Man-Size by William MacLeod Raine (first color ebook reader txt) 📖

Sleeping Dawn was crouched down behind two rocks, the barrel of her rifle gleaming through a slit of open space between them. She was compromising between the orders given her and the anxiety in her to fight back Bully West. As much as she could she kept under cover, while at the same time firing into the darkness whenever she thought she saw a movement.

Morse slipped rearward on a tour of investigation. The ground here fell away rather sharply, so that one coming from behind would have to climb over a boulder field rising to the big rocks. It took Tom only a casual examination to see that a surprise would have to be launched by way of a sort of rough natural stairway.

A flat shoulder of sandstone dominated the stairway from above. Upon this Morse crouched, every sense alert to detect the presence of any one stealing up the pass. He waited, eager and yet patient. What he was going to attempt had its risk, but the danger whipped the blood in his veins to a still excitement.

Occasionally, at intervals, the rifles cracked. Except for that no other sound came to him. He could keep no count of time. It seemed to him that hours slipped away. In reality it could have been only a few minutes.

Below, from the foot of the winding stairway, there was a sound, such a one as might come from the grinding of loose rubble beneath the sole of a boot. Presently the man on the ledge heard it again, this time more distinctly. Some one was crawling up the rocks.

Tom peered into the darkness intently. He could see nothing except the flat rocks disappearing vaguely in the gloom. Nor could he hear again the crunch of a footstep on disintegrated sandstone. His nerves grew taut. Could he have made a mistake? Was there another way up from behind?

Then, at the turn of the stairway, a few feet below him, a figure rose in silhouette. It appeared with extraordinary caution, first a head, then the barrel of a rifle, finally a crouched body followed by bowed legs. On hands and knees it crept forward, hitching the weapon along beside it. Exactly opposite Morse, under the very shadow of the sloping ledge on which he lay, the figure rose and straightened.

The man stood there for a second, making up his mind to move on. He was one of the half-breeds West had brought with him. Almost into his ear came a stern whisper.

"Hands up! I've got you covered. Don't move. Don't say a word."

Two arms shot skyward. In the fingers of one hand a rifle was clenched.

Morse leaned forward and caught hold of it. "I'll take this," he said.
The brown fingers relaxed. "Skirt round the edge of the rock there.
Lie face down in that hollow. Got a six-shooter."

He had. Morse took it from him.

"If you move or speak one word, I'll pump lead into you," the Montanan cautioned.

The half-breed looked into his chill eyes and decided to take no chances. He lay down on his face with hands stretched out exactly as ordered.

His captor returned to the shoulder of rock above the trail. Presently another head projected itself out of the darkness. A man crept up, and like the first stopped to take stock of his surroundings.

Against the back of his neck something cold pressed.

"Stick up your hands, Barney," a voice ordered.

The little man let out a yelp. "Mother o' Moses, don't shoot."

"How many more of you?" asked Morse sharply.

"One more."

The man behind the rifle collected his weapons and put Barney alongside his companion. Within five minutes he had added a third man to the collection.

With a sardonic grin he drove them before him to Beresford.

"I'm a prisoner an' not in this show, you was careful to explain to me, Mr. Constable, but I busted the rules an' regulations to collect a few specimens of my own," he drawled by way of explanation.

Beresford's eyes gleamed. The debonair impudence of the procedure appealed mightily to him. He did not know how this young fellow had done it, but he must have acted with cool nerve and superb daring.

"Where were they? And how did you get 'em without a six-shooter?"

"They was driftin' up the pass to say 'How-d'you-do?' from the back stairway. I borrowed a gun from one o' them. I asked 'em to come along with me and they reckoned they would."

The booming of a rifle echoed in the rocks to the left. From out of them Jessie McRae came flying, something akin to terror in her face.

"I've shot that West. He tried to run in on me and—and—I shot him."
Her voice broke into an hysterical sob.

"Thought I told you to keep out of this," the constable said. "I seem to have a lot of valuable volunteer help. What with you and friend Morse here—" He broke off, touched at her distress. "Never mind about that, Miss McRae. He had it coming to him. I'll go out and size up the damage to him, if his friends have had enough—and chances are they have."

They had. Gosse advanced waving a red bandanna handkerchief as a flag of truce.

"We got a plenty," he said frankly. "West's down, an' another of the boys got winged. No use us goin' on with this darned foolishness. We're ready to call it off if you'll turn Morse loose."

Beresford had walked out to meet him. He answered, curtly. "No."

The long, lank whiskey-runner rubbed his chin bristles awkwardly. "We 'lowed maybe—"

"I keep my prisoners, both Morse and Barney."

"Barney!" repeated Gosse, surprised.

"Yes, we've got him and two others. I don't want them. I'll turn 'em over to you. But not Morse and Barney. They're going to the post with me for whiskey-running."

Gosse went back to the camp-fire, where the Whoop-Up men had carried their wounded leader. Except West, they were all glad to drop the battle. The big smuggler, lying on the ground with a bullet in his thigh, cursed them for a group of chicken-hearted quitters. His anger could not shake their decision. They knew when they had had enough.

The armistice concluded, Beresford and Morse walked over to the camp-fire to find out how badly West was hurt.

"Sorry I had to hit you, but you would have it, you know," the constable told him grimly.

The man snapped his teeth at him like a wolf in a trap. "You didn't hit me, you liar. It was that li'l' hell-cat of McRae. You tell her for me I'll get her right for this, sure as my name's Bully West."

There was something horribly menacing in his rage. In the jumping light of the flames the face was that of a demon, a countenance twisted and tortured by the impotent lust to destroy.

Morse spoke, looking steadily at him in his quiet way. "I'm servin' notice, West, that you're to let that girl alone."

There was a sound in the big whiskey-runner's throat like that of an infuriated wild animal. He glared at Morse, a torrent of abuse struggling for utterance. All that he could say was, "You damned traitor."

The eyes of the younger man did not waver. "It goes. I'll see you're shot like a wolf if you harm her."

The wounded smuggler's fury outleaped prudence. In a surge of momentary insanity he saw red. The barrel of his revolver rose swiftly. A bullet sang past Morse's ear. Before he could fire again, Harvey Gosse had flung himself on the man and wrested the weapon from his hand.

Hard-eyed and motionless, Morse looked down at the madman without saying a word. It was Beresford who said ironically, "Talking about those who keep faith."

"You hadn't oughta of done that, Bully," Gosse expostulated. "We'd done agreed this feud was off for to-night."

"Get your horses and clear out of here," the constable ordered. "If this man's able to fight he's able to travel. You can make camp farther down the creek."

A few minutes later the clatter of horse-hoofs died away. Beresford was alone with his prisoners and his guests.

Those who were still among the big rocks came forward to the camp-fire. Jessie arrived before the others. She had crept to the camp on the heels of Beresford and Morse, driven by her great anxiety to find out how badly West was hurt.

From the shadows of a buffalo wallow she had seen and heard what had taken place.

One glance of troubled curiosity she flashed at Morse. What sort of man was this quiet, brown-faced American who smuggled whiskey in to ruin the tribes, who could ruthlessly hold a girl to a bargain that included horsewhipping for her, who for some reason of his own fought beside the man taking him to imprisonment, and who had flung defiance at the terrible Bully West on her behalf? She hated him. She always would. But with her dislike of him ran another feeling now, born of the knowledge of new angles in him.

He was hard as nails, but he would do to ride the river with.

CHAPTER X A CAMP-FIRE TALE

Another surprise was waiting for Jessie. As soon as Onistah came into the circle of light, he walked straight to the whiskey-smuggler.

"You save my life from Crees. Thanks," he said in English.

Onistah offered his hand.

The white man took it. He was embarrassed. "Oh, well, I kinda took a hand."

The Indian was not through. "Onistah never forget. He pay some day."

Tom waved this aside. "How's the leg? Seems to be all right now."

Swiftly Jessie turned to the Indian and asked him a question in the native tongue. He answered. They exchanged another sentence or two.

The girl spoke to Morse. "Onistah is my brother. I too thank you," she said stiffly.

"Your brother! He's not Angus McRae's son, is he?"

"No. And I'm not his daughter—really. I'll tell you about that," she said with a touch of the defensive defiance that always came into her manner when the subject of her birth was referred to.

She did, later, over the camp-fire.

It is fortunate that desire and opportunity do not always march together. The constable and Morse had both been dead men if Bully West could have killed with a wish. Sleeping Dawn would have been on the road to an existence worse than death. Instead, they sat in front of the coals of buffalo chips while the big smuggler and his companions rode away from an ignominious field of battle.

When the constable and his prisoner had first struck camp, there had been two of them. Now there were six. For in addition to Jessie McRae, the Blackfoot, and Barney, another had come out of the night and hailed them with a "Hello, the camp!" This last self-invited guest was Brad Stearns, who had not ridden to Whoop-Up as he had announced, but had watched events from a distance on the chance that he might be of help to Tom Morse.

Jessie agreed with Beresford that she must stay in camp till morning. There was nothing else for her to do. She could not very well ride the night out with Onistah on the road back to the fort. But she stayed with great reluctance.

Her modesty was in arms. Never before had she, a girl alone, been forced to make camp with five men as companions, all but one of them almost strangers to her. The experience was one that shocked her sense of fitness.

She was troubled and distressed, and she showed it. Her impulsiveness had swept her into an adventure that might have been tragic, that still held potentialities of disaster. For she could not forget the look on West's face when he had sworn to get even with her. This man was a terrible enemy, because of his boldness, his evil mind, and his lack of restraining conscience.

Yet even now she could not blame herself for what she had done. The constable's life was at stake. It had been necessary to move swiftly and decisively.

Sitting before the fire, Sleeping Dawn began to tell her story. She told it to Beresford as an apology for having ridden forty miles with Onistah to save his life. It was, if he chose so to accept it, an explanation of how she came to do so unwomanly a thing.

"Onistah's mother is my mother," she said. "When I was a baby my own mother died. Stokimatis is her sister.