 CHAPTER 1 Spring. A man under thirty needs neighbors. And to stop up the current of his life with a long silence is like obstructing a river. Eventually the water either sweeps away the dam or rises over it, and the stronger the dam the more destructive is that final rush to freedom. Vic Gregg was on the danger side of thirty, and he lived alone in the mountains all that winter. He wanted to marry Betty Neal, but marriage means money. Therefore Vic contracted fifteen hundred dollars' worth of mining for the Duncan's. And instead of taking a partner he went after that stake single-handed. He's a very rare man who can turn out that amount of labor in a single season, but Gregg furnished that exception which establishes the rule. He did the assessment work on fourteen claims and almost finished the fifteenth. Yet he paid the price. Week after week his set of drills was wife and child to him, and for conversation he had only the clanger of the four-pound single-jack on the drill heads, with the crashing of the SHOTS now and then as periods to the chatter of iron on iron. He kept at it, and in the end he almost finished the allotted work, but for all of it he paid in full. The acid loneliness ate into him. To be sure from boyhood he knew the mountain quiet, the still heights, and the solemn echoes, but toward the close of the long isolation the end of each day found him oppressed by a weightier sense of burden. In a few days he would begin to talk to himself. From the first the evening pause after supper hurt him most, for a man needs a talk as well as tobacco, and after a time he dreaded these evenings so bitterly that he purposely spent himself every day so as to pass from supper into sleep at a stride. It needed a long day to burn out his strength thoroughly. So he set his rusted alarm clock, and before dawn it brought him groaning out of the blankets to cook a hasty breakfast and go slowly up to the tunnel. In short he wedded himself to his work. He stepped into a routine which took the place of thought, and the change in him was so gradual that he did not see the danger. A mirror might have shown it to him as he stood this morning at the door of his lean-to for the wind fluttered the shirt around his labour-dried body and his forehead puckered in a frown-grown habitual. It was a narrow face with rather close-set eyes and a slanted forehead which gave token to a single-track mind, a single-purposed nature with one hundred and eighty pounds of strong sinews and iron-hard muscle to give it significance. Such was Vic Gregg as he stood at the door waiting for the coffee he had drunk to brush away the cobwebs of sleep. And then he heard the eagle scream. Great many people have never heard the scream of an eagle. The only voice they connect with the king of the air is a ludicrously feeble squawk dim with a distance, but in his great moments the eagle has a war cry like that of a hawk but harsher, tenfold in volume. This sound cut into the night in the gulch and Vic Gregg started and glanced about, for echoes made the sound stand at his side. Then he looked up and saw two eagles fighting in the light of the morning. He knew what it meant, the beginning of the mating season, and these two battling for a prize. They darted away. They flashed together with reaching talons and gaping beaks and dropped in a tumult of wings, then soared and clashed once more until one of them folded his wings and dropped bullet-like out of the morning into the night. Close over Gregg's head the wings flirted out, ten feet from tip to tip, beat down with a great washing sound, and the bird shot across the valley in a level flight. The conqueror screamed a long insult down the hollow. For a while he balanced, craning his bald head as if he sought applause, then without visible movement of his wings sailed away over the peaks. A feather fluttered slowly down past Vic Gregg. He looked down to it and rubbed the ache out of the back of his neck. All about him the fresh morning was falling. Yonder shone a green mottled face of granite, and there a red iron blowout streaked with veins of glittering silicate, and in this corner still misted with the last delicate shades of night glimmered rhyolite, lavender pink. The single jack dropped from the hand of Gregg and his frown relaxed. When he stretched his arms the cramps of labor unkingked and let the warm blood flow swiftly, and in the pleasure of it he closed his eyes and drew a luxurious breath. He stepped from the door with his head high and his heart lighter, and when his hobnailed shoe clinked on the fallen hammer he kicked it, spinning from his path. That ache brought a smile into his eyes, and he sauntered to the edge of the little plateau, and looked down into the wide chasm of the Asper Valley. Blue shadows washed across it, though morning shone across Gregg on the height, and his glance dropped in a two thousand foot plunge to a single yellow eye that winked through the darkness, a light in the trapper's cabin. But the dawn was falling swiftly now, and while Gregg lingered the blue grew thin, purple tinted, and then dark slender points pricked up which he knew to be the pines. Last of all he caught the sheen of grass. Around him pressed a perfect silence, the quiet of night holding over into the day, yet he cast a glance behind him as if he heard a voice. Indeed he felt that someone approached him, someone for whom he had been waiting. Yet it was a sad expectancy, and more like homesickness than anything he knew. Ah, hell, said bit Gregg. It's spring. A deep-throated echo boomed back at him, and the sound went down the gulch, three times repeated. Spring, repeated Gregg more softly, as if he feared to rouse that echo. Damned if it ain't. He shrugged his shoulders and turned resolutely toward the lean-to, picking up the discarded hammer on the way. By instinct he caught it at exactly the right balance for his strength and arm, and the handle, polished by his grip, played with an oiled, frictionless movement against the calluses of his palm. From the many hours of drilling, fingers crooked, he could only straighten them by a painful effort. Bad hand for cards, he decided, gloomily, and still frowning over this he reached the door. There he paused in instant repugnance, for the place was strange to him. In thought and wish he was even now galloping gray molly over the grass along the asper, and he had to wrench himself into the mood of the patient minor. There lay his blankets, sampled, brown with dirt, and he shivered at the sight of them. The night had been cold. Before he fell asleep he had flung the magazine into the corner, and now the wind rustled its torn, yellowed pages in a whisper that spoke to Gregg of the ten times repeated stories, tales of adventure, drifts of tobacco smoke in gaming halls, the chant of the croupier behind the wheel, deep voices of men, laughter of pretty girls, tattoo of running horses, shouts which only red eye can inspire. He sniffed the air, the odor of burned bacon and coffee permeated the cabin. He turned to the right and saw his discarded overalls with ragged holes at the knees. He turned to the left and looked into the face of the rusted alarm clock, its quick, soft ticking, sent an ache of weariness through him. Ah, what's wrong with me, muttered Gregg? Even that voice seemed ghostly loud in the cabin, and he shivered again. I must be going nutty. As if to escape from his own thoughts he stepped out into the sun again, and it was so grateful to him, after the chill shadow of the lean-to, that he looked up smiling into the sky. A west wind urged a scattering herd of clouds over the peaks. Tumbled masses of white which puffed into transparent silver at the edges, and behind long wraiths of vapor marked the path down which they had traveled. Such an old cowhand as Vic Gregg could not fail to see the forms of cows and heavy-necked bulls and running calves in that drift of clouds. About this season the boys would be watching the range for signs of screwworm in the cattle. And the bog riders must have their hands full dragging out cows which had fled into the mud to escape the heel flies. With a new lonesomeness he drew his eyes down to the mountains. Ordinarily strange fancies never entered the hard head of Gregg, but today it seemed to him that the mountains found a solemn companionship in each other. Out of the horizon where the snowy forms glimmered in the blue they marched in loose order down to the valley of the Asper where some of them halted in place huge cliffs and others tumbled out into foothills. But the main range swerved to the east beside the valley eastward out of his vision though he knew that they went on to the town of Alder. Alder was Vic Gregg's Athens and Rome in one. Its schoolhouse is acropolis and Captain Lorimer's saloon his forum. Other people talked of larger cities but Alder satisfied the imagination of Vic. Besides, Gregg Molley was even now in the blacksmith's pasture and Betty Neal was teaching in the school. Following the march of the mountains and the drift of the clouds he turned toward Alder. The piled water shook the dam, topped it, burst it into fragments and rushed into freedom. He must go to Alder. Have a drink, shake hands with a friend, kiss Betty Neal, and come back again. Two days going, two days coming, three days for the frolic. A week would cover it all. And two hours later Vic Gregg had cashed his heavier equipment, packed his necessaries on the burrow, and was on the way. By noon he had dropped below the snowline and into the foothills and with every step his heart grew lighter. Behind him the mountains slid up into the heart of the sky with cold white winter upon them, but here below it was spring indubitably. There was hardly enough fresh grass to temper the winter brown into shining bronze, but a busy awakening insect life thronged through the roots. Sureer sign than this the flowers were coming. A slope of butter-cups flashed suddenly when the wind struck it, and wild morning glory spotted a stretch of daisies with purple and dainty lavender. To be sure the blossoms never grew thickly enough to make strong dashes of color, but they tinted and stained the hillsides. He began to cross noisy little water-courses, empty most of the year, but now the melting snow fed them. From eddies and quiet pools the bright water-cress streamed out into the currents, and now and then in moist ground under a sheltered bank he found rich patches of violets. His eyes went happily among these tokens of the glad time of the year, but while he noted them and the bursting buds of the aspen reddish-brown, his mind was open to all that middle register of calls which the human ear may notice in wild places. Far above his scale were shrilling murmurs of birds and insects, and beneath it ran those ground noises that the rabbit, for instance, understands so well. But between these overtones and undertones he heard the scream of the hawk, spiraling down in huge circles, and the rapid call of the grouse far off, and the drone of insects about his feet, or darting suddenly upon his brain and away again. He heard these things by the grace of the wind, which sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Greg in the center of a wide hush, with only the creak of the pack-saddle, and the click of the burrow's accurate feet among the rocks. At such times he gave his full attention to the trail, and he read it as one might turn the pages of a book. He saw how a rabbit had scurried running hard for the prince of the hind feet planted far ahead of those of the forepaws. There was reason in her haste for here the pads of a racing coyote had dug deeply into a bit of soft ground. The sign of both rabbit and coyote veered suddenly, and again the trail told the reason clearly. The big print of a lobo's paw, that gray ghost which haunts the ranges with the wisest brain and the swiftest feet in the west. Like Greg Grinn with excitement, fifty dollars bounty if that scalp were his! But the story of the trail called him back with the sign of some small animal which must have traveled very slowly, for in spite of the tiny size of the prince each was distinct. The man sniffed with instinctive aversion and distrust, for this was the trail of the skunk. And if the last of the seven sleepers was out, it was spring indeed. He raised his cudgel and thwacked the burrow joyously. Get on, Marnie, we're overdue in alder. Marnie switched her tail impatiently and canted back a long ear to listen, but she did not increase her pace. For Marnie had only one gait, and if Vic occasionally thumped her it was rather by way of conversation than in any hope of hurrying their journey. End of Chapter 1 Chapter 2 of The Seventh Man If her soul had been capable of enthusiasm, Marnie could have made the trip on schedule time. But she was a burrow good for nothing except to carry a pack well nigh half her own weight, live on forage that might have starved a goat, and smell water fifteen miles in time of drought. Speed was not in her vocabulary, and accordingly it was late afternoon rather than morning when Greg, pointing his course between the ears of Marnie, steered her through Murphy's Pass, and came out over alder. There they paused by mutual consent, and the burrow flicked one long ear forward to listen to the rushing of the Done River. It filled the valley with continual murmur, and just below them, where the brown white-flect current twisted around an elbow bend, lay alder, tossed down without plan, hear a boulder and there a house. They seemed marvellously flimsy structures, and one felt surprise that the weight of the winter's snow had not crushed them, or that the Done River had not sent a strong current licking over bank and tossed the whole village, crashing down the ravine. One building was very much like another, but Greg's familiar eye pierced through the roofs and into widow Sullivan's staggering shack, into Ezekiel Whittleby's hushed sitting-room, down to the moist dark floor of the Captain's Saloon, into that amazing junk-shop the General Merchandise Store. But first and last he looked to the little flag which gleamed and snapped above the school-house, and it spelled, My Country, to Vic. Marnie consented to break into a neat-footed jog-trot going down the last slope, and so she went up the single winding street of Alder, grunting at every step with Greg's whistle behind her. In town he lived with his friend Doug Pym, who kept their attic-room reserved for his occupancy. So he headed straight for that place. What human face would he see first? It was Mrs. Sweeney's little boy Jack, who raced into the street whooping and Vic caught him under the armpits and swung him dizzily into the air. By God, muttered Vic, as he strode on. That's a good kid, that Jack. And he straight away forgot all about that knife which Jackie had perloined from him the summer before. Me and Betty, he thought, will have kids, like Jack. Toughen leather. Old Gerrigan saw him next, and cackled from his truck-garden in the backyard. But Vic went on with a wave of his arm, and on past Gertie Vinson's inviting shout. Gertie had been his particular girl before Betty Needle came to town. And on with the determination of a soldier even passed the veranda of Captain Lorimer's saloon, though Lorimer himself bellowed a greeting, and Chick Stewart crooked a significant thumb over his shoulder toward the open door. He only paused at the blacksmith's shop and looked in at Doug, who was struggling to make the print of a hot shoe on the hind foot of Simpson's sorrel, Glencoe. Hey, Doug! Pim raised a grimy, sweating forehead. You, boy! Easy, damn it! Hello, Vic! And he propped that restless hind foot on his inner thigh and extended a hand. You know, I go on working, Doug, because I can't stop. I just want a rope to catch Gray Molley. You, red devil! Take that rope over there, Vic. Won't have no work catching Molley, which he's plumped to aim. Still, damn you! I've never seen a Glencoe with any sense. Where you going, Vic? Up to the school? At his sweaty grin followed Vic as the ladder went out with a coil of rope over his shoulder. When Greg reached the house, Nellie Pim hugged him, which is the privilege of fattening forty, and then she sat at the foot of the stairs and shouted up gossip while he shaved with frantic haste and jumped into his best clothes. He answered her with monosyllables and only half his mind. Finish up your work, Vic? No. You sure worked yourself all thin. Hope somebody appreciates it. She chuckled. Ain't been sick, have you? Say, who do you think's in town? Sheriff Glass. This information sank in on him while he tugged at the boot, at least a size and a half too small. Pete Glass, he echoed then. Who's he after? I don't know, Vic. He don't look like such a bad one. He's plenty bad enough, Gregor Shorter. Ah! His foot ground into place torturing his toes. Well, considered Ms. Pim in a philosophic rumble, I suppose them quiet gents is the dangerous ones mostly, but looking at Glass, you wouldn't think he ever killed all those men. Know about the dance? Hope. Down at Singer's Place. Bet he going with you? He jerked open the door and barked down at her. Who else would she be going with? Don't start pulling leather for the horse-bucks, said Ms. Pim. I don't know who else she'd be going with. You sure look fine in that red shirt, Vic. He grinned, half mollified, half shame-faced and ducked back into the room, but a moment later he clumped stiffly down the stairs, frowning. He wondered if he could dance in those boots. Feel kind of strange in these clothes. How do I look, Nellie? And he turned and rebuked the foot of the stairs. Slick as a whistle. I'll tell him, man. She raised her voice to a shout as he disappeared through the door. Kiss her once for me, Vic! In the center of the little pasture he stood, shaking out the noose, and the three horses raced in a sweeping gallop round the fence, looking for a place of escape, with gray molly in the lead. Nothing up the Done River or even down the Asper, for that matter, could head molly when she was full of running, and the eyes of Greg gleamed as he watched her. She was not a picture-horse, for her color was rather a dirty white than a dapple. Besides there were some who accused her of tucked-up belly, but she had the legs for speed in spite of the sloping crop, and plenty of chest at the girth, and a small bony head that rejoiced the heart of a horseman. He swung the noose, and while the others darted ahead stupidly straight into the range of danger, gray molly whirled like a doubling coyote and leaped away. Good girl! cried Vic in an involuntary approbation. He ran a few steps. The noose slid up and out, opening in a shaky loop, and swooped down. Too late the gray saw the flying danger, for even as she swerved, the Rihada fell over her head, and she came to a snorting halt with all fours planted, skidding through the grass. The first thing a range horse learns is never to pull against a rope. A few minutes later she was getting the pitch out of her system as any self-respecting cattle-horse must do after a session of pasture and no work. She bucked with enthusiasm and intelligence as she did all things. Sunfishing Sunfishing is the most deadly form of bucking, for it consists of a series of leaps, apparently aimed at the sun, and the horse comes down with a sickening jar on stiff front legs. Educated pitchers land on only one foot so that the shock is accompanied by a terrible sideways downward wrench that breaks the hearts of the best riders in the world. Gray molly was educated, and Mrs. Pym stood in the doorway with a broad grin of appreciation on her red face. She knew riding when she saw it. Then out of the full frenzy the mare lapsed into high-headed quivering attention, and Greg cursed her softly with deep affection. He understood her from her fetlocks to her teeth. She bucked like a fiend of revolt one instant and cantered like an angel of grace the next. In fact, she was more or less of an equine counterpart of her rider. But now he heard shrill voices passing down the street and he knew that school was out and that he must hurry if he wanted to ride home with Betty. So he waved to Mrs. Pym and cantered away. For over two days he had been rushing towards this meeting. All winter he had hungered for it, but now that the moment loomed before him he weakened. He usually did when he came close to the girl. Not that her beauty overwhelmed him, for though she had a portion of energetic good looks and freckled prettiness, he had chosen her as an Indian choosers flint for his steel. One could strike fire from Betty Neal. When he was far away he loved her without doubt or question and his trust ran towards her like a river setting toward the ocean. Because he knew that her heart was as big and as true as the heart of Gray Molly herself, only her ways were fickle and when she came near she filled him with uneasiness, suspicion. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of The Seventh Man On the road he passed Miss Brewster, for the Alder School boasted two teachers, and under her kindly rather faded smile he felt a great desire to stop and take her into his confidence, ask her what Betty Neal had been doing all these months. Instead he touched Gray Molly with the spurs and she answered like a watchspring uncurling beneath him. The rush of wind against his face raised his spirits to a singing pitch, and when he flung from the saddle before the school he shouted, Oh Betty, up the sharply angling steps in a bound and at the door, Oh Betty! His voice filled the room with a thick dull echo and there was Betty behind her desk looking up at him agape, and beside her stood Blondie Hanson, big, good-looking, and equally startled. Fear made the glance of Vic Gregg swerve to where little Tommy Akin scribbled an arithmetic problem on the blackboard, after school worked for whispering in class or some equally heinous crime. The tingling voices of the other children on their way home floated into Tommy and the corners of his mouth drooped. To regain his poise Vic tugged at his belt and felt the weight of the holster slipping into a more convenient place, then he sauntered up the aisle sweeping off his sombrero. Every feeling in his body, every nerve disappeared in a crystalline hardness, for it seemed to him that the air was surcharged with a secret something between Betty and young Hanson. Betty was out from behind her desk and she ran to meet him and took his hand in both of hers. The rush of her coming took his breath, and at her touch something melted in her. Oh Vic, are you all through? Gregg stiffened for the benefit of Hanson and Tommy Akin. Pretty near through, he said carelessly, thought I'd drop down to Alder for a day or two and get the kinks out. Hello Blondie. Hey Tommy! Tommy Akin flashed a grin at him, but Tommy was not quite sure that the rules permitted speaking, even under such provocations as the return of Vic Gregg, so he maintained a desperate silence. Blondie had picked up his hat as he returned the greeting. I guess I'll be going, he said, and coughed to show that he was perfectly at ease, but it seemed to Vic that it was hard for Blondie to meet his eye when they shook hands. See you later, Betty! All right, she smiled at Vic. A flash. Then gathered dignity of both voice and manner. You may go now, Tommy. She lapsed into complete unconsciousness of manner as Tommy swooped on his desk, included hat and book in one grab and darted towards the door, through which Hanson had just disappeared. Here he paused, tilting, and his smile twinkled at them, with understanding. Good night, Miss Neal! Hope you have a good time, Vic! His heel clicked twice on the steps outside, and then the patter of his racing feet across the field. The little mischief, said Betty, delightfully flushed. It beats everything, Vic, how Alder takes things for granted. He should have taken her in his arms and kissed her now that she'd cleared the room. He very well knew. But the obvious thing was always last to come in Gregg's repertoire. Well, why not take it for granted, and it's going to be many days now? He watched her eyes sparkle, but the pleasure of seeing him drown the gleam almost at once. Are you really almost through? Oh, Vic, you've been away so long, and I—she checked herself. There was no overflow of sentiment at Betty. Maybe I was a fool for laying off work this way, he admitted, but I sure got terrible lonesome up there. Her glance went over him contentedly, from the hard brown hands to the wrinkle which labor had sunk into the exact center of his forehead. He was all man to Betty. Come on along, he said. He would kiss her by surprise as they reached the door. Come on along, it's sure enough spring outside. I've been eating it up, and we can do our talking over things at the dance. Let's ride now. Dance? Sure. Down at Singer's Place. It's going to be kind of hard to get out of going with Blondie. He asked me. And you said you'd go? What are you flaring up about? Look here, how long you've been traipsing around with Blondie Hanson? She clenched one hand beside her in a way he knew, but it pleased him more than it warned him. Just as it pleased him to see the ears of Gray Molly go back. What's wrong with Blondie Hanson? What's right about him, he countered senselessly. Her voice went a bit shrill. Blondie's a gentleman I'll have you know. Is he? Don't you sneer at me, Victor Gregg. I won't have it. You won't, huh? He felt he was pushing her to the danger point, but she was perfectly, satisfyingly beautiful in her anger. He taunted her with the pleasure of an artist painting a picture. I won't, she repeated. Something else came to her lips, but she repressed it, and he could see the pressure from within telling. Don't get in a huff over nothing, he urged, in real alarm. Only it made me kind of mad to see Blondie standing there with that calf look. What calf look? He's a lot better to look at than you'll ever be. A smear of red danced before the vision of Gregg. I won't set up for no beauty prize. Tie a pink ribbon in Blondie's hair and take him to a baby show if you want. He's about young enough to enter. If she could have found a ready retort, her anger might have passed away in words, but no words came, and she turned pale. It was here that Gregg made his crucial mistake. For he thought the pallor came from fear, fear which his sham jealousy had roused in her, perhaps. He should have maintained a discreet silence, but instead he poured in the gall of complacency upon a raw wound. Blondie's all right, he stated beneficently, but you just forget about him tonight. You're going to that dance, and you're going with me. If there's any explanations to be made, you leave them to me. I'll handle Blondie. You handle Blondie, she whispered. Her voice came back and rang. You couldn't if he had one hand tied behind him. She measured him for another blow. I'm going to that dance, and I'm going with Mr. Hansen. She knew that he would have died for her, and he knew that she would have died for him. Accordingly, they abandoned themselves to Sullen Fury. You're out of date, Vic. She rang on. Men can't drag women around nowadays, and you can't drag me, not one inch. She put a vicious little interval between each of the last three words. I'll be calling for you at seven o'clock. I won't be there. Then I'll call on Blondie. You don't dare to. Don't you try to bluff me. I'm not that kind. Betty, do you mean that you? You think I'm Yeller? I don't care what you are. I ask you, calm and impersonal, just think that over before you say it. I've already thought it over. Then, by God, said Greg Fremlin, I'll never take one step out of my way to see you again. He turned so blind with fury that he shouldered the door on his way out and so into the saddle with Gray Molly standing like a figure of rock. As if she sensed his mood, he swung her about on her hind legs with a wrench on the curb and a lift of his spurs, but when she leaped into a gallop he brought her back to the walk with a cruel jerk. She began to sidle across the field with her chin drawn almost back to her breast, prancing. That movement of the horse brought him halfway around towards the door, and he was tempted mightily to look, for he knew that Betty Neal was standing there, begging him with her eyes. But the great sullen pain conquered. He straightened out the mare for the gate. Betty was indeed at the door, leaning against it in a sudden weakness, and even in her pain she felt pride in the grace and skill of Vic's horsemanship. The hearts of both of them were breaking, with this rather typical difference that Greg felt her to be entirely at fault and that she as fully accepted every scruple of the blame. He had come down tired out and nervous from work he had done for her sake, she remembered, and if he would only glance back once, he must know that she was praying for it. She would cry out and run down to him, but he went on, on through the gate. A flash of her passion returned to her. I shall go with Blondie if it kills me. And she flung herself into the nearest seat and wept. So when he reached the road and looked back at last the doorway yawned black, empty, and he set his teeth with a groan and spurred down the road for Alder. He drew rain at Captain Lorimer's and entered with Kurt nods in exchange for the greetings. Red eye, he ordered, and seized bottle and glass as Lorimer spun them deftly towards him. Captain Lorimer picked up the bottle and gazed at it mournfully when Vic had poured his drink. SON. He murmured. You sure raised an awful thirst. CHAPTER IV. KING HALL. There's a very general and very erroneous impression that alcohol builds the mood of a man. As a matter of fact it merely makes his temper of the moment fast. The man who takes his first drink with a smile ends in uproarious laughter and he who frowns will often end in fighting. Vic Gregg did not frown as he drank, but the corners of his lips turned up a trifle in a smile of fixed and acid pleasantry, and his glance went from face to face in the bar room steadily with a trifling pause at each pair of eyes. Beginning with himself he hated mankind in general. The burn of the cheap whiskey within served to set the color of that hatred in a fixed dye. He did not lift his chaser, but his hand closed around it hard. If someone had given him an excuse for a fist fight or an outburst of cursing, it would have washed his mind as clean as a new slate, and five minutes later he might have been with Betty Neil riotously happy. Instead, everyone overflowed with good nature, gossip, questions about his work, and the danger in him crystallized. He registered cold reasons for his disgust. Beginning in the first person he loathed himself as a thick-headed ass for talking to Betty as he had done, as well put a bur under one saddle and then feel surprised because the horse bucked. He passed on to the others with equal precision. Captain Lorimer was as dirty as a greaser and like a greaser loose-lipped unshaven. Chick Stewart was a born fool and a fool by self-culture as his never-changing grin amply proved. Lou Perkin sat in the corner on a shaky old apple-barrel and brushed back his long moustaches to spit at the cuspador and miss it. If this were Vic Gregg's saloon he would teach the old loafers more accuracy or break his neck. How are you, Gregg? murmured someone behind him. He turned and found Sheriff Pete Glass with his right hand already spread on the bar while he ordered a drink for two. That was one of the Sheriff's idiosyncrasies. He never shook hands if he could avoid it, and Gregg hated him senselessly, bitterly for it. No doubt everyone in the room noticed and they would tell afterwards how the Sheriff had avoided shaking hands with Vic Gregg. Cheap play for notoriety, thought Gregg. Glass was pushing the bottle towards him. Help yourself, said Gregg. This on me, Vic. I most generally like to buy the first drink. Pete Glass turned his head slowly for indeed all his motions were leisurely and one could not help wondering if the stories of his exploits, the tales of his hair-trigger alertness. Perhaps these half- legendary deeds sent the thrill of uneasiness through Vic Gregg. Perhaps it was owing to the singular hazel eyes with little splotches of red in them, very mild eyes, but one could imagine anything about them. Otherwise there was nothing exceptional in Glass, for he stood well under middle height, a starved figure with a sinewy crooked neck, as if bent on looking up to taller men. His hair was sandy, his face tawny brown, his shirt a gray blue, and everyone knew his dusty ron horse. By nature, by temperament and by personal selection, he was suited to blend into a landscape of sage-dotted plains or sand. Tireless as a lobo on the trail, swift as a bobcat in fight, hunted men had been known to ride in and give themselves up when they heard that Pete Glass was after them. Any way you want, partner," he was saying in his soft, rather husky voice. He poured his drink, barely enough to cover the bottom of his glass, for that was another of Pete's ways. He could never afford to weaken his hand or dead in his eye with alcohol, and even now he stood sideways at the bar, facing Greg and also facing the others in the room. But the larger man, with sudden scorn for this caution, brimmed his own glass and poised it swiftly. Here's how! And down it went. Ordinary red-eye heated his blood and made his brain dizzy. It loosened his tongue and numbed his lips, but today it left him cool, confident, and sharpened his vision, until he felt that he could see through the mind of everyone in the room. Captain Lorimer, for instance, was telling a jocular story to Chick Stewart, in the hope that Chick would set them up for everyone. An old Lou Perkins was waiting for the treat. And perhaps the Sheriff was wondering how he could handle Vic in case of need, or how long it would take to run him down. Not long, decided Greg, breathing hard. No man in the world could put him on the run. Glass was treating in turn, and again the brimming drink went down Vic's throat and left his brain clear. Wonderfully clear. He saw through Betty Neal now she had purposely played off Blondie against him to make them both jealous. Won't you join us, Dad? The Sheriff was saying to Lou Perkins, and Vic Greg smiled. He understood. The Sheriff wanted an excuse to order another round of drinks because he had it in mind to intoxicate Greg. Perhaps Greg had something on him. Perhaps the manhunter thought that Greg had had a part in that Wilsonville affair two years back. That was it. And he wanted to make Vic talk when he was drunk. Don't mind if I do, Lou said, slapping both hands on the bars if he owned it, and while he waited for his drink. What are they going to do with Swain, the doddering idiot? Swain was the last man Glass had taken, and Lou Perkins should have known that the Sheriff never talked about his work. The old ass was in his green age, his second childhood. Swain turned state evidence, said Pete Curtley. He'll go free, I suppose. Fill up your glass, partner. You can see you're thirsty yet. This was to Greg, who had purposely poured out a drink of the Sheriff's own chosen dimension to see if the latter would notice. This remark fixed his suspicions. It was certain that the manhunter was after him. But again in scorn he accepted the challenge and poured a stiff dram. That's right, not at the Sheriff. You've got nothing on your shoulders. You can let yourself go, Vic. Sometimes I sighed. I wish I could do the same. The sneaky coyote thought Greg. He's luring me on. Turn state evidence, wandered Lou Perkins. Well, there's a lot of them loser guts when they're caught. I remember way back in time when Bannock was running full blast. Why did not someone shut off the old idiot before he was thoroughly started? He might keep on talking like the crank of a windmill in a steady breeze endlessly, for Lou was old. 75, 80, 85. He himself probably did not know just how old, and he had lived through at least two generations of pioneers with a myriad stories about them. He could string out tales of the long trail, Abilene, Wichita, Ellsworth, Great Bend, Newton, where eleven men were murdered in one night. He knew the vigilante days in San Francisco and early times in Alder Gulch. Nobody would have thought Plummer was yowler, but he turned out that way, droned on the narrator. Grit! He had enough to fit out twenty men. When Crawford shot him and busted his right arm, he went right on and learned to shoot with his left and start hurting Jack again. Packed that, led with him till he died, and then they found Jack's bullet in his wrist all worked smooth by the play of the bones. Afterwards it turned out that Plummer ran a whole gang, but before we'd learned that we'd been fooled enough to make him sheriff. We got to Plummer right after he'd finished hanging a man and took him to his own gallows. You'd have thought a cool devil like that would have made a good end, but he didn't. He just got down on his knees and cried and asked God to help him. Then he begged us to give him time to pray, but one of the boys up and told him he could do his praying from the cross beam, and that was Henry Plummer that killed a hundred men, him and his gang, murmured the sheriff, and looked uneasily about. Now that his eyes were turned away, Vic could study him at Leisure and he wondered at the smallness of the man. Suppose one were able to lay hands on him, it would be easy to, see you later, boys, draw glass and sauntered from the room. Lou Perkins sighed as the most important part of his audience disappeared, but having started talking, the impetus carried him along. He held Vic Gregg with his hazy eyes. But they didn't all finish like Plummer, not all the baddens, no three. There was Boone Helm. I've heard about him, growled Vic, but the old man had fixed his glance and his reminiscent smile upon the past, and his voice was soft with distance when he spoke again. Helm was sure enough a bad one, son. They don't grow like him no more, while Bill was a baby compared with Helm, and Slade wasn't no man at all, even leaving in the lies to tell about him. Why, son, Helm was just a lobo in the skin of a man. Like Barry, put in Lorimer, drifting closer down the bar. Who's he? Ain't you heard of Whistlin' Dan, the one that killed Jim Silent and busted up his gang? Why, they say he's got a wolf that he can talk to like it was a man. Old Lou chuckled. They say a lot of things, he nodded. But I'll tell a man that a wolf is a wolf, and ain't nothing that can tame him. Now, don't you let him feed you up on lies like that, Lorimer? But Helm was sure bad. He killed for the sake of killing. But he died game. When the boys run him down, he swore on the Bible he'd never killed a man, and they made him swear it over again just to watch his nerve. But he never batted an eye. The picture of that wild time grew up for Greg, and the thought of free men who laughed at the law, strong men, fierce men. What would one of them have done if the girl he intended to marry had treated him like a fool? Then they got him ready for the rope, went on Lou Perkins. Now, I've seen a tolerable lot of death, says Helm, and I ain't afraid of it. There was about six thousand folks that come in to see the end of Boone Helm. Somebody asked him if he wanted anything. Whiskey, says Boone, and he got it. Then he shook his hand, he held it up. He had a sore finger, and he'd bothered him a lot more than the thought of hanging. You gents get through with this or tie up my finger, he kept saying. Helm wasn't the whole show. There were some others being hung that day, and when one of them dropped off his box, Boone says, there's one gone to hell. Pretty soon another one went and hung there, wriggling. Six times he went through all the motions of pulling his six-shooter and firing it. I counted. Kick away, old fella, says Boone Helm. I'll be with you soon. Then it came his turn, and he hollered, Hurrah for Jeff Davis, let her rip! And that was how Boone Helm, the rest of the story, was blotted from the mind of Vic Gregg, by the thud of a heavy heel on the veranda, and then the broad shoulders of Blondie Hanson darkened the doorway. Blondie Hanson dressed for the dance, with the knot of his black silk handkerchief turned to the front, and above that the gleam of his celluloid collar. It was dim in the saloon, compared with the brightness of the outdoors, and perhaps Blondie did not see Vic. At any rate he took his place at the other end of the bar. Three pictures tangled in the mind of Gregg like three bodies in a whirlpool, Betty, Blondie, Pete Glass. That strange clearness of perception increased, and the whole affair lay plainly before him. Betty had sent Hanson dressed manifestly for the festival to gloat over Vic in Lorimer's place. He was at it already. All turned out for the dance, Blondie, huh? Taking a girl? Betty Neal, answered Blondie. The hell you are, inquired Lorimer, mildly astonished. I thought, why, Vic's back in town, don't you know that? He ain't got a mortgage on what she does. Then, guided by the side glance of Lorimer, Hanson saw Gregg, and he stiffened. As for Vic, he perceived the last link in his chain of evidence. Hanson was going to a dance, and yet he wore a gun, and there could be only one meaning in that. Betty had sent him down there to wind up the affair. Didn't see you, Vic, Blondie was saying, his flushed face seeming doubly red against the paleness of his hair. Have something? I ain't drinking, answered Gregg, and slowly, to make sure that no one could miss his meaning, he poured out a glass of liquor and drank it with his face toward Hanson. When he put his glass down, his mind was clearer than ever, and with omniscient precision, with nervous calm, he knew that he was going to kill Blondie Hanson, knew exactly where the bullet would strike. It was something put behind him, his mind had already seen Hanson fall, and he smiled. Dead silence had fallen over the room, and in the silence Gregg heard a muffled ticking sound, the beating of his heart. Heard old Lou Perkins, as the latter softly, slowly glided back out of the straight line of danger. Heard the quick breathing of Captain Lorimer, who stood pasty pale, gaping behind the bar. Heard the gritted teeth of Blondie Hanson, who would not take water. Vic, said Blondie, looks like you mean trouble. Anyway, you just now done something that needs explaining. He stood straight as a soldier, rigid, but the fingers of his right hand twitched, twitched, twitched. The hand itself stole higher. Very calmly, Vic hunted for his words and found him. A cattle rustler is bad, he pronounced. A horse thief is worse. But you're the lowest sneak of the lot, Blondie. Again that silence with a pulse in it, and Vic Gregg could feel the chill which numbed everyone except himself. The lower jaw of Captain Lorimer sagged, and his whisper came out in jerking syllables. God a Marty! Then Blondie went for his gun, and Vic waited with his hand on the butt of his own, waited with a perfect cold foreknowledge. Heard Blondie moan as his cold tongue in the holster, saw the flash of the barrel as it whipped out, and then jerked his own weapon and fired from the hip. Blondie staggered, but kept himself from falling by gripping the edge of the bar with his left hand. The right, still holding the gun, raised and rubbed across his forehead, he looked like a sleeper awakening. Not a sound from anyone else, while Vic watched the tiny wreath of smoke jerk up from the muscle of his revolver. Then Blondie's gun flashed down and clanked on the floor. A red spot grew on the breast of Hanson's shirt. Now he leaned as if to pick up something, but instead slid forward on his face. Vic stepped to him and stirred the body with his toe. It wobbled. Limp. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 The Fight There were three spots of white in the dim saloon, the faces of Stuart, Lorimer, and old Lou Perkins, and at the foot of Vic grew a spot of red. Knowing with calm surety that no hand would lift against him even if he turned his back, he walked out the door without a word and swung into the saddle. There for an instant he calculated chances, for the street stretched empty before and behind with not a sound of warning stirring in the saloon. He was greatly tempted to ride to Doug Pym's for his blanket role and a few other traveling necessities, but he remembered that the men of Alder rose to action with astonishing speed. Within five minutes a group of hard riders would be clattering up his trail with peat glass at their head. An unlucky Providence had sent Pete to Alder on this day of all days. There stood his redoubtable dusty ron at the hitching rack. Her head low, one ear back and one flopped forward, her underlip pendulous. In a pasture full of horses one might pick her last either for stout heart or speed. Even in spite of her history Vic would have engaged Grey Mollie to beat the ron at equal weights, but since he outbulked the share of full forty pounds he weighed in nice balance the necessity of shooting the ron before he left Alder. It was he decided unpleasant but vital, and his fingers had already slid around the butt of his gun when a horse whinnied far off and the ron twitched up her head to listen. She was no longer a clottish lump of horse flesh but an individual, a soul. Greg's hand fell from his gun. Cursing his sentimental weakness, he lifted Mollie into a canter down the street. Still no signs of awakening behind him or about. Only little Jack Sweeney playing tag with a black and tan puppy. The triumphant cackle of a hen somewhere to the left. But as he neared the end of the street where the trail swung into the rocks of the slope, a door banged far off and a voice was screaming, "'Peat! Peat glass!" Grey Mollie switched her tail nervously at the shout, but Vic was too wise to let her waist strength hurrying up so sharp a declivity. That dusty ron whose life he had spared would be spending it prodigly to overtake him before long, and Mollie's power must be husbanded. So he kept her at a quick walk, by pressing the calf of one leg into her flank, and turned in the saddle to watch the town sink behind him. Some time in the vague stupid past Marnie had jog-trotted down this slope, but now he was a new man with an eye which saw all things and a gun which could not fail. Figures singularly tiny and singularly distinct, swarmed into the street from nowhere, men on horses, men swinging into saddles, here and there the slant light of the afternoon twinkled on gun barrels, and ludicrous thin voices came piping up the hill. As he reached the nether lip of Murphy's Pass a small cavalcade detached itself from the main mass before Captain Lorimer's saloon and swept down the street. First a dusty figure on a dusty horse hardly visible, then a spot of red which must be Harry Fisher on his blood bay, with a long striding sorrel beside him that could carry no one except grim old sliver Waldron. Behind these rode one with the light glinting on his silver conchos, Matt Henshaw, the town beau-brummel, then the black Gus Reeve, and last of all, Ronyki Joe on his pinto, Ronyki Joe, handyman at all things, and particularly guns. Showed how fast Pete Glass could work, and how well he knew Alder, for Vic himself could not have selected five cooler fighters among the villagers or five finer mounts. The posse switched around the end of the street and darted up the hill like the curling lash of a whip. Good, said Vic Gregg, the damn fools will win their horses before they hit the pass. He put gray molly into an easy trot for the floor of the pass dipped up and down, littered with sharp toothed rocks or treacherous rolling ones, as bad a place for speed as a stiff upslope. According to his nicest calculation, the posse could not reach the edge of the gulch before he was at the farther side, out of range of everything except a long chance shot. So he took note of things as he went, and observed a spot of pale silver skirting through the brush on the eastern ridge of the gorge. There would be moonlight that night, and another chance in favor of Pete Glass. He remembered then, with quiet content, that jogging in the holster was a power which, with six words, might stop those six pursuers. A long halloo came barking down the pass, now drawing out, now cut away to a silence as the angling cliffs sent on the echo, and Vic loosened the rain. Gray molly swung out with a snort of relief to a free-swinging gallop, and they swept down a great gentle slope where new grass padded the fall of her hooves. Yet even then he kept the mare checked, and held her in touch with an easily playing wrist. He did not imagine that even the sheriff on a dusty ron would dream of trying to swallow up gray molly in a short sprint, but that assurance nearly cost Vic his life. The roar of hooves in the gulch belched out into the comparative silence of the open space beyond, and just as he gave the mare her head a gun coughed, and an angry humming darted past his ear. Molly lengthened into full speed. He could not tell on account of the muffling grass whether the pursuit was gaining or losing. He trusted blindly to the mare, and when he looked back they were already pulling their mounts down to a hand gallop. That would teach him to match Molly in a sprint, ron or no ron. He slapped her below the withers where the long hard muscles ripped back and forth. She was full of running. Her gallop as light as the toss of a bow in the wind, and now as he pulled her back to a swinging canter her head went high with pricking ears. Suddenly his heart went out to her. She would run like that till she died, he knew. Good girl, he whispered huskly. The day was pailing towards the end when he headed into the foothills of the White Mountains. He drew up Molly for a breath on a level shoulder. Already he was close to the snowline with ragged heads of white rearing above him. Far below, a pale streak of moonlight was the asper. Then, out of that blacker night on the slopes beneath, he heard the clinking hooves of the posse. The quiet was so perfect, the air so clear, that he even caught the chorus of straining saddle-leather and then voices of men. All this time the effects of the whisky had been wearing away by imperceptible degrees, and at that sound all his old self rushed back on Vic Gregg. Why, they were his friends, his partners. These voices in the night and that clear laughter floated up from Harry Fisher, who had been his bunkie at the Circle V bar ranch three years ago. He felt an insane impulse to lean over the edge of the cliff and shout a greeting. End of Chapter 5 Dawn found him over the first crest. At noon he was struggling up the slope of the second range, whose rise was not half so sharp as the upward plunge out of the asper. But in spite of that easier ground, Grey Molly could not gain. She went on with shorter steps now, and her head hung lower and lower, yet when a down stretch opened before her she went at it with a gallop as light almost as her race out of Murphy's Pass. Not once had she offered to stop. Not once had she winced from the labour of some sharp uppitch, but still six horsemen hung behind her, and at their head rode a little dusty man on a little dusty ron. It was the lack of training as well as the rough going, which held Molly back. Beyond that second range, however, the down slope stretched smoothly evenly for mile on mile and mile on mile. Perfect going for Grey Molly over easy hills, with patches of forests here and there where he might double, or where he might stop with the hunt sweeping past. All this the sheriff must have known perfectly well, for he no longer kept back with his pack of five, but skirted on ahead, hunting alone. Again and again Vic heard the little shrill whistle with which Pete Glass encouraged the ron. Vic used the spurs twice, and then he desisted from the useless brutality, for Molly was doing her best, and no power on earth could make her do more. After all, her best would be good enough, for now Vic looked up, and his heart leaped into his throat. There was only one more rise above him, and beyond lay the easy ground and a running chance for Molly's slender legs. Even as he raised his head something wind evilly over him, followed by a sound like two heavy hammers swung together, face to face, and shattered by a stroke. A rifle. He looked back, saw the ron standing broadside toward him, watched the sun waver and then flash in a straight, steady line along the barrel of the sheriff's gun. The line of light jerked up, and before the sound reached him, a blow on his right shoulder sent Vic lurching forward against the pommel. Afterward the voice of the rifle rang around him, and a sharp pain twitched up and down his side, then ran tingling to his fingertips. It was the stunning blow which saved him, for the sheriff had the range, and his third bullet would have clipped Vic between the shoulders, but Glass had seen his quarry pitch forward in the saddle, and he would not waste ammunition. The thrift of his New England ancestry spoke in Pete now and then, and he could only grit his teeth when he saw Vic disappearing on the other side of the crest, straightened in the saddle. The next instant the top of the hill shielded the fugitive. Well, and nobly then, Gray Molly repaid all the praise, all the tenderness and care which Vic had lavished upon her in the past years. For with her legs shaking from the struggle of that last climb, with a rider who wobbled crazily in his seat, with reins hanging loose on her neck, with not even a voice to guide or to encourage her, she swept straight across the falling ground, gaining strength and courage at every stride. By the time Vic had regained his self-control and rallied a little from that first terrible falling of the heart, the dusty ron who was over the crest and streaking after the game. Gray Molly gained steadily, yet even when he gathered the reins in his left hand Vic knew that the fight was done in effect. How could he double or dodge when his own blood spotted the trail he kept? And how long could he keep the saddle, with the agony which tore like saw-teeth at his shoulder? Gray Molly plunged straight into the shadow of pine trees and the cool gloom fell like a blessing upon Vic in his torment. It was heaven to be sheltered even for a few moments from the eyes of the posse. At the opposite edge of the wood he drew rain with a groan. Some devil had prompted Gus Reeve and some devil had poured Reeve's horse full of strength for yonder down the valley not a hundred yards away galloped a rider on a black horse yet Vic could have sworn that when he looked back from the crest he had seen Gus riding the very last in the posse. An instant later the illusion vanished. For the black horse of Gus was never an animal such as this. Never had this marvelous long gait. Its feet flicked the earth and shot it along with a reaching stride so easy so flowing that only the fluted mane and the tail stretching straight behind gave token of the speed. For the rest it carried its head high with pricking ears the sure sign of a horse running well within its strength. Yet Gray Molly, fresh and keen for racing, could hardly have kept pace with the black as it slid over the hills. God in heaven if such a horse were his a thousand sheriffs on a thousand dusty roams could never take him. Five minutes would sweep him out of sight and reach. Before the horseman ran a tall dog, wolfish in head and wolfish in the gait which carried it like a cloud shadow over the ground, but it was over large for any wolf Vic had ever seen. It turned its head now and leaped aside at sight of the stranger, but the rider veered from his course and swept down on Vic. He came to a halt close up without either a draw at the reins or a spoken word, probably controlling his mount with pressure of the knees, and Greg found himself facing a delicately handsome fellow. He was neither cow-puncher nor miner, Vic knew at a glance, for that face had never been haggard with labor. A tenderfoot, probably, in spite of his dress, and Vic felt that if his right arm were sound he could take that horse at the point of his gun and leave the rider thanking God that his life had been spared, but his left hand was useless on the butt of a revolver, and three minutes away came the posse racing. There was only time for one desperate appeal. Stranger, he burst out, I'm fallered. I got to have your horse. Take this and then exchange. It's the best I ever threw a leg over. Here's two hundred bucks, and he flung his wallet on the ground and swung himself out of the saddle. The wolfish dog, which had growled softly all this time and roughed up the hair of its neck, now slunk forward on its belly. Heel, Bart, commanded the stranger sharply, and the dog whipped about and stood away, whining with eagerness. The moment Greg's feet struck the ground his legs buckled like saplings in the wind, for a long ride had sapped his strength and the flow of blood told rapidly on him now. The hills and trees whirled around him until a lean, strong hand caught him under either armpit. The stranger stood close. You could have my horse if you could ride him, said he, his voice was singularly unhurried and gentle, but you'd drop out of the saddle in ten minutes. Who's after you? A voice shouted far off beyond the wood, another voice answered nearer and the whole soul of Greg turned to the stallion. Gray Molly was blown. She stood now with hanging head and her flank sunk in alarmingly at every breath, but even fresh from the pasture she was not a rag, not a straw, compared to the black. For God's sake, grown Vic, loan me your arse. You couldn't stick the saddle. Come in here out of sight. I'm going to take him off your trail. When he spoke, he led, half-carried Vic, into a thicket of shrubs, with a small open space at the center. The black and the wolf followed and now the stranger pulled at the bridal rain. The stallion kneeled like a trained dog, and lying thus the shrubbery was high enough to hide him. Closer sweeping through the wood, Vic heard the crash of the pursuit, yet the other was maddeningly slow of speech. You stay here, partner, and sit over there. I'm borrowing your gun. A swift hand appropriated it from Vic's holster, and his own fingers were too paralyzed to resist. And don't you try to ride my horse unless you want them teeth in your throat. Like quiet and tie up your hurt. Bart, watch him. There sat Greg, where he had slipped down in his days of weakness, with a great dog crouched at his feet and snarling ominously every time he raised his hand. The voices came closer. And now, through the interstices of the shrubbery, he saw the stranger swing into the saddle on gray Molly and urged her to a gallop. He could follow them for only an instant with his eyes, but it seemed to Vic that Molly cantered under her new rider with a strange ease and lightness. It was partly the rest, no doubt, and partly the smaller burden. A deep beat of racing hooves and then the dusty ron shot out of the trees close by with a share of leaning forward jockeying his horse. It seemed that no living thing could escape from that relentless rider. Then right behind Vic a horse snorted and grunted as it leaped a fallen log, perhaps, and he watched in alarm to see if the stallion would answer that sound with a start or winnie. The black lay perfectly still, and instead of lifting up to answer or to look, the head lowered, with ears flat back, until the long, outstretched neck gave the animal a snaky appearance. The dog, too, though it showed murderous fangs whenever Vic moved, did not stir from his place but lay flattened into the ground. Cut to the right! Cut to the right, Harry! came the voice of the sheriff, already piping from the distance as the last of the posse brushed out from the trees. Yo-ho! Gus, take the left to royal! Two answering yells, and then the rush of hooves fell away. They were cornering the stranger, no doubt, and Vic struggled to lift himself to his feet and watch until a faint sound from the dog made him look down. Bart lay with his haunches drawn up under him, his forepaws digging into the soft loam, his eyes demonioc. Instinctively, Vic reached for his absent gun, and then, despairing, relaxed to his former position. The wolf-dog lowered his head to his paws, and there remained with the eyes following each intake of Greg's breath. A rattle of gunshots flung back loosely from the hills, and among them Vic winced at the sound of the sheriff's rifle, clear and ringing over the bark of the revolvers. Had they nailed the stranger? The firing recommenced, more faintly and prolonged, so that it was plain the posse maintained a running fusilade against the fugitive. After that fear of his own growing weakness shut out all else from the mind of Greg, as he felt his senses, his physical strength flowing out like an ebb tied to a sea which he knew, was death. He began to work desperately to bind up the wound and stop the flow of blood, and it was fear which gave him momentary strength to tear away his shirt, and then with his teeth and left hand rip it into strips. After that, heedless of the pain, he constructed a rude bandage very clumsily, for he had to work over his shoulder. Here his teeth, once more, were almost as useful as another hand, and as the bandage grew tight, the deadly warm trickle along his side lessened, and his fingers fell away from the last knot. He fainted. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of The Seventh Man. What he next knew was a fire of agony that wrapped his whole body and consciousness flashed back on him. Strong arms lifted him up, up. Above him he sensed the eyes of his torturer, dim in the moonlight, and he beat his clubbed left fist into that face. After that he knew he was being dragged onto a saddle, but a wave of pain rushed up his side and numbed his brain. Thereafter his senses returned by fits and starts vaguely. Once he felt a steel cable that girded his waist and breast and held him erect, though his head flopped back and forth. Once his eyes opened and above him glittered the bright field of stars toward which he drifted through space, a mind without a body. Once a stab of torment wakened him enough to hear, Easy, Satan! Watch them stones! One more jolt like that will send him clear to—and the voice glided into an eternity of distance. Yet again he swung up from the pit of darkness and became aware of golden hair around a woman's face and a marvelous soft, cool hand upon his forehead. Her voice reached him, too, and made him think of all things musical, all things distant, like the sounds of birds falling from the sky, and though he understood not a syllable, a sweet assurance of safety flooded through him. He slept. When he woke again it was from a dream of fleeing through empty airs, swifter than the wind, with a wolf-dog looming behind him out of space, yet presently he found that he was lying in a bed with a stream of sunlight washing across a white coverlet. A door at his right swung open and there in the entrance stood the wolf-dog of his vision, with a five-year-old girl upon its back. Don't go in there, Bart! whispered the child. Go on back! She took one of those pointed wolf ears in her chubby fist and tugged to swing him around, but Bart, with a speed which the eye could not follow, twisted his head and the rows of great teeth closed over her hand. It was so horrible that the cry froze in the throat of Greg, yet the child, with only a little murmur of anger, reached over with her other hand and caught the wolf by the nose. Bad Bart! she whispered and raised the hand which he instantly released. White Mark showed on the pudgy tan. Bad dog! she repeated, and beat his neck with an impotent little fist. The wolf-dog cringed and turned from the door. Come in! invited Greg. He was surprised to find his voice thin, apt to swing up to a high pitch beyond his control. A shower of golden curls tossed away from her face as she looked to him. Oh! she cried, still with a guarded voice. She leaned far over, one hand buried in the rough of Bart's neck to secure her balance, and with the other she laid hold of his right ear and drew him around facing the door once more. This time he showed his teeth but submitted, only twitching the ear back and forth a time or two when she relaxed her hold. Come in! repeated Greg. She canted her head to one side and considered him with fearless blue eyes. I want to, she sighed. Why can't you, honey? Munner says no. He attempted to turn further towards her, but the pain in his right shoulder prevented. He found that his arm was bandaged to the elbow and held close to his side by a complex swathing. Who is your mother? asked Vic. Munner, she repeated, frowning in wonder, why Munner is my Munner. Oh! smiled he. And who's your pa? Why? Who's your father? Who's your dad? Daddy Dan. You ask a lot of things, she added disapprovingly. Come on in! pleaded Vic Greg, and I won't ask nothing more about you. Munner says no, she repeated. She employed the moment of indecision by plucking at the hair of Bart's shoulders. He growled softly, terribly, but she paid not the slightest heed. Your mother won't care, asserted Vic. I know, she nodded, but Daddy will. Spanking? She looked blankly at him. What will he do, then, if you come in to see me? He'll look at me. She grew breathless at the thought and cast a guilty glance over her shoulder. Honey! chuckled Greg weakly, I'll take all the blame, just you come along in, and he'll do his looking at me. He thought of the slender fellow who had rescued him, and his large gentle brown eyes, but to a child even those mild eyes might seem terrible with authority. Will you true? said the child wistfully, honest and true. All right. She made up her mind instantly, her face shining with excitement. Get up, Bart! And she thumped the wolf-dog vigorously with her heels. She carried her in with a few gliding steps, soundless except for the slight rattle of claws on the floor, but he stopped well out of reach of the bed. And when Vic held out his left hand as far as he could across his chest, Bart winced and gave harsh warning. Vic had seen vicious dogs in his day, seen them fighting, seen them playing, but he had never heard one of them growl like this. The upper lips of the animal twitched dangerously back, and the sound came from the very depths of his body. It made the flesh crawl along Vic's back. One rip of those giant teeth could tear a man's throat open. The child thud at her heels against the ribs of Bart again. Get up! She cried. The wolf-dog shuddered, but would not budge an inch. Naughty Bart! She slipped off to the floor. I'll make him come! She said. If it's the same to you, said Vic rather hastily, I just as soon he stayed where he is. He's got to do what I want! She answered. She shook a tiny forefinger at him. Bart, you just come here. The dog turned his blazing eyes on her and replied with a growl that shook his sides. Stop! She ordered and struck him sharply on the nose. He blinked and lowered his head under the blow, but though the snarling stopped, his teeth flashed. She caught him by both jowls and tugged him forward. Let him be, urged Vic. He's got to come! And come he did, step by halting step, while she hauled him, and now the snarling horse intakes of breath filled the room. Once she moved a little to one side and Vic caught the glint of two eyes red-stained, which were fixed undeviatingly upon her face. Mixed with Vic's alarm at the great fighting beast was a peculiar uneasiness, for there was something uncanny in the determination the fearlessness of this infant. When she stepped away the wolf-dog stood trembling visibly, but his eyes were still not upon the man he hated or feared to approach but upon the child's face. Can you pat him now? She asked, not for an instant turning to Greg. No, but it's close enough, he assured her. I don't want him any closer. He's got to come! She stamped. Bart, you come here! He flinched forward an inch. Bart! Her hands were clinched and her little body quivered with resolution. The snake-like head came to the very edge of the bed. Now, pat him! She commanded. By very unpleasant degrees Vic stretched his hand toward that growling menace. He'll take my arm off, he complained. Shame kept him from utterly refusing the risk. He won't bite you one bit, declared the child, but I'll hold his nose if you're afraid. And instantly she clasped the pointed muzzle between her hands. Even when Vic's hands hovered above his head Bart had no eye for him but could not divert his gaze from the face of the child. Once, twice and again, delicately as one might handle bubbles, Greg touched that scarred forehead. I made him come, didn't I? She cried in triumph and turned a tense little face toward Vic. But the instant her eyes moved the wolf-dog leaped away half the width of the room and stood shivering, more devilish than ever. She stamped again. Bad, bad, bad, Bart! She said angrily. Shall I make him come again? Leave him be, muttered Vic, closing his eyes. Leave him be where he is, I don't want him. Oh! She said, it's hard to make him do things sometimes. But Daddy Dan can make him do ANYTHING. Hmph! Grunted Vic. He was remembering how, at the master's order, Bart had crouched at his feet in the wood, an unchained murderer hungrily waiting for an excuse to kill. There was something very odd about the people of this house, and it would be a long time before he rid himself of the impression of the cold, steady eyes which had flashed up to him a moment before out of that baby face. Joan called a voice from beyond, and the soft fiber of it made Vic certain that it belonged to the rider of the Black Stallion. The little girl ran a step toward the door and then stopped and shrank back against the bed. If you're afraid your dad will find you here, said Vic, just you run along. She was nervously twisting her hands in her dress. Daddy Dan'll know, she whispered without turning, and he won't let me be afraid. Even of him! A small hand slipped up, fumbled a bit, found the thumb of Vic Greg, and closed softly over it. With this to steady her, she waited, facing the door. CHAPTER VIII. A light step crossed the outer room with something peculiar in its lightness as if the heel were not touching the floor, with the effect of the padded fall of the feet of some great cat. There was both softness and the sense of weight. First the wolf-dog pricked his ears and turned towards the door. The pudgy fist closed convulsively over Vic's thumb, and then his rescuer stood in the entrance. Hello, partner, called Vic. I got company, you see. The door blew open, and I asked your little girl in. I told you not to come here, said the other. Vic felt the child tremble, but there was no burst of excuses. She didn't want to come, he heard, but I kept on asking her. The emotionless eye of Daddy Dan held upon Joan. I told you not to come, he said. Joan swallowed in mute agony, and the wolf-dog slipped to the side of the master and licked his hand as though in dumb intercession. The blood ran coldly in the veins of Greg, as if he saw a fist raised to strike the little girl. You go out. She went swiftly at that, sidled past her father with her eyes lifted, fascinated, and so out the door where she paused an instant to flash back a wistful appeal. Joan but silence, and then her feet pattered off into the outer room. Maybe you better go keep her company, Bart, said the father, and at this sign of relenting Vic felt his tense muscles relaxing. The wolf whined softly and glided through the door. You feeling better? Like a horse off green feed. I've been lying here, drinking up the sunshine. The other stood beside the open window, and there he canted his head, his glance far off and intent. Do you hear, he asked, turning sharply. There was a fierce eagerness in his face. Hear what? It's spring, he murmured, without answering more directly than this. And Vic felt that the other had changed again, grown understandable. Nevertheless, the shock of that sudden alteration at the window kept him watching his host with breathless interest. Whatever it was that the strange fellow heard, a light had gleamed in his eyes for a moment. And he sauntered back toward the bed, just a trace of it lingering about him. A hint of sternness. "'Spraying,' answered Greg, "'yep, I smelled spring a few days back, and I started out to find some action. You can see for yourself that I found it, partner.' He stirred uneasily. And it was necessary that the story should be told lest it reach the ears of this man from another source. It was one thing to shelter a fugitive from justice whose crime was unknown, perhaps trifling. But it might be quite another story if this gentle singular man learned that his guest was a new-made murderer. Better that he should learn the tale now and form his prejudices in favor of Greg. "'I'll tell you the whole story,' he began. But the other shrugged his shoulders. "'You leave the story be,' he said. And there was something in the quiet firmness of his manner which made it impossible for Vic to continue. "'You're here, and you're hurt, and you need a pile of rest. And that's about enough story for me.' Vic put himself swiftly in the place of the other. Suppose that he and Betty Neal should have a cabin off in the mountains like this. How would they receive a wounded fugitive from justice? As unquestioningly as this. In a surge of gratitude he looked mistily towards his host. "'Stranger,' he said. "'You're white. Damn white. That's all.' "'My name's Vic Greg, and I come from—' "'Thanks,' cut in the other. "'I'm glad to know your name, but in case anybody might be asking me, I wouldn't care to know where you come from.' He smiled. "'I'm Dan Berry.' It had to be a left-handed shake on the part of Vic, a thing of which he often thought in the days that followed, but now he sent his memory hunting. "'Seems like I've heard your name before,' he murmured. "'I don't know where. Were you ever round Alder, Berry?' "'No.' His manner suggested that the topic might as well be closed. He reached over and dropped his hand lightly on the forehead of Vic. A tingling current flowed from it from the brain of the wounded man. "'Your blood's still a bit hot,' he added. "'Be quiet, and don't even think. You're safe here. "'There ain't a thing going to get at you. Not a thing. "'You'll stay till you get ready to leave. So long. I'll see that you get something to eat.' He went out with that unusual patting step which Vic had noticed before and closed the door softly behind him. In spite of that barrier, Greg could hear the noises from their next room quite clearly as someone brought in wood and dropped it on the stone hearth, rattling. He fell into a pleasant dose, just stretching his body now and then to enjoy the coolness of the sheets, the delicious sense of being cared for, and the returning strength in his muscles. Through that haze he heard voices presently, which called him back to wakefulness. "'That ought to be good for him. Take it in, Kate.' "'I shall.' "'Dan, what has Joan done?' She went in there. I told her to leave him alone. But she says he asked her to come in, said he would take the blame. I told her not to go. Poor baby. She's outside now, weeping her eyes out on Bart's shoulder, and he's trying to comfort her. It was pure English, then Vic was accustomed to hear even from his school mistress. But more than the words, the voice surprised him, the low, controlled voice of a woman of gentle blood. He turned his head and looked out the window, baffled. Far above, shooting out of sight, went the slope of a mountain, a cliff shining in the slant sun of the afternoon here, a tumbled slide of rocks and debris there, and over the shoulder of this mountain he saw white-headed monsters stepping back in range upon range. Why should a girl of refinement choose the isolation of such a place as this for her home? It was not the only strange thing about this household, however, and he would dismiss conjectures until he was once more on his feet. She was saying, won't you speak to her now? A little pause, then. No. Not until even. Please, Dan. She's got to learn. A little exclamation of unhappiness, and then the door moved open. Vic found himself looking up to the face with the golden hair which he remembered out of his nightmare. She nodded to him cheerily. I'm so happy that you're better, she said. Dan says that the fever is nearly gone. She rested a large tray she carried on the foot of the bed, and Vic discovered to his great content that it was not hard to meet her eyes. Usually girls embarrassed him, but he recognized so much of Joan in the features of the mother that he felt well acquainted at once. Motherhood surely sat as lightly on her shoulders as fatherhood did on Danbury. But he felt a great pity as he looked at her. This flower-like beauty lost in the rocks and snow with only one man near her. She was like music played without an audience except senseless things. Yep, I'm a lot better, he answered, but sure makes me terrible sorry, ma'am, that I got your little girl in trouble. Mostly it was my fault. She waved away all need of an apology. Don't think an instant about that, Mr. Gregg. Joan needs a great deal of disciplining. She laughed a little. She has so much of her father in her, you see. Now are you strong enough to lift yourself higher in the pillows? They managed it between them, for he was weaker than he thought, and when he was padded into position with cushions she laid the tray across his knees. His head swam at the sight of it. Forty-eight hours of fasting had sharpened his appetite, and the loaded tray whetted a razor edge. For a great bowl of broth steamed forth an exquisite fragrance on one side, and beside it she lifted a napkin to let him peek at a slice of venison steak. Then there was butter, yellow as the gold for which he had been digging all winter, and real cream for his coffee, a whole picture of it, and snowy bread. Best of all she did not stay to embarrass him with her watching while he ate, since above all things in the world a hungry man hates observation when the board is spread. Afterwards consuming sleep rippled over him, from his feet to his eyes to his brain. He partially roused when the tray was removed and the pillows slipped from under his back, but with a vague understanding that expert hands were setting the bed in order, and his senses fled once more. Years and hours later he opened his eyes in utter darkness, with a thin, sweet voice still ringing in his ears. He could not place himself until he turned his head and saw a meager, broken, rectangular line of light which was the door, and immediately afterwards the voice cried, �Oh, Daddy Dan, and what did the wolf do then?� �I�m coming to that, Joan, but don�t you talk about wolves so loud, or old black bard will think you�re talking about him. See him looking at you now? �Oh, but please go on, I won�t say one little word.� The man�s voice began again softly, so that not a word was audible to Greg. He heard the crackle of burning logs upon the hearth, saw the rectangle of light flicker, caught a faint sense of wood-smoke, and then he slept once more. CHAPTER IX From the first the wound healed rapidly, for Vic�s blood was perfectly pure, the mountain air atonic which strengthened him, and his food and care of the best. The high-powered rifle bullet whipped cleanly through his shoulder, breaking no bone and tearing no ligament, and the flesh closed swiftly. Even Vic�s mind carried no burden to oppress him in care for the future or regret for the past. For if he occasionally remembered the limp body of Hanson on the floor of Captain Lorimer�s saloon he could shrug the picture into oblivion. It had been a fair fight, man to man, with all the odds in favor of Blondie, who had been allowed to pull his gun first. If Vic thought about the future at all it was with a blind confidence that some time and in some unrevealed way he would get back to Alder and marry Betty Neal. In the meantime, as the days of the spring went mildly by, he was up and about, and very soon there was only a little stiffness in his right arm to remind him of peat glass and the dusty ron. He spent most of his time close to the cabin, for though he had forgotten the world there was no decisive proof that the world would forget him half so easily. That was not the way of the sheriff. He had been known to spend years in the hunt for a single misdure, and Vic had no care to wander out where he might be seen. Besides it was very pleasant about the cabin. The house itself was built solidly, roomily, out of logs hewn on the timbered slopes above and dragged down to this little plateau. Three mountains to the north, south, and west rolled back and up, cutting away the sunlight in the early afternoon, but at this point the quick slopes put out shoulders and made among them a comfortable bit of rolling ground, deep soiled and fertile. Here so Kate Berry assured him the wildflowers came even earlier than they did in the valley so far below them. And to be sure when Vic first walked from the house he found the meadow aflame with color, except for the space covered by the truck garden and the corral. In that enclosure he found Gray Molly fenced away from the black with several other horses of commoner blood, for the stallion he learned recognized no fraternity of horse flesh, but killed what he could reach. Gray Molly was quite recovered from her long run, and she greeted him in her familiar way with ears flattened viciously. He might have stayed on here quite happily, for any space of time, but more and more Vic felt that he was an intruder. He sensed it rather than received a hint of word or eye. In the first place the three were complete in themselves a triangle of happiness without need of another member for variety or interest. It was plain at a glance that the girl was wholeheartedly happy, and whatever incongruity lay between her and those rough mountains he began to understand that her love for Berry and the child made ample amends. As for the other two he always thought of them in the same instant, for if the child had her eyes and her hair from her mother she had her nature from the man. They were together constantly on walks up the mountain, when she rode black-bart up the steep places, at dips into the valley when he carried her before him on the stallion. She had the same soft voice, the same quick, furtive ways, the same soundless laughter at times, and when Berry sat in the evenings as he often did for hours, staring at empty space, she would climb on his knee, place his unresisting arm around her, and she looking up into his face, sharing his silences. Sometimes Vic wondered if the young mother was not troubled, made a little jealous by this perfect companionship, but he never found a trace of it. It was she, finally, who made him determined to leave as soon as his shoulder muscles moved with perfect freedom. For as the days slipped past he felt that she grew more and more uneasy, and her eyes had a way of going from him to her husband as though she believed their guests a constant danger to Berry. Indeed, to some small extent he was a danger, for the law might deal hardly with a man who took a fugitive out of the very grip of its hand. By a rather ironical chance, on the very morning when he decided that he must start his journey the next day but one, Vic learned that he must not linger even so long as that. Pete Glass and the law had not forgotten him, indeed, nearly so well as he had forgotten the law and Pete Glass. For as he sat in his room filling a pipe after breakfast, the voice of Berry called him out, and he found his host among the rocks which rimmed the southern end of the plateau in front of the house. To the north the ground fell away smoothly, rolled down to the side of the mountain, then dipped easily to the valley, the only direction from which the cabin was accessible. Though here the grade was possible for a buck-board. To the south the plateau ended in a drop that angled sharply down, almost a cliff in places, and from this point of vantage the eye carried nameless miles down the river. Are them friends of yours? asked Dan Berry, as he stood among those rocks. Take a long look. And he handed a strong pair of field glasses to Greg. The latter peered over the dizzy edge. Down there in the very act of fording the river to get to their side of it, he marked five horsemen. No? Six. For he almost missed the leader of the troop, a dusty figure which melted into the background. All the terror of the first flight rushed back on Vic. He stood palsy, not in fear of that posse, but at the very thought of pursuit. There's only one way, he stammered at length. I'll—Dan, give me a hand to get a saddle on Grey Molly, and I'll laugh at him yet, damn'em! What are you going to do?" It was the same unhurried voice which had spoken to Vic on the day of the rescue, and it irritated him in the same manner now. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering. I'm going down that slope to the north, said Vic, and I'll get by him hell-bent for election. Once I show my heels to that lot, they're done! He talked as much to restore his courage as from confidence, for if the posse sighted him going down that slope on the Grey, it would take a super-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap. Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye. Wait a minute, he said, as Vic started toward the corral. That way you got planned is a good way to die. You listened to me. But here Kate broke in on them. Dan, what are you going to do? I'm going to take the Grey and go down the slope. I'm going to lead him off Vic's trail, said Barry quietly, but it seemed to Vic that he avoided his wife's eye. The voice of Betty Neal, he knew, would have risen shrill at a time like this. Kate spoke even more low than usual, but there was a thing in her voice that struck a tremor through Greg. If it's death for him, what is it for you? Nothing at all. If they see me and head for me before the way is cleared, I'll let them come up and see they have the wrong man. If I get the chance, I'll lead him away, and Vic, you'll hit between those two mountains. See him? And cut across country. No horse could carry you there except Satan, and you couldn't ride him. You'll have to go on foot, but they'll never look for you on that side. When you get to the easy-going down in the valley, buy a horse and hit for the railroad. Kate turned on Vic trembling, Are you going to let him do it? She asked, Are you going to let him do it again? He had seen a certain promise of escape held before him the moment before, but pride made him throw that certainty away. Not in a million years, he answered. You'll do what I say, and you'll start now, and I've got a better idea than that. If you head just over the side of that north mountain, you'll find a path that a horse can follow. It won't take you clear away from them down below, but there ain't a chance in ten they'll come that way. Take my old brown horse with a white face. He'll carry you safe." Vic hesitated. The fierce eyes of Kate were on him, and with all his soul he wanted to play the man, but liberty was sweet, sweeter than ever to Vic. She seemed to give him up as he stood there with his heart and his throat. She turned back to Barry. Dan, she pleaded. She had not touched him, but he made a vague gesture as though brushing away a restraining hand. She cried, If you come close to them, if they start shooting, you might want to fight back. They shot before, he answered, and I didn't fire once. But the second time? To be sure, there would be danger in it, but as Barry himself had said, if the way was close to him he could surrender to them and they could not harm him. Vic tried in vain to understand this over-mastering terror in the girl, for she seemed more afraid of what Dan might do to the posse than what the posse might do to Dan. This ain't a day for fighting, said Dan, and he waved towards the mountains. It was one of those misty spring days when the sun raises a vapor from the earth and the clouds blow low around the upper peaks. Every ravine was poured full of blue shadow and even high up the slopes where patches of snow had melted, grass glimmered, a tender green among the white. This ain't a day for fighting, he repeated. A shrill, quivering ney, like the whinny of a galloping horse rang from beyond the house, and Vic saw the black stallion racing up and down his corral. Back and forth he wove, then raced straight for the bars, flashed above them, and stood free beyond with the sunshine trembling on him. He seemed to pause, wondering what to do with his new freedom, then he came at a loose gallop for the master. Not Satan alone, for now black barts slid across the plateau like a shadow weaving among the boulders and came straight towards Barry. Vic himself felt a change, a sort of uneasy happiness. He breathed it with the air. The very sunlight was electric. He saw Kate run close to Barry. If you go this time you'll never come back, Dan. The black stallion swung up beside them, and as he halted his hooves knocked a rattling spray of pebbles ahead. On the other side of the woman and the man the wolf-dog ran uneasily here and there trying to watch the face of the master, which Kate obscured. I ain't going far. I just want to get a horse running under me, enough to cut a wind. Men Satan, Bart, feel what I feel. They came without being called. They never do that unless there's danger ahead. What can I do to convince you? Dan, you'll drive me mad. He made no answer. And if the girl wished him to stay, now seemed the time for persuasion, but she gave up the argument suddenly. She turned away, and Vic saw in her face the same desperate, helpless look as that of a boy who cannot swim beyond his depth in the river. There was no sign of tears. They might come afterwards. What had come over them? This desperation in Kate, this touch of anxiety in the very horse and the wolf-dog, Vic forgot his own danger while he stared, and it seemed to him that the spark of change had come from Barry. There was something in his eyes which Vic found hard to meet. The moment you came, I knew you brought bad luck with you, cried Kate. He brought you in bleeding. He saved you and came in with blood on his hands, and I guessed at the end. Oh, I wish you— Kate! broke in Barry. She dropped upon one of the stones and buried her face in her hands, and Dan paid no more attention to her. Yep, he said. There across the river. And Vic gave up the struggle. For the tears of Kate made him think of Betty Neal, and he followed Dan towards the corral. Around them the stallion ran like a hunting dog, eager to be off. End of chapter 9