Trails to Two Moons/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
When, baffled by bars, the mob in the Two Moons jail had sent a shot at a flickering candle flame and the life of him known as the Killer had gone out with a chauvinistic grace strangely at variance with the record that had won his grim sobriquet, the cry went up: "Where's Zang Whistler? Turn loose Zang Whistler." Every remaining cell in the block was searched from without; all were empty. Then the mob broke into segments, scouring the courthouse and the living quarters contiguous to the jail for Sheriff Agnew and the prisoner believed by him to have been smuggled to a secret hiding place.
Whistler, true to his pledged word, had remained in the darkened room, waiting at the window for the turn of events. There a dozen of the townsmen found him and acclaimed him with cheers.
"Make yourself scarce, Zang," was the cheerful admonition boomed at him by Hanscomb, the blacksmith. "We 're the whole court and jury, an' we find you not guilty. We just found the Killer guilty, the vote being unanimous."
The outlaw, blinking at the light one of the men carried, hesitated and seemed to show no interest in the freedom offered him.
"Say, what 's the matter with you? Don't you want to be turned loose?"
"Thanks, boys, I do," he answered hesitantly. "But there 's a girl I 'm sort a looking after. She was round here somewhere when Agnew locked me up and"
"Oh, he means that yaller-haired beauty that come riding in with him and Uncle Alf ridin' herd on the Killer," piped an inspired one. "You 're all right, you are, Zang. You 're a picker! C'm on, we 'll find her for you."
Another group of the mob, meanwhile, had found Sheriff Red Agnew stretched unconscious in a bedroom by the side of an opened window. They had the big man sitting up and gagging over fiery liquor poured in generous quantity down his throat when Whistler and his convoy arrived. Agnew sent a dazed look at Whistler.
"You see, sheriff, somebody 's took the law outa your hands, an' they say I 'm free," the outlaw explained a little sheepishly. "Of course, if you 're wishful to run counter"
"Why, you poor orphan idjit," the blacksmith caught him up. "Do I hear you pleadin' with Red Agnew here to lock you up again? Vamose while the court 's feelin' its oats and is kind to you."
"Just let me have a word alone with Agnew here, boys," Zang pleaded, "then I 'll do whatever you want." The crowd, complaisant in its triumph of the night, backed out of the room, leaving the two alone. Zang helped Agnew to his feet and sat him on the edge of the bed.
"Where 's the girl, Red?" he questioned tensely.
"Gone, Zang. Kidnapped, I 'm afraid, by the cow-punchers." Zang started and his hand fell on the other's shoulder.
"Pull yourself together, Red," he urged. "Do a little thinking before you talk wild. What do you mean, kidnapped?"
"Mean what I say. After I 'd brought you down from the cell house I come in here to get the girl, like I promised you. She 's not here. But just the minute I see this, in through the window there comes Timberline Todd and a lot of others, and they tackle me and put me out. What's the answer? They 'd grabbed her just before I come in and were planning to rush the jail through this way while a bunch of their outfit was keeping the town crowd busy on the street out front."
The leader of Teapot Spout strove desperately to get a grip on himself. The other's deductions seemed unassailable; he could conceive no reason why Hilma should have fled the protection of the sheriff's quarters, particularly with the uproar and shooting on the street; there was none in Two Moons, he believed, to whom she could have gone. But—kidnapping by the cow-punchers—why—why? Suddenly a thought drove home:
"Red, you did n't see this here Original Bill pile in through the window along with the rest?"
"No, Zang. That long old pine marten Timberline Todd 's only one I recognized, and when I land a warrant on to him, he's going to look through bars a mighty long time. What makes you mix up Blunt in this thing? He always plays 'em from the top of the pack pretty regular and square, even if he does make his salt off the cattle outfits."
Zang did not answer. His mind was racing in an effort to find support for the swift suspicion lodged there. This Original Bill was a man of infinite resource. Zang remembered that from the old days of their association together with the trail herds. The tribute was emphasized by recollection, too, of the man's many stratagems in their more recent private warfare. He dismissed as untenable the premise that the range inspector had been prompted to spirit away the girl to satisfy any private grudge arising out of the fight in Hilma's cabin; Original was not one to hound a woman. But—and here suspicion nearly gave way to conviction—Blunt had seen enough to guess the hold Hilma had upon Zang Whistler; forestalling the release of Zang Whistler by the mob, would not his shrewdness have prompted him to gain possession of the girl in order that he might lead her questing lover into a trap?
"Well, Red, reckon I 'll go get my little hoss an' get busy. I just got to find Hilma." Zang put out a hand to meet the sheriff's.
"Good luck to you, Zang," the unconventional right arm of the law encouraged. "But don't linger too long round town. When things quiet down, if I should find you in Two Moons, why I 'd have to take you up again, Zang. Duty is duty, you know."
The outlaw went out to the shed stable behind the jail to saddle his horse. He found there, hanging on the peg above Hilma's saddle, a blue gingham apron done into a bundle,—the girl's pitiful collection of treasures gathered that day, now seeming ages past, when she had closed her cabin on Teapot and started to ride with him to the Spout. Reverently Zang lifted the bundle to his own saddle horn, then he turned his horse out of the jail yard and down Main Street, still boiling in the afterthroes of the night's passion.
Whipped by a cold and deadly resolve, the big outlaw's eyes under their shadowing hat brim were those of a stalking tiger. They leaped from face to face in the fluxes and eddies of men the pools of light across the road illumined. Though his injured right hand was stiff in splints and bandages, all the power and the cunning of him lay tingling in his ready left. A more dangerous man never ranged Two Moons' single street.
Zang Whistler was looking for Original Bill Blunt. Haply found, the issues of life and death between them would hang on the balance of a hair. But at that hour the object of the outlaw's search was riding alone the salt-lick trail away out under the stars where somewhere in the bad lands beyond Crazy Squaw Hilma Ring blundered in the mazes of the night and the illimitable labyrinth of the Big Country.
The sardonic genius of the Big Country had wrought but part of her will in Two Moons that night. There in a whirlpool of her own devising had been sucked all the bitter hates and tiger ferocities she had been brewing out on the clean spaces of the wide range. There she had contrived a blood reckoning on the tally of little pebbles found on dead men's foreheads; a Killer had received in full the harvest of his sowing. A desperate rallying of the range clan had hurled itself in a wave against the wall of its enemies and fallen back broken; even now hurrying groups of horsemen coursed the divides to find refuge from the wrath that seethed under the town's yellow lights. Unstable law, newly come to the Big Country, had been harried and scorned and made a mockery. Anarchy of the wolf pack was abroad.
Yes, and the little human puppets under the finger of this mocking genius were chips wildly eddying in the whirlpool of her caprice. A Von Tromp, sore in body, bitter in spirit, sat like a coiled rattler in a swaying stage carrying him south to the railroad and that mysterious ring of the big people who employed him; he was hurrying to report nothing less than a scourge of fire competent to prevent the extinction of the cattle clan. A Hilma Ring, become horse thief, was lost in the Big Country, and two men sought her,—one a lover. A wilderness preacher and prophet called upon his Maker to witness that he, and he alone, had wrought the vengeance of the Most High.
But the tale was not told; the comedy had yet another act. Having achieved confusion in the Big Country, the capricious spirit went elsewhere for her instruments of dénouement.
Far, far to the south where the deserts lap like seas about raw towns and all the outlaw trails converge before leaping the Line to Mexico, certain agents whose names need not appear in this chronicle—go to the Big Country to-day and these names will be told you in whispers—certain agents, I say, were busy at their peculiar devices. In the back rooms of saloons in this and that town known throughout the Southwest as bad, these agents talked with men of hard features and harder lives.
They talked glibly, did these agents, of easy money. They said they were recruiting a force of regulators who were to clean up cattle thieves. So many dollars down, all expenses paid, grub and horse for every man; and in the end, when everything was tidied up, a fat bonus for every man employed.
Whispers passed through the walls of these saloon back rooms in tough desert towns. The whispers were of something called the Invasion.