“D’you think it can be done?”
There was a faint, cold twinkle in the eyes of Pop.
“I’ll tell a man it can be done,”
he said slowly. “When you come back here
I may be able to tell you a little story, Andy.
Now climb on Sally and don’t hit nothin’
but the high spots.”
Even in his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert
passes swiftly from the fact of history into the dream
of legend. The telephone and the newspaper cannot
bring that lonely region into the domain of cold truth.
In the time that followed people seized on the story
of Andrew Lanning and embroidered it with rare trimmings.
It was told over and over again in saloons and around
family firesides and in the bunk houses of many ranches.
For Andrew had done what many men failed to do in spite
of a score of killings—he struck the public
fancy. People realized, however vaguely, that
here was a unique story of the making of a desperado,
and they gathered the story of Andrew Lanning to their
hearts.
On the whole, it was not an unkindly interest.
In reality the sympathy was with the outlaw.
For everyone knew that Hal Dozier was on the trail
again, and everyone felt that in the end he would run
down his man, and there was a general hope that the
chase might be a long one. For one thing, the
end of that chase would have removed one of the few
vital current bits of news. Men could no longer
open conversations by asking the last tidings of Andrew.
Such questions were always a signal for an unlocking
of tongues around the circle.
Many untruths were told. For instance, the blowing
of the safe in Allertown was falsely attributed to
Andrew, while in reality he knew nothing about “soup”
and its uses. And the running of the cows off
the Circle O Bar range toward the border was another
exploit which was wrongly checked to his credit or
discredit. Also the brutal butchery in the night
at Buffalo Head was sometimes said to be Andrew’s
work, but in general the men of the mountain desert
came to know that the outlaw was not a red-handed
murderer, but simply a man who fought for his own life.
The truths in themselves were enough to bear telling
and retelling. Andrew’s Thanksgiving dinner
at William Foster’s house, with a revolver on
the table and a smile on his lips, was a pleasant tale
and a thrilling one as well, for Foster had been able
to go to the telephone and warn the nearest officer
of the law. There was the incident of the jammed
rifle at The Crossing; the tale of how a youngster
at Tomo decided that he would rival the career of
the great man—how he got a fine bay mare
and started a blossoming career of crime by sticking
up three men on the road and committing several depredations
which were all attributed to Andrew, until Andrew
himself ran down the foolish fellow, shot the gun
out of his hand, gave him a talking that recalled his
lost senses.
