Marble Range

Author:Robert J. Horton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

In his delirious sleep, Bannister was riding like mad—riding like mad from white specters that pursued him on great blue horses. The smell of smoke was in the air; there was fire somewhere. He could not seem to make his feet move to spur his mount to greater exertion. He looked behind and his pursuers had changed to little brown men with peaked caps like those of a chimney sweep. Funny, he thought. Then his horse stumbled and he went whirling through the air. They were upon him in a minute—scores of them. The white heat of a branding iron dazzled his eyes. It came down upon his head and he shrieked with pain. It came down again . . . again. He came out of it with a jerk—conscious.

His first sensation was that of a burning pain on the left side of the head. It was as if a red-hot poker was being drawn backward and forward, relentlessly, just above his left ear. He squirmed with the torture of it. He started to put his hand to his head but couldn’t move it. Vaguely he realized that he was bound hand and foot. Then the events preceding that burst of flame and his loss of consciousness came back to him. He opened his eyes.

At first he could see nothing. Then, twisting his aching head a bit, he saw a patch of light—a square patch, such as would be made by a window. He was lying on something soft—a bunk. He realized he was in a cabin. He cried aloud several times but received no answer. He groaned with the excruciating pain. His mouth and tongue and lips were dry; his whole being cried for water. He shouted and twisted and turned in the bunk until a sharp pain, like the stab of a knife, stopped him with a moan. Then he was off again. Riding—riding—riding. Florence Marble was with him. She disappeared and Howard Marble was with him. Green and yellow lights broke forth in wreathed clusters and in the center were the leering faces of Cromer and Le Beck. A great, black cloud came down and he plowed into it, choking . . . choking.

When he again opened his eyes, it was daylight. He stared up at the rafters. Then he twisted his head again, wincing with the fire above his left ear. Yes, he was in a cabin. There was a table under one of the windows, a few empty shelves, an old, rusty stove, a bench. It somehow had a familiar look. He racked his aching brain, and then he had it. He was in the cabin behind the leaning cottonwood, the cabin Howard had shown him the day they had gone into the badlands together. In the old rustler’s cabin, wounded, bound hand and foot—a prisoner.

He clenched his teeth against the agonizing pain in his head, twisted and squirmed and strained at his bonds with every iota of his strength, but it was no use.

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