The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

dear God, why can't you help me? Why can't you?"

      She made a swift calculation. It was only a matter of yards to the creek's edge. Once she got him down there she could hide him in one of the innumerable prospectors' pits and cover him with a loose layer of gravel. She could hide until they passed. But the horse was on the trail and they would see it. After that they'd never leave until they had thoroughly covered the adjacent ground. And then it would be too late; Tom would be dead. Nevertheless, she got her arms about his chest and lifted him; dragged him across the earth five yards before stopping. He was far heavier than she supposed. She could go no farther.

      They were back from the side hunt. Forward swung the lantern, forward came the trampling boots. Lorena was on her knees again, both hands stretched across his body. She thought of fighting back, but there was no gun in his holster and her own was in the basket she had dropped on the trail. Thus she crouched, a hand seeming to squeeze her heart. San Saba's voice rose and fell in a round, savage phrase. "Yo' hear me, Hazel. I'll put my heel in his dam' face an' grind the sight outen him! It's the last Gillette. I'm tromplin' the breed out..."

      The veering beams almost touched her. Lorena shifted, and one exploring hand touched and closed about a rock. Closed about it so tightly that its jagged corners bit into her palm. She rose, stepped to the trail and threw the rock as she would have launched a lariat. It went high, carried beyond them and struck a tree. The lantern twisted and dropped; instantly it was smashed and the light extinguished by a grinding boot heel.

      "Behind!"

      "Yo' brash fool, what about a light now?"

      "He's playin' possum behind. Stretch back there!"

      The horse was a few yards removed. Lorena went toward him cautiously. She caught the reins, she swung to the saddle and in a flash she wheeled away from the trail and deeper into the trees. The noise betrayed her, as she wished it to do. San Saba was volleying words; words that were drowned by a double explosion. The bullets were low; she heard them racing toward their own horses.

      All this was blind riding to her, she never had gone far from the trail or very deep into these woods; but she pushed the horse as fast as it would go, marking the town lights now and then as they appeared between the pines. These lights sank as she kept her course upward. It took time for the renegades to get a-saddle and in pursuit, and when she heard them smashing along she made a quick foray at right angles to her course, brought up by the shelter of a thicket she felt against her stirrup, and waited. They swept past her, near enough at one moment to have heard her breathing. Then they were tangled in the pockets and the underbrush of the higher ground; she waited a moment before turning back. The sound of their own progress covered hers. And they wouldn't return—not for a little while.

      The horse took her back to the trail, but the exact location of Gillette was another matter, and she felt, for a little while absolutely helpless. Then the animal's shoes crunched against the glass of the shattered lantern and instantly she was on the ground, zigzagging through the brush. The renegades were out of hearing, but a traveller came along the trail from town, his approach marked by a belled burro. That meant a prospector going into the hills; directly after hearing this new sound in the night her foot touched Gillette's body. She dropped.

      "Tom—oh, my dear! I can't lift you, I can't let you stay here!"

      There was a smallness to his breathing that frightened her. The belled burro neared her covert, and she rose and stepped into the trail. There was no other alternative. This man she would have to use.

      "Who are you?"

      The bell stopped jingling; a gruff voice answered. "Do'ee hear now? Ab's cat, is it a woman in this tarnal black night?"

      "Who are you?"

      "Ma'm, what mought be the difference? Gabe's my handle. Old Gabe. Ask ary old-timer in the Hills about me."

      "You've got to help. No questions to be asked, understand? And you must never say a word to anyone. Will you do it?"

      "Rags an' bottles. Mystication's what it sounds like. But if it's a lady I'll be singed if I won't."

      "Come behind me. There's a man dying here in the brush."

      "Better die in the brush than die in a bed," muttered the prospector. He skirted her and stooped down to run a hand across Gillette. "Dyin' be about the proper term for the sitooation."

      "You've got to carry him a quarter mile for me. Hurry. He's been here too long now."

      The prospector settled to a knee and expelled a great sigh as Gillette's bulk fell on his shoulders. The girl led away, up the trail, and along the lesser path to her cabin. The prospector murmured beneath his burden, and at the cabin door he let Gillette down suddenly and whistled. "A hunnerd ninety pounds solid. Nary ounce less. It'll take a big coffin, ma'm."

      "Not here—inside!"

      She guided the prospector through the door and to the bunk. The man swung Gillette on the blankets. "A leetle light, girl. We'll see the extent o' the perforations. Old Gabe's looked at a plenty in forty years. If his lips is putty colour they ain't a speck o' use..."

      "I'm grateful. You can't see him. You must forget this cabin. Never say anything about it. Do you remember?"

      "Wal..."

      Unwillingness trailed through the word. She shoved him back across the door sill. "Hazel tried to kill this man. I'm hiding him. If Hazel should ever find out he'd come back..."

      "Oh, ay. That's a different set o' drills. Old Gabe ain't int'rested. Didn't hear nuthin', see nuthin', do nuthin'. Ma'm, thankee. Yore a fine girl."

      "There's a horse standing on the main trail. Take him along with you."

      "A hoss thief? Wal, not yet."

      "Take him. Strip off the saddle and hide it somewhere before morning. Drive the horse away up along your trail and let him go."

      "That's a level head. Fine girl—fine girl."

      She heard him go away. Closing the door she laid the barrier into its sockets—a contrivance she herself had made since living here—and crossed to the centre of the room. The burlap curtain wasn't protection enough, so she pulled the blanket rug from the floor and impaled it on the nails serving as window rods. Thus secured she lighted the lamp and went to the bed. What she saw there undid most of the courage she had summoned this eventful night. Tom Gillette lay face upward, coated with dust and streaked with blood. It lay freshly congealed on his temples, and all along one shoulder it fashioned a crimson badge; one arm was askew, as if it were broken, and it seemed to her he had dropped down into that deep level from which the earthborn never return.

      She was crying again. She had only cried twice since childhood, the other time being on the eve of her flight from her father's shelter when the memory of Christine Ballard was fresh in her mind. And as she stood there, shaken and helpless, she thought it a bitter and cruel piece of fortune that of all men he had to be the one to hurt her so badly. So badly that she had given way to the emotion she most despised in a woman. Tom Gillette had the power to make her cry, to break through whatever armour she might put on.

      She lighted a fire. While the water heated in the kettle she ripped a sheet into strips and with the butcher knife cut Gillette's shirt away from him.

      XIV. GRIST STRIKES AGAIN

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      Barron Grist obeyed orders because it was profitable to do so. On his own initiative he never would have committed an overt act of wrongdoing or dared to skim along the slim line dividing legality from illegality. He wasn't robustly crooked enough to face the law on his own account. But with a corporation behind him Grist was another man. He borrowed courage from those who hired him, and he fetched and carried the corporation's dirty tools with the curious yet common philosophy of his type: he wasn't the originator, but only the agent, and therefore not bound by his conscience. After all, business was business,