The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

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      X. A KILLING

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      Lispenard fled away from the scene as fast as his pony could be spurred, nor was he anything less than cruel with those gouging rowels. Physically, he was done up, and the terrific jolting at Tom Gillette's hands left him momentarily sick; he felt as if there were iron hoops around his chest, and the muscles of his face had congealed until it seemed he wore a plaster mask. The power was out of him, he could scarce raise his arms. And over and over again he rehearsed the blows he had struck. His fists had landed; the dull ache that ran from wrist to shoulder told him he had reached his mark. He knew he never yet had hit any man as often and as hard as he had hit Tom Gillette. It hadn't been a boxing match; he meant to kill, he meant to slash and maim. Yet Gillette had beaten him, knocked him out—Gillette whose biceps were not much more than half the size of his own.

      That shook him badly. It roused him anew to a dull, vindictive passion; and his horse suffered for it. The truth about Lispenard was quite apparent; he had gone bad—his was the stuff from which were made the border's greatest renegades. Back East, under restraint, he might never have crossed that line of lawlessness, but rather pursued his way with the aura of his athletic reputation paving a career for him; unscrupulous perhaps but not dangerous; a little dissolute, making feminine conquests with his bold eyes and his gay manner that would grow harder with the years—and more threadbare. Society tolerated his kind under that fanciful pseudonym of "the man about town."

      Out here, with no restraints, the uncertain fibre of the man frayed through. The step across the line was but a short one and easily taken. He had not yet taken that step, for the opportunity was not yet come. But he was right for it, spoiling for it. And thus he rode into Nelson, tethered his horse, and made his purchases. A gunnysack of grub, cartridges, and a blanket. At the saloon he tarried some time. The man had an insatiable thirst; he filled himself full of the trader's whisky and bought a bottle to pack along. At noon he passed out of Nelson with his purchases and struck straight back on the trail until he arrived at the ford. Here, instead of crossing, he paralleled the river a matter of miles and gained the heart of the broken land. High on a ridge he took his bearings and advertised his own whereabouts; San Saba would be watching, that he well knew. So he pressed on, and within twenty minutes the renegade ex-foreman stood in front of him, sheltered by an outcrop of rock.

      His tongue was a little thick, his perceptions were somewhat blurred. Yet his wits were enough about him to receive a warning; he squared himself defensively as he dropped to the ground, and he took care to keep his right arm free. San Saba's little round head dropped forward, and the lank face was speculatively grim; the man was studying Lispenard, turning Lispenard's usefulness over and over in the cautious recesses of his mind. Something tipped the balance on invisible scales, and San Saba relaxed.

      "Grub?"

      "Dam' you, boy," muttered Lispenard, "I'm playin' square. See you do the same by me. I may look green, but I'm not soft."

      "Name yore own contract," murmured San Saba, eyes never shifting; here was one man whose gaze he could meet.

      "Fifty-fifty, all the way around, all the way through," was the reply. "I'm on to you, San Saba. What was it you said?—'takes a scoundrel to know a scoundrel.' That's right, my son. And I know you. I'm not your cat's-paw. We ride equal in this firm."

      "Agreed," was San Saba's laconic answer. Something like sly humour flickered in the depths of his small eyes, too remote for Lispenard to see or understand. "Grub there?"

      "Sure."

      San Saba rifled the sack and brought out a side of bacon; be took his knife and cut a half pound slice from it as he would have pared himself a piece of chewing tobacco. Lispenard never had seen a man eat bacon raw, and the sight turned his stomach. San Saba grinned maliciously. "Ketch holt of yo'self, boy. Yore on the prairie from now on. I'll teach yo' things. Wait till we get a buff'lo—nothin' better'n liver raw."

      "Don't prod me, San Saba," protested Lispenard. "I'm holdin' too much rotgut in my system."

      San Saba took to studying the land with a certain wariness; he squatted on his heels and drew patterns in the sand, from time to time СКАЧАТЬ