Free Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age) by L. Ron Hubbard Page A

George could not be far ahead of him. He was getting even madder.
    In midafternoon he walked with less spring. It was getting heavier, this stone going, and the riverbed was rising sharply into the hills. If it had been alive, he would have died where he was from a bullet.
    A shirt was barely showing in a crevice. They had stoned a man out of sight. Zeke pulled away the gray boulders and found the body of a hard-faced young man. The wound was old and it had bled a lot. Then Big George’s people had not entirely escaped in the holdup. He didn’t know if this was Mike or Oofty or who. He could not recall their names. But they had buried him where he had died. Ten minutes’ more work and Zeke sat down in disappointment. They had buried this man but they had taken his guns.
    Zeke put the stones in place and went on up the riverbed. Here, in the wet season, cascades had fallen. The going got harder and the climb more steep and it was nightfall before the stream began to branch and dwindle.
    Hungry and thirsty to the point of torment, Zeke threw himself down on the bank of the dry stream and rested. He did not know this country. His horse and his gear were gone. He had no weapons and he was hunted.
    He walked now by the faint light of the quarter moon which would soon be gone and his way was slow because he had to locate tracks each time the dry bed forked.
    It was midnight when he found water and he drank it in great gulps, trying to stop himself but unable to repress the tremendous greed of his thirst. He was sick for a short time and then began to feel better. Some courage came back into him.
    Suddenly he sat up and asked himself what he was doing here. It was a queer sensation. Like a man waking from a nightmare and finding it was real. What was he doing here?
    He tried to piece back over his logic without effect. So shocked had he been after the fall that he could not even remember what had happened when he left the holdup. Vaguely he remembered feeling angry and smart. The last place Harmon would permit anybody to look was on the track of Big George. That thought must have been with him. It was all animal cunning, hardly rational at all, the cleverness of the hunted, the fox doubling his tracks to elude the pack. But he had no gun to front Big George and Big George had guns and men.
    Even if he went back and tried to tell them that Big George had done the robbery, they would shoot him down. Those men had been furious with the killing of the coach horses and the men they knew. And Zeke was just a stranger in town.
    But he had no other way to go and he could not retrace what he had so arduously won in distance. The moon was gone sometime since but he had stopped looking for Big George’s tracks. All he wanted to do was get out of the country.
    After some interminable time—an hour—he heard the running of water and came at length to the edge of a stream which was encased by cliffs. He had passed the divide of the hills. The old streambed he had traveled had once carried some of the burden of this present river. He sensed himself in a tumbled, dangerous country and the roar of the water in the deep gorge was frightening, deep and savage.
    For an hour or more he felt his way along the canyon rim, trying to find a way down. It was dangerous work in the darkness. He finally stopped and rested. It was then he saw the pinpoint of light through trees.
    Hope came up to him. He had money. He could perhaps buy a horse and a gun and a canteen and food. Perhaps he had a chance now. He went eagerly toward the light.
    It was a hut, closed about by rocks and pines, situated on a tiny creek. Zeke moved more rapidly toward it. He came to the door and raised his fist to knock.
    An instant before his knuckles struck he heard, “To hell with Harmon, I say. It’s an easy ride to New Mexico!” It was the voice of Big George and Big George was drunk.
    “I don’t like to chance it,” said Oofty. “He’s half bloodhound. You see him the