The Fugitive (18 page)

“And resisting arrest,” cried Harry Vance, “he turned over the stove himself and set fire to the house!”

“That'll make us seem like fools . . . that we let him get out of our hands.”

“Not a bit, Pearson. Stick by me and we'll lie our way out of it. You and me turned to and done our best at putting out the fire and paid no more attention to the escape of Willie, because we figure that the saving of the house was worth a pile more than the life of a rascal like him. Pearson, that lets us out. Now let her burn, and be damned.”

 

It was not the way of Chris Martin to lean unduly upon the law. There was a maxim that he had written in his mind early in his career: “Keep away from the law and the law will keep away from you.” But this day he had a particular reason for using it.

Shortly after the morning began, he received word that his fence had been broken, that there were wagon tracks to the pond, and that there were further tracks to show that not only had his water been stolen, but some of his cattle had been driven through the gap. That gap had now been closed, but it was plain that foolish young Merchant had lived up to the letter of his threat spoken before the people of the town. It was now the turn of the rancher to act, and he prepared at once to take back his cows.

First of all, he went to the room of Jennie. But here good fortune had favored him greatly. She was out of the way. She had risen at daybreak, after a sleepless night, saddled her horse, and gone off for a long ride. That put her out of his way and cleared the ground for action.

When he had discovered this, he went out to the cowpunchers and gave them his orders. The whole of them were to ride over to Willie's place, take the stolen cows, and bring them home once more, and, if Willie resisted, they were to act as the occasion justified. This was the order of old Chris, but after it had been spoken, not a man stirred. They merely looked to one another and scowled. Finally the foreman spoke for the others.

“This here,” he said, “is a game that I don't like. And none of the rest of the boys like it. Willie Merchant has been plumb badgered into doing a crazy thing. If we go over there, he'll pull a gun on us.”

“Are you afraid of him?” roared old Chris.

“Not a bit. There ain't one of us that wouldn't tackle him alone. But there ain't one of us that wants to have his blood laid ag'in' us. He's been a hardworking kid. Now he's cleaned out and plumb busted. Let him go, for all of me. It ain't my job to walk on him now that he's down.”

On the tip of the tongue of old Chris there was an order for his men to pack their belongings and ride for town, but he checked himself. If he discharged these old hands, he probably would find it hard to enlist others who would be any more willing to do the work of destroying Willie Merchant. He turned on his heel before that tigerish temper of his should take the mastery. He went back to the house and sat down to confer with himself. He deliberated in the following fashion:

If I ride there myself, I'll meet Willie, and his pride will make him fight. Then I'll have to kill the young fool. If I kill him, what will Jennie think? She's disgusted because she thinks he's showed yaller. If she finds out that he's pulled a gun and started a fight, she'll know that I've lied about Willie. And what'll be in her head then? She'll go on loving his ghost and hating me for a murder. Nope, this is a case for the law.

So he rode to town and swore out the warrant that had sent young Pearson and Harry Vance out on the road to the Merchant place. Then he sat in his office and waited. It was early in the afternoon before the word came in of what had happened, and it was strange tidings indeed. The mild Willie Merchant, with the round face of a boy, had resisted his would-be captors desperately, in a hand-to-hand struggle, it appeared.

“We didn't want to do no murder to arrest him,” said big Harry Vance. “I told Pearson that we'd take him with our hands. And he fought like a damned wildcat. Pretty soon he rolled into the stove. A kettle dropped off and the water scalded me. That gave him his chance to work loose. He got away and ran through the door and jumped on my hoss. Pearson wanted to foller him or to shoot him out of the saddle. But in the meantime, the fire was scattered all over the floor and the fire was catching the wood. I told Pearson that we'd better let the kid go and try to put out the fire in his house. So we started to work and done our best. But it wasn't no good. The fire spread a pile faster than we could put it out. Pretty soon the whole kitchen was flaming, and then we seen that there wasn't no use in working any longer. Nothing could stop the whole house from burning. And up she went in smoke, like a bonfire.”

All of these statements were reinforced by the agreement of Pearson. The town promptly voted that it had been an exceedingly generous action on the part of the deputy. They even got a collection together with which they bought him a good horse to take the place of his stolen gray. The kindly old sheriff rode in specially to take charge of the manhunt, which had grown to such surprising proportions, and to compliment Harry Vance for his good conduct.

As for Willie Merchant, public opinion was shocked into another course. There had been nothing but pity and sympathy for him hitherto. There was now a revulsion of feeling. In the first place, they argued, a man had no right to rustle cattle, no matter what happened. To cut fences and rustle cattle was bad, mighty bad. To resist arrest was even worse. And to have crowned all with that unspeakable offense of horse stealing was still worse. In short, men put their heads together and decided that something should be done, and done at once, to bring Willie to his senses and lodge him in jail.

“He'd get off with a pretty light sentence. A couple of years in jail would give him time to think things over,” was the final verdict.

Before the evening came, the pick of the town had offered itself to serve with the sheriff and Harry Vance on the trail of the fugitive. They started out, well mounted and armed, from the town of Copper Creek, where the sheriff lived, in the evening of the day. Harry Vance rode at the head of the party.

But there was another shock of common opinion in store. It was produced the following morning. That night, when Copper Creek was dark, a figure slipped into the hotel and, while the clerk snored in his chair, leaned over the register and made out the number of the room that was assigned to young Pearson. Harry Vance would have taken his recent ally with him on the manhunt, but Pearson declared that he was through with the labors of enforcing the law. He had been singed, or nearly singed, in one affair. And now he feared the fire.

Alas, for poor Pearson. He had waited for the blow that now hung over him. The shadowy form now slipped up the stairs, and so softly that not a squeak came from them. It reached the door of Pearson's room. It tried the knob and found that it was locked. Nothing daunted, the midnight prowler went through the hall, up the stairs, into the attic, out the skylight window, and then, like a monkey, climbed down the wall of the building. The window was open. Through the window it passed, and wakened Pearson with the chilly touch of the muzzle of a revolver beneath his chin.

“Wake up,” said the voice of Willie Merchant. “I got to have a little chat with you.”

Pearson sat up in bed with his arms rigid above his head.

“Now,” said Willie Merchant, sitting deliberately upon the bedside and dropping the muzzle of his gun, “I've heard the lie that you and Vance have circulated around the town today. But it ain't going to ride, son. I'm going to have the truth knowed. I'm going to have it signed with your hand and swore to all, solemn and square. You understand?”

“Wh . . . what?” breathed poor Pearson. “Wh . . . what am I to do?”

“Let folks know that you and the skunk, Vance, burned my house and everything of mine that was in it. Let 'em know that. Give 'em the straight news, and I'm satisfied.”

“Vance,” groaned the victim. “He'll never stop till he has murdered me, if I do this here thing that you want me to do, Merchant.”

“You'd rather have me turn the trick than him, then?” said Willie.

“Would you murder me, Willie? For heaven's sake.”

“I'd murder you, son. What's a life to me, more or less? They've ruined me. They've run me out. One man more ain't nothing to me. Will you write out the truth, Pearson?”

Pearson, with a groan, surrendered. “Because it wasn't me that done the burning!” he exclaimed. “It was him. Let him pay for it, then.”

“Sure,” said Willie soothingly. “Sure. Here's paper. I guess you got a pen. Nope, a pencil won't do. Steady, partner. Take it easy. Wait till your hand stops shaking.”

 

The confession that Willie secured, at last, was far more than he had dared to hope for. Under the stimulus of terror, with that long, ominous-appearing Colt beneath his eyes, Pearson wrote more freely than he might otherwise have done. He wrote all that Willie could have hoped, and more. He described every incident of that arrest, of the calm manner in which Willie accepted it, of the meal that was cooked for them and that they ate, of the sudden drumming of the hoofs of horses, and their discovery that Willie had escaped. He told of the fury of the deputy, of how he smashed the stove by throwing the stool at it, of the fall of the firebox and the spreading of the flames, and of the plan that Harry Vance thereupon laid for concealing the truth about that act of vandalism from the eyes of the public. He wrote out this amazing story and signed it with his name, dated it, and dropped the pen. Willie, reading it with dazed eyes, folded it, tucked it into a pocket, and departed through the door, leaving his victim with his head between his hands.

It meant much to young Willie Merchant, the paper that he now held. It fixed the blame for a detestable crime that was, in his eyes, like a murder. The house had been more than a house to him. It had been the work of his hands. It was to him what the picture is to the painter, a thing that cannot be duplicated, once destroyed. And so all the hours of hope and pain and happiness that Willie had put into the building of his shack were gone beyond recall, and those three chairs that had stood in the sealed room—aye, and the room itself, which she could never walk into now. She could never unwrap them. He could never hear her exclamations.

She herself was gone from him and could not be brought back. All that he had been a few days before was scattered to the four winds. A giant had struck his work and his dreams, the concrete and the unreal, and that stroke had demolished him quite. It was old Chris who had done it. When he thought of that grim old man, it seemed to him that the soul of the devil lived in that squat body. Such had been the men who first conquered the mountain desert and made it habitable. Such had been those who blazed the trails that wearier mortals like himself had been able to follow a short way. It was no wonder that Chris had grown rich. Indeed, what Willie Merchant felt for his conqueror was not hatred so much as a sort of reverence. He had not seen how he could be undone, only a short time before, and now he was a fugitive, pursued by the law. He saw before him a dim prospect of a few wild years during which he might live by the gun, riding hard, sleeping in the open, frozen in winter, burned in summer, taking by force, spending in wild debauch, paying for his very food with bullets and eating it in stealth like a wolf.

Such were the thoughts of Willie as he went down the hall of the hotel and then slipped down the stairs. In the lobby beneath, he found the clerk still sprawled in his chair, his mouth open, snoring loudly. The door was wide open, and through it he stepped into the street. There he hesitated, looking up and down. But what difference did it make? All ways and all directions were the same to him; they all led to varying forms of misery.

The question was solved without his own effort. He felt a shadow stir behind him. Then a gun muzzle ground into the tender flesh at the small of his back. An old, stern voice said: “Well, youngster, I guess you and me'll talk.”

It was the voice of Champion, the sheriff. What under heaven had brought him there at this time of the night? Or how could he have found the trail so soon? But, after all, perhaps it was better this way.

“Put them hands down, and put 'em down behind you, slow and easy,” commanded Champion.

Merchant obeyed. Cold iron touched his wrists, and there was a
snap.
He was hopelessly shackled.

“Now, son, let's have a look at you.”

He turned, saying: “Well, Sheriff, it's me. Kind of soft for you, eh?”

“Willie Merchant?” murmured the sheriff. “Well, well, well. Step along.” And he waved up the street.

The jail lay in that direction, and Willie needed no explanation. He went calmly to its doors. They were unlocked, and he was taken in. He was brought into a little office. The sheriff sat down at a dusty desk, opened a big book, and asked him many questions. Willie answered them one by one. Only half of his mind was there; the other half was searching out the image of old Chris Martin and wondering what would be the expression of sardonic satisfaction on his face when he heard the news.

The book was pushed back. “I'll have a look through your pockets, Willie,” said the sheriff.

He brought out the matches, the cigarette papers, the half ball of twine, the pocket knife. He unbelted the cartridge belt, and swung it off, together with the revolver. Then, from the inside coat pocket, he took out the paper that Pearson had just written.

“Read it, Mister Champion,” said Willie.

Champion flicked the paper open and began. “Looks long enough to be a love letter,” he said with a grin on his wrinkled face. The grin presently disappeared. He read with an occasional grunt and droop of the eyebrows. When his eyes had run to the bottom of the page, he raised them and began again at the beginning. He now studied out every phrase, as though it were written in a language with which he was only half familiar. When, at last, he was ended, he raised sorrowful eyes to Willie.