Jonas Prim was too busy and too worried to pay any attention to the Tribune or its editor.He already had the best operative that the best detective agency in the nearest metropolis could furnish.The man had come to Oakdale, learned all that was to be learned there, and forthwith departed.
This, then, will be about all concerning Oakdale for the present.We must leave her to bury her own dead.
The sudden pressure of the knife point against the breast of the Oskaloosa Kid awakened the youth with a startling suddenness which brought him to his feet be-fore a second vicious thrust reached him.For a time he did not realize how close he had been to death or that he had been saved by the chance location of the auto-matic pistol in his breast pocket--the very pistol he had taken from the dressing table of Abigail Prim's boudoir.
The commotion of the attack and escape brought the other sleepers to heavy-eyed wakefulness.They saw Dopey Charlie advancing upon the Kid, a knife in his hand.Behind him slunk The General, urging the other on.The youth was backing toward the doorway.The tableau persisted but for an instant.Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat--there was a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the ground, screaming.In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and vanished into the night.
It had all happened so quickly that the other members of the gang, awakened from deep slumber, had only time to stumble to their feet before it was over.The Sky Pilot, ignoring the screaming Charlie, thought only of the loot which had vanished with the Oskaloosa Kid.
"Come on! We gotta get him," he cried, as he ran from the barn after the fugitive.The others, all but Dopey Charlie, followed in the wake of their leader.
The wounded man, his audience departed, ceased screaming and, sitting up, fell to examining himself.To his surprise he discovered that he was not dead.A fur-ther and more minute examination disclosed the addi-tional fact that he was not even badly wounded.The bullet of The Kid had merely creased the flesh over the ribs beneath his right arm.With a grunt that might have been either disgust or relief he stumbled to his feet and joined in the pursuit.
Down the road toward the south ran The Oskaloosa Kid with all the fleetness of youth spurred on by terror.
In five minutes he had so far outdistanced his pursuers that The Sky Pilot leaped to the conclusion that the quarry had left the road to hide in an adjoining field.
The resultant halt and search upon either side of the road delayed the chase to a sufficient extent to award the fugitive a mile lead by the time the band resumed the hunt along the main highway.The men were de-termined to overhaul the youth not alone because of the loot upon his person but through an abiding suspi-cion that he might indeed be what some of them feared he was--an amateur detective--and there were at least two among them who had reason to be especially fear-ful of any sort of detective from Oakdale.
They no longer ran; but puffed arduously along the smooth road, searching with troubled and angry eyes to right and left and ahead of them as they went.
The Oskaloosa Kid puffed, too; but he puffed a mile away from the searchers and he walked more rapidly than they, for his muscles were younger and his wind unimpaired by dissipation.For a time he carried the small automatic in his hand; but later, hearing no evi-dence of pursuit, he returned it to the pocket in his coat where it had lain when it had saved him from death be-neath the blade of the degenerate Charlie.
For an hour he continued walking rapidly along the winding country road.He was very tired; but he dared not pause to rest.Always behind him he expected the sudden onslaught of the bearded, blear-eyed followers of The Sky Pilot.Terror goaded him to supreme physical effort.Recollection of the screaming man sinking to the earthen floor of the hay barn haunted him.He was a murderer! He had slain a fellow man.He winced and shuddered, increasing his gait until again he almost ran --ran from the ghost pursuing him through the black night in greater terror than he felt for the flesh and blood pursuers upon his heels.
And Nature drew upon her sinister forces to add to the fear which the youth already felt.Black clouds ob-scured the moon blotting out the soft kindliness of the greening fields and transforming the budding branches of the trees to menacing and gloomy arms which ap-peared to hover with clawlike talons above the dark and forbidding road.The wind soughed with gloomy and in-creasing menace, a sudden light flared across the south-ern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.
Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth's face; the vividness of the lightning had increased;the rumbling of the thunder had grown to the propor-tions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not pause to seek shelter.
Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately ahead--to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.
The fugitive paused, undecided.Which way should he turn? The better travelled highway seemed less mys-terious and awesome, yet would his pursuers not natur-ally assume that he had followed it? Then, of course, the right hand road was the road for him.Yet still he hesitated, for the right hand road was black and forbid-ding; suggesting the entrance to a pit of unknown hor-rors.
As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.