The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 15

"Y' have a sheriff?"

Wayland laughed.

"He's like the Indian flies; a no-see-him. He'll ride over the hills for weeks and if he tumbles over the top of his prisoner, he can't find his man!"

The old Britisher looked doubtfully at Wayland, as much as to say, "I don't believe you."

"You're no temptin' me to take the law into our own hands?"

Again Wayland laughed.

"My dear sir, you don't understand! I don't want to drag you into this at all! For ten years, _the powers that stand for law in this country have been marking time behind the firing line; while the other fellow got away with the goods_. They have been marking time while Crime scored, and what you call the Devil kept tally."

The old man nodded his head approvingly.

"That's all true!"

"You ask me if I intend to break the law? No, Sir, I do not; but _I do intend to carry the law out beyond the firing line. The thief strains the law to get away with the goods; I am going to strain the law to get them back. The murderer strains the law to protect his d.a.m.ned useless neck; I'm going to strain the law to break his neck_. Unless," he added, "I break my own neck doing it."

The old man had drawn down his brows. "A don't just like the sound of it; what's your plan?"

"To go out with a gun till I get them; the way your own Mounted Police do up in Canada! _I'm going to quit monkeying with technicalities in the twilight zone . . . and go out . . . after the man_."

The old Britisher sat thinking: "Wayland, if A was managing this thing, first thing A'd do would be blow such a blast on your local press, the authorities would _have_ to sit up, then--A'd go after your sheriff if A had to tackle the coward by the scruff of his scurvy neck, A'd make him ashamed . . . _not_ . . . to act."

"All right, Sir! Manage this thing . . . manage it just as you would behind your hide-bound British laws! We'll pa.s.s the Senator's ranch in ten minutes. You can telephone down to 'The Smelter City Herald.'

I'll get something ready to eat while you telephone. Then, we'll go right along to the sheriff."

They kicked their ponies lightly into a trot and came to the Senator's k'raal before the noon hour. Two or three of the ranch hands loitered casually out to the road. All were in blue over-alls and s.h.i.+rt sleeves but one; and he was in knickerbockers.

"That's the foreman, ask him!"

"'Twould oblige me t' have the use of your telephone?"

The man in the knickerbockers tilted his hat at a rakish angle, stuck a tooth-pick in the corner of his mouth, put his thumbs in his jacket arm holes, shot Wayland a quick look of questioning, grinned at the old man and nodded towards a white pergola standing apart from the veranda of the ranch house.

"Find it there," he indicated, "drop a nickel--then, ring!"

"Did you see that look?" gritted the old Britisher between his teeth, as the fellow sauntered away with elaborate indifference.

"Yes, but looks don't go with a jury."

"Neck-tie was effective with the likes of him in my day!"

For the third time, Wayland uttered the same sardonic laugh. What was happening to the old Britisher to change his point of view?

"I'll go on down to the River and prepare grub."

What Wayland was thinking, he did not say; but _what_ was pa.s.sing in the brain of the law-loving old Britisher that the rakish tilt of the hat, the insolent angle of the tooth-pick, the spread of a man's thumbs and feet--could break through hide-bound respect for law and elicit reference to the court of the old-time neck-tie?

At the River, the Ranger loosened the saddle girths and put a small kettle to boil above a fire of cottonwood chips and gra.s.s. Then he took out his note book and wrote the note to Eleanor which he gave to one of the road gang for Calamity. The note said: "We are setting out on the Long Trail . . . the Long Trail this Nation will have to travel before Democracy arrives . . . the trail of the Man behind the Thing . . . the Man Higher Up." How did the Ranger know what was going on up at the telephone in the pergola, where British respect for law was at one end of the wire and the handy man of the Valley at the other?

There was no bitterness in the quizzical smile with which he awaited the old man's return; for as he lay back on the ground watching the fire burn up, the letter brought again, not memory, but consciousness of that seal to service, he wondered half vaguely could she know, could she realize, did a woman _ever_ realize what her love meant to a man.

She could surely never have given such full draughts of life, of wondrous new revealing consciousness, unless they were drinking together from the same perennial, ever-new, ever-surprising spring! . . . He did not hear the footsteps till the old man spoke--

"A somehow--didna' seem--to get--them clear! They answered; then--they didna' answer! _Smelter City Herald_--ye said? 'Twas strange--'twas vera strange--A got an answer plain asking my name--then central said 'ring off! ring off! can't get them, wire out of order'!"

This time, Wayland did not laugh. Had not the wires been out of order since first he began to ring the bells of his little insignificant place to a Nation's alarm?

They ate their bannocks--'Rocky Mountain dead shot' Westerners call the slap-jacks--in silence. While the old man still pondered mazed and dumb, the Ranger dabbled the cups and plates in the River and recinched the pack saddle, the little mule blowing out his sides and groaning to ease the girth, the bronchos wisely eating to the process of reharnessing. The Britisher's reverence for law dies hard. Wayland saw the wrestle and kept silent. A deep low boom rolled dully through the earth in smothered rumblings and tremblings like distant thunder.

"What's that, Wayland?"

"Only the snow slides loosened by the noon-thaw slithering down the Pa.s.s of Holy Cross;" and somehow, he could not but think of what she had said . . . the law of the snow flake sculpturing the rocks.

The horses cropped audibly over the gra.s.ses--waiting. The little mule looked back--also waiting. A whelming impulse, part of the spirit to drink of her inspiration, part of the flesh to drink of her touch--came over him to ride down to the ranch house, the MacDonald ranch house, to see her--just once before setting out on the Long Trail.

"Well," he said; "which way, Mr. Matthews?"

The old Britisher moved thoughtfully towards his broncho.

"We'll try y'r sheriff--at least, we'll try him _first_."

And again the Ranger laughed.

"Don't laugh, man! D' y' know what it means when men are driven outside the line of law?"

The horses waded in midstream and reached down drinking, champing on their bits.

"Well--what does it mean?"

He saw the blue of the mountain stream swirl and whirl and eddy over the sun-dyed pebbles, singing the law of the far mountain snows.

"G.o.d knows," answered the old man slowly. "It means disrupture. We slew our kings in olden times; but ye are a many headed king in this land! It means--perhaps, ye call it Anarchy to-day."

The yellow noon-day light sifted through the cottonwoods jewel-spangled on the crystal blue River. The Ranger always knew the character of the mountains from the River: silty and milky-blue from glaciers; crystal and green-blue from the snow. And they rode away up the Valley from the ranch houses towards the Pa.s.s, out beyond the bounds of the National Forests with the trees marked two notches and one blaze; gradually up the narrowing trail fringed by the s.h.i.+ny laurel bushes; with the mountains closing closer and the spiced balsam odor raining on the air a sifted gold dust of sunlight. At intervals, came the dull rumble of the snow slide, the far reverberation, the echo of the law of the snow flake rolling away the stone; the smash of the great law drama, the t.i.tans behind the mountains.

It was one of those frequent mountain formations where a Valley seems to terminate in a blank wall. You turn a b.u.t.tress of rock, and you find the sheer wall opening before you in a trail that climbs to a notch on the sky line between forested flanks. The notch of blue is a Pa.s.s.

"Anyway, Mr. Matthews, we are splitting the air, now! We are doing more than sawing air."

They had put their horses to a sharp trot along the trail winding up the River. The water was gurgling over the polished pebbles with little leaps and glints of fire. Presently, the mountains had closed behind them. The River was tumbling with noisy rush in a succession of cascades, and the trail wound back from the rocky bank through circular flats or what were locally known as "bottoms."

"Sheriff live this way?" shouted Matthews; for the roar of the little stream filled the canyon.

"Has a ranch at the foot of the Pa.s.s."