunk, sheriff, that it makes me ashamed of bein' a man!"

"They's only one thing I misdoubt," said the sheriff. "How'd that sort of a gent ever get the nerve to murder a man like Quade? Quade wasn't no tenderfoot, and he could shoot a bit, besides."

"Speaking personal, sheriff, I don't think he done it, now I've had a chance to go over the evidence."

"Maybe he didn't, but most like he'll hang for it. The boys is dead set agin' him. First, he's a dude; second, he's a coward. Sour Creek and Woodville wasn't never cut out for that sort. They ain't wanted around."

That speech made Riley Sinclair profoundly thoughtful. He had known well enough before this that there were small chances of Jig escaping from the damning judgment of twelve of these cowpunchers. The statement of the sheriff made the belief a fact. The death sentence of Jig was pronounced the moment the doors of the jail at Woodville clanged upon him.

They struck the trail to Sour Creek and almost immediately swung off on a branch which led south and west, in the opposite direction from the creek. It was a day of high-driving clouds, thin and fleecy, so that they merely filtered the sunlight and turned it into a haze without decreasing the heat perceptibly, and that heat grew until it became difficult to look down at the blazing sand.

Now the trail climbed among broken hills until they reached a summit. From that point on, now and again the road elbowed into view of a wide plain, and in the center of the plain there was a diminutive dump of buildings.

"Woodville," said the sheriff. "Hey, you, Jig, hustle that hoss along!"

Obediently the drooping Gaspar spurred his horse. The animal broke into a gallop that set Gaspar jolting in the seat, with wildly flopping elbows.

"Look at that," said Sinclair. "Would you ever think that men could be born as awkward as that? Would you ever think that men would be born that didn't have no use in the world?"

"He ain't altogether useless," decided the sheriff. "Seems as how he's done noble in the school. Takes on with the little boys and girls most amazing, and he knows how to keep even the eighth graders interested. But what can you expect of a gent that ain't got no more pride than to be a schoolteacher, eh?"

Sinclair shook his head.

The trail drifted downward now less brokenly, and Woodville came into view. It was a wretched town in a wretched landscape, far different from the wild hills and the rich plowed grounds around Sour Creek. All that came to life in the brief spring, the long summer had long since burned away to drab yellows and browns. A horrible place to die in, Sinclair thought.

"Speaking of hosses, that's a wise-looking hoss you got, sheriff."

"Rode him for five years," said the sheriff. "Raised him and busted him and trained him all by myself. Ain't nobody but me ever rode him. He can go so soft-footed he wouldn't bust eggs, sir, and he can turn loose and run like the wind. They ain't no better hoss than this that's come under my eye, Sinclair. Are you much on the points of a hoss?"

"I use hosses--I don't love 'em," said Sinclair gloomily. "But I can read the points tolerable."

The sheriff eyed Sinclair coldly. "So you don't love hosses, eh?" he said, returning distantly to the subject. It was easy to see where his own heart lay by the way his roan picked up its head whenever its master spoke.

"Sheriff," explained Sinclair, "I'm a single-shot gent. I don't aim to have no scatter fire in what I like. They's only one man that I ever called friend, they's only one place that I ever called home--the mountains, yonder--and they's only one hoss that I ever took to much. I raised Molly up by hand, you might say. She was ugly as sin, but they wasn't nothing she couldn't do--nothing!" He paused. "Sheriff, I used to talk to that hoss!"

The sheriff was greatly moved. "What became of her?" he asked softly.

"I took after a gent once. He couldn't hit me, but he put a slug through Molly."

"What became of the gent?" asked the sheriff still more softly.

"He died just a little later. Just how I ain't prepared to state."

"Good!" said the sheriff. He actually smiled in the pleasure of newfound kinship. "You and me would get on proper, Sinclair."

"Most like."

"This hoss of mine, now, has sense enough to take me home without me touching a rein. Knows direction like a wolf."

"Could you guide her with your knees?"

"Sure."

"And she's plumb safe with you?"

"Sure."

"I know a gent once that said he'd trust himself tied hand and foot on his hoss."

"That goes for me and my hoss, too, Sinclair."

"Well, then, just shove up them hands, sheriff!"

The sheriff blinked, as the sun flashed on the revolver in the steady hand of Sinclair. There was a significant little jerking up of the revolver. Each time the muzzle stirred, the hands of the sheriff jumped higher and higher until his arms were stiffly stretched. Gaspar had halted his horse and looked back in amazement.

"I hate to do it," declared Sinclair. "Right off I sort of took to you, sheriff. But this has got to be done."

"Sinclair, have you done much thinking before you figured this all out?"

"Enough! If I knowed you one shade better, sheriff, I'd take your word that you'd ride on into Woodville, good and slow, and not start no pursuit. But I don't know you that well. I got to tie you on the back of that steady old hoss of yours and turn you loose. We need that much start."

He dismounted, still keeping careful aim, took the rope coiled beside the sheriff's own saddle horn and began a swift and sure process of tying. He worked deftly, without undue fear or haste, and Gaspar came back to look on with scared eyes.

"You're a fool, Sinclair," murmured the sheriff. "You'll never get shut of me. I'll foller you till I drop dead. I'll never forget you. Change your mind now, and we'll say nothing has happened. But if you keep on, you're done for as sure as my name is Kern. Take you by yourself, and you'd be a handful to catch. But two is easier than one, and, when one of them two is a deadweight like Gaspar, they ain't nothing to it."

He finished his appeal completely trussed.

"I ain't tied you on the hoss," said Sinclair. "Take note of that. Also I'm leaving you your guns, sheriff."

"I hope you'll have a chance to see 'em come out of the holster later on, Sinclair."

The cowpuncher took no notice of this bitterness. Gaspar, who looked on, was astonished by a certain deferential politeness on the part of the big cowpuncher.

"Speaking personal, I hope I don't never have no trouble with you, sheriff. I like you, understand?"

"Have your little joke, Sinclair!"

"I mean it. I know I'm usin' you like a skunk. But I got a special need, and I can't take no chances. Sheriff, I tell you out of my heart that I'm sorry! Will you believe me?"