Thatcher obeyed. Robin took a piece of clothesline and tied his wrists tightly, backed him up to a bunk nailed to the wall and lashed him securely to a corner of that. Then he put on his boots, his overcoat, took both their guns and shut the cabin door on the prisoner and the dead.
He saddled his own horse, turned out the other two, hastened their going with a flicking rope-end. In half an hour he would be on the high benches. Until Bud Cartwright and Ed Doyle returned he was safe from pursuit—probably longer. He knew Doyle and Cartwright. They would not hasten to sound an alarm over any one killing Shining Mark.
He mounted and loped away up Birch Creek straight for the Bar M Bar.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE
Dark had fallen. The winter night was setting its teeth hard when Robin dismounted in the Mayne yard. He had forgotten about being tired. His brain had kept a strange sort of time to the drum of hoofs on the frozen ground. He couldn’t make a decision. His instinct was to stand his ground. Yet he knew the risk of that. Sutherland would be implacable. Once a fighting man himself, for a long time Sutherland had frowned on gun fighting on his range. He had grown old and rich. Both publicly and privately he was strong for law and order, set against feuds. He was a fanatic in loyalty. He would never believe that Mark Steele had forced the issue. He would say he meant to see justice done when in reality he would be seeking revenge on an alien rider who had killed one of his trusted men.
Robin held his decision until he could talk with Dan Mayne. Red Mike stood in a stall. He could ride fast and far. He stood a moment to pat the red horse’s glossy hide, thinking that he hated to run. He had been afraid and he was no longer afraid. He would never be afraid of any man again. Robin had never heard a champion pugilist’s dictum that “the bigger they are the harder they fall”, but that was in essence how he felt now. Only, as a reward for proving that truth to himself, he did not wish to wear a striped government suit and enjoy free lodging in state quarters for an indefinite period. Adam Sutherland was powerful enough in Choteau county to inflict that penalty on him.
He walked into the house. Mayne sat by the fireplace sucking his pipe. Ivy came to meet him.
“I’m empty as a last year’s water barrel,” he said to her. “Get me some supper, will you, hon?”
“Where on earth have you been all this time in this kind of weather?” Ivy stayed to ask.
“Oh, every place,” Robin put her off. “Go on, old girl. I’m starved.”