Lancing

“ 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. ”

“ He finished this rush of shouted words with his [Pg 109] familiar old cowboy yell, as if to defy the rush of the flood and the fury of the summer storm.
If they attained their goal and managed to get out of reach of the avalanche of water, it would be by the skin of their teeth. Lanky could not have uttered a word just then, no matter how desperately he tried, for his lips felt as dry as those of a fever-stricken mule-skinner in a caravan, and his breath was coming in pants, as of a hound that had run a long race in chase of a hare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A little puff of alkali dust attested the movement.
"I'll tell you," roared Buck, "you ain't fittin' for a man's hand to touch, you ain't. A hosswhip is more your style."
From the pommel of his saddle he snatched his quirt. It whirled, hummed in the air, and then cracked on the shoulders of Andrew. In the dimness of the saloon door a gun flashed in the hand of Jasper Lanning. It was a swift draw, but he was not in time to shoot, for Andy, with a cry, ducked in under the whip as it raised for the second blow and grappled with Buck Heath. ”

“ Lanning, with men like you—and like myself, I hope—there's no question of distance. It's either a miss or a hit. Here's a better proposition: Let me put my belt on again. Then put your own gun back in the holster. We'll turn and face the wall. ”

“ For the next minute or two, Lanyard fought blindly, madly, viciously, striking and kicking at random. For all that—even with one sergent hors de combat—they were three to one; and though with the ferocity of sheer desperation he shook them all off, at one time, and gained a few yards more, it was only again to be overcome and borne down, crushed beneath the weight of three.
His wind was going, his strength was leaving him. He mustered up every ounce of energy, all his wit and courage, for one last effort: fought like a cat, tooth and nail ”

“ You do the talking then, Lanky!" exclaimed Frank, suddenly, as a buggy drawn by a seemingly tired horse came out of the gathering gloom.
Both boys immediately stepped forward. To their surprise the driver instantly drew in his horse as though the apparition of those two figures had given him a complete fright.
Lanky saw one of the men in the vehicle half rise in his seat, and make a vicious cut at him with the whip he held.
"Here, quit that, you!" shouted the astonished boy, as he ducked his head in time to avoid being struck by the whistling lash; "we only want you——"
"HERE, QUIT THAT, YOU!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it was the sort of fear which makes a man want to fling himself from a great height. But, sitting there calmly in the saddle, he saw a strange thing—the five men raising their dead leader and turning back toward the direction from which they had come. Not once did they look toward the form of Andy Lanning. They knew what he could not know, that the gate of the law had been open to this man as a retreat, but the bullet which struck down Bill Dozier had closed the gate and thrust him out from mercy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lanky made all sorts of encouraging sounds with his lips, and also jerked the lines in the endeavor to encourage the horse to start into a run.
"What ails the beast?" he grumbled, as his labor seemed next door to wasted, for the horse would only start upon a slow moving run, that seemed like a snail's pace to the anxious lad.
"The poor beast is dead tired, that's the truth. Those scamps must have driven him a long way around, trying to escape. And I guess they were using the whip on him when we bounced out on them," remarked Frank. ”

“ The hunger for the man hunt is like the hunger for food, and Bill Dozier had been starved for many a day. When he stood before the saloon, with his arms held above his head like the rest of the crowd, he had sensed many possibilities in young Lanning, and he was more and more determined as the trail wore on to develop the chances to the uttermost. ”

“ Lancaster’s trap, long lost in the myriad turns of the Lane, had emerged into the open road, and the horse’s hoofs, quickened to a sharp trot, rang from hill to hill. There are things to be read from a hoof-beat in the country quiet. Up in the Dales, when a man gallops, the farmers come to their doors, knowing he rides for succour. Lanty’s trot spelt urgency, and more than one voice hailed him as he passed. ”

“ Either the murk deceived or Lanyard had judged shrewdly. His feet were on an approximate level with the coping round the roof, and he stood about as far from the upper girder to which the rope was hitched as that was distant from the coping.
One look up and round at those louring skies, duskily flushed by subdued city lights: with no more ceremony Lanyard released the upright and committed his body to space.
If the downward sweep was breathless, what followed was breath-taking: once past the nadir of that giant swing, he was borne upward by an impetus steadily and sensibly slackening. ”

“ Who should be in the smack but Solby, the canting Baptist, who was no friend to you, or my uncle, or any of us. You had no time for bargaining or coaxing, and so, at the musket's mouth, you drove him from the boat, and pushed it out just as Lancy and his [Pg 72] men came riding up. Your sail was up, and you turned the lugger to the wind in as little time as could be, but the coastguardsmen rode after you, calling you to give in. No man will ever know the bitter trouble in Lancy's heart when he gave the order to fire on you, though he did not fire himself. ”

“ He was cut out to be a man-killer. You say you want to get away: Lanning, you can't do it. Because you can't get away from yourself. I'm making a long talk to you, but you're worth it. I tell you I read your mind. You plan on riding north and getting out of the mountain desert before the countryside there is raised against you, the way it's raised to the south. In the first place, I don't think you'll get away. Hal Dozier is on your trail, and he'll get to the north and raise the whole district and stop you before you hit the towns. You'll have to go back to the mountain desert. ”

“ He found his short, bow-legged friend in the barroom in the midst of excited talk with a big, blond man. He looked a German, with his parted beard and his imposing front and he had the stern blue eye of a fighter. "Is this your friend?" asked Andrew, and walked straight up to them. He watched the eyes of the big man expand and then narrow; his hand even fumbled, at his hip, but then he shook his head. He was too bewildered to act.
"I was just telling Mike," said the short man, "that you told me yourself folks think you're a ringer for Lanning. ”

“ That would be a mighty nice little nest-egg for Bill, and buy him a new evening suit," laughed Lanky.
"Hold your jaw, now, fellows; I'm going to hit her up right here. You'll get the toothache if you talk in this cold wind," remarked Frank, as he gave the speedy car her head over a smooth stretch of road.
They fairly flew.
"Say, makes me think I was on my little Humming Bird, right now!" shouted Lanky; for the wheels of the car were making more or less noise upon the frozen surface of the road, so that speaking in an ordinary voice was next to impossible. ”

“ Tempest in restless pain by the stove, and Dick on the threshold, with cheek on arm and his revolver pushed like the nose of a dog into his palm. And beyond their sleeping bodies stretched that great land which had fashioned and hardened them; which had known the tread of their moccasins along the forest-trails beaten asphalt-smooth by the passing of many generations, and had heard their voices call each other across rivers that had never parted them as the after years had done. ”

“ Now Lanky's managed to get his leg free, and is coming back to camp, carrying the rope and the antelope hide. His little game worked all to the good, but took a turn he didn't count on. See him limp, will you? That left leg feels sore, I bet you!"
"I reckon it serves him about right, as his dad will tell him," observed Frank. "Of all the fool tricks I've ever known that boy to try out, this wanting to lasso a live vulture takes the cake! Most people wouldn't want to touch the horrible things with a ten-foot pole." ”

“ Who is the winning gambler? Jeff Rankin, who plunges every time he sees a three of a kind, or Larry there, who plunges once in an evening for everything he has? He makes more in that plunge than Jeff Rankin makes in a month's play. It's the same with this business of mine, Lanning. I show my hand once in every six or eight months, but when I strike I strike hard and I strike for big stakes."
He added: "You boys play a game; I'm going to break in Lanning to our job."
Taking his horse, he and Andrew rode at a walk up the ravine. On the way the leader explained his system briefly and clearly. ”

“ And then he suddenly stooped and kissed her hand.
"It's for women such as you that men have died—and will die," he said. "Because you believe in us, madame."
The she heard his spurred feet go quickly through the grass to the fence, and the sharp tone of his voice as he backed the chestnut and sprang into the buckboard. She watched for his salute as the horse jumped forward in the traces, and then she turned back into the hush of the shack and sank on her stiff old knees by the bunk. ”

“ When the lads peeped cautiously in through the opening which a rotten door, hanging by its last rusty hinge, faded to shut entirely, it was indeed a sight worth impressing on their minds.
"Gee whiz!" barked Lanky, his eyes opening unusually wide. "See the ugly things dangling there from every rafter, will you?"
"Is that the way bats sleep, hanging by their toes with their heads downward?" exclaimed Paul, intensely interested. "What strange things you often see when you haven't got a gun. ”

“ In addition he had more than his share of an ability which all the members of the gang possessed—an infinite cunning in the use of weapons and a star-storming courage and self-confidence.
"And where," said Andrew at the end of this long recital, "do I fit in?"
"You begin," said Allister, "as the least valuable of my men; before six months you will be worth the whole set of 'em. You'll start as my lieutenant, Lanning. The boys expect it. You've built up a reputation that counts. They admit your superiority without question. ”

“ It's lonesome skating by yourself at night. But horses couldn't hold me back, once I've made my mind up."
"As if I didn't know that, Lanky. Wait up till I get on my sweater and heavy pea-jacket, and then I'll be with you. I want to tell you though, right now, that I'm as stiff as an old man of ninety. When I sit down I can hardly get up out of my chair again. Just think what we've been through to-day, will you?" said Frank.
"Oh! that'll all wear off before you get to the ice," remarked Lanky, cheerfully. ”

“ Two more, on their knees by the fire, were charring lengths of pliant green wood into the angles of sled-runners. Yet another sliced raw moose-hide into slender strips for tie or snowshoe thongs. Sheer in the fire-glow a young muscular breed was pegging out the skin of a wolverine on a flat board. He grinned at Dick in swift delight.
"Huh! You Carcajou," he said. "You no git you man kill, is it not?" ”

“ Lanky, you ought not to let these boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death if you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.”
[Pg 68] THE GENESIS OF PECOS BILL
“I suppose,” said Lanky, as he sat by the camp-fire with Red and Hank and Joe, now his fast friends, “that the cowboy’s life is about the most interesting one there is. I’d like it. Live outdoors, plenty of fresh air to breathe, interesting work—that’s the life.” ”