Red Fire Page 9

  “I’m getting sappy,” said Hagger to his coffee. “I’m getting soft like a baby, by George.”

  He determined to leave the railroads, for, after all, it was not so extremely odd that he had been followed, even by an amateur detective, considering that he had stuck to the main arteries of traffic. A bit of chance and good luck might have kept Friedman up with him, but, now, he would put the jeweler to the test.

  Hagger left Denver that same day and walked for fifteen hours with hardly a stop. The walk beat his feet to a pulpy soreness, but Hagger ever had a soul beyond the reach of physical pain, and he persisted grimly. He spent the night in a barn, and the next morning was picked up by a truck, carrying milk toward the nearest town. That brought him another twenty miles toward the nothingness of the open range, for it seemed like nothingness to Hagger’s city-bred soul. His eyes were oppressed by the vastness of rough mountains, and the mountains themselves shrank small under the great arch of the sky.

  To the illimitable reach of the sky itself he looked from time to time and shook his head, for the heavens that were familiar to him were little narrow strips of gray or blue running between the tops of high buildings. On an ocean trip one could escape from this lonely sense of bigness in the smoking salon or at the bar, but the loneliness was inescapable.

  Vague tremors of fear, as inborn as the pangs of conscience, beset Hagger, for, if pursuit came up with him, what could he do? There was no crowd into which one could plunge, no network of lanes and alleys to receive a fugitive. He felt that he was observed from above as inescapably as by the eye of the moon, and who can get away from that, no matter how swiftly one runs?

  He was lost. He was adrift in a sea of mountain and desert, only knowing indistinctly that Denver was a port behind and San Francisco a port ahead. He managed to steal rides on rickety trains that went pushing out like feeble hands into darkness, but so vast were the dimensions of this land that he felt as though he were laboring on a treadmill.

  Much had to be done on foot. He bought a rifle, a stock of ammunition, a package of salt, cigarette tobacco, and a quantity of wheat-straw papers. In this manner he felt more secure in the wilderness, and although he found game scarce and rifle work very different from pistol play, yet he could get enough to live on.

  He had one deep comfort—that Friedman was being left hopelessly behind. He laughed when he thought of that tall, frail youth attempting to match strides with him through such a wilderness as this where a day’s journey advanced one hardly a step toward the goal.

  Eventually, of course, he would come out on the farther side, and a few drinks and five minutes of the glare of city lights would take from his soul the ache of the wounds that it now was receiving. So he consoled himself.

  Bitter weather began to come upon him. All deciduous trees were naked, and he passed small jungles of stripped brush encased in ice. Snow fell, and once the road turned to ice when a sleet storm poured suddenly out of the black heavens. Still, Hagger kept on. He did not laugh, but he was not disheartened—he had the patience of a sailor in the days of canvas voyaging toward almost legendary shores. He had to sleep outdoors, improvising some shelter against the weather.

  Once, after walking all night, he had to rest for a whole day at a village; he swallowed a vast meal and then lay with closed eyes for hours. Here he bought a horse, saddle, and bridle. But he was ill at ease in a saddle. The unlucky brute put its foot in a gopher hole near the next crossroads town and broke its leg. Hagger shot it and carried the accouterments into town, where he sold them for what they would bring. After that, he trusted to his feet and the trains, when he could catch them. He spent as few hours as possible in towns, eating and leaving at once, or buying what he needed in a store and going on, for he knew that idle conversations mark a trail broad and black. He did not realize that his course was spectacular and strange, and that everyone would talk about a stranger who actually made a journey on foot and yet was not an Indian. He was living and acting according to his old knowledge, but he was in a new world of new men.

  One day, as he was plodding up a grade toward a nest of bald-faced hills, a horseman trotted up behind him.

  “Hagger, I want you,” said a voice.

  Hagger turned and saw a sad-faced man with long, drooping mustache looking at him down the barrel of a rifle.

  “Tuck your hands up into the air,” said the stranger.

  “What d’you want me for?” asked Hagger.

  “Nothin’ much. I’m the sheriff, Hagger. You stick up your hands. We’ll talk it over on the way to town.”

  Hagger smiled. There was a delicious irony of fate in this encounter, and he felt that there was laughter in the wind that leaped on him at that moment, carrying a dry flurry of snow. That flurry was like a winged ghost in the eyes of the sheriff’s young horse, and it danced to one side, making him reach for the reins. Still holding his rifle in one hand, he covered Hagger, but the yegg asked no better chance than this. His numbed hand shot inside his coat; the rifle bullet jerked the hat from his head, but his own shot knocked the sheriff from his horse.

  Hagger stopped long enough to see scarlet on the breast of the man of the law. “If you’d known Hagger, bud,” he said, “you’d have brought your friends along, when you came after me.”

  Behind the saddle he found a small pack of food. He took it, and, leaving the groaning sheriff behind him, he went up the trail, contented.

  At the top of the next hill he paused and looked back. The sheriff was feebly trying to sit up, and Hagger thought of retracing his way and putting a finishing bullet through the head of the man. However, it would waste time. Besides, the sheriff had his rifle and might fight effectively enough. So the yegg went on again, doggedly facing the wind.

  The wind hung at the same point on the horizon for five days, growing stronger and colder, but Hagger accepted it without complaint. It bit him to the bone, but it acted as a compass and told him his direction. Twice he nearly froze during the night, but his marvelous vitality supported him, and he went on again and warmed himself with the labor of the trail.

  It now led up and down over the roughest imaginable hills and mountains. All trees disappeared save hardy evergreens; the mountains looked black; the sun never shone, and all that was brilliant was the streaking of snow here and there.

  Now and again he passed cattle, drifting aimlessly before the wind, or standing head down in the lee of a bluff, their stomachs tucked up against their backs, dying on their feet. So he did not lack for fresh meat.

  Presently, however, his supplies ran out, and after that he pushed on through a nightmare of pain. He began to suffer pain in the stomach. Weakness brought blind spells of dizziness, in the midst of one of which he slipped and nearly rolled over the edge of a precipice. But it never occurred to him to pause or to turn back. Nothing could lie ahead much worse than what he had gone through.

  Then, on the third day of his famine, he saw a hut, a squat, low form just visible up a narrow valley. He turned instantly toward it.

  IV

  Since the sheriff had known of him, everyone in this country might know, Hagger reflected. Therefore, he made a halt near the hut, and beat some warmth and strength into his blue hands. He looked to his automatic; the rifle slung at his back would probably be too slow for hand-to-hand work. After he had made these preparations, he marched on to the hut, ready to kill for the sake of food.

  He knocked but got no answer. He knocked again, and this time he was answered by a shrill snarling. He called out. The dog inside growled again.

  This pleased Hagger, for he realized that the owner of the place must have left and the dog was there to guard the shack until the return of his master. When that master returned, however, he would find something gone from his larder, and something more from his wardrobe.

  The door was closed, but, oddly enough, it was latched from the outside. This puzzled Hagger for a moment, until he remembered that, of course, the master of the house would have secured
the door from that side in leaving. So he set the latch up, and prepared to enter.

  Inside, the dog was giving the most furious warning, and Hagger poised his automatic for a finishing shot. He could have laughed at the thought that any dog might keep him from making free with that heaven-sent haven.

  Steadying himself, he jerked the door wide and poised the pistol.

  A white bull terrier came at him across the floor in a fury, but plainly the dog was incapable of doing damage. The animal staggered, dragging his hind legs. His ribs thrust through his coat, and the clenched fist of a man could have been buried in his hollow flanks. Hagger kicked him. The terrier fell and lay senseless with a thin gash showing between his eyes where the toe of the boot had landed.

  Then Hagger kicked the door to and went to find food. There was very little in that hut. On a high shelf behind the stove he found two cans of beans and pork, a half moldy sack of oatmeal, and the remnant of a side of bacon. There was coffee in another tin, some sugar and salt, and a few spices. That was all.

  Hagger ate the sugar first in greedy mouthfuls. Then he ripped open a can of beans and devoured it. He was about to begin on the second, when the terrier, reviving, came savagely at him, feebler than before, but red-eyed with determination to battle.

  Hagger, open can in hand, looked down with a grim smile at the little warrior. He, too, was a man of battle, but surely he would not have ventured his life for the sake of a master’s property as this little fellow was determined to do.

  “You sap,” said Hagger, “a lot of thanks he’d give you. Why, kid, I’d be a better friend to you, most likely.”

  He side-stepped the clumsy rush of the fighting dog and saw the terrier topple over as it tried to turn.

  “You’d show, too,” said Hagger, nodding wisely, because he knew the points of this breed. “You’d show and win. In New York. At the Garden . . . is what I mean.”

  He stooped and caught the lean neck of the dog by the scruff, so that it was helpless to use its teeth. Then he spilled some beans on the floor before it.

  “Eat ’em, you dummy,” said Hagger, still grinning. “Eat ’em, Bare Bones.”

  The sight of food had a magic effect on the starved brute. Still, he did not touch it at once. His furious eyes glared suspiciously at Hagger. He was growling as he abased his head, but finally he tasted—and then the beans were gone. Gone from the second can of Hagger, too.

  He went to a shed behind the house and found firewood corded there. He brought in a heaping armful and crashed it down. The stove was covered with rust, and, when the fire kindled, it steamed and gave out frightful odors. Hagger was unaware of them, for he was busy preparing the coffee, the oatmeal, and the bacon. Presently the air cleared, the fumes evaporated, and the warmth began to reach even the most distant corners of the cabin.

  At length the meal was ready. Hagger piled everything on the little table and sat down to eat. He was half finished, when he was aware of the dog beside the table, sitting up with trembling legs, slavering with dreadful hunger, but with the fury gone from eyes that followed every movement of Hagger’s hands, mutely hoping that some of the food would fall to its share.

  It was not mere generosity that moved the man, rather, it was because his hunger was already nearly satisfied and he wished to see the terrier’s joy at the sight of food. He dropped a scrap of bacon, and waited.

  The dog shuddered with convulsive desire. His head ducked toward the scrap, and then he checked himself and sat back, watching the face of the stranger for permission. Hagger gaped, open-mouthed.

  Faintly he sensed the cause. Having received food from his hand, the dog, therefore, looked upon him as a natural master, and, being a master, he must be scrupulously obeyed. Something in the heart of Hagger swelled with delight. Never had he owned a pet of any kind, and the only reason that bull terriers had a special interest for him was that he had seen them fighting in the pit.

  “Take it, you little fool,” said Hagger.

  Instantly the morsel was gone. The tail beat a tattoo on the floor.

  “Well I’ll be hanged,” Hagger said, and grinned again.

  When he offered the dog another bit in his hand, it was taken only after the word of permission, and the red tongue touched his fingers afterward in gratitude. Hagger snatched his hand away, looked at it in utter amazement, and then he grinned once more.

  “Why, damn me,” murmured Hagger. “Why, now damn me.” He continued feeding the dog the bacon bit by bit. Suddenly: “You rascal, you’ve stole all my bacon!” cried Hagger suddenly.

  The dog stood up, alert to know the man’s will, tail acquiescently wagging, ears flattened in acknowledgment of the angry tone. Already there seemed more strength in the white body. Tenderness rose in the heart of Hagger at that, but he fought the unfamiliar feeling.

  “Go in the corner and lie down,” he commanded harshly.

  The dog obeyed at once and lay in the farthest shadow, motionless, head raised, as though waiting for some command.

  But warmth and sleepiness possessed Hagger. He flung himself down upon the bunk and slept heavily until the long night wore away and the icy dawn looked across the world. Then he awakened. He was very cold from head to foot, except for one warm spot at his side. It was the dog, curled up and sleeping there.

  “Look here,” said Hagger, sitting up. “You’re a fresh sap to come up here, ain’t you? Who invited you, dumbbell?”

  The terrier licked the hand that was nearest him, then crawled up and tried to kiss the face of Hagger, masked in its bristling growth of many days.

  The yegg regarded the dog with fresh interest.

  “Nothing but blue ribbons,” he said. “Nothing but firsts. Nothing but guts,” he went on in a more emotional strain. “Nothing more but clean fighting. Why, you’re a dog, kid.”

  The dog, sitting on the bunk, cocked its head to follow this language and seemed to grin in approval.

  “So,” said Hagger, “we’re gonna get some breakfast, kid. You come and look.”

  He went out, carrying his rifle, and the terrier staggered to a little pool nearby and licked feverishly at the ice. When Hagger broke the heavy sheet, the animal drank long. There was less of a hollow within his flanks now. Turning from the little pond, Hagger saw a jack rabbit run from a bit of brush, followed by another a little smaller.

  Luck was his. He dropped hastily to one knee and fired. The rearmost rabbit dropped; the other darted toward the safety of the shrubbery, but Hagger knocked him down on the verge of the shadows.

  By the time he had picked up his first prize, the terrier was dragging the second toward him, but his strength was so slight that again and again he sprawled on the slippery snow.

  Hagger strode back to the hut and from there looked toward the bushes. He could see that the dog had progressed hardly at all, but never for a moment did he relax his efforts to get the prize in.

  V

  The amusement of the yegg continued until he saw the dog reach the end of its strength and fall. Then he strode, still laughing, to the rescue, and picked up the rabbit. The terrier, panting, then managed to get to its feet and move uncertainly at the heels of its new master. Now Hagger built another roaring fire and roasted the larger of the rabbits. The second he fed to the dog while he ate his own portion. Then sleepiness came upon him the second time, for Nature was striving in her own way to repair the ravages of cold and starvation in him.

  When he wakened, his nerves were no longer numb, his body was light, and strength had returned to his hands. He saw that he had slept from early morning until nearly noontide. So he hastened to the door and swept the horizon with an anxious glance. He hardly cared, however, what enemies awaited him, for now that he was himself once more, he felt that he could face the world with impunity. Indeed, he looked out on no human enemy, but upon a foe that would nevertheless have to be reckoned with. The wind that had blown steadily all these days had fallen away at last, and was replaced by a gentle breeze out of the sout
h carrying vast loads of water vapor toward the frozen north. The water fell as huge flakes of snow, some of them square as the palm of a man’s hand. Sometimes the air was streaked by ten million pencil lines of white wavering toward the earth, and sometimes the wind gathered strength and sent the billows uncertainly down the valley, picking the white robes from the upper slopes and flinging them on the floor of the ravine.

  When he opened the door, it cut a swath in the heaped drift that had accumulated before the shack. Hagger stepped into the softness and whiteness with an oath. He saw nothing beautiful in the moth wings that were beating so softly upon the world, and he cursed deeply, steadily. “There’s no luck,” said Hagger. “Only the sneaks and the mollycoddles . . . they got all the luck. There ain’t no luck for a man.”

  He was disturbed by something writhing within him, and, turning, he picked up the dog out of the drift where it was vainly struggling. The terrier was much stronger now. Still, his ribs stuck out as mournfully as ever, and his body was a mass of bumps and hollows. It would be days before strength really returned to him.

  Hagger prepared himself at once for the march. His self-confidence rose proudly in spite of the labor that confronted him, and he felt his strength turn to iron and his resolution harden. In a way he loved peril and he loved great tasks, for what other living was there, compared with these crises when brain and soul had to merge in one flame or the labor could not be performed?

  He had cleaned the cabin of its entire food cache, meager as it had been.

  “If there was more than I could pack,” declared Hagger to himself, “I’d burn it up . . . I’d chuck it out to spoil in the wet. Why, such a skunk as him, he don’t deserve to have a bite left him . . . a low hound . . . that would leave a pup to starve . . . why, hell!” concluded Hagger.