Now the thunderclouds were piling on the horizon, and Cartwright could feel the electricity in the air.  He went to Pop.

“I got to have a rifle.”

“What for?”

“You know,” said Cartwright significantly.

The hotelkeeper nodded.  He brought out an old Winchester, still mobile of action and deadly.  With that weapon under his arm, Cartwright started back, but then he remembered that there were excellent chances of missing even with a rifle, when he was shooting through the shadows and by the treacherous moonlight.  It would be better, far better, to have his horse with him.  Then, if he actually succeeded in wounding one or both of them, he could run his victim down, or, perhaps, keep up a steady fire of rifle shots from the rear, that would bring half the town pouring out to join in the chase.

So he swung back to the stables, saddled his horse, trotted it around in a comfortably wide detour, and, coming within sound distance of the cottonwoods behind the blacksmith shop, he dismounted and led his horse into a dense growth of shrubbery.  That close approach would have been impossible without alarming the girl, had it not been for a stiff wind blowing across into his face, completely muffling the noise of his coming.  In the bushes he ensconced himself safely.  Only a few yards away he kept his eye on the opening among the cottonwoods, behind which the girl and the two horses moved from time to time, growing more and more visible, as the moon climbed above the horizon mist.

He tightened his grip on the rifle and amused himself with drawing beads on stumps and bright bits of foliage, from time to time.  He must be ready for any sort of action if the two should ever appear.

While he waited, sounds reached his ear from the town, sounds eloquent of purpose.  He listened to them as to beautiful music.  It was a low, distinct, and continuous humming sound.  Voices of men went into it, low as the growl of an angered dog, and there was a background of slamming doors, and footsteps on verandas.  Sour Creek was mustering for the assault.

35

Now that sound had entered the jail, and it had a peculiar effect.  It was like that distant murmuring of the storm which walks over the treetops far away.  It made the sheriff and his two prisoners lift their heads and look at one another in silence, for the sheriff was most unprofessionally tilted back in a chair, with his feet braced against the bars of the cell, while he chatted with his bad men about men, women, and events.  The sheriff had a distinct curiosity to learn how Arizona had recovered so suddenly from his “blue funk.”

Unquestionably the fat man had recovered.  His voice was as steady now as any man’s, and the old, insolent glitter was in his eyes.  He squared his shoulders and blew his smoke straight at the face of the sheriff, as he talked.  What caused it, the sheriff could not tell, this rehabilitation of a fighting man, but he connected the influence of Sinclair with the change.