“I ought to let him set his teeth in you,”
said Dan, “but I’m goin’ to let
you off if you’ll tell me what I want to know.”
“Yes! Anything!”
“Where’s Jim Silent?”
All eyes flashed towards Morris. The latter,
as the significance of the question came home to him,
went even a sicklier white, like the belly of a dead
fish. His eyes moved swiftly about the circle
of his posse. Their answering glares were sternly
forbidding.
“Out with it!” commanded Dan.
The sheriff strove mightily to speak, but only a ghastly
whisper came: “You got the wrong tip, Dan.
I don’t know nothin’ about Silent.
I’d have him in jail if I did!”
“Bart!” said Dan.
The wolf slunk closer to the kneeling man. His
hot breath fanned the face of the sheriff and his
lips grinned still farther back from the keen, white
teeth.
“Help!” yelled Morris. “He’s
at the shanty up on Bald-eagle Creek.”
A rumble, half cursing and half an inarticulate snarl
of brute rage, rose from the cowpunchers.
“Bart,” called Dan again, and leaped back
from the door, raced out to Satan, and drove into
the night at a dead gallop.
Half the posse rushed after him. A dozen shots
were pumped after the disappearing shadowy figure.
Two or three jumped into their saddles. The others
called them back.
“Don’t be an ass, Monte,” said one.
“You got a good hoss, but you ain’t fool
enough to think he c’n catch Satan?”
They trooped back to the dining-room, and gathered
in a silent circle around the sheriff, whose little
fear-bright eyes went from face to face.
“Ah, this is the swine,” said one, “that
was guardin’ our lives!”
“Fellers,” pleaded the sheriff desperately,
“I swear to you that I jest heard of where Silent
was today. I was keepin’ it dark until
after we got Whistling Dan. Then I was goin’
to lead you—”
The flat of a heavy hand struck with a resounding
thwack across his lips. He reeled back against
the wall, sputtering the blood from his split mouth.
“Pat,” said Monte, “your hoss is
done for. Will you stay here an’ see that
he don’t get away? We’ll do somethin’
with him when we get back.”
Pat caught the sheriff by his shirt collar and jerked
him to a chair. The body of the fat man was trembling
like shaken jelly. The posse turned away.
They could not overtake Whistling Dan on his black
stallion, but they might arrive before Silent and
his gang got under way. Their numbers were over
small to attack the formidable long riders, but they
wanted blood. Before Whistling Dan reached the
valley of Bald-eagle Creek they were in the saddle
and riding hotly in pursuit.
CLOSE IN!
In that time ruined shack towards which the posse
and Dan Barry rode, the outlaws sat about on the floor
eating their supper when Hal Purvis entered.
He had missed the trail from the Salton place to the
Bald-eagle half a dozen times that day, and that had
not improved his bitter mood.
