Louisiana Lou. A Western Story

“Not that I know of,” answered Sucatash. “Gent came along and forked it. I allowed it was hisn and so I didn’t snub him down none. Was he the gent you was lookin’ for?”

“Which way did he go?”

“He was headin’ south-southeast by no’th or thereabouts when I last seen him,” said Sucatash. “And he was fannin’ a hole plumb through the atmosphere.”

They left the unsatisfactory witness and rushed to the corner around which De Launay had vanished. Here they found a man or two who had seen the galloping horse and its rider. But, as following on foot was manifestly impossible, one of them rushed to a telephone while others ran back to get a police automobile and give chase.

De Launay, meanwhile, was riding at a hard pace through the outlying streets of the town, heading toward the south. The paved streets gave way to gravel roads, and the smoke of the factories hung in the air behind him. Past comfortable bungalows and well-kept lawns he rushed, until the private hedges gave place to barbed-wire fences, and the cropped grass to fields of standing stubble.

The road ran along above and parallel to the river, following a ridge. To one side of it the farms lay, brown and gold in their autumn vesture. At regular intervals appeared a house, generally of the stereotyped bungalow form.

De Launay had passed several of these when he noticed, from one ahead of him, several men running toward the road. He watched them, saw that they gesticulated toward the cloud of dust out of which he rode, and turned in his saddle to open the pockets back of the cantle. From one he drew belt and holster, sagging heavily with the pistol that filled it. From the other he pulled clips loaded with cartridges. Leaving the horse to run steadily on the road he strapped himself with the gun.

The men had reached the road and were lined up across it. One of them had a shotgun and others were armed with forks and rakes. They waved their weapons and shouted for him to stop. He calmly drew the pistol and pulled his horse down in the midst of them.

“Well?” he asked as they surged around him. The man with the shotgun suddenly saw the pistol and started to throw the gun to his shoulder.

“We got him!” he yelled, excitedly.

“Got who?” asked De Launay. “You pointing that gun at me? Better head it another way.”

His automatic was swinging carelessly at the belligerent farmer. The man was not long in that country, but he was long enough to know the difference between a shotgun and an automatic forty-five. He lost his nerve.

“We’re lookin’ for an escaped convict,” he muttered. “Be you the feller?”

“Keep on looking,” said De Launay, pleasantly. “But drop that gun and those pitchforks. What do you mean by holding up a peaceable man on the highroads?”

The rattled farmer and his cohorts were bluffed and puzzled. The automatic spoke in terms too imperative to be disregarded. Capturing escaped prisoners was all very well, but when it involved risks such as this they preferred more peaceful pursuits. The men backed away, the farmer let the shotgun drop to the ground.

“Pull your freight!” said De Launay, shortly. They obeyed.

He whirled his horse and resumed his headlong flight. He had gained fifty yards when the farmer, who had run back to his gun, fired it after him. The shot scattered too much to cause him any uneasiness. He laughed back at them and fled away.

Other places had been warned also, but De Launay rushed past them without mishap. The automatic was a passport which these citizens were eager to honor, and which the police had not taken into account. To stop an unarmed fugitive was one thing, but to interfere with one who bristled with murder was quite another.

A new peril was on his trail, however. He soon heard the distant throb of a motor running with the muffler open. Looking back along the road, he could see the car as it rounded curves on top of the ridge. All too soon it was throbbing behind him and not half a mile away.

But he did not worry. Right ahead was a stone marker which he knew marked the boundary of Nevada. Long before the car could reach him he had passed it. He kept on for two or three hundred yards at the same pace while the car, forging up on him, was noisy with shouts and commands to stop. He slowed down to a trot and grinned at the men who stood in the car and pointed their revolvers at him. His pistol was dangling in his hand.

“You gents want me?” he asked, pleasantly. His former captor sputtered an oath.

“You’re shoutin’ we want you,” he cried. “Get off that horse and climb in here, you – ”

De Launay’s voice grew hard and incisive.

“You got a warrant for my arrest?”

“Warrant be hanged! You’re an escaped prisoner! Climb down before we let you have it!”

“That’s interesting. Where’s your extradition papers?”

The officer shrieked his commands and imprecations, waving his pistol. De Launay grinned.

“If you want to test the law, go ahead,” he said. “I’m in Nevada as you know very well. If you want to shoot, you may get me – but I can promise that I’ll get you, too. The first man of you that tightens a trigger will get his. Go to it!”

An officer who is on the right side of the law is thereby fortified and may proceed with confidence. If he is killed, his killer commits murder. But an officer who is on the wrong side of the law has no such psychological reënforcement. He is decidedly at a disadvantage. The policemen were courageous – but they faced a dilemma. If they shot De Launay, they would have to explain. If he shot them, it would be in self-defense and lawful resistance to an illegal arrest. Furthermore, there was something about the way he acted that convinced them of his intention and ability. There were only three of them, and he seemed quite confident that he could get them all before they could kill him.

The officer who had been his guardian thought of a way out.

“There’s a justice of the peace a mile ahead,” he said. “We’ll just linger with you until we reach him and get a warrant.”

“Suit yourselves,” said De Launay, indifferently. “But don’t crowd me too closely. Those things make my horse nervous.”

They started the car, but he galloped easily on ahead, turning in his saddle to watch them. They proceeded slowly, allowing him to gain about forty yards. The officer thought of shooting at him when he was not looking, but desisted when he discovered that De Launay seemed to be always looking.

They had proceeded only a short distance when De Launay, without warning, spurred his horse into a run, swinging him at the same time from side to side of the road. Turned in his saddle, he raised his hand and the staccato rattle of his automatic sounded like the roll of a drum. The startled officers fired and missed his elusive form. They had their aim disarranged by the sudden jolt and stoppage of the car. De Launay had shot the two front tires and a rear one to pieces.

The discomfited policemen saw him disappearing down the road in a cloud of dust from which echoed his mocking laugh and a chanted, jubilant verse that had not been heard in that region for nineteen years:

“My Louisiana! Louisiana Lou!”

CHAPTER XI

JIM BANKER HITS THE TRAIL

When Jim Banker, the prospector, hurried from the hotel, he was singularly agitated for a man merely suffering from the shyness of the desert wanderer in the presence of a pretty woman. His furtive looks and the uneasy glances he cast behind him, no less than the panicky character of his flight, might have aroused further question on the part of those he left, had they been in a position to observe the man.

He made no pause until he had gained the comparative seclusion of Johnny the Greek’s place, which he found almost deserted after the riot of which De Launay had been the center. Johnny had succeeded in getting rid of the officers without the discovery of his illicit operations, and Snake Murphy was once more in his place ready to dispense hospitality. Few remained to accept it, however, the imminent memory of the police having frightened all others away. A liberal dispensation of money and the discovery that De Launay’s coat and shoes were of excellent make and more valuable than those he had lost, had secured the silence of the man whom De Launay had robbed, and he had departed some time since.

Banker sidled into the upstairs room and made his way to the end of the bar, where he called huskily for whisky. Having gulped a couple of fiery drinks, he shivered and straightened up, his evil eyes losing their look of fright.

“Say, Murph,” he whispered, hoarsely. “They’s the devil to pay!”

“How come?” asked Murphy, yawning.

“You remember French Pete, who was killed back in nineteen hundred?”

“The Basco? Sure I do. I got a reminder, hain’t I? Louisiana done shot me up before he went out an’ beefed Pete – if he did beef him.”

“If he did? Whatever makes you say that? If he didn’t– who did?” Jim blurted out the question in a gasp, as though fairly forcing utterance of the words. Murphy flicked a sidelong look at him and then bent his absent gaze across the room.

“Oh – I dunno. Never knew Louisiana to use a rifle, though. The dare-devil! I can hear him now, ridin’ off a-laughin’ and a-chortlin’

“Back to Whisky Chitto; to Beau Regarde bayou;
To my Louisiana – Louisiana Lou.

“Remember the feller’s singin’, Jim?”

The few men in the place had turned startled eyes as Murphy whined the doggerel ballad nasally. It was strange to them, but Banker shivered and shrank from the grinning bartender.