“In a way, yes. It is very much more round-about. It isn't known much by the public. Not many outsiders have business in the valley.”
She volunteered no explanation in detail, and the man beside her said, with a grim laugh:
“There isn't any general admission to the public this way, is there?”
“No. Oh, folks can come if they want to.”
He looked full in her face, and said significantly: “I thought the way to Lost Valley was a sort of a secret—one that those who know are not expected to tell.”
“Oh, that's just talk. Not many come in but our friends. We've had to be careful lately. But you can't call a secret what a thousand folks know.”
It was like a blow in the face to him. Not many but their friends! And she was taking him in confidently because he was her friend. What sort of a friend was he? he asked himself. He could not perform the task to which he was pledged without striking home at her. If he succeeded in ferreting out the Squaw Creek raiders he must send to the penitentiary, perhaps to death, her neighbors, and possibly her relatives. She had told him her father was not implicated, but a daughter's faith in her parent was not convincing proof of his innocence. If not her father, a brother might be involved. And she was innocently making it easy for him to meet on a friendly footing these hospitable, unsuspecting savages, who had shed human blood because of the unleashed passions in them!
In that moment, while he looked away toward Lost Valley, he sickened of the task that lay before him. What would she think of him if she knew?
Arlie, too, had been looking down the gulch toward the valley. Now her gaze came slowly round to him and caught the expression of his face.
“What's the matter?” she cried.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. An old heart pain that caught me suddenly.”
“I'm sorry. We'll soon be home now. We'll travel slowly.”
Her voice was tender with sympathy; so, too, were her eyes when he met them.
He looked away again and groaned in his heart.
They followed the trail down into the cañon. As the ponies slowly picked their footing on the steep narrow path, he asked:
“Why do they call it Mantrap Gulch?”
“It got its name before my time in the days when outlaws hid here. A hunted man came to Lost Cañon, a murderer wanted by the law for more crimes than one. He was well treated by the settlers. They gave him shelter and work. He was safe, and he knew it. But he tried to make his peace with the law outside by breaking the law of the valley. He knew that two men were lying hid in a pocket gulch, opening from the valley—men who were wanted for train robbery. He wrote to the company offering to betray these men if they would pay him the reward and see that he was not punished for his crimes.
“It seems he was suspected. His letter was opened, and the exits from the valley were both guarded. Knowing he was discovered, he tried to slip out by the river way. He failed, sneaked through the settlement at night, and slipped into the cañon here. At this end of it he found armed men on guard. He ran back and found the entrance closed. He was in a trap. He tried to climb one of the walls. Do you see that point where the rock juts out?”
“About five hundred feet up? Yes.”
“He managed to climb that high. Nobody ever knows how he did it, but when morning broke there he was, like a fly on a wall. His hunters came and saw him. I suppose he could hear them laughing as their voices came echoing up to him. They shot above him, below him, on either side of him. He knew they were playing with him, and that they would finish him when they got ready. He must have been half crazy with fear. Anyhow, he lost his hold and fell. He was dead before they reached him. From that day this has been called Mantrap Gulch.”
The ranger looked up at the frowning walls which shut out the sunlight. His imagination pictured the drama—the hunted man's wild flight up the gulch; his dreadful discovery that it was closed; his desperate attempt to climb by moonlight the impossible cliff, and the tragedy that overtook him.
The girl spoke again softly, almost as if she were in the presence of that far-off Nemesis. “I suppose he deserved it. It's an awful thing to be a traitor; to sell the people who have befriended you. We can't put ourselves in his place and know why he did it. All we can say is that we're glad—glad that we have never known men who do such things. Do you think people always felt a sort of shrinking when they were near him, or did he seem just like other men?”
Glancing at the man who rode beside her, she cried out at the stricken look on his face. “It's your heart again. You're worn out with anxiety and privations. I should have remembered and come slower,” she reproached herself.
“I'm all right—now. It passes in a moment,” he said hoarsely.
But she had already slipped from the saddle and was at his bridle rein. “No—no. You must get down. We have plenty of time. We'll rest here till you are better.”
There was nothing for it but to obey. He dismounted, feeling himself a humbug and a scoundrel. He sat down on a mossy rock, his back against another, while she trailed the reins and joined him.
“You are better now, aren't you?” she asked, as she seated herself on an adjacent bowlder.
Gruffly he answered: “I'm all right.”
She thought she understood. Men do not like to be coddled. She began to talk cheerfully of the first thing that came into her head. He made the necessary monosyllabic responses when her speech put it up to him, but she saw that his mind was brooding over something else. Once she saw his gaze go up to the point on the cliff reached by the fugitive.
But it was not until they were again in the saddle that he spoke.
“Yes, he got what was coming to him. He had no right to complain.”
“That's what my father says. I don't deny the justice of it, but whenever I think of it, I feel sorry for him.”
“Why?”
Despite the quietness of the monosyllable, she divined an eager interest back of his question.
“He must have suffered so. He wasn't a brave man, they say. And he was one against many. They didn't hunt him. They just closed the trap and let him wear himself out trying to get through. Think of that awful week of hunger and exposure in the hills before the end!”
“It must have been pretty bad, especially if he wasn't a game man. But he had no legitimate kick coming. He took his chance and lost. It was up to him to pay.”
“His name was David Burke. When he was a little boy I suppose his mother used to call him Davy. He wasn't bad then; just a little boy to be cuddled and petted. Perhaps he was married. Perhaps he had a sweetheart waiting for him outside, and praying for him. And they snuffed his life out as if he had been a rattlesnake.”
“Because he was a miscreant and it was best he shouldn't live. Yes, they did right. I would have helped do it in their place.”
“My father did,” she sighed.
They did not speak again until they had passed from between the chill walls to the warm sunshine of the valley beyond. Among the rocks above the trail, she glimpsed some early anemones blossoming bravely.
She drew up with a little cry of pleasure. “They're the first I have seen. I must have them.”
Fraser swung from the saddle, but he was not quick enough. She reached them before he did, and after they had gathered them she insisted upon sitting down again.
He had his suspicions, and voiced them. “I believe you got me off just to make me sit down.”
She laughed with deep delight. “I didn't, but since we are here we shall.” And she ended debate by sitting down tailor-fashion, and beginning to arrange her little bouquet.
A meadow lark, troubadour of spring, trilled joyously somewhere in the pines above. The man looked up, then down at the vivid creature busy with her flowers at his feet. There was kinship between the two. She, too, was athrob with the joy note of spring.
“You're to sit down,” she ordered, without looking up from the sheaf of anemone blossoms she was arranging.
He sank down beside her, aware vaguely of something new and poignant in his life.
“Hello, Arlie! I been looking for you everywhere.”
The Texan's gaze took in a slim dark man, goodlooking after a fashion, but with dissipation written on the rather sullen face.
“Well, you've found me,” the girl answered coolly.
“Yes, I've found you,” the man answered, with a steady, watchful eye on the Texan.
Miss Dillon was embarrassed at this plain hostility, but indignation too sparkled in her eye. “Anything in particular you want?”
The newcomer ignored her question. His hard gaze challenged the Southerner; did more than challenge—weighed and condemned.
But this young woman was not used to being ignored. Her voice took on an edge of sharpness.
“What can I do for you, Jed?”
“Who's your friend?” the man demanded bluntly, insolently.
Arlie's flush showed the swift, upblazing resentment she immediately controlled. “Mr. Fraser—just arrived from Texas. Mr. Fraser, let me introduce to you Mr. Briscoe.”
The Texan stepped forward to offer his hand, but Briscoe deliberately put both of his behind him.
“Might I ask what Mr. Fraser, just arrived from Texas, is doing here?” the young man drawled, contriving to make an insult of every syllable.
The girl's eyes flashed dangerously. “He is here as my guest.”
“Oh, as your guest!”
“Doesn't it please you, Jed?”
“Have I said it didn't please me?” he retorted smoothly.
“Your looks say it.”
He let out a sudden furious oath. “Then my looks don't lie any.”
Fraser was stepping forward, but with a gesture Arlie held him back. This was her battle, not his.
“What have you got to say about it?” she demanded.
“You had no right to bring him here. Who is he anyhow?”
“I think that is his business, and mine.”
“I make it mine,” he declared hotly. “I've heard about this fellow from your father. You met up with him on the trail. He says his name is Fraser. You don't even know whether that is true. He may be a spy. How do you know he ain't?”
“How do I know you aren't?” she countered swiftly.
“You've known me all my life. Did you ever see him before?”
“Never.”
“Well, then!”
“He risked his life to save ours.”
“Risked nothing! It was a trick, I tell you.”
“It makes no difference to me what you tell me. Your opinion can't affect mine.”
“You know the feeling of the valley just now about strangers,” said Briscoe sullenly.
“It depends on who the stranger is.”
“Well, I object to this one.”
“So it seems; but I don't know any law that makes me do whatever you want me to.” Her voice, low and clear, cut like a whiplash.
Beneath the dust of travel the young man's face burned with anger. “We're not discussing that just now. What I say is that you had no right to bring him here—not now, especially. You know why,” he added, almost in a whisper.
“If you had waited and not attempted to brow-beat me, I would have shown you that that is the very reason I had to bring him.”
“How do you mean?”
“Never mind what I mean. You have insulted my friend, and through him, me. That is enough for one day.” She turned from him haughtily and spoke to the Texan. “If you are ready, Mr. Fraser, we'll be going now.”
The ranger, whose fingers had been itching to get at the throat of this insolent young man, turned without a word and obediently brought the girl's pony, then helped her to mount. Briscoe glared, in a silent tempest of passion.
“I think I have left a glove and my anemones where we were sitting,” the girl said sweetly to the Texan.
Fraser found them, tightened the saddle girth, and mounted Teddy. As they cantered away, Arlie called to him to look at the sunset behind the mountains.
From the moment of her dismissal of Briscoe the girl had apparently put him out of her thoughts. No fine lady of the courts could have done it with more disdainful ease. And the Texan, following her lead, played his part in the little comedy, ignoring the other man as completely as she did.
The young cattleman, furious, his teeth set in impotent rage, watched it all with the lust to kill in his heart. When they had gone, he flung himself into the saddle and rode away in a tumultuous fury.
Before they had covered two hundred yards Arlie turned to her companion, all contrition. “There! I've done it again. My fits of passion are always getting me into trouble. This time one of them has given you an enemy, and a bad one, too.”
“No. He would have been my enemy no matter what you said. Soon as he put his eyes on me, I knew it.”
“Because I brought you here, you mean?”
“I don't mean only that. Some folks are born to be enemies, just as some are born to be friends. They've only got to look in each other's eyes once to know it.”
“That's strange. I never heard anybody else say that. Do you really mean it?”
“Yes.”
“And did you ever have such an enemy before? Don't answer me if I oughtn't to ask that,” she added quickly.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“In Texas. Why, here we are at a ranch!”
“Yes. It's ours, and yours as long as you want to stay. Did you feel that you were enemies the moment you saw this man in Texas?”
“I knew we were going to have trouble as soon as we looked at each other. I had no feeling toward him, but he had toward me.”
“And did you have trouble?”
“Some, before I landed him. The way it turned out he had most of it.”
She glanced quickly at him. “What do you mean by 'landed'?”
“I am an officer in the Texas Rangers.”
“What are they? Something like our forest rangers?”
“No. The duty of a Texas Ranger is to enforce the law against desperadoes. We prevent crime if we can. When we can't do that, we hunt down the criminals.”
Arlie looked at him in a startled silence.
“You are an officer of the law—a sort of sheriff?” she said, at last.
“Yes, in Texas. This is Wyoming.” He made his distinction, knowing it was a false one. Somehow he had the feeling of a whipped cur.
“I wish I had known. If you had only told me earlier,” she said, so low as to be almost a whisper.
“I'm sorry. If you like, I'll go away again,” he offered.
“No, no. I'm only thinking that it gives Jed a hold, gives him something to stir up his friends with, you know. That is, it would if he knew. He mustn't find out.”
“Be frank. Don't make any secret of it. That's the best way,” he advised.
She shook her head. “You don't know Jed's crowd. They'd be suspicious of any officer, no matter where he came from.”
“Far as I can make out, that young man is going to be loaded with suspicions of me anyhow,” he laughed.
“It isn't anything to laugh at. You don't know him,” she told him gravely.
“And can't say I'm suffering to,” he drawled.
She looked at him a little impatiently, as if he were a child playing with gunpowder and unaware of its potentialities.
“Can't you understand? You're not in Texas with your friends all around you. This is Lost Valley—and Lost Valley isn't on the map. Men make their own law here. That is, some of them do. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for your life if the impression spread that you are a spy. It doesn't matter that I know you're not. Others must feel it, too.”
“I see. And Mr. Briscoe will be a molder of public opinion?”
“So far as he can he will. We must forestall him.”
“Beat him to it, and give me a clean bill of moral health, eh?”
She frowned. “This is serious business, my friend.”
“I'm taking it that way,” he said smilingly.
“I shouldn't have guessed it.”
Yet for all his debonair ease the man had an air of quiet competence. His strong, bronzed face and neck, the set of his shoulders, the light poise of him in the saddle, the steady confidence of the gray eyes, all told her as much. She was aware of a curiosity about what was hidden behind that stone-wall face of his.
“You didn't finish telling me about that enemy in Texas,” she suggested suddenly.
“Oh, there ain't much to tell. He broke out from the pen, where I had put him when I was a kid. He was a desperado wanted by the authorities, so I arrested him again.”
“Sounds easy.”
“He made some trouble, shot up two or three men first.” Fraser lifted his hand absently.
“Is that scar on your hand where he shot you?” Arlie asked.
He looked up in quick surprise. “Now, how did you know that?”
“You were talking of the trouble he made and you looked at your hand,” she explained. “Where is he now? In the penitentiary?”
“No. He broke away before I got him there.”
She had another flash of inspiration. “And you came to Wyoming to get him again.”
“Good gracious, ma'am, but you're ce'tainly a wizard! That's why I came, though it's a secret.”
“What is he wanted for?”
“Robbing a train, three murders and a few other things.”
As she swung from her pony in front of the old-fashioned Southern log house, Artie laughed at him over her shoulder.
“You're a fine officer! Tell all you know to the first girl you meet!”
“Well, you see, the girl happened to be—you!”
After the manner of the old-fashioned Southern house a wide “gallery” bisected it from porch to rear. Saddles hung from pegs in the gallery. Horse blankets and bridles, spurs and saddlebags, lay here and there in disarray. A disjointed rifle which some one had started to clean was on the porch. Swiftly Arlie stripped saddle, bridle, and blanket from her pony and flung them down as a contribution to the general disorder, and at her suggestion Fraser did the same. A half-grown lad came running to herd the horses into a corral close at hand.
“I want you when you've finished feeding, Bobbie,” Arlie told the lad. Then briefly to her guest: “This way, please.”
She led him into a large, cheerful living room, into which, through big casement windows, the light streamed. It was a pleasant room, despite its barbaric touch. There was a grizzly bear skin before the great open, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs covered the floor and hung on the walls. The skin of a silver-tip bear was stretched beneath a writing desk, a trophy of Arlie's rifle, which hung in a rack above. Civilization had furnished its quota to the room in a piano, some books, and a few photographs.
The Texan observed that order reigned here, even though it did not interfere with the large effect of comfort.
The girl left him, to return presently with her aunt, to whom she introduced him. Miss Ruth Dillon was a little, bright-eyed old lady, whose hair was still black, and her step light. Evidently she had her instructions, for she greeted their guest with charming cordiality, and thanked him for the service he had rendered her brother and her niece.
Presently the boy Bobbie arrived for further orders. Arlie went to her desk and wrote hurriedly.
“You're to give this note to my father,” she directed. “Be sure he gets it himself. You ought to find him down in Jackson's Pocket, if the drive is from Round Top to-day. But you can ask about that along the road.”
When the boy had gone, Arlie turned to Fraser.
“I want to tell father you're here before Jed gets to him with his story,” she explained. “I've asked him to ride down right away. He'll probably come in a few hours and spend the night here.”
After they had eaten supper they returned to the living room, where a great fire, built by Jim the negro horse wrangler, was roaring up the chimney.
It was almost eleven o'clock when horses galloped up and Dillon came into the house, followed by Jed Briscoe. The latter looked triumphant, the former embarrassed as he disgorged letters and newspapers from his pocket.
“I stopped at the office to get the mail as I came down. Here's yore paper, Ruth.”
Miss Dillon pounced eagerly upon the Gimlet Butte Avalanche, and disappeared with it to her bedroom. She had formerly lived in Gimlet Butte, and was still keenly interested in the gossip of the town.
Briscoe had scored one against Arlie by meeting her father, telling his side of the story, and returning with him to the house. Nevertheless Arlie, after giving him the slightest nod her duty as hostess would permit, made her frontal attack without hesitation.
“You'll be glad to know, dad, that Mr. Fraser is our guest. He has had rather a stormy time since we saw him last, and he has consented to stay with us a few days till things blow over.”
Dillon, very ill at ease, shook hands with the Texan, and was understood to say that he was glad to see him.
“Then you don't look it, dad,” Arlie told him, with a gleam of vexed laughter.
Her father turned reproachfully upon her. “Now, honey, yo' done wrong to say that. Yo' know Mr. Fraser is welcome to stay in my house long as he wants. I'm proud to have him stay. Do you think I forgot already what he done for us?”
“Of course not. Then it's all settled,” Arlie cut in, and rushed on to another subject. “How's the round-up coming, dad?”
“We'll talk about the round-up later. What I'm saying is that Mr. Fraser has only got to say the word, and I'm there to he'p him till the cows come home.”
“That's just what I told him, dad.”
“Hold yore hawsses, will yo', honey? But, notwithstanding which, and not backing water on that proposition none, we come to another p'int.”
“Which Jed made to you carefully on the way down,” his daughter interrupted scornfully.
“It don't matter who made it. The p'int is that there are reasons why strangers ain't exactly welcome in this valley right now, Mr. Fraser. This country is full o' suspicion. Whilst it's onjust, charges are being made against us on the outside. Right now the settlers here have got to guard against furriners. Now I know yo're all right, Mr. Fraser. But my neighbors don't know it.”
“It was our lives he saved, not our neighbors',” scoffed Arlie.
“K'rect. So I say, Mr. Fraser, if yo' are out o' funds, I'll finance you. Wherever you want to go I'll see you git there, but I hain't got the right to invite you to stay in Lost Valley.”
“Better send him to Gimlet Butte, dad! He killed a man in helping us to escape, and he 's wanted bad! He broke jail to get here! Pay his expenses back to the Butte! Then if there's a reward, you and Jed can divide it!” his daughter jeered.
“What's that? Killed a man, yo' say?”
“Yes. To save us. Shall we send him back under a rifle guard? Or shall we have Sheriff Brandt come and get him?”
“Gracious goodness, gyurl, shet up whilst I think. Killed a man, eh? This valley has always been open to fugitives. Ain't that right, Jed?”
“To fugitives, yes,” said Jed significantly. “But that fact ain't proved.”
“Jed's getting right important. We'll soon be asking him whether we can stay here,” said Arlie, with a scornful laugh. “And I say it is proved. We met the deputies the yon side of the big cañon.”
Briscoe looked at her out of dogged, half-shuttered eyes. He said nothing, but he looked the picture of malice.
Dillon rasped his stubbly chin and looked at the Texan. Far from an alert-minded man, he came to conclusions slowly. Now he arrived at one.
“Dad burn it, we'll take the 'fugitive' for granted. Yo' kin lie up here long as yo' like, friend. I'll guarantee yo' to my neighbors. I reckon if they don't like it they kin lump it. I ain't a-going to give up the man that saved my gyurl's life.”
The door opened and let in Miss Ruth Dillon. The little old lady had the newspaper in her hand, and her beady eyes were shining with excitement.
“It's all in here, Mr. Fraser—about your capture and escape. But you didn't tell us all of it. Perhaps you didn't know, though, that they had plans to storm the jail and hang you?”
“Yes, I knew that,” the Texan answered coolly. “The jailer told me what was coming to me. I decided not to wait and see whether he was lying. I wrenched a bar from the window, lowered myself by my bedding, flew the coop, and borrowed a horse. That's the whole story, ma'am, except that Miss Arlie brought me here to hide me.”
“Read aloud what the paper says,” Dillon ordered.
His sister handed the Avalanche to her niece. Arlie found the article and began to read:
“A dastardly outrage occurred three miles from Gimlet Butte last night. While on their way home from the trial of the well-known Three Pines sheep raid case, a small party of citizens were attacked by miscreants presumed to be from the Cedar Mountain country. How many of these there were we have no means of knowing, as the culprits disappeared in the mountains after murdering William Faulkner, a well-known sheep man, and wounding Tom Long.”
There followed a lurid account of the battle, written from the point of view of the other side. After which the editor paid his respects to Fraser, though not by name.
“One of the ruffians, for some unknown reason—perhaps in the hope of getting a chance to slay another victim—remained too long near the scene of the atrocity and was apprehended early this morning by that fearless deputy, James Schilling. He refused to give his name or any other information about himself. While the man is a stranger to Gimlet Butte, there can be no doubt that he is one of the Lost Valley desperadoes implicated in the Squaw Creek raid some months ago. Since the bullet that killed Faulkner was probably fired from the rifle carried by this man, it is safe to assume that the actual murderer was apprehended. The man is above medium height, well built and muscular, and carries all the earmarks of a desperate character.”
Arlie glanced up from her reading to smile at Fraser. “Dad and I are miscreants, and you are a ruffian and a desperate character,” she told him gayly.
“Go on, honey,” her father urged.
The account told how the prisoner had been confined in the jail, and how the citizens, wrought up by the continued lawlessness of the Lost Valley district, had quietly gathered to make an example of the captured man. While condemning lynching in general, the Avalanche wanted to go on record as saying that if ever it was justifiable this was the occasion. Unfortunately, the prisoner, giving thus further evidence of his desperate nature, had cut his way out of prison with a pocketknife and escaped from town by means of a horse he found saddled and did not hesitate to steal. At the time of going to press he had not yet been recaptured, though Sheriff Brandt had several posses on his trail. The outlaw had cut the telephone wires, but it was confidently believed he would be captured before he reached his friends in the mountains.
Arlie's eyes were shining. She looked at Briscoe and handed him the paper triumphantly. This was her vindication for bringing the hunted man to Lost Valley. He had been fighting their battles and had almost lost his life in doing it. Jed might say what he liked while she had this to refute him.
“I guess that editor doesn't believe so confidently as he pretends,” she said. “Anyhow, he has guessed wrong. Mr. Fraser has reached his friends, and they'll look out for him.”
Her father came to her support radiantly. “You bet yore boots they will, honey. Shake hands on it, Mr. Fraser. I reckon yore satisfied too, Jed. Eh, boy?”
Briscoe viewed the scene with cynical malice. “Quite a hero, ain't he? If you want to know, I stand pat. Mr. Fraser from Texas don't draw the wool over my eyes none. Right now I serve notice to that effect. Meantime, since I don't aim to join the happy circle of his admirers, I reckon I'll duck.”
He nodded impudently at Arlie, turned on his heel, and went trailing off with jingling spur. They heard him cursing at his horse as he mounted. The cruel swish of a quirt came to them, after which the swift pounding of a horse's hoofs. The cow pony had found its gallop in a stride.
The Texan laughed lightly. “Exit Mr. Briscoe, some disappointed,” he murmured.
He noticed that none of the others shared his mirth.
Briscoe did not return at once to the scene of the round-up. He followed the trail toward Jackson's Pocket, but diverged after he had gone a few miles and turned into one of the hundred blind gulches that ran out from the valley to the impassable mountain wall behind. It was known as Jack Rabbit Run, because its labyrinthine trails offered a retreat into which hunted men might always dive for safety. Nobody knew its recesses better than Jed Briscoe, who was acknowledged to be the leader of that faction in the valley which had brought it the bad name it held.
Long before Jed's time there had been such a faction, then the dominant one of the place, now steadily losing ground as civilization seeped in, but still strong because bound by ties of kindred and of interest to the honest law-abiding majority. Of it were the outlaws who came periodically to find shelter here, the hasty men who had struck in heat and found it necessary to get beyond the law's reach for a time, and reckless cowpunchers, who foregathered with these, because they were birds of a feather. To all such, Jack Rabbit Run was a haven of rest.
By devious paths the cattleman guided his horse until he came to a kind of pouch, guarded by a thick growth of aspens. The front of these he skirted, plunged into them at the farther edge, and followed a narrow trail which wound among them till the grove opened upon a saucer-shaped valley in which nestled a little log cabin. Lights gleamed from the windows hospitably and suggested the comfortable warmth of a log fire and good-fellowship. So many a hunted man had thought as he emerged from that grove to look down upon the valley nestling at his feet.
Jed turned his horse into a corral back of the house, let out the hoot of an owl as he fed and watered, and returning to the cabin, gave the four knocks that were the signal for admission.
Bolts were promptly withdrawn and the door thrown open by a slender, fair-haired fellow, whose features looked as if they had been roughed out and not finished. He grinned amiably at the newcomer and greeted him with: “Hello, Jed.”
“Hello, Tommie,” returned Briscoe, carelessly, and let his glance pass to the three men seated at the table with cards and poker chips in front of them, The man facing Briscoe was a big, heavy-set, unmistakable ruffian with long, drooping, red mustache, and villainous, fishy eyes. It was observable that the trigger finger of his right hand was missing. Also, there was a nasty scar on his right cheek running from the bridge of the nose halfway to the ear. This gave surplusage to the sinister appearance he already had. To him Briscoe spoke first, attempting a geniality he did not feel.
“How're they coming, Texas?”
“You ain't heard me kicking any, have you?” the man made sullen answer.
“Not out loud,” said Briscoe significantly, his eyes narrowing after a trick they had when he was most on his guard.
“I reckon my remarks will be plumb audible when I've got any kick to register, seh.”
“I hope not, Mr. Johnson. In this neck of woods a man is liable to get himself disliked if he shoots off his mouth too prevalent. Folks that don't like our ways can usually find a door open out of Lost Valley—if they don't wait too long!”
“I'm some haidstrong. I reckon I'll stay.” He scowled at Jed with disfavor, meeting him eye to eye. But presently the rigor of his gaze relaxed. Me remembered that he was a fugitive from justice, and at the mercy of this man who had so far guessed his secret. Putting a temporary curb on his bilious jealousy, he sulkily added: “Leastways, if there's no objection, Mr. Briscoe. I ain't looking for trouble with anybody.”
“A man who's looking for it usually finds it, Mr. Johnson. A man that ain't, lives longer and more peaceable.” At this point Jed pulled himself together and bottled his arrogance, remembering that he had come to make an alliance with this man. “But that's no way for friends to talk. I got a piece of news for you. We'll talk it over in the other room and not disturb these gentlemen.”
One of the “gentlemen” grinned. He was a round-bodied, bullet-headed cowpuncher, with a face like burnt leather. He was in chaps, flannel shirt, and broad-brimmed hat. From a pocket in his chaps a revolver protruded. “That's right, Jed. Wrap it up proper. You'd hate to disturb us, wouldn't you?”
“I'll not interrupt you from losing your money more than five minutes, Yorky,” answered Briscoe promptly.
The third man at the table laughed suddenly. “Ay bane laik to know how yuh feel now, Yorky?” he taunted.
“It ain't you that's taking my spondulix in, you big, overgrown Swede!” returned Yorky amiably. “It's the gent from Texas. How can a fellow buck against luck that fills from a pair to a full house on the draw?”
The blond giant, Siegfried—who was not a Swede, but a Norwegian—announced that he was seventeen dollars in the game himself.
Tommie, already broke, and an onlooker, reported sadly.
“Sixty-one for me, durn it!”
Jed picked up a lamp, led the way to the other room, and closed the door behind them.
“I thought it might interest you to know that there's a new arrival in the valley, Mr. Struve,” he said smoothly.
“Who says my name's Struve?” demanded the man who called himself Johnson, with fierce suspicion.
Briscoe laughed softly. “I say it—Wolf Struve. Up till last month your address for two years has been number nine thousand four hundred and thirty-two, care of Penitentiary Warden, Yuma, Arizona.”
“Prove it. Prove it,” blustered the accused man.
“Sure.” From his inside coat pocket Jed took out a printed notice offering a reward for the capture of Nick Struve, alias “Wolf” Struve, convict, who had broken prison on the night of February seventh, and escaped, after murdering one of the guards. A description and a photograph of the man wanted was appended.
“Looks some like you. Don't it, Mr.—shall I say Johnson or Struve?”
“Say Johnson!” roared the Texan. “That ain't me. I'm no jailbird.”
“Glad to know it.” Briscoe laughed in suave triumph. “I thought you might be. This description sounds some familiar. I'll not read it all. But listen: 'Scar on right cheek, running from bridge of nose toward ear. Trigger finger missing; shot away when last arrested. Weight, about one hundred and ninety.' By the way, just out of curiosity, how heavy are you, Mr. Johnson? 'Height, five feet nine inches. Protuberant, fishy eyes. Long, drooping, reddish mustache.' I'd shave that mustache if I were you, Mr.—er—Johnson. Some one might mistake you for Nick Struve.”
The man who called himself Johnson recognized denial as futile. He flung up the sponge with a blasphemous oath. “What do you want? What's your game? Do you want to sell me for the reward? By thunder, you'd better not!”
Briscoe gave way to one of the swift bursts of passion to which he was subject. “Don't threaten me, you prison scum! Don't come here and try to dictate what I'm to do, and what I'm not to do. I'll sell you if I want to. I'll send you back to be hanged like a dog. Say the word, and I'll have you dragged out of here inside of forty-eight hours.”
Struve reached for his gun, but the other, wary as a panther, had him covered while the convict's revolver was still in his pocket.
“Reach for the roof! Quick—or I'll drill a hole in you! That's the idea. I reckon I'll collect your hardware while I'm at it. That's a heap better.”
Struve glared at him, speechless.
“You're too slow on the draw for this part of the country, my friend,” jeered Briscoe. “Or perhaps, while you were at Yuma, you got out of practice. It's like stealing candy from a kid to beat you to it. Don't ever try to draw a gun again in Lost Valley while you're asleep. You might never waken.”
Jed was in high good humor with himself. His victim looked silent murder at him.
“One more thing, while you're in a teachable frame of mind,” continued Briscoe. “I run Lost Valley. What I say, goes here. Get that soaked into your think-tank, my friend. Ever since you came, you've been disputing that in your mind. You've been stirring up the boys against me. Think I haven't noticed it? Guess again, Mr. Struve. You'd like to be boss yourself, wouldn't you? Forget it. Down in Texas you may be a bad, bad man, a sure enough wolf, but in Wyoming you only stack up to coyote size. Let this slip your mind, and I'll be running Lost Valley after your bones are picked white by the buzzards.”
“I ain't a-goin' to make you any trouble. Didn't I tell you that before?” growled Struve reluctantly.
“See you don't, then. Now I'll come again to my news. I was telling you that there's another stranger in this valley, Mr. Struve. Hails from Texas, too. Name of Fraser. Ever hear of him?”
Briscoe was hardly prepared for the change which came over the Texan at mention of that name. The prominent eyes stared, and a deep, apoplectic flush ran over the scarred face. The hand that caught at the wall trembled with excitement.
“You mean Steve Fraser—Fraser of the Rangers!” he gasped.
“That's what I'm not sure of. I got to milling it over after I left him, and it come to me I'd seen him or his picture before. You still got that magazine with the article about him?”
“Yes.”
“I looked it over hurriedly. Let me see his picture again, and I'll tell you if it's the same man.”
“It's in the other room.”
“Get it.”
Struve presently returned with the magazine, and, opening it, pointed to a photograph of a young officer in uniform, with the caption underneath: