The Land of Strong Men Part 81

"Not much. My shoulder. Get him, d.a.m.n him! Get him for father!"

Angus found Rennie running beside him. It was impossible to trail the fugitive. All they could do was to keep on up the draw and trust to luck. But the pace and the rough ground soon told on Rennie.

"I can't travel no more," he gasped. "Too old. You go ahead."

"Go back and help the boys," Angus said. "There's a moon to-night and I may not be back. If I don't find him I'll come in in the morning."

"Be darn sure you do come in. Don't take no chances."

Angus ran on up the draw. Now that he was alone he began to put forth his strength and speed while the light should last. He was sure that Gavin would make for the higher ground. He would cross the summit of that range, and go ahead for the Cache. Though he had neither food nor outfit he had his six-shooter and presumably ammunition and matches.

Angus knew that he himself would suffer little more than inconvenience if he were in Gavin's place.

The draw narrowed, and steep hills closed in on either hand. He turned to the right and began to climb. Darkness overtook him and he stopped.

The cold chilled his sweating body with the cessation of motion, but Gavin was as badly off. When the moon rose he went on again, but it was slow work. Objects were distorted. Shadows lay where he would have had light. Once he slipped and fell, slithering twenty feet and barely saving himself from an almost perpendicular drop of a hundred. He crawled back with difficulty, but his rifle was gone. He had heard it clang far below him. However, he had his belt gun, and so was on a par with Gavin.

His objective was what seemed to be a notch in the summit. It was what he would make for were he in Gavin's place. He toiled upward methodically, without hurry now, for there might be a long trail ahead.

If Gavin could go to the Cache so could he. The timber began to thin out, to stunt. Trees were dwarfed, twisted by the mountain winds, mere miniatures. Presently they ceased altogether. He was above timberline.

There the thin snow partially covered the ground, increasing the difficulty of travel. But its actinic qualities gave more light. It was past midnight, and the moon was well up. He had been traveling for more than seven hours.

For a moment he paused to rest, his lungs feeding greedily on the thin, cold air, and surveyed the scene below. It was a black fur of tree-tops, rolling, undulating, cleft with lines of greater darkness indicating greater depths. He could look over the tops of lesser mountains. Above were the peaks of the range, whitened spires against the sky.

In those far heights of the mountain wilderness one seemed to touch the rim of s.p.a.ce itself. The moon, the night, the height produced an effect of unspeakable vastness. It seemed to press in, to enfold the tiny atom crawling upon and clinging to the surface of the earth. There finite and infinite made contact. It was like the world's end, the _Ultima Thule_ of ancient man.

Some such thoughts, vague, scarcely formed, pa.s.sed through his mind.

The ranch, ploughed land, houses, seemed to belong to another world.

Once more he began to climb, and now that he was close to the summit the going was easier. Suddenly he stopped. There, clear in the moonlight, was the track of a moccasin-clad foot.

There was no doubt that it was Gavin's. Knowing his own pace Angus knew that the big man could not be far ahead. No doubt he would keep going, over the summit and down the other side, for timber. Once in the timber, with a fire, he would rest. His trail across would be covered by the first wind. He would not suspect that any one would or could follow him by night.

Angus followed the trail easily by the bright moonlight, noting grimly that the length of the stride was almost identical with his own. The prints were clean, showing that the feet had been cleanly lifted and set down, token of energy unimpaired.

When he reached the summit he took a careful survey. It was a desolate plateau, swept and scoured by the winds and rains and snow of unnumbered centuries. On it nothing grew. Here and there bowlders loomed blackly.

But nothing moved. Apparently, it was as bare of life as the dead mountains of the moon. The trail led straight on.

Satisfied of this, Angus followed the trail at speed. Now and then it turned out to avoid a bowlder, but otherwise it went straight ahead, as though no doubt of direction existed in its maker's mind. Presently it swung around a huge rock and then turned north. Angus glanced casually at the bowlder and pa.s.sed by; but he had taken no more than three strides in the new direction when a voice behind him commanded:

"Stop! Put up your hands!"

CHAPTER XLVI

STRONG MEN

The tone forbade disobedience or delay. Angus turned to face a gun in the hands of Gavin French. The latter peered at him for a moment and laughed shortly.

"I thought it was you," he said. "n.o.body else could have made as good time. You're a good guesser, too. Well--unbuckle your belt with your left hand and let it drop. Keep your right hand up. That's it. Now step away from it."

Having no option Angus obeyed, cursing himself internally for being fooled by the old trick of doubling back. Gavin lowered his gun.

"You can take 'em down," he said. "Now what's the next play?"

"That's up to you," Angus told him.

"Does look like it," the big man admitted. "But you know d.a.m.ned well I can't shoot you in cold blood. If I roped you up here and left you, you might not be found. I can't take you with me. So it's partly up to you.

This is h.e.l.l's own rotten mess from start to finish. I knew it would be, from the time Jerry lost his head and plugged Braden. I suppose he's dead?"

"Yes."

"And Jerry and Larry, too?"

"I think so. I didn't wait to make sure."

"Sure to be," Gavin said calmly. "Jerry came ahead on his face and Larry wilted in a bunch. They got it, all right. I had a fool's luck. Any of your bunch get it hard?"

"I don't think so. We were lucky."

"You sure were. We were going to hold you up to-morrow, if we found a good place, but you got the jump on us. You were closer than we thought.

So it seems I'm the only one left, bar Blake, and I don't count him. He quit us yesterday to save his skin. Maybe he was wise, at that."

"Blake is dead."

The big man exclaimed in astonishment. "Dead! How?"

Angus told him. Also he told why he himself had hunted Blake. Gavin French uttered a deep malediction.

"If I had known this," he said, "he would never have come with us. I think I would have handled him myself. But I don't suppose you believe that."

"Yes," Angus returned. "You are a man, and he never was."

Gavin French eyed him for a moment. "I guess you're right--about him, anyway," he said. "He got what was coming to him. Well, that leaves me--and Kathleen." He shook his head moodily. "I tell you straight, Mackay, that I'm not going to be taken. I've stood you up, but I don't know what I'm going to do with you. If you'll give me your word to go back to your bunch and give me that much start, you may pick up your gun and go."

"Will you answer me one question straight?" Angus asked.

"Anything you like," the big man promised. "It won't make much difference now."

"Gavin French, did you kill my father?"

The big man started violently. "Did I--What makes you ask that?"

"You promised me a straight answer. But Braden said so--before he died."

Gavin French did not reply immediately. "Braden was a rotten liar all his life," he said at last. "But I promised you a straight answer, and I keep my word. Yes, I killed your father--at least, I suppose that's what it comes to."

Angus drew a long breath. Its hissing intake was clear in the silence.