_ CHAPTER XXXVIII. TEN MILES' START
When they were in the sitting room the sheriff confronted Rathburn.
"This has been a queer case for me," he said slowly, with an attempt at harshness. "I knew Eagen was up to a lot of dirty work, but I never could fasten anything on him till to-night. I'll get some of the rest of the gang now. Doane showed in his face that he was guilty. Those things don't worry me none. But
you are the hardest character I ever had to handle, Rathburn!"
"I don't figure on givin' you any more trouble, sheriff," Rathburn assured him, smiling.
"That's the puzzle of it!" Long exploded. "That puts it up to me. I know you had reason for giving Gomez his, and I know this girl wouldn't lie about the other. But--well, I don't get you a-tall, Rathburn, and that's a fact. Something tells me I've got to give you a chance, and if I knew what tells me this I'd wring its neck!"
He stepped close to Rathburn and looked him straight in the eye.
"Take one of Mallory's horses. He's got some good ones. I give you ten miles in any direction. If you can make it--it's your candy. But remember, Rathburn, I'm going to try to stop you!"
He walked swiftly out of the door, leaving Rathburn staring at the smiling girl.
Laura stepped close to him and nodded. Rathburn shook his head.
"I can't see where I've got the right to give Long any more trouble."
"But he isn't letting you go, Roger. He's putting it up to you, and he means what he says when he declares he'll try to get you."
"If he does, he'll probably get me," mused Rathburn.
"But maybe he won't get
us, Roger."
"Us?"
"You and I, Roger. Listen! There's a land 'way up north, Roger. I've read about it. It's past the desert and the mountains and the plains--in another country! And there's a river there, Roger--a river they call Peace River. I've always loved the name. We'll go there, Roger, you and I--and father can come later."
She looked up at him with shining eyes and put her arms about his neck, and she saw the unbelievable wonder in his face. The man trembled. Then he took her and held her and kissed her, time after time.
"Joe Price said I could never be satisfied away from the desert unless I took along something that was of it," he muttered hoarsely; "I wonder----"
"Yes, Roger, he meant me."
"We can't make it," he said softly. "Not the two of us--but Laura, girlie,
this is worth the game!"
"Yes we can, Roger," she said eagerly. "Think! We can be married when we've left the desert. It's not quite ten miles to Boxall Canon. We can go up Boxall over the range and cross Death Flat."
"I was thinking of that, sweetheart," he replied. "But no horse can get up Boxall, an' if he did he couldn't get across Death Flat. Few men have crossed that stretch. It's well named. I might try it alone; but you--no, Laura. It just ain't in the pictures!"
"We don't need horses, Roger. You've forgotten the burros. They'll kill any horse on the desert, won't they? We can take two or three loaded with food and water."
"But it's miles and miles an' then some--an' it all looks alike."
"But when we've reached the other side, Roger?"
He drew away from her and stepped to the door. He could not see or hear anything. When he turned and again approached her, his face was white. He looked at Mallory, who was standing with a look of stupefaction on his lined face.
"Wait!" he said and stepped into another room. In a few moments he was back, holding a money belt in his hands. He took out gold and bills and deposited the money on the table.
The others stared.
"There's about six thousand there, Mallory. It's gamblin' money. Turn it in to the bank to make or help out Doane's shortage. I've got just twenty-five hundred left which I earned in a better way."
"Daddy, get the burros!" cried the girl. "We're going!"
* * * * *
Sheriff Bob Long looked down from a ledge above a narrow, deep, boulder-strewn, awe-inspiring canyon and drew in his breath sharply. Below he saw two human beings and three animals.
"I knew he'd try it," Long said wonderingly to himself. "I thought he'd try it afoot. But the girl! And they're going to try to cross Death Flat!"
His look of wonder increased, and he made no move toward the weapons in his holsters.
"I wonder now," he mused. "Can they make it? I wonder----"
He scowled and looked about with a frowning stare. His gaze again shifted downward. Suddenly he shrugged and put the wrong end of his unlighted cigar in his mouth.
"That's the queerest cigar I ever had," he growled, as he made his way to his horse. "It won't stay lit because it wants to be swallowed."
He mounted and rode slowly back toward the far-reaching stretches of desert. Once he halted and turned in his saddle for a backward look.
"He had the makings of the worst bad man this country ever saw," he muttered aloud. "Now, if that woman and another country--but first they've got to get across."
* * * * *
On the western edge of a great, ghastly plain of white, in which a deceiving, distant glow was mirrored in the desert dawn, two figures, a man and a girl, stood hand in hand. Three shaggy burros, heavily laden, stood behind them. The burros saw not the Death Flat ahead, for they were asleep.
And the man and the girl saw not the frightful white, as of powdered skulls, bare, sinister, sunbaked, but a vision of a little house in a fragrant green meadow, with golden fields on either side of a peaceful river, and forests ranging up to distant hills.
[THE END]
James Roberts's Book: Coyote: A Western Story
_