Rimrock Trail, Joseph Allan Dunn [miss read books TXT] 📗

spring, that Sandy's heart swelled with glad emotion, knowing she was unharmed, knowing that his coming was no surprise, however welcome.

He found himself trembling as he untied her bonds and took away the gag from the mouth that lifted to his. She snuggled into his arms and, as the torch sputtered out, leaving them in the darkness, save for the luminous beams that stole down from where Grit whimpered in joyous impatience, her hair showered down over both of them.

"Sandy. I knew you'd come in time!" she whispered.

He held her close and hard for a tense moment that gave all his world to his embrace.

"Molly—girl," he said brokenly, his voice broken with passion.

Her hand crept up and a soft palm cupped about his chin. He kissed the edge of it. He rose easily, still holding her and lifted her high to where she could reach the vine, swinging up after her, Grit dancing a three-legged reel of joy as they came up into the free air and the moonlight.

Blaze greeted them in the corral. Molly mounted, and Sandy set Grit on the saddle in front of her.

"Where's Pronto?" she asked.

He told her.

"I figger Sam an' the boys'll be erlong soon," he said. "They may meet up with Pronto. Anyway, they'll likely bring Goldie fo' me. She's up. An' Pronto'll be too tired fo' what I want him to do ter-night."

She sensed the change in his voice, intuitively guessed but, womanlike, asked:

"What do you mean, Sandy? Aren't you coming home with me to Three Star. If it wasn't so far I'd love to go back just like this, without meeting anybody." She had taken off Sandy's Stetson and she ran fingers through his hair, thrilling him to the intimacy of the caress. But, if there was any plan in her actions, it did not deter him from his.

"Plimsoll's makin' fo' Nipple Peaks an' he's likely to git clear. Me, I aim to head him off an' settle the account."

"Sandy." There was a plea in her voice that plucked at his heart strings. "Don't spoil to-night. Please!"

"That ain't Molly Casey talkin'," said Sandy. "That's somethin' you must have picked up back to Keith's."

"He didn't harm me, Sandy."

"He tried to."

Her hand slipped to his shoulder, touched his cheek. She reined in Blaze. Sandy stood beside her, straight and stern, his eyes implacable.

"He ain't fit to live," he went on. "I w'udn't be fit to go back to Three Star where yore daddy lies an' know he was there in his grave while I let that coyote go loose. I found the luck-piece on the floor of the cabin, Molly, with a lock of yore hair he must have tore out, a button an' a bit of yore dress he nigh tore off you. I was in hell when I thought of you fightin' him off an' if I have to wade through it knee-deep in flamin' sulphur I'm goin' to find that snake an' make sure he quits trailin'. Why, it's my job, Molly. What w'ud you think of me if I let him slide?"

"I know," she answered.

A horse whinnied from down the ravine. Blaze answered.

"That'll be Sam an' the boys, Molly." He cupped hands and sounded a "Yahoo!"

The answer came back clear through the evening, multiplied by the rocks about them.

"I'm afraid," she said.

"Afraid?"

"I know. I never was before. But...." She broke off, leaned swiftly down from the saddle and kissed him.

"Come back to me soon, Sandy," she said.

CHAPTER XXI THE END OF THE ROPE

Pronto had chosen his own trail and gait back to the Three Star. It was Goldie that Sandy rode under the stars toward Nipple Peaks. He was alone, refusing any company of Sam or the riders. Molly's last kiss had been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid—for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out by his death.

Nipple Peaks he knew by sight, two high mounds of bare granite above the timber-line, barring the way to a jumbled country of peaks and ravines and cross cañons among which lay Plimsoll's Hideout. Spur Rock he knew only by rumor. That there was a pass between the peaks he did not doubt. And he rode to meet Plimsoll coming down out of it. To have returned to the Hideout and attempted to follow a rock trail by moonlight, despite its brilliance, would have been sheer folly. Plimsoll had from three to four hours' start, he figured. And he calculated that, with luck, with common luck and justice, he would pick him up before he reached the base of the mountain, before he got into the timber. If not, sooner or later he would cut Plimsoll's sign and follow it to the end.

As he rode over the finny ridge of Elk Mountain and saw the Nipple Peaks gleaming above the black pines across the valley, with Elk River gleaming in the middle, he realized that he had said nothing to Molly of Keith, of the shutting down of the mine and his own action in her name. While she had asked nothing of young Donald. For the time it had been as if the rest of the world had been fenced off from them and their own intimate affairs.

He compressed his knees and the mare answered in a lope that stretched into a gallop, fast and faster as she reached the levels and sped toward Elk River. Sandy was not going to waste time looking for a ford. The mare could swim. The moon, sloping down toward the west, still above the range, helped by the big white stars, made the valley bright almost as day. He scanned the mountain toward the peaks, passed over the dark impenetrable pines, surveyed the stretch of gently rising ground between the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for the cut-off.

The mare took the cold river water about her fetlocks with a little shiver, wading in to the girths, sliding to a deep pool where she had to swim a few strokes before she found gravel under her hoofs and scrambled out. Suddenly, while Sandy hesitated how best to arrange his patrol, a horse came floundering out of the pines less than a quarter of a mile away, a black horse, shining with sweat, tired to its limit, staggering in its stride, the rider hunched in the saddle more like a sack of meal than a man.

Before Sandy could turn the mare toward them three riders burst from the trees like bolts from a crossbow, spurring their mounts, the two in the lead swinging lariats. They divided, one to either side of the foundering black stallion, one at the rear, gaining, angling in. The ropes slithered out, the loops seemed to hang like suspended rings of wire for a second before they settled down, fair and true, about the neck and shoulders of the black's rider. They tightened, the lariats snubbed to the saddle horns, the horses sliding with flattened pasterns. The black lunging on, pitched forward as it was relieved of a sudden weight and its rider jerked hideously from the saddle, hands clawing at the ropes that choked his gullet, wrenching, sinking deep, shutting off air and light with a horrid taste of blood and the noise of thundering waters.

The ropers wheeled their mounts and galloped back toward the woods, the limp body of their victim dragging, bouncing over the ground. The third rode to meet Sandy. It was Brandon. He hailed Sandy with surprise.

"How'd you happen here this time of night, Bourke? Not looking for me?"

"No. I was looking for the man you've just caught. I was about a minute too late."

Brandon glanced curiously at Sandy, caught by the grim note in his voice. But he made no comment.

"Sorry if I spoiled your private vendetta, Bourke. You can have him, what's left of him, if you want. We were going to swing him from a tree with a card on his chest presenting him to Hereford County, with our compliments. As it is, Bourke, I'd be relieved if you'd keep out of this entirely. Even forgetting you'd met us. We're within our rights, but we've done some cleaning up to-night that we might have to explain if we stayed too long in the state. We got the goods on Plimsoll; one of his men whose girl Plimsoll had stolen helped us to pin them on him. We met him at Hereford. I'm going to send the facts and proofs to your authorities. They may not approve of lynch law these days, but they wouldn't act—and we did. I don't fancy they'll bother us any. He wasn't worth the ropes he spoiled. Just as well you kept out of the mix-up."

Sandy said nothing. There was no need to mention Molly's adventure.

"Want to be sure it's him?" asked Brandon. "Let's look at the black first. He gave us a hard chase, but we were too many for him and rounded him up."

They found the black stallion stretched out on the turf with its neck curiously twisted. Tired out, it had fallen clumsily and broken the vertebrae. It was quite dead. Both men looked at it silently, with a mental tribute to a good horse.

The body of Plimsoll lay at the foot of a big pine. The loops were still tight about his neck. One of the ropes had been tossed over a bough. The two men had dismounted. They nodded to Sandy as he came up with Brandon. He had seen them before on their first unsuccessful trip to the Waterline. They were horse-owners, responsible men, who considered they had administered justice, who felt no more qualms concerning the dead man than if his body had been the carcass of a slaughtered steer.

"Waiting for the rest of the boys to come up," said Brandon. "We'll hit the trail home to-night. Bourke wants to identify the body, boys."

Sandy looked down at the contorted, blackened face, and his disappointment at having been forestalled, sedimented down. The gambler's features had not been made placid by death; they still held much of the horror of the last moments of that relentless chase, his horse failing under him, foreknowledge of sudden death and then the whistling ropes, the jerk into eternity...! It was a thing to be forgotten, a nightmare that had nothing to do with the new day ahead.

"It's Plimsoll," said Sandy shortly. "I'm ridin' back to Three Star. I found him hangin' to a tree. Good night, hombres." He left them standing about their quarry and turned the willing mare toward home. Peace settled down on him under the stars that were fading, the moon below the hills when he rode into the home corral.

A figure was perched upon the fence, waiting. It was Molly, and she leaped down almost into his arms as he sprang from the mare. In the gray dawn her face seemed drawn and weary. There were the blue shadows under the eyes that he remembered seeing there the time they had ridden over the Pass of the Goats. She came close to him, her hands up against his