CHAPTER XII
THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW VEILS ITSELF
"Do you mean me to believe," the old frontiersman drew himself up to the full height of British superiority to everything outside the island of its own circumscribed knowledge, "do you mean me to believe that if any of these poor herders had escaped as witnesses, we'd not have been able to send these blackguard murderers to the gallows?"
The Ranger had signalled for some of the road gang to ascend from below the battlements to keep guard till the coroner could come. The little pack mule to the fore, Wayland and Matthews were picking the way slowly down the terra cotta trail of the Rim Rocks.
"It does not make the slightest difference in the world what you or I believe, Sir! The facts are unless you could offer a witness money enough to take him out the United States and to keep him for the rest of his life, he would develop a good-forgetter, or else the same old gag—'been blind folded,' 'didn't see,' and so on, and on, and on; you can't blame them! I'll bet if every one of the herders had escaped instead of festering there in the ash heap, they'd all be legging it out of the country far and fast as they could go."
The little mule came to a stand at a bend in the switch back; and the old evangelist sat ruminating silently on his broncho.
"Y' have a sheriff?"
Wayland laughed.
"He's like the Indian flies; a no-see-him. He'll ride over the hills for weeks and if he tumbles over the top of his prisoner, he can't find his man!"
The old Britisher looked doubtfully at Wayland, as much as to say, "I don't believe you."
"You're no temptin' me to take the law into our own hands?"
Again Wayland laughed.
"My dear sir, you don't understand! I don't want to drag you into this at all! For ten years, the powers that stand for law in this country have been marking time behind the firing line; while the other fellow got away with the goods. They have been marking time while Crime scored, and what you call the Devil kept tally."
The old man nodded his head approvingly.
"That's all true!"
"You ask me if I intend to break the law? No, Sir, I do not; but I do intend to carry the law out beyond the firing line. The thief strains the law to get away with the goods; I am going to strain the law to get them back. The murderer strains the law to protect his damned useless neck; I'm going to strain the law to break his neck. Unless," he added, "I break my own neck doing it."
The old man had drawn down his brows. "A don't just like the sound of it; what's your plan?"
"To go out with a gun till I get them; the way your own Mounted Police do up in Canada! I'm going to quit monkeying with technicalities in the twilight zone . . . and go out . . . after the man."
The old Britisher sat thinking: "Wayland, if A was managing this thing, first thing A'd do would be blow such a blast on your local press, the authorities would have to sit up, then—A'd go after your sheriff if A had to tackle the coward by the scruff of his scurvy neck, A'd make him ashamed . . . not . . . to act."
"All right, Sir! Manage this thing . . . manage it just as you would behind your hide-bound British laws! We'll pass the Senator's ranch in ten minutes. You can telephone down to 'The Smelter City Herald.' I'll get something ready to eat while you telephone. Then, we'll go right along to the sheriff."
They kicked their ponies lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and shirt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers.
"That's the foreman, ask him!"
"'Twould oblige me t' have the use of your telephone?"
The man in the knickerbockers tilted his hat at a rakish angle, stuck a tooth-pick in the corner of his mouth, put his thumbs in his jacket arm holes, shot Wayland a quick look of questioning, grinned at the old man and nodded towards a white pergola standing apart from the veranda of the ranch house.
"Find it there," he indicated, "drop a nickel—then, ring!"
"Did you see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference.
"Yes, but looks don't go with a jury."
"Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!"
For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh. What was happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view?
"I'll go on down to the River and prepare grub."
What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; but what was passing in the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man's thumbs and feet—could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?
At the River, the Ranger loosened the saddle girths and put a small kettle to boil above a fire of cottonwood chips and grass. Then he took out his note book and wrote the note to Eleanor which he gave to one of the road gang for Calamity. The note said: "We are setting out on the Long Trail . . . the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives . . . the trail of the Man behind the Thing . . . the Man Higher Up." How did the Ranger know what was going on up at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?
There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited the old man's return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could she realize, did a woman ever realize what her love meant to a man. She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising spring! . . . He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke—
"A somehow—didna' seem—to get—them clear! They answered; then—they didna' answer! Smelter City Herald—ye said? 'Twas strange—'twas vera strange—A got an answer plain asking my name—then central said 'ring off! ring off! can't get them, wire out of order'!"
This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant place to a Nation's alarm?
They ate their bannocks—'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the slap-jacks—in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.
"What's that, Wayland?"
"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the Pass of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.
The horses cropped audibly over the grasses—waiting. The little mule looked back—also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch—came over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to see her—just once before setting out on the Long Trail.
"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"
The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.
"We'll try y'r sheriff—at least, we'll try him first."
And again the Ranger laughed.
"Don't laugh, man! D' y' know what it means when men are driven outside the line of law?"
The horses waded in midstream and reached down drinking, champing on their bits.
"Well—what does it mean?"
He saw the blue of the mountain stream swirl and whirl and eddy over the sun-dyed pebbles, singing the law of the far mountain snows.
"God knows," answered the old man slowly. "It means disrupture. We slew our kings in olden times; but ye are a many headed king in this land! It means—perhaps, ye call it Anarchy to-day."
The yellow noon-day light sifted through the cottonwoods jewel-spangled on the crystal blue River. The Ranger always knew the character of the mountains from the River: silty and milky-blue from glaciers; crystal and green-blue from the snow. And they rode away up the Valley from the ranch houses towards the Pass, out beyond the bounds of the National Forests with the trees marked two notches and one blaze; gradually up the narrowing trail fringed by the shiny laurel bushes; with the mountains closing closer and the spiced balsam odor raining on the air a sifted gold dust of sunlight. At intervals, came the dull rumble of the snow slide, the far reverberation, the echo of the law of the snow flake rolling away the stone; the smash of the great law drama, the titans behind the mountains.
It was one of those frequent mountain formations where a Valley seems to terminate in a blank wall. You turn a buttress of rock, and you find the sheer wall opening before you in a trail that climbs to a notch on the sky line between forested flanks. The notch of blue is a Pass.
"Anyway, Mr. Matthews, we are splitting the air, now! We are doing more than sawing air."
They had put their horses to a sharp trot along the trail winding up the River. The water was gurgling over the polished pebbles with little leaps and glints of fire. Presently, the mountains had closed behind them. The River was tumbling with noisy rush in a succession of cascades, and the trail wound back from the rocky bank through circular flats or what were locally known as "bottoms."
"Sheriff live this way?" shouted Matthews; for the roar of the little stream filled the canyon.
"Has a ranch at the foot of the Pass."
"It won't be wasting time, anyway," said the old Britisher.
Again, Wayland smiled. If it would not be wasting time; then, they were already in pursuit of the outlaws. What was it in the insolent look of the Senator's ranch hand that had suddenly dashed the doughty Briton's reverence for the instrument of the law?
A barb wire fence tacked to spindly cottonwood trees marked the line of an irregular homestead; and the Ranger swung into a gate extemporized from barb wire on two adjustable posts. Behind the gate, stood a log shack; on the windows, cheap lace curtains; behind the lace curtains, a vague movement of peeping faces and a querulous termagant voice: "I ain't a goin' to have you mixed up in no scrap; so there, Dan Flood!"
Wayland dismounted and knocked on the door with his riding stock. It opened on an anaemic sulphur face with blond hair screwed in curl papers over a full row of gold headlights where an enterprising dentist had engrafted as much of Klondike as possible.
"Sheriff Flood in?" the Ranger raised his hat.
"Oh, how j' do, Mr. Wayland." All the curl papers nodded like clover tops in the wind, while the coy brows arched, and an inviting smile played round the simpering headlights. "No, he ain't! Dan ain't in!" The curl papers nodded again and the gold teeth simpered again.
"Is he—home?" The word home came out with the force of a bullet.
"No, he ain't home! Mr. Flood ain't home! The sheriff was called 'way! Is there any message?"
Wayland stood back and watched the fray. The old man gazed full at the frowsy apparition in the doorway. If dagger looks could have stabbed her, the lady would have dropped dead stuck full of as many daggers as a cushion is of pins. The gold headlights suffered eclipse behind a pair of tightly perked lips; and one hand darted hold of the door knob.
"Yes," he said, looking fixedly at the deep V of ash-colored skin where the lady had turned back the neck of her pink wrapper in imitation of gowns seen in the Sunday supplement of "The Smelter City Herald." "There was murder done on the Rim Rocks last night! There's festering bodies lying on top of yon Mesas! 'Tis a job for the sheriff, not for an outsider—"
"Yes, Sir," said the gold headlights, "I think he's gone to see about it."
He had looked her slowly over again from the blondine hair and the ash-colored V of unclean skin and waistless slop of slattern wrapper to clock work stockings and high heeled slippers.
"A ha' ma doubts he's sprintin' fr' the back door this minute! Are ye the sheriff's—woman?" and oddly enough the lady didn't flush; but the faintest gloss came over the saffron skin—of what? It was the same nonchalant, wordless insolence that had played in the eyes of the man who had come out from the Senator's ranch.
"Yes, Sir, I'll deliver your message a' right," flickered the headlights reassuringly.
The old man stood stolidly and scorched the lady's eyes.
"How long since y'r sheriff thing set out? Did he break loose by the back door?"
"There ain't no back door," snapped the headlights; and the front door slammed in their faces. Wayland burst in a peal of laughter.
"'Tis no laughing matter! 'Tis bad enough t' depend on that broken reed of a dastard coward sheriff hidin' under the bed! A've a mind to go back an' have him oot; but that—pot ash pate—" what else the old man called her was more truthful than elegant for an expurgated age. They replaced the post of the barbed wire gate in its loop and mounted their horses.
"Well, Sir?" asked Wayland. "I don't wish to offend your British sense of law; but which way now?"
The old man left the reins hanging on the broncho's neck. The horses began cropping the grass. The Ranger was fumbling at his stirrup.
"A'm sore puzzled, Wayland! 'Tis not in the blood of a British born to go outside law. Y'r no thinkin' that; are y', Wayland?"
"I am saying nothing! The law protects them in their lawlessness. It doesn't protect us in our lawfulness. The American citizen is the law-maker. There is only one thing for an American citizen to do—get to work and enforce his laws—"
"Then—God's name, Wayland, go ahead and do it! Take the lead! A'll follow! This trail go behind the mountain?"
"Yes, it brings us round behind! They have the start of us by three hours; but they'll camp to-night somewhere along the Lake Behind the Peak. Beyond that, there are some mighty bad slides. These rains have loosened snows. They'll hardly cross the slides beyond the lake but by daylight. If we can reach the lake to-day, we'll have a chance at 'em."
"Wayland, A'm on the last lap of my trail! It doesn't matter what happens to me; but have you thought what might happen when we catch up on them? Those fellows are out to kill. We are out to arrest. Have you thought what that might mean at close quarters?"
"It's close quarters I'm seeking," said Wayland, "though it's hardly fair to drag you into the fight. All I want is a man as a witness who's got red blood that won't turn yellow. This Nation has been cowering behind the line of law, while the looters and skinners have disarmed our very firing line. It's time somebody risked his neck to reverse the order—"
"Git epp," said the old man roughly to his broncho.
The little pack mule took to the trail ears back at an easy lope; and the riders set off up the Pass at the rocking-chair trot of the plains-horseman. Gradually, the mountains crowded closer, in weather-stained rock walls, with a far whish as of wind or waters coming up from the canyon bottom; the sky overhead narrowing to a cleft of blue with the frayed pines and hemlocks hanging from the granite blocks, fragile as ferns against the sky. You looked back; the rocks had closed to a solid wall; you looked down; the river filling the canyon with a hollow hush had dwarfed to a glistening silver thread with the forest dwarfed banks of moss. It was a sombre world, all the more shadowy from that cleft of blue over head where an eagle circled with lonely cry.
The Pass was like the passage of birth and death from life to larger life. On the other side of the mountain lay the sun-bathed Valley and the Ridge with its silver cataracts and the opal peak with the glistening snow cross. This side, the Mountain in the Valley of the Shadow became giant beveled masonry, tier on tier, criss-crossed and scarred by the iced cataracts of a billion years—no sound but the raucous scream of the lone eagle, the hollow hush of the far River, the tinkling of the water-drip freezing as it fell. Then, where the cleft of blue smote the rocks with sunlight, the doors of the mountains would open again to larger life in another Valley.
The horses were no longer trotting. They were climbing and blowing and pausing where the trail of the Pass took sharp turns, back and forward, up and up, till the eagle was circling below. Both men had dismounted and were walking Indian file to the rear, Wayland carrying his own cased rifle. The trail was now running along the edge of an escarpment no wider than a saddle, sheer drop below, sheer wall above.
"How would they come out from the gully on this trail, Wayland? I have been watching for the tracks. They're not ahead of us."
"Gully ends in a blind wall above. As I make it, they'd push their nags up and come down on the Pass trail somewhere below the precipice ahead. We can take our time; I have been watching. There are no tracks ahead. The trail above is worse than this. Devil takes care of his own; or they would have broken their necks long ago coming back and forward. We'll let 'em go down to the lake first. They'll go into the trap. It's a lake mostly ice this time of the year. There's an old punt sometimes used by hunters. It'll take them an hour to cross with their horses. We'll let them camp at the lake. We could pot them there, if we had a sheriff worth his salt."
"'Tis a great trail, Wayland! Minds me of my days building bridges in the Rockies! 'Tisn't just a matter o' courage to follow these precipice trails: it's temperament! 'Tis something in the pit o' the stomach! A mind one of our best engineers; he could meet Chinese navvies with their knives out: couldn't cross one of the precipices to save his life without blinders like a horse: we had to blindfold him so he wouldn't know till he'd crossed. How deep do you call it here?"
"About 7,000 feet drop, I think. This is the top of the Pass. We go down after we leave the precipice! See—? the horses know it! They are taking their top-turn rest."
The two men glanced below. In the shadowed depths, they could see the River tearing down a white fume, a pantherine thing leaping—leaping—; and the hollow roar of water filled the canyon with a quiver that was tangible. Far below, the eagle flew lazily, lifting and falling to the throb of the canyon winds. Suddenly, the air was cut by a piercing whistle. Both men jumped.
"It's only a marmot." The Ranger pointed over his shoulder to the little gray beast sitting on the face of the rock. "Curious place, this Pass! There is an echo here—if it were not that we don't want to announce ourselves, I'd let you hear it. If you yell or sing, you can hear the thing dancing along that opposite wall—Kind of uncanny, the echo voice, in the mist here sometimes."
But the whistle of the marmot had also startled the horses. The tired pack mule gave a hobbling jump and came to a stand. A stone no larger than a horse-shoe kicked loose, tottered on the edge, and went bounding over. It struck the tier of rock below with clattering echo, displaced another stone twice its size, then bounced—bounced—and a slither of slaty rock the size of a house wrenched out—shot into mid-air with crash and sharp clappering echoes—Then the Pass was filled with the thundering roll. They saw it sink—sink—sink and fade, while the echo still rocketted amid the rock tops—sink—sink—sink—no larger than a spool in the purple shadows, till with a plunge it disappeared.
"Whew, it would be going if one went over." The old man mowed the sweat from his forehead and drew a breath.
On the instant, the hollow chasm of the canyon split to the crash of a rifle shot that rocketted and quaked and repeated in splintering echoes; and a bullet pinged at Wayland's feet.
"That's splitting the air for you—Wayland."
"Drop down, Sir," urged the Ranger, pulling the old frontiersman to shelter of the upper rocks. "They have come out above. They have heard that cursed stone. That's only a chance shot to learn where we are. They can't come behind. They have got to go down ahead—"
"And the fat's in the fire; for my rifle's gone with the horse," deplored the old man woefully; for mule and bronchos had galloped along the trail with the clatter of a cavalcade through the canyon. Wayland handed the old man his own rifle and took the six shooter from his belt beneath the leather coat.
"They won't understand this pursuit at all," explained Wayland. "Sheriff Flood is the guarantee of safety for any criminal in the country side. They'll think it a citizens' posse. Where this trail comes down at the end of the precipice is a crag. Will you hide behind that, sir? I'll go above and head them down. I'm not asking you to risk your life. They'll not see you till they gallop down."
"But you are risking your own life if you go up?"
"So does the fellow who has slipped on a banana peel," said Wayland.