Nan of Music Mountain
by Frank H. Spearman · English · Gutenberg #29571 · 541,964 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Nan of Music Mountain
Author: Frank H. Spearman
Illustrator: N. C. Wyeth
Release date: August 2, 2009 [eBook #29571]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29571
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Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NAN OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the
trail.]
NAN OF
MUSIC MOUNTAIN
BY
FRANK H. SPEARMAN
AUTHOR OF
WHISPERING SMITH, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
N. C. WYETH
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons
Copyright, 1916, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published April, 1916
Printed in U. S. A.
TO MY SON
EUGENE LONERGAN SPEARMAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Frontier Day 1
II. The Thief River Stage Line 18
III. The Spanish Sinks 34
IV. First Blood at Calabasas 52
V. Rounding up Sassoon 61
VI. Heels for It 73
VII. Maintaining a Reputation 87
VIII. The Gambling-Room 101
IX. A Cup of Coffee 111
X. The Glass Button 124
XI. After the Storm 138
XII. On Music Mountain 154
XIII. Parley 167
XIV. Nan Drifts 182
XV. Crossing a Deep River 193
XVI. A Venture in the Dark 210
XVII. Strategy 222
XVIII. Her Bad Penny 237
XIX. Danger 250
XX. Facing the Music 262
XXI. A Try Out 273
XXII. Gale Persists 289
XXIII. De Spain Worries 302
XXIV. An Ominous Message 313
XXV. A Surprising Slip 323
XXVI. Flight 338
XXVII. El Capitan 349
XXVIII. Lefever to the Rescue 362
XXIX. Puppets of Fate 371
XXX. Hope Forlorn 386
XXXI. De Spain Rides Alone 399
XXXII. The Truth 408
XXXIII. Gambling With Death 420
XXXIV. At Sleepy Cat 428
ILLUSTRATIONS
De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on
the trail. Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over
Sandusky's left shoulder. 135
"Stand away from that girl!" repeated de Spain harshly,
backing the words with a step forward. 200
"I've promised you I would. I will promise every time
you ask me." 417
NAN OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER I
FRONTIER DAY
Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit
on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of
the table. One of his small feet--his feet were encased in tight,
high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen's boots--usually rested on the
floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air.
This idiosyncrasy his companion, de Spain, had learned to tolerate.
But Lefever's subdued whistle, which seemed meditative, always
irritated de Spain more or less, despite his endeavor not to be
irritated. It was like the low singing of a tea-kettle, which, however
unobtrusive, indicates steam within. In fact, John Lefever, who was
built not unlike a kettle, and whose high, shiny forehead was topped
by a pompadour shock of very yellow hair, never whistled except when
there was some pressure on his sensibilities.
The warm sun streaming through the windows of the private office of
the division superintendent at Sleepy Cat, a railroad town lying
almost within gunshot of the great continental divide, would easily
have accounted for the cordial perspiration that illumined Lefever's
forehead. Not that a perspiration is easily achieved in the high
country; it isn't. None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever
was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the
face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain
plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads
on his companion's forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself
was properly responsible for their presence.
De Spain, tilted back in the superintendent's chair, sat near
Lefever--Jeffries had the mountain division then--his elbows resting
on the arms of the revolving-chair, and with his hands he gripped
rather defiantly the spindles supporting them; his feet were crossed
on the walnut rim of the shabby, cloth-topped table. In this attitude
his chin lay on his soft, open collar and tie, his sunburnt lips were
shut tight, and above and between his nervous brown eyes were two
little, vertical furrows of perplexity and regret. He was looking at
the dull-finish barrel of a new rifle, that lay across Lefever's lap.
At intervals Lefever took the rifle up and, whistling softly, examined
with care a fracture of the lever, the broken thumb-piece of which lay
on the table between the two men.
From the Main Street side of the large room came the hooting and
clattering of a Frontier Day celebration, and these noises seemed not
to allay the discomfort apparent on the faces of the two men.
"It certainly is warm," observed Lefever, apropos of nothing at all.
"Why don't you get out of the sun?" suggested de Spain shortly.
Lefever made a face. "I am trying to keep away from that noise."
"Hang it, John," blurted out de Spain peevishly, "what possessed you
to send for _me_ to do the shooting, anyway?"
His companion answered gently--Lefever's patience was noted even among
contained men--"Henry," he remonstrated, "I sent for you because I
thought you could shoot."
De Spain's expression did not change under the reproach. His bronzed
face was naturally amiable, and his mental attitude toward ill luck,
usually one of indifference, was rarely more than one of perplexity.
His features were so regular as to contribute to this undisturbed
expression, and his face would not ordinarily attract attention but
for his extremely bright and alive eyes--the frequent mark of an
out-of-door mountain life--and especially for a red birthmark, low on
his left cheek, disappearing under the turn of the jaw. It was merely
a strawberry, so-called, but an ineradicable stamp, and perhaps to a
less preoccupied man a misfortune. Henry de Spain, however, even at
twenty-eight, was too absorbed in many things to give thought to this
often, and after knowing him, one forgot about the birthmark in the
man that carried it. Lefever's reproach was naturally provocative. "I
hope now," retorted de Spain, but without any show of resentment, "you
understand I can't."
"No," persisted Lefever good-naturedly, "I only realize, Henry, that
this wasn't your day for the job."
The door of the outer office opened and Jeffries, the superintendent,
walked into the room; he had just come from Medicine Bend in his car.
The two men rose to greet him. He asked about the noise in the
street.
"That noise, William, comes from all Calabasas and all Morgan's
Gap," explained Lefever, still fondling the rifle. "The Morgans
are celebrating our defeat. They put it all over us. We were
challenged yesterday," he continued in response to the abrupt
questions of Jeffries. "The Morgans offered to shoot us offhand,
two hundred yards, bull's-eye count. The boys here--Bob Scott and some
of the stage-guards--put it up to me. I thought we could trim them by
running in a real gunman. I wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry
comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine,
by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun,"
explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. "The lever," he
added with a patient expletive, "broke."
"Give me the gun, John," interposed de Spain resignedly. "I'll lay it
on the track to-night for a train to run over."
"It was a time limit, you understand, William," persisted Lefever,
continuing to stick pins calmly into de Spain. "Henry got to shooting
too fast."
"That wasn't what beat me," exclaimed de Spain curtly. And taking up
the offending rifle he walked out of the room.
"Nor was it the most humiliating feature of his defeat," murmured
Lefever, as the door closed behind his discomfited champion. "What do
you think, William?" he grumbled on. "The Morgans ran in a girl to
shoot against us--true as there's a God in heaven. They put up Nan
Morgan, old Duke Morgan's little niece. And what do you think? She
shot the fingers clean off our well-known Black Hand scout. I never
before in my life saw Henry so fussed. The little Music Mountain skirt
simply put it all over him. She had five bull's-eyes to Henry's three
when the lever snapped. He forfeited."
"Some shooting," commented Jeffries, rapidly signing letters.
"We expected some when Henry unslung his gun," Lefever went on without
respecting Jeffries's preoccupation. "As it is, those fellows have
cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money?
They could start a bank this minute."
Sounds of revelry continued to pour in through the street window. The
Morgans were celebrating uncommonly. "Rubbing it in, eh, John?"
suggested Jeffries.
"Think of it," gasped Lefever, "to be beaten by an eighteen-year-old
girl."
"Now that," declared Jeffries, waking up as if for the first time
interested, "is exactly where you made your mistake, John. Henry is
young and excitable----"
"Excitable!" echoed Lefever, taken aback.
"Yes, excitable--when a girl is in the ring--why not? Especially a
trim, all-alive, up-and-coming, blue-eyed hussy like that girl of
Duke Morgan's. She would upset any young fellow, John."
"A girl from Morgan's Gap?"
"Morgan's Gap, nothing!" responded Jeffries scornfully. "What's that
got to do with it? Does that change the fire in the girl's eye, the
curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, John, or the color of
her cheek?" Lefever only stared. "De Spain got to thinking about the
girl," persisted Jeffries, "her eyes and neck and pink cheeks rattled
him. Against a girl you should have put up an old, one-eyed scout like
yourself, or me, or Bob Scott.
"There's another thing you forget, John," continued Jeffries, signing
even more rapidly. "A gunman shoots his best when there's somebody
shooting at him--otherwise he wouldn't be a gunman--he would be just
an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a
rooster feather in his hat. That's why you shoot well, John--because
you're a gunman, and not a marksman."
"That boy can shoot all around me, Jeff."
"For instance," continued Jeffries, tossing off signatures now with a
rubber stamp, and developing his incontestable theory at the same
time, "if you had put Gale Morgan up against Henry at, say five
hundred yards, and told them to shoot _at_ each other, instead of
against each other, you'd have got bull's-eyes to burn from de Spain.
And the Calabasas crowd wouldn't have your money. John, if you want to
win money, you must study the psychological."
There was abundance of raillery in Lefever's retort: "That's why you
are rich, Jeff?"
"No, I am poor because I failed to study it. That is why I am at
Sleepy Cat holding down a division. But now that you've brought Henry
up here, we'll keep him."
"What do you mean, keep him?" demanded Lefever, starting in protest.
"What do I mean?" thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even
when it didn't rain in the office. "I mean I need him. I mean the time
to shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de
Spain?" demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.
"Henry de Spain?" asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.
"No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts de
Spain," retorted Jeffries peevishly. "Don't you know the man we're
talking about?"
"Known him for ten years."
"Then why say 'Henry' de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He's
the only de Spain in these parts, isn't he? What kind of a fellow is
he?"
Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table,
one arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his
devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with
emphasis: "Why, if you want him short and sharp, he's a man with a
soft eye and a snap-turtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm
shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that
can wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more
shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it--if you want him
flat, that's Henry, as I size him."
Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: "Tell him to come in a minute,
John."
De Spain himself expressed contemptuous impatience when Lefever told
him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He
declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood
why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman's yell
that rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows--and
from up the street and down there were still a good many--was one of
derision at de Spain's galling defeat. When he at length consented to
talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a
positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De
Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and
Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.
"You are looking for promotion, aren't you?" he demanded threateningly.
"Yes, but not for motion without the 'pro,'" objected de Spain. "I
want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the
stage business."
"Temporarily, yes. But I've told you when you come back to the
division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running
the Thief River stages. Think of the salary."
"I have no immediate heirs."
"This is not a matter for joking, de Spain."
"I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the
last six months?"
"Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes," admitted Jeffries
brusquely; "that is to be expected where the specie shipments are
large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you
don't have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and
good guards--men willing to take any kind of a chance if the pay is
right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be
right."
"I have never as yet generally managed any stage line," remarked de
Spain, poking ridicule at the title, "no matter how modest an
outfit."
"You will never learn younger. There is a fascination," declared
Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to
give ease and conviction to his words, "about running a good stage
line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course,
nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United
States--nothing, I guess, in the world--that approaches the Thief
River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest
to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by
the Studebaker people." Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de
Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. "You've seen them! You
know what they are."
De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.
"Second-growth hickory in the gears," continued Jeffries encouragingly,
"ash tongues and boxes----"
"Some of those old buses look like ash-boxes," interposed de Spain
irreverently.
But Jeffries was not to be stopped: "Timkin springs, ball-bearing
axles--why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief
River stage."
"You are some wagon-maker, Jeff," said de Spain, regarding him
ironically.
Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. "This road, as you know, owns the
line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an
ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line
that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de
Spain, is a bad place."
"Is it?" de Spain asked as naïvely as if he had never heard of
Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and
notorious to both.
"There are a lot of bad men there," Jeffries went on, "who are bad
simply because they've never had a man to show them."
"The last 'general' manager was killed there, wasn't he?"
"Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn."
"Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?"
Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. "That's all right, Henry! They
won't get you." Again he extended his finger dogmatically: "If I
thought they would, I wouldn't send you down there."
"Thank you."
"You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn't hanging from
every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me."
"You're not getting shot at."
"No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high
country knows when he is to be made a target--that you well
understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea
of getting killed than I have--or you have."
"Don't include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right
away--the minute I take this job."
"We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough," declared
Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. "Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that
squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon--all hold-up men, every one of them!
Henry, I'm putting you in on that job because you've got nerve,
because you can shoot, because I don't think they can get you--and
paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the
Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry--" Jeffries leaned forward and
lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of
hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the
undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the
younger man under his spell. "Do you know," he repeated, "I suspect
that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind and beneath a lot of this
deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with
Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but
what Duke will help him out." Jeffries exploded with a slight but
forcible expletive. "Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into
Morgan's Gap that didn't find sympathy and shelter with some of the
Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River
stages."
"As bad as that?"
Jeffries turned to his desk. "Ask John Lefever."
De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He
advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his
hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was
unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if
on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and
asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but
the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they
began. So it was on this trying day--for Lefever was not able wholly
to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his
humiliation at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and
Morgan Gap victors.
But concerning the Morgans and their friends, Lefever, to whom
Jeffries had rudely referred the subject at the close of his talk with
de Spain, did abandon his habitual reticence. "Rustlers, thieves,
robbers, coiners, outlaws!" he exclaimed energetically.
"Is this because they got your money to-day, John?" asked de Spain.
"Never mind my money. I've got a new job with nothing to do, and
plenty of cash."
De Spain asked what the job was. "On the stages," announced Lefever.
"I am now general superintendent of the Thief River Line."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I act for the reorganization committee in buying
alfalfa for the horses and smokeless pipes for the guards. I am to be
your assistant."
"I'm not going to take that job, John."
"Yes, you are."
"Not if I know it. I am going back to Medicine Bend to-night." Lefever
took off his hat and twirled it skilfully on one hand, humming softly
the while. "John," asked de Spain after a pause, "who is that girl
that shot against me this afternoon?"
"That," answered Lefever, thinking, shocked, of Jeffries's words, "was
Nan Morgan."
"Who is she?"
"Just one of the Morgans; lives in the Gap with old Duke Morgan, her
uncle; lived there as long as I can remember. Some shot, Henry."
"How can she live in the Gap," mused de Spain, "with an outfit like
that?"
"Got nowhere else to live, I guess. I believe you'd better change your
mind, Henry, and stay with us."
"No," returned de Spain meditatively, "I'm not going to stay. I've had
glory enough out of this town for a while." He picked up his hat and
put it on. Lefever thought it well to make no response. He was charged
with the maintenance and operation of the stage-line arsenal at Sleepy
Cat, and spent many of his idle moments toying with the firearms. He
busied himself now with the mechanism of a huge revolver--one that the
stage-driver, Frank Elpaso, had wrecked on the head of a troublesome
negro coming in from the mines. De Spain in turn took off his hat,
poked the crown discontentedly, and, rising with a loss of amiability
in his features and manner, walked out of the room.
The late sun was streaming down the full length of Main Street. The
street was still filled with loiterers who had spent the day at the
fair, and lingered now in town in the vague hope of seeing a brawl or
a fight before sundown--cattlemen and cowboys from the northern
ranges, sheepmen from the Spider River country, small ranchers and
irrigators from the Bear basin, who picked their steps carefully, and
spoke with prudence in the presence of roisterers from the Spanish
Sinks, and gunmen and gamblers from Calabasas and Morgan's Gap. The
Morgans themselves and their following were out to the last
retainer.
CHAPTER II
THE THIEF RIVER STAGE LINE
Sleepy Cat has little to distinguish it in its casual appearance from
the ordinary mountain railroad town of the western Rockies. The long,
handsome railroad station, the eating-house, and the various
division-headquarters buildings characteristic of such towns are in
Sleepy Cat built of local granite. The yard facilities, shops, and
roundhouses are the last word in modern railroad construction, and the
division has not infrequently held the medal for safety records.
But more than these things go toward making up the real Sleepy Cat. It
is a community with earlier-than-railroad traditions. Sleepy Cat has
been more or less of a settlement almost since the day of Jim Bridger,
and its isolated position in the midst of a country of vast deserts,
far mountain ranges, and widely separated watercourses has made it
from the earliest Western days a rendezvous for hunters, trappers,
emigrants, prospectors, and adventurers--and these have all, in some
measure, left their impress on the town.
Sleepy Cat lies prettily on a high plateau north and east of the
railroad, which makes a détour here to the north to round the
Superstition Range; it is a county-seat, and this, where counties are
as large as ordinary Eastern States, gives it some political
distinction.
The principal street lies just north of the railroad, and parallels
it. A modern and substantial hotel has for some years filled the
corner above the station. The hotel was built by Harry Tenison soon
after the opening of the Thief River gold-fields. Along Main Street to
the west are strung the usual mountain-town stores and saloons, but to
the north a pretty residence district has been built up about the
court-house square. And a good water-supply, pumped from Rat River, a
brawling mountain stream that flows just south of the town, has
encouraged the care of lawns and trees.
Before de Spain had walked far he heard music from the open-air
dancing-pavilion in Grant Street. Stirred by an idle curiosity, he
turned the corner and stopped to watch the crowded couples whirling up
and down the raised platform under paper lanterns and red streamers to
the music of an automatic piano. He took his place in a fringe of
onlookers that filled the sidewalk. But he was thinking as he stood,
not of the boisterous dancing or the clumsy dancers, but of the
broken lever and the defeat at the fair-grounds. It still rankled in
his mind. While he stood thinking the music ceased.
A man, who appeared to be in authority, walked to the centre of the
dancing-floor and made an announcement that de Spain failed to catch.
The manager apparently repeated it to those of his patrons that
crowded around him, and more than once to individual inquirers who had
not caught the purport of what had been said. These late comers he
pushed back, and when the floor had been well cleared he nodded to the
boy operating the piano, and looked toward a young couple standing in
an attitude of waiting at the head of the hall.
All eyes being turned their way, de Spain's attention as well was
drawn toward them. The man was powerful in stature, and rather too
heavy, but straight as an Indian. His small, reddish face was tanned
by the sun and wind, and his manner as he stood with arms akimbo, his
hands resting on his belt, facing his partner and talking to her, had
the confidence of a man at ease with women. From the handsome hat
which, as he turned to his partner for the dance, he sent spinning
toward a table beside the piano, the soft brown shirt and flowing tie,
down to the small, high-heeled and spurred boots, he wore the
distinctive cowboy rig of the mountains, even to the heavy
hip-holster, in which his revolver was slung. He was, in fact, rather
too smartly dressed, too confident in manner to please de Spain, who
was in no mood to be pleased anyway, and who could conceive a dislike
for a man the instant he set eyes on him--and a liking as quickly. He
seemed to recall, too, that this particular fellow had crowed the
loudest when he himself forfeited the shooting-match earlier in the
day.
But de Spain, unamiable as he now was, looked with unconcealed
interest at the man's dancing partner. She, too, was browned by the
mountain sun and air--a slight, erect girl, her head well set, and a
delicate waist-line above a belted brown skirt, which just reached the
tops of her small, high, tan riding-boots. She wore a soft,
French-gray Stetson hat. Her dark-brown hair was deftly hidden under
it, but troublesome ringlets strayed about her ears as if she had not
seen a glass for hours, and these, standing first with one hand and
then the other laid against her leather belt, she put up into place,
and as if not wholly at ease with her surroundings. Instead of looking
at her partner, who talked to her while waiting, her eyes, noticeably
pretty, wandered about the platform, resting at moments on the closely
drawn lines of spectators. They reflected in their unrest the
dissatisfied expression of her face. A talkative woman standing just
in front of de Spain, told a companion that the man was Gale Morgan, a
nephew of Satterlee, laziest of the Morgans. De Spain, who never had
to look twice at any woman, at once recognized in the dancing partner
the little Music Mountain girl who had been his undoing at the target;
the woman added that Nan was, in some hazy degree, Gale's cousin.
The energetic piano thumped the strains of a two-step. Gale Morgan
extended his arm toward Nan; she looked very slight at his side. But
instead of taking her position, she drew back, looking up and frowning
as she seemed to speak objectingly to Gale. De Spain saw her
hesitation without catching its import. The talkative woman near at
hand was more divining. "Lord, that Nan Morgan makes me tired," she
exclaimed to her gum-chewing companion, "ever see anything like her?
First she wouldn't dance unless the floor was cleared--Sleepy Cat
folks ain't good enough for them Music Mountain cattle thieves! And
now the music doesn't suit her. Listen to that boob of a boy trying
one piece after another to get one to suit my outlaw lady. Nerve!"
But while the impatient woman chafed the right tune was found, and
Nan Morgan's face, as she watched the manipulator of the piano,
brightened. "Faster!" she cried under her breath, taking her position
on her cousin's arm. Then, responding with a sort of fiery impatience
to her partner's guiding, she caught the rapid step of the music, and
together the two swept down the floor.
Whatever the impatience of the crowd over the finicky start, the
spectators soon showed their admiration of the dancing with
unrestrained hand-clapping, and followed with approving outcries. De
Spain, standing apart, watched Nan's flying feet, wondering how she
and her people could possibly be what they were painted, and whether
they really were so or not. Every swaying step, every agile turn
proved how sure she was of herself, and how perfectly her body
answered to every exaction of the quick movement of the dance. Gale
Morgan seemed the merest attendant for his partner, who, with
quickened pulses, gave herself up more and more to the lively call of
the music.
Once the two swung away out, near to de Spain's corner. As Nan whirled
by, de Spain, either with the infection of the music or from her
nearness to him, caught his breath. His eyes riveted themselves on her
flushed face as she passed--oblivious of his presence--and he
recalled how in the morning she had handled her rifle in the same
quick, sure way. De Spain could not dance at all; but no one could
successfully accuse him of not knowing how to handle any sort of a
gun. It was only now, as she came so very close to him for the first
time since the mortification of the morning, and he saw the smoothness
of her pink-brown cheeks, that he could ungrudgingly give her full
credit for shooting him down. He forgave her, unasked, the humiliation
she had put on him. He felt an impulse to go up to her--now that she
had stopped dancing--and congratulate her honestly, instead of
boorishly as he had done at the match, and to say, unreservedly, that
she was the better shot--indeed, one of the best he had ever seen.
But while he thought all of this he did not stir a step. The two
dancers at once disappeared, and a new and rougher party crowded out
on the floor.
"Now, isn't that a pretty bunch!" exclaimed the critical woman again.
"That's the Calabasas gang. Look at those four men with the red
neckerchiefs. Sandusky, that big fellow, with the crooked jaw--Butch,
they call him--and his jaw's not half as crooked as Sandusky himself,
either. He couldn't lie in bed straight. And Harvey Logan, with his
black hair plastered over his eyes. Why, for one drink those two
fellows would turn loose on this crowd and kill half a dozen. And
there's two of Duke Morgan's cowboys with them, boozing old Bull Page,
and that squint-eyed Sassoon--he's worse than the others, that
fellow--a fine bunch to allow in this town."
De Spain had excellent ears. He had heard of these Calabasas men--of
Sandusky and of the little fellow, Logan. They had much more than a
local reputation as outlaws; they were known from one end of the
Superstition Range to the other as evil-doers of more than ordinary
ruthlessness. De Spain, from force of habit, studied every detail of
their make-up. Both showed more than traces of drink, and both
securing partners joined rudely in the dancing. It had become second
nature to de Spain to note even insignificant details concerning men,
and he took an interest in and remarked how very low Logan carried his
gun in front of his hip. Sandusky's holster was slung higher and
farther back on the side. Logan wore a tan shirt and khaki. Sandusky,
coatless, was dressed in a white shirt, with a red tie, and wore a
soiled, figured waistcoat fastened at the bottom by a cut-glass
button.
The Sleepy Cat gossip commented on how much money these men had been
spending all day. She wondered aloud, reckless apparently of
consequences, who had been robbed, lately, to provide it. Her
companion scolded her for stirring up talk that might make trouble;
averred she didn't believe half the stories she heard; asserted that
these men lived quietly at Calabasas, minding their own affairs. "And
they're kind to poor folks, too." "Sure," grimaced the obdurate one,
"with other people's money." De Spain had no difficulty in placing the
two women. One was undoubtedly the wife of a railroad man, who hated
the mountain outlaws, and the other was, with equal certainty, a town
sympathizer with slandered men, and the two represented the two
community elements in Sleepy Cat.
De Spain, discontented, turning again into Main Street, continued on
toward the Thief River stage barn. He knew an old Scotch Medicine Bend
barnman that worked there, a boyhood friend; but the man, McAlpin, was
out. After looking the horses over and inspecting the wagons with a
new but mild curiosity, awakened by Jeffries's proposal, de Spain
walked back toward the station. He had virtually decided not to take
the job that Jeffries painted as so attractive, and resolved now to
take the night train back to Medicine Bend. Medicine Bend was his
home. He knew every man, woman, and child in the town. Before the
tragic death of his father, his mother had lived there, and de Spain
had grown up in the town and gone to school there. He was a railroad
man, anyway--a modest trainmaster--and not eager for stage-line
management.
The prospect of reducing the Sinks to a law-and-order basis at his own
proper risk could not be alluring to the most aggressive of
law-and-order men--and de Spain was not aggressive. Yet within a
moment of his sensible decision he was to be hurried by a mere
accident to an exactly contrary fate.
As he passed Grant Street again he encountered a party on horseback
heading for the river bridge. Trotting their horses leisurely, they
turned the corner directly in front of de Spain. There were five in
the company. Three of the men were riding abreast and a little ahead.
Of these, the middle horseman was a spare man of forty years, with a
black military hat, and a frankly disreputable air. His face was drawn
up into a one-sided smile, marked by a deep, vertical wrinkle running
up, close to his nose, from the corner of his mouth almost to the
inner corner of his eye. Satt Morgan's smile was habitual and lessened
his stern aspect. At his right rode his cousin, Duke Morgan, older,
shorter, and stouter. His square, heavy-jawed, smooth-shaven face was
lighted by hard, keen eyes, and finished by an uncompromising chin.
Duke was the real head of the clan, of which there were numerous
branches in the Superstition Mountains, all looking with friendliness
or enmity to the Morgans of Morgan's Gap.
The yellow-haired man riding on the left, with a red face and
red-lidded, squinting eyes, was in stature something between the two
Morgans, and about the age of the elder cousin. His shoulders
slouched, and he showed none of the blood of his companions. But this
man, David Sassoon, the Calabasas gambler, quondam cowboy, and chronic
brawler, stood in some way close to the different Morgans, and was
reputed to have got each of them, at different times, out of more than
one troublesome affair, either by sheer force of arms, or through his
resourceful cunning.
These men were followed by a younger man riding with a very young
woman. De Spain knew none of the front-rank men, but he knew well Nan
Morgan and her dancing partner.
They were talking together, and Nan seemed from her manner at odds
with her companion. He appeared to be trying to laugh the situation
off when he caught sight of de Spain pausing for them to pass. Gale's
face lighted as he set eyes on him, and he spoke quickly to Nan. De
Spain could not at first hear his words, but he needed no ears to
interpret his laugh and the expression on his face. Nan, persistently
importuned, looked around. She saw de Spain, much closer, it would
seem, than she had expected to see a man looking directly at her, and
her eyes rested on him only a moment. The substance of her cousin's
words she apparently had not caught, and he repeated them in a louder
voice: "There's your handsome Medicine Bend gunman!"
Nan, glancing again toward de Spain, seemed aware that he heard. She
looked away. De Spain tightened up with a rage. The blood rushed to
his face, the sarcasm struck in. If the birthmark could have deepened
with humiliation it would have done so at the instant of the cold
inspection of the girl's pretty eyes. But he cared less for Nan's
inspection, cold as it was, than for the jibe of her satisfied cousin.
Not content, Gale, calling ahead to the others, invited their
attention to the man on the street corner. De Spain felt minded to
hurl an insult at them in a body. It would have been four to
one--rather awkward odds even if they were mounted--and there was a
woman. But he only stood still, returning their inspection as
insolently as silence could. Each face was faithfully photographed and
filed in his memory, and his steady gaze followed them until they
rode down the hill and clattered jauntily out on the swaying
suspension bridge that still crosses the Rat River at Grant Street,
and connects the whole south country--the Spanish Sinks, the Thief
River gold-fields, the saw-toothed Superstition Range, Morgan's Gap,
and Music Mountain with Sleepy Cat and the railroad.
De Spain, walking down Grant Street, watched the party disappear among
the hills across the river. The encounter had stirred him. He already
hated the Morgans, at least all except the blue-eyed girl, and she, it
was not difficult to divine from her expression, was, at least,
disdainful of her morning rival.
Reaching the station platform while still busy with his thoughts, de
Spain encountered Jeffries and Lefever.
"When are you coming up to take my job, Henry?" demanded the
superintendent without any parley.
"I am not coming up," announced de Spain bluntly.
"Not coming up, eh? All right, we'll find somebody that will come up,"
retorted Jeffries. "John," he added, "wire Medicine Bend to send
Farrell Kennedy here in the morning to see me."
"What's the reason that fellow sticks so close to Medicine Bend?"
demanded Jeffries, when Lefever joined him later in his office.
"Don't ask me," frowned Lefever perplexed. "Don't ask me. Henry is odd
in some ways. You can't tell what's going on inside that fellow's head
by looking at the outside of it." Jeffries grunted coldly at this bit
of wisdom. "I'll tell you what I should think--if I had to think:
Henry de Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the
death of his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks
sometime he's going to find out right there in Medicine Bend."
While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend
with de Spain on board.
It was a tedious ride, and de Spain was much too engaged with his
thoughts to sleep. The Morgans were in his head, and he could not be
rid of them. He recalled having been told that long ago some of these
same Morgans lived on the Peace River above his father's ranch. Every
story he had ever heard of their wild lives, for they were men sudden
in quarrel and reckless of sequel, came back to his mind. He wondered
what sort of a young girl this could be who lived among them--who
_could_ live among them--and be what she seemed at a glance to be--a
fawn among mountain-wolves.
It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raining--a dismal
kind of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the
street from the station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the
train-despatchers. After an hour of indecision, marked by alternative
fits of making up and unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to
bed, into the telegraph-room, where black-haired Dick Grady sat at a
key.
"How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat?" Grady asked at once.
"What fight?" demanded de Spain perfunctorily.
"The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one
of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat, eh, Henry?"
"What Morgan was in it?"
"Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there
anything started when you left?"
"I didn't hear of anything," responded de Spain. But his indifference
to the subject was marked.
"What's the matter?" demanded the operator. "Aren't you well
to-night?"
"Perfectly."
"Sleepy?"
De Spain roused himself. "Dick, have you got a Sleepy Cat wire open?"
"What do you want?"
"Tell Jeffries I'll take that Thief River stage job."
CHAPTER III
THE SPANISH SINKS
From a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into
the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that
dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In
two extended groups, separated by a narrow but well-defined break,
they constitute a magnificent rampart, named by Spaniards the
Superstition Mountains, and they stretch beyond the horizon to the
south, along the vast depression known locally as the Spanish Sinks.
The break on the eastern side of the chain comes about twenty miles
southwest of Sleepy Cat, and is marked on the north by the most
striking, and in some respects most majestic peak in the range--Music
Mountain; the break itself has taken the name of its earliest white
settlers, and is called Morgan's Gap. No railroad has ever yet
penetrated this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines
have been opened along these mountains, and are still being opened;
but it lies to-day in much of the condition of primitive savagery,
and lawlessness, as the word is conventionally accepted, that obtained
when the first rush was made for the Thief River gold-fields.
It is not to be understood that law is an unknown equation between
Calabasas and Thief River, or even between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat.
But as statute law it suffers so many infractions as to be hardly
recognizable in the ordinary sense. Business is done in this country;
but business must halt everywhere with its means of communication, and
in the Music Mountain country it still rests on the facilities of a
stage line. The stage line is a big and vigorous affair, a perfectly
organized railroad adjunct with the best horses, the best wagons, the
best freighting outfits that money can supply.
But this is by no means, in its civilizing effect, a railroad. A
railroad drives lawlessness before it--the Music Mountain country
still leans on stage-line law. The bullion wagons still travel the
difficult roads. They look for safety to their armed horsemen; the
four and six horse stages look to the armed guard, the wayfarer must
look to his horse--and it should be a good one; the mountain rancher
to his rifle, the cattle thief to the moonless night, the bandit to
his wits, the gunman to his holster: these include practically all of
the people that travel the Spanish Sinks, except the Morgans and the
Mormons. The Mormons looked to the Morgans for safety; the Morgans to
themselves.
For many a year the Morgans have been almost overlords of the Music
Mountain country. They own, or have laid claim to, an extended
territory in the mountains, a Spanish grant. One of the first mountain
Morgans married a Spanish girl, and during the early days, when the
Morgans were not fighting some one out of court, they were fighting
some one in court on their endless and involved titles.
But whether they won domain in lawsuit or lost it, one pearl of their
holdings they never submitted to the jurisdiction of any tribunal
other than their own arms. Morgan's Gap opens south of Music Mountain,
less than ten miles west of Calabasas. It is a narrow valley where
valleys are more precious than water--for the mountain valley means
water--and this in a country where water is much more precious than
life. And some of the best of this land at the foot of Music Mountain
was the maternal inheritance of Nan Morgan.
At Calabasas the Thief River stage line maintains completely equipped
relay barns. They are over twenty miles from Sleepy Cat, but nearly
fifty the other way from Thief River. The unequal division is not due
to what was desirable when the route was laid out, but to the limit of
what man could do in the never-conquered desert. This supplies at
Calabasas a spring, to tempt the unwary traveller still farther within
its clutches. A large number of horses are kept at Calabasas, and the
barn crews are quartered there in a company barrack. Along the low
ridges and in the shallow depressions about Calabasas Spring there are
a very few widely separated shacks, once built by freighters and
occupied by squatter outlaws to be within reach of water. This gives
the vicinity something of the appearance of a poorly sustained
prairie-dog town. And except these shacks, there is nothing between
Calabasas, Thief River, and the mountains except sunshine and alkali.
I say nothing, meaning especially nothing, in the way of a human
habitation.
But there is a queer inn at Calabasas. A pioneer Thief River
prospector, mad with thirst, fought his way across the Sinks to the
Calabasas Spring, and wandered thence one day into Sleepy Cat. In a
delirium of gratitude he ordered built at Calabasas what he termed a
hotel, to provide at that forbidden oasis for the luxurious comfort of
future thirst-mad wanderers. It was built of lumber hauled a thousand
miles, and equipped with luxuries brought three thousand--a fearsome,
rambling structure, big enough for all the prospectors in the Rocky
Mountains.
Having built this monument, creditable to his good-will rather than
his good sense, the unfortunate man went really mad, and had the sorry
distinction of being the first person to be put in the insane asylum
at Bear Dance. It had never occurred to him that any one had any title
to, or that any madder man would lay any claim to, so accursed a spot
as Calabasas. But old Duke Morgan announced in due time that the hotel
was built on Morgan land, and belonged to the Morgans. Nobody outside
a madhouse could be found to dispute with Duke Morgan a title to land
within ten miles of Morgan's Gap, and none but a lunatic would attempt
to run a hotel at Calabasas, anyway. However, a solution of the
difficulty was found: Duke's colorable title gave the cue to his
retainers in the Gap, and in time they carted away piecemeal most of
the main building, leaving for years the kitchen and the servants'
quarters adjoining it to owls, lizards, scorpions, and spiders.
Meantime, to tap the fast-developing gold-fields, the freight route
and stages had been put in, and the barns built at Calabasas. A need
naturally developed for at least one feature of a hotel--a barroom. A
newer lunatic answered the call of civilization--a man only mildly
insane stocked the kitchen range with liquors, and fitted up in a
crude way the ice-boxes--where there never was ice--serving pantries,
and other odd nooks for sleeping quarters. Here the thirsty stage
passenger, little suspecting the origin of the facilities offered him
for a drink, may choose strong drink instead of water--or rather, he
is restricted to strong drink where water might once have been
had--the spring being piped now half a mile to the barns for the
horses. And this shack, as it is locally called, run by a Mexican, is
still the inn at Calabasas. And it continues to contribute, through
its stirring annals, to the tragic history of the continental divide.
It need hardly be said that Duke Morgan laid claim also to the
Calabasas Spring. But on this the company, being a corporation, fought
him. And after somewhat less of argument and somewhat more of siege
and shooting, a compromise was reached whereby the company bought
annually at an exorbitant price all of Duke, Satterlee, and Vance
Morgan's hay, and as the Morgans had small rivers of water in the
mountains, and never, except when crowded, drank water, a _modus
vivendi_ was arranged between the claimants. The only sufferer through
this was the Mexican publican, who found every Morgan his landlord,
and demanding from him tithes over the bar. But force is usually met
with cunning, and such Morgans as would not pay in advance at
Calabasas, when thirsty, often found the half-mad publican out of
goods.
The Calabasas Inn stood in one of the loneliest canyons of the whole
seventy miles between Sleepy Cat and Thief River; it looked in its
depletion to be what it was, a sombre, mysterious, sun, wind, and
alkali beaten pile, around which no one by any chance ever saw a sign
of life. It was a ruin like those pretentious deserted structures
sometimes seen in frontier towns--relics of the wide-open days, which
stand afterward, stark and sombre, to serve as bats' nests or
blind-pigs. The inn at Calabasas looked its part--a haunt of rustlers,
a haven of nameless men, a refuge of road-agents.
The very first time de Spain made an inspection trip over the stage
line with Lefever, he was conscious of the sinister air of this lonely
building. He and Lefever had ridden down from the barn, while their
horses were being changed, to look at the place. De Spain wanted to
look over everything connected in any way, however remotely, with the
operation of his wagons, and this joint, Lefever had told him, was
where the freighters and drivers were not infrequently robbed of
their money. It was here that one of their own men, Bill McCarty, once
"scratched a man's neck" with a knife--which, Bill explained, he just
"happened" to have in his hand--for cheating at cards. Lefever pointed
out the unlucky gambler's grave as he and de Spain rode into the
canyon toward the inn.
Not a sign of any sort was displayed about the habitation. No man was
invited to enter, no man warned to keep out, none was anywhere in
sight. The stage men dismounted, threw their lines, pushed open the
front door of the house and entered a room of perhaps sixteen by
twenty feet. It had been the original barroom. A long, high,
elaborately carved mahogany bar, as much out of keeping as it possibly
could be with its surroundings, stretched across the farther side of
the room. The left end, as they faced the bar, was brought around to
escape a small window opening on a court or patio to the rear of the
room. Back of the bar itself, about midway, a low door in the bare
wall gave entrance to a rear room. Aside from this big, queer-looking
piece of mahogany, the low window at the left end of it, and the low
door at the back, the room presented nothing but walls. Two windows
flanking the front door helped to light it, but not a mirror, picture,
chair, table, bottle, or glass was to be seen. De Spain covered every
feature of the interior at a glance. "Quiet around here, John," he
remarked casually.
"This is the quietest place in the Rocky Mountains most of the
time. But when it is noisy, believe me, it is noisy. Look at the
bullet-holes in the walls."
"The old story," remarked de Spain, inspecting with mild-mannered
interest the punctured plastering, "they always shoot high."
He walked over to the left end of the bar, noting the hard usage shown
by the ornate mahogany, and spreading his hands wide open, palms down,
on the face of it, glanced at the low window on his left, opening on
the gravelled patio. He peered, in the semidarkness, at the battered
door behind the bar.
"Henry," observed Lefever, "if you are looking for a drink, it would
only be fair, as well as politic, to call the Mexican."
"Thank you, John, I'm not looking for one. And I know you don't
drink."
"You want to know, then, where the Mexican keeps his gun?" hazarded
Lefever.
"Not especially. I just want to know----"
"Everything."
"What's behind the bar. That's natural, isn't it?"
Very complete fittings and compartments told of the labor spent in
preparing this inner side for the convenience of the bartender and the
requirements of exacting patrons, but nothing in the way of equipment,
not so much as a pewter spoon, lay anywhere visible.
De Spain, turning, looked all around the room again. "You wouldn't
think," he said slowly, "from looking at the place there was a
road-agent within a thousand miles."
"You wouldn't think, from riding through the Superstition Mountains
there was a lion within a thousand miles. I've hunted them for eleven
years, and I never saw one except when the dogs drove 'em out; but for
eleven years they saw me. If we haven't been seen coming in here by
some of this Calabasas bunch, I miss my guess," declared Lefever
cheerfully.
The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and
noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. "Come in, Pedro," he cried
reassuringly, "come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent
looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro," he continued
encouragingly, as the swarthy publican, low-browed and sullen, emerged
very deliberately from the inner darkness into the obscurity of the
barroom, and bent his one good eye searchingly on de Spain. "This,"
Lefever's left hand lay familiarly on the back of de Spain's
shoulder, "is our new manager, Mr. Henry de Spain. Henry, shake hands
with Mexico."
This invitation to shake hands seemed an empty formality. De Spain
never shook hands with anybody; at least if he did so, he extended,
through habit long inured, his left hand, with an excuse for the
soreness of his right. Pedro did not even bat his remaining eye at the
invitation. The situation, as Lefever facetiously remarked, remained
about where it was before he spoke, and nothing daunted, he asked de
Spain what he would drink. De Spain sidestepped again by asking for a
cigar. Lefever, professing he would not drink alone, called for
cigarettes. While Pedro produced them, from nowhere apparently, as a
conjurer picks cards out of the air, the sound of galloping horses
came through the open door. A moment later three men walked, single
file, into the room. De Spain stood at the left end of the bar, and
Lefever introduced him to Gale Morgan, to David Sassoon, and to
Sassoon's crony, Deaf Sandusky, as the new stage-line manager. The
later arrivals lined up before the bar, Sandusky next to Lefever and
de Spain, so he could hear what was said. Pedro from his den produced
two queer-looking bottles and a supply of glasses.
"De Spain," Gale Morgan began bluntly, "one of our men was put off a
stage of yours last week by Frank Elpaso." He spoke without any
preliminary compliments, and his heavy voice was bellicose.
De Spain, regarding him undisturbed, answered after a little pause:
"Elpaso told me he put a man off his stage last week for fighting."
"No," contradicted Morgan loudly, "not for fighting. Elpaso was
drunk."
"What's the name of the man Elpaso put off, John?" asked de Spain,
looking at Lefever.
Morgan hooked his thumb toward the man standing at his side. "Here's
the man right here, Dave Sassoon."
Sassoon never looked a man in the face when the man looked at him,
except by implication; it was almost impossible, without surprising
him, to catch his eyes with your eyes. He seemed now to regard de
Spain keenly, as the latter, still attending to Morgan's statement,
replied: "Elpaso tells a pretty straight story."
"Elpaso couldn't tell a straight story if he tried," interjected
Sassoon.
"I have the statement of three other passengers; they confirm Elpaso.
According to them, Sassoon--" de Spain looked straight at the accused,
"was drunk and abusive, and kept trying to put some of the other
passengers off. Finally he put his feet in the lap of Pumperwasser,
our tank and windmill man, and Pumperwasser hit him."
Morgan, stepping back from the bar, waved his hand with an air of
finality toward his inoffensive companion: "Here is Sassoon, right
here--he can tell the whole story."
"Those fellows were miners," muttered Sassoon. His utterance was
broken, but he spoke fast. "They'll side with the guards every time
against a cattleman."
"There's only one fair thing to do, de Spain," declared Morgan. He
looked severely at de Spain: "Discharge Elpaso."
De Spain, his hands resting on the bar, drew one foot slowly back.
"Not on the showing I have now," he said. "One of the passengers who
joined in the statement is Jeffries, the railroad superintendent at
Sleepy Cat."
"Expect a railroad superintendent to tell the truth about a Calabasas
man?" demanded Sassoon.
"I should expect him at least to be sober," retorted de Spain.
"Sassoon," interposed Morgan belligerently, "is a man whose word can
always be depended on."
"To convey his meaning," intervened Lefever cryptically. "Of course,
I know," he asserted, earnest to the point of vehemence. "Every one in
Calabasas has the highest respect for Sassoon. That is understood.
And," he added with as much impressiveness as if he were talking
sense, "everybody in Calabasas would be sorry to see Sassoon put off a
stage. But Sassoon is off: that is the situation. We are sorry. If it
occurs again----"
"What do you mean?" thundered Morgan, resenting the interference. "De
Spain is the manager, isn't he? What we want to know is, what you are
going to do about it?" he demanded, addressing de Spain again.
"There is nothing more to be done," returned de Spain composedly.
"I've already told Elpaso if Sassoon starts another fight on a stage
to put him off again."
Morgan's fist came down on the bar. "Look here, de Spain! You come
from Medicine Bend, don't you? Well, you can't bully Music Mountain
men--understand that."
"Any time you have a real grievance, Morgan, I'll be glad to consider
it," said de Spain. "When one of your men is drunk and quarrelsome he
will be put off like any other disturber. That we can't avoid. Public
stages can't be run any other way."
"All right," retorted Morgan. "If you take that tack for your new
management, we'll see how you get along running stages down in this
country."
"We will run them peaceably, just as long as we can," smiled de Spain.
"We will get on with everybody that gives us a chance."
Morgan pointed a finger at him. "I give you a chance, de Spain, right
now. Will you discharge Elpaso?"
"No."
Morgan almost caught his breath at the refusal. But de Spain could be
extremely blunt, and in the parting shots between the two he gave no
ground.
"Jeffries put me here to stop this kind of rowdyism on the stages," he
said to Lefever on their way back to the barn. "This is a good time to
begin. And Sassoon and Gale Morgan are good men to begin with," he
added.
As the horses of the two men emerged from the canyon they saw a
slender horsewoman riding in toward the barn from the Music Mountain
trail. She stopped in front of McAlpin, the barn boss, who stood
outside the office door. McAlpin, the old Medicine Bend barnman, had
been promoted from Sleepy Cat by the new manager. De Spain recognized
the roan pony, but, aside from that, a glance at the figure of the
rider, as she sat with her back to him, was enough to assure him of
Nan Morgan. He spurred ahead fast enough to overhear a request she was
making of McAlpin to mail a letter for her. She also asked McAlpin,
just as de Spain drew up, whether the down stage had passed. McAlpin
told her it had. De Spain, touching his hat, spoke: "I am going right
up to Sleepy Cat. I'll mail your letter if you wish."
She looked at him in some surprise, and then glanced toward Lefever,
who now rode up. De Spain was holding out his hand for the letter. His
eyes met Nan's, and each felt the moment was a sort of challenge. De
Spain, a little self-conscious under her inspection, was aware only of
her rather fearless eyes and the dark hair under her fawn cowboy hat.
"Thank you," she responded evenly. "If the stage is gone I will hold
it to add something." So saying, she tucked the letter inside her
blouse and spoke to her pony, which turned leisurely down the road.
"I'm trying to get acquainted with your country to-day," returned de
Spain, managing with his knee to keep his own horse moving alongside
Nan as she edged away.
She seemed disinclined to answer, but the silence and the awkwardness
of his presence drew at length a dry disclaimer: "This is not my
country."
"I understood," exclaimed de Spain, following his doubtful advantage,
"you lived out this way."
"I live near Music Mountain," returned Nan somewhat ungraciously,
using her own skill at the same time to walk her horse away from her
unwelcome companion.
"I've heard of Music Mountain," continued de Spain, urging his lagging
steed. "I've often wanted to get over there to hunt."
Nan, without speaking, ruthlessly widened the distance between the
two. De Spain unobtrusively spurred his steed to greater activity.
"You must have a great deal of game around you. Do you hunt?" he
asked.
He knew she was famed as a huntress, but he could make no headway
whatever against her studied reserve. He watched her hands, graceful
even in heavy gloves; he noticed the neck-piece of her tan blouse, and
liked the brown throat and the chin set so resolutely against him. He
surmised that she perhaps felt some contempt for him because she had
outshot him, and he continued to ask about game, hoping for a chance
in some far-off time to redeem his marksmanship before her and giving
her every possible chance to invite him to try the hunting around
Music Mountain.
She was deaf to the broadest hints; and when at length she excused
herself and turned her pony from the Sleepy Cat road into the Morgan
Gap trail, de Spain had been defeated in every attempt to arouse the
slightest interest in anything he had said. But, watching with regret,
at the parting, the trim lines of her figure as she dashed away on the
desert trail, seated as if a part of her spirited horse, he felt only
a fast-rising resolution to attempt again to break through her
stubborn reticence and know her better.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST BLOOD AT CALABASAS
Nothing more than de Spain's announcement that he would sustain his
stage-guards was necessary to arouse a violent resentment at Calabasas
and among the Morgan following. Some of the numerous disaffected were
baiting the stages most of the time. They bullied the guards, fought
the passengers, and fomented discontent among the drivers. In all
Thief River disturbances, whether a raid on cattlemen, a stage
hold-up, a gun fight, or a tedious war of words, the Calabasas men,
sometimes apparently for the mere maintaining of prestige, appeared to
take leading rôles. After de Spain's declaration the grievance against
Elpaso was made a general one along the line. His stage was singled
out and ridden at times both by Sandusky and Logan--the really
dangerous men of the Spanish Sinks--and by Gale Morgan and Sassoon to
stir up trouble.
But old Frank Elpaso was far from being a fool. A fight with any one
of these men meant that somebody would be killed, and no one could
tell just who, Elpaso shrewdly reckoned, until the roll-call at the
end of it. He therefore met truculence with diplomacy, threatening
looks with flattery, and hard words with a long story. Moreover, all
Calabasas knew that Elpaso, if he had to, would fight, and that the
eccentric guard was not actually to be cornered with impunity. Even
Logan, who, like Sandusky, was known to be without fear and without
mercy, felt at least a respect for Elpaso's shortened shotgun, and
stopped this side actual hostilities with him. When the June clean-up
of the No. 2 Thief River mine came through--one hundred and six
thousand dollars in gold bullion under double guard--and a Calabasas
contingent of night-riders tried to stop the treasure, rumor along the
Sinks had it that Elpaso's slugs, delivered at the right moment, were
responsible for Deaf Sandusky's long illness at Bear Dance, and the
failure of the subsequent masked attack on the up stage.
Sassoon, however, owing to the indignity now put upon him, also
nourished a particular grievance against the meditative guard, and his
was one not tempered either by prudence or calculation. His chance
came one night when Elpaso had unwisely allowed himself to be drawn
into a card game at Calabasas Inn. Elpaso was notoriously a stickler
for a square deal at cards. He was apparently the only man at
Calabasas that hoped for such a thing, and certainly the only one so
rash as to fight for it--yet he always did. A dispute on this occasion
found him without a friend in the room. Sassoon reached for him with a
knife.
McAlpin was the first to get the news at the barn. He gave first aid
to the helpless guard, and, without dreaming he could be got to a
surgeon alive, rushed him in a light wagon to the hospital at Sleepy
Cat, where it was said that he must have more lives than a wildcat.
Sassoon, not caring to brave de Spain's anger in town, went
temporarily into hiding. A second surgeon was brought from Medicine
Bend, and heroic efforts were put forth to nurse again into life the
feeble spark the assassin had left in the unlucky guard.
Word of this cutting reached de Spain at Thief River. He started for
Calabasas, learned there during a brief stop what he could--which was,
of course, next to nothing--of the affray, and posted on to Sleepy
Cat.
A conference was held in Jeffries's office. De Spain, Lefever, and
some of the division staff discussed the situation raised by the
affair. De Spain was instructed to see that Sassoon was brought in and
made an example of for the benefit of his Calabasas friends.
Accordingly, while the guard's life hung in the balance, the sheriff,
Jim Druel, was despatched after Sassoon. A great deal of inquiry, much
riding, and a lot of talk on Druel's part accomplished nothing.
Lefever spoiled with impatience to get after Sassoon. "The only way
we'll ever get one of that gang is to go for him ourselves," said he.
The sheriff's campaign did collapse. Sassoon could not be found
although rumor was notorious that he continued to haunt Calabasas.
Lefever's irritation grew. "Never mind, John," counselled de Spain,
"forget about wanting him. Sometime one of us will stumble on him, and
when we do we'll shackle him." The precaution was taken, meantime, to
secure a warrant for the missing man, together with authority for
either of the two to serve it. Elpaso, in the end, justified his old
reputation by making a recovery--haltingly, it is true, and with
perilous intervals of sinking, but a recovery.
It was while he still lay in the hospital and hope was very low that
de Spain and Lefever rode, one hot morning, into Calabasas and were
told by McAlpin that Sassoon had been seen within five minutes at the
inn. To Lefever the news was like a bubbling spring to a thirsty man.
His face beamed, he tightened his belt, shook out his gun, and looked
with benevolent interest on de Spain, who stood pondering. "If you
will stay right here, Henry," he averred convincingly, "I will go over
and get Sassoon."
The chief stage-guard, Bob Scott, the Indian, was in the barn. He
smiled at Lefever's enthusiasm. "Sassoon," said he, "is slippery."
"You'd better let us go along and see you do it," suggested de Spain,
who with the business in hand grew thoughtful.
"Gentlemen, I thank you," protested Lefever, raising one hand in
deprecation, the other resting lightly on his holster. "We still have
some _little_ reputation to maintain along the Sinks. Don't let us
make it a _posse_ for _Sassoon_." No one opposed him further, and he
rode away alone.
"It won't be any trouble for John to bring Sassoon in," murmured
Scott, who spoke with a smile and in the low tone and deliberate
manner of the Indian, "if he can find him."
With de Spain, Scott remained in front of the barn, saddled horses in
hand. They could see nothing of the scene of action, and de Spain was
forced in idleness to curb his impatience. Lefever rode down to the
inn without seeing a living thing anywhere about it. When he
dismounted in front he thought he heard sounds within the barroom,
but, pushing open the door and looking circumspectly into the room
before entering, he was surprised to find it empty.
There was something, under the circumstances and in the stimulus of
danger, almost uncanny in the silence, the absence of any life
whatever about the place. Lefever walked cautiously inside; there
seemed no need of caution. No one was there to confront or oppose him.
Surveying the interior with a rapid glance, he walked to the left end
of the bar and, gun in readiness, looked apprehensively behind it. Not
so much as a strainer was to be seen underneath. He noticed, however,
that the sash of the low window on his left, which looked into the
patio, was open, and two heel-marks in the hard clay suggested that a
man might have jumped through. Whether these were Sassoon's heels or
another's, Lefever decided they constituted his clew, and, running out
of the front door, he sprang into his saddle and rode to where he
could signal de Spain and Scott to come up.
He told his story as they joined him, and the three returned to the
inn. Scott rode directly to the rear. Lefever took de Spain in to the
bar, showed him the open sash, and pointed to the heel-prints. De
Spain stepped through the window, Lefever following. An examination
showed the slide of a spur-rowel behind one heel-mark and indications
of a hasty jump.
While they bent over the signs that seemed to connect their quarry
with the place, a door opened across the courtyard, and Pedro
appeared. He was curiously dense to all inquiries, and Lefever,
convinced that Sassoon was somewhere at hand, revenged himself by
searching the place.
In the dark kitchen a very old woman and a slovenly girl were at work.
No one else was to be found anywhere.
De Spain, who was the more experienced tracker, thought he could
follow the footprints to the arched opening across the patio. This was
closed only by a swinging gate, and afforded easy escape from a
pursuer. At some distance outside this gate, as de Spain threw it
open, sat Bob Scott on his horse. De Spain made inquiry of Scott. No
one had been seen. Returning to Lefever, who, greatly chagrined, had
convinced himself that Sassoon had got away, de Spain called Scott
into the patio.
A better tracker than either of his companions, Scott after a minute
confirmed their belief that Sassoon must have escaped by the window.
He then took the two men out to where some one, within a few minutes,
had mounted a horse and galloped off.
"But where has he gone?" demanded Lefever, pointing with his hand.
"There is the road both ways for three miles." Scott nodded toward the
snow-capped peak of Music Mountain. "Over to Morgan's, most likely. He
knows no one would follow him into the Gap. Just for fun, now, let's
see."
Dismounting, the Indian scrutinized the hoof-prints where the horse
had stood. Getting into the saddle again, he led the way, bending over
his horse's neck and stopping frequently to read the trail, half a
mile out along the Gap road, until he could once more readily point
out the hoof-prints to his companions. "That is Sassoon," he
announced. "I know the heels. And I know he rides this horse; it
belongs to Gale Morgan. Sassoon," Scott smiled sympathetically on
Lefever, "is half-way to Morgan's Gap."
"After him!" cried Lefever hotly. De Spain looked inquiringly at the
guard. Scott shook his head. "That would be all right, but there's two
other Calabasas men in the Gap this afternoon it wouldn't be nice to
mix with--Deaf Sandusky and Harvey Logan."
"We won't mix with them," suggested de Spain.
"If we tackle Sassoon, they'll mix with us," explained Scott. He
reflected a moment. "They always stay at Gale Morgan's or Duke's. We
might sneak Sassoon out without their getting on. Sassoon knows he is
safe in the Gap; but he'll hide even after he gets there. He takes two
precautions for every other man's one. Sassoon is a wonder at hiding
out. I've got the Thief River run this afternoon----"
De Spain looked at him. "Well?"
Scott's face softened into the characteristic smile--akin to a quiet
grin--that it often wore. "If I didn't have to go through to-day, and
the three of us could get to the Gap before daylight to-morrow
morning, I would give Sassoon a run for his money in spite of the
other fellows."
"Don't take your run this afternoon," directed de Spain. "Telephone
Sleepy Cat for a substitute. Suppose we go back, get something to eat,
and you two ride singly over toward the Gap this afternoon; lie
outside under cover to see whether Sassoon or his friends leave before
night--there's only one way out of the place, they tell me. Then I
will join you, and we'll ride in before daylight, and perhaps catch
him while everybody is asleep."
"If you do," predicted Scott, in his deliberate way of expressing a
conclusion, "I think you'll get him."
It was so arranged.
CHAPTER V
ROUNDING UP SASSOON
De Spain joined his associates at dark outside the Gap. Neither
Sassoon nor his friends had been seen. The night was still, the sky
cloudless, and as the three men with a led horse rode at midnight into
the mountains, the great red heart of the Scorpion shone afire in the
southern sky. Spreading out when they rode between the mountain walls,
they made their way without interruption silently toward their
rendezvous, an aspen grove near which Purgatoire Creek makes its way
out of the Gap and, cutting a deep gash along the edge of the range
for a hundred miles, empties into the Thief.
Scott was the first to reach the trees. The little grove spreads
across a slope half a mile wide between the base of one towering
cliff, still bearing its Spanish name, El Capitan, and the gorge of
the Purgatoire. To the east of this point the trails to Calabasas and
to Sleepy Cat divide, and here Scott and Lefever received de Spain,
who had ridden slowly and followed Scott's injunctions to keep the
red star to the right of El Capitan all the way across the Sinks.
Securing their horses, the three stretched out on the open ground to
wait for daylight. De Spain was wakeful, and his eyes rested with
curiosity on the huge bulk of Music Mountain, rising overwhelmingly
above him. Through the Gap that divided the great, sentinel-like front
of El Capitan, marking the northern face of the mountain rift, from
Round Top, the south wall of the opening, stars shone vividly, as if
lighting the way into the silent range beyond.
The breathing of his companions soon assured de Spain that both were
asleep. The horses were quiet, and the night gave no sound save that
vaguely through the darkness came the faint brawl of tiny cataracts
tumbling down far mountain heights. De Spain, lying on his side, his
head resting on his elbow, and his hands clasped at the back of his
neck, meditated first on how he should capture Sassoon at daybreak,
and then on Nan Morgan and her mountain home, into which he was about
to break to drag out a criminal. Sassoon and his malice soon drifted
out of his mind, but Nan remained. She stayed with him, it seemed, for
hours--appearing and disappearing, in one aspect more alluring than
another. Then her form outlined in the mists that rose from the
hidden creek seemed to hover somewhere near until Scott's hand laid on
the dreamer's shoulder drove it suddenly away. Day was at hand.
De Spain got up and shook off the chilliness and drowsiness of the
night. It had been agreed that he, being less known in the Gap than
either of his companions, could best attempt the difficult capture. It
was strictly a _coup de main_, depending for its success on chance and
nerve. The one that tried it might manage to bring out his man--or
might be brought out himself. Between these alternatives there was not
much middle ground, except that failing to find Sassoon, or in case he
should be intercepted with his prisoner, the intruder, escaping
single-handed from a shower of bullets, might still get away. But
Morgan's Gap men were esteemed fairly good marksmen.
Bob Scott, who knew the recess well, repeated his explicit directions
as to how de Spain was to reach Sassoon's shack. He repeated his
description of its interior, told him where the bed stood, and even
where Sassoon ordinarily kept his knife and his revolver. The western
sky was still dark when de Spain, mounting, discussed the last
arrangements with his scouts and, taking the bridle of the led horse,
turned toward Round Top. At its narrowest point the Gap opening is
barely two miles wide, and the one road, in and out, lies among the
rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge.
De Spain gave his horse his head--it was still too dark to distinguish
the path--and depended on his towering landmarks for his general
direction. He advanced at a snail's pace until he passed the base of
El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high
projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the
eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly
hidden valley before him. The eastern and southern sides still lay in
darkness, but the stupendous cliffs frowning on the north and west
were lighted somewhat from the east. The southern wall, though
shrouded, seemed to rise in an unending series of beetling arêtes.
De Spain caught his breath. No description he had ever heard of the
nook that screened the Morgans from the outside world had prepared him
for what he saw. From side to side of the gigantic mountain fissure,
it could hardly be, de Spain thought, more than a few thousand
yards--so completely was his sense of proportion stunned by the
frowning cliffs which rose, at points, half a mile into the sky. But
it was actually several miles from wall to wall, and the Gap was more
than as much in depth, as it ran back to a mere wedge between unnamed
Superstition peaks.
Every moment that he pushed ahead warned him that daylight would come
suddenly and his time to act would be short. The trail he followed
broadened into a road, and he strained his eyes for signs, first of
life, and then of habitation. The little creek, now beside his way,
flowed quietly albeit swiftly along, and his utmost vigilance could
detect no living thing stirring; but a turn in the trail, marked by a
large pine-tree and conforming to a bend of the stream, brought him up
startled and almost face to face with a long, rambling ranch-house.
The gable end of the two-story portion of the building was so close to
him that he instantly reined up to seek hiding from its upper and
lower windows.
From Scott's accurate description he knew the place. This was Duke
Morgan's ranch-house, set as a fortress almost at the mouth of the
Gap. To pass it unobserved was to compass the most ticklish part of
his mission, and without changing his slow pace he rode on, wondering
whether a bullet, if fired from any of the low, open windows--which he
could almost throw his hat into as he trotted past--would knock him
off his horse or leave him a chance to spur away. But no bullet
challenged him and no sound came from the silent house. He cantered
away from the peril, thinking with a kind of awe of Nan, asleep, so
close, under that roof--confident, too, he had not been seen--though,
in matter of fact, he had been.
He quickened his pace. The place he wanted to reach was more than a
mile distant. Other cabins back toward the north wall could be seen
dimly to his right, but all were well removed from his way. He found,
in due time, the ford in the creek, as Scott had advised, made it
without mishap, scrambled up a steep and rocky path, and saw
confronting him, not far ahead, a small, ruinous-looking cabin shack.
Dismounting before this, he threw his lines, shook himself a little,
and walked up to the cabin door. It was open.
The mild-minded conspirators who had planned the details of the
abduction were agreed that if the effort could be made a success at
all, there was but one way to effect it, and that was to act, in
every step, openly. Any attempt to steal on Sassoon unawares would
be a desperate one; while to walk boldly into his cabin at daybreak
would be to do only what his companions were likely at any time to do,
and was the course least calculated to lead to serious trouble. None
of the three were unaware of the psychological action of that
peculiar instinct of danger possessed by men habitually exposed to
surprise--they knew how easily it may be aroused in a sleeper by the
unusual happening about him, and how cunningly it is allayed by
counterfeiting within his hearing the usual course of normal events.
De Spain, following the chosen policy, called gruffly to the cabin
inmate. There was no answer. All had sounded extremely plausible to de
Spain at the time he listened to Bob Scott's ingenious anticipation of
the probabilities, and he had felt while listening to the subtle
Indian that the job was not a complicated one.
But now, as he hitched his trouser band near to the butt of his
revolver with his right hand, and laid his left on the jamb of
the door with an effort to feel at home, stepped unevenly across
the threshold, and tried to peer into the interior darkness,
Scott's strategy did not, for some reason, commend itself quite
so convincingly to him. There seemed, suddenly, a great many
chances for a slip in the programme. De Spain coughed slightly, his
eyes meantime boring the darkness to the left, where Sassoon's bed
should be. The utmost scrutiny failed to disclose any sign of it
or any sound of breathing from that corner. He took a few steps
toward where the man should be asleep, and perceived beyond a
doubt that there was no bed in the corner at all. He turned
toward the other corner, his hand covering the butt of his gun.
"Hello, Shike!" he called out in a slightly strained tone of
camaraderie, addressing Sassoon by a common nickname. Then he
listened. A trumpeting snore answered. No sound was ever sweeter to
de Spain's ear. The rude noise cleared the air and steadied the
intruder as if Music Mountain itself had been lifted off his
nerves.
He tried again: "Where are you, Shike?" he growled. "What's this stuff
on the floor?" he continued, shuffling his way ostentatiously to the
other side of the room. But his noise-making was attended with the
utmost caution. He had dropped, like a shot, flat on the floor and
crawled, feeling his way, to the opposite side of the room, only to
find, after much trouble, that the bed in the darkness was there, but
it was empty. De Spain rose. For a moment he was nonplussed. An inside
room remained, but Scott had said there was no bed within it. He felt
his way toward the inner door. This was where he expected to find it,
and it was closed. He laid a hand gingerly on the latch. "Where are
you, Shike?" he demanded again, this time with an impatient expletive
summoned for the occasion. A second fearful snore answered him. De
Spain, relieved, almost laughed as he pushed the door open, though
not sure whether a curse or a shot would greet him. He got neither.
And a welcome surprise in the dim light came through a stuffy pane of
glass at one end of the room. It revealed at the other end a man
stretched asleep on a wall bunk--a man that would, in all likelihood,
have heard the stealthiest sound had any effort been made to conceal
it, but to whose ears the rough voices of a mountain cabin are mere
sleeping-potions.
The sleeper was destined, a moment later, to a ruder awakening than
even his companion outlaws ever gave him. Lying unsuspectingly on his
back, he woke to feel a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. The
instinct of self-preservation acted like a flash. His eyes opened and
his hands struck out like cat's paws to the right and left: no knife
and no revolver met them. Instead, in the semidarkness a strange face
bent over him. His fists shot out together, only to be caught in a
vise that broke his arms in two at the elbows, and forced them back
against his throat. Like lightning, he threw up his knees, drew
himself into a heap, and shot himself out, hands, arms, legs, back,
everything into one terrific spring. But the sinewy vise above only
gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like
an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and heart and lungs.
Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could
not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release
from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and shut off his
breath.
Again and again, with the fury of desperation, Sassoon drew in his
powerful frame, shot it out, twisted and struggled. Great veins
swelled on his forehead, his breath burst in explosive gasps, he
writhed from side to side--it was all one. After every effort the
cruel fingers at his throat tightened. The heavy knee on his chest
crushed more relentlessly. He lay still.
"Are you awake, Shike?" Sassoon heard from the gloom above him. But he
could not place the voice. "You seem to move around a good deal in
your sleep. If you're awake, keep still. I've come from Sleepy Cat to
get you. Don't mind looking for your gun and knife. Two men are with
me. You can have your choice. We've got a horse for you. You can ride
away from us here inside the Gap, and take what hits you in the back,
or you can go to Sleepy Cat with us and stand your trial. I'll read
your warrant when the sun gets a little higher. Get up and choose
quick."
Sassoon could not see who had subdued him, nor did he take long to
decide what to do. Scott had predicted he would go without much fuss,
and de Spain, now somewhat surprised, found Bob right in his forecast.
With less trouble than he expected, the captor got his man sullenly on
horseback, and gave him severely plain directions as to what not to
do. Sassoon, neither bound nor gagged, was told to ride his horse down
the Gap closely ahead of de Spain and neither to speak nor turn his
head no matter what happened right or left. To get him out in this
manner was, de Spain realized, the really ticklish part of the
undertaking.
Fortune, however, seemed to favor his assurance in invading the lions'
den. In the growing light the two men trotted smartly a mile down the
trail without encountering a sign of life. When they approached the
Morgan ranch-house de Spain again felt qualms. But he rode close to
his prisoner, told him in restrained monologue what would happen if he
made a noise, and even held him back in his pace as they trotted
together past the Gap stronghold. Nevertheless, he breathed more
freely when they left the house behind and the turn in the road put
them out of range of its windows. He closed up the distance between
himself and Sassoon, riding close in to his side, and looked back at
the house. He looked quickly, but though his eyes were off his path
and his prisoner for only a fraction of a second, when he looked ahead
again he saw confronting him, not a hundred yards away, a motionless
horseman.
CHAPTER VI
HEELS FOR IT
With a sudden, low command to Sassoon to check his horse, and without
a movement that could be detected in the dawn ten yards away, de Spain
with the thumb and finger of his right hand lifted his revolver from
its scabbard, shifted his lines from his left hand to his right, rode
closer to Sassoon and pressed the muzzle of the gun to his prisoner's
side. "You've got one chance yet, Shike, to ride out of here alive,"
he said composedly. "You know I am a rustler--cousin of John
Rebstock's. My name is 'Frenchy'; I belong in Williams Cache. I rode
in last night from Thief River, and you are riding out with me to
start me on to the Sleepy Cat trail. If you can remember that
much----"
While he spoke to Sassoon his eyes were fixed on the rider halted in
their path. De Spain stopped half-way through his sentence. The figure
revealed in the half-light puzzled him at first. Then it confused and
startled him. He saw it was not a man at all, but a woman--and a
woman than whom he would rather have seen six men. It was Nan
Morgan.
With her head never more decisively set under her mannish hat, her
waist never more attractively outlined in slenderness, she silently
faced de Spain in the morning gray. His face reflected his chagrined
perplexity. The whole fabric of his slender plot seemed to go to
pieces at the sight of her. At the mere appearance of his frail and
motionless foe a feeling of awkward helplessness dissolved his easy
confidence. He now reversed every move he had so carefully made with
his hands and, resentfully eying Nan, rode in somewhat behind Sassoon,
doing nothing further than to pull his kerchief up about his neck, and
wondering what would be likely to happen before the next three minutes
were up. Beyond that flash the future held no interest for him--his
wits had temporarily failed.
Of one thing he felt assured, that it was in no wise up to him to
speak or do first. He could already see Nan's eyes. They were bent
keenly first on him, then on his companion, and again on him. De Spain
kept his face down as much as he dared, and his hat had been pulled
well over it from the beginning. She waited so long before accosting
the two men that de Spain, who was ready to hope any improbable thing,
began to hope she might let them pass unchallenged. He had resolved,
if she did not speak to push past without even looking at her. They
were now almost abreast. His fine resolution went smash overboard. The
very instinctive knowledge that her eyes were bent on his made him
steal a glance at her in spite of himself. The next instant he was
shamefacedly touching his hat. Though nothing was lost on her, Nan
professed not to see the greeting. He even continued to dream she did
not recognize him. Her eyes, in fact, were directed toward Sassoon,
and when she spoke her tone was dry with suspicion.
"Wait a moment, Sassoon. Where are you going?" she demanded. Sassoon
hitched with one hand at his trousers band. He inclined his head
sulkily toward his companion. "Starting a man on the trail for Sleepy
Cat."
"Stop," she exclaimed sharply, for de Spain, pushing his own horse
ahead, had managed without being observed, to kick Sassoon's horse in
the flank, and the two were passing. Sassoon at the resolute summons
stopped. De Spain could do no less; both men, halting, faced their
suspicious inquisitor. She scrutinized de Spain keenly. "What is this
man doing in the Gap?"
"He come up from Thief River last night," answered Sassoon monotonously.
"What is he doing here with you?" persisted Nan.
"He's a cousin of John Rebstock's from Williams Cache," continued
Sassoon. The yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances
for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now
confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that
de Spain would fully as lief have been sitting between his horse's
legs as astride his back.
"That's not true, Sassoon," said his relentless questioner. Her tone
and the expression of her face boded no friendliness for either of the
two she had intercepted.
De Spain had recovered his wits. "You're right," he interposed without
an instant's hesitation. "It isn't true. But that's not his fault; he
is under arrest, and is telling you what I told him to tell you. I
came in here this morning to take Sassoon to Sleepy Cat. He is a
prisoner, wanted for cutting up one of our stage-guards."
Nan, coldly sceptical, eyed de Spain. "And do you try to tell me"--she
pointed to Sassoon's unbound hands--"that he is riding out of here, a
free man, to go to jail?"
"I do tell you exactly that. He is my prisoner----"
"I don't believe either of you," declared Nan scornfully. "You are
planning something underhand together."
De Spain laughed coolly. "We've planned that much together, but not, I
assure you, with his consent."
"I don't believe your stories at all," she declared firmly.
De Spain flushed. The irritation and the serious danger bore in on
him. "If you don't believe me it's not my fault," he retorted. "I've
told you the truth. Ride on, Sassoon."
He spoke angrily, but this in no wise daunted Nan. She wheeled her
horse directly in front of them. "Don't you stir, Sassoon," she
commanded, "until I call Uncle Duke."
De Spain spurred straight at her; their horses collided, and his knee
touched hers in the saddle. "I'm going to take this man out of here,"
he announced in a tone she never had heard before from a man. "I've no
time to talk. Go call your uncle if you like. We must pass."
"You shan't pass a step!"
With the quick words of defiance the two glared at each other. De
Spain was taken aback. He had expected no more than a war of words--a
few screams at the most. Nan's face turned white, but there was no
symptom even of a whimper. He noticed her quick breathing, and felt,
instinctively, the restrained gesture of her right hand as it started
back to her side. The move steadied him. "One question," he said
bluntly, "are you armed?"
She hated even to answer, and met his searching gaze resentfully, but
something in his tone and manner wrung a reply. "I can defend myself,"
she exclaimed angrily.
De Spain raised his right hand from his thigh to the pommel of his
saddle. The slight gesture was eloquent of his surrender of the issue
of force. "I can't go into a shooting-match with you about this cur.
If you call your uncle there will be bloodshed--unless you drop me off
my horse right here and now before he appears. All I ask you is this:
Is this kind of a cutthroat worth that? If you shoot me, my whole
posse from Sleepy Cat is right below us in the aspens. Some of your
own people will be killed in a general fight. If you want to shoot me,
shoot--you can have the match all to yourself. If you don't, let us go
by. And if I've told you one word that isn't true, call me back to
this spot any time you like, and I'll come at your call, and answer
for it."
His words and his manner confounded her for a moment. She could not at
once make an answer, for she could not decide what to say. Then, of a
sudden, she was robbed of her chance to answer. From down the trail
came a yell like a shot. The clatter of hoofs rang out, and men on
horses dashed from the entrance of the Gap toward them. De Spain could
not make them out distinctly, but he knew Lefever's yell, and pointed.
"There they are," he exclaimed hurriedly. "There is the whole posse.
They are coming!" A shot, followed closely by a second, rang out from
below. "Go," he cried to Nan. "There'll be shooting here that I can't
stop!" He slapped Sassoon's pony viciously with his hand, yelled loud
in answer to Lefever, and before the startled girl could collect
herself, de Spain, crouching in his saddle, as a fusillade cracked
from Lefever's and Scott's revolvers, urged Sassoon's horse around
Nan's, kicked it violently, spurred past her himself, and was away.
White with consternation and anger, she steadied herself and looked
after the fleeing pair. Then whirling in her saddle, she ran her pony
back to the ranch-house to give the alarm.
Yelling like half a dozen men, Lefever and Scott, as de Spain and his
prisoner dashed toward them, separated, let the pair pass, and spurred
in behind to cover the flight and confront any pursuers. None at the
moment threatened, but no words were exchanged until the whole party,
riding fast, were well past El Capitan and out of the Gap. For some
unexpressed reason--so strong is the influence of tradition and
reputation--no one of the three coveted a close encounter with the
Morgans within its walls.
"It's the long heels for it now, boys," cried de Spain. His companions
closed up again.
"Save your horses," cautioned Scott, between strides. "It's a good
ways home."
"Make for Calabasas," shouted Lefever.
"No," yelled Scott. "They would stand us a siege at Calabasas. While
the trail is open make for the railroad."
A great globe of dazzling gold burst into the east above the distant
hills. But the glory of the sunrise called forth no admiration from
the three men hurrying a fourth urgently along the Sleepy Cat trail.
Between breaths de Spain explained his awkward meeting with Nan, and
of the strait he was in when Lefever's strong lungs enabled him to get
away unscratched. But for a gunman a narrow squeak is as good as a
wide one, and no one found fault with the situation. They had the
advantage--the only question was whether they could hold it. And while
they continued to cast anxious glances behind, Scott's Indian eyes
first perceived signs on the horizon that marked their pursuit.
"No matter," declared Lefever. "This is a little fast for a fat man,
anyway." He was not averse, either, to the prospect of a long-range
exchange with the fighting mountaineers. All drew rein a little.
"Suppose I cover the rear till we see what this is," suggested
Lefever, limbering up as the other two looked back. "Push ahead with
Sassoon. These fellows won't follow far."
"Don't be sure about that," muttered Scott. "Duke and Gale have got
the best horses in the mountains, and they'd rather fight than eat.
There they come now."
Dashing across a plain they themselves had just crossed, they could
see three horsemen in hot chase. The pursued men rode carefully, and,
scanning the ground everywhere ahead and behind, de Spain, Scott, and
Lefever awaited the moment when their pursuers should show their hand.
Scott was on the west of the line, and nearest the enemy.
"Who are they, Bob?" yelled Lefever.
Scott scrutinized the pursuers carefully. "One," he called back, "that
big fellow on the right, is Deaf Sandusky, sure. Harvey Logan, likely,
the middle man. The other I can't make out. Look!" he exclaimed,
pointing to the foot-hills on their distant left. Two men, riding out
almost abreast of them, were running their horses for a small canyon
through which the trail led two miles ahead. "Some riding," cried
Scott, watching the newcomers. "That farther man must be Gale Morgan.
They are trying for the greasewood canyon, to cut us off."
"We can't stand for that," decided de Spain, surveying the ground
around them. "There's not so much as a sage-brush here for cover."
Lefever pointed to his right; at some distance a dark, weather-beaten
cone rose above the yellow desert. "Let's make a stand in the lava
beds," he cried.
De Spain hesitated. "It takes us the wrong way." He pointed ahead.
"Give them a run for that canyon, boys."
Urging their horses, the Sleepy Cat men rode at utmost speed to beat
the flanking party to the trail gateway. For a few minutes it looked
an even break between pursuers and pursued. The two men in the
foot-hills now had a long angle to overcome, but they were doing a
better pace than those of the Gap party behind, and half-way to the
canyon it looked like a neck-and-neck heat for the narrow entrance.
Lefever complained of the effort of keeping up, and at length reined
in his horse. "Drop me here on the alkali, boys," he cried to the
others. "I'll hold this end while you get through the canyon."
"No," declared de Spain, checking his pace. "If one stays, all stay.
This is as good a time as any to find out what these fellows mean."
"But not a very good place," commented Scott, as they slowed, looking
for a depression.
"It's as good for us as it is for them," returned de Spain abruptly.
"We'll try it right here."
He swung out of his saddle, Lefever and Scott after an instant's
reconnoissance following. Sassoon they dismounted. Scott lashed his
wrists together, while de Spain and Lefever unslung their carbines,
got their horses down, and, facing the west and south, spread
themselves on the ground.
The men behind lost nothing of the defensive movement of the pursued
party, and slowed up in turn. For the moment the flankers were out of
sight, but they must soon appear on the crest of a rise between them
and the canyon. Lefever was first down and first ready with his rifle
to cover the men behind. These now spread out and came on, as if for a
rush.
Lefever, picking Logan, the foremost, sent a warning shot in front of
him. De Spain fired almost at the same moment toward the big man
making a détour to the right of the leader. The two bullets puffed in
the distant alkali, and the two horsemen, sharply admonished, swerved
backward precipitately. After a momentary circling indecision, the
three rode closer together for a conference, dismounted, and opened a
return fire on the little party lying to.
The strategy of their halt and their firing was not hard to penetrate.
The men from the foot-hills were still riding for the canyon. No views
were exchanged among Sassoon's captors, but all understood that this
move must be stopped. Lefever and Scott, without words, merely left
the problem to de Spain as the leader. He lay on the right of the line
as they faced south, and this brought him nearest to the riders out of
the foot-hills. Taking advantage of a lull in the firing, he pulled
his horse around between himself and the attacking party, and in such
a position that he could command with his rifle the fast-moving riders
to the west.
Something of a predicament confronted him. He was loath to take a
human life in the effort to get a cutthroat jailed, and hated even to
cripple a beast for it, but the two men must be stopped. Nor was it
easy to pick up the range offhand, but meaning that the Morgans, if
they were Morgans, should understand how a rush would be met, he sent
one shot after another, short, beyond, and ahead of the horsemen, to
check them, and to feel the way for closer shooting if it should be
necessary. The two dashed on undaunted. De Spain perceived that
warnings were wasted. He lowered his sights, and, waiting his chance
as the leader of the foot-hill pursuers rode into a favorable range,
he fired for his horse's head. The beast jumped convulsively and
pitched forward, head down in a half somersault, throwing his rider
violently to the ground. Scott and Lefever yelled loudly.
Out of the cloud of dust the man scrambled to his feet, looked coolly
around, and brushed the alkali disgustedly from his eyes just as a
second bullet from de Spain tore up the earth a few feet to one side
of him. He jumped like a rabbit at this summons, and did not even make
a further pretense at composure. Grabbing his hat from the ground, he
ran like mad toward the hills. Meantime his mounted companion had
turned about. De Spain sprang to his feet, jerked up his horse and
cried: "Now for the canyon!" Pushing Sassoon into the saddle and
profiting by the confusion, the railroad men rode hard for their
refuge, and reached it without more molestation than an occasional
shot from their distant pursuers on the main trail. De Spain and his
scouts now felt assured of their escape. The foot-hills contingent was
left far behind, and, though their remaining pursuers rode in at times
with a show of rushing, the chase was a stern one, and could be
checked whenever necessary. Halting at times in this way to breathe
their horses, or to hold off the rear pursuit, de Spain with his two
companions and their prisoner rode into Sleepy Cat, locked Sassoon up,
and went to the Mountain House for breakfast.
CHAPTER VII
MAINTAINING A REPUTATION
The abduction of Sassoon, which signalized de Spain's entry into the
stage-line management, created a sensation akin to the exploding of a
bomb under the range. The whole mountain country, which concentrates,
sensibly, on but one topic at a time, talked for a week of nothing
else. No such defiance of the traditions of the Morgan rule along the
reaches of the Spanish Sinks had been attempted in years--and it was
recalled more than once, when de Spain's feat was discussed at the
ranches, on the trails, and in the haunts of gunmen in Calabasas, that
no one of those who had ever braved the wrath of the Sink rulers had
lived indefinitely to boast of it.
Experienced men, therefore, in the high country--men of that class
who, wherever found, are old in the ways of the world, and not
promptly moved by new or youthful adventure--dismissed the incident
after hearing the details, with the comment or the conclusion that
there would hardly be for de Spain more than one additional chapter to
the story, and that this would be a short one. The most active
Morgans--Gale, Duke, and the easy-going Satterlee--were indeed wrought
to the keenest pitch of revengeful anger. No question of the right or
wrong of the arrest was discussed--justification was not considered.
It was an overwhelmingly insolent invasion--and worst of all, a
successful invasion, by one who had nothing but cool impudence, not
even a budding reputation to justify his assault on the lifelong
prestige of the Gap clan. Gale Morgan strode and rode the streets of
Sleepy Cat looking for de Spain, and storming.
De Spain himself, somewhat surprised at the storm he had kicked up,
heeded the counsel of Scott, and while the acute stage of the
resentment raged along the trail he ran down for a few days to
Medicine Bend to buy horses. Both Gale and Duke Morgan proclaimed, in
certain public places in Sleepy Cat, their intention of shooting de
Spain on sight; and as a climax to all the excitement of the week
following his capture, the slippery Sassoon broke jail and, after a
brief interval, appeared at large in Calabasas.
This feat of the Morgan satellite made a loud laugh at de Spain's
expense. It mitigated somewhat the humiliation of Sassoon's friends,
but it in no wise diminished their expressed resolve to punish de
Spain's invasion. Lefever, who as the mixer among the stage men, kept
close to the drift of public sentiment, decided after de Spain's
return to Sleepy Cat that the stage-line authorities had gained
nothing by Sassoon's capture.
"We ought to have thought of it before, Henry," he said frankly one
night in Jeffries's office, "but we didn't think."
"Meaning just what, John?" demanded de Spain without real interest.
"Meaning, that in this country you can't begin on a play like pulling
Sassoon out from under his friends' noses without keeping up the
pace--without a second and third act. You dragged Sassoon by his hair
out of the Gap; good. You surprised everybody; good. But you can't
very well stop at that, Henry. You have raised hopes, you have led
people to invest you with the faint glimmerings of a reputation. I
say, the glimmerings, because such a feat by itself doesn't insure a
permanent reputation, Henry. It is, so to say, merely a 'demand'
reputation--one that men reserve the right to recall at any moment.
And the worst of it is, if they ever do recall it, you are worse off
than when before they extended the brittle bauble to you."
"Jingo, John! For a stage blacksmith you are some spieler." De Spain
added an impatient, not to say contumelious exclamation concerning
the substance of Lefever's talk. "I didn't ask them for a reputation.
This man interfered with my guard--in fact, tried to cut his throat,
didn't he?"
"Would have done it if Frank had been an honest man."
"That is all there is to it, isn't it? If Sassoon or anybody else gets
in the way of the stages, I'll go after them again--that's all there
is to it, isn't it?"
Lefever tapped the second finger of one fat hand gently on the table.
"Practically; practically all, Henry, yes. You don't quite understand,
but you have the right idea. What I am trying to hammer into your
dense cocoanut is, that when a man has, gets, or is given a reputation
out in this country, he has got to live up to it."
"What do you want me to do--back a horse and shoot two guns at once up
and down Main Street, cowboy style?"
Lefever kept his patience without difficulty. "No, no. You'll
understand."
"Scott advised me to run down to Medicine Bend for a few days to let
the Morgans cool off."
"Right. That was the first step. The few days are a thing of the past.
I suppose you know," continued Lefever, in as well-modulated a tone
as he could assume to convey information that could not be regarded as
wholly cheerful, "that they expect to get you for this Sassoon job."
De Spain flushed. But the red anger lasted only a moment. "Who are
'they'?" he asked after a pause.
"Deaf Sandusky, Logan, of course, the Calabasas bunch, and the
Morgans."
De Spain regarded his companion unamiably. "What do they expect I'll
be doing while they are getting me?"
Lefever raised a hand deprecatingly. "Don't be overconfident, Henry;
that's your danger. I know you can take care of yourself. All I want
to do is to get the folks here acquainted with your ability, without
taking unnecessary chances. You see, people are not now asking
questions of one another; they are asking them of themselves. Who and
what is this newcomer--an accident or a genuine arrival? A common
squib or a real explosion? Don't get excited," he added, in an effort
to soothe de Spain's obvious irritation. "You have the idea, Henry.
It's time to show yourself."
"I can't very well do business here without showing myself," retorted
de Spain.
"But it is a thing to be managed," persisted Lefever. "Now,
suppose--since the topic is up--we 'show' in Main Street for a
while."
"Suppose we do," echoed de Spain ungraciously.
"That will crack the début ice. We will call at Harry Tenison's hotel,
and then go to his new rooms--go right to society headquarters
first--that's my theory of doing it. If anybody has any shooting in
mind, Tenison's is a quiet and orderly place. And if a man declines to
eat anybody up at Tenison's, we put him down, Henry, as not ravenously
hungry."
"One man I would like to see is that sheriff, Druel, who let Sassoon
get out."
"Ready to interview him now?"
"I've got some telegrams to answer."
"Those will keep. The Morgans are in town. We'll start out and find
somebody."
It was wet and sloppy outside, but Lefever was indifferent to the
rain, and de Spain thought it would be undignified to complain of it.
When, followed by Lefever, he walked into the lobby of Tenison's hotel
a few moments later the office was empty. Nevertheless, the news of
the appearance of Sassoon's captor spread. The two sauntered into the
billiard-hall, which occupied a deep room adjoining the office and
opened with large plate-glass windows on Main Street. Every table was
in use. A fringe of spectators in the chairs, ostensibly watching the
pool games, turned their eyes toward de Spain--those that recognized
him distinguishing him by nods and whispers to others.
Among several groups of men standing before the long bar, one party of
four near the front end likewise engaged the interest of those keener
loafers who were capable of foreseeing situations. These men,
Satterlee Morgan, the cattleman; Bull Page, one of his cowboys;
Sheriff Druel, and Judge Druel, his brother, had been drinking
together. They did not see Lefever and his companion as the two came
in through the rear lobby door. But Lefever, on catching sight of
them, welcomed his opportunity. Walking directly forward, he laid his
hand on Satt Morgan's shoulder. As the cattleman turned, Lefever,
genially grasping his hand, introduced de Spain to each of the party
in turn. What followed in the brief interval between the meeting of
the six men and the sudden breaking up of the group a few moments
later was never clearly known, but a fairly conclusive theory of it
was afterward accepted by Sleepy Cat.
Morgan threw the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned
face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety
designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But
his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long,
round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his
frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. "I heard," he said in
a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, "you made a sunrise call on us
one day last week."
"And I want to say," returned de Spain, equally amiable, "that if I
had had any idea you folks would take it so hard--I mean, as an
affront intended to any of you--I never would have gone into the Gap
after Sassoon. I just assumed--making a mistake as I now realize--that
my scrap would be with Sassoon, not with the Morgans."
Satt's face wrinkled into a humorous grin. "You sure kicked up some
alkali."
De Spain nodded candidly. "More than I intended to. And I say--without
any intention of impertinence to anybody else--Sassoon is a cur. I
supposed when I brought him in here after so much riding, that we had
sheriff enough to keep him." He looked at Druel with such composure
that the latter for a moment was nonplussed. Then he discharged a
volley of oaths, and demanded what de Spain meant. De Spain did not
move. He refused to see the angry sheriff. "That is where I made my
second mistake," he continued, speaking to Morgan and forcing his
tone just enough to be heard. Druel, with more hard words, began to
abuse the railroad for not paying taxes enough to build a decent jail.
De Spain took another tack. He eyed the sheriff calmly as the latter
continued to draw away and left de Spain standing somewhat apart from
the rest of the group. "Then it may be I am making another mistake,
Druel, in blaming you. It may not be your fault."
"The fault is, you're fresh," cried Druel, warming up as de Spain
appeared to cool. The line of tipplers backed away from the bar. De
Spain, stepping toward the sheriff, raised his hand in a friendly way.
"Druel, you're hurting yourself by your talk. Make me your deputy
again sometime," he concluded, "and I'll see that Sassoon stays where
he is put."
"I'll just do that," cried Druel, with a very strong word, and he
raised his hand in turn. "Next time you want him locked up, you can
take care of him yourself."
The sharp crack of a rifle cut off the words; a bullet tore like a
lightning-bolt across de Spain's neck, crashed through a mahogany
pilaster back of the bar, and embedded itself in the wall. The shot
had been aimed from the street for his head. The noisy room instantly
hushed. Spectators sat glued to their chairs. White-faced players
leaned motionless against the tables. De Spain alone had acted; all
that the bartenders could ever remember after the single rifle-shot
was seeing his hand go back as he whirled and shot instantly toward
the heavy report. He had whipped out his gun and fired sidewise
through the window at the sound.
That was all. The bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were
crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case,
looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a
dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and
alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain
moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape,
he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. "What's the matter
with your curtains?" he demanded, sheathing his revolver and pointing
with an expletive to the big sheet of plate glass. "Is this the way
you build up business for the house?"
Those close enough to the window saw that the bare pane had been cut,
just above the middle, by two bullet-holes. Curious men examined both
fractures when de Spain and Lefever had left the saloon. The first
hole was the larger. It had been made by a high-powered rifle; the
second was from a bullet of a Colt's revolver; it was remarked as a
miracle of gun-play that the two were hardly an inch apart.
In the street a few minutes later, de Spain and Lefever encountered
Scott, who, with his back hunched up, his cheap black hat pulled well
down over his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets and his thin
coat collar modestly turned against the drizzling rain, was walking
across the parkway from the station.
"Sassoon is in town," exclaimed Lefever with certainty after he had
told the story. He waited for the Indian's opinion. Scott, looking
through the water dripping from the brim of his seasoned derby, gave
it in one word. "Was," he amended with a quiet smile.
"Let's make sure," insisted Lefever. "Supposing he might be in town
yet, Bob, where is he?"
Scott gazed up the street through the rain lighted by yellow lamps on
the obscure corners, and looked down the street toward the black
reaches of the river. "If he's here, you'll find him in one of two
places. Tenison's----"
"But we've just come from Tenison's," objected Lefever.
"I mean, across the street, up-stairs; or at Jim Kitchen's barn. If he
was hurried to get away," added Scott reflectively, "he would slip
up-stairs over there as the nearest place to hide; if he had time he
would make for the barn, where it would be easy to cache his rifle."
Lefever took the lapel of the scout's coat in his hand. "Then you,
Bob, go out and see if you can get the whole story. I'll take
the barn. Let Henry go over to Tenison's and wait at the head of
the stairs till we can get back there. It is just around the
corner--second floor--a dark hall running back, opposite the
double doors that open into an anteroom. Stay there, Henry, till we
come. It won't be long, and if we don't get track of him you may
spot your man yourself."
De Spain found no difficulty in locating the flight of marble stairs
that led to the gambling-rooms. It was the only lighted entrance
in the side street. No light shone at the head of the stairs, but a
doorway on the left opened into a dimly lighted anteroom and this, in
turn, through a large arch, opened on a large room brilliantly
lighted by chandeliers--one in the centre and one near each corner.
Around three sides of this room were placed the keno layouts,
roulette-wheels, faro-tables, and minor gambling devices. Off the
casino itself small card-rooms opened.
The big room was well filled for a wet night. The faro-tables were
busy, and at the central table at the farther end of the room--the
table designated as Tenison's, because, at the rare intervals in which
the proprietor dealt, he presided at this table--a group watched
silently a game in progress. De Spain took a place in shadow near one
side of the archway facing the street-door and at times looked within
for the loosely jointed frame, crooked neck, tousled forehead, and
malevolent face of the cattle thief. He could find in the many figures
scattered about the room none resembling the one he sought.
A man entering the place spoke to another coming out. De Spain
overheard the exchange. "Duke got rid of his steers yet?" asked the
first.
"Not yet."
"Slow game."
"The old man sold quite a bunch this time. The way he's playing now
he'll last twenty-four hours."
De Spain, following the newcomer, strolled into the room and,
beginning at one side, proceeded in leisurely fashion from wheel to
wheel and table to table inspecting the players. Few looked at him and
none paid any attention to his presence. At Tenison's table he saw in
the dealer's chair the large, white, smooth face, dark eyes, and
clerical expression of the proprietor, whose presence meant a real
game and explained the interest of the idlers crowded about one
player whom de Spain, without getting closer in among the onlookers
than he wanted to, could not see.
Tenison, as de Spain approached, happened to look wearily up; his face
showed the set lines of a protracted session. He neither spoke nor
nodded to the newcomer, but recognized him with a mere glance. Then,
though his eyes had rested for only an instant on the new face, he
spoke in an impassive tone across the intervening heads: "What
happened to your red tie, Henry?"
De Spain put up his hand to his neck, and looked down at a loose end
hanging from his soft cravat. It had been torn by the bullet meant for
his head. He tucked the end inside his collar. "A Calabasas man tried
to untie it a few minutes ago. He missed the knot."
Tenison did not hear the answer. He had reverted to his case. De Spain
moved on and, after making the round of the scattered tables, walked
again through the archway into the anteroom, only to meet, as she
stood hesitating and apparently about to enter the room, Nan Morgan.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GAMBLING-ROOM
They confronted each other blankly. To Nan's confusion was added her
embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the
limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse
showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet
riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress,
fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her,
fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.
This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her
eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and
enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up,
furious. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed with indignation. "Let me
pass."
The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move
to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to
obstruct her. "You've made a mistake, I think," he said evenly.
"I have not," she replied with resentment. "Let me pass."
"I think you have. You don't know where you are going," he persisted,
his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.
She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. "I
know perfectly well where I am going," she retorted with heat.
"Then you know," he returned steadily, "that you've no business to
enter such a place."
His opposition seemed only to anger her. "I know where I have
business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter.
You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!"
His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her
resolve. "One question," he said, ignoring her angry words. "Have you
ever been in these rooms before?"
He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She
even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it
was only to collect herself. "Yes," she answered, looking up
unflinchingly.
Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his
interference, but he met her once more quietly. "I am sorry to hear
it," he rejoined. "But that won't make any difference. You can't go in
to-night."
"I will go in," she cried.
"No," he returned slowly, "you are not going in--not, at least, while
I am here."
They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination.
She resented every word he offered. "You are most insolent," she
exclaimed. "You are interfering in something that is no concern of
yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don't
stand aside I'll call for help."
"Nan!" De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words
fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. "We
met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth.
Did I do it?"
"I don't care what you said or what you did----"
"Answer me," he said sharply, "did I tell you the truth?"
"I don't know or care----"
"Yes, you do know----"
"What you say or do----"
"I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you
enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if
you like."
She looked at him with amazement. She seemed about to speak--to make
another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again,
put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward
the stairs. De Spain followed her. "Let me take you to where you are
going?"
Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single,
scornful, furious word: "No!" She quickened her step from him in such
confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the
stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the
men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in
getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She
fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after
her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: "Now, who the deuce was
that?"
De Spain ignored his question by asking another: "Did you find him?"
Lefever shook his head. "Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess
Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?"
"Nobody we want."
"Nothing going on?"
"Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I'll run over to the
office and answer those telegrams."
De Spain started for the stairs. "Henry," called Lefever, as his
companion trotted hastily down, "if you catch up to her, kindly
apologize for a fat man."
But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street
he ran into Scott. "Did you get the story?" demanded de Spain.
"Part of it."
"Was it Sassoon?"
Scott shook his head. "I wish it was."
"What do you mean?"
"Deaf Sandusky."
"Calabasas?"
Scott nodded. "You must have moved a couple of inches at the right
nick, Henry. That man Sandusky," Bob smiled a sickly smile, "doesn't
miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all
around you."
The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. "Why," asked de
Spain, boiling a little, "should that damned, hulking brute try to
blow _my_ head off just now?"
"Only for the good of the order, Henry," grinned the scout.
"Nice job Jeff has picked out for me," muttered de Spain grimly,
"standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at." He drew in a
good breath and threw up the wet brim of his hat. "Well, such is life
in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage
to get me--or I'll manage to get him--that all depends on how the
happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it's bad luck to miss a man. We'll
hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow
John calls the butcher?" demanded de Spain.
"That's what everybody calls him, I guess."
The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three
discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the
report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the
big room in front of them.
Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. "We'll go in and look at
him." He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. "Think
twice, John," suggested the Indian. "If there's any trouble in a crowd
like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is
pretty sure to get hurt."
"I don't mean to start anything," explained Lefever. "I only want de
Spain to look at him."
But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a
faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players,
together with the onlookers, and the dealer--whose tumbled hair fell
partly over the visor that protected his eyes from the glare of the
overhead light--made up the group. The table stood next to that of
Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light,
still held to his chair.
Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced
Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look
the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a
powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without
showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the
size and extreme length of the outlaw's hand. He had heard of
Sandusky's hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the
palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again
the length of the hand of the average man.
De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of
Sandusky's dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so
lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained
now that de Spain perceived Sandusky's small, hard, brown eyes
were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every
little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation
only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset
the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse,
straw-colored hair--plastered recently over the forehead by a
barber--the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand,
the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin,
and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky's brown
shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again
the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass
button.
At Sandusky's side sat his crony in all important undertakings--a much
smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes.
Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de
Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost
no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what
he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered
with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: "I am looking
at you."
Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de
Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. "What are you looking
at me for?" demanded Logan insolently.
De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry.
"So I'll know you next time."
Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned his legs from under the
table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the
brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot
kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance
or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de
Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and
the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so--comprehension dawning
on him--his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which
both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the
faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott's hand rested heavily on him.
"What's the row?" demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man.
Logan pointed at de Spain. "That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight."
"With a man, Logan; not with a cub," retorted de Spain, matching
insult with insult.
"Maybe I can do something for you," interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran
like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the
best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now
at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the
Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged
themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about
lifting his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of
resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the
best weapon. "If I can," he added stiffly, "I'm at your service."
De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky's
eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and
rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the
disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While
Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said
was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only
thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last,
since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal
conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan
by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de
Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged,
and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.
Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to
do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he
could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.
CHAPTER IX
A CUP OF COFFEE
He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to
himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than
all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of
the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for
reflection--indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life
would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and
continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.
But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility
in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang,
failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan
Morgan's eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit,
by a glance, a word, a gesture--a mere turn of her head. There was in
the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to
please her--yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into
her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent
on entering a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night.
Association with outlaws--what might it not do for even such a girl?
While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least
were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of
her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a
horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an
hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail,
hoping to catch a sight of her.
On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound
of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a
clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was
close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to Nan if it were
she. In another moment his ear told him there were two horses
approaching. He waited for the couple to cross the bridge, and they
passed him so close he could almost have touched the nearer rider.
Then he realized, as the horse passing beside him shied, that it was
Sandusky and Logan riding silently by.
For a week de Spain spent most of his time in Sleepy Cat trying to
catch sight of Nan. His reflection on the untoward incidents that had
set them at variance left him rebellious. He meditated more about
putting himself right with her than about all his remaining concerns
together. A strange fire had seized him--that fire of the imagination
which scorns fair words and fine reasoning, but which, smothered,
burns in secret until, fanned by the wind of accident, it bursts out
the more fiercely because of the depths in which it has smouldered.
Every day that de Spain rode across the open country, his eyes turned
to the far range and to Music Mountain. The rounded, distant,
immutable peak--majestic as the sun, cold as the stars, shrouding in
its unknown fastnesses the mysteries of the ages and the secrets of
time--meant to him now only this mountain girl whom its solitude
sheltered and to whom his thoughts continually came back.
Within two weeks he became desperate. He rode the Gap trail from
Sleepy Cat again and again for miles and miles in the effort to
encounter her. He came to know every ridge and hollow on it, every
patch and stone between the lava beds and the Rat River. And in spite
of the counsels of his associates, who warned him to beware of traps,
he spent, under one pretext or another, much of the time either on the
stages to and from Calabasas or in the saddle toward Morgan's Gap,
looking for Nan.
Killing time in this way, after a fruitless ride, his persistence was
one day most unexpectedly rewarded at the Calabasas barns. He had
ridden through a hot sun from Sleepy Cat, passing the up stage
half-way to Calabasas, and had struck from there directly out on
the Sinks toward Morgan's Gap. Riding thence around the lower lava
beds, he had headed for Calabasas, where he had an appointment to
meet Scott and Lefever at five o'clock. When de Spain reached the
Calabasas barn, McAlpin, the barn boss, was standing in the
doorway. "You'd never be comin' from Sleepy Cat in the saddle!"
exclaimed McAlpin incredulously. De Spain nodded affirmatively as he
dismounted. "Hot ride, sir; a hot day," commented McAlpin, shaking
his head dubiously as he called a man to take the horse, unstrapped
de Spain's coat from the saddle, and followed the manager into the
office.
The heat was oppressive, and de Spain unbuckled his cartridge-belt,
slipped his revolver from the holster, mechanically stuck it inside
his trousers waistband, hung the heavy belt up under his coat, and,
sitting down, called for the stage report and asked whether the new
blacksmith had sobered up. When McAlpin had given him all minor
information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to
inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the
manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to
tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry,
sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company
hay, was Nan Morgan's.
McAlpin, talking volubly, essayed to move on, but de Spain, stubbornly
pausing, only continued to look at the handsome saddle-horse. McAlpin
saw he was in for it, and resigned himself to an inquisition. When de
Spain asked whose horse it was, McAlpin was ready. "That little pony
is Nan Morgan's, sir."
De Spain made no comment. "Good-looking pony, sir," ventured McAlpin
half-heartedly.
"What's it doing here?" demanded de Spain coldly.
Before answering, the barn boss eyed de Spain very carefully to see
how the wind was setting, for the pony's presence confessed an
infraction of a very particular rule. "You see," he began, cocking at
his strict boss from below his visorless cap a questioning Scotch eye,
"I like to keep on good terms with that gang. Some of them can be very
ugly. It's better to be friends with them when you can--by stretching
the barn rules a little once in a while--than to have enemies of 'em
all the time--don't you think so, sir?"
"What's her horse doing here?" asked de Spain, without commenting on
the long story, but also without showing, as far as the barnman could
detect, any growing resentment at the infraction of his regulations.
McAlpin made even the most inconsequential approaches to a statement
with a keen and questioning glance. "The girl went up to the Cat on
the early stage, sir. She's coming back this afternoon."
"What is she riding away over here to Calabasas for to take the stage,
instead of riding straight into Sleepy Cat?"
Once more McAlpin eyed him carefully. "The girl's been sick."
"Sick?"
"She ain't really fit to ride a step," confided the Scotch boss with
growing confidence. "But she's been going up two or three times now to
get some medicine from Doc Torpy--that's the way of it. There's a nice
girl, sir--in a bunch o' ruffians, I know--though old Duke, she lives
with, he ain't a half-bad man except for too many cards; I used to
work for him--but I call her a nice girl. Do you happen to know her?"
De Spain had long been on guard. "I've spoken with her in a business
way one or twice, Jim. I can't really say I know her."
"Nice girl. But that's a tough bunch in that Gap, sure as you're
alive; yes, sir."
De Spain was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had
lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a
hardy and enduring rider on a night round-up.
"Anything sick, Jim?" asked de Spain, walking on down the barn and
looking at the horses. It was only the second time since he had given
him the job that de Spain had called the barn boss "Jim," and McAlpin
answered with the rising assurance of one who realizes he is "in"
right. "Not so much as a sore hoof in either alley, Mr. de Spain. I
try to take care of them, sir."
"What are we paying you, Jim?"
"Twenty-seven a week, sir; pretty heavy work at that."
"We'll try to make that thirty-two after this week."
McAlpin touched his cap. "Thank you kindly, sir, I'm sure. It costs
like hell to live out here, Mr. de Spain."
"Lefever says you live off him at poker."
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, sir! John will have his joke. He's always after me to
play poker with him--I don't like to do it. I've got a family to
support--he ain't. But by and far, I don't think John and me is ten
dollars apart, year in and year out. Look at that bay, sir! A month
ago Elpaso said that horse was all in--look at him now. I manage to
keep things up."
"What did you say," asked de Spain indifferently, "had been the matter
with Nan Morgan?" Her name seemed a whole mouthful to speak, so
fearful was he of betraying interest.
"Why, I really didn't say, sir. And I don't know. But from what she
says, and the way she coughs, I'm thinking it was a touch of this
p-new-monia that's going around so much lately, sir."
His listener recalled swiftly the days that had passed since the night
he had seen her wet through in the cold rain at Sleepy Cat. He feared
Jim's diagnosis might be right. And he had already made all
arrangements to meet the occasion now presenting itself. Circumstances
seemed at last to favor him, and he looked at his watch. The down
stage bringing Nan back would be due in less than an hour.
"Jim," he said thoughtfully, "you are doing the right thing in showing
some good-will toward the Morgans."
"Now, I'm glad you think that, sir."
"You know I unintentionally rubbed their backs the wrong way in
dragging Sassoon out."
"They're jealous of their power, I know--very jealous."
"This seems the chance to show that I have no real animosity myself
toward the outfit."
Since de Spain was not looking at him, McAlpin cocked two keen and
curious eyes on the sphinx-like birthmark of the very amiable
speaker's face. However, the astute boss, if he wondered, made no
comment. "When the stage comes in," continued de Spain quietly, "have
the two grays--Lady and Ben--hitched to my own light Studebaker. I'll
drive her over to the Gap myself."
"The very thing," exclaimed McAlpin, staring and struggling with his
breath.
"In some way I've happened, both times I talked with her, to get in
wrong--understand?" McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than
once. "No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first
take kindly to the idea of going with me."
"I see."
"But she ought to do it. She will be tired--it's a long, dusty ride
for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill."
"So it is, so it is!"
De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid. "See that her
pony is lame when she gets here--can't be ridden. But you'll take good
care of him and send him home in a few days--get it?"
McAlpin half closed his eyes. "He'll be so lame it would stagger a
cowboy to back him ten feet--and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust
me!"
"No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?"
"No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River."
"If she insists on riding _something_, or even walking home,"
continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should
have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a
peace-offering, "I'll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me
here to-night, on the hay?"
"Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You've got a room right here
up-stairs, didn't you know that?"
"Don't mind the bed," directed de Spain prudently. "I like the hay
better."
"As you like; we've got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap.
But the bed's all right, sir; it is, on me word."
With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked
reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his
appeal for Nan's favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly
faint in the heat and dust, when she arrived. He returned to McAlpin:
"Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?"
"Go right down to the inn, sir. It's a new chap running it--a
half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on.
She'll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee."
It was four o'clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain
walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his
soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts
engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor
the left.
As he approached the weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in
sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not
a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood
ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted
him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare
of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very
large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters and carvings.
De Spain pounded on the bar. His effort to attract attention met with
no response. He walked to the left end of the bar, lifted the
hand-rail that enclosed the space behind it, and pushed open the door
between the mirrors leading to the back room. This, too, was empty. He
called out--there was no response. He walked through a second door
opening on an arcaded passageway toward the kitchen--not a soul was in
sight. There was a low fire in the kitchen stove, but Mrs. McAlpin had
apparently gone home for a while. Walking back toward the office, he
remembered the covered way leading to a patio, which in turn opened on
the main road. He perceived also that at the end next the office the
covered way faced the window at the end of the long bar.
Irritated at the desertion of the place, due, he afterward learned, to
the heat of the afternoon, and disappointed at the frustration of his
purpose, he walked back through the rear room into the office. As he
lifted the hand-rail and, passing through, lowered it behind him, he
took out his watch to see how soon the stage was due. While he held
the timepiece in his hand he heard a rapid clatter of hoofs
approaching the place. Thinking it might be Scott and Lefever arriving
from the south an hour ahead of time, he started toward the front
door--which was still open--to greet them. Outside, hurried footsteps
reached the door just ahead of him and a large man, stepping quickly
into the room, confronted de Spain. One of the man's hands rested
lightly on his right side. De Spain recognized him instantly; the
small, drooping head, carried well forward, the keen eyes, the long
hand, and, had there still been a question in his mind, the
loud-patterned, shabby waistcoat would have proclaimed beyond
doubt--Deaf Sandusky.
CHAPTER X
THE GLASS BUTTON
Even as the big fellow stepped lightly just inside and to the left--as
de Spain stood--of the door and faced him, the encounter seemed to de
Spain accidental. While Sandusky was not a man he would have chosen to
meet at that time, he did not at first consider the incident an
eventful one. But before he could speak, a second man appeared in the
doorway, and this man appeared to be joking with a third, behind him.
As the second man crossed the threshold, de Spain saw Sandusky's
high-voiced little fighting crony, Logan, who now made way, as he
stepped within to the right of the open door, for the swinging
shoulders and rolling stride of Gale Morgan.
Morgan, eying de Spain with insolence, as was his wont, closed the
door behind him with a bang. Then he backed his powerful frame
significantly against it.
A blind man could have seen the completeness of the snare. An
unpleasant feeling flashed across de Spain's perception. It was only
for the immeasurable part of a second--while uncertainty was
resolving itself into a rapid certainty. When Gale Morgan stepped into
the room on the heels of his two Calabasas friends, de Spain would
have sold for less than a cup of coffee all his chances for life.
Nevertheless, before Morgan had set his back fairly against the door
and the trap was sprung, de Spain had mapped his fight, and had
already felt that, although he might not be the fortunate man, not
more than one of the four within the room would be likely to leave it
alive.
He did not retreat from where he halted at the instant Sandusky
entered. His one slender chance was to hug to the men that meant to
kill him. Morgan, the nearest, he esteemed the least dangerous of the
three; but to think to escape both Sandusky and Logan at close
quarters was, he knew, more than ought to be hoped for.
While Morgan was closing the door, de Spain smiled at his visitors:
"That isn't necessary, Morgan: I'm not ready to run." Morgan only
continued to stare at him. "I need hardly ask," added de Spain,
"whether you fellows have business with me?"
He looked to Sandusky for a reply; it was Logan who answered in shrill
falsetto: "No. We don't happen to have business that I know of. A
friend of ours may have a little, maybe!" Logan, lifting his
shoulders with his laugh, looked toward his companions for an answer
to his joke.
De Spain's smile appeared unruffled: "You'll help him transact it, I
suppose?"
Logan, looking again toward Sandusky, grinned: "He won't need any
help."
"Who is your friend?" demanded de Spain good-naturedly. Logan's glance
misled him; it did not refer to Sandusky. And even as he asked the
question de Spain heard through the half-open window at the end of the
bar the sound of hoofs. Hoping against hope for Lefever, the
interruption cheered him. It certainly did not seem that his situation
could be made worse.
"Well," answered Logan, talking again to his gallery of cronies,
"we've got two or three friends that want to see you. They're waiting
outside to see what you'll look like in about five minutes--ain't
they, Gale?"
Some one was moving within the rear room. De Spain felt hope in every
footfall he heard, and the mention this time of Morgan's name cleared
his plan of battle. Before Gale, with an oath, could blurt out his
answer, de Spain had resolved to fight where he stood, taking Logan
first and Morgan as he should jump in between the two. It was at the
best a hopeless venture against Sandusky's first shot, which de Spain
knew was almost sure to reach a vital spot. But desperate men cannot
be choosers.
"There's no time for seeing me like the present," declared de Spain,
ignoring Morgan and addressing his words to Logan. "Bring your friends
in. What are you complaining about, Morgan?" he asked, resenting the
stream of abuse that Gale hurled at him whenever he could get a word
in. "I had my turn at you with a rifle the other day. You've got your
turn now. And I call it a pretty soft one, too--don't you, Sandusky?"
he demanded suddenly of the big fellow.
Sandusky alone through the talk had kept an unbroken silence. He was
eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear
him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless
from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the
preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did _not_
know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had
prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a
reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it.
What Sandusky was sensibly intent on was the determination that he
should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of
anybody's reputation. His eyes with this resolve shining in them
rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his
right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain's
question seemed to arouse him. "What's your name?" he demanded
bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected in the
strained tone.
"It's on the butt of my gun, Sandusky."
"What's that he says?" demanded the man known as the butcher, asking
the question of Logan, but without taking his eyes off his shifty
prey.
Logan raised his voice to repeat the words and to add a ribald
comment.
"You make a good deal of noise," muttered Sandusky, speaking again to
de Spain.
"That ought not to bother you much, Sandusky," shouted de Spain,
trying to win a smile from his taciturn antagonist.
"His noise won't bother anybody much longer," put in Logan, whose
retorts overflowed at every interval. But there was no smile even
hinted at in the uncompromising vigilance of Sandusky's expressionless
face. De Spain discounted the next few minutes far enough to feel that
Sandusky's first shot would mean death to him, even if he could return
it.
"I'll tell you, de Spain," continued Logan, "we're going to have a
drink with you. Then we're going to prepare you for going back where
you come from--with nice flowers."
"I guess you thought you could come out here and run over everybody in
the Spanish Sinks," interposed Morgan, with every oath he could summon
to load his words.
"Keep out, Morgan," exclaimed Logan testily. "I'll do this talking."
De Spain continued to banter. "Gentlemen," he said, addressing the
three together and realizing that every moment wasted before the
shooting added a grain of hope, "I am ready to drink when you are."
"He's ready to drink, Tom," roared Morgan in the deaf man's ear.
"I'm ready," announced Sandusky in hollow voice.
Still regarding de Spain with the most businesslike expression, the
grizzled outlaw took a guarded step forward, his companions following
suit. De Spain, always with a jealous regard for the relative distance
between him and his self-appointed executioners, moved backward. In
crossing the room, Sandusky, without objection from his companions,
moved across their front, and when the four lined up at the bar their
positions had changed. De Spain stood at the extreme left, Sandusky
next, Logan beside him, and Gale Morgan, at the other end of the line,
pretended to pound the bar for service. De Spain, following mountain
etiquette in the circumstances, spread his open hands, palms down, on
the bar. Sandusky's great palms slid in the same fashion over the
checked slab in unspoken recognition of the brief armistice. Logan's
hands came up in turn, and Morgan still pounded for some one to
serve.
De Spain in the new disposition weighed his chances as being both
better and worse. They had put Sandusky's first shot at no more than
an arm's length from his prey, with Logan next to cover the
possibility of the big fellow's failing to paralyze de Spain the first
instant. On the other hand, de Spain, trained in the tactics of
Whispering Smith and Medicine Bend gunmen, welcomed a short-arm
struggle with the worst of his assailants closest at hand. One factor,
too, that he realized they were reckoning with, gave him no concern.
No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the
technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of
Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of
everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be
prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet
to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if
you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure
on Morgan's impatience. Logan looked again at his two companions and
laughed.
Every hope de Spain had of possible help from the back room died with
that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the
scar-featured face of Sassoon peered cautiously from the gloom. The
horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at
the railroad man.
If it were possible to deepen it, the sinister spot on de Spain's face
darkened. Something in his blood raged at the sight of the malevolent
face. He glanced at Logan. "This," he smiled faintly, nodding toward
Sassoon as he himself took a short step farther to the left, "is your
drink, Harvey, is it?"
"No," retorted Logan loudly, "this is _your_ drink."
"I'll take Sassoon," assented de Spain, good-natured again and
shifting still another step to the left. "What do you fellows want
now?"
"We want to punch a hole through that strawberry," said Logan, "that
beauty-mark. Where did you get it, de Spain?"
"I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey," returned de
Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might
crowd him closer. "I was born with my beauty-mark--just as you were
born with your damned bad manners," he added composedly, for in
hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. "You can't help
it, neither can I," he went on. "Somebody is bound to pay for putting
that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk
about either? Sassoon, set out for your friends--or I will. Spread,
gentlemen, spread."
He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended,
and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as
he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next
him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the
words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and
saw only within his field of vision, a cut-glass button that fastened
the bottom of Sandusky's greased waistcoat.
"You've waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de
Spain," cried Logan shrilly. "You've turned one trick too many on the
Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain't in
this room, you'll never get him."
"Which means, I take it, you're going to try to get me," smiled de
Spain.
"No," bellowed Morgan, "it means we have got you."
"You are fooling yourself, Harvey." De Spain addressed the warning to
Logan. "And you, too, Sandusky," he added.
"We'll take care of that," grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence.
"You are jumping into another man's fight," protested de Spain
steadily.
"Sassoon's fight is our fight," interrupted Morgan.
"I advise you," said de Spain once more, looking with the words at
Sandusky and his crony, "to keep out of it."
"Sandusky," yelled Logan to his partner, "he advises me and you to
keep out of this fight," he shrilly laughed.
"Sure," assented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes
on de Spain.
Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sassoon, and pointed
contemptuously toward the end of the bar. "Shike!" he cried, "step
through the rail and take that man's gun."
De Spain, looking from one to the other of the four faces confronting
him, laughed for the first time. But he was looking without seeing
what he seemed to look at. In reality, he saw only a cut-glass
button. He was face to face with taking a man's life or surrendering
his own, and he knew the life must be taken in such a way as instantly
to disable its possessor. These men had chosen their time and place.
There was nothing for it but to meet them. Sassoon was stepping toward
him, though very doubtfully. De Spain laughed again, dryly this time.
"Go slow, Sassoon," he said. "That gun is loaded."
"If you want terms, hand over your gun to Sassoon," cried Logan.
"Not till it's empty," returned de Spain. "Do you want to try taking
it?" he demanded of Logan, his cheeks burning a little darker.
[Illustration: Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over
Sandusky's left shoulder.]
Logan never answered the question. It was not meant to be answered.
For de Spain asked it only to cover the spring he made at that instant
into Sandusky's middle. Catlike though it was, the feint did not take
the big fellow unprepared. He had heard once, when or where he could
not tell, but he had never forgotten the hint, that de Spain, a boxer,
was as quick with his feet as with his hands. The outlaw whirled. Both
men shot from the hip; the reports cracked together. One bullet
grazing the fancy button smashed through the gaudy waistcoat: the
other, as de Spain's free hand struck at the muzzle of the big man's
gun, tore into de Spain's foot. Sandusky, convulsed by the frightful
shock, staggered against de Spain's arm, the latter dancing tight
against him. Logan, alive to the trick but caught behind his partner,
fired over Sandusky's right shoulder at de Spain's head, flattened
sidewise against the gasping outlaw's breast. Hugging his shield, de
Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder into Logan's
face. Logan, sinking to the floor, never moved again. Supporting with
extraordinary strength the unwieldy bulk of the dying butcher, de
Spain managed to steady him as a buffer against Morgan's fire until he
could send a slug over Sandusky's head at the instant the latter
collapsed. Morgan fell against the bar.
Sandusky's weight dragged de Spain down. For an instant the four men
sprawled in a heap. Sassoon, who had not yet got an effective shot
across at his agile enemy, dropping his revolver, dodged under the
rail to close. De Spain, struggling to free himself from the dying
man, saw, through a mist, the greenish eyes and the thirsty knife. He
fired from the floor. The bullet shook without stopping his enemy, and
de Spain, partly caught under Sandusky's body, thought, as Sassoon
came on, the game was up. With an effort born of desperation, he
dragged himself from under the twitching giant, freed his revolver,
rolled away, and, with his sight swimming, swung the gun at Sassoon's
stomach. He meant to kill him. The bullet whirled the white-faced man
to one side and he dropped, but pulled himself, full of fight, to his
knees and, knife in hand, panted forward. De Spain rolling hastily
from him, staggered to his feet and, running in as Sassoon tried to
strike, beat him senseless with the butt of his gun.
His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was
breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He
still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his
fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window,
smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sassoon's horse
trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he
stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he
could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he
threw himself like a sack across the horse's back, lashed the brute
through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly
away.
CHAPTER XI
AFTER THE STORM
It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen,
after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals,
dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of
the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long
turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An
overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the
riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the
darkness told of a pace forced for some hours.
"Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe," suggested the heavier of
the two men guardedly to the taller one.
"Does this man know you?" muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe,
stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his
breast.
"Pedro knows me," returned Lefever, the other man, "but McAlpin says
there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to the same
gang--coiners, I believe, every one of them. They work here and push
in Texas."
"Can you spot the room when you get up-stairs, where we saw that
streak of light a minute ago?" demanded Pardaloe, gazing at the black
front of the building.
"I can spot every foot of the place, up-stairs and down, in the dark,"
declared Lefever, peering through the inky night at the ruinous pile.
Instead of meeting de Spain, as appointed, Lefever had come in from
the Thief River stage with Scott three hours late only to learn of the
fight at the Inn and de Spain's disappearance. Jeffries had already
sent a party, of whom Pardaloe, a man of Farrell Kennedy's from
Medicine Bend, had been picked up as one, down from Sleepy Cat, to
look for the missing man, and for hours the search had gone forward.
"Suppose you go back to the barn," suggested Pardaloe, "and wait there
while I go in and have a little talk with the landlord."
"Why, yes, Pardaloe. That's an idea," assented Lefever feebly. Then he
laid the first two fingers of his fat right hand on the lapel of his
companion's coat: "Where should you like your body sent?" he asked in
feigned confidence. "Concerning these little details, it's just as
well to know your wishes now."
"You don't suppose this boob will try to fight, do you, when he knows
Jeffries will burn the shack over his head if another railroad man is
attacked in it?" demanded Pardaloe.
"The most ruinous habit I have had in life--and first and last I have
contracted many--has been, trusting other people," observed Lefever.
"A man shouldn't trust anybody--not even himself. We can burn the
boob's shack down--of course: but if you go in there alone the ensuing
blaze would be of no particular interest to you."
"All right. We go in together."
"Not exactly that, either. You go first. Few of these forty-four
bullets will go through two men at once."
Ignoring Lefever's pleasantry, Pardaloe, pulling his hat brim through
force of habit well over his eyes, shook himself loose and, like a big
cat walking in water, stepped toward the door. He could move his tall,
bony frame, seemingly covered only with muscles and sinews, so
silently that in the dark he made no more sound than a spectre. But
once before the door, with Lefever close at hand, he pounded the
cracked panels till the windows shook. Some time elapsed before there
was any response. The pounding continued till a flickering light
appeared at a window. There was an ill-natured colloquy, a delay, more
impatience, and at length the landlord reluctantly opened the door.
He held in his hand an oil-lamp. The chimney had been smoked in such a
way that the light of the flame was thrown forward and not back.
Lefever in the background, nothing disturbed, threw a flash-light back
at the half-dressed innkeeper. His hair was tumbled sleepily across
his forehead and his eyes--one showing a white scar across the
pupil--set deep in retreating orbits, blinked under heavy brows. "What
do you want?" he demanded. Pardaloe, without answering, pushed through
the half-open door into the room.
"We're staying here to-night," announced Pardaloe, as simply as
possible. Lefever had already edged into the doorway, pushing the
stubborn innkeeper aside by sheer bulk of weight and size.
The sleepy man gave ground stubbornly. "I've got no beds," he growled
surlily. "You can't stay here."
Lefever at once assumed the case for the intruders. "I could sleep
this minute standing on my head," he declared. "And as for staying
here, I can't stay anywhere else. What's your name, son?" he demanded,
buttonholing in his off-hand way the protesting man.
"My name is Philippi," answered the one-eyed defiantly.
"Regards to Brutus, my dear fellow," retorted Lefever, seizing the
man's hand as if happily surprised.
"You can't crowd in here, so you might as well move on," declared
Philippi gruffly. "This is no hotel."
Lefever laughed. "No offense, Philippi, but would it be indiscreet to
ask which side of your face hurts the most when you smile?"
"If you've got no beds, we won't bother you long," interposed
Pardaloe.
"I'd like a pitcher of ice-water, anyway," persisted Lefever. "Sit
down, noble Greek; we'll talk this over."
"Who are you fellows?" demanded Philippi, looking from one to the
other.
"I am a prospector from the Purgatoire," answered Pardaloe.
Philippi turned his keen eye on Lefever. "You a railroad man?"
"No, sir," declared Lefever, dusting the alkali vigorously from his
coat sleeve.
"What are you?"
John looked as modest as it was possible for him to look. "Few people
ask me that, but in matter of fact I am an _objet d'art_."
"What's that?"
"Different things at different times to different men, Philippi,"
answered Lefever simply, exploring, while he spoke, different corners
of the room with his flash-light. "At this moment--" he stopped
suddenly, then resumed reassuringly--"I want a drink."
"Nothing doing," muttered the landlord sulkily.
Lefever's flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back
of the bar. "Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?" he demanded, walking
significantly toward the vender's authority.
"Nothing in the house to-night."
"Then," announced Lefever calmly, "I arrest you."
Philippi started. "Arrest me?"
"For obtaining a thirst under false pretenses. Come, now, before we
slip the irons on, get us something to eat. I'll go up-stairs and pick
out a room to sleep in."
"I tell you," insisted Philippi profanely, "there are no rooms for you
to sleep in up-stairs."
"And I," retorted Lefever, "tell you there are. Anyway, I left a
sewing-machine up-stairs here three years ago, and promised to keep it
oiled for the lady. This is a good time to begin."
With Lefever making the old steps creak, ahead, and Pardaloe, with
his long, soft, pigeon-toed tread close behind, the unwilling
landlord was taken up the stairs, and the two men thoroughly searched
the house. Lefever lowered his voice when the hunt began through
the bedrooms--few of which contained even a bed--but he kept up a
running fire of talk that gave Philippi no respite from anxiety.
Outside the kitchen quarters, which likewise were rigorously searched,
not a soul could be found in the house. One room only, over the
kitchen, gave hope of uncovering something. The party reached the door
of this room through a narrow, tortuous passageway along an attic
gable. The door was locked. Philippi told them it belonged to a
sheep-herder who did not use it often. He protested he had no key.
Pardaloe knocked and, getting no response, tried unsuccessfully to
force the lock. Lefever motioned him aside and, after knocking loudly
on the door himself, laid his shoulder against it. The door creaked
and sprung in crazy protest. The panels cracked, the stubborn frame
gave, and with a violent crash Lefever pushed completely through the
locked barrier and threw his flash-light inside. Pardaloe, urging the
unwilling Philippi ahead, followed.
The room, unfinished under the rafters, was destitute of furnishings,
and bore traces of long disuse. Stretched on the floor toward the
middle of it, and side by side, lay two men. One of them was very
large, the other not more than half his companion's size. Lefever
kneeling over the man nearest the door listened for signs of
breathing, and laid his head to the man's heart. Having completed his
examination, he went around to the other--Pardaloe and Philippi
silently watching--and looked him over with equal care. When he had
done, he examined, superficially, the wounds of each man. Rising, he
turned toward Philippi. "Were these men dead when you brought them up
here?"
"I didn't bring 'em up," growled Philippi.
"You know them, Pardaloe?" asked Lefever. Pardaloe answered that he
did. Lefever turned sharply on Philippi. "Where were you when this
fight was going on?"
"Down at the stage barn."
"Getting your alibi ready. But, of course, you know that won't let you
out, Philippi. Your best chance is to tell the truth. There were two
others with this pair--where are Gale Morgan and Sassoon?"
"Satt Morgan was here with hay to-day. He took them over this evening
to Music Mountain."
"Where were they hit?"
"Morgan was hit in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sassoon was hit in
the side, and in the neck."
"Where is de Spain?"
"Dead, I reckon, by this time."
"Where's his body?"
"I don't know."
"Why do you think he is dead?"
"Sassoon said he was hit in the head."
"Yet he got away on horseback!"
"I'm telling you what Sassoon said; I didn't see him."
Lefever and Pardaloe rode back to the stage barn. "Certainly looks
blue for Henry," muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with
Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be
gathered. "Bob Scott," he added gloomily, "may find him somewhere on
the Sinks."
At Sleepy Cat, Jeffries, wild with impatience, was on the telephone.
Lefever, with McAlpin and Pardaloe standing at his side, reported to
the superintendent all he could learn. "He rode away--without help, of
course," explained Lefever to Jeffries in conclusion. "What shape he
is in, it's pretty hard to say, Jeffries. Three more of the bunch,
Vance Morgan, Bull Page, and a lame man that works for Bill Morgan,
were waiting in the saddle at the head of the draw between the barn
and the hotel for him if he should get away from the inn. Somehow, he
went the other way and nobody saw hide nor hair of him, so far as I
can learn. If he was able to make it, Jeff, he would naturally try for
Sleepy Cat. But that's a pretty fair ride for a sound man, let alone a
man that's hit--and everybody claims he was hit. If he wasn't hit he
should have been in Sleepy Cat long before this. You say you've had
men out across the river?"
"Since dark," responded Jeffries. "But, John," he asked, "could a man
hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a
get-away?"
"Henry might," answered Lefever laconically.
Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o'clock
after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up
the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken
place, they followed de Spain's jump through the broken sash into the
patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he
had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the
south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he
should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy's country,
but there was no gainsaying the trail--occasional flecks of blood
blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led--not as the
trailers hoped they would, in a wide détour across easy-riding
country toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road--but farther
and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man's
land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this
alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the
unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.
Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head
as he leaned over the pony's shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast
of him. "It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind
of riding."
Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first
time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain's
revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to
stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a
long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter
was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and
after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain
was no longer guiding Sassoon's pony; it was wandering at will.
Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read
in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had
come almost completely about and headed again for Music Mountain.
Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran
directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan's Gap and were
practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.
"Here's a go," muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth
for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.
"Remember," interposed Scott mildly, "he is riding Sassoon's
horse--the brute is naturally heading for home."
"Follow him home, then," said Lefever unhesitatingly.
Scott looked at his companion in surprise: "Near home, you mean,
John," he suggested inoffensively. "For three of us to ride into the
Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don't
think the excitement would last long--for us."
The three were agreed, however, to follow up to the mouth of the Gap
itself and did follow. Finding no trace of de Spain's movements in
this quest, they rode separately in wide circles to the north and
south, but without picking up a hoof-print that led anywhere or gave
them any clew to the whereabouts of the missing man.
"There is one consolation," muttered Lefever, as they held to what
each felt to be an almost hopeless search. "As long as Henry can
stick to a saddle he can shoot--and the Morgans after yesterday
afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find
him."
Scott shook his head: "That brings us up against another proposition,
John. De Spain hasn't got any cartridges."
Lefever turned sharply: "What do you mean?"
"His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat."
"Why didn't you tell me that before," demanded Lefever indignantly.
"I've been hoping all the time we'd find Henry and I wouldn't have to
tell you."
In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some
chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scott's information was
disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the
greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known
later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.
For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each
succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man
alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music
Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy
Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly accurate reports accounted
for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, badly
wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information
halted.
Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to
Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgan's stable, Sassoon's horse--the
one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the
blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when
the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight,
waiting at Sassoon's corral to be cared for. There could be, it was
fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the
animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing
rider.
Though Scott had known first of de Spain's helpless condition in
his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the
last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the
midst of a gloomy council at Jeffries's office, he was pressed for
an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott
to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest
instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But,
Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation
of the faith that was in him. "In the first place," he said, "I've
ridden a good deal with that man--pretty much all over the country
north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nut's full of
meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself.
Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here,
they don't. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they
never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown
with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk
that's floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a
mark here one day in Sleepy Cat."
Jeffries didn't interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.
"You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot
into it, and expect to live to tell it," continued Scott mildly, "as
to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to
get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man,
without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at
that, John, the man that fires the gun," murmured the scout, "ought to
be behind a tree.
"You say he is hit. I grant it," he concluded. "But I knew him once
when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once
from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a scrimmage outside Williams
Cache two years ago."
"You don't believe, then, he's dead, Bob?" demanded Jeffries
impatiently.
"Not till I see him dead," persisted Scott unmoved.
CHAPTER XII
ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN
De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon's saddle, was losing sight and
consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so
faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and
any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the
instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means
of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky
dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for
fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.
The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not
recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he
felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled
somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his
waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained--flight, and he
spurred his horse cruelly.
Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head
made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite
beyond his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his
infuriated horse flew along as if winged.
A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to
make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other
wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to
nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he
tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead.
He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly
wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he
could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible
between himself and more of the Morgans.
A perceptible weakness presently forced him to realize he must look to
his wounded foot. This he did without slackening speed. The sight of
it and the feeling inside his torn and blood-soaked boot was not
reassuring, but he rode on, sparing neither his horse nor his
exhaustion. It was only when spells of dizziness, recurring with
frequency, warned him he could not keep the saddle much longer, that
he attempted to dismount to stanch the drip of blood from his
stirrup.
Before he slackened speed he tried to look behind to reconnoitre.
With relief he perceived his sight to be a trifle better, and in
scanning the horizon he could discover no pursuers. Choosing a
secluded spot, he dismounted, cut open his boot, and found that a
bullet, passing downward, had torn an artery under the arch of the
foot. Making a rude tourniquet, he succeeded in checking pretty well
the spurting flow that was sapping his strength. After he had adjusted
the bandage he stood up and looked at it. Then he drew his revolver
again and broke it. He found five empty shells in the chambers and
threw them away. The last cartridge had not been fired. He could not
even figure out how he had happened to have six cartridges in the
cylinder, for he rarely loaded more than five. Indeed, it was his
fixed habit--to avoid accidents--never to carry a cartridge under the
hammer of his gun--yet now there had been one. Without trying to
explain the circumstance, he took fresh stock of his chances and began
to wonder whether he might yet escape and live.
He climbed again into the saddle, and, riding to a ridge, looked
carefully over the desert. It was with an effort that he could steady
himself, and the extent of his weakness surprised him. What further
perplexed him as he crossed a long divide, got another good view and
saw no pursuit threatening in any direction, was to identify the
country he was in. The only landmark anywhere in sight that he could
recognize was Music Mountain. This now lay to the northwest, and he
knew he must be a long way from any country he was familiar with. But
there was no gainsaying, even in his confused condition, Music
Mountain. After looking at it a long time he headed with some
hesitation cautiously toward it, with intent to intercept the first
trail to the northeast. This would take him toward Sleepy Cat.
As his eyes continued to sweep the horizon he noted that the sun was
down and it was growing dark. This brought a relief and a difficulty.
It left him less in fear of molestation, but made it harder for him to
reach a known trail. The horse, in spite of the long, hard ride seemed
fresh yet, and de Spain, with one cartridge would still have laughed
at his difficulties had he not realized, with uneasiness, that his
head was becoming very light. Recurring intervals of giddiness
foreshadowed a new danger in his uncharted ride. It became again a
problem for him to keep his seat in the saddle. He was aware at
intervals that he was steadying himself like a drunken man. His
efforts to guide the horse only bewildered the beast, and the two
travelled on maudlin curves and doubled back on their track until de
Spain decided that his sole chance of reaching any known trail was to
let go and give the horse his head.
A starless night fell across the desert. With danger of pursuit
practically ended, and only a chance encounter to fear, de Spain tried
to help himself by walking the horse and resting his bleeding foot in
front of the pommel, letting the pony pick his way as he chose. A
period of unconsciousness, a blank in de Spain's mind, soon followed
the slowing up. He came to himself as he was lurching out of the
saddle. Pulling himself together, he put the wet foot in the stirrup
again and clung to the pommel with his hands. How long he rode in this
way, or how far, he never knew. He was roused to consciousness by the
unaccustomed sound of running water underneath his horse's feet.
It was pitch dark everywhere. The horse after the hard experience of
the evening was drinking a welcome draft. De Spain had no conception
of where he could be, but the stream told him he had somehow reached
the range, though Music Mountain itself had been swallowed up in the
night. A sudden and uncontrollable thirst seized the wounded man. He
could hear the water falling over the stones and climbed slowly and
painfully out of the saddle to the ground. With the lines in his left
hand he crawled toward the water and, lying flat on the ground beside
the horse, put his head down to drink. The horse, meantime, satisfied,
lifted his head with a gulp, rinsed his mouth, and pulled backward.
The lines slipped from de Spain's hand. Alarmed, the weakened man
scrambled after them. The horse, startled, shied, and before his rider
could get to his feet scampered off in a trot. While de Spain listened
in consternation, the escaped horse, falling into an easy stride,
galloped away into the night.
Stunned by this new misfortune, and listening gloomily to the
retreating hoof-beats, de Spain pondered the situation in which the
disaster left him. It was the worst possible blow that could have
fallen, but fallen it had, and he turned with such philosophy as he
could to complete the drink of water that had probably cost him his
life. At least, cold water never tasted sweeter, never was so grateful
to his parched tongue, and since the price of the draft might be
measured by life itself, he drank extravagantly, stopping at times to
rest and, after breathing deeply, to drink again.
When he had slaked a seemingly unquenchable craving, he dashed the
running water, first with one hand and then the other, over his face.
He tried feebly to wash away some of the alkali that had crusted over
the wound in the front of his head and was stinging and burning in it.
There was now nothing to do but to secrete himself until daylight and
wait till help should reach him--it was manifestly impossible for him
to seek it.
Meantime, the little stream beside him offered first aid. He tried it
with his foot and found it slight and shallow, albeit with a rocky bed
that made wading in his condition difficult. But he felt so much
better he was able to attempt this, and, keeping near to one side of
the current, he began to follow it slowly up-stream. The ascent was at
times precipitous, which pleased him, though it depleted his new
strength. It was easy in this way to hide his trail, and the higher
and faster the stream took him into the mountains the safer he would
be from any Calabasas pursuers. When he had regained a little strength
and oriented himself, he could quickly get down into the hills.
Animated by these thoughts, he held his way up-stream, hoping at every
step to reach the gorge from which the flow issued. He would have
known this by the sound of the falling water, but, weakening soon, he
found he must abandon hope of getting up to it. However, by resting
and scrambling up the rocks, he kept on longer than he would have
believed possible. Encountering at length, as he struggled upward, a
ledge and a clump of bushes, he crawled weakly on hands and knees into
it, too spent to struggle farther, stretched himself on the flattened
brambles and sank into a heavy sleep.
* * * * *
He woke in broad daylight. Consciousness returned slowly and he raised
himself with pain from his rough couch. His wounds were stiff, and he
lay for a long time on his back looking up at the sky. At length he
dragged himself to an open space near where he had slept and looked
about. He appeared to be near the foot of a mountain quite strange to
him, and in rather an exposed place. The shelter that had served him
for the night proved worthless in daylight and, following his strongly
developed instinct of self-preservation, de Spain started once more up
the rocky path of the stream. He clambered a hundred feet above where
he had slept before he found a hiding-place. It was at the foot of a
tiny waterfall where the brook, striking a ledge of granite, had
patiently hollowed out a shallow pool. Beside this a great mass of
frost-bitten rock had fallen, and one of the bowlders lay tilted in
such a way as to roof in a sort of cave, the entrance to which was
not higher than a man's knee. De Spain crawled into this refuge. He
conceived that from this high, open ledge he could show a small
signal-fire at night, and if it were answered by his enemies he had a
semblance of a retreat under the fallen rock, a hunting-knife, and one
lone cartridge to protect himself with. A mountain-lion might have to
be reckoned with; and if a pursuer should follow him under the rock
his only chance would lie in getting hold, after a fight, of the man's
loaded revolver or ammunition-belt. Such a hope involved a great deal
of confidence, but de Spain was an optimist--most railroad men are.
The outlook was, in truth, not altogether cheerful--some would have
called it, for a wounded man, desperate--but it had some slight
consolations and de Spain was not given to long-range forebodings. The
rising sun shone in a glory of clearness, and the cool night air
rolling up the mountain was grateful and refreshing. Lying flat on the
rock, he stretched his head forward and drank deeply of the ice-cold
pool beside which he lay. The violent exertion of reaching the height
had started the ruptured artery anew, and his first work was crudely
to cleanse the wound and attempt to rebandage it. He was hungry, but
for this there was only one alleviation--sleep--and, carefully
effacing all traces of his presence on the ledge, he crawled into his
rock retreat and fell again into a heavy slumber.
It was this repose that proved his undoing. He woke to consciousness
so weak he could scarcely lift his head. It was still day. A consuming
thirst assailed him, but he lacked the strength to crawl out of his
cave, and, looking toward his bandaged foot, he was shocked at the
sight of how it had bled while he slept. When he could rally from his
discouragement he rewound the bandages and told himself what a fool he
had been to drag his foot up the rocks before the wound had had any
chance to heal. He resolved, despite his thirst, to lie still all day
and give the artery absolute quiet. It required only a little
stoicism; the stake was life.
Toward afternoon his restlessness increased, but he clung to his
resolve to lie still. By evening he was burning with thirst, and when
morning came after a feverish night, with his head on fire and his
mouth crusted dry, he concluded rightly that one or both of his wounds
had become infected.
De Spain understood what it meant. He looked regretfully at the
injured foot. Swollen out of shape and angry-looking, the mere
appearance would have told him, had the confirmation been needed,
that his situation was becoming critical. This did not so much
disconcert him as it surprised him and spurred him mentally to the
necessity of new measures. He lay a long time thinking. Against the
infection he could do little. But the one aid at his hand was
abundance of cold water to drink and bathe his wound in, and to this
he resolved now to drag himself. To crawl across the space that
separated him from the pool required all the strength he could summon.
The sun was already well up and its rays shot like spectrum arrows
through the spray of the dainty cataract, which spurted in a jewelled
sheet over a rocky ledge twenty feet above and poured noisily down
from the broad pool along jagged bowlders below.
Crawling, choking with thirst, slowly forward, he reached the water,
and, reclining on his side and one elbow, he was about to lean down to
drink when he suddenly felt, with some kind of an instinctive shock,
that he was no longer alone on the ledge. He had no interest in
analyzing the conviction; he did not even question it. Not a sound had
reached his ears. Only a moment before he had looked carefully all
around. But the field of his vision was closely circumscribed by the
walls about him. It was easy for an invader to come on his retreat
unawares--at all events, somebody, he was almost sure, stood behind
him. The silence meant an enemy. The first thing to expect was a
bullet. It would probably be aimed at the back of his head. At least
he knew this was the spot to aim for to kill a man instantly and
painlessly--yet he shrank from that anticipated crash.
And it was this thought that cost the defenseless man at the moment
the most pain--that feeling, in advance, of the blow of the bullet
that should snuff out his life. Defense was out of the question; he
was as helpless as a baby. An impulse in his fingers to clutch his
revolver he restrained at once--it could only hasten his death. He
wondered, as the seconds passed, why his executioner hesitated to
shoot, but he could not rid himself of the mental horror of being shot
in the base of the brain. Anywhere else he would have almost welcomed
a bullet; anywhere else it might have given him one chance for life
through rolling over after he was struck in an attempt to kill his
assailant.
His thoughts, working in flashes of lightning, suggested every
possible trick of escape, and as rapidly rejected each. There was
nothing for it but to play the part, to take the blow with no more
than a quiver when it came. He had once seen a man shot in just that
way. Braced to such a determination, de Spain bent slowly downward,
and, with eyes staring into the water for a reflection that might
afford a glimpse of his enemy, he began to drink. A splash above his
head frightened him almost to death. It was a water ousel dashing into
the foaming cataract and out again, and the spray falling from the
sudden bath wrecked the mirror of the pool. De Spain nearly choked.
Each mouthful of water was a struggle. The sense of impending death
had robbed even the life-giving drafts of their tonic; each instant
carried its acute sensation of being the last. At length, his nerves
weakened by hunger and exposure, revolted under the strain. Suppose it
should be, after all, a fantasy of his fever that pictured so vividly
an enemy behind. With an effort that cost more mental torture than he
ever had known, he drew back on his elbow from the pool, steadied
himself, turned his head to face his executioner, and confronted Nan
Morgan.
CHAPTER XIII
PARLEY
She stood beside the rock from which the ledge was reached from below,
and as if she had just stepped up into sight. Her rifle was so held in
both hands that it could be fired from her hip, and at such close
quarters with deadly accuracy. As she stood with startled eyes fixed
on his haggard face, her slender neck and poised head were very
familiar to de Spain.
And her expression, while it reflected her horrified alarm, did
not conceal her anger and aversion at the sight of him. Unaware of
the forbidding spectacle he presented, de Spain, swept by a
brainstorm at the appearance of this Morgan--the only one of all the
Morgans he had not fancied covering him and waiting to deliver his
death-warrant--felt a fury sweep over him at the thought of being
shot by a woman. The wild idea that she meant to kill him, which in a
rational moment would never have entered his mind, now in his
delirium completely obsessed him. Working, as it were, mechanically,
even the instinct of self-defense asserted itself against her. But
enough of reason remained in his disordered senses to tell him that
self-defense was out of the question. Whatever she meant to do, he
could no more fire at this girl, even had he a chance--and he
realized he was at her mercy--than he could at his sister; and he
lay with his eyes bent on hers, trying to read her purpose.
She stood guarded, but motionless with surprise. De Spain turned
himself slowly and, sitting up, waited for her to speak. There was
little to hope for, he thought, in her expression. And all of his
duplicity seemed to desert him before her cold resolution. The tricks
he would have tried, at bay before a man, he felt no inclination to
attempt. He read in her set face only abhorrence and condemnation, and
felt in no way moved to argue her verdict. "I suppose," he said, at
length, not trying to disguise his bitter resentment of her presence,
"you've come to finish me."
His shirt stained and tattered for bandages, his hair matted in blood
on his forehead, his eyes inflamed and sunken, his lips crusted and
swollen, the birthmark fastened vividly on his cheek made him a
desperate sight. Regarding him steadily, Nan, as bewildered as if she
had suddenly come on a great wounded beast of prey still dangerous,
made no response
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