“Three!” cried the shrill, anxious voice of Jimmy Lovell. “What three? Three that was to hang yesterday morning— is that the three you mean?”
“Hey, how did you know that?” asked the newcomer.
“I guessed it!” shouted Jimmy Lovell. “The blockheads, they had those three in the death house. Couldn’t they keep ‘em there?”
“Why,” said the red-faced man, “they got their hands on the warden through the bars of their cell, and they just about killed him, and they got the keys off of him. They jimmied up the lights and got down to the yard “
Phil Bray said quietly: “Mantry, take the window. This window here. Dave, take the back door. I’ll take the front door. We’ll let Jimmy see us, and then we’ll paste him. I wanted to wait till we could get our hands on him —but after he gets this news, he’s going to run like a jack rabbit and never stop running.”
Bray left the window and hurried around the front of the building. Behind the wall he could hear the voice of the news bringer continuing:
“They get out to the gate and stick up the gatekeeper. They make him open up the gate, and they get through. By that time the warden was able to talk, and he gives the alarm. They start the bell ringing. The guard on top of the wall sees the three of them bolt from the gate, and starts shooting “
Phil Bray stepped into the light of the doorway with a revolver in his hand.
On the table, Jimmy Lovell kept slowly prancing, lifting up his knees in an agony of anxiety as he heard the tidings.
“But they got guardhouses and searchlights up on the hills all around the Atwater pen,” cried Lovell. “Nobody ever got out of the place. Nobody ever could. They got guardhouses and searchlights, and there’s men and horses all ready at every one of the places. How could they get away?” He made an eloquently appealing gesture with the whisky bottle.
“They charged right at the first guardhouse. One of ‘em shot the guard behind ‘em off the wall. They smashed the light in the guardhouse and “
This speech was cut short by a blood-chilling screech from the lips of Jimmy Lovell. His pointed face opened wide, and out of his throat the yell came swelling, louder and louder.
For in the lighted doorway he had seen Phil Bray and the pointed revolver. He glanced to the side and saw Joe Mantry. He jerked his head over his shoulder and observed tall Dave Lister standing in the rear doorway.
He was cornered. He was tasting the perfect dread of death for half a second before it would strike him down. Then, whirling as if to leap, he hurled the bottle in his hand right into the gasoline lamp.
There was a booming explosion, with a harsh tinkling of glass in it. One wave of mingled light and shadow dashed through the room. Utter darkness followed with the yelling of frightened men and the groaning of the injured.
But there was no fire following the explosion. The violence of the outburst seemed to have extinguished all the flames. Or was it some strange accident that had kept the liberated gasoline from flaring up?
Phil Bray, knocked backward by surprise and the effect of the explosion, recovered himself and peered in vain into the turmoil of the dark, where figures were swaying here and there.
But he could make out nothing. He could not see one from another, only vague and fantastic shadows leaping. Two men rushed out the door and charged past him. One of them was small, very active, and dodged right and left like a snipe as he sprinted.
Jimmy Lovell?
Bray turned and went after him fast. The little figure darted around the comer of the building. Bray followed, saw the small form spring onto a horse on the farther side of the glimmering watering trough, and then the fugitive darted down the street.
It was Jimmy Lovell, riding for his life.
Bray stepped out into the street, leveled his Colt with care, and emptied it. Three times he was sure that the bullets must have hit the mark. But the rider went on. Had Bray missed, after all?
He lowered the gun. Two men were charging toward him, demanding what he was up to.
“Taking a crack at the dirty swine that smashed that lamp,” said Bray coolly, and, detaching himself from the others, he went back to the place where the horses had been left.
Mantry and Dave Lister were already there.
Lister was gibbering softly to himself, half out of his wits with rage and disappointment. Joe Mantry said nothing at all. They got into the saddle and rode back through the trees until they found an open trail. There they paused a moment, shoulder to shoulder.
“I done it,” Bray said. “We should ‘a’ socked him full of lead as soon as we seen him. But I hoped that we could get our hands on him first and make him show us where he’s hidden out the loot. Then I thought at least that we’d let him see what was coming to him before it arrived. I was all wrong all the way through.”
“Drop it,” said Mantry. “I would ‘a’ done the same. Where’ll Jimmy go?”
“Into the deepest cover any gent ever found in the world,” said Dave Lister. “I saw it in his eyes when he stood there on the table, screaming. I saw that he’d keep on running till he came to the end of the world.”
“All right,” said Bray. “We’ll start for the end of the world. I don’t want anything else out of life. I just want to get my hands on Jimmy Lovell.”
IX—LOVELL’S IDEA
Lovell had bolted right along the out trail away from Rusty Gulch. Bullets followed him. He rode for five minutes in a frenzy before he was able to look back and make sure that no one was pursuing him. Then he cut off from the trail, rounded back through open country, and came down into Rusty Gulch from the north.
The shack in which he was living sat back from the road a little distance. When he came up behind it he dismounted; then he crawled through the fence into the long grass of the back yard. The grass was wet with dew. The cold wetness soaked through his clothes, but the dew was not so cold as his heart.
The three of them must know where he lived. That was why they had not followed him up the road in their savage eagerness. They had simply turned back to his house, and there they were waiting for him.
But the house could be damned, for all of him. He only wanted to get to the well in the back yard.
He crawled on through the long grass. Dave Lister, he knew, had ears as keen as the ears of a fox. Dave would hear the slightest sound. Perhaps he had detected the rustling in the grass. So Jimmy Lovell went on an inch at a time, until he came out of the high grass into view of the well.
Bad luck again!
The Murphys, next door to him, were still sitting around the dining-room table. The window was open. He could see old Murphy sitting with the sleeves of his shirt turned up to the elbow, and the sleeves of the red flannel undershirt turned down to the wrist. Old Murphy believed that red flannel keeps away rheumatism.
But what was important was that a dim pallor of lamplight was shed through the open window, and stole across the very face of the well and its wooden cover.
Lying stretched out on the ground trembling, Lovell waited for a time. Three men and three guns might be, must be waiting for him in the black darkness of his house; but half a million dollars was inside that well!
He crawled on. Life was worth a lot, but what man’s life was worth as much as half a million dollars?
He got into the field of the lamplight. Fear sickened him. As he crawled forward, his arms kept sagging and shuddering at the elbows. Then he reached the well.
He hoped that he could push up the edge of the wooden cover and reach down inside. But the cover was stuck in place. He had to rise to his knees in order to get greater lifting power. And when he rose, three guns might speak from the blackness of the empty door of his shack.