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Updated: May 3, 2025
Andrew, fascinated, let Sally fall into a walk, while he watched the singular, convulsive struggles of Gray Peter to gain his feet. Hal Dozier was up again; he ran to his horse, caught his head, and at the same moment the stallion grew suddenly limp. The weight of his head dragged the marshal down, and then Andrew saw that Dozier made no effort to rise again.
And was he, Andrew Lanning, unknown until the past few months, now going down to face destruction, as full of fear as a girl trembling at the dark? What was it that drew them together, so unfairly matched? He could still see only the white haze of the moonshine before him, but now there was the clicking of hoofs on the rock. Dozier was coming.
At that sentence every muscle of Andrew's body relaxed, and he sat like one in a state of collapse, except that the right hand and the gun in it were steady as rocks. "Here's something between you and me that I'd swear I never said if I was called in a court," went on Hal Dozier in a solemn murmur. "I'll tell you that I know Bill was no good. I've known it for years, and I've told him so.
Come to think of it" for it occurred to him that if the old man were indeed concealing the outlaw he might not know the price which was on his head "there's a pretty little bit of coin connected with Lanning. Too bad you didn't drop him when he came to your door." "Drop a helpless man for money?" asked the old man. "Never, Dozier!"
And standing there over the table, he knew that Dozier had at length finally and definitely recognized him; but that the numbed brain of the marshal refused to permit him to act. He believed and yet he dared not believe his belief. Andrew saw the glance of Dozier go to his hip his hip which the holster had rubbed until it gleamed.
And Andrew, peering through that shadow, saw two little, bright eyes, like the eyes of a beast, twinkling out at him from the mass of hair. "When you went after the shells for me, Hank," he stated, "you gave the word that I was here. Then you told the gent that took the message to spread it around to get it to Hal Dozier, if possible to have the men come back here.
It made some of them shrug their shoulders, but here again it was proved that Bill Dozier knew the men of Martindale, and had picked his posse well. They were the common, hard-working variety of cow-puncher, and presently the word went among them from the man riding nearest to Bill that if young Lanning were taken it would be worth a hundred dollars to each of them.
It was as if the keen-eyed trapper were more interested in his own foolish little subterfuge than in preserving Andrew. "Now, tell me, how is Jasper?" "I've got to tell you one thing first. Dozier has raised the mountains, and I could never cross 'em now." "Going to turn back into the plains?" "No. The ranges are wide enough, but they're a prison just the same.
But if the men of the mountain desert considered Hal Dozier the greatest enemy of Andrew, he himself had quite another point of view. It was the loneliness, as Pop had promised him.
It's a good bluff, as I said before, and I admire the way you worked it. But it won't do. I call it. I won't leave your trail, Lanning. Now pull your trigger." He smiled straight into the eye of the younger man. A flush jumped into the cheeks of Andrew, and, fading, left him by contrast paler than ever. "You were one-quarter of an inch from death, Dozier," he replied.
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