It was a big jump, and the great danger was that, in missing, his impact on the floor would surely alarm the men in the office, so he gathered himself, ran swiftly on his toes, and sprang. His hands slapped on the edge of the framing, the fingers slipped—and held.
He was swinging like a pendulum from the impetus of the leap, and taking advantage of the backward sway, he drew himself with a lunge through the skylight, and his knee rested on the roof.
Only now did he realize what freedom would mean. The gallows which had been his familiar thought, the death which he had been nerving himself to die, became dim, misted ghosts behind his conscious mind. And he saw, to the east, a long streak of white light, and the black hills tumbled away under it. There was his freedom!
He skirted across the flat roof, and at an angle looked down. Beneath him paced two men, meeting at the corner on each beat, and then turning their backs, like soldiers, and swinging off in opposite directions. Within three paces they were out of sight of each other, so Dreer drew back along one side and crouched to wait.
They were calling inside, thunderously loud: “Chalmers, Chalmers!”
Seconds would tell the story now, and how slow that fellow dragged along his beat, met his companion at the corner, and turned back. Half a dozen steps—a yell tore up from the inside of the prison, and the guard halted abruptly and looked behind him.
At that instant, like a black panther from an overhanging bough, Dreer dropped. His knees struck the fellow at the nape of the neck, and the blow stunned him. He was pitched upon his face, and Jess rolled half a dozen steps away, and came to his feet again, running low and fast across the clearing toward the nearest house, his revolver in his hand.
But not a shot followed him. The yell from the prison had dissolved into a shouting of many voices, and no doubt the other outer guards had hurried inside the jail at the very moment when they were needed on the outside. A moment later Jess was in the black shadow behind the first house.
It was his right direction, luckily, and he cut straight ahead at full speed, running as he had never run before. And how the absence of those irons gave wings to his heels! Behind him the uproar burst out of the jail and crashed through the open air. Doors began to slam open down the street; windows were smashed up. Other voices were calling here and there.
He had never dreamed that an entire town could be alarmed so quickly. It seemed to him that the noise spelled one syllable to the town: “Dreer!”
He whirled in at the saloon, vaulted the bars of the corral, and raced through the barn. His saddle was hanging on the very peg where he had left it. He reached Angelina, standing with her sleepy head hanging far down, and cast the creaking burden on her back.
Angelina did not even raise her head; she did not even stir an ear. Such scenes as this were old indeed to her.
Jess Dreer could have burst into song. His own saddle, his own horse. Angelina of all others. With her stubborn sides between his knees he felt that he could mock the world. There was only one thing lacking, and that was the old revolver which hung on the wall of the office of Sheriff Clancy in the jail. For that matter, he had two better guns hanging now from his belt.
But he would not have traded the original revolver for a thousand of the newest. It belonged to him, and he felt his luck was inextricably wrapped up in it. For a moment, sitting in the saddle, he hesitated; then he determined on the venture. Instead of cutting out of the corral of Carrol's place and heading for the hills, he jogged up the alley and swung onto the main street of Salt Springs. Almost instantly a volley of a dozen horses thundered down at him. Two of them swung off with a yell as he came into the road.
“Go it, boys! I'm with you!” yelled Jess Dreer, and waved his hat at the diminishing line of riders.
But now the gray dawn was growing every moment, and in a short time people would be able to recognize him. Up the street he went at the same slow trot, feeling Angelina unlimber beneath him and begin to come up on the bit, for the unaccustomed rest of the last few days had filled her full of running.
Straight to the jail went Jess Dreer again.
From a distance he could see single horsemen and horsemen in groups radiating from the open door of the sheriff like rays of light from a lantern, and he knew that the sheriff, the master mind, was directing the pursuit. Why did the sheriff himself abstain from taking part? Like a wise general, perhaps, he preferred by far to remain behind the lines of action and view his troops at a distance, measuring chances and results.
There was a dwindling group of saddled horses in front of the jail, and now and again out burst a man, flung himself on his mount, and rushed headlong off.
Jess Dreer reined in Angelina and waited a little uneasily. For now the daylight was increasing with every moment, and his stay in Salt Springs became with each second doubly perilous. But it seemed to him that to the very tips of his fingers his hands ached for the familiar touch of his old revolver.
Still he delayed. A secondary purpose was beginning to form in his mind, a sort of delicate mental dessert, and he rolled the anticipation of it over the roots of his tongue, and grinned to himself in the dim dawn. Far away, he heard the pursuit splashing through the hills around Salt Springs, voices, even gunshots.
Yet he remained there at the center of his danger until there was left, before the jail, only a single horse. The moment he saw this, he sent Angelina into full gallop with a touch of his knees. Sheriff Clancy came and stood in the doorway.
“Who's there? Down to the old fort, pardner, and ride mighty fast! But who are you?”
This as, instead of obeying, the new horseman flung himself out of the saddle.
“An old friend,” said Jess Dreer, and thrust a gun under the chin of Clancy.
The sheriff stiffened, as if suddenly petrified.
“Don't beg,” said the big man. “I got a sneaking idea that maybe you'll be on your knees in a minute, begging for your life. It gives me the creeps to see the yaller come out in a gent, Sheriff. So I'll tell you beforehand that I ain't going to send a slug through you. Got two reasons for letting you off. First, because a shot would bring some callers, most like. Second, because I can do worse'n kill you, Claney. I can shame you so's you'll be the laughingstock of the ranges. And that's what I'll do. Now turn your back.”
The sheriff obeyed without a word.
Inside went the sheriff. When the light struck him, one could see that he was quaking. His head and shoulders were sinking. Indeed, he seemed to be wilting away, as slugs will when salt is sprinkled on them.
“I had an idea you was a skunk,” said Dreer, making a face as though he were swallowing a bitter pill. “But I didn't know the yaller streak was so wide.”
The sheriff seemed tongue-tied. Dreer took from the wall of the room a long rope and spun it dexterously around Claney, weaving him, hand, foot, and body to the neck, in a tight coil of horsehair.
The sheriff's own wadded handkerchief made the gag, and it was wedged deep into his throat.
After this, Dreer looked around the room. It was in the wildest confusion. Chairs, overturned, lay here and there, even including the sheriff's own priceless leather-seated throne. And in his mind's eye the outlaw pictured the excitement when the yell of the first discoverer sent the guards rushing into the jail.
It was perfectly quiet in Salt Springs; but a ring of noise rolled farther and farther away around it. Dreer stepped to the door, looked out, and then came back and poured himself a drink from the uncorked bottle. He found his own revolver—already by the industry of the sheriff enclosed in a glass case with an inscription burned into the wood below it.
“Taken from the celebrated desperado, Jess Dreer, by Sheriff Claney.”
“The dead come back to life,” and Dreer grinned as he threw aside the two guns, unstrapped one useless holster, and slipped his ancient weapon into the other.
Instantly he felt a double reliance.
Going out, he paused by the sheriff, smiled contemptuously into the man's face, and seeing the eyes widen with fear, he turned on his heel and went out.
He was climbing into the saddle when three men plunged up to the jail.
“What's orders?” they called, still from a distance.
“Down to the Six-Bar Ranch,” directed Jess.
“Are you going that way? Show us down!”
“What's the matter? Strangers?”
“Just got in last night. Heard about him, but never seen him. What's he look like, before we start?”
“I'll tell you as we go along. I'll be your guide, boys, and when I see him, I'll tell you what's what. Take him all in all, he looks a good deal like me.”
“Thought he was a pile bigger.”
“Come to think of it, I reckon he is. Let's start!”
