Part 21 (1/2)
Thereafter the talk was short. Now and again Sinclair gave some curt direction, but they put mile after mile behind them without a single phrase interchanged. Gaspar began to slump in the saddle. It brought a fierce rebuke from Sinclair.
”Straighten up. Put some of your weight in them stirrups. D'you think any hoss can buck up when it's carrying a pile of lead? Come alive!”
”It's the heat. It takes my strength,” protested Gaspar.
”Curse you and your strength! I wouldn't trade all of you for one ear of the hoss you're riding. Do what I tell you!”
Without protest, without a flush of shame at this brutal abuse, John Gaspar attempted to obey. Then, as they topped a rise and reached a crest of a range of hills, Gaspar cried out in surprise. Sour Creek lay in the hollow beneath them.
”But you're running straight into the face of danger!”
”Don't tell me what I'm doing. I know maybe, all by myself!”
He checked his horse and sat his saddle, eying Gaspar with such disgust, such concentrated scorn and contempt, that the schoolteacher winced.
”I've brought you in sight of the town so's you can go home.”
”And be hanged?”
”You won't be hanged. I'll send a confession along with you. I've busted the law once. They're after me. They might as well have some more reasons for hitting my trail.”
”But is it fair to you?” asked Gaspar, intertwining his nervous fingers.
Sinclair heard the words and eyed the gesture with unutterable disgust.
At last he could speak.
”Fair?” he asked in scorn. ”Since when have you been interested in playing fair? Takes a man with some nerve to play fair. You've spoiled my game, Gaspar. You've blocked me every way from the start, Cold Feet.
I killed Quade, and they's another in Sour Creek that needs killing.
That's something you can do. Go down and tell the sheriff when he happens along and show him my confession. Go down and tell him that I ain't running away--that I'm staying close, and that I'm going to nab my second man right under his nose. That'll give him something to think about.”
He favored the schoolteacher with another black look and then swung out of the saddle, throwing his reins. He sat down with his back to a stunted tree. Gaspar dismounted likewise and hovered near, after the fas.h.i.+on of a man who is greatly worried. He watched while Sinclair deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil and started to write. His brows knitted in pain with the effort.
Suddenly Gaspar cried: ”Don't do it, Mr. Sinclair!”
A slight lifting of Sinclair's heavy brows showed that he had heard, but he did not raise his head.
”Don't do what?”
”Don't try to kill that second man. Don't do it!”
Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.
”Why not?”
The schoolteacher was desperately eager. His glance roved from the set face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.
”You'll be d.a.m.ned for it--in your own mind. At heart you're a good man; I swear you are. And now you throw yourself away. Won't you try to open your mind and see this another way?”
”Not an inch. Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man. I told you about a friend of mine?”
”I'll never forget.”