The group of deputies had halted; they were sitting tense and silent in their saddles when the Diamond K outfit came up, slowing down as they drew nearer, and halting within ten feet of the others, spreading out in a crude semi-circle, so that each man had an un.o.bstructed view of the deputies.

Barkwell had no chance to talk. Before he could get his breath after pulling his horse down, Weaver, his six-shooter in hand, its muzzle directed fairly at Gieger, who was slightly in advance of his men, fumed forth:

"What in h.e.l.l do you-all mean by tryin' to herd-ride our boss? Talk fast, you eagle-beaked turkey buzzard, or I salivates you rapid!"

The situation was one of intense delicacy. Gieger might have averted the threatening clash with a judicious use of soft, placating speech. But it pleased him to bl.u.s.ter.

"We are deputies, acting under orders from the court. We are after a murderer, and we mean to get him!" he said, coldly.

"Deputies! h.e.l.l!" Barkwell's voice rose, sharply scornful and mocking.

"Deputies! Crooks! Gun-fighters! Pluguglies!" His eyes, bright, alert, gleaming like a bird's, were roving over the faces in the group of deputies. "A d.a.m.n fine bunch of guys to represent the law! There's Dakota d.i.c.k, there! Tinhorn, rustler! There's Red Cla.s.sen! Stage robber! An'

Pepper Ridgely, a plain, ornery thief! An' Kid Dorgan, a sneakin' killer!

An' Buff Keller, an' Andy Watts, an' Pig Mugley, an'--oh, h.e.l.l! Deputies!

Law!----Ah--hah!"

One of the men had reached for his holster. Weaver's gun barked twice and the man pitched limply forward to his horse's neck. Other weapons flashed; the calm of the early morning was rent by the hoa.r.s.e, guttural cries of men in the grip of the blood-l.u.s.t, the sustained and venomous popping of pistols, the queer, sodden impact of lead against flesh, the terror-snorts of horses, and the grunts of men, falling heavily.

A big man in khaki, loping his horse up the slope of an arroyo half a mile distant, started at the sound of the first shot and raced over the crest.

He pulled the horse to an abrupt halt as his gaze swept the plains in front of him. He saw riderless horses running frantically away from a smoking blot, he saw the blot streaked with level, white smoke-spurts that ballooned upward quickly; he heard the dull, flat reports that followed the smoke-spurts.

It seemed to be over in an instant. The blot split up, galloping horses and yelling men burst out of it. The big man had reached the crest of the arroyo at the critical second in which the balance of victory wavers uncertainly. With thrusting chin, lips in a hideous pout, and with sullen, blazing eyes, he watched the battle go against him. Fifteen cowboys--he counted them, deliberately, coldly, despite the rage-mania that had seized him--were spurring after eight other men whom he knew for his own. As he watched he saw two of these tumble from their horses. And at a distance he saw the loops of ropes swing out to enmesh four more--who were thrown and dragged; he watched darkly as the remaining two raised their hands above their heads. Then his lips came out of their pout and were wreathed in a bitter snarl.

"Licked!" he muttered. "Twelve put out of business. But there's thirty more--if the d.a.m.n fools have come in to town! That's two to one!" He laughed, wheeled his horse toward Manti, rode a few feet down the slope of the arroyo, halted and sat motionless in the saddle, looking back. He smiled with cold satisfaction. "Lucky for me that cinch strap broke," he said.

Trevison was placing Levins' limp form across the saddle on n.i.g.g.e.r's back when the faint morning breeze bore to his ears the report of Weaver's pistol. A rattling volley followed the first report, and Trevison led n.i.g.g.e.r close to the edge of the ledge in time to observe the battle as Corrigan had seen it. He hurried n.i.g.g.e.r down the slope, but he had to be careful with his burden. Reaching the level he lifted Levins off, laid him gently on the top of a huge flat rock, and then leaped into the saddle and sent n.i.g.g.e.r tearing over the plains toward the scene of the battle.

It was over when he arrived. A dozen men were lying in the tall gra.s.s.

Some were groaning, writhing; others were quiet and motionless. Four or five of them were arrayed in chaps. His lips grimmed as his gaze swept them. He dismounted and went to them, one after another. He stooped long over one.

"They've got Weaver," he heard a voice say. And he started and looked around, and seeing no one near, knew it was his own voice that he heard.

It was dry and light--as a man's voice might be who has run far and fast.

He stood for a while, looking down at Weaver. His brain was reeling, as it had reeled over on the ledge of the pueblo a few minutes before, when he had discovered a certain thing. It was not a weakness; it was a surge of reviving rage, an accession of pa.s.sion that made his head swim with its potency, made his muscles swell with a strength that he had not known for many hours. Never in his life had he felt more like crying. His emotions seared his soul as a white-hot iron sears the flesh; they burned into him, scorching his pity and his impulses of mercy, withering them, blighting them. He heard himself whining sibilantly, as he had heard boys whine when fighting, with eagerness and l.u.s.t for blows. It was the insensate, raging fury of the fight-madness that had gripped him, and he suddenly yielded to it and raised his head, laughing harshly, with panting, labored breath.

Barkwell rode up to him, speaking hoa.r.s.ely: "We come pretty near wipin'

'em out, 'Firebrand!'"

He looked up at his foreman, and the latter's face blanched. "G.o.d!" he said. He whispered to a cowboy who had joined him: "The boss is pretty near loco--looks like!"

"They've killed Weaver," muttered Trevison. "He's here. They killed Clay, too--he's down on a rock near the slope." He laughed, and tightened his belt. The record book which he had carried in his waistband all along interfered with this work, and he drew it out, throwing it from him. "Clay was worth a thousand of them!"

Barkwell got down and seized the book, watching Trevison closely.

"Look here, Boss," he said, as Trevison ran to his horse and threw himself into the saddle; "you're bushed, mighty near--"

If Trevison heard his first words he had paid no attention to them. He could not have heard the last words, for n.i.g.g.e.r had lunged forward, running with great, long, catlike leaps in the direction of Manti.

"Good G.o.d!" yelled Barkwell to some of the men who had ridden up; "the d.a.m.n fool is goin' to town! They'll salivate him, sure as h.e.l.l! Some of you stay here--two's enough! The rest of you come along with me!"

They were after Trevison within a few seconds, but the black horse was far ahead, running without hitch or stumble, as straight toward Manti as his willing muscles and his loyal heart could take him.

Corrigan had seen the black bolt that had rushed toward him out of the spot where the blot had been. He cursed hoa.r.s.ely and drove the spurs deep into the flanks of his horse, and the animal, squealing with pain and fury, leaped down the side of the arroyo, crossed the bottom in two or three bounds and stretched away toward Manti.

A cold fear had seized the big man's heart. It made a sweat break out on his forehead, it caused his hand to tremble as he flung it around to his hip in search of his pistol. He tried to shake the feeling off, but it clung insistently to him, making him catch his breath. His horse was big, rangy, and strong, but he forced it to such a pace during the first mile of the ride that he could feel its muscles quivering under the saddle skirts. And he looked back at the end of the mile, to see the black horse at about the same distance from him; possibly the distance had been shortened. It seemed to Corrigan that he had never seen a horse that traveled as smoothly and evenly as the big black, or that ran with as little effort. He began to loathe the black with an intensity equaled only by that which he felt for his rider.

He held his lead for another mile. Glancing back a little later he noted with a quickening pulse that the distance had been shortened by several hundred feet, and that the black seemed to be traveling with as little effort as ever. Also, for the first time, Corrigan noticed the presence of other riders, behind Trevison. They were topping a slight rise at the instant he glanced back, and were at least a mile behind his pursuer.

At first, mingled with his fear, Corrigan had felt a slight disgust for himself in yielding to his sudden panic. He had never been in the habit of running. He had been as proud of his courage as he had been of his cleverness and his keenness in planning and plotting. It had been his mental boast that in every crisis his nerve was coldest. But now he nursed a vagrant, furtive hope that waiting for him at Manti would be some of those men whom he had hired at his own expense to impersonate deputies.

The presence of the hope was as inexplicable as the fear that had set him to running from Trevison. Two or three weeks ago he would have faced both Trevison and his men and brazened it out. But of late a growing dread of the man had seized him. Never before had he met a man who refused to be beaten, or who had fought him as recklessly and relentlessly.

He jeered at himself as he rode, telling himself that when Trevison got near enough he would stand and have it out with him--for he knew that the fight had narrowed down between them until it was as Trevison had said, man to man--but as he rode his breath came faster, his backward glances grew more frequent and fearful, and the cold sweat on his forehead grew clammy. Fear, naked and shameful, had seized him.

Behind him, lean, gaunt, haggard; seeing nothing but the big man ahead of him, feeling nothing but an insane desire to maim or slay him, rode a man who in forty-eight hours had been transformed from a frank, guileless, plain-speaking human, to a rage-drunken savage--a monomaniac who, as he leaned over n.i.g.g.e.r's mane, whispered and whined and mewed, as his forebears, in some tropical jungle, voiced their pa.s.sions when they set forth to slay those who had sought to despoil them.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DREGS

When the Benham private car came to a stop on the switch, Rosalind swung up the steps and upon the platform just as J. C., ruddy, smiling and bland, opened the door. She was in his arms in an instant, murmuring her joy. He stroked her hair, then held her off for a good look at her, and inquired, unctuously:

"What are you doing in town so early, my dear?"

"Oh!" She hid her face on his shoulder, reluctant to tell him. But she knew he must be told, and so she steeled herself, stepping back and looking at him, her heart pounding madly.

"Father; these people have discovered that Corrigan has been trying to cheat them!"

She would have gone on, but the sickly, ghastly pallor of his face frightened her. She swayed and leaned against the railing of the platform, a sinking, deadly apprehension gnawing at her, for it seemed from the expression of J. C.'s face that he had some knowledge of Corrigan's intentions. But J. C. had been through too many crises to surrender at the first shot in this one. Still he got a good grip on himself before he attempted to answer, and then his voice was low and intoned with casual surprise:

"Trying to cheat them? How, my dear?"

"By trying to take their land from them. You had no knowledge of it, Father?"

"Who has been saying that?" he demanded, with a fairly good pretense of righteous anger.

"n.o.body. But I thought--I--Oh, thank G.o.d!"

"Well, well," he bluffed with faint reproach; "things are coming to a pretty pa.s.s when one's own daughter is the first to suspect him of wrong-doing."