The Fugitive (25 page)

Now, eager and keen as a hunting hawk, he watched the girl take the two mules, while Thomas turned down the street.

Speedy was after him at once, and his movements were like the flight of a snipe downwind. For he did not go straight forward. Pursuing an irregular course, pausing here, halting there, and then cutting at a diagonal across the street, he came up behind his quarry just as Ben Thomas paused to allow an eightmule team to turn in the street, the tossing heads of the leaders swinging across the sidewalk.

“Good work!” called Ben Thomas cheerfully to the teamster at that moment and waved his hand. As he waved and the wagon straightened out down the street, the coat of Ben Thomas belled out and under the flap of the pocket Speedy could see the glint of white, the top edges of the papers.

His hand dipped in like the beak of a bird and came out again, bearing the prize, which disappeared into his own coat with such speed that even if any passerby had been looking, he would have seen hardly more than a flash of light as Speedy turned on his heel, shook his head, and frowned like a man who must retrace his steps because of something forgotten. He hurried back up the street to the hotel.

Only once he paused and risked a glance behind him, and that glance showed him Ben Thomas turning in under the sheriff's sign. It was enough to indicate that he needed speed, but he had to be nonchalant, also.

He went to the hotel clerk and asked for Miss Fenton. She would be called. The clerk himself went to do it, and a rusty-headed boy slid in behind the desk to take up the duties of handing out and receiving keys.

Through the register, the fingers of Speedy sifted, found that day's arrivals, and glanced at the handwriting of the girl. A second and longer glance printed the characters in his mind, and the next moment he was writing a by no means clumsy imitation of her hand:

 

Dear Uncle Ben:

I've just seen an old friend, and he asked me to go down the street to see his father. I'll be back in a half hour or so. Wait for me here.

Jessica

He folded the paper and pushed it across the table to the redheaded boy. “Give this to Mister Ben Thomas when he comes in, will you?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the boy, and stuffed the paper into its key box.

When Speedy turned, the clerk was coming toward him, and Jessica Fenton along with him. There was first a shock of surprise in her face, followed at once by the most brilliant of smiles. Genuine pleasure made her hold out her hand and grip Speedy's.

“I might have known that you'd be traveling toward the most excitement,” she said. “How are you, Speedy? Or do you really want people to call you that?”

“I can't help myself,” he said. “I'm one of those poor chaps who can't keep a name of his own. I've tried all sorts of names, but they won't stick. They roll off me like water off a duck's back. I've brought you a message from Mister Thomas.”

“Oh, you've seen him?” asked the girl.

Trouble was in her eyes, the old trouble, as she watched her companion.

“We're not enemies,” said Speedy, “because of that little trouble at Council Flat. Mister Thomas was in a crush of business, something that he had to do at once. He begged me to do something for you and, of course, I said that I would.”

He drew the papers from his pocket, and her eyes widened as she recognized the handwriting of her father.

“Here's the description of a claim that he wants you to hurry down to the bureau and file.”

“But he has to go along and file with me,” said the girl. “That's the agreement.”

“Is it?” Speedy said. He went on smoothly: “Thomas doesn't want any part of the claim, according to what he says. His idea is that, if anything happens to him, well, people wouldn't know that he owed it all to you, and that it's really your property. He was only going to file to help you hold the property.”

He had ended rather lamely on this note, but the girl had not the slightest suspicion in her mind.

“That's greathearted!” she exclaimed.

“Well, he's a big man, and he has to have a heart that will match his size,” said Speedy calmly. “We'd better start. He said that there was the greatest sort of a hurry.”

“He was in a hurry,” admitted the girl. “We'll go along. Do you know the way?”

“Yes.” He had, in fact, spotted the place on his first visit to the town. He was not one who could settle blindly into any nest, for the world was filled with enemies for Speedy, and he dared not close both eyes at once, either by night or day, in new surroundings or old ones.

He waved her on, and paused again for a moment to say to the clerk: “What's the sheriff look like?”

“You mean Sam Hollis?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Why, you can't mistake Sam. Smallish, and ain't got no color in his hair and eyes, but Sam's a real man that'll . . .” He broke off with a grunt, for Speedy was already gliding away to the door, where he joined the girl and turned down the street.

There was much, there was very much for him to do, and, because of it and the danger that lay before him, he smiled and hummed as he walked along.

“This is a happy day for you,” said the girl.

“It's the mountain air,” he answered her. “It goes to the bottom of the lungs, to the bottom of the heart, too. It gives a fellow life.”

She drew out a broad silver dollar and held it out. “I owe you this,” she said.

The happiness went out of his face and left it grim. Then he shook his head: “I can't take it. Not yet,” he said.

It seemed to her that half the brightness went out of the morning by that change in his expression and by something coldly ominous that lay behind the words. Death had been his word to her the day before, and death, she felt, was in his expression again at this moment. Yet happiness returned to her. For it seemed that both she and her father were on the upward path. How could trouble come when the very soil of the earth was yielding up treasures to their hands?

They turned into a long, low shed, filled with smoke, from which there issued an uproar of angry voices as half a dozen men disputed before another man on the other side of a desk, which was made of a flat board laid over two hurdles. The man had a tired face.

“You see him?” asked Speedy.

“Yes.”

“He'll record the claim. It won't take long, once you get to him. But I'll tell you something more, you want to get in there as fast as you can. Shove in, Miss Fenton. You'll get ahead faster by yourself than you will if I wait here. Shove straight ahead and try to close up the deal. I have to leave you. These fellows will give way to you when they know that you only have a half hour.”

“A half hour,” she asked him with suddenly increased interest.

“Just about a half hour,” he said.

“What do you mean? Is there something that you're keeping back from me?”

“Nothing that would do any good, if it were told,” Speedy replied cheerfully, making his expression brighter for her sake.

“But how can you know that there's exactly a half hour?”

“It's something that I got out of this good clean mountain air as I was coming down the street. It's just that I have a pretty keen sense of time, d'you see?”

She eyed him, shaking her head. What there was behind his words she could not, of course, guess, but her mind groped blindly, striving for some clue. But he was waving good-bye, and now he stood at the door. She saw his head turn to the right, and then to the left. There was something infinitely cautious about him. Just in this fashion she had seen a cat pause at the open door of a house before stepping out into the mystery of the open night. Somehow, very strongly, she felt that Speedy was heading into danger. However, that would never be solved by her, and she stepped forward into the waiting line.

Speedy, in the meantime, got into the street in time to see a man dismount from a lump-headed yellow mustang, a fifty-dollar antique, with a tendollar wreck of a saddle cinched on its back.

“How much for that outfit?” he asked.

“To you, brother, only two hundred bucks,” said the other, grinning a little in the eyes, but not with the lips.

$200 in currency was suddenly counted into his amazed hands.

“Hold on!” he exclaimed.

“See you later,” Speedy announced, and sprang into the saddle.

The Westerner watched him go down the street, bounding high with every stride of the mustang.

“Another damned fool of a tenderfoot,” he said to himself, and began to count his money over again.

 

A mile up the ravine, Speedy, already well pounded and hammered by the clumsy gait of the mustang, passed another single horseman on the way, pushing his horse ahead at a steady, easy dogtrot. As Speedy went by, he noted the pale hair, the paler eyes, the keenness of his glance, and something quietly efficient and self-reliant about the way the man sat his saddle. That was Sam Hollis, he could lay his bet, and, if it were Hollis, then there was still plenty of time to do the work that he had in mind. He was glad to reduce the pace of the yellow mustang, therefore, and still he was reasonably sure that he had gained a good half mile on the man of the law by the time he came to the two black rocks with the evergreen tree between them.

He dismounted, led the horse, trailing and stumbling behind him for a short distance into the woods, tethered it there, and then went at full speed up the hillside.

A mountain lion would hardly have climbed faster than he did, leaping over rocks, almost always in fast motion, no matter what the grade he was managing. As he worked, his eyes were still shining, and his face was bright.

He had gone on for some distance before he began to call—“Oliver Fenton!”—cupping his hands so as to direct the sound straighter and farther before him. Again, after he had run ahead, he paused and shouted once more: “Oliver Fenton!”

He got no answer out of the wilderness, but he hardly expected one; he simply wanted to send a warning of his coming, so that the hunted father of the girl would not slink away at the noise of footsteps.

At last, breaking into the clearing, he swept it with a glance, and shouted for the final time, with all his might: “Oliver Fenton!”

He was silent, then, straining his ear to distinguish an answer, perhaps far away. Once he thought that he heard a sound, but he could not be sure whether it was a human voice coming toward him, or some noise among the trees, for a wind had risen and was bending them slowly from side to side.

It was a crossing of his plans and his hopes that he had not counted on, and he snapped his slender fingers with annoyance. Everything depended upon his ability, he felt, to get to the spot in time to speak with the fugitive, warn him of the coming of the sheriff, warn him, above all, of the treachery of Ben Thomas. And now, having arrived at the proper place, he found that his quarry was gone. He groaned impotently.

There was nothing for it, however. He drew back among the trees, found a patch of thick brush, and behind that he crouched, waiting.

A full half hour went slowly and wretchedly by. He heard not a single sound of approach, but suddenly a smallish form was standing in the clearing where, a moment before, there had been nothing. It was Sam Hollis, beyond a doubt. It amused the watcher as much as it caused him anxiety to watch the prowling movements of the sheriff. He admired the way Sam Hollis handled himself. As he moved, so would Speedy have done under similar circumstances, with the same catlike silence, the same deftness of foot, the same uncanny wariness of ear and eye, for always Hollis was probing the silence and the shadows of the trees about him while he stepped here and there, never stepping where the print of his foot would remain upon the ground or even upon the cushion of pine needles, but always from rock to rock, where he could be reasonably sure that only a microscope would betray the fact that he had come and gone.

Now he was stooping beside the runlet of water; now he had broken out a bit of earth from the bank; now he was washing it in the hollow of his hand. When he arose, it was with a sudden stiffening of his body, and Speedy saw that the face of the man had become hard and cold.

That was what the sight of the gold would always do. Murder was in the air of that quiet little clearing, into which the rays of the sun sifted down so pleasantly, and left little pools and patches and charming embroideries of light upon the ground.

The sheriff drew back and disappeared. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear—only the burbling of the water as it ran with a sound like a secret whisper and the occasional murmur of the wind in the tops of the trees. Then a squirrel came out and squatted in a patch of sunshine, sitting up, examining something that it held in its little black claws. It remained for only a moment, turning its head with bird-like movements from side to side. Then, suddenly, it scooted away, made a gray streak up the side of a pine tree, and was presently chattering harshly far up among the branches.

Then big Oliver Fenton came slowly out into the clearing and looked about him with a frown. “Funny damn' thing,” he said aloud. “I kind of thought that somebody was hollering my name around about in here. Some man who . . .” His voice trailed away to join his silent thoughts.

Speedy, tiger-keen with eagerness and anxiety, continued a movement that he had begun as soon as the fugitive from justice appeared. He had hoped, if Fenton came down to the clearing, he might pass close to the spot where he was lying and receive the timely warning. But, in fact, he had come in on the farther side of the clearing and was closer to the place where the sheriff had disappeared.

So Speedy slid out from the patch of brush, where he was securely hidden, and approached the clearing little by little, gliding swiftly from the protection of one tree to another, as though every open glimpse of the little brook were a flight of arrows driven at him. He was almost at the edge of the clearing when the sheriff stepped out from a tree behind Fenton, with a leveled revolver in his hand. Speedy noted that the gun was held low, hardly more than hip high, and thrusting out half the length of the curving arm. That was the way an expert always handled his weapons in this part of the world.