Free Wanderer Of the Wasteland (1982) by Zane Grey Page A

bullets. "You needn't bluff it out with your damned lying white face. She told me...You--you Adam Larey, with your pure thoughts and lofty ideals...the rot of them! You--damn your milksop soul!--you were the slave of a dirty little greaser girl who fooled you, laughed in your face, left you for me--for me at the snap of my fingers...And, by God! my cup would be full--if your mother could only know----"
    It was Collishaw's swift hand that knocked up Adam's flinging arm and the gun which spouted red and boomed heavily. Collishaw grappled with him--was flung off--and then Guerd lunged in close to save himself. A writhing, wrestling struggle--quick, terrible; then the gun boomed with muffled report--and Guerd Larey uttering a cry of agony, fell away from Adam, backward over the table. His gaze, conscious, appalling, was fixed on Adam. A dark crimson spot stained his white shirt. Then he lay there with fading eyes--the beauty and radiance and hate of his face slowly shading.
    Collishaw leaned over him. Then with hard, grim gesture he shouted, hoarsely: "Dead, by God!...You'll hang for this!"
    A creeping horror was slowly paralysing Adam. But at that harsh speech he leaped wildly, flinging his gun with terrific force into the sheriff's face. Like an upright stone dislodged Collishaw fell. Then Adam, bounding forward, flung aside the men obstructing his passage and fled out of the door.
    Terror lent wings to his feet. In a few moments he was beyond the outskirts of the camp. Even here, fierce in his energy, he bounded upward, from rock to rock, until he reached the steep jumble of talus where swift progress was impossible. Then with hands and feet working in unison, as if he had been an ape, he climbed steadily.
    From the top of the first rocky slope he gazed back fearfully. Yes, men were pursuing him, strung out along the road of the mining camp; and among the last was a tall, black-coated, bareheaded man that Adam took to be Collishaw. This pursuer was staggering along, flinging his arms.
    Adam headed straight up the ascent. Picacho loomed to the right, a colossal buttress of red rock, wild and ragged and rugged. But the ascent that had looked so short and easy--how long and steep! Every shadow was a lie, every space of slope in the sunlight hid the truth of its width. Sweat poured from his hot body. He burned. His breath came in laboured bursts. A painful stab in his side spread and swelled to the whole region of his breast. He could hear the mighty throb of his heart, and he could hear it in another way--a deep muffled throb through his ears.
    At last he reached the height of the slope where it ended under a wall of rock, the backbone of that ridge, bare and jagged, with no loose shale on its almost perpendicular side. Here it took hard labour of hand and foot to climb and zigzag and pull himself up. Here he fell exhausted.
    But the convulsion was short lived. His will power was supreme and his endurance had not been permanently disabled. He crawled before he could walk, and when he recovered enough to stagger erect he plodded on, invincible in his spirit to escape.
    From this height, which was a foothill to the great peak, he got his bearings and started down.
    "They can't--trail me--here," he whispered, hoarsely, as he looked back with the eyes of a fugitive. "And--down there--I'll keep off the road."
    After that brief moment of reasoning he became once more victim to fear and desperate passion to hurry. He had escaped, his pursuers could not see him now, he could hide, the descent was tortuous; yet these apparent facts, favourable as they were, could not save him. Adam pushed on, gaining strength as he recovered breath. As his direction led him downhill, he went swiftly, sometimes at a rapid walk, again sliding down here and rushing there, and at other places he stepped from rock to rock, like a balancing rope walker.
    The descent here appeared to be a long, even slant of broken rocks, close together like cobblestones in a