Houck crawled through the barbed-wire fence and looked back into the park from which he had just fled. June was kneeling beside the man he had shot. Some one was running across the grass toward her. Soon the pursuit would be at his heels. He dared not lose a second.
He plunged into the sage, making for the hills which rose like a saw-toothed wall on the horizon. If he could reach them he might find there a precarious safety. Some wooded pocket would give him shelter until the pursuit had swept past. He was hungry, but if he must he could do without food for a day.
The bandit was filled with a furious, impotent rage at the way fortune had tricked him. Thirty-five miles from Bear Cat, well back from the river, three horses were waiting for him and his dead companions in a draw. Unless somebody found them they would wait a long time. The way that led to them was barred for him. He would have to try to reach Glenwood or Rifle. From there he could perhaps catch a freight east or west. His one chance was to get clear out of the country. After this day’s work it would be too small to hold him.
Nothing had come out as he had planned it. The farthest thing from his hopes had been that he would have to fight his way out. He had not killed that fool Dillon of set purpose. He knew now that if his anger had not blazed out he might have made his getaway and left the fellow alive. But he had been given no time to think. It was a bad break of the luck. The White River settlers would not forgive him that. They would remember that Dillon had saved him from the Indians in the Ute campaign, and they would reason—the thickheaded idiots—that the least he could have done was to let the boy go.
He plunged through the sand of the sage hills at a gait that was half a run and half a walk. In his high-heeled boots fast travel was difficult. The footgear of the cattleman is not made for walking. The hill riders do most of their travel in a saddle. Houck’s feet hurt. His toes were driven forward in the boots until each step became torture. From his heels the skin peeled from sliding up and down against the hard leather.
But he dared not stop. Already he could hear the pursuers. In the still night there came to him the shout of one calling to another, the ring of a horse’s hoof striking on a stone. They were combing the mesa behind him.
Houck stumbled forward. Vaguely there rose before him a boulder-strewn slope that marked the limit of the valley. Up this he scrambled in a desperate hurry to reach the rocks. For the pursuit was almost upon him now.
Two outcroppings of sandstone barred the way. They leaned against each other, leaving a small cave beneath. Into this Houck crawled on hands and knees.
He lay crouched there, weapon in hand, like a cornered wolf, while the riders swept up and past. He knew one palpitating moment when he thought himself about to be discovered. Two of the posse stopped close to his hiding-place.
“Must be close to him,” one said. “Got the makin’s, Jim?”