MOUNTAIN KILLERS

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.