Chapter XV: Quarry

There was a shout from the road. And the shout spoiled any intention Harry, the Goose, may have had for a second shot. Yet he knew that his first and only shot had gone wide of the mark. With that peculiar, microscopic interest that all men have for little things in the midst of big events, Harry had seen a blood-red rose, well off to one side of Craig, drop as if the stem of it had been snipped by invisible shears, and knew that it was there his bullet had passed.

Besides, Craig had him--had seized his two wrists, the one that was in his pocket and the other in the air, and was squeezing them fit to pulverize the bones.

It would have been all over with Harry, the Goose--was, in fact, all over with him, anyway--if it hadn’t been for that shout in the road. For both he and Craig had twisted so that they could look in that direction. And, for a static moment, so they remained--a picture of two brothers embracing each other, ready to kiss.

A group of men, also momentarily static, were out there at the head of the lane.

Harry, the Goose, let out a whimper.

“They were follerin’ me!”

It was true, as Craig himself divined. Harry, the Goose, was no top-liner, like Count Wolf, or even Trick O’Ray, to fool the sleuths for very long, not even the country sleuths. Over beyond the woods, somewhere, he had held up a country school-teacher--a girl--and robbed her of fifty cents besides almost frightening her to death. Then a farmer who came up had got busy on the telephone.

There they were now, a dozen farmers, some of them mounted--some armed with pitchforks, most of them armed with guns.

These, though, Craig saw as more details of the landscape. There was a central figure to the landscape, and him alone could Craig distinctly see. It was his former master, big and bearded--ex-tyrant of San Pedro, ousted, disgraced, smarting with the pain of it all, lustful of revenge: Warden Green!

At sight of him, Craig felt the strength go out of his arms. His heart stood still. What if these men should arrest him here, find out that he had been working for Aunt Katherine, near relative of the new warden of San Pedro.

What of her? What of Joan Gracie and her father? What of Gary Lee, the aristocrat, who had brought him here?

He was willing to take the chance of the posse out there capturing Harry Gosse.

He whirled and stooped. He ran crouchingly, to keep the cover as much as possible of these friendly flowers he had come to love. He rounded the house, back the way he had come, through the back garden, over the back fence, into the woods.

He wasn’t frightened on his own account. Aunt Katherine’s worries were all that worried him. These woods he knew. No Indian captive, with a hostile tribe at his back, could have gained these woods with a greater assurance of escape.

A sinking in his heart told him that this was so even when a complex bellow told him that he had been discovered again, that the crowd was starting in pursuit. That was Warden Green’s voice booming through the others as a horn booms through the lighter instruments of an orchestra.

“Git’m, boys! The first one! Three Sevens himself! Thousand dollars’ reward!”

“I’m running,” said Craig, “with a price on my head.”

It seemed strange that this should be so, yet another major link in his chain of great events. Stranger yet it seemed to him that he wasn’t frightened.

He wasn’t frightened until, as he was about to slacken his pace in a mossy little dell where the water dripped all about and queer little bell-like flowers grew, thick and waxy white. Here where he had dreamed so often, since his second escape from San Pedro, he heard a thudding footfall back of him, a rending of brush, a gasp of exhausted lungs.

Some one had almost overtaken him. And it was then that it occurred to him how easy it would be for this other to shoot him in the back. This other was armed. He was not. He dared not stop. He dared not turn. The panting pursued him. Each gasping breath might mean that the runner would stop running, in despair, and begin to shoot.

Back there where the race began, a number of the men, Warden Green among them, had paused for a moment to inquire of Miss Middleton if she had seen any other than these two about.

She said yes. She said they knew her--how she always gave work and a mouthful to eat to every one who came along, and how one of these boys had been lingering around here for quite a while, and that she had been expecting him back at any minute. She rambled on, until they lost patience with her, and also a fraction of invaluable time--which is always enough to win or lose a race.

So they murmured among themselves and scattered at top speed, and Aunt Katherine picked up the blood-red rose which, as one might say, had been shed in her honor. A hard old woman, and as much a man as a woman in some respects, but Aunt Katherine was all woman, right at that particular moment, with the tears dropping down her wrinkled cheeks.

“God save you, Danny!” she whispered, under her breath--she who had always treated this ex-convict, who had been thrust upon her, with a certain wholesome bitterness.

Craig ran. He plunged downhill. He jumped into gullies. There was no shaking off the pursuer who was at his heels. The worst of it was, he was no longer free to go where he willed on another account.

That gang of guns and pitchforks who had accompanied the ex-warden of San Pedro were themselves woodsmen to some extent familiar with the lay of the land. They were spreading out, as they would have done in an old-fashioned fox drive.

Twice, now, Craig had all but run into one of them, had swerved just in time, brought fresh danger to his trail. And, sooner or later, the pack would begin to close in. Even the stag has to give up at last in a chase like this. And he himself was almost winded.

He determined on a last, desperate play. He knew where there was a dry watercourse full of small boulders. He made for this, while he dragged those footfalls back of him like a curse. He toppled over the bank of the watercourse there where he could have at least some cover. He picked up a boulder in each hand.

His lungs were laboring. So was his heart. But he had strength and the will for almost anything rather than surrender.

He had just turned, just drawn back his right hand with the stone in it, when the bushes swerved, and a man stumbled through. It was Harry, the Goose!

It was Harry who had followed him like that through the woods, Harry who had borne up during the long chase. It was fear that had given him the strength, even as it had added to the strength of Craig. But the race had been unequal. It was always easier to follow than to lead.

But, if it had been unequal in this respect, it was balanced in another. Craig still had strength. Harry had none. He stumbled to his knees. He went over on his side. He lay there like a wounded man, gasping, his mouth wide open, unable to move, his ugly face set to the lines of exhaustion.

Craig crawled out of his waterway. He took Harry’s pistol from him. Then he sat at Harry’s side, and pumped the air into his own lungs.

At the same time he listened. This double trail that he and Harry had made would be easy enough to follow, but now he saw that he had an advantage, after all. The pursuers knew that at least one of them was armed, must have believed them both to be armed. There could be no blind plunging through the woods for them. They would have to go slow, examine each tree and bush.

There is something about a habit of environment in the matter of thought. Since his second escape from prison, these woods had become a thinking place for Craig--a sort of temple, for resolutions, hopes, and prayers. And the habit declared itself now, strange as it may seem--with a murderous pack warm on his trail, and an enemy here at his side who but a few minutes ago had made a cowardly attempt on his life.

“They’ve got us,” gasped Harry.

“Shut up,” said Craig.

“Gimme a drink!” panted Harry.

“I’ll give you water in a minute,” whispered Craig fiercely.

“Give me water!”

“Yes!”

“You got nerve!”

Harry was for sitting up. He must have been muddled on the circumstances--must have thought that Craig was as frightened as he was, that the chase had made them brothers again. Wrong. Craig flattened him with a push of his open hand.

“Stay there and keep quiet,” said Craig.

Harry, the Goose, sat up.

“I’m going,” he announced, in a snarling whisper.

“Stay where you are. I’ll tell you what you’re to do and what you’re not to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know whether to tie you up----”

“You tie me up!”

“--and leave you for the posse, or try to take you back myself.”

“Where?”

“San Pedro.”

There for a moment terror and rage were battling for possession of Harry’s drab face.

It was clear that he thought he had to do with a maniac, and a maniac who was dangerous. Fear won. His mouth sagged open. It dribbled out black blasphemy like the drooling of a wounded puff adder.

“If I leave you,” said Craig, “you might get lynched.”

“You’re crazy.”

Harry twitched his eyes this way and that.

“They’ve got a new warden there,” said Craig, “who’s going to give every one a square deal--even you.”

“You dirty snake!”

And Harry had his hand again in his pocket. He had been so overcome that it wasn’t until then that he learned his pistol was gone. He saw it in Craig’s hand, pointed at him.

“Don’t get noisy,” said Craig. “Say what you want to”--he himself was using the almost silent lip speech that he had learned in San Pedro--“but say it like this.”

Harry tried to argue.

“They’ll pinch you, too.”

“Maybe!”

“And give you life for what you done. I had no share in it.”

“Maybe!”

“You’re after the reward.”

“That’s also why I’m taking you back myself.”

“Sellin’ me!”

“Giving you away,” smiled Craig. “If I left you to these farmers, the county or the State would be that much poorer, so I will not do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to pay back to society what I owe.”

This was beyond Harry, the Goose. He sought to mollify his captor, the while his eyes shifted.

“For Heaven’s sake, Tommy! Me and you ought to be friends.”

“We are! San Pedro’s going to be a place to do you good.”

“And you, you louse!”

“I’ll go back, too--when I’ve finished.”

“But, Tommy!”

“Sh! Some one’s coming. Listen, Goose. Would you rather take a chance with me, or an old-fashioned lynching bee? You know the kind--rope--limb--shots--maybe a fire.”

Harry, the Goose, broke down and began to blubber.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “Can’t you have pity on me poor old mother?”