The Runaways by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing

21

THE ROAD AGAIN

When he had turned the corner, I said to Lefty: “Well?”

“Back to the stable, kid, as fast as you can trot with me,” said Lefty. We headed back that way. “Because,” he went on, as we hurried, “what we have to travel in is a buggy with a trotting horse. If they take a notion to light out after us, they have riding horses in this town, and they have some damned fast-looking ones, too.”

You couldn't get around logic like that. Those Western towns were real fire, when they got started. They were very easy and lazy, mostly, about hunting down crooks, but when once they got on a tear after you, it was a good idea to make a fast start. They would think nothing of giving you a roll in tar and feathers. If it was anything serious, they stopped all wasting of time by just arranging a little rope around your neck and hoisting you up to swing in the wind and dry out there.

We were both pretty serious, you can believe me!

“If I get out of this town,” said Lefty, “with a whole skin, we won't stop in another this side of a hundred and fifty miles.” He meant it, too.

In the livery stable, we slapped that Tippety into the harness, tumbled into the rig, spanked him out of the stable, down the back alley, and up past the house of Kate. When I saw that Lefty intended to go right on past, I could only turn and stare at him.

“Lefty,” I said, “it ain't possible that you mean to go right on by and not even say good-bye to her?”

I could see that he was hard hit, but he didn't say a word. He just whistled a sharp note that he used for calling Smiler. There was a crash of glass, and Smiler sailed right out of a second-story window. That fool dog would have jumped right over a cliff if he had heard the whistle of his boss. He landed in a shrub with a crash, and in another minute he was sitting up in the rig beside us with a couple of cuts on the head and another on the shoulder where the glass had sliced him, but just as happy as a picture to be back there with us on the road, again.

I watched that house for what I was afraid would happen. Sure enough, I was right. Around the corner of the house came Kate Perigord. She didn't stand and stare. She just gave us one look, turned right around, bowed her head, and walked away. So that I knew she didn't need to be told what was happening. There was hardly anybody in the world so understanding as her.

Maybe Lefty knew that she was watching. He didn't say anything and he didn't let on. He stuck out his jaw, and he drove along down that road with the reins just tight enough for him to push on them, as you might say.

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