CHAPTER VIII
That moment when Original Bill surprised the outlaw from Teapot Spout in his struggle to impose rough mastery upon the girl Hilma was typical of the sharp movements of climax the genius of the Big Country delights to visit upon the puppet actors in the broad sweep of her comedy. Hot love is suddenly confronted by bitter hate; in the winking of an eye a man's little moment of ecstasy is transformed into one of violence, trembling upon the pull of a trigger finger. And the genius of the Big Country, having wrought thus, veils a laugh with the sleeve of her garment.
Hilma was the first of the twain the range inspector interrupted to coördinate impulse and action. Even as Zang Whistler's hand dropped to his holster she leaped in front of him, attempting to sweep him behind her with a powerful backward stroke of her arm. The movement was purely protective, yet the instant before Original Bill's appearance the girl had been tigerish in her wrath against this man whose body she now screened against the expected bullet. Again the lounging figure against the doorpost permitted his lips to widen in silent laughter.
"Of course, Zang," he drawled, "the young lady's cuttin' into the game this way sorta puts you in a hole. You don't rightly feel like shootin' your way out from behind a woman, an' I admire your gentlemanly instincts."
No weapon had appeared in Original's hands; none even showed on his person. But he carried his right hand clinging loosely to the opened lapel of his jacket over his left breast. The range inspector had been the first to introduce into the Big Country the fashion of carrying a .45 on a flat spring holster hung from the shoulder beneath the jacket and directly over the heart; while in the holster the weapon had a protective value against a speeding bullet; it could leap out a sixteenth of a second quicker than one drawn from the hip. Original, too, had perfected through long and stern practice the somewhat delicate mastery of hammer firing—that is, the trigger of the gun was ignored and a lightning movement of the thumb drew back and released the striking hammer even as the weapon was being withdrawn and leveled.
There had been but one man in all the range country between the Broken Horns and the Black Hills who was quicker on the draw than Original Bill, but a straight white line running through the latter's raven hair an inch or so above the left ear bore testimony to the fact that once this superior master's aim had been a shade off true. One such error was all Fate allotted him.
At Original's taunting words Zang's lips curled into an animal snarl, and he tried to push the girl from him. His gun was cocked in his hand. Still Original's right hung loosely from his jacket's lapel; still he smiled teasingly.
"Put her up, Zang," he commanded in a casual tone. "It 's plain as a dry trail you can't shoot your way outa this jack pot—leastways not with the lady exhibitin' her loving kindness like she does. I 'd admire for to have you alone over a top sight, Zang, but you can see for yourself I have to take you as I find you."
Hilma flamed fiery red as she appreciated the sense of Original's blunt innuendo of cowardice leveled at Zang, but still some protective instinct stronger than her wrath forced her to continue to stave off the inevitable deadly speaking of the guns which she could loose any instant by retreating from her doggedly held place in front of Whistler.
"Why have you come here?" she mastered herself sufficiently to demand in a voice choking with rage. "What do you want this time?"
"Nothing very much, lady," Original answered, with his unwavering smile. "Name 's Zang Whistler, the same which is mentioned plenty an' various in grand-jury indictments found down to the court in Two Moons ever since there was a court. Grand larceny 's the brand I think those grand juries 've hung on to Zang."
Whistler put in a word. He had fully regained his customary poise of easy confidence. He consciously matched his tone with Original's soft drawl:
"Figure to take me to jail, Original?"
"That 's my aim, Zang. Soon 's I saw the prints of your little hoss round here t'other day I reckoned here was an easier place to get you than over in the Spout."
"Did n't have no hunger for comin' into the Spout after me, Original?" Zang laughed shortly.
"I never match up against forty, Zang, when I can find a way to match up with one—or even two." Original sent a quick flash of his teeth Hilma's way.
With all his pose of indolent ease there against the doorpost, Original's black eyes never left the figures of the two confronting him ten feet away. Though the girl's shoulders partially screened Whistler's body, and the broad flare of her blue skirt hid one of his legs, one booted foot was visible beyond the hem of her gown. Original's quick eye caught a movement of this foot; the toe lifted ever so little and sidled outward.
"Figure to take me in alive, a' course, Original." Zang spoke the words softly, almost in a croon, and the groping toe moved outward still farther.
"Alive 'd be much better, Zang," Original vouchsafed carelessly.
"Well," from the outlaw, "I reckon maybe" He leaped then, quick as a timber gray, back and away from the figure of the girl. Two shots sounded as one. The wide brim of Original's high-crowned beaver hat suddenly dropped before his eyes, cut clean away from the crown. As he gave a great bound forward Original shook the obscuring hat from his head.
Zang was staggering backward, striving mightily to twist the hand which held his revolver up to a shooting position. Something white and glistening showed against the back of that hand; it was a bone splinter pushed through the hole a bullet had drilled.
Hilma screamed shrilly and threw out her arms to seize Original in his meteor plunge toward her companion. He slipped under one arm and closed with the outlaw just as the latter's gun was being transferred to his sound hand. The impact of the range inspector's one hundred and sixty pounds of bone and muscle sent Zang spinning back against the wall. Even as his back crashed on the logs a band of steel circled his right wrist with a vicious snap. He felt his antagonist's hand crawling up his left arm to drag it down to imprisonment.
Original, sure of his man, had dropped his .45 in a side pocket as he cleared the space between them. When first he closed with Zang he had shaken the gun out of the latter's paralyzed grip and spurned it out of reach with his foot. But the quick flux of action had prevented his mind from encompassing all the angles of the situation; his interest, centered wholly on the man, had overlooked the woman. As, head to breast, he jammed Whistler against the wall Original caught from the tail of his eye Hilma's swift bound for the weapon he thought he had rendered useless.
He saw her stoop and straighten with the thing in her hand just as Whistler, bracing one foot against the log wall behind him, gave a mighty heave forward. Even as their two bodies lurched outward Original pivoted on one heel and swung his opponent's body between himself and the rising weapon.
"Get him, girl!" Zang screamed in a whistling breath. But Hilma, finding herself in danger of being caught in the angle between the projecting fireplace and the back wall, twisted to escape and tripped over one of Zang's flailing legs. Before she could recover herself Original seized the instant's opportunity and, half lifting Zang with a tremendous heave of his shoulders, jammed him back against the girl in the trap of solid stone and logs. He heard her breath come in a half sob of anguish.
Zang, sensing instantly the advantage Original's strategy had turned, summoned every ounce of his strength to push out from the trap and free his ally. But a sharp catching of breath in his ear told him his effort was only crushing Hilma the more. He tried to edge to one side, leaving her a hole to slip through.
Original forestalled him by a second terrific drive of his shoulder into the pit of the stomach. Zang lifted his wounded right hand, from whose wrist dangled the ugly unfilled mate of the wristlet of steel biting into the flesh, then he flailed the cuff down on the black head beneath his chin. The blow landed true. For just an instant the pressure of determined muscle against his body slackened.
That instant Zang seized to twist eel-like out of the cul-de-sac of the chimney corner, though he could not shake Original's grip from him. Hilma, freed, leaped past the struggling men and again brought up the point of her weapon to slay.
But a rally by Original brought Whistler's body whirling round as a shield against a bullet. White fear sent a spasm over the latter's features as he felt a snubbed point of steel against the small of his back.
"Give him the butt," he panted hoarsely. "Don't—try—to shoot!"
Then he bent his head to whisper brokenly into the ear just below his chin:
"Better quit! She 'll kill—I—won't."
Just a flash of Original's teeth bared in a grin as his head came up and one of his legs suddenly curled round below Zang's knees. Back they went against the heavy table just as the clubbed gun in Hilma's hands came swinging down upon Zang's shoulder instead of on the black head which had dodged less than an inch. The table teetered for an instant, then crashed over, and the three of them sprawled in a fighting, tumbling heap on the floor.
"I said alive was better 'n dead," Original grunted as they rolled in a deadly lock. Zang felt his left arm being inexorably warped away from its grip round Original's neck; his right, with the waiting cuff on the wrist, was almost useless because of the numbing wound through the palm. A sickening fear began to sweep over the outlaw; that bit of steel around the wrist suddenly appeared symbolical; it was the steel that locked against liberty.
Hilma, now on her feet and with the clubbed revolver in her hand, followed, stooping, the course of the writhing men on the floor. Her lips were drawn back over feline teeth, her blue-black eyes were narrowed by hard-drawn lids into the eyes of a hunting panther. The will to slay possessed her wholly. For an instant a tousled black head was uppermost. She smote it hard with the heavy revolver butt—smote again, yet once again.
A metallic click, a long sigh and the shape of what had been a fighting one hundred and sixty pounds of virile, tricky thews and springs of tempered steel lay sprawled inert, nerveless. Zang Whistler, very white and shaking, slowly rose from the floor. His hands, held ashamedly at arm's length, were linked together by steel bands on a short steel chain.
Hilma's eyes were not for him. They were fixed upon the prone figure of Original Bill and the glint of pantherlike ferocity in them was undimmed. Zang's gun she had turned with the butt firm in her right hand; her left thumb was slowly pushing up the hammer.
The outlaw saw the movement of that thumb. Swiftly he stooped to where the girl sat back on her heels near the helpless head and his manacled hands swooped down to seize and wrest the weapon from her. She leaped to her feet, eyes blazing. The man's eyes, meeting her unspoken challenge, were filled with mingled wonder and abhorrence.
"In this country," he said slowly, "folks don't shoot a man when he 's helpless—least of all women folks don't. That 's counted murder."
"I hate him—I hate him!" Hilma gritted through clenched teeth. "Him and his whole tribe of swaggering, robbing cowmen. Why should n't I shoot him?" Zang nodded to the wounded hand with the white sliver of bone protruding from a round hole.
"You see what he did to me," he said simply. "When a man quick and surefire as he is might 's well have put that hole through the middle of my forehead. He gives me this when I—when I was shootin'—to kill. In this country that kind of a thing 's called white—plumb white."
A slow flush began to creep above the line of the blue frock at Hilma's throat; it colored her round neck and hung a flag of shame upon each cheek. She turned abruptly and went to the far corner of the room where she splashed water from a pail into a basin and busied herself tearing several strips from an old apron hanging on a nail. When she returned she found Zang on his knees beside the figure of their enemy.
"He 'll come round, I reckon," the man said. "Nobody who 's been all whittled up in gun plays like Original Bill 's goin' to take his checks to the bank just because of a couple of wallops on the coco from a gun butt. Here, I located this in one of his pockets. Tie me loose, will you?"
Zang held up a small key. Hilma had to stand very close to him to manipulate the locks on the handcuffs. Her bent head of glorious gold and the warm, reflected golden tints from the round of her neck were just below the man's ravening eyes. A suave, indefinable odor—the odor of warm flesh and of vigorous masses of hair—was in his nostrils. When the grip of steel finally was loosed from his wrists he instantly joined the freed hands about the girl's waist and drew her to him. She did not resist. In truth reaction from recent stress made her all the more apathetic, and she was engulfed of a sudden by a vague yearning for something, somebody to lift her out of herself, to carry her off her feet so lately set in a path of blind passion.
Zang misread her yielding for something that was not. He bent and kissed her on the cheek, on the soft curve of her neck. Hilma flinched but did not draw away; nor did the man's hot caresses rouse in her any answering emotion. She accepted them because she did not have the will to resist any event of the moment.
"Now, Hilma," Zang was saying in a choked voice, as the girl automatically bathed his wounded hand from the basin set on the righted table—"now, Hilma girl, there 's nothin' left but for you to come back to the Spout with me. Here 's Original; all he 's got to do is to go back to Two Moons an' swear out a warrant for you an' a fresh one agin me—assault with a deadly weapon. All alone here, you 'll be caught an' sent to do a term down to Rawlins. In the Spout Original nor any posse he 's a mind to raise can't get you."
The girl steadily drained water over the red hole in the hand she held over the basin. She answered nothing.
" Don't you see, girl, you 're outlawed now—just like Zang Whistler?" the man urged. "What they call law in this country 'll be agin you from now until you 're caught. An' this man here, this Original Bill 's a mighty bad hombre to have campin' on your trail. I 'll say that for him because I know. He 's a wolf for trailing an' trailing an' never letting go. Over in the Spout I can give you protection an'—an', yes, Hilma girl, I can give you love. A clean love, Hilma, like what a man oughta give a woman. What do you say, Hilma?"
She had bound two lengths of gingham about the injured hand and deftly anchored them in place with a needle and thread before she made answer.
"If you want me on my terms, Zang, I 'll go with you." The outlaw's eyes lighted and he took a step toward her.
"What 's the contract, little woman?"
"You 'll hear that after we get to the Spout," the girl said evenly.
Fifteen minutes later Hilma Ring, on the back of her father's drab little horse, Christian, was riding with Zang Whistler toward the distant notch in the Broken Horns which represented the tortuous entrance into that secret valley of the outlaws called the Teapot Spout. Hung across her saddle bow was a blue gingham apron knotted about a small bundle of clothing and the tin box containing her father's sheep books, three dollars and forty-five cents in silver and a photograph of a young man and his bride who had looked upon a road to happiness many years back.
Original Bill Blunt lay still unconscious on the floor of the deserted cabin while his little horse Tige whinnied and pawed the ground impatiently in the dooryard.