Part 30 (1/2)

Kate had started to her feet, holding Joan in one arm and das.h.i.+ng away her tears with the free hand. All weakness was gone from her.

”Hurry!” she commanded. ”We haven't any time to lose. Buck, come here!

No, Lee, you're stronger. Honey, this is your Uncle Lee. He'll take care of you; he won't hurt you. Will you go to him?”

Joan shrank away while she examined him, but the instincts of a child move with thrice the speed of a mature person's judgment; she read the kindly honesty which breathed from every line of Haines' face, and held out her arms to him.

Then they started down the slope for the horses, running wildly, for the moment they turned their backs on the cave the same thought was in the mind of each, the same haunting fear of that small, shrill whistle pursuing. Half running, half sliding, they went down to the bottom of the gorge. While the pebble they started rushed after them in small avalanches, and they even had to dodge rocks of considerable size which came bounding after, Joan, alert upon the shoulder of Lee Haines, enjoyed every moment of it; her hair tossed in the sun, her arms were outstretched for balance. So they reached the horses, and climbed into the saddles. Then, without a word from one to the other, but with many a backward look, they started on the flight.

By the time they reached the shoulder of the hill on the farther side, with a long stretch of down slope before, they had placed a large handicap between them and the danger of pursuit, but still they were not at ease. On their trail, sooner or later, would come three powers working towards one end, the surety of Black Bart following a scent, the swiftness of Satan which never tired, and above all the rider who directed them both and kept them to their work. His was the arm which could strike from the distance and bring them down. They spurted down the hill.

No sooner were they in full motion than Joan, for the first time, seemed to realize what it was all about. She was still carried by Lee Haines, who cradled her easily in his powerful left arm, but now she began to struggle. Then she stiffened and screamed: ”Daddy Dan! Daddy Dan!”

”For G.o.d's sake, stop her mouth or he'll hear!” groaned Buck Daniels.

”He can't!” said Haines. ”We're too far away even if he were at the cave now.”

”I tell you he'll hear! Don't talk to me about distance.”

Kate reined her horse beside Lee.

”Joan!” she commanded.

They were sweeping across the meadow now at an easy gallop. Joan screamed again, a wild plea for help.

”Joan!” repeated Kate, and her voice was fierce. She raised her quirt and shook it. ”Be quiet, Munner whip--hard!”

Another call died away on the lips of Joan. She looked at her mother with astonishment and then with a new respect.

”If you cry once more, munner whip!”

And Joan was silent, staring with wonder and defiance.

When they came close to the cabin, Lee Haines drew rein, but Kate motioned him on.

”Where to?” he called.

”Back to the old ranch,” she answered. ”We've got to have help.”

He nodded in grim understanding, and they headed on and down the slope towards the valley.

Chapter XXIX. Billy The Clerk

If Sheriff Pete Gla.s.s had been the typical hard-riding, sure-shooting officer of the law as it is seen in the mountain-desert, his work would have died with his death, but Gla.s.s had a mind as active as his hands, and therefore, for at least a little while, his work went on after him.

He had gathered fifteen practiced fighters who represented, it might be said, the brute body of the law, and when they, with most of Rickett at their heels, burst down the door of the Sheriff's office and found his body, they had only one thought, which was to swing into the saddle and ride on the trail of the killer, who was even now in a diminis.h.i.+ng cloud of dust down the street. He was riding almost due east, and the cry went up: ”He's streakin' it for the Morgan Hills. Git after him, boys!” So into the saddle they went with a rush, fifteen tried men on fifteen chosen horses, and went down the street with a roar of hoof-beats. That was the body and muscle of the sheriff's work going out to avenge him, but the mind of the law remained behind.

It was old Billy, the clerk. No one paid particular attention to Billy, and they never had. He was useless on a horse and ridiculous with a gun, and the only place where he seemed formidable was behind a typewriter.

Now he sat looking, down into the dead face of Pete Gla.s.s, trying to grasp the meaning of it all. From the first he had been with Pete, from the first the invincibility of the little dusty man had been the chief article of Billy's creed, and now his dull eyes, bleared with thirty years of clerical labor, wandered around on the galaxy of dead men who looked down at him from the wall. He leaned over and took the hand of the sheriff as one would lean to help up a fallen man, but the fingers were already growing cold, and then Billy realized for the first time that this was death. Pete Gla.s.s had been; Pete Gla.s.s was not.

Next he knew that something had to be done, but what it was he could not tell, for he sat in the sheriff's office and in that room he was accustomed to stop thinking and receive orders. He went back to his own little cubby-hole, and sat down behind the typewriter; at once his mind cleared, thoughts came, and linked themselves into ideas, pictures, plans.

The murderer must be taken, dead or alive, and those fifteen men had ridden out to do the necessary thing. They had seemed irresistible, as they departed; indeed, no living thing they met could withstand them, human or otherwise, as Billy very well knew. Yet he recalled a saying of the sheriff, a thing he had insisted upon: ”No man on no hoss will ever ride down Whistlin' Dan Barry. It's been tried before and it's never worked. I've looked up his history and it can't be done. If he's goin'