CHAPTER XXVI
A MAN IS HANGED
Sanderson and Streak grew dim in the distance until, to the watchers at the ranchhouse, horse and rider merged into a mere blot that crawled up the long slope leading to the mesa. The watchers saw the blot yet a little longer, as it traveled with swift, regular leaps along the edge of the mesa; then it grew fainter and fainter, and at last they saw it no more.
Dale's men, their backs to Owen and Mary, seemed to have accepted their defeat in a spirit of resignation, for they made no attempt to turn their heads.
Mary, white and shaking, though with a calmness that came from the knowledge that in this crisis she must do what she could, went inside and stood behind Owen, ready to respond to any call he might make upon her.
Owen, his rage somewhat abated, though he still watched Dale and his men with sullen, malevolent eyes, had changed his position. Mary had brought a chair, and Owen sat on it, the rifle still resting on the window-sill, menacing the men.
The minutes, it seemed to the girl, passed with exceeding slowness. She watched the hands of a clock on a shelf in the room drag themselves across the face of the dial, and twice she walked in front of the shelf and peered intently at the clock, to be certain it was going.
Williams and the other men had been gone for something more than an hour. But, as Owen had said, they would travel slowly, having no incentive for haste. Sanderson, on the other hand, would make Streak run his best—and she knew Streak could run.
So she began to estimate the time that would elapse before Sanderson and Williams returned. With an hour's start, she gave Sanderson three-quarters of an hour to catch them. Then, three quarters of an hour additional would be required for the run home—if they came back as swiftly as Sanderson had gone.
But she doubted that. She would give them a full hour for the return trip. That would make an hour and three quarters.
But it seemed to her that an age elapsed before the minute hand on the clock dragged itself one-quarter of the distance around the circle.
She looked out at Dale and his men. The men were all standing, their backs to the house. But it seemed to the girl that they were standing nearer to one another than they had been all along, and a pulse of trepidation ran over her.
Watching them closely, Mary felt they were meditating some action. They were whispering to one another, and Dale was gesturing as emphatically as he could.
The girl was certain they contemplated concerted action of some sort, and she was just about to apprise Owen of her fears, when she saw one of the men—and then another and another—working with the ropes that bound them. One of the men turned, a huge grin on his face. She caught the flash of metal in the man's hands, saw the rope fall from them, severed.
She shouted, then, at Owen:
"Look out, Barney; they've got a knife!"
At the instant she spoke the men moved as though by prearrangement. By the time her voice reached Owen's ears the men had scattered, running in all directions. Several ran directly away from the house, others toward it, some went toward the corners of the building nearest them. All were running zigzag fashion.
Owen, his eyes blazing, fired three times in rapid succession. One of the men tumbled, headlong, turning over several times and landing face downward on the sand of the yard; but several others, apparently uninjured, ran straight for the ranchhouse.
There were no stationary targets for Owen to shoot at. By the time he had fired the three shots the men were all moving. Several the girl saw as they ran around the ranchhouse; three or four others ran straight for the door in which she stood.
She cried sharply to Owen, and the latter fired once, as three or four figures crossed the porch. The girl could not tell whether or not Dale was one of the three, for the men moved quickly.
Owen missed; Mary heard him curse. And before he had time to do either again the men were inside. Mary was standing near Owen, and she had reached down for one of the pistols that lay on the floor.
By the time the men entered the door she had raised the weapon, and as the first figure burst through the opening, she leveled the weapon and pulled the trigger.
The gun went off, but did no apparent damage, and before she could fire again the men were upon her. She threw the heavy weapon into the face of the man nearest her—she did not look at him; and ran through the nearest door, which opened into the kitchen. She heard the man curse as the weapon struck him full in the face, and she knew, then, that she had struck Dale.
In the kitchen the girl hesitated. She would have gone outside, on the chance that the men there might not see her, but, hesitating at the kitchen door, she saw a big man running toward it.
So she turned and ran into the room she used as a pantry, slamming the door behind her, bolting it and leaning against it, breathing heavily.
She had not, however, escaped the eyes of the man who had been running toward the kitchen door. She heard Dale's voice, asking one of the men if he had seen her, and the latter answered:
"She ducked into the pantry and closed the door."
She heard a man step heavily across the kitchen floor, and an instant later he was shoving against the door with a shoulder.
"Bolted, eh?" he said with a short laugh. He walked away, and presently returned. "Well, you'll keep," he said, "there ain't any windows."
She knew from his voice that the man was Dale. He had gone outside and had seen there was no escape for her except through the door she had barred.
There came a silence except for the movements of the men, and the low hum of their voices. She wondered what had become of Owen, but she did not dare unbolt the door for fear that Dale might be waiting on the other side of it. So, in the grip of a nameless terror she leaned against the door and waited.
She heard Dale talking to his men; he was standing near the door behind which she stood, and she could hear him distinctly.
"You guys hit the breeze after Sanderson. Kill him,—an' anybody that's with him! Wipe out the whole bunch! I'll stay here an' make the girl tell me where the coin is. Get goin', an' go fast, for Sanderson will travel some!"
The girl heard the boots of the men clatter on the floor as they went out. Listening intently, she could hear the thudding of their horses' hoofs as they fled. She shrank back from the door, looking hard at it, wondering if it would hold, if it would resist Dale's efforts to burst it open—as she knew he would try to do.
She wished, now, that she had followed Sanderson's suggestion about riding after Williams. This situation would not have been possible, then.
Working feverishly, she piled against the door all the available articles and objects she could find. There were not many of them, and they looked a pitifully frail barricade to her.
A silence that followed was endured with her cringing against the barricade. She had a hope that Dale would search for the money—that he would find it, and go away without attempting to molest her. But when she heard his step just outside the door, she gave up hope and stood, her knees shaking, awaiting his first movement.
It came quickly enough. She heard him; saw the door give just a trifle as he leaned his weight against it.
The movement made her gasp, and he heard the sound.
"So you're still there, eh? Well, I thought you would be. Open the door!"
"Dale," she said, desperately, "get out of here! I'll tell you where the money is—I don't want it."
"All right," he said, "where is it?"
"It's in the parlor; the packages are stuffed between the springs of the lounge."
He laughed, jeeringly.
"That dodge don't go," he said in a voice that made her feel clammy all over. "If it's there, all right. I'll get it. But the money can wait. Open the door!"
"Dale," she said, as steadily as she could, "if you try to get in here I shall kill you!"
"That's good," he laughed; "you threw your gun at me. It hit me, too. Besides if you had a gun you'd be lettin' it off now—this door ain't so thick that a bullet wouldn't go through it. Shoot!"
Again there came a silence. She heard Dale walking about in the kitchen. She heard him place a chair near the wall which divided the pantry from the kitchen, and then for the first time she realized that the partition did not reach entirely to the ceiling; that it rose to a height only a few feet above her head.
She heard Dale laugh, triumphantly, at just the instant she looked at the top of the partition, and she saw one of Dale's legs come over. It dangled there for a second; then the man's head and shoulders appeared, with his hands gripping the top of the wall.
She began to tear at the barricade she had erected, and had only succeeded in partially demolishing it, when Dale swung his body over the wall and dropped lightly beside her.
She fought him with the only weapons she had, her hands, not waiting for him to advance on her, but leaping at him in a fury and striking his face with her fists, as she had seen men strike others.
He laughed, deeply, scornfully, as her blows landed, mocking her impotent resistance. Twice he seized her hands and swept them brutally to her sides, where he held them—trying to grip them in one of his; but she squirmed free and fought him again, clawing at his eyes.
The nails of her fingers found his cheek, gashing it deeply. The pain from the hurt made him furious.
"Damn you, you devil, I'll fix you!" he cursed. And in an access of bestial rage he tore her hands from his face, crushed them to her sides, wrenching them cruelly, until she cried out in agony.
Then, his face hideous, he seized her by the shoulders and crushed her against the outside wall, so that her head struck it and she sagged forward into his arms, unconscious.
The lock on Barney Owen's rifle had jammed just as Dale entered the room, following the rush of the men to the outside door. He had selected Dale as his target.
He tried for a fatal instant to work the lock, saw his error, and swung the weapon over his head in an attempt to brain the man nearest him. The man dodged and the rifle slipped from Owen's hands and went clattering to the floor. Then the man struck with the butt of one of the pistols he had picked up from the floor, and Owen went down in a heap.
When he regained consciousness the room was empty. For a time he lay where he had fallen, too dizzy and faint to get to his feet; and then he heard Dale's voice, saying:
"A bullet wouldn't go through it. Shoot!"
At the sound of Dale's voice a terrible rage, such as had seized Owen at the moment he had stuck the rifle through the window, gripped him now, and he sat up, swaying from the strength of it. He got to his feet, muttering insanely, and staggered toward the kitchen door—from the direction in which Dale's voice seemed to come.
It took him some time to reach the door, and when he did get there he was forced to lean against one of the jambs for support.
But he gained strength rapidly, and peering around the door jamb he was just in time to see Dale step on a chair and lift himself over the partition dividing the kitchen from the pantry.
Owen heard the commotion that followed Dale's disappearance over the partition; he heard the succeeding crashes and the scuffling. Then came Dale's voice:
"Damn you, you devil, I'll fix you!"
Making queer sounds in his throat, Owen ran into the sitting-room where the weapons taken from the men had been piled. They were not there. He picked up the rifle. By some peculiar irony the lock worked all right for him now, but a quick look told him there were no more cartridges in the magazine. He dropped the rifle and looked wildly around for a another weapon.
He saw a lariat hanging from a peg on the kitchen wall. It was Sanderson's rope—Owen knew it. Sanderson had oiled it, and had hung it from the peg to dry.
Owen whined with joy when he saw it. His face working, odd guttural sounds coming from his throat, Owen leaped for the rope and pulled it from the peg. Swiftly uncoiling it, he glanced at the loop to make sure it would run well; then with a bound he was on the chair and peering over the top of the partition, the rope in hand, the noose dangling.
He saw Dale directly beneath it. The Bar D man was standing over Mary Bransford. The girl was on her back, her white face upturned, her eyes closed.
Grinning with hideous joy, Owen threw the rope. The loop opened, widened, and dropped cleanly over Dale's head.
Dale threw up both hands, trying to grasp the sinuous thing that had encircled his neck, but the little man jerked the rope viciously and the noose tightened. The force of the jerk pulled Dale off his balance, and he reeled against the partition.
Before he could regain his equilibrium Owen leaned far over the top of the partition. Exerting the last ounce of his strength Owen lifted, and Dale swung upward, swaying like an eccentric pendulum, his feet well off the floor.
Dale's back was toward the wall, and he twisted and squirmed like a cat to swing himself around so that he could face it.
During the time Dale struggled to turn, Owen moved rapidly. Leaping off the chair, keeping the rope taut over the top of the partition, Owen ran across the kitchen and swiftly looped the end of the rope around a wooden bar that was used to fasten the rear outside door.
Then, running into the front room, he got the rifle, and returning to the kitchen he got on the chair beside the partition.
He could hear Dale cursing. The man's legs were thrashing about, striking the boards of the partition. Owen could hear his breath as it coughed in his throat. But the little man merely grinned, and crouched on the chair, waiting.
He was waiting for what he knew would come next. Dale would succeed in twisting his body around before the rope could strangle him, he would grasp the rope and pull himself upward until he could reach the top of the partition with his hands.
And while Owen watched and waited, Dale's hands came up and gripped the top of the wall—both hands, huge and muscular. Owen looked at them with great glee before he acted. Then he brought the stock of the rifle down on one of the hands with the precision of a cold deliberation that had taken possession of him.
Dale screamed with the pain of the hurt, then cursed. But he still gripped the top of the partition with the other hand.
Owen grinned, and with the deliberation that had marked the previous blow he again brought the rifle stock down, smashing the remaining hand. That, too, disappeared, and Dale's screaming curses filled the cabin.
Owen waited. Twice more the hands came up, and twice more Owen crushed them with the rifle butt. At last, though Owen waited for some time, the hands came up no more. Then, slowly, cautiously, Owen stuck his head over the top of the partition.
Dale's head had fallen forward; he was swinging slowly back and forth, his body limp and lax.