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Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border

by William MacLeod Raine · English · Gutenberg #1809 · 444,134 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bucky O'Connor: A Tale of the Unfenced Border

Author: William MacLeod Raine


        
Release date: July 1, 1999 [eBook #1809]
                Most recently updated: January 25, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1809

Credits: Mary Starr and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUCKY O'CONNOR: A TALE OF THE UNFENCED BORDER ***




[Illustration]




BUCKY O’CONNOR

A Tale of the Unfenced Border

By William MacLeod Raine




To My Brother
 EDGAR C. RAINE

MY DEAR WANDERER:

I write your name on this page that you may know we hold you not less
in our thoughts because you have heard and answered again the call of
the frozen North, have for the time disappeared, swallowed in some of
its untrodden wilds. As in those old days of 59 Below On Bonanza, the
long Winter night will be of interminable length. Armed with this note
of introduction then, Bucky O’Connor offers himself, with the best bow
of one Adventurer to another, as a companion to while away some few of
those lonely hours.

March, 1910, Denver.




BUCKY O’CONNOR




CONTENTS

 BUCKY O’CONNOR
 CHAPTER I. ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS 
 CHAPTER II. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION 
 CHAPTER III. THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF 
 CHAPTER IV. A BLUFF IS CALLED 
 CHAPTER V. BUCKY ENTERTAINS 
 CHAPTER VI. BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY 
 CHAPTER VII. IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS 
 CHAPTER VIII. FIRST BLOOD! 
 CHAPTER IX. "ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D.” 
 CHAPTER X. THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER 
 CHAPTER XI. "STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.” 
 CHAPTER XII. A CLEAN WHITE MAN’S OPTION 
 CHAPTER XIII. BUCKY’S FIRST-RATE REASONS 
 CHAPTER XIV. LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI 
 CHAPTER XV. IN THE SECRET CHAMBER 
 CHAPTER XVI. JUAN VALDEZ SCORES 
 CHAPTER XVII. HIDDEN VALLEY 
 CHAPTER XVIII. A DINNER FOR THREE 
 CHAPTER XIX. A VILLON OF THE DESERT 
 CHAPTER XX. BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY 
 CHAPTER XXI. THE WOLF PACK 
 CHAPTER XXII. FOR A GOOD REASON 




CHAPTER I.
ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS


She had been aware of him from the moment of his spectacular entrance,
though no slightest sign of interest manifested itself in her indolent,
incurious eyes. Indeed, his abundant and picturesque area was so vivid
that it would have been difficult not to feel his presence anywhere,
let alone on a journey so monotonous as this was proving to be.

It had been at a water-tank, near Socorro, that the Limited, churning
furiously through brown Arizona in pursuit of a lost half-hour, jarred
to a sudden halt that shook sleep from the drowsy eyes of bored
passengers. Through the window of her Pullman the young woman in
Section 3 had glimpsed a bevy of angry train officials eddying around a
sturdy figure in the center, whose strong, lean head rose confidently
above the press. There was the momentary whirl of a scuffle, out of the
tangle of which shot a brakeman as if propelled from a catapult. The
circle parted, brushed aside by a pair of lean shoulders, muscular and
broad. Yet a few moments and the owner of the shoulders led down the
aisle to the vacant section opposite her a procession whose tail was
composed of protesting trainmen.

“You had no right to flag the train, Sheriff Collins, and you’ll have
to get off; that’s all there is to it,” the conductor was explaining
testily.

“Oh, that’s all right,” returned the offender with easy good nature,
making himself at home in Section 4. “Tell the company to send in its
bill. No use jawing about it.”

“You’ll have to get off, sir.”

“That’s right—at Tucson.”

“No, sir. You’ll have to get off here. I have no authority to let you
ride.”

“Didn’t I hear you say the train was late? Don’t you think you’d arrive
earlier at the end of your run if your choo-choo got to puffing?”

“You’ll have to get off, sir.”

“I hate to disoblige,” murmured the owner of the jingling spurs, the
dusty corduroys, and the big, gray hat, putting his feet leisurely on
the cushion in front of him. “But doesn’t it occur to you that you are
a man of one idea?”

“This is the Coast Limited. It doesn’t stop for anybody—not even for
the president of the road.”

“You don’t say! Well, I ce’tainly appreciate the honor you did me in
stopping to take me on.” His slight drawl was quite devoid of concern.

“But you had no right to flag the train. Can’t you understand
_anything?_” groaned the conductor.

“You explain it again to me, sonny. I’m surely thick in the haid,”
soothed the intruder, and listened with bland good-humor to the
official’s flow of protest.

“Well—well! Disrupted the whole transcontinental traffic, didn’t I? And
me so innocent, too. Now, this is how I figured it out. Here’s me in a
hurry to get to Tucson. Here comes your train a-foggin’—also and
likewise hittin’ the high spots for Tucson. Seemed like we ought to
travel in company, and I was some dubious she’d forget to stop unless I
flagged her. Wherefore, I aired my bandanna in the summer breeze.”

“But you don’t understand.” The conductor began to explain anew as to a
dull child. “It’s against the law. You’ll get into trouble.”

“Put me in the calaboose, will they?”

“It’s no joke.”

“Well, it does seem to be worrying you,” Mr. Collins conceded. “Don’t
mind me. Free your mind proper.”

The conductor, glancing about nervously, noticed that passengers were
smiling broadly. His official dignity was being chopped to mince-meat.
Back came his harassed gaze to the imperturbable Collins with the
brown, sun-baked face and the eyes blue and untroubled as an Arizona
sky. Out of a holster attached to the sagging belt that circled the
corduroy trousers above his hips gleamed the butt of a revolver. But in
the last analysis the weapon of the occasion was purely a moral one.
The situation was one not covered in the company’s rule book, and in
the absence of explicit orders the trainman felt himself unequal to
that unwavering gaze and careless poise. Wherefore, he retreated,
muttering threats of what the company would do.

“Now, if I had only known it was against the law. My thick haid’s
always roping trouble for me,” the plainsman confided to the Pullman
conductor, with twinkling eyes.

That official unbent. “Talking about thick heads, I’m glad my porter
has one. If it weren’t iron-plated and copper-riveted he’d be needing a
doctor now, the way you stood him on it.”

“No, did I? Ce’tainly an accident. The nigger must have been in my way
as I climbed into the car. Took the kink out of his hair, you say?
Here, Sam!” He tossed a bill to the porter, who was rolling affronted
eyes at him. “Do you reckon this is big enough to plaster your injured
feelings, boy?”

The white smile flashed at him by the porter was a receipt for
indemnity paid in full.

Sheriff Collins’ perception of his neighbor across the aisle was more
frank in its interest than the girl’s had been of him. The level,
fearless gaze of the outdoors West looked at her unabashed,
appreciating swiftly her points as they impinged themselves upon his
admiration. The long, lithe lines of the slim, supple body, the languid
grace missing hauteur only because that seemed scarce worth while, the
unconscious pride of self that fails to be offensive only in a young
woman so well equipped with good looks as this one indubitably was the
rider of the plains had appraised them all before his eyes dismissed
her from his consideration and began a casual inspection of the other
passengers.

Inside of half an hour he had made himself _persona grata_ to everybody
in the car except his dark-eyed neighbor across the way. That this
dispenser of smiles and cigars decided to leave her out in the
distribution of his attentions perhaps spoke well for his discernment.
Certainly responsiveness to the geniality of casual fellow passengers
did not impress Mr. Collins as likely to be an outstanding, quality in
her. But with the drummer from Chicago, the young mining engineer going
to Sonora, the two shy little English children just in front of him
traveling to meet their father in California, he found intuitively
common ground of interest. Even Major Mackenzie, the engineer in charge
of the large irrigation project being built by a company in southern
Arizona, relaxed at one of the plainsman’s humorous tales.

It was after Collins had half-depopulated the car by leading the more
jovial spirits back in search of liquid refreshments that an urbane
clergyman, now of Boston but formerly of Pekin, Illinois, professedly
much interested in the sheriff’s touch-and-go manner as presumably
quite characteristic of the West, dropped into the vacant seat beside
Major Mackenzie.

“And who might our energetic friend be?” he asked, with an ingratiating
smile.

The young woman in front of them turned her head ever so slightly to
listen.

“Val Collins is his name,” said the major. “Sometimes called ‘Bear-trap
Collins.’ He has always lived on the frontier. At least, I met him
twelve years ago when he was riding mail between Aravaipa and Mesa. He
was a boy then, certainly not over eighteen, but in a desperate fight
he had killed two men who tried to hold up the mail. Cow-puncher,
stage-driver, miner, trapper, sheriff, rough rider, politician—he’s
past master at them all.”

“And why the appellation of ‘Bear-trap,’ may I ask?” The smack of
pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of the
Reverend Peter Melancthon Brooks.

“Well, sir, that’s a story. He was trapping in the Tetons about five
years ago thirty miles from the nearest ranch-house. One day, while he
was setting a bear-trap, a slide of snow plunged down from the tree
branches above and freed the spring, catching his hand between its
jaws. With his feet and his other hand he tried to open that trap for
four hours, without the slightest success. There was not one chance in
a million of help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen
a human being for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did
it.”

“And that was?”

“You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The
reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand.”

“You mean—” The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious thrill
of horror.

“Yes, sir. That’s just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist
with his hunting-knife.”

“Why, the man’s a hero!” cried the clergyman, with unction.

Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. “We don’t go much on heroes out
here. He’s game, if that’s what you mean. And able, too. Bucky O’Connor
himself isn’t any smarter at following a trail.”

“And who is Bucky O’Connor?”

“He’s the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I’ll have a smoke,
sir. Care to join me?”

But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his note-book
the story of the bear-trap, to be used later as a sermon illustration.
This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick look that
passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between Major
Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the old
officer had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which was
known only to them.

But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it, and
wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major
Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers,
yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he had
not the key.

Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss
Wainwright—he had seen the name on her suit-case—gave way to horror
when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering
vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his wrist
with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the
rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.

The young man resumed his seat, and Miss Wainwright her listless
inspection of the flying stretches of brown desert. Dusk was beginning
to fall, and the porter presently lit the lamps. Collins bought a
magazine from the newsboy and relapsed into it, but before he was well
adjusted to reading the Limited pounded to a second unscheduled halt.

Instantly the magazine was thrown aside and Collins’ curly head thrust
out of the window. Presently the head reappeared, simultaneously with
the crack of a revolver, the first of a detonating fusillade.

“Another of your impatient citizens eager to utilize the unspeakable
convenience of rapid transit,” suggested the clergyman, with ponderous
jocosity.

“No, sir; nothing so illegal,” smiled the cattleman, a whimsical light
in his daredevil eyes. He leaned forward and whispered a word to the
little girl in front of him, who at once led her younger brother back
to his section.

“I had hoped it would prove to be more diverting experience for a
tenderfoot,” condescended the gentleman of the cloth.

“It’s ce’tainly a pleasure to be able to gratify you, sir. You’ll be
right pleased to know that it is a train hold-up.” He waved his hand
toward the door, and at the word, as if waiting for his cue, a masked
man appeared at the end of the passage with a revolver in each hand.




CHAPTER II.
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION


“Hands up!”

There was a ring of crisp menace in the sinister voice that was a spur
to obedience. The unanimous show of hands voted “Aye” with a hasty
precision that no amount of drill could have compassed.

It was a situation that might have made for laughter had there been
spectators to appreciate. But of whatever amusement was to be had one
of the victims seemed to hold a monopoly. Collins, his arm around the
English children by way of comfort, offered a sardonic smile at the
consternation his announcement and its fulfillment had created, but
none of his fellow passengers were in the humor to respond.

The shock of an earthquake could not have blanched ruddy faces more
surely. The Chicago drummer, fat and florid, had disappeared completely
behind a buttress of the company’s upholstery.

“God bless my soul!” gasped the Pekin-Bostonian, dropping his eyeglass
and his accent at the same moment. The dismay in his face found a
reflection all over the car. Miss Wainwright’s hand clutched at her
breast for an instant, and her color ebbed till her lips were ashen,
but her neighbor across the aisle noticed that her eyes were steady and
her figure tense.

“Scared stiff, but game,” was his mental comment.

“Gents to the right and ladies to the left; line up against the walls;
everybody waltz.” called the man behind the guns, with grim humor.

The passengers fell into line as directed, Collins with the rest.

“You’re calling this dance, son; it’s your say-so, I guess,” he
conceded.

“Keep still, or I’ll shoot you full of holes,” growled the autocrat of
the artillery.

“Why, sure! Ain’t you the real thing in Jesse Jameses?” soothed the
sheriff.

At the sound of Collins’ voice, the masked man had started perceptibly,
and his right hand had jumped forward an inch or two to cover the
speaker more definitely. Thereafter, no matter what else engaged his
attention, the gleaming eyes behind the red bandanna never wandered for
a moment from the big plainsman. He was taking no risks, for he
remembered the saying current in Arizona, that after Collins’ hardware
got into action there was nothing left to do but plant the deceased and
collect the insurance. He had personal reasons to know the fundamental
accuracy of the colloquialism.

The train-conductor fussed up to the masked outlaw with a ludicrous
attempt at authority. “You can’t rob the passengers on this train. I’m
not responsible for the express-car, but the coaches—”

A bullet almost grazed his ear and shattered a window on its way to the
desert.

“Drift, you red-haired son of a Mexican?” ordered the man behind the
red bandanna. “Git back to that seat real prompt. This here’s taxation
without representation.”

The conductor drifted as per suggestion.

The minutes ticked themselves away in a tense strain marked by pounding
hearts. The outlaw stood at the end of the aisle, watching the sheriff
alertly.

“Why doesn’t the music begin?” volunteered Collins, by way of
conversation, and quoted: “On with the dance. Let joy be unconfined.”

A dull explosion answered his question. The bandits were blowing open
the safe in the express-car with dynamite, pending which the looting of
the passengers was at a standstill.

A second masked figure joined his companion at the end of the passage
and held a hurried conversation with him. Fragments of their low-voiced
talk came to Collins.

“Only thirty thousand in the express-car. Not a red cent on the old man
himself.”

“Where’s the rest?” The irritation in the newcomer’s voice was
pronounced.

Collins slewed his head and raked him with keen eyes that missed not a
detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he
knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so
gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless
outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the
flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, black-haired,
lithely tigerish, with masterful mouth and eyes of steel, so far as one
might judge behind the white mask he wore. Alert, cruel, fearless from
the head to the heel of him, he looked the very devil to lead an
enterprise so lawless and so desperate as this. His vigilant eyes swept
contemptuously up and down the car, rested for a moment on the young
woman in Section 3, and came back to his partner.

“Bah! A flock of sheep—tamest bunch of spring lambs we ever struck.
I’ll send Scotty in to go through them. If anybody gets gay, drop him.”
And the outlaw turned on his heel.

Another of the highwaymen took his place, a stout, squat figure in the
flannel shirt, spurs, and chaps of a cow-puncher. It took no second
glance to tell Collins this bandy-legged fellow had been a rider of the
range.

“Come, gentlemen, get a move on you,” Collins implored. “This train’s
due at Tucson by eight o’clock. We’re more than an hour late now. I’m
holding down the job of sheriff in that same town, and I’m awful
anxious to get a posse out after a bunch of train-robbers. So burn the
wind, and go through the car on the jump. Help yourself to anything you
find. Who steals my purse takes trash. ’Tis something, nothing. ’Twas
mine; ’tis his. That’s right, you’ll find my roll in that left-hand
pocket. I hate to have you take that gun, though. I meant to run you
down with that same old Colt’s reliable. Oh, well, just as you say. No,
those kids get a free pass. They’re going out to meet papa at Los
Angeles, boys. See?”

Collins’ running fire of comment had at least the effect of restoring
the color to some cheeks that had been washed white and of snatching
from the outlaws some portion of their sense of dominating the
situation. But there was a veiled vigilance in his eyes that belied his
easy impudence.

“That lady across the aisle gets a pass, too, boys,” continued the
sheriff. “She’s scared stiff now, and you won’t bother her, if you’re
white men. Her watch and purse are on the seat. Take them, if you want
them, and let it go at that.”

Miss Wainwright listened to this dialogue silently. She stood before
them cool and imperious and unwavering, but her face was bloodless and
the pulse in her beautiful soft throat fluttered like a caged bird.

“Who’s doing this job?” demanded one of the hold-ups, wheeling savagely
on the impassive officer “Did I say we were going to bother the lady?
Who’s doing this job, Mr. Sheriff?”

“You are. I’d hate to be messing the job like you—holding up the wrong
train by mistake.” This was a shot in the dark, and it did not quite
hit the bull’s-eye. “I wouldn’t trust you boys to rob a hen-roost, the
amateur way you go at it. When you get through, you’ll all go to
drinking like blue blotters. I know your kind—hell-bent to spend what
you cash in, and every mother’s son of you in the pen or with his toes
turned up inside of a month.”

“Who’ll put us there?” gruffly demanded the bowlegged one.

Collins smiled at him with confidence superb “Mebbe I will—and if I
don’t Bucky O’Connor will—those of you that are left alive when you go
through shooting each other in the back. Oh, I see your finish to a
fare-you-well.”

“Cheese it, or I’ll bump you off.” The first out law drove his gun into
the sheriff’s ribs.

“That’s all right. You don’t need to punctuate that remark. I line up
with the sky-pilot and chew the cud of silence. I merely wanted to
frame up to you how this thing’s going to turn out. Don’t come back at
me and say I didn’t warn you, sonnie.”

“You make my head ache,” snarled the bandy-legged outlaw sourly, as he
passed down with his sack, accumulating tribute as he passed down the
aisle with his sack, accumulating tribute as he went.

The red-kerchiefed robber whooped when they came to the car conductor.
“Dig up, Mr. Pullman. Go way down into your jeans. It’s a right smart
pleasure to divert the plunder of your bloated corporation back to the
people. What! Only fifty-seven dollars. Oh, dig deeper, Mr. Pullman.”

The drummer contributed to the sack eighty-four dollars, a diamond
ring, and a gold watch. His hands were trembling so that they played a
tattoo on the sloping ceiling above him.

“What’s the matter, Fatty? Got a chill?” inquired one of the robbers,
as he deftly swept the plunder into the sack.

“For—God’s sake—don’t shoot. I have—a wife—and five children,” he
stammered, with chattering teeth.

“No race suicide for Fatty. But whyfor do they let a sick man like you
travel all by his lone?”

“I don’t know—I—Please turn that weapon another way.”

“Plumb chuck full of malaria,” soliloquized the owner of the weapon,
playfully running its business end over the Chicago man’s anatomy.
“Shakes worse’n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and
whisky. It’s sure good for chills.” The man behind the bandanna gravely
handed his victim back a dollar. “Write me if it cures you. Now for the
sky-pilot. No white chips on this plate, parson. It’s a contribution to
the needy heathen. You want to be generous. How much do you say?”

The man of the cloth reluctantly said thirty dollars, a Lincoln penny,
and a silver-plated watch inherited from his fathers. The watch was
declined with thanks, the money accepted without.

The Pullman porter came into the car under compulsion of a revolver in
the hand of a fourth outlaw, one in a black mask. His trembling finger
pointed out the satchel and suit-case of Major Mackenzie, and under
orders he carried out the baggage belonging to the irrigation engineer.
Collin observed that the bandit in the black mask was so nervous that
the revolver in his hand quivered like an aspen in the wind. He was
slenderer and much shorter than the Mexican, so that the sheriff
decided he was a mere boy.

It was just after he had left that three shots in rapid succession rang
out in the still night air.

The red-bandannaed one and his companion, who had apparently been
waiting for the signal, retreated backward to the end of the car, still
keeping the passengers covered. They flung rapidly two or three bullets
through the roof, and under cover of the smoke slipped out into the
night. A moment later came the thud of galloping horses, more shots,
and, when the patter of hoofs had died away—silence.

The sheriff was the first to break it. He thrust his brown hands deep
into his pockets and laughed—laughed with the joyous, rollicking
abandon of a tickled schoolboy.

“Hysterics?” ventured the mining engineer sympathetically.

Collins wiped his eyes. “Call ’em anything you like. What pleases me is
that the reverend gentleman should have had this diverting experience
so prompt after he was wishing for it.” He turned, with concern, to the
clergyman. “Satisfied, sir? Did our little entertainment please, or
wasn’t it up to the mark?”

But the transported native of Pekin was game. “I’m quite satisfied, if
you are. I think the affair cost you a hundred dollars or so more than
it did me.”

“That’s right,” agreed the sheriff heartily. “But I don’t grudge it—not
a cent of it. The show was worth the price of admission.”

The car conductor had a broadside ready for him. “Seems to me you shot
off your mouth more than you did that big gun of yours, Mr. Sheriff.”

Collins laughed, and clapped him on the back. “That’s right. I’m a
regular phonograph, when you wind me up.” He did not think it necessary
to explain that he had talked to make the outlaws talk, and that he had
noted the quality of their voices so carefully that he would know them
again among a thousand. Also he had observed—other things—the garb of
each of the men he had seen, their weapons, their manner, and their
individual peculiarities.

The clanking car took up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train
plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues,
set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger
was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear
that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into
flabby cheeks and red blood into hearts of water.

At the next station the Limited stopped, and the conductor swung from a
car before the wheels had ceased rolling and went running into the
telegraph office.

“Fire a message through for me, Pat. The Limited has been held up,” he
announced.

“Held up?” gasped the operator.

“That’s right. Get this message right through to Sabin. I’m not going
to wait for an answer. Tell him I’ll stop at Apache for further
instructions.”

With which the conductor was out again waving his lantern as a signal
for the train to start. Sheriff Collins and Major Mackenzie had entered
the office at his heels. They too had messages to send, but it was not
until the train was already plunging into the night that the station
agent read the yellow slips they had left and observed that both of
them went to the same person.

“Lieutenant Bucky O’Connor, Douglas, Arizona,” was the address he read
at the top of each. His comment serves to show the opinion generally in
the sunburned territory respecting one of its citizens.

“You’re wise guys, gents, both of yez. This is shure a case for the
leftenant. It’s send for Bucky quick when the band begins to play,” he
grinned.

Sitting down, he gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting
the conductor’s message to the division superintendent. His fingers
were just striking the first tap when a silken voice startled him.

“One moment, friend. No use being in a hurry.”

The agent looked up and nearly fell from his stool. He was gazing into
the end of a revolver held carelessly in the hand of a masked man
leaning indolently on the counter.

“Whe—where did you come from?” the operator gasped.

“Kaintucky, but I been here a right smart spell. Why? You takin’ the
census?” came the drawling answer.

“I didn’t hear youse come in.”

“I didn’t hear you come in, either,” the man behind the mask mocked.
But even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his
voice. “Have you sent those messages yet?”

“Wha—what messages?”

“Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?”

“Not yet.”

“Hand them over here.”

The operator passed them across the counter without demur.

“Now reach for the roof.”

Up shot the station agent’s hands. The bandit glanced over the written
sheets and commented aloud:

“Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those.
But this one from Collins is ce’tainly a surprise party. I didn’t know
he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn’t, or mebbe I’d a-put his
light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we’ll suppress these messages.
Military necessity, you understand.” And with that he lightly tore up
the yellow sheets and tossed them away.

“The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache,” the operator
suggested, not very boldly.

The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. “He most
surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us an
extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more
valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O’Connor when you see him that
that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren’t on the
anxious seat any without it.”

It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was
more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the
latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter
with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in
front of him and glanced over the Tucson _Star_ in leisurely fashion,
while Pat’s arms still projected roofward.

The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not
withhold a reluctant admiration of this man’s aplomb. There was a
certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw’s movements, a trim grace
of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles perfectly under control,
and a quiet wariness of eye more potent than words at repressing
insurgent impulses. Certainly if ever there was a cool customer and one
perfectly sure of himself, this was he.

“Not a thing in the _Star_ to-day,” Pat’s visitor commented, as he
flung it away with a yawn. “I’ll let a thousand dollars of the express
company’s money that there will be something more interesting in it
to-morrow.”

“That’s right,” agreed the agent.

“But I won’t be here to read it. My engagements take me south. I’ll
make a present to the great Lieutenant O’Connor of the information.
We’re headed south, tell him. And tell Mr. Sheriff Collins, too—happy
to entertain him if he happens our way. If it would rest your hands any
there’s no law against putting them in your trousers pockets, my
friend.”

From outside there came a short sharp whistle. The man on the counter
answered it, and slipped at once to the floor. The door opened, to let
in another masked form, but one how different from the first! Here was
no confidence almost insolent in its nonchalance. The figure was slight
and boyish, the manner deprecating, the brown eyes shy and shrinking He
was so obviously a novice at outlawry that fear sat heavy upon his
shoulders. When he spoke, almost in a whisper, his teeth chattered.

“All ready, sir.”

“The wires are cut?” demanded his leader crisply.

“Yes, sir.”

“On both sides?”

“On both sides.”

His chief relieved the operator of the revolver in his desk, broke it,
emptied out the shells, and flung them through the window, then tossed
the weapon back to its owner.

“You’ll not shoot yourself by accident now,” he explained, and with
that he had followed his companion into the night.

There came to the station agent the sound of galloping horses, growing
fainter, until a heavy silence seemed to fill the night. He stole to
the door and locked it, pulled down the window blinds, and then
reloaded his revolver with feverish haste. This done, he sat down
before his keys with the weapon close at hand and frantically called
for Tucson over and over again. No answer came to him, nor from the
other direction when he tried that. The young bandit had told the
truth. His companions had cut the wires and so isolated from the world
for the time the scene of the hold-up. The agent understood now why the
leader of the outlaws had honored him with so much of his valuable
time. He had stayed to hold back the telegrams until he knew the wires
were cut.




CHAPTER III.
THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF


Bear-trap Collins, presuming on the new intimacy born of an exciting
experience shared in common, stepped across the aisle, flung aside Miss
Wainwright’s impedimenta, and calmly seated himself beside her. She was
a young woman capable of a hauteur chillier than ice to undue
familiarity, but she did not choose at this moment to resent his
assumption of a footing that had not existed an hour ago. Picturesque
and unconventional conduct excuses itself when it is garbed in
picturesque and engaging manners. She had, besides, other reasons for
wanting to meet him, and they had to do with a sudden suspicion that
flamed like tow in her brain. She had something for which to thank
him—much more than he would be likely to guess, she thought—and she was
wondering, with a surge of triumph, whether the irony of fate had not
made his pretended consideration for her the means of his undoing.

“I am sorry you lost so much, Miss Wainwright,” he told her.

“But, after all, I did not lose so much as you. Her dark, deep-pupiled
eyes, long-lashed as Diana’s, swept round to meet his coolly.

“That’s a true word. My reputation has gone glimmering for fair, I
guess.” He laughed ruefully. “I shouldn’t wonder, ma’am, when election
time comes round, if the boys ain’t likely to elect to private life the
sheriff that lay down before a bunch of miscreants.”

“Why did you do it?”

His humorous glance roamed round the car. “Now, I couldn’t think it
proper for me to shoot up this sumptuous palace on wheels. And wouldn’t
some casual passenger be likely to get his lights put out when the band
began to play? Would you want that Boston church to be shy a preacher,
ma’am?”

Her lips parted slightly in a curve of scorn. “I suppose you had your
reasons for not interfering.”

“Surely, ma’am. I hated to have them make a sieve of me.”

“Were you afraid?”

“Most men are when Wolf Leroy’s gang is on the war path.”

“Wolf Leroy?”

“That was Wolf who came in to see they were doing the job right. He’s
the worst desperado on the border—a sure enough bad proposition, I
reckon. They say he’s part Spanish and part Indian, but all pisen.
Others say he’s a college man of good family. I don’t know about that,
for nobody knows who he really is. But the name is a byword in the
country. People lower their voices when they speak of him and his
night-riders.”

“I see. And you were afraid of him?”

“Very much.”

Her narrowed eyes looked over the strong lines of his lean face and
were unconvinced. “I expect you found a better reason than that for not
opposing them.”

He turned to her with frank curiosity. “I’d like real well to have you
put a name to it.”

But he was instantly aware that her interest had been side tracked.
Major Mackenzie had entered the car and was coming down the aisle.
Plainer than words his eyes asked a question, and hers answered it.

The sheriff stopped him with a smiling query: “Hit hard, major?”

Mackenzie frowned. “The scoundrels took thirty thousand from the
express car, I understand. Twenty thousand of it belonged to our
company. I was expecting to pay off the men next Tuesday.”

“Hope we’ll be able to run them down for you,” returned Collins
cheerfully. “I suppose you lay it to Wolf Leroy’s gang?”

“Of course. The work was too well done to leave any doubt of that.” The
major resumed his seat behind Miss Wainwright.

To that young woman the sheriff repeated his unanswered question in the
form of a statement. “I’m waiting to learn that better reason, ma’am.”

She was possessed of that spice of effrontery more to be desired than
beauty. “Shall we say that you had no wish to injure your friends?”

“My friends?”

Her untender eyes mocked his astonishment. “Do I choose the wrong
word?” she asked, with an audacity of a courage that delighted him.
“Perhaps they are not your friends—these train robbers? Perhaps they
are mere casual acquaintances?”

His bold eyes studied with a new interest her superb, confident
youth—the rolling waves of splendid Titian hair, the lovely, subtle
eyes with the depths of shadowy pools in them, the alluring lines of
long and supple loveliness. Certainly here was no sweet, ingenuous
youth all prone to blushes, but the complex heir of that world-old
wisdom the weaker sex has shaped to serve as a weapon against the
strength that must be met with the wit of Mother Eve.

“You ce’tainly have a right vivid imagination, ma’am,” he said dryly.

“You are quite sure you have never seen them before?” her velvet voice
asked.

He laughed. “Well, no—I can’t say I am.”

“Aren’t you quite sure you have seen them?”

Her eyes rested on him very steadily.

“You’re smart as a whip, Miss Wainwright. I take off my hat to a young
lady so clever. I guess you’re right. About the identity of one of
those masked gentlemen I’m pretty well satisfied.”

She drew a long breath. “I thought so.”

“Yes,” he went on evenly, “I once earmarked him so that I’d know him
again in case we met.”

“I beg pardon. You—what?”

“Earmarked him. Figure of speech, ma’am. You may not have observed that
the curly-headed person behind the guns was shy the forefinger of his
right hand. We had a little difficulty once when he was resisting
arrest, and it just happened that my gun fanned away his trigger
finger.” He added reminiscently:

“A good boy, too, Neil was once. We used to punch together on the
Hashknife. A straight-up rider, the kind a fellow wants when Old Man
Trouble comes knocking at the door. Well, I reckon he’s a miscreant
now, all right.”

“They knew _you_—at least two of them did.”

“I’ve been pirootin’ around this country, boy and man, for fifteen
years. I ain’t responsible for every yellow dog that knows me,” he
drawled.

“And I noticed that when you told them not to rob the children and not
to touch me they did as you said.”

“Hypnotism,” he suggested, with a smile.

“So, not being a child, I put two and two together and draw an
inference.”

He seemed to be struggling with his mirth. “I see you do. Well, ma’am,
I’ve been most everything since I hit the West, but this is the first
time I’ve been taken for a train robber.”

“I didn’t say that,” she cried quickly.

“I think you mentioned an inference.” The low laugh welled out of him
and broke in his face. “I’ve been busy on one, too. It’s a heap nearer
the truth than yours, Miss Mackenzie.”

Her startled eyes and the swift movement of her hand toward her heart
showed him how nearly he had struck home, how certainly he had
shattered her cool indifference of manner.

He leaned forward, so close that even in the roar of the train his low
whisper reached her. “Shall I tell you why the hold-ups didn’t find
more money on your father or in the express car, Miss Mackenzie?”

She was shaken, so much so that her agitation trembled on her lips.

“Shall I tell you why your hand went to your breast when I first
mentioned that the train was going to be held up, and again when your
father’s eyes were firing a mighty pointed question at you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she retorted, again mistress of herself.

Her gallant bearing compelled his admiration. The scornful eyes, the
satirical lift of the nostrils, the erect, graceful figure, all flung a
challenge at him. He called himself hard names for putting her on the
rack, but the necessity to make her believe in him was strong within
him.

“I noticed you went right chalky when I announced the hold-up, and I
thought it was because you were scared. That was where I did you an
injustice, ma’am, and you can call this an apology. You’ve got sand. If
it hadn’t been for what you carry in the chamois skin hanging on the
chain round your neck you would have enjoyed every minute of the little
entertainment. You’re as game as they make them.”

“May I ask how you arrived at this melodramatic conclusion?” she asked,
her disdainful lip curling.

“By using my eyes and my ears, ma’am. I shouldn’t have noticed your
likeness to Major Mackenzie, perhaps, if I hadn’t observed that there
was a secret understanding between you. Now, whyfor should you be
passing as strangers? I could guess one reason, and only one. There
have twice been attempted hold-ups of the paymaster of the Yuba
reservoir. It was to avoid any more of these that Major Mackenzie took
charge personally of paying the men. He has made good up till now. But
there have been rumors for months that he would be held up either
before leaving the train or while he was crossing the desert. He didn’t
want to be seen taking the boodle from the express company at Tucson.
He would rather have the impression get out that this was just a casual
visit. It occurred to him to bring along some unsuspected party to help
him out. The robbers would never expect to find the money on a woman.
That’s why the major brought his daughter with him. Doesn’t it make you
some uneasy to be carrying fifty thousand in small bills sewed in your
clothes and hung round your neck?”

She broke into musical laughter, natural and easy. “I don’t happen to
have fifty thousand with me.”

“Oh, well, say forty thousand. I’m no wizard to guess the exact
figure.”

Her swift glance at him was almost timid.

“Nor forty thousand,” she murmured.

“I should think, ma’am, you’d crinkle more than a silk-lined lady
sailing down a church aisle on Sunday.”

A picture in the magazine she was toying with seemed to interest her.

“I expect that’s the signal for ‘Exit Collins.’ I’ll say good-by till
next time, Miss Mackenzie.”

“Oh, is there going to be a next time?” she asked, with elaborate
carelessness.

“Several of them.”

“Indeed!”

He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote.

“I ain’t the son of a prophet, but I’m venturing a prediction,” he
explained.

She had nothing to say, and she said it competently.

“Concerning an investment in futurities I’m making,” he continued.

Her magazine article seemed to be beginning, well.

“It’s a little guess about how this train robbery is coming out. If you
don’t mind, I’ll leave it with you.” He tore the page out, put it in an
empty envelope, sealed the flap, and handed it to her.

“Open it in a month, and see whether my guess is a good one.”

The dusky lashes swept round indolently. “Suppose I were to open it
to-night.”

“I’ll risk it,” smiled the blue eyes.

“On honor, am I?”

“That’s it.” He held out a big, brown hand.

“You’re going to try to capture the robbers, are you?”

“I’ve been thinking that way—with the help of Lieutenant Bucky
O’Connor, I mean.”

“And I suppose you’ve promised yourself success.”

“It’s on the knees of chance, ma’am. We may get them. They may get us.”

“But this prediction of yours?” She held up the sealed envelope.

“That’s about another matter.”

“But I don’t understand. You said—” She gave him a chance to explain.

“It ain’t meant you should. You’ll understand plenty at the proper
time.”

He offered her his hand again. “We’re slowing down for Apache.
Good-by—till next time.”

The suede glove came forward, and was buried in his handshake.

He understood it to be an unvoiced apology of its owner for her
suspicions, and his instinct was correct. For how could her doubts hold
their ground when he had showed himself a sharer in her secret and a
guardian of it? And how could anything sinister lie behind those frank,
unwavering eyes or consist with that long, clean stride that was
carrying him so forcefully to the vestibule?

At Apache no telegrams were found waiting for those who had been
expecting them. Communication with the division superintendent at
Tucson uncovered the fact that no message of the hold-up had yet
reached him. It was an easy guess for Collins to find the reason.

“We’re in the infant class, major,” he told Mackenzie, with a sardonic
laugh. “Leroy must have galloped down the line direct to the station
after the hold-up. Likely enough he went into the depot just as we went
out. That gives him the other hour or two he needs to make his getaway
with the loot. Well, it can’t be helped now. If I can only reach Bucky
there’s one chance in fifty he can head them off from crossing into
Sonora. Soon as I can get together a posse I’ll take up the trail from
the point of the hold-up. But they’ll have a whole night’s start on me.
That’s a big handicap.”

From Apache Collins sent three dispatches. One was to his deputy,
Dillon, at Tucson. It read:

“Get together at once posse of four and outfit same for four days.”

Another went to Sabin, the division superintendent:

“Order special to carry posse with horses from Tucson to Big Gap. Must
leave by midnight. Have track clear.”

The third was a notification to Lieutenant O’Connor, of the Arizona
Rangers, of the hold-up, specifying time and place of the occurrence.
The sheriff knew it was not necessary to add that the bandits were
probably heading south to get into Sonora. Bucky would take that for
granted and do his best to cover the likely spots of the frontier.

It was nearly eleven when the Limited drew in to Tucson. Sabin was on
the platform anxiously awaiting their arrival. Collins reached him even
before the conductor.

“Ordered the special, Mr. Sabin?” he asked, in a low voice.

The railroad man was chewing nervously on an unlit cigar. “Yes,
sheriff. You want only an engine and one car, I suppose.”

“That will be enough. I’ve got to go uptown now and meet Dillon.
Midnight sharp, please.”

“Do you know how much they got?” Sabin whispered.

“Thirty thousand, I hear, besides what they took from the passengers.
The conductor will tell you all about it. I’ve got to jump to be
ready.”

A disappointment awaited him in the telegrapher’s room at the depot. He
found a wire, but not from the person he expected. The ranger in charge
at Douglas said that Lieutenant O’Connor was at Flagstaff, but pending
that officer’s return he would put himself under the orders of Sheriff
Collins and wait for instructions.

The sheriff whistled softly to himself and scratched his head. Bucky
would not have waited for instructions. By this time that live wire
would have finished telephoning all over Southern Arizona and would
himself have been in the saddle. But Bucky in Flagstaff, nearly three
hundred miles from the battlefield, so far as the present emergency
went, might just as well be in Calcutta. Collins wired instructions to
the ranger and sent a third message to the lieutenant.

“I expect I’ll hear this time he’s skipped over to Winslow,” he told
himself, with a rueful grin.

The special with the posse on board drew out at midnight sharp. It
reached the scene of the holdup before daybreak. The loading board was
lowered and the horses led from the car and picketed. Meanwhile two of
the men lit a fire and made breakfast while the others unloaded the
outfit and packed for the trail. The first faint streaks of gray dawn
were beginning to fleck the sky when Collins and Dillon, with a
lantern, moved along the railroad bed to the little clump of
cottonwoods where the outlaws had probably lain while they waited for
the express. They scanned this ground inch by inch. The coals where
their camp-fire had been were still alive. Broken bits of food lay
scattered about. Half-trampled into the ground the sheriff picked up a
narrow gold chain and locket. This last he opened, and found it to
contain a tiny photograph of a young mother and babe, both laughing
happily. A close search failed to disclose anything else of interest.

They returned to their companions, ate breakfast, and saddled. It was
by this time light enough to be moving. The trail was easy as a printed
map, for the object of the outlaws had been haste rather than secrecy.
The posse covered it swiftly and without hesitation.

“Now, I wonder why this trail don’t run straight south instead of
bearing to the left into the hills. Looks like they’re going to cache
their stolen gold up in the mountains before they risk crossing into
Sonora. They figure Bucky’ll be on the lookout for them,” the sheriff
said to his deputy.

“I believe you’ve guessed it, Val. Stands to reason they’ll want to get
rid of the loot soon as they can. Oh, hell!”

Dillon’s disgust proved justifiable, for the trail had lost itself in a
mountain stream, up or down which the outlaws must have filed. A month
later and the creek would have been dry. But it was still spring. The
mountain rains had not ceased feeding the brook, and of this the
outlaws had taken advantage to wipe out their trail.

The sheriff looked anxiously at the sky. “It’s fixin’ to rain, Jim.
Don’t that beat the Dutch? If it does, that lets us out plenty.”

The men they were after might have gone either upstream or down. It was
impossible to know definitely which, nor was there time to follow both.
Already big drops of rain were splashing down.

“We’ll take a chance, and go up. They’re probably up in the hills
somewhere right now,” said Collins, with characteristic decision.

He had guessed right. A mile farther upstream horses had clambered to
the bank and struck deeper into the hills. But already rain was falling
in a brisk shower. The posse had not gone another quarter of a mile
before the trail was washed out. They were now in a rough and rocky
country getting every minute steeper.

“It’s going to be like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack, Val,” Dillon
growled.

Collins nodded. “We ain’t got one chance in a hundred, Jim, but I
reckon we’ll take that chance.”

For three days they blundered around in the hills before they gave it
up. The first night, about dusk, the pursuers were without knowing it
so warm that one of the bandits lay with his rifle on a rock rim not a
stone’s throw above them as they wound through a little ravine. But
Collins got no glimpse of the robbers. At last he reluctantly gave the
word to turn back. Probably the men he wanted had already slipped down
to the plains and across to Mexico. If not, they might play hide and
seek with him a month in the recesses of these unknown mountains.

Next morning the sheriff struck a telephone wire, tapped it, got Sabin
on the line, told him of his failure and that he was returning to
Tucson. About the middle of the afternoon the dispirited posse reached
its sidetracked special.

A young man lay stretched full length on the loading board, with a
broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes. He wore a gray flannel shirt and
corduroy trousers thrust into half-leg laced boots. At the sound of
voices he turned lazily on his side and watched the members of the
posse swing wearily from their saddles. An amiable smile, not wholly
free of friendly derision, lit his good-looking face.

“Oh, you sheriff,” he drawled.

Collins swung round, as if he had been pricked with a knife point. He
stared an instant before he let out a shout of welcome and fell upon
the youth.

“Bucky, by thunder!”

The latter got up nimbly in time to be hospitably thumped and punched.
He was a lithe, slender young fellow, of medium height, and he carried
himself lightly with that manner of sunburned competency given only by
the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoors West.

While the men reloaded the car he and the sheriff stood apart and
talked in low tones. Collins told what he knew, both what he had seen
and inferred, and Bucky heard him to the end.

“Yes, it ce’tainly looks like one of Wolf Leroy’s jobs,” he agreed.
“Nobody else but Leroy would have had the nerve to follow you right up
to the depot and put the kibosh on sending those wires. He’s surely
game from the toes up. Think of him sittin’ there reading the newspaper
half an hour after he held up the Limited!”

“Did he do that, Bucky?” The sheriff’s tone conceded admiration.

“He did. He’s the only train robber ever in the business that could
have done it. Oh, the Wolf’s tracks are all over this job.”

“No doubt about that. I told you I recognized York Neil by him being
shy that trigger finger I fanned off down at Tombstone. Well, they say
he’s one of the Wolf’s standbys.”

“Yes. I warned him two months ago that if he didn’t break away he’d die
sudden. Somehow I couldn’t persuade him he was an awful sick man right
then. You saw four of these hold-ups in all, didn’t you, Val?”

“Four’s right. First off Neil, then the fellow I took to be the Wolf.
After he went out a bowlegged fellow came in, and last a slim little
kid that was a sure enough amateur, the way his gun shook.”

“Any notion how many more there were?”

“I figured out two more. A big gazabo in a red wig held up Frost, the
engineer. He knew it was a wig because he saw long black hair peeping
out around his neck. Then there must ’a’ been another in charge of
blowing up the express car, a Mexican, from the description the
messenger gives of him.”

Bucky nodded. “Looks like you got it figured about right, Val. The
Mexican is easy to account for. The Wolf spends about half his time
down in Chihuahua and trains with some high-class greasers down there.
Well, we’ll see what we’ll see. I’ll set my rangers at rounding up the
border towns a bit, and if I don’t start anything there I’ll hike down
into Mexico and see what’s doing. I’ll count on you to run the Arizona
end of it while I’m away, Val. The Wolf’s outfit is a pretty wild one,
and it won’t be long till something begins to howl. We’ll keep an eye
on the gambling halls and see who is burning up money. Oh, they’ll
leave plenty of smoke behind them,” the ranger concluded cheerfully.

“There will be plenty of smoke if we ever do round ’em up, not to
mention a heap of good lead that will be spilled,” the sheriff agreed
placidly. “Well, all I got to say is the sooner the quicker. The bunch
borrowed a mighty good.45 of mine I need in my biz. I kinder hanker to
get it back _muy pronto_.”

“Here’s hoping,” Bucky nodded gayly. “I bet there will be a right
lively wolf hunt. Hello! The car’s loaded. All aboard for Tucson.”

The special drew out from the side track and gathered speed. Soon the
rhythmic chant of the rails sounded monotonously, and the plains on
either side of the track swam swiftly to the rear.




CHAPTER IV.
A BLUFF IS CALLED


Torpid lay Aravaipa in a coma of sunheat. Its adobe-lined streets
basked in the white glare of an Arizona spring at midday. One or two
Papago Indians, with their pottery wares, squatted in the shade of the
buildings, but otherwise the plaza was deserted. Not even a moving dog
or a lounging peon lent life to the drowsy square. Silence profound and
peace eternal seemed to brood over the land.

Such was the impression borne in upon the young man riding townward on
a wiry buckskin that had just topped the rise which commanded the
valley below. The rider presented a striking enough appearance to take
and hold the roving eye of any young woman in search of romance. He was
a slender, lithe young Adonis of medium height. His hair and eyebrows
left one doubtful whether to pronounce them black or brown, but the
eyes called for an immediate verdict of Irish blue. Every inch of him
spoke of competency—promised mastership of any situation likely to
arise. But when the last word is said it was the eyes that dominated
the personality. They could run the whole gamut of emotions, or they
could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as
a girl’s, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades
might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them
opaque as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they
looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a
world they appraised with the shrewdness of a veteran.

The young man drew rein above the valley, sitting his horse in the
easy, negligent fashion of one that lives in the saddle. A thumb was
hitched carelessly in the front pocket of his chaps, which pocket
served also as a holster for the .45 that protruded.

Even in the moment that he sat there a change came over Aravaipa. As a
summer shower sweeps across a lake so something had ruffled the town to
sudden life. From stores and saloons men dribbled, converging toward a
common centre hurriedly.

“I reckon, Bucky, the band has begun to play,” the rider told himself
aloud. “Mebbe we better move on down in time for the music.”

But no half-expected revolver shots shattered the stillness, even
though interest did not abate.

“There’s ce’tainly something doing at the Silver Dollar this glad
mo’ning. Chinks, greasers, and several other kinds of citizens driftin’
that way, not to mention white men. I expect there will be room for
you, Bucky, if you hurry before the seats are all sold out.”

He cantered down the plaza, swung from the saddle, threw the rein over
the pony’s head to the ground, and jingled across the sidewalk into the
gambling house. It was filled with a motley crowd of miners, vaqueros,
tourists, cattlemen, Mexicans, Chinese, and a sample of the rest of the
heterogeneous population of the Southwest. Behind this assemblage the
newcomer tiptoed in vain to catch a glimpse of the cause of the
excitement. Wherefore, he calmly removed an almond-eyed Oriental from a
chair on which he was standing, tipped the ex-Cantonese a half dollar,
and appropriated the point of vantage himself.

There was a cleared space in the corner by the roulette table, and
here, his chair tipped back against the wall and a glass of whisky in
front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of humanity. He was a
man of about fifty years, large boned and gaunt. Dressed in fringed
buckskin trousers and a silver-laced Mexican sombrero, he affected the
long hair, the sweeping mustache, and the ferocious aspect that are the
custom of the pseudo-Westerners who do business in the East with fake
medical remedies. Around his waist was a belt garnished with knives by
the dozen. These were long and pointed, sharpened to a razor edge. One
of them was in his hand poised for a throw at the instant Bucky mounted
the chair and looked over the densely packed mass of heads in front of
him.

The ranger’s keen glance swept to the wall and took in the target. A
slim lad of about fifteen stood against it with his arms outstretched.
Above and below each hand and on either side of the swelling throat
knives quivered in the frame wall. There was a flash of steel, and the
seventh knife sank into the wood so close to the crisp curls that a
lock hung by a hair, almost completely severed by the blade. The boy
choked back a scream, his big brown eyes dilating with terror.

The bully sipped at his highball and deliberately selected another
knife. To Bucky’s swift inspection it was plain he had drunk too much
and that a very little slip might make an end of the boy. The
fascinated horror in the lad’s gaze showed that he realized his danger.

“Now, f’ler cit’zens, I will continue for your ’musement by puttin’
next two knives on right and lef’ sides of his cheek. Observe, pleash,
that these will land less than an inch from hish eyes. As the champion
knife thrower in the universe I claim—”

What he claimed his audience had to guess, for at this instant another
person took a part in the act. Bucky had stepped lightly across the
intervening space on the shoulders of the tightly packed crowd and had
dropped as lightly to the ground in front of the astonished champion of
the universe.

“I reckon you’ve about wore out that target. What’s the matter with
trying a brand new one,” drawled the ranger, his quiet, unwavering eye
fixed on the bloated, mottled face of the imitation “bad man.”

The bully, half seas over, leaned forward and gripped his knife. He was
sober enough to catch the jeer running through the other’s words
without being sufficiently master of himself to appreciate the menace
that underlay them.

“Wha’s that? Say that again!” he burst out, purple to the collar line.
He was not used to having beardless boys with long, soft eyelashes
interfering with his amusements, and a blind rage flooded his heart.

“I allowed that a change of targets would vary the entertainment, if
you haven’t any objections, seh,” the blue-eyed stranger explained
mildly.

“Who is this kid?” demanded the bully, with a sweep of his arm toward
the intruder.

Nobody seemed to know, wherefore the ranger himself gave the
information mildly:

“Bucky O’Connor they call me.”

A faint murmur of surprise soughed through the crowd, for Bucky
O’Connor of the Arizona Rangers was by way of being a public hero just
now on account of his capture of Fernendez, the stage robber. But the
knife thrower had but lately arrived in the country. The youth carried
with him none of the earmarks of his trade, unless it might be that
quiet, steady gaze that seemed to search the soul. His voice was soft
and drawling, his manner almost apologetic. In the smile that came and
went was something sweet and sunny, in his bearing a gay charm that did
not advertise the recklessness that bubbled from his daredevil spirit.
Surely here was an easy victim upon whom to vent his spleen, thought
the other in his growing passion.

“You want to be my target, do you?” he demanded, tugging ferociously at
his long mustache.

“If you please, seh.”

The fellow swore a vile oath. “Just as you say. Line up beside the
other kid.”

With three strides Bucky reached the wall, and turned.

“Let ’er go,” his gentle voice murmured.

He was leaning back easily against the wall, his thumb hitched
carelessly in the revolver pocket of his worn leather chaps. He looked
at ease, every jaunty inch of him, but a big bronzed cattleman who had
just pushed his way in noticed that the frosty blue eyes never released
for an instant those of the enemy.

The bully at the table passed an uncertain hand over his face to clear
his blurred vision, poised the cruel blade in his hand, and sent it
flashing forward with incredible swiftness. The steel buried itself two
inches deep in the soft pine beside Bucky’s head. So close had it
shaved him that a drop of blood gathered and dropped from his ear to
the floor.

“Good shot,” commented the ranger quietly, and on the instant his
revolver seemed to leap from its holster to his hand. Without raising
or moving his arm in the least, Bucky fired.

Again a murmur eddied through the crowd. The bullet had neatly bored
the bully’s ear. He raised his hand in dazed fashion and brought it
away covered with blood. With staring eyes he looked at his moist red
fingers, then at his latest victim, who was proving such an unexpected
surprise.

The big cattleman, who by this time had pushed a way with his broad
shoulders to the front, observed the two men attentively with a
derisive smile on his frank face. He was seeing a bluff called, and he
enjoyed it.

“You’ll be able to wear earrings, Mr. Champion of the Universe, after I
have ventilated the other,” suggested the ranger affably. “Come again,
seh.”

But his opponent had had enough, and more than enough. It was one thing
to browbeat a harmless boy, quite another to measure courage with a
young gamecock like this. He had all the advantage of the first move.
He was an expert and could drive his first throw into the youth’s
heart. But at bottom he was a coward and lacked the nerve, if not the
inclination, to kill. If he took up that devil-may-care challenge he
must fight it out alone. Moreover, as his furtive glance went round the
ring of faces, he doubted whether a rope and the nearest telegraph pole
might not be his fate if he went the limit. Sourly he accepted defeat,
raging in his craven spirit at the necessity.

“Hell! I don’t fight with boys,” he snarled,

“So?”

Bucky moved forward with the curious lightness of a man spring-footed.
His gaze held the other’s shifting eyes as he plucked the knife from
his opponent’s hand.

“Unbuckle that belt,” he ordered.

All said, the eye is a prince of weapons. It is a moral force more
potent than the physical, and by it men may measure strength to a
certainty. So now these two clinched and battled with it till the best
man won. The showman’s look gave way before the stark courage of the
other. His was no match for the inscrutable, unwavering eye that
commanded him. His fingers began to twitch, edged slowly toward his
waist. For an instant they fumbled at the buckle of the belt, which
presently fell with a rattle to the floor.

“Now, roll yore trail to the wall. Face this way! Arms out! That’s
good! You rest there comfortable while I take these pins down and let
the kid out.”

He removed the knives that hemmed in the boy and supported the
half-fainting figure to a chair beside the roulette table. But always
he remained in such a position as to keep the big bully he was baiting
in view. The boy dropped into the chair and covered his face with his
hands, sobbing with deep, broken breaths. The ranger touched
caressingly the crisp, fair hair that covered the head in short curls.

“Don’t you worry, bub. Now, don’t you. It’s all over with now. That
coyote won’t pester you any more. Will you, Mr. False Alarm Bad Man?”

At the last words he wheeled suddenly to the showman. “You’re right
sorry already you got so gay, ain’t you? Come! Speak yore little piece,
please.”

He waited for an answer, and his gaze held fast to the bloated face
that cringed before his attack.

“What’s your name?”

“Jay Hardman,” quavered the now thoroughly sobered bad man.

“Dead easy jay, I reckon you mean. Now, chirp, up and tell the boy how
sorry you are you got fresh with your hardware.”

“He’s my boy. I guess I can do what I like with him,” the man burst out
angrily. “I wasn’t hurting him any, either. That’s part of our show,
to—”

Bucky fondled suggestively the revolver in his hand. A metallic click
came to his victim.

“Don’t you shoot at me again,” the man broke off to scream.

The Colt clipped the sentence and the man’s other ear.

“You can put in your order now for them earrings we were mentionin’,
Mr. Deadeasy. You see, I had to puncture this one so folks would know
they were mates.”

“I’ll put you in the pen for this,” the fellow whined, in terror.

“Funny how you will get off the subject. We were discussin’ an apology
when you got to wandering in yore haid.”

The mottled face showed white in patches. Beads of perspiration stood
out on the forehead of Hardman. “I didn’t aim to hurt him any. I’ll be
right glad to explain to you—”

A bullet plowed a path through the long hair that fell to the showman’s
shoulders and snipped a lock from it.

“You don’t need to explain a thing to me, seh. I’m sure resting easy in
my mind. But as you were about to re-mark you’re fair honin’ for a
chance to ask the kid’s pardon. Now, ain’t I a mind reader, seh?”

A trembling voice stammered huskily an apology.

“Better late than too late. Now, I’ve a good mind to take a vote
whether I’d better unload the rest of the pills in this old reliable
medicine box at you. Mebbe I ought to pump one into that coyote heart
of yours.”

The fellow went livid. “My God, you wouldn’t kill an unarmed man, would
you?”

For answer the ranger tossed the weapon on the table with a scornful
laugh and strode up to the other. The would-be bad man towered six
inches above him, and weighed half as much again. But O’Connor whirled
him round, propelled him forward to the door, and kicked him into the
street.

“I’d hate to waste a funeral on _him_,” he said, as he sauntered back
to the boy at the table.

The lad was beginning to recover, though his breath still came with a
catch. His rag of a handkerchief was dabbing tears out of his eyes.
O’Connor noticed how soft his hands and how delicate his features.

“This kid ain’t got any more business than a rabbit going around in the
show line with that big scoundrel. He’s one of these gentle,
rock-me-to-sleep-mother kids that ought to stay in the home nest and
not go buttin’ into this hard world. I’ll bet a doughnut he’s an
orphan, though.”

Bucky had been brought up in the school of experience, where every
student keeps his own head or goes to the wall. All his short life he
had played a lone hand, as he would have phrased it. He had campaigned
in Cuba as a mere boy. He had ridden the range and held his own on the
hurricane deck of a bucking broncho. From cowpunching he had graduated
into the tough little body of territorial rangers at the head of which
was “Hurry Up” Millikan. This had brought him a large and turbulent
experience in the knack of taking care of himself under all
circumstances. Naturally, a man of this type, born and bred to the code
of the outdoors West, could not fail of a certain contempt for a boy
that broke down and cried when the game was going against him.

But Bucky’s contempt was tolerant, after all. He could not deny his
sympathy to a youngster in trouble. Again he touched gently the lad’s
crisp curls of burnished gold.

“Brace up, bub. The worst is yet to come,” he laughed awkwardly. “I
reckon there’s no use spillin’ any more emotion over it. He ain’t your
dad, is he?”

The lad’s big brown eyes looked up into the serene blue ones and found
comfort in their strength. “No, he’s my uncle—and my master.”

“This is a free country, son. We don’t have masters if we’re good
Americans, though we all have to take orders from our superior
officers. You don’t need to serve this fellow unless you want to.
That’s a cinch.”

The boy’s troubled eyes were filmed with reminiscent terror. “You don’t
know him. He is terrible when he is angry,” he murmured.

“I don’t think it,” returned Bucky contemptuously. “He’s the worst
blowhard ever. Say the word and I’ll run the piker out of town for
you.”

The boy whipped up the sleeve of the fancy Mexican jacket he wore and
showed a long scar on his arm. “He did that one day when he was angry
at me. He pretended to others that it was an accident, but I knew
better. This morning I begged him to let me leave him. He beat me, but
he was still mad; and when he took to drinking I was afraid he would
work himself up to stick me again with one of his knives.”

Bucky looked at the scar in the soft, rounded arm and swept the boy
with a sudden puzzled glance that was not suspicion but wonder.

“How long have you been with him, kid?”

“Oh, for years. Ever since I was a little fellow. He took me after my
father and mother died of yellow fever in New Orleans. His wife hates
me too, but they have to have me in the show.”

“Then I guess you had better quit their company. What’s your name?”

“Frank Hardman. On the show bills I have all sorts of names.”

“Well, Frank, how would you like to go to live on a ranch?”

“Where he wouldn’t know I was?” whispered the boy eagerly.

“If you like. I know a ranch where you’d be right welcome.”

“I would work. I would do anything I could. Really, I would try to pay
my way, and I don’t eat much,” Frank cried, his eyes as appealing as a
homeless puppy’s.

Bucky smiled. “I expect they can stand all you eat without going to the
poorhouse. It’s a bargain then. I’ll take you out there to-morrow.”

“You’re so good to me. I never had anybody be so good before.” Tears
stood in the big eyes and splashed over.

“Cut out the water works, kid. You want to take a brace and act like a
man,” advised his new friend brusquely.

“I know. I know. If you knew what I have done maybe you wouldn’t ask me
to go with you. I—I can’t tell you anything more than that,” the
youngster sobbed.

“Oh, well. What’s the diff? You’re making a new start to-day. Ain’t
that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call me Bucky.”

“Yes, sir. Bucky, I mean.”

A hand fell on the ranger’s shoulder and a voice in his ear. “Young
man, I want you.”

The lieutenant whirled like a streak of lightning, finger on trigger
already. “I’ll trouble you for yore warrant, seh,” he retorted.

The man confronting him was the big cattleman who had entered the
Silver Dollar in time to see O’Connor’s victory over the showman. Now
he stood serenely under Bucky’s gun and laughed.

“Put up your .45, my friend. It’s a peaceable conference I want with
you.”

The level eyes of the young man fastened on those of the cattleman,
and, before he spoke again, were satisfied. For both of these men
belonged to the old West whose word is as good as its bond, that West
which will go the limit for a cause once under taken without any
thought of retreat, regardless of the odds or the letter of the law.
Though they had never met before, each knew at a glance the manner of
man the other was.

“All right, seh. If you want me I reckon I’m here large as life,” the
ranger said,

“We’ll adjourn to the poker room upstairs then, Mr. O’Connor.”

Bucky laid a hand on the shoulder of the boy. “This kid goes with me.
I’m keeping an eye on him for the present.”

“My business is private, but I expect that can be arranged. We’ll take
the inner room and let him have the outer.”

“Good enough. Break trail, seh. Come along, Frank.”

Having reached the poker room upstairs, that same private room which
had seen many a big game in its day between the big cattle kings and
mining men of the Southwest, Bucky’s host ordered refreshments and then
unfolded his business.

“You don’t know me, lieutenant, do you?”

“I haven’t that pleasure, seh.”

“I am Major Mackenzie’s brother.”

“Webb Mackenzie, who came from Texas last year and bought the Rocking
Chair Ranch?”

“The same.”

“I’m right glad to meet you, seh.”

“And I can say the same.”

Webb Mackenzie was so distinctively a product of the West that no other
segment of the globe could have produced him. Big, raw-boned, tanned to
a leathery brick-brown, he was as much of the frontier as the ten
thousand cows he owned that ran the range on half as many hills and
draws. He stood six feet two and tipped the beam at two hundred twelve
pounds, not an ounce of which was superfluous flesh. Temperamentally,
he was frank, imperious, free-hearted, what men call a prince. He wore
a loose tailor-made suit of brown stuff and a broad-brimmed light-gray
Stetson. For the rest, you may see a hundred like him at the yearly
stock convention held in Denver, but you will never meet a man even
among them with a sounder heart or better disposition.

“I’ve got a story to tell you, Lieutenant O’Connor,” he began. “I’ve
been meaning to see you and tell it ever since you made good in that
Fernendez matter. It wasn’t your gameness. Anybody can be game. But it
looked to me like you were using the brains in the top of your head,
and that happens so seldom among law officers I wanted to have a talk
with you. Since yesterday I’ve been more anxious. For why? I got a
letter from my brother telling me Sheriff Collins showed him a locket
he found at the place of the T. P. Limited hold-up. That locket has in
it a photograph of my wife and little girl. For fifteen years I haven’t
seen that picture. When I saw it last ’twas round my little baby’s
neck. What’s more, I haven’t seen her in that time, either.”

Mackenzie stopped, swallowed hard, and took a drink of water.

“You haven’t seen your little girl in fifteen years,” exclaimed Bucky.

“Haven’t seen or heard of her. So far as I know she may not be alive
now. This locket is the first hint I have had since she was taken away,
the very first news of her that has reached me, and I don’t know what
to make of that. One of the robbers must have been wearing it, the way
I figure it out. Where did he get it? That’s what I want to know.”

“Suppose you tell me the story, seh,” suggested the ranger gently.

The cattleman offered O’Connor a cigar and lit one himself. For a
minute he puffed slowly at his Havana, leaning far back in his chair
with eyes reminiscent and half shut. Then he shook himself back into
the present and began his tale.

“I don’t reckon you ever heard tell of Dave Henderson. It was back in
Texas I knew him, and he’s been missing sixteen years come the eleventh
of next August. For fifteen years I haven’t mentioned his name, because
Dave did me the dirtiest wrong that one man ever did another. Back in
the old days he and I used to trail together. We was awful thick, and
mostly hunted in couples. We began riding the same season back on the
old Kittredge Ranch, and we went in together for all the kinds of
spreeing that young fellows who are footloose are likely to do. Fact
is, we suited each other from the ground up. We frolicked round
a-plenty, like young colts will, and there was nothing on this green
earth Dave could have asked from me that I wouldn’t have done for him.
Nothing except one, I reckon, and Dave never asked that of me.”

Mackenzie puffed at his cigar a silent moment before resuming. “It
happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little Frances Clark,
of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker than me and a more
taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me from the start. Dave
stayed till the finish, and when he seen he had lost he stood up with
me at the wedding. We had agreed, you see, that whoever won it wasn’t
to break up our friendship.

“Well, Frankie and I were married, and in course of time we had two
children. My boy, Tom, is the older. The other was a little girl, named
after her mother.” The cattleman waited a moment to steady his voice,
and spoke through teeth set deep in his Havana. “I haven’t seen her, as
I said, since she was two years and ten months old—not since the night
Dave disappeared.”

Bucky looked up quickly with a question on his lips, but he did not
need to word it.

Mackenzie nodded. “Yes, Dave took her with him when he lit out across
the line for Mexico.”

But I’ll have to go back to something that happened earlier. About
three months before this time Dave and me were riding through a cut in
the Sierra Diablo Mountains, when we came on a Mexican who had been
wounded by the Apaches. I reckon we had come along just in time to
scare them off before they finished him. We did our best for him, but
he died in about two hours. Before dying, he made us a present of a map
we found in his breast pocket. It showed the location of a very rich
mine he had found, and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to
do with as we pleased.

“Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much
attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other with his
life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half, each of us keeping
one part, in order that nobody else could steal the secret from the one
that held the paper. The last time I had been in El Paso I had bought
my little girl a gold chain with two lockets pendent. These lockets
opened by a secret spring, and in one of them I put my half of the map.
It seemed as safe a place as I could devise, for the chain never left
the child’s neck, and nobody except her mother, Dave, and I knew that
it was placed there. Dave hid his half under a rock that was known to
both of us. The strange thing about the story is that my false friend,
in the hurry of his flight, forgot to take his section of the map with
him. I found it under the rock next day, so that his vile treachery
availed him nothing from a mercenary point of view.”

“Didn’t take his half of the map with him. That’s right funny,” Bucky
mused aloud.

“We never could understand why he didn’t.”

“Mebbe if you understood that a heap of things might be clear that are
dark now.”

“Mebbe. Knowing Dave Henderson as I did, or, rather, as I thought I
did, such treachery as his was almost unbelievable. He was the
sweetest, sunniest soul I ever knew, and no two brothers could have
been as fond of each other as we seemed to be. But there was no chance
of mistake. He had gone, and taken our child with him, likely in
accordance with a plan of revenge long cherished by him. We never heard
of him or the child again. They disappeared as completely as if the
earth had swallowed them up. Our cook, too, left with him that evil
night.”

“Your cook?” It was the second comment Bucky had ventured, and it came
incisively. “What manner of man was he?”

“A huge, lumbering braggart. I could never understand why Dave took the
man with him.”

“If he did.”

“But I tell you he did. They disappeared the same night, and the trail
showed they went the same road. We followed them for about an hour next
day, but a heavy rain came up and blotted out the tracks.”

“What was the cook’s name?”

“Jeff Anderson.”

“Have you a picture of him, or one of your friend?”

“Back at the ranch I had pictures of Dave, but I burned them after he
left. Yes, I reckon we have one of Anderson, standing in front of the
chuck wagon.”

“Send it to me, please.”

“All right.”

The ranger asked a few questions that made clearer the situation on the
day of the kidnapping, and some more concerning Anderson, then fell
again into the role of a listener while Mackenzie concluded his story.

“All these years I have kept my eyes open, confident that at last I
would discover something that would help me to discover the whereabouts
of my child, or, at least, give me a chance to punish the scoundrel who
betrayed my confidence. Yesterday my brother’s letter gave the first
clue we have had. I want that lead worked. Ferret this thing out to the
bottom, lieutenant. Get me something definite to go on. That’s what I
want you to do. Run the thing to earth, get at the facts, and find my
child for me. I’ll give you carte blanche up to a hundred thousand
dollars. All I ask of you is to make good. Find the little girl, or
else bring me face to face with that villain Henderson. Can you do it?”

O’Connor was strangely interested in this story of treachery and
mystery. He rose with shining eyes and held out his hand. “I don’t
know, seh, but I’ll try damned hard to do three things: find out what
has become of the little girl, of Dave Henderson, and of the scoundrel
who stole your baby because he thought the map was in the pocket.”

“You mean that you don’t think Dave—”

“That is exactly what I mean. Your cook, Anderson, kidnapped the child,
looks like to me. I saw that locket Collins found. My guess was that
the marks on the end of the chain were deep teeth marks. The man that
stole your baby tried first to cut the chain with his teeth so as to
steal the chain. You see, he could not find the clasp in the dark. Then
the child wakened and began to cry. He clapped a hand over its mouth
and carried the little girl out of the room. Then he heard somebody
moving about, lost his nerve, and jumped on the horse that was waiting,
saddled, at the door. He took the child along simply because he had to
in order to get the chain and the secret he thought it held.”

“Perhaps; but that does not prove it was not Dave.”

“It’s contributory evidence, seh. Your friend could have slipped the
chain from her neck any day, or he could have opened the locket and
taken the map. No need for him to steal in at night. Do you happen to
remember whether your little girl had any particular aversion to the
cook?”

The cattleman’s forehead frowned in thought. “I do remember, now, that
she was afraid of him. She always ran screaming to her mother when he
tried to be friendly with her. He was a sour sort of fellow.”

“That helps out the case a heap, for it shows that he wanted to make
friends with her and she refused. He was thus forced to take the chain
when she was asleep instead of playing with her till he had discovered
the spring and could simply take the map.”

“But he didn’t know anything about the map. He was not in our
confidence.”

“You and your friend talked it over evenings when he was at the ranch,
and other places, too, I expect.”

“Yes, our talk kind of gravitated that way whenever we got together.”

“Well, this fellow overheard you. That’s probable, at least.”

“But you’re ignoring the important fact. Dave disappeared too that
night, with my little girl.”

Bucky cut in sharply with a question. “Did he? How do you know he
disappeared _with_ her? Why not _after?_ That’s the theory my mind is
groping on just now.”

“That’s a blind trail to me. Why _after?_ And what difference does it
make?”

“All the difference in the world. If he left after the cook, you have
been doing him an injustice for fifteen years, seh.”

Mackenzie leaned forward, excitement burning in his eyes. “Prove that,
young man, and I’ll thank you to the last day of my life. It’s for my
wife’s sake more than my own I want my little girl back. She jes’ pines
for her every day of her life. But for my friend—if you can give me
back the clean memory of Dave you’ll have done a big thing for me, Mr.
O’Connor.”

“It’s only a working theory, but this is what I’m getting at. You and
Henderson had arranged to take an early start on a two days’ deer hunt
next mo’ning. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”

“We were to start about four. Yes, sir.”

“Well, let’s suppose a case. Along comes Dave before daybreak, when the
first hooters were beginning to call. Just as he reaches your ranch he
notices a horse slipping away in the darkness. Perhaps he hears the
little girl cry out. Anyhow, instead of turning in at the gate, he
decides to follow. Probably he isn’t sure there’s anything wrong, but
when he finds out how the horse he’s after is burning the wind his
suspicions grow stronger. He settles down to a long chase. In the
darkness, we’ll say, he loses his man, but when it gets lighter he
picks up the trail again. The tracks lead south, across the line into
Mexico. Still he keeps plodding on. The man in front sees him behind
and gets scared because he can’t shake him off. Very likely he thinks
it is you on his track. Anyhow, while the child is asleep he waits in
ambush, and when Henderson rides up he shoots him down. Then he pushes
on deeper into Chihuahua, and proceeds to lose himself there by
changing his name.”

“You think he murdered Dave?” The cattleman got up and began to pace up
and down the floor.

“I think it possible.”

Webb Mackenzie’s face was pallid, but there was a new light of hope in
it. “I believe you’re right. God knows I hope so. That may sound a
horrible thing to say of my best friend, but if it has got to be one or
the other—if it is certain that my old bunkie came to his death foully
in Chihuahua while trying to save my baby, or is alive to-day, a
skulking coward and villain—with all my heart I hope he is dead.” He
spoke with a passionate intensity which showed how much he had cared
for his early friend, and how much the latter’s apparent treachery had
cut him. “I hope you’ll never have a friend go back on you, Mr.
O’Connor, the one friend you would have banked on to a finish. Why,
Dave Henderson saved my life from a bunch of Apaches once when it was
dollars to doughnuts he would lose his own if he tried it. We were
prospecting in the Galiuros together, and one mo’ning when he went down
to the creek to water the hawsses he sighted three of the red devils
edging up toward the cabin. There might have been fifty of them there
for all he knew, and he had a clear run to the plains if he wanted to
back one of the ponies and take it. Most any man would have saved his
own skin, but not Dave. He hoofed it back to the cabin, under fire
every foot of the way, and together we made it so hot for them that
they finally gave up getting us. We were in the Texas Rangers together,
and pulled each other through a lot of close places. And then at the
end—Why, it hurt me more than it did losing my own little girl.”

Bucky nodded. Since he was a man and not a father, he could understand
how the hurt would rankle year after year at the defalcation of his
comrade.

“That’s another kink we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off,
there’s your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we
must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there’s something due
the scoundrel who is responsible for this. Fourthly, brethren, there’s
that map section to find. And lastly, we’ve got to find just how this
story you’ve told me got mixed with the story of the holdup of the
Limited. For it ce’tainly looks as if the two hang together. I take it
that the thing to do is to run down the gang that held up the Limited.
Once we do that, we ought to find the key to the mystery of your little
girl’s disappearance. Or, at least, there is a chance we shall. And
it’s chances we’ve got to gamble on in this thing.”

“Good enough. I like the way you go at this. Already I feel a heap
better than I did.”

“If the cards fall our way you’re going to get this thing settled once
for all. I can’t promise my news will be good news when I get it, but
anything will be better than the uncertainty you’ve been in, I take
it,” said Bucky, rising from his chair.

“You’re right there. But, wait a moment. Let’s drink to your success.”

“I’m not much of a sport,” Bucky smiled. “Fact is, I never drink, seh.”

“Of course. I remember, now. You’re the good bad man of the West,”
Mackenzie answered amiably. “Well, I drink to you. Here’s good hunting,
lieutenant.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose you’ll get right at this thing?”

“I’ve got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I
won’t stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him.”

“What’s the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with
me? My wife and I will see he’s looked after till you return.”

“That would be the best plan, if it won’t trouble you too much. We’d
better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of
the country.”

“Yes, though I hardly think he’d be fool enough to show up at the
Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they
might show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago.”

“A chapping would sure do him a heap of good,” grinned Bucky, and so
dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind.




CHAPTER V.
BUCKY ENTERTAINS


Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position
made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and
Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money
were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger’s experience had
taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to
burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of
the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb
disport themselves together.

The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at
Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the
same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he
was making.

O’Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table
to him the photograph he had just received.

“If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help
us. You don’t by any chance know him, do you, Val?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Not in my rogues’ gallery, Bucky.”

The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to
somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked
the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph of
the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were
lacking, to be sure—the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin
trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same
shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky’s confidence that Mackenzie
had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The
fellow was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch
that curious furtive glance of his. But for that O’Connor would never
have known the two to be the same.

Bucky was at the telephone half an hour. In the middle of the next
afternoon his reward came in the form of a Western Union billet. It
read:

“Eastern man says you don’t want what is salable here.”

The lieutenant cut out every other word and garnered the wheat of the
message:

“Man you want is here.”

The telegram was marked from Epitaph, and for that town the ranger and
the sheriff entrained immediately.

Bucky’s eye searched in vain the platform of the Epitaph depot for
Malloy, of the Rangers, whose wire had brought him here. The cause of
the latter’s absence was soon made clear to him in a note he found
waiting for him at the hotel:

“The old man has just sent me out on hurry-up orders. Don’t know when
I’ll get back. Suggest you take in the show at the opera house to-night
to pass the time.”

It was the last sentence that caught Bucky’s attention. Jim Malloy had
not written it except for a reason. Wherefore the lieutenant purchased
two tickets for the performance far back in the house. From the local
newspaper he gathered that the showman was henceforth to be a resident
of Epitaph. Mr. Jay Hardman, or Signor Raffaello Cavellado, as he was
known the world over by countless thousands whom he had entertained,
had purchased a corral and livery stable at the corner of Main and
Boothill Streets and solicited the patronage of the citizens of Hualpai
County. That was the purport of the announcement which Bucky ringed
with a pencil and handed to his friend.

That evening Signor Raffaello Cavellado made a great hit with his
audience. He swaggered through his act magnificently, and held his
spectators breathless. Bucky took care to see that a post and the
sheriff’s big body obscured him from view during the performance.

After it was over O’Connor and the sheriff returned to the hotel, where
also Hardman was for the present staying, and sent word up to his room
that one of the audience who had admired very much the artistic
performance would like the pleasure of drinking a glass of wine with
Signor Cavellado if the latter would favor him with his company in room
seven. The Signor was graciously pleased to accept, and followed his
message of acceptance in person a few minutes later.

Bucky remained quietly in the corner of the room back of the door until
the showman had entered, and while the latter was meeting Collins he
silently locked the door and pocketed the key.

The sheriff acknowledged Hardman’s condescension brusquely and without
shaking hands. “Glad to meet you, seh. But you’re mistaken in one
thing. I’m not your host. This gentleman behind you is.”

The man turned and saw Bucky, who was standing with his back against
the door, a bland smile on his face.

“Yes, seh. I’m your host to-night. Sheriff Collins, hyer, is another
guest. I’m glad to have the pleasure of entertaining you, Signor
Raffaello Cavellado,” Bucky assured him, in his slow, gentle drawl,
without reassuring him at all.

For the fellow was plainly disconcerted at recognition of his host. He
turned with a show of firmness to Collins. “If you’re a sheriff, I
demand to have that door opened at once,” he blustered.

Val put his hands in his pockets and tipped back his chair. “I ain’t
sheriff of Hualpai County. My jurisdiction don’t extend here,” he said
calmly.

“I’m an unarmed man,” pleaded Cavellado.

“Come to think of it, so am I.”

“I reckon I’m holding all the aces, Signor Cavellado,” explained the
ranger affably. “Or do you prefer in private life to be addressed as
Hardman—or, say, Anderson?”

The showman moistened his lips and offered his tormentor a blanched
face.

“Anderson—a good plain name. I wonder, now, why you changed it?”
Bucky’s innocent eyes questioned him blandly as he drew from his pocket
a little box and tossed it on the table. “Open that box for me, Mr.
Anderson. Who knows? It might explain a heap of things to us.”

With trembling fingers the big coward fumbled at the string. With all
his fluent will he longed to resist, but the compelling eyes that met
his so steadily were not to be resisted. Slowly he unwrapped the paper
and took the lid from the little box, inside of which was coiled up a
thin gold chain with locket pendant.

“Be seated,” ordered Bucky sternly, and after the man had found a chair
the ranger sat down opposite him.

From its holster he drew a revolver and from a pocket his watch. He
laid them on the table side by side and looked across at the
white-lipped trembler whom he faced.

“We had better understand each other, Mr. Anderson. I’ve come here to
get from you the story of that chain, so far as you know it. If you
don’t care to tell it I shall have to mess this floor up with your
remains. Get one proposition into your cocoanut right now. You don’t
get out of this room alive with your secret. It’s up to you to choose.”

Quite without dramatics, as placidly as if he were discussing railroad
rebates, the ranger delivered his ultimatum. It seemed plain that he
considered the issue no responsibility of his.

Anderson stared at him in silent horror, moistening his dry lips with
the tip of his tongue. Once his gaze shifted to the sheriff but found
small comfort there. Collins had picked up a newspaper and was absorbed
in it.

“Are you going to let him kill me?” the man asked him hoarsely.

He looked up from his newspaper in mild protest at such unreason. “Me?
I ain’t sittin’ in this game. Seems like I mentioned that already.”

“Better not waste your time, signor, on side issues,” advised the man
behind the gun. “For I plumb forgot to tell you I’m allowing only three
minutes to begin your story, half of which three has already slipped
away to yesterday’s seven thousand years. Without wantin’ to hurry you,
I suggest the wisdom of a prompt decision.”

“Would he do it?” gasped the victim, with a last appeal to Collins.

“Would he what? Oh, shoot you up. Cayn’t tell till I see. If he says he
will he’s liable to. He always was that haidstrong.”

“But—why—why—”

“Yes, it’s sure a heap against the law, but then Bucky ain’t a lawyer.
I don’t reckon he cares sour grapes for the law—as law. It’s a right
interesting guess as to whether he will or won’t.”

“There’s a heap of cases the law don’t reach prompt. This is one of
them,” contributed the ranger cheerfully. He pocketed his watch and
picked up the .45. “Any last message or anything of that sort, signor?
I don’t want to be unpleasant about this, you understand.”

The whilom bad man’s teeth chattered. “I’ll tell you anything you want
to know.”

“Now, that’s right sensible. I hate to come into another man’s house
and clutter it up. Reel off your yarn.”

“I don’t know—what you want.”

“I want the whole story of your kidnapping of the Mackenzie child, how
came you to do it, what happened to Dave Henderson, and full directions
where I may locate Frances Mackenzie. Begin at the beginning, and I’ll
fire questions at you when you don’t make any point clear to me. Turn
loose your yarn at me hot off the bat.”

The man told his story sullenly. While he was on the round-up as cook
for the riders he had heard Mackenzie and Henderson discussing together
the story of their adventure with the dying Spaniard and their hopes of
riches from the mine he had left them. From that night he had set
himself to discover the secret of its location, had listened at windows
and at keyholes, and had once intercepted a letter from one to the
other. By chance he had discovered that the baby was carrying the
secret in her locket, and he had set himself to get it from her.

But his chance did not come. He could not make friends with her, and at
last, in despair of finding a better opportunity, he had slipped into
her room one night in the small hours to steal the chain. But it was
wound round her neck in such a way that he could not slip it over her
head. She had awakened while he was fumbling with the clasp and had
begun to cry. Hearing her mother moving about in the next room, he had
hastily carried the child with him, mounted the horse waiting in the
yard, and ridden away.

In the road he became aware, some time later, that he was being
pursued. This gave him a dreadful fright, for, as Bucky had surmised,
he thought his pursuer was Mackenzie. All night he rode southward
wildly, but still his follower kept on his trail till near morning,
when he eluded him. He crossed the border, but late that afternoon got
another fright. For it was plain he was still being followed. In the
endless stretch of rolling hills he twice caught sight of a rider
picking his way toward him. The heart of the guilty man was like water.
He could not face the outraged father, nor was it possible to escape so
dogged a foe by flight. An alternative suggested itself, and he
accepted it with sinking courage. The child was asleep in his arms now,
and he hastily dismounted, picketed his horse, and stole back a quarter
of a mile, so that the neighing of his bronco might not betray his
presence. Then he lay down in a dense mesquit thicket and waited for
his foe. It seemed an eternity till the man appeared at the top of a
rise fifty yards away. Hastily Anderson fired, and again. The man
toppled from his horse, dead before he struck the ground. But when the
cook reached him he was horrified to see that the man he had killed was
a member of the Rurales, or Mexican border police. In his guilty terror
he had shot the wrong man.

He fled at once, pursued by a thousand fears. Late the next night he
reached a Chihuahua village, after having been lost for many hours. The
child he still carried with him, simply because he had not the heart to
leave it to die in the desert alone. A few weeks later he married an
American woman he met in Sonora. They adopted the child, but it died
within the year of fever.

Meanwhile, he was horrified to learn that Dave Henderson, following
hard on his trail, had been found bending over the spot where the dead
soldier lay, had been arrested by a body of Rurales, tried hurriedly,
and convicted to life imprisonment. The evidence had been purely
circumstantial. The bullet found in the dead body of the trooper was
one that might have come from his rifle, the barrel of which was empty
and had been recently fired. For the rest, he was a hated _Americano_,
and, as a matter of course, guilty. His judges took pains to see that
no message from him reached his friends in the States before he was
buried alive in the prison. In that horrible hole an innocent man had
been confined for fifteen years, unless he had died during that time.

That, in substance, was the story told by the showman, and Bucky’s
incisive questions were unable to shake any portion of it. As to the
missing locket, the man explained that it had been broken off by
accident and lost. When he discovered that only half the secret was
contained on the map section he had returned the paper to the locket
and let the child continue to carry it. Some years after the death of
the child, Frances, his wife had lost the locket with the map.

“And this chain and locket—when did you lose them?” demanded Bucky
sharply.

“It must have been about two months ago, down at Nogales, that I sold
it to a fellow. I was playing faro and losing. He gave me five dollars
for it.”

And to that he stuck stoutly, nor could he be shaken from it. Both
O’Connor and the sheriff believed he was lying, for they were convinced
that he was the bandit with the red wig who had covered the engineer
while his companions robbed the train. But of this they had no proof.
Nor did Bucky even mention his suspicion to Hardman, for it was his
intention to turn him loose and have him watched. Thus, perhaps, he
would be caught corresponding or fraternizing with some of the other
outlaws. Collins left the room before the showman, and when the latter
came from the hotel he followed him into the night.

Meanwhile, Bucky went out and tapped another of his underground wires.
This ran directly to the Mexican consul at Tucson, to whom Bucky had
once done a favor of some importance, and from him to Sonora and
Chihuahua. It led to musty old official files, to records already
yellowed with age, to court reports and prison registers. In the end it
flashed back to Bucky great news. Dave Henderson, arrested for the
murder of the Rurales policeman, was still serving time in a Mexican
prison for another man’s crime. There in Chihuahua for fifteen years he
had been lost to the world in that underground hole, blotted out from
life so effectually that few now remembered there had been such a
person. It was horrible, unthinkable, but none the less true.




CHAPTER VI.
BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY


For a week Bucky had been in the little border town of Noches, called
there by threats of a race war between the whites and the Mexicans.
Having put the quietus on this, he was returning to Epitaph by way of
the Huachuca Mountains. There are still places in Arizona where rapid
transit can be achieved more expeditiously on the back of a bronco than
by means of the railroad, even when the latter is available. So now
Bucky was taking a short cut across country instead of making the two
train changes, with the consequent inevitable delays that would have
been necessary to travel by rail.

He traveled at night and in the early morning, to avoid the heat of the
midday sun, and it was in the evening of the second and last day that
the skirts of happy chance led him to an adventure that was to affect
his whole future life. He knew a waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows
were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he
was making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred
yards distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at
the spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it
might be any one of a score of border ruffians who owed him a grudge
and would be glad to pay it in the silent desert that tells no tales
and betrays no secrets to the inquisitive.

He flung the bridle-rein over his pony’s neck and crept forward on
foot, warily and noiselessly. While still some little way from the
water-hole he was arrested by a sound that startled him. He could make
out a raucous voice in anger and a pianissimo accompaniment of womanish
sobs.

“You’re mine to do with as I like. I’m your uncle. I’ve raised you from
a kid, and, by the great mogul! you can’t sneak off with the first
good-for nothing scoundrel that makes eyes at you. Thought you had
slipped away from me, you white-faced, sniveling little idiot, but I’ll
show you who is master.”

The lash of a whip rose and fell twice on quivering flesh before Bucky
leaped into the fireglow and wrested the riding-whip from the hands of
the angry man who was plying it.

“Dare to touch a woman, would you?” cried the ranger, swinging the whip
vigorously across the broad shoulders of the man. “Take that—and
that—and that, you brute!”

But when Bucky had finished with the fellow and flung him a limp,
writhing huddle of welts to the ground, three surprises awaited him.
The first was that it was not a woman he had rescued at all, but a boy,
and, as the flickering firelight played on his face, the ranger came to
an unexpected recognition. The slim lad facing him was no other than
Frank Hardman, whom he had left a few days before at the Rocking Chair
under the care of motherly Mrs. Mackenzie. The young man’s eyes went
back with instant suspicion to the fellow he had just punished, and his
suspicions were verified when the leaping light revealed the face of
the showman Anderson.

Bucky laughed. “I ce’tainly seem to be interfering in your affairs a
good deal, Mr. Anderson. You may take my word for it that you was the
last person in the world I expected to meet here, unless it might be
this boy. I left him safe at a ranch fifty miles from here, and I left
you a staid business man of Epitaph. But it seems neither of you stayed
hitched. Why for this yearning to travel?”

“He found me where I was staying. I was out riding alone on an errand
for Mrs. Mackenzie when he met me and made me go with him. He has
arranged to have me meet his wife in Mexico. The show wouldn’t draw
well without me. You know I do legerdemain,” Frank explained, in his
low, sweet voice.

“So you had plans of your own, Mr. Anderson. Now, that was right
ambitious of you. But I reckon I’ll have to interfere with them again.
Go through him, kid, and relieve him of any guns he happens to be
garnished with. Might as well help yourself to his knives, too. He’s so
fond of letting them fly around promiscuous he might hurt himself.
Good. Now we can sit down and have a friendly talk. Where did you say
you was intending to spend the next few weeks before I interrupted so
unthinking and disarranged your plans? I’m talking to you, Mr.
Anderson.”

“I was heading for Sonora,” the man whined.

What Bucky thought was: “Right strange direction to be taking for
Sonora. I’ll bet my pile you were going up into the hills to meet some
of Wolf Leroy’s gang. But why you were taking the kid along beats me,
unless it was just cussedness.” What he said was:

“Oh, you’ll like Epitaph a heap better. I allow you ought to stay at
that old town. It’s a real interesting place. Finished in the adobe
style and that sort of thing. The jail’s real comfy, too.”

“Would you like something to eat, sir?” presently asked Frank timidly.

“Would I? Why, I’m hungry enough to eat a leather mail-sack. Trot on
your grub, young man, and watch my smoke.”

Bucky did ample justice to the sandwiches and lemonade the lad set in
front of him, but he ate with a wary eye on a possible insurrection on
the part of his prisoner.

“I’m a new man,” he announced briskly, when he had finished. “That veal
loaf sandwich went sure to the right spot. If you had been a young lady
instead of a boy you couldn’t fix things up more appetizing.”

The lad’s face flushed with embarrassment, apparently at the ranger’s
compliment, and the latter, noticed how delicate the small face was. It
made an instinctive, wistful appeal for protection, and Bucky felt an
odd little stirring at his tender Irish heart.

“Might think I was the kid’s father to see what an interest I take in
him,” the young man told himself reprovingly. “It’s all tommyrot, too.
A boy had ought to have more grit. I expect he needed that licking all
right I saved him from.”

When Bucky had eaten, the camp things were repacked for travel. Epitaph
was only twenty-three miles away, and the ranger preferred to ride in
the cool of the night rather than sit up till daybreak with his
prisoner. Besides, he could then catch the morning train from that town
and save almost a day.

So hour after hour they plodded on, the prisoner in front, O’Connor in
the center, and Frank Hardman bringing up the rear. It was an Arizona
night of countless stars, with that peculiar soft, velvety atmosphere
that belongs to no other land or time. In the distance the jagged,
violet line of mountains rose in silhouette against a sky not many
shades lighter, while nearer the cool moonlight flooded a land grown
magical under its divine touch.

The ranger rode with a limp ease that made for rest, his body shifting
now and again in the saddle, so as to change the weight and avoid
stiffness.

It must have been well past midnight that he caught the long breath of
a sigh behind him. The trail had broadened at that point, for they were
now down in the rolling plain, so that two could ride abreast in the
road. Bucky fell back and put a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the
boy.

“Plumb fagged out, kid?” he asked.

“I am tired. Is it far?”

“About four miles. Stick it out, and we’ll be there in no time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. Call me Bucky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bucky laughed. “You’re ce’tainly the queerest kid I’ve run up against.
I guess you didn’t scramble up in this rough-and-tumble West like I
did. You’re too soft for this country.” He let his firm brown fingers
travel over the lad’s curly hair and down the smooth cheek. “There it
is again. Shrinking away as if I was going to hurt you. I’ll bet a
biscuit you never licked the stuffing out of another fellow in your
life.”

“No, sir,” murmured the youth, and Bucky almost thought he detected a
little, chuckling laugh.

“Well, you ought to be ashamed of it. When come back from old Mexico
I’m going to teach you how to put up your dukes. You’re going to ride
the range with me, son, and learn to stick to your saddle when the
bronc and you disagrees. Oh, I’ll bet all you need is training. I’ll
make a man out of you yet,” the ranger assured his charge cheerfully.
“Will you?” came the innocent reply, but Bucky for a moment had the
sense of being laughed at.

“Yes, I ‘will you,’ sissy,” he retorted, without the least
exasperation. “Don’t think you know it all. Right now you’re riding
like a wooden man. You want to take it easy in the saddle. There’s
about a dozen different positions you can take to rest yourself.” And
Bucky put him through a course of sprouts. “Don’t sit there laughing at
folks that knows a heap more than you ever will get in your noodle, and
perhaps you won’t be so done up at the end of a little jaunt like
this,” he concluded. And to his conclusion he presently added a
postscript: “Why, I know kids your age can ride day and night for a
week on the round-up without being all in. How old are you, son?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s a lie,” retorted the ranger, with immediate frankness. “You’re
not a day over fifteen, I’ll bet.”

“I meant to say fifteen,” meekly corrected the youth.

“That’s another of them. You meant to say eighteen, but you found I
wouldn’t swallow it. Now, Master Frank, you want to learn one thing
prompt if you and I are to travel together. I can’t stand a liar. You
tell the truth, or I’ll give you the best licking you ever had in your
life.”

“You’re as bad a bully as he is,” the boy burst out, flushing angrily.

“Oh, no, I’m not,” came the ranger’s prompt unmoved answer. “But just
because you’re such a weak little kid that I could break you in two
isn’t any reason why I should put up with any foolishness from you. I
mean to see that you act proper, the way an honest kid ought to do.
Savvy?”

“I’d like to know who made you my master?” demanded the boy hotly.

“You’ve ce’tainly been good and spoiled, but you needn’t ride your high
hawss with me. Here’s the long and the short of it. To tell lies ain’t
square. If I ask you anything you don’t want to answer tell me to go to
hell, but don’t lie to me. If you do I’ll punish you the same as if you
were my brother, so long as you trail with me. If you don’t like it,
cut loose and hit the pike for yourself.”

“I’ve a good mind to go.”

Bucky waved a hand easily into space. “That’s all right, too, son.
There’s a heap of directions you can hit from here. Take any one you
like. But if I was as beat as you are, I think I’d keep on the Epitaph
road.” He laughed his warm, friendly laugh, before the geniality of
which discord seemed to melt, and again his arm went round the other’s
weary shoulders with a caressing gesture that was infinitely
protecting.

The boy laughed tremulously. “You’re awfully good to me. I know I’m a
cry-baby, sissy boy, but if you’ll be patient with me I’ll try to be
gamer.”

It certainly was strange the way Bucky’s pulse quickened and his blood
tingled when he touched the little fellow and heard that velvet voice’s
soft murmur. Yes, it surely was strange, but perhaps the young
Irishman’s explanation was not the correct one, after all. The cause he
offered to himself for this odd joy and tender excitement was perfectly
simple.

“I’m surely plumb locoed, or else gone soft in the haid,” he told
himself grimly.

But the reason for those queer little electric shocks that pulsed
through him was probably a more elemental and primeval one than even
madness.

Arrived at Epitaph, Bucky turned loose his prisoner with a caution and
made his preparations to leave immediately for Chihuahua. Collins had
returned to Tucson, but was in touch with the situation and ready to
set out for any point where he was needed.

Bucky, having packed, was confronted with a difficulty. He looked at
it, and voiced his perplexity.

“Now, what am I going to do with you, Curly Haid? I expect I had better
ship you back to the Rocking Chair.”

“I don’t want to go back there. He’ll come out again and find me after
you leave.”

“Where do you want to go, then? If you were a girl I could put you in
the convent school here,” he reflected aloud.

Again that swift, deep blush irradiated the youth’s cheeks. “Why can’t
I go with you?” he asked shyly.

The ranger laughed. “Mebbe you think I’m going on a picnic. Why, I’m
starting out to knock the chip off Old Man Trouble’s shoulder. Like as
not some greaser will collect Mr. Bucky’s scalp down in _mañana_ land.
No, sir, this doesn’t threaten to be a Y. P. S. C. E. excursion.”

“If it is so dangerous as that, you will need help. I’m awful good at
making up, and I can speak Spanish like a native.”

“Sho! You don’t want to go running your neck into a noose. It’s a
jail-break I’m planning, son. There may be guns a-popping before we get
back to God’s country—if we ever do. Add to that, trouble and then
some, for there’s a revolution scheduled for old Chihuahua just now, as
your uncle happens to know from reliable information.”

“Two can always work better than one. Try me, Bucky,” pleaded the boy,
the last word slipping out with a trailing upward inflection that was
irresistible.

“Sure you won’t faint if we get in a tight pinch, Curly?” scoffed
O’Connor, even though in his mind he was debating a surrender. For he
was extraordinarily taken with the lad, and his judgment justified what
the boy had said.

“I shall not be afraid if you are with me.”

“But I may not be with you. That’s the trouble. Supposing I should be
caught, what would you do?”

“Follow any orders you had given me before that time. If you had not
given any, I would use my best judgment.”

“I’ll give them now,” smiled Bucky. “If I’m lagged, make straight for
Arizona and tell Webb Mackenzie or Val Collins.”

“Then you _will_ take me?” cried the boy eagerly.

“Only on condition that you obey orders explicitly. I’m running this
cutting-out expedition.”

“I wouldn’t think of disobeying.”

“And I don’t want you to tell me any lies.”

“No.”

Bucky’s big brown fist caught the little one and squeezed it. “Then
it’s a deal, kid. I only hope I’m doing right to take you.”

“Of course you are. Haven’t you promised to make a man of me?” And
again Bucky caught that note of stifled laughter in the voice, though
the big brown eyes met his quite seriously.

They took the train that night for El Paso, Bucky in the lower berth
and his friend in the upper of section six of one of the Limited’s
Pullman cars. The ranger was awake and up with the day. For a couple of
hours he sat in the smoking section and discussed politics with a
Chicago drummer. He knew that Frank was very tired, and he let him
sleep till the diner was taken on at Lordsburg. Then he excused himself
to the traveling man.

“I reckon I better go and wake up my pardner. I see the chuck-wagon is
toddling along behind us.”

Bucky drew aside the curtains and shook the boy gently by the shoulder.
Frank’s eyes opened and looked at the ranger with that lack of
comprehension peculiar to one roused suddenly from deep sleep.

“Time to get up, Curly. The nigger just gave the first call for the
chuck-wagon.”

An understanding of the situation flamed over the boy’s face. He
snatched the curtains from the Arizonian and gathered them tightly
together. “I’ll thank you not to be so familiar,” he said shortly from
behind the closed curtains.

“I beg your pahdon, your royal highness. I should have had myself
announced and craved an audience, I reckon,” was Bucky’s ironic retort;
and swiftly on the heels of it he added. “You make me tired, kid.”

O’Connor was destined to be “made tired” a good many times in the
course of the next few days. In all the little personal intimacies
Frank possessed a delicate fastidiousness outside the experience of the
ranger. He was a scrupulously clean man himself, and rather nice as to
his personal habits, but it did not throw him into a flame of
embarrassment to brush his teeth before his fellow passengers. Nor did
it send him into a fit if a friend happened to drop into his room while
he was finishing his dressing. Bucky agreed with himself that this
excess of shyness was foolishness, and that to indulge the boy was
merely to lay up future trouble for him. A dozen times he was on the
point of speaking his mind on the subject, but some unusual quality of
innocence in the lad tied his tongue.

“Blame it all, I’m getting to be a regular old granny. What Master
Frank needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss
has got me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I’m mum as a hooter on
the nest,” he admitted to himself ruefully. “Just when something comes
up that needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school
eye of his, and it’s Bucky back to Webster’s unabridged. I’ve got to
quit trailing with him, or I’ll be joining the church first thing I
know. He makes me feel like I want to be _good_, confound the little
swindle.”

Notwithstanding the ranger’s occasional moments of exasperation, the
two got along swimmingly. Each of them found a continued pleasure in
delving into the other’s unexplored mental recesses. They drifted into
one of those quick, spontaneous likings that are rare between man and
man. Some subtle quality of affection bubbled up like a spring in the
hearts of each for the other. Young Hardman could perhaps have
explained what lay at the roots of it, but O’Connor admitted that he
was “buffaloed” when he attempted an analysis of his unusual feeling.

From El Paso a leisurely run on the Mexican Central Pacific took them
to Chihuahua, a quaint old city something about the size of El Paso.
Both Bucky and his friend were familiar with the manners of the
country, so that they felt at home among the narrow adobe streets, the
lounging, good-natured peons, and the imitation Moorish architecture.
They found rooms at a quiet, inconspicuous hotel, and began making
their plans for an immediate departure in the event that they succeeded
in their object.

At a distance it had seemed an easy thing to plan the escape of David
Henderson and to accomplish it by craft, but a sight of the heavy stone
walls that encircled the prison and of the numerous armed guards who
paced to and fro on the walls, put a more chilling aspect on their
chances.

“It isn’t a very gay outlook,” Bucky admitted cheerfully to his
companion, “but I expect we can pull it off somehow. If these Mexican
officials weren’t slower than molasses in January it might have been
better to wait and have him released by process of law on account of
Hardman’s confession. But it would take them two or three years to come
to a decision. They sure do hate to turn loose a gringo when they have
got the hog-tie on him. Like as not they would decide against him at
the last, then. Course I’ve got the law machinery grinding, too, but
I’m not banking on it real heavy. We’ll get him out first any old way,
then get the government to O. K. the thing.”

“How were you thinking of proceeding?”

“I expect it’s time to let you in on the ground floor, son. I reckon
you happen to know that down in these Spanish countries there’s usually
a revolution hatching. There s two parties among the aristocrats, those
for the government and those ferninst. The ‘ins’ stand pat, but the
‘outs’ have always got a revolution up their sleeves. Now, there’s
mostly a white man mixed up in the affair. They have to have him to run
it and to shoot afterward when the government wins. You see, somebody
has to be shot, and it’s always so much to the good if they can line up
gringoes instead of natives. Nine times out of ten it’s an
Irish-American lad that is engineering the scheme. This time it happens
to be Mickey O’Halloran, an old friend of mine. I’m going to put it up
to Mick to find a way.”

“But it isn’t any affair of his. He won’t do it, will he?”

“Oh, I thought I told you he was Irish.”

“Well?”

“And spoiling for trouble, of course. Is it likely he could keep his
fist out of the hive when there’s such a gem of a chance to get stung?”

It had been Frank’s suggestion that they choose rooms at a hotel which
open into each other and also connect with an adjoining pair. The
reason for this had not at first been apparent to the ranger, but as
soon as they were alone Frank explained.

“It is very likely that we shall be under surveillance after a day or
two, especially if we are seen around the prison a good deal. Well,
we’ll slip out the back way to-night, disguised in some other rig, come
boldly in by the front door, and rent the rooms next ours. Then we
shall be able to go and come, either as ourselves or as our neighbors.
It will give us a great deal more liberty.”

“Unless we should get caught. Then we would have a great deal less.
What’s your notion of a rig-up to disguise us, kid?”

“We might have several, in case of emergencies. For one thing, we could
easily be street showmen. You can do fancy shooting and I can do
sleight-of-hand tricks or tell fortunes.”

“You would be a gipsy lad?”

The youngster blushed. “A gipsy girl, and you might be my husband.”

“I’m no play actor, even if you are,” said Bucky. “I don’t want to be
your husband, thank you.”

“All you would have to do is to be sullen and rough. It is easy
enough.”

“And you think you could pass for a girl? You’re slim and soft enough,
but I’ll bet you would give it away inside of an hour.”

The boy laughed, and shot a swift glance at O’Connor under his long
lashes. “I appeared as a girl in one of the acts of the show for years.
Nobody ever suspected that I wasn’t.”

“We might try it, but we have no clothes for the part.”

“Leave that to me. I’ll buy some to-day while you are looking the
ground over for our first assault an the impregnable fortress.”

“I don’t know. It seems to me pretty risky. But you might buy the
things, and we’ll see how you look in them. Better not get all the
things at the same store. Sort of scatter your purchases around.”

They separated at the door of the hotel, Frank to choose the materials
he needed, and O’Connor to look up O’Halloran and get a permit to visit
the prison from the proper authorities. When the latter returned
triumphantly with his permit he found the boy busy with a needle and
thread and surrounded by a litter of dress-making material.

“I’m altering this to fit me and fixing it up,” he explained.

“Holy smoke! Who taught you to sew?” asked Bucky, in surprise.

“My aunt, Mrs. Hardman. I used to do all the plain sewing on my
costumes. Did you see your friend and get your permit?”

“You bet I did, and didn’t. Mickey was out, but I left him a note. The
other thing I pulled off all right. I’m to be allowed to visit the
prison and make a careful inspection of it at my leisure. There’s
nothing like a pull, son.”

“Does the permit say you are to be allowed to steal any one of the
prisoners you take a fancy to? asked Frank, with a smile.

“No, it forgot to say that. When do you expect to have that toggery
made?”

“A good deal of it is already made, as you see. I’m just making a few
changes. Do you want to try on your suit?”

“Is _this_ mine?” asked the ranger, picking up with smiling contempt
the rather gaudy blouse that lay on a chair.

“Yes, sir, that is yours. Go and put it on and we’ll see how it fits.”

Bucky returned a few minutes later in his gipsy uniform, with a
deprecating grin.

“I’ll have to stain your face. Then you’ll do very well,” said Frank,
patting and pulling at the clothes here and there. “It’s a good fit, if
I do say it that chose it. The first thing you want to do when you get
out in it is to roll in the dust and get it soiled. No respectable
gipsy wears new clothes. Better have a tear or two in it, too.”

“You ce’tainly should have been a girl, the way you take to clothes,
Curly.”

“Making up was my business for a good many years, you know,” returned
the lad quietly. “If you’ll step into the other room for about fifteen
minutes I’ll show you how well I can do it.”

It was a long half-hour later that Bucky thumped on the door between
the rooms. “Pretty nearly ready, kid? Seems to me it is taking you a
thundering long time to get that outfit on.”

“How long do you think it ought to take a lady to dress?”

“Ten minutes is long enough, and fifteen, say, if she is going to a
dance. You’ve been thirty-five by my Waterbury.”

“It’s plain you never were married, Mr. Innocent. Why, a girl can’t fix
her hair in less than half an hour.”

“Well, you got a wig there, ain’t you? It doesn’t take but about five
seconds to stick that on. Hurry up, _amigo!_ I’m clean through this old
newspaper.”

“Read the advertisements,” came saucily through the door.

“I’ve read the durned things twice.”

“Learn them by heart,” the sweet voice advised.

“Oh, you go to Halifax!”

Nevertheless, Mr. Bucky had to wait his comrade’s pleasure. But when he
got a vision of the result, it was so little what he had expected that
it left him staring in amazement, his jaw fallen and his eyes
incredulous.

The vision swept him a low bow. “How do you like Bonita?” it demanded
gaily.

Bucky’s eyes circled the room, to make sure that the boy was not hidden
somewhere, and came back to rest on his surprise with a look that was
almost consternation. Was this vivid, dazzling creature the boy he had
been patronizing, lecturing, promising to thrash any time during the
past four days? The thing was unbelievable, not yet to be credited by
his jarred brain. How incredibly blind he had been! What an idiot of
sorts! Why, the marks of sex sat on her beyond any possibility of
doubt. Every line of the slim, lissom figure, every curve of the soft,
undulating body, the sweep of rounded arm, of tapering waist-line, of
well-turned ankle, contributed evidence of what it were folly to ask
further proof. How could he have ever seen those lovely, soft-lashed
eyes and the delicate little hands without conviction coming home to
him? And how could he have heard the low murmur of her voice, the catch
of her sobs, without knowing that they were a denial of masculinity?

She was dressed like a Spanish dancing girl, in short kilts, red sash,
and jaunty little cap placed sidewise on her head. She wore a wig of
black hair, and her face was stained to a dusky, gipsy hue. Over her
thumb hung castanets and in her hand was a tambourine. Roguishly she
began to sway into a slow, rhythmic dance, beating time with her
instruments as she moved. Gradually the speed quickened to a faster
time. She swung gracefully to and fro with all the lithe agility of the
race she personified. No part could have been better conceived or
executed. Even physically she displayed the large, brilliant eyes, the
ringleted, coal-black hair, the tawny skin, and the flashing smile that
showed small teeth of dazzling ivory, characteristic of the Romanies he
had met. It was a daring part to play, but the young man watching
realized that she had the free grace to carry it out successfully. She
danced the fandango to a finish, swept him another low bow, and
presented laughingly to him the tambourine for his donation. Then,
suddenly flinging aside the instrument, she curtsied and caught at his
hand.

“Will the señor have his fortune told?”

Bucky drew a handful of change from his pocket and selected a gold
eagle. “I suppose I must cross your palm with gold,” he said, even
while his subconscious mind was running on the new complication
presented to him by this discovery.

He was very clear about one thing. He must not let her know that he
knew her for a girl. To him she must still be a boy, or their relation
would become impossible. She had trusted in her power to keep her
secret from him. On no other terms would she have come with him; of so
much he was sure, even while his mind groped for a sufficient reason to
account for an impulse that might have impelled her. If she found out
that he knew, the knowledge would certainly drive her at once from him.
For he knew that not the least charm of the extraordinary fascination
she had for him lay in her sweet innocence of heart, a fresh innocence
that consisted with this gay Romany abandon, and even with a mental
experience of the sordid, seamy side of life as comprehensive as that
of many a woman twice her age. She had been defrauded out of her
childish inheritance of innocence, but, somehow, even in her foul
environment the seeds of a rare personal purity had persistently sprung
up and flourished. Some flowers are of such native freshness that no
nauseous surroundings can kill their fragrance. And this was one of
them.

Meanwhile, her voice ran on with the patter of her craft. There was the
usual dark woman to be circumvented and the light one to be rewarded.
Jealousies and rivalries played their part in the nonsense she glibly
recited, and somewhere in the future lay, of course, great riches and
happiness for him.

With a queer little tug at his heart he watched the dainty finger that
ran so lightly over his open palm, watched, too, the bent head so
gracefully fine of outline and the face so mobile of expression when
the deep eyes lifted to his in question of the correctness of her
reading. He would miss the little partner that had wound himself so
tightly round his heart. He wondered if he would find compensating joy
in this exquisite creature whom a few moments had taken worlds distant
from him.

Suddenly tiring of her diversion, she dropped his hand. “You don’t say
I do it well,” she charged, aware suspiciously, at last, of his grave
silence.

“You do it very well indeed. I didn’t think you had it in you, kid.
What’s worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure enough
gipsy as you.”

“All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too
familiar with me. You can do that, can’t you?”

“You bet I can,” he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.

“And look handsome,” she teased.

“Oh, that will be easy for me—since you are going to make me up. As a
simple child of nature I’m no ornament to the scenery, but art’s a heap
improving sometimes.”

She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before it
could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the plains. It was
not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes that could say so many
things in a minute, but the gallant ease of his bearing. Such a springy
lightness, such sinewy grace of undulating muscle, were rare even on
the frontier. She had once heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he
could whip his weight in wildcats, and it was easy of belief after
seeing how surely he was master of the dynamic power in him. It is the
emergency that sifts men, and she had seen him rise to several with a
readiness that showed the stuff in him.

That evening they slipped out unobserved in the dusk, and a few minutes
later a young gipsy and his bride presented themselves at the inn to be
put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he
spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of
the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first
two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must
connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he
would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to
turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations in
the house. This being satisfactorily arranged, the young gipsies were
left to themselves in the room they had rented.

The first thing that the man did when they were alone was to roll a
cigarette, which operation he finished deftly with one hand, while the
other swept a match in a circular motion along his trousers leg. In
very fair English the Spanish gipsy said: “You ce’tainly ought to learn
to smoke, kid. Honest, it’s more comfort than a wife.”

“How do you know, since you are not married?” she asked archly.

“I been noticing some of my poor unfortunate friends,” he grinned.




CHAPTER VII.
IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS


The knock that sounded on the door was neither gentle nor apologetic.
It sounded as if somebody had flung a baseball bat at it.

O’Connor smiled, remembering that soft tap of yore. “I reckon—” he was
beginning, when the door opened to admit a visitor.

This proved to be a huge, red-haired Irishman, with a face that served
just now merely as a setting for an irresistible smile. The owner of
the flaming head looked round in surprise on the pair of Romanies and
began an immediate apology to which a sudden blush served as
accompaniment.

“Beg pardon. I didn’t know. The damned dago told me—” He stopped in
confusion, with a scrape and a bow to the lady.

“Sir, I demand an explanation of this most unwarrantable intrusion,”
spoke the ranger haughtily, in his best Spanish.

A patter of soft foreign vowels flowed from the stranger’s
embarrassment.

“You durned old hawss-stealing greaser, cayn’t you talk English?”
drawled the gipsy, with a grin.

The other’s mouth fell open with astonishment He stared at the slim,
dusky young Spaniard for an instant before he fell upon him and began
to pound his body with jovial fists.

“You would, would you, you old pie-eating fraud! Try to fool your Uncle
Mick and make him think you a greaser, would you? I’ll learn yez to
play horse with a fullgrown, able-bodied white man.” He punctuated his
points with short-arm jolts that Bucky laughingly parried.

“Before ladies, Mick! Haven’t you forgot your manners, Red-haid?”

Swiftly Mr. O’Halloran came to flushed rigidity. “Madam, I must still
be apologizing. The surprise of meeting me friend went to me head, I
shouldn’t wonder.”

Bucky doubled up with apparent mirth. “Get into the other room, Curly,
and get your other togs on,” he ordered. “Can’t you see that Mick is
going to fall in love with you if he sees you a minute longer, you
young rascal? Hike!”

“Don’t you talk that way to a lady, Bucky,” warned O’Halloran, again
blushing vividly, after she had disappeared into the next room. “And I
want to let yez have it right off the bat that if you’ve been leading
that little Mexican señorita into trouble you’ve got a quarrel on with
Mike O’Halloran.”

“Keep your shirt on, old fire-eater. Who told you I was wronging her
any?”

“Are you married to her?”

“You bet I ain’t. You see, Mick, that handsome lady you’re going to
lick the stuffing out of me about is only a plumb ornery sassy young
boy, after all.”

“No!” denied Mick, his eyes two excited interrogation-points. “You
can’t stuff me with any such fairy-tale, me lad.”

“All right. Wait and see,” suggested the ranger easily. “Have a smoke
while you’re falling out of love.”

“You young limb, I want you to tell me all about it this very minute,
before I punch holes in yez.”

Bucky lit his cigar, leaned back, and began to tell the story of Frank
Hardman and the knife-thrower. Only one thing he omitted to tell, and
that was the conviction that had come home to him a few moments ago
that his little comrade was no boy, but a woman. O’Halloran was a
chivalrous Irishman, a daredevil of an adventurer, with a pure love of
freedom that might very likely in the end bring him to face a row of
loaded carbines with his back to a wall, but Bucky had his reticencies
that even loyal friendship could not break down. This girl’s secret he
meant to guard until such time as she chose of her own free will to
tell it.

Frank returned just as he finished the tale of the knife episode, and
Mick’s frank open eyes accused him of idiocy for ever having supposed
that this lad was a woman. Why, he was a little fellow not over
fifteen—not a day past fifteen, he would swear to that. He was, to be
sure, a slender, girlish young fellow, a good deal of a sissy by the
look of him, but none the less a sure enough boy. Convinced of this,
the big Irishman dismissed him promptly from his thoughts and devoted
himself to Bucky.

“And what are yez doing down in greaser land? Thought you was rustling
cows for a living somewheres in sunburnt Arizona,” he grinned amiably.

“Me? Oh, I came down on business. We’ll talk about that presently.
How’s your one-hawss revolution getting along, Reddy? I hope it’s right
peart and healthy.”

O’Halloran’s eyes flashed a warning, with the slightest nod in the
world toward the boy.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s straight as a string and knows how to keep
his mouth shut. You can tell him anything you would me.” He turned to
the boy sitting quietly in an inconspicuous corner. “Mum’s the word,
Frank. You understand that, of course?”

The boy nodded. “I’ll go into the next room, if you like.”

“It isn’t necessary. Fire ahead, Mike.”

The latter got up, tiptoed to each door in turn, flung it suddenly open
to see that nobody was spying behind it, and then turned the lock. “I
have use for me head for another year or two, and it’s just as well to
see that nobody is spying. You understand, Bucky, that I’m risking me
life in telling you what I’m going to. If you have any doubts about
this lad—” He stopped, keen eyes fixed on Frank.

“He’s as safe as I am, Mike. Is it likely I would take any risks about
a thing of that sort with my old bunkie’s tough neck inviting the
hangman?” asked O’Connor quietly.

“Good enough. The kid looks stanch, and, anyhow, if you guarantee him
that’s enough for me.” He accepted another of the ranger’s cigars,
puffed it to a red glow, and leaned back to smile at his friend.
“Glory, but it’s good to see ye, Bucky, me bye. You’ll never know how a
man’s eyes ache to see a straight-up white man in this land of
greasers. It’s the God’s truth I’m telling ye when I say that I haven’t
had a scrimmage with me hands since I came here. The only idea this
forsaken country has of exchanging compliments is with a knife in the
dark.” He shook his flaming head regretfully at the deplorably lost
condition of a country where the shillalah was unknown as a social
institution.

“If I wasn’t tied up with this Valdez bunch I’d get out to-morrow, and
sometimes I have half a mind to pull out anyhow. If you’ve never been
associated, me lad, with half a dozen most divilishly polite señors,
each one of them watching the others out of the corner of his slant
eyes for fear they are going to betray him or assassinate him first,
you’ll never know the joys of life in this peaceful and contented land
of indolence. Life’s loaded to the guards with uncertainties, so eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you hang, or your friend will carve
ye in the back with a knife, me old priest used to say, or something
like it. ’Tis certain he must have had in mind the Spanish-American, my
son.”

“Which is why you’re here, you old fraud,” smiled Bucky. “You’ve got to
grumble, of course, but you couldn’t be dragged away while there’s a
chance of a row. Don’t I know you of old, Reddy?”

“Anyway, here I am, with me neck so near to the rope it fairly aches
sometimes. If you have any inclinations toward suicide, I’ll be glad to
introduce ye to me revolutionary friends.”

“Thank you, no. The fact is that we have a little private war of our
own on hand, Mike. I was thinking maybe you’d like to enlist, old
filibuster.”

“Is the pay good?”

“Nothing a day and find yourself,” answered Bucky promptly.

“No reasonable man could ask fairer than that,” agreed O’Halloran, his
grin expanding. “Well, then, what’s the row? Would ye like to be
dictator of Chihuahua or Emperor of Mexico?”

“There’s an American in the government prison here under a life
sentence. He is not guilty, and he has already served fifteen years.”

“He is like to serve fifteen more, if he lives that long.”

“Wrong guess. I mean to get him out.”

“And I’m meaning to go to Paradise some day, but will I?”

“You’re going to help me get him out, Mike.”

“Who told ye that, me optimistic young friend?”

“I didn’t need to be told.”

“Well, I’ll not lift a finger, Bucky—not a finger.”

“I knew you wouldn’t stand to see a man like Henderson rot in a
dungeon. No Irishman would.”

“You needn’t blarney me. I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff.
It’s a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I’m not
running the criminal jurisprudence of Mexico meself.”

“And I said to Webb Mackenzie: ‘Mickey O’Halloran is the man to see;
he’ll know the best way to do it as nobody else would.’ I knew I could
depend on you.”

“You’ve certainly kissed the blarney stone, Mr. O’Connor,” returned the
revolutionist dryly. “Well, then, what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing much. Get Henderson out and help us to get safely from the
country whose reputation you black-eye so cheerfully.”

“Mercy of Hiven! Bring me the moon and a handful of stars, says he, as
cool as you please.”

The ranger told the story of Henderson and Mackenzie’s lost child in
such a way that it lost nothing in the telling. O’Halloran was moved.
“’Tis a damned shame about this man Henderson,” he blurted out.

Bucky leaned back comfortably and waved airily his brown hand. “It’s up
to you,” his gay, impudent eyes seemed to say.

“I don’t say I won’t be able to help you,” conceded O’Halloran. “It
happens, me bye, that you’ve dropped in on me just before the band
begins to play.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “There’s a
shipment of pianos being brought down the line this week. The night
after they arrive I’m looking for music.”

“I see. The piano boxes are filled with rifles and ammunition.”

“You have a mind like a tack, Bucky. Rifles is the alias of them
pianos. They’ll make merry music once we get them through.”

“That’s all very well, but have you reckoned with the government at
Mexico? Chihuahua isn’t the whole country, Mickey. Suppose President
Diaz takes a hand in the game and sends troops in on you?”

“He won’t,” answered the other, with a wink. “He’s been seen. The
president isn’t any too friendly to that old tyrant Megales, who is now
governor here. There’s an election next week. The man that gets most
votes will be elected, and I’m thinking, Bucky, that the man with most
rifles will the most votes. Now, says Diaz, in effect, with an official
wave of his hand, ‘Settle your own rows, gintlemen. I don’t give a damn
whether Megales or Valdez is governor of Chihuahua, subject, of coorse,
to the will of the people.’ Then he winks at Valdez wid his off eye as
much as to say: ‘Go in an’ win, me boy; me prayers are supporting ye.
But be sure ye do nothing too illegal.’ So there ye are, Bucky. If ould
Megales was to wake up election morning and find that the
polling-places was in our hands, his soldiers disarmed or bought over,
and everything contributing smoothly to express the will of the people
in electing him to take a swift hike out of Chihuahua, it is likely
that he might accept the inevitable as the will of fate and make a
strategic retreat to climes more healthy.”

“And if in the meantime he should discover those rifles, or one of
those slant-eyed señors should turn out a Benedict Arnold, what then,
my friend?”

“Don’t talk in that cruel way. You make me neck ache in anticipation,”
returned O’Halloran blithely.

“I think we’ll not travel with you in public till after the election,
Mr. O’Halloran,” reflected Bucky aloud.

“’Twould be just as well, me son. My friends won’t be overpopular with
Megales if the cards fall his way.”

“If you win, I suppose we may count Henderson as good as a free man?”

“It would be a pity if me pull wouldn’t do a little thing like that,”
scoffed the conspirator genially.

“But, win or lose, I may be able to help you. We need musicians to play
those pianos we’re bringing in. Well, the most dependable men we can
set to play some of them are the prisoners in the fortress. There’s
likely to be a wholesale jail delivery the night before the election.
Now, it’s just probable that the lads we free will fight to keep their
freedom. That’s why we use them. They _have_ to be true to us because,
if they don’t, _whichever side wins_ back they go to jail.”

“Of course. I wish I could take a hand myself. But I can’t, because I’m
a soldier of a friendly power. We’ll get Henderson out the night before
the election and leave on the late train. You’ll have to arrange the
program in time for us to catch that train.”

O’Halloran looked drolly at him. “I’m liking your nerve, young man. I
pull the chestnuts out of the fire for yez and, likely enough, get
burned. You walk off with your chestnut, and never a ‘Thank ye’ for
poor Mickey the catspaw.”

“It doesn’t look like quite a square deal, does it?” laughed the
ranger. “Well, we might vary the program a bit. Bucky O’Connor, Arizona
ranger, can’t stop and take a hand in such a game, but I don’t know
anything to prevent a young gipsy from Spain staying over a few days.”

“If you stay, I shall,” announced the boy Frank.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind, seh. You’ll do just as I say, according
to the agreement you made with me when I let you come,” was Bucky’s
curt answer. “We’re not playing this game to please you, Master Frank.”

Yet though the ranger spoke curtly, though he still tried to hold
toward his comrade precisely the same attitude as he had before
discovering her sex, he could not put into his words the same
peremptory sting that, he had done before when he found that
occasionally necessary. For no matter how severely he must seem to deal
with her to avoid her own suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to
keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very
different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with
which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into
a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at
once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even
front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills
that shot his pulses.




CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST BLOOD!


Occasionally Alice Mackenzie met Collins on the streets of Tucson. Once
she saw him at the hotel where she was staying, deep in a discussion
with her father of ways and means of running down the robbers of the
Limited. He did not, however, make the least attempt to push their
train acquaintanceship beyond the give and take of casual greeting.
Without showing himself unfriendly, he gave her no opportunity to
determine how far they would go with each other. This rather piqued
her, though she would probably have rebuffed him if he had presumed
far. Of which probability Val Collins was very well aware.

They met one morning in front of a drug store downtown. She carried a
parasol that was lilac-trimmed, which shade was also the outstanding
note of her dress. She was looking her very best, and no doubt knew it.
To Val her dainty freshness seemed to breathe the sweetness of spring
violets.

“Good morning, Miss Mackenzie. Weather like this I’m awful glad I ain’t
a mummy,” he told her. “The world’s mighty full of beautiful things
this glad day.”

“Essay on the Appreciation of Nature, by Professor Collins,” she
smiled.

“To be continued in our next,” he amended. “Won’t you come in and have
a sundae? You look as if you didn’t know it, but the rest of us have
discovered it’s a right warm morning.”

Looking across the little table at him over her sundae, she questioned
him with innocent impudence. “I saw you and dad deep in plans Tuesday.
I suppose by now you have all the train robbers safely tucked away in
the penitentiary?”

“Not yet,” he answered cheerfully.

“Not yet!” Her lifted eyebrows and the derisive flash beneath mocked
politely his confidence. “By this time I should think they might be
hunting big game in deepest Africa.”

“They might be, but they’re not.”

“What about that investment in futurities you made on the train? The
month is more than half up. Do you see any chance of realizing?”

“It looks now as if I might be a false prophet, but I feel way down
deep that I won’t. In this prophet’s business confidence is half the
stock in trade.”

“Really. I’m very curious to know what it is you predicted. Was it
something good?”

“Good for me,” he nodded.

“Then I think you’ll get it,” she laughed. “I have noticed that it is
the people that expect things—and then go out and take them—that
inherit the earth these days. The meek have been dispossessed.”

“I’m glad I have your good wishes.”

“I didn’t say you had, but you’ll get along just as well without them,”
she answered with a cool little laugh as she rose.

“I’d like to discuss that proposition with you more at length. May I
call on you some evening this week, Miss Mackenzie?”

There was a sparkle of hidden malice in her answer. “You’re too late,
Mr. Collins. We’ll have to leave it undiscussed. I’m going to leave
to-day for my uncle s ranch, the Rocking Chair.”

He was distinctly disappointed, though he took care not to show it.
Nevertheless, the town felt empty after her train had gone. He was glad
when later in the day a message came calling him to Epitaph. It took
him at least seventy-five miles nearer her.

Before he had been an hour at Epitaph the sheriff knew he had struck
gold this time. Men were in town spending money lavishly, and at a
rough description they answered to the ones he wanted. Into the Gold
Nugget Saloon that evening dropped Val Collins, big, blond, and jaunty.
He looked far less the vigorous sheriff out for business than the
gregarious cowpuncher on a search for amusement.

Del Hawkes, an old-time friend of his staging days, pounced on him and
dragged him to the bar, whence his glance fell genially on the roulette
wheel and its devotees, wandered casually across the impassive poker
and Mexican monte players, took in the enthroned musicians, who were
industriously murdering “La Paloma,” and came to rest for barely an
instant at a distant faro table. In the curly-haired good-looking young
fellow facing the dealer he saw one of the men he had come seeking. Nor
did he need to look for the hand with the missing trigger finger to be
sure it was York Neil—that same gay, merry-hearted York with whom he
used to ride the range, changed now to a miscreant who had elected to
take the short cut to wealth.

But the man beside Neil, the dark-haired, pallid fellow from whose
presence something at once formidable and sinister and yet gallant
seemed to breathe—the very sight of him set the mind of Collins at work
busily upon a wild guess. Surely here was a worthy figure upon whom to
set the name and reputation of the notorious Wolf Leroy.

Yet the sheriff’s eyes rested scarce an instant before they went
traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in
the object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one,
picturesque in its diversity. For here had drifted not only the
stranded derelicts of a frontier civilization, but selected types of
all the turbid elements that go to make up its success. Mexican,
millionaire, and miner brushed shoulders at the roulette-wheel.
Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and plainsman, tourist and tailor,
bucked the tiger side by side with a democracy found nowhere else in
the world. The click of the wheel, the monotonous call of the croupier,
the murmur of many voices in alien tongues, and the high-pitched
jarring note of boisterous laughter, were all merged in a medley of
confusion as picturesque as the scene itself.

“Business not anyways slack at the Nugget,” ventured Collins, to the
bartender.

“No, I don’t know as ’tis. Nearly always somethin’ doing in little old
Epitaph,” answered the public quencher of thirsts, polishing the glass
top of the bar with a cloth.

“Playing with the lid off back there, ain’t they?” The sheriff’s nod
indicated the distant faro-table.

“That’s right, I guess. Only blue chips go.”

“It’s Wolf Leroy—that Mexican-looking fellow there,” Hawkes explained
in a whisper. “A bad man with the gun, they say, too. Well, him and
York Neil and Scotty Dailey blew in last night from their mine, up at
Saguache. Gave it out he was going to break the bank, Leroy did.
Backing that opinion usually comes high, but Leroy is about two
thousand to the good, they say.”

“Scotty Dailey? Don’t think I know him.”

“That shorthorn in chaps and a yellow bandanna is the gentleman; him
that’s playing the wheel so constant. You don’t miss no world-beater
when you don’t know Scotty. He’s Leroy’s Man Friday. Understand they’ve
struck it rich. Anyway, they’re hitting high places while the mazuma
lasts.”

“I can’t seem to locate their mine. What’s its brand?”

“The Dalriada. Some other guy is in with them; fellow by the name of
Hardman, if I recollect; just bought out a livery barn in town here.”

“Queer thing, luck; strikes about as unexpected as lightning. Have
another, Del?”

“Don’t care if I do, Val. It always makes me thirsty to see people I
like. Anything new up Tucson way?”

The band had fallen on “Manzanilla,” and was rending it with variations
when Collins circled round to the wheel and began playing the red. He
took a place beside the bow-legged vaquero with the yellow bandanna
knotted loosely round his throat. For five minutes the cow-puncher
attended strictly to his bets. Then he cursed softly, and asked Collins
to exchange places with him.

“This place is my hoodoo. I can’t win—” The sentence died in the man’s
throat, became an inarticulate gurgle of dismay.

He had looked up and met the steady eyes of the sheriff, and the
surprise of it had driven the blood from his heart. A revolver thrust
into his face could not have shaken him more than that serene smile.

Collins took him by the arm with a jovial laugh meant to cover their
retreat, and led him into one of the curtained alcove rooms. As they
entered he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Leroy and Neil
were still intent on their game. Not for a moment, not even while the
barkeeper was answering their call for liquor, did the sheriff release
Scotty from the rigor of his eyes, and when the attendant drew the
curtain behind him the officer let his smile take on a new meaning.

“What did I tell you, Scotty?”

“Prove it,” defied Scotty. “Prove it—you can’t prove it.”

“What can’t I prove?”

“Why, that I was in that—” Scotty stopped abruptly, and watched the
smile broaden on the strong face opposite him. His dull brain had come
to his rescue none too soon.

“Now, ain’t it funny how people’s thoughts get to running on the same
thing? Last time I met up with you there you was collecting a hundred
dollars and keep-the-change cents from me, and now here you are
spending it. It’s ce’tinly curious how both of us are remembering that
little seance in the Pullman car.”

Scotty took refuge in a dogged silence. He was sweating fear.

“Yes, sir. It comes up right vivid before me. There was you a-trainin’
your guns on me—”

“I wasn’t,” broke in Scotty, falling into the trap.

“That’s right. How come I to make such a mistake? Of cou’se you carried
the sack and York Neil held the guns.”

The man cursed quietly, and relapsed into silence.

“Always buy your clothes in pairs?”

The sheriff’s voice showed only a pleasant interest, but the outlaw’s
frightened eyes were puzzled at this sudden turn.

“Wearing a bandanna same color and pattern as you did the night of our
jamboree on the Limited, I see. That’s mightily careless of you, ain’t
it?”

Instinctively a shaking hand clutched at the kerchief. “It don’t cut
any ice because a hold-up wears a mask made out of stuff like this.”

“Did I say it was a mask he wore?” the gentle voice quizzed.

Scotty, beads of perspiration on his forehead, collapsed as to his
defense. He fell back sullenly to his first position: “You can’t prove
anything.”

“Can’t I?” The sheriff’s smile went out like a snuffed candle. Eyes and
mouth were cold and hard as chiseled marble. He leaned forward far
across the table, a confident, dominating assurance painted on his
face. “Can’t I? Don’t you bank on that. I can prove all I need to, and
your friends will prove the rest. They’ll be falling all over
themselves to tell what they know—and Mr. Dailey will be holding the
sack again, while Leroy and the rest are slipping out.”

The outlaw sprang to his feet, white to the lips.

“It’s a damned lie. Leroy would never—” He stopped, again just in time
to bite back the confession hovering on his lips. But he had told what
Collins wanted to know.

The curtain parted, and a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe
figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face
gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before
they came home to the sheriff.

“And what is it Leroy would never do?” a gibing voice demanded silkily.

Scotty pulled himself together and tried to bluff, but at the look on
his chief’s face the words died in his throat.

Collins did not lift a finger or move an eyelash, but with the first
word a wary alertness ran through him and starched his figure to
rigidity. He gathered himself together for what might come.

“Well, I am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?” The voice
carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had
stricken conspirators dumb.

Collins offered the explanation.

“Mr. Dailey was beginning a testimonial of your virtues just as you
right happily arrived in time to hear it. Perhaps he will now proceed.”

But Dailey had never a word left. His blunders had been crying ones,
and his chief’s menacing look had warned him what to expect. The
courage oozed out of his heart, for he counted himself already a dead
man.

“And who are you, my friend, that make so free with Wolf Leroy’s name?”
It was odd how every word of the drawling sentence contrived to carry a
taunt and a threat with it, strange what a deadly menace the glittering
eyes shot forth.

“My name is Collins.”

“Sheriff of Pica County?”

“Yes.”

The eyes of the men met like rapiers, as steady and as searching as
cold steel. Each of them was appraising the rare quality of his
opponent in this duel to the death that was before him.

“What are you doing here? Ain’t Pica County your range?”

“I’ve been discussing with your friend the late hold-up on the
Transcontinental Pacific.”

“Ah!” Leroy knew that the sheriff was serving notice on them of his
purpose to run down the bandits. Swiftly his mind swept up the factors
of the situation. Should he draw now and chance the result, or wait for
a more certain ending? He decided to wait, moved by the consideration
that even if he were victorious the lawyers were sure to draw out of
the fat-brained Scotty the cause of the quarrel.

“Well, that don’t interest me any, though I suppose you have to explain
a heap how come they to hold you up and take your gun. I’ll leave you
and your jelly-fish Scotty to your gabfest. Then you better run back
home to Tucson. We don’t go much on visiting sheriffs here.” He turned
on his heel with an insolent laugh, and left the sheriff alone with
Dailey.

The superb contempt of the man, his readiness to give the sheriff a
chance to pump out of Dailey all he knew, served to warn Collins that
his life was in imminent danger. On no hypothesis save one—that Leroy
had already condemned them both to death in his mind—could he account
for such rashness. And that the blow would fall soon, before he had
time to confer with other officers, was a corollary to the first
proposition.

“He’ll surely kill me on sight,” Scotty burst out.

“Yes, he’ll kill you,” agreed the sheriff, “unless you move first.”

“Move how?”

“Against him. Protect yourself by lining up with me. It’s your only
show on earth.”

Dailey’s eyes flashed. “Then, by thunder, I ain’t taking it! I’m no
coyote, to round on my pardners.”

“I give it to you straight. He means murder.”

Perspiration poured from the man’s face. “I’ll light out of the
country.”

The sheriff shook his head. “You’d never get away alive. Besides, I
want you for holding up the Limited. The safest place for you is in
jail, and that’s where I’m going to put you. Drop that gun! Quick!
That’s right. Now, you and I are going out of this saloon by the back
door. I’m going to walk beside you, and we’re going to laugh and talk
as if we were the best of friends, but my hand ain’t straying any from
the end of my gun. Get that, amigo? All right. Then we’ll take a little
_pasear_.”

As Collins and his prisoner reappeared in the main lobby of the Gold
Nugget, a Mexican slipped out of the back door of the gambling-house.
The sheriff called Hawkes aside.

“I want you to call a hack for me, Del. Bring it round to the back
door, and arrange with the driver to whip up for the depot as soon as
we get in. We ought to catch that 12:20 up-train. When the hack gets
here just show up in the door. If you see Leroy or Neil hanging around
the door, put your hand up to your tie. If the coast is clear, just
move off to the bar and order something.”

“Sure,” said Hawkes, and was off at once, though just a thought
unsteady from his frequent libations.

Both hands of the big clock on the wall pointed to twelve when Hawkes
appeared again in the doorway at the rear of the Gold Nugget. With a
wink at Collins, he made straight for the cocktail he thought he
needed.

“Now,” said the sheriff, and immediately he and Dailey passed through
the back door.

Instantly two shots rang out. Collins lurched forward to the ground,
drawing his revolver as he fell. Scotty, twisting from his grasp, ran
in a crouch toward the alley along the shadow of the buildings. Shots
spattered against the wall as his pursuers gave chase. When the Gold
Nugget vomited from its rear door a rush of humanity eager to see the
trouble, the noise of their footsteps was already dying in the
distance.

Hawkes found his friend leaning against the back of the hack, his
revolver smoking in his hand.

“For God’s sake, Val!” screamed Hawkes. “Did they get you?”

“Punctured my leg. That’s all. But I expect they’ll get Dailey.”

“How come you to go out when I signaled you to stay?”

“Signaled me to stay, why—”

Collins stopped, unwilling to blame his friend. He knew now that
Hawkes, having mixed his drinks earlier in the evening, had mixed his
signals later.

“Get me a horse, Del, and round up two or three of the boys. I’ve got
to get after those fellows. They are the ones that held up the Limited
last week. Find out for me what hotel they put up at here. I want their
rooms searched. Send somebody round to the corrals, and let me know
where they stabled their horses. If they left any papers or
saddle-bags, get them for me.”

Fifteen minutes later Collins was in the saddle ready for the chase,
and only waiting for his volunteer posse to join him. They were just
starting when a frightened Chinaman ran into the plaza with the news
that there had been shooting just back of his laundry on the edge of
town and that a man had been killed.

When the sheriff reached the spot, he lowered himself from the saddle
and limped over to the black mass huddled against the wall in the
bright moonlight. He turned the riddled body over and looked down into
the face of the dead man. I was that of the outlaw, Scotty Dailey. That
the body had been thoroughly searched was evident, for all around him
were scattered his belongings. Here an old letter and a sack of
tobacco, its contents emptied on the ground; there his coat and vest,
the linings of each of them ripped out and the pockets emptied. Even
the boots and socks of the man had been removed, so thorough had been
the search. Whatever the murderers had been looking for it was not
money, since his purse, still fairly well lined with greenbacks, was
found behind a cactus bush a few yards away.

“What in time were they after?” frowned Collins. “If it wasn’t his
money—and it sure wasn’t—what was it? I ce’tainly would like to know
what the Wolf wanted so blamed bad. Guess I’ll not follow Mr. Leroy
just now till my leg is in better shape. Maybe I had better investigate
a little bit round town first.”

The body was taken back to the Gold Nugget and placed on a table,
pending the arrival of the undertaker. It chanced that Collins, looking
absently over the crowd, glimpsed a gray felt hat that looked familiar
by reason of a frayed silver band found it. Underneath the hat was a
Mexican, and him the sheriff ordered to step forward.

“Where did you get that hat, Manuel?”

“My name is José—José Archuleta,” corrected the olive-hued one.

“I ain’t worrying about your name, son. What I want to know is where
you found that hat.”

“In the alley off the plaza, señor.”

“All right. Chuck it up here.”

“_Muy bien, señor_.” And the dusty hat was passed from hand to hand
till it reached the sheriff.

Collins ripped off the silver band and tore out the sweat-pad. It was
an off chance—one in a thousand—but worth trying none the less. And a
moment later he knew it was the chance that won. For sewed to the
inside of the discolored sweat-pad was a little strip of silk. With his
knife he carefully removed the strip, and found between it and the
leather a folded fragment of paper closely covered with writing. He
carried this to the light, and made it out to be a memorandum of
direction of some sort. Slowly he spelled out the poorly written words:

From Y. N. took Unowhat. Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight
feet direckly west. Fifty yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke.
Then eighteen to nerest cotonwood. J. H. begins hear.


Collins read the scrawl twice before an inkling of its meaning came
home to him. Then in a flash his brain was lighted. It was a memorandum
of the place where Dailey’s share of the plunder was buried.

His confederates had known that he had it, and had risked capture to
make a thorough search for the paper. That they had not found it was
due only to the fact that the murdered man had lost his hat as he
scurried down the streets before them.

The doctor, having arrived, examined the wound and suggested an
anaesthetic. Collins laughed.

“I reckon not, doc. You round up that lead pill and I’ll endure the
grief without knockout drops.”

While the doctor was probing for the bullet lodged in his leg, the
sheriff studied the memorandum found in Dailey’s hat. He found it
blind, disappointing work, for there was no clearly indicated
starting-point. Bit by bit he took it:

From Y. N. took Unowhat.


This was clear enough, so far as it went. It could only mean that from
York Neil the writer had taken the plunder to hide. But _where_ did he
take it? From what point? A starting-point must be found somewhere, or
the memorandum was of no use. Probably only Neil could supply the
needed information, now that Dailey was dead.

Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight feet direckly west. Fifty
yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke. Then eighteen to nerest
cotonwood.


All this was plain enough, but the last sentence was the puzzler.

J. H. begins hear.


Was J. H. a person? If so, what did he begin. If Dailey had buried his
plunder, what had J. H. left to do?

But _had_ he buried it? Collins smiled. It was not likely he had handed
it over to anybody else to hide for him. And yet—

He clapped his hand down on his knee. “By the jumping California frog,
I’ve got it!” he told himself. “They hid the bulk of what they got from
the Limited all together. Went out in a bunch to hide it. Blind-folded
each other, and took turn about blinding up the trail. No one of them
can go get the loot without the rest. When they want it, every one of
these memoranda must be Johnny-on-the-spot before they can dig up the
mazuma. No wonder Wolf Leroy searched so thorough for this bit of
paper. I’ll bet a stack of blue chips against Wolf’s chance of heaven
that he’s the sorest train-robber right this moment that ever punctured
a car-window.”

Collins laughed softly, nor had the smile died out of his eyes when
Hawkes came into the room with information to the point. He had made a
round of the corrals, and discovered that the outlaws’ horses had been
put up at Jay Hardman’s place, a tumble-down feed-station on the edge
of town.

“Jay didn’t take kindly to my questions,” Hawkes explained, “but after
a little rock-me-to-sleep-mother talk I soothed him down some, and cut
the trail of Wolf Leroy and his partners. The old man give me several
specimens of langwidge unwashed and uncombed when I told him Wolf and
York was outlaws and train-robbers. Didn’t believe a word of it, he
said. ’Twas just like the fool officers to jump an innocent party. I
told Jay to keep his shirt on—he could turn his wolf lose when they
framed up that he was in it. Well, sir! I plumb thought for a moment he
was going to draw on me when I said that. Say he must be the fellow
that’s in on that mine, with Leroy and York Neil. He’s a big,
long-haired guy.”

Collins’ eyes narrowed to slits, as they always did when he was
thinking intensely. Were their suspicions of the showman about to be
justified? Did Jay Hardman’s interest in Leroy have its source merely
in their being birds of a feather, or was there a more direct community
of lawlessness between them? Was he a member of Wolf Leroy’s murderous
gang? Three men had joined in the chase of Dailey, but the tracks had
told him that only two horses had galloped from the scene of the murder
into the night. The inference left to draw was that a local accomplice
had joined them in the chase of Scotty, and had slipped back home after
the deed had been finished.

What more likely than that Hardman had been this accomplice? Hawkes
said he was a big long-haired fellow. So was the man that had held up
the engineer of the Limited. He was—“J. H. begins hear.” Like a flash
the ill-written scrawl jumped to his sight. “J. H.” was Jay Hardman.
What luck!

The doctor finished his work, and Collins tested his leg gingerly.
“Del, I’m going over to have a little talk with the old man. Want to go
along?”

“You bet I do, Val”—from Del Hawkes.

“You mustn’t walk on that leg for a week or two yet, Mr. Collins,” the
doctor explained, shaking his head.

“That so, doctor? And it nothing but a nice clean flesh-wound! Sho!
I’ve a deal more confidence in you than that. Ready, Del?”

“It’s at your risk then, Mr. Collins.”

“Sure.” The sheriff smiled. “I’m living at my own risk, doctor. But I’d
a heap rather be alive than daid, and take all the risk that’s coming,
too. But since you make a point of it, I’ll do most of my walking on a
bronco’s back.”

They found Mr. Hardman just emerging from the stable with a saddle-pony
when they rode into the corral. At a word from Collins, Hawkes took the
precaution to close the corral gate.

The fellow held a wary position on the farther side of his horse, the
while he ripped out a raucous string of invectives.

“Real fluent, ain’t he?” murmured Hawkes, as he began to circle round
to flank the enemy.

“Stay right there, Del Hawkes. Move, you redhaided son of a brand
blotter, and I’ll pump holes in you!” A rifle leveled across the saddle
emphasized his sentiments.

“Plumb hospitable,” grinned Hawkes, coming promptly to a halt.

Collins rode slowly forward, his hand on the butt of the revolver that
still lay in its scabbard. The Winchester covered every step of his
progress, but he neither hastened nor faltered, though he knew his life
hung in the balance. If his steely blue eyes had released for one
moment the wolfish ones of the villain, if he had hesitated or hurried,
he would have been shot through the head.

But the eyes of a brave man are the king of weapons. Hardman’s fingers
itched at the trigger he had not the courage to pull. For such an
unflawed nerve he knew himself no match.

“Keep back,” he screamed. “Damn it, another step and I’ll fire!”

But he did not fire, though Collins rode up to him, dismounted, and
threw the end of the rifle carelessly from him.

“Don’t be rash, Hardman. I’ve come here to put you under arrest for
robbing the T. P. Limited, and I’m going to do it.”

The indolent, contemptuous drawl, so free of even a suggestion of the
strain the sheriff must have been under, completed his victory. The
fellow lowered his rifle with a peevish oath.

“You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, Mr. Collins.”

“I guess not,” retorted the sheriff easily. “Del, you better relieve
Mr. Hardman of his ballast. He ain’t really fit to be trusted with a
weapon, and him so excitable. That Winchester came awful near going
off, friend. You don’t want to be so careless when you’re playing with
firearms. It’s a habit that’s liable to get you into trouble.”

Collins had not shaved death so closely without feeling a reaction of
boyish gaiety at his adventure. It bubbled up in his talk like
effervescing soda.

“Now we’ll go into a committee of the whole, gentlemen, adjourn to the
stable, and have a little game of ‘Button, button, who’s got the
button?’ You first, Mr. Hardman. If you’ll kindly shuck your coat and
vest, we’ll begin button-hunting.”

They diligently searched the miscreant without hiding anything
pertaining to “J. H. begins hear.”

“He’s bound to have it somewhere,” asseverated Collins. “It don’t stand
to reason he was making his getaway without that paper. We got to be
more thorough, Del.”

Hawkes, under the direction of his friend, ripped up linings and tore
away pockets from clothing. The saddle on the bronco and the
saddle-blankets were also torn to pieces in vain.

Finally Hawkes scratched his poll and looked down on the wreckage. “I
hate to admit it, Val, but the old fox has got us beat; it ain’t on his
person.”

“Not unless he’s got it under his skin,” agreed Collins, with a grin.

“Maybe he ate it. Think we better operate and find out?”

An idea hit the sheriff. He walked up to Hardman and ordered him to
open his mouth.

The jaws set like a vise.

Collins poked his revolver against the closed mouth. “Swear for us, old
bird. Get a move on you.”

The mouth opened, and Collins inserted two fingers. When he withdrew
them they brought a set of false teeth. Under the plate was a tiny
rubber bag that stuck to it. Inside the bag was a paper. And on it was
written four lines in Spanish. Those lines told what he wanted to know.
They, too, were part of a direction for finding hidden treasure.

The sheriff wired at once to Bucky, in Chihuahua. Translated into plain
English, his cipher dispatch meant: “Come home at once. Trail getting
red hot.”

But Bucky did not come. As it happened, that young man had other fish
to fry.




CHAPTER IX.
“ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D.”


After all, adventures are to the adventurous. In this prosaic twentieth
century the Land of Romance still beckons to eager eyes and gallant
hearts. The rutted money-grabber may deny till he is a nerve-racked
counting-machine, but youth, even to the end of time, will laugh to
scorn his pessimism and venture with elastic heel where danger and
mystery offer their dubious hazards.

So it was that Bucky and his little comrade found nothing of dulness in
the mission to which they had devoted themselves. In their task of
winning freedom for the American immured in the Chihuahua dungeon they
already found themselves in the heart of a web of intrigue, the stakes
of which were so high as to carry life and death with them in the
balance. But for them the sun shone brightly. It was enough that they
played the game and shared the risks together. The jocund morning was
in their hearts, and brought with it an augury of success based on
nothing so humdrum or tangible as reason.

O’Connor carried with him to the grim fortress not only his permit for
an inspection, but also a note from O’Halloran that was even more
potent in effect. For Colonel Ferdinand Gabilonda, warden of the
prison, had a shrewd suspicion that a plot was under way to overthrow
the unpopular administration of Megales, and though he was an
office-holder under the present government he had no objection to
ingratiating himself with the opposition, providing it could be done
without compromising himself openly. In other words, the warden was
sitting on the fence waiting to see which way the cat would jump. If
the insurgents proved the stronger party, he meant to throw up his hat
and shout “Viva Valdez.” On the other hand, if the government party
crushed them he would show himself fussily active in behalf of Megales.
Just now he was exerting all his diplomacy to maintain a pleasant
relationship with both. Since it was entirely possible that the big
Irishman O’Halloran might be the man on horseback within a very few
days, the colonel was all suave words and honeyed smiles to his friend
the ranger.

Indeed he did him the unusual honor of a personally conducted
inspection. Gabilonda was a fat little man, with a soft, purring voice
and a pompous manner. He gushed with the courteous volubility of his
nation, explaining with great gusto this and that detail of the work.
Bucky gave him outwardly a deferent ear, but his alert mind and eyes
were scanning the prisoners they saw. The ranger was trying to find in
one of these scowling, defiant faces some resemblance to the picture
his mind had made of Henderson.

But Bucky looked in vain. If the man he wanted was among these he had
changed beyond recognition. In the end he was forced to ask Gabilonda
plainly if he would not take him to see David Henderson, as he knew a
man in Arizona who was an old friend of his, and he would like to be
able to tell him that he had seen his friend.

Henderson was breaking stone when O’Connor got his first glimpse of
him. He continued to swing his hammer listlessly, without looking up,
when the door opened to let in the warden and his guests. But something
in the ranger’s steady gaze drew his eyes. They were dull eyes, and
sullen, but when he saw that Bucky was an American, the fire of
intelligence flashed into them.

“May I speak to him?” asked O’Connor.

“It is against the rules, señor, but if you will be brief—” The colonel
shrugged, and turned his back to them, in order not to see. It must be
said for Gabilonda that his capacity for blinking what he did not think
it judicious to see was enormous.

“You are David Henderson, are you not?” The ranger asked, in a low
voice.

Surprise filtered into the dull eyes. “That was my name,” the man
answered bitterly. “I have a number now.”

“I come from Webb Mackenzie to get you out of this,” the ranger said.

The man’s eyes were no longer dull now, but flaming with hatred. “Curse
him, I’ll take nothing from his hands. For fifteen years he has let me
rot in hell without lifting a hand for me.”

“He thought you dead. It can all be explained. It was only last week
that the mystery of your disappearance was solved.”

“Then why didn’t he come himself? It was to save his little girl I got
myself into this place. If I had been in his shoes I would have come if
I’d had to crawl on my hands and knees.”

“He doesn’t know yet you are here. I wrote him simply that I knew where
you were, and then I came at once.” Bucky glanced round warily at the
fat colonel gazing placidly out of the barred window. “I mean to rescue
you, and I knew if he were here his impulsiveness would ruin
everything.”

“Do you mean it? For God’s sake! don’t lie to me. If there’s no hope
for me, don’t say there is.” The prisoner’s voice shook and his hands
trembled. He was only the husk of the man he had been, but it did
Bucky’s heart good to see that the germ of life was still in him. Back
in Arizona, on the Rocking Chair Ranch, with the free winds of the
plains beating on his face, he would pick up again the old strands of
his broken life, would again learn to love the lowing of cattle and the
early morning call of the hooter to his mate.

“I mean it. As sure as I stand here I’ll get you out, or, if I don’t,
Webb Mackenzie will. We’re calling the matter to the attention of the
United States Government, but we are not going to wait till that time
to free you. Keep up your courage, man. It is only for a little time
now.”

Tears leaped to the prisoner’s eyes. He had been a game man in the dead
years that were past, none gamer in Texas, and he could still face his
jailers with an impassive face; but this first kindly word from his
native land in fifteen years to the man buried alive touched the fount
of his emotions. He turned away and leaned against the grating of his
cell, his head resting on his forearm. “My God! man, you don’t know
what it means to me. Sometimes I think I shall go mad and rave. After
all these years. But I know you’ll fail—It’s too good to be true,” he
finished quietly.

“I’ll not fail, though I may be delayed. But I can’t say more.
Gabilonda is coming back. Next time I see you it will be to take you
out to freedom. Think of that always, and believe it.”

Gabilonda bowed urbanely. “If the señor has seen all he cares to of
this department we will return to the office,” he suggested suavely.

“Certainly, colonel. I can’t appreciate too much your kindness in
allowing me to study your system so carefully.”

“Any friend of my friend the Señor O’Halloran is cherished deeply in my
heart,” came back the smiling colonel, with a wave of his plump, soft
hand.

“I am honored, sir, to receive such consideration at the hands of so
distinguished a soldier as Colonel Gabilonda,” bowed Bucky gravely, in
his turn, with the most flowery Spanish he could muster.

There was another half-hour of the mutual exchange of compliments
before O’Connor could get away. Alphonse and Gaston were fairly
outdone, for the Arizonian, with a smile hidden deep behind the
solemnity of his blue eyes, gave as good as he got. When he was at last
fairly in the safety of his own rooms he gave way to limp laughter
while describing to his little friend that most ceremonious parting.

“He pressed me to his manly bay window, Curly, and allowed he was plumb
tickled to death to have met me. Says I, coming back equal strong,
’twas the most glorious day of my life.”

“Oh, I know _you_,” answered young Hardman, with a smile.

“A friend of his friend O’Halloran—”

“Mr. O’Halloran was here while you were away. He seemed very anxious to
see you; said he would call again in an hour. I think it must be
important.”

Came at that instant O’Halloran’s ungentle knock, on the heels of which
his red head came through the open door.

“You’re the very lad I’m wanting to see, Bucky,” he announced, and
followed this declaration by locking all the doors and beckoning him to
the center of the room.

“Is that tough neck of yours aching again, Reddy?” inquired his friend
whimsically.

“It is that, me bye. There’s the very divil to pay,” he whispered.

“Cough it out, Mike.”

“That tyrant Megales is onto our game. Somebody’s leaked, or else he
has a spy in our councils—as we have in his, the ould scoundrel.”

“I see. Your spy has told you that his spy has reported to him—”

“That the guns are to be brought in to-night. He has sent out a guard
to bring them in safely to _him_. If he gets them, our game is up, me
son, and you can bet your last nickle on that.”

“If he gets them! Is there a chance for us?”

“Glory be! there is. You see, he doesn’t know that we know what he has
done. For that reason he sent out only a guard of forty men. If he sent
more we would suspect what he was doing, ye see. That is the way the
old fox reasoned. But forty—they were able to slip out of the city on
last night’s train in civilian’s clothes and their arms in a couple of
coffins.”

“Why didn’t he send a couple of hundred men openly, and at the same
time arrest you all?”

“That doesn’t suit his book at all. For one thing, he probably doesn’t
know all of us, and he doesn’t want to bag half of us and throw the
rest into immediate rebellion. It’s his play not to force the issue
until after the election, Bucky. He controls all the election machinery
and will have himself declared reëlected, the old scamp,
notwithstanding that he’s the most unpopular man in the State. To
precipitate trouble now would be just foolishness, he argues. So he’ll
just capture our arms, and after the election give me and my friends
quiet hell. Nothing public, you know—just unfortunate assassinations
that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been
assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It’s very
destructive to a man’s future usefulness.”

“And so?” laughed the ranger.

“And so we’ve arranged to take a few lads up the line and have a train
hold-up. I’m the robber-in-chief. Would ye like to be second in command
of the lawless ruffians, me son?”

Bucky met his twinkling eye gaily. “Mr. O’Connor is debarred from
taking part in such an outrageous affair by international etiquette,
but he knows a gypsy lad would be right glad to join, I reckon.”

“Bully for him. If you’ll kindly have him here I’ll come around and
collect him this evening at eight-thirty sharp.”

“I hope you’ll provide a pleasant entertainment for him.”

“We’ll do our best,” grinned the revolutionist. “Music provided by
Megales’ crack military band. A lively and enjoyable occasion
guaranteed to all who attend. Your friend will meet some of the
smartest officers in the State. It promises to be a most sumptuous
affair.”

“Then my friend accepts with pleasure.”

After the conspirator had gone, Frank spoke up. “You wouldn’t go away
with him and leave me here alone, would you?”

“I ce’tainly shouldn’t take you with me, kid. I don’t want my little
friend all shot up by greasers.”

“If you’re going, I want to go, too. Supposing—if anything were to
happen to you, what could I do?”

“Leave the country by the next train. Those are the orders.”

“You’re always talking about a square deal. Do you think that is one? I
might say that I don’t want _you_ shot. You don’t care anything about
my feelings.” The soft voice had a little break in it that Bucky loved.

He walked across to his partner, that rare, tender smile of his in his
eyes. “If I’m always talking about a square deal I reckon I have got to
give you one. Now, what would you think a square deal, Curly? Would it
be square for me to let my friend O’Halloran stand all the risk of this
and then me take the reward when Henderson has been freed by him? Would
that be your notion of the right telling?”

“I didn’t say that, though I don’t see why you have to mix yourself up
in his troubles. Why should you go out and kill these soldiers that
haven’t injured you?”

“I’m not going to kill any of them,” he smiled “Besides, that isn’t the
way I look at it. This fellow Megales is a despot. He has made out to
steal the liberty of the people from them. President Diaz can’t
interfere because the old rascal governor does everything with that
smooth, oily way of his under cover of law. It’s up to some of the
people to put up a good strong kick for themselves. I ain’t a bit sorry
to give them the loan of my foot while they are doing it.”

“Then can’t I go, too? I don’t want to be left alone here and you away
fighting.”

Bucky’s eyes gleamed. He dared an experiment in an indifferent drawl.
“Whyfor don’t you want to stay alone, kid? Are you afraid for yourself
or for me?”

His partner’s cheeks were patched with roses. Shyly the long, thick
lashes lifted and let the big brown eyes meet his blue ones. “Maybe I’m
afraid for both of us.”

“Would you care if one of their pills happened along in the scrimmage
and put me out of business? Honest, would you?”

“You haven’t any right to talk that way. It’s cruel,” was the reply
that burst from the pretty lips, and he noticed that at his suggestion
the roses had died from soft cheeks.

“Well, I won’t talk that way any more, little partner,” he answered
gaily, taking the small hand in his. “For reasons good. I’m fire-proof.
The Mexican bullet hasn’t been cast yet that can find Bucky O’Connor’s
heart.”

“But you mustn’t think that, either, and be reckless,” was the next
injunction. The shy laugh rang like music. “That’s why I want to go
along, to see that you behave yourself properly.”

“Oh, I’ll behave,” he laughed; for the young man found it very easy to
be happy when those sweet eyes were showing concern for him. “I’ve got
several good reasons why I don’t aim to get bumped off just yet. Heaps
of first-rate reasons. I’ll tell you what some of them are one of these
days,” he dared to add.

“You had better tell me now.” The gaze that fell before his steady eyes
was both shy and eager.

“No, I reckon I’ll wait, Curly,” he answered, turning away with a long
breath. “Well, we better go out and get some grub, tortillas and
frijoles, don’t you think?”

“Just as you like.” The lad’s breath was coming a little fast. They had
been on the edge of some moment of intimacy that Bucky’s partner both
longed for and dreaded. “But you have not told me yet whether I can go
with you.”

“You can’t. I’m sorry. I’d like first-rate to take you, if you want to
go, but I can’t do it. I hate to disappoint you if you’re set on it,
but I’ve got to, kid. Anything else you want I’ll be glad to do.”

He added this last because Frank looked so broken-hearted about it.

“Very well.” Swift as a flash came the demand: “Tell me these heaps of
first-rate reasons you were mentioning just now.”

Under the sun-tan he flushed. “I reckon I’ll have to make another
exception, Curly. Those reasons ain’t ripe yet for telling.”

“Then if you are—if anything happens—I’ll never know them. And you
promised you would tell me—you, who pretend to hate a liar so,” she
scoffed.

“Would it do if I wrote those reasons and left them in a sealed
envelope? Then in case anything happened you could open it and satisfy
that robust curiosity of yours.” He recognized that he had trapped
himself, and he was making the best bargain left him.

“You may write them, if you like. But I’m going to open the letter,
anyway. The reasons belong to me now. You promised.”

“I’ll make a new deal with you, then,” he smiled. “I’ll take awful good
care of myself to-night if you’ll promise not to open the envelope for
two weeks unless—well, unless that something happens that we ain’t
expecting.”

“Call it a week, and it’s a bargain.”

“Better say when we’re back across the line again. That may be inside
of three days, if everything goes well,” he threw in as a bait.

“Done. I’m to open the letter when we cross the line into Texas.”

Bucky shook the little hand that was offered him and wished mightily
that he had the right to celebrate with more fervent demonstrations.

That afternoon the ranger wrote with a good deal of labor the letter he
had promised. It appeared to be a difficult thing for him to deliver
himself even on paper of those good and sufficient reasons. He made and
destroyed no less than half a dozen openings before at last he was
fairly off. Meanwhile, Master Frank, busy over some alterations in
Bucky’s gypsy suit, took pleasure in deriding with that sweet voice the
harassed correspondent.

“It might be a love letter from the pains you take with it. Would you
like me to come and help you with it?” the sewer railed merrily.

“I ain’t used to letter writing much,” apologized the scribe, wiping
his bedewed brow, which had suddenly gone a shade more flushed.

“Apparently not. I expect, from the time you give it, the result will
be a literary classic.”

“Don’t you disturb me, Curly, or I’ll never get done,” implored the
tortured ranger.

“You’re doing well. You’ve only been an hour and a half on six lines,”
the tormentor mocked.

Womanlike, she was quite at her ease, since he was very far indeed from
being at his. Yet she had a problem of her own she was trying to
decide.

Had he discovered, after all, that she was not a boy, and had his
reasons—the ones he was trying to tell in that disturbing
letter—anything to do with that discovery? Such a theory accounted for
several things she had noticed in him of late. There was an added
respect in his manner for her. He never now invaded the room recognized
as hers without a specific invitation, nor did he seem any longer to
chafe at the little personal marks of fastidiousness that had at first
appeared to annoy him. To be sure, he ordered her about, just as he had
been in the habit of doing at first. But it was conceivable that this
might be a generous blind to cover up his knowledge of her sex.

“How do you spell guessed—one s or two?” he presently asked, out of the
throes of composition.

She spelled it, and added demurely: “Adore has only one d”

Bucky laid down his pen and pretended to glare at him. “You young
rascal, what do you mean by bothering me like that? Act like that, you
young imp, and you’ll never grow up to be a gentleman.”

Their glances caught and held, the minds of each of them busy over that
last prediction of his. For one long instant masks were off and both
were trying to find an answer to a question in the eyes opposite. Then
voluntarily each gaze released the other in a confusion of sweet shame.
For the beating of a lash, soul had looked into naked soul, all
disguise stripped from them. She knew that he knew. Yet in that instant
when his secret was surprised from him another secret, sweeter than the
morning song of birds, sang its way into both their hearts.




CHAPTER X.
THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER


Agua Negra is twelve miles from Chihuahua as the crow flies, but if one
goes by rail one twists round thirty sinuous miles of rough mountainous
country in the descent from the pass to the capital of the State. The
ten men who slipped singly or by twos out of the city in the darkness
that evening and met at the rendezvous of the Santa Dolorosa mission
did not travel by rail to the pass, but followed a horseback trail
which was not more than half the distance.

At the mission O’Halloran and his friend found gathered half a dozen
Mexicans, one or two of them tough old campaigners, the rest young
fellows eager for the excitement of their first active service.

“Is Juan Valdez here yet?” asked O’Halloran, peering around in the
gloom.

“Not yet; nor Manuel Garcia,” answered a young fellow.

Bucky was introduced to those present under the name of Alessandro
Perdoza, and presently also to the two missing members of the party who
arrived together a few moments later. Juan Valdez was the son of the
candidate who was opposing the reelection of Megales, and Manuel Garcia
was his bosom friend, and the young man to whom his sister was engaged.
They were both excellent types of the honorable aristocratic young
Mexican. They were lightly built, swarthy young men, possessed of that
perfect grace and courtesy which can be found at its best in the
Spanish races. Gay, handsome young cavaliers as they were, filled with
the pride of family, Bucky thought them almost ideal companions for
such a harebrained adventure as this. The ranger was a social democrat
to the marrow. He had breathed in with the Southwest breezes the
conviction that every man must stand on his own bottom, regardless of
adventitious circumstance, but he was not fool enough to think all men
equal. It had been his experience that some men, by grace of the
strength in them, were born to be masters and others by their weakness
to be servants. He knew that the best any civilization can offer a man
is a chance. Given that, it is up to every man to find his own niche.

But though he had no sense of deference to what is known as good blood,
Bucky had too much horse sense to resent the careless, half-indifferent
greeting which these two young sprouts of aristocracy bestowed on the
rest of the party. He understood that it was the natural product of
their education and of that of the others.

“Are we all here?” asked Garcia.

“All here,” returned O’Halloran briskly. “Rodrigo will guide the party.
I ride next with Señor Garcia. Perdoza and Señor Valdez will bring up
the rear. Forward, gentlemen, and may the Holy Virgin bring a happy
termination to our adventure.” He spoke in Mexican, as they all did,
though for the next two hours conversation was largely suspended, owing
to the difficulty of the precipitous trail they were following.

Coming to a bit of the road where they were able to ride two abreast,
O’Connor made comment on the smallness of their number. “O’Halloran
must have a good deal of confidence in his men. Forty to ten is rather
heavy odds, is it not, señor?”

“There are six more to join us at the pass. The wagons have gone round
by the road and the drivers will assist in the attack.”

“Of course it is all in the surprise. I have seen three men hold up a
train with five hundred people on it. Once I knew a gang to stick up a
treasure train with three heavily armed guards protecting the gold.
They got them right, with the drop on them, and it was good-by to the
mazuma.”

“Yes, if they have had any warning or if our plans slip a cog anywhere
we shall be repulsed to a certainty.”

By the light of a moon struggling out from behind rolling clouds Bucky
read eleven-thirty on his watch when the party reached Agua Negra. It
was still thirty minutes before the Flyer was due, and O’Halloran
disposed his forces with explicit directions as to the course to be

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