Part 2

Le Ranier had formerly been a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company in the far north and he had the knack of telling tales. It was almost midnight when the two men finally crawled into their bunks.

Daylight was just tinting the eastern sky when Le Ranier called Dixie. The Pony Express rider from the north was due there about five, and Dixie saddled his horse while the Frenchman finished getting breakfast.

They had eaten and Dixie was sitting in the door of the station, smoking a cigarette, when a horse came loping through the rocky defile to the north. A moment more and Dixie was in the saddle and riding out from the station.

“There’s some mail for Ross’s Post, sent down from Salt Lake,” the other rider stated, handing over a packet of letters with the mochilla.

Dixie waved his hand to Le Ranier as he passed, then swept out upon the desert, glimpsing an occasional coyote as he rode.

A few miles from Ross’s Post the trail passed through a group of bleak, sandstone buttes, similar to those at Red Pillar. As Dixie galloped along the sandy path, he heard the sound of a horse approaching. Instantly he thought of Settes, but when the other horse rounded a high rock, he recognized the lean figure of Jim Slade, bound for Salt Lake.

The superintendent lifted his arm as a signal to halt and Dixie reined up alongside.

“Make it all right?” Slade inquired tersely.

“Fine.”

“I figured you would when I hired you,” Slade said, more slowly. “I had a talk with Clint the other night, after he saw you talking to that fellow in the barroom. Clint was right worried about you, but I told him all you needed was a chance to make good. I’m considered lucky in picking out men.”

“Whether you’re lucky or not, you sure know how to get at the best that’s in a man,” Dixie rejoined with feeling. “I’m going to do my best not to disappoint you.” And when Slade had said “So long” and ridden on, Dixie knew that he would keep that promise, even though it meant an actual clash with Jack Settes.

That it meant trouble, he knew only too well. There was plenty of iron in Settes’s massive frame; something that made all the more terrifying the lightning quickness of his gun trick. He hadn’t bothered to ask Dixie to get that letter; simply demanded it, and he was accustomed to getting what he demanded.

Dixie had one advantage in facing Settes. He knew of his gun trick; that sudden sideways fall of Settes’s big body, while his right hand, meeting a lurching holster, held a belching gun by the time his body struck the ground. Settes wore two guns, but it was his right that always did the killing, and so well did it perform that the left was never called into play.

As he had told Slade, Dixie was only fair with a gun; fairly accurate and fairly fast. He knew that in the matter of drawing he had no chance with Settes. But in thinking of that gun trick, he had hit upon what might prove a counter for it, and passing a cactus that threw its shadow at the right angle, he jerked out his gun and fired a shot that kicked up the dust in the center of the shadow.

His first clash with Settes came sooner than he expected; almost by the time he reached Ross’s Post. He had turned over the mochilla and was almost at the door of the trading post when Settes, coming from the office, met him.

“What the hell’s troubling that brother of yours?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Why?” Dixie countered.

“He came into the barroom the other night and tied into me. Gave me to understand that I was to lay off you, or I’d have him to settle with. I reckon you hadn’t told him who I am.”

“On the contrary, I did tell him, with a little extra boost for you thrown in for good measure,” Dixie replied, conscious of a sudden joy in his heart that Clint, after all, had tried to help him. “But a little thing like a reputation doesn’t bother Clint. He figgers he’s pretty nifty with a gun himself.”

“He’ll need to be if he tries to interfere with me again. That letter from Crosby will be in the mail tomorrow. I didn’t want any trouble with anybody until after I get it, but after that, he can get action with me any time he wants it.”

“I guess it’s about time I put you right about that letter,” Dixie said evenly. “I’ve been thinking about that ever since we talked the other night. I don’t know whether I can clear myself on that case or not, considering the company they thought I was in and that I ran away as I did. But I’d rather risk a trial than let an innocent man be hung. I’m going to carry the letter through.”

“If you do, you won’t need to worry about standing trial,” Settes said deliberately, though his eyes were like pinpoints as he met Dixie’s quiet gaze. “I came here for that letter, and I’m going to have it, whether you get chicken-hearted or not.” And as if further words were unnecessary, he turned down the street.

Dixie had half turned, intending to follow Settes, when a sound caused him to glance up. In the doorway stood Mildred, and her expression told him that she had heard all that had been said.

Instead of following Settes, he entered the office, and the girl, with an eagerness that gladdened his heart, asked:

“What does all this mean, Dixie; about you having to stand trial unless you get a letter from the mail?”

“It’s a letter concerning a robbery and murder in California that Settes wants. He expected me to take it out of the mail, but you heard what I said to him.”

She nodded, then came another question: “How does he know that the letter will come through tomorrow?”

“He got a letter from a man in St. Louis, telling him when it was to start. It’s easy to figure when it will be here, because the Pony Express always makes its regular time.”

There was a pause, then Mildred said: “I’ve noticed that you and Clint aren’t very friendly. That you took separate rooms the other night and that you seldom speak to each other at the table. Is that because of this?”

“Yes, or rather because of Clint’s attitude concerning it,” he explained, somehow finding it easy to unburden his chief worry to this girl. “Clint had heard that I had been in some trouble, and he jumped to the conclusion that I was guilty without even giving me the chance to explain. Shall I explain my part in it to you?”

“You don’t need to,” she said quietly, with a look that said more. And after an instant, she asked: “Why is Settes so anxious to get this letter?”

“Because it implicates him. He was the leader of a gang that robbed a mine and shot a night watchman. He is willing that an innocent man should be hung for the murder, rather than that his connection with it should become known.”

The girl started to ask another question, then checked it, and Dixie, thinking that it might concern his part in the affair, didn’t urge her. Ross coming in a moment later, interrupted their conversation, and Dixie later drifted into the bar.

Dixie was to relieve Clint that afternoon, and he debated telling Clint of Settes’s threat. But because Clint had cautioned him about Settes, and because, in his anger, he had told Clint that he could get along without his help he decided against that. He liked to stick with a decision, once he had made it, and when Clint rode in that afternoon, Dixie took the mochilla on the gallop and sped away on his run.

Thinking of the clash with Settes and his threat Dixie rode carefully, though he knew he was in no particular danger as long as he held to the open desert. As he neared the sandstone buttes, he checked his horse a bit.

There were a dozen trails through the buttes, but the one used by the Pony Express riders was the best. Tempering speed with caution, he turned into a trail that paralleled the one usually followed, but he rode through and on into Red Pillar without incident.

Le Ranier must have found him a little quiet that night because he was worried, but he said nothing of the trouble on his mind. In fact, he waved the Frenchman a cheerful good-by when he took the mail the next morning and galloped away to the south; over a trail that ordinarily was safe, was now fraught with the gravest danger for him.

In the early morning, what life there was on the desert was out, and twice Dixie’s hand slid to his holster as he glimpsed moving objects in the cactus. But they proved to be only coyotes. He knew that the buttes offered a thousand places from which he might be ambushed and like the day before, he turned into an old trail where the soft sand deadened the sounds of hoofs.

Halfway through the danger zone, Dixie stiffened suddenly. He had caught the swish of a horse’s tail in a cluster of cactus beside the main trail. He slid from the saddle, and, gun in hand, made his way forward on foot.

A little farther and he reached a jagged boulder that overlooked the trail. Silently as a cougar stalking its prey, he made his way around its base, then suddenly flattened himself against the rock.

Fifty feet away and slightly below him, Settes lay behind a rock, watching the main trail with a cocked rifle in his hands.

For several minutes, Dixie stood there, wondering just what to do. Below him, Settes lay, waiting to shoot him down, the rifle being ample evidence of his intent. At that distance, he could drill Settes with ease, and yet he couldn’t pull the trigger.

There was sand at the base of the rock, and Dixie stepped out upon it, in full view had Settes been looking. But Settes had his eyes glued to the trail, all unsuspecting the danger behind, until Dixie’s voice, calm in spite of his excitement, called:

“Expecting me, Settes?”

Quick as a flash, Settes twisted about, the latter half of his gun trick. But that trick had always been practiced with a six-gun, and he now held a rifle.

Dixie let him get the weapon almost to his shoulder, then he fired as he had been firing at the shadows, and Settes’s great body slowly relaxed onto the sand.

Dixie had started forward, but he suddenly stopped, then moved back behind the rock. From the main trail came the sound of horses and Clint, with a rifle in his hand, raced into view. Behind him came Mildred, and both halted as Dixie stepped out into sight.

“What happened?” Clint asked, trying to hide the excitement in his voice as he leaped from the saddle and ran to Dixie.

“Settes tried to ambush me,” and Dixie pointed to the object that told the rest of the story.

“Thank God, you got him first,” Clint said fervently. “I got here as soon as I could after Mildred told me of seeing Settes leave the post with a rifle, but I was afraid I would be too late. Maybe you know how I felt, after the way I’ve treated you. I didn’t understand, until Mildred told me what she had heard Settes say yesterday, and what she found in that letter.”

“What letter?”

“A letter that Settes had received from a man named Dickson. It showed that Settes killed a man in Sacramento, for which another man was to be hung. A pal of his had confessed, and he wanted to get this man’s statement from the mail to save himself. Mildred couldn’t get the letter until after Settes left his room.”

The girl was coming up from the trail, and Dixie remarked:

“So it was Mildred who saw Settes leave and got that letter. I wonder why she did that?”

“Because she wanted to prove your innocence, and she wanted to do that because she loves you. She’s a good girl, Dixie, and there’s no reason why you can’t ask her to be your wife.” And later, as Clint, with the mochilla that contained Crosby’s letter, rode away to the south, Dixie again returned to his boyhood habit of following Clint’s advice.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 28, 1925 issue of _Argosy-Allstory Weekly_ magazine.]