Chapter XXII

Jim Torrance dabbed at his eyes as he ran, and cursed under his breath and longed with all his heart for just one thing then--to come up with Steve Bordereau. Perhaps because his sight was at the moment blurred, he crashed full tilt into three men advancing across the sidewalk in front of the Stag Horn like the three Musketeers. They were Dave Drennen, Dick Pardee and Curly Redmond, just arrived from the King Cannon ranch.

He told them in few words, low-toned but as emphatic as the crack of a whip, what had happened; how Bordereau and his men had got away with their fresh loot; how Sally Dawn had ridden only a few minutes ago out to his place; how the Bordereau crowd were on their way at last to the border.

“They killed Florinda. She told me that they were headed out to my place to get me. Now they know I’m in town, they may not ride that way. But maybe their plans, already made, call for that direction. They may run into Sally Dawn. Unless you boys, riding in just now, met them on the county road?”

They hadn’t seen any riders, hadn’t heard anything.

“I’m on my way back to my place,” said Torrance, and went up into his saddle.

“We’re with you,” said one of them and the three hurried to their horses. As they did so several men came out of the Stag Horn; one of them was Bill Yarbo. He shouted:

“What’s up, Jim? Where you headed for? After them fellers?”

“To my ranch,” Torrance called back as his horse jumped under him. “All you boys that are not friends of Steve Bordereau come along.”

He rode first, taking chances of an ambush, into the alley and to the shed where he had found the sweat-wet saddle horses; there was not a horse there now, not a man. He spurred on and into the back road and out of town to the north road, and still had no sight and caught no sound of the raiding party. Already they must be well on their way. And he began to feel pretty sure that they were headed back toward the hills, toward his ranch--in the direction Sally Dawn had taken. So he took that same road, shook out his bridle reins and touched his horse with the spurs.

He reloaded before he was out of town; both guns were empty. How many men had been burned down there in the gambling room before the lights went out--and even after--he did not know. But already Bordereau knew that he had left three of his band behind him. And that did not trouble Steve Bordereau, so long as he sped on his way with a whole skin and his job up here done. There’d be fewer men to pay off, more money for him from the loot already taken and slung to his saddle strings.

Torrance had not ridden far before he heard the hammering of hoofs; at first he thought they were ahead of him but presently realized they were at some considerable distance behind; they told him that Curly and Pardee and Drennen, perhaps Bill Yarbo and others were following him; their horses’ hoofs rang out on a bit of hard road where they swung off from the main street.

He kept storming along, anger in his heart, and sorrow, too, for he could not forget bright Florinda dying in his arms--and fear, too, for Sally Dawn. He would put nothing beyond Steve Bordereau tonight, and he knew Bordereau must hate the girl if only for all the wrongs he had done her.

Ten minutes later he again heard, faint and far, the hammering of rushing hoofs, and this time he thought at first that he was hearing again the men behind him, though he had thought to have outdistanced them. But listening intently, hearing the faint flutter of sound above the pounding of his own horse’s hoofbeats, he made out that it was ahead of him. This time it was Bordereau and his men that he heard, and they were speeding on northward, still on the road toward his ranch, and he was slowly coming up with them.

But before he had covered another mile he was delayed by Sam Pepper, riding in furious haste toward a meeting with him. Torrance would have pressed on but for Sam’s insistence; Sam had a lot to say and said it.

“I was on my way when I heard them hellions come swooping along,” said Sam. “Me, I pulled aside the road and let ’em have it. But I was close enough and there was light enough for me to make ’em out; there was one man leading the way and if he wasn’t Steve Bordereau I’ll swallow your spurs.”

“Sally Dawn--”

“I know about her, too. She rode over to your place just a little while ago; I was still there; had went out to the bunk house and was gabbing with your men. She was looking for you; said Florinda sent her and she was to tell you Bordereau was high-tailing out this way to get your scalp. I told her you’d cut cross the hills to her place; so she done the same. Then I told your hired hands that they’d better look out for Bordereau and his killers, and I did some high-tailing on my own.”

Torrance breathed easier.

“So Sally Dawn’s left and gone home? That’s good news, Sam. Now in a couple of minutes you will meet up with some of the boys following me; tell them what you’ve told me. I’m on my way.”

“Hey, there!” yipped Sam. “There must be ten or a dozen of them boys with Steve. You better--”

But Torrance was already off, his horse at a run. Sam sat undecided a moment; then he heard a drumming of hoofs coming along from Sundown-way, knew that here must come the boys who Torrance had said were following him, and waited out in the middle of the road for their arrival. As they slowed down he made out who several of them were, friends all, and called to them all he knew of the night’s happenings.

“Jim’s overtaking them hellers,” he said, “and he’ll do it, and it’s just him against the crowd. His men, this being no fight of their’n, skipped out of the bunk house as soon’s they heard what Sally Dawn had to say. And--”

“Come ahead!” sang out Dave Drennen. “We’ll be with Torrance before they can burn him down.”

“Listen to me--” began an excited Sam.

They listened no longer. Bill Yarbo, riding by him, almost riding him down, drenched him with big, booming, mocking laughter.

“You hang back here, Sam,” he said. “Safer. Or run get Mrs. Sam to hide you under her apron!”

Whatever Sam screamed after him was drowned out by the thunder of hoofs. Sam whirled his own horse about, dug his heels in and followed them. But long before any of them got to Jim Torrance’s ranch, before even Jim himself had reached there, they knew that Bordereau had already arrived, had tarried briefly and had gone on his way.

That was because they saw the red flare in the night sky. Jim’s house, his bunk house, his barn, all were in flames.

So it was as bright as day out in the road when they pulled in at Torrance’s gate and came up with him. He was on foot, and waved them to a stop; he was stooping low, looking for tracks in the road.

When he straightened up, “They’ve cut across the road here,” he said. “They’re headed across the hills, over the old Parker place. They’re headed toward the King Cannon ranch. And they’re riding hell-for-leather!”

Again he led the way, this time with the others keeping as close to him as they could; very close at first, but within ten minutes he was far out ahead of them.

So he came alone through the trees dotting the hills of the old Parker ranch to an open spot from which he could look down into the valley that was the heart of the King Cannon ranch, and he saw first of all a flush against the sky, like a hot summer dawn. But it wasn’t dawn and it wasn’t summer, and he knew that he was right in judging that Bordereau had come this way. That rosy, softly fluttering light was the light of a fire down where the ranch buildings were.

It struck Torrance that Bordereau must be mighty sure of himself! Already the bunk house was blazing; the first spears of flame began to stab through the barn’s walls. Torrance came rushing on. He saw men--just dark, running figures--and he thought: “The house isn’t burning. Why?” And then he was so close that he slid down from his saddle and ran forward on foot.

A woman--the light was so flickering and false and filled with trickery that at first he thought it was Sally Dawn--came running out of the ranch house back door. She was screaming as she darted out into the yard, trying frantically to gain the grove just back of the house. It was the Indian woman who worked for Sally Dawn; Torrance made that out just as he saw a running figure pounce upon her. Torrance, still running, shot the man and saw him fall and saw the woman scramble to her feet and vanish among the trees. He himself kept straight on to the house, not stopping even while he fired and glanced aside. He thought: “She’s running out of the house, so the house is being attacked. Maybe Sally Dawn is in there now. Then Bordereau will be there.”

The first door he came to, at the side of the house, was locked. He ran around to the rear and up the three steps to the kitchen porch. The door there, too, was locked. He threw his weight against it.

Just then several men, he never knew how many, whether four or five or six, came running from the direction of the barn shouting, “That you, Steve?”

“You rats!” shouted Torrance. “Get to hell out of here if you can travel any faster than a bullet!”

They opened fire on him, all of them together, and he, with his back against the wall and a gun in each hand, his body partly in shadow, gave them as good as they sent. How many of them he hit, how many he missed, he was never to know. But he did see three men drop before, simultaneously, two things happened. One was that the boys from Sundown came swooping down the slope of the timbered hill, yelling like Comanches and already beginning to shoot at what running targets they saw. The other was that Jim Torrance’s two guns, both with cylinders emptied, brought their hammers down with a click.

That was two things. A third came so swiftly that Torrance had not even reloaded when he got its import. From within the house came the sounds of an angry voice, shouting, and of the explosion of a shotgun. The voice was Steve Bordereau’s! Who but Sally Dawn had fired the shotgun?

Torrance struck the door again with his shoulder, and this time its ancient bolt dragged old screws out of the woodwork, and the door flew open and Torrance burst in.

There was a coal oil lamp burning in the dining room, and the door was open, so he had light enough to guide him. He hurried on through the dining room. Just then all within the ranch house was perfectly still. Outside, however, there was an inferno of noise; shots were popping like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. Out there hell was riding on bullets.

Then, above the lively young inferno outside, he again heard sounds within the house. They came from upstairs; it sounded like a man battering a door down. He ran to the staircase and when his foot was at the bottom step he heard quite clearly Steve Bordereau saying stormily:

“Out you come and quick, and I won’t hurt you. Stay in there and I’ll burn the house down, you in it. I’ve already set fire to your other buildings. And when you open the door, shove that shotgun through, butt-end first, or--”

No, Jim Torrance hadn’t heard all this from the bottom of the stairs. By the time Bordereau had got that far he was nearly at the top, making his rush in a sort of twilight, for all the light that came into the upper hall was from the burning buildings, flickering through the muslin curtains. Bordereau heard him and broke off and was still a minute, then called out:

“Who’s there? That you, Clark? I told you--”

As Torrance’s eyes reached the level of the second story floor they discovered Bordereau, who had quitted the locked door behind which Sally Dawn was, and had turned to make out who came. And when no one answered and he knew it wasn’t Clark Murdo his gun was in his hand.

Torrance knew the shot was coming and lurched sideways before it came, and completed his upward rush. Bordereau fired again and at the same instant Torrance hurled a heavy forty-four, useless now save as missile or club, and heard the thud of it as it struck the other man somewhere in the body.

“Torrance!” yelled Bordereau, and there was a world of gloating in his voice, and triumph. “I’ve been waiting for now!”

He waited a split second too long, for while he was speaking, realizing that he had his enemy unarmed and so sure of shooting him dead, Torrance hurled his forty-four straight into Bordereau’s face, and followed it up by catapulting his own body on Bordereau’s as the man reeled back. Bordereau came up with his shoulders against the wall; he fired a third time.

But now Torrance was on him and had locked one hand about Bordereau’s gun wrist, and with the other was battering into an already bleeding face. An instant later the two crashed to the floor, and a door was whipped open and Sally Dawn came running to stand over them, a shotgun in her hands.

“Jim! Jim!” she cried wildly. “Let him go--get away from him--give me a chance--I’m going to shoot him--”

Torrance snapped at her:

“Stand back! Keep out. He’s got a gun in his hand! You run!”

“I won’t run! I’m not going to let him kill you! I tell you I am going to kill him this time!”

She would have asked nothing better just then, knowing that it was going to be Jim Torrance’s life or Steve Bordereau’s. But in the faint light, with the two men now battling like a grim pair of wolves, never still for an instant, rolling and twisting and flailing about, she couldn’t even make out which one of them was Jim, which Bordereau.

Those moments were to her like a nightmare. She could hear the shouts outside and the gunfire; a man screamed terribly and an even more terrible sound in her ears was another man’s laugh cutting across the tragic outcry. And she could see on the wall down the staircase the flicker of a light that grew rosier and brighter as buildings burned with higher leaping flames. And worst of all was it to stand there, her weapon gripped so determinedly in her hands, and not be able to shove its muzzle down against Steve Bordereau’s body and so end the thing. At that second she would have pulled the trigger with no more compunction than she would have slapped at a mosquito.

The two men in that fierce death-grip of theirs rolled to the top of the staircase. Somehow Bordereau wrenched free and stood up. Sally Dawn saw him clearly enough to make out who he was, and jerked up her shotgun. At that same instant two other things happened. Bordereau still had his gun in his hand and crooked his finger to the trigger, sure this time he had Jim Torrance where he had long wanted him. But Torrance wasn’t out of the fight yet; he rose as Bordereau rose, and hurled himself forward. Bordereau’s gun exploded; a terrified Sally Dawn didn’t know whether it had found its mark or not; all she knew was what she saw, and that was the two bodies hurtling down the stairs, all the way to the floor below.

Down there men were running into the house through the kitchen. She couldn’t tell who they were but supposed and feared they were Bordereau’s men. She was at the head of the stairs; she was on the verge of emptying a shotgun among them when a roaring voice which she knew, the voice of Lying Bill Yarbo, shouted:

“Jim! Where are you? We got ’em on the run.”

Sally Dawn screamed down to him:

“He and Steve Bordereau--they’re fighting. Bordereau has a gun--”

She ran down then, only to encounter the same condition which had already made impossible her taking any hand. Torrance and Bordereau were again struggling hand to hand, body to body. Then she heard Jim Torrance laugh. Never in her life had she heard a man laugh like that; never would she forget it.

“Bordereau!” he shouted. “You’ve dropped your gun--and now I’m going to kill you! For what you’ve done to Florinda tonight, for what you’ve done to Sally Dawn, and to me, and to a lot of others--I’m going to kill you--now--with my hands!”

“Jim! You damn fool!” roared Lying Bill Yarbo. “Stand out of my way. Let me shoot the ---- ---- ----!”

But Jim Torrance didn’t have it in him to stand aside for any man. His lean hard fist was already on its way, and caught Bordereau under the chin and sent him staggering back so that he came close to falling and only gained his uncertain balance when he brought up against the hall door which happened to be closed. He saw other men come running in from the kitchen until the hall was filled with them, and in desperation he tried to get the door open behind him and make his escape.

Then Jim Torrance laughed again, and again bore down on him. For as long as it takes two infuriated men to exchange a dozen blows, they stood there, hammering at each other. Again Torrance’s fist beat Bordereau back as a club beats a man, and again Bordereau tottered--and this time, before he could get control of himself, Torrance was again on him, battering him. Once more the two men went down. They lay on the floor rather more quietly this time. Their hands were at each other’s throats.

Now and then a convulsive shudder shook them. Men crowded close; one of them brought the lamp from the kitchen. Bordereau lay on his back; Jim Torrance was on top of him; Torrance’s hands were at his throat, the fingers almost sunk out of sight. Bordereau’s glaring eyes, horrible to look at, seemed about to spring from his head--

It took four men to pull Torrance off, and when he was on his feet and stood and looked down at the man he had beaten so close to death, Sally Dawn saw his eyes and was afraid of him.

She threw the shotgun down and came running to him and caught his arm in both her hands.

“Jim! Jim! Oh, Jim, please--for God’s sake, don’t! Just let them take him away.”

At first he just tried to shake her off; he didn’t hear what she was saying; he didn’t even know who she was.

“Let him get up,” he said to the men standing over the fallen man. “Let him up. I’m going to beat hell out of him. Then I’m going to kill him just as sure as he killed Florinda--just as sure as he killed my pardner six years ago.”

Sally Dawn kept clinging to him, shaking his arm, pleading. He couldn’t seem to brush her aside. Angrily he looked down at her and saw that it was Sally Dawn.

“Jim!” she pleaded. And then, there before them all, she said huskily, “Jim--if you love me--”

He put a hand up to his face; it was battered and torn and bloody. He shook his head as though to get his thoughts clear, the way a horse shakes its head when summer flies are at its eyes. Then he put his hand down on her two and patted them gently.

“I won’t kill him, boys,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be a good thing if we let this country know that the law is nosing in here and is coming to stay. The law will hang him. Take him away.”

They took him away swiftly, men thick about him. And under a big oak, from which Bordereau could take full advantage of the spectacular view of buildings burning, they hanged him and let him kick his life out. By this time there were thirty Sundown men on hand to officiate; not a single dissenting voice was lifted when someone called for a rope.