CHAPTER XXVII
Asthe three friends hurried up Pine Nut Gulch toward the Katie Brackett the youngest of them reflected that the method of approach had been made smooth for him. It was not now necessary for him to skulk up through the sage. The whole town was on its way to the scene of the disaster. A stream of people was headed for the mine. Nimble boys passed them on the run. Less active citizens they overtook and left behind. The sounds of voices, of movements of many people, came to them through the darkness.
Hugh still carried his sawed-off shotgun. He might need it. He might not. He realized that for the moment his vengeance must take second place. The common thought and effort of Piodie must centre on the business of saving the poor fellows trapped in that fiery furnace six hundred feet below ground.
The superintendent of the mine was calling for volunteer rescuers just as Hugh and Dan reached the shaft house. McClintock hid his shotgun under a pile of lumber and stepped forward. The cage was a double decker. There was a rush of men to get on the lower floor. They knew well enough the danger that faced them, but it is a risk a brave miner is always willing to take for the lives of doomed companions.
“Hold on! Get back there. Don’t crowd!” ordered the superintendent. “No married man can go. You, Finlay—and Trelawney—and Big Bill. That makes six. All right.”
The lower compartment dropped and the second level was even with the ground. The superintendent stepped into the cage. Byers crowded in next. Budd, puffing hard, pushed close. With an elbow driven hard into his midriff Hugh thrust him back. “Don’t you hear? No married men wanted, Jim.”
McClintock vaulted over the edge of the cage and dropped into it.
A big Ayrshire mucker shouted at the superintendent. “An’ when did ye divorce your wife an’ twa weans, boss?”
“I’ve got to go, Sandy. It’s my job,” the mine boss called back. “That’s all. No room for more. Jam that gate shut.”
The engineer moved a lever and the bucket dropped into the darkness. Every few seconds there was a flash of light as the cage passed a station. Except for that the darkness was dense.
Hugh heard someone beside him say, “I hear Dodson’s caught in a drift.”
Carstairs, the superintendent, answered: “Yes. Dutch is with him. They went to look at that new vein we struck yesterday.”
No accident contains more terrible possibilities than a fire in a mine. Flame and gas pursue the trapped victims as they fly. Cut off from the shaft, buried hundreds of feet in the ground, the miners run the risk of being asphyxiated, burned, or blown up in an explosion of released gases.
The shaft, the drifts, the crosscuts, and the tunnels all act as flues to suck the flames into them. At Piodie, as at Virginia City, the danger was intensified by the great quantity of fuel with which these natural chimneys were lined. In the Katie Brackett whole forests were buried. Every drift and tunnel was braced with timbers. Scores of chutes, with vertical winzes, all made of wood, led from one level to another. The ore chambers were honeycombed with square sets of timber mortised together and wedged against the rock walls and roof. Upon each set floors of heavy planking were laid. In these were trap doors, through which steps ran leading from the lower level to the one above.
The fire was in the north drift. Carstairs led the men forward cautiously. Already their eyes were inflamed from the smoke that rolled out at them. As they moved forward heat waves struck them. The rock walls were so hot that the rescuers could with difficulty keep going.
Hugh was at the nozzle of the hose they were dragging. He kept a stream playing on the rock and the charred timber. Presently he fell back, overcome by the intense heat, and Carstairs took his place. Byers succeeded the superintendent at the apex of the attack.
Steam, sulphur, fumes, and gas released from the minerals swept the rescuers back. The air was so foul that the workers could not breathe it without collapsing. An air pipe was led in from the main blower above, and the volunteers renewed their efforts.
At times the swirling smoke was too much for them. It either drove them to the shaft or it forced them to lie with their faces close to the ground where the air was purer. Farther down the tunnel they could see red tongues of flame licking at them. The roar of the fire as it leaped forward was far more appalling than that of any wild beast could have been.
The faces of the firemen were smoke-blackened and grimy. Already several had collapsed from the intense heat. These were helped back to the shaft and sent up. Others came down to take their places.
Hugh’s eyebrows crisped from the heat. The men were all naked from the waist up. Below this they wore only cotton overalls and boots. These were licked to a char thin and fragile as paper. The skin peeled from Hugh’s body in flakes where anything touched it.
From above came an ominous sound.
“Back,” ordered Carstairs.
The roof came down, an avalanche of dirt and rock and timber. So close was McClintock to it that the air shock almost knocked him down.
Before the dust had settled Carstairs sent his sappers at the job of clearing out and timbering the tunnel.
Steadily the rescuers gained ground. Every few minutes they relayed each other. Each man knew that his position was one of great danger. The fire might reach the shaft and cut them off from above. A cave of rock might release gases which might kill either by explosion or asphyxiation. A change of draught might fling a great tongue of fire at them and wipe the whole party out in a few seconds. Yet the work went on, hour after hour, steadily and without ceasing. For somewhere in one of the crosscuts which they were approaching, a group of haggard, anxious men were awaiting rescue, unless the fire had already snuffed out their lives.
“The crosscut’s just ahead,” Carstairs announced.
Byers was at the nozzle. The little man had stuck it out gamely. Only four of the original party were still working. The others had been relieved and sent to the surface.
McClintock had just returned from the shaft where he had been with a man overcome by the heat. He was for the moment the freshest man in the group.
“Two volunteers to search the crosscut while the rest hold back the fire,” called Carstairs.
“I’ll go,” said a Maine lumberjack.
“Same here,” added Hugh.
They waited, watching for a chance to plunge into the side tunnel when the fire was momentarily low.
“Now,” said McClintock, and he dived at the opening in the wall.
The lumberjack followed him. So intense was the heat at the entrance to the crosscut that a little pool of water on the rock floor was boiling angrily. As they pushed deeper into it the heat decreased.
Hugh shouted. A voice answered his call.
He moved forward and presently stumbled over a body.
“How many in here?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“Where are the others?”
“Dead,” came the answer. “Cut off by fire damp before we reached the crosscut.”
“All of you able to travel?”
“Yes.”
Hugh heard the sound of footsteps stumbling toward him. Men came abreast of him and went past. He counted them—eleven. Then he stooped and picked up the body at his feet. In another minute he was staggering into the drift with his burden.
The fire fighters fell back past the charred timbers and the hot rocks of the wall.
“You’re through, boys,” Carstairs said. “I’ll send a fresh crew in to blast down the mouth of the drift and build a bulkhead against the fire. Then we’ll close the shaft and let ’er die down for lack of air.”
The first thing Hugh did when he reached the foot of the shaft was to find the revolver he had hidden beneath a car; the next was to look over the rescued men for the one he wanted. He found him, standing beside Robert Dodson close to the cage. The mine owner was sobbing with the strain he had undergone. His nerve had gone. The big hulking figure at his back was Sam Dutch.
Hugh kept in the background. He did not want to be recognized just yet. Meanwhile, he slipped into his trousers, shirt, and coat. In the pocket of his coat was something that jingled when he accidentally touched the wall.
The rescued men were in much better condition than the ones who had fought the fire to save them. They had reached the precarious safety of the crosscut in time to avail themselves of its comparatively fresh air. The volunteers were worn out, fagged, and burned to a toast. Some of them had inhaled gases and smoke that would enfeeble their lungs for months. They moved like automatons, their energy gone, their strength exhausted.
The cage came down and the men began to pile in. Hugh was standing close behind a huge man whom his eyes never left. He pushed into the lower level of the cage after him.
The car shot upward. Hugh drew something from his pocket. In the darkness his hand moved gently to and fro. It found what it was seeking. There was a click, a second click, a furious, raucous oath of rage like the bellow of a maddened bull elephant. Hugh had slipped handcuffs on the thick wrists of Dutch and locked them.
His thumb jammed hard into the spine of the desperado. “Steady in the boat,” he murmured. “This gun’s liable to spill sudden.”
The car rose into the fresh daylight of the young morning.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Throughthe crowd at the mouth of the mine word flashed that the cage was coming up. All night they had waited there, the wives and children of the imprisoned miners, the residents of Piodie who knew one or another of the men caught in the raging inferno below. The women and the little ones had wept themselves dry of tears long since. They stood now with taut nerves, eyes glued to the cage as it swept into sight.
Someone started a cheer as the first of the rescued men stepped out to the platform. A wail of anguish rose above it and killed the cheer. It came from a young wife with a shawl over her head. She had asked a question of one of the men and learned that her husband was dead.
The crowd pressed close to those who had come up from the fire. A woman gave a sob of joy and fell into the arms of a grimy Cousin Jack. Another caught a glimpse of her husband’s face and fainted.
In the excitement two men pushed through the crowd toward a pile of lumber. The one in front moved with sullen reluctance. Only the pressure against his back kept him going. Nobody noticed that he was handcuffed.
From underneath the lumber pile the second man drew a sawed-off shotgun.
“We’ll be movin’ down to town,” he told his captive.
Dutch shouted one word, “Dodson.”
The mine owner swung round, and at the first glance understood the situation. He turned pale and stepped behind Carstairs. Not for a moment did he doubt that McClintock had come to kill Dutch. Would he make a clean sweep of it and shoot him, too? Convicted of guilt, he crouched behind his superintendent shaking like an aspen.
“Don’t let him kill me,” he begged.
Hugh spoke, his voice cold and hard. “I’m not on the shoot to-day, Dodson—unless you force my hand, you black-hearted murderer. I’m here to take Dutch back to Carson with me. The yellow wolf shot my brother in the back.”
“No such thing. I got him in a fair fight,” blustered Dutch. “An’ I ain’t goin’ to Carson with you, either.”
“You’re going,dead or alive.” McClintock’s face and voice were as inexorable as the day of judgment.
“He’s aimin’ to take me there to be killed,” Dutch cried out. “You boys won’t stand for that.” He named two or three of the men with whom he consorted, picking them out of the crowd.
“Sure we won’t.” A gunman stepped forward briskly. “You can’t pull that over here, McClintock. You don’t own this camp, an’ you can’t play chief here.”
Two men lined up with Hugh, one on each side of him. The man on his right was a whale of a fat man. Deftly he slid McClintock’s revolver from its holster. The second ally was a small wiry fellow. From a grimy blackened face keen eyes peered intently.
The fat man spoke. “Don’t run on the rope, Sloan. We’re with the kid on this. He’s a deputy sheriff, an’ it’ll sure be ‘Let’s gather at the river’ for some of you anxious gents if you overplay yore hand.”
Sloan hesitated. He could not very well look round to see whether the gang of which he was one were present in numbers, and, if so, whether they would support him. He knew these three men of old. They belonged to the pony express outfit, as hard-riding and fast shooting a group of men as the West has known. It was certain that Dutch could not be rescued without a fight, and Sloan was hardly in a position to call for a showdown. He was game enough. With McClintock alone he would have taken a chance. But the three of them were too many for him.
The sheriff of the county saved his face. He bustled forward.
“Tut, tut! What’s all this?” he asked fussily. “There’s good law in this town, lots of it. No need of gun plays. If Mr. Dutch is wanted, there’s a right an’ proper way to get him, but that way ain’t at the point of a gun.”
“McClintock’s a deputy sheriff,” put in Budd.
There was rivalry between him and the sheriff. Budd was a candidate for the party nomination at the coming primaries. The wise politicians admitted that even with the Dodsons against him the fat man had a chance.
“You’d oughta know better’n that, Budd, an’ you a candidate for sheriff,” the officer reproved. “Say he is a deputy. He can’t go cavortin’ round all over Nevada, California, and Utah arrestin’ any one he’s a mind to. Where’s his warrant? Whyn’t he come to me with it like a reasonable man would—that is, if he’s got one.”
With his left hand Hugh felt in his pocket and produced a warrant. He handed it to the sheriff. That gentleman ran his eye over it. He returned it.
“Good only in Ormsby County,” he snapped. “What arrestin’ is done here I do—leastways, at present,” he added with a sarcastic grin at Budd.
The fat man was caught. He knew nothing about the technicalities of arrests. What the sheriff said might or might not be true. He tried a bluff.
“This here’s an extra-territorial warrant that runs ex judicio,” he explained largely.
“That so?” asked the sheriff ironically. “Well, it sure don’t hold water here. Bad men can’t get on the prod with me. No, siree!”
The cage had descended to bring up a second load of miners. Meanwhile, the interest of the crowd centred on the dispute that had arisen. Those on the outskirts pressed forward, eager to hear what was being said. Sloan had fallen back and was whispering in the ears of a few choice spirits.
Hugh spoke out straight and strong. His words were not for the sheriff, but for the judgment of the unbiased public.
“I came here as an officer with a warrant to get this man. Three days ago he shot down from behind the best man in Nevada, Scot McClintock. Most of you know my brother, a first-class citizen and soldier. He ran this scalawag out of Virginia, and he made the mistake of not killin’ him right then. I’ve made that same mistake myself three times. Yet yore sheriff says I’m a bad man because I come here to arrest a fifteen-times murderer. How about that, boys?”
The crowd was with Hugh at once. The Dodsons controlled the camp. A good many of these men were dependent upon them financially. But even Ralph Dodson was hardly popular. As for Dutch, their camp bully, everybody feared him and nobody trusted him. He was so confirmed a gunman that at any moment while in drink he might slay any of them.
The sheriff had not volunteered to go down into the mine with one of the rescue parties; nor had Sloan or any of his cronies. But this young fellow with the fire-blackened face and hands, whose haggard eyes looked out with such quiet grim resolution, had gone into that hell below to save their friends. Byers, the man on his left, had been another of the rescuers. The fat man had volunteered three times and been rejected.
“His warrant goes in Piodie,” someone shouted.
“Sure does,” echoed another voice.
“Not on yore tintype,” retorted the sheriff. “Ormsby County don’t run our affairs. Not none.”
The Maine lumberjack lined up beside Hugh, an axe shaft in his hand. He had observed that Dodson and Sloan were gathering the camp toughs for a rescue.
“His warrant’s good with me—good as the wheat,” the big woodsman said. “He made it good, boys, when he stood up to that hose nozzle down below and stuck there while he baked. He made it good again when he went in to the crosscut where our friends were trapped.”
Sloan and his crowd moved forward. One of them spoke to the sheriff. “If you want to swear in some deputies to enforce the law, Dick, why, we’re right here handy.”
From out of the crowd a girl darted, light as a deer. She stood directly in front of Hugh, face to face with the gunmen of the camp. A warm colour breathed in her cheeks. Her dark eyes flashed with indignation.
“Don’t you touch him. Don’t you dare touch him,” she cried. “It was my brother this—this villain killed. He did shoot him from behind. I’ve had a letter. It was murder.”
A murmur of resentment passed like a wave through the crowd. They knew the slim young school teacher told the truth.
“Don’t I know?” she went on ardently, beautiful in her young unconsciousness of self as a flaming flower. “Wasn’t I there when he tried to kill Hugh here—and Hugh frozen from the blizzard so that he couldn’t lift a hand to help himself? Oh, he’s—he’s a terrible man.”
“He is that,” an Irishwoman’s voice lifted. “But glory be, there’s wan man not afraid to comb his whiskers for him. An’ it’s a brave colleen y’are to spake up for your fine young man like that.”
A roar of approval went up into the air. Men surged forward, and women, too, to express their gratitude by standing between this young man and the Dodson faction. Vicky, rosy with embarrassment, vanished in the crowd.
“I reckon you don’t get a chance to use yore scatter gun this trip,” Budd said with a grin. “Prospects look bilious for this killer you got rounded up. Sure do. I never did see such a son-of-a-gun as you, Kid. Me, I’d ’a’ bet an ounce of gold against a dollar Mex you never would ’a’ walked into Piodie an’ took Sam Dutch out. But that there miracle is what you’re gonna pull off, looks like.”
“Went right down into the Katie Brackett after him,” chuckled Byers. “Brought him from that hell hole with the cuffs on him.”
“Sho! It’s you boys that helped me out,” said Hugh. “And I haven’t got him to Carson yet, anyhow. Sloan won’t give up without makin’ a try to get Dutch from me.”
Evidently the gunmen knew better than to challenge public opinion at present. They drew off to the mine boarding house and left Hugh free to return to Piodie with his prisoner.
McClintock thanked the lumberjack and others who had come to his aid, and started down the gulch, accompanied by a straggling guard of townspeople returning to their homes for breakfast after a long and anxious night.
Dutch shambled in front of him through the sage. After a period of violent cursing he had fallen into a savage and vindictive silence. He, too, believed that his allies would not desert him without a fight.
Beneath the superficial needs of the moment Hugh’s thoughts were of Vicky. He had all the average man’s healthy reluctance at being defended by a woman, but deeper than this was his admiration for the spirit of the girl. He had never seen anything lovelier, more challenging, than the slender girl glowing with passionate indignation on his behalf. She had looked like a picture he had seen of Joan of Arc standing before the French army, her sword outflung and her young body clad in shining armour.
CHAPTER XXIX
Vicky,in her bedroom at Mrs. Budd’s, flogged herself with a whip of scorn. She had acted on imperative impulse, just as she used to do when she was a little girl. Her cheeks flamed again when she recalled what the Irishwoman had said. Of course! Everybody would think she had done it because she was in love with Hugh McClintock.
Savagely she mocked her own heroics. She had behaved ridiculously. There was no excuse for her at all. Probably Hugh, too, was laughing at her or else flattering himself that he had made a conquest. Her pride rebelled. And yet—when she saw again in imagination the group of gunmen under Sloan moving forward to attack, she knew that she would probably do the same thing a second time, given the same circumstances.
Mrs. Budd knocked on the door. “Breakfast ready, deary.”
Miss Lowell became aware suddenly that she was very hungry. But she did not want to meet Jim Budd. He would probably start teasing her, and if he did she would certainly lose her temper. She fibbed.
“I’m not hungry yet. If you don’t mind I’ll come down and get a bite out of the pantry later.”
“Mr. McClintock is here. He wants to thank you,” the landlady said gently.
Hugh McClintock was the last man in the world that Vicky wanted to see just now, but she would not for a month’s salary have let him know it.
“He needn’t trouble, I’m sure,” she said carelessly. “But I’ll be down presently.”
She came to breakfast stormy-eyed. Hugh rose to meet her from his seat next the door. He offered his hand.
For a fraction of a second she looked at it, apparently surprised. It was as though she said, a little disdainfully, “What’s the use of all this fuss about nothing?” Then her hand met his.
He said, in a low voice, “Old dog Tray’s mighty grateful, Vicky.”
But he spoke with a smile, words unstressed. She drew a breath of relief. Hugh understood, anyhow. He was not imagining any foolishness.
“Oh, I didn’t want them to take that villain from you,” she explained. “I’ll not be satisfied till he’s hanged. What have you heard about Scot?”
“A telegram last night and one this mo’ning. He’s still holdin’ his own, the doctors say. But they’re not hopeful. One of the bullets went into his intestines.”
Tears brimmed her eyes. “Isn’t it dreadful—when people are happy, like Scot and Mollie, that——”
He nodded, his throat tightening.
“Don’t let these buckwheats get cold,” Mrs. Budd said cheerfully, bustling in with a hot plateful.
Jim Budd was sitting in the kitchen guarding the prisoner, but Byers, Hugh, and Vicky, with an occasional word from Mrs. Budd, discussed plans for getting Dutch to Carson.
Both Hugh and Byers were exhausted. The night through which they had just come had been a terrible one. Their bodies from which the skin peeled in flakes at several points of contact with their clothes, were a torment to them. Eyebrows, eyelashes, and some of the front hair had crisped away. The faces of both of them were fire-red, and from sunken sockets blear-eyed old age gazed listlessly. They needed sleep certainly, medical attention possibly.
The girl’s dark eyes softened as she looked at them. They had fought a good fight, just as a matter of course and all in the day’s work. She had been down a mine. Her imagination filled in the horrors of the fearful hours in that hell’s cauldron from which they had at last dragged the imprisoned miners.
“Let me send for Doctor Rogers,” she said gently.
“You feelin’ sick, Vicky?” Hugh asked with a flare of humour.
“I mean, to look at you and Mr. Byers.”
“We ain’t much to look at right now. I expect he’d rather see us some time when we’re not so dog tired. Find us more entertainin’.”
“Then you’d better go upstairs and sleep. Mr. Budd says he’ll watch your prisoner till night.”
“And what then?” asked Hugh. “We can’t just saddle up and hit the trail for Carson. Never in the world get there. By this time they’ve wired to Ralph Dodson. He’s on the job at the other end of the line.”
“What makes you think so?” Vicky asked.
“Because Bob Dodson hired Dutch to shoot Scot. He showed it when he lit out with him in the middle of the night. Dodson has got to stand by Dutch to keep him from telling all he knows. He’s sure sent a hurry-up call for help to brother Ralph. Their play is to prevent me from reaching Carson with Dutch a prisoner. Once there, with feeling in the town high against him, the killer would be liable to tell who was back of the shooting. He’d do it out of revenge because he had not been rescued.”
“I can telegraph to Carson for help and have friends come and meet you.”
“That would mean a pitched battle. Can’t have that.”
“Oh, well, you go to bed and sleep,” Vicky said imperatively. “We can decide later about how you’re going to reach Carson.”
Hugh nodded. “You’ll have me wakened if any word comes about Scot?”
“Of course.”
Within a few minutes both men, and Dutch, too, were sound asleep. It was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Budd knocked on Hugh’s door to awaken him.
He found Vicky waiting for him in the sitting room.
“You look better,” she said.
“I feel a hundred years younger,” he answered. “Any news about Scot?”
“No.”
“I’ll leave to-night. Can’t stay away any longer.”
“Yes. That would be best.”
“Is the house watched?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t help it. I’ll go soon as I’ve eaten.”
“I’m going, too,” she told him. “I ought to be with Mollie.”
“You come to-morrow—not to-day. There may be trouble.”
“No, there won’t be any trouble—and I’m going with you,” she answered. There was a queer little smile on her face, a smile of friendly mockery.
“I’m not going alone, you know,” he explained. “Dutch travels with me.”
“Then there’ll be three of us.” She stepped to the kitchen door, but before she opened it mirth bubbled in her face and broke to laughter. “Come in, Mr. Dutch. We start on a long journey about dusk.”
Dutch shuffled into the room—at least the man was Dutch in walk, in manner, dress, and beard. Hugh looked at him again, and still a third time, before he discovered that this was Jim Budd made up for the part of the desperado.
The young man’s puzzled eyes asked a question of Vicky.
“We three are going after supper,” she explained. “Their lookout is over at Schmidt’s blacksmith shop. Mr. Budd will seem to have his hands tied. Of course he’ll think it’s your prisoner.”
“If Jim doesn’t begin to tell him all about old Grimes,” McClintock said drily.
“Yes, you mustn’t sing, Mr. Budd. You know there aren’t many voices like yours,” the girl replied, laughing. “He’ll notify his friends, and they’ll follow us. Probably they’ll telegraph ahead that we’re coming. Very likely a welcome party will come to meet us. By that time Mr. Budd will be Mr. Budd, and somebody will be sold.”
“Good enough,” agreed Hugh. “But haven’t you forgot one small detail? The real Dutch has got to go to Carson. That’s what I came here for—to get him.”
“He’ll go. As soon as the sheriff’s posse has clattered past after us, Mr. Byers and your prisoner will take a very quiet walk up the gulch and round Bald Knob. Horses are waiting there somewhere; I don’t know just where. Your friend the lumberjack with the axe handle took them. He and Mr. Byers will ride across the hills with the prisoner to Carson.”
Hugh looked at the eager, vital girl with frank admiration. “You’re a wonder, Vicky, one sure enough whirlwind when you get going. Sounds reasonable—if Dodson’s crowd let us get goin’ as you figure they will. But you can’t tell. They may stop us right when we start up the cañon. Then they’ll know Jim here isn’t Dutch, and the fat will certainly be in the fire.”
“No, Hugh, we’ve had a message from a friend in the enemy’s camp.”
“Yes?”
“From Irish Tom.”
“Carberry?”
“Yes. At least, we think it’s from him. One of my little boys brought me a note. Here it is.”
Hugh read the words scribbled on a sheet of torn note paper.
Tell McClintock to look out for trouble near Bell’s Camp. He’ll be caught between two fires if he tries to take Dutch with him.A Friend.
Tell McClintock to look out for trouble near Bell’s Camp. He’ll be caught between two fires if he tries to take Dutch with him.
A Friend.
“What makes you think Carberry wrote this?” asked Hugh.
“Ned described the man who gave it to him,” Budd explained. “He’s sure a ringer for Carberry—even to that red shirt he wears.”
“Might be Tom,” agreed Hugh. “My vote saved his life from the vigilantes at Aurora. Tom’s not such a bad sort.”
“You see we’re safe till we reach Bell’s Camp,” interpreted Vicky. “The sheriff and the gunmen he appoints as deputies will follow behind us and we’ll be driven into the arms of those who come to meet us. That’s the plan.”
“Yes—if Irish Tom wrote this and it’s not a trap.”
“Oh, well, beggars can’t be choosers,” she cried impatiently. “I don’t suppose you have a better way to suggest.”
“Only in one particular, Vicky. No need of you going. There might be shooting. I don’t say there will, but there might be.”
“Fiddlesticks! There won’t be, not if I’m there. Think I don’t know Ralph Dodson?”
Budd came unexpectedly to her aid. “Miss Lowell’s sure right, Hugh. Youknowif she’s with us there won’t be no gun-play.”
Hugh hesitated. What his friends said was true enough. The West, even at its worst, was very careful of its good women. No weapons would be used in the presence of Victoria Lowell. But there was in him an extreme reluctance to use her skirts as a protection behind which to hide. He wanted to play his own hand and take Dutch out openly in the face of opposition.
Yet he knew this was not possible. Vicky had worked out a feasible plan of operations. It was only fair to give it a tryout.
“All right,” he conceded rather ungraciously. “Have it yore own way, good people. Vicky, you’re road boss of this outfit. Go to it. When do we start, did you say?”
Vicky dimpled with delight. “Right after supper.”
CHAPTER XXX
Aboyrode up the street leading two saddled horses. He stopped in front of the Budd house, from which three persons emerged in answer to his shrill whistle. The lookout in the shadow of Schmidt’s blacksmith shop leaned forward to peer into the failing light. First came a huge, shambling man, hairy and bearded, his hands tied together in front of him. At his heels walked a straight lithe figure recognized instantly by the watcher as McClintock. The deputy carried a revolver. A young woman in riding dress brought up the rear.
McClintock handed his revolver to the lady after he had helped her mount. He adjusted the stirrups of all the saddles. To the watcher up the street it seemed that all his movements were hurried and furtive. Plainly the travellers wanted to be gone.
No sooner had they started into the cañon than the lookout was off to make his report. Inside of five minutes a party of four horsemen swung round the bend of the road into the gorge.
Half a mile up the cañon Hugh stopped to free Budd’s hands. This done, he waited a moment to listen. On the night breeze came faintly the ring of a horse’s hoof on granite.
“Our anxious friends aren’t losin’ any time,” he said, grinning.
“You’re damn whistlin’,” agreed Bud. “Beg pardon, ma’am. I done forgot you was here. I meant to say he was doggoned right.”
From the cañon they emerged into a rough country of basaltic rocks twisted and misshapen. Once a rabbit scurried from almost under the feet of Vicky’s horse. The scent of the sage was strong in her nostrils, and the taste of alkali in her throat.
But the girl was happy. This night ride, with her face against the wind and the eternal stars above, made the blood in her body sing. She vibrated with excitement. The rapid motion, the knowledge of the armed pursuit, the touch of peril in the situation, appealed to all the adventure zest in her heart. As they rode knee to knee through the darkness the movements of the horses occasionally pushed her and Hugh into contact. A new delightful thrill flamed through her. Shyly she looked at him and was glad of the night. Her eyes were too bright and her cheeks too hot to be seen even by old dog Tray.
Old dog Tray! She knew the metaphor was inept. Jim Budd, now, was a good old dog Tray, but not this light-stepping young Apollo who somehow contrived to be the partner of all the dramatic moments in her life. She would never forget him as he had faced Sloan and his gang at the mouth of the pit from which he had come with all the anguish of the night written on his face. There had been something indomitable in his gesture, a spark in the sunken eye struck from the soul of a man quite sure of himself. Vicky knew—and knew it with a strange reluctant dread—that her feelings would insist on a retrial of the case of Hugh McClintock at the bar of her judgment. Vaguely she divined that the true romance is not of outward trappings but straight from the heart of life.
The miles of their journey stole the hours. It was far past midnight when Hugh turned to Vicky with a smile not free from anxiety.
“Bell’s Camp just ahead,” he said. “Don’t make any mistake. When we’re ordered to halt, all our hands go straight up in the air.”
He wished now that he had not let the girl come with them. It had been easy to reason in the light of day that she would be quite safe. But Dodson did not know she was in the party. Suppose someone got excited and fired in the darkness. Hugh’s imagination began to conjure disaster.
But the affair worked out quite simply. From behind rocks on both sides of the road men rose suddenly and covered the party with rifles.
“Stick ’em up. Reach for the sky,” a voice ordered curtly.
Six hands went up instantly, almost as though they had been waiting for the cue.
“You may pull yours down, Dutch,” the voice went on.
Hugh spoke suavely: “Must be some mistake, gentlemen. Mr. Dutch isn’t with us.”
“Not with you! What’s the use of lying? Speak up, Dutch.”
“If you’re meanin’ me, my name’s Budd—Jim Budd from Piodie,” spoke up the fat man.
The challenger stepped close and stared up at his face. “Where’s Dutch? What have you done with him?” he demanded.
“Why, we left him at Piodie. The sheriff didn’t want us to bring him,” Budd said with bland innocence, grinning down at his questioner. “Is this here a hold-up, or what?”
“One of ’em’s a girl,” cried another of the armed men in sharp surprise.
“A girl!”
Vicky spoke now. “Isn’t that Mr. Dodson—Mr. Ralph Dodson?” she asked quietly.
“Miss Lowell! What are you doing here?”
“I might ask that about you, Mr. Dodson,” she retorted. “I’m going with Mr. McClintock and Mr. Budd to Carson. Haven’t you heard that two ruffians tried to murder Colonel McClintock?” Her voice rang out like a bell. It accused him, if not of conspiracy to murder, at least of aiding and abetting the escape of the murderer.
After just an instant’s hesitation Dodson spoke gravely. “Yes, I’ve heard, Miss Lowell. Believe me, I have been greatly distressed. If there’s anything I can do——”
“You can help us bring to justice the desperado who escaped,” she cried hotly.
Dodson chose his words with care. He knew they were likely to be reported by some of his men to the gang at Piodie. “If someone got into a quarrel with Colonel McClintock and——”
“They didn’t get into a quarrel with him,” Vicky flung out indignantly. “They crept up behind him and shot him down while he wasn’t looking. Even rattlesnakes give warning. These reptiles didn’t.”
“I really don’t know the facts, Miss Lowell. But if you’re correctly informed certainly——”
“Oh, if—if—if,” exploded the girl. “Just words. The attack on Scot was the most dastardly, cowardly cruel thing I ever heard of. The men who did it and those who had it done are as bad as red Indians.” Her eyes stabbed into him. They were filled with the passionate intolerance of youth.
“Well, I can’t talk about that because I don’t know anything about it,” Dodson said, his surface smile working. “We’re here under orders from the sheriff at Piodie. He sent us word that someone was attempting illegally to abduct Sam Dutch. There seems to be some mistake.”
“So that it remains for you to apologize for having drawn guns on us,” Vicky said tartly. “Then we’ll move on.”
Dodson flushed. “I’m certainly sorry if we alarmed you, Miss Lowell. Under the circumstances it couldn’t be helped. If we had known you were out riding with friends——” He stopped, leaving his sarcastic sentence suspended in air.
“Much obliged, Mr. Dodson,” she answered angrily. “I suppose you felt you had to say that pleasant farewell remark. I wouldn’t be out riding with friends at this time of night, as you would have put it if you had the courage, if your friends hadn’t laid in wait to kill my brother Thursday evening.”
Hugh spoke quietly and evenly. “We’ll say good-night, Mr. Dodson, that is, if you’re quite satisfied we’re not concealing Mr. Dutch about our persons.”
Dodson fell back with a wave of his hand. The rifles were lowered. In a moment the travellers were on their way. The mine owner looked after them with a frown on his brow. He was not satisfied. He believed he had been tricked, but for the life of him he could not tell how.
Budd was the first of the three to speak. “You got us out of that fine, Miss Lowell. Had him busy explainin’ why-for the whole time.”
But Vicky was not willing to leave the case as it stood. She was annoyed at herself. Yet her judgment defended her course.
“I acted like a vixen,” she said. “But I wanted to put him on the defence. The easiest way to meet an attack is to attack first, Scot once told me. So I tried to ride roughshod over him so that he wouldn’t dare take us back to Piodie with him.”
“He couldn’t fight Miss Victoria Lowell,” Hugh told her, smiling. “If it hadn’t been for you he ce’tainly would have taken us to Piodie. But you had him right. He couldn’t do a thing but let us go. We’re much obliged to you.”
Presently, out of the darkness, while Budd was riding a few yards ahead of them, Vicky’s voice came with unwonted humility:
“You were right, Hugh, and I was wrong. I heard something about him the other day. Mrs. Budd told me, and it came direct. No matter what it was, but—I don’t want to be friends with him any more.”
Hugh’s heart lifted, but all he said was, “I’m glad, Vicky.”