4
Perhaps, in the final analysis, Riley Sinclair would not be condemnedfor the death of Lowrie or the killing of Quade, but for singing on thetrail to Sour Creek. And sing he did, his voice ringing from hill tohill, and the echoes barking back to him, now and again.
He was not silent until he came to Sour Creek. At the head of the long,winding, single street he drew the mustang to a tired walk. It was avery peaceful moment in the little town Yonder a dog barked and acoyote howled a thin answer far away, but, aside from these, all othersounds were the happy noises of families at the end of a day. Fromevery house they floated out to him, the clamor of children, the deeplaughter of a man, the loud rattle of pans in the kitchen.
"This ain't so bad," Riley Sinclair said aloud and roused the mustangcruelly to a gallop, the hoofs of his mount splashing through inches ofpungent dust.
The heaviness of the gallop told him that his horse was plainly spentand would not be capable of a long run before the morning. RileySinclair accepted the inevitable with a sigh. All his strong instinctscried out to find Sandersen and, having found him, to shoot him andflee. Yet he had a sense of fatality connected with Sandersen. Lowrie'sown conscience had betrayed him, and his craven fear had been hisexecutioner. Quade had been shot in a fair fight with not a soul nearby. But, at the third time, Sinclair felt reasonably sure that his luckwould fail him. The third time the world would be very apt to brand himwith murder.
It was a bad affair, and he wanted to get it done. This stay in SourCreek was entirely against his will. Accordingly he put the mustang inthe stable behind the hotel, looked to his feed, and then went slowlyback to get a room. He registered and went in silence up to his room.If there had been the need, he could have kept on riding for atwenty-hour stretch, but the moment he found his journey interrupted,he flung himself on the bed, his arms thrown out crosswise, crucifiedwith weariness.
In the meantime the proprietor returned to his desk to find a long,gaunt man leaning above the register, one brown finger tracing a name.
"Looking for somebody, Sandersen?" he asked. "Know this gent Sinclair?"
"Face looked kind of familiar to me," said the other, who had jerkedhis head up from the study of the register. "Somehow I don't tie thatname up with the face."
"Maybe not," said the proprietor. "Maybe he ain't Riley Sinclair ofColma; maybe he's somebody else."
"Traveling strange, you mean?" asked Sandersen.
"I dunno, Bill, but he looks like a hard one. He's got one of themnervous right hands."
"Gunfighter?"
"I dunno. I'm not saying anything about what he is or what he ain't.But, if a gent was to come in here and tell me a pretty strong yarnabout Riley Sinclair, or whatever his name might be, I wouldn't inclineto doubt of it, would you, Bill?"
"Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn't," answered Bill Sandersengloomily.
He went out onto the veranda and squinted thoughtfully into thedarkness. Bill Sandersen was worried--very worried. The moment he sawSinclair enter the hotel, there had been a ghostly familiarity aboutthe man. And he understood the reason for it as soon as he saw the nameon the register. Sinclair! The name carried him back to the picture ofthe man who lay on his back, with the soft sands already half buryinghis body, and the round, purple blur in the center of his forehead. Ina way it was as if Hal Sinclair had come back to Me in a new and moreterrible form, come back as an avenger.
Bill Sandersen was not an evil man, and his sin against Hal Sinclairhad its qualifying circumstances. At least he had been only one ofthree, all of whom had concurred in the thing. He devoutly wished thatthe thing were to be done over again. He swore to himself that in sucha case he would stick with his companion, no matter who deserted. Butwhat had brought this Riley Sinclair all the way from Colma to SourCreek, if it were not an errand of vengeance?
A sense of guilt troubled the mind of Bill Sandersen, but the obviousthing was to find out the reason for Sinclair's presence in Sour Creek.Sandersen crossed the street to the newly installed telegraph office.He had one intimate friend in the far-off town of Colma, and to thatfriend he now addressed a telegram.
* * * * *
Rush back all news you have about man calling self Riley Sinclair ofColma--over six feet tall, weight hundred and eighty, complexion dark,hard look.
* * * * *
There was enough meat in that telegram to make the operator rise hishead and glance with sharpened eyes at the patron. Bill Sandersenreturned that glance with so much interest that the operator loweredhis head again and made a mental oath that he would let the Westernersrun the West.
With that telegram working for him in far-off Colma, Bill Sandersenstarted out to gather what information he could in Sour Creek. Hedrifted from the blacksmith shop to the kitchen of Mrs. Mary Caluson,but both these brimming reservoirs of news had this day run dry. Mrs.Caluson vaguely remembered a Riley Sinclair, a man who fought for thesheer love of fighting. A grim fellow!
Pete Handley, the blacksmith, had even less to say. He also, heaverred, had heard of a Riley Sinclair, a man of action, but he couldnot remember in what sense. Vaguely he seemed to recall that there hadbeen something about guns connected with the name of Riley Sinclair.
Meager information on which to build, but, having seen this man, BillSandersen said the less and thought the more. In a couple of hours hewent back through the night to the telegraph office and found that hisColma friend had been unbelievably prompt. The telegram had been sent"collect," and Bill Sandersen groaned as he paid the bill. But when heopened the telegram he did not begrudge the money.
Riley Sinclair is harder than he looks, but absolutely honest and willpay fairer than anybody. Avoid all trouble. Trust his word, but not histemper. Gunfighter, but not a bully. By the way, your pal Lowrie shothimself last week.
The long fingers of Bill Sandersen slowly gathered the telegram into aball and crushed it against the palm of his hand. That ball hepresently unraveled to reread the telegram; he studied it word by word.
"Absolutely honest!"
It made Sandersen wish to go straight to the gunfighter, put his cardson the table, confess what he had done to Sinclair's brother, and thenexpress his sorrow. Then he remembered the cruel, lean face of Sinclairand the impatient eyes. He would probably be shot before he had halffinished his story of the gruesome trip through the desert. AlreadyLowrie was dead. Even a child could have put two and two together andseen that Sinclair had come to Sour Creek on a mission of vengeance.Sandersen was himself a fighter, and, being a fighter, he knew that inRiley Sinclair he would meet the better man.
But two good men were better than one, even if the one were an expert.Sandersen went straight to the barn behind his shack, saddled hishorse, and spurred out along the north road to Quade's house. Oncewarned, they would be doubly armed, and, standing back to back, theycould safely defy the marauder from the north.
There was no light in Quade's house, but there was just a chance thatthe owner had gone to bed early. Bill Sandersen dismounted to find out,and dismounting, he stumbled across a soft, inert mass in the path. Amoment later he was on his knees, and the flame of the sulphur matchsputtered a blue light into the dead face of Quade, staring upward tothe stars. Bill Sandersen remained there until the match singed hisfinger tips.
All doubt was gone now. Lowrie and Quade were both gone; and he,Sandersen, alone remained, the third and last of the guilty. His firststrong impulse, after his agitation had diminished to such a point thathe was able to think clearly again, was to flee headlong into the nightand keep on, changing horses at every town he reached until he was overthe mountains and buried in the shifting masses of life in some greatcity.
And then he recalled Riley Sinclair, lean and long as a hound. Such aman would be terrible on the trail--tireless, certainly. Besides therewas the horror of flight, almost more awful than the immediate fear ofdeath. Once he turned his back to flee from Riley Sinclair, thegunfighter would bec
ome a nightmare that would haunt him the rest ofhis life. No matter where he fled, every footstep behind him would bethe footfall of Riley Sinclair, and behind every closed door wouldstand the same ominous figure. On the other hand if he went back andfaced Sinclair he might reduce the nightmare to a mere creature offlesh and blood.
Sandersen resolved to take the second step.
In one way his hands were tied. He could not accuse Sinclair of thiskilling without in the first place exposing the tale of how Riley'sbrother was abandoned in the desert by three strong men who had beenhis bunkies. And that story, Sandersen knew, would condemn him to worsethan death in the mountain desert. He would be loathed and scorned fromone end of the cattle country to the other.
All of these things went through his head, as he jogged his mustangback down the hill. He turned in at Mason's place. All at once herecalled that he was not acting normally. He had just come from seeingthe dead body of his best friend. And yet so mortal was his concern forhis own safety that he felt not the slightest touch of grief or horrorfor dead Quade.
He had literally to grip his hands and rouse himself to a pitch ofsemihysteria. Then he spurred his horse down the path, flung himselfwith a shout out of the saddle, cast open the door of the house withouta preliminary knock, and rushed into the room.
"Murder!" shouted Bill Sandersen. "Quade is killed!"