Chapter VII: Part 7

"Well, I'd have carried it eighty years as easy as eight," declared Arizona. "I been waiting all this time, and now I got you, Sinclair. You'll rot behind the bars the best part of the life that's left to you. And when you come out--I'll meet you ag'in!"

Sinclair smiled in a singular fashion. "Sorry to disappoint you, Dago. But I'm not coming out. I'm going to stay put. I'm through." The other blinked. "How come?"

"It's something you couldn't figure," said Sinclair calmly, and he eyed the fat man as if from a great distance.

Sinclair was remembering the day, eight years ago, in a lumber camp to the north when a shivering, meager, shifty-eyed youngster had come among them asking for work. They had taken pity on him, those big lumberjacks, put him up, given him money, kept him at the bunk house.

Then articles began to disappear, watches, money. It was Sinclair who had caught the friendless stripling in the act of sleight of hand in the middle of the night when the laborers, tired out, slept as if stunned. And when the others would have let the cringing, weeping youth go with a lecture and the return of his illicit spoils, it was the stern Sinclair who had insisted on driving home the lesson. He forced them to strip Dago to the waist. Two stalwarts held his hands, and Sinclair laid on the whip. And Dago, the moment the lash fell, ceased his wailing and begging, and stood quivering, with his head bent, his teeth set and gritting, until the punishment was ended.

It was Sinclair, also, when the thing was ended, and the others would have thrust the boy out penniless, who split the contents of his wallet with Dago. He remembered the words he had spoken to the stripling that day eight years before.

"You ain't had much luck out here in the West, kid, but stay around. Go south. Learn to ride a hoss. They's nothing that puts heart and honesty in a man like a good hoss. Don't go back to your city. You'll turn into a snake there. Stay out here and practice being a man, will you? Get the feel of a Colt. Fight your way. Keep your mouth shut and work with your hands. And don't brag about what you know or what you've done. That's the way to get on. You got the markings in you, son. You got grit. I seen it when you was under the whip, and I wish I had the doing of that over again. I made a mistake with you, kid. But do what I've told you to do, and one of these days you'll meet up with me and beat me to the draw and take everything you got as a grudge out on me. But you can't do it unless you turn into a man."

Dago had listened in the most profound silence, accepted the money without thanks, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. In the sleek-faced man before him, Sinclair could hardly recognize that slender fellow of the lumber camp. Only the bright and agile eyes were the same; that, and a certain telltale nervousness of hand. The color was coming back into his face.

"I guess I've done it," Arizona was saying. "I guess we're squared up, Sinclair."

"Yep, and a balance on your side."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I've followed your advice, Long Riley. I've never forgot a word of it. It was printed into me!"

He made a significant, short gesture, as if he were snapping a whip, and a snarl of undying malice curled his lips.

"As long as you live, Sinclair," he added. "As long as you live, I'll remember."

Even the sheriff shuddered at that glimpse into the black soul of a man; Sinclair alone was unmoved.

"I reckon you've barked enough, Arizona," he suggested. "S'pose you trot along. I got to have words with my friend, the sheriff."

Arizona waved his fat hand. He was recovering his ordinary poise, and with a smiling good night to the sheriff, he turned away through the door.

"Nice, friendly sort, eh?" remarked Sinclair the moment he was alone with Kern.

"I still got the chills," said the sheriff. "Sure has got a wicked pair of eyes, that Arizona."

Kern cast an apprehensive glance at the closed door, yet, in spite of the fact that it was closed, he lowered his voice.

"What in thunder have you done to him, Sinclair?"

"About eight years ago--" began Sinclair and then stopped short.

"Let it go," he went on. "No matter what Arizona is today, he's sure improved on the gent I used to know. What's done is done. Besides, I made a mistake that time. I went too far with him, and a mistake is like borrowed money, sheriff. It lays up interest and keeps compounding. When you have to pay back what you done a long time ago, you find it's a terrible pile. That's all I got to say about Arizona."

Sheriff Kern nodded. "That's straight talk, Sinclair," he said softly. "But what was it you wanted to see me about?"

"Cold Feet," said Sinclair.

At once the sheriff brightened. "That's right," he said hurriedly. "You got the right idea now, partner. Glad to see you're using hoss sense. And if you gimme an idea of the trail that'll lead to Cold Feet, I can see to it that you get out of this mess pretty pronto. After all, you ain't done no real harm except for nicking Cartwright in the arm, and I figure that he needs a little punishment. It'll cool his temper down."

"You think I ought to tell you where Cold Feet is?" asked Sinclair without emotion.

"Why not?"

"Him and me sat around the same campfire, sheriff, and ate off'n the same deer."

At this the sheriff winced. "I know," he murmured. "It's hard--mighty hard!" He continued more smoothly: "But listen to me, partner. There's twenty-five-hundred dollars on the head of Cold Feet. Why not come in? Why not split on it? Plenty for both of us; and, speaking personal, I could use half that money, and maybe you could use the other half just as well!"

"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Sinclair, "I'll give you the layout for finding Cold Feet. Ride west out of Sour Creek and head for a flat-topped mountain. On the shoulder just under the head of the peak you'll find Cold Feet. Go get him!"

The sheriff caught his breath, then whirled on his heel. The sharp voice of Sinclair called him back.

"Wait a minute. I ain't through. When you catch Cold Feet you go after him without guns."

"How come?"

"Because you might hurt him, and he can't fight, sheriff. Even if he was to pull a gun, he couldn't hit nothing with it. He couldn't hit the ground he's standing on with a gun."

Sheriff Kern scratched his head.

"And when you get him," went on Sinclair, "tell him to go back and take up his life where he left off, because they's no harm coming to him."

"Great guns, man! No harm coming to him with a murder to his count and a price on his head?"

"I mean what I say. Break it to him real gentle."

"And who pays for the killing of Quade?"

Sinclair smiled. He was finding it far easier to do it than he had ever imagined. The moment he made the resolve, his way was smoothed for him.

"I pay for Quade," he said quietly.

"What d'you mean?"

"Because I killed him, sheriff. Now go tell Cold Feet that his score is clean!"

26

Toward the flat-topped mountain, with the feeling of his fate upon him, Bill Sandersen pushed his mustang through the late evening, while the darkness fell. He had long since stopped thinking, reasoning. There was only the strong, blind feeling that he must meet Sinclair face to face and decide his destiny in one brief struggle.

So he kept on until his shadow fell faintly on his path before him, long, shapeless, grotesque. He turned and saw the moon coming up above the eastern mountains, a wan, sickly moon hardly out of her first quarter, and even in the pure mountain air her light was dim.

But it gave thought and pause to Sandersen. First there was the outcropping of a singular superstition which he had heard long before and never remembered until this moment: that a moon seen over the left shoulder meant the worst of bad luck. It boded very ill for the end of this adventure.

Suppose he were able only partially to surprise the big cowpuncher from the north, and that there was a call for fighting. What chance would he have in the dim and bewildering light of that moon against the surety of Sinclair who shot, he knew, as other men point the finger --instinctively hitting the target? It would be a mere butchery, not a battle.

Sending his mustang into a copse of young trees, he dismounted. His mind was made up not to attempt the blow until the first light of dawn. He would try to reach the top of the flat-crested mountain well before sunup, when there would be a real light instead of this ghostly and partial illumination from the moon.

Among the trees he sat down and took up the dreadful watches of the night. Sleep never came near him. He was turning the back pages of his memory, reviewing his past with the singular clearness of a man about to die. For Sandersen had this mortal certainty resting upon his mind that he must try to strike down Sinclair, and that he would fail. And failure meant only one alternative--death. He was perfectly confident that this was the truth. He knew with prophetic surety that he would never again see the kind light of the sun, that in a half-light, in the cold of the dawn, a bullet would end his life.

What he saw in the past was not comforting. A long train of vivid memories came up in his mind. He had accomplished nothing. In the total course of his life he had not made a man his friend, or won the love of a woman. In all his attempts to succeed in life there had been nothing but disastrous failures, and wherever he moved he involved others in his fall. Certainly the prospecting trip with the three other men had been worse than all the rest, but it had been typical. It had been he who first suggested the trip, and he had rounded the party together and sustained it with enthusiasm.

It had been he who led it into the mountains and across the desert. And on the terrible return trip he knew, with an abiding sense of guilt, that he alone could have checked the murderous and cowardly impulse of Quade. He alone could have overruled Quade and Lowrie; or, failing to overrule them he should at least have stayed with the cripple and helped him on, with the chance of death for them both.

When he thought of that noble opportunity lost, he writhed. It would have gained the deathless affection of Hal Sinclair and saved that young, strong life. It would have won him more. It would have made Riley Sinclair his ally so long as he lived. And how easy to have done it, he thought, looking back.

Instead, he had given way; and already the result had been the death of three men. The tale was not yet told, he was sure. Another death was due. A curse lay on that entire party, and it would not be ended until he, Sandersen, the soul of the enterprise, fell.

The moon grew old in the west. Then he took the saddle again and rode, brooding, up the trail, his horse stumbling over the stones as the animal grew wearier in the climb.

And then, keeping his gaze fastened above him, he saw the outline of the crests grow more and more distinct. He looked behind. In the east the light was growing. The whole horizon was rimmed with a pale glow.

Now his spirits rose. Even this gray dawn was far better than the treacherous moonlight. A daylight calm came over him. He was stronger, surer of himself. Impatiently he drew out his Colt and looked to its action. The familiar weight added to his self-belief. It became possible for him to fight, and being possible to fight, it was also possible to conquer.

Presently he reached a bald upland. The fresh wind of the morning struck his face, and he breathed deep of it. Why could he not return to Sour Creek as a hero, and why could he not collect the price on the head of Riley Sinclair?

The thought made him alert, savage. A moment later, his head pushing up to the level of the shoulder of the mountain, he saw his quarry. In the dimness of that early dawn he made out the form of a sleeper huddled in blankets, but it was enough. That must be Riley Sinclair. It could not be another, and all his premonitions were correct.

Suddenly he became aware that he could not fail. It was impossible! As gloomy as he had been before, his spirits now leaped to the heights. He swung down from the saddle, softly, slowly, and went up the hill without once drawing his eyes from that motionless form in the blankets.

Once something stirred to the right and far below him. He flashed a glance in that direction and saw that it was a hobbled horse, though not the horse of Sinclair; but that mattered nothing. The second horse might be among the trees.

Easing his step and tightening the grip on his revolver, he drew closer. Should he shoot without warning? No, he would lean over the sleeper, call his name, and let him waken and see his death before it came to him. Otherwise the triumph would be robbed of half of its sweetness.

Now he had come sufficiently near to make out distinctly that there was only one sleeper. Had Sinclair and Cold Feet separated? If so, this must be Sinclair. The latter might have the boldness to linger so close to danger, but certainly never Cold Feet, even if he had once worked his courage to the point of killing a man. He stepped closer, leaned, and then by the half-light made out the pale, delicate features of the schoolteacher.

For the moment Sandersen was stunned with disappointment, and yet his spirits rose again almost at once. If Sinclair had fled, all the better. He would not return, at least for a long time, and in the meantime, he, Sandersen, would collect the money on the head of Cold Feet!

With the Colt close to the breast of Jig, he said: "Wake up, Cold Feet!"

The girl opened her eyes, struggled to sit up, and was thrust back by the muzzle of the gun, held with rocklike firmness in the hand of Sandersen.

"Riley--what--" she muttered sleepily and then she made out the face of Sandersen distinctly.

Instantly she was wide awake, whiter than ever, staring. Better to take the desperado alive than dead--far better. Cold Feet would make a show in Sour Creek for the glorification of Sandersen, as he rode down through the main street, and the men would come out to see the prize which even Sheriff Kern and his posse had not yet been able to take.

"Roll over on your face."

Cold Feet obeyed without a murmur. There was a coiled rope by the cinders of the fire. Sandersen cut off a convenient length and bound the slender wrists behind the back of the schoolteacher. Then he jerked his quarry to a sitting posture.

"Where's Sinclair gone?"

To his astonishment, Cold Feet's face brightened wonderfully.

"Oh, then you haven't found him? You haven't found him? Thank goodness!"

Sandersen studied the schoolteacher closely. It was impossible to mistake the frankness of the latter's face.

"By guns," he said at last, "I see it all now. The skunk sneaked off in the middle of the night and left you alone here to face the music?"

Jig flushed, as she exclaimed: "That's not true. He's never run away in his life."

"Maybe not," muttered Sandersen apprehensively. "Maybe he'll come back ag'in. Maybe he's just rode off after something and will be back."

At once the old fear swept over him. His apprehensive glance flickered over the rocks and trees around him--a thousand secure hiding places. He faced the schoolteacher again.

"Look here, Jig: You're charged with a murder, you see? I can take you dead or alive; and the shot that bumped you off might bring Sinclair running to find out what'd happened, and he'd go the same way. But will you promise to keep your mouth shut and give no warning when Sinclair heaves in sight? Take your pick. It don't make no difference to me, one way or the other; but I can't have the two of you on my hands."

To his surprise Jig did not answer at once.

"Ain't I made myself clear? Speak out!"

"I won't promise," said Cold Feet, raising the colorless face.

"Then, by thunder, I'll--"

In the sudden contorting of his face she saw her death, but as she closed her eyes and waited for the report and the tear of the bullet, she heard him muttering: "No, they's a better way."

A moment later her mouth was wrenched open, and a huge wadded bandanna was stuffed into it. Sandersen pushed her back to the ground and tossed the blanket over her again.

"You ain't much of a man, Jig, but as a bait for my trap you'll do tolerable well. You're right: Sinclair's coming back, and when he comes, I'll be waiting for him out of sight behind the rock. But listen to this, Jig. If you wrastle around and try to get that gag out of your mouth, I ain't going to take no chances. Whether Sinclair's in sight or not, I'm going to drill you clean. Now lie still and keep thinking on what I told you. I mean it all!"

With a final scowl he left her and hurried to the rock. It made an ideal shelter for his purposes. On three sides, the rock made a thick and effectual parapet. A thousand bullets might splash harmlessly against that stone; and through crevices he commanded the whole sweep of the mountainside beneath them. The courage which had been growing in Sandersen, now reached a climax. Below him lay the helpless body of one prize--from a distance apparently a sound and quiet sleeper, though Sandersen could see the terrified glint of Jig's eyes.

But he forgot that a moment later, when he saw the form of a horseman break out of covert from the trees farther down the mountain and immediately disappear again. Sinclair? He studied the barrel of the revolver, but the horseman appeared no more in the brightening and misty dawn. It was only after a long pause that there issued from the trees, not Riley Sinclair, but the squat, thick form of Arizona!

27

Behind the sheriff's apprehensive glance there had been reason. True the door had closed upon Arizona, and the door was thick. But the moment Arizona had passed through the door, he clapped his ear to the keyhole and listened, holding his breath, for he was certain that the moment his back was turned the shameful story of his exploits in the lumber camp eight years before would come out for the edification of Kern. If so, it meant ruin for him. Arizona was closed to him; all this district would be closed by the story of his early light-fingeredness. He felt as if he were being driven to the wall. Consequently he listened with set teeth to the early questions of the sheriff; then he breathed easier, still incredulous, when he heard Sinclair refuse to tell the tale.

Still he lingered, dreading that the truth might out, and so heard the talk turn to a new channel--Cold Feet. Cold Feet meant many things to Sour Creek; to Arizona, the schoolteacher meant only one thing--twenty-five-hundred dollars. And Arizona was broke.

To his hungry ear came the tidings: "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you the layout for finding Cold Feet. Ride west out of Sour Creek and head for a flat-topped mountain. On the shoulder just under the head you'll find Cold Feet. Go get him!"

To Arizona it seemed as if this last injunction were personal advice. He waited to hear no more; if he had paused for a moment he might have learned that the hope of twenty-five hundred was an illusion and a snare. He saw the bright vision of a small fortune placed in his hands as the result of a single gunplay. He had seen the schoolteacher. He knew by instinct that there was no fighting quality in Jig. And the moment he heard the location it was as good as cash in his pocket, he was sure.

There was only one difficulty. He must beat out the sheriff. To that end he hurried to the stable behind the hotel, broke all records for speed in getting the saddle on his roan mare, and then jogged her quietly out of town so as to rouse no suspicions. But hardly was he past the outskirts, hardly crediting his good luck that the sheriff himself was not yet on the way, than he touched the flanks with his spurs and sent the mare flying west.

In the west the moon was dropping behind the upper ranges, as he rode through the foothills; when he began to climb the side of the mountain, the dawn began to grow. So much the better for Arizona. But, knowing that he had only Cold Feet to deal with, he did not adopt all the caution of Sandersen on the same trail. Instead he cut boldly straight for the shoulder of the mountain, knowing what he would find there on his arrival. In the nearest grove he left his horse and then walked swiftly up to the level. There the first thing that caught his eyes was the form wrapped in the blanket. But the next thing he saw was the pale glimmer of the dawn on the barrel of a revolver. He reached for his own gun, only to see, over the rock above him, the grinning face of Sandersen arise.

"Too late, Arizona," called the tall man. "Too late for one job, partner, but just in time for the next!"

Arizona cursed softly, steadily, through snarling lips.

"What job?"

"Sinclair! He's gone, but he'll be back any minute. And it'll need us both to down him, Arizona. We'll split on Sinclair's reward."

Disgust and wrath consumed Arizona. Without other answer he strode to the prostrate form, slashed the rope and tore the handkerchief from between the teeth of Cold Feet. The schoolteacher sat up, gasping for breath, purple of face.

"Leave him be!" cried Sandersen, his voice shrill with anger. "Leave him be! He's the bait, Arizona, and we're the trap that'll catch Sinclair."

But Arizona cursed again bitterly. "Leave that bait lie till the sun burns it up. You'll never catch Sinclair with it."

"How come?"

From around the rock Sandersen appeared and walked down to the fat man.

"Because Sinclair's already caught."

If he had expected the tall man to groan with disappointment, there was a surprise in store for him. Sandersen exclaimed shrilly for joy.

"Sinclair took! Took dead, then!"

"Dead? Why?"

"You don't mean he was taken alive?"

"Yes, I sure do! And I done the figuring that led up to him being caught."

The slender form of Jig rose before them, trembling.

"It isn't true! It isn't true! There aren't enough of you in Sour Creek to take Riley Sinclair!"

"Ain't it true?" asked Arizona. "All right, son, you'll meet him pronto in the Sour Creek jail, unless the boys finish their party of the other day and string you up before you get inside the jail."

This brought a peculiar, low-pitched moan from Cold Feet.

"Cheer up," said Sandersen. "You ain't swinging yet awhile."

"But he's hurt! If he's alive, he's terribly wounded?"

Arizona beat down the appealing hand with a brutal gesture.

"No, he ain't particular hurt. Just his neck squashed a bit where the sheriff throttled him. He didn't fight enough to get hurt, curse him!"

Frowning, Sandersen shook his head. "He's a fighting man, Arizona, if they ever was one."

It seemed that everything infuriated the fat man.

"What d'you know about it, Lanky?" he demanded of Sandersen. "Didn't I run the affair? Wasn't it me that planted the whole trap? Wasn't it me that knowed he'd come into town for you or Cartwright?"

"Cartwright!" gasped Jig.

"Sure! We nailed him in Cartwright's room, just the way I said we would. And they laughed at me, the fools!"

He might have gathered singular inferences from the lowered head of Jig and the soft murmur: "I might have known--I might have known he'd try for me."

"And I might have had the pleasure of drilling him clean," said Arizona, harking back to it with savage pleasure, "but I shot out the light. I wanted him to die slow, and before the end I wanted to pry his eyes open and make him see my face and know that it was me that done for him! That was what I wanted. But he turned yaller and wouldn't fight."

"He wouldn't kill," said Jig coldly. "But for courage--I laugh at you, Arizona!"

"Easy," scowled the cowpuncher. "Easy, Jig. You ain't behind the bars yet. You're in reach of my fist, and I'd think nothing of busting you in the face. Shut up till I talk to you."

The misty eyes of Sandersen brightened a little and grew hard. There was a great deal of fighting spirit in the man, and his easy victory of that morning had roused him to a battling pitch.

"Looks to me like you ain't running this here party, Arizona," he said dryly. "If there are any directions to give Cold Feet, I'll give 'em. It was me that took him!"

No direct answer could Arizona find to this true statement, and, as always when a man is at a loss for words, his temper rose, and his fists clenched. For the first time he looked at Sandersen with an eye of savage calculation. He had come to hope of a tidy little fortune. He had found it snatched out of his hand, and, as he measured Sandersen, his heart rose. Twenty-five-hundred dollars would fairly well equip him in life. The anger faded out of his eyes, and in its place came the cold gleam of the man who thinks and calculates. All at once he began to smile, a mirthless smile that was of the lips only.

"Maybe you're right, Sandersen, but I'm thinking you'd have to prove that you took Cold Feet.'

"Prove it?"

"Sure! The boys wouldn't be apt to believe that sleepy Sandersen woke up and took Cold Feet alive."

Instantly the gorge of Sandersen rose, and he began to see red.

"Are you out to find trouble, Fatty?"

The adjective found no comfortable lodging place in the mind of Arizona.

"Me? Sure I ain't. I'm just stating facts the way I know 'em."

"Well, the facts you know ain't worth a damn."

"No?"

It was growing clearer and clearer to the fat man that between him and twenty-five-hundred dollars there stood only the unamiable figure of the long, lean cowpuncher. He steadied his eye till a fixed glitter came in it. He hated lean men by instinct and distrusted them.

"Sure they ain't. How you going to get around the fact that I did take Cold Feet?"

"Well, Sandersen, you see that they's twenty-five-hundred dollars hanging on the head of this Cold Feet?"

"Certainly! And I see ten ways of spending just that amount."

"So do I," said Arizona.

"You do?"

"Partner, you've heard me talk!"

"Arizona, you're talking mighty queer. What d'ye mean?"

"Now, suppose it was me that brought in Cold Feet, who'd get the money?"

"Why, you that brought him in?"

"Yep, me. And suppose I brought him in with two murders charged to him instead of one."

"I don't foller you. What's the second murder, Fatty?"

"You!"

Sandersen blinked and gave back a little. Plainly he was beginning to fear that the reason of Arizona was unbalanced.

He shook his head.

"I'll show you how it'll be charged to Cold Feet," said the fat man.

Taking the cartridge belt of Jig he shook the revolver out of the holster and pumped a shot into the ground. The sharp crack of the explosion roused no echo for a perceptible space. Then it struck back at them from a solid wall of rock, almost as loud as it had been in fact. Off among the hills the echo was repeated to a faint whisper. Arizona dropped the revolver carelessly on the ground.

"Fatty, you've gone nutty," said Sandersen.

"I'll tell you a yarn," said Arizona.

Sandersen looked past him to the east. The light was growing rapidly about the mountains. In another moment or so that sunrise which he had been looking forward to with such solemn dread, would occur. He was safe, of course, and still that sense of impending danger would not leave him. He noted Jig, erect, very pale, watching them with intense and frightened interest.

"Here's the story," went on the fat man. "I come out of Sour Creek hunting for Cold Feet. I came straight to this here mountain. Halfway up the side I hear a shot. I hurry along and soft-foot on to this shoulder. I see Cold Feet standing, over the dead body of Sandersen. Then I stick up Cold Feet and take him back to Sour Creek and get the reward. Won't that be two murders on his head?"

The thin Swede rubbed his chin. "For a grown man, Fatty, you're doing a lot of supposing."

"I'm going to turn it into fact," said Arizona.

"How?"

"With a chunk of lead! Pull your gun, you lanky fool!"

It seemed to Jig, watching with terrible interest, that Sandersen stared not at Arizona, as he went for his gun, but beyond the stubby cowpuncher--far behind and into the east, where the dawn was growing brighter, losing its color, as sunrises do, just before the rising of the sun. His long arm jerked back, the revolver whipped into his hand, and he stiffened his forearm for the shot.

All that Jig saw, with eyes sharpened, so that each movement seemed to be taking whole seconds, was a sneering Arizona, waiting till the last second. When he moved, however, it was with an almost leisurely flip of the wrist. The heavy Colt was conjured into his hand. With graceful ease the big weapon slipped out and exploded before Sandersen's forefinger had curled around the trigger.

Out of the hand of the Swede slipped the gun and clanged unheeded on the ground at his feet. She saw a patch of red spring up on his breast, while he lurched forward with long, stiff strides, threw up his hands to the east, and pitched on his face. She turned from the dead thing at her feet.

The white rim of the sun had just slid over the top of a mountain.

28

She dropped to her knees, and with a sudden, hysterical strength she was able to turn him on his back. He was dead. The first glimpse of his face told her that. She looked up into the eyes of the murderer.

Arizona was methodically cleaning his gun. His color had not changed. There was a singular placidity about all his movements.

"I just hurried up what was coming to him," said Arizona coolly, as he finished reloading his Colt. "Sinclair was after him, and that meant he was done for."

Oddly enough, she found that she was neither very much afraid of the fat man, nor did she loathe him for his crime. He seemed outside of the jurisdiction of the laws which govern most men.

"You said Sinclair is in jail."

"Sure, and he is. But they don't make jails strong enough in these parts to hold Sinclair. He'd have come out and landed Sandersen, just as he's going to come out and land Cartwright. What has he got agin' Cartwright, d'you know?"

Oh, it was incredible that he could talk so calmly with the dead man before him.

"I don't know," she murmured and drew back.

"Well, take it all in all," pursued Arizona, "this deal of mine is pretty rotten, but you'd swing just the same for one murder as for two. They won't hang you no deader, eh? And when they come to look at it, this is pretty neat. Sandersen wasn't no good. Everybody knowed that. But he had one thing I wanted--which was you and the twenty-five hundred that goes with the gent that brings you into Sour Creek. So, at the price of one bullet, I get the coin. Pretty neat, I say ag'in."

Dropping the revolver back into the holster he patted it with a caressing hand.

"There's your gun," went on Arizona, chuckling. "It's got a bullet fired out of it. There's Sandersen's gun with no bullet fired, showing that, while he was stalking you, you shot and drilled him. Here's my gun with no sign of a shot fired. Which proves that I just slid in here and stuck you up from behind, while you were looking over the gent you'd just killed."

He rubbed his hands together, and bracing himself firmly on his stubby legs, looked almost benevolently on Jig.

Not only did she lose her horror of him, but she gained an impersonal, detached interest in the workings of his mind. She looked on him not as a man but as a monster in the guise of a man.

"Two deaths," she said quietly, "for your money. You work cheaply, Arizona."

Jig's criticism seemed to pique him.

"How come?"

"Sandersen's death by your bullet, and mine when I die in the law. Both to your account, Arizona, because you know I'm innocent."

"I know it, but a hunch ain't proof in the eyes of the law. Besides, I don't work so cheap. Sandersen was no good. He ain't worth thinking about. And as for you, Jig, though I don't like to throw it in your face, as a schoolteacher you may be all right, but as a man you ain't worth a damn. Nope. I won't give neither of you a thought--except for Sinclair."

"Ah?"

"Him and you have been bunkies, if he ever should find out what I done, he'd go on my trail. Maybe he will anyway. And he's a bad one to have on a gent's trail."

"You fear him?" she asked curiously, for it had seemed impossible that this cold-blooded gunman feared any living thing.

He rolled a cigarette meditatively before he answered.

"Sure," he said, "I fear him. I ain't a fool. It was him that started me, and him that gave me the first main lessons. But I ain't got the nacheral talent with a gun that Sinclair has got."

Nodding his head in confirmation, his expression softened, as with the admiration of one artist for a greater kindred spirit.

"The proof is that they's a long list of gunfights in Sinclair's past, but not more deaths than you can count on the fingers of one hand. And them that he killed was plumb no good. The rest he winged and let 'em go. That's his way, and it takes an artist with a gun to work like that. Yep, he's a great man, curse him! Only one weak thing I ever hear of him doing. He buckled to the sheriff and told him where to find you!"

Scratching a match on his trousers, the cowpuncher was amazed to hear Jig cry: "You lie!"

He gaped at her until the match singed his fingers. "That's a tolerable loud word for a kid to use!"

Apparently he meditated punishment, but then he shrugged his shoulders and lighted his cigarette.

"Wild horses couldn't have dragged it out of him!" Jig was repeating.

"Say," said the fat man, grinning, "how d'you know _I_ knew where you was?"

Like a blow in the face it silenced her. She looked miserably down to the ground. Was it possible that Sinclair had betrayed her? Not for the murder of Quade. He would be more apt to confess that himself, and indeed she dreaded the confession. But if he let her be dragged back, if her identity became known, she faced what was more horrible to her than hanging, and that was life with Cartwright.

"Which reminds me," said Arizona, "that the old sheriff may not wait for morning before he starts after you. Just slope down the hill and saddle your hoss, will you?"

Automatically she obeyed, wild thoughts running through her mind. To go back to Sour Creek meant a return to Cartwright, and then nothing could save her from him. Halfway to her saddle her foot struck metal, her own gun, which Arizona had dropped after firing the bullet. Was there not a possibility of escape? She heard Arizona humming idly behind her. Plainly he was entirely off guard.

Bending with the speed of a bird in picking up a seed, she scooped up the gun, whirling with the heavy weapon extended, her forefinger curling on the trigger. But, as she turned, the humming of Arizona changed to a low snarl. She saw him coming like a bolt. The gun exploded of its own volition, it seemed to her, but Arizona had swerved in his course, and the shot went wild.

The next instant he struck her. The gun was wrenched from her hand, and a powerful arm caught her and whirled her up, only to hurl her to the ground; Arizona's snarling, panting face bent over her. In the very midst of that fury she felt Arizona stiffen and freeze; the snarling stopped; his nerveless arm fell away, and she was allowed to stagger to her feet. She found him staring at her with a peculiar horror.

"Murdering guns!" whispered Arizona.

Now she understood that he knew. She saw him changed, humbled, disarmed before her. But even then she did not understand the profound meaning of that moment in the life of Arizona.

But to have understood, she would have had to know how that life began in a city slum. She would have had to see the career of the sneak thief which culminated in the episode of the lumber camp eight years before. She would have had to understand how the lesson from the hand of big Sinclair had begun the change which transformed the sneak into the dangerous man of action. And now the second change had come. For Arizona had made the unique discovery that he could be ashamed!

He would have laughed had another told him. Virtue was a name and no more to the fat man. But in spite of himself those eight years under free skies had altered him. He had been growing when he thought he was standing still. When the eye plunges forty miles from mountain to mountain, through crystal-clear air, the mind is enlarged. He had lived exclusively among hard-handed men, rejoicing in a strength greater than their own. He suddenly found that the feeble hand from which he had so easily torn the weapon a moment before, had in an instant acquired strength to make or break him.

All that Jig could discern of this was that her life was no longer in danger, and that her enemy had been disarmed. But she was not prepared for what followed.

Dragging off his hat, as if he acted reluctantly, his eyes sank until they rested on the ground at her feet.

"Lady," he said, "I didn't know. I didn't even dream what you was."

29

Gradually she found her breath and greater self-possession.

"You mean I'm free?" she asked him. "You won't make me go into Sour Creek?"

His face twisted as if in pain. "Make you?" he asked violently. "I'd blow the head off the first one that tried to make you take a step."

Suddenly it seemed to her that all this was ordered and arranged, that some mysterious Providence had sent this man here to save her from Sandersen and all the horror that the future promised, just as Sinclair had saved her once before from a danger which he himself had half created.

"I got this to say," went on Arizona, struggling for the words. "Looks to me like you might have need of a friend to help you along, wherever you're going." He shook his thick shoulders. "Sure gives me a jolt to think of what you must have gone through, wandering around here all by yourself! I sure don't see how you done it!"

And all this time the man whom Arizona had killed, was lying face up to the morning, hardly a pace behind him! But she dared not try to analyze this man. She could only feel vaguely that an ally had been given her, an ally of strength. He, too, must have sensed what was in her mind.

"You'll be wanting this, I reckon."

Returning the Colt to her, he slowly dragged his glance from the ground and let it cross her face for a fleeting instant. She slipped the gun back into its holster.

"And now suppose we go down the hill and get your hoss?"

Evidently he was painfully eager to get the dead man out of sight. Yet he paused while he picked up her saddle.

"They'll be along pretty pronto--the sheriff and his men. They'll take care of--him."

Leading the way down to her hobbled horse he saddled it swiftly, while she stood aside and watched. When he was done he turned to her.

"Maybe we better be starting. It wouldn't come in very handy for Kern to find us here, eh?"

Obediently she came. With one hand he held the stirrup, while the other steadied her weight by the elbow, as she raised her foot. In spite of herself she shivered at his touch. A moment later, from the saddle, she was looking down into a darkly crimsoned face. Plainly he had understood that impulse of aversion, but he said nothing.

There was a low neigh from the other side of the hill in answer to his soft whistle, and then out of the trees came a beautifully formed roan mare, with high head and pricking ears. With mincing steps she went straight to her master, and Jig saw the face of the other brighten. But he was gloomy again by the time he had swung into the saddle.

"Now," he said, "where away?"

"You're coming with me?" she asked, with a new touch of alarm. She regretted her tone the moment she had spoken. She saw Arizona wince.

"Lady," he said, "suppose I come clean to you? I been in my time about everything that's bad. I ain't done a killing except squarely. Sinclair taught me that. And you got to allow that what I done to Sandersen was after I give him all the advantage in the draw. I took even chances, and I give him better than an even break. Ain't that correct?"

She nodded, fascinated by the struggle in his face between pride and shame and anger.

"Worse'n that," he went on, forcing out the bitter truth. "I been everything down to a sharp with the cards, which is tolerable low. But I got this to say: I'm playing clean with you. I'll prove it before I'm done. If you want me to break loose and leave you alone, say the word, and I'm gone. If you want me to stay and help where I can help, say the word, and I stay and take orders. Come out with it!"

Gathering his reins, he sat very straight and looked her fairly and squarely in the eye, for the first time since he had discovered the truth about Cold Feet. In spite of herself Jig found that she was drawn to trust the fat man. She let a smile grow, let her glance become as level and as straight as his own. She reined her horse beside his and stretched out her hand.

"I know you mean what you say," said Jig. "And I don't care what you have been in the past. I _do_ need a friend--desperately. Riley Sinclair says that a friend is the most sacred thing in the world. I don't ask that much, but of all the men I know you are the only one who can help me as I need to be helped. Will you shake hands for a new start between us?"

"Lady," said the cowpuncher huskily, "this sure means a lot to me. And the--other things--you'll forget?"

"I never knew you," said the girl, smiling at him again, "until this moment."

"Oh, it's a go!" cried Arizona. "Now try me out!"

Jig saw his self-respect come back to him, saw his eye grow bright and clear. Arizona was like a man with a new "good resolution." He wanted to test his strength and astonish someone with his change.

"There is one great thing in which I need help," she said.

"Good! And what's that?"

"Riley Sinclair is in jail."

"H'm," muttered Arizona. "He ain't in on a serious charge. Let him stay a while." Stiffening in the saddle he stared at her. "Does Sinclair know?"

"What?" asked the girl, but she flushed in spite of herself.

"That you ain't a man?"

"Yes."

For a moment he considered her crimson face gloomily. "You and Sinclair was sort of pals, I guess," he said at length.

Faintly she replied in the affirmative, and her secret was written as clearly as sunlight on her face. Yet she kept her eyes raised bravely.

As for Arizona, the newborn hope died in him, and then flickered back to an evil life. If Sinclair was in his way, why give up? Why not remove this obstacle as he had removed others in his time. The hurrying voice of the girl broke in on his somber thoughts.

"He went to Sour Creek to help me as soon as he found out that I was not a man. He put himself in terrible danger there on my account."

"Did Cartwright have something to do with you and him?"

"Yes."

But Arizona made no effort to read her riddle.

She went on: "Now that he has been taken, I know what has happened. To keep me out of danger he told--"

"That you're a woman?"

"No, he wouldn't do that, because he knows that is the last thing in the world that I want revealed. But he's told them that he killed Quade, and now he's in danger of his life."

"Let's ride on," said Arizona. "I got to think a pile."

She did not speak, while the horses wound down the steep side of the mountain. Mile after mile rose behind them. The sun increased in power, flashing on the leaves of the trees and beginning to burn the face with its slanting heat. Now and then she ventured a side-glance at Arizona, and always she found him in a brown study. Vaguely she knew that he was fighting the old battle of good and evil in the silence of the morning. Finally he stopped his horse and turned to her again.

They were in the foothills by this time, and they had drawn out from the trees to a little level space on the top of a rise. The morning mist was thinning rapidly in the heart of the hollow beneath them. Far off, they heard the lowing of cows being driven into the pasture land after the morning milking, and they could make out tiny figures in the fields.

"Lady," Arizona was saying to her, "they's one gent in the world that I've got an eight-year-old grudge agin'. I've swore to get him sooner or later, and that gent is Riley Sinclair. Make it something else, and I'll work for you till the skin's off my hands. But Sinclair--" He stopped, studying her intently. "Will you tell me one thing? How much does Sinclair mean to you."

"A great deal," said the girl gently. "But if you hate him, I can't ask you."

"He's a hard man," said Arizona, "and he's got a mean name, lady. You know that. But when you say that he means a lot to you, maybe it's because he's taken a big chance for you in Sour Creek and--"

She shook her head. "It's more than that--much more."

"Well, I guess I understand," said Arizona.

Burying the last of his hopes, Arizona looked straight into the sun.

"Eight years ago he was a better man than I am," said he at length. "And he's a better man still. Lady, I'm going to get Riley Sinclair free!"

30

As Arizona had predicted, Sheriff Kern was greatly tempted not to start on the hard ride for the mountains before morning, and finally he followed his impulse. With the first break of the dawn he was up, and a few minutes later he had taken the trail alone. There was no need of numbers, for that matter, to tell a single man that he no longer need dread the law. But it was only common decency to inform him of the charge, and Kern was a decent sort.

He was thoughtful on the trail. A great many things had happened to upset the sheriff. The capture of Sinclair, take it all in all, was an important event. To be sure, the chief glory was attributable to the cunning of Arizona; nevertheless, the community was sure to pay homage to the skill of the sheriff who had led the party and managed the capture.

But now the sheriff found himself regretting the capture and all its attendant glory. Not even a personal grudge against the man who had taken his first prisoner from him, could give an edge to the sheriff's satisfaction, for, during the late hours of the preceding night he had heard from Sinclair the true story of the killing of Quade; not a murder, but a fair fight. And he had heard more--the whole unhappy tale which began with the death of Hal Sinclair in the desert, a story which now included, so far as the sheriff knew, three deaths, with a promise of another in the future.

It was little wonder that he was disturbed. His philosophy was of the kind that is built up in a country of horses, hard riding, hard work, hard fighting. According to the precepts of that philosophy, Sinclair would have shirked a vital moral duty had he failed to avenge the pitiful death of his brother.

The sheriff put himself into the boots of the man who was now his prisoner and facing a sentence of death. In that man's place he knew that he would have taken the same course. It was a matter of necessary principle; and the sheriff also knew that no jury in the country could allow Sinclair to go free. It might not be the death sentence, but it would certainly be a prison term as bad as death.

These thoughts consumed the time for the sheriff until his horse had labored up the height, and he came to the little plateau where so much had happened outside of his ken. And there he saw Bill Sandersen, with the all-seeing sun on his dead eyes.

For a moment the sheriff could not believe what he saw. Sandersen was, in the phrase of the land, "Sinclair's meat." It suddenly seemed to him that Sinclair must have broken from jail and done this killing during the night. But a moment's reflection assured him that this could not be. The mind of the sheriff whirled. Not Sinclair, certainly. The man had been dead for some hours. In the sky, far above and to the north, there were certain black specks, moving in great circles that drifted gradually south. The buzzards were already coming to the dead. He watched them for a moment, with the sinking of the heart which always comes to the man of the mountain desert when he sees those grim birds.

It was not Sinclair. But who, then?

He examined the body and the wound. It was a center shot, nicely placed. Certainly not the sort of shot that Cold Feet, according to the description which Sinclair had given of the latter's marksmanship, would be apt to make. But there was no other conclusion to come to. Cold Feet had certainly been here according to Sinclair's confession, and it was certainly reasonable to suppose that Cold Feet had committed this crime. The sheriff placed the hat of Sinclair over his face and swung back into his saddle; he must hurry back to Sour Creek and send up a burial party, for no one would have an interest in interring the body in the town.