Gawd’s truth! And take it or leave it, everything I did was because it was the only way I saw of getting clear of Louis Peele. And now that I’ve got clear of the sidewinder who had me, body and soul, I’m not going back! Not for you or any other man wearing shoe leather!”
“You are going back, Rood,” Hardin replied quietly, his voice the same monotone of deadly accusation. “You are—”
“Listen to me, Gage!” Vandover pleaded desperately, his face colorless beneath the sun’s burning, his eyes despairing. “I’ll make a bargain with you. Listen! What would you give to know what became of your brother Bruce, back there where you lived before—the Valley?”
Hardin drew a deep, hard breath, but his eyes held steadily, inexorably on the cringing gunman.
“Nothing, Rood,” he said coldly. “I have known for nearly nine years that my brother was dead.”
Vandover laughed, a strange, insane sound in the desert air.
“Oh, yes, he’s dead all right. But—wouldn’t you give a good deal to know how he died? You never did know, did you? And ever since you’d have given your right arm to know how—and why, and who. You know you would—and so do I. You may suspect, but you’d give something to know. Fair enough. I do know. And so I’m making you a proposition. You let me get away, let me go on into Mexico—I swear you nor nobody else in the Valley will ever hear of me again—and I’ll give you enough on Louis Peele to—”
“I have enough on Louis Peele now to hang him to the highest tree, Rood,” Hardin said, his voice icily cold, hard. “I make no bargains with a treacherous rat like you. You are going back with me, so stop trying to argue, and do as I say. I have enough water to see us back across the desert. We will take turns walking, and riding my horse.” Again his lips tightened, as he shot a quick glance at the suffering animal in the sand. “But the first thing you are to do is to walk over there and shoot that black horse of yours.”
“Shoot him yourself!” snapped Vandover, but a queer gleam came into his eyes that Gage Hardin did not miss.
“And give you a chance to draw on me?” sneered Hardin.
Vandover slumped, defeated, his eyes on the gun held so steadily in the tall young rancher’s hand.
“Turn your back to me,” commanded Hardin. “Now draw your gun and shoot the horse. Then throw your gun behind you and stay where you are until I get the gun.”
Vandover tried to straighten, as within him despair and terror won all odds, but his shoulders would not entirely come out of their slump. Even though his back was turned he knew that he would have no chance, even with a gun in his hand, for Hardin’s own gun was unswervingly between his shoulder blades. He would be a dead man before he could even whirl with his own weapon.
Slowly he drew his gun from its holster—the weapon so useless now for his own purpose. As steadily as he could, he aimed it at the head of the black horse, and with neat precision put a bullet through the animal’s brain. The horse quivered once, kicked feebly with its hind feet, and again lay still.
“Now toss that gun behind you,” came Hardin’s calm monotone, and the gun plumped into the sand a few feet beyond the tall rancher.
But Gage Hardin was not prepared for Rood Vandover’s next swift move, perhaps because he had not fully realized the depths of despair in the man’s black heart. He had not thought that Vandover would whirl to make battle, weaponless, in the face of a covering gun. But that was exactly what the gunman did!
Before he could actually grasp the fact that it was coming, Hardin saw a big fist flash at his chin as Rood Vandover whirled, lightninglike, cursing and staggering, but filled with the courage of despair. With an instinctive roll of his head Hardin evaded the punch, but before he could get his gun into action, the brutishly husky man was on him, closing in so that gun play was impossible. One of Vandover’s hands was grasping the rancher’s wrist in a viselike grip, and with the other huge hand he was reaching for Hardin’s throat, the thick, steely fingers kinked like talons.
Gage Hardin knew Vandover of old, knew his reputation in a rough-and-tumble fight; knew especially now, with so much at stake, that he would use everything. He also knew the man’s strength and knew that if those devilish hands once found his windpipe that it would be quickly crushed.
Thinking quickly, knowing that for the moment the gun in the hand that Vandover gripped would be useless, Hardin hooked up his left fist in a hard uppercut aimed at Vandover’s apelike jaw. But the bunched knuckles did not connect, for Vandover jerked his head aside at just the right moment, and Hardin’s fist smashed solidly on the gunman’s nose. He felt the impact along his own arm as he also felt bone and cartilage crunch. Vandover let out a bull roar and shook his head as the blood spattered.
“I’ll kill you for that!” he howled. “I wasn’t going to, but now—”
Raging like an angry bull, Vandover hurled the full strength of his body against Hardin, trying to fling him to the sand. He was still holding the rancher’s gun hand rigid, but was swinging his huge fist at Hardin’s head with a rage that was accentuated by the pain of his crushed nose.
But even as that hamlike fist drove, Hardin ducked, then quickly straightened as again his own fist slashed out. It was an awkward position from which to hurl a killing blow, but somehow Gage Hardin managed it. It was a punch that started somewhere from down at his knees and gathered strength along the way until it landed like a flaming meteor on Rood Vandover’s jaw.
It landed properly that time, too. Hardin could feel it himself, all the way from his connecting fist along his arm, and down through his body as it landed on Vandover’s jaw with a sound like that of a meat cleaver hitting a side of beef. But the next instant he saw the hairy face that had been so close to his retreat as Vandover’s head snapped backward. Then he felt the death grip on his gun hand loosen, saw his antagonist, with a dazed expression in his eyes, slumped backward to the sand as his knees buckled.
Hardin’s gun was held steadily on the man who had made his final desperate play for freedom. Rood Vandover struggled to his knees and knelt there a moment, head hanging, as he shook it groggily.
“Get up, Rood,” Hardin said grimly. “It’s no use. I told you that you were going back.”
Vandover glanced up at him—once—through bleared eyes.
“I told you I wasn’t going back—to Louis Peele,” he mumbled. “I meant it.”
Gage Hardin had thought his antagonist’s last play had been made, and was not prepared for any further resistance. In the heat of the fight, he had completely forgotten the gun that Vandover had tossed behind him at the rancher’s orders. But Vandover had not forgotten it. He had been reminded of it when he had fallen flat on the hard metal of the six-gun. But he knew he would never get a chance to use it on Gage Hardin who stood there so coldly merciless, with his own gun muzzle aimed straight at Vandover’s heart.
After that all but knock-out blow, Hardin would not have believed Rood Vandover could move so fast as he did then. But the next instant, he saw the man’s hand go slightly behind him, saw the glitter of the weapon in a movement so swift it was a blur in the blistering sunlight. As though it were all the same blurring movement, Vandover whipped the gun to his own temple and fired.
Hardin averted his face as Vandover went down into the sand again—never again to rise, this time. The act had been so unexpected, its results were so irrevocably final that for the moment he felt stunned, nauseated. For so swiftly did it happen that Rood Vandover was dead before he struck the sand.
At last he had hurled his defiance in Hardin’s face—a defiance that could not be denied. He was not going back to Louis Peele.
CHAPTER V
HARDIN’S RETURN
FOUR days later, in that dusk which lies between sunset and moonrise, and all the rangeland lies in quiet dreaming, Doe Gaston heard a familiar