The Night Horseman/Chapter 39

they rode out of the town the wet sand squashed under the feet of their horses and splashed up on their riding boots and their slickers. It even spotted their faces here and there, and a light brown spray darted out to right and left of the falling hoofs. For all the streets of Elkhead were running shallow rivers, with dark, swift currents, and when they left the little town the landscape was shut out by the falling torrents. It made a strange and shifting panorama, for the rain varied in its density now and again, and as it changed hills which had been quite blotted out leaped close upon them, like living things, and then sprang back again into the mist.

So heavy was that tropical fall of water that the horses were bothered by the beating of the big drops, and shook their heads and stamped fretfully under the ceaseless bombardment. Indeed, when one stretched out his hand the drops stung him as if with lashes of tiny whips. There was no wind, no thunder, no flash of lightning, only the tremendous downpour which blended earth and sky in a drab, swift river.

The air was filled with parallel lines, as in some pencil drawings—not like ordinary rain, but as if the sky had changed into a vast watering-spout and was sending down a continuous flood from a myriad holes. It was hard to look up through the terrific downpour, for it blinded one and whipped the face and made one breathless, but now and again a puff of the rare wind would lift the sodden brim of the sombrero and then one caught a glimpse of the low-hanging clouds, with the nearest whiffs of black mist dragging across the top of a hill. Without noticeable currents of wind, that mass of clouds was shifting slowly—with a sort of rolling motion, across the sky. And the weight of the rain forced the two to bend their heads and stare down to where the face of the earth was alive with the gliding, brown waters, whose surface was threshed into a continual foam. To speak to each other through the uproar, they had to cup their hands about their lips and shout. Then again the rainfall around them fell away to a drizzling mist and the beating of the downpour sounded far away, and they were surrounded by distant walls of noise. So they came to the McDuffy place.

It was a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof remained. The sheds for the horses had dropped to the earth; but the walls of the house still remained standing, in part, with the empty windows looking out with a mocking promise of the shelter which was not within. Upon this hollow shack the rain beat with redoubled fury, and even before they could make out the place through the blankets of rain, they heard the hollow drumming. For there were times, oddly enough, when any sound would carry a great distance through the crashing of the rain.

A wind now sprung up and at once veered the rain from its perpendicular fall. It slashed them in the face under the drooping brims of their sombreros, so they drew into the shelter of the highest part of the standing wall. Still some of the rain struck them, but the major part of it was shunted over their heads. Moreover, the wall acted as a sort of sounding board, catching up every odd noise from the storm-beaten plain beyond. They could speak to each other now without effort.

"D'you think," asked Haw-Haw Langley, pressing his reeking horse a little closer to Mac Strann, "that he'll come out after us in a rain like this?"

But simple-minded Mac Strann lifted his head and peered through the thick curtains of rain.

"D'you think," he parried, "that Jerry could maybe look through all this and see what I'm doin' to-day?"

It made Haw-Haw Langley grin, but peering more closely and observing that there was no mockery in the face of the giant, he wiped out his grin with a scrubbing motion of his wet hand and peered closely into the face of his companion.

"They ain't any doubt of it," he said reassuringly. "He'll know what you do, Mac. What was it that Pale Annie said to you?"

"Wanted me not to meet Barry. Said that Barry had once cleaned up a gang of six."

"And here we are only two."

"You ain't to fight!" warned Mac Strann sharply. "It'll be man to man, Haw-Haw."

"But he might not notice that," cried Haw-Haw, and he caressed his scrawny neck as though he already felt fingers closing about his windpipe. "Him bein' used to fight crowds, Mac. Did you think of that?"

"I never asked you to come," responded Mac Strann.

"Mac," cried Haw-Haw in a sudden alarm, "s'pose you wasn't to win. S'pose you wasn't able to keep him away from me?"

The numb lips of Mac Strann sprawled in an ugly smile, but he made no other answer.

"You don't think you'll lose," hurried on Haw-Haw, "but neither did them six that Pale Annie was tellin' about, most like. But they did! They lost; but if you lose what'll happen to me?"

"They ain't no call for you to stay here," said Mac Strann with utter indifference.

Haw-Haw answered quickly: "I wouldn't go—I wouldn't miss it for nothin'. Ain't I come all this way to see it—I mean to help? Would I fall down on you now, Mac? No, I wouldn't!"

And twisting those bony fingers together he burst once more into that rattling, unhuman laughter which all the Three B's knew so well and dreaded as the dying dread the sight of the circling buzzard above.

"Stop laughin'!" cried Mac Strann with sudden anger. "Damn you, stop laughin'!"

The other peered upon Mac Strann with incredulous delight, his broad mouth gaping to that thirsted grin of enjoyment.

"You ain't gettin' nervous, Mac?" he queried, and thrust his face closer to make sure. "You ain't bothered, Mac? You ain't doubtin' how this'll turn out?" There was no answer and so he replied to himself: "I know what done it to you. I seen it myself. It was that yaller light in his eyes, Mac. My God, it come up there out of nothin' and it wasn't a light that ought to come in no man's eyes. It was like I'd woke up at night with a cold weight on my chest and found two snakes' eyes glitterin' close to my face. Makes me shivery, like, jest to think of it now. D'you notice that, Mac?"

"I'm tired of talkin'," said Mac Strann hoarsely, "damned tired!"

And so saying he swung his great head slowly around and glared at Haw-Haw. The latter shrank away with an undulatory motion in his saddle. And when the head of Mac Strann turned away again the broad mouth began gibbering: "It's gettin' him like it done me. He's scared, scared, scared—even Mac Strann!"

He broke off, for Mac Strann had jerked up his head and said in a strangely muffled voice: "What was that?"

The bullet head of Haw-Haw Langley leaned to one side, and his glittering eyes rolled up while he listened.

"Nothin'!" he said, "I don't hear nothin'!"

"Listen again!" cried Mac Strann in that same cautious voice, as of one whispering in the night in the house of the enemy. "It's like a voice in the wind. It comes down the wind. D'ye hear now—now—now?"

It was, indeed, the faintest of faint sounds when Haw-Haw caught it. It was, in the roar of the rain, as indistinct as some distant light on the horizon which may come either from a rising star or from the window of a house. But it had a peculiar quality of its own, even as the house-light would be tinged with yellow when the stars are cold and white. A small and distant sound, and yet it cut through the crashing of the storm more and more clearly; someone rode through the rain whistling.

"It's him!" gasped Haw-Haw Langley. "My God A'mighty, Mac, he's whistlin'! It ain't possible!"

He reined his horse closer to the wall, listening with mouth agape.

He shrilled suddenly: "What if he should hit us both, seein' us together? They ain't no heart in a feller that can whistle in a storm like this!"

But Mac Strann had lowered his head, bulldog-like, and now he listened and thrust out his blunt jaw farther and farther and returned no answer.

"God gimme the grit to stick it out," begged Haw-Haw Langley in an agony of desire. "God lemme see how it comes out. God lemme watch 'em fight. One of 'em is goin' to die—may be two of 'em—nothin' like it has ever been seen!"

The rain shifted, and the heart of the storm rolled far away. For the moment they could look far out across the shadow-swept hills, and out of the heart of the desolate landscape the whistling ran thrilling upon them. It was so loud and close that of one accord the two listeners jerked their heads about and stared at each other, and then turned their eyes as hastily away, as though terrified by what they had seen—each in the face of the other. It was no idle tune which they heard whistled. This was a rising, soaring pean of delight. It rang down upon the wind—it cut into their faces like the drops of the rain; it branded itself like freezing cold into their foreheads.

And then, upon the crest of the nearest hill, Haw-Haw Langley saw a dim figure through the mist, a man on a horse and something else running in front; and they came swiftly.

"It's the wolf that's runnin' us down!" screamed Haw-Haw Langley. "Oh, God A'mighty, even if we was to want to run, the wolf would come and pull us down. Mac, will you save me? Will you keep the wolf away?"

He clung to the arm of his companion, but the other brushed him back with a violence which almost unseated Haw-Haw.

"Keep off'n me," growled Mac Strann, "because when you touch me, it feels like somethin' dead was next to my skin. Keep off'n me!"

Haw-Haw dragged himself back into the saddle with effort, for it was slippery with rain. His face convulsed with something black as hate.

"It ain't long you'll do the orderin' and be so free with your hands. He's comin'—soon! Mac, I'd like to stay—I'd like to see the finish——" he stopped, his buzzard eyes glittering against the face of the giant.

The rain blotted out the figure of the coming horseman, and at the same instant the whistling leaped close upon them. It was as if the whistling man had disappeared at the place where the rain swallowed his form, and had taken body again at their very side. Mac Strann shrank back against the wall, bracing his shoulders, and gripped the butts of his guns. But Haw-Haw Langley cast a frightened glance on either side; his head making birdlike, pecking notions, and then he leaned over the pommel of his saddle with a wail of despair and spurred off into the rain.