Belts fell. Theodorik Perrine, staring at the opposite wall, threw a question over his giant shoulders. "What kind of a play do yuh think to make, Chaffee? Yore on trembly ground. I'm sayin' it. You ain't got no backin' in this county. Not any more. Yuh can't make the bluff good."
"Stand up, Theodorik, and slip your belt. Now sit down. Sleepy, do the same. Don't try to stall on me. It's just as easy to leave a few of you cattle butchers on the floor. Sit down, Sleepy! Theodorik, take off your boots and throw 'em back here."
"What's the need o'—"
The first shock of surprise having passed, they sparred for time. Chaffee knew by the way Perrine bent and hauled at his boots that the renegade expected a turn of the tide. That ninth man must be in the neighborhood. Chaffee pulled himself a little more to one side of the door's opening. "Theodorik, if that boot seems tight I'll help it with a little lead. Throw it back. Other one, too." They came sailing through the door. Chaffee took one of them and slid it beneath his belt. "Rest of you imitation bad men do the same. Throw 'em this way."
Perrine turned in the chair, big face grinning malevolently. "I'm plumb interested. Yuh can't make the bluff good. The jail won't hold none of us. Politics have changed, Chaffee. What else do yuh aim to try? Stirrup S is on the slide. It don't count no more."
Boots came flying out. Chaffee kicked them on into the yard. Eight men stood in their socks, glowering. "What I aim to do, Theodorik, is to string all you jack rabbits on one rope and walk you barefoot across the lava and back to the ranch. By the time you get that far you'll be halter broke." Then he stopped, thinking he heard a remote sound beyond the yard.
"You can't do it!" roared Theodorik Perrine. "You can't make the bluff good!"
"Barefoot," replied Chaffee grimly. "And if a jail won't hold you, then Stirrup S will. We'll break your back, Theodorik. That's the beginning. Stand up. Sleepy, get that rope and put a hitch around your neck. You boys won't be doin any more dirty chores for a while. Neither will your boss when we find out who he is."
"You'll last about as long as a snowball in—" began Perrine. The rest of it was cut off by a grumbling, half-awake question from the barn. "What's all that racket over there, huh?"
Theodorik Perrine's face turned thunder black. "He went asleep again! It's the last time for him!"
"What's the racket?" repeated the voice, coming nearer. Chaffee crouched as far in the shadows as he dared. Perrine began to shift weight and grumble. The whole crowd inside the hut started moving. Chaffee warned them with a sibilant whisper. Perrine laughed. Of a sudden the ninth man out in the yard yelled. His gun smashed the silence, bullets ripped the ground by the door and Perrine shouted a warning. Chaffee fired at the ninth man point-blank. The hut trembled, the light went out and confusion turned the place upside down. Another shot plunged past Chaffee; and he, marking the source by the mushrooming purple point of light, matched it. He heard the man fall.
There was no time left now. Window glass broke. Perrine bellowed his wrath through the openings. Chaffee ran five yards from the house, commanding a dim view of the door and the near window. They began to find their guns and rake the doorway from the inside. Chaffee lifted his voice. "Better light the lamp and cave in. I've got this dump covered."
"Yuh ain't broad enough to cover it!" roared Perrine. They placed him from his voice, and in a moment he heard them crawling through the window on the far side. One man raced headlong around the corner, flinging lead at each step. Chaffee dropped him. But the tide was setting out; they had gotten beyond his control and in another moment they would have him trapped in this bowl. So, with Thcodorik Perrine's boot still tucked under his belt—a valuable trophy in itself—and knowing that he had in a measure shaken the gang, he raced along the path, got his horse, and threaded the lava to open country. He pointed the pony toward Roaring Horse town, dropping the spurs. He heard Theodorik Perrine following, and he knew that before the night had run its course he would collide with the giant again.
"Bad odds from now on," he murmured to himself. "If I ducked back to Stirrup S I might find the gang home. And we'd take Theodorik into camp. But if the outfit ain't back then I'm only invitin' a wholesale bonfire. That's what Theodorik would do. If I hit into the open country and try to outrun those boys I ain't doing a thing but admit I'm licked. And then I ain't of any use. I'm out. Same as havin' a price on my head. No, sir. I'll track into town and see what this boot tells me. They'll follow. But I don't believe they've got nerve enough to try' a wholesale battle with everybody lookin' on. Theodorik will brace me alone. If he ain't able to do it he'll shunt another of the bunch on me. I don't mind that kind of a scrap. And I can do a lot of duckin' around the buildings in case it gets too hot."
He lost sound of the pursuing party. Halfway to Roaring Horse he stopped to listen. Presently he heard the drum of pursuit swelling through the soft shadows; so he raced on, came into the main street of the town, and left his horse down a convenient back alley. It was late, yet the saloons were still open, a few nighthawks loitered along the building porches, and Doc Fanchers' light beckoned through a window above Tilton's. Jim Chaffee climbed the stairs.
Hardly had he disappeared from sight when Theodorik Perrine and the rest of the renegades slipped quietly around the rodeo field and dismounted. There in the darkness they debated.
"Don't see his horse," said Sleepy Slade.
"He's here," grunted Penrine. "Runnin' for a hole. Hidin' out somewhere. Red, skin down to the other end of the street and block it. Duck, you stay here with me. Sleepy, wait near the Gusher. Rest scatter along the alleys. He don't get away, see? He's makin' a payment on the damage he did back at the hut." The man's tremendous body seemed to swell. "Jupiter, but I hate to let him alone! But I got orders to keep away personal. I ain't in no shape to disobey, either. So, whichever you boys see him—he's yore game. Get that?"
"Some town dudes roamin' up the street," murmured Slade.
"Never mind 'em," replied Perrine. "They don't make no difference. What they see don't count. We're protected. Listen to me. Chaffee's in this town. He don't ever leave it alive. Take no chances when yuh see him. Don't give him a break. Start reachin' before he gets a chance. They ain't nobody in this outfit except me that's as fast as he is. So keep out o' the light and let him have it. Shoot him in the back if yuh can. Now get goin'."
They spread apart, slouching down the dark lanes, closing quietly upon their designated stations. Both ends of town were closed, the alleys were covered; and one of the gang, stumbling upon Chaffee's hidden horse, led it away. So silently and discreetly was the maneuver accomplished that not a single one of the loitering townsmen knew what had occurred. Roaring Horse was blockaded; and Sleepy Slade stood in a black corner of the hotel porch, facing that stairway up which Jim Chaffee had a moment ago climbed. And down which Jim Chaffee would presently come.
IX. DISASTER
Fancher was reading; he looked up to Jim Chaffee and lowered his feet to the floor, somewhat astonished. "Where in thunder have you been?"
"It wouldn't sound right if I told you," answered Chaffee. "I don't even sound right when I tell myself. It's been sort of an active evening. Here's a little trophy I took into camp. Bring out that biggest tar model and let's see what we can see."
He laid the captured boot on Fancher's table. The latter studied it with professional interest for some moments, then turned to his cabinet and drew out one of the models. Capsizing the boot, he fitted the model to the sole of it. Chaffee rolled a cigarette, his eyes half closed against the light.
"What would you think a jury might say to that, Doc?"
"A coroner's jury could easy hold a man over on that similarity," decided Fancher. "Whether a trial jury would convict on that much evidence, I ain't saying. The heels of the boot are some run over on the outer edges. Seems to show something like that in the model, doesn't it?"
"Now