THE RIDER OF THE MOHAVE

A Western Story

By JAMES FELLOM

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with Chelsea House

Printed in U. S. A.

By CHELSEA HOUSE

The Rider of the Mohave

(Printed in the United States of America)

To those who, having paid the penalty for their misdeeds, seek to regain their places in the ranks of the law-abiding, this book is sympathetically dedicated

CONTENTS
Prologue	[He Rides by Night]
I	[Mania and Dreams]
II	[The Man Hunter]
III	[In Which Wills Collide]
IV	[Lemuel Yields]
V	[The Wherewithal]
VI	[Aftermath]
VII	[Startling Predicaments]
VIII	[Lavender and Old Lace]
IX	[Evidence to Convict]
X	[A Disclosure]
XI	[Outwitted]
XII	[Reputations at Stake]
XIII	[Sinister Forebodings]
XIV	[An Episode in the Hills]
XV	[The Potent Influence]
XVI	[The Hand of Quintell]
XVII	[One Silent Night]
XVIII	[Skulking Shadows]
XIX	[An Enemy in the Ranks]
XX	[Geerusalem Stirs]
XXI	[The Law and the Lawless]
XXII	[A Showdown]
XXIII	[The Uprising]
XXIV	[Warburton Gets Square]

THE RIDER OF THE MOHAVE
PROLOGUE—HE RIDES BY NIGHT

It was three in the morning, but Geerusalem had not yet closed its eyes. There was too much undug gold in the hills; it was too handy—too easy come, easy go; the days, too short; the pleasures, too wanton, too alluring. The camp of Geerusalem promenaded, gambled, danced, fought, debauched the night away, waiting for to-morrow. Far out on desolate Soapweed Plains, rose the intermittent, yelping wail-bark of a coyote.

The back door of a little store that fronted on the main street opened cautiously. The interior of what was a kitchen was dark; the flower-garden yard into which it gave, was also dark. The shadowy form of a man emerged and halted; he peered carefully about through the gloom. A smaller figure followed, pausing on the threshold—a woman, her white apron and snowy hair quite visible. The man turned, took her in his arms impulsively, and held her close to his breast.

“Don’t you worry, ma. I’ll be droppin’ round again, two weeks from to-night—sure’s sic ’em!” he whispered, as he kissed her.

The woman wept softly. “Oh, Jerome, darling, why don’t you quit this awful thing?” she sobbed, clinging to him. “Don’t you know how my heart’s just breaking?”

“Too late, ma. I oughter’ve quit ’fore I begun. If I started quittin’ now, they wouldn’t let me, would they? But I’m tellin’ you; don’t think about me. They can’t ketch me. I’ve bin goin’ it three years, ain’t I? Well, then, when you see Tinnemaha Pete, tell him to leave you a chunk of that ore. An’ see that he don’t tell nobody about findin’ it. I figger it’s a bonanza. Mebby, that’ll mean better days. Well, we’ll see what’s doin’. Now, I’d better be scootin’, honey. An’ don’t you worry, see?” He kissed her again, tenderly, many times, breathing his last injunction into her ear.

A few seconds later he had slipped like a shadow across the yard and was stealing out of an alleyway between two adobe buildings, heading for the back street. That street was black, deserted, the nocturnal population of the camp confining itself to the bright lights and attractions that converted the one business thoroughfare into a brilliant avenue, noisy with ribald merrymaking and adventure.

Near by stood his horse. He reached it and, with a vigilant glance about, threw back one of the flaps of his saddlebags and plunged a rummaging hand inside. It came forth with a folded piece of wrapping paper and several nails he had placed there the day before.

With a reckless chuckle, he wound his bandanna around his face leaving only his eyes exposed; then he mounted and rode off to the next cross street, and thence to the brilliantly lighted hub of the town. The bulletin board of the Geerusalem Searchlight, an afternoon newspaper, loomed big and black on the edge of the sidewalk, in the full glare of window lights. It was one of those moments when the immediate vicinity was clear of promenaders.

Seeing this, the rider spurred over to the bulletin board, unfolded the sheet of wrapping paper, and nailed it on the black surface with the butt of his six-shooter. Then, he caracoled his horse about, fired a volley into the air and, throwing the whole strength of his lungs into a wild howl, waved his hat to a crowd of men standing before the Miners’ Hotel, and dashed away around the nearest street corner, bound for the lonely, trailless reaches of the Mohave Desert far to the south.

The horde of curious night revelers swarming to the spot, a few seconds later, read with varying degrees of emotion the rough printed notice on the bulletin board:

I bin lookin three year for Sheriff Warburton an cant find him. Ill give $5,000 to git akquainted with the county fameous detektive.

Your lovin bandit,

Billy Gee.

CHAPTER I—MANIA AND DREAMS

Lemuel Huntington had told himself a thousand times that his Dot must have an education. He had long since become infatuated with the notion. It had him gripped as tenaciously as the seductive toils of romance had the imaginative Dot enmeshed. It was a consuming mania with him.

“If I got to steal the money, she’s goin’ to college—the dream of her darlin’ dead mother. S’help me, I’ll turn thief if I got to!”

Lemuel, the failure, was fifty-one—the age when most men begin to slow down, whether they want to or not. Twenty years before, he and his little bride had left a perfectly good living in Iowa to try a short cut to fortune in California. The fact that more often than not distance is a most captivating beckoner, did not occur to these happy newlyweds until they reached the Golden State and found that a tremendous army—also seeking sudden wealth—had preceded them, and was daily being augmented by regiments of recruits from the four corners of the globe.

The discovery appalled them—their capital being alarmingly small; and nearly two years of drifting from little town to little town, just managing to get by, took the heart out of them.

Then, one day, Lemuel brought home news of a tract of government land known as Soapweed Plains, on the north rim of the Mohave Desert, with enticing reports of rich mineral belts in the adjacent mountain ranges. It looked like the opportunity for which they had waited. They would homestead, and in a few years Huntington would be a name indelibly branded on the cattle industry of the State. And there was the further golden prospect of rich mines!

Packing their few belongings, husband and wife bought tickets to the dismal wind-whipped station of Mirage, on the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad, and spent two everlasting days shooing a trinity of stubborn burros over a hell waste, into the new land of promise. But again the captivating beckoner had tricked them. Soapweed Plains was a sweltering realm of sagebrush, sand and sidewinders, twenty-five miles wide, divided off from the rest of the desert universe by a horseshoe barricade of saw-edge peaks and table mountains that abutted a sky-line mesa to the south—and by serenading coyotes by night.

In despair, the Huntingtons filed on two quarter sections of sand and rubble, the west side of their claims overlapping a bunch-grass hill; the narrow strip on the east was handy to those scant benefits of irrigation so grudgingly bestowed by the tepid disappearing-reappearing Mohave River. Here, at least, they might coax a living out of the soil, said Lemuel dolefully. It was a permanent anchorage, if nothing more, sighed his wife. And they started grubbing away a site for a home and killing the sidewinding rattlesnakes.

Soon, they found that the potato thrived, as did the melon and alfalfa; found, too, that it was a paradise for bees. They contrived to get a cow and heifer, a span of desert-broke horses, and a rattletrap buckboard. Prospectors learned about the Huntington ranch and, finding it handier to go there after certain commodities than to far-off Mirage, began patronizing it. Its popularity grew. As a result, Lemuel added a stock of bacon, beans, condensed milk, sugar, matches, and such staple supplies to his assorted farm products, and reaped a comfortable profit therefrom.

Then Dot came—and the lonely brush ranch became the nucleus of Lemuel and Emily’s resurrected hopes, for they began planning wonderful things for their first-born, and, not the least among these things, an education that would make her a great lady of accomplishments some day.

But the years dragged by, one after the other, in that out-of-the-way land, so woefully lacking in transportation—empty-handed years almost, that held out scarcely more than a possibility at any time that those precious plans of theirs would ever be fulfilled. It would take a fat purse indeed to send Dot to select Longwell Seminary in San Francisco and keep her there in becoming luxury until she blossomed forth a chosen daughter of California’s élite.

When Dot was twelve her brave little mother died, and for a long time afterward, Lemuel went about like a man desperately searching for something he had lost without knowing just what it was. His resurrected hopes died with her, and were buried. Everything slowed down to a point where he merely held on to a bare living for himself and his child.

To-day, he was a failure, that child eighteen, while the only remaining echo of the precious plans to make Dot a grand lady was this secret wild mania of his, seething in the core of his brain, to see that daughter educated before they laid him beside the trim little grave in the garden.

Perhaps it was this same mania of his that now led him to haunt the nearest place where brains forgathered—the gold camp of Geerusalem, four miles northeast of the Huntington ranch—and to get to hobnobbing with its insolent brotherhood of mining engineers, promoters, assayers, and attorneys—a type of individual that looms up in the mind of the crude Southwest as prodigious as totem poles, omniscient and omnipotent.

Whatever it was that made Lemuel enjoy being the butt of this uppish fraternity’s quips and sneers, and come back regularly for more, hardly matters. Month in and month out, as often as he could get away from the ranch, he would saddle a horse and ride to Geerusalem, and spend the day strutting around with the forty-five caliber brains of the camp. Accordingly, day after day, Dot, the imaginative, was left to herself and the weaving of her wistful, romantic dreams.

She was a bright little body, this eighteen-year-old daughter of Lemuel, the failure; face so frank and sensitive, hair so soft and wavy and glossy, throat so round and smooth. Her eyes were large and brown, and sometimes quite sad from gazing too long into the monotonous distances out of whose blue haze nothing of living substance ever came. She had grown to charming young womanhood, but she still retained the fanciful mind of her pinafore days—the little story-teller had survived as her playmate, Frank Norris would have said—with all a youngster’s fascination for impossible stories of impossible beings.

She would sit by the hour dreaming of handsome blond heroes rescuing beautiful maidens from the clutches of Tatarian villains, with wicked flowing black mustaches and bushy eyebrows, of magnificent daredevil bandits succoring helpless widows and orphans, of notorious Billy Gee even, about whose wild, desperate exploits up and down the Mohave and Colorado Deserts she had heard so much, of hairbreadth escapes, furious bloody duels, and brilliant weddings.

The isolated ranch was an ideal spot for the painting of just such thrilling mind pictures. She could sit on the front porch and look across the gray desolation of plain that stretched to the violet and yellow scallop of range twenty miles eastward, and visualize in that void of undulating air currents every scene her fertile imagination conjured up for her. She lived those scenes, every one of them. They were big moments in her life; palpitating, vivid moments—moments that made her dreary, humdrum existence worth while to her.

“Nothing ever happens out here,” she would sometimes murmur to the eternal sameness of the plains. “Nobody ever comes this way, even. I wish daddy would sell the ranch and move to Geerusalem or somewhere—where things happen, where people laugh and talk and visit.”

On a number of occasions, Lemuel had found her sitting on the front porch, musing into the solitudes, eyes brilliant, cheeks aglow, her parted lips moving.

“Gosh, what a pity!” he had lamented to himself each time, as he went tiptoeing away. “It’s them fine brains of hers workin’. I tell you, Em’ly, wife, she’s goin’ to be the great lady you figgered on, if I got to sell my soul to do it. I’m jest watchin’ for a chanct. You wait an’ see!”

It was well on toward noon of an August day. A fiery sun was churning the floor of Soapweed Plains into a stormy ocean of heat waves. Lemuel had gone to Geerusalem on his customary hobnobbing expedition. Dot, her housework completed, sat reading in the shade of the passion-flower vine that trellised the porch, a novel borrowed from Mrs. Agatha Liggs, a widow who kept a small dry goods store in the camp.

Suddenly, breaking on the dead silence like muffled shots, came the sound of hoofs. Dot dropped her book and sprang to her feet expectantly, for the riders who passed that way, bound to and from the unimportant desert station of Mirage, were few indeed and far between. The next instant she was staring at a lone horseman approaching, not along the road but from across country, from the direction of the violet and yellow scallop of range that formed the magical setting of all her romantic dreams!

She stared in unbelief, amazed for the moment. Then she noticed that he was hatless, that the whole side of his head, the whole front of his dirty, white shirt, were crimson with blood, that he reeled drunkenly, lifelessly in the saddle.

Aghast at the spectacle, she gazed on, rooted to the spot, until the exhausted horse stumbled up to the barred gate and stopped, drooping, rocking on quivering legs. Out of the gate she darted then, threw down the bars and led the animal up to the house, her heart fluttering with excitement and horror.

The rider was in a half swoon, mumbling thickly. Above his right ear was a long, bloody furrow, like the plow of a bullet. The bandanna he had had for a bandage had slipped down over his face, neglected. It was saturated. He had been bleeding for hours, was her horrifying thought. A glance told her that he was a stranger. That same glance informed her that he was probably twenty-five, fairly good-looking even through his coating of dust and blood, and that he wore a double cartridge belt and a brace of six-shooters, one of which he still held gripped in his hand.

Ordinarily, she would have been quite unable to handle the dead weight he represented, but now she managed to drag him out of the saddle and into the house without being particularly conscious of the effort. She got him on the parlor lounge finally and plunged into the work of bathing his wound and dressing it. Then she tore away his sodden shirts, replaced them with two of her father’s, and brought a dipper of water and poured it in little swallows down his throat.

Seating herself in a chair beside him, she looked him over curiously, studied him. Who was he? What was he? The wound? Under less shocking circumstances, it was quite probable he would have proved a big treat to her vivid imagination. But now there somehow seemed to be too much tragic reality about him to make her care to commit him and his plight to the wild flings of fancy.

At last he opened his eyes and stared up at her vaguely. They were blue eyes. There was an odd, hunted glint in them, a smolder of recklessness, a shadow of sadness, exhaustion. He raised an uncertain hand to his bandaged head. He glanced around the room, then back at her, his wits clearing suddenly.

“Where am I? Whose—whose place is this?” he jerked out, with an effort.

“This is Lemuel Huntington’s ranch. I’m his daughter, Dot.” She thought a queer interest leaped into his eyes at the information. “You must be quiet, now. You’ve lost a lot of blood, but you’ll be all right,” she went on, when he did not speak. “If I fixed you something, could you eat?” She rose from her chair.

But he detained her, in a sudden spasm of apprehension. “My—my saddlebags! I—they——” he faltered hoarsely.

“They’re safe outside,” she nodded. “Do you want them?”

“Please, sister. Bring ’em here. Hurry! I—I want ’em handy.”

She ran out of the front door to the horse which still stood, untethered, on sagging legs. Unfastening the leather containers, she carried them into the house. She remarked that while they were not especially heavy, they bulged to capacity, their flaps buckled securely. She remarked also the man’s relief at sight of them and how profusely he thanked her. Then he instructed her to stow them under the head of the lounge and asked her for a drink of water. But when she returned with a dipperful, she found him sunk into a sleep of exhaustion. Whereupon she darkened the room, closed the door quietly behind her, and went outside again to look after the spent horse.

Watering the animal, she tied it in a stall in the barn to feed. Then she inspected the stranger’s saddle carefully. It was typical of the parts, without an identifying mark of any kind upon it, except splashes of dried blood. Presently she fastened the barn door and reëntered the house. Her mysterious patient still slept. It was a few minutes past noon, and she sat down to her customary warmed-over meal in the kitchen, but she could not eat.

CHAPTER II—THE MAN HUNTER

As has been said, Dot Huntington was, notwithstanding her eighteen years, a child of romance. She had been “living scenes” ever since her mother told her the first bed-time story in the long, long ago. She had wished so many, many times in the past that something really thrilling might happen to her—a big, exciting adventure. At this moment she felt that that thrilling something had at last happened. Here was that big, exciting adventure begun. It was all like one of her tremendous, wonderful dreams come true.

She quivered rapturously in the realization that she was a flesh-and-blood factor in some great tragic mystery, that, hero or villain, this sick, wounded man was her patient, dependent on her. A surge of pity swept suddenly into her heart at the thought; an odd sense of responsibility followed, bringing with it a subtle gratification she keenly welcomed.

She told herself that this stranger had ridden in out of that vast mystic horizon where all her dreams had taken shape—like any one of the impossible beings she visualized—looking for attention, care, succor. Yes, she would heed his call—whether he was good or bad. Why, indeed, should she question the moral status of a man half dead? She sat for a long time, her warmed-over meal cold, ruminating thus. How he must have suffered out in that awful wilderness of sand and furnace heat!

Then again came the sound of approaching hoofs.

Starting up out of her chair, she listened. It was the gait of a fresh horse. If it were her father returning early from camp? If it were somebody else? She had not given this phase of the matter a thought. She had lost sight of embarrassing consequences developing. Now vague fears she could not analyze began to assail her.

The hoofs had fallen into a trot, had come to a halt out on the road, ere she flitted through the house, reached the front door and peered cautiously out. A man had just dismounted at the gate. He also was a stranger, a big, broad man about fifty, wearing a split-crown sombrero, unusually wide of brim, and baggy trousers stuffed into high-heeled boots. He too was coated with the dust of long riding, his iron-gray mustache almost invisibly white with it, his six-shooter holsters standing out from his hips.

In the act of lowering the bars, he stooped to examine something on the ground. His appearance, coupled with this last suspicious move, sufficed to stamp him an officer of the law, even though he was not wearing his identifying star of authority.

Dot watched him a few seconds, reasoning that were he an officer, he undoubtedly hailed from San Buenaventura, the county seat, as she was well acquainted with the constable and deputy sheriffs who made their headquarters in Geerusalem. With this decision, she closed the door, locked it, and rushed into the parlor. Her patient was sleeping heavily. She shook him by the shoulder.

“Wake up! Wake up! There’s a—a sheriff outside!” she whispered hoarsely into his ear.

He scrambled off the lounge in a panic, wild-eyed, groggy, a curse bursting from his lips.

“Y’sure? Why in hell—— Git back, an’ let me at him! I’ll give him——” He fumbled feebly for his six-shooters, reeled off his balance, and tumbled over backward on the lounge. His gaze fastened on her, horrible with appeal. “You wouldn’t feed me to that buzzard—this way—would you, sister? Gimme an even break with the——” he gasped out.

A strange ominous fire was playing in Dot’s eyes. She was pale, but dangerously calm. She leaned over him and caught him quickly around the middle with her right arm.

“Come! Stand up! He won’t dare go into my room.”

He blundered to his feet, then through the small dining room and into her own quarters, adjoining the kitchen, she finally staggered with him and helped him onto her bed.

“Not a sound, now!” she warned.

“I’ll never ferget you for this, Miss—Miss Huntington,” he said hoarsely.

She closed the door after her as she went out, locked it, and hurriedly arranged her appearance before the wall glass in the kitchen. Then she threw on a sunbonnet and took a glistening something out of a drawer in the cupboard. She walked out of the back door, just as the stranger, having finished his investigations at the gate, approached along the driveway, leading his horse. He touched his hat to her as she came in view around the corner of the house, one hand hidden in the folds of her skirt.

“I jest dropped in to get a swaller of water for Chain Lightnin’—if you don’t mind,” he said pleasantly. “It’s right hot travelin’.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Help yourself.” She indicated the trough near by. She looked him over, with obvious suspicion.

While his horse drank, the visitor’s eyes wandered apparently aimlessly over the vicinity; they took in the girl, the buildings, the fresh hoofprints in the mud around the trough. He even hearkened to the munching of an animal in the barn—hungry munching, that was. Presently he sauntered back to her and halted a step away.

“You didn’t happen to see a feller ride by this way an hour or so ago, miss? Mighta looked shot—bleedin’ bad?” he said, watching her narrowly.

She nodded. “About two hours ago—yes. Are you——”

“By that you mean, he come an’ went—is that it?”

“I said he was here, not he is here, sir,” she parried, with emphasis.

He burst into a heavy chuckle, mopped his red face, but kept his hawklike eye riveted on her. “I see. Of course, if he was here you’d jest nacherly out with it, sence they ain’t no reason why you shouldn’t, eh?”

“Well, I declare! You’re awfully clever. You’ve read my mind—almost,” she exclaimed, giving him a radiant, tantalizing smile.

He winced and changed his tactics. When he spoke again it was in a well-assumed, worried confidential tone.

“Poor Bill! He bled like a stuck pig. I see it out by the gate. Y’see, miss, me an’ him’s old pals. He gets in a little scrimmich las’ night, an’ a depity sheriff whangs away at him. I bin’ tryin’ to ketch up with him sence about nine this mornin’. I’m dead anxious to——”

“It’s too bad,” interrupted Dot. “Really, if I’d known that, I’d have insisted on him waiting for you.” He caught the sly derision in her voice, and his jaws set.

“I see you got his hoss in the barn. I s’pose you presented him with a fresh one an’ fixed him up so’s he could go on comf’table?”

“Why, yes! I bandaged his head for him. That was the Christian thing to do, don’t you think? And that poor horse couldn’t have lasted him into Geerusalem. But how in the world did you ever guess——”

“How far is that?”

“Geerusalem? Four miles.”

“That’s about where he’s steerin’ for, don’t you reckon?” he asked shrewdly.

She flashed him another smile. “That’s just what I was going to ask you. How should I know his business? Being his old pal, you’re doing a lot of funny questioning, it seems to me.”

He flushed angrily. “You know consid’rable more than you let on, miss,” he said harshly, his eyes narrowing to pin points. “They ain’t no hoss went out that gate sence he come in here. Somebody ridden out before, but you helped this galoot outer the saddle an’ tramped over the other tracks. You can’t make no sucker outer me. Come through, now!”

She laughed daringly. “There’s more than one way of getting off this ranch—fast, stranger. I’ve had bother enough with one scamp already, without wasting breath on his partner.” She took a sudden step away from him, and the hand she had held concealed in the folds of her skirt came forth, holding a revolver. “Travel! Get out and hunt for your friend, before I give you a place to bandage!”

The unexpectedness of her action took him quite by surprise. He gazed hard at her for a few seconds, then he changed fronts with amazing rapidity. He began to grin broadly.

“Of co’se, you don’t know who you’re talkin’ to, miss, or you wouldn’t jerk a gun——”

“I’m talking to another scalawag. Are you traveling, or do you want what the deputy sheriff gave him?”

There was no doubting her earnestness. Firmness of purpose was stamped on her face, shone from her eyes. The man saw it.

“Why, I’m Sheriff Warburton, of San Buenaventura County, young lady,” he said rather awkwardly.

Dot had been looking straight at him, hard, inimically. Now, as he made known his identity, she also changed front. She wavered suddenly, amazement, pleasure, unbelief struggling across her face. She lowered the revolver and broke into a musical laugh.

“Sheriff Bob Warburton! Are you really? Sheriff? I’m Lemuel Huntington’s daughter, Dot.”

His eyes flew wide open. A snort of astonishment burst from him. His ruddy countenance expanded into a great warm smile.

“Lem’s daughter!” he exploded. “Get away! Well, I’ll be reediscongariconficated! Not that leetle knee-high tike I seen in Jupiter—le’s see, how many years ago was that? Well now, wouldn’t that bust you!” He grabbed her hand. “An’ this is Lem’s ranch, eh? Bless his heart! Where’s the good ol’ hoss thief?”

Presently she said: “Won’t you come inside, Sheriff Warburton, and let me fix you a little bite? You must be hungry——”

“By George! I jest hate to refuse that, Dot. I sure am hungry, but I got to git along.” He grinned slyly as he added: “My time’s all took up chasin’ this pardner of mine who you was so horspitable to.”

“Never mind. You’re liable to get shot gallivanting over the plains without your star and telling such awful whoppers to defenseless young women,” she warned him, with mock gravity.

“I’m more liable to, wearin’ it an’ tellin’ the truth, Dot. This galoot is a stick-up—bad clean through. I hear he’s got folks in these parts an’ I figgered you might be—well, mebby his sister. You’ll forgive my bein’ a leetle rough, Dot, but I——”

“If you’ll forgive my taking care of a wounded man and asking no questions, Sheriff Warburton. You were quite correct about him not leaving by the front gate. But there’s another gate in the north corner of the field, opening on the road between Geerusalem and Colony Town.”

“I was dead sure I was right. You can’t fool me on hoss tracks, Dot. Well, I’m goin’ on into Geerusalem first, to dig up a posse. Reckon I might see Lem. Anyway, tell him I’m comin’ out before I go back, to see how he’s behavin’ hisself.”

As he was riding out along the driveway he turned in his saddle and grinned at her.

“You got too big a heart, Dot. If you’d a-hung onto that pardner of mine, you’d ’a’ collected ten thousand dollars reeward—cash down.” He tapped the breast pocket of his corduroy coat as he spoke.

CHAPTER III—IN WHICH WILLS COLLIDE

For a long time after Sheriff Warburton rode away, Dot followed him with her eyes. Not until he was but a wisp of dust in the gray distance, did she turn to reënter the house. She was considerably shaken by the ordeal, relieved that it was over. Ten thousand dollars reward, he had said. A fortune! What a store of untold pleasures it would buy—surcease of worry, regeneration! Thoughtfully she walked to her room and unlocked the door. The fearful eyes of the fugitive fastened on hers questioningly.

“He’s gone. It was Sheriff Warburton. He’s hunting for you—to arrest you.” She said this in quiet tones.

“I—I don’t know how to thank you, Miss Huntington,” he stammered huskily. “My—my own mother couldn’t ’a’ done more. I ain’t deservin’. I’m no good. I’ll never ferget you as long as I live.” A strange spasm crossed his face. He settled feebly back on the bed, the tears coursing down his cheeks in little rivulets.

“There now! Don’t think about it,” she said gently. “I’ll fix you something to eat. Then you can sleep. But my father must not even suspect that you are here, understand? To-night, when you’re stronger, I’ll help you out of the house. I’ll spread a few blankets in the hayloft for you. You’ll be safe there.”

She made to leave the room, but he stopped her.

“Would you mind gettin’ me them—them saddlebags ag’in, Miss Huntington? An’—an’ keep ’em by me, won’t you? I got things in ’em I—I can’t afford to lose, so to speak.”

For the second time Dot obeyed his request, bringing the bulging twin leather pouches from under the parlor lounge and storing them under the head of the bed. Now, she began to wonder curiously what they contained. While she prepared him his meal she still wondered. Of a sudden it dawned on her that in her nervousness and excitement she had forgotten to ask Sheriff Warburton about the fugitive—who he was, the nature of his crime, everything. What if she should be harboring a murderer? The thought chilled the blood in her veins. It filled her with apprehension, misgivings—horrified her. She turned it over in her mind, deciding finally that she would not allow herself to believe it. He was not the type who would kill a man, of that she became firmly convinced. A murderer must have something of viciousness stamped on his face, she fancied. The result of these reflections made her resolve to ask her patient about himself. There was no great hurry. He could not leave inside of several days anyway.

Later that afternoon she gathered together a number of old blankets and quilts, and spread a bed for the wounded fugitive in an obscure corner of the hayloft under the eaves of the barn. She hid the blood-spattered saddle. Then she drove the exhausted horse to wander with their handful of stock in the far end of the field.

Around five o’clock she made out her father galloping home along the road from camp. Giving the outlaw a few specific instructions she ran out beyond the gate to meet Lemuel as was her custom. But Huntington had no smile for his daughter to-day. She marked the ill humor in his face, the hard, accusing look he gave her, and half suspected the reason.

A tall, angular, wiry man was Lemuel Huntington, a sprinkle of gray in his hair and mustache, a countenance more pathetic than aggressive. Association with Geerusalem’s uppish fraternity had inspired him to assume its dashy swagger garb—stiff-brim gray Stetson, corduroy suit, his trousers stuffed into yellow, laced, three-quarter boots resplendent with steel buckles, his coat, box-pleated and belted à la Norfolk. Just now, as he rode up, scowling on Dot, he looked more the prosperous mining man of sectional influence than the humble, unimportant rancher he really was.

“What’s this talk of you side-kickin’ it with a bandit, Dot?” he began sharply as he dismounted.

“I suppose you’ve met Sheriff Warburton, and he’s told you——”

“Yes, I did. He says you helped Billy Gee git away, patched him up, give him a hoss, an’——”

“Billy Gee!” she gasped aloud. Her patient was the notorious desperado who, for years, had terrorized the border settlements far to the south!

“Yes—Billy Gee. He stuck up the paymaster’s car of the Mohave & Southwestern last night at a gradin’ camp east of Mirage an’ skinned out with twenty thousand dollars. Bob Warburton was on his trail when he done it. Posses are out thicker’n fleas—three from Geerusalem alone. The country’s all riled up. What d’you mean by actin’ that fool way, Dot? Ain’t you got no sense?”

“How did I know he was Billy Gee, daddy? Please be a little reasonable.” She spoke, a tinge of impatience in her voice, her eyes on the ground.

“He must ’a’ acted suspicious, didn’t he? An’ he was winged, to boot.”

“He was about dead. Father, would you have me run a dying man off the place, brutally—like a dog? Is that the kind of daughter you want to be proud of?” She was looking steadily at him now.

Lemuel was silent a moment. He glanced down at the buckles on his boots.

“By gosh, honey! I reckon you’ve got the ol’ man holed up,” he admitted rather ruefully. “But can’t you see, if it’d bin any one else, ’cept Bob Warburton, we’d have a tough time provin’ we wasn’t in cahoots with this thievin’ kiyote. It’s mighty ticklish business, I’m tellin’ you. He was bad hit, eh?”

She gave him a detailed account of the fugitive’s arrival at the ranch, but very carefully omitted to mention that she had taken him into the house. Adroitly, also, she evaded saying that he had departed. She dwelt in particular on the seriousness of his condition because of his loss of blood and his need of immediate care. Lemuel said no more following this explanation, though it was quite plain to her that some thought still troubled him.

While he attended to his chores Dot went into the kitchen and started getting supper ready. Now she was afire with excitement. Billy Gee, that terrible personage of whom she had heard such wild, thrilling things, was locked in her room—lying on her bed! Her prisoner! Her romantic brain reeled with ecstasy at the realization. And Sheriff Warburton, posses galore, were frantically beating brush the length and breadth of Soapweed Plains for Billy Gee, in pursuit of a ten-thousand-dollar reward. She had outwitted them—she, Dot Huntington!

The whole situation struck her as ridiculously funny. She leaned against the kitchen table and choked with silent laughter. This indeed was the big, exciting adventure she had longed for all these past years—infinitely big and exciting, pregnant with thrilling possibilities.

Then she remembered her father saying that Billy Gee had stolen twenty thousand dollars just the night before. She grew anxiously grave. From reflecting on the robbery she presently interpreted the cause of her patient’s singular concern over the safety of his saddlebags. They contained his stealings—currency, most likely; twenty thousand dollars in bills would make a bulky package, she believed.

Lemuel sauntered in from the barn some minutes afterward. He prepared to wash.

“I don’t see his horse, Dot,” he began abruptly, as he poured a dipperful of water into the basin.

“I turned it out with the rest—after I fed it. The poor thing was——”

“You give him Baldy, I s’pose?”

“No. Sheriff Warburton appeared to get the notion from what I said that I traded horses, and I didn’t tell him different. I didn’t see why I should,” she explained frankly.

Lemuel, in the act of rolling up his sleeves, glanced around at her. He frowned.

“Are you meanin’ to tell me, Dot, that a dyin’ man with a sheriff at his heels’d resk a get-away on foot—pertickler, a hard case like this here Billy Gee? D’you think I’m a fool, Dot?”

“Well, count your stock if you don’t believe me, daddy. You’re—you’re doubting everything I say, to-day. I don’t know why. You’ve never done that before.”

She spoke in such a meek, sorrowful voice that it moved him to cross the room to her side and kiss her tenderly on the cheek.

“Lord bless you, hon!” he murmured in loving tones. “I ain’t aimin’ to doubt my leetle gal never. You know that.” He laughed. “The on’y thing I got to say is, it’ll be good-by, Billy Gee, ’fore the week’s up, if he don’t git somepn faster’n two laigs under him. He must ’a’ left his saddle an’ everythin’, eh?” he added craftily.

“Everything,” nodded Dot, in a very decisive manner.

Lemuel went back to the basin and silently proceeded with his washing, but he said to himself: “No bandit livin’ would do sech a crazy thing—shot up, into the bargain. You might fool Bob Warburton, daughter, but you can’t fool yore ol’ man. There’s ten thousand dollars hidin’ on this ranch this minute.”

After supper, Lemuel composed himself in his favorite chair and smoked his pipe and mused as usual. It was a quiet night—exceptionally quiet, thought Dot, who, mindful that only a thin board partition separated her room from the kitchen, grew more and more fearful as the evening dragged on, in the knowledge that an accidental sound or movement by her outlaw patient would lead her father to investigate. She trembled at the consequences to herself. By the hour she kept busy with the noisy task of scouring pots and pans, giving the cupboard a thorough overhauling, burnishing the stove, making all the distracting sounds possible, and wishing and wishing that Lemuel might go to bed. But he had no such inclination.

“At three dollars a day, a man’d work over twenty years for twenty thousand dollars, Dot,” he observed pointedly, breaking a long silence. “An’ this Billy Gee gits it overnight.”

“Yes, daddy. But he doesn’t enjoy it. How can he?” she replied, vigorously rubbing at the stove lids. “Think of him being hunted from place to place like a wild animal, the target for any man’s gun, without home or any one to care for him when he’s sick. Think of such a terrible existence!”

“When a feller tries an’ tries till the heart’s kicked outer him, ’tain’t hard to tempt him. That’s how I feel about it.” There was an ugly, suggestive note in his voice.

She paused in her scrubbing and gave him a quick, searching look. Some grim expression she saw in his face, a dangerous flicker in his eyes, filled her with sudden misgivings.

“I mean that!” he said harshly, with a vicious jerk of his head. He had taken the pipe from his mouth; his gaze was fastened on her accusingly. “Look at me! I bin kicked an’ kicked! Year in an’ year out I bin a-goin’ it, till I’m bruck down—petered out, an’ not a cussed thing to show for it. An’ look at other men who ain’t half as deservin’! What’ve I got, eh? What’ve you got?” He stiffened in his chair, gulped out suddenly in tones that reverberated through the silent little house: “An’ I’ve tried—God Almighty knows! An’ yore poor ma she—she died a-tryin’ an’ skimpin’ an’ dreamin’——”

“Father!” cried Dot aghast. Her face was white, drawn; her eyes wide with alarm.

Sitting there in the yellow lamplight, Lemuel Huntington was wild to behold; his features distorted into hideous lines; his hands clenched, his whole body trembling spasmodically. He burst into a horrible laugh.

“To-day, you doctor up a low-down murd’rous skunk that’d cut our throats to-morrow for the fun of it. An’ ten thousand dollars gits by us, eh? D’you hear that! D’you hear that? Ten thousand dollars for Billy Gee, dead or alive! D’you know what that means to us? An’ d’you reckon I’m goin’ to sit still an’ let you——”

“Blood money!” she broke in, gasping out the words. “Daddy, would you want to buy your food and drink—mine—our clothes, pleasures—would you be so inhuman as to find happiness at the expense of a miserable fellow creature?”

“It’s the law—like the ten-dollar bounty on the hide of the kiyote. Money is money,” he slung in savagely. “I want you to c’nsider me, yoreself, our c’ndition. I bin wantin’ to give you an edjucation, to carry out yore ma’s dyin’ wish. I want you to be somebody. We bin livin’ like dogs too long. I’m damn sick of it! Outside o’ Agatha Liggs, look at how them town hussies treat you! An’ them edjucated shysters who ain’t fit to grease my boots—what do I git from them? We need money. We got to git money—now. Right off, see? An’ if you can’t help me git it honest, ’cordin’ to law, I’ll start out to steal it! I’ll turn bandit, an’ it’ll be for you to hide me out an’ take care of me! What d’you say to that, eh? What’re you goin’ to do?”

He had risen to his feet as he spoke. He crossed the kitchen to her side and stood now, glowering down on her, cupidity, fury, desperation flaming from his eyes. Terrified, she stared at him. She knew at last the reason for the marked change in him, what he intimated. There was no way for her to dodge the issue.

“You think I know where Billy Gee is——” she began with an effort.

“You got him hid out, an’ don’t lie to me!” he roared. “He’s too sick to ride, an’ you’re nursin’ him some place on this ranch. You can’t make no damn fool out of me, young lady. Where is he? You’re goin’ to tell me, or by hell, I’ll——” He raised his clenched fists menacingly above her head.

CHAPTER IV—LEMUEL YIELDS

Lemuel Huntington, as has been suggested, was not a forceful character. Even in this desperate moment when the strength of his life’s mania was being directed to gain that which would make the fulfillment of that mania possible, he lacked the stubbornness of will, the blind conquering egoism, to win his demands at all costs. He had never had occasion to present such a furious front to his daughter before. That he was doing it now, exerted a disconcerting influence upon him, embarrassed him, made him a little uncertain as to the fairness of his methods.

On the other hand, he had never even so much as suspected the existence of a broad strain of high-spiritedness in Dot’s nature and that firmness of purpose which he himself did not have. The launching of his threat roused her like the sting of a whip. Her terror vanished and left her cold. She strode up close to him now and let her eyes burn into his.

“Father! Another word from you, and I’ll leave the house. And I’ll never come back!”

He did not answer. He looked at her in a queer, dumb frenzy. Then slowly, amazement, incredulity, indecision grew on his face. He had never seen her so dreadfully calm, so white before. She had never threatened such a fearful thing before! A long minute dragged by.

From out in the darkness came the weird shriek of a predacious nighthawk. Presently, he turned away from her, walked back to his chair, and began filling with clumsy, trembling fingers his forgotten pipe. His mouth was distorted with what seemed to be some forlorn grief; his breath broke from his lungs in low distressful gasps.

It grew very quiet. The old clock on the shelf ticked tiredly. Some time afterward he heard a sob and, glancing around, saw Dot leaning against the wall, her face buried in her hands. Thereupon he put down his pipe and went over and took her in his arms. Hungrily he held her to his breast, and there was in his eyes the reflection of the fierce struggle that was taking place in his soul.

“Your poor, lonesome leetle heart,” he said, in a voice that shook with sobs. “I didn’t aim to act so cussed, darlin’. God knows, I wouldn’t do nuthin’ to hurt you, Dot! You know yore dad’d do anythin’ to make you happy. Don’t you, honey? I’d go through fire an’ brimstone, I’d die for your daughter, Emily, like I always said,” he added, his face turned to the rafters under the roof.

Some time afterward, as he lighted his candle to go to his room and kissed her good night, he reassured her gently. “I jest git so disapp’inted with myse’f, dearie. Yore poor ma an’ me used to plan so many big things for our leetle gal. I’ve wanted to do so much for you an’ I ain’t done nuthin’. Anyway, Dot, we’ll ferget all about this here Billy Gee. It ain’t worth quarrelin’ over, it ain’t worth it, hon.”

Dot lingered in the kitchen until she was sure he had gone to bed. Then she began hurried preparations to spirit her outlaw patient out of the house. Filling a bottle with hot coffee, she threw some bread and meat into a paper bag. After this she tiptoed to her room, stealthily unlocked the door, closed it behind her, and lit the candle on the bureau.

One glance, and she saw that her bed was empty, the window open. Billy Gee was gone; so were his saddlebags!

For an instant she stood perplexed. But she breathed easier, vastly relieved that he had thus chosen to steal out of the house without her aid. Stepping over to the window she flashed the candle outside and listened into the quiet night. There was no sign of him, no sound. He must have found his way into the hayloft, she told herself, recalling the fact that she had described the location of his new hiding place to him that afternoon. But from reflecting on his weak condition she became more and more concerned about him, resolving finally to investigate his whereabouts and take him the food.

It was only a matter of four feet from the window sill to the ground, and a far safer means of exit from the house at this late hour, particularly after her father’s furious outburst, so unexpected and ominous. She put out the light and let herself down noiselessly into the strip of garden outside, and flitted off like a shadow for the barn. With a subdued little cough to herald her coming to the fugitive, she climbed the short flight of steps to the loft and struck a match.

He was there, standing knee-deep in the loose hay, spectral, sinister, a six-shooter glinting in his hand. At sight of her, he lowered the weapon and clutched a tie beam for support. Ere the match went out, she reached his side.

“I was leary it’d go hard on you if he ketched me in there, so I sneaked out,” he explained in low tones. “I heerd it all an’ I’m sorry I got you in so much trouble. I’m goin’ to resk it, to-night.”

“No, no! You mustn’t,” she whispered quickly. “The plains are alive with posses. You’d never escape.”

He chuckled softly. “Wunst I git a-goin’, I’ll be orright. The moon’s comin’ up, an’ I got folks livin’ handy.”

“Here’s something for you to eat. You must be terribly hungry—weak.” She thrust the bottle and the paper bag into his hand as she spoke. “I’d counted on you staying till you were stronger—three days, anyway. You’d be perfectly safe here. I’d see that you were. Why don’t you?”

“Yore dad’s too sespicious. He’ll start huntin’ me up; you see if he don’t.” He broke off, resuming: “I—I won’t ever ferget what you’ve done for me, Miss Huntington. An’ you wouldn’t give me away, would you? An’ you’re desp’rate for money. I ain’t ever had anybody give me such a square deal—chuck over a fortune to help——” His voice trailed off into silence.

“You poor, wounded wild animal!” said Dot gently. “Even a coyote is better off than you. Can’t you understand? Don’t you know any different? Is it so much easier to be bad, so much more pleasing to have a pack of legalized killers always on your heels? Or don’t you care?” She paused and added: “Do you really want to repay me for everything I’ve done for you?”

Through a square hole under the eaves, the first white beams of the moon were just struggling in. She could see the man’s face indistinctly; the white bandage around his head.

“I do. Say it! Anythin’ you want done, Miss Huntington,” he nodded.

“Then, quit this miserable life. Be a man. Go far away, where no one will ever recognize you, and start fresh. Be honorable—somehow. You can do it, if you want to. But will you? To pay me back?” There was a strange, dramatic note in her voice.

He caught her hand suddenly, fervently. “I’ll do it, Miss Huntington. Listen! You turned down ten thousand dollars; you stuck by me. I’m goin’ to show you what I kin do for you. Some of these days you’re goin’ to hear from me.”

“I’m so glad,” she breathed. “I’d be so proud to know that I helped remake the wild animal, Billy Gee, into a God-fearing human being.”

A short, heavy silence fell. From somewhere in the ground floor of the barn, a board expanding with the cool night air snapped sharply.

“I come up here to take a coupla these old blankets, sence I can’t lug my saddle; it’s too heavy,” he announced, after a little while. “Would you mind fixin’ ’em for me?”

She found them half folded, made a neat roll of them, and looped them for slinging over the shoulders with strips she tore from her calico apron. As she prepared to leave him, he spoke again.

“Miss Huntington, I’d sorter like you to know that I ain’t near’s bad as they tell it around. I ain’t never killed a man—wounded ’em, yes, an’ only jest when I had to. An’ with all I’ve got away with, I’m next thing to broke this minute. That’s honest——”

“But you held up the paymaster’s car last night, didn’t you?” she interrupted.

“Yes’m. But I didn’t hold onto the money, bein’ wounded, an’ Warburton——”

“What was in your saddlebags that you said you couldn’t afford to lose?”

“My mother’s pitcher, some clothes, an’ a lot of leetle doodads I’m keepin’. I always have ’em along with me. But I want to tell you ag’in that I ain’t fergettin’ yore kindness. You’re goin’ to hear from me, Miss Huntington, some time. An’—an’ I hope you’ll be proud, like you jest said.”

Dot crept down the steps shortly afterward, shut the barn door behind her, and darted across the moonlit yard. Climbing back into her room she cautiously lowered the window. Then, with a sigh of relief and satisfaction, she went to bed. For the remainder of the night, she lay wide-eyed, snug in the bewitching embraces of romance and imagination.

Following her departure, Billy Gee remained in the hayloft for a long interval and leisurely ate the food she had brought him. Periodically, he looked at his watch by the aid of a moonbeam streaming in through a crack in the boards. When one o’clock came, he got carefully to his feet, took up the roll of blankets, and started downstairs.

From far out on Soapweed Plains, rose the wail-bark of a foraging coyote. There was no other sound. That semiarid land lay mute and mysterious and teaming with tragic potentialities.

“Creepy,” he muttered under his breath. “Reckon I’m a leetle flighty—leaked too much blood.”

He reached the ground floor and noiselessly made his way toward the rear door of the barn, heading for the field and his horse. As he fumbled in the dark for the hasp an invisible figure emerged from under the steps back of him. He felt the sharp dig of a six-shooter between his shoulders. A voice hissed in his ear.

“Steady, pardner! Make a move, an’ I’ll kill you!”

In a twinkling, he was stripped of his guns. Then his captor—Lemuel Huntington—unhasped the barn door and herded him outside and down a narrow lane between two corrals, until they stood in the open field.

“Turn yore face to the moon, an’ let’s git a squint of you, Billy Gee,” said Lemuel. He studied the outlaw a few seconds. “So my gal was passin’ up ten thousand dollars for the likes of you, eh? Well, I won’t! Now, listen clost an’ don’t make no mistake about what I tell you! Me an’ you’s goin’ on into Geerusalem right off, see? Warburton wants you dead or ’live, an’ it’s up to you how you care to be deelivered to him. I don’t. Savvy! Now, march acrosst to them hosses!”

CHAPTER V—THE WHEREWITHAL

When Dot awoke next morning, after a fitful few hours’ sleep, it was nine o’clock. She sprang out of bed and hurried through her dressing, certain that her father was considerately waiting his breakfast rather than disturb her, late though the hour was. But upon entering the kitchen, she found that he had not yet been about. This fact at first astonished, then filled her with alarm. She ran to his door and rapped sharply, calling him, and experienced a feeling of deep relief when she heard him yawn out a reply.

Nevertheless, as she walked back into the kitchen and began scraping the ashes out of the grate, she reflected on the usual circumstance of Lemuel oversleeping; for not in many years—and then only on the several rare occasions that they had been out late together the night before, attending a party at some neighboring ranch—had he failed to have the fire in the stove going for her. Later on she told herself that it was quite probable their quarrel had disturbed him, that worry had kept him awake, and out of this conviction was born an acute feeling of remorse which determined her to make no reference to the time of day or to anything that might recall the unhappy scene of the night.

For that matter, he also was silent on the subject. He came into the kitchen, stretching himself tremendously, grinning, in the best spirits she had seen him in for many months. She could not help but notice a remarkable change in him, but attributed it to his desire to have her forget their recent differences. So she met him halfway in the effort and laughed merrily when he jested about the professional fraternity he hobnobbed with in camp and at his sly insinuations that Agatha Liggs would make an adorable stepmother for some girl. As he picked up his hat to look after his chores he caught her in his arms, told her how fondly he loved her, and that her happiness meant everything in the world to him.

But alone, back of the barn, his display of buoyancy vanished. He gazed down the lane between the two corrals and reënacted in his mind’s eye his brave capture of the notorious train robber, Billy Gee, and the way he had marched the outlaw into Sheriff Warburton’s room in the hotel before daybreak and turned his prisoner over to the astounded, sleepy-eyed official. Again, he felt an ecstatic thrill over the realization that he had the certified check of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad for ten thousand dollars in his pocket that very moment!

Nor could he subdue the wild surge of elation that swept through his breast at thought that his Dot was to receive the long-cherished education, that here at last, after long, trialsome years of waiting, was the crystallization of his dead wife’s precious dreams all but fulfilled. Why couldn’t this sacred woman of his heart have lived to enjoy this great moment of happiness with him, to know that all her trying and skimping and dreaming had not been done in vain? Yes, he decided, Dot would be educated “to the queen’s taste;” nothing would be spared, nothing would be left undone to make her the wonderful lady of accomplishments Emily had so desired.

But with all the deep sense of gratification that his reavowal of intentions gave him and the delight he got from planning the glorious future, he could not put out of his mind Billy Gee’s last words to him in Warburton’s room that morning—what Billy Gee had said, the look in his eyes as he spoke.

“Huntington, I’m goin’ to be free one of these days. When I am, I’m huntin’ you up. An’ you’re goin’ to pay, Huntington. Remember that! Damn you, you’ll pay like you never paid in yore life!”

There had been something so frightful, so murderously frightful, in the threat as it fell from the outlaw’s tight-drawn lips. Try as he would, Lemuel had not been able to forget the hatred in the man’s fiery eyes, the icy cut in his voice. He was doomed to be haunted by them, to have memory rehearse them over and over to him.

True, Billy Gee was even now being taken out of the country, southwest to the county seat, San Buenaventura, heavily shackled, under the hawklike eye of Bob Warburton; and countless things would happen ere the train robber served out the long prison sentence that confronted him. But the mere fact that he would serve it out, that he would be free some time, was an overshadowing menace that laid a firm, clammy hand on Lemuel’s heart.

For many minutes he stood and stared across the plains. Doubtless Billy Gee would hunt him up and kill him, he told himself nervously. A vicious bandit of Billy Gee’s ilk would stop at nothing to get revenge. He shook his head, feeling strangely insecure. After a little, he recalled Dot’s interest in the fellow. One thing was certain; she must not even so much as suspect what her father had done. Not until the episode was old and forgotten must she know what had happened to the fugitive.

He knew it was not love for Billy Gee that had prompted her to hide him, help him to escape. Dot was sentimental, romantic; she was just sorry for the scamp. Most women were that way. But after their quarrel last night she must never surmise how he had treacherously spied on her, seen her go into the barn, and lain in wait to capture the man she was trying to save.

So while Dot prepared their breakfast her father made plans whereby she might not know for years to come just what had befallen the magnificent bandit who had ridden into her life out of the magical violet and yellow scallop of hills. In the first place, Lemuel was determined to hurry her out of the locality that she might not hear of the heroic leading rôle he had played; secondly, he cast about for a logical explanation of how he came to have sufficient money to afford a journey such as he contemplated. He knew Dot was too familiar with his affairs not to question his sudden acquisition of any considerable amount of money. He struck upon a happy solution.

During the meal he mentioned rather casually that he was going to Geerusalem to see if he could negotiate a loan from Bob Warburton, and he backed up the propriety of his action by declaring that he had once come to the sheriff’s assistance when the latter was financially down and out.

Dot was interested. To her query as to how much he intended borrowing, Lemuel grinned confidently:

“A coupla thousand dollars, anyway. An’ I’m purty sure to git it, at that.”

She stared across the table at him, perplexed for the moment. What in the world possessed her father this morning? He was so changed, so self-confident, so resolute—as if he were laboring under some suppressed emotion, some unusual good tidings that he was with difficulty keeping to himself. The strange way in which she studied him made him hasten to put at rest any suspicion she may have entertained.

“I bin thinkin’ it all over, Dot, an’ I decided that what me an’ you needs most is a leetle more pleasure an’ not so much stickin’ to a cussed ol’ ranch year in an’ year out like we bin doin’. So I’m goin’ to borry some real money off Bob, an’ we’re takin’ a trip—Frisco, Noo York, or any place you say. Le’s be good an’ happy wunst anyway, an’ see how it feels. What d’you say?”

She brightened instantly. Her eyes widened, sparkled with expectation. “It’d be just wonderful, daddy,” she cried. “But—but you’d have to pay the money back some time, and it would be so hard——”

“We ain’t goin’ to stop to think o’ that, hon. We’re out for one grand cut-up, me an’ you. Leave it to me. I’ll do the worryin’. If I git it you’ll go, won’t you?”

“Go?” she echoed joyously. “Oh, daddy! I’ve been wishing and wishing and wishing, months and months and years, to see cities and orchards and rivers and steamers and street cars and the ocean, and——”

They talked on, Lemuel controlling by a desperate effort the wild enthusiasm that consumed him, Dot giving her eagerness unbridled play, planning and scheduling an itinerary with a dispatch and thoroughness that made him fairly marvel at her cleverness. Shortly afterward, however, as he was galloping toward camp he laughed aloud to the boundless desolation of plain over the shrewd way in which he had deceived his daughter, clever though she was.

Dot stood on the front porch looking after him. She watched him out of sight, her brain in a delicious stupor at the glorious prospect of seeing for the first time in her life the great fairyland far to the north, that wonderful region she had read and dreamed so much about. For a long interval she reveled in the thought, until her eyes turned to the violet and yellow scallop of range in the distance. Her mind swung back to the present, then to Billy Gee. How was he faring?

The day was hot, similar to yesterday. It was very silent, too. Presently it began dawning on her that to-day was different from any she had ever known. She glanced over the garden. It seemed lonesome; she had never thought it lonesome before. The feel of the ranch, too, filled her with an odd depression. Everything looked so colorless, so uninteresting, so awfully the same. Her eyes went back to the violet and yellow scallop of hills again. That bleak playground of mirages where she had visualized the figments of her imagination, appeared to have lost its magic. The whole range seemed faded, so wrinkled, so woefully unattractive, like the bleached outlines of some shabby old crayon. She turned into the house and entered the parlor.

For many seconds she stood and gazed down at the lounge and began reviewing, as she had done a number of times, her meeting with the notorious Billy Gee, from the moment of his coming, until she bade him good-by in the half light of the hayloft.

“He isn’t the terrible person they say,” she told the parlor lounge. “There are a lot of worse men in Geerusalem who wear white collars and polish their shoes every morning. They know how to rob according to law. They haven’t the courage to take to the open with a six-shooter. Poor fellow! He was so grateful, and his voice was so lonely, so gentle.”

She walked into her bedroom, still thinking of him, and it came to her suddenly that she had hidden the worst criminal of the generation in that bedroom, that he had occupied her bed even! She halted in the middle of the floor and blushed furiously over the reflection. What would her father say if he knew? And her dear old lady friend, the good Mrs. Agatha Liggs? Or Sheriff Warburton? The utter recklessness of her act now struck her with full force.

But the next instant she was defending herself with the argument that Billy Gee was bent on mending his ways. He had promised her he would reform. She believed him. If he were captured——

For some reason she felt no anxiety on that score. He had been too confident of his ability to evade the posses, had shown no alarm over the information that they were out in numbers; besides, he had mentioned having relatives living close at hand, denoting that he would find safety with them until such time as he could leave the country.

“You’re goin’ to hear from me, Miss Huntington, some time,” he had said.

She experienced a strange little thrill when she recalled that he was giving up his vicious career solely because she had asked him to. It was such a satisfying thought, such a proud conceit, to feel that she, Dot Huntington, had exerted an influence over this elusive terror of the Southwest who laughed at the law and recognized nothing binding upon him save the fulfillment of his own personal desires. Yet, she told herself, she would look forward from now on, hopefully, with keen anticipation, to the day when she would hear from him.

While thinking thus, she had been standing near her bed, gazing abstractedly at the old-fashioned bureau opposite. Now her eyes became attracted to a narrow edge of green showing just over the top of the middle drawer. Thoughtfully, she reached down and plucked at it with thumb and forefinger. She drew it out—a ten-dollar greenback. For one long instant she stared dumfounded at it. Then she pulled out the drawer and fell back with a low cry, gazing at the interior in wide-eyed, fearful amazement. The drawer was piled high with a disordered mass of currency of all denominations.

CHAPTER VI—AFTERMATH

Geerusalem was a camp of many people of many waspish dispositions. The engrossing business of making money and spending it kept this isolated desert settlement steering a more or less wabbly, law-abiding course, for, like frontier camps the world over, it had its furious six-shooter forays, stealthy knifings, mob uprisings, its denizens of dive and den. These things were simply because civic unity was an unknown quality at the time, the population of the fly-by-night variety, and the county officials too busy serving the communities where the majority vote held forth to concern themselves with the “scattering returns.”

Established before the “blue-sky” law was written into the statute books of California, this metropolis of Soapweed Plains was the Mecca of the “wildcatter”—that thrifty, gentlemanly rascal who tempts gullible men and women of other climes to invest their nest eggs in mining stock fit only to start the kitchen fire. These gentry were the leading citizens of Geerusalem, though their neighbors knew them for what they were; autocratic, pompous fellows, skimming just under the surface of the law, clever swindlers who paid homage to none save the mining engineer and the occasional moody geologist who dropped unannounced into camp. A mineralogist’s O. K. was a valuable thing to have on a stock prospectus.

The .45-caliber brains with which Lemuel Huntington hobnobbed, belonged, for the most part, to these wildcatters—promoters, they styled themselves. He was their standing joke, their dub, the something at which they could sling the garbage of their talk. From which it may be surmised that he did not rank very high in the estimation of this fraternity. Yet, heretofore, he had felt oddly gratified over the thought that he could associate with them; they were “big guns,” financially powerful, influential to a great degree, and they had seemed, to his way of thinking, to be exemplars of education and refinement.

This morning, however, as he rode into camp from his ranch, on what he had led Dot to believe was a borrowing expedition, his viewpoint had undergone a change. He was a far different Lemuel Huntington from the tolerant, good-natured dub of yesterday. He had captured the terrible, much-feared desperado, Billy Gee. He had won a comfortable fortune by his bravery. His Dot was going to receive that long-dreamed-of education. His breast was filled with it; his head reeled with his own importance.

Geerusalem was seething with excitement. The main street was clogged with men, discussing Huntington, Billy Gee, the holdup of the paymaster’s car, the dramatic entry at daybreak of captor and captive while shotgun posses scoured the country over a fifty-mile radius. It was a monumental “catch,” unprecedented in Southwestern history.

As Lemuel rode into view, some one recognized him. News of his presence in camp spread like wildfire. A crowd surged after him, gathering in size. He had not expected an ovation of such an enthusiastic nature, and it embarrassed him. He wished now that he had come in by a back street. His face flaming red, flustered, he looked about over the heads of that stream of humanity that soon packed the thoroughfare from sidewalk to sidewalk, acclaimed him as he rode along.

He spied Mrs. Agatha Liggs. She was standing in the doorway of her little dry-goods store watching his approach. As he came opposite her he smiled and raised his hat. Then he grew abashed. She had not acknowledged the salutation. In the belief that she had not seen the action he bowed again.

She was looking straight at him, and he thought that her thin, pathetic face was unusually pale and drawn, that her fragile little body was more stooped, that her lips were strangely pursed. She looked at him fixedly with an expression in her old eyes so icy, so accusing, as to make him feel foolish and uncomfortable. That look of hers flattened out his conceit as nothing else could have done. He rode on up the street to the bank, dismounted, and went inside, wondering just why Mrs. Liggs had snubbed him.

The huge crowd that had followed him, collected before the building, and watching him through the doors and windows, saw him cash the Mohave & Southwestern’s ten-thousand-dollar certificate check. As he came out the door, acquaintances began hailing him lustily. He heard flattering comments of his valor on every hand.

“Gritty chap. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you?”

“Brought him in single-handed. Fine work, pardner!”

“Done overnight what a hundred posses couldn’t do in ten years.”

“Good boy, Lem! Oh, you Nick Carter!”

Crimson as a turkey gobbler, sweat streaming down his face, he led his horse to a livery stable. Then he strutted down the plank sidewalk, the mob stringing out behind him. Presently he entered an auto-stage office, talked to the ticket seller about mileage and rates, and ended by paying down the rental of a machine, to be ready in an hour. Ten minutes later found him swaggering big-chested into the U. & I. saloon—hangout of the .45-caliber brains of Geerusalem. He glanced boldly around at the uppish fraternity, posed about, fastidious and blasé, deigned them a nod and ordered a drink. This was the red-letter hour in Lemuel Huntington’s life.

He leaned luxuriously against the bar, peeled off a bill from his great wad, and to those who came up to congratulate him on his daring feat, remarked with considerable loftiness: “Yes, I reckon it takes somepin’ better’n edjucation to handle a man like Billy Gee.”

Downing his drink, he was turning to make his stately way out of the place, when he heard his name called, and a familiar hand was laid on his arm. He recognized a young mining engineer friend, a recent arrival from San Francisco. With him was a tall sharp-eyed man, twenty-seven or thereabouts, pleasing of face, and with a grave courtesy that instantly marked him in Lemuel’s mind as a total stranger to desert life. He was dressed in a whipcord suit that was partly concealed beneath a voluminous dust coat. On his head was a golf cap, a pair of goggles thrust up over the visor, and he carried driving gauntlets in one hand.

“Mr. Huntington, meet Mr. Sangerly,” said the mining engineer. The two shook hands. “Mr. Sangerly’s father is Western manager of the Mohave Southwestern, and he wanted to thank you in person for your splendid service to his company by your capture of this desperado, Billy Gee.”

Lemuel rubbed his chin in awkward fashion. “There wasn’t nuthin’ much to it, Mr. Sangerly,” he muttered.

“Indeed there was,” declared the other. “Why, this outlaw has robbed our trains eight times in the last three years. Besides our losses, Wells Fargo has suffered greatly. You’ve done us what I candidly look upon as an immeasurable service, and the general office is being thoroughly informed on the matter.” He paused. “There was a side issue relative to your capture that I wished to take up privately with you, Mr. Huntington—if you have time, and if Mr. Lennox,” glancing at his friend, “will excuse us.”

Three minutes later, they were seated across from each other in a booth at the rear of the saloon, a table between them, the waiter departing with their order.

“Now, to start at the beginning, Mr. Huntington,” said Sangerly, coming directly to the point, “Billy Gee robbed our paymaster’s car at a grading camp a few miles east of the station of Mirage. This you doubtless already know. Well, Sheriff Warburton, who had been in close touch with our Los Angeles office ever since he got on the bandit’s trail a week ago, wired us the same night of the robbery. From the tone of his message Billy Gee was heading north and his capture would be affected within ten hours. That was the gist of the thing. Anyhow, I started by auto yesterday morning. As it happened, you beat Warburton to the honors. You brought Billy Gee in, but the twenty thousand dollars he stole from our paymaster is missing.”

“I’d thought about that,” Lemuel replied. “On our way into camp this mornin’, I asked him in pertick’lar what’d become of it, an’ he said it was in safe hands.”

Sangerly lit a cigarette. “That’s what he told Warburton and that’s what’s keeping me here. I’m going to find out, if possible, who has that money. I intend to arrest the party as an accomplice and try to get him—or her—a jail sentence. There’s not the slightest doubt in my mind that this unknown person has been harboring the outlaw in the past and has profited at the expense of our company. You heard, of course, that he is supposed to have relatives somewhere on Soapweed Plains?”

“I don’t believe it,” said Lemuel. “That’s what Bob Warburton was tellin’ me. He said the only reason that folks got that idee, was because after robbin’ a train, Billy Gee’d always head this way an’ disappear. But look at how far it is to the railroad! That’s all talk.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Huntington! Don’t forget that this is the nearest point of habitation. Now, let me explain something to you.” Sangerly took a pencil from his pocket and began mapping off the table roughly. “According to the sheriff, with whom I had a long talk before he left for San Buenaventura this morning, he followed Billy Gee’s trail over every foot of the way—fifty-odd miles, and barren desert all of it. By barren, I mean flat, sandy country, and lacking those landmarks which would tempt any outlaw, hard-pressed, to hide his plunder. Moreover and most important, Billy Gee was wounded—shot by one of the paymaster’s crew as he was riding away. My opinion is, therefore, that he brought the money direct to your ranch and——”

“I can’t see how you figger that out, Mr. Sangerly,” broke in Lemuel hurriedly. “Ain’t you kinder insinuatin’ a leetle that I’m in cahoots with a train robber?” he added in measured tones.

Sangerly hastened to correct the impression. He caught the other’s hand, shook it laughingly. “The furthest thing from my mind, my friend,” he declared. “Certainly, I couldn’t imagine an accomplice doing what you did. It’s not reasonable. It would be ridiculous. But just follow me and you’ll agree with me that my theory is correct as to fact. Now, this is the exact situation: Here we have Billy Gee with Sheriff Warburton at his heels—not over two hours behind, mind you! Billy Gee is wounded, bleeding badly. He is traveling over a country as flat as this table, where there is no chance of hiding his booty with any assurance of ever being able to find it again—lack of landmarks, you understand? And all the time he is becoming weaker from loss of blood. From what little I saw of him to-day it is a question in my mind whether he would have risked getting off his horse to cache his stealings if he had had a chance, through fear of not being able to mount again.

“Anyhow, it is certain he was far more concerned over getting his wound attended to than he was about the money. So he must have pressed forward as rapidly as his horse could carry him, particularly since Warburton said that he had him in sight after daybreak and up to the time he dropped off the mesa onto the plains. Now, Mr. Huntington, the paymaster’s crew told the sheriff that Billy Gee stuffed the twenty thousand dollars—currency, all of it—into his saddlebags, and you brought him in without his saddlebags, I believe.”

“That’s c’rrect,” agreed Lemuel, with a troubled frown. “I found he’d crawled in my barn. Afterward, I located his hoss in the far end of the field. But, it seems to me——”

“I questioned the sheriff carefully on that point, but he said that all he knew was just what you told him,” interrupted Sangerly. “His theory was that the fellow turned his horse into your field when no one was watching and took the opportunity also of hiding his saddle and saddlebags, later on finding his way into the barn to wait until night when he might reach the home of his friend or relative unobserved. That’s what I believe, Mr. Huntington. I am quite convinced that Billy Gee cached that money on your ranch. He could lie low at this rendezvous of his, and some dark night when the whole affair had blown over, he’d simply slip out there and dig up the treasure. A very natural step to take, in my opinion.”

Lemuel nodded slowly. “It sounds reas’nable, at that. An’ you aim to look over the ground, I reckon, to see if you kin locate the cache.”

“Precisely. Warburton has promised me he’ll try to sweat the bandit into confessing. Meanwhile, I’ll work on this end with two railroad detectives whom I’ve brought with me. You’ll have no objections, of course, if we spend a few days snooping around the place, Mr. Huntington?” he asked smilingly.

“Not at all. Me an’ my daughter’s leavin’ for a two-week trip to-day, but I’ll stick the key under the front doormat, an’ you kin make yoreself to home.”

Sangerly thanked him. They left the booth and walked out to the street together. As they parted, Lemuel said:

“When do you figger you’ll be out to the ranch, Mr. Sangerly?”

“This afternoon, some time. Be assured we’ll not abuse your hospitality, and I hope to see you again on your return. By the way,” he added, as an afterthought, “I understand you have a daughter. Did she see Billy Gee, or have any idea of his presence before his capture? I mean, had she noticed anything that would have led her to suspect the presence of a stranger in the neighborhood?”

“No, sir,” said Lemuel, with a positive shake of his head. “She was surprised when I told her. I had to show her the check I got, ’fore she would believe me. I think you got it sized up about right; this Billy Gee party jest watched his chanct, reckonin’ on a clean get-away. He turned his hoss out along with mine to throw off sespicion, an’ buried his swag where he could come an’ git it unbeknown to anybody.” He laughed. “You don’t know my Dot, Mr. Sangerly. If ever there was a real honest-to-goodness little lady, she’s it—even if I do have to say it. I want you to meet her when we git back.”

CHAPTER VII—STARTLING PREDICAMENTS

That talk with the son of the Western manager of the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad did not set well on Lemuel’s mind. Even the fact that the Geerusalem Searchlight’s bulletin board, with chalky eloquence, fairly bristling with superlatives, made bold to proclaim him “California’s Bat Masterson,” carried little if any thrill for him. Sangerly’s words sounded like trouble in disguise. Sangerly’s keen deduction of what had happened to the paymaster’s money seemed alarmingly correct. It seemed more, for on the heels of its apparent certitude, came the distressing suspicion that Dot, having assisted Billy Gee during his whole period at the ranch, must know something about the disappearance of his saddlebags. Sangerly was right. No man in the bandit’s condition would have lost precious moments trying to hide his stealings, particularly in a trackless, changeable sand waste such as lay to the south. It would have been the height of folly, a useless piece of work, for he never could have found his cache again. There was not the slightest doubt but that that twenty thousand dollars was on the Huntington Ranch.

So thought Lemuel, and then he recalled that Sangerly had mentioned the presence of two railroad detectives who were to aid him in the search. What if they should dig up evidence involving Dot? Sheriff Warburton had not so much as hinted about her having harbored the bandit, from what Sangerly had said; yet Warburton must surely have suspected it. Bob Warburton certainly was a good friend.

The longer Lemuel reviewed the situation, the more he became convinced that he must get Dot out of the country before these detectives began their investigations. He shuddered at the fearful disgrace were her name mentioned, even in the remotest way, with the whole ugly affair. He would pack her out of Soapweed Plains immediately. Later on he would question her. He was fully convinced that she would give him all the details on the subject without hesitation when he asked her.

He had still a few minutes left before the time he must report back to the stage office. These he devoted to hiring a man who would look after the ranch during their absence. Afterward, he sought the quiet and seclusion of a back street and wandered aimlessly about, his mind busy with this new disturbing angle that threatened to sully the clean name of Huntington. So preoccupied was he, that he entirely overlooked his intention of paying Mrs. Liggs a visit to inquire the reason for her cold treatment of him shortly before.

He found the rented machine ready and waiting for him. Clambering in beside the driver, he was soon whirling out of camp toward home. A strange sense of security came to him. Sangerly and his sleuths were left behind, and it would be only a matter of a few short hours ere he and Dot would be lost in the confusion and bustle of traveling thousands. The proverbial needle in the haystack would be as easy to find as they, he told himself.

When within a mile of the ranch he chanced to glance in the direction of the low line of chromatic hills across which his acreage extended. A man was trudging along through the greasewood brush, steering diagonally for the road. He was less than a quarter of a mile off, and Lemuel squinted at him curiously.

“Who’s that sun lizard? Kin you make him out?” he asked the driver.

The latter looked. “Sure. That’s old Tinnemaha Pete, a prospector. You must know him. Hangs around Mrs. Liggs’ store a lot. She’s bin grubstaking him for years, I hear. Some one was telling me he used to be her husband’s partner.”

Lemuel nodded. “Come to think of it now, I did meet him there wunst.”

“Poor old devil! If it weren’t for her he’d have starved to death long ago,” said the driver. “The gold fever sure gets ’em, don’t it? He’s been going it all his life and never found anything. Never will, I reckon. One of these days, he’ll go out and the old desert’ll pick his bones clean. That’s how most of these granddads end up.”

The machine sped on, its dust cloud trailing across the flat, enveloping the bent, shriveled form of Tinnemaha Pete, rocking pathetically along on his unsteady legs, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, bound for Geerusalem. Like some misshapen wraith, born of the grotesqueness and deformity of that wild, mystic desolation, he fled on, his long gray beard whisking about in the hot breeze, his baggy clothes bulging and shrinking in the wrench and flip of its frolicking.

A few minutes later the automobile stopped before the Huntington gate, and Lemuel sprang out and hurried up the walk toward the house. Dot, attracted by the approach of the car, had come to the front door. She greeted her father with an expression of blank amazement.

“What in the world, daddy——” she began.

“Git ready to travel, hon!” he cried out excitedly, as he put an arm around her and drew her into the house. “Looket! Looket! We got money. What d’you think o’ that?” He fished out a handful of bills and waved them before her face. He broke into a gleeful laugh, so well assumed that it deceived her. “What’d I tell you, eh? Bob Warburton come through like a leetle major. Loaned me two thousand dollars on my note. Think o’ that! Ain’t that jest dandy? Come on, now! Chuck some duds in a valise. We’re startin’ right out on a big blow-out. We’re goin’ to see the world—me an’ you.” He romped around the room with her, like an overjoyed schoolboy.

“But, daddy,” she protested in bewilderment, “how can I? Why, you don’t give me time to——”

“You don’t need nothin’. I’m goin’ to tog you out complete with a hull bran’-new outfit, soon’s we hit the city. Hurry up! We ain’t got all day to talk about it, Dot. We’re strikin’ south to Mirage. I’m on’y takin’ a shirt an’ a pair o’ socks, myself.” He headed for his room.

The Rider of the Mohave: A Western Story