Halloway came early into the hamlet of Viper, bedraggled with travel. He knew that among the men about him must be at least several accomplices to the conspiracy which he sought to defeat. He had been in Coal City for only a few days past and never in Viper until now; so until someone drifted in who remembered his interference at the tavern he would not necessarily be recognized as having any connection with Alexander's affairs. Indeed he had been seen with her so little that he might altogether escape association with her in the minds of these fellows. On the other hand any stranger would in all probability be held under unremitting surveillance and he must therefore proceed with extreme caution.
Jerry O'Keefe was lounging about the streets, gossiping with acquaintances, but when Halloway passed him and brushed his shoulders, neither gave any sign of recognition and Halloway brought up at last, though with seeming aimlessness, at the telegraph office.
There, besides the man who sat at the key, he discovered three others, all of unfamiliar mien, but he gathered from the scowls which they bent on him that he was something less than welcome. Palpably the present occupants of that small room preferred to remain uninterrupted in the discussion of such matters as might arise, yet they did not wish to manifest open or undue anxiety to a stranger.
"Howdy, men," began the new arrival affably as he stood towering over the telegraph operator. Then looking down at that person he added with awkward, back-country diffidence: "Stranger, be ye ther feller thet works thet thar telegraph?"
The seated man looked up and nodded.
"I promised a man by ther name of Brent back thar in Coal City ter kinderly see ef anybody along ther road I come hed any timber they sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I hain't l'arned nothin', because I come through soon in ther mornin' an' ther roads was empty, but I reckon I'd better send him a message ter thet effect."
Halloway noticed that, as he talked, the other men watched him narrowly though, as he glanced in their direction, they fell at once into a semblance of carelessness. The operator grunted, as he shoved forward a blank with the instructions, "write out your telegram."
Halloway modestly thrust back the paper.
"I kin write—some——" he said, "but not skeercely good enough fer thet. I 'lowed I'd get ye ter do hit fer me. Just say I haven't heered of no timber fer sale. His name's Will Brent an' mine's Jack Halloway."
As the seated man grudgingly scribbled, the newcomer lounged lazily nearby, but just as the man at the key was about to begin sending, his instrument fell into a frenzied activity. Halloway thought that the other loiterers, who were really no more genuinely loitering than himself, made a poor showing of indifference, and that their attitudes betrayed their eagerness of waiting for whatever was coming over.
Finally the electric chatter ended. The seated man had cut in once or twice with questions, and at the end he rose from his chair, not with a regularly transcribed message, but with a few hastily jotted notes on a sheet of paper in his hand.
Impulse had brought him to his feet but he stood hesitant, bethinking himself of the presence of the interloper, and Halloway broke in with a drawling inquiry pitched to a stupid inflection.
"Did ye send my message, Stranger? Did they say he war there?"
The operator flung him a churlish glance and a short answer. "Thet office was busy," he said. "They didn't hev no time ter take your talk jest now." Then with exaggerated carelessness he turned to one of the other loungers. "Joe, ef ye'll come inter ther baggage room, I'll see ef thet express parcel o' yourn's in thar. I think hit came afore ther high-water."
"I reckon," murmured Halloway disappointedly, "I'll hev ter wait a spell an' see kin I git my man later on," and making that observation he settled into his chair with a seeming of permanent intent.
Meanwhile, in the privacy of the baggage room, the station-agent was whispering excitedly to his companion. The man in his chair beyond the door could of course hear no word of that hurried conference, but after all he had no need to do so. He had read its essence at first hand from the wire and it had run about like this:
"She driv two of our fellows back with a pistol when they sought to follow her, but she left her mule and turned into the timber five miles this side of Coal City."
Halloway had congratulated himself that to this extent at least Alexander had succeeded, but his pleasure had been short-lived for the operator here at Viper had flashed back the interrogation, "What then," and the other—who Halloway figured must be cutting in from Wolf-Pen Gap—rapped out the disquieting reply:
"They're combin' ther timber fer her. Have your boys there head her off at the mouth of Chimney-pot Fork in case she circles round the Gap."
A detail which might prove important struck Halloway as he listened. He had recognized the sending from the other end as a man may recognize a speaking voice.
It had been years since he had himself operated a key; but like many adept telegraphers he could distinguish not only the dots and dashes of the code, but also the individual peculiarities of their rapping out. Now he would have been willing to take oath that the hand which had sent this news was the same quick, sure hand that he had watched at work yesterday.
That would indicate that Wicks had either deserted his post at Coal City, or left it in charge of a relief man, and that he had come to Wolf-Pen to operate a disused key nearer the scene of action.
Through the open door of the telegraph office Halloway, now burning with impatience, could see Jerry O'Keefe strolling aimlessly along the sidewalk a half a block away. Jerry too was waiting for instructions and ready, once he had received them, to lead his own force out, with that light in his eye that had dwelt there when he first saw Alexander.
Halloway rose, yawned, and stretched himself. As he did so his hands almost brushed the ceiling.
"I reckon," he asserted, "I won't tarry no longer. Mebby I'll come back again." But before he had reached the threshold the operator and his companion stood looking on from the baggage room door. Even unlettered Machiavellis must have their flashes of inspiration, premonition, "hunch," or whatever you may choose to call it. Suddenly, into the telegrapher's consciousness flashed the suspicion that in the departure of this unknown observer lurked some hidden menace. In what that danger lay he was all at sea but it was a thing he felt and upon which he acted. The knight of the ticker jerked his head and raised a hand, and before Halloway's own arms had descended from the heights to which his yawn had stretched them, he found two pistols squarely presented to his broad chest, and heard a voice instruct with unmistakable finality, "Keep them hands up!"
Keeping them up, Halloway could still see across the shoulders of his captors the distant figure of Jerry O'Keefe but with him he could not communicate.
As he stood, rapidly thinking, it occurred to him that his strength and agility might perhaps even yet avail him. With a lunge he might carry down the two armed figures and escape, but before undertaking that he turned his head for a backward glance and decided against the experiment. Besides the Station Agent stood the third fellow, also with a drawn and leveled weapon.
The Operator spoke again somewhat nervously. He had acted so strenuously on pure impulse and not without a certain misgiving. Now he felt the need of some explanation.
"Boys, when that instrument ticked a while back," he mendaciously asserted, "hit was ther town marshal at Coal City talkin'. He described this man an' said he was wanted thar fer settin' ther hotel on fire day before yesterday. We hain't got no choice but ter hold him."
Going to the drawer of his desk the speaker produced a pair of handcuffs and rattled them as he explained, "Ther revenue man left these hyar. Put 'em on him, Joe."
With the two pistols still pressed close Halloway slowly lowered his wrists and submitted to the indignity of their shackling. Had any human possibility of a break for freedom presented itself he would have embraced it, but the three guns had the look of business and the three faces back of them were flinty with purpose.
As the locks snapped into the grooves of the bracelets the telegrapher commented in sardonic afterthought.
"Ther revenuer fergot ter leave ther key. I don't know how we'll ever git them things loose ergin."
They led him at once back into a dark corner of the baggage room and bestowed him there in a chair, where with a revolver against his temple, they gagged him and lashed him by waist and legs. His hands being sufficiently manacled they did not bind further.
Alexander had, when she came to a place which was rocky enough to leave no footprints, slipped from her saddle, taken her rifle and saddle-bags from their fastenings and disappeared into the timber. The mule she knew would sooner or later be recognized and returned to the stable, but she did not want it recognized too promptly so she led it with her into the woods and turned it loose well up on the mountain side. From that moment she disappeared with a completeness which attested her woodcraft. It was as though she had been and then had ceased to be. The way she elected to go followed the crests, since it is better when "hiding-out" to look down than to be looked down upon.
The sodden woods gave a quieter footing than had they been frosty and brittle underfoot, but even had it been otherwise she had the art of silent movement.
She knew that sooner or later her ruse would be discovered by the watchers of the conspiracy, but she asked only two hours of freedom. After that she would be as difficult to find as the rabbit that has gained the heart of the briar patch.
Once lying high up on a sheer and poroused precipice, she had seen a party of horsemen ride by, far below, and she laughed inwardly to herself, guessing at their purpose and object.
She came eventually to the sharp spur where that particular stretch of ridge ended in a precipitous break. That meant that she must for awhile go down to lower and more perilous levels. This was the final, dubious stage of her journey and with it behind her, she would feel that she had won through to security.
Because she was young and strong enough to laugh at fatigue and bold enough to find a certain joy in recklessness, her spirits began to mount. There are huntsmen who will tell you that the wily and experienced fox comes to relish the chase more keenly than the pack which courses him. Alexander went on with a smile in her eyes.
But when she had gone down into the cloistered shadows of the valley her spirits descended too and when she slipped through the thickets and reached a certain point, something like despair tightened about her heart. Across the line of her march boiled a freshet which might as well have been a river. To swim it with her impediments was impossible and though it might carry her dangerously close to the road which she sought to avoid, she had no choice. She must follow it until a crossing developed.
As a woodsman, Alexander acknowledged few peers but this was to her, unfamiliar country. She was moreover pitting her skill against one who was her equal if not her superior, and who knew every trail and by-way hereabouts. He was a youth with a vacuous, almost idiotic face, whom she had that same day encountered. He had left her sight, but had never been too remote to follow or gauge her course and what he learned he relayed to others. In due time he had known without going further just where she must bring up—for he knew the condition of that stream—and its crossings.
The girl came, in due course, upon a broken litter of giant boulders, each the size of a small house, which lay scattered where at last the water grew shallow. She could even make out a point where one might cross dryshod by leaping from rock to rock.
It was in a fashion a place of mystery and foreboding, for each of those titanic rocks, with its age-long smoothness and greenness was a screen whose other side might harbor things only to be guessed. There one must risk an ambuscade, trusting to one's star, and Alexander loosened her pistol and shifted her saddle-bags to her left shoulder and her rifle to her left hand.
Then she started forward—-and one by one left the boulders behind her until she came to the last. As she rounded the final shoulder of sandstone her hand was knocked up and her pistol fell clattering.
Her ambuscaders had known a thing which she had not—that for all the roomy freedom of the woods she must come out at last through this one passage—as wine must come out through the neck of the bottle.
About her closed a tightly grouped handful of men whose faces were masked and whose bodies were covered by the uniformity of black rubber coats.
Alexander did not surrender tamely. With the strength and the desperation of a tigress she gave them battle, until the sheer force of their numbers had smothered her into helplessness. Her coat was ripped and her shirt hung in tatters from one curved shoulder before they pinioned her and silenced her lips with a bandage.
After that they blind-folded her and carried her up and down hill, twisting beyond all chance of guessing the course, to a place where the air was cool with that freshness of quality that characterizes a cavern. There they stood her upright and removed the bandage.
About her was a flare of torches and the grotesque play of shadows between the grotto-like walls of an abandoned coal mine. About her too ranged in the spectral formality of masked faces and black rubber coats; of peaked hats with low turned brims, stood the circle of her captors.
"Now, Alexander McGivins," proclaimed a deep and solemnly pitched voice, "ye stands before ther dread an' awful conclave of ther order of ther Ku-Klux; ther regulators of sich as defies proper an' decorous livin'. We charges ye with unwomanly shamelessness an' with ther practicin' of witchcraft."
For a moment as she turned observant eyes about the walls of the place to which she had been brought, Alexander almost hoped that the astonishing statement of the spokesman was a true one—that in store for her, instead of robbery and possible outrage, lay only the judgment of the punitive clan. Such punishment might be brutally severe but she could face it in such fashion as would vindicate her claim of playing a man's game in a man's way.
So she stood there meeting the eyes that glared at her through the slit masks with a splendid assumption of scorn and defiance. She was keyed to that mood which makes it possible for martyrs to acquit themselves, even at the stake, with a victorious disdain.
Through this section of the mountains there had never been, since reconstruction days, any survival of the Ku-Klux in a true sense, but now and then, as in all wild and violent countries, sporadic "regulations" occurred in which masked men took a faltering law into their own less faltering hands. Sometimes it was a bastard Ku-Klux in the original meaning of the term, a Vigilance Committee operating against abuses which the law failed to check. Oftener it was a masquerade behind which moved designs of personal hatred and vengeance. Sometimes the wife-beater or the harlot was punished. Sometimes the stronger enemy persecuted the weaker.
While Alexander waited for the next development, her captors prolonged the silence in order that the suspense of unguessed things should sap her courage.
The entrance through which they had come showed only as a darker spot in the shadowed vagueness of a far wall of rock, but there was a squareness about it which suggested a mineshaft. The walls themselves were streaked with black seams of coal and dug into tunnels that led in unknown directions.
The place was lighted by several lanterns of feeble power and a number of pine torches, and between the spot where they had stationed her and the crescent of dark figures that stood as silent accusers and judges, ran a trickling rivulet of water. At that detail Alexander smiled, for she knew that it was part and parcel of the absurdity contained in the allegation of witchcraft. The black art is powerless, by mountain tradition, to cross running water.
A bat fluttered zig-zag about the place brushing her cheek, but Alexander was not the sort of woman to be frightened by a bat.
When the calculated silence had held for perhaps five full minutes, the standing men meanwhile remaining as motionless as though they were themselves carved from coal, Alexander spoke.
"Why don't ye say somethin'," she demanded. "I've got friends thet'll be s'archin' these hills fer me right vigorous ef I don't git ter Viper in good time."
It was a bold and provocative speech, but it failed to tempt the silent men out of the pose they had assumed. They knew the effect of protracted silence and impending danger to sap even an assertive courage and for five other minutes they stood wordless and motionless. Only their shadows moved under the torch-light, wavering fitfully from small to large, from light to dark like draperies in a wind.
Finally the man at the center who appeared to exercise a sort of command moved a step forward and raised both hands. The others lifted high their right arms and in a sepulchral voice the spokesman demanded, "Does ye all solemnly sw'ar, by ther dreadful oath ye've done tuck, with yore lives forfeit fer disloyalty or disobedience, ter try this wench on ther charge of outragin' decorum—an' practicin' ther foul charms of witchcraft? Does ye all sw'ar ter deal with her in full an' unmitigated jestice despite thet she s'arves Satan with a comely face and a comely body? Does ye all sw'ar?"
The raised hands, with a unanimous and solemn gesture, fell over the hearts of the questioned and then came aloft once more, still as if with a single nerve impulse. In a unison out of which no separate voice emerged sounded the reply: "We does!"
Alexander laughed, but it must be confessed that that was pure bravado. She knew that on the backwaters of many creeks were cabins where simple folks invoked charms against witchcraft and did so with genuine dread. She knew that many others, less candid, laughed at old superstitions yet acknowledged them in their hearts. In her case the witchcraft charge was of course a cloak for subterfuge, but it was a jest which might bear bitterly serious results.
"Alexander McGivins," began the spokesman afresh, "we charges ye with these weighty matters; thet ye glories in callin' yoreself a he-woman—refusin' ter accept God's mandate an' castin' mortification on yore own sex by holdin' on ter shameless notions. We charges ye with settin' ther example of unwomanly behavior before ther eyes of young gals, an' we aims ter make a sample of ye.
"We furthermore charges ye with practicin' witchcraft; with castin' spells an' performin' devil's work." He wheeled and demanded suddenly; "Number Thirteen, I calls on ye ter step forward an' testify. How does witches gain thar black powers?"
The answering voice, was plainly disguised, and it came with the lugubrious quality of calculated awesomeness.
"By compact with Satan."
"Number Thirteen, how is sich-like compacts made?"
"Thar's ways an' ways. A body kin go up ter a mounting top fer nine nights an' shoot through a kerchief at ther moon, cussin' ther Almighty each separate time, an' ownin' Satan fer master."
"Number Thirteen, what powers does Satan give these hyar sarvants of his'n?"
"They gains ther baleful power ter kill folks with witch balls, rolled tight outen ther hair of a cow or a varmint. By runnin' a hand over a rifle gun they kin make hit shoot crooked. They kin spell a houn' dog so thet he back-tracks 'stid of trailin' for'ards. They kin bring on all manner of pestilence an' make cows go dry an' hosses fling their riders. They kin——"
"Thet's enough, Number Thirteen," announced the spokesman. "Thet's a lavish of evil. How kin they be hindered from this deviltry?"
"Thar's means of liftin' spells, but nothin' save death hitself cures ther witches."
"Number Thirteen, how does ye go about hit, ter slay a witch?"
"By shootin' with a silver bullet run outen a mould thet's done been rubbed with willow-sprigs."
"Number Thirteen, in the event of need, hev ye got sich a bullet hyar?"
"Each one of us hes got one."
Once more the apparent head of the clan turned to the girl. "Woman, air ye guilty or not guilty?"
"I reckon," suggested Alexander coolly, "ye'd better ask Number Thirteen. He 'pears ter know 'most everything."
But the spokesman declined to be lured by frivolous taunt from his vantage ground of solemnity. He turned his head and gravely inquired: "Number Thirteen, how does ye det'armine ther guilt of a witch?"
"Ef a preacher comes nigh, she kain't help turnin' her back."
"I reckon we hain't skeercely got no preacher handy ter test her with," interrupted the master of ceremonies drily, and the other went on.
"Ef she stays hyar 'twell midnight a sperit in ther guise of a black cat'll appear ter do her biddin'."
On the ground lay the saddle-bags and the rifle; as yet unmolested. Before they had loosened the blindfold from her eyes she had been subjected to the needless indignity of bound wrists and now she was entirely helpless.
Her coat hung on her tattered during the struggle and her flannel shirt had been rent until both garments sagged from her shoulders, leaving bare the white curves of their flesh. The circle had fallen silent again. It remained silent for a half hour, then the man who had acted as chief inquisitor drew aside that other whom Alexander knew only as Number Thirteen, and, apart, they conferred in lowered voices. In the manner of these two, the captive recognized indications of anxiety. Palpably some detail of their plans had gone awry and that miscarriage, whatever its nature, was troubling their peace of mind. Had she understood more fully it would likewise have troubled her.
The conventional and successful course of highway robbery runs in the channel of a swift accomplishment and a rapid getaway. Yet this crew, leaving the saddle-bags uninvestigated at their feet, were solemnly playing out their farce at the expense of valuable time—time which should have stood for miles put between themselves and pursuit.
Was the difficulty that of disposing of her? If so, she stood face to face with a stark and grim extremity. Murder and concealment of a lifeless body, here, would be easy enough. These men were desperadoes, and if dire enough need pressed them they would not, she thought, balk overlong at the idea of killing a woman.
Yet the leader, studiously maintaining his Ku-Klux masquerade, parleyed with his underlings and consulted a heavy nickel-cased watch. His gesture showed a petulant impatience. The men in the silent circle stirred uneasily and from time to time low growls broke from their muffled lips. Obviously they were awaiting some development which though overdue had not materialized.
The half hour became an hour, then doubled itself to a full two—in oppressive silence.
"What be ye awaitin' fer?" Alexander demanded in a taunting voice, though inwardly she felt that the peril was pregnant and immediate. The only satisfaction she could deny them now was that of any confessed fear.
This time the speaker snarled his answer back at her angrily, without any consistent attempt at holding the ritualistic impressiveness of manner.
"Mebby we're waitin' fer midnight—twell ther black cat comes."
Alexander could not guess that all these malefactors were on tenterhooks of misgiving because the arrangement entered into as a concession to the vanity of Jase Mallows had failed; the fictitious rescue which was to re-establish him in the eyes of the girl and give to them the chance to practice highway robbery, still stopping short of murder. The whole scheme had been cut to that pattern and it was now too late to evolve a new strategy. The trial was to have seemed genuine. It was to have been followed by a fictitious battle in which the alleged regulators were to have been put to flight by the victorious entry of Jase himself with his underlings. The girl, snatched from the jaws of death by his valor would henceforth rest under such obligations as could be recompensed only by her favor—but in the melee, her money would disappear.
Jase had not come—and the captive whom he was to take off their hands must either be done to death or liberated with a wagging tongue.
Eventually the masked head-highwayman led two of his men aside. He recognized that having compacted with Jase they could not ignore him. In a whisper he ventured the suggestion, "Mebby Jase hes done come ter grief. Mebby we'd better kill ther gal atter all an' git away. But if we does we've got ter git Jase afore he has time ter blab an' hang us all."
Halloway spending a long and dreary day bound to his chair in the baggage-room at Viper had succeeded in wriggling his lips free of the bandage. As yet that was only an academic victory. Unless there stood in the room where the instrument ticked a sufficiently strong force of his friends to wage a successful battle, any sound from his lips would mean only death for them and himself—without material advantage to his cause.
Twice during his long inactivity the raucous sound of a telephone bell jangled and he heard a voice replying to some inquiry, "No, he hain't been here." The question so answered, he guessed, had come from Brent seeking to locate him and confer with him as he came along the road between Coal City and Viper. He thought very grimly and with bitter futility of the force waiting so near and so eagerly keyed to action under O'Keefe, which one minute of private speech would launch into a hurricane effectiveness. In mad moments he had even tried to break the chain between the steel bracelets that bit into his wrists. His Samson strength had strained until the arteries swelled in his temples and it has been almost enough—but not quite. A link had stretched a bit, but the wrists had been so lacerated that the effort had to be abandoned.
Then when the day was spent towards late afternoon he caught the chatter of the key again, somewhat confused by the intervening wall, but though he missed part of the message he caught a few words which were pregnant with meaning … "got her … in mine shaft … back of Gap."
Now, Halloway told himself, as tortured sweat of suspense dripped down his face, he must somehow convey word to Jerry O'Keefe—but how? He had the facts—the location—the certainty and he could use none of his vital information.
He twisted his two gyved hands around and got one of them into his coat pocket. He brought out the pipe which he could neither fill nor light, but there was a certain steadying comfort in feeling its cool stem between his teeth.
During the captive's leisure for reflection he had been pondering one point which had puzzled him. From what telegraph office out there in the wilds was Wicks acting as intelligence bureau? Obviously he must be near the Gap itself as the station wire followed the railroad.
Then he remembered a device that he had seen used about mining properties and laughed at his own stupidity in remaining as long baffled. The few telephones hereabouts were party lines where all conversation could be overheard and so, for the use of highwaymen, they were unavailable. Wicks had merely brought a key, a battery and a ground wire with him and he had cut in on a telephone line. There were, he remembered now, two instruments on the operator's table here. One was the twin to the thing upon which the resourceful Wricks was playing.
Brent and Bud Sellers had ridden with spirits rapidly sinking since they had drawn near to that territory which lay adjacent to Wolf-Pen Gap. The failure to reach Halloway by 'phone at Viper was a bad augury, since it left them in the position of an army whose intelligence bureau has collapsed.
The two horsemen had ridden through wintry forests along steep and difficult roads where it seemed that they alone represented humanity. Of course Alexander, herself, might be traveling as uneventfully as themselves, but they could feel no great confidence in that hope and now there was nothing to do but to push on to Viper, perhaps passing by spots where they were sorely needed, as they went, and to try to find Halloway, whose silence left them groping in the dark.
Will Brent was, in the sense of present requirements, no woodsman. He knew the forests as a lumber expert knows them, but the seemingly trivial and minute indications that another might have read, carried for him no meaning.
However, he put his dependence in Bud Sellers whose knowledge of such lore amounted to wizardry, and at one point Bud halted abruptly gazing down with absorbtion from his saddle.
"Right hyar," he said shortly, "Alexander stopped an' hed speech with two horsemen. Ther looks of hit don't pleasure me none nuther."
"Why?" inquired Brent, and the mountaineer drew his brow into an apprehensive furrow. "Fer a spell back, I've been watchin' these signs with forebodin's. Alexander wasn't ridin' at no stiddy gait. She'd walk her mule, then gallop him—then she'd pull down an' halt. These other two riders did jest what she did—kain't ye read ther story writ out in ther marks of them mule-irons on ther mud?"
Brent shook his head in bewilderment.
"Well, hit's all too damn plain an' hit would 'pear ter signify that Alexander sought ter shake off two fellers thet didn't low ter be shook off. Right hyar they all stopped, an' parleyed some."
"Why?"
"Because three mules stood hyar fer a leetle spell—ye kin see whar they stomped, an' movin' mules don't stomp twice or thrice over ther same spot. Then two of 'em went on gallopin'—and one went on walkin'. Yes this is whar she got rid of 'em, but I misdoubts ef they lost sight of her."
A little further Bud showed Brent where the two mules had turned aside to the right and, a mile further on, where Alexander had also abandoned the main road and gone to the left.
"She held ter ther highway a mile further then she 'lowed ter," growled Sellers. "Thar's jest one reasonable cause fer thet. She knowed she war bein' spied on, an' she aimed ter shake 'em off. I wonderdidshe shake 'em off."
When they had almost reached the Gap itself and were proceeding warily they came to a narrow ford at whose edge Bud drew rein.
"Let's pause an' study this hyar proposition out afore we rides on any further," he suggested.
It was a particularly wild and desolate spot where the road bent so sharply that they had turned a corner and come upon the crossing of the water without a previous view. They had been riding toward what had seemed a sheer wall of bluff, and that abrupt angle had brought them to a point where the road dipped sharply down and lost itself in the rapidly running waters of a narrow creek. On the opposite shore the road came out again with a right-angle turn to thread its course along a shelf of higher ground as a narrow cornice might run along a wall. Below was a drop to the creek; above the perpendicular uplift of the precipice.
"This hyar's ther commencement of Wolf-Pen Gap," Bud Sellers enlightened his companion. "This is just erbout whar they aimed ter lay-way her at. I shouldn't marvel none ef some of 'em's watchin' us from them thickets up on thet bluff right now."
"Then let's hurry across," Brent nervously suggested. "Once we get over the stream the cliff itself will shield us. They can't shoot straight down."
"Oh, I reckon they don't hardly aim ter harm us," reassured Bud. "An' anyhow we've got ter tutor this matter jest right. Thet creek's norrer but hit's deep beyond fordin'. We needs must swim our mules acros't."
Brent shuddered at the sight of the chill water but Bud went on inexorably. "Now, ye've got ter start as fur up es ye handily kin—because ther current's swift—an' if hit carries yer beyond thet small bend ye comes out in quicksand. Jest foller me. I'll go fust."
Brent had faced a number of adventures of late, but for this newest one he had little stomach. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and prepared to go ahead and follow his companion's lead, since need left no alternative.
As Bud's mule thrust its fore-feet into the creek's edge the creature balked and the young man kicked him viciously. Brent was waiting with bated breath when abruptly from overhead came the clean, sharp bark of a rifle. Brent's hat went spinning from his head and he felt the light sting of a grazing wound along his scalp. It seemed to be in the same instant that he heard Bud's revolver barking its retort towards the point from which the flash had gleamed. There followed a second report and the zip of a bullet burying itself in wood, and then he heard Bud yelling, "Go on!"
Realizing that once across the narrow stream he would be under shelter, he kicked and belabored his mule to the take-off. There was a downward plunge, a floundering in the icy water, and then an unsteady sensation as the beast struck out to swim. The current had taken its effect so that mule and rider were being carried down channel faster than they were gaining across, but Brent instinctively turned his head to see what had become of his guide.
He saw an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all! He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight, making for the protection of the turn about which they had come. Twice before he gained safety the rifle above spat out venomously, but missed the fleeing target.
Such a confusion seized upon Brent that he never knew how he got across that creek. Ahead had lain quicksand, above a rifle in the laurel and in his own entrails an overpowering nausea of betrayed confidence. His comrade had deserted him—had run away!
Somehow, his own mount had won across and was plodding up to solid roadway once more and there safe, for the moment at least, he halted and looked back.
Hoping against hope, Brent waited for five minutes with a clammy sweat on his forehead, but there was still no sign of a returning Bud Sellers. Then Brent unwillingly admitted that it was a pure and unmitigated case of desertion under fire.
"My God," he groaned. "He quit me cold—quit like a dog! He simply cut and ran!"
With a sickened heart he rode on. His head ached from the near touch of the assassin's bullet. He was not even watching for a second ambuscade, and fortunately for him, there was none. But with dulled observation he passed by a place where, close to the road, a shaft ran back into an abandoned coal mine and he followed his dejected course without suspecting that at that moment Alexander was being held a prisoner in the cavern to which that shaft gave access.
The men who had come into town for the purpose of co-operating with Jerry O'Keefe and with Halloway had of course drifted in singly and with no seeming of cohesion. It was vital that they should avoid any manifest community of purpose, yet they were armed, ready and alert, awaiting only a signal to gather out of scattered elements into a close-knit force with heavy striking-power.
As they waited through the day for the call which did not come they began to feel the dispirited gloom of men keyed to action and kept interminably waiting—but none of them dropped away.
It was close to sundown when Brent himself arrived, and since he failed to encounter Jerry O'Keefe on the streets he did not pause to search for him, but went direct to the telegraph office. It had not been disclosed to O'Keefe how close to the heart of the conspiracy was the operator and the young man with the Irish eyes had not been stirred to any deep suspicion in that quarter.
Brent himself had not considered it a reasonable assumption that to such a powerful fellow as Halloway harm could come in so public a place. Yet Halloway had meant to make that office his headquarters and now Brent made it his first destination.
Through the open door and the smeared window spilled out a yellow and sickly light.
Inside sat two men, but a glance told Brent that neither of them worked the key. The pair were gaunt and sinister of aspect and they were not town folk but creek-dwellers. One was evil-visaged to a point of gargoyle hideousness. The other was little better, and he raised a face to inspect the man in the door which some malignant sculptor might have modeled in pure spite, pinching it viciously here and there into sharp angles of grotesqueness. Yet in the eyes Brent recognized keenness and determination.
The newcomer casually inquired for the station agent and one of the fellows stared at him morosely, making no reply. The other however, supplied the curt information: "He's done gone out ter git him a snack ter eat."
"I'm looking for a man named Halloway," said Brent. "A big upstandin' fellow. Maybe you men know him?"
To the mountaineers who walk softly and speak low by custom it seemed that the city man spoke with a volume and resonance quite needless in such narrow confines.
"I knows him when I sees him," admitted the man who had answered the first question. The other remained dumb.
"Has he been about here to-day?"
"No."
"I'll wait till the operator gets back," announced Brent with a nonchalance difficult to maintain.
He did not take a seat but stood, studiously appraising the place while he seemed to see little. After the depression attendant upon Bud's desertion had followed an almost electric keenness; every gesture was guarded and every nerve set now against any self-betrayal, for he felt himself fencing in the dark with wily adversaries.
He sauntered idly over near the door to the baggage-room and beyond its panels he could hear the scurry of rats at play among loose piles of boxes and litter.
"Sounds like the rats are having a party in there," he suggested as though laudibly resolved upon making conversation in a taciturn circle.
"Mebby they be." Still only one of the countrymen had spoken a syllable.
"I'd like to put a good rat-dog in there and watch him work," laughed Brent, turning again to face the door as though he found fascination in the thought. Then idly he laid his hand on the knob as though to try its opening, but he went no further. Just at the side of the lintel hung a broken and extremely dirty mirror and a quick glance into its revealing surface told him a full story. He saw the man with the pinched features reach swiftly back of him and slide a rifle away from its concealed place against the wall. He saw the other's hand go flash-like under his coat and under his left arm-pit. He caught in both faces a sudden and black malignity which told him, beyond question, that they would not play but would kill.
Of course too he knew why and he made a point of standing there with every evidence of having seen nothing or suspected nothing.
After that first glance he also carefully avoided the mirror which might work revelation to them as well as to himself. Eventually he turned, not directly toward them but toward the other end of the room and carelessly walked its length that he might give emphasis to his unhurried seeming before he came slowly about.
When he did so the two men sat as before. The rifle had already disappeared. The hand that had swept holster-ward had swept out again. Both faces were blankly unconcerned.
Brent dropped into a chair near the door and listened as the clatter inside increased. The rats scrambled about with a multiplicity of light gnawing sounds and the clicking of some trifles unstably balanced. Then slowly the clicking ceased to be random.
It differed from the other little noises only to the practiced ears of Brent himself. That was not because his ears were keener than the other pairs, but because to others there was no comprehensible connection between a faint tapping and the sequence of raps that spells words in the Morse code.
It was strange that from rats at play should issue the coherent sense of consecutive telegraphy.
Brent had been on thequi-vive, steadied against any self-betrayal, yet now he struggled against the impulse to tremble with excitement. His fingers gripping the chair arms threatened to betray him by their tautness and he could feel cold perspiration dripping down his body.
He crossed his legs and slouched more indolently into his chair in the attitude of a bored and vacant-minded man—but as he sat his brain was focussed on the clicking.
"Am tied … up … here," spelled out the dots and dashes from the baggage-room. "If you understand, scrape chair on floor." Brent shifted his seat noisily.
"She … is … caught.…" There was a pause there.
"In God's name, how is he doing it?" Brent questioned himself, while inside, bound to his chair, with cuffed wrists, Halloway went on sending—rapping with a pipe stem between parted rows of strong teeth.
"She is held … in mine-shaft … back of Gap.…"
The pressure of concentrating on that faint, but infinitely important sound, and the need of maintaining a semblance of weary dullness was trying Brent's soul. He thanked Heaven for the taciturnity of his companions.
"Get there … with all men possible … as for me——"
Brent came suddenly and noisily to his feet for just then the operator appeared in the doorway and it would not do for these sounds to continue after his coming.
"Well, here comes the man I've been waiting for," he announced loudly, and once more the clatter in the baggage-room became the random of rats at play. "I wanted to ask you if you had any message for William Brent, from a man named Halloway," he inquired, still speaking as if against the wind, and, receiving a brief negative, he turned toward the outer door.
An exit under such circumstances is always difficult. To curb the urge of haste, to remain casual under lynx-like eyes, these are not untrying tasks. Any slip now and he might be in the same durance as Halloway himself—and when he breathed the outer air it was with a deep-drawn sigh of relief for delivery out of peril.
When he had established connection with O'Keefe and had given him the main facts, withholding, however, his sources of information, he said: "We must get Halloway free before we start."
"Like hell we must!" exploded Jerry. "So long es he lays thar they'll figger they've done fooled us an' beat us. Ef we take him out, thar'll be men in ther la'rel all the way we've got ter go, pickin' us off in ther dark."
"You're right," assented Brent, "but he's been there all day, I guess."
"Wa'al then a leetle more hain't goin' ter hurt him none."
Fifteen minutes later, leaving separately but timed to come to a rendezvous near the point of attack a good dozen men were on the trail to the Gap.
Through wet and chilly thickets O'Keefe led Brent at a gait that made his heart pound. There was a battle-joy in the mountaineer's eyes and in them too, was something else inspired by certain dreams of the girl he had seen only once and whom he had told himself he meant to marry.
Over broken gulches, along precipitous paths he led the way buoyantly and now and then he broke into low almost inaudible crooning of an ancient love song.