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The Sheriff's Son

by William MacLeod Raine · English · Gutenberg #17043 · 385,008 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Sheriff's Son

Author: William MacLeod Raine

Illustrator: Harold James Cue


        
Release date: November 11, 2005 [eBook #17043]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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THE SHERIFF'S SON

by

WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

Author of
The Yukon Trail, Wyoming, etc.

Illustrated by Harold Cue







[Frontispiece:  When Meldrum came in answer to her summons, he met the
shock of his life.]




New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1917 and 1918, by Frank A. Munsey Company
Copyright, 1918, by William Macleod Raine
All Rights Reserved
Published April 1918





TO

ROBERT H. DAVIS


WHO WITH HIS USUAL GENEROSITY TO WRITERS

MADE THE AUTHOR A PRESENT

OF THE GERM IDEA

OF THIS PLOT




Contents

          Foreword
      I.  Dingwell Gives Three Cheers.
     II.  Dave Caches a Gunnysack
    III.  The Old-Timer Sits into a Big Game
     IV.  Royal Beaudry Hears a Call
      V.  The Hill Girl
     VI.  "Cherokee Street"
    VII.  Jess Tighe Spins a Web
   VIII.  Beulah Asks Questions
     IX.  The Man on the Bed
      X.  Dave Takes a Ride
     XI.  Tighe Weaves his Web Tighter
    XII.  Stark Fear
   XIII.  Beulah Interferes
    XIV.  Personally Escorted
     XV.  The Bad Man
    XVI.  Roy is Invited to Take a Drink
   XVII.  Roy Improves the Shining Hours
  XVIII.  Rutherford Answers Questions
    XIX.  Beaudry Blows a Smoke Wreath
     XX.  At the Lazy Double D
    XXI.  Roy Rides his Paint Hoss
   XXII.  Miss Rutherford Speaks her Mind
  XXIII.  In the Pit
   XXIV.  The Bad Man Decides not to Shoot
    XXV.  Two and a Camp-Fire
   XXVI.  The Sins of the Fathers
  XXVII.  The Quicksands
 XXVIII.  Pat Ryan Evens an Old Score
   XXIX.  A New Leaf




The Sheriff's Son

Foreword

Through the mesquite a horse moved deviously, following the crooked
trail of least resistance.  A man was in the saddle and in front of him
a little boy nodding with sleep.  The arm of the rider cradled the
youngster against the lurches of the pony's gait.

The owner of the arm looked down at the tired little bundle it was
supporting.  A wistful tenderness was in the leathery face.  To the
rest of the world he was a man of iron.  To this wee bit of humanity he
was a nurse, a playmate, a slave.

"We're 'most to the creek now, son.  Onc't we get there, we'll throw
off and camp.  You can eat a snack and tumble right off to bye-low
land," he promised.

The five-year-old smiled faintly and snuggled closer.  His long lashes
drooped again to the soft cheeks.  With the innocent selfishness of a
child he accepted the love that sheltered him from all troubles.

A valley opened below the mesa, the trail falling abruptly almost from
the hoofs of the horse.  Beaudry drew up and looked down.  From rim to
rim the meadow was perhaps half a mile across.  Seen from above, the
bed of it was like an emerald lake through which wound a ribbon of
silver.  This ribbon was Big Creek.  To the right it emerged from a
draw in the foothills where green reaches of forest rose tier after
tier toward the purple mountains.  Far up among these peaks Big Creek
had its source in Lost Lake, which lay at the foot of a glacier near
the top of the world.

The saw-toothed range lifted its crest into a sky of violet haze.  Half
an hour since the sun had set in a blaze of splendor behind a crotch of
the hills, but dusk had softened the vivid tints of orange and crimson
and scarlet to a faint pink glow.  Already the mountain silhouette had
lost its sharp edge and the outlines were blurring.  Soon night would
sift down over the roof of the continent.

The eyes of the man searched warily the valley below.  They rested
closely on the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left,
and the big rocks beyond the creek.  From its case beneath his leg he
took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot.  It rested on the
pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the
panorama.  The spot was an ideal one for an ambush.

His unease communicated itself to the boy, who began to whimper softly.
Beaudry, distressed, tried to comfort him.

"Now, don't you, son--don't you.  Dad ain't going to let anything hurt
you-all."

Presently he touched the flank of his roan with a spur and the animal
began to pick its way down the steep trail among the loose rubble.  Not
for an instant did the rider relax his vigilance as he descended.  At
the ford he examined the ground carefully to make sure that nobody had
crossed since the shower of the afternoon.  Swinging to the saddle
again, he put his horse to the water and splashed through to the
opposite shore.  Once more he dismounted and studied the approach to
the creek.  No tracks had written their story on the sand in the past
few hours.  Yet with every sense alert he led the way to the cottonwood
grove where he intended to camp.  Not till he had made a tour of the
big rocks and a clump of prickly pears adjoining was his mind easy.

He came back to find the boy crying.  "What's the matter, big son?" he
called cheerily.  "Nothing a-tall to be afraid of.  This nice
camping-ground fits us like a coat of paint.  You-all take forty winks
while dad fixes up some supper."

He spread his slicker and rolled his coat for a pillow, fitting it
snugly to the child's head.  While he lit a fire he beguiled the time
with animated talk.  One might have guessed that he was trying to make
the little fellow forget the alarm that had been stirred in his mind.

"Sing the li'l' ole hawss," commanded the boy, reducing his sobs.

Beaudry followed orders in a tuneless voice that hopped gayly up and
down.  He had invented words and music years ago as a lullaby and the
song was in frequent demand.

  "Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow,
  Amblin' along by the ole haymow,
  Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew,
  'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

Seventeen stanzas detailed the adventures of this amazing horse and
predatory cow.  Somewhere near the middle of the epic little Royal
Beaudry usually dropped asleep.  The rhythmic tale always comforted
him.  These nameless animals were very real friends of his.  They had
been companions of his tenderest years.  He loved them with a devotion
from which no fairy tale could wean him.

Before he had quite surrendered to the lullaby, his father aroused him
to share the bacon and the flapjacks he had cooked.

"Come and get it, big son," Beaudry called with an imitation of manly
roughness.

The boy ate drowsily before the fire, nodding between bites.

Presently the father wrapped the lad up snugly in his blankets and
prompted him while he said his prayers.  No woman's hands could have
been tenderer than the calloused ones of this frontiersman.  The boy
was his life.  For the girl-bride of John Beaudry had died to give this
son birth.

Beaudry sat by the dying fire and smoked.  The hills had faded to
black, shadowy outlines beneath a night of a million stars.  During the
day the mountains were companions, heaven was the home of warm friendly
sunshine that poured down lance-straight upon the traveler.  But now
the black, jagged peaks were guards that shut him into a vast prison of
loneliness.  He was alone with God, an atom of no consequence.  Many a
time, when he had looked up into the sky vault from the saddle that was
his pillow, he had known that sense of insignificance.

To-night the thoughts of John Beaudry were somber.  He looked over his
past with a strange feeling that he had lived his life and come to the
end of it.  He was not yet forty, a well-set, bow-legged man of medium
height, in perfect health, sound as to every organ.  From an old war
wound he had got while raiding with Morgan he limped a little.  Two
more recent bullet scars marked his body.  But none of these interfered
with his activity.  He was in the virile prime of life; yet a bell rang
in his heart the warning that he was soon to die.  That was why he was
taking his little son out of the country to safety.

He took all the precautions that one could, but he knew that in the end
these would fail him.  The Rutherfords would get him.  Of that he had
no doubt.  They would probably have killed him, anyhow, but he had made
his sentence sure when he had shot Anse Rutherford and wounded Eli
Schaick ten days ago.  That it had been done by him in self-defense
made no difference.

Out of the Civil War John Beaudry had come looking only for peace.  He
had moved West and been flung into the wild, turbulent life of the
frontier.  In the Big Creek country there was no peace for strong men
in the seventies.  It was a time and place for rustlers and
horse-thieves to flourish at the expense of honest settlers.  They
elected their friends to office and laughed at the law.

But the tide of civilization laps forward.  A cattlemen's association
had been formed.  Beaudry, active as an organizer, had been chosen its
first president.  With all his energy he had fought the rustlers.  When
the time came to make a stand the association nominated Beaudry for
sheriff and elected him.  He had prosecuted the thieves remorselessly
in spite of threats and shots in the dark.  Two of them had been put by
him behind bars.  Others were awaiting trial.  The climax had come when
he met Anse Rutherford and his companion at Battle Butte, had defeated
them both single-handed, and had left one dead on the field and the
other badly wounded.

Men said that John Beaudry was one of the great sheriffs of the West.
Perhaps he was, but he would have to pay the price that such a
reputation exacts.  The Rutherford gang had sworn his death and he knew
they would keep the oath.

The man sat with one hand resting on the slim body of the sleeping boy.
His heart was troubled.  What was to become of little Royal without
either father or mother?  After the manner of men who live much alone
in the open he spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Son, one of these here days they're sure a-goin' to get yore dad.
Maybe he'll ride out of town and after a while the hawss will come
galloping back with an empty saddle.  A man can be mighty unpopular and
die of old age, but not if he keeps bustin' up the plans of rampageous
two-gun men, not if he shoots them up when they're full of the devil
and bad whiskey.  It ain't on the cyards for me to beat them to the
draw every time, let alone that they'll see to it all the breaks are
with them.  No, sir.  I reckon one of these days you're goin' to be an
orphan, little son."

He stooped over the child and wrapped the blankets closer.  The muscles
of his tanned face twitched.  Long he held the warm, slender body of
the boy as close to him as he dared for fear of wakening him.

The man lay tense and rigid, his set face staring up into the starry
night.  It was his hour of trial.  A rising tide was sweeping him away.
He had to clutch at every straw to hold his footing.  But something in
the man--his lifetime habit of facing the duty that he saw--held him
steady.

"You got to stand the gaff, Jack Beaudry.  Can't run away from your
job, can you?  Got to go through, haven't you?  Well, then!"

Peace came at last to the tormented man.  He fell asleep.  Hours later
he opened his eyes upon a world bathed in light.  It was such a brave
warm world that the fears which had gripped him in the chill night
seemed sinister dreams.  In this clear, limpid atmosphere only a sick
soul could believe in a blind alley from which there was no escape.

But facts are facts.  He might hope for escape, but even now he could
not delude himself with the thought that he might win through without a
fight.

While they ate breakfast he told the boy about the mother whom he had
never seen.  John Beaudry had always intended to tell Royal the story
of his love for the slender, sweet-lipped girl whose grace and beauty
had flooded his soul.  But the reticence of shyness had sealed his
lips.  He had cared for her with a reverence too deep for words.

She was the daughter of well-to-do people visiting in the West.  The
young cattleman and she had fallen in love almost at sight and had
remained lovers till the day of her death.  After one year of happiness
tragedy had stalked their lives.  Beaudry, even then the object of the
rustlers' rage, had been intercepted on the way from Battle Butte to
his ranch.  His wife, riding to meet him, heard shots and galloped
forward.  From the mesa she looked down into a draw and saw her husband
fighting for his life.  He was at bay in a bed of boulders, so well
covered by the big rocks that the rustlers could not easily get at him.
His enemies, scattered fanshape across the entrance to the arroyo, were
gradually edging nearer.  In a panic of fear she rode wildly to the
nearest ranch, gasped out her appeal for help, and collapsed in a
woeful little huddle.  His friends arrived in time to save Beaudry,
damaged only to the extent of a flesh wound in the shoulder, but the
next week the young wife gave premature birth to her child and died
four days later.

In mental and physical equipment the baby was heir to the fears which
had beset the last days of the mother.  He was a frail little fellow
and he whimpered at trifles.  But the clutch of the tiny pink fingers
held John Beaudry more firmly than a grip of steel.  With unflagging
patience he fended bogies from the youngster.

But the day was at hand when he could do this no longer.  That was why
he was telling Royal about the mother he had never known.  From his
neck he drew a light gold chain, at the end of which was a small square
folding case.  In it was a daguerreotype of a golden-haired, smiling
girl who looked out at her son with an effect of shy eagerness.

"Give Roy pretty lady," demanded the boy.

Beaudry shook his head slowly.  "I reckon that's 'most the only thing
you can ask your dad for that he won't give you."  He continued
unsteadily, looking at the picture in the palm of his hand.  "Lady-Bird
I called her, son.  She used to fill the house with music right out of
her heart. . . .  Fine as silk and true as gold.  Don't you ever forget
that your mother was a thoroughbred."  His voice broke.  "But I hadn't
ought to have let her stay out here.  She belonged where folks are good
and kind, where they love books and music.  Yet she wouldn't leave me
because . . . because . . .  Maybe you'll know why she wouldn't some
day, little son."

He drew a long, ragged breath and slipped the case back under his shirt.

Quickly Beaudry rose and began to bustle about with suspicious
cheerfulness.  He whistled while he packed and saddled.  In the fresh
cool morning air they rode across the valley and climbed to the mesa
beyond.  The sun mounted higher and the heat shimmered on the trail in
front of them.  The surface of the earth was cracked in dry, sun-baked
tiles curving upward at the edges.  Cat's-claw clutched at the legs of
the travelers.  Occasionally a swift darted from rock to rock.  The
faint, low voices of the desert were inaudible when the horse moved.
The riders came out of the silence and moved into the silence.

It was noon when Beaudry drew into the suburbs of Battle Butte.  He
took an inconspicuous way by alleys and side streets to the corral.
His enemies might or might not be in town.  He wanted to take no
chances.  All he asked was to postpone the crisis until Royal was safe
aboard a train.  Crossing San Miguel Street, the riders came face to
face with a man Beaudry knew to be a spy of the Rutherfords.  He was a
sleek, sly little man named Chet Fox.

"Evening sheriff.  Looks some like we-all might have rain," Fox said,
rasping his unshaven chin with the palm of a hand.

"Looks like," agreed Beaudry with a curt nod and rode on.

Fox disappeared around a corner, hurried forward for half a block, and
turned in at the Silver Dollar Saloon.  A broad-shouldered, hawk-nosed
man of thirty was talking to three of his friends.  Toward this group
Fox hurried.  In a low voice he spoke six words that condemned John
Beaudry to death.

"Beaudry just now rode into town."

Hal Rutherford forgot the story he was telling.  He gave crisp, short
orders.  The men about him left by the back door of the saloon and
scattered.

Meanwhile the sheriff rode into the Elephant Corral and unsaddled his
horse.  He led the animal to the trough in the yard and pumped water
for it.  His son trotted back beside him to the stable and played with
a puppy while the roan was being fed.

Jake Sharp, owner of the corral, stood in the doorway and chatted with
the sheriff for a minute.  Was it true that a new schoolhouse was going
to be built on Bonito?  And had the sheriff heard whether McCarty was
to be boss of Big Creek roundup?

Beaudry answered his questions and turned away.  Royal clung to one
hand as they walked.  The other held the muley gun.

It was no sound that warned the sheriff.  The approach of his enemies
had been noiseless.  But the sixth sense that comes to some fighting
men made him look up quickly.  Five riders were moving down the street
toward the stable, Hal Rutherford in the lead.  The alert glance of the
imperiled man swept the pasture back of the corral.  The glint of the
sun heliographed danger from the rifle barrels of two men just topping
the brow of the hill.  Two more were stealing up through a draw to the
right.  A bullet whistled past the head of the officer.

The father spoke quietly to his little boy.  "Run, son, to the stable."

The little chap began to sob.  Bullets were already kicking up the dust
behind them.  Roy clung in terror to the leg of his father.

Beaudry caught up the child and made a dash for the stable.  He reached
it, just as Sharp and his horse-wrangler were disappearing into the
loft.  There was no time to climb the ladder with Royal.  John flung
open the top of the feed-bin, dropped the boy inside, and slammed down
the lid.

The story of the fight that followed is still an epic in the Southwest.
There was no question of fair play.  The enemies of the sheriff
intended to murder him.

The men in his rear were already clambering over the corral fence.  One
of them had a scarlet handkerchief around his neck.  Beaudry fired from
his hip and the vivid kerchief lurched forward into the dust.  Almost
at the same moment a sharp sting in the fleshy part of his leg told the
officer that he was wounded.

From front and rear the attackers surged into the stable.  The sheriff
emptied the second barrel of buckshot into the huddle and retreated
into an empty horse-stall.  The smoke of many guns filled the air so
that the heads thrust at him seemed oddly detached from bodies.  A
red-hot flame burned its way through his chest.  He knew he was
mortally wounded.

Hal Rutherford plunged at him, screaming an oath.  "We've got him,
boys."

Beaudry stumbled back against the manger, the arms of his foe clinging
to him like ropes of steel.  Twice he brought down the butt of his
sawed-off gun on the black head of Rutherford.  The grip of the big
hillman grew lax, and as the man collapsed, his fingers slid slackly
down the thighs of the officer.

John dropped the empty weapon and dragged out a Colt's forty-four.  He
fired low and fast, not stopping to take aim.  Another flame seared its
way through his body.  The time left him now could be counted in
seconds.

But it was not in the man to give up.  The old rebel yell of Morgan's
raiders quavered from his throat.  They rushed him.  With no room even
for six-gun work he turned his revolver into a club.  His arm rose and
fell in the melee as the drive of the rustlers swept him to and fro.

So savage was the defense of their victim against the hillmen's
onslaught that he beat them off.  A sudden panic seized them, and those
that could still travel fled in terror.

They left behind them four dead and two badly wounded.  One would be a
cripple to the day of his death.  Of those who escaped there was not
one that did not carry scars for months as a memento of the battle.

The sheriff was lying in the stall when Sharp found him.  From out of
the feed-bin the owner of the corral brought his boy to the father
whose life was ebbing.  The child was trembling like an aspen leaf.

"Picture," gasped Beaudry, his hand moving feebly toward the chain.

A bullet had struck the edge of the daguerreo-type case.

"She . . . tried . . . to save me . . . again," murmured the dying man
with a faint smile.

He looked at the face of his sweetheart.  It smiled an eager invitation
to him.  A strange radiance lit his eyes.

Then his head fell back.  He had gone to join his Lady-Bird.




Chapter I

Dingwell Gives Three Cheers

Dave Dingwell had been in the saddle almost since daylight had wakened
him to the magic sunshine of a world washed cool and miraculously clean
by the soft breath of the hills.  Steadily he had jogged across the
desert toward the range.  Afternoon had brought him to the foothills,
where a fine rain blotted out the peaks and softened the sharp outlines
of the landscape to a gentle blur of green loveliness.

The rider untied his slicker from the rear of the saddle and slipped
into it.  He had lived too long in sun-and-wind-parched New Mexico to
resent a shower.  Yet he realized that it might seriously affect the
success of what he had undertaken.

If there had been any one to observe this solitary traveler, he would
have said that the man gave no heed to the beauty of the day.  Since he
had broken camp his impassive gaze had been fixed for the most part on
the ground in front of him.  Occasionally he swung his long leg across
the rump of the horse and dismounted to stoop down for a closer
examination of the hoofprints he was following.  They were not recent
tracks.  He happened to know that they were about three days old.
Plain as a printed book was the story they told him.

The horses that had made these tracks had been ridden by men in a
desperate hurry.  They had walked little and galloped much.  Not once
had they fallen into the easy Spanish jog-trot used so much in the
casual travel of the South-west.  The spur of some compelling motive
had driven this party at top speed.

Since Dingwell knew the reason for such haste he rode warily.  His
alert caution suggested the panther.  The eye of the man pounced surely
upon every bit of cactus or greasewood behind which a possible foe
might be hidden.  His lean, sun-tanned face was an open letter of
recommendation as to his ability to take care of himself in a world
that had often glared at him wolfishly.  A man in a temper to pick a
quarrel would have looked twice at Dave Dingwell before choosing him as
the object of it--and then would have passed on to a less competent
citizen.

The trail grew stiffer.  It circled into a draw down which tumbled a
jocund little stream.  Trout, it might be safely guessed, lurked here
in the riffles and behind the big stones.  An ideal camping-ground
this, but the rider rejected it apparently without consideration.  He
passed into the canon beyond, and so by a long uphill climb came to the
higher reaches of the hills.

He rode patiently, without any hurry, without any hesitation.  Here
again a reader of character might have found something significant in
the steadiness of the man.  Once on the trail, it would not be easy to
shake him off.

By the count of years Dingwell might be in the early forties.  Many
little wrinkles radiated fanlike from the corners of his eyes.  But
whatever his age time had not tamed him.  In the cock of those same
steel-blue eyes was something jaunty, something almost debonair, that
carried one back to a youth of care-free rioting in a land of sunshine.
Not that Mr. Dingwell was given to futile dissipations.  He had the
reputation of a responsible ranchman.  But it is not to be denied that
little devils of mischief at times danced in those orbs.

Into the hills the trail wound across gulches and along the shoulders
of elephant humps.  It brought him into a country of stunted pines and
red sandstone, and so to the summit of a ridge which formed part of the
rim of a saucer-shaped basin.  He looked down into an open park hedged
in on the far side by mountains.  Scrubby pines straggled up the slopes
from arroyos that cleft the hills.  By divers unknown paths these led
into the range beyond.

A clump of quaking aspens was the chief landmark in the bed of the
park.  Though this was the immediate destination of Mr. Dingwell, since
the hoofprints he was following plunged straight down toward the grove,
yet he took certain precautions before venturing nearer.  He made sure
that the 45-70 Winchester that lay across the saddle was in working
order.  Also he kept along the rim of the saucer-shaped park till he
came to a break where a creek tumbled down in a white foam through a
ravine.

"It's a heap better to be safe than to be sorry," he explained to
himself cheerfully.  "They call this Lonesome Park, and maybe so it
deserves its name to-day.  But you never can tell, Dave.  We'll make
haste slowly if you don't mind."

Along the bank of the creek he descended, letting his sure-footed
cowpony pick its own way while he gave strict attention to the scenery.
At a bend of the stream he struck again the trail of the riders he had
been following and came from there directly to the edge of the aspen
clump.

Apparently his precautions were unnecessary.  He was alone.  There
could be no doubt of that.  Only the tracks of feet and the ashes of a
dead fire showed that within a few days a party had camped here.

Dingwell threw his bridle to the ground and with his rifle tucked under
his arm examined the tracks carefully.  Sometimes he was down on hands
and knees peering at the faint marks of which he was reading the story.
Foot by foot he quartered over the sand, entirely circling the grove
before he returned to the ashes of the dead fire.  Certain facts he had
discovered.  One was that the party which had camped here had split up
and taken to the hills by different trails instead of as a unit.  Still
another was that so far as he could see there had been no digging in or
near the grove.

It was raining more definitely now, so that the distant peaks were
hidden in a mist.  In the lee of the aspens it was still dry.  Dingwell
stood there frowning at the ashes of the dead campfire.  He had had a
theory, and it was not working out quite as he had hoped.  For the
moment he was at a mental impasse.  Part of what had happened he could
guess almost as well as if he had been present to see it.  Sweeney's
posse had given the fugitives a scare at Dry Gap and driven them back
into the desert.  In the early morning they had tried the hills again
and had reached Lonesome Park.  But they could not be sure that Sweeney
or some one of the posses sent out by the railroad was not close at
hand.  Somewhere in the range back of them the pursuers were combing
the hills, and into those very hills the bandits had to go to disappear
in their mountain haunts.

Even before reaching the park Dingwell had guessed the robbers would
separate here and strike each for individual safety.  But what had they
done with the loot?  That was the thing that puzzled him.

They had divided the gold here.  Or one of them had taken it with him
to an appointed rendezvous in the hills.  Or they had cached it, One of
these three plans had been followed.  But which?

Dingwell rubbed the open fingers of one hand slowly through his
sunburnt thatch of hair.  "Doggone my hide, if it don't look like they
took it with them," he murmured.  "But that ain't reasonable, Dave.
The man in charge of this hold-up knew his business.  It was smooth
work all the way through.  If it hadn't been for bad luck he would have
got away with the whole thing fine.  They still had the loot with them
when they got here.  No doubt about that.  Well, then!  He wouldn't
divvy up here, because, if they separated, and any one of them got
caught with the gold on him, it would be a give-away.  But if they
didn't have the dough on them, it would not matter if some of the boys
were caught.  You can't do anything with a man riding peaceable through
the hills looking for strays, no matter how loaded to the guards with
suspicions you may be.  So they would cache the loot.  Wouldn't they?
Sure they would if they had any sense.  But tell me where, Dave."

His thoughtful eyes had for some moments been resting on something that
held them.  He stooped and picked up a little chip of sealing-wax.
Instantly he knew how it had come here.  The gold sacks had been sealed
by the express company with wax.  At least one of the sacks had been
opened here by the robbers.

Did this mean they had divided their treasure here?  It might mean
that.  Or it might mean that before they cached it they had opened one
sack to see how much it held.  Dingwell clung to the opinion that the
latter was the truth, partly because this marched with his hopes and
partly because it seemed to him more likely.  There would be a big risk
in taking their haul with them farther.  There was none at all in
caching it.

It was odd how that little heap of ashes in the center of the camp-fire
drew his eye.  Ashes did not arrange themselves that way naturally.
Some one had raked these into a pile.  Why?  And who?

He could not answer those questions offhand.  But he had a large bump
of curiosity about some things.  Otherwise he would not have been where
he was that afternoon.  With his boot he swept the ashes aside.  The
ground beneath them was a little higher than it was in the immediate
neighborhood.  Why should the bandits have built their fire on a small
hillock when there was level ground adjacent?  There might be a reason
underneath that little rise of ground or there might not.  Mr. Dingwell
got out his long hunting-knife, fell on his knees, and began to dig at
the center of the spot where the campfire had been.

The dirt flew.  With his left hand he scooped it from the hole he was
making.  Presently the point of his knife struck metal.  Three minutes
later he unearthed a heavy gunnysack.  Inside of it were a lot of
smaller sacks bearing the seal of the Western Express Company.  He had
found the gold stolen by the Rutherford gang from the Pacific Flyer.

Dave was pleased with himself.  It had been a good day's work.  He
admitted cheerfully that there was not another man in New Mexico who
could have pulled off successfully the thing he had just done.  The
loot had been well hidden.  It had been a stroke of genius to cache it
in the spot where the camp-fire was afterward built.  But he had
outguessed Jess Tighe that time.  His luck had sure stood up fine.  The
occasion called for a demonstration.

He took off his broad-rimmed gray hat.  "Three rousing cheers, Mr.
Dingwell," he announced ceremoniously.  "Now, all together."

Rising to his toes, he waved his hat joyously, worked his shoulders
like a college cheer leader, and gave a dumb pantomime of yelling.  He
had intended to finish off with a short solo dance step, for it is not
every day that a man finds twenty thousand dollars in gold bars buried
in the sand.

But he changed his mind.  As he let himself slowly down to his heels
there was a sardonic grin on his brown face.  In outguessing Tighe he
had slipped one little mental cog, after all, and the chances were that
he would pay high for his error.  A man had been lying in the mesquite
close to the creek watching him all the time.  He knew it because he
had caught the flash of light on the rifle barrel that covered him.

The gold-digger beckoned with his hat as he called out.  "Come right
along to the party.  You're welcome as a frost in June."

A head raised itself cautiously out of the brush.  "Don't you move, or
I'll plug lead into you."

"I'm hog-tied," answered Dingwell promptly.  His mind worked swiftly.
The man with the drop on him was Chet Fox, a hanger-on of the
Rutherford gang, just as he had been seventeen years before when he
betrayed John Beaudry to death.  Fox was shrewd and wily, but no
gunman.  If Chet was alone, his prisoner did not propose to remain one.
Dave did not intend to make any fool breaks, but it would be hard luck
if he could not contrive a chance to turn the tables.

"Reach for the roof."

Dingwell obeyed orders.

Fox came forward very cautiously.  Not for an instant did his beady
eyes lift from the man he covered.

"Turn your back to me."

The other man did as he was told.

Gingerly Fox transferred the rifle to his left hand, then drew a
revolver.  He placed the rifle against the fork of a young aspen and
the barrel of the six-gun against the small of Dingwell's back.

"Make just one break and you're a goner," he threatened.

With deft fingers he slid the revolver of the cattleman from its
holster.  Then, having collected Dingwell's rifle, he fell back a few
steps.

"Now you can go on with those health exercises I interrupted if you've
a mind to," Fox suggested with a sneer.

His prisoner turned dejected eyes upon him.  "That's right.  Rub it in,
Chet.  Don't you reckon I know what a long-eared jackass I am?"

"There's two of us know it then," said Fox dryly.  "Now, lift that
gunnysack to your saddle and tie it on behind."

This done, Fox pulled himself to the saddle, still with a wary eye on
his captive.

"Hit the trail along the creek," he ordered.

Dingwell moved forward reluctantly.  It was easy to read chagrin and
depression in the sag of his shoulders and the drag of his feet.

The pig eyes of the fat little man on horseback shone with triumph.  He
was enjoying himself hugely.  It was worth something to have tamed so
debonair a dare-devil as Dingwell had the reputation of being.  He had
the fellow so meek that he would eat out of his hand.




Chapter II

Dave Caches a Gunnysack

Fox rode about ten yards behind his prisoner, who plodded without
spirit up the creek trail that led from the basin.

"You're certainly an accommodating fellow, Dave," he jeered.  "I've
seen them as would have grumbled a heap at digging up that sack, and
then loaning me their horse to carry it whilst they walked.  But you're
that cheerful.  My own brother wouldn't have been so kind."

Dingwell grunted sulkily.  He may have felt cheerful, but he did not
look it.  The pudgy round body of Fox shook with silent laughter.

"Kind is the word, Dave.  Honest, I hate to put myself under
obligations to you like this.  If I hadn't seen with my own eyes how
you was feeling the need of them health exercises, I couldn't let you
force your bronc on me.  But this little walk will do you a lot of
good.  It ain't far.  My horse is up there in the pines."

"What are you going to do with me?" growled the defeated man over his
shoulder.

"Do with you?"  The voice of Fox registered amiable surprise.  "Why, I
am going to ask you to go up to the horse ranch with me so that the
boys can thank you proper for digging up the gold."

Directly in front of them a spur of the range jutted out to meet the
brown foothills.  Back of this, forty miles as the crow flies, nestled
a mountain park surrounded by peaks.  In it was the Rutherford horse
ranch.  Few men traveled to it, and these by little-used trails.  Of
those who frequented them, some were night riders.  They carried a
price on their heads, fugitives from localities where the arm of the
law reached more surely.

Through the dry brittle grass the man on horseback followed Dingwell to
the scant pines where his cowpony was tethered.  Fox dismounted and
stood over his captive while the latter transferred the gunnysack and
its contents to the other saddle.  Never for an instant did the little
spy let the other man close enough to pounce upon him.  Even though
Dingwell was cowed, Chet proposed to play it safe.  Not till he was in
the saddle himself did he let his prisoner mount.

Instantly Dave's cowpony went into the air.

"Whoa, you Teddy!  What's the matter with you?" cried the owner of the
horse angrily.  "Quit your two-stepping, can't you?"

The animal had been gentle enough all day, but now a devil of unrest
seemed to have entered it.  The sound of trampling hoofs thudded on the
hard, sun-baked earth as the bronco came down like a pile-driver,
camel-backed, with legs stiff and unjointed.  Skyward it flung itself
again, whirled in the air, and jarred down at an angle.  Wildly flapped
the arms of the cattleman.  The quirt, wrong end to, danced up and down
clutched in his flying fist.  Each moment it looked as if Mr. Dingwell
would take the dust.

The fat stomach of Fox shook with mirth.  "Go it, you buckaroo," he
shouted.  "You got him pulling leather.  Sunfish, you pie-faced cayuse."

The horse in its lunges pounded closer.  Fox backed away, momentarily
alarmed.  "Here ---- you, hold your brute off.  It'll be on top of me
in a minute," he screamed.

Apparently Dingwell had lost all control of the bucker.  Somehow he
still stuck to the saddle, by luck rather than skill it appeared.  His
arms, working like windmills, went up as Teddy shot into the air again.
The hump-backed weaver came down close to the other horse.  At the same
instant Dingwell's loose arm grew rigid and the loaded end of the quirt
dropped on the head of Fox.

The body of Fox relaxed and the rifle slid from his nerveless fingers.
Teddy stopped bucking as if a spring had been touched.  Dingwell was on
his own feet before the other knew what had happened.  His long arm
plucked the little man from the saddle as if he had been a child.

Still jarred by the blow, Fox looked up with a ludicrous expression on
his fat face.  His mind was not yet adjusted to what had taken place.

"I told you to keep the brute away," he complained querulously.  "Now,
see what you've done."

Dave grinned.  "Looks like I spilled your apple cart.  No, don't bother
about that gun.  I'll take care of it for you.  Much obliged."

Chet's face registered complex emotion.  Incredulity struggled with
resentment.  "You made that horse buck on purpose," he charged.

"You're certainly a wiz, Chet," drawled the cattleman.

"And that business of being sore at yourself and ashamed was all a
bluff.  You were laying back to trick me," went on Fox venomously.

"How did you guess it?  Well, don't you care.  We're born to trouble as
the sparks fly upward.  As for man, his days are as grass.  He diggeth
a pit and falleth into it his own self.  Likewise he digs a hole and
buries gold, but beholds another guy finds it.  See, Second Ananias,
fourteen, twelve."

"That's how you show your gratitude, is it?  I might 'a' shot you safe
and comfortable from the mesquite and saved a lot of trouble."

"I don't wonder you're disgusted, Chet.  But be an optimist.  I might
'a' busted you high and wide with that quirt instead of giving you a
nice little easy tap that just did the business.  There's no manner of
use being regretful over past mistakes," Dave told him cheerfully.

"It's easy enough for you to say that," groaned Fox, his hand to an
aching head.  "But I didn't lambaste you one on the nut.  Anyhow,
you've won out."

"I had won out all the time, only I hadn't pulled it off yet," Dingwell
explained with a grin.  "You didn't think I was going up to the horse
ranch with you meek and humble, did you?  But we can talk while we
ride.  I got to hustle back to Battle Butte and turn in this sack to
the sheriff so as I can claim the reward.  Hate to trouble you, Chet,
but I'll have to ask you to transfer that gunnysack back to Teddy.
He's through bucking for to-day, I shouldn't wonder."

Sourly Fox did as he was told.  Then, still under orders, he mounted
his own horse and rode back with his former prisoner to the park.
Dingwell gathered up the rifle and revolver that had been left at the
edge of the aspen grove and headed the horses for Battle Butte.

"We'll move lively, Chet," he said.  "It will be night first thing we
know."

Chet Fox was no fool.  He could see how carefully Dingwell had built up
the situation for his coup, and he began at once laying the groundwork
for his own escape.  There was in his mind no intention of trying to
recover the gold himself, but if he could get away in time to let the
Rutherfords know the situation, he knew that Dave would have an uneasy
life of it.

"'Course I was joking about shooting you up from the mesquite, Dave,"
he explained as the horses climbed the trail from the park.  "I ain't
got a thing against you--nothing a-tall.  Besides, I'm a law-abiding
citizen.  I don't hold with this here gunman business.  I never was a
killer, and I don't aim to begin now."

"Sure, I know how tender-hearted you are, Chet.  I'm that way, too.
I'm awful sorry for myself when I get in trouble.  That's why I tapped
you on the cocoanut with the end of my quirt.  That's why I'd let you
have about three bullets from old Tried and True here right in the back
if you tried to make your getaway.  But, as you say, I haven't a thing
against you.  I'll promise you one of the nicest funerals Washington
County ever had."

The little man laughed feebly.  "You will have your joke, Dave, but I
know mighty well you wouldn't shoot me.  You got no legal right to
detain me."

"I'd have to wrastle that out with the coroner afterward, I expect,"
replied Dingwell casually.  "Not thinking of leaving me, are you?"

"Oh, no!  No.  Not at all.  I was just kinder talking."

It was seven miles from Lonesome Park to Battle Butte.  Fox kept up a
kind of ingratiating whine whenever the road was so rough that the
horses had to fall into a walk.  He was not sure whether when it came
to the pinch he could summon nerve to try a bolt, but he laid himself
out to establish friendly relations.  Dingwell, reading him like a
primer, cocked a merry eye at the man and grinned.

About a mile from Battle Butte they caught up with another rider, a
young woman of perhaps twenty.  The dark, handsome face that turned to
see who was coming would have been a very attractive one except for its
look of sulky rebellion.  From the mop of black hair tendrils had
escaped and brushed the wet cheeks flushed by the sting of the rain.
The girl rode splendidly.  Even the slicker that she wore could not
disguise the flat back and the erect carriage of the slender body.

Dingwell lifted his hat.  "Good-evenin', Miss Rutherford."

She nodded curtly.  Her intelligent eyes passed from his to those of
Fox.  A question and an answer, neither of them in words, flashed forth
and back between Beulah Rutherford and the little man.

Dave took a hand in the line-up as they fell into place beside each
other.  "Hold on, Fox.  You keep to the left of the road.  I'll ride
next you with Miss Rutherford on my right."  He explained to the girl
with genial mockery his reason.  "Chet and I are such _tillicums_ we
hate to let any one get between us."

Bluntly the girl spoke out, "What's the matter?"

The cattleman lifted his eyebrows in amused surprise.  "Why, nothing at
all, I reckon.  There's nothing the matter, is there, Chet?"

"I've got an engagement to meet your father and he won't let me go,"
blurted out Fox.

"When did you make that hurry-up appointment, Chet?" laughed Dingwell.
"You didn't seem in no manner of hurry when you was lying in the
mesquite back there at Lonesome Park."

"You've got no business to keep him here.  He can go if he wants to,"
flashed the young woman.

"You hear that, Chet.  You can go if you want to," murmured Dave with
good-natured irony.

"Said he'd shoot me in the back if I hit the trail any faster," Fox
snorted to the girl.

"He wouldn't dare," flamed Beulah Rutherford.

Her sultry eyes attacked Dingwell.

He smiled, not a whit disturbed.  "You see how it is, Chet.  Maybe I
will; maybe I won't.  Be a sport and you'll find out."

For a minute the three rode in silence except for the sound of the
horses moving.  Beulah did not fully understand the situation, but it
was clear to her that somehow Dingwell was interfering with a plan of
her people.  Her untamed youth resented the high-handed way in which he
seemed to be doing it.  What right had he to hold Chet Fox a prisoner
at the point of a rifle?

She asked a question flatly.  "Have you got a warrant for Chet's
arrest?"

"Only old Tried and True here."  Dave patted the barrel of his weapon.

"You're not a deputy sheriff?"

"No-o.  Not officially."

"What has Chet done?"

Dingwell regarded the other man humorously.  "What have you done, Chet?
You must 'a' broke some ordinance in that long career of
disrespectability of yours.  I reckon we'll put it that you obstructed
traffic at Lonesome Park."

Miss Rutherford said no more.  The rain had given way to a gentle mist.
Presently she took off her slicker and held it on the left side of the
saddle to fold.  The cattleman leaned toward her to lend a hand.

"Lemme roll it up," he said.

"No, I can."

With the same motion the girl had learned in roping cattle she flung
the slicker over his head.  Her weight on the left stirrup, she threw
her arms about him and drew the oil coat tight.

"Run, Chet!" she cried.

Fox was off like a flash.

Hampered by his rifle, Dave could use only one hand to free himself.
The Rutherford girl clung as if her arms had been ropes of steel.
Before he had shaken her off, the runaway was a hundred yards down the
road galloping for dear life.

Dave raised his gun.  Beulah struck the barrel down with her quirt.  He
lowered the rifle, turned to her, and smiled.  His grin was rueful but
friendly.

"You're a right enterprising young lady for a schoolmarm, but I
wouldn't have shot Chet, anyhow.  The circumstances don't warrant it."

She swung from the saddle and picked her coat out of the mud where it
had fallen.  Her lithe young figure was supple as that of a boy.

"You've spoiled my coat," she charged resentfully.

The injustice of this tickled him.  "I'll buy you a new one when we get
to town," he told her promptly.

Her angry dignity gave her another inch of height.  "I'll attend to
that, Mr. Dingwell.  Suppose you ride on and leave me alone.  I won't
detain you."

"Meaning that she doesn't like your company, Dave," he mused aloud,
eyes twinkling.  "She seemed kinder fond of you, too, a minute ago."

Almost she stamped her foot.  "Will you go?  Or shall I?"

"Oh, I'm going, Miss Rutherford.  If I wasn't such an aged, decrepit
wreck I'd come up and be one of your scholars.  Anyhow, I'm real glad
to have met you.  No, I can't stay longer.  So sorry.  Good-bye."

He cantered down the road in the same direction Fox had taken.  It
happened that he, too, wanted to be alone, for he had a problem to
solve that would not wait.  Fox had galloped in to warn the Rutherford
gang that he had the gold.  How long it would take him to round up two
or three of them would depend on chance.  Dave knew that they might be
waiting for him before he reached town.  He had to get rid of the
treasure between that spot and town, or else he had to turn on his
tired horse and try to escape to the hills.  Into his mind popped a
possible solution of the difficulty.  It would depend on whether luck
was for or against him.  To dismount and hide the sack was impossible,
both because Beulah Rutherford was on his heels and because the muddy
road would show tracks where he had stopped.  His plan was to hide it
without leaving the saddle.

He did.  At the outskirts of Battle Butte he crossed the bridge over
Big Creek and deflected to the left.  He swung up one street and down
another beside which ran a small field of alfalfa on one side.  A
hundred yards beyond it he met another rider, a man called Slim
Sanders, who worked for Buck Rutherford as a cow-puncher.

The two men exchanged nods without stopping.  Apparently the news that
Fox had brought was unknown to the cowboy.  But Dingwell knew he was on
his way to the Legal Tender Saloon, which was the hang-out of the
Rutherford followers.  In a few minutes Sanders would get his orders.

Dave rode to the house of Sheriff Sweeney.  He learned there that the
sheriff was downtown.  Dingwell turned toward the business section of
the town and rode down the main street.  From a passer-by he learned
that Sweeney had gone into the Legal Tender a few minutes before.  In
front of that saloon he dismounted.

Fifty yards down the street three men were walking toward him.  He
recognized them as Buck Rutherford, Sanders, and Chet Fox.  The little
man walked between the other two and told his story excitedly.
Dingwell did not wait for them.  He had something he wanted to tell
Sweeney and he passed at once into the saloon.




Chapter III

The Old-Timer Sits into a Big Game

The room into which Dingwell had stepped was as large as a public
dance-hall.  Scattered in one part or another of it, singly or in
groups, were fifty or sixty men.  In front, to the right, was the bar,
where some cowmen and prospectors were lined up before a counter upon
which were bottles and glasses.  A bartender in a white linen jacket
was polishing the walnut top with a cloth.

Dave shook his head in answer to the invitation to drink that came to
him at once.  Casually he chatted with acquaintances as he worked his
way toward the rear.  This part of the room was a gambling resort.
Among the various methods of separating the prodigal from his money
were roulette, faro, keno, chuckaluck, and poker tables.  Around these
a motley assemblage was gathered.  Rich cattlemen brushed shoulders
with the outlaws who were rustling their calves.  Mexicans without a
nickel stood side by side with Eastern consumptives out for their
health.  Chinese laundrymen played the wheel beside miners and
cowpunchers.  Stolid, wooden-faced Indians in blankets from the
reservation watched the turbid life of the Southwest as it eddied
around them.  The new West was jostling the old West into the
background, but here the vivid life of the frontier was making its last
stand.

By the time that Dave had made a tour of two thirds of the room he knew
that Sheriff Sweeney was not among those present.  His inquiries
brought out the fact that he must have just left.  Dingwell sauntered
toward the door, intending to follow him, but what he saw there changed
his mind.  Buck Rutherford and Slim Sanders were lounging together at
one end of the bar.  It took no detective to understand that they were
watching the door.  A glance to the rear showed Dave two more
Rutherfords at the back exit.  That he would have company in case he
left was a safe guess.

The cattleman chuckled.  The little devils of mischief already
mentioned danced in his eyes.  If they were waiting for him to go, he
would see that they had a long session of it.  Dave was in no hurry.
The night was young yet, and in any case the Legal Tender never closed.
The key had been thrown away ten years before.  He could sit it out as
long as the Rutherfords could.

Dingwell was confident no move would be made against him in public.
The sentiment of the community had developed since that distant day
when the Rutherford gang had shot down Jack Beaudry in open daylight.
Deviltry had to be done under cover now.  Moreover, Dave was in the
peculiar situation of advantage that the outlaws could not kill him
until they knew where he had hidden the gold.  So far as the
Rutherfords went, he was just now the goose that laid the golden egg.

He stood chatting with another cattleman for a few moments, then
drifted back to the rear of the hall again.  Underneath an elk's head
with magnificent antlers a party sat around a table playing draw poker
with a skinned deck.  Two of them were wall-eyed strangers whom
Dingwell guessed to be professional tinhorns.  Another ran a curio
store in town.  The fourth was Dan Meldrum, one of the toughest crooks
in the county.  Nineteen years ago Sheriff Beaudry had sent him to the
penitentiary for rustling calves.  The fifth player sat next to the
wall.  He was a large, broad-shouldered man close to fifty.  His face
had the weather-beaten look of confidence that comes to an outdoor
Westerner used to leading others.

While Dave was moving past this table, he noticed that Chet Fox was
whispering in the ear of the man next the wall.  The poker-player
nodded, and at the same moment his glance met that of Dingwell.  The
gray eyes of the big fellow narrowed and grew chill.  Fox, starting to
move away, recognized the cattleman from whom he had escaped half an
hour before.  Taken by surprise, the little spy looked guilty as an
urchin caught stealing apples.

It took no clairvoyant to divine what the subject of that whispered
colloquy had been.  The cheerful grin of Dave included impartially Fox,
Meldrum, and the player beneath the elk's head.

The ex-convict spoke first.  "Come back to sit in our game, Dave?" he
jeered.

Dingwell understood that this was a challenge.  It was impossible to
look on the ugly, lupine face of the man, marked by the ravages of
forty years of vice and unbridled passion, without knowing that he was
ready for trouble now.  But Meldrum was a mere detail of a situation
piquant enough even for so light-hearted a son of the Rockies as this
cattleman.  Dave had already invited himself into a far bigger game of
the Rutherford clan than this.  Moreover, just now he was so far ahead
that he had cleared the table of all the stakes.  Meldrum knew this.
So did Hal Rutherford, the big man sitting next the wall.  What would
be their next move?  Perhaps if he joined them he would find out.  This
course held its dangers, but long experience had taught him that to
walk through besetting perils was less risk than to run from them.

"If that's an invitation, Dan, you're on," he answered gayly.  "Just a
minute, and I'll join you.  I want to send a message to Sweeney."

Without even looking at Meldrum to see the effect of this, Dave
beckoned a Mexican standing near.  "Tell the sheriff I want to see him
here _pronto_.  You win a dollar if he is back within an hour."

The Mexican disappeared.  Fox followed him.

The cattleman drew in his chair and was introduced to the two
strangers.  The quick, searching look he gave each confirmed his first
impression.  These men were professional gamblers. It occurred to him
that they had made a singularly poor choice of victims in Dan Meldrum
and Hal Rutherford.  Either of them would reach for his gun at the
first evidence of crooked play.

No man in Battle Butte was a better poker psychologist than Dingwell,
but to-night cards did not interest him.  He was playing a bigger game.
His subconscious mind was alert for developments.  Since only his
surface attention was given to poker he played close.

While Rutherford dealt the cards he talked at Dave.  "So you're
expecting Sweeney, are you?  Been having trouble with any one?"

"Or expect to have any?" interjected Meldrum, insolence in his shifty
pig eyes.

"No, not looking for any," answered Dingwell amiably.  "Fact is, I was
prospecting around Lonesome Park and found a gold mine.  Looks good, so
I thought I'd tell Sweeney about it. . . .  Up to me?  I've got
openers."  He pushed chips to the center of the table.

Rutherford also pushed chips forward.  "I'll trail along. . . .  You
got an idea of taking in Sweeney as a partner?  I'm looking for a good
investment.  _It would pay you to take me in rather than Sweeney_."

Three of those at the table accepted this talk at its face value.  They
did not sense the tension underneath the apparently casual
give-and-take.  Two of them stayed and called for cards.  But Dave
understood that he had been offered a compromise.  Rutherford had
proposed to divide the gold stolen from the express car, and the
proffer carried with it a threat in case of refusal.

"Two when you get to me. . . .  No, I reckon I'll stick to the sheriff.
I've kinda arranged the deal."

As Rutherford slid two cards across to him the eyes of the men met.
"Call it off.  Sweeney is not the kind of a partner to stay with you to
the finish if your luck turns bad.  When I give my word I go through."

Dingwell looked at his cards.  "Check to the pat hand. . . .  Point is,
Hal, that I don't expect my luck to turn bad."

"Hmp!  Go in with Sweeney and you'll have bad luck all right.  _I'll
promise you that_.  Better talk this over with me and put a deal
through."  He rapped on the table to show that he too passed without
betting.

The curio dealer checked and entered a mild protest.  "Is this a poker
game or a conversazione, gentlemen?  It's stuck with Meldrum.  I reckon
he's off in Lonesome Park gold-mining the way he's been listening."

Meldrum brought his attention back to the game and bet his pat hand.
Dave called.  After a moment's hesitation Rutherford threw down his
cards.

"There's such a thing as pushing your luck too far," he commented.
"Now, take old man Crawford.  He was mightily tickled when his brother
Jim left him the Frying Pan Ranch.  But that wasn't good enough as it
stood.  He had to try to better it by marrying the Swede hash-slinger
from Los Angeles.  Later she fed him arsenic in his coffee.  A man's a
fool to overplay his luck."

At the showdown Meldrum disclosed a four-card flush and the cattleman
three jacks.

As Dave raked in the pot he answered Rutherford casually.  "Still, he
hadn't ought to underplay it either.  The other fellow may be out on a
limb."

"Say, is it any of your business how I play my cards?" demanded
Meldrum, thrusting his chin toward Dingwell.

"Absolutely none," replied Dave evenly.

"Cut that out, Dan," ordered Rutherford curtly.

The ex-convict mumbled something into his beard, but subsided.

Two hours had slipped away before Dingwell commented on the fact that
the sheriff had not arrived.  He did not voice his suspicion that the
Mexican had been intercepted by the Rutherfords.

"Looks like Sweeney didn't get my message," he said lazily.  "You never
can tell when a Mexican is going to get too tired to travel farther."

"Better hook up with me on that gold-mine proposition, Dave," Hal
Rutherford suggested again.

"No, I reckon not, Hal.  Much obliged, just the same."

Dave began to watch the game more closely.  There were points about it
worth noticing.  For one thing, the two strangers had a habit of
getting the others into a pot and cross-raising them exasperatingly.
If Dave had kept even, it was only because he refused to be drawn into
inviting pots when either of the strangers was dealing.  He observed
that though they claimed not to have met each other before there was
team work in their play.  Moreover, the yellow and blue chips were
mostly piled up in front of them, while Meldrum, Rutherford, and the
curio dealer had all bought several times.  Dave waited until his
doubts of crooked work became certainty before he moved.

"The game's framed.  Blair has rung in a cold deck on us.  He and Smith
are playing in cahoots."

Dingwell had risen.  His hands rested on the table as an assurance that
he did not mean to back up his charge with a gunplay unless it became
necessary.

The man who called himself Blair wasted no words in denial.  His right
hand slid toward his hip pocket.  Simultaneously the fingers of Dave's
left hand knotted to a fist, his arm jolted forward, and the bony
knuckles collided with the jaw of the tinhorn.  The body of the
cattleman had not moved.  There seemed no special effort in the blow,
but Blair went backward in his chair heels over head.  The man writhed
on the floor, turned over, and lay still.

From the moment that he had launched his blow Dave wasted no more
attention on Blair.  His eyes fastened upon Smith.  The man made a
motion to rise.

"Don't you," advised the cattleman gently.  "Not till I say so, Mr.
Smith.  There's no manner of hurry a-tall.  Meldrum, see what he's got
in his right-hand pocket.  Better not object, Smith, unless you want to
ride at your own funeral."

Meldrum drew from the man's pocket a pack of cards.

"I thought so.  They've been switching decks on us.  The one we're
playing with is marked.  Run your finger over the ace of clubs there,
Hal. . . .  How about it?"

"Pin-pricked," announced Rutherford.  "And they've garnered in most of
the chips.  What do you think?"

"That I'll beat both their heads off," cut in Meldrum, purple with rage.

"Not necessary, Dan," vetoed Dingwell.  "We'll shear the wolves.  Each
of you help yourself to chips equal to the amount you have lost. . . .
Now, Mr. Smith, you and your partner will dig up one hundred and
ninety-three dollars for these gentlemen."

"Why?" sputtered Smith.  "It's all a frame-up.  We've been playing a
straight game.  But say we haven't.  They have got their chips back.
Let them cash in to the house.  What more do you want?"

"One hundred and ninety-three dollars.  I thought I mentioned that
already.  You tried to rob these men of that amount, but you didn't get
away with it.  Now you'll rob yourself of just the same sum.  Frisk
yourself, Mr. Smith."

"Not on your life I won't.  It. . . it's an outrage.  It's robbery.
I'll not stand for it."  His words were brave, but the voice of the man
quavered.  The bulbous, fishy eyes of the cheat wavered before the
implacable ones of the cattleman.

"Come through."

The gambler's gaze passed around the table and found no help from the
men he had been robbing.  A crowd was beginning to gather.  Swiftly he
decided to pay forfeit and get out while there was still time.  He drew
a roll of bills from his pocket and with trembling fingers counted out
the sum named.  He shoved it across the table and rose.

"Now, take your friend and both of you hit the trail out of town,"
ordered the cattleman.

Blair had by this time got to his feet and was leaning stupidly on a
chair.  His companion helped him from the room.  At the door he turned
and glared at Dingwell.

"You're going to pay for this--and pay big," he spat out, his voice
shaking with rage.

"Oh, that's all right," answered Dingwell easily.

The game broke up.  Rutherford nodded a good-night to the cattleman and
left with Meldrum.  Presently Dave noticed that Buck and the rest of
the clan had also gone.  Only Slim Sanders was left, and he was playing
the wheel.

"Time to hit the hay," Dave yawned.

The bartender called "Good-night" as Dingwell went out of the swinging
doors.  He said afterward that he thought he heard the sound of
scuffling and smothered voices outside.  But his interest in the matter
did not take him as far as the door to find out if anything was wrong.




Chapter IV

Royal Beaudry Hears a Call

A bow-legged little man with the spurs still jingling on his heels
sauntered down one side of the old plaza.  He passed a train of
fagot-laden burros in charge of two Mexican boys from Tesuque, the
sides and back of each diminished mule so packed with firewood that it
was a comical caricature of a beruffed Elizabethan dame.  Into the
plaza narrow, twisted streets of adobe rambled carelessly.  One of
these led to the San Miguel Mission, said to be the oldest church in
the United States.

An entire side of the square was occupied by a long, one-story adobe
structure.  This was the Governor's Palace.  For three hundred years it
had been the seat of turbulent and tragic history.  Its solid walls had
withstood many a siege and had stifled the cries of dozens of tortured
prisoners.  The mail-clad Spanish explorers Penelosa and De Salivar had
from here set out across the desert on their search for gold and glory.
In one of its rooms the last Mexican governor had dictated his defiance
to General Kearny just before the Stars and Stripes fluttered from its
flagpole.  The Spaniard, the Indian, the Mexican, and the American in
turn had written here in action the romance of the Southwest.

The little man was of the outdoors.  His soft gray creased hat, the
sun-tan on his face and neck, the direct steadiness of the blue eyes
with the fine lines at the corners, were evidence enough even if he had
not carried in the wrinkles of his corduroy suit about seven pounds of
white powdered New Mexico.

He strolled down the sidewalk in front of the Palace, the while he
chewed tobacco absent-mindedly.  There was something very much on his
mind, so that it was by chance alone that his eye lit on a new tin sign
tacked to the wall.  He squinted at it incredulously.  His mind
digested the information it contained while his jaws worked steadily.

The sign read:--

    DESPACHO

      DE

    ROYAL BEAUDRY, LICENDIADO.

For those who preferred another language, a second announcement
appeared below the first:--

    ROYAL BEAUDRY.

    ATTORNEY AT LAW.

"Sure, and it must be the boy himself," said the little man aloud.

He opened the door and walked in.

A young man sat reading with his heels crossed on the top of a desk.  A
large calf-bound volume was open before him, but the book in the hands
of the youth looked less formidable.  It bore the title, "Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes."  The budding lawyer flashed a startled glance at his
caller and slid Dr. Watson's hero into an open drawer.

The visitor grinned and remarked with a just perceptible Irish accent:
"'Tis a good book.  I've read it myself."

The embryo Blackstone blushed.  "Say, are you a client?" he asked.

"No-o."

"Gee!  I was afraid you were my first.  I like your looks.  I'd hate
for you to have the bad luck to get me for your lawyer."  He laughed,
boyishly.  There was a very engaging quality about his candor.

The Irishman shot an abrupt question at him.  "Are you John Beaudry's
son--him that was fighting sheriff of Washington County twenty years
ago?"

A hint of apprehension flickered into the eyes of the young man.
"Yes," he said.

"Your father was a gr-reat man, the gamest officer that ever the Big
Creek country saw.  Me name is Patrick Ryan."

"Glad to meet any friend of my father, Mr. Ryan."  Roy Beaudry offered
his hand.  His fine eyes glowed.

"Wait," warned the little cowpuncher grimly.  "I'm no liar, whativer
else I've been.  Mebbe you'll be glad you've met me--an' mebbe you
won't.  First off, I was no friend of your father.  I trailed with the
Rutherford outfit them days.  It's all long past and I'll tell youse
straight that he just missed me in the round-up that sent two of our
bunch to the pen."

In the heart of young Beaudry a dull premonition of evil stirred.  His
hand fell limply.  Why had this man come out of the dead past to seek
him?  His panic-stricken eyes clung as though fascinated to those of
Ryan.

"Do you mean . . . that you were a rustler?"

Ryan looked full at him.  "You've said it.  I was a wild young colt
thim days, full of the divil and all.  But remimber this.  I held no
grudge at Jack Beaudry.  That's what he was elected for--to put me and
my sort out of business.  Why should I hate him because he was man
enough to do it?"

"That's not what some of your friends thought."

"You're right, worse luck.  I was out on the range when it happened.
I'll say this for Hal Rutherford.  He was full of bad whiskey when your
father was murdered. . . .  But that ended it for me.  I broke with the
Huerfano gang outfit and I've run straight iver since."

"Why have you come to me?  What do you want?" asked the young lawyer,
his throat dry.

"I need your help."

"What for?  Why should I give it?  I don't know you."

"It's not for mysilf that I want it.  There's a friend of your father
in trouble.  When I saw the sign with your name on it I came in to tell
you."

"What sort of trouble?"

"That's a long story.  Did you iver hear of Dave Dingwell?"

"Yes.  I've never met him, but he put me through law school."

"How come that?"

"I was living in Denver with my aunt.  A letter came from Mr. Dingwell
offering to pay the expenses of my education.  He said he owed that
much to my father."

"Well, then, Dave Dingwell has disappeared off the earth."

"What do you mean--disappeared?" asked Roy.

"He walked out of the Legal Tender Saloon one night and no friend of
his has seen him since.  That was last Tuesday."

"Is that all?  He may have gone hunting--or to Denver--or Los Angeles."

"No, he didn't do any one of the three.  He was either murdered or else
hid out in the hills by them that had a reason for it."

"Do you suspect some one?"

"I do," answered Ryan promptly.  "If he was killed, two tinhorn
gamblers did it.  If he's under guard in the hills, the Rutherford gang
have got him."

"The Rutherfords, the same ones that--?"

"The ver-ry same--Hal and Buck and a brood of young hellions they have
raised."

"But why should they kidnap Mr. Dingwell?  If they had anything against
him, why wouldn't they kill him?"

"If the Rutherfords have got him it is because he knows something they
want to know.  Listen, and I'll tell you what I think."

The Irishman drew up a chair and told Beaudry the story of that night
in the Legal Tender as far as he could piece it together.  He had
talked with one of the poker-players, the man that owned the curio
store, and from him had gathered all he could remember of the talk
between Dingwell and Rutherford.

"Get these points, lad," Ryan went on.  "Dave comes to town from a long
day's ride.  He tells Rutherford that he has been prospecting and has
found gold in Lonesome Park.  Nothing to that.  Dave is a cattleman,
not a prospector.  Rutherford knows that as well as I do.  But he falls
right in with Dingwell's story.  He offers to go partners with Dave on
his gold mine--keeps talking about it--insists on going in with him."

"I don't see anything in that," said Roy.

"You will presently.  Keep it in mind that there wasn't any gold mine
and couldn't have been.  That talk was a blind to cover something else.
Good enough.  Now chew on this awhile.  Dave sent a Mexican to bring
the sheriff, but Sweeney didn't come.  He explained that he wanted to
go partners with Sweeney about this gold-mine proposition.  If he was
talking about a real gold mine, that is teetotally unreasonable.
Nobody would pick Sweeney for a partner.  He's a fathead and Dave
worked against him before election.  But Sweeney _is sheriff of
Washington County_.  Get that?"

"I suppose you mean that Dingwell had something on the Rutherfords and
was going to turn them over to the law."

"You're getting warm, boy.  Does the hold-up of the Pacific Flyer help
you any?"

Roy drew a long breath of surprise.  "You mean the Western Express
robbery two weeks ago?"

"Sure I mean that.  Say the Rutherford outfit did that job."

"And that Dingwell got evidence of it.  But then they would kill him."
The heart of the young man sank.  He had a warm place in it for this
unknown friend who had paid his law-school expenses.

"You're forgetting about the gold mine Dave claimed to have found in
Lonesome Park.  Suppose he was hunting strays and saw them cache their
loot somewhere.  Suppose he dug it up.  Say they knew he had it, but
didn't know where he had taken it.  They couldn't kill him.  They would
have to hold him prisoner till they could make him tell where it was."

The young lawyer shook his head.  "Too many _ifs_.  Each one makes a
weak joint in your argument.  Put them all together and it is full of
holes.  Possible, but extremely improbable."

An eager excitement flashed in the blue eyes of the Irishman.

"You're looking at the thing wrong end to.  Get a grip on your facts
first.  The Western Express Company was robbed of twenty thousand
dollars and the robbers were run into the hills.  The Rutherford outfit
is the very gang to pull off that hold-up.  Dave tells Hal Rutherford,
the leader of the tribe, that he has sent for the sheriff.  Hal tries
to get him to call it off.  Dave talks about a gold mine he has found
and Rutherford tries to fix up a deal with him.  There's no _if_ about
any of that, me young Sherlock Holmes."

"No, you've built up a case.  But there's a stronger case already built
for us, isn't there?  Dingwell exposed the gamblers Blair and Smith,
knocked one of them cold, made them dig up a lot of money, and drove
them out of town.  They left, swearing vengeance.  He rides away, and
he is never seen again.  The natural assumption is that they lay in
wait for him and killed him."

"Then where is the body?"

"Lying out in the cactus somewhere--or buried in the sand."

"That wouldn't be a bad guess--if it wasn't for another bit of
testimony that came in to show that Dave was alive five hours after he
left the Legal Tender.  A sheepherder on the Creosote Flats heard the
sound of horses' hoofs early next morning.  He looked out of his tent
and saw three horses.  Two of the riders carried rifles.  The third
rode between them.  He didn't carry any gun.  They were a couple of
hundred yards away and the herder didn't recognize any of the men.  But
it looked to him like the man without the gun was a prisoner."

"Well, what does that prove?"

"If the man in the middle was Dave--and that's the hunch I'm betting on
to the limit--it lets out the tinhorns.  Their play would be to kill
and make a quick getaway.  There wouldn't be any object in their taking
a prisoner away off to the Flats.  If this man was Dave, Blair and
Smith are eliminated from the list of suspects.  That leaves the
Rutherfords."

"But you don't know that this was Dingwell."

"That's where you come in, me brave Sherlock.  Dave's friends can't
move to help him.  You see, they're all known men.  It might be the end
of Dave if they lifted a finger.  But you're not known to the
Rutherfords.  You slip in over Wagon Wheel Gap to Huerfano Park, pick
up what you can, and come out to Battle Butte with your news."

"You mean--spy on them?"

"Of coorse."

"But what if they suspected me?"

"Then your heirs at law would collect the insurance," Ryan told him
composedly.

Excuses poured out of young Beaudry one on top of another.  "No, I
can't go.  I won't mix up in it.  It's not my affair.  Besides, I can't
get away from my business."

"I see your business keeps you jumping," dryly commented the Irishman.
"And you know best whether it's your affair."

Beaudry could have stood it better if the man had railed at him, if he
had put up an argument to show why he must come to the aid of the
friend who had helped him.  This cool, contemptuous dismissal of him
stung.  He began to pace the room in rising excitement.

"I hate that country up there.  I've got no use for it.  It killed my
mother just as surely as it did my father.  I left there when I was a
child, but I'll never forget that dreadful day seventeen years ago.
Sometimes I wake in bed out of some devil's nightmare and live it over.
Why should I go back to that bloody battleground?  Hasn't it cost me
enough already?  It's easy for you to come and tell me to go to
Huerfano Park--"

"Hold your horses, Mr. Beaudry.  I'm not tellin' you to go.  I've laid
the facts before ye.  Go or stay as you please."

"That's all very well," snapped back the young man.  "But I know what
you'll think of me if I don't go."

"What you'll think of yourself matters more.  I haven't got to live
with ye for forty years."

Roy Beaudry writhed.  He was sensitive and high-strung.
Temperamentally he coveted the good opinion of those about him.
Moreover, he wanted to deserve it.  No man had ever spoken to him in
just the tone of this little Irish cowpuncher, who had come out of
nowhere into his life and brought to him his first big problem for
decision.  Even though the man had confessed himself a rustler, the
young lawyer could not escape his judgment.  Pat Ryan might have ridden
on many lawless trails in his youth, but the dynamic spark of
self-respect still burned in his soul.  He was a man, every inch of his
five-foot three.

"I want to live at peace," the boy went on hotly.  "Huerfano Park is
still in the dark ages.  I'm no gunman.  I stand for law and order.
This is the day of civilization.  Why should I embroil myself with a
lot of murderous outlaws when what I want is to sit here and make
friends--?"

The Irishman hammered his fist on the table and exploded.  "Then sit
here, damn ye!  But why the hell should any one want to make friends
with a white-livered pup like you?  I thought you was Jack Beaudry's
son, but I'll niver believe it.  Jack didn't sit on a padded chair and
talk about law and order.  By God, no!  He went out with a six-gun and
made them.  No gamer, whiter man ever strapped a forty-four to his hip.
_He_ niver talked about what it would cost him to go through for his
friends.  He just went the limit without any guff."

Ryan jingled out of the room in hot scorn and left one young peace
advocate in a turmoil of emotion.

Young Beaudry did not need to discuss with himself the ethics of the
situation.  A clear call had come to him on behalf of the man who had
been his best friend, even though he had never met him.  He must answer
that call, or he must turn his back on it.  Sophistry would not help at
all.  There were no excuses his own mind would accept.

But Royal Beaudry had been timid from his childhood.  He had inherited
fear.  The shadow of it had always stretched toward him.  His cheeks
burned with shame to recall that it had not been a week since he had
looked under the bed at night before getting in to make sure nobody was
hidden there.  What was the use of blinking the truth?  He was a born
coward.  It was the skeleton in the closet of his soul.  His schooldays
had been haunted by the ghost of dread.  Never in his life had he
played truant, though he had admired beyond measure the reckless little
dare-devils who took their fun and paid for it.  He had contrived to
avoid fights with his mates and thrashings from the teachers.  On the
one occasion when public opinion had driven him to put up his fists, he
had been saved from disgrace only because the bully against whom he had
turned proved to be an arrant craven.

He remembered how he had been induced to go out and try for the
football team at the university.  His fellows knew him as a fair
gymnast and a crack tennis player.  He was muscular, well-built, and
fast on his feet, almost perfectly put together for a halfback.  On the
second day of practice he had shirked a hard tackle, though it happened
that nobody suspected the truth but himself.  Next morning he turned in
his suit with the plea that he had promised his aunt not to play.

Now trepidation was at his throat again, and there was no escape from a
choice that would put a label on him.  It had been his right to play
football or not as he pleased.  But this was different.  A summons had
come to his loyalty, to the fundamental manhood of him.  If he left
David Dingwell to his fate, he could never look at himself again in the
glass without knowing that he was facing a dastard.

The trouble was that he had too much imagination.  As a child he had
conjured dragons out of the darkness that had no existence except in
his hectic fancy.  So it was now.  He had only to give his mind play to
see himself helpless in the hands of the Rutherfords.

But he was essentially stanch and generous.  Fate had played him a
scurvy trick in making him a trembler, but he knew it was not in him to
turn his back on Dingwell.  No matter how much he might rebel and
squirm he would have to come to time in the end.

After a wretched afternoon he hunted up Ryan at his hotel.

"When do you want me to start?" he asked sharply.

The little cowpuncher was sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper.  He
took one look at the harassed youth and jumped up.

"Say, you're all right.  Put her there."

Royal's cold hand met the rough one of Ryan.  The shrewd eyes of the
Irishman judged the other.

"I knew youse couldn't be a quitter and John Beaudry's son," he
continued.  "Why, come to that, the sooner you start the quicker."

"I'll have to change my name."

"Sure you will.  And you'd better peddle something--insurance, or
lightning rods, or 'The Royal Gall'ry of Po'try 'n Art' or--"

"'Life of the James and Younger Brothers.'  That ought to sell well
with the Rutherfords," suggested Roy satirically, trying to rise to the
occasion.

"Jess Tighe and Dan Meldrum don't need any pointers from the James
Boys."

"Tighe and Meldrum--  Who are they?"

"Meldrum is a coyote your father trapped and sent to the pen.  He's a
bad actor for fair.  And Tighe--well, if you put a hole in his head
you'd blow out the brains of the Rutherford gang.  For hiven's sake
don't let Jess know who you are.  All of sivinteen years he's been a
cripple on crutches, and 't was your father that laid him up the day of
his death.  He's a rivingeful divil is Jess."

Beaudry made no comment.  It seemed to him that his heart was of
chilled lead.




Chapter V

The Hill Girl

The Irish cowpuncher guided young Royal Beaudry through Wagon Wheel Gap
himself.  They traveled in the night, since it would not do for the two
to be seen together.  In the early morning Ryan left the young man and
turned back toward Battle Butte.  The way to Huerfano Park, even from
here, was difficult to find, but Roy had a map drawn from memory by Pat.

"I'll not guarantee it," the little rider had cautioned.  "It's been
many a year since I was in to the park and maybe my memory is playing
tricks.  But it's the best I can do for you."

Beaudry spent the first half of the day in a pine grove far up in the
hills.  It would stir suspicion if he were seen on the road at dawn,
for that would mean that he must have come through the Gap in the
night.  So he unsaddled and stretched himself on the sun-dappled ground
for an hour or two's rest.  He did not expect to sleep, even though he
had been up all night.  He was too uneasy in mind and his nerves were
too taut.

But it was a perfect day of warm spring sunshine.  He looked up into a
blue unflecked sky.  The tireless hum of insects made murmurous music
all about him.  The air was vocal with the notes of nesting birds.  His
eyes closed drowsily.

When he opened them again, the sun was high in the heavens.  He saddled
and took the trail.  Within the hour he knew that he was lost.  Either
he had mistaken some of the landmarks of Ryan's sketchy map or else the
cowpuncher had forgotten the lay of the country.

Still, Roy knew roughly the general direction of Huerfano Park.  If he
kept going he was bound to get nearer.  Perhaps he might run into a
road or meet some sheepherder who would put him on the right way.

He was in the heart of the watershed where Big Creek heads.
Occasionally from a hilltop he could see the peaks rising gaunt in
front of him.  Between him and them were many miles of tangled
mesquite, wooded canons, and hills innumerable.  Somewhere among the
recesses of these land waves Huerfano Park was hidden.

It was three o'clock by Royal's watch when he had worked to the top of
a bluff which looked down upon a wooded valley.  His eyes swept the
landscape and came to rest upon an object moving slowly in the
mesquite.  He watched it incuriously, but his interest quickened when
it came out of the bushes into a dry water-course and he discovered
that the figure was that of a human being.  The person walked with an
odd, dragging limp.  Presently he discerned that the traveler below was
a woman and that she was pulling something after her.  For perhaps
fifty yards she would keep going and then would stop.  Once she
crouched down over her load.

Roy cupped his hands at his mouth and shouted.  The figure straightened
alertly and looked around.  He called to her again.  His voice must
have reached her very faintly.  She did not try to answer in words, but
fired twice with a revolver.  Evidently she had not yet seen him.

That there was something wrong Beaudry felt sure.  He did not know
what, nor did he waste any time speculating about it.  The easiest
descent to the valley was around the rear of the bluff, but Roy
clambered down a heavily wooded gulch a little to the right.  He saved
time by going directly.

When Roy saw the woman again he was close upon her.  She was stooped
over something and her back and arms showed tension.  At sound of his
approach she flung up quickly the mass of inky black hair that had
hidden her bent face.  As she rose it became apparent that she was tall
and slender, and that the clear complexion, just now at least, was
quite without color.

Moving forward through the underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky
nymph with surprise.  In her attitude was something wild and free and
proud.  It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had
summoned him.  Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman
primeval before the conventions of civilization had tamed her to its
uses.

Her intent eyes watched him steadily as he came into the open.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"I was on the bluff and saw you.  I thought you were in trouble.  You
limped as if--"

He stopped, amazed.  For the first time he saw that her foot was caught
in a wolf trap.  This explained the peculiarity of gait he had noticed
from above.  She had been dragging the heavy Newhouse trap and the clog
with her as she walked.  One glance at her face was enough to show how
greatly she was suffering.

Fortunately she was wearing a small pair of high-heeled boots such as
cowpunchers use, and the stiff leather had broken the shock of the blow
from the steel jaws.  Otherwise the force of the released spring must
have shattered her ankle.

"I can't quite open the trap," she explained.  "If you will help me--"

Roy put his weight on the springs and removed the pressure of the jaws.
The girl drew out her numb leg.  She straightened herself, swayed, and
clutched blindly at him.  Next moment her body relaxed and she was
unconscious in his arms.

He laid her on the moss and looked about for water.  There was some in
his canteen, but that was attached to the saddle on the top of the
bluff.  For present purposes it might as well have been at the North
Pole.  He could not leave her while she was like this.  But since he
had to be giving some first aid, he drew from her foot the boot that
had been in the steel trap, so as to relieve the ankle.

Her eyelids fluttered, she gave a deep sigh, and looked with a
perplexed doubt upon the world to which she had just returned.

"You fainted," Roy told her by way of explanation.

The young woman winced and looked at her foot.  The angry color flushed
into her cheeks.  Her annoyance was at herself, but she visited it upon
him.

"Who told you to take off my boot?"

"I thought it might help the pain."

She snatched up the boot and started to pull it on, but gave this up
with a long breath that was almost a groan.

"I'm a nice kind of a baby," she jeered.

"It must hurt like sixty," he ventured.  Then, after momentary
hesitation: "You'd better let me bind up your ankle.  I have water in
my canteen.  I'll run up and get some as soon as I'm through."

There was something of sullen suspicion in the glance her dark eyes
flashed at him.

"You can get me water if you want to," she told him, a little
ungraciously.

He understood that his offer to tie up the ankle had been refused.
When he returned with his horse twenty minutes later, he knew why she
had let him go for the water.  It had been the easiest way to get rid
of him for the time.  The fat bulge beneath her stocking showed that
she had taken advantage of his absence to bind the bruised leg herself.

"Is it better now--less painful?" he asked.

She dismissed his sympathy with a curt little nod.  "I'm the biggest
fool in Washington County.  We've been setting traps for wolves.
They've been getting our lambs.  I jumped off my horse right into this
one.  Blacky is a skittish colt and when the trap went off, he bolted."

He smiled a little at the disgust she heaped upon herself.

"You'll have to ride my horse to your home.  How far is it?"

"Five miles, maybe."  The girl looked at her ankle resentfully.  It was
plain that she did not relish the idea of being under obligations to
him.  But to attempt to walk so far was out of the question.  Even now
when she was not using the foot she suffered a good deal of pain.

"Cornell isn't a bit skittish.  He's an old plug.  You'll find his gait
easy," Beaudry told her.

If she had not wanted to keep her weight from the wounded ankle, she
would have rejected scornfully his offer to help her mount, for she was
used to flinging her lithe body into the saddle as easily as her
brothers did.  The girl had read in books of men aiding women to reach
their seat on the back of a horse, but she had not the least idea how
the thing was done.  Because of her ignorance she was embarrassed.  The
result was that they boggled the business, and it was only at the third
attempt that he got her on as gracefully as if she had been a sack of
meal.

"Sorry.  I'm awfully awkward," he apologized.

Again an angry flush stained her cheeks.  The stupidity had been hers,
not his.  She resented it that he was ready to take the blame,--read
into his manner a condescension he did not at all feel.

"I know whose fault it was.  I'm not a fool," she snapped brusquely.

It added to her irritation at making such an exhibition of clumsiness
that she was one of the best horsewomen in the Territory.  Her life had
been an outdoor one, and she had stuck to the saddle on the back of
many an outlaw bronco without pulling leather.  There were many things
of which she knew nothing.  The ways of sophisticated women, the
conventions of society, were alien to her life.  She was mountain-bred,
brought up among men, an outcast even from the better class of Battle
Butte.  But the life of the ranch she knew.  That this soft-cheeked boy
from town should think she did not know how to get on a horse was a
little too humiliating.  Some day, if she ever got a chance, she would
let him see her vault into the saddle without touching the stirrups.

The young man walking beside the horse might still be smooth-cheeked,
but he had the muscles of an athlete.  He took the hills with a light,
springy step and breathed easily after stiff climbing.  His mind was
busy making out what manner of girl this was.  She was new to his
experience.  He had met none like her.  That she was a proud, sulky
creature he could easily guess from her quickness at taking offense.
She resented even the appearance of being ridiculous.  Her acceptance
of his favors carried always the implication that she hated him for
offering them.  It was a safe guess that back of those flashing eyes
were a passionate temper and an imperious will.

It was evident that she knew the country as a teacher knows the primer
through which she leads her children.  In daylight or in darkness, with
or without a trail, she could have followed almost an air-line to the
ranch.  The paths she took wound in and out through unsuspected gorges
and over divides that only goats or cow-ponies could have safely
scrambled up and down.  Hidden pockets had been cached here so
profusely by nature that the country was a maze.  A man might have
found safety from pursuit in one of these for a lifetime if he had been
provisioned.

"Where were you going when you found me?" the young woman asked.

"Up to the mountain ranches of Big Creek.  I was lost, so we ought to
put it that you found me," Beaudry answered with the flash of a
pleasant smile.

"What are you going to do up there?"  Her keen suspicious eyes watched
him warily.

"Sell windmills if I can.  I've got the best proposition on the market."

"Why do you come away up here?  Don't you know that the Big Creek
headwaters are off the map?"

"That's it exactly," he replied.  "I expect no agents get up here.
It's too hard to get in.  I ought to be able to sell a whole lot easier
than if I took the valleys."  He laughed a little, by way of taking her
into his confidence.  "I'll tell the ranchers that if they buy my
windmills it will put Big Creek on the map."

"They won't buy them," she added with a sudden flare of temper.  "This
country up here is fifty years behind the times.  It doesn't want to be
modern."

Over a boulder bed, by rock fissures, they came at last to a sword gash
in the top of the world.  It cleft a passage through the range to
another gorge, at the foot of which lay a mountain park dotted with
ranch buildings.  On every side the valley was hemmed in by giant peaks.

"Huerfano Park?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You live here?"

"Yes."  She pointed to a group of buildings to the left.  "That is my
father's place.  They call it the 'Horse Ranch.'"

He turned startled eyes upon her.  "Then you are--?"

"Beulah Rutherford, the daughter of Hal Rutherford."




Chapter VI

"Cherokee Street"

She was the first to break the silence after her announcement.

"What's the matter?  You look as if you had seen a ghost."

He had.  The ghost of a dreadful day had leaped at him out of the past.
Men on murder bent were riding down the street toward their victim.  At
the head of that company rode her father; the one they were about to
kill was his.  A wave of sickness shuddered through him.

"It--it's my heart," he answered in a smothered voice.  "Sometimes it
acts queer.  I'll be all right in a minute."

The young woman drew the horse to a halt and looked down at him.  Her
eyes, for the first time since they had met, registered concern.

"The altitude, probably.  We're over nine thousand feet high.  You're
not used to walking in the clouds.  We'll rest here."

She swung from the saddle and trailed the reins.

"Sit down," the girl ordered after she had seated herself
tailor-fashion on the moss.

Reluctantly he did as he was told.  He clenched his teeth in a cold
rage at himself.  Unless he conquered that habit of flying into panic
at every crisis, he was lost.

Beulah leaned forward and plucked an anemone blossom from a rock
cranny.  "Isn't it wonderful how brave they are?  You wouldn't think
they would have courage to grow up so fine and delicate among the rocks
without any soil to feed them."

Often, in the days that followed, he thought of what she had said about
the anemones and applied it to herself.  She, too, had grown up among
the rocks spiritually.  He could see the effect of the barren soil in
her suspicious and unfriendly attitude toward life.  There was in her
manner a resentment at fate, a bitterness that no girl of her years
should have felt.  In her wary eyes he read distrust of him.  Was it
because she was the product of heredity and environment?  Her people
had outlawed themselves from society.  They had lived with their hands
against the world of settled order.  She could not escape the law that
their turbulent sins must be visited upon her.

Young Beaudry followed the lead she had given him.  "Yes, that is the
most amazing thing in life--that no matter how poor the soil and how
bad the conditions fine and lovely things grow up everywhere."

The sardonic smile on her dark face mocked him.  "You find a sermon in
it, do you?"

"Don't you?"

She plucked the wild flower out by the roots.  "It struggles--and
struggles--and blooms for a day--and withers.  What's the use?" she
demanded, almost savagely.  Then, before he could answer, the girl
closed the door she had opened for him.  "We must be moving.  The sun
has already set in the valley."

His glances swept the park below.  Heavily wooded gulches pushed down
from the roots of the mountains that girt Huerfano to meet the fences
of the ranchers.  The cliffs rose sheer and bleak.  The panorama was a
wild and primitive one.  It suggested to the troubled mind of the young
man an eagle's nest built far up in the crags from which the great bird
could swoop down upon its victims.  He carried the figure farther.
Were these hillmen eagles, hawks, and vultures?  And was he beside them
only a tomtit?  He wished he knew.

"Were you born here?" he asked, his thoughts jumping back to the girl
beside him.

"Yes."

"And you've always lived here?"

"Except for one year when I went away to school."

"Where?"

"To Denver."

The thing he was thinking jumped into words almost unconsciously.

"Do you like it here?"

"Like it?"  Her dusky eyes stabbed at him.  "What does it matter
whether I like it?  I have to live here, don't I?"

The swift parry and thrust of the girl was almost ferocious.

"I oughtn't to have put it that way," he apologized.  "What I meant
was, did you like your year outside at school?"

Abruptly she rose.  "We'll be going.  You ride down.  My foot is all
right now."

"I wouldn't think of it," he answered promptly.  "You might injure
yourself for life."

"I tell you I'm all right," she said, impatience in her voice.

To prove her claim she limped a few yards slowly.  In spite of a
stubborn will the girl's breath came raggedly.  Beaudry caught the
bridle of the horse and followed her.

"Don't, please.  You might hurt yourself," he urged.

She nodded.  "All right.  Bring the horse close to that big rock."

From the boulder she mounted without his help.  Presently she asked a
careless question.

"Why do you call him Cornell?  Is it for the college?"

"Yes.  I went to school there a year."  He roused himself to answer
with the proper degree of lightness.  "At the ball games we barked in
chorus a rhyme: 'Cornell I yell--yell--yell--Cornell.'  That's how it
is with this old plug.  If I want to get anywhere before the day after
to-morrow, I have to yell--yell--yell."

The young woman showed in a smile a row of white strong teeth.  "I see.
His real name is Day-After-To-Morrow, but you call him Cornell for
short.  Why not just Corn?  He would appreciate that, perhaps."

"You've christened him, Miss Rutherford.  Corn he shall be, henceforth
and forevermore."

They picked their way carefully down through the canon and emerged from
it into the open meadow.  The road led plain, and straight to the horse
ranch.  Just before they reached the house, a young man cantered up
from the opposite direction.

He was a black-haired, dark young giant of about twenty-four.  Before
he turned to the girl, he looked her companion over casually and
contemptuously.

"Hello, Boots!  Where's your horse?" he asked.

"Bolted.  Hasn't Blacky got home yet?"

"Don't know.  Haven't been home.  Get thrown?"

"No.  Stepped into one of your wolf traps." She turned to include
Beaudry.  "This gentleman--Mr.--?"

Caught at advantage, Roy groped wildly for the name he had chosen.  His
mind was a blank.  At random he snatched for the first that came.  It
happened to be his old Denver address.

"Cherokee Street," he gasped.

Instantly he knew he had made a mistake.

"That's odd," Beulah said.  "There's a street called Cherokee in
Denver.  Were you named for it?"

He lied, not very valiantly.  "Yes, I--I think so.  You see, I was born
on it, and my parents--since their name was Street, anyhow,--thought it
a sort of distinction to give me that name.  I've never much liked it."

The girl spoke to the young man beside her.  "Mr. Street helped me out
of the trap and lent me his horse to get home.  I hurt my leg."  She
proceeded to introductions.  "Mr. Street, this is my brother, Jeff
Rutherford."

Jeff nodded curtly.  He happened to be dismounting, so he did not offer
to shake hands.  Over the back of the horse he looked at his sister's
guest without comment.  Again he seemed to dismiss him from his mind as
of no importance.  When he spoke, it was to Beulah.

"That's a fool business--stepping into wolf traps.  How did you come to
do it?"

"It doesn't matter how.  I did it."

"Hurt any?"

She swung from the saddle and limped a few steps.  "Nothing to make any
fuss about.  Dad home?"

"Yep.  Set the trap again after you sprung it, Boots?"

"No.  Set your own traps," she flung over her shoulder.  "This way, Mr.
Street."

Roy followed her to the house and was ushered into a room where a young
man sat cleaning a revolver with one leg thrown across a second chair.
Tilted on the back of his head was a cowpuncher's pinched-in hat.  He
too had black hair and a black mustache.  Like all the Rutherfords he
was handsome after a fashion, though the debonair recklessness of his
good looks offered a warning of temper.

"'Lo, Boots," he greeted his sister, and fastened his black eyes on her
guest.

Beaudry noticed that he did not take off his hat or lift his leg from
the chair.

"Mr. Street, this is my brother Hal.  I don't need to tell you that he
hasn't been very well brought up."

Young Rutherford did not accept the hint.  "My friends take me as they
find me, sis.  Others can go to Guinea."

Beulah flushed with annoyance.  She drew one of the gauntlets from her
hand and with the fingers of it flipped the hat from the head of her
brother.  Simultaneously her foot pushed away the chair upon which his
leg rested.

He jumped up, half inclined to be angry.  After a moment he thought
better of it, and grinned.

"I'm not the only member of the family shy on manners, Boots," he said.
"What's the matter with you?  Showing off before company?"

"I'd have a fine chance with you three young rowdies in the house," she
retorted derisively.  "Where's dad?"

As if in answer to her question the door opened to let in a big,
middle-aged rancher with a fine shock of grizzled hair and heavy black
eyebrows.  Beulah went through the formula of introduction again, but
without it Beaudry would have known this hawk-nosed man whose gaze
bored into his.  The hand he offered to Hal Rutherford was cold and
clammy.  A chill shiver passed through him.

The young woman went on swiftly to tell how her guest had rescued her
from the wolf trap and walked home beside her while she rode his horse.

"I'll send for Doc Spindler and have him look at your ankle, honey,"
the father announced at once.

"Oh, it's all right--bruised up a bit--that's all," Beulah objected.

"We'll make sure, Boots.  Slap a saddle on and ride for the Doc, Hal."
When the young man had left the room, his father turned again to Roy.
His arm gathered in the girl beside him.  "We're sure a heap obliged to
you, Mr. Street.  It was right lucky you happened along."

To see the father and daughter together was evidence enough of the
strong affection that bound them.  The tone in which he had spoken to
his son had been brusque and crisp, but when he addressed her, his
voice took on a softer inflection, his eyes betrayed the place she held
in his heart.

The man looked what he was--the chief of a clan, the almost feudal
leader of a tribe which lived outside the law.  To deny him a certain
nobility of appearance was impossible.  Young Beaudry guessed that he
was arrogant, but this lay hidden under a manner of bluff frankness.
One did not need a second glance to see from whom the younger
Rutherfords had inherited their dark, good looks.  The family likeness
was strong in all of them, but nature had taken her revenge for the
anti-social life of the father.  The boys had reverted toward savagery.
They were elemental and undisciplined.  This was, perhaps, true of
Beulah also.  There were moments when she suggested in the startled
poise of her light body and the flash of her quick eyes a wild young
creature of the forest set for night.  But in her case atavism
manifested itself charmingly in the untamed grace of a rich young
personality vital with life.  It was an interesting speculation whether
in twenty years she would develop into a harridan or a woman of unusual
character.

The big living-room of the ranch house was a man's domain.  A
magnificent elk head decorated one of the walls.  Upon the antlers
rested a rifle and from one of the tines depended a belt with a
six-shooter in its holster.  A braided leather quirt lay on the table
and beside it a spur one of the boys had brought in to be riveted.
Tossed carelessly into one corner were a fishing-rod and a creel.  A
shotgun and a pair of rubber waders occupied the corner diagonally
opposite.

But there were evidences to show that Beulah had modified at least her
environment.  An upright piano and a music-rack were the most
conspicuous.  Upon the piano was a padded-covered gift copy of "Aurora
Leigh."  A similar one of "In Memoriam" lay on the mantel next to a
photograph of the girl's dead mother framed in small shells.  These
were mementoes of Beulah's childhood.  A good copy of Del Sarto's John
the Baptist hanging from the wall and two or three recent novels
offered an intimation that she was now beyond shell frames and
padded-leather editions.

Miss Rutherford hobbled away to look after her ankle and to give orders
for supper to the ranch cook.  Conversation waned.  The owner of the
place invited Roy out to look over with him a new ram he had just
imported from Galloway.  The young man jumped at the chance.  He knew
as much about sheep as he did of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but he
preferred to talk about the mange rather than his reasons for visiting
Huerfano Park.

Just at present strangers were not welcome in the park.  Rutherford
himself was courteous on account of the service he had done Beulah, but
the boys were frankly suspicious.  Detectives of the express company
had been poking about the hills.  Was this young fellow who called
himself Street a spy sent in by the Western?  While Beaudry ate supper
with the family, he felt himself under the close observation of four
pairs of watchful eyes.

Afterward a young man rode into the ranch and another pair of eyes was
added to those that took stock of the guest.  Brad Charlton said he had
come to see Ned Rutherford about a gun, but Ned's sister was the real
reason for his call.  This young man was something of a dandy.  He wore
a Chihuahua hat and the picturesque trappings with which the Southwest
sometimes adorns itself.  The fine workmanship of the saddle, bridle,
and stirrups was noticeable.  His silk handkerchief, shirt, and boots
were of the best.  There was in his movements an easy and graceful
deliberation, but back of his slowness was a chill, wary strength.

Roy discovered shortly that Charlton was a local Admirable Crichton.
He was known as a crack rider, a good roper, and a dead shot.
Moreover, he had the reputation of being ready to fight at the drop of
the hat.  To the Rutherford boys he was a hero.  Whether he was one
also to Beulah her guest had not yet learned, but it took no wiseacre
to guess that he wanted to be.

As soon as the eyes of Charlton and Beaudry met there was born between
them an antagonism.  Jealousy sharpened the suspicions of the young
rancher.  He was the sort of man that cannot brook rivalry.  That the
newcomer had been of assistance to Miss Rutherford was enough in itself
to stir his doubts.

He set himself to verify them.




Chapter VII

Jess Tighe Spins a Web

"Then you left Denver, did you?" asked Charlton suavely.

Roy laughed.  "Yes, then I left Denver and went to college and shouted,
'Rah, rah, rah, Cornell.'  In time I became a man and put away childish
things.  Can I sell you a windmill, Mr. Charlton, warranted to raise
more water with less air pressure than any other in the market?"

"Been selling windmills long?" the rancher asked casually.

It was his ninth question in fifteen minutes.  Beaudry knew that he was
being cross-examined and his study of law had taught him that he had
better stick to the truth so far as possible.  He turned to Miss
Rutherford.

"Your friend is bawling me out," he gayly pretended to whisper.  "I
never sold a windmill in my life.  But I'm on my uppers.  I've got a
good proposition.  This country needs the Dynamo Aermotor and I need
the money.  So I took the agency.  I have learned a fifteen minutes'
spiel.  It gives seven reasons why Mr. Charlton will miss half the joy
of life until he buys a Dynamo.  Do you think he is a good prospect,
Miss Rutherford?"

"Dad has been talking windmill," she said.  "Sell him one."

"So has Jess Tighe," Charlton added.  He turned to Jeff Rutherford.
"Couldn't you take Mr. Street over to see Jess to-morrow morning?"

Jeff started promptly to decline, but as his friend's eyes met his he
changed his mind.  "I guess I could, maybe."

"I don't want to trouble you, Mr. Rutherford," objected Roy.

Something in the manner of Charlton annoyed Beulah.  This young man was
her guest.  She did not see any reason why Brad should bombard him with
questions.

"If Jeff is too busy I'll take you myself," she told Beaudry.

"Oh, Jeff won't be too busy.  He can take a half-day off," put in his
father.

When Charlton left, Beulah followed him as far as the porch.

"Do you think Mr. Street is a horse-thief that you ask him so many
questions?" she demanded indignantly.

He looked straight at her.  "I don't know what he is, Beulah, but I'm
going to find out."

"Isn't it possible that he is what he says he is?"

"Sure it's possible, but I don't believe it."

"Of course, I know you like to think the worst of a man, but when you
meet him in my house I'll thank you to treat him properly.  I vouch for
him."

"You never met him before this afternoon."

"That's my business.  It ought to be enough for you that he is my
guest."

Charlton filled in the ellipsis.  "If it isn't I can stay away, can't
I?  Well, I'm not going to quarrel with you, Beulah.  Good-night."

As soon as he was out of sight of the ranch, Charlton turned the head
of his horse, not toward his own place, but toward that of Jess Tighe.

Dr. Spindler drove up while Beulah was still on the porch.  He examined
the bruised ankle, dressed it, and pronounced that all it needed was a
rest.  No bones were broken, but the ligaments were strained.  For
several days she must give up riding and walking.

The ankle pained a good deal during the night, so that its owner slept
intermittently.  By morning she was no longer suffering, but was far
too restless to stay in the house.

"I'm going to drive Mr. Street over to the Tighe place in the buggy,"
she announced at breakfast.

Her brothers exchanged glances.

"Think you'd better go so far with your bad ankle, honey?" Hal
Rutherford, senior, asked.

"It doesn't make any difference, dad, so long as I don't put my weight
on it."

She had her way, as she usually did.  One of the boys hitched up and
brought the team to the front of the house.  Beaudry took the seat
beside Beulah.

The girl gathered up the reins, nodded good-bye to her father, and
drove off.

It was such a day as comes not more than a dozen times a season even in
New Mexico.  The pure light from the blue sky and the pine-combed air
from the hills were like wine to their young blood.  Once when the road
climbed a hilltop the long saw-toothed range lifted before them, but
mostly they could not see beyond the bastioned ramparts that hemmed in
the park or the nearer wooded gulches that ran down from them.

Beulah had brought her camera.  They took pictures of each other.  They
gathered wild flowers.  They talked as eagerly as children.  Somehow
the bars were down between them.  The girl had lost the manner of
sullen resentment that had impressed him yesterday.  She was gay and
happy and vivid.  Wild roses bloomed in her cheeks.  For this young man
belonged to the great world outside in which she was so interested.
Other topics than horses and cattle and drinking-bouts were the themes
of his talk.  He had been to theaters and read books and visited large
cities.  His coming had enriched life for her.

The trail took them past a grove of young aspens which blocked the
mouth of a small canon by the thickness of the growth.

"Do you see any way in?" Beulah asked her companion.

"No.  The trees are like a wall.  There is not an open foot by which
one could enter."

"Isn't there?" She laughed.  "There's a way in just the same.  You see
that big rock over to the left.  A trail drops down into the aspens
back of it.  A man lives in the gulch, an ex-convict.  His name is Dan
Meldrum."

"I expect he isn't troubled much with visitors."'

"No.  He lives alone.  I don't like him.  I wish he would move away.
He doesn't do the park any good."

A man was sitting on the porch of the Tighe place as they drove up.
Beside him lay a pair of crutches.

"That is Jess," the girl told Beaudry.  "Don't mind if he is gruff or
bad-tempered.  He is soured."

But evidently this was not the morning for Tighe to be gruff.  He came
to meet them on his crutches, a smile on his yellow, sapless face.
That smile seemed to Roy more deadly than anger.  It did not warm the
cold, malignant eyes nor light the mordant face with pleasure.  Only
the lips and mouth responded mechanically to it.

"Glad to see you, Miss Beulah.  Come in."

He opened the gate and they entered.  Presently Beaudry, his blood
beating fast, found himself shaking hands with Tighe.  The man had an
odd trick of looking at one always from partly hooded eyes and at an
angle.

"Mr. Street is selling windmills," explained Miss Rutherford.  "Brad
Charlton said you were talking of buying one, so here is your chance."

"Yes, I been thinking of it."  Tighe's voice was suave.  "What is your
proposition, Mr. Street?"

Roy talked the Dynamo Aermotor for fifteen minutes.  There was
something about the still look of this man that put him into a cold
sweat.

It was all he could do to concentrate his attention on the patter of a
salesman, but he would not let his mind wander from the single track
upon which he was projecting it.  He knew he was being watched closely.
To make a mistake might be fatal.

"Sounds good.  I'll look your literature over, Mr. Street.  I suppose
you'll be in the park a few days?"

"Yes."

"Then you can come and see me again.  I can't come to you so easy,
Mr.--er--"

"Street," suggested Beulah.

"That's right--Street.  Well, you see I'm kinder tied down."  He
indicated his crutches with a little lift of one hand.  "Maybe Miss
Beulah will bring you again."

"Suits me fine if she will," Beaudry agreed promptly.

The half-hooded eyes of the cripple slid to the girl and back again to
Roy.  He had a way of dry-washing the backs of his hands like Uriah
Heep.

"Fine.  You'll stay to dinner, now, of course.  That's good.  That's
good.  Young folks don't know how it pleasures an old man to meet up
with them sometimes."  His low voice was as smooth as oil.

Beaudry conceived a horror of the man.  The veiled sneer behind the
smile on the sapless face, the hooded hawk eyes, the almost servile
deference, held a sinister threat that chilled the spine of his guest.
The young man thought of him as of a repulsive spider spinning a web of
trouble that radiated from this porch all over the Big Creek country.

"Been taking pictures of each other, I reckon.  Fine.  Fine.  Now, I
wonder, Miss Beulah, if you'd do an old man a favor.  This porch is my
home, as you might say, seeing as how I'm sorter held down here.  I'd
kinder like a picture of it to hang up, providing it ain't asking too
much of you."

"Of course not.  I'll take it now," answered the girl.

"That's right good of you.  I'll jest sit here and be talking to Mr.
Street, as you might say.  Wouldn't that make a good picture--kinder
liven up the porch if we're on it?"

Roy felt a sudden impulse to protest, but he dared not yield to it.
What was it this man wanted of the picture?  Why had he baited a trap
to get a picture of him without Beulah Rutherford knowing that he
particularly wanted it?  While the girl took the photograph, his mind
was racing for Tighe's reason.

"I'll send you a copy as soon as I print it, Mr. Tighe," promised
Beulah.

"I'll sure set a heap of store by it, Miss Beulah. . . .  If you don't
mind helping me set the table, we'll leave Mr. Street this old
newspaper for a few minutes whilst we fix up a snack.  You'll excuse
us, Mr. Street?  That's good."

Beulah went into the house the same gay and light-hearted comrade of
Beaudry that she had been all morning.  When he was called in to
dinner, he saw at once that Tighe had laid his spell upon her.  She was
again the sullen, resentful girl of yesterday.  Suspicion filmed her
eyes.  The eager light of faith in him that had quickened them while
she listened for his answers to her naive questions about the great
world was blotted out completely.

She sat through dinner in cold silence.  Tighe kept the ball of
conversation rolling and Beaudry tried to play up to him.  They talked
of stock, crops, and politics.  Occasionally the host diverted the talk
to outside topics.  He asked the young man politely how he liked the
park, whether he intended to stay long, how long he had lived in New
Mexico, and other casual questions.

Roy was glad when dinner was over.  He drew a long breath of relief
when they had turned their backs upon the ranch.  But his spirits did
not register normal even in the spring sunshine of the hills.  For the
dark eyes that met his were clouded with doubt and resentment.




Chapter VIII

Beulah Asks Questions

A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came out of the house with Brad
Charlton just as the buggy stopped at the porch of the horse ranch.  He
nodded to Beulah.

"'Lo, sis."

"My brother Ned--Mr. Street."  The girl introduced them a little
sulkily.

Ned Rutherford offered Roy a coffee-brown hand and looked at him with
frank curiosity.  He had just been hearing a lot about this
good-looking stranger who had dropped into the park.

"See Jess Tighe?  What did he say about the windmill?" asked Charlton.

"Wanted to think it over," answered Beaudry.

Beulah had drawn her brother to one side, but as Roy talked with
Charlton he heard what the other two said, though each spoke in a low
voice.

"Where you going, Ned?" the sister asked.

"Oh, huntin' strays."

"Home to-night?"

"Reckon not."

"What deviltry are you and Brad up to now?  This will be the third
night you've been away--and before that it was Jeff."

"S-sh!"  Ned flashed a warning look in the direction of her guest.

But Beulah was angry.  Tighe had warned her to be careful what she told
Street.  She distrusted the cripple profoundly.  Half the evil that
went on in the park was plotted by him.  There had been a lot of
furtive whispering about the house for a week or more.  Her instinct
told her that there was in the air some discreditable secret.  More
than once she had wondered whether her people had been the express
company robbers for whom a reward was out.  She tried to dismiss the
suspicion from her mind, for the fear of it was like a leaden weight at
her heart.  But many little things contributed to the dread.
Rutherford had sent her just at that time to spend the week at Battle
Butte.  Had it been to get her out of the way?  She remembered that her
father had made to her no explanation of that scene in which she and
Dave Dingwell had played the leading parts.  There had been many
journeyings back and forth on the part of the boys and Charlton and her
uncle, Buck Rutherford.  They had a way of getting off into a corner of
the corral and talking low for hours at a time.  And now Street had
come into the tangle.  Were they watching him for fear he might be a
detective?

Her resentment against him and them boiled over into swift wrath.
"You're a fine lot--all of you.  I'd like to wash my hands clean of the
whole outfit."  She turned on her heel and strode limping to the house.

Ned laughed as he swung to the back of one of the two broncos waiting
with drooped heads before the porch.  He admired this frank, forthright
sister who blazed so handsomely into rage.  He would have fought for
her, even though he pretended to make a joke of her.

"Boots sure goes some.  You see what you may be letting yourself in
for, Brad," he scoffed good-naturedly.

Charlton answered with cool aplomb.  "Don't you worry about me, Ned.  I
travel at a good lick myself.  She'll break to double harness fine."

Without touching the stirrup this knight of the _chaparreras_ flung
himself into the saddle, the rowels of his spurs whirring as he
vaulted.  It was a spectacular but perfect mount.  The horse was off
instantly at a canter.

Roy could not deny the fellow admiration, even though he despised him
for what he had just said.  It was impossible for him to be
contemptuous of Charlton.  The man was too virile, too game for that.
In the telling Western phrase, he would go through.  Whatever he did
was done competently.

Yet there was something detestable in the way he had referred to Beulah
Rutherford.  In the first place, Roy believed it to be a pure
assumption that he was going to marry her.  Then, too, he had spoken of
this high-spirited girl as if she were a colt to be broken and he the
man to wield the whip.  Her rebellion against fate meant nothing more
to him than a tantrum to be curbed.  He did not in the least divine the
spiritual unrest back of her explosion.

Beaudry shrugged his shoulders.  He was lucky for once.  It had been
the place of Ned Rutherford to rebuke Charlton for his slighting
remark.  A stranger had not the least right to interfere while the
brother of the girl was present.  Roy did not pursue the point any
further.  He did not want to debate with himself whether he had the
pluck to throw down the gauntlet to this fighting _vaquero_ if the call
had come to him.

As he walked into the house and up to his room, his mind was busy with
another problem.  Where had Ned Rutherford been for three nights and
his brother Jeff before that?  Why had Beulah flared into unexpected
anger?  He, too, had glimpsed furtive whisperings.  Even a fool would
have understood that he was not a welcome guest at the horse ranch, and
that his presence was tolerated only because here the boys could keep
an eye on him.  He was under surveillance.  That was plain.  He had
started out for a little walk before breakfast and Jeff joined him from
nowhere in particular to stroll along.  What was it the Huerfano Park
settlers were trying to hide from him?  His mind jumped promptly to the
answer.  Dave Dingwell, of course.

Meanwhile Miss Rutherford lay weeping in the next room face down upon
the bed.  She rarely indulged in tears.  It had not happened before
since she was seventeen.  But now she sobbed into a pillow, softly, so
that nobody might hear.  Why must she spend her life in such
surroundings?  If the books she read told the truth, the world was full
of gentle, kindly people who lived within the law and respected each
other's rights.  Why was it in her horoscope to be an outcast?  Why
must she look at everybody with bitterness and push friendship from her
lest it turn to poison at her touch?  For one hour she had found joy in
comradeship with this stranger.  Then Tighe had whispered it that he
was probably a spy.  She had returned home only to have her doubts
about her own family stirred to life again.  Were there no good, honest
folk in the world at all?

She washed her telltale eyes and ventured downstairs to look after
supper.  The Mexican cook was already peeling the potatoes.  She gave
him directions about the meal and went out to the garden to get some
radishes and lettuce.  On the way she had to pass the corral.  Her
brother Hal, Slim Sanders, and Cherokee Street were roping and branding
some calves.  The guest of the house had hung his coat and hat on a
fence-post to keep them from getting soiled, but the hat had fallen
into the dust.

Beulah picked up the hat and brushed it.  As she dusted with her
handkerchief the under side of the rim her eyes fell upon two initials
stamped into the sweat pad.  The letters were "R.B."  The owner of the
hat called himself Cherokee Street.  Why, then, should he have these
other initials printed on the pad?  There could be only one answer to
that question.  He was passing under a name that was not his own.

If so, why?  Because he was a spy come to get evidence against her
people for the express company.

The eyes of the girl blazed.  The man had come to ruin her father, to
send her brothers to prison, and he was accepting their hospitality
while he moled for facts to convict them.  To hear the shout of his gay
laughter as a calf upset him in the dust was added fuel to the fire of
her anger.  If he had looked as villainous as Dave Meldrum, she could
have stood it better, but any one would have sworn that he was a clean,
decent young fellow just out of college.

She called to him.  Roy glanced up and came across the corral.  His
sleeves were rolled to the elbows and the shirt open at the throat.
Flowing muscles rippled under the white skin of his forearms as he
vaulted the fence to stand beside her.  He had the graceful poise of an
athlete and the beautiful, trim figure of youth.

Yet he was a spy.  Beulah hardened her heart.

"I found your hat in the dust, Mr. Street."  She held it out to him
upside down, the leather pad lifted by her finger so that the letters
stood out.

The rigor of her eyes was a challenge.  For a moment, before he caught
sight of the initials, he was puzzled at her stiffness.  Then his heart
lost a beat and hammered wildly.  His brain was in a fog and he could
find no words of explanation.

"It is your hat, isn't it, Mr.--Street?"

"Yes."  He took it from her, put it on, and gulped "Thanks."

She waited to give him a chance to justify himself, but he could find
no answer to the charge that she had fixed upon him.  Scornfully she
turned from him and went to the house.

Miss Rutherford found her father reading a week-old newspaper.

"I've got fresher news than that for you, dad," she said.  "I can tell
you who this man that calls himself Cherokee Street isn't."

Rutherford looked up quickly.  "You mean who he is, Boots."

"No, I mean who he isn't.  His name isn't Cherokee Street at all."

"How do you know?"

"Because he is wearing a hat with the initials 'R.B.' stamped in it.  I
gave him a chance to explain and he only stammered and got white.  He
hadn't time to think up a lie that would fit."

"Dad burn it, Jess Tighe is right, then.  The man is a spy."  The
ranchman lit a cigar and narrowed his eyes in thought.

"What is he spying here for?"

"I reckon he's a detective of the express company nosing around about
that robbery.  Some folks think it was pulled off by a bunch up in the
hills somewhere."

"By the Rutherford gang?" she quoted.

He looked at her uneasily.  The bitterness in her voice put him on the
defensive.  "Sho, Boots!  That's just a way folks have of talking.
We've got our enemies.  Lots of people hate us because we won't let any
one run over us."

She stood straight and slender before him, her eyes fixed in his.  "Do
they say we robbed the express company?"

"They don't say it out loud if they do--not where I can hear them," he
answered grimly.

"Did we?" she flung at him.

His smile was forced.  The question disturbed him.  That had always
been her way, even when she was a small child, to fling herself
headlong at difficulties.  She had never been the kind to be put off
with anything less than the truth.

"I didn't.  Did you?" he retorted.

"How about the boys--and Uncle Buck--and Brad Charlton?" she demanded.

"Better ask them if you want to know."  With a flare of temper he
contradicted himself.  "No, you'd better mind your own business, girl.
Forget your foolishness and 'tend to your knitting."

"I suppose it isn't my business if my kin go to the penitentiary for
train robbery."

"They're not going any such place.  If you want to know, I give you my
word that none of us Rutherfords have got the gold stolen from the
Western Express Company."

"And don't know where it is?"

"Haven't the least idea--not one of us."

She drew a deep breath of relief.  More than once her father had kept
from her secrets of the family activities, but he had never lied to her.

"Then it doesn't matter about this detective.  He can find out nothing
against us," she reflected aloud.

"I'm not so sure about that.  We've had our troubles and we don't want
them aired.  There was that shooting scrape Hal got into down at Battle
Butte, for instance.  Get a little more evidence and the wrong kind of
a jury would send him up for it.  No, we'll keep an eye on Mr. Cherokee
Street, or whatever his name is.  Reckon I'll ride over and have a talk
with Jess about it."

"Why not tell this man Street that he is not wanted and so be done with
it?"

"Because we wouldn't be done with it.  Another man would come in his
place.  We'll keep him here where we can do a little detective work on
him, too."

"I don't like it.  The thing is underhanded.  I hate the fellow.  It's
not decent to sit at table with a man who is betraying our
hospitality," she cried hotly.

"It won't be for long, honey.  Just leave him to us.  We'll hang up his
pelt to dry before we're through with him."

"You don't mean--?"

"No, nothing like that.  But he'll crawl out of the park like a whipped
cur with its tail between its legs."

The cook stood in the doorway.  "Miss Beulah, do you want that meat
done in a pot roast?" he asked.

"Yes.  I'll show you."  She turned at the door.  "By the way, dad, I
took a snapshot of Mr. Tighe on his porch.  I'll develop it to-night
and you can take it to him in the morning."

"All right.  Don't mention to anybody that matter we were discussing.
Act like you've forgotten all about what you found out, Boots."

The girl nodded.  "Yes."




Chapter IX

The Man on the Bed

Beulah Rutherford found it impossible to resume a relation of
friendliness toward her guest.  By nature she was elemental and direct.
A few months earlier she had become the teacher of the Big Creek
school, but until that time life had never disciplined her to repress
the impulses of her heart.  As a child she had been a fierce, wild
little creature full of savage affections and generosities.  She still
retained more feminine ferocity than social usage permits her sex.  It
was not in her to welcome an enemy with smiles while she hated him in
her soul.  The best she could do was to hold herself to a brusque
civility whenever she met Beaudry.

As for that young man, he was in a most unhappy frame of mind.  He
writhed at the false position in which he found himself.  It was bad
enough to forfeit the good opinion of this primitive young hill beauty,
but it was worse to know that in a measure he deserved it.  He saw,
too, that serious consequences were likely to follow her discovery, and
he waited with nerves on the jump for the explosion.

None came.  When he dragged himself to dinner, Beulah was stiff as a
ramrod, but he could note no difference in the manner of the rest.  Was
it possible she had not told her father?  He did not think this likely,
and his heart was in panic all through the meal.

Though he went to his room early, he spent a sleepless night full of
apprehension.  What were the Rutherfords waiting for?  He was convinced
that something sinister lay behind their silence.

After breakfast the ranchman rode away.  Jeff and Slim Sanders jogged
off on their cowponies to mend a broken bit of fence.  Hal sat on the
porch replacing with rivets the torn strap of a stirrup.

Beaudry could stand it no longer.  He found his hostess digging around
the roots of some rosebushes in her small garden.  Curtly she declined
his offer to take the spade.  For a minute he watched her uneasily
before he blurted out his intention of going.

"I'll move up to the other end of the park and talk windmill to the
ranchers there, Miss Rutherford.  You've been awfully good to me, but I
won't impose myself on your hospitality any longer," he said.

He had dreaded to make the announcement for fear of precipitating a
crisis, but the young woman made no protest.  Without a word of comment
she walked beside him to the house.

"Hal, will you get Mr. Street's horse?" she asked her brother.  "He is
leaving this morning."

Young Rutherford's eyes narrowed.  It was plain that he had been caught
by surprise and did not know what to do.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"What do you care where he is going?  Get the horse--or I will," she
ordered imperiously.

"I'm going to board at one of the ranches farther up the park,"
explained Roy.

"Better wait till dad comes home," suggested Hal.

"No, I'll go now."  Royal Beaudry spoke with the obstinacy of a timid
man who was afraid to postpone the decision.

"No hurry, is there?"  The black eyes of Rutherford fixed him steadily.

His sister broke in impatiently.  "Can't he go when he wants to, Hal?
Get Mr. Street's horse."  She whirled on Beaudry scornfully.  "That is
what you call yourself, isn't it--Street?"

The unhappy youth murmured "Yes."

"Let him get his own horse if he wants to hit the trail in such a
hurry," growled Hal sulkily.

Beulah walked straight to the stable.  Awkwardly Beaudry followed her
after a moment or two.  The girl was leading his horse from the stall.

"I'll saddle him, Miss Rutherford," he demurred, the blanket in his
hand.

She looked at him a moment, dropped the bridle, and turned stiffly
away.  He understood perfectly that she had been going to saddle the
horse to justify the surface hospitality of the Rutherfords to a man
they despised.

Hal was still on the porch when Roy rode up, but Beulah was nowhere in
sight.  The young hillman did not look up from the rivet he was
driving.  Beaudry swung to the ground and came forward.

"I'm leaving now.  I should like to tell Miss Rutherford how much I'm
in her debt for taking a stranger in so kindly," he faltered.

"I reckon you took her in just as much as she did you, Mr. Spy."
Rutherford glowered at him menacingly.  "I'd advise you to straddle
that horse and git."

Roy controlled his agitation except for a slight trembling of the
fingers that grasped the mane of his cowpony.  "You've used a word that
isn't fair.  I didn't come here to harm any of your people.  If I could
explain to Miss Rutherford--"

She stood in the doorway, darkly contemptuous.  Fire flashed in her
eyes, but the voice of the girl was coldly insolent.

"It is not necessary," she informed him.

Her brother leaned forward a little.  His crouched body looked like a
coiled spring in its tenseness.  "Explain yourself down that road, Mr.
Street--_pronto_," he advised.

Beaudry flashed a startled glance at him, swung to the saddle, and was
away at a canter.  The look in Rutherford's glittering eyes had sent a
flare of fear over him.  The impulse of it had lifted him to the back
of the horse and out of the danger zone.

But already he was flogging himself with his own contempt.  He had
given way to panic before a girl who had been brought up to despise a
quitter.  She herself had nerves as steady as chilled steel.  He had
seen her clench her strong white little teeth without a murmur through
a long afternoon of pain.  Gameness was one of the fundamentals of her
creed, and he had showed the white feather.  It added to his
punishment, too, that he worshiped pluck with all the fervor of one who
knew he had none.  Courage seemed to him the one virtue worth while;
cowardice the unpardonable sin.  He made no excuses for himself.  From
his father he inherited the fine tradition of standing up to punishment
to a fighting finish.  His mother, too, had been a thoroughbred.  Yet
he was a weakling.  His heart pumped water instead of blood whenever
the call to action came.

In dejection he rode up the valley, following the same hilly trail he
had taken two days before with Miss Rutherford.  It took him past the
aspen grove at the mouth of the gulch which led to the Meldrum place.
Beyond this a few hundred yards he left the main road and went through
the chaparral toward a small ranch that nestled close to the timber.
Beulah had told him that it belonged to an old German named Rothgerber
who had lived there with his wife ever since she could remember.

Rothgerber was a little wrinkled old man with a strong South-German
accent.  After Beaudry had explained that he wanted board, the rancher
called his wife out and the two jabbered away excitedly in their native
tongue.  The upshot of it was that they agreed to take the windmill
agent if he would room in an old bunkhouse about two hundred yards from
the main ranch building.  This happened to suit Roy exactly and he
closed the matter by paying for a week in advance.

The Rothgerbers were simple, unsuspecting people of a garrulous nature.
It was easy for Beaudry to pump information from them while he ate
supper.  They had seen nothing of any stranger in the valley except
himself, but they dropped casually the news that the Rutherfords had
been going in and out of Chicito Canon a good deal during the past few
days.

"Chicito Canon.  That's a Mexican name, isn't it?  Let's see.  Just
where is this gulch?" asked Beaudry.

The old German pointed out of the window.  "There it iss, mein friend.
You pass by on the road and there iss no way in--no arroyo, no gulch,
no noddings but aspens.  But there iss, shust the same, a trail.
Through my pasture it leads."

"Anybody live up Chicito?  I want everybody in the park to get a chance
to buy a Dynamo Aermotor before I leave."

"A man named Meldrum.  My advice iss--let him alone."

"Why?"

Rothgerber shook a pudgy forefinger in the air.  "Mein friend--listen.
You are a stranger in Huerfano Park.  Gut.  But do not ask questions
about those who lif here.  Me, I am an honest man.  I keep the law.
Also I mind my own pusiness.  So it iss with many.  But there are
others--mind, I gif them no names, but--"  He shrugged his shoulders
and threw out his hands, palm up.  "Well, the less said the petter.  If
I keep my tongue still, I do not talk myself into trouble.  Not so,
Berta?"

The pippin-cheeked little woman nodded her head sagely.

In the course of the next few days Roy rode to and fro over the park
trying to sell his windmill to the ranchers.  He secured two orders and
the tentative promise of others.  But he gained no clue as to the place
where Dingwell was hidden.  His intuition told him that the trail up
Chicito Canon would lead him to the captive cattleman.  Twice he
skirted the dark gash of the ravine at the back of the pasture, but
each time his heart failed at the plunge into its unknown dangers.  The
first time he persuaded himself that he had better make the attempt at
night, but when he stood on the brink in the darkness the gulf at his
feet looked like a veritable descent into Avernus.  If he should be
caught down here, his fate would be sealed.  What Meldrum and Tighe
would do to a spy was not a matter of conjecture.  The thought of it
brought goose-quills to his flesh and tiny beads of perspiration to his
forehead.

Still, the peril had to be faced.  He decided to go up the canon in the
early morning before the travel of the day had begun.  The night before
he made the venture he prepared an alibi by telling Mrs. Rothgerber
that he would not come to breakfast, as he wanted to get an early start
for his canvassing.  The little German woman bustled about and wrapped
up for him a cold lunch to eat at his cabin in the morning.  She liked
this quiet, good-looking young man whose smile was warm for a woman
almost old enough to be his grandmother.  It was not often she met any
one with the charming deference he showed her.  Somehow he reminded her
of her own Hans, who had died from the kick of a horse ten years since.

Roy slept in broken cat-naps full of fearful dreams, from which he woke
in terror under the impression that he was struggling helplessly in the
net of a great spider which had the cruel, bloodless face of Tighe.  It
was three o'clock when he rose and began to dress.  He slipped out of
the cabin into the wet pasture.  His legs were sopping wet from the
long grass through which he strode to the edge of the gulch.  On a flat
boulder he sat shivering in the darkness while he waited for the first
gray streaks of light to sift into the dun sky.

In the dim dawn he stumbled uncertainly down the trail into the canon,
the bottom of which was still black as night from a heavy growth of
young aspens that shut out the light.  There was a fairly well-worn
path leading up the gulch, so that he could grope his way forward
slowly.  His feet moved reluctantly.  It seemed to him that his nerves,
his brain, and even his muscles were in revolt against the moral
compulsion that drove him on.  He could feel his heart beating against
his ribs.  Every sound startled him.  The still darkness took him by
the throat.  Doggedly he fought against the panic impulse to turn and
fly.

If he quit now, he told himself, he could never hold his self-respect.
He thought of all those who had come into his life in connection with
the Big Creek country trouble.  His father, his mother, Dave Dingwell,
Pat Ryan, Jess Tighe, the whole Rutherford clan, including Beulah!  One
quality they all had in common, the gameness to see out to a finish
anything they undertook.  He could not go through life a confessed
coward.  The idea was intolerably humiliating.

Then, out of the past, came to him a snatch of nonsense verse:--

  "Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow,
  Amblin' along by the ole haymow,
  Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew,
  'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."

So vivid was his impression of the doggerel that for an instant he
thought he heard the sing-song of his father's tuneless voice.  In
sharp, clean-cut pictures his memory reproduced the night John Beaudry
had last chanted the lullaby and that other picture of the Homeric
fight of one man against a dozen.  The foolish words were a bracer to
him.  He set his teeth and ploughed forward, still with a quaking soul,
but with a kind of despairing resolution.

After a mile of stiff going, the gulch opened to a little valley on the
right-hand side.  On the edge of a pine grove, hardly a stone's throw
from where Roy stood, a Mexican _jacal_ looked down into the canon.
The hut was a large one.  It was built of upright poles daubed with
clay.  Sloping poles formed the roof, the chinks of which were
waterproofed with grass.  A wolf pelt, nailed to the wall, was hanging
up to dry.

He knew that this was the home of Meldrum, the ex-convict.

Beaudry followed a bed of boulders that straggled toward the pine
grove.  It was light enough now, and he had to move with caution so as
to take advantage of all the cover he could find.  Once in the grove,
he crawled from tree to tree.  The distance from the nearest pine to
the jacal was about thirty feet.  A clump of _cholla_ grew thick just
outside the window.  Roy crouched behind the trunk for several minutes
before he could bring himself to take the chance of covering that last
ten yards.  But every minute it was getting lighter.  Every minute
increased the likelihood of detection.  He crept fearfully to the hut,
huddled behind the cactus, and looked into the window.

A heavy-set man, with the muscle-bound shoulders of an ape, was
lighting a fire in the stove.  At the table, his thumbs hitched in a
sagging revolver belt, sat Ned Rutherford.  The third person in the
room lay stretched at supple ease on a bed to one of the posts of which
his right leg was bound.  He was reading a newspaper.

"Get a move on you, Meldrum," young Rutherford said jauntily, with an
eye on his prisoner to see how he took it.  "I've got inside
information that I need some hot cakes, a few slices of bacon, and a
cup of coffee.  How about it, Dave?  Won't you order breakfast, too?"

The man on the bed shook his head indifferently.  "Me, I'm taking the
fast cure.  I been reading that we all eat too much, anyhow.  What's
the use of stuffing--gets yore system all clogged up.  Now, take
Edison--he don't eat but a handful of rice a day."

"That's one handful more than you been eating for the past three days.
Better come through with what we want to know.  This thing ain't going
to get any better for you.  A man has got to eat to live."

"I'm trying out another theory.  Tell you-all about how it works in a
week or so.  I reckon after a time I'll get real hungry, but it don't
seem like I could relish any chuck yet."  The cattleman fell to
perusing his paper once more.

Royal Beaudry had never met his father's friend, Dave Dingwell, but he
needed no introduction to this brown-faced man who mocked his guard
with such smiling hardihood.  They were trying to starve the secret out
of him.  Already his cheek showed thin and gaunt, dark circles shadowed
the eyes.  The man, no doubt, was suffering greatly, yet his manner
gave no sign of it.  He might not be master of his fate; at least, he
was very much the captain of his soul.  Pat Ryan had described him in a
sentence.  "One hundred and ninety pounds of divil, and ivery ounce of
ivery pound true gold."  There could not be another man in the Big
Creek country that this description fitted as well as it did this
starving, jocund dare-devil on the bed.

The savory odor of bacon and of coffee came through the open window to
Beaudry where he crouched in the chaparral.  He heard Meldrum's brusque
"Come and get it," and the sound of the two men drawing up their chairs
to the table.

"What's the use of being obstinate, Dave?" presently asked Rutherford
from amid a pleasant chink of tin cups, knives, and forks.  "I'd a heap
rather treat you like a white man.  This 'Pache business doesn't make a
hit with me.  But I'm obeying orders.  Anyhow, it's up to you.  The
chuck-wagon is ready for you whenever you say the word."

"I don't reckon I'll say it, Ned.  Eating is just a habit.  One man
wants his eggs sunny side up; another is strong for them hard-boiled.
But eggs is eggs.  When Dan went visitin' at Santa Fe, he likely
changed his diet.  For two or three days he probably didn't like the
grub, then--"

With a raucous curse the former convict swung round on him.  A revolver
seemed to jump to his hand, but before he could fire, young Rutherford
was hanging to his wrist.

"Don't you, Dan.  Don't you," warned Ned.

Slowly Meldrum's eyes lost their savage glare.  "One o' these days I'll
pump lead into him unless he clamps that mouth of his'n.  I won't stand
for it."  His voice trailed into a string of oaths.

Apparently his host's fury at this reference to his convict days did
not disturb in the least the man on the bed.  His good-natured drawl
grew slightly more pronounced.  "Wall yore eyes and wave yore tail all
you've a mind to, Dan.  I was certainly some indiscreet reminding you
of those days when you was a guest of the Government."

"That's enough," growled Meldrum, slamming his big fist down on the
table so that the tinware jumped.

"Sure it's enough.  Too much.  Howcome I to be so forgetful?  If I'd
wore a uniform two years for rustling other folks' calves, I reckon I
wouldn't thank a guy--"

But Meldrum had heard all he could stand.  He had to do murder or get
out.  He slammed the coffee-pot down on the floor and bolted out of the
open door.  His arms whirled in violent gestures as he strode away.  An
unbroken stream of profanity floated back to mark his anabasis.

Meldrum did not once look round as he went on his explosive way to the
gulch, but Roy Beaudry crouched lower behind the cactus until the man
had disappeared.  Then he crawled back to the grove, slipped through
it, and crept to the shelter of the boulder bed.

It would not do for him to return down the canon during daylight, for
fear he might meet one of the Rutherfords coming to relieve Ned.  He
passed from one boulder to another, always working up toward the wall
of the gulch.  Behind a big piece of sandstone shaped like a flatiron
he lay down and waited for the hours to pass.

It was twilight when he stole down to the trail and began his return
journey.




Chapter X

Dave Takes a Ride

Dave Dingwell had sauntered carelessly out of the Legal Tender on the
night of his disappearance.  He was apparently at perfect ease with a
friendly world.  But if any one had happened to follow him out of the
saloon, he would have seen an odd change in the ranchman.  He slid
swiftly along the wall of the building until he had melted into the
shadows of darkness.  His eyes searched the neighborhood for lurking
figures while he crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood.  Every
nerve of the man was alert, every muscle ready for action.  One brown
hand lingered affectionately close to the butt of his revolver.

He had come out of the front door of the gambling-house because he knew
the Rutherfords would expect him, in the exercise of ordinary common
sense, to leave by the rear exit.  That he would be watched was
certain.  Therefore, he had done the unexpected and walked boldly out
through the swinging doors.

As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out a horse in
the clump of trees about twenty yards to the left.  Whether it was
Teddy he could not be sure, but there was no time to lose.  Already a
signal whistle had shrilled out from the other side of the street.
Dave knew this was to warn the guards at the rear of the Legal Tender
that their prey was in the open.

He made a dash for the tree clump, but almost as he reached it, he
swung to the left and circled the small grove so as to enter it from
the other side.  As he expected, a man whirled to meet him.  The
unforeseen tactics of Dingwell had interfered with the ambush.

Dave catapulted into him head first and the two went down together.
Before Dingwell could grip the throat of the man beneath him, a second
body hurled itself through space at the cattleman.  The attacked man
flattened under the weight crushing him, but his right arm swept around
and embraced the neck of his second assailant.  He flexed his powerful
forearm so as to crush as in a vice the throat of his foe between it
and the hard biceps.  The breath of the first man had for the moment
been knocked out of him and he was temporarily not in the fight.  The
ranchman gave his full attention to the other.

The fellow struggled savagely.  He had a gun in his right hand, but the
fingers of Dave's left had closed upon the wrist above.  Stertorous
breathing gave testimony that the gunman was in trouble.  In spite of
his efforts to break the hold that kept his head in chancery, the
muscles of the arm tightened round his neck like steel ropes drawn
taut.  He groaned, sighed in a ragged expulsion of breath, and suddenly
collapsed.

Before he relaxed his muscles, Dingwell made sure that the surrender
was a genuine one.  His left hand slid down and removed the revolver
from the nerveless fingers.  The barrel of it was jammed against the
head of the man above him while the rancher freed himself from the
weight of the body.  Slowly the cattleman got to his feet.

Vaguely he had been aware already that men were running toward the tree
clump.  Now he heard the padding of their feet close at hand.  He ran
to the horse and flung himself into the saddle, but before the animal
had moved two steps some one had it by the bridle.  Another man caught
Dingwell by the arm and dragged him from the saddle.  Before Dave could
scramble to his feet again, something heavy fell upon his head and
shook him to the heels.  A thousand lights flashed in zigzags before
his eyes.  He sank back into unconsciousness.

The cowman returned to a world of darkness out of which voices came as
from a distance hazily.  A groan prefaced his arrival.

"Dave's waking up," one of the far voices said.

"Sure.  When you tap his haid with a six-gun, you're liable to need
repairs on the gun," a second answered.

The next words came to Dingwell more distinctly.  He recognized the
speaker as Hal Rutherford of the horse ranch.

"Too bad the boy had to hand you that crack, Dave.  You're such a bear
for fighting a man can't take any chances.  Glad he didn't bust your
haid wide open."

"Sure he didn't?" asked the injured man.  "I feel like I got to hold it
on tight so as to keep the blamed thing from flying into fifty pieces."

"Sorry.  We'll take you to a doc and have it fixed up.  Then we'll all
go have a drunk.  That'll fix you."

"Business first," cut in Buck Rutherford.

"That's right, Dave," agreed the owner of the horse ranch.  "How about
that gunnysack?  Where did you hide it?"

Dingwell played for time.  He had not the least intention of telling,
but if he held the enemy in parley some of his friends might pass that
way.

"What gunnysack, Hal?  Jee-rusalem, how my head aches!"  He held his
hands to his temples and groaned again.

"Your head will mend--if we don't have to give it another crack," Buck
told him grimly.  "Get busy, Dave.  We want that gold--_pronto_.  Where
did you put it?"

"Where _did_ I put it?  That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the
answer out of my noodle.  Maybe you're thinking of some one else,
Buck."  Dingwell looked up at him with an innocent, bland smile.

"Come through," ordered Buck with an oath.

The cattleman treated them to another dismal groan.  "Gee!  I feel like
the day after Christmas.  Was it a cannon the kid hit me with?"

Meldrum pushed his ugly phiz to the front.  "Don't monkey away any
time, boys.  String him to one of these cottonwoods till he spits out
what we want."

"Was it while you was visiting up at Santa Fe you learnt that habit of
seeing yore neighbors hanged, Dan?" drawled Dingwell in a voice of
gentle irony.

Furious at this cool reference to his penitentiary days, Meldrum kicked
their captive in the ribs.  Hal Rutherford, his eyes blazing, caught
the former convict by the throat.

"Do that again and I'll hang yore hide up to dry."  He shook Meldrum as
if he were a child, then flung the gasping man away.  "I'll show you
who's boss of this _rodeo_, by gum!"

Meldrum had several notches on his gun.  He was, too, a
rough-and-tumble fighter with his hands.  But Hal Rutherford was one
man he knew better than to tackle.  He fell back, growling threats in
his throat.

Meanwhile Dave was making discoveries.  One was that the first two men
who had attacked him were the gamblers he had driven from the Legal
Tender earlier in the evening.  The next was that Buck Rutherford was
sending the professional tinhorns about their business.

"Git!" ordered the big rancher.  "And keep gitting till you've crossed
the border.  Don't look back any.  Jest burn the wind.  _Adios_."

"They meant to gun you, Dave," guessed the owner of the horse ranch.
"I reckon they daren't shoot with me loafing there across the road.
You kinder disarranged their plans some more by dropping in at their
back door.  Looks like you'd 'a' rumpled up their hair a few if you
hadn't been in such a hurry to make a get-away.  Which brings us back
to the previous question.  The unanimous sense of the meeting is that
you come through with some information, Dave.  Where is that gunnysack?"

Dave, still sitting on the ground, leaned his back against a tree and
grinned amiably at his questioner.  "Sounds like you-all been to school
to a parrot.  You must 'a' quituated after you learned one sentence."

"We're waiting for an answer, Dave."

The cool, steady eyes of Dingwell met the imperious ones of the other
man in a long even gaze.  "Nothing doing, Hal."

"Even split, Dave.  Fifty-fifty."

The sitting man shook his head.  "I'll split the reward with you when I
get it.  The sack goes back to the express company."

"We'll see about that."  Rutherford turned to his son and gave brisk
orders.  "Bring up the horses.  We'll get out of here.  You ride with
me, Jeff.  We'll take care of Dingwell.  The rest of you scatter.
We're going back to the park."

The Rutherfords and their captive followed no main road, but cut across
country in a direction where they would be less likely to meet
travelers.  It was a land of mesquite and prickly pear.  The sting of
the cactus bit home in the darkness as its claws clutched at the riders
winding their slow way through the chaparral.

Gray day was dawning when they crossed the Creosote Flats and were seen
by a sheep-herder at a distance.  The sun was high in the heavens
before they reached the defile which served as a gateway between the
foothills and the range beyond.  It had passed the meridian by the time
they were among the summits where they could look back upon rounded
hills numberless as the billows of a sea.  Deeper and always deeper
they plunged into the maze of canons which gashed into the saddles
between the peaks.  Blue-tinted dusk was enveloping the hills as they
dropped down through a wooded ravine into Huerfano Park.

"Home soon," Dave suggested cheerfully to his captors.  "I sure am
hungry enough to eat a government mailsack.  A flank steak would make a
big hit with me."

Jeff looked at him in the dour, black Rutherford way.  "This is no
picnic, you'll find."

"Not to you, but it's a great vacation for me.  I feel a hundred per
cent better since I got up into all this ozone and scenery."  Dingwell
assured him hardily.  "A man ought to take a trip like this every once
in a while.  It's great for what ails him."

Young Rutherford grunted sulkily.  Their prisoner was the coolest
customer he had ever met.  The man was no fool.  He must know he was in
peril, but his debonair, smiling _insouciance_ never left him for a
moment.  He was grit clear through.




Chapter XI

Tighe Weaves his Web Tighter

The hooded eyes of Jess Tighe slanted across the table at his visitor.
Not humor but mordant irony had given birth to the sardonic smile on
his thin, bloodless lips.

"I reckon you'll be glad to know that you've been entertaining an angel
unawares, Hal," he jeered.  "I've been looking up your handsome young
friend, and I can tell you what the 'R.B.' in his hat stands for in
case you would be interested to know."

The owner of the horse ranch gave a little nod.  "Unload your
information, Jess."

Tighe leaned forward for emphasis and bared his teeth.  If ever
malevolent hate was written on a face it found expression on his now.

"'R.B.' stands for Royal Beaudry."

Rutherford flashed a question at him from startled eyes.  He waited for
the other man to continue.

"You remember the day we put John Beaudry out of business?" asked Tighe.

"Yes.  Go on."  Hal Rutherford was not proud of that episode.  In the
main he had fought fair, even though he had been outside the law.  But
on the day he had avenged the death of his brother Anson, the feud
between him and the sheriff had degenerated to murder.  A hundred times
since he had wished that he had gone to meet the officer alone.

"He had his kid with him.  Afterward they shipped him out of the
country to an aunt in Denver.  He went to school there.  Well, I've had
a little sleuthing done."

"And you've found out--?"

"What I've told you."

"How?"

"He said his name was Cherokee Street, but Jeff told me he didn't act
like he believed himself.  When yore girl remembered there was a street
of that name in Denver, Mr. Cherokee Street was plumb rattled.  He seen
he'd made a break.  Well, you saw that snapshot Beulah took of him and
me on the porch.  I sent it to a detective agency in Denver with orders
to find out the name of the man that photo fitted.  My idea was for the
manager to send a man to the teachers of the high schools, beginning
with the school nearest Cherokee Street.  He done it.  The third
schoolmarm took one look at the picture and said the young fellow was
Royal Beaudry.  She had taught him German two years.  That's howcome I
to know what that 'R.B.' in the hat stands for."

"Perhaps it is some other Beaudry."

"Take another guess," retorted the cripple scornfully.  "Right off when
I clapped eyes on him, I knew he reminded me of somebody.  I know now
who it was."

"But what's he doing up here?" asked the big man.

The hawk eyes of Tighe glittered.  "What do you reckon the son of John
Beaudry would be doing here?"  He answered his own question with bitter
animosity.  "He's gathering evidence to send Hal Rutherford and Jess
Tighe to the penitentiary.  That's what he's doing."

Rutherford nodded.  "Sure.  What else would he be doing if he is a chip
of the old block?  That's where his father's son ought to put us if he
can."

Tighe beat his fist on the table, his face a map of appalling fury and
hate.  "Let him go to it, then.  I've been a cripple seventeen years
because Beaudry shot me up.  By God!  I'll gun his son inside of
twenty-four hours.  I'll stomp him off'n the map like he was a
rattlesnake."

"No," vetoed Rutherford curtly.

"What!  What's that you say?" snarled the other.

"I say he'll get a run for his money.  If there's any killing to be
done, it will be in fair fight."

"What's ailing you?" sneered Tighe.  "Getting soft in your upper story?
Mean to lie down and let that kid run you through to the pen like his
father did Dan Meldrum?"

"Not in a thousand years," came back Rutherford.  "If he wants war, he
gets it.  But I'll not stand for any killing from ambush, and no
killing of any kind unless it has to be.  Understand?"

"That sounds to me," purred the smaller man in the Western slang that
phrased incredulity.  Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth.  "Keep
out of this if you're squeamish.  Let me play out the hand.  I'll bump
him off _pronto_."

"No, Jess."

"What do you think I am?" screamed Tighe.  "Seventeen years I've been
hog-tied to this house because of Beaudry.  Think I'm going to miss my
chance now?  If he was Moody and Sankey rolled into one, I'd go through
with it.  And what is he--a spy come up here to gather evidence against
you and me!  Didn't he creep into your house so as to sell you out when
he got the goods?  Hasn't he lied from start to finish?"

"Maybe so.  But he has no proof against us yet.  We'll kick him out of
the park.  I'm not going to have his blood on my conscience.  That's
flat, Jess."

The eyes in the bloodless face of the other man glittered, but he put a
curb on his passion.  "What about me, Hal?  I've waited half a lifetime
and now my chance has come.  Have you forgot who made me the misshaped
thing I am?  I haven't.  I'll go through hell to fix Beaudry's cub the
way he did me."  His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his
feeling.

Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency.  "No,
Jess.  I know just how you feel, but I'm going to give this kid his
chance.  We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn't let us alone.  Either he
or a lot of us had to go.  But I'll say this.  I never was satisfied
with the way we did it.  When Jack Beaudry shot you up, he was fighting
for his life.  We attacked him.  You got no right to hold it against
his son."

"I don't ask you to come in.  I'll fix his clock all right."

"Nothing doing.  I won't have it."  Rutherford, by a stroke of
strategy, carried the war into the country of the other.  "I gave way
to you about Dingwell, though I hated to try that Indian stuff on him.
He's a white man.  I've always liked him.  It's a rotten business."

"What else can you do?  We daren't turn him loose.  You don't want to
gun him.  There is nothing left but to tighten the thumbscrews."

"It won't do any good," protested the big man with a frown.  "He's
game.  He'll go through. . . .  And if it comes to a showdown, I won't
have him starved to death."

Tighe looked at him through half-hooded, cruel eyes.  "He'll weaken.
Another day or two will do it.  Don't worry about Dingwell."

"There's not a yellow streak in him.  You haven't a chance to make him
quit."  Rutherford took another turn up and down the room diagonally.
"I don't like this way of fighting.  It's--damnable, man!  I won't have
any harm come to Dave or to the kid either.  I stand pat on that, Jess."

The man with the crutches swallowed hard.  His Adam's apple moved up
and down like an agitated thermometer.  When he spoke it was in a
smooth, oily voice of submission, but Rutherford noticed that the
rapacious eyes were hooded.

"What you say goes, Hal.  You're boss of this round-up.  I was jest
telling you how it looked to me."

"Sure.  That's all right, Jess.  But you want to remember that public
sentiment is against us.  We've pretty near gone our limit up here.  If
there was no other reason but that, it would be enough to make us let
this young fellow alone.  We can't afford a killing in the park now."

Tighe assented, almost with servility.  But the cattleman carried away
with him a conviction that the man had yielded too easily, that his
restless brain would go on planning destruction for young Beaudry just
the same.

He was on his way up Chicito Canon and he stopped at Rothgerber's ranch
to see Beaudry.  The young man was not at home.

"He start early this morning to canfass for his vindmill," the old
German explained.

After a moment's thought Rutherford left a message.  "Tell him it isn't
safe for him to stay in the park; that certain parties know who 'R.B.'
is and will sure act on that information.  Say I said for him to come
and see me as soon as he gets back.  Understand?  Right away when he
reaches here."

The owner of the horse ranch left his mount in the Rothgerber corral
and passed through the pasture on foot to Chicito.  Half an hour later
he dropped into the _jacal_ of Meldrum.

He found the indomitable Dingwell again quizzing Meldrum about his
residence at Santa Fe during the days he wore a striped uniform.  The
former convict was grinding his teeth with fury.

"I reckon you won't meet many old friends when you go back this time,
Dan.  Maybe there will be one or two old-timers that will know you, but
it won't be long before you make acquaintances," Dave consoled him.

"Shut up, or I'll pump lead into you," he warned hoarsely.

The cattleman on the bed shook his head.  "You'd like to fill me full
of buckshot, but it wouldn't do at all, Dan.  I'm the goose that lays
the golden eggs, in a way of speaking.  Gun me, and it's good-bye to
that twenty thousand in the gunnysack."  He turned cheerfully to
Rutherford, who was standing in the doorway.  "Come right in, Hal.
Glad to see you.  Make yourself at home."

"He's deviling me all the time," Meldrum complained to the owner of the
horse ranch.  "I ain't a-going to stand it."

Rutherford looked at the prisoner, a lean, hard-bitten Westerner with
muscles like steel ropes and eyes unblinking as a New Mexico sun.  His
engaging recklessness had long since won the liking of the leader of
the Huerfano Park outlaws.

"Don't bank on that golden egg business, Dave," advised Rutherford.
"If you tempt the boys enough, they're liable to forget it.  You've
been behaving mighty aggravating to Dan."

"Me!"  Dave opened his eyes in surprise.  "I was just asking him how
he'd like to go back to Santa Fe after you-all turn me loose."

"We're not going to turn you loose till we reach an agreement.  What's
the use of being pigheaded?  We're looking for that gold and we're
going to find it mighty soon.  Now be reasonable."

"How do you know you're going to find it?"

"Because we know you couldn't have taken it far.  Here's the point.
You had it when Fox made his getaway.  Beulah was right behind you, so
we know you didn't get a chance to bury it between there and town.  We
covered your tracks and you didn't leave the road in that half-mile.
That brings you as far as Battle Butte.  You had the gunnysack when you
crossed the bridge.  You didn't have it when Slim Sanders met you.  So
you must have got rid of it in that distance of less than a quarter of
a mile.  First off, I figured you dropped the sack in Hague's alfalfa
field.  But we've tramped that all over.  It's not there.  Did you meet
some one and give it to him?  Or how did you get rid of it?"

"I ate it," grinned Dingwell confidentially.

"The boys are getting impatient, Dave.  They don't like the way you
butted in."

"That's all right.  You're responsible for my safety, Hal.  I'll let
you do the worrying."

"Don't fool yourself.  We can't keep you here forever.  We can't let
you go without an agreement.  Figure out for yourself what's likely to
happen?"

"Either my friends will rescue me, or else I'll escape."

"Forget it.  Not a chance of either."  Rutherford stopped, struck by an
idea.  "Ever hear of a young fellow called Cherokee Street?"

"No.  Think not.  Is he a breed?"

"White man."  Rutherford took a chair close to Dingwell.  He leaned
forward and asked another question in a low voice.  "Never happened to
meet the son of John Beaudry, did you?"

Dingwell looked at him steadily out of narrowed eyes.  "I don't get
you, Hal.  What has he got to do with it?"

"Thought maybe you could tell me that.  He's in the park now."

"In the park?"

"Yes--and Jess Tighe knows it."

"What's he doing here?"

But even as he asked the other man, Dingwell guessed the answer.  Not
an hour before he had caught a glimpse of a white, strained face at the
window.  He knew now whose face it was.

"He's spying on us and sleuthing for evidence to send us to the pen.
Think he'd be a good risk for an insurance company?"

Dave thought fast.  "I don't reckon you're right.  I put the kid
through law school.  My friends have likely sent him up here to look
for me."

Rutherford scoffed.  "Nothing to that.  How could they know you are
here?  We didn't advertise it."

"No-o, but--"  Dingwell surrendered the point reluctantly.  He flashed
a question at Rutherford.  "Tighe will murder him.  That's sure.  You
going to let him?"

"Not if I can help it.  I'm going to send young Beaudry out of the
park."

"Fine.  Don't lose any time about it, Hal."

The Huerfano Park rancher made one more attempt to shake his prisoner.
His dark eyes looked straight into those of Dingwell.

"Old-timer, what about you?  I ain't enjoying this any more than you
are.  But it's clear out of my hands."

"Then why worry?" asked Dingwell, a little grin on his drawn face.

"Hell!  What's the use of asking that?  I'm no Injun devil," barked
Rutherford irritably.

"Turn me loose and I'll forget all I've seen.  I won't give you the
loot, but I'll not be a witness against you."

The Huerfano Park ranchman shook his head.  "No, we want that gold,
Dave.  You butted into our game and we won't stand for that."

"I reckon we can't make a deal, Hal."

The haggard eyes of the starving man were hard as tungsten-washed
steel.  They did not yield a jot.

A troubled frown dragged together the shaggy eyebrows of Rutherford as
he snapped out his ultimatum.

"I like you, Dave.  Always have.  But you're in one hell of a hole.
Don't feed yourself any fairy tales.  Your number is chalked up, my
friend.  Unless you come through with what we want, you'll never leave
here alive.  I can't save you.  There's only one man can--and that is
your friend David Dingwell."

The other man did not bat an eyelid.  "Trying to pass the buck, Hal?
You can't get away with it--not for a minute."  A gay little smile of
derision touched his face.  "I'm in your hands completely.  I'll not
tell you a damn thing.  What are you going to do about it?  No, don't
tell me that Meldrum and Tighe will do what has to be done.  You're the
high mogul here.  If they kill me, Hal Rutherford will be my murderer.
Don't forget that for a second."

Rutherford carried home with him a heavy heart.  He could see no way
out of the difficulty.  He knew that neither Meldrum nor Tighe would
consent to let Dingwell go unless an agreement was first reached.
There was, too, the other tangle involving young Beaudry.  Perhaps he
also would be obstinate and refuse to follow the reasonable course.

Beulah met him on the road.  Before they had ridden a hundred yards,
her instinct told her that he was troubled.

"What is it, dad?" she asked.

He compromised with himself and told her part of what was worrying him.
"It's about your friend Street.  Jess had him looked up in Denver.  The
fellow turns out to be a Royal Beaudry.  You've heard of a sheriff of
that name who used to live in this country? . . .  Well, this is his
son."

"What's he doing here?"

"Trying to get us into trouble, I reckon.  But that ain't the point.
I'm not worrying about what he can find out.  Fact is that Tighe is
revengeful.  This boy's father crippled him.  He wants to get even on
the young fellow.  Unless Beaudry leaves the park at once, he'll never
go.  I left word at Rothgerber's for him to come down and see me soon
as he gets home."

"Will he come?" she asked anxiously.

"I don't know.  If not I'll go up and fetch him.  I don't trust Jess a
bit.  He'll strike soon and hard."

"Don't let him, dad," the girl implored.

The distressed eyes of the father rested on her.  "You like this young
fellow, honey?" he asked.

She flamed.  "I hate him.  He abused our hospitality.  He lied to us
and spied on us.  I wouldn't breathe the same air he does if I could
help it.  But we can't let him be killed in cold blood."

"That's right, Boots.  Well, he'll come down to-day and I'll pack him
back to Battle Butte.  Then we'll be shet of him."

Beulah passed the hours in a fever of impatience.  She could not keep
her mind on the children she was teaching.  She knew Tighe.  The
decision of her father to send Beaudry away would spur the cripple to
swift activity.  Up at Rothgerber's Jess could corner the man and work
his vengeance unhampered.  Why did not the spy come down to the horse
ranch?  Was it possible that his pride would make him neglect the
warning her father had left?  Perhaps he would think it only a trap to
catch him.

Supper followed dinner, and still Beaudry had not arrived.  From the
porch Beulah peered up the road into the gathering darkness.  Her
father had been called away.  Her brothers were not at home.  The girl
could stand it no longer.  She went to the stable and saddled Blacky.

Five minutes later she was flying up the road that led to the
Rothgerber place.




Chapter XII

Stark Fear

When Beaudry climbed the canon wall to the Rothgerber pasture he
breathed a deep sigh of relief.  For many hours he had been under a
heavy strain, nerves taut as fiddle-strings.  Fifty times his heart had
jumped with terror.  But he had done the thing he had set out to do.

He had stiffened his flaccid will and spurred his trembling body
forward.  If he had been unable to control his fear, at least he had
not let it master him.  He had found out for Ryan where Dingwell was
held prisoner.  It had been his intention to leave the park as soon as
he knew this, report the facts to the friends of Dave, and let them
devise a way of escape.  He had done his full share.  But he could not
follow this course now.

The need of the cattleman was urgent.  Somehow it must be met at once.
Yet what could he do against two armed men who would not hesitate to
shoot him down if necessary?  There must be some way of saving Dingwell
if he could only find it.

In spite of his anxiety, a fine spiritual exaltation flooded him.  So
far he had stood the acid test, had come through without dishonor.  He
might be a coward; at least, he was not a quitter.  Plenty of men would
have done his day's work without a tremor.  What brought comfort to
Roy's soul was that he had been able to do it at all.

Mrs. Rothgerber greeted him with exclamations of delight.  The message
of Rutherford had frightened her even though she did not entirely
understand it.

"Hermann iss out looking for you.  Mr. Rutherford--the one that owns
the horse ranch--he wass here and left a message for you."

"A message for me!  What was it?"

With many an "Ach!" she managed to tell him.

The face of her boarder went white.  Since Rutherford was warning him
against Tighe, the danger must be imminent.  Should he go down to the
horse ranch now?  Or had he better wait until it was quite dark?  While
he was still debating this with himself, the old German came into the
house.

"Home, eh?  Gut, gut!  They are already yet watching the road."

Roy's throat choked.  "Who?"

This question Rothgerber could not answer.  In the dusk he had not
recognized the men he had seen.  Moreover, they had ridden into the
brush to escape observation.  Both of them had been armed with rifles.

The old woman started to light a lamp, but Roy stopped her.  "Let's eat
in the dark," he proposed.  "Then I'll slip out to the bunkhouse and
you can have your light."

His voice shook.  When he tried to eat, his fingers could scarcely hold
a knife and fork.  Supper was for him a sham.  A steel band seemed to
grip his throat and make the swallowing of food impossible.  He was as
unnerved as a condemned criminal waiting for the noose.

After drinking a cup of coffee, he pushed back his chair and rose.

"Petter stay with us," urged the old German.  He did not know why this
young man was in danger, but he read in the face the stark fear of a
soul in travail.

"No.  I'll saddle and go down to see Rutherford.  Good-night."

Roy went out of the back door and crept along the shadows of the hill.
Beneath his foot a dry twig snapped.  It was enough.  He fled
panic-stricken, pursued by all the demons of hell his fears could
evoke.  A deadly, unnerving terror clutched at his throat.  The
pounding blood seemed ready to burst the veins at his temples.

The bunkhouse loomed before him in the darkness.  As he plunged at the
door a shot rang out.  A bolt of fire burned into his shoulder.  He
flung the door open, slammed it shut behind him, locked and bolted it
almost with one motion.  For a moment he leaned half swooning against
the jamb, sick through and through at the peril he had just escaped.

But had he escaped it?  Would they not break in on him and drag him out
to death?  The acuteness of his fright drove away the faintness.  He
dragged the bed from its place and pushed it against the door.  Upon it
he piled the table, the washstand, the chairs.  Feverishly he worked to
barricade the entrance against his enemies.

When he had finished, his heart was beating against his ribs like that
of a wild rabbit in the hands of a boy.  He looked around for the
safest place to hide.  From the floor he stripped a Navajo rug and
pulled up the trapdoor that led to a small cellar stairway.  Down into
this cave he went, letting the door fall shut after him.

In that dark blackness he waited, a crumpled, trembling wretch, for
whatever fate might have in store for him.

How long he crouched there Beaudry never knew.  At last reason asserted
itself and fought back the panic.  To stay where he was would be to
invite destruction.  His attackers would come to the window.  The
barricaded door, the displaced rug, the trapdoor, would advertise his
terror.  The outlaws would break in and make an end of him.

Roy could hardly drag his feet up the stairs, so near was he to
physical collapse.  He listened.  No sound reached him.  Slowly he
pushed up the trapdoor.  Nobody was in the room.  He crept up, lowered
the door, and replaced the carpet.  With his eyes on the window he put
back the furniture where it belonged.  Then, revolver in hand, he sat
in one corner of the room and tried to decide what he must do.

Down in the cellar he had been vaguely aware of a dull pain in his
shoulder and a wet, soggy shirt above the place.  But the tenseness of
his anxiety had pushed this into the background of his thoughts.  Now
again the throbbing ache intruded itself.  The fingers of his left hand
searched under his waistcoat, explored a spot that was tender and
soppy, and came forth moist.

He knew he had been shot, but this gave him very little concern.  He
had no time to worry about his actual ills, since his whole mind was
given to the fear of those that were impending.

Upon the window there came a faint tapping.  The hand with the revolver
jerked up automatically.  Every muscle of Beaudry's body grew rigid.
His senses were keyed to a tense alertness.  He moistened his lips with
his tongue as he crouched in readiness for the attack about to break.

Again the tapping, and this time with it a quick, low, imperious call.

"Mr. Street.  Are you there?  Let me in!"

He knew that voice--would have known it among a thousand.  In another
moment he had raised the window softly and Beulah Rutherford was
climbing in.

She panted as if she had been running.  "They're watching the entrance
to the arroyo.  I came up through the canon and across the pasture,"
she explained.

"Did they see you?"

"No.  Think not.  We must get out of here."

"How?"

"The same way I came."

"But--if they see us and shoot?"

The girl brushed his objection aside.  "We can't help that.  They know
you're here, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Then they'll rush the house.  Come."

Still he hesitated.  At least they had the shelter of the house.
Outside, if they should be discovered, they would be at the mercy of
his foes.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked sharply, and she moved toward the
window.

But though he recoiled from going to meet the danger, he could not let
a girl lead the way.  Beaudry dropped to the ground outside and stood
ready to lend her a hand.  She did not need one.  With a twist of her
supple body Beulah came through the opening and landed lightly beside
him.

They crept back to the shadows of the hill and skirted its edge.
Slowly they worked their way from the bunkhouse, making the most of
such cover as the chaparral afforded.  Farther up they crossed the road
into the pasture and by way of it reached the orchard.  Every inch of
the distance Roy sweated fear.

She was leading, ostensibly because she knew the lay of the land
better.  Through the banked clouds the moon was struggling.  Its light
fell upon her lithe, slender figure, the beautifully poised head, the
crown of soft black hair.  She moved with the grace and the rhythm of a
racing filly stepping from the paddock to the track.

Beaudry had noticed, even in his anxiety, that not once since the
tapping on the window had her hand touched his or the sweep of her
skirt brushed against his clothes.  She would save him if she could,
but with an open disdain that dared him to misunderstand.

They picked their course diagonally through the orchard toward the
canon.  Suddenly Beulah stopped.  Without turning, she swept her hand
back and caught his.  Slowly she drew him to the shadow of an apple
tree.  There, palm to palm, they crouched together.

Voices drifted to them.

"I'd swear I hit him," one said.

"Maybe you put him out of business.  We got to find out," another
answered.

"I'll crawl up to the window and take a look," responded the first.

The voices and the sound of the man's movements died.  Beulah's hand
dropped to her side.

"We're all right now," she said coldly.

They reached the gulch and slowly worked their way down its precipitous
sides to the bottom.

The girl turned angrily on Roy.  "Why didn't you come after father
warned you?"

"I didn't get his warning till night.  I was away."

"Then how did you get back up the arroyo when it was watched?"

"I--I wasn't out into the park," he told her.

"Oh!"  Her scornful gypsy eyes passed over him and wiped him from the
map.  She would not even comment on the obvious alternative.

"You think I've been up at Dan Meldrum's spying," he protested hotly.

"Haven't you?" she flung at him.

"Yes, if that's what you want to call it," came quickly his bitter
answer.  "The man who has been my best friend is lying up there a
prisoner because he knows too much about the criminals of Huerfano
Park.  I heard Meldrum threaten to kill him unless he promised what was
wanted of him.  Why shouldn't I do my best to help the man who--"

Her voice, sharpened by apprehension, cut into his.  "What man?  Who
are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about David Dingwell."

"What do you mean that he knows too much?  Too much about what?" she
demanded.

"About the express robbery."

"Do you mean to say that--that my people--?"  She choked with anger,
but back of her indignation was fear.

"I mean to say that one of your brothers was guarding Dingwell and that
later your father went up to Meldrum's place.  They are starving him to
get something out of him.  I serve warning on you that if they hurt my
friend--"

"Starving him!" she broke out fiercely.  "Do you dare say that my
people--my father--would torture anybody?  Is that what you mean, you
lying spy?"

Her fury was a spur to him.  "I don't care what words you use," he
flung back wildly.  "They have given him no food for three days.  I
didn't know such things were done nowadays.  It's as bad as what the
old Apaches did.  It's devilish--"

He pulled himself up.  What right had he to talk that way to the girl
who had just saved his life?  Her people might be law-breakers, but he
felt that she was clean of any wrongdoing.

Her pride was shaken.  A more immediate issue had driven it into the
background.

"Why should they hurt him?" she asked.  "If they had meant to do that--"

"Because he won't tell what he knows--where the gold is--won't promise
to keep quiet about it afterward.  What else can they do?  They can't
turn him loose as a witness against them."

"I don't believe it.  I don't believe a word of it."  Her voice broke.
"I'm going up to see right away."

"You mean--to-night?"

"I mean now."

She turned up the gulch instead of down.  Reluctantly he followed her.




Chapter XIII

Beulah Interferes

They felt their way up in the darkness.  The path was rough and at
first pitch-black.  After a time they emerged from the aspens into more
open travel.  Here were occasional gleams of light, as if the moon
stood tip-toe and peered down between the sheer walls of Chicito to the
obscure depths below.

Beulah led.  Mountain-born and bred, she was active as a bighorn.  Her
slenderness was deceptive.  It concealed the pack of her long rippling
muscles, the deep-breasted strength of her torso.  One might have
marched a long day's journey without finding a young woman more
perfectly modeled for grace and for endurance.

"What are you going to try to do?" Beaudry asked of her timidly.

She turned on him with a burst of feminine ferocity.  "Is that any of
your business?  I didn't ask you to come with me, did I?  Go down to
the horse ranch and ask dad to help you out of the park.  Then, when
you're safe with your friends, you can set the officers on him.  Tell
them he is a criminal--just as you told me."

Her biting tongue made him wince.  "If I told you that I'm sorry.  I
had no right.  You've saved my life.  Do you think it likely I would
betray your people after that?"

"How do I know what a spy would do?  Thank God, I can't put myself in
the place of such people," she answered disdainfully.

He smiled ruefully.  She was unjust, of course.  But that did not
matter.  Roy knew that she was wrought up by what he had told her.
Pride and shame and hatred and distrust spoke in her sharp words.  Was
it not natural that a high-spirited girl should resent such a charge
against her people and should flame out against the man who had wounded
her?  Even though she disapproved of what they had done, she would fly
to their defense when attacked.

From the dark gash of the ravine they came at last to the opening where
Meldrum lived.

The young woman turned to Beaudry.  "Give me your revolver belt."

He hesitated.  "What are you going to do?"

Plainly she would have liked to rebuff him, but just now he had the
whip hand.  Her sullen answer came slowly.

"I'm going to tell my brother that father needs him.  When he has gone,
I'll see what I can do."

"And what am I to do while you are inside?"

"Whatever you like."  She held out her hand for his belt.

Not at all willingly he unbuckled it.  "You'll be careful," he urged.
"Meldrum is a bad man.  Don't try any tricks with him."

"He knows better than to touch a hair of my head," she assured him with
proud carelessness.  Then, "Hide in those trees," she ordered.

Ned Rutherford answered her knock on the door of the _jacal_.  At sight
of her he exclaimed:--

"What are you doing here, Boots?  At this time of night?  Anything
wrong?"

"Dad needs you, Ned.  It seems there is trouble about that young man
Street.  Jess Tighe has sworn to kill him and dad won't have it.
There's trouble in the air.  You're to come straight home."

"Why didn't he send Jeff?"

"He needed him.  You're to keep on down through the canon to the mouth.
Jess has the mouth of the arroyo guarded to head off Street."

"But--what's broke?  Why should Tighe be so keen on bumping off this
pink-ear when dad says no?"

"They've found out who he is.  It seems Street is an _alias_.  He is
really Royal Beaudry, the son of the man who used to be sheriff of the
county, the one who crippled Jess the day he was killed."

The slim youth in the high-heeled boots whistled.  He understood now
why Tighe dared to defy his father.

"All right, Boots.  With you in a minute, soon as I get my hat and let
Dan know."

"No.  I'm to stay here till dad sends for me.  He doesn't want me near
the trouble."

"You mean you're to stay at Rothgerber's."

"No, here.  Tighe may attack Rothgerber's any time to get this young
Beaudry.  I heard shooting as I came up."

"But--you can't stay here.  What's dad thinking about?" he frowned.

"If you mean because of Mr. Dingwell, I know all about that."

"Who told you?" he demanded.

"Dad can't keep secrets from me.  There's no use his trying."

"Hm!  I notice he loaded us with a heap of instructions not to let you
know anything.  He'd better learn to padlock his own tongue."

"Isn't there a room where I can sleep here?" Beulah asked.

"There's a cot in the back room," he admitted sulkily.  "But you
can't--"

"That's another thing," she broke in.  "Dad doesn't want Dan left alone
with Mr. Dingwell."

"Who's that out there, Ned?" growled a heavy voice from inside.

Beulah followed her brother into the hut.  Two men stared at her in
amazement.  One sat on the bed with a leg tied to the post.  The other
was at the table playing solitaire, a revolver lying beside the cards.
The card-player was Meldrum.  He jumped up with an oath.

"Goddlemighty!  What's she doing here?" he demanded in his hoarse
raucous bass.

"That's her business and mine," Rutherford answered haughtily.

"It's mine too, by God!  My neck's in the noose, ain't it?" screamed
the former convict.  "Has everybody in the park got to know we're
hiding Dingwell here?  Better put it in the paper.  Better--"

"Enough of that, Dan.  Dad is running this show.  Obey orders, and that
lets you out," retorted the young man curtly.  "You've met my sister,
haven't you, Dave?"

The cattleman smiled at the girl.  "Sure.  We had a little ride
together not long since.  I owe you a new raincoat.  Don't I, Miss
Beulah?"

She blushed a little.  "No, you don't, Mr. Dingwell.  The mud came off
after it dried."

"That's good."  Dave turned to Rutherford.  The little devils of
mischief were in his eyes.  "Chet Fox was with us, but he didn't
stay--had an engagement, he said.  He was in some hurry to keep it,
too."

But though he chatted with them gayly, the ranchman's mind was
subconsciously busy with the new factor that had entered into the
problem of his captivity.  Why had Rutherford allowed her to come?  He
could not understand that.  Every added one who knew that he was here
increased the danger to his abductors.  He knew how fond the owner of
the horse ranch was of this girl.  It was odd that he had let her
become incriminated in his lawless plans.  Somehow that did not seem
like Hal Rutherford.  One point that stood out like the Map of Texas
brand was the effect of her coming upon his chances.  To secure their
safety neither Tighe nor Meldrum would stick at murder.  Ten minutes
ago the prudent way out of the difficulty would have been for them to
arrange his death by accident.  Now this was no longer feasible.  When
the Rutherford girl had stepped into the conspiracy, it became one of
finesse and not bloodshed.  Was this the reason that her father had
sent her--to stay the hands of his associates already reaching toward
the prisoner?  There was no question that Meldrum's finger had been
itching on the trigger of his revolver for a week.  One of the young
Rutherfords had been beside him day and night to restrain the man.

Dave was due for another surprise when Ned presently departed after a
whispered conference with Meldrum and left his sister in the hut.
Evidently something important was taking place in another part of the
park.  Had it to do with young Beaudry?

From his reflections the cattleman came to an alert attention.  Miss
Rutherford was giving Meldrum instructions to arrange her bed in the
back room.

The convict hesitated.  "I can't leave him here alone with you," he
remonstrated surlily.

"Why can't you?" demanded Beulah incisively.  "He's tied to the bedpost
and I have my gun.  I can shoot as straight as you can.  What harm can
he do me in five minutes?  Don't be an idiot, Dan."

Meldrum, grumbling, passed into the back room.

In an instant Beulah was at the table, had drawn out a drawer, and had
seized a carving knife.  She turned on Dingwell, eyes flashing.

"If I help you to escape, will you swear to say nothing that will hurt
my father or anybody else in the park?" she demanded in a low voice.

"Yes--if young Beaudry has not been hurt."

"You swear it."

"Yes."

She tossed him the knife, and moved swiftly back to the place where she
had been standing.  "Whatever my father wants you to do you'd better
do," she said out loud for the benefit of Meldrum.

Dingwell cut the ropes that bound his leg.  "I'm liable to be Dan's
guest quite awhile yet.  Rutherford and I don't quite agree on the
terms," he drawled aloud.

Beulah tossed him her revolver.  "I'll call Dan, but you're not to hurt
him," she whispered.

When Meldrum came in answer to her summons, he met the shock of his
life.  In Dingwell's competent hand was a revolver aimed at his heart.

The man turned savagely to Beulah.  "So I'm the goat," he said with a
curse.  "Rutherford is going to frame me, is he?  I'm to go to the pen
in place of the whole bunch.  Is that it?"

"No, you've guessed wrong.  Yore hide is safe this time, Meldrum," the
cattleman explained.  "Reach for the roof.  No, don't do that. . . .
Now, turn yore face to the wall."

Dave stepped forward and gathered in the forty-four of the enemy.  He
also relieved him of his "skinning" knife.  With the deft hands of an
old roper he tied the man up and flung him on the bed.

This done, Dingwell made straight for the larder.  Though he was
ravenous, the cattleman ate with discretion.  Into his pockets he
packed all the sandwiches they would hold.

"Is it true that you--that they didn't give you anything to eat?" asked
Beulah.

He looked at her--and lied cheerfully.

"Sho, I got cranky and wouldn't eat.  Yore folks treated me fine.  I
got my neck bowed.  Can't blame them for that, can I?"

"We must be going," she told him.  "If you don't get over the pass
before morning, Tighe might catch you."

He nodded agreement.  "You're right, but I've got to look out for young
Beaudry.  Do you know where he is?"

"He is waiting outside," the girl said stiffly.  "Take him away with
you.  I'll not be responsible for him if he comes back.  We don't like
spies here."

They found Roy lying against the wall of the hut, his white face
shining in the moonlight.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Miss Rutherford sharply.

"I'm all right."  Roy managed to rise and lean against the _jacal_.  "I
see you made it.  Mr. Dingwell, my name is Beaudry."

"Glad to know you."  The cattleman's strong hand gripped his limp one.
"Yore father was the gamest man I ever knew and one of my best friends."

The keen eyes of Beulah had been fastened on Roy.  She recalled what
she had heard the man say in the orchard.  In her direct fashion she
flung a question at the young man.

"Are you wounded?  Did that man hit you when he fired?"

"It's in my shoulder--just a flesh wound.  The bleeding has stopped
except when I move."

"Why didn't you say something about it?" she asked impatiently.  "Do
you think we're clairvoyants?  We'd better get him into the house and
look at it, Mr. Dingwell."

They did as she suggested.  A bullet had ploughed a furrow across the
shoulder.  Except for the loss of blood, the wound was not serious.
With the help of Miss Rutherford, which was given as a matter of course
and quite without embarrassment, Dave dressed and bandaged the hurt
like an expert.  In his adventurous life he had looked after many men
who had been shot, and had given first aid to a dozen with broken bones.

Roy winced a little at the pain, but he made no outcry.  He was not a
baby about suffering.  That he could stand as well as another.  What
shook his nerve was the fear of anticipation, the dread of an impending
disaster which his imagination magnified.

"You'd better hurry," he urged two or three times.  "Some one might
come any minute."

Dave looked at him, a little surprised.  "What's the urge, son?  We've
got two six-guns with us if anybody gets too neighborly."

But Beulah was as keen for the start as Beaudry.  She did not want the
men escaping from the park to meet with her people.  To avoid this,
rapid travel was necessary.

As soon as Roy was patched up they started.




Chapter XIV

Personally Escorted

Before they reached the mouth of the canon, Dave was supporting the
slack body of his friend.  When the party came to the aspens, Beulah
hurried forward, and by the time the two men emerged she was waiting
for them with Blacky.

Roy protested at taking the horse, but the girl cut short his
objections imperiously.

"Do you think we've only your silly pride to consider?  I want you out
of the park--where my people can't reach you.  I'm going to see you get
out.  After that I don't care what you do."

Moonlight fell upon the sardonic smile on the pitifully white face of
the young man.  "I'm to be personally conducted by the Queen of
Huerfano.  That's great.  I certainly appreciate the honor."

With the help of Dingwell he pulled himself to the saddle.  The
exertion started a spurt of warm blood at the shoulder, but Roy
clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel to steady himself.  The
cattleman led the horse and Beulah walked beside him.

"I can get another pony for you at Cameron's," she explained.  "Just
above there is a short cut by way of Dolores Sinks.  You ought to be
across the divide before morning.  I'll show you the trail."

What story she told to get the horse from Cameron her companions did
not know, but from where they waited in the pines they saw the
flickering light of a lantern cross to the stable.  Presently Beulah
rode up to them on the hillside above the ranch.

By devious paths she led them through chaparral and woodland.
Sometimes they followed her over hills and again into gulches.  The
girl "spelled" Dingwell at riding the second horse, but whether in the
saddle or on foot her movements showed such swift certainty that Dave
was satisfied she knew where she was going.

Twice she stopped to rest the wounded man, who was now clinging with
both hands to the saddle-horn.  But the hard gleam of her dark eyes
served notice that she was moved by expediency and not sympathy.

It was midnight when at last she stopped near the entrance to the pass.

"The road lies straight before you over the divide.  You can't miss it.
Once on the other side keep going till you get into the foothills.  All
trails will take you down," she told Dingwell.

"We're a heap obliged to you, Miss Rutherford," answered Dingwell.  "I
reckon neither one of us is liable to forget what you've done for us."

She flamed.  "I've nothing against you, Mr. Dingwell, but you might as
well know that what I've done was for my people.  I don't want them to
get into trouble.  If it hadn't been for that--"

"You'd 'a' done it just the same," the cattleman finished for her with
a smile.  "You can't make me mad to-night after going the limit for us
the way you have."

Beaudry, sagging over the horn o

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