They brought Ed home. John lay dying. My father sat up and watched. I could not go near the house. I went out to the barn and waited. I felt like another Cain.
There was no indecision in my mind. I knew that my lawless temper had precipitated the killing. But Love had been laying for Ed. He had ribbed Houston to the shooting. They had murdered deliberately, cowardly—they had shot from behind.
Before the night was over the news went like a flame through the country. Woodward held its breath and waited for the answering shot.
Houston and Love would come back. They expected me to get them.
The remorse of the night before had reared like a coiled snake into a poisonous vengeance. There would be no quitting now.
The mean, sordid gray of early morning had just streaked the night sky. My father came out to the barn. He looked tall and grim, but blanched as a leper.
"Come in with me." His voice seemed pressed and flattened with misery. "Come in here." He led the way to the room where John lay in a moaning delirium.
"There's one," he pointed.
And then he moved silently into the other room where Ed had been placed on the board table.
My father's cavernous eyes glowed into mine in a blazing scrutiny.
"There's two," he said.
"Now what are you going to do? Are you going to finish us?"
It was like a whiplash cutting a welt across my face. I felt like a beaten, cowering dog.
Neither of us spoke. It was hard even to breathe. I could see that my father's hand trembled. I did not want to look into his accusing face.
What did he mean? Did he expect me to do nothing, while all of Woodward waited for the blow?
He knew the spirit of these prairie towns. Men settled their own accounts in swift and deadly fashion. Ex-fugitives and old range men made up the population. They paid little tribute to the law.
The marshals who administered it were the meanest men in the country. They were mostly former horse-thieves, rustlers or renegade gamblers.
The outlaws did their financeering with a six-shooter; the marshals used a whiskey bottle.
I have known deputy U. S. marshals, dozens of times, deliberately sneak the bottle into the schooner wagons going across the plains; double back on the occupants, search the wagons, find the bottle, tie their victims to the trees, hold them until the scoundrelly trick gave them about 10 prisoners. Then they would drive them all into Fort Smith, produce their fraudulent evidence, collect mileage and cold-bloodedly have those innocent men sent up for four or five years on the charge of introducing liquor into the Indian Territory. Ohio penitentiary, when I landed there, was choked with men serving time on such trumped-up cases.
The marshals grabbed off about $2,000 on the deal. The oowpunchers who sometimes became outlaws were clean men by comparison. They took little stock in the justice of sneak thieves.
These things I knew. It was not murder to strike down the men who had shot from the back. In the Middle West, it was honor.
It was not honor that I wanted, but vengeance. Ed and I had been 12 years together. He had taken the place of Stanton, of Chicken. He was more than either to me. Big natured, clear brained, the gentlest fellow that ever lived—and there he was with the back of his poor head blown off with the murderous bullets.
"Listen to me!" My father's voice seemed rumbling through a wall of pain. It jerked me back. "Listen to me. There's been killing enough. There's been sorrow enough.
"Your brother has paid the penalty of vengeance. John, too, may pay. Where will it end? When Woodward runs with blood?"
He went on as though he were possessed.
"You shall not do it. I am the judge here. I was appointed when the county was formed. I was named to maintain the law. If my own sons will not stand by me what can I expect from others?"
All of a sudden he stopped. His colorless face seemed crumpled with misery. "Al, you won't do anything till Frank comes, will you?"
Frank came on from Denver. My father had his way.
"Let them go to trial," Frank said. "He wants it. I'll do no killing."
Frank was always like that, impulsive, soft-hearted, generous—undecided until he got into action, then he tore ahead deadly and relentless as a very hell on wheels. As for myself, I felt a blazing hatred against them all in my heart. I made one promise. I would wait until the trial was over. If the law failed, I would strike.
But we could not stay in Woodward. Not even the old gentleman could stand that. He took John down to Tecumseh and almost immediately was named a judge there. Frank and I went to the sheriff, Tob Olden, and told him we would wait. He was disappointed.
"May want to hit the bull's eye later, boys. When you reckon to bust them off, Tob Olden's house is yours."
CHAPTER VI.
In the outlaws' country; acquittal of the assassins; a brother's rage; false accusation; the father's denunciation; refuge in the outlaw's camp.
Nearly every range on the prairies sheltered and winked at outlaw gangs. From peeler to highway-man was a short step.
Frank and I went down to the Spike S to hang up till after the trial.
John Harliss owned the ranch. The Snake Creek and the Arkansas river ran through his 100,000 acres. It was an ideal haunt for fugitives. Harliss was hospitable. The Conchorda Mountains, like tremendous black towers, formed a massive wall on one side. The cliff came down to the creek. On the near side of the water the land rolled out in a magnificent sweep of low hills and valleys.
Once across the Snake Creek to the mountain side, and capture was almost impossible. Dogwood, pecan trees, briar and cottonwood matted together and pread like a jungle growth up the mountain and there wasn't a marshal in the State would set a horse toward it.
It was across the Snake Creek and up the Conchorda that I made my last race against the law, years later.
I went cow-punching there; Frank went over to Pryor's Creek, 20 miles distant.
The branding pen was just at the edge of the timber on the near side of the creek. Harliss was not over-particular as to the ownership of the calves branded. His pen was well concealed.
One morning we were branding the cattle. Five men rode up, nodded to Harliss and began stripping off the meat from the carcass hanging in the trees. One of them came over to me.
"Reckon you don't remember me? Reckon you uster work on the Lazy Z for my father?"
He knew of the shooting in Las Cruces. He knew of my brother's murder. He knew I had a fast gun and a close mouth. He told me of a robbery that had been pulled off on the Sante Fe.
"Ain't much in range work," he ended. "Reckon you'll join us yet."
He was a shrewd prophet. Not more than a month later John Harliss was sitting on the porch of the ranch house. I was standing in the door. A nester rode up. We knew that something had happened.
The nester comes only to bring news. If there's one fellow in the world that loves gossip it's these puffy little farmers that nestle in the flats. It makes them big with importance.
John Harliss was a blond giant. He towered over the blustering nester.
"Ain't heard the news, hev ye?" Then he caught sight of me and added furtively. "They cleared the fellows that killed Jennings' brother."
Houston and Love free!
The thing I had been dreading and expecting for six months came now with a shock that sent a cold fury of resolution through me. I knew that I would have to do deliberately what I should have done in passion.
It was not blood-lust, but raging vindictiveness that spurred ire on the 75-mile ride to my father's house.
The hoofbeats stopping at his door aroused him. When he saw me, he stood as one petrified.