The Covered Wagon by Emerson Hough (ebook audio reader txt) 📕

"Your rope, quick, Bill!"

[pg 169]

Jackson hurried and they joined the ends of the two ropes.

"Not my horse--he's wild. Dally on to your own saddle, Bill, and go slow or you'll tear his head off."

The scout's pony, held by the head and backed slowly, squatted to its haunches, snorting, but heaving strongly. The head of the victim was drawn oddly toward his shoulder by the loop, but slowly, silently, his hands clutching at the rope, his body began to rise, to slip forward.

Banion, deep as he dared, at last caught him by the collar, turned up his face. He was safe. Jackson heard the rescuer's deep exclamation, but was busy.

"Cast free, Will, cast free quick, and I'll try for the horse!"

He did try, with the lengthened rope, cast after cast, paying little attention to the work of Banion, who dragged out his man and bent over him as he lay motionless on the safe edge of the treacherous sunken sands which still half buried him.

"No use!" exclaimed the older man. He ran to his saddle and got his deadly double barrel, then stepped as close as possible to the sinking animal as he could. There came a roar. The head of the horse dropped flat, began to sink. "Pore critter!" muttered the old man, capping his reloaded gun. He now hastened to aid Banion.

The latter turned a set face toward him and pointed. The rescued man had opened his eyes. He reached now convulsively for a tuft of grass, paused, stared.

[pg 170]

"Hit's Sam Woodhull!" ejaculated the scout. Then, suddenly, "Git away, Will--move back!"

Banion looked over his shoulder as he stood, his own hands and arms, his clothing, black with mire. The old man's gray eye was like a strange gem, gleaming at the far end of the deadly double tube, which was leveled direct at the prostrate man's forehead.

"No!" Banion's call was quick and imperative. He flung up a hand, stepped between. "No! You'd kill him--now?"

With a curse Jackson flung his gun from him, began to recoil the muddied ropes. At length, without a word, he came to Banion's side. He reached down, caught an arm and helped Banion drag the man out on the grass. He caught off a handful of herbage and thrust it out to Woodhull, who remained silent before what seemed his certain fate.

"Wipe off yore face, you skunk!" said the scout. Then he seated himself, morosely, hands before knees.

"Will Banion," said he, "ye're a fool--a nacherl-borned, congenual, ingrain damned fool! Ye're flyin' in the face o' Proverdence, which planted this critter right here fer us ter leave where no one'd ever be the wiser, an' where he couldn't never do no more devilment. Ye idjit, leave me kill him, ef ye're too chicken-hearted yoreself! Or leave us throw him back in again!"

Banion would not speak at first, though his eyes never left Woodhull's streaked, ghastly face.

[pg 171]

"By God!" said he slowly, at length, "if we hadn't joined Scott and climbed Chapultepec together, I'd kill you like a dog, right here! Shall I give you one more chance to square things for me? You know what I mean! Will you promise?"

"Promise?" broke in Jackson. "Ye damned fool, would ye believe ary promise he made, even now? I tell-ee, boy, he'll murder ye the fust chanct he gits! He's tried hit one night afore. Leave me cut his throat, Will! Ye'll never be safe ontel I do. Leave me cut his throat er kill him with a rock. Hit's only right."

Banion shook his head.

"No," he said slowly, "I couldn't, and you must not."

"Do you promise?" he repeated to the helpless man. "Get up--stand up! Do you promise--will you swear?"

"Swear? Hell!" Jackson also rose as Woodhull staggered to his feet. "Ye knew this man orto kill ye, an' ye sneaked hit, didn't ye? Whar's yer gun?"

"There!" Woodhull nodded to the bog, over which no object now showed. "I'm helpless! I'll promise! I'll swear!"

"Then we'll not sound the No-quarter charge that you and I have heard the Spanish trumpets blow. You will remember the shoulder of a man who fought with you? You'll do what you can now--at any cost?"

"What cost?" demanded Woodhull thickly.

Banion's own white teeth showed as he smiled.

"What difference?" said he. "What odds?"

"That's hit!" Again Jackson cut in, inexorable. "Hit's no difference to him what he sw'ars, yit he'd bargain even now. Hit's about the gal!"

[pg 172]

"Hush!" said Banion sternly. "Not another word!"

"Figure on what it means to you." He turned to Woodhull. "I know what it means to me. I've got to have my own last chance, Woodhull, and I'm saving you for that only. Is your last chance now as good as mine? This isn't mercy--I'm trading now. You know what I mean."

Woodhull had freed his face of the mud as well as he could. He walked away, stooped at a trickle of water to wash himself. Jackson quietly rose and kicked the shotgun back farther from the edge. Woodhull now was near to Banion's horse, which, after his fashion, always came and stood close to his master. The butts of the two dragoon revolvers showed in their holsters at the saddle. When he rose from the muddy margin, shaking his hands as to dry them, he walked toward the horse. With a sudden leap, without a word, he sprang beyond the horse, with a swift clutch at both revolvers, all done with a catlike quickness not to have been predicted. He stood clear of the plunging horse, both weapons leveled, covering his two rescuers.

"Evener now!" His teeth bared. "Promise me!"

Jackson's deep curse was his answer. Banion rose, his arms folded.

"You're a liar and a coward, Sam!" said he. "Shoot, if you've got the nerve!"

Incredible, yet the man was a natural murderer. His eye narrowed. There came a swift motion, a double empty click!

[pg 173]

"Try again, Sam!" said Banion, taunting him. "Bad luck--you landed on an empty!"

He did try again. Swift as an adder, his hands flung first one and then the other weapon into action.

Click after click, no more; Jackson sat dumb, expecting death.

"They're all empty, Sam," said Banion at last as the murderer cast down the revolvers and stood with spread hands. "For the first time, I didn't reload. I didn't think I'd need them."

"You can't blame me!" broke out Woodhull. "You said it was no quarter! Isn't a prisoner justified in trying to escape?"

"You've not escaped," said Banion, coldly now. "Rope him, Jackson."

The thin, soft hide cord fell around the man's neck, tightened.

"Now," shrilled Jackson, "I'll give ye a dog's death!"

He sprang to the side of the black Spaniard, who by training had settled back, tightening the rope.

[pg 174]

Catching the intention of the maddened man, now bent only on swift revenge, Banion sprang to the head of his horse, flinging out an arm to keep Jackson out of the saddle. The horse, frightened at the stubborn struggle between the two, sprang away. Woodhull was pulled flat by the rope about his neck, nor could he loosen it now with his hands, for the horse kept steadily away. Any instant and he might be off in a mad flight, dragging the man to his death.

"Ho! Pronto--Vien aqui!"

Banion's command again quieted the animal. His ears forward, he came up, whickering his own query as to what really was asked of him.

Banion caught the bridle rein once more and eased the rope. Jackson by now had his shotgun and was shouting, crazed with anger. Woodhull's life chance was not worth a bawbee.

It was his enemy who saved it once again, for inscrutable but unaltered reasons of his own.

"Drop that, Jackson!" called Banion. "Do as I tell you! This man's mine!"

Cursing himself, his friend, their captive, the horse, his gun and all animate and inanimate Nature in his blood rage, the old man, livid in wrath, stalked away at length. "I'll kill him sometime, ef ye don't yerself!" he screamed, his beard trembling. "Ye damned fool!"

[pg 175]

"Get up, Woodhull!" commanded Banion. "You've tried once more to kill me. Of course, I'll not take any oath or promise from you now. You don't understand such things. The blood of a gentleman isn't anywhere in your strain. But I'll give you one more chance--give myself that chance too. There's only one thing you understand. That's fear. Yet I've seen you on a firing line, and you started with Doniphan's men. We didn't know we had a coward with us. But you are a coward.

"Now I leave you to your fear! You know what I want--more than life it is to me; but your life is all I have to offer for it. I'm going to wait till then.

"Come on, now! You'll have to walk. Jackson won't let you have his horse. My own never carried a woman but once, and he's never carried a coward at all. Jackson shall not have the rope. I'll not let him kill you."

"What do you mean?" demanded the prisoner, not without his effrontery.

The blood came back to Banion's face, his control breaking.

"I mean for you to walk, trot, gallop, damn you! If you don't you'll strangle here instead of somewhere else in time."

He swung up, and Jackson sullenly followed.

[pg 176]

"Give me that gun," ordered Banion, and took the shotgun and slung it in the pommel loop of his own saddle.

The gentle amble of the black stallion kept the prisoner at a trot. At times Banion checked, never looking at the man following, his hands at the rope, panting.

"Ye'll try him in the camp council, Will?" began Jackson once more. "Anyways that? He's a murderer. He tried to kill us both, an' he will yit. Boy, ye rid with Doniphan, an' don't know the ley refugio. Hasn't the prisoner tried to escape? Ain't that old as Mayheeco Veeayho? Take this skunk in on a good rope like that? Boy, ye're crazy!"

"Almost," nodded Banion. "Almost. Come on. It's late."

It was late when they rode down into the valley of the Platte. Below them twinkled hundreds of little fires of the white nation, feasting. Above, myriad stars shone in a sky unbelievably clear. On every hand rose the roaring howls of the great gray wolves, also feasting now; the lesser chorus of yapping coyotes. The savage night of the Plains was on. Through it passed three savage figures, one a staggering, stumbling man with a rope around his neck.

They came into the guard circle, into the dog circle of the encampment; but when challenged answered, and were not stopped.

"Here, Jackson," said Banion at length, "take the rope. I'm going to our camp. I'll not go into this train. Take this pistol--it's loaded now. Let off the reata, walk close to this man. If he runs, kill him. Find Molly Wingate. Tell her Will Banion has sent her husband to her--once more. It's the last time."

[pg 177]

He was gone in the dark. Bill Jackson, having first meticulously exhausted the entire vituperative resources of the English, the Spanish and all the Indian languages he knew, finally poked the muzzle of the pistol into Woodhull's back.

"Git, damn ye!" he commanded. "Center, guide! Forrerd, march! Ye--"

He improvised now, all known terms of contempt having been heretofore employed.

Threading the way past many feast fires, he did find the Wingate wagons at length, did find Molly Wingate. But there his memory failed him. With a skinny hand at Sam Woodhull's collar, he flung him forward.

"Here, Miss Molly," said he, "this thing is somethin' Major Banion sont in ter ye by me. We find hit stuck in the mud. He said ye're welcome."

But neither he nor Molly really knew why that other man had spared Sam Woodhull's life, or what it was he awaited in return for Sam Woodhull's life.

All that Jackson could do he did. As he turned in the dark he implanted a heartfelt kick which sent Sam Woodhull on his knees before Molly