CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE SHADOW
The outcropping which formed Cathedral Tank stood stark and saffron in the lap of the desert under the morning sun, flinging out slow waves of heat even at that early hour, as Sam McKee rode from the wash into the basin and stopped his horse.
Since the mountains themselves were made that group of pinnacles and ledges had jutted up from the seamed desert, a landmark for miles around, catching the flood waters that rushed toward it from far hills.
The name of the tank was result of no far-fetched imaginings for the granite rose in long, slender spires, as though the thirsty desert reached great fingers toward the sky in stiff appeal. Narrow defiles struck back into the granite and sharp crevices cut deeply down between the natural minarets, and at one place a larger opening led backward into the rocks, widened and narrowed again, forming the rough outlines of transept and nave. More, the wind which always blew there often sounded deep notes as of an organ when it wandered through narrow spaces.
On three sides this abrupt, ragged rise of rock shut in the basin and the other was open to the waters that swept down from the south and eastward. When McKee neared this entrance he stopped his horse and reconnoitered. The other rider was not in sight, lost in some of the many depressions of the valley and many miles yonder, for the gray horse had traveled a shorter distance and that at a trot. The roan could not arrive for some time.... So he reasoned....
The man stopped his horse at the edge of the fresh, deep scar which Hepburn's explosive had made. Other tracks were there, made by Riley yesterday. Across the way lay the dead steers and overhead a buzzard wheeled slowly, waiting to return to the feast from which he had been frightened by Sam's approach.
"Bone dry!" the man said aloud, and laughed.
Then he drank from his canteen and wiped his lips with a long sigh, either in satisfaction or anticipation, and then looked about; not absently, but with plan and craft.
To that point Beck would come, there he would stand, and behind was a ledge on the face of the towering rock, higher than a mounted man's head, deep and with enough backward pitch to conceal thoroughly a man's body. It would be a hard scramble, but he could gain it by aid of a tough stub which grew on the wall. Once there he would be protected.
McKee rode close under this ledge and stood in his saddle, lips parted and eyes alight. He could hold off a regiment there; what chance would one unsuspecting man have? As he stood so he unstrapped his gun and lay it with its belt on the shelf.
He dropped down and rode into a nearby, narrow crevice, where his horse could remain concealed, dismounted, and took down his rope, preparatory to tieing the animal.
He believed his growing haste was only anticipation, but perhaps there was a quality of premonition there. He had been unable to follow Beck's progress and remain concealed himself; therefore he had not seen the roan pick up his swinging trot as Tom's concentrated thought reached ferment and he sought relief in speed.
McKee reached for the reins to lead his horse further into the crevice. Then his heart leaped and he went quickly cold as he looked at the animal.
The gray's head was up, ears stiff, eyes alert as a horse will pose on sensing the approach of another animal. Even as Sam's hands flashed out for his nose the nostrils fluttered and had he been an instant later a betraying whinner would have gone echoing through the rocks to warn Beck. He drove his fingers into the soft muzzle and choked back the sound. The gray stepped quickly and shook his head whereat McKee relaxed his grasp somewhat. They then stood quiet, both listening, the horse alert, the man weak and white, breathing in fluttering gasps.
He was trapped! Outside on the ledge where he had planned to wait and shoot Beck down without giving or taking a chance, lay his gun. On either side the walls rose sheer, without so much as a hand-hold for yards above his head; before was a blank wall; outside was Tom Beck. And fear of a degree such as the man had never known shook his body.
It was that fear which is as dangerous to an enemy as the most absurd courage. Discovery would mean catastrophe; he had nothing to gain by shirking now!
Slowly he released his grip on the gray's nostrils, holding ready to clamp down again should the horse attempt to greet the other. He heard hoofs clatter on the rock basin, knew that Beck had stopped. Then the wind soughed through the rocks with its prolonged organ tone and for the moment McKee could only guess what happened out there.
The gray, with head turned, stared toward the opening of the crevice and then as no other sounds came, swung his head back to its normal position and switched rather languidly at flies.
Carefully McKee stole toward the entrance of the crevice where he might see the other man. He went with a hand against the granite, putting down his boots very carefully, hoping against hope that Beck would be far enough away so that he might either recover his gun or devise some means of escape. Perspiration ran from beneath his hat band and his hands were clammy cold. His breath continued in that fluttering gasp.
Beck had dismounted and was squatted beside the scar in the rocks. His roan stood a dozen feet behind him. McKee peered out, measuring the distance quickly. The other's back was to him but there was no chance that he could regain his gun without being detected. Beck's revolver swung from his hip, and McKee had nothing with which to fight but the rope in his hands....
The rope! He stared down at it and drew back behind the boulder of rock. The rope!
An absurd, impotent device, but it had served purposes as desperate as this! Besides ... there was a hope in it and, for McKee, there was no other hope beneath that blue dome of sky....
He looked out again as he built his loop. Beck was on hands and knees, peering down into the crack through which stored waters had trickled away. Sam made the loop quickly, steeled to caution. He moved out from his hiding place a step ... then another. The roan looked up, with a little whiff of breath and Beck, attracted by the movement, the slight noise, turned his head sharply toward the horse.
It was then that the loop swirled and that McKee sped forward a dozen paces as quickly, as quietly as a cat, balanced, sure of himself in that crisis. From the tail of his eye Beck saw the first loop cut the corner of his range of vision and his body made the first lunge toward an erect position as the lithe writhing thing sped through the air....
McKee had never thrown as true. The loop settled about Tom's arms and beneath his knees. It came taut with an angry rip through the hondou even as the snared man made the first move to throw it off. He was pitched violently forward on his face, arms pinned to his sides, legs doubled against his stomach.
The breath went from him in an angry oath of surprise as McKee's breath shot from his lips in another oath ... of triumph. Hand over hand he went down the rope, keeping it taut, yet hastening to reach the doubled body before Beck could wriggle free. He fell upon the other just as one arm worked slack enough to permit the hand to strain for the revolver at his hip.
Snarling, gibbering with a mingling of terror and rage, McKee's one hand fastened on the gun. He clung to the rope with the other, battering Beck, who struggled to rise, back to earth with his knees. His fingers clamped on the grip of the Colt; he pulled free: it flashed in the air as his thumb sought the hammer and then, as he drove the muzzle downward against its living target the man beneath him bowed and writhed and he went over with a cry. A fist struck his wrist, the revolver exploded in the air and fell clattering, a dozen feet away.
Then it was man to man, a fight of bone and muscle ... bone, muscle and rope. Blindly McKee clung to the strand with one hand. It passed about his body as they rolled over. Beck's own weight, struggling to tear from it, tightened its hold. Tom struck savagely at the face beside him with his one free fist but McKee's knees, jamming into his stomach, crushed breath from him.
For one vibrant instant their strength was matched, the one's physical advantage offset by the handicap of the lariat about him. And then the rope told. Slowly Tom's resistance became less, gradually McKee wound the hemp about his own hand and wrist, shutting down its sinuous grasp, drawing Beck's body into a more compact knot. With a desperate shift he was on top, winding the hard-twist about Tom's hands, trussing them tightly behind his back, licking his lips as he made his victim secure.
In that time neither had spoken nor did McKee utter a sound as he rose, wiped the dust and sweat from his eyes and surveyed the figure at his feet. Beck looked back at him, the rage in his eyes giving way to a sane calculation. At the cost of great effort he rolled over and propped himself on one elbow. A scratch on his forehead sent a trickle of blood into one eye and he shook his head to be rid of it, coughing slightly as he did so.
"Now," he said, his panting becoming less noticeable, "what do you think you're goin' to do?"
McKee laughed sharply and looked away. He walked to where the revolver lay in the sharp sunlight, picked it up, broke it, examined the cartridges and closed it again.
"I come out here to kill you, Beck; that's what I'm goin' to do next."
He did not lift his voice but about his manner was a defined swagger, the boasting of the craven who, for once, is beyond fear of retribution. A slow shadow crossed between them as the buzzard wheeled, waiting, lazily impatient....
Beck delayed a brief interval before asking:
"Right here, Sam? You going to kill me right here?"
"Right here, you—!" He spat out the unforgiveable epithet with a curl to his lip. For once he had this man where he wanted him; Beck's life was in his hands ... right in his palm.... "I'm goin' to kill you like I'd kill a snake! I've took a lot off you; I've stood for a lot from you, but you've gone too fur, you've played your hand too high!"
He began to feel a greater sense of his importance. He was dominating and it was sweet.
"I've waited a long time, Beck; I ain't forgot a thing you've done to me; I've been waitin' for just this chance!
"Now I'm goin' to kill you, you—!"
Again the word, with even great conviction. The man's lips trembled with rage, but as he glared down at the other he saw the level, mocking eyes studying his. He had not yet impressed Tom Beck, had not made him fear! It was disconcerting.
"What you goin' to kill me with, Sam?"
"With your own gun, by God!"—spinning the cylinder.
A moment of silence while Sam looked at the dull barrel, a queer, quick hesitancy coming over him, something he did not understand, something he did not will. When, a moment before, he felt that the situation would take a course exactly as he willed!
"With my own gun!" Beck repeated.
McKee cocked the weapon and looked about.
"When you goin' to do this killing, Sam?"
The level, mocking tone infuriated the other.
"Now!" he cried, shaken by hate. "Now, by God!"
He screamed the curse, threw the gun up to position and glared into Beck's face, moving forward a step, standing poised as though he would shoot and then fling himself upon his victim to vent his festering rage with his fists.
But he had failed to reckon throughout on one fact: The human eye is a stronger weapon than the inventive genius of man has ever devised, and he was meeting the gaze from an eye that was as steady, as fearless, as collected as any he had ever seen. His courage was the courage bred of cowardly impulses and it could not stand before fearlessness....
"Right now, Sam?"
The question was low, gentle, and with another shade of inflection might have been a plea. But it was no plea. It was subtle, stinging mockery which penetrated McKee's understanding and gave full life to that desire to hesitate which had shaken him a moment before.
"You ain't goin' to kill me right off, are you Sam?"
And at that McKee's irresolution became full blown. His body swung backward from its menacing poise, the gun hand dropped just a degree; his gaze, an instant before fixed and red with hate, now wavered.
"No, you ain't going to kill me now, Sam. You ain't got the guts!"
Prostrate, bound, wholly helpless, miles from aid, Beck flung those words from his lips. They pelted on McKee's ears like hard flung stones and he looked back to see the eyes that a moment ago had been amused, blazing righteous wrath.
"You wouldn't kill anybody, McKee," Beck said, after a breathless pause. In that pause McKee's gun hand had gone to his side and as it went down so did the flare of rage in Beck's face. His eyes grew calm and steady again with that covert amusement in them.
"You ain't just that kind of a man. If you'd been goin' to kill me you'd have done it right off. You wouldn't have waited, like you're waitin' now.... You missed out on your intentions, Sam, when you didn't do it pronto."
Across McKee's face swept a wave of helpless rage, humiliation, shame, self revulsion.... He stood there unable to move. He wanted to kill with a lust that men seldom feel, but he could not for he knew that he was a coward, knew that Beck knew, and the assurance that it was within his physical power to take a life without risk to his own mattered not at all. The moral force was lacking.
He tried to meet Beck's gaze and hold it but he could not. That man, even now, did not fear him, and to a man who had been impelled to every strong act by fear, fearlessness is of itself an overwhelming force.
Tom talked on, lowly, confidently. He chided, he made fun of his captor; he belittled himself, discussed his inability to defend himself, but time after time he said with emphasis:
"You're afraid of me, Sam."
Afraid of him! Yes, McKee was fear-filled. He could not kill and yet thought of the retribution that might come for going even this far put him in a panic. There were others who would kill. Webb would have done it, Hepburn might have ... there was one other who would have killed ... Hilton, but he could not and the others were far off. They would know, they would ridicule him and thought of that, coming so close on that high expectation of triumph that had sent him out onto the desert, made his position hopeless.
He turned and walked slowly toward the ledge which was to have been his assassin's hiding place.
"Goin' to leave me, Sam?" Beck asked.
"You'll see what I'm goin' to do?" McKee raved, wheeling, suddenly articulate. "You'll see what'll happen to you, you—! What's already happened is only a starter. I didn't intend to kill you myself. I only come here to hogtie you. I guess I done that, didn't I?"
"Ain't you just sure, Sam?"
The tone was stinging and where McKee might have raved on he simply grasped the stub on the rock and scrambled up until he could reach his revolver.
Beck asked if that was McKee's arsenal; wanted to know more about Sam's plans; wanted to know who sent him; wanted to know if any one else was coming or if they were going out to meet others.... He talked gently, slowly, tauntingly until McKee fidgetted like an embarrassed school girl.
After a time Beck struggled to a sitting position, back against a rock. The searing sun beat down on his bared head, his wrists were puffing, fingers numb and swollen from the ropes cutting into his flesh. His body ached miserably, but he would not betray that. His throat burned for water and there was water on his saddle, but he would not mention thirst. There yet was danger! He must keep the other impressed with his inferiority....
"That your pet buzzard, Sam?" he asked once, squinting upward at the wheeling scavenger. "Somebody said you kept one ... to pick up after you...."
"You wait! You'll have less to say after a while," McKee growled and stared off toward the heights to the eastward, feigning expectancy.
And then, as McKee paced back and forth, covering his helplessness and his fear to make another move, by the sham of watching for other arrivals, Beck's mind began working on a theory. Two-Bits had been shot down the day he had driven McKee off HC range. He had been shot from behind. McKee was the only one in the country who had a personal quarrel with the homely cowboy.
It was clear enough to him but he feared that an accusation, bringing some demonstration of guilt, might bring other things that he dared not risk. He played a game that was desperate enough. He lived by the grace of McKee's cowardice and that cowardice had permitted this triumph by the scantest possible margin. To provoke the desperation that he knew was latent in Sam's heart would be the rankest folly.
Noon, with blistering heat. McKee drank greedily, water running down his chin and spattering over his boots. It was agony for Beck but he fought against betraying evidence of it, holding his eyes on the other and smiling a trifle and wondering how long he could keep back the groans.
McKee squatted in the shade of a rock for a time. Once he looked at Beck while Tom was staring across the desert and that hate flickered up in his eyes again; then Tom looked back and he got up and walked, licking his lips.
Two o'clock: "I don't guess they're comin' today, Sam. Maybe you misunderstood 'em."
Three: "Sure is too bad to have your plans all go to hell, isn't it, Sam?"
The sensation had entirely gone from hands and lower arms. His biceps and shoulders ached as though they had been mauled; his back was shot with hot stabs of pain.
But at four o'clock he said: "You'd ought to have killed me, Sam. That'd surprised 'em for sure!"
He bit his lips to hold back the moan and for a time things swam. He hoped that he would not lose consciousness ... hoped this rather vaguely, for vaguely he felt that McKee would kill him should he be unable to realize what transpired. He had a confused notion that Jane Hunter was there and this disturbed him. He felt a poorly defined sinking sensation ... Jane ... and this. Why, then this really mattered very little! That his life was in danger, that his body hurt, were inconsequential details compared to the love that had died yesterday, to the hurt of his heart!
A draft of cooler air, sucking through the rocks, roused him and he looked up to find that the tank was entirely in shadows. The rocks were still hot but the air which moved above them was heavier, cooler. McKee paced nervously back and forth. He wore two guns.
"You reckon somebody's goin' to steal me?" Beck asked, forcing his voice to be steady. "I didn't realize I was valuable enough to be close herded by a two-gun man."
With the moderation of temperature Tom's alertness revived.
"I'm goin' to sleep right here, Sam; where are you going to turn in?" he asked. "I sleep pretty well in th' open; how about you?"
He leaned forward slightly and his eye had a brighter glint. Question after question he flung at the other. Now and then McKee growled; twice he cursed Beck, in vile explosions of oaths. At these Beck nodded in assent.
"I sure am an undesirable," he said.
Back and forth, bewildered, McKee walked. He dared not face the future with Beck alive; he dared not take Beck's life. He feared the punishment that might be his for this much he had done; he feared the relentless ridicule of Webb and Hepburn and of Hilton; he feared to go, he feared to stay. And gradually this last fear grew.
"I think you ought to start out an' ride after 'em, Sam," Beck advised. "Do they sabe this country? You better go; they might get strayed. I'll be here. I figure on stayin' quite a time. I.... Honest, Sam, I've had a hell of a good time today...."
McKee wheeled in his walking.
"You'll stay all right!" he screamed. "You damned bet your dirty skin you won't go far! You've been talkin' a lot wiser than you know, you—! You'll stay!"
He dropped to his knees beside Tom and with a wrench pulled off the man's boots.
The movement sent exquisite pains through Tom's body, but he shut his teeth against them. He smiled, demonstrating more of the Spartan by that smile than he had at any time during the day.
"You ain't figuring on walkin' your boots out, are you?" he asked in mock solicitation.
"Never you mind, you—!" McKee snarled.
He brought out his horse, tightened the cinch and led him toward the roan. He tied Tom's boots to his own saddle and then without looking at the man he had come to kill and who he was leaving bound, waterless, without boots or a horse, twenty miles from the first help, he lashed the roan with his quirt, sharply about the head and, when the big creature wheeled in surprise, about the hocks.
Kicking, frightened, stepping on the reins and breaking them off, Beck's horse ran away. Ran scot free, head up, out to the eastward, abused and headed for home. He began to buck, pitching desperately. The saddle worked back and under and down. He kicked it free. Somewhere between the tank and that fallen saddle, Beck knew was his canteen. But McKee did not know. He mounted and stuck into the wash through which he had ridden hours before, lashing the gray to a gallop, putting distance between his menace, his shame....
And back in the tank as night came on a man for whom every move was torment rolled and wriggled from place to place, searching doggedly for a ragged rock, among those that were water-worn and smooth.
The buzzard had ceased his wheeling, the stars came out. Beck talked aloud rather crazily. Everything seemed smooth; even the pain became less harsh; everything was soft and easy ... remarkably so.... Until his cheek felt a ragged, narrow edge of rock, close in against the base of the tallest spire. Moaning feebly he wriggled against it until the ropes touched the edge. Then, with great labor, he began to writhe and twist. It took hours to fray out a single strand, and his arms were bound by many ... hours....
And when finally his arms fell apart, sensations, fiendish, killing sensations, began to stab through them, he laughed lightly and ended shortly. He was free!...
Free?
Just at that time back in the HC ranch house a woman rose from her tumbled bed and dressed. Her eyes were dry though her breath came unevenly.
She looked into her mirror as she put on her hat.
"You're a fool!" she cried lowly. "A fool!... False pride has taken two days out of your life ... two precious days!"
She ran down the stairs, out to the corral and saddled her sorrel horse.