The Loner

by Roy Norton

 

The Loner

One of the most attractive stories of the West we have ever published—by the noted author of “The Unknown Mr. Kent,” “The Flame’ and “Drowned Gold.”

By ROY NORTON

THE times of John Barton are gone, although there still live in the Far West men with gray beards, halting steps and numbered days who can, from the somewhat dusty archives of memory, recall him. The type of men like John Barton seems also to have gone—unless, as ghosts, they haunt the trails that have grown dim or become obliterated through lack of use or utility. The very land that knew John Barton has changed from windswept valleys of grass, or deserts that needed but irrigation, to well-ordered farms tilled by a generation to whom a buffalo or a wild steer is as foreign as an animal in a menagerie. Of John Barton nothing but the legend remains. Not even those ancients with rheumy eyes from which the frontier keenness and alertness have long faded can tell whence he came, or what his antecedents; nor are these pertinent, for it is of what he did that they remember, and perhaps garrulously boast as if to prove to their grandchildren that their own brilliant days of lusty manhood were more virile, more stirring, more testing than these humdrum times of lethargic peace.

It was in those “days now dead beyond recall”—thank God!—that into the then straggling street of Big Cañon wandered John Barton, tall, bent, yet active despite gray hair and white beard. Hands and face were gnarled, but his eyes were keen, gray and of a disarming benevolence. He spoke but little, and always in a gentle voice, a voice that seemed to protest against anything harsh or sudden. He appeared content with the sole friendship of a dog. And the dog seemed equally content with the sole friendship of John Barton; for it was ever at his heels, or by his side when he sat down, and the gnarled hand invariably came to rest on the dog's head. Men observed the dog as much as its master; for it was a huge mongrel whose ancestry at some time had included a timber wolf. It resented its master's intercourse with other men, eying the entire world askance as if anticipating malevolence. It had unquestionably been trained to guard John Barton's back; for whenever the man stopped in the street, the dog would instantly fall behind him, face the other way and keep vigilant watch. Once a man, imbued with friendliness, started to lay a hand on John Barton's shoulder—and there came through the air like a bolt of gray wrath, with huge fangs exposed and great head outthrust, that dog. Nothing save the quick thrust of Barton's arm saved the ripping of a man's throat, and provoked the only explanation he, John Barton, was ever known to give of his former life.

“Don't blame him, sir. ⁠—Down, Sioux! Get behind me! ⁠—He thought maybe you was goin' to go for me. You see, me and him's been in a country where we had to sort of look out for each other when the corners were tight, and—he meant nothin' by it—saved my life more'n once, and—”

His low, gentle voice died away into mumbled, inaudible, broken sentences, an habitual closure; but after that, the reputation of the dog called Sioux was established, and men moved with caution when in its vicinity. Yet dog and man had what was the extreme virtue of their days and environment, in that each strictly, unendingly, resolutely, “minded his own business.”

THE “business” of John Barton, it became known, was cattle. A cow-man might have denied this and called him, contemptuously, “a nester;” but he was the forerunner of those who knew how to farm as well as “run stock,' and most of all, knew how to depend upon themselves entirely and adequately. Big Cañon, being a divisional headquarters, caught the gossip of railway crews that the company had been induced to build a small cattle-pen and chute at Manipa; and men smiled and wondered, because Manipa, the first station west of Big Cañon, and eighty miles distant, had theretofore consisted of but three structures, a tiny red station, a huge, round water-tank, and a patchwork hovel for the section gang. Yet in due time three carloads of young stock consigned to John Barton were by him and Sioux driven away.

It was Tom Horn, the somewhat inquisitive storekeeper from whom John Barton bought his supplies, who first gleaned information of the latter's situation, hopes and emprise, with which he seemed content.

“It's like this,” he explained in an unusual outburst of confidence. 'Most of my life I've been lookin' for a place that would just suit me so's I could settle down, quit driftin', an' call it home. Every man wants a home. Sometimes he finds it soon; sometimes he travels far, and if he's unlucky, sometimes never finds it at all—never! I've found mine. Long Valley, between rocks so high there's only two ways of gettin' in and out of it, and both so narrer they can be shut in with a fence; river through the middle; good grazin' for more cattle than I can ever own; some timber up in the hills; Manipa only twenty miles away; no bad Injuns and no bad neighbors..... Peace. Place where a man can sleep without hangin' onto his gun. What better could me and Sioux, after all we've been through—ummh—want than that? Huh? He likes it, and says he: 'Me and you are gettin' old, and damn' tired of shiftin', so let's stay here.' And I told him I would. So there him and me'll stick..... Home.”

And Horn swore that the great dog that had arisen from between its master's feet, as if rendered apprehensive by such length of speech, suddenly smiled, licked the one hand it knew and loved in all the world, sighed deeply, and again rested content.

“But—wasn't there any place you could find nearer than that?” the storekeeper demanded, and then added, whimsically: “Seems to me you're a hell of a long way from anywhere.”

“Me and Sioux are loners,” John Barton mumbled thoughtfully, “and are used to bein' a hell of a long way from anywhere, so we don't like too damn' much company.”

“Then I reckon that place ought to suit you,” Horn agreed, with a grin, as he prepared to take Barton's orders. And from that day onward, with the aptitude for distinguishing appellations that characterized those times, old John Barton was known as “the Loner.” Moreover for nearly two years he came, and went, sometimes accompanied by Sioux, more times alone, without men knowing more of him, his ways, or his accomplishments. Veritably a “loner.” Save that it seemed his desire, pathetically alone.

THEN in a single day, Barton came to local fame. Tempted by the sight of a prize rifle that he saw in Horn's window, which he fondled, mumbled over, and admired when told that it was as perfect a weapon as could be made, he succumbed to the storekeeper's facetious urging to “stay in town till the Fourth and win her.” He borrowed Horn's rifle and spent a day in the hills “Gettin' the hang of her,” and “to see if she's like my own at home.” The jest spread broadcast, inasmuch as it was practically a border championship event, to be participated in by some then famous marksmen. On that eventful day his appearance was greeted with a roar of laughter, to which he was oblivious—more so indeed than the dog at his heels, which raised an angry ruff, then stared upward at the Loner as if expecting the latter speedily to punish that derision.

ROY NORTON hails from Kewanee, Illinois, but his far travels have since made of him something of a world citizen. He has long enjoyed a well-merited fame for stories and novels of conspicuous virility and power. “The Vanishing Fleets,” “The Toll of the Sea,” “The Moccasins of Gold,” “The Unknown Mr. Kent,” and “The Garden of Fate” are among the books that have won for him this special distinction. The impressive short story of the West which we print herewith is typical of his genius.

“Go it, Granddad!” was the way the umpire started the Loner off. The good-humored badinage from the crowd stopped after the fifth consecutive bull's-eye. It gave way to admiration at the seventh, provoked murmurs of applause at the ninth and burst into a wild cheer at the tenth. The Loner was too much engaged in pacifying Sioux to give heed. The distance-tests left him well in the lead, but the crowd was almost unanimous in its agreement that at rapid-fire, short-distances, a man of his age had small chance. The comments were audibly expressed. The umpire and both the famous experts protested, one of the latter whirling savagely round and shouting: “Men, you've seen this man Barton do some wonderful shooting. Give him a chance! It's not fair to talk when a man is on such a strain.”

The Loner turned, and his clear eyes twinkled as he said: “Thank you, sir. But me and Sioux don't care. A lot of our shootin's been done where a feller couldn't afford to let noise make him miss—but—thanks just the same.”

AND then at the signal he threw the borrowed rifle up and with startling accuracy and rapidity made his score. The visiting experts were the first to congratulate him; for despite his years and an unfamiliar weapon, he was point to point with them in the final test, and the prize rifle was his. He had not known that a trophy cup, heavy and ornate, accompanied it, and seemed puzzled when the judges handed it to him. He took it in his big, rough hands, examined it, and slowly a look of profound disappointment settled on his face.

“It's purty,” he said, “mighty purty; and thank you kindly, sir. But what do I have to do now to win that there rifle?”

“You've won it also. It was merely an additional prize. Here it is.”

The Loner's face was gladdened swiftly as if by sunshine. He clutched the desired rifle to his breast while holding the borrowed firearm in the hollow of his arm. And then, with the silver cup, coveted by experts, dangling carelessly from a finger and bumping his leg, he said, “Come on, Sioux,” and made his way out through the now adulatory crowd. He went to Horn's store and patiently awaited the storekeeper's return while the bewildered clerks whispered their astonishment.

“Mr. Horn,” the Loner said when the storekeeper, imbued with a new respect, returned, “you was right kind to me. That's a good gun of yours. I reckon you'd not lend her to anybody but a friend. This cup thing—can't drink out of it—no use—aint touched a drop in more'n twenty year, and—” He scratched his chin in perplexity and then brightened as he asked: “You got a woman? Yes? Well, give it to her. Women seem most always to like things that are purty, but no use.”

WHEN Horn attempted to make him appreciate the value of the trophy, he appeared unimpressed and in a burst of magnanimity said: “It was right selfish of me! I ought to have let you take your choice. Would you rather have the rifle?”

“Of course not. I'd rather have the cup!”

“Then there it is on the counter—no, on the floor. Forgot just where I put it, but—⁠ I wouldn't have said nothin', but I'd sure have been disappointed if you'd picked the gun. Always did want to have the finest rifle in the world—never expected—seems like—⁠ Git down, Sioux!....”

His words died away as they frequently did, in the folds of his white beard, as if smothered by long repression, loneliness, ineptitude, until utterance seemed waste.

When he went out of the store, one of the clerks laughed, and to his astonishment Horn turned and snapped: “Shut up! There's goin' to be no more jokes about that old man. He put his hand in mine when he told me we were friends. I took it. From now on, anybody who makes fun of him answers to me. I was a damn' fool myself; for, I tell you, even if he don't look up to much, the Loner's a great old man. I saw it in his eyes. He's got something inside of him that counts.”

The evidence of trust imposed in Horn by the Loner was not long in forthcoming. It took form in a check which Barton had received for his first shipment of cattle, and was inclosed with a letter:

I don't like banks. One busted once and busted me. So I wish you'd get the money for this here piece of paper and keep it in your safe till I want it.

John Barton.

P. S. You can use it if you want to till I want to use it, which'll most likely not be before next spring.

Spring came, indeed, before the Loner called on Horn.

“Goin' to buy some young stuff to run and fatten,” he explained.

“John, you can have your money any time you want it,” said Horn, “but have you heard about this bunch of rustlers called the Birch Gang? Well, they're a bad lot. It's pretty generally known that they're running whole herds of stock off the range, but so far, no one has been able to prove it on them—that is, if anyone has, he's turned his toes up before he got a chance. Nobody knows that they committed murder, but there's a dozen men been found dead that can't be accounted for. A United States deputy marshal told me confidentially, only last week, that they've been working in Wyoming until it got too hot for them, and that they're thought to have come this way. If I were you, I'd go slow on cattle until this gang is wiped out, or we can be sure they're not out near your range.”

The Loner was influenced, and depressed.

“Seems tough luck on me,” he remarked. “I done so well out of that last lot, and—why, I was just sayin' to Sioux the other night that maybe we'd have to hire a feller to help us, and buy some farm horses and a plow. We thought of a few pigs and chickens, too, and—I don't know—⁠ Rustlers! Bumped into some of 'em—Canadian border—thought we'd got to—everything so peaceful-like and—”

THE storekeeper did not catch the final words, but feeling a great sympathy for this lonely and trustful old man, gave more advice:

“I'd put that money out at interest, and be contented with that for a while. The law will get the Birch Gang sooner or later, and—”

“But I'm only' runnin' a bunch of about a hundred now, and—interest? I don't know nothin' about such things. I never had to borrow money, and until now it seems like I never had none to lend.”

“Well, all I can say is that even a hundred head of stock is enough to make the Birch Gang move your way if it comes handy. I'd sell them too, if I were you, and wait until things blew over. You're not too young, and you're a long way from anywhere. The nearest neighbor you've got is twenty miles away, and after that not a one nearer than here. I'm not too much of a coward, but—if I was as far from neighbors as you are, I'm not certain but that I'd move out for a while.”

HORN went on to tell other gruesome stories of the Birch Gang, of the fact that even sheriffs were not too keen to hunt them, and of the terror which their murderous lawlessness had spread over the range. The Loner sat on a cracker box for more than an hour, his shoulders drooped a little more than usual, his head bent forward, his big hands listless, his whole attitude one of disappointment and depression. He finally agreed, after much more persuasion, to consider the matter for a few weeks longer, but could not be induced to seek a safer situation.

“No, Horn,” he said, finally, “I don't allow to be scared out of the country. And maybe they're not in my neck of the woods at all. Maybe they'll not come. I'm sort of out of the way—”

“Out of the way—nothing! You're in exactly the line they'd take if they undertook to run bunches of rustled stock toward the southern border. The Maldai Pass is in a line due south of you, and the open range north! You've got a closed valley where they could lay low and round up rustled steers. You've got the only water and grass in a hundred-mile circle.”

“Just the same, I'm goin' back there to stay. Me and Sioux likes it there. It's the first real home me and him's had for years, and—maybe it's all talk and—couldn't find us most likely—no regular trails—hard goin'—ought to have some luck after—”

His voice died away as usual into murmurs; but awhile later he gave his usual order for supplies and promised to return within six weeks.

Dejected, he sat alone in the westbound train that night, seeming to find no interest in the half-dozen other occupants of the coach, and but little in the conversation of the brakeman, who recognized him, and dropped into the seat by his side for a chat.

“Aint you afraid the rustlers will give you a visit, Uncle John?” the young man asked. “We heard on the up-trip that some of the runs a little west of you are missing a lot of steers.”

“Nope,” the Loner insisted, stubbornly, “they aint likely to come my way.”

THE brakeman shook his head at such optimism, and, suddenly remembering that Manipa station was near, got up and hurried through the train bawling the name as if expecting that other passengers than the Loner might wish to get off at such an isolated, out-of-the-world stop. None did. The Loner got off alone, went to the rear of the section house where it was his custom to leave his pack-burro and saddle-pony, collected his meager supplies that had been dumped off the train, made his pack, and rode away over the waste of sand and sagebrush into the late afternoon glow.

Off on the horizon the bleak hills began to appear clear-cut as iron teeth against the skyline, and his patient eyes were fixed on them with the yearning of the wanderer, homeward bound. Great, friendly shapes they were to him, for there, in their heart, lay his valley of dreams and attainment. He talked to his burro now and then, and the long gray ears would stop their listless waving as if to listen and understand,

“Cain't you walk a little faster, Pete? Roney, here, under me aint satisfied with you goin' so slow. We got to get home sometime, you know.”

And Pete seemed to quicken his steps, and the saddle-pony to move less impatiently. The desert gave way to sand dunes, to patches of barren, protruding rocks, and finally to stony foothills through which the little cavalcade wound its way with the certainty of familiarity. The hoofs lost their shuffle, and struck sparks from stones. A tiny forest of scrub pines that for decades had fought to subsist was passed; the hot air no longer rippled upward, weaving fantastic gyrating figures in a blur, and the moist smell of water came to the red and dilated nostrils. They came out on a cliff at a spot from which with caution they could descend, and there, nestled below them in the purple haze, rested the cabin and the clumsy outbuildings surrounded by the sea of grass, green with the tender color of spring, but now, in the dusk, a carpet of pale emerald.

The Loner always stopped there and whistled, waiting to hear the distant deep-throated welcome of that loyal watchman left on guard. Always his face took on an expectant and mild glow of enjoyment in anticipation of that sound. It was so on this night of his return. But it proved unlike other nights, for there was no immediate response. Nothing at first but a silence, filled only with the croon of the evening breeze through the pines.

“That's strange—mighty strange,” he muttered, and whistled again, listening attentively for a reply. It came at last, in a plaintive, weak yelp, as if Sioux had been compelled to exhaust his powers in a single sound which, faithful to the last, he must utter though it be beyond his strength.

Alarmed, John Barton urged his pony recklessly down the trail that wound back and forth the face of the cliff. And then he saw, crawling toward him with dragging hind legs, and uttering plaintive whines, that strange partner of his, the great mongrel dog. The Loner flung himself from his saddle crying, “Sioux! Sioux! What is it?” He dropped to his knees and caught the dog in his arms. The dog rested there, licking the gnarled hands with hot tongue, whimpering a tale of distress and defeat—endeavoring to explain his first great failure, and his fierce but hopeless fight.

“SHOT, by God! He's been shot three times!” The Loner's voice arose in an excited and angry exclamation. He gathered the dog farther into his arms, and strode toward the cabin muttering words of sympathy, of anger, and of endearment, all in broken phrases, detached, confused, and burdened with his great distress. The pony trudged sympathetically at his heels, unheeded. Behind came the burro, as if intent on sharing this tragic episode.

Barton carried the dog in and laid it on his own bed, before thinking it strange that the door of the cabin should be standing wide. He lit the lamp and looked around. The place was in disorder. A meal had been cooked, and the table was littered with the unwashed enameled plates and broken food. And in the middle of its wreckage, like an upright survivor of debauch, stood an empty whisky-bottle in which was stuck a fork holding a sheet of paper torn from the front of old John Barton's Bible. He held it beneath the lamp and read:

Your little bunch of stock is gone because we can use them. Your dog is dead because he was a fool and didn't know when to quit fighting. So take warning. Clear out of this, and clear for good. If we catch you here again when we come through this way, you'll get the same the dog got, which was plenty. And if you are wise, you wont make too much talk about why you left either, because you'll be got if you do.

The Gang.

FOR a minute Barton stood, bewildered by this enormity, this unmerited enmity, this tragic downfall of his house of peace. His tired old eyes swept the walls of his abode reproachfully, as if they had deserted him and no longer afforded security. The familiar objects had been knocked about by ruthless, wanton hands, curious perhaps, or even malevolent. The sturdy old clock that he had prized had been used as a target, and its brass bowels protruded in melancholy ruin. His mind wandered in aimless, stricken circles, beginning nowhere, ending nowhere, and then slowly steadied. He observed that there had been seven plates used from that proud store of his purchased in distant Big Cañon at an auction sale.

As he gazed, the dog moaned and twisted on the bed. Instantly all else was forgotten. He trudged hastily across the room.

“Sioux!” he said. “Poor old boy! Seven of 'em you fought! Fought 'em all until they thought they'd got you! My God! How I wish I'd been here with you!”

He heard a noise at the open door, and saw that both Roney and Pete were standing with their heads inside, wondering at his forgetfulness and lack of care, their eyes wide with reproach and bewilderment. Apologizing in a steady flow of words, he went to them, took off pack and saddle, and told them to go and help themselves to a drink and food. He tried clumsily to dress the dog's wounds, bathing them with warm water, examining them, and shaking his head and muttering doubtfully; but Sioux, as if soothed by his presence, merely lay more quietly with dumb, agonized eyes following his movements.

Barton cleaned away the table, prepared himself some food, and ate it like an automaton, for his mind was bewildered with shock. In the midst of his meal he remembered that fabulous rifle of his, that most cherished of possessions, and crawled under his rough bunk with outstretched hands, feeling for it in the place where he always kept it, not for concealment alone, but for dryness and care. He brought it out, swathed in woolen rags and cotton, and patted it with his hands and spoke to it, congratulating it upon its escape. Once more he attended that stricken companion of his, and stood above the bunk scratching his chin through his white beard as if to stimulate resource for such a terrible emergency.

Then suddenly he bent forward and said: “Sioux, it's goin' to be a hard trip, but I reckon we'll have to have a doctor. You see, I aint much good at this sort of thing, so you'll have to put up with it till we can get you somewhere. You really ought to be put in one of them hospertals. I'll go out and git Roney now.”

At one o'clock in the morning the lone agent at Manipa was aroused from sleep by the Loner, who carried in his cramped arms, as if it were an injured child, a half-conscious dog, while slung over his shoulder was a burnished rifle.

“Wh—wh—what the hell's this?” the sleepy agent demanded, opening his eyes and staring at the white-bearded old man who peered at him appealingly.

“It's me—John Barton. Sioux's been hurt bad. Shot! You can stop trains, cain't you? They'll stop if you ask 'em with that red light of your'n, wont they?”

THE agent protested, disdainfully, volubly, with that official impatience which reaches its worst in only such a station as his. The appeal died from the visitor's eyes and gave way to something hard and stern.

“You say you cain't stop a train without orders. Well, I order you to stop the next one that comes through and—you'll do it, too. If you don't—”

His disengaged hand swept upward and patted the barrel of the rifle.

“I mean it!” he declared grimly. “I take Sioux on the next train.”

He did. It was a fast freight with trundling refrigerator-cars hurrying fruits from distant Western shores to Eastern markets, and the conductor swore turbidly and threatened to report until he too was overawed by the grim old man with rifle and with dog. Yet that report was never made; because on that long, tedious journey which John Barton was making for the second and unexpected time, the conductor heard the story, sympathized, and cursed still more volubly with oaths directed at the perpetrators of such an outrage. He proffered advice:

“There's only one veterinarian in Big Cañon, Doc' Mathews,” he said. “And I'm not sure that he knows much about dogs; but he's there when it comes to horses and other livestock. A regular human doctor don't know anything about dogs, I reckon. Go to Mathews.”

And at five o'clock that morning Mathews was visited by the man with the dog, gun and rifle. While the veterinary examined his patient, Sioux, with mysterious animal intuition, evidently sensed that he was in the hands of a friend, for he submitted to probings and dressings without baring a fang.

“If you ask me,” the veterinarian said to the silent old man, “that dog is pretty badly shot to pieces. It would be a mercy to put him out of his misery, because if you don't, he'll most likely be a cripple for life, partially paralyzed.”

“Good Gawd!” said the Loner indignantly, and with wide eyes. “Is that any reason to kill a friend? Why, that's the time to stick to him through thick and thin. You don't reckon Sioux would help kill me if I were paralyzed, do you? Nosir-ee! He aint that kind of a feller, and I aint either. If you pull him through, the price don't matter. I aint rich, but I'll give all I got.” And then, as his losses dawned on him, he qualified it with: “All I got left.”

“Well, leave the dog here, and be sure I'll do all I can for him,” Mathews said, and deftly inserted a hypodermic injection of morphia to ease the animal's pain, then showed its owner to the door.

WHEN the sheriff came to open his office in the county courthouse, he discovered a tired old man sitting on the courthouse steps, asleep. The sheriff stared curiously, and then said: “Blessed if it isn't old John Barton—the Loner.”

The exclamation awoke the sleeper, who got to his feet and said: “Been waitin' for you, Sheriff.”

And as they passed inside, he told of his disaster. The sheriff scowled and clenched his fists when the story was finished, then glared at the written notice issued by the rustlers.

“John,” he said kindly, “I wish I could go after them. The Lord knows I do! It's undoubtedly the Birch Gang, and from now on there'll be trouble around here; but don't you understand that I'm hog-tied like a thrown steer? This is Colorado. You belong in another State, and another county, and I'm not allowed to cross over into Utah to run down cattle-thieves. You should have gone to the sheriff of your county.”

“But—but my county's several hundred miles square, and the sheriff is almost a day's journey by train!”

AGAIN the sheriff sadly shook his head and said: “I know it is. And I know that to bring a posse so far takes time and money, and that before it could be done, those steers of yours would probably have been shipped and the thieves starting out to rustle a fresh batch. That's what makes it possible for that Birch Gang to get away with all they do. They're not much afraid of the law in a country like this. All they're afraid of are the cattle-men themselves. It's almost impossible under the law to get them! It's an outrage, but it can't be helped. I don't honestly know what you can do about it. If you had neighbors that could band together to help one another, you might make it too hot for them. That's what they did up on the Wyoming ranges, and that's why the gang's come down into this country. But one thing I'll tell you: if I were you, I'd take that warning mighty seriously, and not go back until, somehow or another, that gang of rustlers is wiped out. It's as much as your life is worth, I tell you, to try to stick there. What does the murder of one lonely man, away off by himself, amount to to them? Nothing! Not as much as that!” And he snapped his fingers.

The Loner sat for a long time brooding helplessly before he said: “Then it seems there aint anything at all that I can do. The law can't help me so—my stock is gone and—they'll take my ranch to use for a roundup of stolen stock.”

“That's about it,” the sheriff admitted. “But of course, if I were you, I'd get on the train and go out to your own county seat and lay the case before the sheriff. I've met him several times. He's a good man and will do the best he can. But I don't hold out any hope, and he wont, of doing much. I'll give you a letter to him, so he'll know that when you tell him a thing he can be sure it's gospel truth, and—that a lot of us over here like to call you a friend.”

But Barton did not travel westward. Disconsolate, harassed, hurt and helpless, he explained the situation to Horn:

“First, it seems it wouldn't get me nowhere, and second, I couldn't leave nohow on account of Sioux. I'm mighty anxious about Sioux. If he don't get well, I don't know what on earth I'll do. I don't see how I could ever get along without him, now. And he cain't get well without me. And besides, if he don't, I wouldn't have him cash in his chips thinkin' I'd deserted him. That'd be the worst of all. Friendship is friendship, and never yet have I thrown down a friend.”

And so for eight anxious days Barton wandered like a lost ghost here and there, sometimes far out into the mountains, sometimes through the streets, always unseeing, as if his troubled old eyes were looking into a perplexed and unpromising future; and for hours each day he sat in the sunshine outside the veterinarian's stables with one hand resting on the back of a dying dog. When the end came, he picked the big body up gently, as if still hoping for a responsive recognition from something that in all its faithful life had never failed, carried it out into the hills and, muttering his grief, buried it and made a cairn of rocks to mark the grave.

TIRED from his labors, he sat down beside the rough monument, took off his hat, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and stared off at the tops of the distant snow-bound peaks as if communing with them. At last the old lips beneath the white beard tightened and he stood up. “Good-by, Sioux!” he said. “Where you are now you're all right. Don't worry none about me. I'll just have to get along without you, somehow. Good-by!”

He spoke with the solemnity of conviction—his conviction that God in heaven couldn't be so unkind as to leave dogs like Sioux unsouled and with all their life's fidelity unrewarded after death. The thought comforted him as with firm steps he walked to the town on the plateau below. Just as Horn was closing his store that night, Barton entered.

“John,” he said, “I came to buy a lot of cartridges and to say good-by. I'm goin' home on the train that goes through here at three o'clock in the mornin'.”

Horn, aghast at such folly, sat down and tried to dissuade him; but his words beat as uselessly as a wind against a peak.

“I know—just as you say—that the law cain't help me,” said the Loner, “so from now on I'll help myself. It's all the home I got, and I'm goin' to stay there, dead or alive.”

“Then you'll probably stay there dead!” Horn exclaimed, exasperated by such unreasoning stubbornness, and bade him not “Good-by,” but “Farewell.”

WHEN he took his seat in the train, the Loner attracted no attention; for at that hour travelers slept, sprawling in their seats beneath the half-dimmed lights in an atmosphere that was stale with many odors. And as if relaxed after a long vigil, the Loner slept too, until aroused by the brakeman who shook him to wakefulness. Hugging his rifle and a small bundle of supplies, he stepped off into the sand, blinking as if dazed, and then recovering wits and purposefulness, he went to the shed where his saddle-pony, wearied with long inactivity, whinnied a greeting. For the first time in days the old man smiled.

“That was good of you, Roney,” he said, caressing the soft outthrust muzzle. “You and Pete's all I got left now. Sioux aint goin' to be with us no more.”

He scanned the manger and the feed-box to make certain that the section men had not neglected the horse during his absence, and satisfied of this, saddled and led it to the foot of the great red tank, where he gave it water. He rode away as the east reddened and lent strange tints and beauties to the sands, the sage and the clean morning skies. But he rode without that wonderful sense of homecoming with which heretofore he had always taken the trail. In place of this kindly, warm emotion, his thoughts were grim, determined, troubled.

The sun was up when, with Roney breathing deeply and sweating from the upward climb, he came slowly out through the edge of the scrub pines to the first view of his cabin. And then he suddenly pulled his mount to a halt, and frowning, glared downward. A column of gray smoke was plumed upward in the still air like a pillar of pale light, and the cabin door was open, as were the shutters over the solitary window at the end. Two men with hats on the backs of their heads sat straddlewise on the homely bench whereon for so long he and Sioux had been accustomed to rest. They played cards as if wholly absorbed in pursuit of gain. Barton's eyes, stern and alert, shifted and swept over the visible portion of his valley. Strange cattle were there, resting as if they had been cruelly driven in the night or preceding day. Strange horses were there, and he counted them—seven. That telltale number! Seven, just as there had been seven of his plates used before his own herd had been driven away, and—the thought brought flame again to his eyes—when Sioux, faithful old Sioux, had fought to the death,

JOHN BARTON dismounted and carefully led Roney well back into the forest screen. He took the marvelous rifle into his hands with a new clutch, made certain that it was fully loaded, then undid his bundle, took from it a box of cartridges and emptied them into his coat pocket. He trudged unfalteringly back, then by a zigzag route and keeping behind cover—now a rock, now a clump of brush clinging precariously to the shelves of the cliff—gained a lower and closer altitude that commanded both door and window. He carefully selected a boulder over the tops of which grew in profusion a screen of brush He took off his coat as if going to manual labor, spread his cartridges within reach and then, resting on his knees behind the boulder, thrust his rifle through the screen, brushed his eyes as if to make certain of their clarity, took careful aim and fired. Nor had the echoes of the snapping report come back from across the valley before he fired again. Without a sound the two men who had been playing cards collapsed, as if actuated by common and timed impulse, fell sidewise, and lay twitching upon the beaten earth.

From the cabin door two men rushed into view, looking wildly around. And this time the two rifle reports were so close together that their echoes returned as one, and now there were four men making the last, convulsive, involuntary movements of abruptly extinguished life. Door and window of the cabin closed swiftly as if to shut out the sight; the grazing ponies lifted their heads and stared excitedly as if such sounds were familiar precedents for quirt-tormented speed, agonizing distances, and merciless rowels when they stumbled from exhaustion. The ensuing silence, augmented by contrast, protracted, reassured them, and they returned to their grazing.

Up behind the screen of boulder and brush John Barton rested patiently, calm, unmoved, unpitying, with the sights of the rifle trained upon the window.

“You showed no mercy to Sioux,” he said as if his low-pitched soliloquy could reach listening ears, “and so I show none to you.'

He watched the window unblinkingly, persistently, expectantly.

“First of all,” he reflected, “they'll wonder if they're surrounded. That's what they'll be afraid of. Afraid a posse's caught up with them at last. Then bimeby they'll take a chance on lookin' out to see, and they'll just naturally try the window first. There's three of 'em in there, sure! Most likely they was still in their blankets when I opened up. Maybe been ridin' hard last night. And then—”

He did not finish the sentence, but fired; and a spot of white that had cautiously appeared at the window was there no longer. Also the glass came rattling brokenly outward and fell tinkling on the bench below.

“I reckon I got that feller—and that as he went down, he flung his hands out and that's what smashed my window,” the Loner reasoned. “It cost me a heap of trouble to get it out here and keep it unbusted, but that's just one thing more to charge up ag'in' this gang.” He patted his rifle and murmured: “They said you was the best gun in the world, and I'm tellin' you now that they didn't lie none about you.” He stroked its blue barrel affectionately, and resumed his meditation with: “Now, the other two that's left'll be too scared to move for a long time, and when they do, maybe they'll come through the door on the run.”

FOR more than an hour the same silence, usually so filled with an assurance of peace, but now rendered ominous by the proofs of death stretched motionless outside the cabin, continued. Only the birds in the little forest at the top of the cliffs took heart and resumed the songs of mating spring. The Loner was annoyed by the delay.

“Aint you ever comin' out?” he growled. “I don't want to camp here forever. I want to get it over with so's I can go down and get my cabin cleaned up and see how much damage you've done this time.”

If his mind could have commanded his enemies, they would have immediately responded by opening the door. But it did not. And so, after a time, he fell to a ruse that he had used in situations far more dangerous to himself than this—got a branch of brush, put his hat on it, got one arm behind him, cuddled his rifle aimed at the cabin with the other, and thrust the hat upward.

A streak of fire came from between the logs of the cabin where the chinking had been dug away to make a loophole. The Loner grinned and fired five shots as rapidly as he could pull the trigger, two at the loophole, two at the window, and one at the center of his door.

“Never thought of that before,” he commented. “That door's one of them factory made things that a bullet from a first-class rifle like this here will shoot through like it was paper. I hate to spile that nice door, but—”

HE poured a fusillade alternately through the door and the window, splintering the thin panels of the former, smashing the last cherished pane from the latter.

“If that'll only make them believe there's nobody here but me,” he thought, “they'll probably take chances on a rush pretty soon.” But in this he was disappointed. Furthermore, at the end of an hour he was puzzled by something unusual and not understandable. The smoke from the chimney, that had for a long time been but a slender spiral of heated blue, suddenly gave forth a cloud of steam. For a moment it puffed upward, dissipated, and thereafter there was neither steam nor smoke.

“Throwed water on the fire!” the Loner exclaimed at last as if triumphantly solving a deep problem. “Wonder what for they did that? It'll crack my nice iron stove! Seems like they just do all they can to be mean.”

Faint but sharp metallic sounds came to his hearing after another wait, but for these he could find no explanation. The sun gained the meridian, poured showers of heat into the valley and over the face of the cliff, and yet from the cabin came no further sounds. Barton, reasoning slowly, decided that the men within might wait for darkness to escape. The thought for a moment angered him, and he cogitated the advisability of leaving his post, regaining the top of the cliff, traversing it for a mile, finding a way of descent, and then closing in to within shouting distance. He turned his head and looked back for a route of covered retreat. When he looked at the cabin again, he understood the reason for the strange actions and sounds that had baffled him. Where the window had been was something of lighter color than the solid black of a darkened interior.

“Damn 'em!” he growled. “They've done took my stove to pieces and fastened the top of it ag'in' my winder. They've plumb ruined it.”

He took a shot at the steel barricade, and saw a splinter ripped loose from a log at the side, proving that the bullet had ricocheted, and that the shield was effective. It was that which decided him. With the caution and skill of a veteran Indian fighter and frontiersman, he retreated from cover to cover back up the hillside and to the top. Loath to lose time, lest his victims escape in the interval, he ran through the chaparral heedless of thorns, tearing the fabric of what he termed his “store clothes,” gained a familiar place for the descent, and rapidly made his way downward. Once a treacherous rock betrayed him, and he fell eight or ten feet, heavily jarring a body no longer resilient with youth, and driving the breath from his lungs. For twenty minutes he rested there on his back, half-dazed, before he could recover—then the iron of his determination drove him on.

KEEPING the outbuildings between him and the cabin, he lunged heavily up the valley until he gained his stable, where he paused to recover breath and rest his aches. He considered the advisability of demanding a surrender, and then remembered that from his vantage point he could cover neither door nor window. His problem was imperative by now, for already the sun was on the quick western lap, and soon the night would fall. And then he fell to cursing his own stupidity.

“Why did I ever come down here, anyhow?” he thought. “There's a full moon and she's as clear as day. They can't try the window to get out, because they've had to fasten that stove-top too solid to get it down without raising a row, so they'd have had to get out through the door. I'd have done better to have stayed up there in front of 'em.”

He decided now that if his enemies chose to wait for night, he could do the same, but retreated until he gained the shelter of a little log storehouse from the corner of which he could keep watch upon the door. The time passed slowly, as if it too were bound in a spell—as if the sun were loath to continue its round until witnessing the finale of this lonely tragedy in such a lonely place. The birds sang their vesper songs and drowsily twittered in concluding gossip. Far up in the valley Pete brayed, the sound coming to his owner fraught with anxiety, or loneliness.

“Poor little cuss! He wonders what's become of me, and Roney, and Sioux,” Barton thought as he lay there inflexibly, unremittingly intent on guarding the closed and splintered door. The sun, finally concluding its observation, resumed its perpetual duty and sank from sight. The night seemed filled with a silence that sighed with anxiety. The stars and great round moon, wan in the early dusk, became brilliant lights as the hours advanced, and the Loner thought of his cherished clock, wantonly ruined, and of how proud he had been of its chime beaten out with a brass hammer on a great spring wire.

“She was so loud and fine that if she was still runnin' I could hear her strike clean out here,” he thought, almost boastfully, quite like one recounting the value of lost treasure. He remembered with a pang that Sioux had howled and barked, much to his master's amusement, for the first few times when the clock struck after it had been brought “home.”

“And now he'll never bark again. Not even when I come back from a trip.”

His lips quivered a little beneath his beard and then hardened savagely, remorselessly, when he considered that brutal injustice. There was no pity within him as he stolidly waited for the end.

IT came unexpectedly, and from an unexpected quarter. From the opposite side, where the cabin cast a shadow like a sheet of black velvet on the grass, there came a noise so slight that to ears less acute than those of the pioneer it would have been inaudible. A low, softly scraping sound, stealthy, unavoidable.

“My Lord! It's the winder, after all!” the listening man muttered. He tensed himself for action, then heard a thud as of feet dropped upon the bench outside the cabin window. He waited no longer, but leaped to his feet and ran round the back of the cabin toward the corner, rifle in ready hands.

Two figures in swift motion emerged from the shadow, undoubtedly believing that the blind wall of the cabin was unguarded, and rushed upon him. The Loner fired from his hip, and one man shouted, threw his hands up and toppled backward, and a revolver hurled into the air caught blue glints from the moon. The second running figure fired, and the Loner stumbled to his knees. “Hit!” he muttered, but instantly fired again. He failed to bring down the man who had shot him. The fugitive whirled and fired again, and the kneeling man's hat flew outward like a black vulture of the night taking a short flight in expectancy of prey. Its loss disturbed the Loner's aim, and before he could shoot, his assailant was in flight again, and running toward the shelter of the shed. The Loner, still on his knees took what was for him a long and careful aim, and shot but once; for the runner suddenly bounded into the air, dipped his head forward, took a few more steps through convulsive impetus, and then came to the ground in a heavy somersault and lay there doubled grotesquely, like a gnome resting still in devout adoration of the moon. The Loner calmly got to his feet, paused to consider, fancied he saw movement in that huddled shape, and deliberately fired into it again. A noise behind him attracted his attention, and swiftly he turned, raising his rifle, as he did so.

“Don't shoot again! For God's sake, don't!” an anguished voice implored, and just in time the ready gnarled finger on the rifle trigger restrained itself.

The man first shot had gained a sitting posture and was doubled forward holding his arms tightly clenched across his abdomen.

“Throw your gun!” commanded the Loner.

“I haven't got it!”

“Then up with your hands. Quick!” There was neither compassion nor hesitancy in the harsh old voice. Nothing but the chill and willing readiness to inflict death. The man's hands went feebly aloft, and the Loner strode across to him, assured himself that no arms were at hand and then demanded: “Are there any more of you?”

“No. You've got us all! And none of us even got a chance at you but Tim Birch, him that lies out there by the shed.”

“So that was Birch, eh? I'm glad now that I shot him twice. I wish to God he could have lived until I could have filled him full of lead—like he did to my dog. That's mainly why I came back the way I did. I hated to shoot them two outside because they wasn't armed, and then I remembered that Sioux wasn't armed, either.”

“My God! You don't mean that you came back on account of a dog, and shot us down one after the other?”

“Just that! I could have got more steers. I could even have got another ranch; but I couldn't get another friend like Sioux!”

He spoke earnestly, as if justifying his remorselessness, his methods, his mental trepidations.

“I've killed plenty of men in my time,” he added. “I never have liked to, but they was always trying to kill me, and it was always face to face; but—you fellers weren't worth a fair fight. You were a lot of damned cowards. Not worth my dog that you shot. And so—I shot you like coyotes!”

He paused, interrupted in his anathema by the groans and contortions of the man at his feet.

“After all,” he said, softly, “I'm sorry I had to do it—now that it's done. I'm hit myself, through the leg, but you're bad hurt. I couldn't leave any wounded thing to suffer. Wait here, and I'll get into my cabin and light the lamp, then bring you in and see what I can do for you.”

HE went into the cabin, found the lamp and stared at the havoc about him. He held the lamp above a dead man on the floor beneath the window, and confirmed the accuracy of that shot fired—was it that morning, or many, many mornings since? Time had run laggardly throughout that direful day of battle. He saw the ruin of his stove and recovered the iron kettle from the floor and carried it outside with the intention of lighting a fire to heat water therein. He advanced to the wounded man, who was now stretched out and moaning like a hurt animal. It flashed through his mind that this sound was similar to that made by Sioux when the latter came to meet him with dragging hips and feet. The man muttered something about having sold his cattle with others “across the line;” and then, even as the Loner, relenting, strove to pick him up in his arms, gasped and lay inert.

The Loner, limping with his burden, carried it into the cabin and laid it on the bed; but his effort had been wasted, for the last of the Birch Gang was dead. In the light of the lamp Barton bound his own wound, which experience convinced him was painful but not dangerous, and then stood for a moment staring at the lamp.

“I got to get to Roney,” he muttered. “He's been up there all day, but—” And then he blew out the lamp, closed the door softly as if fearing to disturb the dead, and with seeming absurdity painfully carried a pail of water in his hand when he limped away to the steeply climbing trail. He gave the horse the water, apologizing meantime in muttered sentences for his neglect; then, with difficulty getting into the saddle, he turned and rode away.

ONCE more the railway agent was aroused from midnight sleep by a battered summons, harsh, imperative, on his door. Once more he came out, complaining, and was silenced by the cold glare in the eyes that pinned his attention.

“I want to send a message and—”

“Can't you wait till morning?”

“I'm sending it now!” the Loner said, thrusting his face forward. “And you'll send it, young feller. Do I have to—”

The agent shrank back from that cold wrath and apologetically acquiesced. He lighted the lamp in front of his counter, afraid to protest, and stood while the Loner with much effort, and care, and many starts, stoppings and alterations, addressed a dispatch to his friend Horn. And the agent gasped when he read in that cramped hand:

Send by first train seven plain pine wood coffins. I've killed the Birch Gang, but as the law didn't help me do it, I aint goin' to bother no coroner. Also send one good iron cookstove and a winder sash reg'lar size, because I got to fix up my home.

John Barton.