Still, none of the four fugitives had been knocked from his saddle by the bullets that hailed after them. They swept around the curve of the lower street in a solid body and disappeared from view.
III—ALL FOR ONE
Phil bray had command, but Dave Lister knew the country better than the others, and therefore he gave advice as to the twist and the turns they had better make when they got back into the mountains.
They were well out from Elkdale, with their horses running well—depending upon Phil Bray to make sure that the horses were as good as money could buy—when bad luck struck them down. Their horses were good enough to gain slowly, consistently, on the riders from the town of Elkdale, but they were not fast enough to outfoot bad luck.
It came in the form of an old prospector who had a rifle slung from his shoulder instead of thrust into the pack of his burro, simply because ten minutes before this hour he had determined that the time had come when he must begin to look about him for a little fresh meat.
He had not seen so much as a rabbit when, looking down into the valley, he saw a stream of half a hundred riders raising a dust from the direction of Elkdale, and far ahead of them there was a quartet of fugitives.
The prospector took them to be fugitives—not the leaders of a pursuit. And since he was a fellow who always followed the first thought, and obeyed every original emotion, he straightaway leveled his rifle and took a crack at the strangers.
It was a six-hundred-yard shot, and he fired just before the four men got into a pine wood, so he had no way of knowing what his bullet had accomplished.
As a matter of fact, it had driven into the side of the horse which rat-faced Jimmy Lovell was riding. His, mount stopped to a stagger, and Jimmy shouted:
“Chief! Lister! Mantry! I’m gone! The mare is dyin’ under me!”
Bray reined up his horse, though Lister said savagely, curtly:
“We can spare Lovell the best of the lot. Better let him go than have all of us snagged.”
But Bray, swinging in beside Lovell, motioned him to climb up behind him.
“All for one, and one for all!” said Bray.
He had read that in a book—he forgot where—and he liked the sound of it. It had a special meaning for him.
“All for one, and one for all!” he thundered again, and got his horse under way once more.
But in half a mile the extra weight, the up grade, and the approach of sounds of the pursuit from behind them told all four that Bray’s horse could carry double no longer.
Mantry was the lightest of the riders, except little Lovell himself. So Mantry took up the handicap, and managed very well with it, because Mantry was a genius when it came to handling horseflesh.
But, inside of another mile or so, Mantry’s own horse was stopping to a walk, and the men from Elkdale were thundering along closer.
It was clear that the carrying of Jimmy Lovell might ruin all four of the men. And as Dave Lister took Lovell up behind him in turn, he shouted to Bray:
“Name one of us! Let’s make a choice. One of us had better go down than all of us. We’re all lost if we try to pack extra weight. We’re all done for—and there’s a dead man back there in Elkdale! Mantry killed a man for us back there! Think, Phil! It’s life or death!”
Phil Bray gripped his horse hard with his knees and rose in the saddle, shouting:
“All for one, and one for all, and damn the traitors what leave a partner in a pinch!”
He added: “Can we duck down one of these side canyons, Dave?”
For narrow ravines branched off on either side from the course of the valley down which the horses were straining.
“Half of ‘em are box canyons that’d bring us up agin’ a solid wall,” answered Lister. “I don’t know which are which, but this one oughta be all right!”
He swung to the right as he spoke, and rushed his tiring horse down the canyon. It opened big and wide and deep before them at the start. At the first turning it narrowed. At the next turn they saw before them a fifty-foot wall of almost sheer rock, and over it a thin flag of spray was falling and fanning out into a mist.
That was the prospect before them. Behind them they heard the uproar, as of an advancing sea, when the posse from Elkdale swarmed into the head of the ravine that held them.
They were bottled up. Surrender was all they had before them. And when they surrendered, they could contemplate the death of Hal Parson back there in Elkdale.
Joe Mantry was not the only man who would hang for that murder. The entire quartet would be strung up.
The shrill, piercing voice of Jimmy Lovell was heard yelling: “Lister, you got us into this blind pocket, damn you!”
Lister turned in the saddle and jerked his elbow into the face of Lovell, knocking him headlong from the saddle.
He got up with a great red streak across his features, silenced.
Bray was already climbing the talus of broken rock at the base of the cliff, calling out:
“We’ll make a try, boys. There may be a chance here. One for all, all for one!”
They scanned the height and the sheer, glistening face of the cliff with despair, but it was better to try something than to surrender.
Up the talus they ran. Bray, leading, found a way of working up a cleft in the rock to the left that brought them within some seven or eight yards of the top. Farther it was absolutely impossible for any human being to mount the rock.
But Bray shouted: “We’ll make a ladder, boys! I’ll be the first round. Here, Lister. Climb up over me. Come on, Mantry, and stand on Lister’s shoulders. Now, Jimmy Lovell. You don’t weigh anything. Up you go, boy. Up like a squirrel. If one of us can get away—and the loot with him—he can buy us out with a smart lawyer, maybe. Up with you!”
They formed the living ladder as their chief commanded.
Bray was the base of it, standing with bent head, submitting to weight after weight as Lister first clambered up and stood on his shoulders. Lister found a handhold on the rock to steady the pile as Joe Mantry in his turn climbed up the ladder and stood on the shoulders of Lister. Last of all came Jimmy Lovell, whining, clumsy with fear. And as at last he stood on top of the living ladder, he cried: “I can’t reach it!”
“Jump!” commanded Joe Mantry.
“I can’t—I’ll fall and break my neck,” groaned Jimmy Lovell.
“Jump, or I’ll throw you down with my own hands!” threatened Joe Mantry.
So threatened, Lovell finally gathered courage enough to leap up. The force with which he sprang nearly tore the clinging fingers of Mantry from the rock. But Lovell had hooked his hands over the upper ledge, and now he scrambled to safety on the ledge above, while a bullet thudded against the cliff close to Phil Bray’s face.
Down came Mantry and Dave Lister, while Bray grabbed that precious canvas sack and, with a whirl, hurled it high up into the air, where the hands of Jimmy Lovell reached out. Then Lovell disappeared among the rocks and brush of the upper floor of the valley.
Below came the men of Elkdale, with pale-faced Oliver Wayland riding at the head of them all. He was no expert with horses, but the consuming passion of his shame and his desire to strike one blow on behalf of the bank had brought him finally to the lead. It was his own quick guesswork rather than anything he saw or heard that had led him down this canyon from the main valley, and the rest of the hunt had streaked in behmd him.
They saw the canvas sack disappear. They saw the three criminals who were brought to bay stand with then: hands raised above their heads in surrender.
Joe Mantry, who saw red when there was a chance to fight, was snarling imprecations and wishing to get at his guns, but Phil Bray had commanded: