kept looking straight ahead, biting his lips, and this made her wonder. She began to hum a gay little tune, and the first bar made the man start. So she kept on. She was bubbling with apparent good nature when Charles, all gravity, opened the door of the living room.
The shades were drawn. The quiet in that room was a deadly, living thing. And then she saw, on the sofa at one side of the place, a human form under a sheet.
"Charles!" whispered the girl. She put out her hand and touched his shoulder, but she could not take her eyes off that ghastly dead thing. "They—they—he's dead—Andrew Lanning! Why did you bring me here?"
"Take the cloth from his face," commanded Charles Merchant, and there was something so hard in his voice that she obeyed.
The sheet came away under her touch, and she was looking into the sallow face of Bill Dozier. She had remembered him because of the sad mustaches, that morning, and his big voice.
"That's what your romantic boy out of a book has done," said Charles Merchant. "Look at his work!"
But she dropped the sheet and whirled on him.
"And they left him—" she said.
"Anne," said he, "are you thinking about the safety of that murderer—now? He's safe, but they'll get him later on; he's as good as dead, if that's what you want to know."
"God help him!" said the girl.
And going back a pace, she stood in the thick shadow, leaning against the wall, with one hand across her lips. It reminded Charles of the picture he had seen when he broke into her room after Andrew Lanning had escaped. And she looked now, as, then, more beautiful, more wholly to be desired than he had ever known her before. Yet he could neither move nor speak. He saw her go out of the room. Then, without stopping to replace the sheet, he followed.
He had hoped to wipe the last thought of that vagabond blacksmith out of her mind with the shock of this horror. Instead, he knew now that he had done quite another thing. And in addition he had probably made her despise him for taking her to confront such a sight.
All in all, Charles Merchant was exceedingly thoughtful as he closed the door and stepped into the hall. He ran up the stairs to her room. The door was closed. There was no answer to his knock, and by trying the knob he found that she had locked herself in. And the next moment he could hear her sobbing. He stood for a moment more, listening, and wishing Andrew Lanning dead with all his heart.
Then he went down to the garage, climbed into his car, and burned up the road between his place and that of Hal Dozier. There was very little similarity between the two brothers. Bill had been tall and lean; Hal was compact and solid, and he had the fighting agility of a starved coyote. He had a smooth-shaven face as well, and a clear gray eye, which was known wherever men gathered in the mountain desert. There was no news to give him. A telephone message had already told him of the death of Bill Dozier.
"But," said Charles Merchant, "there's one thing I can do. I can set you free to run down this Lanning."
"How?"
"You're needed on your ranch, Hal; but I want you to let me stand the expenses of this trip. Take your time, make sure of him, and run him into the ground."
"My friend," said Hal Dozier, "you turn a pleasure into a real party."
And Charles Merchant left, knowing that he had signed the death warrant of young Lanning. In all the history of the mountain desert there was a tale of only one man who had escaped, once Hal Dozier took his trail, and that man had blown out his own brains.
CHAPTER 11
Far away in the western sky Andy Lanning saw a black dot that moved in wide circles and came up across the heavens slowly, and he knew it was a buzzard that scented carrion and was coming up the wind toward that scent. He had seen them many a time before on their gruesome trails, and the picture which he carried was not a pleasant one.
But now the picture that drifted through his mind was still more horrible. It was a human body lying face downward in the sand with the wind ruffling in the hair and the hat rolled a few paces off and the gun close to the outstretched hand. He knew from Uncle Jasper that no matter how far the trail led, or how many years it was ridden, the end of the outlaw was always the same—death and the body left to the buzzards. Or else, in some barroom, a footfall from behind and a bullet through the back.
The flesh of Andy crawled. It was not possible for him to relax in vigilance for a moment, lest danger come upon him when he least expected it. Perhaps, in some open space like this. He went on until the sun was low in the west and all the sky was rimmed with color.
Dusk had come over the hills in a rush, when he saw a house half lost in the shadows. It was a narrow-fronted, two-storied, unpainted, lonely place, without sign of a porch. Here, where there was no vestige of a town near, and where there was no telephone, the news of the deaths of Bill Dozier and Buck Heath could not have come. Andy accepted the house as a blessing and went straight toward it.
But the days of carelessness were over for Andy, and he would never again approach a house without searching it like a human face. He studied this shack as he came closer. If there were people in the building they did not choose to show a light.
Andy went around to the rear of the house, where there was a low shed beside the corral, half tumbled down; but in the corral were five or six fine horses—wild fellows with bright eyes and the long necks of speed. Andy looked upon them wistfully. Not one of them but was worth the price of three of the pinto; but as for money there was not twenty dollars in the pocket of Andy.
Stripping the saddle from the pinto, he put it under the shed and left the mustang to feed and find water in the small pasture. Then he went with the bridle, that immemorial sign of one who seeks hospitality in the West, toward the house. He was met halfway by a tall, strong man of middle age or more. There was no hat on his head, which was covered with a shock of brown hair much younger than the face beneath it. He beheld Andy without enthusiasm.
"You figure on layin' over here for the night, stranger?" he asked.
"That's it," said Andy.
"I'll tell you how it is," said the big man in the tone of one who is willing to argue a point. "We ain't got a very big house—you see it—and it's pretty well filled right now. If you was to slope over the hills there, you'd find Gainorville inside of ten miles."
Andy explained that he was at the end of a hard ride. "Ten more miles would kill the pinto," he said. "But if you don't mind, I'll have a bit of chow and then turn in out there in the shed. That won't crowd you in your sleeping quarters, and it'll be fine for me."
The big man opened his mouth to say something more, then turned on his heel.
"I guess we can fix you up," he said. "Come on along."
At another time Andy would have lost a hand rather than accept such churlish hospitality, but he was in no position to choose. The pain of hunger was like a voice speaking in him.
It was a four-room house; the rooms on the ground floor were the kitchen, where Andy cooked his own supper of bacon and coffee and flapjacks, and the combination living room, dining room, and, from the bunk covered with blankets on one side, bedroom. Upstairs there must have been two more rooms of the same size.
Seated about a little kitchen table in the front room, Andy found three men playing an interrupted game of blackjack, which was resumed when the big fellow took his place before his hand. The three gave Andy a look and a grunt,
