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Updated: May 6, 2025
As he rode down into a deep arroyo, a horseman came galloping into its lower end and raced almost upon him before seeing him. His hand darted like lightning to his gun, and the weapon snapped into aim at his hip. The horseman came to a rearing halt, reins dangling, his hands held high, his eyes bulging from their sockets. "Rathburn!" he exclaimed. "The same," said the man with the gun.
The bandit had traveled fast and he had kept steadily to the eastward. This last was what caused Rathburn to smile with satisfaction. The man for whose crime Rathburn was suspected was heading straight for Rathburn's own stamping ground the far-distant desert range, which he knew from the low horizon in the south to the white-capped peaks in the north.
Rathburn had recognized the ranch long before they came close to it. It was the place where he had stopped for a meal with the girl and the freckle-faced boy two days before the day he had gone on into Dry Lake. He saw no sign of the girl or the boy or any one else as they reached the front door and hurried inside.
"This job ain't none too easy, as it is," he complained. "As a writer I'm a first-rate cow hand. Lemme take your knife to sharpen this pencil with. When I asked the sheriff for a stub of a pencil he took me at my word." "Sure I'll let you have my knife," said the jailer sarcastically. "How about my gun want that, too?" "Oh, come on, old-timer," pleaded Rathburn.
I always gave you credit for being clever." "Thanks, Sheriff Long," said Rathburn dryly. "There's a few preliminaries we've got to get over, so " His gun leaped into his hand and instantly covered the official. He stepped to the end of the desk, reached over and appropriated the belt with the two guns with his left hand. He tossed the belt and weapons to a vacant chair.
"I've got him dead to rights," replied Rathburn shortly, taking some paper and a pencil from a pocket. Sautee looked at him curiously as he started to write on the paper. "Going to write it all out and leave it?" he asked sneeringly. "I'm going to put it outside the powder house in a place where Mannix or some of the others will be sure to find it," was the puzzling answer.
Three persons had dismounted from their horses behind the screen of timber. One, a tall man, had donned a long, black slicker and was tying a handkerchief about his face. "Juniper, hoss," said Rathburn, "what does that gent want that slicker on for? It ain't going to rain. An' how does he reckon to see onless maybe he's got holes cut in that there hanky?"
Thus did the bonds of evidence tighten about Rathburn while he slept through the late afternoon and the twilight. When he awoke a faint yellow light dimly illuminated his surroundings. He lay thinking for several minutes. He knew night had fallen and surmised that he had slept a full eight hours. He could tell this because he was fully awake and alert.
"Tell him I'm tellin' the truth!" shouted Eagen at the shaking bank cashier. "You can't get out of it." There was a tense moment. Doane shook his head weakly; he was a picture of guilt. "He got scared I wouldn't go through with the play, sheriff," Eagen continued. "Thought maybe I'd make off with all the kale. So he framed it with Rathburn, an' I caught 'em about to divide it here."
Rathburn had rescued the dog that day in the saloon more to thwart the designs of Pete Mulligan, the head of the gang and an old enemy, than for any compassion for the dog itself; but after he had taken the little animal home he rather enjoyed the slavish devotion which in the dog's mind seemed evidently to be the only fit return for so great a service as had been done him.
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