Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/99

Rh “Halt, there! Up with your hands, or I'll drill you!” When they swung from side to side, craning their heads to look, they made out a shadowy horseman facing Pete head on. Then the sheriff's voice again: “Gregg, I'm considerable glad to meet up with you.”

If that meeting had taken place in any other spot probably Gregg would have taken his chance on escaping through the night, but in this narrow pass he could swing to neither side and before he could turn the brown horse entirely around the sheriff might pump him full of lead. They gathered in a solemn quiet around him; the irons were already upon his wrists.

“All right, boys,” he said, “you've got me, but you'll have to give in that you had all the luck.”

A moment after that sharp command in the familiar, dreaded voice of Pete Glass, Vic had been glad that the lone flight was over. Eventually this was bound to come. He would go back and face the law, and three men lived to swear that Blondy had gone after his gun first.

“Maybe luck,” said the sheriff. “How d' you come back this way?”

“Made a plumb circle,” chuckled Gregg. “Rode like a fool not carin' where I hit out for, and the end of it was that it was dark before I'd had sense to watch where the sun went down.”

“Kind of cheerful, ain't you?” cut in Ronicky Joe, and his voice was as dry as the crisping leaves in an autumn wind.