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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77343 ***
MOUNTAIN KILLERS
Lying in wait for his brother’s murderer, Olaf Swensen
planned to execute mountain justice--but fate crouched
in the background.
By Thomas Barclay Thomson
The rifle barrel peered malignantly, implacably, over the edge of
the huge rock. Behind it, his eyes fixed upon the sun-drenched
mountain trail below, lay Olaf Swensen.
A full two hours had passed since Olaf first took up his vigil; yet
no sign of impatience did he show. For six months, now, he had
awaited this chance to kill Sim Satterlee. What did a few minutes,
one way or another, matter to him?
Back of Olaf, above him, in the fork of the giant pine, the thing
crouched, jaws slavering, tail twitching. Hunger urged it to leap,
but man was not to be thus lightly attacked. The cougar, old, slow
on the game trails, had learned the slower speed of man and his puny
strength, but animal instinct demanded caution. This man below was
armed, himself a killer who lay in ambush.
From far down the cañon, came the ring of iron on stone, followed by
heavy oaths, as the driver urged his string of pack-mules up the
steep trail.
Yesterday Sim Satterlee, Shifty Sim, had been tried and acquitted of
the murder of Lars Swensen, Olaf’s brother. Olaf knew that nothing
would prevent Sim’s hurried flight to the sanctity of his mountain
retreat in the fastnesses of Dead Man’s Gulch. So, overlooking the
trail over which Sim must pass on his way to his mountain aerie,
Olaf grimly awaited his coming.
Man and gun were welded in one weapon, grim, purposeful, vengeful.
The lion, too, ceased all motion; the twitching tail was stilled.
With effortless stride, the lanky, black-visaged mountaineer
slouched along below, trailing the plodding, scuffing feet of the
mules. His shifty, darting eyes, afurtive with the uneasiness of
guilt, searched vainly for a possible ambush.
Stoical, diabolically cool, Olaf continued to wait until Sim slunk
along directly beneath him. He had no chance, now, to dodge back to
a sheltering bush, or dart ahead to a friendly turn in the trail.
Shifty Sim’s keen, penetrating eyes located that grim, gaping
gun-barrel at the very moment Olaf halted him. Sim stood in a
tableau not unknown to him; but the roles were reversed, and fear
shook him like a palsy; his vicious black soul turned sick within
him.
No doubts had he of the identity of his Nemesis. Many times, lying
on his prison cot, awaiting trial, he had regretted his failure to
remove Lars Swensen’s brother when opportunity offered. His plea of
self-defense, so carefully planned, could easily have covered the
two cases. The witnesses, in deathly fear of his vengeful methods,
would as readily have sworn to a double lie. But perhaps there was
still a chance.
Slowly Sim’s hand crept toward the bib of his greasy overalls, his
piercing glance seeking the outline of his hidden enemy.
“Yust leave your gun be!” Olaf called. The rifle barrel concentrated
on a point slightly to the left of, and above Sim’s breastbone. Its
unwinking stare caused his flesh to crawl at that spot; his heart
did queer things. His hand dropped limply to his side. Clammy sweat
exuded from every pore of him, but his eyes still searched the
covert above.
“Say your prayers, murderer, for now you die!”
* * * * *
There came a long, tense silence. Sim stood without motion,
helpless, doomed. In that moment he distinguished the form of Olaf,
prone upon the rock, behind the unwavering rifle. And, hopelessly,
he cursed an oath-laden prayer, a blasphemous petition for a chance
to die fighting. Once more, his hand crept toward the resting place
of his well-oiled old .45; slowly, so slowly.
Taunts from the hidden Olaf; more taunts. Revenge is admittedly
sweet, and long had Olaf awaited this moment. Again he ordered the
creeping hand down.
Shifty Sim was on the brink of collapse. Like so many of his
kind--those who kill on slight provocation, and with insatiable
bloodthirstiness--he was weak and cowardly at heart.
He sensed a stir overhead; slight, almost imperceptible. The
nervous, twitching tail of the crouching Death in the great pine
caught the fear-glazed eyes of Sim Satterlee. He traced the lion’s
tense outline. Would it leap in time, drop upon the prostrate Olaf,
thereby liberating Sim and sending his enemy to a tragic death? Or
would Olaf, unhindered, press the trigger and snuff out his life?
And then Olaf, the stoical, who thrice had taken upon himself the
execution of his mortal foe, broke under the strain. He sprang to
his feet, arms upraised; fists clenched, eyes gazing skyward. The
loosened rifle clattered unnoticed down the stony slope. Bitterly he
cried out:
“Ay can’t do it! Ay can’t do it! Lars, you hear me? Ay tried, but Ay
can’t!”
Nerves, drawn taut as steel wires, snapped into dynamic action. The
huge cougar, with a snarling cry, catapulted itself straight toward
the spot so lately occupied by the recumbent Olaf, a huge,
rapier-armed paw swishing viciously down in vain effort to crush
him. A frenzied shriek of warning, defiance, and relief came from
Sim, as his hand leaped to his breast and out again, bearing the
death-dealing forty-five. The bullet from its muzzle met the lion in
mid-air.
Olaf reeled away from this unexpected menace. The wounded lion
landed on the edge of the rock directly above Sim Satterlee. His
next leap was instantaneous and purposeful. Again Sim’s gun crashed
its message of death, but in vain. The great cat struck squarely,
and the two killers, man and brute, went down in a sickening
scramble. The beast’s claws raked convulsively and were still. Sim’s
bullets had done their work too late.
Crushed beneath the body of the dying beast lay Shifty Sim, clawed
and mauled almost beyond recognition, his lifeblood spurting from
his mangled body.
Overcome with shock and horror, Olaf, on hands and knees, crawled
down to his stricken foes, idiotically gibbering a mixture of
Swedish and English, attempting to express his gratitude to Sim, his
late enemy.
Sim raised himself on an elbow, made a convulsive attempt to reach
the revolver lying beside him--and sank back, eyes glazing.
“Hell!” he mumbled thickly. “Missed ya with--my--last shot.”
Stark incredulity--then the horror of belief--dawned in the eye of
Swede Olaf, as the import of the words struck home. Shifty Sim saw.
A sardonic, triumphant gleam fitfully lit the hardened countenance,
and as he had lived, so Sim died--unregenerate, spurning all
gratitude, profanely denying that even for one brief moment he had
been a man.
[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the March 23, 1929 issue
of _Argosy All Story Weekly_ magazine.]
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77343 ***
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