It was all arranged offhand in less time than I have taken to tell of it, and I was hustled out to where a row of cow-ponies patiently awaited the pleasure of their hard-riding masters. For aught these sons of the plains knew I was a purely worthless bit of human driftwood. But I don’t think they gave a thought to the matter. There was only one thing to be done, in their estimation, and they proceeded to do it without consulting me or doing very much talking about it themselves. So very shortly I found myself straddle of the Circle foreman’s horse and jogging out of Benton. Beside me, young Wall rode silently until we reached the top of the long hill that slopes to the town. Then he shook his horse into a lope, and broke into cheerful whistling.
I, however, was far short of the whistling mood. The thing I should have done I was afraid to do. Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to face the music. I was unrepentant for the part I had played in the extinction of Tupper. Nor would I, if I had calmly weighed the chances for and against, have felt any fear of consequences before the law. But my experience with the law, in those days, was a void. That which we do not understand we usually fear, and that night I was stricken with a swift fear of the law. I had killed, and there was a penalty. My spirit revolted at the thought of a jail. Likewise, the quick action of those Circle cowpunchers made a deep impression on me. If incarceration was so to be avoided that they were willing to back their deeds with gunpowder, I wanted no phase of incarceration in my experience. Better the open, an unknown country, and whatever might befall therein, than to lie in Benton “calaboose”—which, to my disturbed mind, was a synonym for a place of vague horrors.
I thought of standing my ground, of taking chances on Bax the marshal and the Benton jail, until the Moon could reach St. Louis and apprise Bolton of my need—and then I shuddered at the thought that the thing might be settled beyond interference before he could make the long river journey. I had heard and read more or less of hasty trials in the West; I had killed a man in what seemed to me a barbarous fashion; I did not know what the authorities, self-constituted or otherwise, might do to me—and I hadn’t the nerve to stay and find out. If they should hang me, thought I, I shall be a long time dead. Flight, under these circumstances, made the strongest appeal to my excited imagination.
Such was the chaotic state of my ideas when Wall pulled up his horse, and I saw the white glimmer of tents close at hand.
“Night-hawk’s got the bunch over here, I think,” said he. “Seems like I hear the bells. Anyhow, you stay here and I’ll get yuh a caballo that can drift.”
He trotted off, leaving me standing by the clear-cut outline of a wagon. Away off in the semi-dark—for the moon was now risen—I heard a sudden scurry of hoofs, an accentuated jangling of two or three small bells. Presently Wall came loping back leading a blaze-faced sorrel horse.
From under the forward end of the wagon he dragged a saddle, a bridle and a saddle-blanket.
“There,” he said, “there’s a good rig, barrin’ spurs—which yuh won’t need much. And a good hoss to put it on. Go to it.”
The stock saddle, with its high horn and deep seat, was not so different from what I’d been used to—except as to weight. The double-cinch apparatus bothered me a little, but when Wall explained the uses of the latigo and the manner of its tying, I got my horse saddled properly—the small imps of uneasy haste spurring me on. Then I swung up to try the stirrups, and found that I had a restive brute under me. He plunged once or twice, but I kept his head in the air, and finally straightened him out. Wall nodded approval.
“I wasn’t dead sure yuh could ride him,” he owned. “But I see you’ve got him in your sack, and you’ll find him there when it comes to gettin’ over the ground.”