De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the trail.

Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner’s Sons

Copyright, 1916, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published April, 1916

Printed in U. S. A.

TO MY SON

EUGENE LONERGAN SPEARMAN

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

1

Nan of Music Mountain

CHAPTER I

FRONTIER DAY

Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet––his feet were encased in tight, high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen’s boots––usually rested on the floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air. This idiosyncrasy his companion, de Spain, had learned to tolerate.

But Lefever’s subdued whistle, which seemed meditative, always irritated de Spain more or less, despite his endeavor not to be irritated. It was like the low singing of a tea-kettle, which, however unobtrusive, indicates steam within. In fact, John Lefever, who was built not unlike a kettle, and whose high, shiny forehead was topped by a pompadour shock of very yellow hair, never whistled except when there was some pressure on his sensibilities.

2

The warm sun streaming through the windows of the private office of the division superintendent at Sleepy Cat, a railroad town lying almost within gunshot of the great continental divide, would easily have accounted for the cordial perspiration that illumined Lefever’s forehead. Not that a perspiration is easily achieved in the high country; it isn’t. None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads on his companion’s forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself was properly responsible for their presence.

De Spain, tilted back in the superintendent’s chair, sat near Lefever––Jeffries had the mountain division then––his elbows resting on the arms of the revolving-chair, and with his hands he gripped rather defiantly the spindles supporting them; his feet were crossed on the walnut rim of the shabby, cloth-topped table. In this attitude his chin lay on his soft, open collar and tie, his sunburnt lips were shut tight, and above and between his nervous brown eyes were two little, vertical furrows of perplexity and regret. He was looking at the dull-finish barrel of a new rifle, 3 that lay across Lefever’s lap. At intervals Lefever took the rifle up and, whistling softly, examined with care a fracture of the lever, the broken thumb-piece of which lay on the table between the two men.

From the Main Street side of the large room came the hooting and clattering of a Frontier Day celebration, and these noises seemed not to allay the discomfort apparent on the faces of the two men.

“It certainly is warm,” observed Lefever, apropos of nothing at all.

“Why don’t you get out of the sun?” suggested de Spain shortly.

Lefever made a face. “I am trying to keep away from that noise.”

“Hang it, John,” blurted out de Spain peevishly, “what possessed you to send for me to do the shooting, anyway?”

His companion answered gently––Lefever’s patience was noted even among contained men––“Henry,” he remonstrated, “I sent for you because I thought you could shoot.”

De Spain’s expression did not change under the reproach. His bronzed face was naturally amiable, and his mental attitude toward ill luck, usually one of indifference, was rarely more than one of perplexity. His features were so regular as to 4 contribute to this undisturbed expression, and his face would not ordinarily attract attention but for his extremely bright and alive eyes––the frequent mark of an out-of-door mountain life––and especially for a red birthmark, low on his left cheek, disappearing under the turn of the jaw. It was merely a strawberry, so-called, but an ineradicable stamp, and perhaps to a less preoccupied man a misfortune. Henry de Spain, however, even at twenty-eight, was too absorbed in many things to give thought to this often, and after knowing him, one forgot about the birthmark in the man that carried it. Lefever’s reproach was naturally provocative. “I hope now,” retorted de Spain, but without any show of resentment, “you understand I can’t.”

“No,” persisted Lefever good-naturedly, “I only realize, Henry, that this wasn’t your day for the job.”

The door of the outer office opened and Jeffries, the superintendent, walked into the room; he had just come from Medicine Bend in his car. The two men rose to greet him. He asked about the noise in the street.

“That noise, William, comes from all Calabasas and all Morgan’s Gap,” explained Lefever, still fondling the rifle. “The Morgans are celebrating our defeat. They put it all over us. 5 We were challenged yesterday,” he continued in response to the abrupt questions of Jeffries. “The Morgans offered to shoot us offhand, two hundred yards, bull’s-eye count. The boys here––Bob Scott and some of the stage-guards––put it up to me. I thought we could trim them by running in a real gunman. I wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine, by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun,” explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. “The lever,” he added with a patient expletive, “broke.”

“Give me the gun, John,” interposed de Spain resignedly. “I’ll lay it on the track to-night for a train to run over.”

“It was a time limit, you understand, William,” persisted Lefever, continuing to stick pins calmly into de Spain. “Henry got to shooting too fast.”

“That wasn’t what beat me,” exclaimed de Spain curtly. And taking up the offending rifle he walked out of the room.

“Nor was it the most humiliating feature of his defeat,” murmured Lefever, as the door closed behind his discomfited champion. “What do you think, William?” he grumbled on. “The Morgans ran in a girl to shoot against us––true as there’s a God in heaven. They put up Nan 6 Morgan, old Duke Morgan’s little niece. And what do you think? She shot the fingers clean off our well-known Black Hand scout. I never before in my life saw Henry so fussed. The little Music Mountain skirt simply put it all over him. She had five bull’s-eyes to Henry’s three when the lever snapped. He forfeited.”

“Some shooting,” commented Jeffries, rapidly signing letters.

“We expected some when Henry unslung his gun,” Lefever went on without respecting Jeffries’s preoccupation. “As it is, those fellows have cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money? They could start a bank this minute.”

Sounds of revelry continued to pour in through the street window. The Morgans were celebrating uncommonly. “Rubbing it in, eh, John?” suggested Jeffries.

“Think of it,” gasped Lefever, “to be beaten by an eighteen-year-old girl.”

“Now that,” declared Jeffries, waking up as if for the first time interested, “is exactly where you made your mistake, John. Henry is young and excitable–––”

“Excitable!” echoed Lefever, taken aback.

“Yes, excitable––when a girl is in the ring––why not? Especially a trim, all-alive, up-and-coming, 7 blue-eyed hussy like that girl of Duke Morgan’s. She would upset any young fellow, John.”

“A girl from Morgan’s Gap?”

“Morgan’s Gap, nothing!” responded Jeffries scornfully. “What’s that got to do with it? Does that change the fire in the girl’s eye, the curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, John, or the color of her cheek?” Lefever only stared. “De Spain got to thinking about the girl,” persisted Jeffries, “her eyes and neck and pink cheeks rattled him. Against a girl you should have put up an old, one-eyed scout like yourself, or me, or Bob Scott.

“There’s another thing you forget, John,” continued Jeffries, signing even more rapidly. “A gunman shoots his best when there’s somebody shooting at him––otherwise he wouldn’t be a gunman––he would be just an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a rooster feather in his hat. That’s why you shoot well, John––because you’re a gunman, and not a marksman.”

“That boy can shoot all around me, Jeff.”

“For instance,” continued Jeffries, tossing off signatures now with a rubber stamp, and developing his incontestable theory at the same time, “if you had put Gale Morgan up against Henry 8 at, say five hundred yards, and told them to shoot at each other, instead of against each other, you’d have got bull’s-eyes to burn from de Spain. And the Calabasas crowd wouldn’t have your money. John, if you want to win money, you must study the psychological.”

There was abundance of raillery in Lefever’s retort: “That’s why you are rich, Jeff?”

“No, I am poor because I failed to study it. That is why I am at Sleepy Cat holding down a division. But now that you’ve brought Henry up here, we’ll keep him.”

“What do you mean, keep him?” demanded Lefever, starting in protest.

“What do I mean?” thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even when it didn’t rain in the office. “I mean I need him. I mean the time to shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de Spain?” demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.

“Henry de Spain?” asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.

“No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts de Spain,” retorted Jeffries peevishly. “Don’t you know the man we’re talking about?”

“Known him for ten years.”

9

“Then why say ‘Henry’ de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He’s the only de Spain in these parts, isn’t he? What kind of a fellow is he?”

Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table, one arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with emphasis: “Why, if you want him short and sharp, he’s a man with a soft eye and a snap-turtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that can wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it––if you want him flat, that’s Henry, as I size him.”

Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: “Tell him to come in a minute, John.”

De Spain himself expressed contemptuous impatience when Lefever told him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman’s yell that rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows––and from up the street and down there were still a good many––was one of 10 derision at de Spain’s galling defeat. When he at length consented to talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.

“You are looking for promotion, aren’t you?” he demanded threateningly.

“Yes, but not for motion without the ‘pro,’” objected de Spain. “I want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the stage business.”

“Temporarily, yes. But I’ve told you when you come back to the division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running the Thief River stages. Think of the salary.”

“I have no immediate heirs.”

“This is not a matter for joking, de Spain.”

“I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the last six months?”

“Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes,” admitted Jeffries brusquely; “that is to be expected where the specie shipments are large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you don’t have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and good guards––men willing to take any kind of a chance 11 if the pay is right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be right.”

“I have never as yet generally managed any stage line,” remarked de Spain, poking ridicule at the title, “no matter how modest an outfit.”

“You will never learn younger. There is a fascination,” declared Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to give ease and conviction to his words, “about running a good stage line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course, nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United States––nothing, I guess, in the world––that approaches the Thief River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by the Studebaker people.” Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. “You’ve seen them! You know what they are.”

De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.

“Second-growth hickory in the gears,” continued Jeffries encouragingly, “ash tongues and boxes–––”

“Some of those old buses look like ash-boxes,” interposed de Spain irreverently.

But Jeffries was not to be stopped: “Timkin 12 springs, ball-bearing axles––why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief River stage.”

“You are some wagon-maker, Jeff,” said de Spain, regarding him ironically.

Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. “This road, as you know, owns the line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de Spain, is a bad place.”

“Is it?” de Spain asked as naïvely as if he had never heard of Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and notorious to both.

“There are a lot of bad men there,” Jeffries went on, “who are bad simply because they’ve never had a man to show them.”

“The last ‘general’ manager was killed there, wasn’t he?”

“Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn.”

“Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?”

Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. “That’s all right, Henry! They won’t get you.” Again he extended his finger dogmatically: “If I thought they would, I wouldn’t send you down there.”

13

“Thank you.”

“You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn’t hanging from every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me.”

“You’re not getting shot at.”

“No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high country knows when he is to be made a target––that you well understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea of getting killed than I have––or you have.”

“Don’t include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right away––the minute I take this job.”

“We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough,” declared Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. “Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon––all hold-up men, every one of them! Henry, I’m putting you in on that job because you’ve got nerve, because you can shoot, because I don’t think they can get you––and paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry––” Jeffries leaned forward and lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the younger man under his 14 spell. “Do you know,” he repeated, “I suspect that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind and beneath a lot of this deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but what Duke will help him out.” Jeffries exploded with a slight but forcible expletive. “Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into Morgan’s Gap that didn’t find sympathy and shelter with some of the Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River stages.”

“As bad as that?”

Jeffries turned to his desk. “Ask John Lefever.”

De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they began. So it was on this trying day––for Lefever was not able wholly to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his humiliation 15 at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and Morgan Gap victors.

But concerning the Morgans and their friends, Lefever, to whom Jeffries had rudely referred the subject at the close of his talk with de Spain, did abandon his habitual reticence. “Rustlers, thieves, robbers, coiners, outlaws!” he exclaimed energetically.

“Is this because they got your money to-day, John?” asked de Spain.

“Never mind my money. I’ve got a new job with nothing to do, and plenty of cash.”

De Spain asked what the job was. “On the stages,” announced Lefever. “I am now general superintendent of the Thief River Line.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I act for the reorganization committee in buying alfalfa for the horses and smokeless pipes for the guards. I am to be your assistant.”

“I’m not going to take that job, John.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Not if I know it. I am going back to Medicine Bend to-night.” Lefever took off his hat and twirled it skilfully on one hand, humming softly the while. “John,” asked de Spain after a pause, “who is that girl that shot against me this afternoon?”

16

“That,” answered Lefever, thinking, shocked, of Jeffries’s words, “was Nan Morgan.”

“Who is she?”

“Just one of the Morgans; lives in the Gap with old Duke Morgan, her uncle; lived there as long as I can remember. Some shot, Henry.”

“How can she live in the Gap,” mused de Spain, “with an outfit like that?”

“Got nowhere else to live, I guess. I believe you’d better change your mind, Henry, and stay with us.”

“No,” returned de Spain meditatively, “I’m not going to stay. I’ve had glory enough out of this town for a while.” He picked up his hat and put it on. Lefever thought it well to make no response. He was charged with the maintenance and operation of the stage-line arsenal at Sleepy Cat, and spent many of his idle moments toying with the firearms. He busied himself now with the mechanism of a huge revolver––one that the stage-driver, Frank Elpaso, had wrecked on the head of a troublesome negro coming in from the mines. De Spain in turn took off his hat, poked the crown discontentedly, and, rising with a loss of amiability in his features and manner, walked out of the room.

The late sun was streaming down the full length of Main Street. The street was still filled with 17 loiterers who had spent the day at the fair, and lingered now in town in the vague hope of seeing a brawl or a fight before sundown––cattlemen and cowboys from the northern ranges, sheepmen from the Spider River country, small ranchers and irrigators from the Bear basin, who picked their steps carefully, and spoke with prudence in the presence of roisterers from the Spanish Sinks, and gunmen and gamblers from Calabasas and Morgan’s Gap. The Morgans themselves and their following were out to the last retainer.

18

CHAPTER II

THE THIEF RIVER STAGE LINE

Sleepy Cat has little to distinguish it in its casual appearance from the ordinary mountain railroad town of the western Rockies. The long, handsome railroad station, the eating-house, and the various division-headquarters buildings characteristic of such towns are in Sleepy Cat built of local granite. The yard facilities, shops, and roundhouses are the last word in modern railroad construction, and the division has not infrequently held the medal for safety records.

But more than these things go toward making up the real Sleepy Cat. It is a community with earlier-than-railroad traditions. Sleepy Cat has been more or less of a settlement almost since the day of Jim Bridger, and its isolated position in the midst of a country of vast deserts, far mountain ranges, and widely separated watercourses has made it from the earliest Western days a rendezvous for hunters, trappers, emigrants, prospectors, and adventurers––and these have all, in some measure, left their impress on the town.

Sleepy Cat lies prettily on a high plateau north 19 and east of the railroad, which makes a détour here to the north to round the Superstition Range; it is a county-seat, and this, where counties are as large as ordinary Eastern States, gives it some political distinction.

The principal street lies just north of the railroad, and parallels it. A modern and substantial hotel has for some years filled the corner above the station. The hotel was built by Harry Tenison soon after the opening of the Thief River gold-fields. Along Main Street to the west are strung the usual mountain-town stores and saloons, but to the north a pretty residence district has been built up about the court-house square. And a good water-supply, pumped from Rat River, a brawling mountain stream that flows just south of the town, has encouraged the care of lawns and trees.

Before de Spain had walked far he heard music from the open-air dancing-pavilion in Grant Street. Stirred by an idle curiosity, he turned the corner and stopped to watch the crowded couples whirling up and down the raised platform under paper lanterns and red streamers to the music of an automatic piano. He took his place in a fringe of onlookers that filled the sidewalk. But he was thinking as he stood, not of the boisterous dancing or the clumsy dancers, but of the broken 20 lever and the defeat at the fair-grounds. It still rankled in his mind. While he stood thinking the music ceased.

A man, who appeared to be in authority, walked to the centre of the dancing-floor and made an announcement that de Spain failed to catch. The manager apparently repeated it to those of his patrons that crowded around him, and more than once to individual inquirers who had not caught the purport of what had been said. These late comers he pushed back, and when the floor had been well cleared he nodded to the boy operating the piano, and looked toward a young couple standing in an attitude of waiting at the head of the hall.

All eyes being turned their way, de Spain’s attention as well was drawn toward them. The man was powerful in stature, and rather too heavy, but straight as an Indian. His small, reddish face was tanned by the sun and wind, and his manner as he stood with arms akimbo, his hands resting on his belt, facing his partner and talking to her, had the confidence of a man at ease with women. From the handsome hat which, as he turned to his partner for the dance, he sent spinning toward a table beside the piano, the soft brown shirt and flowing tie, down to the small, high-heeled and spurred boots, he wore the distinctive 21 cowboy rig of the mountains, even to the heavy hip-holster, in which his revolver was slung. He was, in fact, rather too smartly dressed, too confident in manner to please de Spain, who was in no mood to be pleased anyway, and who could conceive a dislike for a man the instant he set eyes on him––and a liking as quickly. He seemed to recall, too, that this particular fellow had crowed the loudest when he himself forfeited the shooting-match earlier in the day.

But de Spain, unamiable as he now was, looked with unconcealed interest at the man’s dancing partner. She, too, was browned by the mountain sun and air––a slight, erect girl, her head well set, and a delicate waist-line above a belted brown skirt, which just reached the tops of her small, high, tan riding-boots. She wore a soft, French-gray Stetson hat. Her dark-brown hair was deftly hidden under it, but troublesome ringlets strayed about her ears as if she had not seen a glass for hours, and these, standing first with one hand and then the other laid against her leather belt, she put up into place, and as if not wholly at ease with her surroundings. Instead of looking at her partner, who talked to her while waiting, her eyes, noticeably pretty, wandered about the platform, resting at moments on the closely drawn lines of spectators. They reflected 22 in their unrest the dissatisfied expression of her face. A talkative woman standing just in front of de Spain, told a companion that the man was Gale Morgan, a nephew of Satterlee, laziest of the Morgans. De Spain, who never had to look twice at any woman, at once recognized in the dancing partner the little Music Mountain girl who had been his undoing at the target; the woman added that Nan was, in some hazy degree, Gale’s cousin.

The energetic piano thumped the strains of a two-step. Gale Morgan extended his arm toward Nan; she looked very slight at his side. But instead of taking her position, she drew back, looking up and frowning as she seemed to speak objectingly to Gale. De Spain saw her hesitation without catching its import. The talkative woman near at hand was more divining. “Lord, that Nan Morgan makes me tired,” she exclaimed to her gum-chewing companion, “ever see anything like her? First she wouldn’t dance unless the floor was cleared––Sleepy Cat folks ain’t good enough for them Music Mountain cattle thieves! And now the music doesn’t suit her. Listen to that boob of a boy trying one piece after another to get one to suit my outlaw lady. Nerve!”

But while the impatient woman chafed the 23 right tune was found, and Nan Morgan’s face, as she watched the manipulator of the piano, brightened. “Faster!” she cried under her breath, taking her position on her cousin’s arm. Then, responding with a sort of fiery impatience to her partner’s guiding, she caught the rapid step of the music, and together the two swept down the floor.

Whatever the impatience of the crowd over the finicky start, the spectators soon showed their admiration of the dancing with unrestrained hand-clapping, and followed with approving outcries. De Spain, standing apart, watched Nan’s flying feet, wondering how she and her people could possibly be what they were painted, and whether they really were so or not. Every swaying step, every agile turn proved how sure she was of herself, and how perfectly her body answered to every exaction of the quick movement of the dance. Gale Morgan seemed the merest attendant for his partner, who, with quickened pulses, gave herself up more and more to the lively call of the music.

Once the two swung away out, near to de Spain’s corner. As Nan whirled by, de Spain, either with the infection of the music or from her nearness to him, caught his breath. His eyes riveted themselves on her flushed face as she 24 passed––oblivious of his presence––and he recalled how in the morning she had handled her rifle in the same quick, sure way. De Spain could not dance at all; but no one could successfully accuse him of not knowing how to handle any sort of a gun. It was only now, as she came so very close to him for the first time since the mortification of the morning, and he saw the smoothness of her pink-brown cheeks, that he could ungrudgingly give her full credit for shooting him down. He forgave her, unasked, the humiliation she had put on him. He felt an impulse to go up to her––now that she had stopped dancing––and congratulate her honestly, instead of boorishly as he had done at the match, and to say, unreservedly, that she was the better shot––indeed, one of the best he had ever seen.

But while he thought all of this he did not stir a step. The two dancers at once disappeared, and a new and rougher party crowded out on the floor.

“Now, isn’t that a pretty bunch!” exclaimed the critical woman again. “That’s the Calabasas gang. Look at those four men with the red neckerchiefs. Sandusky, that big fellow, with the crooked jaw––Butch, they call him––and his jaw’s not half as crooked as Sandusky himself, either. He couldn’t lie in bed straight. And 25 Harvey Logan, with his black hair plastered over his eyes. Why, for one drink those two fellows would turn loose on this crowd and kill half a dozen. And there’s two of Duke Morgan’s cowboys with them, boozing old Bull Page, and that squint-eyed Sassoon––he’s worse than the others, that fellow––a fine bunch to allow in this town.”

De Spain had excellent ears. He had heard of these Calabasas men––of Sandusky and of the little fellow, Logan. They had much more than a local reputation as outlaws; they were known from one end of the Superstition Range to the other as evil-doers of more than ordinary ruthlessness. De Spain, from force of habit, studied every detail of their make-up. Both showed more than traces of drink, and both securing partners joined rudely in the dancing. It had become second nature to de Spain to note even insignificant details concerning men, and he took an interest in and remarked how very low Logan carried his gun in front of his hip. Sandusky’s holster was slung higher and farther back on the side. Logan wore a tan shirt and khaki. Sandusky, coatless, was dressed in a white shirt, with a red tie, and wore a soiled, figured waistcoat fastened at the bottom by a cut-glass button.

The Sleepy Cat gossip commented on how much money these men had been spending all day. 26 She wondered aloud, reckless apparently of consequences, who had been robbed, lately, to provide it. Her companion scolded her for stirring up talk that might make trouble; averred she didn’t believe half the stories she heard; asserted that these men lived quietly at Calabasas, minding their own affairs. “And they’re kind to poor folks, too.” “Sure,” grimaced the obdurate one, “with other people’s money.” De Spain had no difficulty in placing the two women. One was undoubtedly the wife of a railroad man, who hated the mountain outlaws, and the other was, with equal certainty, a town sympathizer with slandered men, and the two represented the two community elements in Sleepy Cat.

De Spain, discontented, turning again into Main Street, continued on toward the Thief River stage barn. He knew an old Scotch Medicine Bend barnman that worked there, a boyhood friend; but the man, McAlpin, was out. After looking the horses over and inspecting the wagons with a new but mild curiosity, awakened by Jeffries’s proposal, de Spain walked back toward the station. He had virtually decided not to take the job that Jeffries painted as so attractive, and resolved now to take the night train back to Medicine Bend. Medicine Bend was his home. He knew every man, woman, and child in the 27 town. Before the tragic death of his father, his mother had lived there, and de Spain had grown up in the town and gone to school there. He was a railroad man, anyway––a modest trainmaster––and not eager for stage-line management.

The prospect of reducing the Sinks to a law-and-order basis at his own proper risk could not be alluring to the most aggressive of law-and-order men––and de Spain was not aggressive. Yet within a moment of his sensible decision he was to be hurried by a mere accident to an exactly contrary fate.

As he passed Grant Street again he encountered a party on horseback heading for the river bridge. Trotting their horses leisurely, they turned the corner directly in front of de Spain. There were five in the company. Three of the men were riding abreast and a little ahead. Of these, the middle horseman was a spare man of forty years, with a black military hat, and a frankly disreputable air. His face was drawn up into a one-sided smile, marked by a deep, vertical wrinkle running up, close to his nose, from the corner of his mouth almost to the inner corner of his eye. Satt Morgan’s smile was habitual and lessened his stern aspect. At his right rode his cousin, Duke Morgan, older, shorter, and stouter. His square, heavy-jawed, smooth-shaven face was 28 lighted by hard, keen eyes, and finished by an uncompromising chin. Duke was the real head of the clan, of which there were numerous branches in the Superstition Mountains, all looking with friendliness or enmity to the Morgans of Morgan’s Gap.

The yellow-haired man riding on the left, with a red face and red-lidded, squinting eyes, was in stature something between the two Morgans, and about the age of the elder cousin. His shoulders slouched, and he showed none of the blood of his companions. But this man, David Sassoon, the Calabasas gambler, quondam cowboy, and chronic brawler, stood in some way close to the different Morgans, and was reputed to have got each of them, at different times, out of more than one troublesome affair, either by sheer force of arms, or through his resourceful cunning.

These men were followed by a younger man riding with a very young woman. De Spain knew none of the front-rank men, but he knew well Nan Morgan and her dancing partner.

They were talking together, and Nan seemed from her manner at odds with her companion. He appeared to be trying to laugh the situation off when he caught sight of de Spain pausing for them to pass. Gale’s face lighted as he set eyes on him, and he spoke quickly to Nan. De Spain 29 could not at first hear his words, but he needed no ears to interpret his laugh and the expression on his face. Nan, persistently importuned, looked around. She saw de Spain, much closer, it would seem, than she had expected to see a man looking directly at her, and her eyes rested on him only a moment. The substance of her cousin’s words she apparently had not caught, and he repeated them in a louder voice: “There’s your handsome Medicine Bend gunman!”

Nan, glancing again toward de Spain, seemed aware that he heard. She looked away. De Spain tightened up with a rage. The blood rushed to his face, the sarcasm struck in. If the birthmark could have deepened with humiliation it would have done so at the instant of the cold inspection of the girl’s pretty eyes. But he cared less for Nan’s inspection, cold as it was, than for the jibe of her satisfied cousin. Not content, Gale, calling ahead to the others, invited their attention to the man on the street corner. De Spain felt minded to hurl an insult at them in a body. It would have been four to one––rather awkward odds even if they were mounted––and there was a woman. But he only stood still, returning their inspection as insolently as silence could. Each face was faithfully photographed and filed in his memory, and his steady gaze followed 30 them until they rode down the hill and clattered jauntily out on the swaying suspension bridge that still crosses the Rat River at Grant Street, and connects the whole south country––the Spanish Sinks, the Thief River gold-fields, the saw-toothed Superstition Range, Morgan’s Gap, and Music Mountain with Sleepy Cat and the railroad.

De Spain, walking down Grant Street, watched the party disappear among the hills across the river. The encounter had stirred him. He already hated the Morgans, at least all except the blue-eyed girl, and she, it was not difficult to divine from her expression, was, at least, disdainful of her morning rival.

Reaching the station platform while still busy with his thoughts, de Spain encountered Jeffries and Lefever.

“When are you coming up to take my job, Henry?” demanded the superintendent without any parley.

“I am not coming up,” announced de Spain bluntly.

“Not coming up, eh? All right, we’ll find somebody that will come up,” retorted Jeffries. “John,” he added, “wire Medicine Bend to send Farrell Kennedy here in the morning to see me.”

“What’s the reason that fellow sticks so close 31 to Medicine Bend?” demanded Jeffries, when Lefever joined him later in his office.

“Don’t ask me,” frowned Lefever perplexed. “Don’t ask me. Henry is odd in some ways. You can’t tell what’s going on inside that fellow’s head by looking at the outside of it.” Jeffries grunted coldly at this bit of wisdom. “I’ll tell you what I should think––if I had to think: Henry de Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the death of his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks sometime he’s going to find out right there in Medicine Bend.”

While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend with de Spain on board.

It was a tedious ride, and de Spain was much too engaged with his thoughts to sleep. The Morgans were in his head, and he could not be rid of them. He recalled having been told that long ago some of these same Morgans lived on the Peace River above his father’s ranch. Every story he had ever heard of their wild lives, for they were men sudden in quarrel and reckless of sequel, came back to his mind. He wondered what sort of a young girl this could be who lived among them––who could live among them––and be what she seemed at a glance to be––a fawn among mountain-wolves.

32

It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raining––a dismal kind of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the street from the station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the train-despatchers. After an hour of indecision, marked by alternative fits of making up and unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to bed, into the telegraph-room, where black-haired Dick Grady sat at a key.

“How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat?” Grady asked at once.

“What fight?” demanded de Spain perfunctorily.

“The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat, eh, Henry?”

“What Morgan was in it?”

“Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there anything started when you left?”

“I didn’t hear of anything,” responded de Spain. But his indifference to the subject was marked.

“What’s the matter?” demanded the operator. “Aren’t you well to-night?”

“Perfectly.”

“Sleepy?”

33

De Spain roused himself. “Dick, have you got a Sleepy Cat wire open?”

“What do you want?”

“Tell Jeffries I’ll take that Thief River stage job.”

34

CHAPTER III

THE SPANISH SINKS

From a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In two extended groups, separated by a narrow but well-defined break, they constitute a magnificent rampart, named by Spaniards the Superstition Mountains, and they stretch beyond the horizon to the south, along the vast depression known locally as the Spanish Sinks. The break on the eastern side of the chain comes about twenty miles southwest of Sleepy Cat, and is marked on the north by the most striking, and in some respects most majestic peak in the range––Music Mountain; the break itself has taken the name of its earliest white settlers, and is called Morgan’s Gap. No railroad has ever yet penetrated this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines have been opened along these mountains, and are still being opened; but it lies to-day in much of the condition of primitive 35 savagery, and lawlessness, as the word is conventionally accepted, that obtained when the first rush was made for the Thief River gold-fields.

It is not to be understood that law is an unknown equation between Calabasas and Thief River, or even between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat. But as statute law it suffers so many infractions as to be hardly recognizable in the ordinary sense. Business is done in this country; but business must halt everywhere with its means of communication, and in the Music Mountain country it still rests on the facilities of a stage line. The stage line is a big and vigorous affair, a perfectly organized railroad adjunct with the best horses, the best wagons, the best freighting outfits that money can supply.

But this is by no means, in its civilizing effect, a railroad. A railroad drives lawlessness before it––the Music Mountain country still leans on stage-line law. The bullion wagons still travel the difficult roads. They look for safety to their armed horsemen; the four and six horse stages look to the armed guard, the wayfarer must look to his horse––and it should be a good one; the mountain rancher to his rifle, the cattle thief to the moonless night, the bandit to his wits, the gunman to his holster: these include practically 36 all of the people that travel the Spanish Sinks, except the Morgans and the Mormons. The Mormons looked to the Morgans for safety; the Morgans to themselves.

For many a year the Morgans have been almost overlords of the Music Mountain country. They own, or have laid claim to, an extended territory in the mountains, a Spanish grant. One of the first mountain Morgans married a Spanish girl, and during the early days, when the Morgans were not fighting some one out of court, they were fighting some one in court on their endless and involved titles.

But whether they won domain in lawsuit or lost it, one pearl of their holdings they never submitted to the jurisdiction of any tribunal other than their own arms. Morgan’s Gap opens south of Music Mountain, less than ten miles west of Calabasas. It is a narrow valley where valleys are more precious than water––for the mountain valley means water––and this in a country where water is much more precious than life. And some of the best of this land at the foot of Music Mountain was the maternal inheritance of Nan Morgan.

At Calabasas the Thief River stage line maintains completely equipped relay barns. They are over twenty miles from Sleepy Cat, but nearly fifty the other way from Thief River. The 37 unequal division is not due to what was desirable when the route was laid out, but to the limit of what man could do in the never-conquered desert. This supplies at Calabasas a spring, to tempt the unwary traveller still farther within its clutches. A large number of horses are kept at Calabasas, and the barn crews are quartered there in a company barrack. Along the low ridges and in the shallow depressions about Calabasas Spring there are a very few widely separated shacks, once built by freighters and occupied by squatter outlaws to be within reach of water. This gives the vicinity something of the appearance of a poorly sustained prairie-dog town. And except these shacks, there is nothing between Calabasas, Thief River, and the mountains except sunshine and alkali. I say nothing, meaning especially nothing, in the way of a human habitation.

But there is a queer inn at Calabasas. A pioneer Thief River prospector, mad with thirst, fought his way across the Sinks to the Calabasas Spring, and wandered thence one day into Sleepy Cat. In a delirium of gratitude he ordered built at Calabasas what he termed a hotel, to provide at that forbidden oasis for the luxurious comfort of future thirst-mad wanderers. It was built of lumber hauled a thousand miles, and equipped with luxuries brought three thousand––a fearsome, 38 rambling structure, big enough for all the prospectors in the Rocky Mountains.

Having built this monument, creditable to his good-will rather than his good sense, the unfortunate man went really mad, and had the sorry distinction of being the first person to be put in the insane asylum at Bear Dance. It had never occurred to him that any one had any title to, or that any madder man would lay any claim to, so accursed a spot as Calabasas. But old Duke Morgan announced in due time that the hotel was built on Morgan land, and belonged to the Morgans. Nobody outside a madhouse could be found to dispute with Duke Morgan a title to land within ten miles of Morgan’s Gap, and none but a lunatic would attempt to run a hotel at Calabasas, anyway. However, a solution of the difficulty was found: Duke’s colorable title gave the cue to his retainers in the Gap, and in time they carted away piecemeal most of the main building, leaving for years the kitchen and the servants’ quarters adjoining it to owls, lizards, scorpions, and spiders.

Meantime, to tap the fast-developing gold-fields, the freight route and stages had been put in, and the barns built at Calabasas. A need naturally developed for at least one feature of a hotel––a barroom. A newer lunatic answered the 39 call of civilization––a man only mildly insane stocked the kitchen range with liquors, and fitted up in a crude way the ice-boxes––where there never was ice––serving pantries, and other odd nooks for sleeping quarters. Here the thirsty stage passenger, little suspecting the origin of the facilities offered him for a drink, may choose strong drink instead of water––or rather, he is restricted to strong drink where water might once have been had––the spring being piped now half a mile to the barns for the horses. And this shack, as it is locally called, run by a Mexican, is still the inn at Calabasas. And it continues to contribute, through its stirring annals, to the tragic history of the continental divide.

It need hardly be said that Duke Morgan laid claim also to the Calabasas Spring. But on this the company, being a corporation, fought him. And after somewhat less of argument and somewhat more of siege and shooting, a compromise was reached whereby the company bought annually at an exorbitant price all of Duke, Satterlee, and Vance Morgan’s hay, and as the Morgans had small rivers of water in the mountains, and never, except when crowded, drank water, a modus vivendi was arranged between the claimants. The only sufferer through this was the Mexican publican, who found every Morgan his landlord, 40 and demanding from him tithes over the bar. But force is usually met with cunning, and such Morgans as would not pay in advance at Calabasas, when thirsty, often found the half-mad publican out of goods.

The Calabasas Inn stood in one of the loneliest canyons of the whole seventy miles between Sleepy Cat and Thief River; it looked in its depletion to be what it was, a sombre, mysterious, sun, wind, and alkali beaten pile, around which no one by any chance ever saw a sign of life. It was a ruin like those pretentious deserted structures sometimes seen in frontier towns––relics of the wide-open days, which stand afterward, stark and sombre, to serve as bats’ nests or blind-pigs. The inn at Calabasas looked its part––a haunt of rustlers, a haven of nameless men, a refuge of road-agents.

The very first time de Spain made an inspection trip over the stage line with Lefever, he was conscious of the sinister air of this lonely building. He and Lefever had ridden down from the barn, while their horses were being changed, to look at the place. De Spain wanted to look over everything connected in any way, however remotely, with the operation of his wagons, and this joint, Lefever had told him, was where the freighters and drivers were not infrequently robbed of 41 their money. It was here that one of their own men, Bill McCarty, once “scratched a man’s neck” with a knife––which, Bill explained, he just “happened” to have in his hand––for cheating at cards. Lefever pointed out the unlucky gambler’s grave as he and de Spain rode into the canyon toward the inn.

Not a sign of any sort was displayed about the habitation. No man was invited to enter, no man warned to keep out, none was anywhere in sight. The stage men dismounted, threw their lines, pushed open the front door of the house and entered a room of perhaps sixteen by twenty feet. It had been the original barroom. A long, high, elaborately carved mahogany bar, as much out of keeping as it possibly could be with its surroundings, stretched across the farther side of the room. The left end, as they faced the bar, was brought around to escape a small window opening on a court or patio to the rear of the room. Back of the bar itself, about midway, a low door in the bare wall gave entrance to a rear room. Aside from this big, queer-looking piece of mahogany, the low window at the left end of it, and the low door at the back, the room presented nothing but walls. Two windows flanking the front door helped to light it, but not a mirror, picture, chair, table, bottle, or glass was to be seen. De Spain 42 covered every feature of the interior at a glance. “Quiet around here, John,” he remarked casually.

“This is the quietest place in the Rocky Mountains most of the time. But when it is noisy, believe me, it is noisy. Look at the bullet-holes in the walls.”

“The old story,” remarked de Spain, inspecting with mild-mannered interest the punctured plastering, “they always shoot high.”

He walked over to the left end of the bar, noting the hard usage shown by the ornate mahogany, and spreading his hands wide open, palms down, on the face of it, glanced at the low window on his left, opening on the gravelled patio. He peered, in the semidarkness, at the battered door behind the bar.

“Henry,” observed Lefever, “if you are looking for a drink, it would only be fair, as well as politic, to call the Mexican.”

“Thank you, John, I’m not looking for one. And I know you don’t drink.”

“You want to know, then, where the Mexican keeps his gun?” hazarded Lefever.

“Not especially. I just want to know–––”

“Everything.”

“What’s behind the bar. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

Very complete fittings and compartments told 43 of the labor spent in preparing this inner side for the convenience of the bartender and the requirements of exacting patrons, but nothing in the way of equipment, not so much as a pewter spoon, lay anywhere visible.

De Spain, turning, looked all around the room again. “You wouldn’t think,” he said slowly, “from looking at the place there was a road-agent within a thousand miles.”

“You wouldn’t think, from riding through the Superstition Mountains there was a lion within a thousand miles. I’ve hunted them for eleven years, and I never saw one except when the dogs drove ’em out; but for eleven years they saw me. If we haven’t been seen coming in here by some of this Calabasas bunch, I miss my guess,” declared Lefever cheerfully.

The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. “Come in, Pedro,” he cried reassuringly, “come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro,” he continued encouragingly, as the swarthy publican, low-browed and sullen, emerged very deliberately from the inner darkness into the obscurity of the barroom, and bent his one good eye searchingly on de Spain. “This,” Lefever’s left hand lay familiarly on the back of 44 de Spain’s shoulder, “is our new manager, Mr. Henry de Spain. Henry, shake hands with Mexico.”

This invitation to shake hands seemed an empty formality. De Spain never shook hands with anybody; at least if he did so, he extended, through habit long inured, his left hand, with an excuse for the soreness of his right. Pedro did not even bat his remaining eye at the invitation. The situation, as Lefever facetiously remarked, remained about where it was before he spoke, and nothing daunted, he asked de Spain what he would drink. De Spain sidestepped again by asking for a cigar. Lefever, professing he would not drink alone, called for cigarettes. While Pedro produced them, from nowhere apparently, as a conjurer picks cards out of the air, the sound of galloping horses came through the open door. A moment later three men walked, single file, into the room. De Spain stood at the left end of the bar, and Lefever introduced him to Gale Morgan, to David Sassoon, and to Sassoon’s crony, Deaf Sandusky, as the new stage-line manager. The later arrivals lined up before the bar, Sandusky next to Lefever and de Spain, so he could hear what was said. Pedro from his den produced two queer-looking bottles and a supply of glasses.

“De Spain,” Gale Morgan began bluntly, “one 45 of our men was put off a stage of yours last week by Frank Elpaso.” He spoke without any preliminary compliments, and his heavy voice was bellicose.

De Spain, regarding him undisturbed, answered after a little pause: “Elpaso told me he put a man off his stage last week for fighting.”

“No,” contradicted Morgan loudly, “not for fighting. Elpaso was drunk.”

“What’s the name of the man Elpaso put off, John?” asked de Spain, looking at Lefever.

Morgan hooked his thumb toward the man standing at his side. “Here’s the man right here, Dave Sassoon.”

Sassoon never looked a man in the face when the man looked at him, except by implication; it was almost impossible, without surprising him, to catch his eyes with your eyes. He seemed now to regard de Spain keenly, as the latter, still attending to Morgan’s statement, replied: “Elpaso tells a pretty straight story.”

“Elpaso couldn’t tell a straight story if he tried,” interjected Sassoon.

“I have the statement of three other passengers; they confirm Elpaso. According to them, Sassoon––” de Spain looked straight at the accused, “was drunk and abusive, and kept trying to put some of the other passengers off. Finally 46 he put his feet in the lap of Pumperwasser, our tank and windmill man, and Pumperwasser hit him.”

Morgan, stepping back from the bar, waved his hand with an air of finality toward his inoffensive companion: “Here is Sassoon, right here––he can tell the whole story.”

“Those fellows were miners,” muttered Sassoon. His utterance was broken, but he spoke fast. “They’ll side with the guards every time against a cattleman.”

“There’s only one fair thing to do, de Spain,” declared Morgan. He looked severely at de Spain: “Discharge Elpaso.”

De Spain, his hands resting on the bar, drew one foot slowly back. “Not on the showing I have now,” he said. “One of the passengers who joined in the statement is Jeffries, the railroad superintendent at Sleepy Cat.”

“Expect a railroad superintendent to tell the truth about a Calabasas man?” demanded Sassoon.

“I should expect him at least to be sober,” retorted de Spain.

“Sassoon,” interposed Morgan belligerently, “is a man whose word can always be depended on.”

“To convey his meaning,” intervened Lefever 47 cryptically. “Of course, I know,” he asserted, earnest to the point of vehemence. “Every one in Calabasas has the highest respect for Sassoon. That is understood. And,” he added with as much impressiveness as if he were talking sense, “everybody in Calabasas would be sorry to see Sassoon put off a stage. But Sassoon is off: that is the situation. We are sorry. If it occurs again–––”

“What do you mean?” thundered Morgan, resenting the interference. “De Spain is the manager, isn’t he? What we want to know is, what you are going to do about it?” he demanded, addressing de Spain again.

“There is nothing more to be done,” returned de Spain composedly. “I’ve already told Elpaso if Sassoon starts another fight on a stage to put him off again.”

Morgan’s fist came down on the bar. “Look here, de Spain! You come from Medicine Bend, don’t you? Well, you can’t bully Music Mountain men––understand that.”

“Any time you have a real grievance, Morgan, I’ll be glad to consider it,” said de Spain. “When one of your men is drunk and quarrelsome he will be put off like any other disturber. That we can’t avoid. Public stages can’t be run any other way.”

48

“All right,” retorted Morgan. “If you take that tack for your new management, we’ll see how you get along running stages down in this country.”

“We will run them peaceably, just as long as we can,” smiled de Spain. “We will get on with everybody that gives us a chance.”

Morgan pointed a finger at him. “I give you a chance, de Spain, right now. Will you discharge Elpaso?”

“No.”

Morgan almost caught his breath at the refusal. But de Spain could be extremely blunt, and in the parting shots between the two he gave no ground.

“Jeffries put me here to stop this kind of rowdyism on the stages,” he said to Lefever on their way back to the barn. “This is a good time to begin. And Sassoon and Gale Morgan are good men to begin with,” he added.

As the horses of the two men emerged from the canyon they saw a slender horsewoman riding in toward the barn from the Music Mountain trail. She stopped in front of McAlpin, the barn boss, who stood outside the office door. McAlpin, the old Medicine Bend barnman, had been promoted from Sleepy Cat by the new manager. De Spain recognized the roan pony, but, aside 49 from that, a glance at the figure of the rider, as she sat with her back to him, was enough to assure him of Nan Morgan. He spurred ahead fast enough to overhear a request she was making of McAlpin to mail a letter for her. She also asked McAlpin, just as de Spain drew up, whether the down stage had passed. McAlpin told her it had. De Spain, touching his hat, spoke: “I am going right up to Sleepy Cat. I’ll mail your letter if you wish.”

She looked at him in some surprise, and then glanced toward Lefever, who now rode up. De Spain was holding out his hand for the letter. His eyes met Nan’s, and each felt the moment was a sort of challenge. De Spain, a little self-conscious under her inspection, was aware only of her rather fearless eyes and the dark hair under her fawn cowboy hat.

“Thank you,” she responded evenly. “If the stage is gone I will hold it to add something.” So saying, she tucked the letter inside her blouse and spoke to her pony, which turned leisurely down the road.

“I’m trying to get acquainted with your country to-day,” returned de Spain, managing with his knee to keep his own horse moving alongside Nan as she edged away.

She seemed disinclined to answer, but the silence 50 and the awkwardness of his presence drew at length a dry disclaimer: “This is not my country.”

“I understood,” exclaimed de Spain, following his doubtful advantage, “you lived out this way.”

“I live near Music Mountain,” returned Nan somewhat ungraciously, using her own skill at the same time to walk her horse away from her unwelcome companion.

“I’ve heard of Music Mountain,” continued de Spain, urging his lagging steed. “I’ve often wanted to get over there to hunt.”

Nan, without speaking, ruthlessly widened the distance between the two. De Spain unobtrusively spurred his steed to greater activity. “You must have a great deal of game around you. Do you hunt?” he asked.

He knew she was famed as a huntress, but he could make no headway whatever against her studied reserve. He watched her hands, graceful even in heavy gloves; he noticed the neck-piece of her tan blouse, and liked the brown throat and the chin set so resolutely against him. He surmised that she perhaps felt some contempt for him because she had outshot him, and he continued to ask about game, hoping for a chance in some far-off time to redeem his marksmanship before her and giving her every possible chance to 51 invite him to try the hunting around Music Mountain.

She was deaf to the broadest hints; and when at length she excused herself and turned her pony from the Sleepy Cat road into the Morgan Gap trail, de Spain had been defeated in every attempt to arouse the slightest interest in anything he had said. But, watching with regret, at the parting, the trim lines of her figure as she dashed away on the desert trail, seated as if a part of her spirited horse, he felt only a fast-rising resolution to attempt again to break through her stubborn reticence and know her better.

52

CHAPTER IV

FIRST BLOOD AT CALABASAS

Nothing more than de Spain’s announcement that he would sustain his stage-guards was necessary to arouse a violent resentment at Calabasas and among the Morgan following. Some of the numerous disaffected were baiting the stages most of the time. They bullied the guards, fought the passengers, and fomented discontent among the drivers. In all Thief River disturbances, whether a raid on cattlemen, a stage hold-up, a gun fight, or a tedious war of words, the Calabasas men, sometimes apparently for the mere maintaining of prestige, appeared to take leading rôles. After de Spain’s declaration the grievance against Elpaso was made a general one along the line. His stage was singled out and ridden at times both by Sandusky and Logan––the really dangerous men of the Spanish Sinks––and by Gale Morgan and Sassoon to stir up trouble.

But old Frank Elpaso was far from being a fool. A fight with any one of these men meant 53 that somebody would be killed, and no one could tell just who, Elpaso shrewdly reckoned, until the roll-call at the end of it. He therefore met truculence with diplomacy, threatening looks with flattery, and hard words with a long story. Moreover, all Calabasas knew that Elpaso, if he had to, would fight, and that the eccentric guard was not actually to be cornered with impunity. Even Logan, who, like Sandusky, was known to be without fear and without mercy, felt at least a respect for Elpaso’s shortened shotgun, and stopped this side actual hostilities with him. When the June clean-up of the No. 2 Thief River mine came through––one hundred and six thousand dollars in gold bullion under double guard––and a Calabasas contingent of night-riders tried to stop the treasure, rumor along the Sinks had it that Elpaso’s slugs, delivered at the right moment, were responsible for Deaf Sandusky’s long illness at Bear Dance, and the failure of the subsequent masked attack on the up stage.

Sassoon, however, owing to the indignity now put upon him, also nourished a particular grievance against the meditative guard, and his was one not tempered either by prudence or calculation. His chance came one night when Elpaso had unwisely allowed himself to be drawn into a card game at Calabasas Inn. Elpaso was notoriously 54 a stickler for a square deal at cards. He was apparently the only man at Calabasas that hoped for such a thing, and certainly the only one so rash as to fight for it––yet he always did. A dispute on this occasion found him without a friend in the room. Sassoon reached for him with a knife.

McAlpin was the first to get the news at the barn. He gave first aid to the helpless guard, and, without dreaming he could be got to a surgeon alive, rushed him in a light wagon to the hospital at Sleepy Cat, where it was said that he must have more lives than a wildcat. Sassoon, not caring to brave de Spain’s anger in town, went temporarily into hiding. A second surgeon was brought from Medicine Bend, and heroic efforts were put forth to nurse again into life the feeble spark the assassin had left in the unlucky guard.

Word of this cutting reached de Spain at Thief River. He started for Calabasas, learned there during a brief stop what he could––which was, of course, next to nothing––of the affray, and posted on to Sleepy Cat.

A conference was held in Jeffries’s office. De Spain, Lefever, and some of the division staff discussed the situation raised by the affair. De Spain was instructed to see that Sassoon was brought in and made an example of for the benefit 55 of his Calabasas friends. Accordingly, while the guard’s life hung in the balance, the sheriff, Jim Druel, was despatched after Sassoon. A great deal of inquiry, much riding, and a lot of talk on Druel’s part accomplished nothing.

Lefever spoiled with impatience to get after Sassoon. “The only way we’ll ever get one of that gang is to go for him ourselves,” said he. The sheriff’s campaign did collapse. Sassoon could not be found although rumor was notorious that he continued to haunt Calabasas. Lefever’s irritation grew. “Never mind, John,” counselled de Spain, “forget about wanting him. Sometime one of us will stumble on him, and when we do we’ll shackle him.” The precaution was taken, meantime, to secure a warrant for the missing man, together with authority for either of the two to serve it. Elpaso, in the end, justified his old reputation by making a recovery––haltingly, it is true, and with perilous intervals of sinking, but a recovery.

It was while he still lay in the hospital and hope was very low that de Spain and Lefever rode, one hot morning, into Calabasas and were told by McAlpin that Sassoon had been seen within five minutes at the inn. To Lefever the news was like a bubbling spring to a thirsty man. His face beamed, he tightened his belt, shook out 56 his gun, and looked with benevolent interest on de Spain, who stood pondering. “If you will stay right here, Henry,” he averred convincingly, “I will go over and get Sassoon.”

The chief stage-guard, Bob Scott, the Indian, was in the barn. He smiled at Lefever’s enthusiasm. “Sassoon,” said he, “is slippery.”

“You’d better let us go along and see you do it,” suggested de Spain, who with the business in hand grew thoughtful.

“Gentlemen, I thank you,” protested Lefever, raising one hand in deprecation, the other resting lightly on his holster. “We still have some little reputation to maintain along the Sinks. Don’t let us make it a posse for Sassoon.” No one opposed him further, and he rode away alone.

“It won’t be any trouble for John to bring Sassoon in,” murmured Scott, who spoke with a smile and in the low tone and deliberate manner of the Indian, “if he can find him.”

With de Spain, Scott remained in front of the barn, saddled horses in hand. They could see nothing of the scene of action, and de Spain was forced in idleness to curb his impatience. Lefever rode down to the inn without seeing a living thing anywhere about it. When he dismounted in front he thought he heard sounds within the barroom, but, pushing open the door and looking 57 circumspectly into the room before entering, he was surprised to find it empty.

There was something, under the circumstances and in the stimulus of danger, almost uncanny in the silence, the absence of any life whatever about the place. Lefever walked cautiously inside; there seemed no need of caution. No one was there to confront or oppose him. Surveying the interior with a rapid glance, he walked to the left end of the bar and, gun in readiness, looked apprehensively behind it. Not so much as a strainer was to be seen underneath. He noticed, however, that the sash of the low window on his left, which looked into the patio, was open, and two heel-marks in the hard clay suggested that a man might have jumped through. Whether these were Sassoon’s heels or another’s, Lefever decided they constituted his clew, and, running out of the front door, he sprang into his saddle and rode to where he could signal de Spain and Scott to come up.

He told his story as they joined him, and the three returned to the inn. Scott rode directly to the rear. Lefever took de Spain in to the bar, showed him the open sash, and pointed to the heel-prints. De Spain stepped through the window, Lefever following. An examination showed the slide of a spur-rowel behind one heel-mark and indications of a hasty jump.

58

While they bent over the signs that seemed to connect their quarry with the place, a door opened across the courtyard, and Pedro appeared. He was curiously dense to all inquiries, and Lefever, convinced that Sassoon was somewhere at hand, revenged himself by searching the place.

In the dark kitchen a very old woman and a slovenly girl were at work. No one else was to be found anywhere.

De Spain, who was the more experienced tracker, thought he could follow the footprints to the arched opening across the patio. This was closed only by a swinging gate, and afforded easy escape from a pursuer. At some distance outside this gate, as de Spain threw it open, sat Bob Scott on his horse. De Spain made inquiry of Scott. No one had been seen. Returning to Lefever, who, greatly chagrined, had convinced himself that Sassoon had got away, de Spain called Scott into the patio.

A better tracker than either of his companions, Scott after a minute confirmed their belief that Sassoon must have escaped by the window. He then took the two men out to where some one, within a few minutes, had mounted a horse and galloped off.

“But where has he gone?” demanded Lefever, 59 pointing with his hand. “There is the road both ways for three miles.” Scott nodded toward the snow-capped peak of Music Mountain. “Over to Morgan’s, most likely. He knows no one would follow him into the Gap. Just for fun, now, let’s see.”

Dismounting, the Indian scrutinized the hoof-prints where the horse had stood. Getting into the saddle again, he led the way, bending over his horse’s neck and stopping frequently to read the trail, half a mile out along the Gap road, until he could once more readily point out the hoof-prints to his companions. “That is Sassoon,” he announced. “I know the heels. And I know he rides this horse; it belongs to Gale Morgan. Sassoon,” Scott smiled sympathetically on Lefever, “is half-way to Morgan’s Gap.”

“After him!” cried Lefever hotly. De Spain looked inquiringly at the guard. Scott shook his head. “That would be all right, but there’s two other Calabasas men in the Gap this afternoon it wouldn’t be nice to mix with––Deaf Sandusky and Harvey Logan.”

“We won’t mix with them,” suggested de Spain.

“If we tackle Sassoon, they’ll mix with us,” explained Scott. He reflected a moment. “They always stay at Gale Morgan’s or Duke’s. We might sneak Sassoon out without their getting on. 60 Sassoon knows he is safe in the Gap; but he’ll hide even after he gets there. He takes two precautions for every other man’s one. Sassoon is a wonder at hiding out. I’ve got the Thief River run this afternoon–––”

De Spain looked at him. “Well?”

Scott’s face softened into the characteristic smile––akin to a quiet grin––that it often wore. “If I didn’t have to go through to-day, and the three of us could get to the Gap before daylight to-morrow morning, I would give Sassoon a run for his money in spite of the other fellows.”

“Don’t take your run this afternoon,” directed de Spain. “Telephone Sleepy Cat for a substitute. Suppose we go back, get something to eat, and you two ride singly over toward the Gap this afternoon; lie outside under cover to see whether Sassoon or his friends leave before night––there’s only one way out of the place, they tell me. Then I will join you, and we’ll ride in before daylight, and perhaps catch him while everybody is asleep.”

“If you do,” predicted Scott, in his deliberate way of expressing a conclusion, “I think you’ll get him.”

It was so arranged.

61

CHAPTER V

ROUNDING UP SASSOON

De Spain joined his associates at dark outside the Gap. Neither Sassoon nor his friends had been seen. The night was still, the sky cloudless, and as the three men with a led horse rode at midnight into the mountains, the great red heart of the Scorpion shone afire in the southern sky. Spreading out when they rode between the mountain walls, they made their way without interruption silently toward their rendezvous, an aspen grove near which Purgatoire Creek makes its way out of the Gap and, cutting a deep gash along the edge of the range for a hundred miles, empties into the Thief.

Scott was the first to reach the trees. The little grove spreads across a slope half a mile wide between the base of one towering cliff, still bearing its Spanish name, El Capitan, and the gorge of the Purgatoire. To the east of this point the trails to Calabasas and to Sleepy Cat divide, and here Scott and Lefever received de Spain, who had ridden slowly and followed Scott’s 62 injunctions to keep the red star to the right of El Capitan all the way across the Sinks.

Securing their horses, the three stretched out on the open ground to wait for daylight. De Spain was wakeful, and his eyes rested with curiosity on the huge bulk of Music Mountain, rising overwhelmingly above him. Through the Gap that divided the great, sentinel-like front of El Capitan, marking the northern face of the mountain rift, from Round Top, the south wall of the opening, stars shone vividly, as if lighting the way into the silent range beyond.

The breathing of his companions soon assured de Spain that both were asleep. The horses were quiet, and the night gave no sound save that vaguely through the darkness came the faint brawl of tiny cataracts tumbling down far mountain heights. De Spain, lying on his side, his head resting on his elbow, and his hands clasped at the back of his neck, meditated first on how he should capture Sassoon at daybreak, and then on Nan Morgan and her mountain home, into which he was about to break to drag out a criminal. Sassoon and his malice soon drifted out of his mind, but Nan remained. She stayed with him, it seemed, for hours––appearing and disappearing, in one aspect more alluring than another. Then her form outlined in the mists that rose from the 63 hidden creek seemed to hover somewhere near until Scott’s hand laid on the dreamer’s shoulder drove it suddenly away. Day was at hand.

De Spain got up and shook off the chilliness and drowsiness of the night. It had been agreed that he, being less known in the Gap than either of his companions, could best attempt the difficult capture. It was strictly a coup de main, depending for its success on chance and nerve. The one that tried it might manage to bring out his man––or might be brought out himself. Between these alternatives there was not much middle ground, except that failing to find Sassoon, or in case he should be intercepted with his prisoner, the intruder, escaping single-handed from a shower of bullets, might still get away. But Morgan’s Gap men were esteemed fairly good marksmen.

Bob Scott, who knew the recess well, repeated his explicit directions as to how de Spain was to reach Sassoon’s shack. He repeated his description of its interior, told him where the bed stood, and even where Sassoon ordinarily kept his knife and his revolver. The western sky was still dark when de Spain, mounting, discussed the last arrangements with his scouts and, taking the bridle of the led horse, turned toward Round Top. At its narrowest point the Gap opening is barely two 64 miles wide, and the one road, in and out, lies among the rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge. De Spain gave his horse his head––it was still too dark to distinguish the path––and depended on his towering landmarks for his general direction. He advanced at a snail’s pace until he passed the base of El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly hidden valley before him. The eastern and southern sides still lay in darkness, but the stupendous cliffs frowning on the north and west were lighted somewhat from the east. The southern wall, though shrouded, seemed to rise in an unending series of beetling arêtes.

De Spain caught his breath. No description he had ever heard of the nook that screened the Morgans from the outside world had prepared him for what he saw. From side to side of the gigantic mountain fissure, it could hardly be, de Spain thought, more than a few thousand yards––so completely was his sense of proportion stunned by the frowning cliffs which rose, at points, half a mile into the sky. But it was actually several miles from wall to wall, and the Gap was more than as much in depth, as it ran back 65 to a mere wedge between unnamed Superstition peaks.

Every moment that he pushed ahead warned him that daylight would come suddenly and his time to act would be short. The trail he followed broadened into a road, and he strained his eyes for signs, first of life, and then of habitation. The little creek, now beside his way, flowed quietly albeit swiftly along, and his utmost vigilance could detect no living thing stirring; but a turn in the trail, marked by a large pine-tree and conforming to a bend of the stream, brought him up startled and almost face to face with a long, rambling ranch-house. The gable end of the two-story portion of the building was so close to him that he instantly reined up to seek hiding from its upper and lower windows.

From Scott’s accurate description he knew the place. This was Duke Morgan’s ranch-house, set as a fortress almost at the mouth of the Gap. To pass it unobserved was to compass the most ticklish part of his mission, and without changing his slow pace he rode on, wondering whether a bullet, if fired from any of the low, open windows––which he could almost throw his hat into as he trotted past––would knock him off his horse or leave him a chance to spur away. But no bullet challenged him and no sound came from the 66 silent house. He cantered away from the peril, thinking with a kind of awe of Nan, asleep, so close, under that roof––confident, too, he had not been seen––though, in matter of fact, he had been.

He quickened his pace. The place he wanted to reach was more than a mile distant. Other cabins back toward the north wall could be seen dimly to his right, but all were well removed from his way. He found, in due time, the ford in the creek, as Scott had advised, made it without mishap, scrambled up a steep and rocky path, and saw confronting him, not far ahead, a small, ruinous-looking cabin shack. Dismounting before this, he threw his lines, shook himself a little, and walked up to the cabin door. It was open.

The mild-minded conspirators who had planned the details of the abduction were agreed that if the effort could be made a success at all, there was but one way to effect it, and that was to act, in every step, openly. Any attempt to steal on Sassoon unawares would be a desperate one; while to walk boldly into his cabin at daybreak would be to do only what his companions were likely at any time to do, and was the course least calculated to lead to serious trouble. None of the three were unaware of the psychological action of that peculiar instinct of danger possessed by 67 men habitually exposed to surprise––they knew how easily it may be aroused in a sleeper by the unusual happening about him, and how cunningly it is allayed by counterfeiting within his hearing the usual course of normal events.

De Spain, following the chosen policy, called gruffly to the cabin inmate. There was no answer. All had sounded extremely plausible to de Spain at the time he listened to Bob Scott’s ingenious anticipation of the probabilities, and he had felt while listening to the subtle Indian that the job was not a complicated one.

But now, as he hitched his trouser band near to the butt of his revolver with his right hand, and laid his left on the jamb of the door with an effort to feel at home, stepped unevenly across the threshold, and tried to peer into the interior darkness, Scott’s strategy did not, for some reason, commend itself quite so convincingly to him. There seemed, suddenly, a great many chances for a slip in the programme. De Spain coughed slightly, his eyes meantime boring the darkness to the left, where Sassoon’s bed should be. The utmost scrutiny failed to disclose any sign of it or any sound of breathing from that corner. He took a few steps toward where the man should be asleep, and perceived beyond a doubt that there was no bed in the corner at all. He turned toward 68 the other corner, his hand covering the butt of his gun. “Hello, Shike!” he called out in a slightly strained tone of camaraderie, addressing Sassoon by a common nickname. Then he listened. A trumpeting snore answered. No sound was ever sweeter to de Spain’s ear. The rude noise cleared the air and steadied the intruder as if Music Mountain itself had been lifted off his nerves.

He tried again: “Where are you, Shike?” he growled. “What’s this stuff on the floor?” he continued, shuffling his way ostentatiously to the other side of the room. But his noise-making was attended with the utmost caution. He had dropped, like a shot, flat on the floor and crawled, feeling his way, to the opposite side of the room, only to find, after much trouble, that the bed in the darkness was there, but it was empty. De Spain rose. For a moment he was nonplussed. An inside room remained, but Scott had said there was no bed within it. He felt his way toward the inner door. This was where he expected to find it, and it was closed. He laid a hand gingerly on the latch. “Where are you, Shike?” he demanded again, this time with an impatient expletive summoned for the occasion. A second fearful snore answered him. De Spain, relieved, almost laughed as he pushed the door open, 69 though not sure whether a curse or a shot would greet him. He got neither. And a welcome surprise in the dim light came through a stuffy pane of glass at one end of the room. It revealed at the other end a man stretched asleep on a wall bunk––a man that would, in all likelihood, have heard the stealthiest sound had any effort been made to conceal it, but to whose ears the rough voices of a mountain cabin are mere sleeping-potions.

The sleeper was destined, a moment later, to a ruder awakening than even his companion outlaws ever gave him. Lying unsuspectingly on his back, he woke to feel a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. The instinct of self-preservation acted like a flash. His eyes opened and his hands struck out like cat’s paws to the right and left: no knife and no revolver met them. Instead, in the semidarkness a strange face bent over him. His fists shot out together, only to be caught in a vise that broke his arms in two at the elbows, and forced them back against his throat. Like lightning, he threw up his knees, drew himself into a heap, and shot himself out, hands, arms, legs, back, everything into one terrific spring. But the sinewy vise above only gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and 70 heart and lungs. Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and shut off his breath.

Again and again, with the fury of desperation, Sassoon drew in his powerful frame, shot it out, twisted and struggled. Great veins swelled on his forehead, his breath burst in explosive gasps, he writhed from side to side––it was all one. After every effort the cruel fingers at his throat tightened. The heavy knee on his chest crushed more relentlessly. He lay still.

“Are you awake, Shike?” Sassoon heard from the gloom above him. But he could not place the voice. “You seem to move around a good deal in your sleep. If you’re awake, keep still. I’ve come from Sleepy Cat to get you. Don’t mind looking for your gun and knife. Two men are with me. You can have your choice. We’ve got a horse for you. You can ride away from us here inside the Gap, and take what hits you in the back, or you can go to Sleepy Cat with us and stand your trial. I’ll read your warrant when the sun gets a little higher. Get up and choose quick.”

Sassoon could not see who had subdued him, nor did he take long to decide what to do. Scott 71 had predicted he would go without much fuss, and de Spain, now somewhat surprised, found Bob right in his forecast. With less trouble than he expected, the captor got his man sullenly on horseback, and gave him severely plain directions as to what not to do. Sassoon, neither bound nor gagged, was told to ride his horse down the Gap closely ahead of de Spain and neither to speak nor turn his head no matter what happened right or left. To get him out in this manner was, de Spain realized, the really ticklish part of the undertaking.

Fortune, however, seemed to favor his assurance in invading the lions’ den. In the growing light the two men trotted smartly a mile down the trail without encountering a sign of life. When they approached the Morgan ranch-house de Spain again felt qualms. But he rode close to his prisoner, told him in restrained monologue what would happen if he made a noise, and even held him back in his pace as they trotted together past the Gap stronghold. Nevertheless, he breathed more freely when they left the house behind and the turn in the road put them out of range of its windows. He closed up the distance between himself and Sassoon, riding close in to his side, and looked back at the house. He looked quickly, but though his eyes were off his 72 path and his prisoner for only a fraction of a second, when he looked ahead again he saw confronting him, not a hundred yards away, a motionless horseman.

73

CHAPTER VI

HEELS FOR IT

With a sudden, low command to Sassoon to check his horse, and without a movement that could be detected in the dawn ten yards away, de Spain with the thumb and finger of his right hand lifted his revolver from its scabbard, shifted his lines from his left hand to his right, rode closer to Sassoon and pressed the muzzle of the gun to his prisoner’s side. “You’ve got one chance yet, Shike, to ride out of here alive,” he said composedly. “You know I am a rustler––cousin of John Rebstock’s. My name is ‘Frenchy’; I belong in Williams Cache. I rode in last night from Thief River, and you are riding out with me to start me on to the Sleepy Cat trail. If you can remember that much–––”

While he spoke to Sassoon his eyes were fixed on the rider halted in their path. De Spain stopped half-way through his sentence. The figure revealed in the half-light puzzled him at first. Then it confused and startled him. He saw it was not a man at all, but a woman––and a woman 74 than whom he would rather have seen six men. It was Nan Morgan.

With her head never more decisively set under her mannish hat, her waist never more attractively outlined in slenderness, she silently faced de Spain in the morning gray. His face reflected his chagrined perplexity. The whole fabric of his slender plot seemed to go to pieces at the sight of her. At the mere appearance of his frail and motionless foe a feeling of awkward helplessness dissolved his easy confidence. He now reversed every move he had so carefully made with his hands and, resentfully eying Nan, rode in somewhat behind Sassoon, doing nothing further than to pull his kerchief up about his neck, and wondering what would be likely to happen before the next three minutes were up. Beyond that flash the future held no interest for him––his wits had temporarily failed.

Of one thing he felt assured, that it was in no wise up to him to speak or do first. He could already see Nan’s eyes. They were bent keenly first on him, then on his companion, and again on him. De Spain kept his face down as much as he dared, and his hat had been pulled well over it from the beginning. She waited so long before accosting the two men that de Spain, who was ready to hope any improbable thing, began to hope she 75 might let them pass unchallenged. He had resolved, if she did not speak to push past without even looking at her. They were now almost abreast. His fine resolution went smash overboard. The very instinctive knowledge that her eyes were bent on his made him steal a glance at her in spite of himself. The next instant he was shamefacedly touching his hat. Though nothing was lost on her, Nan professed not to see the greeting. He even continued to dream she did not recognize him. Her eyes, in fact, were directed toward Sassoon, and when she spoke her tone was dry with suspicion.

“Wait a moment, Sassoon. Where are you going?” she demanded. Sassoon hitched with one hand at his trousers band. He inclined his head sulkily toward his companion. “Starting a man on the trail for Sleepy Cat.”

“Stop,” she exclaimed sharply, for de Spain, pushing his own horse ahead, had managed without being observed, to kick Sassoon’s horse in the flank, and the two were passing. Sassoon at the resolute summons stopped. De Spain could do no less; both men, halting, faced their suspicious inquisitor. She scrutinized de Spain keenly. “What is this man doing in the Gap?”

“He come up from Thief River last night,” answered Sassoon monotonously.

76

“What is he doing here with you?” persisted Nan.

“He’s a cousin of John Rebstock’s from Williams Cache,” continued Sassoon. The yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that de Spain would fully as lief have been sitting between his horse’s legs as astride his back.

“That’s not true, Sassoon,” said his relentless questioner. Her tone and the expression of her face boded no friendliness for either of the two she had intercepted.

De Spain had recovered his wits. “You’re right,” he interposed without an instant’s hesitation. “It isn’t true. But that’s not his fault; he is under arrest, and is telling you what I told him to tell you. I came in here this morning to take Sassoon to Sleepy Cat. He is a prisoner, wanted for cutting up one of our stage-guards.”

Nan, coldly sceptical, eyed de Spain. “And do you try to tell me”––she pointed to Sassoon’s unbound hands––“that he is riding out of here, a free man, to go to jail?”

“I do tell you exactly that. He is my prisoner–––”

“I don’t believe either of you,” declared Nan 77 scornfully. “You are planning something underhand together.”

De Spain laughed coolly. “We’ve planned that much together, but not, I assure you, with his consent.”

“I don’t believe your stories at all,” she declared firmly.

De Spain flushed. The irritation and the serious danger bore in on him. “If you don’t believe me it’s not my fault,” he retorted. “I’ve told you the truth. Ride on, Sassoon.”

He spoke angrily, but this in no wise daunted Nan. She wheeled her horse directly in front of them. “Don’t you stir, Sassoon,” she commanded, “until I call Uncle Duke.”

De Spain spurred straight at her; their horses collided, and his knee touched hers in the saddle. “I’m going to take this man out of here,” he announced in a tone she never had heard before from a man. “I’ve no time to talk. Go call your uncle if you like. We must pass.”

“You shan’t pass a step!”

With the quick words of defiance the two glared at each other. De Spain was taken aback. He had expected no more than a war of words––a few screams at the most. Nan’s face turned white, but there was no symptom even of a whimper. He noticed her quick breathing, and felt, instinctively, 78 the restrained gesture of her right hand as it started back to her side. The move steadied him. “One question,” he said bluntly, “are you armed?”

She hated even to answer, and met his searching gaze resentfully, but something in his tone and manner wrung a reply. “I can defend myself,” she exclaimed angrily.

De Spain raised his right hand from his thigh to the pommel of his saddle. The slight gesture was eloquent of his surrender of the issue of force. “I can’t go into a shooting-match with you about this cur. If you call your uncle there will be bloodshed––unless you drop me off my horse right here and now before he appears. All I ask you is this: Is this kind of a cutthroat worth that? If you shoot me, my whole posse from Sleepy Cat is right below us in the aspens. Some of your own people will be killed in a general fight. If you want to shoot me, shoot––you can have the match all to yourself. If you don’t, let us go by. And if I’ve told you one word that isn’t true, call me back to this spot any time you like, and I’ll come at your call, and answer for it.”

His words and his manner confounded her for a moment. She could not at once make an answer, for she could not decide what to say. Then, 79 of a sudden, she was robbed of her chance to answer. From down the trail came a yell like a shot. The clatter of hoofs rang out, and men on horses dashed from the entrance of the Gap toward them. De Spain could not make them out distinctly, but he knew Lefever’s yell, and pointed. “There they are,” he exclaimed hurriedly. “There is the whole posse. They are coming!” A shot, followed closely by a second, rang out from below. “Go,” he cried to Nan. “There’ll be shooting here that I can’t stop!” He slapped Sassoon’s pony viciously with his hand, yelled loud in answer to Lefever, and before the startled girl could collect herself, de Spain, crouching in his saddle, as a fusillade cracked from Lefever’s and Scott’s revolvers, urged Sassoon’s horse around Nan’s, kicked it violently, spurred past her himself, and was away. White with consternation and anger, she steadied herself and looked after the fleeing pair. Then whirling in her saddle, she ran her pony back to the ranch-house to give the alarm.

Yelling like half a dozen men, Lefever and Scott, as de Spain and his prisoner dashed toward them, separated, let the pair pass, and spurred in behind to cover the flight and confront any pursuers. None at the moment threatened, but no words were exchanged until the whole party, riding fast, were well past El Capitan and out of the Gap. 80 For some unexpressed reason––so strong is the influence of tradition and reputation––no one of the three coveted a close encounter with the Morgans within its walls.

“It’s the long heels for it now, boys,” cried de Spain. His companions closed up again.

“Save your horses,” cautioned Scott, between strides. “It’s a good ways home.”

“Make for Calabasas,” shouted Lefever.

“No,” yelled Scott. “They would stand us a siege at Calabasas. While the trail is open make for the railroad.”

A great globe of dazzling gold burst into the east above the distant hills. But the glory of the sunrise called forth no admiration from the three men hurrying a fourth urgently along the Sleepy Cat trail. Between breaths de Spain explained his awkward meeting with Nan, and of the strait he was in when Lefever’s strong lungs enabled him to get away unscratched. But for a gunman a narrow squeak is as good as a wide one, and no one found fault with the situation. They had the advantage––the only question was whether they could hold it. And while they continued to cast anxious glances behind, Scott’s Indian eyes first perceived signs on the horizon that marked their pursuit.

“No matter,” declared Lefever. “This is a 81 little fast for a fat man, anyway.” He was not averse, either, to the prospect of a long-range exchange with the fighting mountaineers. All drew rein a little. “Suppose I cover the rear till we see what this is,” suggested Lefever, limbering up as the other two looked back. “Push ahead with Sassoon. These fellows won’t follow far.”

“Don’t be sure about that,” muttered Scott. “Duke and Gale have got the best horses in the mountains, and they’d rather fight than eat. There they come now.”

Dashing across a plain they themselves had just crossed, they could see three horsemen in hot chase. The pursued men rode carefully, and, scanning the ground everywhere ahead and behind, de Spain, Scott, and Lefever awaited the moment when their pursuers should show their hand. Scott was on the west of the line, and nearest the enemy.

“Who are they, Bob?” yelled Lefever.

Scott scrutinized the pursuers carefully. “One,” he called back, “that big fellow on the right, is Deaf Sandusky, sure. Harvey Logan, likely, the middle man. The other I can’t make out. Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to the foot-hills on their distant left. Two men, riding out almost abreast of them, were running their horses for a small canyon through which the trail led 82 two miles ahead. “Some riding,” cried Scott, watching the newcomers. “That farther man must be Gale Morgan. They are trying for the greasewood canyon, to cut us off.”

“We can’t stand for that,” decided de Spain, surveying the ground around them. “There’s not so much as a sage-brush here for cover.”

Lefever pointed to his right; at some distance a dark, weather-beaten cone rose above the yellow desert. “Let’s make a stand in the lava beds,” he cried.

De Spain hesitated. “It takes us the wrong way.” He pointed ahead. “Give them a run for that canyon, boys.”

Urging their horses, the Sleepy Cat men rode at utmost speed to beat the flanking party to the trail gateway. For a few minutes it looked an even break between pursuers and pursued. The two men in the foot-hills now had a long angle to overcome, but they were doing a better pace than those of the Gap party behind, and half-way to the canyon it looked like a neck-and-neck heat for the narrow entrance. Lefever complained of the effort of keeping up, and at length reined in his horse. “Drop me here on the alkali, boys,” he cried to the others. “I’ll hold this end while you get through the canyon.”

“No,” declared de Spain, checking his pace. 83 “If one stays, all stay. This is as good a time as any to find out what these fellows mean.”

“But not a very good place,” commented Scott, as they slowed, looking for a depression.

“It’s as good for us as it is for them,” returned de Spain abruptly. “We’ll try it right here.”

He swung out of his saddle, Lefever and Scott after an instant’s reconnoissance following. Sassoon they dismounted. Scott lashed his wrists together, while de Spain and Lefever unslung their carbines, got their horses down, and, facing the west and south, spread themselves on the ground.

The men behind lost nothing of the defensive movement of the pursued party, and slowed up in turn. For the moment the flankers were out of sight, but they must soon appear on the crest of a rise between them and the canyon. Lefever was first down and first ready with his rifle to cover the men behind. These now spread out and came on, as if for a rush.

Lefever, picking Logan, the foremost, sent a warning shot in front of him. De Spain fired almost at the same moment toward the big man making a détour to the right of the leader. The two bullets puffed in the distant alkali, and the two horsemen, sharply admonished, swerved backward precipitately. After a momentary circling 84 indecision, the three rode closer together for a conference, dismounted, and opened a return fire on the little party lying to.

The strategy of their halt and their firing was not hard to penetrate. The men from the foot-hills were still riding for the canyon. No views were exchanged among Sassoon’s captors, but all understood that this move must be stopped. Lefever and Scott, without words, merely left the problem to de Spain as the leader. He lay on the right of the line as they faced south, and this brought him nearest to the riders out of the foot-hills. Taking advantage of a lull in the firing, he pulled his horse around between himself and the attacking party, and in such a position that he could command with his rifle the fast-moving riders to the west.

Something of a predicament confronted him. He was loath to take a human life in the effort to get a cutthroat jailed, and hated even to cripple a beast for it, but the two men must be stopped. Nor was it easy to pick up the range offhand, but meaning that the Morgans, if they were Morgans, should understand how a rush would be met, he sent one shot after another, short, beyond, and ahead of the horsemen, to check them, and to feel the way for closer shooting if it should be necessary. The two dashed on 85 undaunted. De Spain perceived that warnings were wasted. He lowered his sights, and, waiting his chance as the leader of the foot-hill pursuers rode into a favorable range, he fired for his horse’s head. The beast jumped convulsively and pitched forward, head down in a half somersault, throwing his rider violently to the ground. Scott and Lefever yelled loudly.

Out of the cloud of dust the man scrambled to his feet, looked coolly around, and brushed the alkali disgustedly from his eyes just as a second bullet from de Spain tore up the earth a few feet to one side of him. He jumped like a rabbit at this summons, and did not even make a further pretense at composure. Grabbing his hat from the ground, he ran like mad toward the hills. Meantime his mounted companion had turned about. De Spain sprang to his feet, jerked up his horse and cried: “Now for the canyon!” Pushing Sassoon into the saddle and profiting by the confusion, the railroad men rode hard for their refuge, and reached it without more molestation than an occasional shot from their distant pursuers on the main trail. De Spain and his scouts now felt assured of their escape. The foot-hills contingent was left far behind, and, though their remaining pursuers rode in at times with a show of rushing, the chase was a stern one, and 86 could be checked whenever necessary. Halting at times in this way to breathe their horses, or to hold off the rear pursuit, de Spain with his two companions and their prisoner rode into Sleepy Cat, locked Sassoon up, and went to the Mountain House for breakfast.

87

CHAPTER VII

MAINTAINING A REPUTATION

The abduction of Sassoon, which signalized de Spain’s entry into the stage-line management, created a sensation akin to the exploding of a bomb under the range. The whole mountain country, which concentrates, sensibly, on but one topic at a time, talked for a week of nothing else. No such defiance of the traditions of the Morgan rule along the reaches of the Spanish Sinks had been attempted in years––and it was recalled more than once, when de Spain’s feat was discussed at the ranches, on the trails, and in the haunts of gunmen in Calabasas, that no one of those who had ever braved the wrath of the Sink rulers had lived indefinitely to boast of it.

Experienced men, therefore, in the high country––men of that class who, wherever found, are old in the ways of the world, and not promptly moved by new or youthful adventure––dismissed the incident after hearing the details, with the comment or the conclusion that there would hardly be for de Spain more than one additional chapter to the story, and that this would be a 88 short one. The most active Morgans––Gale, Duke, and the easy-going Satterlee––were indeed wrought to the keenest pitch of revengeful anger. No question of the right or wrong of the arrest was discussed––justification was not considered. It was an overwhelmingly insolent invasion––and worst of all, a successful invasion, by one who had nothing but cool impudence, not even a budding reputation to justify his assault on the lifelong prestige of the Gap clan. Gale Morgan strode and rode the streets of Sleepy Cat looking for de Spain, and storming.

De Spain himself, somewhat surprised at the storm he had kicked up, heeded the counsel of Scott, and while the acute stage of the resentment raged along the trail he ran down for a few days to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Both Gale and Duke Morgan proclaimed, in certain public places in Sleepy Cat, their intention of shooting de Spain on sight; and as a climax to all the excitement of the week following his capture, the slippery Sassoon broke jail and, after a brief interval, appeared at large in Calabasas.

This feat of the Morgan satellite made a loud laugh at de Spain’s expense. It mitigated somewhat the humiliation of Sassoon’s friends, but it in no wise diminished their expressed resolve to punish de Spain’s invasion. Lefever, who as 89 the mixer among the stage men, kept close to the drift of public sentiment, decided after de Spain’s return to Sleepy Cat that the stage-line authorities had gained nothing by Sassoon’s capture.

“We ought to have thought of it before, Henry,” he said frankly one night in Jeffries’s office, “but we didn’t think.”

“Meaning just what, John?” demanded de Spain without real interest.

“Meaning, that in this country you can’t begin on a play like pulling Sassoon out from under his friends’ noses without keeping up the pace––without a second and third act. You dragged Sassoon by his hair out of the Gap; good. You surprised everybody; good. But you can’t very well stop at that, Henry. You have raised hopes, you have led people to invest you with the faint glimmerings of a reputation. I say, the glimmerings, because such a feat by itself doesn’t insure a permanent reputation, Henry. It is, so to say, merely a ‘demand’ reputation––one that men reserve the right to recall at any moment. And the worst of it is, if they ever do recall it, you are worse off than when before they extended the brittle bauble to you.”

“Jingo, John! For a stage blacksmith you are some spieler.” De Spain added an impatient, 90 not to say contumelious exclamation concerning the substance of Lefever’s talk. “I didn’t ask them for a reputation. This man interfered with my guard––in fact, tried to cut his throat, didn’t he?”

“Would have done it if Frank had been an honest man.”

“That is all there is to it, isn’t it? If Sassoon or anybody else gets in the way of the stages, I’ll go after them again––that’s all there is to it, isn’t it?”

Lefever tapped the second finger of one fat hand gently on the table. “Practically; practically all, Henry, yes. You don’t quite understand, but you have the right idea. What I am trying to hammer into your dense cocoanut is, that when a man has, gets, or is given a reputation out in this country, he has got to live up to it.”

“What do you want me to do––back a horse and shoot two guns at once up and down Main Street, cowboy style?”

Lefever kept his patience without difficulty. “No, no. You’ll understand.”

“Scott advised me to run down to Medicine Bend for a few days to let the Morgans cool off.”

“Right. That was the first step. The few days are a thing of the past. I suppose you know,” 91 continued Lefever, in as well-modulated a tone as he could assume to convey information that could not be regarded as wholly cheerful, “that they expect to get you for this Sassoon job.”

De Spain flushed. But the red anger lasted only a moment. “Who are ‘they’?” he asked after a pause.

“Deaf Sandusky, Logan, of course, the Calabasas bunch, and the Morgans.”

De Spain regarded his companion unamiably. “What do they expect I’ll be doing while they are getting me?”

Lefever raised a hand deprecatingly. “Don’t be overconfident, Henry; that’s your danger. I know you can take care of yourself. All I want to do is to get the folks here acquainted with your ability, without taking unnecessary chances. You see, people are not now asking questions of one another; they are asking them of themselves. Who and what is this newcomer––an accident or a genuine arrival? A common squib or a real explosion? Don’t get excited,” he added, in an effort to soothe de Spain’s obvious irritation. “You have the idea, Henry. It’s time to show yourself.”

“I can’t very well do business here without showing myself,” retorted de Spain.

“But it is a thing to be managed,” persisted 92 Lefever. “Now, suppose––since the topic is up––we ‘show’ in Main Street for a while.”

“Suppose we do,” echoed de Spain ungraciously.

“That will crack the début ice. We will call at Harry Tenison’s hotel, and then go to his new rooms––go right to society headquarters first––that’s my theory of doing it. If anybody has any shooting in mind, Tenison’s is a quiet and orderly place. And if a man declines to eat anybody up at Tenison’s, we put him down, Henry, as not ravenously hungry.”

“One man I would like to see is that sheriff, Druel, who let Sassoon get out.”

“Ready to interview him now?”

“I’ve got some telegrams to answer.”

“Those will keep. The Morgans are in town. We’ll start out and find somebody.”

It was wet and sloppy outside, but Lefever was indifferent to the rain, and de Spain thought it would be undignified to complain of it.

When, followed by Lefever, he walked into the lobby of Tenison’s hotel a few moments later the office was empty. Nevertheless, the news of the appearance of Sassoon’s captor spread. The two sauntered into the billiard-hall, which occupied a deep room adjoining the office and opened with large plate-glass windows on Main Street. Every 93 table was in use. A fringe of spectators in the chairs, ostensibly watching the pool games, turned their eyes toward de Spain––those that recognized him distinguishing him by nods and whispers to others.

Among several groups of men standing before the long bar, one party of four near the front end likewise engaged the interest of those keener loafers who were capable of foreseeing situations. These men, Satterlee Morgan, the cattleman; Bull Page, one of his cowboys; Sheriff Druel, and Judge Druel, his brother, had been drinking together. They did not see Lefever and his companion as the two came in through the rear lobby door. But Lefever, on catching sight of them, welcomed his opportunity. Walking directly forward, he laid his hand on Satt Morgan’s shoulder. As the cattleman turned, Lefever, genially grasping his hand, introduced de Spain to each of the party in turn. What followed in the brief interval between the meeting of the six men and the sudden breaking up of the group a few moments later was never clearly known, but a fairly conclusive theory of it was afterward accepted by Sleepy Cat.

Morgan threw the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated 94 in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. “I heard,” he said in a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, “you made a sunrise call on us one day last week.”

“And I want to say,” returned de Spain, equally amiable, “that if I had had any idea you folks would take it so hard––I mean, as an affront intended to any of you––I never would have gone into the Gap after Sassoon. I just assumed––making a mistake as I now realize––that my scrap would be with Sassoon, not with the Morgans.”

Satt’s face wrinkled into a humorous grin. “You sure kicked up some alkali.”

De Spain nodded candidly. “More than I intended to. And I say––without any intention of impertinence to anybody else––Sassoon is a cur. I supposed when I brought him in here after so much riding, that we had sheriff enough to keep him.” He looked at Druel with such composure that the latter for a moment was nonplussed. Then he discharged a volley of oaths, and demanded what de Spain meant. De Spain did not move. He refused to see the angry sheriff. “That is where I made my second mistake,” he 95 continued, speaking to Morgan and forcing his tone just enough to be heard. Druel, with more hard words, began to abuse the railroad for not paying taxes enough to build a decent jail. De Spain took another tack. He eyed the sheriff calmly as the latter continued to draw away and left de Spain standing somewhat apart from the rest of the group. “Then it may be I am making another mistake, Druel, in blaming you. It may not be your fault.”

“The fault is, you’re fresh,” cried Druel, warming up as de Spain appeared to cool. The line of tipplers backed away from the bar. De Spain, stepping toward the sheriff, raised his hand in a friendly way. “Druel, you’re hurting yourself by your talk. Make me your deputy again sometime,” he concluded, “and I’ll see that Sassoon stays where he is put.”

“I’ll just do that,” cried Druel, with a very strong word, and he raised his hand in turn. “Next time you want him locked up, you can take care of him yourself.”

The sharp crack of a rifle cut off the words; a bullet tore like a lightning-bolt across de Spain’s neck, crashed through a mahogany pilaster back of the bar, and embedded itself in the wall. The shot had been aimed from the street for his head. The noisy room instantly hushed. Spectators 96 sat glued to their chairs. White-faced players leaned motionless against the tables. De Spain alone had acted; all that the bartenders could ever remember after the single rifle-shot was seeing his hand go back as he whirled and shot instantly toward the heavy report. He had whipped out his gun and fired sidewise through the window at the sound.

That was all. The bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case, looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape, he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. “What’s the matter with your curtains?” he demanded, sheathing his revolver and pointing with an expletive to the big sheet of plate glass. “Is this the way you build up business for the house?”

Those close enough to the window saw that the bare pane had been cut, just above the middle, by two bullet-holes. Curious men examined both fractures when de Spain and Lefever had left the saloon. The first hole was the larger. It had been made by a high-powered rifle; the second 97 was from a bullet of a Colt’s revolver; it was remarked as a miracle of gun-play that the two were hardly an inch apart.

In the street a few minutes later, de Spain and Lefever encountered Scott, who, with his back hunched up, his cheap black hat pulled well down over his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets and his thin coat collar modestly turned against the drizzling rain, was walking across the parkway from the station.

“Sassoon is in town,” exclaimed Lefever with certainty after he had told the story. He waited for the Indian’s opinion. Scott, looking through the water dripping from the brim of his seasoned derby, gave it in one word. “Was,” he amended with a quiet smile.

“Let’s make sure,” insisted Lefever. “Supposing he might be in town yet, Bob, where is he?”

Scott gazed up the street through the rain lighted by yellow lamps on the obscure corners, and looked down the street toward the black reaches of the river. “If he’s here, you’ll find him in one of two places. Tenison’s–––”

“But we’ve just come from Tenison’s,” objected Lefever.

“I mean, across the street, up-stairs; or at Jim Kitchen’s barn. If he was hurried to get 98 away,” added Scott reflectively, “he would slip up-stairs over there as the nearest place to hide; if he had time he would make for the barn, where it would be easy to cache his rifle.”

Lefever took the lapel of the scout’s coat in his hand. “Then you, Bob, go out and see if you can get the whole story. I’ll take the barn. Let Henry go over to Tenison’s and wait at the head of the stairs till we can get back there. It is just around the corner––second floor––a dark hall running back, opposite the double doors that open into an anteroom. Stay there, Henry, till we come. It won’t be long, and if we don’t get track of him you may spot your man yourself.”

De Spain found no difficulty in locating the flight of marble stairs that led to the gambling-rooms. It was the only lighted entrance in the side street. No light shone at the head of the stairs, but a doorway on the left opened into a dimly lighted anteroom and this, in turn, through a large arch, opened on a large room brilliantly lighted by chandeliers––one in the centre and one near each corner. Around three sides of this room were placed the keno layouts, roulette-wheels, faro-tables, and minor gambling devices. Off the casino itself small card-rooms opened.

The big room was well filled for a wet night. The faro-tables were busy, and at the central table 99 at the farther end of the room––the table designated as Tenison’s, because, at the rare intervals in which the proprietor dealt, he presided at this table––a group watched silently a game in progress. De Spain took a place in shadow near one side of the archway facing the street-door and at times looked within for the loosely jointed frame, crooked neck, tousled forehead, and malevolent face of the cattle thief. He could find in the many figures scattered about the room none resembling the one he sought.

A man entering the place spoke to another coming out. De Spain overheard the exchange. “Duke got rid of his steers yet?” asked the first.

“Not yet.”

“Slow game.”

“The old man sold quite a bunch this time. The way he’s playing now he’ll last twenty-four hours.”

De Spain, following the newcomer, strolled into the room and, beginning at one side, proceeded in leisurely fashion from wheel to wheel and table to table inspecting the players. Few looked at him and none paid any attention to his presence. At Tenison’s table he saw in the dealer’s chair the large, white, smooth face, dark eyes, and clerical expression of the proprietor, whose presence meant a real game and explained the interest of the 100 idlers crowded about one player whom de Spain, without getting closer in among the onlookers than he wanted to, could not see.

Tenison, as de Spain approached, happened to look wearily up; his face showed the set lines of a protracted session. He neither spoke nor nodded to the newcomer, but recognized him with a mere glance. Then, though his eyes had rested for only an instant on the new face, he spoke in an impassive tone across the intervening heads: “What happened to your red tie, Henry?”

De Spain put up his hand to his neck, and looked down at a loose end hanging from his soft cravat. It had been torn by the bullet meant for his head. He tucked the end inside his collar. “A Calabasas man tried to untie it a few minutes ago. He missed the knot.”

Tenison did not hear the answer. He had reverted to his case. De Spain moved on and, after making the round of the scattered tables, walked again through the archway into the anteroom, only to meet, as she stood hesitating and apparently about to enter the room, Nan Morgan.

101

CHAPTER VIII

THE GAMBLING-ROOM

They confronted each other blankly. To Nan’s confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress, fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her, fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.

This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up, furious. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed with indignation. “Let me pass.”

The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to obstruct 102 her. “You’ve made a mistake, I think,” he said evenly.

“I have not,” she replied with resentment. “Let me pass.”

“I think you have. You don’t know where you are going,” he persisted, his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.

She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. “I know perfectly well where I am going,” she retorted with heat.

“Then you know,” he returned steadily, “that you’ve no business to enter such a place.”

His opposition seemed only to anger her. “I know where I have business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter. You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!”

His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her resolve. “One question,” he said, ignoring her angry words. “Have you ever been in these rooms before?”

He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it was only to collect herself. “Yes,” she answered, looking up unflinchingly.

Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his interference, but he met her once more quietly. “I am sorry to hear 103 it,” he rejoined. “But that won’t make any difference. You can’t go in to-night.”

“I will go in,” she cried.

“No,” he returned slowly, “you are not going in––not, at least, while I am here.”

They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination. She resented every word he offered. “You are most insolent,” she exclaimed. “You are interfering in something that is no concern of yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don’t stand aside I’ll call for help.”

“Nan!” De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. “We met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth. Did I do it?”

“I don’t care what you said or what you did–––”

“Answer me,” he said sharply, “did I tell you the truth?”

“I don’t know or care–––”

“Yes, you do know–––”

“What you say or do–––”

“I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if you like.”

She looked at him with amazement. She 104 seemed about to speak––to make another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again, put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward the stairs. De Spain followed her. “Let me take you to where you are going?”

Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single, scornful, furious word: “No!” She quickened her step from him in such confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: “Now, who the deuce was that?”

De Spain ignored his question by asking another: “Did you find him?” Lefever shook his head. “Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?”

“Nobody we want.”

“Nothing going on?”

“Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I’ll run over to the office and answer those telegrams.”

105

De Spain started for the stairs. “Henry,” called Lefever, as his companion trotted hastily down, “if you catch up to her, kindly apologize for a fat man.”

But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street he ran into Scott. “Did you get the story?” demanded de Spain.

“Part of it.”

“Was it Sassoon?”

Scott shook his head. “I wish it was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Deaf Sandusky.”

“Calabasas?”

Scott nodded. “You must have moved a couple of inches at the right nick, Henry. That man Sandusky,” Bob smiled a sickly smile, “doesn’t miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all around you.”

The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. “Why,” asked de Spain, boiling a little, “should that damned, hulking brute try to blow my head off just now?”

“Only for the good of the order, Henry,” grinned the scout.

“Nice job Jeff has picked out for me,” muttered de Spain grimly, “standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at.” He drew in a good breath and threw up the wet brim of his 106 hat. “Well, such is life in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage to get me––or I’ll manage to get him––that all depends on how the happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it’s bad luck to miss a man. We’ll hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow John calls the butcher?” demanded de Spain.

“That’s what everybody calls him, I guess.”

The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the big room in front of them.

Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. “We’ll go in and look at him.” He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. “Think twice, John,” suggested the Indian. “If there’s any trouble in a crowd like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is pretty sure to get hurt.”

“I don’t mean to start anything,” explained Lefever. “I only want de Spain to look at him.”

But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players, together with the onlookers, and the dealer––whose tumbled hair fell partly over the visor that protected 107 his eyes from the glare of the overhead light––made up the group. The table stood next to that of Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light, still held to his chair.

Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the size and extreme length of the outlaw’s hand. He had heard of Sandusky’s hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again the length of the hand of the average man.

De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of Sandusky’s dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained now that de Spain perceived Sandusky’s small, hard, brown eyes were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse, 108 straw-colored hair––plastered recently over the forehead by a barber––the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand, the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin, and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky’s brown shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass button.

At Sandusky’s side sat his crony in all important undertakings––a much smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes. Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: “I am looking at you.”

Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. “What are you looking at me for?” demanded Logan insolently.

De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry. “So I’ll know you next time.”

Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned 109 his legs from under the table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so––comprehension dawning on him––his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott’s hand rested heavily on him. “What’s the row?” demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man. Logan pointed at de Spain. “That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight.”

“With a man, Logan; not with a cub,” retorted de Spain, matching insult with insult.

“Maybe I can do something for you,” interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about lifting 110 his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the best weapon. “If I can,” he added stiffly, “I’m at your service.”

De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky’s eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last, since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged, and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.

Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.

111

CHAPTER IX

A CUP OF COFFEE

He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for reflection––indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.

But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang, failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan Morgan’s eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit, by a glance, a word, a gesture––a mere turn of her head. There was in the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to please her––yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent on entering 112 a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night. Association with outlaws––what might it not do for even such a girl? While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail, hoping to catch a sight of her.

On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to Nan if it were she. In another moment his ear told him there were two horses approaching. He waited for the couple to cross the bridge, and they passed him so close he could almost have touched the nearer rider. Then he realized, as the horse passing beside him shied, that it was Sandusky and Logan riding silently by.

For a week de Spain spent most of his time in Sleepy Cat trying to catch sight of Nan. His reflection on the untoward incidents that had set them at variance left him rebellious. He 113 meditated more about putting himself right with her than about all his remaining concerns together. A strange fire had seized him––that fire of the imagination which scorns fair words and fine reasoning, but which, smothered, burns in secret until, fanned by the wind of accident, it bursts out the more fiercely because of the depths in which it has smouldered.

Every day that de Spain rode across the open country, his eyes turned to the far range and to Music Mountain. The rounded, distant, immutable peak––majestic as the sun, cold as the stars, shrouding in its unknown fastnesses the mysteries of the ages and the secrets of time––meant to him now only this mountain girl whom its solitude sheltered and to whom his thoughts continually came back.

Within two weeks he became desperate. He rode the Gap trail from Sleepy Cat again and again for miles and miles in the effort to encounter her. He came to know every ridge and hollow on it, every patch and stone between the lava beds and the Rat River. And in spite of the counsels of his associates, who warned him to beware of traps, he spent, under one pretext or another, much of the time either on the stages to and from Calabasas or in the saddle toward Morgan’s Gap, looking for Nan.

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Killing time in this way, after a fruitless ride, his persistence was one day most unexpectedly rewarded at the Calabasas barns. He had ridden through a hot sun from Sleepy Cat, passing the up stage half-way to Calabasas, and had struck from there directly out on the Sinks toward Morgan’s Gap. Riding thence around the lower lava beds, he had headed for Calabasas, where he had an appointment to meet Scott and Lefever at five o’clock. When de Spain reached the Calabasas barn, McAlpin, the barn boss, was standing in the doorway. “You’d never be comin’ from Sleepy Cat in the saddle!” exclaimed McAlpin incredulously. De Spain nodded affirmatively as he dismounted. “Hot ride, sir; a hot day,” commented McAlpin, shaking his head dubiously as he called a man to take the horse, unstrapped de Spain’s coat from the saddle, and followed the manager into the office.

The heat was oppressive, and de Spain unbuckled his cartridge-belt, slipped his revolver from the holster, mechanically stuck it inside his trousers waistband, hung the heavy belt up under his coat, and, sitting down, called for the stage report and asked whether the new blacksmith had sobered up. When McAlpin had given him all minor information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the 115 horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, was Nan Morgan’s.

McAlpin, talking volubly, essayed to move on, but de Spain, stubbornly pausing, only continued to look at the handsome saddle-horse. McAlpin saw he was in for it, and resigned himself to an inquisition. When de Spain asked whose horse it was, McAlpin was ready. “That little pony is Nan Morgan’s, sir.”

De Spain made no comment. “Good-looking pony, sir,” ventured McAlpin half-heartedly.

“What’s it doing here?” demanded de Spain coldly.

Before answering, the barn boss eyed de Spain very carefully to see how the wind was setting, for the pony’s presence confessed an infraction of a very particular rule. “You see,” he began, cocking at his strict boss from below his visorless cap a questioning Scotch eye, “I like to keep on good terms with that gang. Some of them can be very ugly. It’s better to be friends with them when you can––by stretching the barn rules a little once in a while––than to have enemies of ’em all the time––don’t you think so, sir?”

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“What’s her horse doing here?” asked de Spain, without commenting on the long story, but also without showing, as far as the barnman could detect, any growing resentment at the infraction of his regulations.

McAlpin made even the most inconsequential approaches to a statement with a keen and questioning glance. “The girl went up to the Cat on the early stage, sir. She’s coming back this afternoon.”

“What is she riding away over here to Calabasas for to take the stage, instead of riding straight into Sleepy Cat?”

Once more McAlpin eyed him carefully. “The girl’s been sick.”

“Sick?”

“She ain’t really fit to ride a step,” confided the Scotch boss with growing confidence. “But she’s been going up two or three times now to get some medicine from Doc Torpy––that’s the way of it. There’s a nice girl, sir––in a bunch o’ ruffians, I know––though old Duke, she lives with, he ain’t a half-bad man except for too many cards; I used to work for him––but I call her a nice girl. Do you happen to know her?”

De Spain had long been on guard. “I’ve spoken with her in a business way one or twice, Jim. I can’t really say I know her.”

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“Nice girl. But that’s a tough bunch in that Gap, sure as you’re alive; yes, sir.”

De Spain was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a hardy and enduring rider on a night round-up.

“Anything sick, Jim?” asked de Spain, walking on down the barn and looking at the horses. It was only the second time since he had given him the job that de Spain had called the barn boss “Jim,” and McAlpin answered with the rising assurance of one who realizes he is “in” right. “Not so much as a sore hoof in either alley, Mr. de Spain. I try to take care of them, sir.”

“What are we paying you, Jim?”

“Twenty-seven a week, sir; pretty heavy work at that.”

“We’ll try to make that thirty-two after this week.”

McAlpin touched his cap. “Thank you kindly, sir, I’m sure. It costs like hell to live out here, Mr. de Spain.”

“Lefever says you live off him at poker.”

“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, sir! John will have his joke. He’s always after me to play poker with him––I don’t like to do it. I’ve got a family to support––he ain’t. But by and far, I don’t think John and me is ten dollars apart, year in and year 118 out. Look at that bay, sir! A month ago Elpaso said that horse was all in––look at him now. I manage to keep things up.”

“What did you say,” asked de Spain indifferently, “had been the matter with Nan Morgan?” Her name seemed a whole mouthful to speak, so fearful was he of betraying interest.

“Why, I really didn’t say, sir. And I don’t know. But from what she says, and the way she coughs, I’m thinking it was a touch of this p-new-monia that’s going around so much lately, sir.”

His listener recalled swiftly the days that had passed since the night he had seen her wet through in the cold rain at Sleepy Cat. He feared Jim’s diagnosis might be right. And he had already made all arrangements to meet the occasion now presenting itself. Circumstances seemed at last to favor him, and he looked at his watch. The down stage bringing Nan back would be due in less than an hour.

“Jim,” he said thoughtfully, “you are doing the right thing in showing some good-will toward the Morgans.”

“Now, I’m glad you think that, sir.”

“You know I unintentionally rubbed their backs the wrong way in dragging Sassoon out.”

“They’re jealous of their power, I know––very jealous.”

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“This seems the chance to show that I have no real animosity myself toward the outfit.”

Since de Spain was not looking at him, McAlpin cocked two keen and curious eyes on the sphinx-like birthmark of the very amiable speaker’s face. However, the astute boss, if he wondered, made no comment. “When the stage comes in,” continued de Spain quietly, “have the two grays––Lady and Ben––hitched to my own light Studebaker. I’ll drive her over to the Gap myself.”

“The very thing,” exclaimed McAlpin, staring and struggling with his breath.

“In some way I’ve happened, both times I talked with her, to get in wrong––understand?” McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than once. “No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first take kindly to the idea of going with me.”

“I see.”

“But she ought to do it. She will be tired––it’s a long, dusty ride for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill.”

“So it is, so it is!”

De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid. “See that her pony is lame when she gets here––can’t be ridden. But you’ll take good care of him and send him home in a few days––get it?”

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McAlpin half closed his eyes. “He’ll be so lame it would stagger a cowboy to back him ten feet––and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust me!”

“No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?”

“No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River.”

“If she insists on riding something, or even walking home,” continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a peace-offering, “I’ll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me here to-night, on the hay?”

“Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You’ve got a room right here up-stairs, didn’t you know that?”

“Don’t mind the bed,” directed de Spain prudently. “I like the hay better.”

“As you like; we’ve got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap. But the bed’s all right, sir; it is, on me word.”

With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his appeal for Nan’s favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly faint in the heat and dust, when 121 she arrived. He returned to McAlpin: “Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?”

“Go right down to the inn, sir. It’s a new chap running it––a half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on. She’ll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee.”

It was four o’clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor the left.

As he approached the weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters and carvings.

De Spain pounded on the bar. His effort to attract attention met with no response. He walked to the left end of the bar, lifted the hand-rail that enclosed the space behind it, and pushed 122 open the door between the mirrors leading to the back room. This, too, was empty. He called out––there was no response. He walked through a second door opening on an arcaded passageway toward the kitchen––not a soul was in sight. There was a low fire in the kitchen stove, but Mrs. McAlpin had apparently gone home for a while. Walking back toward the office, he remembered the covered way leading to a patio, which in turn opened on the main road. He perceived also that at the end next the office the covered way faced the window at the end of the long bar.

Irritated at the desertion of the place, due, he afterward learned, to the heat of the afternoon, and disappointed at the frustration of his purpose, he walked back through the rear room into the office. As he lifted the hand-rail and, passing through, lowered it behind him, he took out his watch to see how soon the stage was due. While he held the timepiece in his hand he heard a rapid clatter of hoofs approaching the place. Thinking it might be Scott and Lefever arriving from the south an hour ahead of time, he started toward the front door––which was still open––to greet them. Outside, hurried footsteps reached the door just ahead of him and a large man, stepping quickly into the room, confronted de Spain. 123 One of the man’s hands rested lightly on his right side. De Spain recognized him instantly; the small, drooping head, carried well forward, the keen eyes, the long hand, and, had there still been a question in his mind, the loud-patterned, shabby waistcoat would have proclaimed beyond doubt––Deaf Sandusky.

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CHAPTER X

THE GLASS BUTTON

Even as the big fellow stepped lightly just inside and to the left––as de Spain stood––of the door and faced him, the encounter seemed to de Spain accidental. While Sandusky was not a man he would have chosen to meet at that time, he did not at first consider the incident an eventful one. But before he could speak, a second man appeared in the doorway, and this man appeared to be joking with a third, behind him. As the second man crossed the threshold, de Spain saw Sandusky’s high-voiced little fighting crony, Logan, who now made way, as he stepped within to the right of the open door, for the swinging shoulders and rolling stride of Gale Morgan.

Morgan, eying de Spain with insolence, as was his wont, closed the door behind him with a bang. Then he backed his powerful frame significantly against it.

A blind man could have seen the completeness of the snare. An unpleasant feeling flashed across de Spain’s perception. It was only for the immeasurable part of a second––while uncertainty 125 was resolving itself into a rapid certainty. When Gale Morgan stepped into the room on the heels of his two Calabasas friends, de Spain would have sold for less than a cup of coffee all his chances for life. Nevertheless, before Morgan had set his back fairly against the door and the trap was sprung, de Spain had mapped his fight, and had already felt that, although he might not be the fortunate man, not more than one of the four within the room would be likely to leave it alive.

He did not retreat from where he halted at the instant Sandusky entered. His one slender chance was to hug to the men that meant to kill him. Morgan, the nearest, he esteemed the least dangerous of the three; but to think to escape both Sandusky and Logan at close quarters was, he knew, more than ought to be hoped for.

While Morgan was closing the door, de Spain smiled at his visitors: “That isn’t necessary, Morgan: I’m not ready to run.” Morgan only continued to stare at him. “I need hardly ask,” added de Spain, “whether you fellows have business with me?”

He looked to Sandusky for a reply; it was Logan who answered in shrill falsetto: “No. We don’t happen to have business that I know of. A friend of ours may have a little, maybe!” Logan, 126 lifting his shoulders with his laugh, looked toward his companions for an answer to his joke.

De Spain’s smile appeared unruffled: “You’ll help him transact it, I suppose?”

Logan, looking again toward Sandusky, grinned: “He won’t need any help.”

“Who is your friend?” demanded de Spain good-naturedly. Logan’s glance misled him; it did not refer to Sandusky. And even as he asked the question de Spain heard through the half-open window at the end of the bar the sound of hoofs. Hoping against hope for Lefever, the interruption cheered him. It certainly did not seem that his situation could be made worse.

“Well,” answered Logan, talking again to his gallery of cronies, “we’ve got two or three friends that want to see you. They’re waiting outside to see what you’ll look like in about five minutes––ain’t they, Gale?”

Some one was moving within the rear room. De Spain felt hope in every footfall he heard, and the mention this time of Morgan’s name cleared his plan of battle. Before Gale, with an oath, could blurt out his answer, de Spain had resolved to fight where he stood, taking Logan first and Morgan as he should jump in between the two. It was at the best a hopeless venture against Sandusky’s first shot, which de Spain knew was almost 127 sure to reach a vital spot. But desperate men cannot be choosers.

“There’s no time for seeing me like the present,” declared de Spain, ignoring Morgan and addressing his words to Logan. “Bring your friends in. What are you complaining about, Morgan?” he asked, resenting the stream of abuse that Gale hurled at him whenever he could get a word in. “I had my turn at you with a rifle the other day. You’ve got your turn now. And I call it a pretty soft one, too––don’t you, Sandusky?” he demanded suddenly of the big fellow.

Sandusky alone through the talk had kept an unbroken silence. He was eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did not know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it. What Sandusky was sensibly intent on was the determination that he should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of anybody’s reputation. His eyes 128 with this resolve shining in them rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain’s question seemed to arouse him. “What’s your name?” he demanded bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected in the strained tone.

“It’s on the butt of my gun, Sandusky.”

“What’s that he says?” demanded the man known as the butcher, asking the question of Logan, but without taking his eyes off his shifty prey.

Logan raised his voice to repeat the words and to add a ribald comment.

“You make a good deal of noise,” muttered Sandusky, speaking again to de Spain.

“That ought not to bother you much, Sandusky,” shouted de Spain, trying to win a smile from his taciturn antagonist.

“His noise won’t bother anybody much longer,” put in Logan, whose retorts overflowed at every interval. But there was no smile even hinted at in the uncompromising vigilance of Sandusky’s expressionless face. De Spain discounted the next few minutes far enough to feel that Sandusky’s first shot would mean death to him, even if he could return it.

“I’ll tell you, de Spain,” continued Logan, 129 “we’re going to have a drink with you. Then we’re going to prepare you for going back where you come from––with nice flowers.”

“I guess you thought you could come out here and run over everybody in the Spanish Sinks,” interposed Morgan, with every oath he could summon to load his words.

“Keep out, Morgan,” exclaimed Logan testily. “I’ll do this talking.”

De Spain continued to banter. “Gentlemen,” he said, addressing the three together and realizing that every moment wasted before the shooting added a grain of hope, “I am ready to drink when you are.”

“He’s ready to drink, Tom,” roared Morgan in the deaf man’s ear.

“I’m ready,” announced Sandusky in hollow voice.

Still regarding de Spain with the most businesslike expression, the grizzled outlaw took a guarded step forward, his companions following suit. De Spain, always with a jealous regard for the relative distance between him and his self-appointed executioners, moved backward. In crossing the room, Sandusky, without objection from his companions, moved across their front, and when the four lined up at the bar their positions had changed. De Spain stood at the extreme 130 left, Sandusky next, Logan beside him, and Gale Morgan, at the other end of the line, pretended to pound the bar for service. De Spain, following mountain etiquette in the circumstances, spread his open hands, palms down, on the bar. Sandusky’s great palms slid in the same fashion over the checked slab in unspoken recognition of the brief armistice. Logan’s hands came up in turn, and Morgan still pounded for some one to serve.

De Spain in the new disposition weighed his chances as being both better and worse. They had put Sandusky’s first shot at no more than an arm’s length from his prey, with Logan next to cover the possibility of the big fellow’s failing to paralyze de Spain the first instant. On the other hand, de Spain, trained in the tactics of Whispering Smith and Medicine Bend gunmen, welcomed a short-arm struggle with the worst of his assailants closest at hand. One factor, too, that he realized they were reckoning with, gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet’s nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manœuvring on this score 131 caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. “You’ll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan,” he said, commenting with composure on Morgan’s impatience. Logan looked again at his two companions and laughed.

Every hope de Spain had of possible help from the back room died with that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the scar-featured face of Sassoon peered cautiously from the gloom. The horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at the railroad man.

If it were possible to deepen it, the sinister spot on de Spain’s face darkened. Something in his blood raged at the sight of the malevolent face. He glanced at Logan. “This,” he smiled faintly, nodding toward Sassoon as he himself took a short step farther to the left, “is your drink, Harvey, is it?”

“No,” retorted Logan loudly, “this is your drink.”

“I’ll take Sassoon,” assented de Spain, good-natured again and shifting still another step to the left. “What do you fellows want now?”

“We want to punch a hole through that strawberry,” said Logan, “that beauty-mark. Where did you get it, de Spain?”

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“I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey,” returned de Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might crowd him closer. “I was born with my beauty-mark––just as you were born with your damned bad manners,” he added composedly, for in hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. “You can’t help it, neither can I,” he went on. “Somebody is bound to pay for putting that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk about either? Sassoon, set out for your friends––or I will. Spread, gentlemen, spread.”

He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended, and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and saw only within his field of vision, a cut-glass button that fastened the bottom of Sandusky’s greased waistcoat.

“You’ve waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de Spain,” cried Logan shrilly. “You’ve turned one trick too many on the Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain’t in this room, you’ll never get him.”

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“Which means, I take it, you’re going to try to get me,” smiled de Spain.

“No,” bellowed Morgan, “it means we have got you.”

“You are fooling yourself, Harvey.” De Spain addressed the warning to Logan. “And you, too, Sandusky,” he added.

“We’ll take care of that,” grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence.

“You are jumping into another man’s fight,” protested de Spain steadily.

“Sassoon’s fight is our fight,” interrupted Morgan.

“I advise you,” said de Spain once more, looking with the words at Sandusky and his crony, “to keep out of it.”

“Sandusky,” yelled Logan to his partner, “he advises me and you to keep out of this fight,” he shrilly laughed.

“Sure,” assented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes on de Spain.

Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sassoon, and pointed contemptuously toward the end of the bar. “Shike!” he cried, “step through the rail and take that man’s gun.”

De Spain, looking from one to the other of the four faces confronting him, laughed for the first time. But he was looking without seeing what 134 he seemed to look at. In reality, he saw only a cut-glass button. He was face to face with taking a man’s life or surrendering his own, and he knew the life must be taken in such a way as instantly to disable its possessor. These men had chosen their time and place. There was nothing for it but to meet them. Sassoon was stepping toward him, though very doubtfully. De Spain laughed again, dryly this time. “Go slow, Sassoon,” he said. “That gun is loaded.”

“If you want terms, hand over your gun to Sassoon,” cried Logan.

“Not till it’s empty,” returned de Spain. “Do you want to try taking it?” he demanded of Logan, his cheeks burning a little darker. 135

Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky’s left shoulder.

Logan never answered the question. It was not meant to be answered. For de Spain asked it only to cover the spring he made at that instant into Sandusky’s middle. Catlike though it was, the feint did not take the big fellow unprepared. He had heard once, when or where he could not tell, but he had never forgotten the hint, that de Spain, a boxer, was as quick with his feet as with his hands. The outlaw whirled. Both men shot from the hip; the reports cracked together. One bullet grazing the fancy button smashed through the gaudy waistcoat: the other, as de Spain’s free hand struck at the muzzle of the big man’s gun, tore into de Spain’s foot. Sandusky, convulsed by the frightful shock, staggered against de Spain’s arm, the latter dancing tight against him. Logan, alive to the trick but caught behind his partner, fired over Sandusky’s right shoulder at de Spain’s head, flattened sidewise against the gasping outlaw’s breast. Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky’s left shoulder into Logan’s face. Logan, sinking to the floor, never moved again. Supporting with extraordinary strength the unwieldy bulk of the dying butcher, de Spain managed to steady him as a buffer against Morgan’s fire until he could send a slug over Sandusky’s head at the instant the latter collapsed. Morgan fell against the bar.

Sandusky’s weight dragged de Spain down. For an instant the four men sprawled in a heap. Sassoon, who had not yet got an effective shot across at his agile enemy, dropping his revolver, dodged under the rail to close. De Spain, struggling to free himself from the dying man, saw, through a mist, the greenish eyes and the thirsty knife. He fired from the floor. The bullet shook without stopping his enemy, and de Spain, partly caught under Sandusky’s body, thought, as Sassoon came on, the game was up. With an effort born of desperation, he dragged himself from under the twitching giant, freed his revolver, rolled away, 136 and, with his sight swimming, swung the gun at Sassoon’s stomach. He meant to kill him. The bullet whirled the white-faced man to one side and he dropped, but pulled himself, full of fight, to his knees and, knife in hand, panted forward. De Spain rolling hastily from him, staggered to his feet and, running in as Sassoon tried to strike, beat him senseless with the butt of his gun.

His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window, smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sassoon’s horse trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he threw himself like a sack across the horse’s back, lashed the brute through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly away.

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CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE STORM

It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen, after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals, dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the darkness told of a pace forced for some hours.

“Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe,” suggested the heavier of the two men guardedly to the taller one.

“Does this man know you?” muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe, stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his breast.

“Pedro knows me,” returned Lefever, the other man, “but McAlpin says there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to the same gang––coiners, I believe, every one of them. They work here and push in Texas.”

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“Can you spot the room when you get up-stairs, where we saw that streak of light a minute ago?” demanded Pardaloe, gazing at the black front of the building.

“I can spot every foot of the place, up-stairs and down, in the dark,” declared Lefever, peering through the inky night at the ruinous pile.

Instead of meeting de Spain, as appointed, Lefever had come in from the Thief River stage with Scott three hours late only to learn of the fight at the Inn and de Spain’s disappearance. Jeffries had already sent a party, of whom Pardaloe, a man of Farrell Kennedy’s from Medicine Bend, had been picked up as one, down from Sleepy Cat, to look for the missing man, and for hours the search had gone forward.

“Suppose you go back to the barn,” suggested Pardaloe, “and wait there while I go in and have a little talk with the landlord.”

“Why, yes, Pardaloe. That’s an idea,” assented Lefever feebly. Then he laid the first two fingers of his fat right hand on the lapel of his companion’s coat: “Where should you like your body sent?” he asked in feigned confidence. “Concerning these little details, it’s just as well to know your wishes now.”

“You don’t suppose this boob will try to fight, do you, when he knows Jeffries will burn the 139 shack over his head if another railroad man is attacked in it?” demanded Pardaloe.

“The most ruinous habit I have had in life––and first and last I have contracted many––has been, trusting other people,” observed Lefever. “A man shouldn’t trust anybody––not even himself. We can burn the boob’s shack down––of course: but if you go in there alone the ensuing blaze would be of no particular interest to you.”

“All right. We go in together.”

“Not exactly that, either. You go first. Few of these forty-four bullets will go through two men at once.”

Ignoring Lefever’s pleasantry, Pardaloe, pulling his hat brim through force of habit well over his eyes, shook himself loose and, like a big cat walking in water, stepped toward the door. He could move his tall, bony frame, seemingly covered only with muscles and sinews, so silently that in the dark he made no more sound than a spectre. But once before the door, with Lefever close at hand, he pounded the cracked panels till the windows shook. Some time elapsed before there was any response. The pounding continued till a flickering light appeared at a window. There was an ill-natured colloquy, a delay, more impatience, and at length the landlord reluctantly opened the door.

140

He held in his hand an oil-lamp. The chimney had been smoked in such a way that the light of the flame was thrown forward and not back. Lefever in the background, nothing disturbed, threw a flash-light back at the half-dressed innkeeper. His hair was tumbled sleepily across his forehead and his eyes––one showing a white scar across the pupil––set deep in retreating orbits, blinked under heavy brows. “What do you want?” he demanded. Pardaloe, without answering, pushed through the half-open door into the room.

“We’re staying here to-night,” announced Pardaloe, as simply as possible. Lefever had already edged into the doorway, pushing the stubborn innkeeper aside by sheer bulk of weight and size.

The sleepy man gave ground stubbornly. “I’ve got no beds,” he growled surlily. “You can’t stay here.”

Lefever at once assumed the case for the intruders. “I could sleep this minute standing on my head,” he declared. “And as for staying here, I can’t stay anywhere else. What’s your name, son?” he demanded, buttonholing in his off-hand way the protesting man.

“My name is Philippi,” answered the one-eyed defiantly.

“Regards to Brutus, my dear fellow,” retorted 141 Lefever, seizing the man’s hand as if happily surprised.

“You can’t crowd in here, so you might as well move on,” declared Philippi gruffly. “This is no hotel.”

Lefever laughed. “No offense, Philippi, but would it be indiscreet to ask which side of your face hurts the most when you smile?”

“If you’ve got no beds, we won’t bother you long,” interposed Pardaloe.

“I’d like a pitcher of ice-water, anyway,” persisted Lefever. “Sit down, noble Greek; we’ll talk this over.”

“Who are you fellows?” demanded Philippi, looking from one to the other.

“I am a prospector from the Purgatoire,” answered Pardaloe.

Philippi turned his keen eye on Lefever. “You a railroad man?”

“No, sir,” declared Lefever, dusting the alkali vigorously from his coat sleeve.

“What are you?”

John looked as modest as it was possible for him to look. “Few people ask me that, but in matter of fact I am an objet d’art.”

“What’s that?”

“Different things at different times to different men, Philippi,” answered Lefever simply, exploring, 142 while he spoke, different corners of the room with his flash-light. “At this moment––” he stopped suddenly, then resumed reassuringly––“I want a drink.”

“Nothing doing,” muttered the landlord sulkily.

Lefever’s flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. “Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?” he demanded, walking significantly toward the vender’s authority.

“Nothing in the house to-night.”

“Then,” announced Lefever calmly, “I arrest you.”

Philippi started. “Arrest me?”

“For obtaining a thirst under false pretenses. Come, now, before we slip the irons on, get us something to eat. I’ll go up-stairs and pick out a room to sleep in.”

“I tell you,” insisted Philippi profanely, “there are no rooms for you to sleep in up-stairs.”

“And I,” retorted Lefever, “tell you there are. Anyway, I left a sewing-machine up-stairs here three years ago, and promised to keep it oiled for the lady. This is a good time to begin.”

With Lefever making the old steps creak, ahead, and Pardaloe, with his long, soft, pigeon-toed tread close behind, the unwilling landlord was taken up the stairs, and the two men thoroughly searched the house. Lefever lowered his 143 voice when the hunt began through the bedrooms––few of which contained even a bed––but he kept up a running fire of talk that gave Philippi no respite from anxiety.

Outside the kitchen quarters, which likewise were rigorously searched, not a soul could be found in the house. One room only, over the kitchen, gave hope of uncovering something. The party reached the door of this room through a narrow, tortuous passageway along an attic gable. The door was locked. Philippi told them it belonged to a sheep-herder who did not use it often. He protested he had no key. Pardaloe knocked and, getting no response, tried unsuccessfully to force the lock. Lefever motioned him aside and, after knocking loudly on the door himself, laid his shoulder against it. The door creaked and sprung in crazy protest. The panels cracked, the stubborn frame gave, and with a violent crash Lefever pushed completely through the locked barrier and threw his flash-light inside. Pardaloe, urging the unwilling Philippi ahead, followed.

The room, unfinished under the rafters, was destitute of furnishings, and bore traces of long disuse. Stretched on the floor toward the middle of it, and side by side, lay two men. One of them was very large, the other not more than half his 144 companion’s size. Lefever kneeling over the man nearest the door listened for signs of breathing, and laid his head to the man’s heart. Having completed his examination, he went around to the other––Pardaloe and Philippi silently watching––and looked him over with equal care. When he had done, he examined, superficially, the wounds of each man. Rising, he turned toward Philippi. “Were these men dead when you brought them up here?”

“I didn’t bring ’em up,” growled Philippi.

“You know them, Pardaloe?” asked Lefever. Pardaloe answered that he did. Lefever turned sharply on Philippi. “Where were you when this fight was going on?”

“Down at the stage barn.”

“Getting your alibi ready. But, of course, you know that won’t let you out, Philippi. Your best chance is to tell the truth. There were two others with this pair––where are Gale Morgan and Sassoon?”

“Satt Morgan was here with hay to-day. He took them over this evening to Music Mountain.”

“Where were they hit?”

“Morgan was hit in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sassoon was hit in the side, and in the neck.”

“Where is de Spain?”

145

“Dead, I reckon, by this time.”

“Where’s his body?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you think he is dead?”

“Sassoon said he was hit in the head.”

“Yet he got away on horseback!”

“I’m telling you what Sassoon said; I didn’t see him.”

Lefever and Pardaloe rode back to the stage barn. “Certainly looks blue for Henry,” muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. “Bob Scott,” he added gloomily, “may find him somewhere on the Sinks.”

At Sleepy Cat, Jeffries, wild with impatience, was on the telephone. Lefever, with McAlpin and Pardaloe standing at his side, reported to the superintendent all he could learn. “He rode away––without help, of course,” explained Lefever to Jeffries in conclusion. “What shape he is in, it’s pretty hard to say, Jeffries. Three more of the bunch, Vance Morgan, Bull Page, and a lame man that works for Bill Morgan, were waiting in the saddle at the head of the draw between the barn and the hotel for him if he should get away from the inn. Somehow, he went the other way and nobody saw hide nor hair of him, so far 146 as I can learn. If he was able to make it, Jeff, he would naturally try for Sleepy Cat. But that’s a pretty fair ride for a sound man, let alone a man that’s hit––and everybody claims he was hit. If he wasn’t hit he should have been in Sleepy Cat long before this. You say you’ve had men out across the river?”

“Since dark,” responded Jeffries. “But, John,” he asked, “could a man hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a get-away?”

“Henry might,” answered Lefever laconically.

Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o’clock after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken place, they followed de Spain’s jump through the broken sash into the patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy’s country, but there was no gainsaying the trail––occasional flecks of blood blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led––not as the trailers hoped they would, in a wide détour across easy-riding country 147 toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road––but farther and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man’s land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.

Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head as he leaned over the pony’s shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast of him. “It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind of riding.”

Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain’s revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain was no longer guiding Sassoon’s pony; it was wandering at will.

Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had come almost completely about and headed again for 148 Music Mountain. Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan’s Gap and were practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.

“Here’s a go,” muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.

“Remember,” interposed Scott mildly, “he is riding Sassoon’s horse––the brute is naturally heading for home.”

“Follow him home, then,” said Lefever unhesitatingly.

Scott looked at his companion in surprise: “Near home, you mean, John,” he suggested inoffensively. “For three of us to ride into the Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don’t think the excitement would last long––for us.”

The three were agreed, however, to follow up to the mouth of the Gap itself and did follow. Finding no trace of de Spain’s movements in this quest, they rode separately in wide circles to the north and south, but without picking up a hoof-print that led anywhere or gave them any clew to the whereabouts of the missing man.

“There is one consolation,” muttered Lefever, as they held to what each felt to be an almost 149 hopeless search. “As long as Henry can stick to a saddle he can shoot––and the Morgans after yesterday afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find him.”

Scott shook his head: “That brings us up against another proposition, John. De Spain hasn’t got any cartridges.”

Lefever turned sharply: “What do you mean?”

“His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before,” demanded Lefever indignantly.

“I’ve been hoping all the time we’d find Henry and I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scott’s information was disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.

For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly 150 accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, badly wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information halted.

Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgan’s stable, Sassoon’s horse––the one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight, waiting at Sassoon’s corral to be cared for. There could be, it was fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing rider.

Though Scott had known first of de Spain’s helpless condition in his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the midst of a gloomy council at Jeffries’s office, he was pressed for an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But, Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation of the faith that was in him. “In the 151 first place,” he said, “I’ve ridden a good deal with that man––pretty much all over the country north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nut’s full of meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself. Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here, they don’t. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk that’s floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a mark here one day in Sleepy Cat.”

Jeffries didn’t interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.

“You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot into it, and expect to live to tell it,” continued Scott mildly, “as to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man, without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at that, John, the man that fires the gun,” murmured the scout, “ought to be behind a tree.

“You say he is hit. I grant it,” he concluded. “But I knew him once when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a 152 scrimmage outside Williams Cache two years ago.”

“You don’t believe, then, he’s dead, Bob?” demanded Jeffries impatiently.

“Not till I see him dead,” persisted Scott unmoved.

153

CHAPTER XII

ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN

De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon’s saddle, was losing sight and consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.

The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained––flight, and he spurred his horse cruelly.

Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite beyond 154 his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his infuriated horse flew along as if winged.

A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead. He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible between himself and more of the Morgans.

A perceptible weakness presently forced him to realize he must look to his wounded foot. This he did without slackening speed. The sight of it and the feeling inside his torn and blood-soaked boot was not reassuring, but he rode on, sparing neither his horse nor his exhaustion. It was only when spells of dizziness, recurring with frequency, warned him he could not keep the saddle much longer, that he attempted to dismount to stanch the drip of blood from his stirrup.

Before he slackened speed he tried to look behind 155 to reconnoitre. With relief he perceived his sight to be a trifle better, and in scanning the horizon he could discover no pursuers. Choosing a secluded spot, he dismounted, cut open his boot, and found that a bullet, passing downward, had torn an artery under the arch of the foot. Making a rude tourniquet, he succeeded in checking pretty well the spurting flow that was sapping his strength. After he had adjusted the bandage he stood up and looked at it. Then he drew his revolver again and broke it. He found five empty shells in the chambers and threw them away. The last cartridge had not been fired. He could not even figure out how he had happened to have six cartridges in the cylinder, for he rarely loaded more than five. Indeed, it was his fixed habit––to avoid accidents––never to carry a cartridge under the hammer of his gun––yet now there had been one. Without trying to explain the circumstance, he took fresh stock of his chances and began to wonder whether he might yet escape and live.

He climbed again into the saddle, and, riding to a ridge, looked carefully over the desert. It was with an effort that he could steady himself, and the extent of his weakness surprised him. What further perplexed him as he crossed a long divide, got another good view and saw no pursuit 156 threatening in any direction, was to identify the country he was in. The only landmark anywhere in sight that he could recognize was Music Mountain. This now lay to the northwest, and he knew he must be a long way from any country he was familiar with. But there was no gainsaying, even in his confused condition, Music Mountain. After looking at it a long time he headed with some hesitation cautiously toward it, with intent to intercept the first trail to the northeast. This would take him toward Sleepy Cat.

As his eyes continued to sweep the horizon he noted that the sun was down and it was growing dark. This brought a relief and a difficulty. It left him less in fear of molestation, but made it harder for him to reach a known trail. The horse, in spite of the long, hard ride seemed fresh yet, and de Spain, with one cartridge would still have laughed at his difficulties had he not realized, with uneasiness, that his head was becoming very light. Recurring intervals of giddiness foreshadowed a new danger in his uncharted ride. It became again a problem for him to keep his seat in the saddle. He was aware at intervals that he was steadying himself like a drunken man. His efforts to guide the horse only bewildered the beast, and the two travelled on maudlin curves and doubled back on their track 157 until de Spain decided that his sole chance of reaching any known trail was to let go and give the horse his head.

A starless night fell across the desert. With danger of pursuit practically ended, and only a chance encounter to fear, de Spain tried to help himself by walking the horse and resting his bleeding foot in front of the pommel, letting the pony pick his way as he chose. A period of unconsciousness, a blank in de Spain’s mind, soon followed the slowing up. He came to himself as he was lurching out of the saddle. Pulling himself together, he put the wet foot in the stirrup again and clung to the pommel with his hands. How long he rode in this way, or how far, he never knew. He was roused to consciousness by the unaccustomed sound of running water underneath his horse’s feet.

It was pitch dark everywhere. The horse after the hard experience of the evening was drinking a welcome draft. De Spain had no conception of where he could be, but the stream told him he had somehow reached the range, though Music Mountain itself had been swallowed up in the night. A sudden and uncontrollable thirst seized the wounded man. He could hear the water falling over the stones and climbed slowly and painfully out of the saddle to the ground. With 158 the lines in his left hand he crawled toward the water and, lying flat on the ground beside the horse, put his head down to drink. The horse, meantime, satisfied, lifted his head with a gulp, rinsed his mouth, and pulled backward. The lines slipped from de Spain’s hand. Alarmed, the weakened man scrambled after them. The horse, startled, shied, and before his rider could get to his feet scampered off in a trot. While de Spain listened in consternation, the escaped horse, falling into an easy stride, galloped away into the night.

Stunned by this new misfortune, and listening gloomily to the retreating hoof-beats, de Spain pondered the situation in which the disaster left him. It was the worst possible blow that could have fallen, but fallen it had, and he turned with such philosophy as he could to complete the drink of water that had probably cost him his life. At least, cold water never tasted sweeter, never was so grateful to his parched tongue, and since the price of the draft might be measured by life itself, he drank extravagantly, stopping at times to rest and, after breathing deeply, to drink again.

When he had slaked a seemingly unquenchable craving, he dashed the running water, first with one hand and then the other, over his face. 159 He tried feebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it. There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and wait till help should reach him––it was manifestly impossible for him to seek it.

Meantime, the little stream beside him offered first aid. He tried it with his foot and found it slight and shallow, albeit with a rocky bed that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength and oriented himself, he could quickly get down into the hills.

Animated by these thoughts, he held his way up-stream, hoping at every step to reach the gorge from which the flow issued. He would have known this by the sound of the falling water, but, weakening soon, he found he must abandon hope of getting up to it. However, by resting 160 and scrambling up the rocks, he kept on longer than he would have believed possible. Encountering at length, as he struggled upward, a ledge and a clump of bushes, he crawled weakly on hands and knees into it, too spent to struggle farther, stretched himself on the flattened brambles and sank into a heavy sleep.

He woke in broad daylight. Consciousness returned slowly and he raised himself with pain from his rough couch. His wounds were stiff, and he lay for a long time on his back looking up at the sky. At length he dragged himself to an open space near where he had slept and looked about. He appeared to be near the foot of a mountain quite strange to him, and in rather an exposed place. The shelter that had served him for the night proved worthless in daylight and, following his strongly developed instinct of self-preservation, de Spain started once more up the rocky path of the stream. He clambered a hundred feet above where he had slept before he found a hiding-place. It was at the foot of a tiny waterfall where the brook, striking a ledge of granite, had patiently hollowed out a shallow pool. Beside this a great mass of frost-bitten rock had fallen, and one of the bowlders lay tilted in such a way as to roof in a sort of cave, the entrance 161 to which was not higher than a man’s knee. De Spain crawled into this refuge. He conceived that from this high, open ledge he could show a small signal-fire at night, and if it were answered by his enemies he had a semblance of a retreat under the fallen rock, a hunting-knife, and one lone cartridge to protect himself with. A mountain-lion might have to be reckoned with; and if a pursuer should follow him under the rock his only chance would lie in getting hold, after a fight, of the man’s loaded revolver or ammunition-belt. Such a hope involved a great deal of confidence, but de Spain was an optimist––most railroad men are.

The outlook was, in truth, not altogether cheerful––some would have called it, for a wounded man, desperate––but it had some slight consolations and de Spain was not given to long-range forebodings. The rising sun shone in a glory of clearness, and the cool night air rolling up the mountain was grateful and refreshing. Lying flat on the rock, he stretched his head forward and drank deeply of the ice-cold pool beside which he lay. The violent exertion of reaching the height had started the ruptured artery anew, and his first work was crudely to cleanse the wound and attempt to rebandage it. He was hungry, but for this there was only one alleviation––sleep––and, 162 carefully effacing all traces of his presence on the ledge, he crawled into his rock retreat and fell again into a heavy slumber.

It was this repose that proved his undoing. He woke to consciousness so weak he could scarcely lift his head. It was still day. A consuming thirst assailed him, but he lacked the strength to crawl out of his cave, and, looking toward his bandaged foot, he was shocked at the sight of how it had bled while he slept. When he could rally from his discouragement he rewound the bandages and told himself what a fool he had been to drag his foot up the rocks before the wound had had any chance to heal. He resolved, despite his thirst, to lie still all day and give the artery absolute quiet. It required only a little stoicism; the stake was life.

Toward afternoon his restlessness increased, but he clung to his resolve to lie still. By evening he was burning with thirst, and when morning came after a feverish night, with his head on fire and his mouth crusted dry, he concluded rightly that one or both of his wounds had become infected.

De Spain understood what it meant. He looked regretfully at the injured foot. Swollen out of shape and angry-looking, the mere appearance would have told him, had the confirmation 163 been needed, that his situation was becoming critical. This did not so much disconcert him as it surprised him and spurred him mentally to the necessity of new measures. He lay a long time thinking. Against the infection he could do little. But the one aid at his hand was abundance of cold water to drink and bathe his wound in, and to this he resolved now to drag himself. To crawl across the space that separated him from the pool required all the strength he could summon. The sun was already well up and its rays shot like spectrum arrows through the spray of the dainty cataract, which spurted in a jewelled sheet over a rocky ledge twenty feet above and poured noisily down from the broad pool along jagged bowlders below.

Crawling, choking with thirst, slowly forward, he reached the water, and, reclining on his side and one elbow, he was about to lean down to drink when he suddenly felt, with some kind of an instinctive shock, that he was no longer alone on the ledge. He had no interest in analyzing the conviction; he did not even question it. Not a sound had reached his ears. Only a moment before he had looked carefully all around. But the field of his vision was closely circumscribed by the walls about him. It was easy for an invader to come on his retreat unawares––at 164 all events, somebody, he was almost sure, stood behind him. The silence meant an enemy. The first thing to expect was a bullet. It would probably be aimed at the back of his head. At least he knew this was the spot to aim for to kill a man instantly and painlessly––yet he shrank from that anticipated crash.

And it was this thought that cost the defenseless man at the moment the most pain––that feeling, in advance, of the blow of the bullet that should snuff out his life. Defense was out of the question; he was as helpless as a baby. An impulse in his fingers to clutch his revolver he restrained at once––it could only hasten his death. He wondered, as the seconds passed, why his executioner hesitated to shoot, but he could not rid himself of the mental horror of being shot in the base of the brain. Anywhere else he would have almost welcomed a bullet; anywhere else it might have given him one chance for life through rolling over after he was struck in an attempt to kill his assailant.

His thoughts, working in flashes of lightning, suggested every possible trick of escape, and as rapidly rejected each. There was nothing for it but to play the part, to take the blow with no more than a quiver when it came. He had once seen a man shot in just that way. Braced to 165 such a determination, de Spain bent slowly downward, and, with eyes staring into the water for a reflection that might afford a glimpse of his enemy, he began to drink. A splash above his head frightened him almost to death. It was a water ousel dashing into the foaming cataract and out again, and the spray falling from the sudden bath wrecked the mirror of the pool. De Spain nearly choked. Each mouthful of water was a struggle. The sense of impending death had robbed even the life-giving drafts of their tonic; each instant carried its acute sensation of being the last. At length, his nerves weakened by hunger and exposure, revolted under the strain. Suppose it should be, after all, a fantasy of his fever that pictured so vividly an enemy behind. With an effort that cost more mental torture than he ever had known, he drew back on his elbow from the pool, steadied himself, turned his head to face his executioner, and confronted Nan Morgan.

166

CHAPTER XIII

PARLEY

She stood beside the rock from which the ledge was reached from below, and as if she had just stepped up into sight. Her rifle was so held in both hands that it could be fired from her hip, and at such close quarters with deadly accuracy. As she stood with startled eyes fixed on his haggard face, her slender neck and poised head were very familiar to de Spain.

And her expression, while it reflected her horrified alarm, did not conceal her anger and aversion at the sight of him. Unaware of the forbidding spectacle he presented, de Spain, swept by a brainstorm at the appearance of this Morgan––the only one of all the Morgans he had not fancied covering him and waiting to deliver his death-warrant––felt a fury sweep over him at the thought of being shot by a woman. The wild idea that she meant to kill him, which in a rational moment would never have entered his mind, now in his delirium completely obsessed him. Working, as it were, mechanically, even the instinct of self-defense asserted itself against 167 her. But enough of reason remained in his disordered senses to tell him that self-defense was out of the question. Whatever she meant to do, he could no more fire at this girl, even had he a chance––and he realized he was at her mercy––than he could at his sister; and he lay with his eyes bent on hers, trying to read her purpose.

She stood guarded, but motionless with surprise. De Spain turned himself slowly and, sitting up, waited for her to speak. There was little to hope for, he thought, in her expression. And all of his duplicity seemed to desert him before her cold resolution. The tricks he would have tried, at bay before a man, he felt no inclination to attempt. He read in her set face only abhorrence and condemnation, and felt in no way moved to argue her verdict. “I suppose,” he said, at length, not trying to disguise his bitter resentment of her presence, “you’ve come to finish me.”

His shirt stained and tattered for bandages, his hair matted in blood on his forehead, his eyes inflamed and sunken, his lips crusted and swollen, the birthmark fastened vividly on his cheek made him a desperate sight. Regarding him steadily, Nan, as bewildered as if she had suddenly come on a great wounded beast of prey still dangerous, made no response to his words. The two stared 168 at each other defiantly and for another moment in silence. “If you are going to kill me,” he continued, looking into her eyes without any thought of appeal, “do it quick.”

Something in his long, unyielding gaze impelled her to break the spell of it. “What are you doing here?” she demanded with anger, curbing her voice to control her excitement as best she could.

De Spain, still looking at her, answered only after a pause. “Hiding,” he said harshly.

“Hiding to kill other men!” Nan’s accusation as she clutched her rifle was almost explosive.

He regarded her coolly, and with the interval he had had for thinking, his wits were clearing. “Do I look like a man hunting for a fight? Or,” he added, since she made no answer, “like a man hunting for a quiet spot to die in? How,” he went on slowly, delirium giving place to indignation, “can you say I’m hiding here to kill other men? That’s what your people tell you, is it?”

“I know you are a murderer.”

In spite of his weakness he flushed. “No,” he exclaimed sharply, “I’m not a murderer. If you think it”––he pointed contemptuously to her side––“you have your rifle––use it!”

“My rifle is to defend myself with. I am not a public executioner,” she answered scornfully.

“You need no rifle to defend yourself from 169 me––though I am a murderer. And if you’re not a public executioner, leave me––I’m dying fast enough.”

“You came here to hide to kill somebody!” she exclaimed, as if the thought were a sudden explanation.

“What do you mean by ‘here’? I might better ask why you came here,” he retorted. “I don’t know where I am. Do I look as if I came here by choice?” He paused. “Listen,” he said, quite master of himself, “I’ll tell you why I came. I shall never get away alive, anyway––you can have the truth if you want it. I got off my horse in the night to get a drink. He bolted. I couldn’t walk. I climbed up here to hide till my wounds heal. Now, I’ve told you the truth. Where am I?”

The grip of her hands on the rifle might have relaxed somewhat, but she saw his deadly revolver in its accustomed place and did not mean to surrender her command of him. Nor would she tell him where he was. She parried his questions. He could get no information of any sort out of her. Yet he saw that something more than his mere presence detained and perplexed her. Her prompt condemnation of him rankled in his mind, and the strain of facing her suspicion wore on him. “I won’t ask you anything more,” he said 170 at length. “You do right to give me no information. It might help me save my life. I can’t talk any longer. You know you think I’ve no right to live––that’s what you think, isn’t it? Why don’t you shoot?” She only stared at him. “Why don’t you answer?” he demanded recklessly.

Nan summoned her resolution. “I know you tried to kill my cousin,” she said hotly, after he had taunted her once more. “And I don’t know you won’t try it again as soon as you are able. And I am going to think what to do before I tell you anything or do anything.”

“You know I tried to kill your cousin! You know nothing of the kind. Your cousin tried to kill me. He’s a bully and a coward, a man that doesn’t know what fair fighting means. Tell him that for me.”

“You are safe in abusing him when he’s not here.”

“Send him to me! This is no place for a woman that calls me what you call me––send your cousin and all his friends!” His voice shook with anger. “Tell him I’m wounded; tell him I’ve had nothing to eat since I fought him before. And if he’s still afraid”––de Spain drew and broke his revolver almost like a flash. In that incredibly quick instant she realized he might have threatened 171 her life before she could move a muscle––“tell your fine cousin I’ve got one cartridge left––just one!” So saying, he held in one hand the loaded cartridge and in the other the empty revolver.

“You think little of bloodshed, I know,” she returned unpleasantly.

“I think a whole lot,” he drawled in painful retort, “of fair fighting.”

“And I’m a woman––you do well to taunt me with that.”

“I did not taunt you with it. You are hatefully unjust,” he protested sullenly.

“You’ve asked me to go––I’m going. How much of what you tell me is true, I don’t know. But I can believe my own eyes, and I believe you are not in condition to do much injury, even if you came here with that intention. You will certainly lose your life if you move from your hiding-place.”

She started away. He leaned toward her. “Stop,” he said peremptorily, raising himself with a wrenching effort. Something in the stern eye held her. His extended hand pointed toward her as arbitrarily as if, instead of lying helpless at her feet, he could command her to his bidding. “I want to ask you a question. I’ve told you the truth. I have just one cartridge. If you are 172 going to send your cousin and his men here, it’s only fair I should know it now––isn’t it?”

Her face was hard in spite of the weakness he struggled to conceal. It annoyed her to think he had surmised she was revolving in her mind what to do. He was demanding an answer she had not yet given to herself.

“My cousin is wounded,” she said, pausing. And then with indecision: “If you stay here quietly you are not likely to be molested.”

She stepped down from the ledge as noiselessly as she had come. Shaken by the discovery she had so unexpectedly made, Nan retreated almost precipitately from the spot. And the question of what to do worried her as much as it worried de Spain. The whole range had been shaken by the Calabasas fight. Even in a country where appeal to arms was common, where men were ready to snuff out a life for a word, or kill for a mess of pottage––to settle for the least grave offense a dispute with a shot––the story of the surprising, unequal, and fatal encounter of the Calabasas men with de Spain, and of his complete disappearance after withstanding almost unheard-of odds, was more than a three days’ wonder; nothing else was talked of for weeks. Even the men in Morgan’s Gap, supposed to be past masters of the game played in the closed room at Calabasas, 173 had been stunned by the issue of the few minutes with Jeffries’s new man.

Nan, who had heard but one side of the story, pictured the aggressor from the tale of the two who lived to tell of the horribly sharp action with him. Morning, noon, and night she had heard nothing but the fight at Calabasas discussed by the men that rode in and out of the Gap––and in connection with it, de Spain’s unexplained flight and disappearance. Those that knew the real story of the conspiracy to kill him did not talk much, after the disastrous outcome, of that part of the affair. But Nan’s common sense whispered to her, whatever might be said about de Spain’s starting the fight, that one man locked in a room with four enemies, all dangerous in an affray, was not likely to begin a fight unless forced to––none, at least, but a madman would do so. She had heard stories, too, of de Spain’s drinking and quarrelling, but none that told them had ever seen him under the influence of drink or had had a quarrel with him except Gale and Sassoon––and these two were extremely quarrelsome.

Unhappy and irresolute, Nan, when she got home, was glad of an excuse to ride to Calabasas for a packet of dressings coming by stage from Sleepy Cat for Gale, who lay wounded at Satt 174 Morgan’s; and, eating a hasty luncheon, she ordered her horse and set out.

Should she tell her Uncle Duke of finding de Spain? Whenever she decided that she must, something in the recollection of de Spain’s condition unsettled her resolution. Tales enough of his bloodthirstiness, his merciless efficiency, his ever-ready craft and consummate duplicity were familiar to her––most of them made so within the last three days––for no one in her circle any longer professed to underrate the demonstrated resourcefulness of the man.

Yet only a few of these stories appealed to Nan’s innate convictions of truth and justice. She lived among men who were, for the most part, not truthful or dependable even in small things––how could they be relied on to tell the truth about de Spain’s motives and conduct? As to his deadly skill with arms, no stories were needed to confirm this, even though she herself had once overcome him in a contest. The evidence of this mastery had now a fatal pre-eminence among the tragedies of the Spanish Sinks. Where he lay he could, if he meditated revenge on her people, murder any of them, almost at will. To spare his life imperilled to this extent theirs––but surely he lay not far from death by exhaustion. Weighed against all she had ever listened 175 to concerning his deceit was the evidence of her own sight. She had seen men desperately ill, and men desperately stricken. This man was either both or she could never again believe her senses. And if he was not helped soon he would die.

But who was to help him? Certainly none of his friends could know where he was hidden or of his plight––no help could come from them unless she told them. If she told them they would try to reach him. That would mean an appalling––an unthinkable––fight. If she told her uncle, could she keep him from killing de Spain? She believed not. He might promise to let him go. But she knew her uncle’s ferocious resentment, and how easy it would be for him to give her fine words and, in spite of them, for de Spain to be found dead some morning where he lay––there were plenty of men available for jobs such as that.

All came back to one terrifying alternative: Should she help this wretched man herself? And if he lived, would he repay her by shooting some one of her own kin?

The long ride to Calabasas went fast as the debate swept on, and the vivid shock of her strange experience recurred to her imagination.

She drew up before the big barn. Jim McAlpin 176 was coming out to go to supper. Nan asked for her package and wanted to start directly back again. McAlpin refused absolutely to hear of it. He looked at her horse and professed to be shocked. He told her she had ridden hard, urged her to dismount, and sent her pony in to be rubbed, assuring Nan heartily there was not a man, outside the hostlers, within ten miles. While her horse was cared for, McAlpin asked, in his harmless Scotch way, about Gale.

Concerning Gale, Nan was non-committal. But she listened with interest, more or less veiled, to whatever running comment McAlpin had to offer concerning the Calabasas fight. “And I was sorry to see Gale mixed up in it,” he concluded, in his effort to draw Nan out, “sorry. And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms.” He put out his hand cannily. “I worked for his father before he was born.” His listener remained obdurate. There was nothing for it except further probing, to which, however, Jim felt abundantly equal. “Some say,” he suggested, looking significantly toward the door of the barn, and significantly away again, “that Henry went down there to pick a fight with the boys. But,” he asserted cryptically, “I happen to know that wasn’t so.”

177

“Then what did he go down there for?” demanded Nan indignantly, but not warily.

McAlpin, the situation now in hand, took his time to it. He leaned forward in a manner calculated to invite confidence without giving offense. “Miss Nan,” said he simply, “I worked for your Uncle Duke for five years––you know that.” Nan had, at least, heard it fifty times. “I think a good deal of him––I think a good deal of you, so does the missus, so does little Loretta––she’s always asking about you, the child is––and I hear and see a good deal here that other people don’t get next to––they can’t. Now Henry de Spain was here, with me, sitting right there where you are sitting, Miss Nan, in that chair,” declared McAlpin with an unanswerable finger, “not fifteen minutes before that fight began, he was there. I told you he never went down there to fight. Do you want the proof? I’ll tell you––I wouldn’t want anybody else to know––will you keep it?”

Nan seemed indifferent. “Girls are not supposed to keep secrets,” she said obstinately.

Her narrator was not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. “There is Henry de Spain’s coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you’ll find his belt of cartridges. Don’t take my word––look for yourself.”

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Giving this information time to sink in, McAlpin continued. Nan’s eyes had turned, despite her indifference, to the coat; but she was thinking more intently about the belt which McAlpin asserted hung under it. “You want to know what he did go down to the hotel for that afternoon? I happen to know that, too,” averred McAlpin, sitting down, but respectfully, on the edge of the chair. “First I want to say this: I worked for your Uncle Duke five years.”

He paused to give Nan a chance to dispute the statement if she so desired. Then taking her despairing silence as an indorsement of his position in giving her a confidence, he went on: “Henry de Spain is dead,” he said quietly. She eyed him without so much as winking. “I wouldn’t tell it if he wasn’t. Some of the boys don’t believe he is. I’m not a pessimist––not a bit––but I’m telling you it’s a physical impossibility for a man to take the fire of four revolvers in the hands of four men like those four men, at arm’s length, and live. Henry de Spain is the cleverest man with a gun that ever rode the Spanish Sinks, but limits is limits; the boy’s dead. And he was always talking about you. It’s God’s truth, and since he’s dead it harms no one to tell it to you, though I’d never breathe it to another. He was fairly gone on you. Now 179 that’s the fair truth: the man was gone on you. I knowed it, where others didn’t know it. I was the only one he could always ask about whether you’d been here, and when; and when you might be expected coming again––and all such things like that.

“You don’t have to knock me down, Miss Nan, to put me wise about a man’s being keen on a girl. I’m a married man,” declared McAlpin with modest pride. “He thought all the time he was fooling me, and keeping covered. Why, I laughed to myself at his tricks to get information without letting on! Now, that afternoon he came in here kind of moody. It was an anniversary for him, and a hard one––the day his father was shot from ambush––a good many years ago, but nary one of us had forgot it. Then he happened to see your pony––this same pony you’re riding to-day––a-standing back there in the box-stall. He asked me whose it was; and he asked me about you, and, by jinx! the way he perked up when I told him you were coming in on the stage that afternoon! When he heard you’d been sick, he was for going down to the hotel to get a cup of coffee––for you!” McAlpin, like any good story-teller, was already on his feet again. “He did it,” he exclaimed, “and you know what he got when he stepped into the barroom.” 180 He took hold of de Spain’s coat and held it aside to enter his exhibit. “There,” he concluded, “is his cartridge-belt, hanging there yet. The boy is dead––why shouldn’t I tell you?”

Nan rode home much more excited, more bewildered than when she had ridden over. What should she do? It was already pretty clear to her that de Spain had not ridden unarmed to where she found him to ambush any of the Morgans. He was not dead; but he was not far from it if McAlpin was right and if she could credit her own senses in looking at him. What ought she to do?

Other things McAlpin had said crowded her thoughts. Strangest shock of all that this man of all other men should profess to care for her. She had shown anger when McAlpin dared speak of it; at least, she thought she had. And she still did not know how, sufficiently, to resent the thought of such audacity on de Spain’s part; but recalling all she could of his words and actions, she was forced to confess to herself that McAlpin’s assertions were confirmed in them––and that what McAlpin had said interpreted de Spain’s unvarying attitude toward her. This was, to say the least, a further awkward complication for her feelings. She already had enough to confuse them.

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CHAPTER XIV

NAN DRIFTS

Without going in to speak to Gale, whom Bull Page, his nurse, reported very cross but not hurt much, Nan left her packet for him and rode home. Her uncle Duke was in town. She had the house to herself, with only Bonita, the old Mexican serving-woman, and Nan ate her late supper alone.

The longer she pondered on de Spain and his dilemma––and her own––the more she worried. When she went to bed, up-stairs in her little gable room, she thought sleep––never hard for her to woo––would relieve her of her anxiety for at least the night. But she waited in vain for sleep. She was continually asking herself whether de Spain was really very badly hurt, or whether he might be only tricking her into thinking he was. Assailed by conflicting doubts, she tossed on her pillow till a resolve seized her to go up again to his hiding-place and see what she could see or hear––possibly, if one were on foot, she could uncover a plot.

She dressed resolutely, buckled a holster to 182 her side, and slipping a revolver––a new one that Gale had given her––into it for protection, she walked softly down-stairs and out of doors.

The night air was clear with a three-quarter moon well up in the sky. She took her way rapidly along the trail to the mountain, keeping as much as possible within the great shadows cast by the towering peaks. Not a sound met her acute listening as she pressed on––not a living thing seemed to move anywhere in the whole great Gap, except this slender-footed, keen-eyed girl, whose heart beat with apprehension of wiles, stratagems, and ambush concerning the venture she was making.

Breathing stealthily and keyed to a tense feeling of uncertainty and suspicion, Nan at length found herself below the ledge where de Spain was in hiding. She stopped and, with the craft of an Indian, stood perfectly still for a very long time before she began to climb up to where the enemy lay. Hearing no sound, she took courage and made the ascent. She reached without adventure the corner of the ledge where she had first seen him, and there, lying flat, listened again.

Hearing only the music of the little cascade, she swept the ledge as well as she could with her eyes, but it was now so far in shadow as to lie in impenetrable darkness. Hardly daring to breathe, 183 she crept and felt her way over it with her hands, discovering nothing until she had almost reached de Spain’s retreat at the farther side. Then her heart stopped in an agony of fear––underneath the overhanging wall she heard voices.

To attempt to escape was as dangerous as to lie still. Had she dared, she would have retreated at once the way she came. Since she dared not, she was compelled to hear what was said, and, indeed, was eager to hear. De Spain had confederates, then, and had tricked her, after all. Whatever his plot, she was resolved to know it, and instead of retreating she took her revolver in hand and drew herself nearer. When she had gained her new position the mutterings, which had been indistinct, became audible. It was not two voices she had heard, but one––de Spain, she judged, was talking in his sleep.

But a moment later this explanation failed to satisfy her. The mutterings were too constant and too disconnected to be mistaken for sleep-talking––it dawned on Nan that this must be delirium. She could hear de Spain throwing himself from side to side, and the near and far sounds, as if of two voices, were explained. It was possible now for her to tell herself she was mistress of the situation. She crept nearer.

He was babbling in the chill darkness about 184 ammunition, urging men to make haste, warning them of some one coming. He turned on the rock floor ceaselessly, sometimes toward her, sometimes from her, muttering of horses, water, passengers, wheels, wrecks. He made broken appeals to be chopped out, directed men where to use their axes. Nan listened to his ravings, overcome by the revelation of his condition. Once her uncle had lain sick of a fever and had been delirious; but that, her sole experience, was nothing to this. Once de Spain threw out a groping hand and, before she could escape, caught her skirt. Nan tried to pull away. His grip did not loosen. She took his hand in hers and, while he muttered meaningless words, forced his fingers open and drew away. His hand was dry and burning hot.

She told herself he must die if he remained longer unaided, and there were unpleasant possibilities, if he died where he lay. Such a death, so close to her own home might, if it were ever known, throw suspicion on her uncle and arouse the deeper resentment of the wounded man’s friends. If the least of pity played a part in suggesting that her safest course was to help de Spain, Nan kept its promptings as much as she could in the penumbra of her thoughts. She did not want to pity or to help him, she convinced 185 herself; but she did not want his death laid to a Morgan plot––for none of his friends would ever believe de Spain had found his way alive and alone to where he lay.

All of this Nan was casting up in her mind as she walked home. She had already decided, but without realizing it, what to do, and was willing to assume that her mind was still open.

Toward daylight of the morning, de Spain dreamed he was not alone––that a figure moved silently in the faintness of the dawn––a figure he struggled to believe a reality, but one that tricked his wandering senses and left him, at the coming of another day, weaker, with failing courage, and alone.

But when he opened his eyes later, and with a clearer head, he found food and drink near. Unable to believe his sight, he fancied his wavering senses deceiving him, until he put out his hand and felt actually the substance of what he saw. He took up a bottle of milk incredulously, and sipped at it with the caution of a man not unused to periods of starvation. He broke eggs and swallowed them, at intervals, hungrily from the shell; and meat he cached, animal-like, in near-by crannies and, manlike, in his pockets.

He was determined, if she should come again, to intercept his visitor. For forty-eight hours 186 he tried cat-naps with an occasional sandwich to keep up his strength. Nan returned unseen, and disappeared despite his watchfulness. A new supply of food proved she had been near, but that it would be hard to time her coming.

When she did come, the third time, an innocent snare discovered her presence. It was just before day, and de Spain had so scattered small obstacles––handfuls of gravel and little chips of rock––that should she cross the ledge in the dark she could hardly escape rousing him.

The device betrayed her. “I’m awake,” announced de Spain at once from his retreat. When she stopped at the words he could not see her; she had flattened herself, standing, against a wall of the ledge. He waited patiently. “You give me no chance to thank you,” he went on after a pause. Nan, drawing nearer, put down a small parcel. “I don’t need any thanks,” she replied with calculated coolness. “I am hoping when you are well enough you will go away, quietly, in the night. That will be the only way you can thank me.”

“I shall be as glad to go as you can be to have me,” rejoined de Spain. “But that won’t be thanking you as I am going to. If you think you can save my life and refuse my thanks as I mean to express them––you are mistaken. I will 187 be perfectly honest. Lying out here isn’t just what I’d choose for comfort. But if by doing it I could see you once in two or three days–––”

“You won’t see me again.”

“No news could be worse. And if I can’t, I don’t know how I’m going to get out at all. I’ve no horse––you know that. I can’t stand on my foot yet; if you had a light you might see for yourself. I think I showed you my gun. If you could tell me where I am–––”

He halted on the implied question. Nan took ample time to reply.

“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know where you are?” she asked, and there was a touch of vexed incredulity in her tone.

De Spain seemed unmoved by her scepticism. “I can’t tell you anything else,” he said simply. “You couldn’t have any idea I crawled up here for the fun of it.”

“I’ve been trying to think,” she returned, and he perceived in the hardness of her voice how at bay she felt in giving him the least bit of information, “whether I ought to tell you anything at all–––”

“I couldn’t very decently take any unfair advantage after what you’ve done, could I?”

“Then––you are in Morgan’s Gap,” she said swiftly, as if she wanted it off her mind.

188

There was no movement of surprise, neither was there any answer. “I supposed, when I found you here, you knew that,” she added less resolutely; the darkness and silence were plainly a strain.

“I know you are telling the truth,” he responded at length. “But I can hardly believe it. That’s the reason, of course, you did find me. I rode a good many miles that night without knowing where I was or what I was doing. I certainly never figured on winding up here. How could I get in here without being stopped?”

“Everybody inside the Gap was outside hunting for you, I suppose.”

“There isn’t much use asking where I am, in the Gap. I never was inside but once. I shouldn’t know if you did tell me.”

“You are at the foot of Music Mountain, about a mile from where I live.”

“You must have thought I meant to raid your house. I didn’t. I was hit. I got mixed up in trying to get away. You want me out of here?”

“Very much.”

“No more than I want to get out. Perhaps by to-morrow I could walk a few miles. I should have to assassinate somebody to get some ammunition.”

“It wouldn’t be hard for you to do that, I presume.”

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Her words and her tone revealed the intensity of her dislike and the depth of her distrust.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, without resentment: “You are ashamed already of saying that, aren’t you?”

“No, I am not,” she answered defiantly.

“Yes, you are. You know it isn’t true. If you believed it you never would have brought food here to save my life.”

“I brought it to save some of my own people from possible death at your hands––to prevent another fight––to see if you hadn’t manhood enough after being helped, to go away, when you were able to move, peaceably. One cartridge might mean one life, dear to me.”

“I know whose life you mean.”

“You know nothing about what I mean.”

“I know better than you know yourself. If I believed you, I shouldn’t respect you. Fear and mercy are two different things. If I thought you were only afraid of me, I shouldn’t think much of your aid. Listen––I never took the life of any man except to defend my own–––”

“No murderer that ever took anybody’s life in this country ever said anything but that.”

“Don’t class me with murderers.”

“You are known from one end of the country to the other as a gunman.”

He answered impassively: “Did these men who 190 call me a gunman ever tell you why I’m one?” She seemed in too hostile a mood to answer. “I guess not,” he went on. “Let me tell you now. The next time you hear me called a gunman you can tell them.”

“I won’t listen,” she exclaimed, restive.

“Yes, you will listen,” he said quietly; “you shall hear every word. My father brought sheep into the Peace River country. The cattlemen picked on him to make an example of. He went out, unarmed, one night to take care of the horses. My mother heard two shots. He didn’t come back. She went to look for him. He was lying under the corral gate with a hole smashed through his jaw by a rifle-bullet that tore his head half off.” De Spain did not raise his voice nor did he hasten his words. “I was born one night six months after that,” he continued. “My mother died that night. When a neighbor’s wife took me from her arm and wrapped me in a blanket, she saw I carried the face of my father as my mother had seen it the night he was murdered. That,” he said, “is what made me a ‘gunman.’ Not whiskey––not women––not cards––just what you’ve heard. And I’ll tell you something else you may tell the men that call me a gunman. The man that shot down my father at his corral gate I haven’t found yet. I 191 expect to find him. For ten years I’ve been getting ready to find him. He is here––in these mountains. I don’t even know his name. But if I live, I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll tear open his head with a soft bullet in the way he tore my father’s open. After I get through with that man”––he hesitated––“they may call me whatever they like.”

The faint ghostliness of the coming day, writing its warning in the eastern sky, the bitter chill of the dying night, the slow, hard, impassive utterance, the darkness in which she stood listening to an enemy she could not see, the loneliness and danger of her situation combined to impress on the unwilling listener the picture of the murder, the tragic birth, and the mother’s death. “You want me out of the Gap,” de Spain concluded, his voice unchanged. “I want to get out. Come back, once more, in the daytime. I will see what I can do with my foot by that time.” He paused. “Will you come?”

She hesitated. “It would be too dangerous for me to come up here in the daytime. Trouble would follow.”

“Come at dusk. You know I am no murderer.”

“I don’t know it,” she persisted stubbornly. It was her final protest.

“Count, some day, on knowing it.”

192

CHAPTER XV

CROSSING A DEEP RIVER

A grizzly bear hidden among the haystacks back of the corral would have given Nan much less anxiety than de Spain secreted in the heart of the Morgan stronghold. But as she hurried home, fearful of encountering an early rider who should ask questions, it seemed as if she might, indeed, find some way of getting rid of the troublesome foe without having it on her conscience that she had starved a wounded man to death, or that he had shot some one of her people in getting away.

Her troubled speculations were reduced now almost to wondering when de Spain would leave, and, disinclined though she felt to further parley, she believed he would go the sooner if she were to consent to see him again. Everything he had said to her seemed to unsettle her mind and to imperil impressions concerning him that she felt it dangerous, or at least treasonable, to part with. To believe anything but the worst of a man whom she heard cursed and abused continually by her 193 uncles, cousins, and their associates and retainers, seemed a monstrous thing––and every effort de Spain made to dislodge her prejudices called for fresh distrust on her part. What had most shaken her convictions––and it would come back to her in spite of everything she could do to keep it out of her mind––was the recollection of the murder of his father, the tragic death of his mother. As for the facts of his story, somehow she never thought of questioning them. The seal of its dreadful truth he carried on his face.

That day Nan washed her hair. On the second day––because there were no good reasons for it––she found herself deciding conscientiously to see de Spain for the last time, and toward sunset. This was about the time he had suggested, but it really seemed, after long thought, the best time. She began dressing early for her trip, and with constantly recurring dissatisfaction with her wardrobe––picking the best of her limited stock of silk stockings, choosing the freshest of her few pairs of tan boots. All of her riding-skirts looked shabby as she fretfully inspected them; but Bonita pressed out the newest one for the hurried occasion, while Nan used the interval, with more than usual care, on her troublesome hair––never less tractable, it seemed, in her life. Nothing, in truth, in her appearance, satisfied her, and she 194 was obliged at last to turn from her glass with the hateful sigh that it made no difference anyway.

De Spain was sitting with his back against a rock, and his knees drawn up, leaning his head on his right hand and resting his elbow on the knee. His left arm hung down over his left knee, and the look on his face was one of reflection and irresolution rather than of action and decision. But he looked so restored after his brief period of nourishment that Nan, when she stepped up on the ledge at sunset, would not have known the wreck she had seen in the same place the week before.

His heart jumped at the sight of her young face, and her clear, courageous eyes surveyed him questioningly as he scrambled to his feet.

“I am going to tramp out of here to-morrow night,” he confided to her after his thanks. “It is Saturday; a lot of your men will be in Sleepy Cat––and they won’t all be very keen-sighted on their way back. I can get a good start outside before daylight.”

She heard him with relief. “What will you do then?” she asked.

“Hide. Watch every chance to crawl a mile nearer Calabasas. I can’t walk much, but I ought to make it by Sunday night or Monday 195 morning. I may see a friend––perhaps I may see the other fellow’s friend, and with my lone cartridge I may be able to bluff him out of a horse,” he suggested, gazing at the crimson tie that flowed from Nan’s open neck. “By the way,” he added, his glance resting on her right side as he noticed the absence of her holster, “where is your protector to-day?” She made no answer. “Fine form,” he said coldly, “to come unarmed on an errand of mercy to a desperado.”

Nan flushed with vexation. “I came away in such a hurry I forgot it,” she replied lamely.

“A forget might cost you your life.”

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten you left a cartridge-belt behind once yourself,” she returned swiftly. The retort startled him. How could she know? But he would not, at first, ask a question, though her eyes told him she knew what she was talking about. They looked at each other a moment in silence.

De Spain, convicted, finally laid his fingers over the butt of his empty revolver. “How did you find that out?”

She tossed her head. They were standing only a few feet apart, de Spain supporting himself now with his left hand high up against the wall; Nan, with her shoulder lightly against it; both had become quizzical. “Other people forget, too, then,” 196 was all she said, fingering the loosened tie as the breeze from the west blew it toward her shoulder.

“No,” he protested, “I didn’t forget; not that time. I went over to the joint to get a cup of coffee and expected to be back within five minutes, never dreaming of walking into a bear trap.” He drew his revolver and, breaking it negligently, took out the single cartridge. “Take this.” He held the cartridge in his left hand and took two halting steps toward her––“since you are unarmed, I will be, too. Not that this puts us on an even footing. I don’t mean that. Nothing would. You would be too much for me in any kind of a contest, armed or unarmed.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded to hide her confusion. And she saw that each step he took cost pain, skilfully concealed.

“I mean,” he said, “you are to take this cartridge as a remembrance of my forgetfulness and your adventure.”

She drew back. “I don’t want it.”

“Take it.”

He was persistent. She allowed him to drop the loaded shell into her hand. “Now,” he continued, replacing his gun, “if I encounter any of your people in an attempt to break through a line, and somebody gets killed, you will know, 197 when you hear the story, that this time, at least, I didn’t ‘start it.’”

“All the same––” She hesitated. “I don’t think that’s exactly right. You need not shoot my people, even if you meet them. There are plenty of others you might meet–––”

He put her objections aside, enjoying being so near her and happy that she made no retreat. “My reputation,” he insisted, “has suffered a little in Morgan’s Gap. I mean that at least one who makes her home under Music Mountain shall know differently of me. What’s that?” He heard a sound. “Listen!”

The two, looking at each other, strained their ears to hear more through the rush of the falling water. “Some one is coming,” said de Spain. Nan ran lightly to where she could peep over the ledge. Hardly pausing as she glanced down, she stepped quickly back. “I’ll go right on up the mountain to the azalea fields,” she said hastily.

He nodded. “I’ll hide. Stop. If you are questioned, you don’t know I’m here. You must say so for your own sake, not for mine.”

She was gone before he had finished. De Spain drew quickly back to where he could secrete himself. In another moment he heard heavy footsteps where he had stood with his visitor. But the footsteps crossed the ledge, and their 198 sound died away up the path Nan had taken. De Spain could not see the intruder. It was impossible to conjecture who he was or what his errand, and de Spain could only await whatever should develop. He waited several minutes before he heard any sign of life above. Then snatches of two voices began to reach him. He could distinguish Nan’s voice and at intervals the heavier tones of a man. The two were descending. In a few moments they reached the ledge, and de Spain, near at hand, could hear every word.

“Hold on a minute,” said the man roughly. His voice was heavy and his utterance harsh.

“I must get home,” objected Nan.

“Hold on, I tell you,” returned her companion. De Spain could not see, but he began already to feel the scene. “I want to talk to you.”

“We can talk going down,” parried Nan.

De Spain heard her hurried footfalls. “No, you don’t,” retorted her companion, evidently cutting off her retreat.

“Gale Morgan!” There was a blaze in Nan’s sharp exclamation. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you and I are going to have this out right here, before we leave this ledge.”

“I tell you, I want to go home.”

“You’ll go home when I say so.”

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“Stand away from that girl!” repeated de Spain harshly, backing the words with a step forward.

200

“How dare you stop me!”

“I’ll show you what I dare, young lady. You’ve been backing and filling with me for two years. Now I want to know what you’re going to do.”

“Gale! Won’t you have a little sense? Come along home with me, like a good fellow, and I’ll talk things over with you just as long as you like.”

“You’ll talk things over with me right here, and as long as I like,” he retorted savagely. “Every time I ask you to marry me you’ve got some new excuse.”

“It’s shameful for you to act in this way, Gale.” She spoke low and rapidly to her enraged suitor. De Spain alone knew it was to keep her humiliation from his own ears, and he made no effort to follow her quick, pleading words. The moment was most embarrassing for two of the three involved. But nothing that Nan could say would win from her cousin any reprieve.

“When you came back from school I told Duke I was going to marry you. He said, all right,” persisted her cousin stubbornly.

“Gale Morgan, what Uncle Duke said, or didn’t say, has nothing whatever to do with my consent.”

“I told you I was going to marry you.”

“Does that bind me to get married, when I don’t want to?”

201

“You said you’d marry me.”

Nan exploded: “I never, never said so in this world.” Her voice shook with indignation. “You know that’s a downright falsehood.”

“You said you didn’t care for anybody else,” he fairly bellowed. “Now I want to know whether you’ll marry me if I take you over to Sleepy Cat to-morrow?”

“No!” Nan flung out her answer, reckless of consequence. “I’ll never marry you. Let me go home.”

“You’ll go home when I get through with you. You’ve fooled me long enough.”

Her blood froze at the look in his face. “How dare you!” she gasped. “Get out of my way!”

“You damned little vixen!” He sprang forward and caught her by the wrist. “I’ll take the kinks out of you. You wouldn’t marry me your way, now you’ll marry me mine.”

She fought like a tigress. He dragged her struggling into his arms. But above her half-stifled cries and his grunting laugh, Morgan heard a sharp voice: “Take your hands off that girl!”

Whirling, with Nan in his savage arms, the half-drunken mountaineer saw de Spain ten feet away, his right hand resting on the grip of his revolver. Stunned, but sobered by mortal danger, Morgan greeted his enemy with an oath. 202 “Stand away from that girl!” repeated de Spain harshly, backing the words with a step forward. Morgan’s grasp relaxed. Nan, jerking away, looked at de Spain and instantly stepped in front of her cousin, on whom de Spain seemed about to draw.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Morgan, with an enraged oath.

“I left some business with you the other day at Calabasas half finished,” said de Spain. “I’m here this afternoon to clean it up. Get away from that girl!”

His manner frightened even Nan. The quick step to the side and back––poising himself like a fencer––his revolver restrained a moment in its sheath by an eager right arm, as if at any instant it might leap into deadly play.

Shocked with new fear, Nan hesitated. If it was play, it was too realistic for the nerves even of a mountain girl. De Spain’s angry face and burning eyes photographed themselves on her memory from that moment. But whatever he meant, she had her part to do. She backed, with arms spread low at her sides, directly against her cousin. “You shan’t fight,” she cried at de Spain.

“Stand away from that man!” retorted de Spain sternly.

203

“You shan’t kill my cousin. What do you mean? What are you doing here? Leave us!”

“Get away, Nan, I tell you. I’ll finish him,” cried Morgan, puncturing every word with an oath.

She whirled and caught her cousin in her arms. “He will shoot us both if you fire. Take me away, Gale. You coward,” she exclaimed, whirling again with trembling tones on de Spain, “would you kill a woman?”

De Spain saw the danger was past. It needed hardly an instant to show him that Morgan had lost stomach for a fight. He talked wrathfully, but he made no motion to draw. “I see I’ve got to chase you into a fight,” said de Spain contemptuously, and starting gingerly to circle the hesitating cousin. Nan, in her excitement, ran directly toward the enemy, as if to cut off his movement.

“Don’t you dare put me in danger,” she cried, facing de Spain threateningly. “Don’t you dare fight my cousin here.”

“Stand away from me,” hammered de Spain, eying Morgan steadily.

“He is wounded now,” stormed Nan, so fast she could hardly frame the words. “You shan’t kill him. If you are a man, don’t shoot a wounded man and a woman. You shan’t shoot. Gale! protect yourself!” Whirling to face her cousin, 204 she took the chance to back directly against de Spain. Both hands were spread open and partly behind her, the palms up, as if to check him. In the instant that she and de Spain were in contact he realized, rather than saw––for his eyes never released Morgan’s eyes––what she was frantically slipping to him––the loaded cartridge. It was done in a flash, and she was running from him again. Her warm fingers had swept across his own. She had returned to him, voluntarily, his slender chance for life. But in doing it she had challenged him to a new and overwhelming interest in life itself. And again, in front of her cousin, she was crying out anew against the shedding of blood.

“I came up here to fight a man. I don’t fight women,” muttered de Spain, maintaining the deceit and regarding both with an unpromising visage. Then to Morgan. “I’ll talk to you later. But you’ve got to fight or get away from here, both of you, in ten seconds.”

“Take me away, Gale,” cried Nan. “Leave him here––take me home! Take me home!”

She caught her cousin’s arm. “Stay right where you are,” shouted Morgan, pointing at de Spain, and following Nan as she pulled him along. “When I come back, I’ll give you what you’re looking for.”

205

“Bring your friends,” said de Spain tauntingly. “I’ll accommodate four more of you. Stop!” With one hand still on his revolver he pointed the way. “Go down that trail first, Morgan. Stay where you are, girl, till he gets down that hill. You won’t pot me over her shoulder for a while yet. Move!”

Morgan took the path sullenly, de Spain covering every step he took. Behind de Spain Nan stood waiting for her cousin to get beyond earshot. “What,” she whispered hurriedly to de Spain, “will you do?”

Covering Morgan, who could whirl on him at any turn in the descent, de Spain could not look at her in answering. “Looks pretty rocky, doesn’t it?”

“He will start the whole Gap as soon as he gets to his horse.”

He looked at the darkening sky. “They won’t be very active on the job before morning.”

Morgan was at a safe distance. De Spain turned to Nan. He tried to speak out to her, but she sternly smothered his every effort. Her cheeks were on fire, she breathed fast, her eyes burned.

“It looks,” muttered de Spain, “as if I should have to climb Music Mountain to make a get-away.”

206

“There is no good place to hide anywhere above here,” said Nan, regarding him intently.

“Why look so hard at me, then?” he asked. “If this is the last of it, I can take it here with our one lone cartridge.”

Her eyes were bent on him as if they would pierce him through. “If I save your life––” still breathing fast, she hesitated for words––“you won’t trick me––ever––will you?”

Steadily returning her appealing gaze, de Spain answered with deliberation. “Don’t ever give me a chance to trick you, Nan.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded, fear and distrust burning in her tone.

“My life,” he said slowly, “isn’t worth it.”

“You know––” He could see her resolute underlip, pink with fresh young blood, quiver with intensity of feeling as she faltered. “You know what every man says of every girl––foolish, trusting, easy to deceive––everything like that.”

“May God wither my tongue before ever it speaks to deceive you, Nan.”

“A while ago you frightened me so–––”

“Frightened you! Great God!” He stepped closer and looked straight down into her eyes. “If you had raised just one finger when I was bluffing that fellow, I’d have calmed down and eaten out of your little hand, by the hour!”

207

“There’s not a moment to lose,” she said swiftly. “Listen: a trail around this mountain leads out of the Gap, straight across the face of El Capitan.”

“I can make it.”

“Listen! It is terribly dangerous–––”

“Whatever it is it’s a concrete boulevard to a man in my fix.”

“It is half a mile––only inches wide in places––up and down––loose rock–––”

“Some trail!”

“If you slip it’s a thousand feet–––”

“A hundred would be more than plenty.”

“A good climber can do it––I have done it. I’d even go with you, if I could.”

“Why?”

She shook her head angrily at what he dared show in his eyes. “Oh, keep still, listen!”

“I know you’d go, Nan,” he declared unperturbed. “But believe me, I never would let you.”

“I can’t go, because to do any good I must meet you with a horse outside.”

He only looked silently at her, and she turned her eyes from his gaze. “See,” she said, taking him eagerly to the back of the ledge and pointing, “follow that trail, the one to the east––you can’t get lost; you can reach El Capitan before dark––it’s very close. Creep carefully across El Capitan 208 on that narrow trail, and on the other side there is a wide one clear down to the road––oh, do be careful on El Capitan.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I must watch my chance to get away from the corral with a horse. If I fail it will be because I am locked up at home, and you must hide and do the best you can. How much they will surmise of this, I don’t know.”

“Go now, this minute,” he said, restraining his words. “If you don’t come, I shall know why.”

She turned without speaking and, fearless as a chamois, ran down the rocks. De Spain, losing not a moment, hobbled rapidly up along the granite-walled passage that led the way to his chance for life.

209

CHAPTER XVI

A VENTURE IN THE DARK

Pushing his way hastily forward when he could make haste; crawling slowly on his hands and knees when held by opposing rock; feeling for narrow footholds among loose and treacherous fragments; flattening himself like a leech against the face of the precipice when the narrowing ledge left him only inches under foot; clinging with torn hands to every favoring crevice, and pausing when the peril was extreme for fresh strength, de Spain dragged his injured foot across the sheer face of El Capitan in the last shadows of the day’s failing light.

Half-way across, he stopped to look down. Far below lay the valley shrouded in night. Where he stood, stars, already bright, lighted the peaks. But nowhere in the depths could he see any sign of life. Spent by his effort, de Spain reached the rendezvous Nan had indicated, as nearly as the stars would tell him, by ten o’clock. He fell asleep in the aspen grove. Horsemen passing not a hundred yards away roused him.

210

He could not tell how many or who they were, but from the sounds he judged they were riding into the Gap. The moon was not yet up, so he knew it was not much after midnight. The ground was very cold, and he crawled farther on toward the road along which Nan had said he might look for her. It was only after a long and doubtful hour that he heard the muffled footfalls of a horse. He stood concealed among the smaller trees until he could distinguish the outlines of the animal, and his eye caught the figure of the rider.

De Spain stepped out of the trees, and, moving toward Nan, caught her hand and helped her to the ground.

She enjoined silence, and led the horse into the little grove. Stopping well within it, she stooped and began rearranging the mufflers on the hoofs.

“I’m afraid I’m too late,” she said. “How long have you been here?” She faced de Spain with one hand on the pony’s shoulder.

“How could you get here at all?” he asked, reaching clandestinely for her other hand.

“I got terribly frightened thinking of your trying El Capitan. Did you have any falls?”

“You see I’m here––I’ve even slept since. You! How could you get here at all with a horse?”

211

“If I’m only not too late,” she murmured, drawing her hand away.

“I’ve loads of time, it’s not one o’clock.”

“They are hiding on both trails outside watching for you––and the moon will be up––” She seemed very anxious. De Spain made light of her fears. “I’ll get past them––I’ve got to, Nan. Don’t give it a thought.”

“Every corner is watched,” she repeated anxiously.

“But I tell you I’ll dodge them, Nan.”

“They have rifles.”

“They won’t get a chance to use them on me.”

“I don’t know what you’ll think of me––” He heard the troubled note in her voice.

“What do you mean?”

She began to unbutton her jacket. Throwing back the revers she felt inside around her waist, unfastened after a moment and drew forth a leathern strap. She laid it in de Spain’s hands. “This is yours,” she said in a whisper.

He felt it questioningly, hurriedly, then with amazement. “Not a cartridge-belt!” he exclaimed.

“It’s your own.”

“Where––?” She made no answer. “Where did you get it, Nan?” he whispered hurriedly.

212

“Where you left it.”

“How?” She was silent. “When?”

“To-night.”

“Have you been to Calabasas and back to-night?”

“Everybody but Sassoon is in the chase,” she replied uneasily––as if not knowing what to say, or how to say it. “They said you should never leave the Gap alive––they are ready with traps everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear––after what––you did for me to-night––to think of your being shot down like a dog, when you were only trying to get away.”

“I wouldn’t have had you take a ride like that for forty belts!”

“McAlpin showed it to me the last time I was at the stage barn, hanging where you left it.” He strapped the cartridges around him.

“You should never have taken that ride for it. But since you have––” He had drawn his revolver from his waistband. He broke it now and held it out. “Load it for me, Nan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Put four more cartridges in it yourself. Except for your cartridge, the gun is empty. When you do that you will know none of them ever will be used against your own except to protect my life. And if you have any among them whose 213 life ought to come ahead of mine––name him, or them, now. Do as I tell you––load the gun.”

He took hold of her hands and, in spite of her refusals, made her do his will. He guided her hand to draw the cartridges, one after another, from his belt, and waited for her to slip them in the darkness into the empty cylinder, to close the breech, and hand the gun back.

“Now, Nan,” he said, “you know me. You may yet have doubts––they will all die. You will hear many stories about me––but you will say: ‘I put the cartridges in his revolver with my own hands, and I know he won’t abuse the means of defense I gave him myself.’ There can never be any real doubts or misunderstandings between us again, Nan, if you’ll forgive me for making a fool of myself when I met you at Tenison’s. I didn’t dream you were desperate about the way your uncle was playing; I pieced it all together afterward.” He waited for her to speak, but she remained silent.

“You have given me my life, my defense,” he continued, passing from a subject that he perceived was better left untouched. “Who is nearest and dearest to you at home?”

“My Uncle Duke.”

“Then I never will raise a hand against your Uncle Duke. And this man, to-night––this cousin––Gale? Nan, what is that man?”

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“I hate him.”

“Thank God! So do I!”

“But he is a cousin.”

“Then I suppose he must be one of mine.”

“Unless he tries to kill you.”

“He won’t be very long in trying that. And now, what about yourself? What have you got to defend yourself against him, and against every other drunken man?”

She laid her own pistol without a word in de Spain’s hand. He felt it, opened, closed, and gave it back. “That’s a good defender––when it’s in reach. When it’s at home it’s a poor one.”

“It will never be at home again except when I am.”

“Shall I tell you a secret?”

“What is it?” asked Nan unsuspectingly.

“We are engaged to be married.” She sprang from him like a deer. “It’s a dead secret,” he said gravely; “nobody knows it yet––not even you.”

“You need never talk again like that if you want to be friends with me,” she said indignantly. “I hate it.”

“Hate it if you will; it’s so. And it began when you handed me that little bit of lead and brass on the mountain to-night, to defend your life and mine.”

“I’ll hate you if you persecute me the way 215 Gale does. The moon is almost up. You must go.”

“What have you on your feet, Nan?”

“Moccasins.” He stooped down and felt one with his hand. She drew her foot hastily away. “What a girl to manage!” he exclaimed.