Way of the Lawless

After that things happened to Andrew in a swirl.  They were shaking hands with him.  They were congratulating him on the killing of Bill Dozier.  They were patting him on the back.  Larry la Roche, who had been so hostile, now stood up to the full of his ungainly height and proposed his health.  And the other men drank it standing.  Andy received a tin cup half full of whisky, and he drank the burning stuff in acknowledgment.  The unaccustomed drink went to his head, his muscles began to relax, his eyes swam.  Voices boomed at him out of a haze.  “Why, he’s only a young kid.  One shot put him under the weather.”

“Shut up, Larry.  He’ll learn fast enough.”

“Ah, yes,” said Larry to himself, “he’ll learn fast enough!”

Presently he was lifted and carried by strong arms up a creaking stairs.  He looked up, and he saw the red hair of the mighty Jeff, who carried him as if he had been a child, and deposited him among some blankets.

“I didn’t know,” Larry la Roche was saying.  “How could I tell a man-killer like him couldn’t stand no more than a girl?”

“Shut up and get out,” said another voice.  Heavy footsteps retreated, then Andrew heard them once more grumbling and booming below him.

After that his head cleared rapidly.  Two windows were open in this higher room, and a sharp current of the night wind blew across him, clearing his mind as rapidly as wind blows away a fog.  Now he made out that one man had not left him; the dark outline of him was by the bed, waiting.

“Who’s there?” asked Andrew.  “Allister.  Take it easy.”

“I’m all right.  I’ll go down again to the boys.”

“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, kid.  Are you sure your head’s clear?”

“Yep.  Sure thing.”

“Then listen to me, Lanning, while I talk.  It’s important.  Stay here till the morning, then ride on.”

“Where?”

“Oh, away from Martindale, that’s all.”

“Out of the desert?  Out of the mountains?”

“Of course.  They’ll hunt for you here.”  Allister paused, then went on.  “And when you get away what’ll you do?  Go straight?”

“God willing,” said Andrew fervently.  “It—­it was only luck, bad luck, that put me where I am.”

The outlaw scratched a match and lighted a candle; then he dropped a little of the melted tallow on a box, and by that light he peered earnestly into Andrew’s face.  He appeared to need this light to read the expression on it.  It also enabled Andrew to see the face of Allister.  Sometimes the play of shadows made that face unreal as a dream, sometimes the face was filled with poetic beauty, sometimes the light gleamed on the scar and the sardonic smile, and then it was a face out of hell.

“You’re going to get away from the mountain desert and go straight,” said Allister.

“That’s it.”  He saw that the outlaw was staring with a smile, half grim and half sad, into the shadows and far away.

“Lanning, let me tell you.  You’ll never get away.”

“You don’t understand,” said Andrew.  “I don’t like fighting.  It—­it makes me sick inside.  I’m not a brave man!”

He waited to see the contempt come on the face of the famous leader, but there was nothing but grave attention.

“Why,” Andy went on in a rush of confidence, “everybody in Martindale knows that I’m not a fighter.  Those fellows downstairs think that I’m a sort of bad hombre.  I’m not.  Why, Allister, when I turned over Buck Heath and saw his face, I nearly fainted, and then—­”

“Wait,” cut in the other.  “That was your first man.  You didn’t kill him, but you thought you had.  You nearly fainted, then.  But as I gather it, after you shot Bill Dozier you simply sat on your horse and waited.  Did you feel like fainting then?”

“No,” explained Andrew hastily.  “I wanted to go after them and shoot’em all.  They could have rushed me and taken me prisoner easily, but they wanted to shoot me from a distance—­and it made me mad to see them work it.  I—­I hated them all, and I had a reason for it.  Curse them!”

He added hurriedly:  “But I’ve no grudge against anybody.  All I want is a chance to live quiet and clean.”

There was a faint sigh from Allister.

“Lanning,” he murmured, “the minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you were one of my kind.  In all my life I’ve known only one other with that same chilly effect in his eyes—­that was Marshal Langley—­only he happened to be on the side of the law.  No matter.  He had the iron dust in him.  He was cut out to be a man-killer.  You say you want to get away:  Lanning, you can’t do it.  Because you can’t get away from yourself.  I’m making a long talk to you, but you’re worth it.  I tell you I read your mind.  You plan on riding north and getting out of the mountain desert before the countryside there is raised against you, the way it’s raised to the south.  In the first place, I don’t think you’ll get away.  Hal Dozier is on your trail, and he’ll get to the north and raise the whole district and stop you before you hit the towns.  You’ll have to go back to the mountain desert.  You’ll have to do it eventually, why not do it now?  Lanning, if I had you at my back I could laugh at the law the rest of our lives!  Stay with me.  I can tell a man when I see him.  I saw you call Larry la Roche.  And I’ve never wanted a man the way I want you.  Not to follow me, but as a partner.  Shake and say you will!”

The slender hand was stretched out through the shadows, the light from the candle flashed on it.  And a power outside his own will made Andrew move his hand to meet it.  He stopped the gesture with a violent effort.

The swift voice of the outlaw, with a fiber of earnest persuasion in it, went on:  “You see what I risk to get you.  Hal Dozier is on your trail.  He’s the only man in the world I’d think twice about before I met him face to face.  But if I join to you, I’ll have to meet him sooner or later.  Well, Lanning, I’ll take that risk.  I know he’s more devil than man when it comes to gun play, but we’ll meet him together.  Give me your hand!”

There was a riot in the brain of Andrew Lanning.  The words of the outlaw had struck something in him that was like metal chiming on metal.  Iron dust?  That was it!  The call of one blood to another, and he realized the truth of what Allister said.  If he touched the hand of this man, there would be a bond between them which only death could break.  In one blinding rush he sensed the strength and the faith of Allister.

But another voice was at his ear, and he saw Anne Withero, as she had stood for that moment in his arms in her room.  It came over him with a chill like cold moonlight.

“Do you fear me?” he had whispered.

“No.”

“Will you remember me?”

“Forever!”

And with that ghost of a voice in his ear Andrew Lanning groaned to the man beside him:  “Partner, I know you’re nine-tenths man, and I thank you out of the bottom of my heart.  But there’s some one else has a claim to me—­I don’t belong to myself.”

There was a breathless pause.  Anger contracted the face of Henry Allister; he nodded gravely.

“It’s the girl you went back to see,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Well, then, go ahead and try to win through.  I wish you luck.  But if you fail, remember what I’ve said.  Now, or ten years from now, what I’ve said goes for you.  Now roll over and sleep.  Good-by, Lanning, or, rather, au revoir!”