Sheriff Larrabee's Prisoner by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2016-10-23T22:00:00+00:00

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VI. — ALL ABOARD!

TWO days later the joyless eyes of Jack Montagne looked down from the side of a foothill upon a streak of black, hurrying across the valley, with a trailing cloud of white drawn out above it. Montagne drew a great breath of relief. He looked back instinctively toward the mountains, rolling huge and sullen above him, as if he expected them to put forth an arm and catch him back.

After all the perils, he had escaped and come to easy-striking distance of the railroad, and the railroad meant freedom. In a few days it could carry him away to the ends of the country, where the names of Zellar and Benton were never dreamed of. He visualized himself in a far-off city, reading an obscure notice in an obscure paper about the futile hunt for Jack Montagne, wanted for murder. For by this time they had surely hunted back to the town of his origin, and there they had learned that other and shameful story, and his name with it.

He bowed his head at the thought of it. Then he shrugged back his shoulders and started his pony down the mountainside and toward the rambling collection of houses in the distance.

Two miles from the outskirts he came to a pleasant meadow, where a brook tumbled brightly in the sunshine. Here he dismounted, took off the saddle and bridle, and waved the horse away to freedom. The invitation was accepted with a snort and a flirt of the heels. For a moment, Montagne watched with a sigh, and then turned back to take up his trail.

He so timed his approach that he reached the vicinity of the town at dusk and then skirted about it to the railroad. Of course, it would not do to linger near the station, but that would not be necessary. Hardly a mile away the tracks started a stiff grade, where a freight train would have to labor slowly—so slowly that a man, agile of foot and sure of hand, could certainly take it with ease.

To this point he went, and, selecting a shelter between two bushes that would shelter him from the too-active eye of some brakie, as the train approached, he sat down to wait. The moon rose during his vigil, before he heard a far-off humming on the tracks, and then made out a train stopping at the town and starting again. That it was a freight train he had not the slightest doubt, as soon as he heard the redoubled labor of the engine as it reached the grade. Montagne rose, stretched himself, and, finding all his muscles playing smoothly in spite of the long period of inactivity, crouched again between the bushes and watched the train roar nearer.

The sound grew louder. The humming of the rails was now a heavy vibration. The rush of the exhaust was like the deafening noise of a great waterfall. With his brain reeling from the uproar, the blow fell that had been so long avoided.

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