It was a singular goal for that posse, but they were sharpened by the phrase: “The last of old Allister’s gang.”
They rode hard, using the last strength of their horses. Two hours wore on, but there was no sight of Sally again. It was a strange predicament. The more they pressed on Lanning, the more he would struggle to escape and close on the real criminals. And yet they could not desist and leave odds of three-to-one against him.
At last they were riding over gravel and hard rock that gave no trail to follow. Suddenly a second fusillade made them spur their horses on. The crackling of guns had been far away, only a gust of wind had blown the sound to them, showing how hopelessly they had been distanced. They urged their sweating horses on in the ominous silence that followed the firing. Then the neighing of a horse guided them.
They climbed to a ridge, and on the shoulder below them, in a natural theater rimmed by great rocks, they saw the picture. The gaunt, horrible body of Larry la Roche lay propped against the rocks, his long arms spread out beside him. Clune was curled up on his side nearby, with the gravel scuffed away where he had struggled in the death agony. In the center of the terrible little stage lay no less a person than Lefty Gruger, gaping at the sky, and across him lay the body of him who had worked all this death, Andrew Lanning. Above him, trembling with weariness, stood beautiful Sally, neighing for help till the mountainside reechoed.
Not a man spoke as they went down the slope.
The whole thing was perfectly clear. The gang, hard pressed by their terrible antagonist, had turned back and waylaid him, taking ambush behind these rocks. When he came down, they had shot him from his horse. It was while he was falling, perhaps, and while he lay on the ground that they had rushed him, but the revolver of Lanning had come out, and this was its work. The first bullet had slain the grim la Roche, and the second had curled up Clune. The head of Lefty Gruger had been smashed with a stroke of the butt as he came running to close quarters.
They lifted the form of the conqueror from the body of Lefty Gruger, and the marshal, with his face pressed to the breast of Andy, caught the faint flutter of the heart.
Only then they set about the work of first aid, and they started with a sort of fierce determination, hard- eyed and drawn- lipped. The marshal cursed them as they worked, telling them briefly the true story of Andrew Lanning, which they would never believe before. And now, it seemed, he had given his life for them.
It was a dubious matter indeed. The bullet that had knocked him from his horse had whipped through his thigh. Another had broken his left arm, and a third—and this was the dangerous one—had plowed straight through his body. When his breathing became perceptible, a red bubble rose to his lips. Somewhere that bullet had touched the lungs, and now the matter of life or death was as uncertain as the flip of a coin.
They could not dream of removing him. He must be brought back to life or die on the spot, and they worked like madmen, throwing a shelter against sun and wind above him, bedding him soft in saddle blankets and fir boughs, washing the wounds and bandaging them.
“Get the doctor from Glenwood,” said Hal Dozier to his messengers, “and get Anne Withero … she’s in Martindale. Let the doc come as fast as he can, but make Anne Withero come like the wind.”
The doctor was there before dark, and he shook his head.
Anne Withero was there before midnight, and she set her teeth.
At dawn the doctor admitted there was a ghost of a hope. At noon he declared for a fighting chance. In the twilight Andy Lanning parted his stained lips and whispered into the ear of Anne Withero: “The bad strain, dear … I think they’ve let it out.”