Frederick Schiller Faust

“ It was a fine, young chestnut gelding with a Roman nose and long, mulish ears. His head was not beautiful to see from any angle, but Andrew saw only the long, powerful, sloping shoulders, the long neck, burdened by no spare flesh, the legs fine-drawn as hammered bronze, and appearing fully as strong. Every detail of the body spelled speed, and speed meant safety. From the famous gray stallion of Hal Dozier this gelding could never escape, Andrew knew, but the chestnut could undoubtedly distance any posse which had no greater speed than the pace of its slowest horse. ”

“ It was like a picture of a dog rather than a reality to Andrew. He heeded it only with a glance from the corner of his eye. And then, his dull brain clearing, he realized that the dog no longer howled at him or showed his teeth, but was walking beside him, licking his hand and whining with sympathy.
"Oh, Lord," thought Andrew, "if I could find one human being with a heart as kind as that dog's!" ”

“ She began to understand that if she lived to be a hundred, she would never find that memory dimmer. Men had made love to her, had poured out their hearts before her, but only once she had seen the soul of a man. And very naturally she kept thinking: What did he see in return? No, he had not seen the truth, but he had taken away a picture to worship. It was not strange that she did not hold this against young Lanning.
When her eyes were misty with this thought, and a half-sad, half-happy smile was touching the corners of her mouth, Charles Merchant knocked at her door. ”

“ BESIDE the rear window of the blacksmith shop Jasper Lanning held his withered arms folded against his chest. With the dispassionate eye and the aching heart of an artist he said to himself that his life work was a failure. That life work was the young fellow who swung the sledge at the forge, and truly it was a strange product for this seventy-year-old veteran with his slant Oriental eyes and his narrow beard of white. Andrew Lanning was not even his son, but it came about in this way that Andrew became the life work of Jasper. ”

“ She turned up the lamp, and a flood of strong yellow light went over the room.
"But you have changed," said Anne Withero with a little cry. "Oh, you have changed! What have they been doing to you?"
He was dumb. Something cold that had been forming about his heart was breaking away and crumbling, and a strange warmth and weakness was coming in his blood. She was answering her own question. "I know. They've been hounding you—the cowards!"
"Does it make no difference to you—all that I've done?" asked Andrew.
"What is it that should make a difference?"
"I have killed a man." ”

“ There was another great return from Andrew's long and steady intimacy with the mare. She came to accept him absolutely. She knew his voice; she would come to his whistle; and finally, when every vestige of unsoundness had left his wounds, he climbed into that improvised saddle and put his feet in the stirrups. Sally winced down in her catlike way and shuddered, but she straightened again, and by the quiver of her muscles the rider knew that she was hesitating between bolting and standing still. He began to talk to her, and the familiar voice decided Sally. ”

“ Everybody in the mountains, every puncher on the range knows that Hal Dozier has started on a new trail, and every man of them knows that I've never failed before. Andy, I can't give it up. You see, I've got no shame before you. I tell you the straight of it. I tell you that I'm a bought man. But I can't leave this trail to go back and face the boys. If one of them was to shake his head and say on the side that I'm no longer the man I used to be, I'd shoot him dead as sure as there's a reckoning that I'm bound for. It isn't you, Andy; it's my reputation that makes me go on. ”

“ The old rooster was so accustomed to his master, indeed, that he allowed himself to be taken from the perch without a single squawk, and there was no sound except the rushing of his wings as he regained his balance on the wrist of Jud. The boy took his captive beyond the pen. Once, when the big rooster canted his head and looked into his face with his courageous red eyes, the boy had to wink away the tears; but he thought of the man so near death in the attic, he felt the clumsy boots on his feet, and his heart grew strong again. ”

“ Is a marriage a blot or a stain?"
"It is a barrier," he answered.
"Even to thoughts? Even to friendship?"
"Yes."
A very strange thing happened in the excited mind of Anne Withero. It seemed to her that Charles Merchant sat, a filmy ghost, beside this tattered fugitive. He was speaking the same words that Andrew spoke, but his voice and his manner were to Andrew Lanning what moonshine is to sunlight. She had looked upon marriage simply as an acquisition, a gain, an inevitable event toward which all womankind must move. ”

“ Dozier was coming, fresh from another kill.
"Only one man I'd think twice about meeting," Allister had said in the old days, and he had been right. Yet there were thousands who had sworn that Allister was invincible—that he would never fall before a single man.
He thought, too, of the lean face and the peculiar, set eye of Dozier. The man had no fear, he had no nerves; he was a machine, and death was his business.
And was he, Andrew Lanning, unknown until the past few months, now going down to face destruction, as full of fear as a girl trembling at the dark? ”

“ At once a roar went up from every throat in the saloon: "There's your man. Go to him!" Buck Heath turned from his horse; Andrew lifted his head. They were face to face, and it was hard to tell to which one of them the other was the least welcome. But Andrew spoke first. A thick silence had fallen in the saloon. Most of the onlookers wore careless smiles, for the caliber of these two was known, and no one expected violence; but Jasper Lanning, at the door, stood with a sick face. ”

“ Men boiled out of the village like hornets out of a shaken nest. He could see them buckling on belts while they were riding with the reins in their teeth. And they came like the wind, yelling at the sight of their quarry. Who would not kill a horse for the sake of saying that he had been within pistol range of the great outlaw? But, fast as their horses ran, Dozier, on Gray Peter, was able to keep up with them and also to range easily from group to group. Truly, Gray Peter was a glorious animal! For the hundredth time Andrew admitted it. ”

“ The sky was now of a brightness not far from day, and, turning east, in the direction pointed out, Charles Merchant saw a horseman ride over a hilltop, a black form against the coloring horizon. He was moving leisurely, keeping his horse at the cattle pony's lope. Presently he dipped away out of sight.
John Merchant dropped his hand on the shoulder of his son. He was a stern man, was John Merchant, and his face was not pleasant as Charles turned and looked up at it; but if John Merchant was stern, the face of his son was the face of a lost soul in torment. ”

“ One sleep was all he needed to wipe his mind clean as a slate of the past.
He saddled Sally this morning, and, after a leisurely breakfast, started at a jog trot through the hills, taking the upslope with the utmost care. For nothing so ruins a horse as hard work uphill at the very beginning of the day. He gave Sally her head, and she went along in her own capricious manner, walking at a snail's pace here, trotting there, breaking into a gallop now and again to stretch her muscles, and on the whole behaving like some irresponsible boy turned loose for the first time on the road. ”

“ A fine horse—such a horse as Sally, say!
Once he had connected her with his hope of freedom, he felt a tremendous urge to back her, and, besides, she had fitted into his mind the first moment he saw her, as a girl's face fits into the mind of an impressionable boy—there was Andrew's idea of a horse. No matter what experts may say, men are born with prejudices in horseflesh. ”

“ It seemed to Andrew that a buzz of comment and warning preceded him and closed behind him. He felt sure that the children stood and gaped at him from behind, but he dared not turn in his saddle to look back.
At all costs he must get into the heart of this place, hear men talk, learn if those placards were up, and discover if any posses were out to search the road for the wanderer. And he kept on, reining in the gelding, and probing every face with one swift, resistless glance that went to the heart. He had been accustomed, in the old days, to look straight before him, and see no one. ”

“ Well, Lanning, I'll take that risk. I know he's more devil than man when it comes to gun play, but we'll meet him together. Give me your hand!"
There was a riot in the brain of Andrew Lanning. The words of the outlaw had struck something in him that was like metal chiming on metal. Iron dust? That was it! The call of one blood to another, and he realized the truth of what Allister said. If he touched the hand of this man, there would be a bond between them which only death could break. In one blinding rush he sensed the strength and the faith of Allister. ”

“ And of his few friends, what one was there who would shelter him or aid him? What human being in the world would prefer him to five thousand dollars?
All this ran through the brain of Andy in the second in which he turned his head toward the window. He had been keyed to the breaking point before; but his alertness was now trebled, and, like a sensitive barometer, he felt the danger of Larry, the brute strength of Jeff, the cunning of Henry, the grave poise of Joe, to say nothing of Scottie—an unknown force. ”

“ The men of Martindale wore guns, and the conclusion had always been apparent to Andy that they wore guns because, in a pinch, they were ready to kill men.
And Andy Lanning, with a sob in his throat and his eyes drawn to glinting points, sent his horse rushing down the valley.
The fear of wild beasts is terrible enough, and there are few horrors as great as the terror which the criminal feels when he hears the bloodhounds crying down his trail; but of all fears there is none like the fear of man for man. Because it is intelligence following intelligence. ”

“ The first discharge left both Andrew and the horse untouched, and for the moment the wild hope of unexpected success was raised in his heart. And he had noted one all-important fact—the flashes, widely scattered as they were, did not extend across the exact course of his flight toward the trees. Therefore, none of the posse would have a point-blank shot at him. For those in the rear and on the sides the weaving course of the gelding, running like a deer and swerving agilely among the rocks, as if to make up for his first blunder, offered the most difficult of all targets. ”

“ And that was to Andrew the most melancholy sound in the world.
The rain, trickling even through the foliage of the evergreen, decided him to act at once. It might be that all the noise and light were, after all, an advantage to him, and, running close to the ground, he skulked across the dangerous open stretch and came into the safe shadow of the wall of the house. ”

“ Find a man with his sights? He could follow his target as though a magnetic power attracted his rifle. The weapon seemed to have a volition of its own. It drifted along with the canter of Bill Dozier. With incredible precision the little finger of iron inside the circle dwelt in turn on the hat of Bill Dozier, on his sandy mustaches, on his fluttering shirt. And Andy knew that he had the life of a man under the command of his forefinger. ”

“ He called on Sally again and again. He touched her for the first time in her life with spurs, and she found something in the depths of her heart and her courage to answer with. She ran again with a ghost of her former buoyancy, and Gray Peter was held even.
Not an inch could he gain after that. Andrew saw his pursuer raise his quirt and flog. It was useless. Each horse was running itself out, and no power could get more speed out of the pounding limbs.
And with his head still turned, Andrew felt a shock and flounder. Sally had almost fallen. ”

“ The whole mountain desert waited for that time to come and bated its breath in hope and fear of it.
But if the men of the mountain desert considered Hal Dozier the greatest enemy of Andrew, he himself had quite another point of view. It was the loneliness, as Pop had promised him. It was the consuming loneliness that ate into his heart. There were days when he hardly touched food such was his distaste for the ugly messes which he had to cook with his own hands; there were days when he would have risked his life to eat a meal served by the hands of another and cooked by another man. ”

“ With Uncle Jasper to manage his affairs he had had little to do with men and their ways, and his small contact with people in the blacksmith shop, outside of purely business dealings, had all gone to convince him that men near Martindale were a stark and terrible lot.
Was not Uncle Jasper himself continually dinning into his ears the terrible possibilities of trouble? Was not Uncle Jasper, even in his old age, when no one but a greaser would dream of lifting a hand against him, religiously exacting in his hour or more of gun exercise each day? ”

“ So I swung out of my road and came straight to this house. I came up the stairs. I went into a room down the hall and made a man tell me where to find you."
There was a flash in the eyes of the girl like the wink of sun on a bit of quartz on a far-away hillside, but it cut into the speech of Andrew Lanning. "He told you where to find me?" she asked in a voice no louder than the swift, low voice of Andy. But what a world of meaning! What a rush and outpour of contempt and scorn!
"He had a gun shoved into the hollow of his throat," said Andy. ”

“ The eye of old Jasper in the rear of the shop grew dim with wistfulness as he heard this talk. He knew Buck Heath; he knew his kind; in his day he would have eaten a dozen men of such rough words and such mild deeds as Buck. But searching the face of Andy, he saw no resentment. Merely a quiet resignation.
"Another thing," said Buck Heath, who seemed determined to press the thing to a disagreeable point. "I hear you don't fit your shoes on hot. Well?"
"I never touch a hoof with hot iron," replied Andy. "It's a rotten practice." ”