DEFIANCE
AT THE first report of the rifle, Hardin straightened in his saddle. He raised himself in his stirrups and issued a sharp word of command to the roan. Scotch had a reserve of speed remaining—something of which Hardin had been certain, and upon which he had banked for the showdown.
The gap between the two horses diminished. It lessened to a mere hundred yards.
Vandover shouted a rasping, despairing curse. The rifle had been emptied of its last shell and none of his shots had come close to the man who was so swiftly gaining on him. With a yell of defiance he flung the rifle far out into the sand and reached for the revolver at his belt.
But before he could even get it out of its holster, the black horse’s straining pace took its toll. The spent horse, blinded by the sweat and dust and sand particles filming his eyes, tortured by the effort of his laboring lungs, struck an upstanding rock in the treacherous sand. The black lunged madly and went down, floundering, striking the floor of the desert with a crash, describing a complete somersault that threw the rider several feet beyond in a sprawling heap.
Hardin reined the panting Scotch to a halt within a few yards of the prone black horse and leaped to the ground. The black lay utterly still, mouth open, tongue lolling to the sand, barrel heaving painfully, eyes rolling in agony. Hardin’s gaze focused on the distortion of the slender forelegs of the well-bred animal. Both of them had been broken by the punishing fall.
Rood Vandover struggled frantically to his feet, momentarily stunned by the crash, and stood staring stupidly at Gage Hardin. But he made no further attempt to go for his holstered gun, for Hardin’s own gun muzzle was boring at him steadily. With colossal difficulty the downed gunman found his voice.
“I was hoping”—he made an attempt to wet dry lips with a dry, quivering tongue as he rasped out his lie—“I was hoping that you would not come after me, Gage, when you found—found . . . For your own sake—’cause you was more needed in the Valley. Believe me or not, I was hoping you wouldn’t come! I—I hated to do that to your—horses. But I had to. Louis made me do it! It—it was all part of a trap to get you away.”
“You are telling me nothing.” Hardin held Rood Vandover’s gaze with eyes that concealed his bitterness, and his tone held the coldness of judgment. “None of your excuses matter now, Rood. I am taking you back to answer charges. You have done Louis Peele’s bidding just once too often, Vandover. I could kill you now—but I’m taking you back to the law.”
“Taking me back, Gage? Not me! I killed your horses, yes. It’s no use trying to deny that, for it was planned for you to know it was me. But I killed them because Louis made me. It was all part of a trap, I tell you, and I’ll admit I even helped plan that—how to get you away from the Valley while Louis did something else he wanted to do. He didn’t tell me what—that’s Gawd’s truth! And take it or leave it, everything I did was because it was the only way I saw of getting clear of Louis Peele. And now that I’ve got clear of the sidewinder who had me, body and soul, I’m not going back! Not for you or any other man wearing shoe leather!”
“You are going back, Rood,” Hardin replied quietly, his voice the same monotone of deadly accusation. “You are—”
“Listen to me, Gage!” Vandover pleaded desperately, his face colorless beneath the sun’s burning, his eyes despairing. “I’ll make a bargain with you. Listen! What would you give to know what became of your brother Bruce, back there where you lived before—the Valley?”
Hardin drew a deep, hard breath, but his eyes held steadily, inexorably on the cringing gunman.
“Nothing, Rood,” he said coldly. “I have known for nearly nine years that my brother was dead.”
Vandover laughed, a strange, insane sound in the desert air.
“Oh, yes, he’s dead all right. But—wouldn’t you give a good deal to know how he died? You never did know, did you? And ever since you’d have given your right arm to know how—and why, and who. You know you would—and so do I. You may suspect, but you’d give something to know. Fair enough. I do know. And so I’m making you a proposition. You let me get away, let me go on into Mexico—I swear you nor nobody else in the Valley will ever hear of me again—and I’ll give you enough on Louis Peele to—”
“I have enough on Louis Peele now to hang him to the highest tree, Rood,” Hardin said, his voice icily cold, hard. “I make no bargains with a treacherous rat like you. You are going back with me, so stop trying to argue, and do as I say. I have enough water to see us back across the desert. We will take turns walking, and riding my horse.” Again his lips tightened, as he shot a quick glance at the suffering animal in the sand. “But the first thing you are to do is to walk over there and shoot that black horse of yours.”
“Shoot him yourself!” snapped Vandover, but a queer gleam came into his eyes that Gage Hardin did not miss.
“And give you a chance to draw on me?” sneered Hardin.
Vandover slumped, defeated, his eyes on the gun held so steadily in the tall young rancher’s hand.
“Turn your back to me,” commanded Hardin. “Now draw your gun and shoot the horse. Then throw your gun behind you and stay where you are until I get the gun.”
Vandover tried to straighten, as within him despair and terror won all odds, but his shoulders would not entirely come out of their slump. Even though his back was turned he knew that he would have no chance, even with a gun in his hand, for Hardin’s own gun was unswervingly between his shoulder blades. He would be a dead man before he could even whirl with his own weapon.
Slowly he drew his gun from its holster—the weapon so useless now for his own purpose. As steadily as he could, he aimed it at the head of the black horse, and with neat precision put a bullet through the animal’s brain. The horse quivered once, kicked feebly with its hind feet, and again lay still.
“Now toss that gun behind you,” came Hardin’s calm monotone, and the gun plumped into the sand a few feet beyond the tall rancher.
But Gage Hardin was not prepared for Rood Vandover’s next swift move, perhaps because he had not fully realized the depths of despair in the man’s black heart. He had not thought that Vandover would whirl to make battle, weaponless, in the face of a covering gun. But that was exactly what the gunman did!
Before he could actually grasp the fact that it was coming, Hardin saw a big fist flash at his chin as Rood Vandover whirled, lightninglike, cursing and staggering, but filled with the courage of despair. With an instinctive roll of his head Hardin evaded the punch, but before he could get his gun into action, the brutishly husky man was on him, closing in so that gun play was impossible. One of Vandover’s hands was grasping the rancher’s wrist in a viselike grip, and with the other huge hand he was reaching for Hardin’s throat, the thick, steely fingers kinked like talons.
Gage Hardin knew Vandover of old, knew his reputation in a rough-and-tumble fight; knew especially now, with so much at stake, that he would use everything. He also knew the man’s strength and knew that if those devilish hands once found his windpipe that it would be quickly crushed.
Thinking quickly, knowing that for the moment the gun in the hand that Vandover gripped would be useless, Hardin hooked up his left fist in a hard uppercut aimed at Vandover’s apelike jaw. But the bunched knuckles did not connect, for Vandover jerked his head aside at just the right moment, and Hardin’s fist smashed solidly on the gunman’s nose. He felt the impact along his own
