The Night Horseman

OLD GARY PETERS

For some moments after this Buck Daniels remained at the bar with his hand clenched around his glass and his eyes fixed before him in the peculiar second-sighted manner which had marked him when he sat so long on the veranda.

“Funny thing,” began O’Brien, to make conversation, “how many fellers go west at sunset.  Seems like they let go all holts as soon as the dark comes.  Hey?”

“How long before sunset now?” asked Buck Daniels sharply.

“Maybe a couple of hours.”

“A couple of hours,” repeated Daniels, and ground his knuckles across his forehead.  “A couple of hours!”

He raised his glass with a jerky motion and downed the contents; the chaser stood disregarded before him and O’Brien regarded his patron with an eye of admiration.

“You long for these parts?” he asked.

“No, I’m strange to this range.  Riding up north pretty soon, if I can get someone to tell me the lay of the land.  D’you know it?”

“Never been further north than Brownsville.”

“Couldn’t name me someone that’s travelled about, I s’pose?”

“Old Gary Peters knows every rock within three day’s riding.  He keeps the blacksmith shop across the way.”

“So?  Thanks; I’ll look him up.”

Buck Daniels found the blacksmith seated on a box before his place of business; it was a slack time for Gary Peters and he consoled himself for idleness by chewing the stem of an unlighted corn-cob, whose bowl was upside down.  His head was pulled down and forward as if by the weight of his prodigious sandy moustache, and he regarded a vague horizon with misty eyes.

“Seen you comin’ out of O’Brien’s,” said the blacksmith, as Buck took possession of a nearby box.  “What’s the news?”

“Ain’t any news,” responded Buck dejectedly.  “Too much talk; no news.”

“That’s right,” nodded Gary Peters.  “O’Brien is the out-talkingest man I ever see.  Ain’t nobody on Brownsville can get his tongue around so many words as O’Brien.”

So saying, he blew through his pipe, picked up a stick of soft pine, and began to whittle it to a point.

“In my part of the country,” went on Buck Daniels, “they don’t lay much by a man that talks a pile.”

Here the blacksmith turned his head slowly, regarded his companion for an instant, and then resumed his whittling.

“But,” said Daniels, with a sigh, “if I could find a man that knowed the country north of Brownsville and had a hobble on his tongue I could give him a night’s work that’d be worth while.”

Gary Peters removed his pipe from his mouth and blew out his dropping moustaches.  He turned one wistful glance upon his idle forge; he turned a sadder eye upon his companion.

“I could name you a silent man or two in Brownsville,” he said, “but there ain’t only one man that knows the country right.”

“That so?  And who might he be?”

“Me.”

“You?” echoed Daniels in surprise.  He turned and considered Gary as if for the first time.  “Maybe you know the lay of the land up as far as Hawkin’s Arroyo?”

“Me?  Son, I know every cactus clear to Bald Eagle.”

“H-m-m!” muttered Daniels.  “I s’pose maybe you could name some of the outfits from here on a line with Bald Eagle—­say you put ’em ten miles apart?”

“Nothin’ easier.  I could find ’em blindfold.  First due out they’s McCauley’s.  Then lay a bit west of north and you hit the Circle K Bar—­that’s about twelve mile from McCauley’s.  Hit ’er up dead north again, by east, and you come eight miles to Three Roads.  Go on to—­”

“Partner,” cut in Daniels, “I could do business with you.”

“Maybe you could.”

“My name’s Daniels.”

“I’m Gary Peters.  H’ware you?”

They shook hands.

“Peters,” said Buck Daniels, “you look square, and I need you in square game; but there ain’t any questions that go with it.  Twenty iron men for one day’s riding and one day’s silence.”

“M’frien’,” murmured Peters.  “In my day I’ve gone three months without speakin’ to anything in boots; and I wasn’t hired for it, neither.”

“You know them people up the line,” said Daniels.  “Do they know you?”

“I’ll tell a man they do!  Know Gary Peters?”

“Partner, this is what I want.  I want you to leave Brownsville inside of ten minutes and start riding for Elkhead.  I want you to ride, and I want you to ride like hell.  Every ten miles, or so, I want you to stop at some place where you can get a fresh hoss.  Get your fresh hoss and leave the one you’ve got off, and tell them to have the hoss you leave ready for me any time to-night.  It’ll take you clear till to-morrow night to reach Elkhead, even with relayin’ your hosses?”

“Round about that, if I ride like hell.  What do I take with me?”

“Nothing.  Nothing but the coin I give you to hire someone at every stop to have that hoss you’ve left ready for me.  Better still, if you can have ’em, get a fresh hoss.  Would they trust you with hosses that way, Gary?”

“Gimme the coin and where they won’t trust me I’ll pay cash.”

“I can do it.  It’ll about bust me, but I can do it.”

“You going to try for a record between Brownsville and Elkhead, eh?  Got a bet up, eh?”

“The biggest bet you ever heard of,” said Daniels grimly.  “You can tell the boys along the road that I’m tryin’ for time.  Have you got a fast hoss to start with?”

“Got a red mare that ain’t much for runnin’ cattle, but she’s greased lightnin’ for a short bust.”

“Then get her out.  Saddle her up, and be on your way.  Here’s my stake—­I’ll keep back one twenty for accidents.  First gimme a list of the places you’ll stop for the relays.”

He produced an old envelope and a stub of soft pencil with which he jotted down Gary Peters’ directions.

“And every second,” said Buck Daniels in parting, “that you can cut off your own time will be a second cut off’n mine.  Because I’m liable to be on your heels when you ride into Elkhead.”

Gary Peters lifted his eyebrows and then restored his pipe.  He spoke through his teeth.

“You ain’t got a piece of money to bet on that, partner?” he queried softly.

“Ten extra if you get to Elkhead before me.”

“They’s limits to hoss-flesh,” remarked Peters.  “What time you ridin’ against?”

“Against a cross between a bullet and a nor’easter, Gary.  I’m going back to drink to your luck.”

A promise which Buck Daniels fulfilled, for he had need of even borrowed strength.  He drank steadily until a rattle of hoofs down the street entered the saloon, and then someone came in to say that Gary Peters had started out of town to “beat all hell, on his red mare.”

After that, Buck started out to find Dan Barry.  His quarry was not in the barn nor in the corral behind the barn.  There stood Satan and Black Bart, but their owner was not in sight.  But a thought came to Buck while he looked, rather mournfully, at the stallion’s promise of limitless speed.  “If I can hold him up jest half a minute,” murmured Buck to himself, “jest half a minute till I get a start, I’ve got a rabbit’s chance of livin’ out the night!”

From the door of the first shed he took a heavy chain with the key in the padlock.  This chain he looped about the post and the main timber of the gate, snapped the padlock, and threw the key into the distance.  Then he stepped back and surveyed his work with satisfaction.  It would be a pretty job to file through that chain, or to knock down those ponderous rails of the fence and make a gap.  A smile of satisfaction came on the face of Buck Daniels, then, hitching at his belt, and pulling his sombrero lower over his eyes, he started once more to find Dan Barry.

He was more in haste now, for the sun was dipping behind the mountains of the west and the long shadows moved along the ground with a perceptible speed.  When he reached the street he found a steady drift of people towards O’Brien’s barroom.  They came by ones and twos and idled in front of the swinging doors or slyly peeked through them and then whispered one to the other.  Buck accosted one of those by the door and asked what was wrong.

“He’s in there,” said the other, with a broad and excited grin.  “He’s in there—­waitin’!”

And when Buck threw the doors wide he saw, at the farther end of the deserted barroom, Dan Barry, seated at a table braiding a small horsehair chain.  His hat was pushed far back on his head; he had his back to the door.  Certainly he must be quite unaware that all Brownsville was waiting, breathless, for his destruction.  Behind the bar stood O’Brien, pale under his bristles, and his eyes never leaving the slender figure at the end of his room; but seeing Buck he called with sudden loudness:  “Come in, stranger.  Come in and have one on the house.  There ain’t nothing but silence around this place and it’s getting on my nerves.”

Buck Daniels obeyed the invitation at once, and behind him, stepping softly, some of them entering with their hats in their hands and on tiptoe, came a score of the inhabitants of Brownsville.  They lined the bar up and down its length; not a word was spoken; but every head turned as at a given signal towards the quiet man at the end of the room.