The Fugitive (24 page)

He held up his hand. Far away they could hear the stir of voices coming faintly through the thin, pure mountain air.

Ben Thomas aroused himself from a trance and turned to the others. “I'm ready,” he muttered. And he added to himself, under his breath: “Half a life of slavin' . . . and then this . . . just blundered onto.”

“And no one has seen you here?” the girl was asking her father anxiously.

“Nobody. I've lived here like a wildcat in the shadow,” he answered her. Then he urged them on. “Quick! Quick!” he exclaimed. “I'll be staying here in a sweat until you come back again. Stake it out, Ben. Here, I'll help. I've got everything ready. Here's the description written out, locating it. I know enough surveying for that. This is a description that will fit to a T. Hurry along. I'll take you down as far as the trail.”

He escorted them away, a hand on the arm of the girl, a hand on the arm of his friend.

As they disappeared, among the shadows along the bough of a great pine that bordered the clearing, another shadow stirred, moved, sat erect—a man. He was on the lowest bough and had been stretched there, face downward. Now he climbed down, a considerable distance, with nothing to aid him but shallow finger and toe holds in the roughness of the bark and in knotty projections, here and there. But he came down with such surety, it seemed that he was possessed with claws, like a cat. At the bottom, he sat down on one of the great roots that projected like the coil of a brown python from the ground and pulled on the shoes that had been slung about his neck. Then he stood up, dusted his hands, took out a small pocketknife, and with the edge of the blade carefully removed a small shot of brown resin that adhered to his trousers leg. After that, he stepped out of the shadow into the patch of sunlight that broke through the foliage above him. Carefully he moved, never stepping upon the soft soil, but only from projecting rock to rock, until he came to the edge of the runlet. There he stooped, scooped out a palmful of the earth, washed it with a rapid and gentle trundling motion, and looked down curiously at the glittering yellow grains of gold that remained in the wrinkles of his cupped hand.

“Gold,” murmured Speedy. “Yes, and murder, too. I guessed it before, and I know it now. Murder . . . red murder . . . the air's full of it.”

His voice, as he spoke, was not at all in keeping with the solemnity of his words, for there seemed to be a bubbling cheerfulness about him, and he had a half smile about his lips, as though from amusement or from sheer happiness and content with this world as he found it.

With quick glances he noted down the spot and the guiding headlands that appeared, looming through or above the trees. When he had finished that quick survey, he could have found his way to this place even through the thickest darkness, so long as there were a faint foreshadowing of any of the neighboring mountains through the heavy gloom.

He was still lingering at the spot, when he heard other voices approaching from the side, and at this he drew back as silently as a shadow that moves beneath a cloud across the surface of the earth. The trees received him; the big trunks swarmed and thickened between him and the clearing, and so he moved back and back until he was at a sufficient distance to give over his caution and to stride boldly and freely away among the forest aisles. He did not walk, however. Walking was not for him at such a time as this, for there were vital miles between him and Trout Lake, where he had much to do.

He broke into a run, an easy and light striding as the run of a Navajo Indian, those matchless desert runners that can put one hundred miles behind them between sunrise and sunset, and in a week outmarch the toughest mustang. So, weaving among the trees, he sloped away across the mountainside, and still, as he ran, he was smiling.

 

When Ben Thomas reached Trout Lake, his mind was entirely made up. He had been turning various possibilities over in his thoughts during the journey back, and his decision, he believed, was entirely practical. The moment he got to the town, therefore, he started to act on it with the fine, quick decision of a man of affairs.

He dropped the girl at the hotel, merely saying: “We have to hurry, Jessica. You have the mules put up . . . here's money to pay for 'em. I'll hurry over and arrange things at the bureau, so that there'll be nothing for you to do except to sign your name when it comes to filing the claim. I'll be back here in a few minutes . . . maybe a half hour. Will you be ready?”

“Ready?” said the girl. “I'll be waiting on pins and needles. Do you know what it means to me?”

“It means a fortune in hard cash, or soft yellow gold, any way you look at it,” suggested Ben Thomas with a grin.

She shook her head. “It means that there'll be enough money to hire one good lawyer, and I know that one good lawyer will be able to clear Father before the world.”

He nodded, waved, and was off, smiling reassurance at her over his shoulder. As a matter of fact, her last remark had made him feel that what he was about to do was not a crime at all, but almost a virtue.

Who is it that does not know that lawyers are a quicksand that will swallow up a fortune as a shark swallows a small fish? Therefore, if the girl intended to spend her fortune on the law, it was far better that she should have no fortune to spend. That money would round out the sum that he needed.

He never had seen himself satisfactorily as a small rancher. The picture of Ben Thomas that he retained in his inmost mind's eye was of a great power, a man of nationally felt force, one whose name would be familiar to the captains of finance.

He was sure that he had in him the brains and the mental resource to employ great good fortune, if ever it came his way. But the cattle business had not brought him luck. On the contrary, he seemed apt to buy high and sell low. Then there was the matter of the infernal mortgages. He had thought himself a lucky man when he was able to raise the money at the banks. He had assured himself that in two years, at the most, he would be able to pay off the debt. As a matter of fact, he had increased his indebtedness, and never lowered it a penny. That he constantly attributed to bad fortune, not to lack of energy or ability on his part.

In the back of his mind, there was established a sneering contempt for most other men who he met. He was always seeing political posters along the roads, nailed or pasted up, and reading in place of the actual names:
Ben Thomas, for state senator; Ben Thomas for sheriff; Benjamin Thomas, the people's true friend, for governor; The Honorable Benjamin Royce Thomas, for the United States Senate!

In those terms he saw himself, and they were the reality. This actual self that moved through the world, unappreciated, slapped upon the shoulder as hearty, hail-fellow-well-met, Ben Thomas, the rancher, was merely the sham that bad luck forced him to maintain against his will, against his higher nature.

Now, as he walked rapidly down the street, he saw the future with amazing clearness. There might be half a million, perhaps a million in that black clay on the shoulder of the mountain. Half of that sum he could put in investments, and he knew just where to place the money—in small loans to ranches that would soon go under and whose owners could be squeezed out into the road while he, Ben Thomas, properly organized the places. The other half he would use to pay his debts, build a good house, enlarge and restock completely the old place, and suddenly step forward as a public-spirited citizen, ready to assume the burdens of legislation and law enforcement.

Well, he felt that he had the presence, for one thing, and for another he was confident that he had the brains. It might be that he had failed so far to make a great position for himself, but that was simply because he never had been able to fill his hands with opportunities large enough to fit his grasp.

This was the humor he was in, when he came to his first and most important destination, a little shack on the street, with a shingle sticking out over the door and painted with the inscription:
Office of the Sheriff: Samuel Hollis.
He turned in under the sign and found himself in a little room, half of which was clouded with the blue-brown of cigarette smoke.

Through that cloud he saw a man whose hair was so straw-colored, and whose eyes were so pale a gray that he looked like an albino. There was something startling about his nondescript features. He was standing by a table and revealing himself in boots and long, spoon-handled spurs. His chaps were of worn, scarred leather, hanging over the back of a neighboring chair. He was not very big, and he was not very impressive. Ben Thomas wished that he had found a more startling and formidable-looking man.

Another man had preceded Ben Thomas. This visitor was dressed up in the semiofficial costume of a gambler, from the long coat to the wide-brimmed hat of gray felt. He was a big, important-looking fellow, but now he was sagging, as though under a weight. And the gentle, soothing voice of the sheriff was heard saying, in a mere murmur: “The only thing is, that I wouldn't do it again. Mind you, I ain't got a thing ag'in' you. I don't want to have a thing ag'in' you. I'm only telling you . . . I hope that I won't hear a yarn like that ag'in, with you in it.”

“You won't hear a thing like that again,” said the other. “On my word of honor.”

“Don't go to promising. Go to doing,” said the sheriff. “So long, and good luck to you, brother.”

The gambler walked to the door, blinked at the sun, and then slid away to one side with a furtive, dodging movement, as though he were afraid that a gun might be leveled against him from behind.

The opinion of Ben Thomas about the sheriff rose a great deal. He stepped forward and said: “Are you Sam Hollis?”

“That's my name,” said the other gently.

“I'm Ben Thomas. I've brought you news.”

“News that comes to a sheriff ain't often good news,” said Sam Hollis. “But what is it?”

“You've heard of Oliver Fenton?”

“Ain't he the man that killed Henry Dodson?”

“That's the one. And he's the one that Missus Dodson will pay ten thousand dollars for, once he's brought to trial.”

“Ten thousand is a lot of money,” said the sheriff.

“I can tell you where to pick it up.”

“You mean, where to pick up Fenton? Ain't that the idea that you're drivin' at?”

“That's the idea.”

The sheriff nodded. “That'd be right friendly,” he declared. A mild, childish interest began to flicker in his pale eyes.

“Here's the place,” said the other. Quickly he dictated the description of the way to the shoulder of the mountain where Oliver Fenton had struck the pay dirt.

“That sounds good to me,” said the sheriff. “Maybe I could pick up that fellow. You don't know him?”

“I know him pretty well.”

“Know whether he's much of a fighting man?”

“Every Fenton's a fightin' man,” declared the rancher, “and Ollie Fenton is a scoundrel, that's all. He's a demon on wheels. He ain't a youngster, but he's fast, and he's strong.”

“I wasn't exactly talking about fistfighting,” the sheriff drawled naïvely.

“He can use guns, too,” said Ben Thomas. “He's a mighty good shot.”

“He might be a good shot, but is he a cool head?” asked the sheriff.

“He's the coldest that you ever seen, when it comes to a pinch. He's the kind of fire that don't sputter, but it burns through steel plate like shingle wood.”

“I've seen that kind of man, I reckon,” said the sheriff as mildly as before. “I'd kind of like to have a look at this Fenton, too. The ones that fight cold are always interesting. Show me a gent that has to warm himself up by swearing a little before he pulls a gun, and I'll mostly show you a gent that shoots crooked, too . . . unless he's Irish.” He smiled a little, as he added the last words, and shrugged his lean shoulders.

Thomas was satisfied. He was convinced that he was in touch with a man who knew his work. “You'd better take some others along with you,” suggested Thomas.

“When I go out to bring in one man, I go alone,” said the sheriff. “Now, about a split in the reward, if any reward turns up. Whacha think should be your split?”

“My split? Well, what do you say?” asked Thomas, always pleased to bargain.

“One third,” said the sheriff.

“A half, sounds more like it to me,” said Thomas.

“He's a fightin' man,” said the sheriff. “I notice that you didn't bring him in yourself.”

“Him? I couldn't bring him in myself, and I can't be mentioned. I know him, d'ye see?”

The eyes of the sheriff narrowed for a shooting instant. “Might be that you're a friend of his?” he suggested.

“I ranched near him,” Thomas responded uncomfortably.

The sheriff nodded. “I see,” he said. As he considered Thomas, the latter found that his face was rapidly growing very warm. “We'll make it a half, if you say so,” said the sheriff, half turning away.

“Aw, a third would do, too,” said Thomas, red but amiable. “Let it go at that. And where's the bureau? I'm gonna file on a little claim . . .” He reached, as he spoke, for the full description of the claim that Oliver Fenton had written out and given to him. To his amazement, the papers were no longer in his coat pocket.

 

There was a reason for the disappearance of the prize from the pocket of big Ben Thomas. When he had reached the hotel with the girl, across the street, in the smoky mouth of a blacksmith shop, Speedy had been standing, breathing rather hard from his long run across the uplands and through the woods. But he had been content because he had arrived in town before Thomas and his protégée. It was not for nothing that he had lain out on the limb of the pine tree and studied the upturned evil in the face of the big man, back there in the clearing.