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

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СКАЧАТЬ minutes and then went on. Perhaps his senses played him false. Both uncertain and restless he pressed the horse to a faster pace. He passed a solitary pine and a hedgelike clump of juniper bushes; he struck a beaten trail and then the outline of all that had been the Stirrup S home ranch lay dark and obscure in front of him.

      He stopped, oppressed by the tenancy of those chilly shadows. Once Stirrup S had been crowded with life; a light had glimmered from the big house; melody and warmth had dwelt in the crew's quarters. Fine men had walked the yard, proud of all that Stirrup S meant—its vast range; its wide-flung herds. A domain it had been, a little empire apart, a haven and refuge, a sturdy piece of the historic West. Now it was but a cheerless relic of brave dreams gone to defeat. Out beyond in the still heavier shadows Dad Satterlee lay asleep. Miz Satterlee was gone, the crew scattered; never again would the corrals echo to the same shouts, the same epithets, the same ribald jeering. This had been his home; and the thought of it renewed the feeling of homesickness in him.

      "Times change. I guess we ain't got any right to stick to the old, familiar things. But it goes hard—it goes hard."

      His old-time partners were not on hand, otherwise a light would be burning. Dropping from the saddle, he led the horse nearer a corral and left it. Walking alongside the bars of the corral he was more distinctly assailed by the sensation that others were abroad in the night, behind him or about him. The farther he issued into the yard the more strongly did the belief become until at last he halted, drawing his muscles together and dropping his gun arm. He stood between the crew's quarters and the big house, facing westward toward the gaunt outline of the barn. He had not been aware of a wind before, yet there appeared to be a rustling and a whispering and a soft abrasion of sounds running here and there. It seemed to him to grow louder around the crew's quarters; it seemed to him the shadows were shifting. He stepped side-wise, closing upon the porch of the big house, at the same time watching the other direction with flaring eyes.

      Was it the Stirrup S bunch, waiting for him and yet wishing to keep under cover for fear of the forces leagued against them? Supposing his friends were over there? They could hear him. Why didn't somebody challenge? Did they figure it was his play and not theirs? Well, maybe it was. He debated, more and more sure of company in the yard. At that point he heard the first definite breaking of silence—a boot dragging along a board, a subdued murmur. All this by the crew's quarters. Nothing came from the big house. He got to the steps of the house porch and made his decision; he drew a breath, lifted his gun from the holster, and sent a challenge running softly across the yard.

      "Who's that?"

      It was as if he had opened the door to bedlam. A staccato roar rent the silence and the blackness. Flames mushroomed at widely divergent points; bullets smashed along the porch and spat at his very feet. And above this he heard the booming sledging voice of Theodorik Perrine summoning up the attack.

      "Now we got him! Snap into it! Lay lead over there—lay lead over there!"

      He leaped up the steps and over the porch. The door was closed; he flung it open, slid inside, and slammed it shut. The next moment he had jumped away and down to a window. The door seemed about to be beaten off its hinges by the impact of bullets. They came onward, Perrine's mighty, sounding wrath like the break of rollers on a beach. They were up to the porch; from the window he saw their shadowed forms weaving this way and that way, and he opened on them with a brace of shots that scattered the gang and flattened them down against the porch boards. But he knew the diversion was only for the moment. He could not stop them; he could not keep them from coming through—either by the front or the back. What he could do was play a game of hide- away. Another shot humbled them for a few moments.

      In those moments he slipped up the stairs. On the landing he heard the front door give and go down. Only Perrine's strength could have smashed it so suddenly and completely; and they were inside, roving here and there with a singular recklessness until the giant that led them boomed again.

      "You go outside, Clipper! Watch! Back door—for the love o' God, watch that back door!"

      "Listen," grumbled one of the men, "this ain't no way to get him. Damn' place is full uh holes an' shadders. Le's go outside and string around it. Burn the joint. Can't miss him then."

      "I want to get my hands on him," muttered Perrine.

      "Use yore head—"

      "Shut up! This is my party!"

      The giant had gone mad. Chaffee's groping arm touched a table in the hallway. There was a piece of Indian pottery on it. Seizing the jar, he bent over the banister and dropped it down. The smash of it on the lower floor, woke their restless guns. Smoke swirled upward; hot profanity beat along the darkness. They were falling flat, overturning chairs and tables for protection.

      "That corner—"

      "Chaffee—yore dead now!"

      Chaffee went on down the upper hall a-tiptoe. A window opened to the roof of the back porch, and he hoped to let himself down quietly and circle around to his horse. But in treading the hall his boots struck a loose board. It sent out a sharp protest, and as he reached the window there seemed to be a general break-up of Perrine's party. The renegades broke in all directions, boots drumming the lower flooring, sounding out of the doors. He debated, trying to catch the meaning of the move. Then he heard a brace of shots cracking from the general direction of the barn. Hard after, Perrine went a-bellowing across the yard.

      "He's wiggled clear! He's monkeyin' with our hosses! Clipper—Clipper, where in the name o' Judas are yuh? Nev' mind upstairs—that's just a sound!" The rest of his vast fury rolled out unprintable and blasphemous. Chaffee shook his head, not understanding. He drew the catches of the window and raised it, noise lost in the general racket going on below. He shoved himself through and worked to the edge of the porch roof. Back here was quietness; out front the guns were playing. Looking to the ground from this elevation was like staring into some black pool of water.

      "Maybe it's another neat little device of Mr. Perrine's," he said to himself. "He's as crazy as a louse on a hot brick. But I can't be speculatin' all night. Here's a break. Better take it. Now, if they's a man waitin'—"

      He dropped and hit the ground on all fours, feeling the impact stabbing his still insecure ankle. So far so good. No gun met him, nobody came catapulting out of the surrounding shadows. He rose and galloped away from the house, hearing the thundering voice of Theodorik Perrine rise and fall from one raging epithet to another. He skirted a shed, reached the corral, and hurried around it. His horse still stood, though restless and circling the reins. Chaffee never gave it a thought; he sprang up and turned the pony. A voice came sibilantly from somewhere.

      "Jim."

      "Who's that?"

      "Mark—Mark Eagle." Horse and rider closed in, came beside Jim. The Indian's arm dropped on Chaffee's shoulder. "I am your friend."

      "How in the name of—"

      "Let's ride out first."

      The pair spurred off, the drum of their ponies bringing Perrine's gang down the yard on the jump. But presently they had become only murmuring figures in the distance. The reports of the shooting were damped. "Better swing," said Chaffee. "They'll be on our heels pretty quick."

      "No," said Mark Eagle with the quiet, expressionless manner so characteristic of him. "I drove their horses away before I fired those shots. They will hunt around some while, my friend."

      "Now, listen Mark, how did you bust into this?"

      "This afternoon СКАЧАТЬ