Beyond the Law
CHAPTER I
WATSON HEARS HIS CALL
“Did you ever kill a man?”
The question came quietly out of a long silence. The younger man looked upquickly from the crackling camp-fire, his eyes searching his partner’s graveface for an explanation of the strangely dull note in his voice.
“No, Johnny. I never killed a man. Why?”
Johnny Watson made no answer for a little as he drew thoughtfully upon his pipe.The little, drying mountain stream upon which they had camped for the night wentsinging on its way under the stars.
Neither of the two men so much as stirred until after the younger man had almostforgotten the abrupt question, and was thinking upon the bed he had made ofwillow branches, when Johnny Watson took the pipe from between his lips, ran abrown hand across the grizzled stub of his ragged mustache and continued in thesame expressionless monotone:
“I have. Three of ’em. One close to thirty years ago, Dick. A sailor, he was;and a sailor of a sort I was, too, in those days. Down where the South Seas isused to man-killing. I had a little money, a good deal for a sailorman to haveall at one time, sewed in a bit of canvas in my shirt. Ben, he had been drunkand was mean and reckless, or I guess he wouldn’t ’a’ done it— Ben was a decentman after his fashion.
“He come up behind with a knife. I saw his shadow, and I give it to him acrossthe temple with a bit of scrap-iron laying on the little pier. He died two dayslater.
“One was twenty years gone now. They called him DeVine, and he was thecrookedest man that ever put on white man’s clothes. It began with cards, andended with him trying to do me on a mine. He knowed when I had caught him, andpulled his gun first. He missed me about six inches, and we wasn’t standing morethan seven feet apart....
“And one was something more than eight years ago. He was no account. He murderedold Tom Richards. Tom was a pardner of mine. Tom’s body wasn’t cold yet when theman as murdered him went to plead his case with the Great Judge.”
Again the deep stillness of the mountains shut in about them. Young Dick Farleystared curiously into his partner’s face, wondering. And since the ways of thecities of the earth were not forgotten by him, the ways of men, where judges andcourts and written laws were not, were new to him—he shivered slightly.
For two years he and the man who was speaking quietly of the murderous killingof men, and the killing of men in retribution, had lived together in that closefraternity for which the West has coined the word “pardnership” from a colderword; and never had he heard old Johnny Watson talk as he did tonight. And stillhe waited for the man to go on, knowing that there was some reason for thisunasked confidence.
“There’s some things a man can explain,” went on Watson. “There’s a Lord’s sightmore he can’t. When you’ve lived as long as I have, Dickie, alone a bigthree-fourths of the time, maybe you’ll be like me and not try to look underthings for the why so long’s you know the what.
“I know now you and me are on the likeliest trail I ever put one foot down infront of the other on. And I know it’s my last trail! It’s ‘So long’ for you andme, pardner. And I’m going to know real soon what’s on the other side ofthings.”
Dick Farley sought a light rejoinder