But there was no other hope for him now. Twice,
as he crossed the clearing before he reached the door
of the cabin, his foot struck a rock and he pitched
weakly forward, with only the crumbling strength of
his right arm to keep him from striking on his face.
Then there was a furious clamor and a huge dog rushed
at him.
He heeded it only with a glance from the corner of
his eye. And then, his dull brain clearing, he
realized that the dog no longer howled at him or showed
his teeth, but was walking beside him, licking his
hand and whining with sympathy. He dropped again,
and this time he could never have regained his feet
had not his right arm flopped helplessly across the
back of the big dog, and the beast cowered and growled,
but it did not attempt to slide from under his weight.
He managed to get erect again, but when he reached
the low flight of steps to the front door he was reeling
drunkenly from side to side. He fumbled for the
knob, and it turned with a grating sound.
“Hold on! Keep out!” shrilled a voice
inside. “We got guns here. Keep out,
you dirty bum!”
The door fell open, and he found himself confronted
by what seemed to him a dazzling torrent of light
and a host of human faces. He drew himself up
beside the doorway.
“Gentlemen,” said Andrew, “I am
not a bum. I am worth five thousand dollars to
the man who turns me over, dead or alive, to the sheriff.
My name is Andrew Lanning.”
At that the faces became a terrible rushing and circling
flare, and the lights went out with equal suddenness.
He was left in total darkness, falling through space;
but, at his last moment of consciousness, he felt
arms going about him, arms through which his bulk kept
slipping down, and below him was a black abyss.
It was a very old man who held, or tried to hold,
Andrew from falling to the floor. His shoulders
shook under the burden of the outlaw, and the burden,
indeed, would have slumped brutally to the floor, had
not the small ten-year-old boy, whom Andrew had seen
on the bay mare, come running in under the arms of
the old man. With his meager strength he assisted,
and the two managed to lower the body gently.
The boy was frightened. He was white at the sight
of the wounds, and the freckles stood out in copper
patches from his pallor.
Now he clung to the old man.
“Granddad, it’s the gent that tried to
buy Sally!”
The old man had produced a murderous jackknife with
a blade that had been ground away to the disappearing
point by years of steady grinding.
“Get some wood in the stove,” he commanded.
“Fire her up, quick. Put on some water.
Easy, lad!”
The room became a place of turmoil with the clatter
of the stove lids being raised, the clangor of the
kettle being filled and put in place. By the
time the fire was roaring and the boy had turned, he
found the bandages had been taken from the body of
the stranger and his grandfather was studying the
smeared naked torso with a sort of detached, philosophic
interest. With the thumb and forefinger of his
left hand he was pressing deeply into the left shoulder
of Andrew.
