Starlight Riders Boxed-Set 50 Western Classics in One Edition. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ buck plowed ahead, directly in fine with Chaffee. The man pulled back the gun's hammer and took a test sight. Right in the chest and a little to one side. But it was still too far. The buck had trouble in making traction, and three times during that long spell of waiting the beast stopped. Chaffee throttled the impulse to shoot. Another yard would make it surer. And when the deer advanced the necessary yard Chaffee argued with himself again as if he were lecturing an impatient child. Still another yard to be more sure. "Yuh look hungry. Well, they's all sorts of nice grass down beyond me. Don't take my word for it. Use your own judgment. Ain't that what you come all this way to find? Now next time you stop, turn halfway round. I'll be obliged. I'd rather aim behind a forequarter. Won't hurt you near so much."

      All this was under his breath. Feeling fast fled from his arms. The muzzle of the gun had a tendency to droop. The buck halted twenty yards or more away. Chaffee sighed and squeezed the trigger. The report of that shot roared in his ears and was flung back by the wind; the buck reared, whirled about, and raced into the teeth of the driving mist. A moment later he was beyond the pall, and all of Jim Chaffee's hopes went with him. The revolver dropped to the snow, nor did the man make any effort to secure it. Very, very slowly he hauled himself toward the cabin. He was sleepy and he began to argue with himself, "about the blamed well you got to exert a little more steam. Cabin ain't but a mite off. Hoopa—one more boost." His head dropped and he never knew when he went to sleep. The descent to oblivion was very easy. Gay Thatcher and Ranzo Taber, coming along less than five minutes later with Taber's huskies, almost ran over him.

      His feet hurt—that woke him out of the stupor. They stung like fury. So did his hands; so did his ears. And somebody worked over him with a great deal of unnecessary roughness. He opened his eyes and saw Ranzo Taber, whom he didn't know. Beyond stood Gay Thatcher.

      "I missed that doggone buck," he murmured.

      "I guess you did," said Taber. "He went by us like a shot out of a gun. How do you feel?"

      "All the symptoms. Yeah, I know you're pinchin' my legs. Feelin's comin' back."

      "Guess you can stoke up the fire," said Taber to Gay.

      The girl went over and ripped the cupboard down with one single motion. Chaffee couldn't help grinning. "I wasn't able to budge it a little while back. When I get out of here I'm goin' to hire somebody to haul six-eight cords of wood alongside this cabin. Where did you come from?"

      "Have a drink first," suggested Taber. Chaffee strangled over a jolt of whisky, but the benefit derived there from was immediate.

      "When did you eat last?" asked the girl, breaking the cupboard into the stove.

      "Not since I left Linderman's."

      The girl pulled a canteen from her shoulders and came over to Chaffee. "I thought something like that might have happened. This is chocolate. One big drink, Jim. No more."

      Ranzo Taber started for the door. "Want to look at the dogs. We better be hittin' out of this pretty quick. Ain't long till dark."

      Chaffee took a long drink of warm chocolate. Every minute brought an added sting and jab of some reviving piece of skin, but he felt in pretty good shape, almost as if he were waking from a turbulent dream. Gay Thatcher he began to study with freshening interest. In the week's interval she had changed some. Laying aside the effect of man's clothing and high boots, she appeared tired, somehow sad. Her eyes were of a deeper color; once when she caught his direct glance a tinge of crimson slowly rose to her cheeks—and went away. He remembered their meeting in the jail and he wondered what she thought about now.

      "You tell your story; then I'll tell mine," said she.

      He took another pull on the canteen. "Takes a woman to think of a drink like that. Wouldn't this be a haywire world without women? My story don't amount to much. I got out of the jail, ran the lines with Mack, ended up at Linderman's, borrowed a horse and hit for the pass. Was kind of tired, so the horse caught me sleepin' and threw me. Twisted my ankle. Got to the cabin. Been here ever since. Was about to depart for regions unknown when you came along. How did you figure I was here?"

      "I saw Mack. He told me you hadn't written. He was worried. I got the whole story from him and put two and two together. So I circled around to Bannock City and went to Ranzo Taber's ranch. It is only ten miles east of here. Ranzo runs two or three strings of huskies every winter for sport. I knew that. You weren't in Bannock City, and I figured you must be somewhere along the trail. So we came." She fell silent. But a moment later he was startled to hear the swift vehemence of her words. "Jim, do you know how close to death you were out there in the snow!"

      "I can make a guess at it," he muttered, bothered by something else. "I don't just see why you went to all this trouble."

      "Don't you, Jim?"

      The color came to her cheeks again; her lips were pursed tightly and she held herself very straight and still. He turned his head to the wall, stirred by strange currents. "Well—give me that canteen." He downed the last of the chocolate. Ranzo Taber came back.

      "Better be going. How do you stack up, Chaffee?"

      "Nothing wrong with me except a weak ankle and an empty stomach. Once I get about haif a cow inside me I'll be ready to r'ar."

      He sat up, feeling a little bit giddy, and drew on his socks and boots. But he wasn't ready to stand on his own strength yet, so Ranzo Taber bent a shoulder, and in this manner they left the summit cabin. Chaffee rolled into the sled; Gay Thatcher pulled the blankets around him and stepped back.

      "You take 'er down, Miss Gay," said Taber. "I'll trot behind. Mush!"

      So in the deepening mists and with the peaks shrilling dismally the dog team snapped into the traces, ran the sled across the level mouth of the pass and down the eastern slopes. Full dark found them inside Taber's ranch house at the foot of the bench, found Jim Chaffee siting up to a table and eating his first good meal in five or six days.

      "Once a sourdough, always a sourdough," said Taber, smiling reminiscently. "It's been ten years since I left the Klondike, but I never been without huskies in that time. Folks have always wondered why I fooled with 'em. Well, you're the fourth man I've found up around the peaks. Two of 'em came in stiff. You're lucky. Now it ain't any of my business, But I'm wonderin' what the next play is."

      The girl said nothing, leaving the question for Chaffee to answer. She had slipped back to feminine clothing, and the transformation somehow bothered Chaffee. He recollected moments when she had seemed close and intimate, when she had appeared to be fashioned out of the same simple, sturdy clay that he himself was made of. Now she had withdrawn and become silent and aloof; and she added a touch of grace and beauty to the table that marked her of another world. Nothing definite. Only the lamplit casting a glow on her clear profile. The slender suppleness of her fingers twining around the water glass.

      "I've got to get into Bannock City and drop Mack a note," said Chaffee. "Then I reckon I'll give my foot a week to limber up. After that I reckon I'll sort of breeze back into Roaring Horse again. Maybe—maybe not. Depends."

      "Mack is laid up with a bullet in his shoulder," said the girl.

      "Who did it?" demanded Chaffee with so much force that Ranzo Taber's interest switched away from his coffee cup.

      The girl went through the story, her soft voice rounding out the details of Stirrup S passing into other hands, of the arrival of the first homesteaders. Chaffee's face settled. "Where's Miz Satterlee?"

      "She left. I don't know СКАЧАТЬ