"Come on, boys," said Houck, reining round. "White here is puttin' up a talk to hold us—and Young Pete's usin' the time."
Andy watched them ride away, a queer expression lighting his face. "They hate like the Ole Scratch to believe me—and they are hatin' themselves for havin' to."
He pulled off Pete's hat and turned it over, gazing at the two little round holes curiously. "Pete, old scout," he said, smiling whimsically, "here's hopin' they never come closer to gettin' you than they did to gettin' me. Keep a-ridin'—for you sure got to be that 'Ridin' Kid from Powder River' this journey—and then some."
Andy turned the black sombrero round in his hands. "All this here hocus comes of the killin' of a old man that never lifted a finger against nobody—and as game a kid as ever raked a hoss with a spur. But one killin' always means more. I ain't no gunman—or no killer. But, by cracky! some of my ideas has changed since I got that hole in my hat. I wisht I'd 'a' rode with Pete. I wouldn't ask nothin' better right now than to stand back to back with him, out in the open somewhere and let 'em come! Because why? Because the only law that a man's got in this country is hisself—and if he's right, why, crossin' over with his gun explainin' his idees ain't the worst way to go. Anyhow, it ain't any worse than gettin' throwed from a bronc and gettin' his neck broke or gettin' stomped out in a stampede. Them's just regular, common ways of goin' out. I just wonder how Pete is makin' it?"
Andy put on his hat, glanced at the sun, and strode to his pony. Far across the eastern desert he saw the posse—a mere moving dot against the blue. "Wolf-hungry to make a killin' because they're foolin' themselves that they're actin' out the law! Well, come on, Chico, old hoss, we got to make home before sundown."
CHAPTER XIX
THE SPIDER
Where the old Ranger Trail, crossing the Blue Mesa, leaves the high mesa and meanders off into the desert, there is a fork which leads southwest, to the Apache country—a grim and waterless land—and finally swings south toward the border. Pete dismounted at this fork, pulled up his slackened cinches, and making certain that he was leaving a plain track, rode down the main trail for half a mile. Then he reined his pony to a bare spot on the grass-dotted tufa, and again dismounted. He looped Blue Smoke's fore feet, then threw him, and pulled his shoes with a pair of wire nippers, and stowed the shoes in his saddle-pockets.
He again rode directly down the trail, surmising that the occasional track of a barefoot horse would appear natural enough should the posse, whom he knew would follow him, split up and ride both trails. Farther on he again swung from the trail to the tufa, never slackening pace, and rode across the broken ground for several miles. He had often seen the unshod and unbranded ponies of the high country run along a trail for a mile or so and then dash off across the open. Of course, if the posse took the direct trail to the border, paying no attention to tracks, they would eventually overtake him. Pete was done with the companionship of men who allowed the wanton killing of a man like Annersley to go unpunished. He knew that if he were caught, he would most probably be hanged or imprisoned for the shooting of Gary—if he were not killed in being taken. The T-Bar-T interests ruled the courts. Moreover, his reputation was against him. Ever since the raid on Annersley's place Pete had been pointed out as the "kid who stood off the raiders and got two of them." And Pete knew that the very folk who seemed proud of the fact would be the first to condemn him for the killing of Gary. He was outlawed—not for avenging the death of his foster-father, but actually because he had defended his own life, a fact difficult to establish in court and which would weigh little against the evidence of the six or eight men who had heard him challenge Gary at the round-up. Jim Bailey had been right. Men talked too much as a usual thing. Gary had talked too much.