“Of course you don’t. You and me are old friends, Judy. But what does your dad say?”
“He says that … that … inside a couple of days you’ll shoot somebody or get shot. That ain’t true, is it, Andy?”
“Who knows, Judy?” he asked slowly. “But I hope not.”
He sent Sally down the street again with a touch of his heel, and then, remembering, he turned with a sudden smile and waved to the child. She brightened at once and waved after him. It comforted Andrew immensely to know that he had this one small ally in the town. Everything, it seemed, had changed , except Judy. Little Judy had grown lanky—even her freckles were bigger—but, inside, Judy was the same.
However, the town was different; it was more drab and shrunken, more hopeless. His discontent grew as he approached his destination, Hal Dozier’s office. Rounding the bend of the street, he came in sight of it, and he also came in sight of the commercial district of the town, namely the hotel and store and the blacksmith shop. The hotel veranda, that social gathering place of the mountain towns, was filled with idlers. They stared at Andrew with casual interest, but when they saw the full beauty of Sally, their interest quickened. A buzz went up and down the length of the veranda, and every man came to his feet. Andrew knew then that they had recognized him.
Every nerve in his right arm began to tingle, as though it possessed a life of its own, and that life was endangered, and every nerve in his body called on him to whip out his gun. But he checked the impulse and fought it down with a great effort. Not a gun had shown on the veranda. One man or two had stepped back through the door, to be sure, but otherwise each man remained rooted to his place.
Andrew rode on, deliberately turned his back on them, and dismounted in front of Dozier’s little town office. The big Dozier Ranch was far out of town among the hills, but Hal, who acted as a federal marshal, had written that he would be in town in his office. He rose with a brief, deep-throated shout at the sight of Andrew Lanning. Sally had been attempting to follow her master into the office, but the shout of the marshal drove her back. She slipped over to the window and cautiously put her head through the opening to overlook this interview and see that no harm came to her rider.
“I gave you up yesterday,” said Hal Dozier as he wrung the hand of Andrew Lanning. “Gave you up complete. Did you get my letters … both of ’em?”
“I’ll tell you why I waited for the second letter,” said Andrew frankly. “I wanted to give you time to find out from the men around town how they would take my return. When you wrote in the second letter that you thought they’d give me a square deal and a chance to make good, I decided to come in. It wasn’t that I distrusted you … not for a minute. I knew that you’d be better than your word. You’ve got the governor’s pardon for me. That was the first big thing that gives me a chance to live like an honest man and hold up my head. But my job is to win back the trust of these people around here.”
The marshal shook his head. “I know what you want to do. And when I wrote to you and told you that they were willing to give you a fighting chance, I meant what I said. Just that and no more. You see, Andy, these blockheads have it fixed in their brains that if a man is a killer once, he’s a killer forever. I’ve tried to point out to them that you never were a killer, that you killed just one man, and that you killed him under excusable conditions. It makes no difference. They think the fever is in you, and that it will break out in gun talk, sooner or later.”
“They’re probably right,” said Lanning sadly.
“Eh?” asked the marshal.
“I mean it. Look here.”
He took the sheriff to the back window and pointed to the upstepping ranges of the mountains, ridge after ridge pouring into the pale-blue sky.
“That’s been my country for these past few years,” said Andrew softly. “I’ve been king of it. The law has fought me, and I’ve fought the law. A hard fight, and a hard life, but a wonderful one. Do you know the kind of an appetite it gives you to eat in a house surrounded by people who know there’s a price of ten thousand dollars on your head? Do you know what it is to sleep with one ear open? Do you know what it is to go hungry for days, with towns full of people and food in plain sight and easy reach, but fenced away from you with guns? It’s hard, but there’s a tang to a life like that. I say I’ve lived like a king. My gun was my passport. It was my coin. It paid my debts and my grudges. And now I’ve stepped out of my kingdom, Hal, and I’ve come down to this.”
He gestured despairingly toward the front of the little room at the street beyond. “Martindale! A rotten place for a grown-up man. No, Hal, it’s hard to make the change. I’m going to fight hard to make it. I’m going to fight like a demon to be an honest man and work for my living, but every night I’ll dream about the mountains and the freedom. And that’s why I say that maybe they’re right. Maybe I’ll break loose before long. I’ve gone without roping for a long time. Maybe I’ll jump the first fence I find in my way and land on another gent’s property, or his toes.”
Hal Dozier listened to this speech with a frown. “Then go away from Martindale. You know there’s one place where you’d be welcome, a place where nobody has heard of you.”
Andrew Lanning changed color. “Have you heard from her?” he asked huskily.
“I have.” He handed Andy a letter, and the latter unfolded it slowly, breathing hard. He found written in a swift freehand:
I know he is up for a hard battle, but he’ll win. He has too much true steel in him to lose any fight he really wants to win. Will you tell him that for me? And will you ask him to write?
“Well?” said Dozier as Andrew handed back the letter. “Will you do it? Will you write to her?”
“When I’ve earned the right to.” He wandered slowly toward the door.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to find out for myself. I’m going to learn if those gents yonder on the veranda want me to stay or want me to go back to the mountains. They can have their way about it.”
Hal Dozier attempted to stop him, but he brushed the restraint aside and walked slowly across the wide street toward the hotel. Dozier, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, looked after him, and Sally trotted after her master until she had reached his heels and then followed like a dog, reaching out and trying to catch the brim of the wide sombrero in her teeth, for Sally still kept a good deal of the colt in her makeup.
II
That evening Hal Dozier sat long at his desk, writing. Now and then he stopped to think, or even rose and paced the room until new ideas came to him, and it was late when he had finished a letter that ran as follows:
Dear Miss Withero:
I’m keeping the promise I made you to give you the news, as soon as there was news to give. To start with there’s the biggest and best kind of news. Andrew has come into town!
He came as big as life, and very much as you must remember him; a little thinner, I think, and a little sterner, compared to the old Andy we used to know about Martindale. He came on Sally, of course, and Sally, at least, hasn’t changed. I used to hate that horse. It was Sally, you know, who ran my Gray Peter to death. But she’s such a beauty that I’ve forgiven her. She follows Andy about like a dog. If it weren’t for her, he’d die of loneliness, I know.
But to get back to important facts. When Andy came in I ran over things as clearly as I could, told him that the governor had pardoned him for the past and hoped well for his future. I advised him to accept your invitation to go East, and I promised to help him in any way that I could.