“Till the moon comes up?” queried one of his men. “Well, that won’t be more’n half an hour, I guess, at the most and…”
But Jack Trainor, sitting in the next room of the hotel and hearing every syllable that was spoken because the wall between was of a thickness hardly rivaling cardboard, waited to hear no more. He had made out, from what passed before in their talk, that the sheriff had gathered the half dozen men in the next room to conduct an inquiry into the stage robbery that had occurred the night before. And now he had been struck rigid with horror by the mention of the name of Bill Vance, his brother-in-law.
Trainor had left Bill’s house the previous evening after a visit of a fortnight. It seemed impossible that young Vance should have committed the robbery, but on second thought Jack remembered that his host had been absent during the entire first half of the night, pleading a business call across the hills. Moreover, he knew that Vance was desperately hard pressed for money. He had made considerable loans to Bill in the past, but all that he could raise on a cowpuncher’s pay had been little enough, considering the needs of a growing family. However that might be, he had no time to argue about possibilities. The important thing for him to do was to rush back to Bill’s house and learn the truth from him and deliver the warning about the coming of the sheriff.
That was what he did. Five minutes later he was out of the hotel and on his horse galloping hard along the road. As he swung out of the saddle before the door, he saw the white rim of the moon slide up above the eastern hills. The house was black. The family slept. And yet, at the first rap at the door, there was an answering stir.
Did a guilty conscience make the sleep of Bill Vance light?
“It’s me, Bill,” he called softly, and a moment later the door was opened to him by his brother-in-law, the moonlight shining fully on his face and making him seem old and pale.
“What’s wrong?” gasped out Vance.
“How d’you know that there’s anything wrong?” demanded Jack Trainor sternly. “Who said that there was anything wrong?”
“I don’t know…only…”
“Bill,” commanded Jack, “you got to tell me the whole truth. Did you stick up the Norberry stage?”
There was another gasp from the wretched Bill. Confession of his guilt, and his despair for the consequences of his act that now confronted him, showed at once in his face.
“It was only because I…” He stopped short. “Who says I did it?” he asked.
“You’re guilty, Bill,” said Trainor. “And they know it. They know that the gent that stuck up the stage rode a gray horse. They recognized that high-headed young gray of yours, that Mike horse that you been riding lately.”
“They co-couldn’t,” stammered Bill. “It was dark and…”
“You did it, then?”
“Lord help me,” groaned Bill.
“Better start by helping yourself. Bill, they’ll be here in twenty minutes. They were to start by moonrise and then…”
“I’ll stay here.”
“You’re crazy, Bill. That’ll be ruin. They’ll get you sure. You ain’t got the face to stand up before a jury. They’ll see through you as clear as day.”
“I don’t care what they do to me. It would be ruin if I ran for it. What would become of Mary and the kids if I ran for it?”
The heavy truth of that statement bore in upon the mind of Jack Trainor. He regarded his sister’s husband bitterly.
“Does Mary know that I’ve come back?” he asked.
“No. She’s sound asleep, I guess.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take the gray horse and make a getaway. You stay here where you are and, if they ask, tell them that I was out last night, you don’t know where, and that I’ve gone out again tonight, and that both times I took the gray horse. Understand?”
“Good Lord, Jack, you don’t mean that you’ll take the crime on your own head? Man…”
“Shut up that talk. We ain’t got the time for it. You got a family, and it’s the needs of the family that made you do it…but you’ll never try it again, I guess.”
“Never, so help me…”
“Help yourself, Bill,” said the other sternly. “You been looking around to the Lord and other folks for help long enough.”
“But I can’t let you…I’m not a low-enough hound to let you step in and take the blame for this.”
“You got to let me. You got three people depending on you. I got none.”
“But Mary knows that you didn’t leave the house…”
“She’ll let it go as I want her to do…she knows that the family mustn’t be ruined.”
“But this may wreck your life, Jack.”
“My life is young. If it’s wrecked now, I got time to make a new life over again. Stop arguing and help me get the gray and throw a saddle over him.”
Ten minutes later, on the back of gray Mike, he wrung the hand of his brother-in-law.
“They’ll think that I started back for town and registered for a room at the hotel just as a bluff. Meantime, I’m going to ride for Jerneyville and show myself, and, when I get through at Jerneyville, there won’t be any doubts about me being the man that done the stick-up of the stage last night. Good bye, Bill. Go straight. And put every cent of that money you got by the hold-up in such a place that it will be found and returned to them that lost it. A gent can’t get on by taking things that he don’t own by rights. So long!”
And, as he gave the gray his head, they could hear the drumming of many hoofs far down the road coming out from town. But Jack Trainor regarded them not. He had under him a fresh horse with a fine turn of speed, and, by the time the posse had finished making its examination of Bill Vance, he would be so far away that they could never hope to head him off without a change of horses.
So he swung toward Jerneyville, keeping the gray well in hand, and at an easy pace cantered down the main street of the village at midnight. There he picked out the bank, which was well guarded, he knew, dismounted, broke in the back door, making noise enough to attract the attention of an army, and, of course, he was promptly encountered by the watchman.
He knew that worthy, a fat and harmless fellow with a smile as bland as a summer sky. He had often thought that thieves who could not handle such a watchman as he must be stupid villains, indeed. Now Trainor tested his theory and found that it was perfectly workable. He stopped the first yell of the fat watchman with a blow of his fist and then knocked the gun out of the hand of the other.
It exploded as it struck the floor, while the half-strangled shriek of the fat man echoed through the village: “Murder! Robbery! Jack Trainor is robbing the bank!”
With that hubbub behind him, and the grim knowledge that he had certainly established his reputation as a criminal and been identified as such, Trainor hurried outdoors, sprang into his saddle, and let the eager gray show some of the speed that had been going into the steady pull at the bit earlier in the night.
Chapter 2
The cry that the fat man raised in the bank at Jer-neyville proved to be louder and longer than Trainor had dreamed. It struck up echoes that, so it seemed, raised men out of the ground for hundreds of miles. He rode southward at first, aiming at the Río Grande and safety in the confusion beyond that muddy little river. But the first four days brought twice that many brushes with pursuing posses.