Page:The Black Cat v01no01 (1895-10).pdf/6

4 around him. Every man with a cayuse tore in pursuit, but they only brought back eight half-dead horses. Stokes had staked relay beasts at different points along the road, and was then safe in the chaparral cañons toward the north.

"The gambling dens choked up with the crowds; gold-dust was heaped on gold-dust for the reward of the cowardly hound. Murders weren't rare then, but there was only one Ned Emory, remember.

"Four of us wouldn't drop the search. We let the blood-money men get out of the way, and then we worked as we'd toil for only our own.

"There was scarcely no scent to follow, for Stokes had bribed the greasers who furnished his horses; but we forced our way along on nothing. Day and night we rode with our eyes open, sometimes bullying and sometimes begging. It began to seem hopeless. The days were running into summer again.

"One afternoon, toward twilight, we rested on the crest of a mountain where the path took a sudden turn away from a two hundred-foot precipice.

"We were torn with the snapping branches of the greasewood, and full of extremest dirt and disgust. Suddenly we heard the rustle of a step on the fallen leaves. Under a live oak, not thirty yards away, on the very edge of the cliff, stood Shorty Stokes. He had not heard us, and he stood looking at the moon which hung a sickle in the hot sky. The evening star was showing.

"The four of us were like stones. He could have got to Guinea before motion 'd have come to us. Then, simultaneously with our steps forward, he turned and looked into our faces.

"It was a moment to test the nerve of any man. He stood it as we were used to seeing him face all things.

"'I suppose I'm the man you're after,' he said.

"He said it with the dignity of a parson.

"In a second he had thrown down his pistols. He unsheathed his knives and dropped them to the ground.

"'Take me,' he said.

Four of us looked into the unflinching clearness of his eyes. As we hesitated, he spoke again.

"'Listen. It is not in excuse that I speak, nor in weakening.