George W. Ogden - Ogden Westerns - Boxed Set

It seemed unlikely that Dalton ever would sling a gun with that member again, if he should be so lucky, indeed, as to come through with his life. The bone was shattered, the hand hung limp, like a broken wing. Dalton sat up, yielding his arm to his enemy’s ministrations, as silent and ungracious as a dog. In a little while Macdonald had done all that he could do, and with a hand under the hollow of Dalton’s arm he lifted him to his feet.

“Can you ride?” he asked. Dalton did not reply. He looked at the figure on the bed, and stood turning his eyes around the room in the manner of one stunned, and completely confounded by the failure of a scheme counted infallible.

“You made a botch of this job, Dalton,” Macdonald said. “The rest of your crowd’s outside where Thorn dropped them—he snatched your gun from the floor and killed both of them.”

Dalton went weakly to the door, where he stood a moment, steadying himself with a hand on the jamb. Macdonald eased him from there to the gate, and brought the horses which the gang had hidden among the willows.

“Tell Chadron to send a wagon up here after these dead men,” Macdonald said, leading a horse to the gate.

He helped the still silent Dalton into the saddle, where he sat weakly. The man seemed to be debating something to say to this unaccountably fortunate nester, who came untouched through all their attempts upon his life. But whatever it was that he cogitated he kept to himself, only turning his eyes back toward the house, where his two men lay on the ground. The face of one was turned upward. In the draining light of the spent day it looked as white as innocence.

As Dalton drew his eyes away from the fearful evidence of his plan’s miscarriage, the sound of hard riding came from the direction of the settlement up the river. Macdonald listened a moment as the sound grew.

“That will be no friend of yours, Dalton. Get out of this!”

He cut Dalton’s horse a sharp blow. The beast bounded away with a start that almost unseated its dizzy rider; the two free animals galloped after it. Chance Dalton was on his way to Chadron with his burden of disgrace and disastrous news. It seemed a question to Macdonald, as he watched him weaving in the saddle as the gloom closed around him and shut him from sight, whether he ever would reach the ranchhouse to recount his story, whatever version of the tragedy he had planned.

Tom Lassiter drew up before Macdonald’s gate while the dust of Dalton’s going was still hanging there. The gaunt old homesteader with the cloud of sorrows in his eyes said that he had been on his way over to see what had become of Macdonald in his lone hunt for Mark Thorn. He had heard the shooting, and the sound had hurried him forward.

Macdonald told him what had happened, and took him in to see the wreckage left after that sudden storm. Tom shook his head as he stood in the yard looking down at the two dead men.

“Hell’s a-goin’ to pop now!” he said.

“I think you’ve said the word, Tom,” Macdonald admitted. “They’ll come back on me hard for this.”

“You’ll never have to stand up to ’em alone another time, I’ll give you a guarantee on that, Mac.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Macdonald replied, but wearily, and with no warmth or faith in his words.

“And they let that old scorpeen loose to skulk and kill ag’in!”

“Yes, he got away.”

“They sure did oncork a hornet’s nest when they come here this time, though, they sure did!” Tom stood in the door, looking into the darkening room and at the figure sprawled across the bed. “He-ell’s a-goin’ to pop now!” he said again, in slow words scarcely above his breath.

He turned his head searchingly, as if he expected to see the cloud of it already lowering out of the night.

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