“Keep off’n me,” growled Mac Strann,
“because when you touch me, it feels like somethin’
dead was next to my skin. Keep off’n me!”
Haw-Haw dragged himself back into the saddle with
effort, for it was slippery with rain. His face
convulsed with something black as hate.
“It ain’t long you’ll do the orderin’
and be so free with your hands. He’s comin’—soon!
Mac, I’d like to stay—I’d like
to see the finish——” he stopped,
his buzzard eyes glittering against the face of the
giant.
The rain blotted out the figure of the coming horseman,
and at the same instant the whistling leaped close
upon them. It was as if the whistling man had
disappeared at the place where the rain swallowed his
form, and had taken body again at their very side.
Mac Strann shrank back against the wall, bracing his
shoulders, and gripped the butts of his guns.
But Haw-Haw Langley cast a frightened glance on either
side; his head making birdlike, pecking notions, and
then he leaned over the pommel of his saddle with
a wail of despair and spurred off into the rain.
THE ARROYO
He disappeared, instantly, in that shivering curtain
of greyness. Mac Strann sat by the ruined house
alone.
Now, in a time of danger a child will give courage
to the strong man. There is a wonderful communion
between any two in time of crisis; and when Haw-Haw
Langley disappeared through the rain it was to Mac
Strann as it was to Patroclus when Apollo struck the
base of his neck and his armour of proof fell from
him. Not only was there a singular sense of nakedness,
but it seemed to him also that the roaring of the rain
became a hostile voice of threatening at the same
instant.
He had never in his life feared any living thing.
But now there was a certain hollowness in the region
of his stomach, and his heart fluttered like a bird
in the air, with appalling lightness. And he wished
to be far away.
With a clear heaven above him—ay, that
would be different, but God had arranged this day
and had set the earth like a stage in readiness for
a death. And that was why the rain lashed the
earth so fiercely. He looked down. After
his death the wind would still continue to beat that
muddy water to foam. Ay, in that very place all
would be as it was at this moment. He would be
gone, but the sky and the senseless earth would remain
unchanged. A sudden yearning seized him for the
cabin among the mountains, with the singing of the
coffee pot over the fire—the good, warm,
yellow fire that smoked between the rocks. And
the skins he had left leaning against the walls of
the cabin to dry—he remembered them all
in one glance of memory.
Why was he here, then, when he should have been so
far away, making his roof snug against this torrent
of rain. Now, there would be no rain, surely,
in those kindly mountains. Their tall peaks would
shut out the storm clouds. Only this plain, these
low hills, were the place of hell!
