There was a sneering inflection in the voice.
Rathburn’s hand, as it moved downward toward his shirt, hovered an instant above where his good gun was stuck in his waistband, out of sight under the skirt of his coat; then it moved to the open shirt at his throat. He drew out the package and held it out toward the other.
The man closed in and snatched the package, glancing at it in the dim starlight.
“Now back the way you came an’ don’t invite no shootin’!” was the brief command.
Rathburn whirled his horse and drove in his spurs. As he fled from the scene a harsh laugh came to his ears from behind. Then utter silence save for the pounding of his horse’s hoofs in the hard road back down the hogback.
“Jog along, hoss,” Rathburn crooned as he sped down the long slopes toward town; “maybe we’re peggin’ things wrong, an’ if it turns out that way we’ve a powerful long ways to go.”
It lacked a few minutes of being two hours after midnight when he reached the Carlisle cabin. There he reined in his horse, dismounted in the shadow of the timber, and crept to a window. The moon had risen and was bathing the hills in a ghostly light in which every object stood out clear-cut and easily distinguishable. Rathburn peered into the two front windows, but could see nothing. Then, from a side window into which the moonlight filtered, he made out a bedroom. It was not occupied. 138 From the other side of the cabin he saw another bedroom, and it, too, was unoccupied.
“Nobody home,” he muttered cheerfully as he ran for his horse.
In another minute he was again speeding down the road toward town. He slacked his pace as he reached the upper end of the short main street. The street was dark save for two beams of yellow light, one of which shone from a window of the jail office and the other from the front of the Red Feather resort.
He walked his horse down the street past the jail and the resort and almost to the end of the line of buildings where he arrived before the small, one-story, two-room structure which was Sautee’s office and abode.