She seized the cowboy’s arm, and they went out together, and on down the stairs.
Langford stood still a moment, following them with his eyes. His face was white. He bent his head. Jim, looking back, saw him thus, the dull light from the hall-lamp falling upon the bent head and the yellow hair. When Langford raised his head, his face, though yet white, bore an expression of concentrated determination.
He, too, strode quickly down the stairs.
[CHAPTER XXII—THE OUTLAW’S LAST STAND]
In the morning the sheriff went to the island. He reported the place deserted. He made many other trips. Sometimes he took a deputy with him; more often he rode unaccompanied. Richard Gordon lay helpless in a burning fever, with Paul Langford in constant and untiring attendance upon him. George Williston was a sadly shattered man.
“I met Black on the corner west of Gordon’s office,” he explained, when he could talk. “I had not been able to sleep, and had been walking to tire my nerves into quiet. I was coming back to the hotel when I heard Black’s shot and then Mary’s. I ran forward and met Black on the corner, running. He stopped, cried out, ‘You, too, damn you,’ and that’s the last I knew until the boys picked me up.”
These were the most interested—Langford, Gordon, Williston. Had they been in the count, things might have been different. It is very probable a posse would have been formed for immediate pursuit. But others must do what had been better done had it not been for those shots in the dark. There was blood outside Gordon’s window; yet Black had not crawled home to die. He had not gone home at all,—at least, that is what the sheriff said. No one had seen the convicted man after his desperate and spectacular exit from the courtroom—no one at least but Louise, Mary, and her father. Mary’s shot had not killed him, but it had saved Richard Gordon’s life, which was a far better thing. It was impossible to track him out of town, for the cattle had trampled the snow in every direction.
The authorities could gather no outside information. The outlying claims and ranches refuted indignantly any hint of their having given aid or shelter to the fugitive, or of having any cognizance whatsoever regarding his possible whereabouts. So the pursuit, at first hot and excited, gradually wearied of following false leads,—contented itself with desultory journeys when prodded thereto by the compelling power of public opinion,—finally ceased altogether even as a pretence.
One of the first things done following the dramatic day in court had been to send the officers out to the little shanty in the valley where the half-breed lay dead across the threshold. A watch was also set upon this place; but no one ever came there.
August had come again, and Judge Dale was in Kemah to hear a court case.