Thereafter the talk was short. Now and again Sinclair gave some curt direction, but they put mile after mile behind them without a single phrase interchanged. Gaspar began to slump in the saddle. It brought a fierce rebuke from Sinclair.
"Straighten up. Put some of your weight in them stirrups. D"you think any hoss can buck up when it"s carrying a pile of lead? Come alive!"
"It"s the heat. It takes my strength," protested Gaspar.
"Curse you and your strength! I wouldn"t trade all of you for one ear of the hoss you"re riding. Do what I tell you!"
Without protest, without a flush of shame at this brutal abuse, John Gaspar attempted to obey. Then, as they topped a rise and reached a crest of a range of hills, Gaspar cried out in surprise. Sour Creek lay in the hollow beneath them.
"But you"re running straight into the face of danger!"
"Don"t tell me what I"m doing. I know maybe, all by myself!"
He checked his horse and sat his saddle, eying Gaspar with such disgust, such concentrated scorn and contempt, that the schoolteacher winced.
"I"ve brought you in sight of the town so"s you can go home."
"And be hanged?"
"You won"t be hanged. I"ll send a confession along with you. I"ve busted the law once. They"re after me. They might as well have some more reasons for hitting my trail."
"But is it fair to you?" asked Gaspar, intertwining his nervous fingers.
Sinclair heard the words and eyed the gesture with unutterable disgust.
At last he could speak.
"Fair?" he asked in scorn. "Since when have you been interested in playing fair? Takes a man with some nerve to play fair. You"ve spoiled my game, Gaspar. You"ve blocked me every way from the start, Cold Feet.
I killed Quade, and they"s another in Sour Creek that needs killing.
That"s something you can do. Go down and tell the sheriff when he happens along and show him my confession. Go down and tell him that I ain"t running away--that I"m staying close, and that I"m going to nab my second man right under his nose. That"ll give him something to think about."
He favored the schoolteacher with another black look and then swung out of the saddle, throwing his reins. He sat down with his back to a stunted tree. Gaspar dismounted likewise and hovered near, after the fashion of a man who is greatly worried. He watched while Sinclair deliberately took out an old stained envelope and the stub of a pencil and started to write. His brows knitted in pain with the effort.
Suddenly Gaspar cried: "Don"t do it, Mr. Sinclair!"
A slight lifting of Sinclair"s heavy brows showed that he had heard, but he did not raise his head.
"Don"t do what?"
"Don"t try to kill that second man. Don"t do it!"
Gaspar was rewarded with a sneer.
"Why not?"
The schoolteacher was desperately eager. His glance roved from the set face of the cowpuncher and through the scragged branches of the tree.
"You"ll be d.a.m.ned for it--in your own mind. At heart you"re a good man; I swear you are. And now you throw yourself away. Won"t you try to open your mind and see this another way?"
"Not an inch. Kid, I gave my word for this to a dead man. I told you about a friend of mine?"
"I"ll never forget."
"I gave my word to him, though he never heard it. If I have to wait fifty years I"ll live long enough to kill the gent that"s in Sour Creek now. The other day I had him under my gun. Think of it! I let him go!"
"And you"ll let him go again. Sinclair, murder isn"t in your nature.
You"re better than you think."
"Close up," growled the cowpuncher. "It ain"t no Sat.u.r.day night party for me to write. Keep still till I finish."
He resumed his labor of writing, drawing out each letter carefully. He had reached his signature when a low call from John Gaspar alarmed him.
He looked up to find the little man pointing and staring up the trail.
A horseman had just dropped over the crest and was winding leisurely down toward the plain below.
"We can get behind that knoll, perhaps, before he sees us," suggested Jig in a whisper. His suggestion met with no favor.
"You hear me talk, son," said Sinclair dryly. "That gent ain"t carrying no guns, which means that he ain"t on our trail, we being figured particularly desperate." He pointed this remark with a cold survey of the "desperate" Jig.
"But the best way to make danger follow you, Jig, is to run away from it. We stay put!"
He emphasized the remark by stretching luxuriously. Gaspar, however, did not seem to hear the last words. Something about the strange horseman had apparently riveted his interest. His last gesture was arrested halfway, and his color changed perceptibly.
"You stay, then, Mr. Sinclair," he said hurriedly. "I"m going to slip down the hill and--"
"You stay where you are!" cut in Sinclair.
"But I have a reason."
"Your reasons ain"t no good. You stay put. You hear?"
It seemed that a torrent of explanation was about to pour from the lips of Jig, but he restrained himself, white of face, and sank down in the shade of the tree. There he stretched himself out hastily, with his hands cupped behind his head and his hat tilted so far down over his face that his entire head was hidden.
Sinclair followed these proceedings with a lackl.u.s.ter eye.
"When you _do_ move, Jig," he said, "you ain"t so slow about it. That"s pretty good faking, take it all in all. But why don"t you want this strange gent to see your face?"
A slight shudder was the only reply; then Jig lay deadly still. In the meantime, before Sinclair could pursue his questions, the horseman was almost upon them. The cowpuncher regarded him with distinct approval.
He was a man of the country, and he showed it. As his pony slouched down the slope, picking its way dexterously among the rocks, the rider met each jolt on the way with an easy swing of his shoulders, riding "straight up," just enough of his weight falling into his stirrups to break the jar on the back of the mustang.
The stranger drew up on the trail and swung the head of his horse in toward the tree, raising his hand in cavalier greeting. He was a sunbrowned fellow, as tall as Sinclair and more heavily built; as for his age, he seemed in that joyous prime of physical life, twenty-five.
Sinclair nodded amiably.
"Might that be Sour Creek yonder?" asked the brown man.
"It might be. I reckon it is. Get down and rest your hoss."
"Thanks. Maybe I will."
He dropped to the ground and eased and stiffened his knees to get out the cramp of long riding. Off the horse he seemed even bigger and more capable than before, and now that he had come sufficiently close, so that the shadow from his sombrero"s brim did not partially mask the upper part of his face, it seemed to Sinclair that about the eyes he was not nearly so prepossessing as around the clean-cut fighter"s mouth and chin. The eyes were just a trifle too small, a trifle too close together. Yet on the whole he was a handsome fellow, as he pushed back his hat and wiped his forehead dry with a gay silk handkerchief.