The boy went into the street again, mounted[208] and rode rapidly round the corner. His own home was across the way; his mother might see him at the office and call him. But once out of sight he stopped to consider what came next. Who was the right man to tell after the Doctor? The Sheriff!
A shiver chased up and down Billy’s . He knew the Sheriff by sight only; and he was so inseparable from the handcuffs the boy had seen from a pocket, that Billy felt it would “almost fasten suspicion on a fellow just to be seen speaking to the officer.”
But a familiar sound came to his ear, and he turned to see the Doctor’s splendid bays pounding down the street, pulling the buggy almost by the . Billy followed quickly and was soon closeted with the man, who listened, first with a smile, with grave attention.
“My boy, you have done a wonderful thing!” he said when Billy had finished. “You must come with me and tell your story again. If it comes out as I think, you’ll earn at least a thousand dollars.”
Half paralyzed with Billy went with the Doctor to the Sheriff’s office; but he was out and the deputy didn’t know when he would return; thought it might be within an hour or so. There was nothing to do but wait. Billy’s , baffled face touched the Doctor. His temples were already gray, but he had not forgotten how a boy feels.
“You don’t want to see your mother now, do you, boy? No more do you feel like with Bess at our table. Come over to the hotel, and we’ll lunch together.”
“But Mrs. Carter’ll expect—” Billy began, yet stopped, for the physician was laughing.
“A doctor’s wife gets over ‘expecting’ very young, Billy. They won’t think I’m dead if I don’t come home to lunch. But your mother?” His inflection finished the question.
“She’ll be all right. May Nell and me—I—we took our lunch and went over to Potter’s pasture. Shoot! She’s waiting now! I hope the poor little kiddie—little girl—eats, don’t wait for me,—she an’ Bouncer.”
“Oh, she’ll eat when she gets hungry, never fear.”
But Billy thought with pride that May Nell was one person he knew better than the Doctor.
They turned into the town’s finest hotel, just opened.
“I didn’t—I haven’t washed. I’m—” All at once as Billy walked through the tiled entrance, and felt himself in the midst of he had viewed only from without, he was overcome with the suspicion that he looked rather queer beside the immaculate Doctor. He knew his hair “stood up all ways for Sunday”; and his face must be dirty. “But they won’t know how dirty,” he reflected; “this is[211] the time them plaguey ’ll get in an’ hide the dust.” Freckles were Billy’s sorest point.
“Come with me, Billy; I must wash up. I’ve had a dusty drive up Spring Mountain; you know the roads aren’t watered up there.”
Billy looked the Doctor over and wondered. He was not subtle enough to suspect the Doctor’s purpose. “Golly! I’d hate to have to wash as much as a doctor,” he exclaimed, as they stepped into the appointed . “You look now like you’d just had a Turkish bath. But I’m glad of the chance for myself.” He surely did look better when the two came out and crossed to the big dining-room; though there was a tell-tale around his neck, and his crown lock stood stiff and divided.
At first he could not eat with , his mind was so distracted with of the magnificent room, and impatient to get his worrying secret off his heart and conscience. But his wise host ordered so artfully, and filled the of waiting with such stories and , explanations of the decorations, funny facts or concerning the hotel and guests, that before he knew it, Billy had, he told his mother afterward, referring to his stomach, “loaded her up to the guards, ’nough to make you ’shamed of me, mother.”
When they entered the Sheriff’s office again it was two o’clock. He was there, and gave Billy a private audience far more graciously than he would have done had not Doctor Carter’s presence been for the importance of the matter. When the boy repeated his story, less confidently, less dramatically than before, yet not needing the Doctor’s comment to prove its value, the Sheriff drew a long breath and emphasized it with a blow of his fist on the table.
“That’s the gang we’ve been hunting through[213] five counties. Boy, you’ve done what the State’s been trying a long time to do. The reward’s a good lump; if we bag the game you shall have your share.”
Billy looked on wide-eyed, as the Doctor said with a puzzling smile, “And, Sheriff, if I don’t think you divide fair with my friend here, you’ve got me to deal with next election. See?”
“All right, Doc,” the other replied a bit gruffly; “suppose we catch ’em before we fight about the divvy.”
It took a very short time to gather the posse, instruct it, and set out for the mountain. The Sheriff gave Billy an old hat and bade him to a seat behind the swift horses; and Billy obeyed, feeling a strange as they set out. It was just like a story. Could it be he, plain Billy Bennett, that was assisting the State to find long-sought-for criminals? The horses flew, yet Billy thought they would never arrive at the turn in the road where they would leave them. He felt as if in some unknown way the man at the hut would surely know of their coming, would hide, destroy, perhaps carry off all that would convict him, and the other, the big man,— Oh, would they never be there?
But a different and sudden fear leaped in both hearts as they rounded the shoulder of the mountain. The air had rapidly grown more oppressive; now they knew the cause, the forest was on fire!
June had been unusually warm and dry, and careless early campers had already started their annual . Now high over the of the mountain the flames came down; came with the wind from the valley on the other side where they had raged till fuel was .
“Great Scott, boy! We’ll have to hurry. We must get up there before the fire gets down. Do you know the shortest way?”
“Yes,” Billy answered breathlessly as he leaped from the buggy; “but we’ll have to go in the way I did if you want to catch ’em sure. We can come out by the trail.”
They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and disposed and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious, “disrespectable.”
The heat and smoke increased alarmingly as they went on, the man at the boy’s pace. In and out, occasionally doubling and returning but never losing altitude, Billy crashed on. His slender body slipped through underbrush by way of small that would not admit the man’s greater bulk; he had to break his way. The boy, also accustomed to running, climbing, had the advantage of better breath; though the other could not, Billy still held his mouth shut against the smoke, kept his smarting eyes partly closed.
The roar of the flames came dreadfully near. Trees cracked, crashed and fell, sending up columns of sparks and that dropped about the panting climbers. Billy began to wonder if he would hold out to the end of his task. His boy’s had easily outdone the man’s; but he had made the trip once before that day, had ridden from town at a speed; and now his endurance was almost at an end, while the Sheriff was getting his “second wind.”
They came to the crest of the . “We’ll have to slow up and zig-zag down carefully or they’ll hear us an’ get away,” Billy suggested.
“They won’t be watching for visitors,” the man answered; “they’ll be hiding the plant and skinning out of here,—if they haven’t already,” he added . He stood[217] back to the wind and scanned the opposite bank. “There they are, two of our fellows; the chaps haven’t escaped in that direction.”
As ordered two of the posse were closing in from the west toward the . A few more steps and the four met. Those who had been ordered to beat the mountain about the spring were waiting below; the fire had policed that territory.
As the four
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