Square Deal Sanderson, Charles Alden Seltzer [best ereader for comics TXT] 📗

and Andy were lying near the fire, whose last faint embers were sputtering feebly; Buck was some distance away, but he, too, was dead!

Sanderson went from one to the other of the men, to make a final examination. Bending over Sogun, he heard the latter groan, and in an instant Sanderson was racing to the river for water.

He bathed Sogun's wound—which was low on the left side, under the heart, and, after working over him for five or ten minutes, giving him whisky from a flask he found in the chuck wagon, and talking to the man in an effort to force him into consciousness, he was rewarded by seeing Sogun open his eyes.

Sogun looked perplexedly at Sanderson, whose face was close.

There was recognition in Sogun's eyes—the calm of reason was swimming in them.

He half smiled. "So you wriggled out of it, boss, eh? It was a clean-up, for sure. I seen them get the other boys. I emptied my gun, an' was fillin' her again when they got me."

"Who?" demanded Sanderson sharply.

"Dale an' his gang. They was a bunch of them—twenty, mebbe. I heard them while I was layin' here. They thought they'd croaked me, an' they wasn't botherin' with me.

"One of them waved a blanket—or a tarp. I couldn't get what it was. Anyway, they waved somethin' an' got the herd started. I heard them talkin' about seein' Soapy go under, right at the start. An' you. Dale said he saw you go down, an' it wasn't no use to look for you. They sure played hell, boss."

Sanderson did not answer.

"If you'd lift my head a little higher, boss, I'd feel easier, mebbe," Sogun smiled feebly. "An' if it ain't too much trouble I'd like a little more of that water—I'm powerful thirsty."

Sanderson went to the river, and when he returned Sogun was stretched out on his back, his face upturned with a faint smile upon it.

Sanderson knelt beside him, lifted his head and spoke to him. But Sogun did not answer.

Sanderson rose and stood with bowed head for a long time, looking down at Sogun. Then he mounted Streak and headed him into the moonlit space that lay between the camp and the Double A ranchhouse.

It was noon the next day when Sanderson returned with a dozen Double A men. After they had labored for two hours the men mounted their horses and began the return trip, one of them driving the chuck wagon.

All of the men were bitter against Dale for what had happened, and several of them were for instant reprisal.

But Sanderson stared grimly at them.

"There ain't any witnesses," he said, "not a damned one! My word don't go in Okar. Besides, it's my game, an' I'm goin' to play her a lone hand—as far as Dale is concerned."

"You goin' to round up what's left of the cattle?" asked a puncher.

Sanderson answered shortly: "Not any. There wasn't enough left to make a fuss about, an' Dale can have them."

CHAPTER XXI A MAN BORROWS MONEY

The incident of Devil's Hole had changed the character of the fighting between Sanderson and Dale. Dale and his fellow-conspirators had deserted that law upon which, until the incident of Devil's Hole, they had depended. They had resorted to savagery, to murder; they had committed themselves to a course that left Sanderson no choice except to imitate them.

And Sanderson was willing. More, he was anxious. He had respected the law; and still respected it. But he had never respected the law represented by his three enemies. He was determined to avenge the murder of his men, but in his own time and in his own way.

His soul was in the grip of a mighty rage against Dale and the others; he longed to come into personal contact with them—to feel them writhe and squirm in his clutch. And had he been the free agent he had always been until his coming to the Double A he would have gone straight to Okar, thus yielding to the blood lust that swelled his veins.

But he could not permit his inclinations to ruin the girl he had promised to protect. He could kill Dale, Silverthorn, and Maison quite easily. But he would have no defense for the deed, and the law would force him to desert Mary Bransford.

For an entire day following the return of himself and his men from the scene of the stampede Sanderson fought a terrific mental battle. He said nothing to Mary Bransford, after giving her the few bare facts that described the destruction of the herd. But the girl watched him anxiously, suspecting something of the grim thoughts that tortured him, and at dinner she spoke to him.

"Deal," she said, "don't be rash. Those men have done a lawless thing, but they still have the power to invoke the law against you."

"I ain't goin' to be lawless—yet," he grinned.

But Sanderson was yielding to an impulse that had assailed him. His manner betrayed him to Owen, at least, who spoke to Mary about it.

"He's framing up something—or he's got it framed up and is ready to act," he told the girl. "He has got that calm during the past few hours that I feel like I'm in the presence of an iceberg when I'm near him."

Whatever was on Sanderson's mind he kept to himself. But late that night, when the ranchhouse was dark, and a look through one of the windows of the bunkhouse showed Sanderson there were only two men awake—and they playing cards sleepily—he threw saddle and bridle on Streak and rode away into the inky darkness of the basin.

Shortly after dusk on the same night Silverthorn, Dale, and Maison were sitting at a table in Maison's private office in the bank building. They, too, were playing cards.

But their thoughts were not on the cards. Elation filled their hearts.

Dale was dealing, but it was plain that he took no interest in the game. At last, with a gesture of disgust, he threw the cards face up on the table and smiled at the others.

"What's the use?" he said. "I keep thinking of what happened at Devil's Hole. We ought to have been sure that we finished the job, an' we would have been sure if we hadn't known that that damned Colfax sheriff was hanging around somewhere.

"He took two hundred head from Sanderson—when he ought to have taken the whole damn herd—which he'd orders to do. And then, instead of driving them direct to Lester's he made camp just on the other side of Devil's Hole—three or four miles, Morley said. I don't know what for, except that maybe he's decided to give Sanderson the steers he'd taken from him—the damned fool! You've got to break him, Maison, for disobeying orders!"

"I'll attend to him," said Maison.

"That's the reason we didn't go through Devil's Hole to see what had become of Sanderson," resumed Dale. "We was afraid of running into the sheriff, and him, being the kind of a fool he is, would likely have wanted to know what had happened. I thought it better to sneak off without letting him see us than to do any explaining."

Silverthorn looked at his watch. "Morley and the others ought to be here pretty soon," he said.

"They're late as it is," grumbled Dale. "I ought to have gone myself."

They resumed their card-playing. An hour or so later there came a knock on the door of the bank—a back door—and Dale opened it to admit Morley—the big man who had drawn a pistol on Sanderson when he had tried to take Barney Owen out of the City Hotel barroom.

Morley was alone. He stepped inside without invitation and grinned at the others.

"There's no sign of Sanderson. Someone had been there an' planted the guys we salivated—an' the guy which went down in the run. We seen his horse layin' there, cut to ribbons. It's likely Sanderson went into the sand ahead of the herd—they was crowdin' him pretty close when we seen them runnin'."

"You say them guys was planted?" said Dale. "Then Sanderson got out of it. He would—if anyone could, for he was riding like a devil on a cyclone when I saw him. He's got back, and took his men to Devil's Hole."

Maison laughed. "We'll say he got out of it. What of it? He's broke. And if the damned court would get a move on with that evidence we've sent over to prove that he isn't a Bransford, we'd have the Double A inside of a week!"

Dale got up, grinning and looking at his watch.

"Well, gentlemen, I'm hitting the breeze to the Bar D for some sleep. See you tomorrow."

Dale went out and mounted his horse. But he did not go straight home, as he had declared he would. After striking the neck of the basin he swerved his horse and rode northeastward toward Ben Nyland's cabin.

For he had heard that day in Okar that Ben Nyland had taken a train eastward that morning, to return on the afternoon of the day following. And during the time Dale had been talking with Maison; and Silverthorn, and playing cards with them, he thought often of Peggy Nyland.

Silverthorn and Morley did not remain long in Maison's private room in the bank building.

Morley had promised to play cards with some of his men in the City Hotel barroom, and he joined them there, while Silverthorn went to his rooms in the upper story of the station.

After the departure of the others, Maison sat for a long time at the table in the private room, making figures on paper.

Maison had exacted from the world all the luxuries he thought his pampered body desired. His financial career would not have borne investigation, but Maison's operations had been so smooth and subtle that he had left no point at which an enemy could begin an investigation.

But years of questionable practice had had an inevitable effect upon Maison. Outwardly, he had hardened, but only Maison knew of the many devils his conscience created for him.

Continued communion with the devils of conscience had made a coward of Maison. When at last he got up from the table he glanced apprehensively around the room; and after he had put out the light and climbed the stairs to his rooms above the bank, he was trembling.

Maison had often dealt crookedly with his fellow-men, but never, until the incident of Devil's Hole, had he deliberately planned murder. Thus tonight Maison's conscience had more ghastly evidence to confront him with, and conscience is a pitiless retributive agent.

Maison poured himself a generous drink of whisky from a bottle on a sideboard before he got into bed, but the story told him by Dale and the others of the terrible scene at Devil's Hole—remained so staringly vivid in his thoughts that whisky could not dim it.

He groaned and pulled the covers over his head, squirming and twisting, for the night was warm and there was little air stirring.

After a while Maison sat up. It seemed to him that he had been in bed for an age, though actually the time was not longer than an hour.

It had been late when he had left the room downstairs. And now he listened for sounds that would tell him that Okar's citizens were still busy with their pleasures.

But no sound came from the street. Maison yearned for company, for he felt unaccountably depressed and morbid. It was as though some danger impended and instinct was warning him of it.

But in the dead silence of Okar there was no suggestion of sound. It must have been in the ghostly hours between midnight and the dawn—though a cold terror that had gripped Maison would not let him get up to look at the clock that ticked monotonously on the sideboard.

He lay, clammy with sweat, every sense strained and acute, listening. For, from continued contemplation of imaginary dangers he had worked himself into a frenzy which would have turned into a conviction of real danger at the slightest