It was old Billy, the clerk. No one paid particular attention to Billy, and they never had. He was useless on a horse and ridiculous with a gun, and the only place where he seemed formidable was behind a typewriter. Now he sat looking, down into the dead face of Pete Glass, trying to grasp the meaning of it all. From the first he had been with Pete, from the first the invincibility5 of the little dusty man had been the chief article of Billy's creed6, and now his dull eyes, bleared with thirty years of clerical labor7, wandered around on the galaxy8 of dead men who looked down at him from the wall. He leaned over and took the hand of the sheriff as one would lean to help up a fallen man, but the fingers were already growing cold, and then Billy realized for the first time that this was death. Pete Glass had been; Pete Glass was not.
Next he knew that something had to be done, but what it was he could not tell, for he sat in the sheriff's office and in that room he was accustomed to stop thinking and receive orders. He went back to his own little cubby-hole, and sat down behind the typewriter; at once his mind cleared, thoughts came, and linked themselves into ideas, pictures, plans.
The murderer must be taken, dead or alive, and those fifteen men had ridden out to do the necessary thing. They had seemed irresistible10, as they departed; indeed, no living thing they met could withstand them, human or otherwise, as Billy very well knew. Yet he recalled a saying of the sheriff, a thing he had insisted upon: “No man on no hoss will ever ride down Whistlin' Dan Barry. It's been tried before and it's never worked. I've looked up his history and it can't be done. If he's goin' to be ran down it's got to be done with relays, like you was runnin' down a wild hoss.” Billy rubbed his bald head and thought and thought.
With that orderliness which had become his habit of mind, from work with reports and papers, sorting and filing away, Billy went back to the beginning. Dan Barry was fleeing. He started from Rickett, and nine chances out of ten he was heading, eventually, towards those practically impenetrable mountain ranges where the sheriff before had lost the trail after the escape from the cabin and the killing11 of Mat Henshaw. Towards this same region, again, he had retreated after the notorious Killing at Alder12. There was no doubt, then, humanly speaking, that he would make for the same safe refuge.
At first glance this seemed quite improbable, to be sure, for the Morgan Hills lay due east, or very nearly east, while the place from which Barry must have sallied forth13 and to which he would return was somewhere well north of west, and a good forty miles away. It seemed strange that he should strike off in the opposite direction, so Billy closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and summoned up a picture of the country.
Five miles to the east the Morgan Hills rolled, sharply broken ups and downs of country—bad lands rather than real hills, and a difficult region to keep game in view. That very idea gave Billy his clue. Barry knew that he would be followed hard and fast, and he headed straight for the Morgan's to throw the posse off the final direction he intended to take in his flight. In spite of the matchless speed of that black stallion of which the sheriff had learned so much, he would probably let the posse keep within easy view of him until he was deep within the bad-lands. Then he would double, sharply around and strike out in the true direction of his flight.
Having reached this point in his deductions14, Billy smote15 his hands together. He was trembling with excitement so that he filled his pipe with difficulty. By the time it was drawing well he was back examining his mental picture of the country.
West of Rickett about the same distance as Morgan Hills, ran the Wago Mountains, low, rolling ranges which would hardly form an impediment for a horseman. Across these Barry might cut at a good speed on his western course, but some fifteen or twenty miles from Rickett he was bound to reach a most difficult barrier. It was the Asper river, at this season of the year swollen16 high and swift with snow-water—a rare feat17 indeed if a man could swim his horse across such a stream. There were only two places in which it could be forded.
About fifty miles north and a little east of the line from Rickett the Asper spread out into a broad, shallow bed, its streams dispersed19 for several miles into a number of channels which united again, farther down the course, and made the same strong river. Towards this ford18, therefore, it was possible that Dan Barry would head, in the region of Caswell City.
There was, however, another way of crossing the stream. Almost due west of Rickett, a distance of fifteen miles, Tucker Creek20 joined the Asper. Above the point of junction21 both the creek and the river were readily fordable, and Barry could cross them and head straight for his goal.
It was true that to make Tucker Creek he would have to double out of the Morgan Hills and brush back perilously22 close to Rickett, but Billy was convinced that this was the outlaw23's plan; for though the Caswell City fords would be his safest route it would take him a day's ride, on an ordinary horse, out of his way. Besides, the sheriff had always said: “Barry will play the chance!”
Billy would have ventured his life that the fugitive24 would strike straight for the Creek as soon as he doubled out of Morgan Hills.
Doors began to bang; a hundred pairs of boots thudded and jingled25 towards Billy; the noise of voices rolled through the outer hall, poured through the door, burst upon his ears. He looked up in mild surprise; the first wave of Rickett's men had swept out of the courthouse to take the trail of the fugitive or to watch the pursuit; in this second wave came the remnants, the old men, the women; great-eyed children. In spite of their noise of foot and voice they appeared to be trying to walk stealthily, talk so softly. They leaned about his desk and questioned him with gesticulations, but he only stared. They were all dim as dream people to Billy the clerk, whose mind was far away struggling with his problem.
“Pore old Billy is kind of dazed,” suggested a woman. “Don't bother him, Bud. Look here!”
The tide of noise and faces broke on either side of the desk and swayed off towards the inner office and vaguely26 Billy felt that they should not be there—the sheriff's privacy—the thought almost drew him back to complete consciousness, but he was borne off from them, again, on a wave of study, pictures. Off there to the east went the fifteen best men of the mountain-desert on the trail of the slender fellow with the black hair and the soft brown eyes. How he had seemed to shrink with aloofness27, timidity, when he stood there at the door, giving his name. It was not modesty28. Billy knew now; it was something akin3 to the beasts of prey29, who shrink from the eyes of men until they are mad with hunger, and in the slender man Billy remembered the same shrinking, the same hunger. When he struck, no wonder that even the sheriff went down; no wonder if even the fifteen men were baffled on that trail; and therefore, it was sufficiently30 insane for him, Billy the clerk, to sit in his office and dream with his ineffectual hands of stopping that resistless flight. Yet he pulled himself back to his problem.
Considering his problem in general, the thing was perfectly31 simple: Barry was sure to head west, and to the west there were only two gates—fording the creek and the river above the junction in the first place, or in the second place cutting across the Asper far north at Caswell City.
If he could be turned from the direction of Tucker Creek he would head for the second possible crossing, and when he drew near Caswell City if he were turned by force of numbers again he would unquestionably skirt the Asper, hoping against hope that he might find a fordable place as he galloped32 south. But, going south, he might be fenced again from Tucker Creek, and then his case would be hopeless and his horse worn down.
It was a very clever plan, quite simple after it was once conceived, but in order to execute it properly it was necessary that the outlaw be pressed hard every inch of the way and never once allowed to get out of sight. He must be chased with relays. In ordinary stretches of the mountain-desert that would have been impossible, but the country around Rickett was not ordinary.
Between the Morgan Hills and Wago there were considerable stretches of excellent farm land in the center of which little towns had grown up. Running north from the country seat, they were St. Vincent, Wago, and Caswell City. Coming south again along the Asper River there were Ganton and Wilsonville, and just above the junction of the river with Tucker Creek lay the village of Bly Falls. There was no other spot in the mountain-desert, perhaps, which could show so many communities. Also it was possible to get in touch with the towns from Rickett, for in a wild spirit of enterprise telephones had been strung to connect each village of the group.
His hand went out mechanically and pushed in an open drawer of his filing cabinet as if he were closing up the affair, putting away the details of the plan. Each point was now clear, orderly assembled. It meant simply chasing Barry along a course which covered close to a hundred miles and which lay in a loosely shaped U. St. Vincent's was the tip of the eastern side of that U. The men of St. Vincent's were to be called out to turn the outlaw out of his course towards Tucker Creek, and then, as he struck northeast towards Caswell City, they were to furnish the posse with fifteen fresh horses, the best they could gather on such short notice. Swinging north along that side of the U, Wago would next be warned to get its contribution of fifteen horses ready, and this fresh relay would send Barry thundering along towards Caswell City at full speed. Then Caswell City would send out its contingent33 of men and horses, and turn the fugitive back from the fords. By this time, unless his horse were better winded than any that Billy had ever dreamed of, it would be staggering at every stride, and the fresh horses from Caswell City would probably ride him down before he had gone five miles. Even in case they failed in this, there was the little town of Ganton, which would be ready with its men and mounts. Perhaps they could hem9 in the desperado from the front and shoot him down there, as he skirted along the river. At the worst they would furnish the fresh horses and the fifteen hardy34 riders would spur at full speed south along the river. If again, by some miracle, the black stallion lasted out this run, Wilsonville lay due ahead, and that place would again give new horses to the chase.
Last of all, the men of Bly Falls could be warned. Bly Falls was a town of size and it could turn out enough men to block a dozen Dan Barrys, no matter how desperate. If he reached that point, he must turn back. The following posse would catch him from the rear, and between two fires he must die ingloriously. Taking the plan as a whole it meant running Barry close to a hundred miles with six sets of horses.
It all hinged, however, on the first step: Could the men of St. Vincent turn him out of his western course and send him north towards Caswell City? If they could, he was no better than a dead man. All things favored Billy. In the first place it was still morning, and eight hours of broad daylight would keep the fugitive in view every inch of the way. In the second place, much of the distance was cut up by the barb-wire fences of the farm-lands, and he must either jump these or else stop to cut them.
A crackle of laughter cut in on Billy the clerk. They were laughing in that inner office, where the sheriff lay dead. Blood swept across his eyes, set his brain whirling, and he rushed to the door.
“You yelpin' coyotes!” shouted Billy the clerk. “Get out. I got to be alone! Get out, or by God—”
It was not so much his words, or the fear of his threats, but the very fact that Billy the clerk, harmless, smiling old Billy, had burst into noisy wrath35, scared them as if an earthquake had gripped the building. They went out sidling, and left the rooms in quiet. Then Billy took up the phone.
“Pete Glass is dead,” he was saying a moment later to the owner of the general merchandise store at St. Vincent. “Barry came in this morning and shot him. The boys have run him east to the Morgan Hills. Johnny, listen hard and shut up. You got half an hour to turn out every man in your town. Ride south till you get in the hills on a bee-line east of where Tucker Creek runs into the old Asper. D'ye hear? Then keep your eyes peeled to the east, and watch for a man on a black hoss ridin' hard, because Barry is sure as hell goin' to double back out of the Morgan Hills and come west like a scairt coyote. The posse will be behind him, but they most like be a hell of a ways to the bad. Johnny, everything hangs on your turnin' Barry back. And have fifteen fresh hosses, the best St. Vincent has, so that the boys in the posse can climb on 'em and ride hell-bent for Wago. Johnny, if we get him started north he's dead—and if you turn him like I say I'll see that you come in on the reward. D'ye hear?”
Billy hung up. A little later he was talking to Wago.
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1
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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avenge
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| v.为...复仇，为...报仇 | |
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invincibility
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| n.无敌，绝对不败 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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7
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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alder
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| n.赤杨树 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 | |
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15
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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perilously
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| adv.充满危险地，危机四伏地 | |
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outlaw
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| n.歹徒，亡命之徒；vt.宣布…为不合法 | |
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fugitive
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| adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者 | |
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jingled
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| 喝醉的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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aloofness
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| 超然态度 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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32
galloped
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| （使马）飞奔，奔驰( gallop的过去式和过去分词 )； 快速做[说]某事 | |
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contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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whoop
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| n.大叫，呐喊，喘息声；v.叫喊，喘息 | |
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