217CHAPTER IIITHE TABLES TURNED
From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes which pierced one like bullets.
The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the surface.
“Mornin’, gentlemen,” he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.
“Mornin’,” responded one of the loafers.
“I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor Lee.”
“The mayor ain’t to home,” volunteered a lank, unshaven native in butternut jeans and boots.
“I think it was his house I inquired for,” suggested the stranger.
“Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice—a big two-story brick, with a gallery and po’ches all round it.”218
Having thanked his informant, the stranger passed down the street. The curious saw him pass in at the mayor’s gate and knock at the door. It opened presently, and disclosed a flash of white, which they knew to be the skirt of a girl.
“I reckon that’s Miss ’Lissie,” the others were informed by the unshaven one. “She’s let him in and shet the door.”
Inevitably there followed speculation as to who the arrival might be. That his coming had something to do with the affair of the West kidnapping, all were disposed to agree; but just what it might have to do with it, none of them could do more than guess. If they could have heard what passed between Melissy and the stranger, their curiosity would have been gratified.
“Good mornin’, miss. Is Mayor Lee at home?”
“No—he isn’t. He hasn’t got back yet. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Two rows of even white teeth flashed in a smile. “I thought maybe there was something I could do for you. You are Miss Lee, I take it?”
“Yes. But I don’t quite understand—unless you have news.”
“I have no news—yet.”
“You mean——” Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. “You are not Lieutenant O’Connor?”
“Am I not?” he smiled.219
“I mean—are you?”
“At your service, Miss Lee.”
She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona “bad men.” Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew—game men all—hailed Bucky O’Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.
“Come in,” the girl invited. “Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He’s hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn’t know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn’t been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray’s name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roaring Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn’t armed. I’m troubled about him.”
Again the young man’s white-toothed smile flashed. “You’d better be. Anybody that goes220hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured.”
She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. “Yes—but he would go. He doesn’t mean them to see him, if he can help it.”
“Black sees a heap he isn’t expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day.”
“Yes—I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?”
“It’s a big thing—the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?”
“That’s what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn’t have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him.”
“Are they?”
She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man’s voice, and laid it to his vanity. “I don’t mean thattheyare. I mean thatyouare sure to get him,” she hastened to add. “Father thinks you are wonderful.”
“I’m much obliged to him,” said the man, with almost a sneer.
He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him—which221was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.
“I didn’t look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven,” she said. “I understood that was the earliest you could get here.”
His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. “I found I could make an earlier train.”
“I’m glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh.”
“Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?” he asked.
“Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped.”
“Did you know any of the men?”
She hesitated. “I thought one was Duncan Boone.”
“What made you think so?”
“He was the leader, I think, moved the way he does.” Her anger flashed for an instant. “And acted like him—detestably.”
“Was he violent to West? Injure him?”
“No—he didn’t do him any physical injury that I saw. I wasn’t thinking about Mr. West.”
“Surely he didn’t lay hands onyou!”
She looked up, in time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. “He was insolent and ungentlemanly.”
“As how?”222
“It doesn’t matter how.” Her manner specifically declined to particularize.
“Would you recognize him again if you met him? Describe him, if you can.”
“Yes. I used to know him well—before he became known as an outlaw,” she added after a perceptible hesitation. “There’s something ravenous about him.”
“You mean that he is fierce and bloodthirsty?”
“No—I don’t mean that; though, for that matter, I don’t think he would stick at anything. What I mean is that he is pantherine in his movements—more lithe and supple than most men are.”
“Is he a big man?”
“No—medium size, and dark.”
“There were four of them, you say?”
“Yes. Jack saw them, too, but at a distance.”
“He reached you after they were out of sight?”
“They had been gone about five minutes when I saw him—five or ten. I couldn’t be sure.”
“Boone offered no personal indignity to you?”
“Why are you so sure?” she flashed.
“The story is that he is quite the ladies’ man.”
Melissy laughed scornfully.
At his request, she went over again the story of the abduction, telling everything save the matter of the ravished kisses. This she kept to herself. She did not quite know why, except that there was something she did not like about this Bucky O’Connor. He had a trick of narrowing his eyes and223gloating over her, as a cat gloats over its expected kill.
However, his confidence impressed her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on occasion he could be merciless. On the other hand, he fitted very badly with the character of the young lieutenant of rangers, as Jack Flatray had sketched it for her. Her friend’s description of his hero had been enthusiastic. She decided that the young cattleman was a bad judge of men—though, of course, he had never actually met O’Connor.
“I reckon I’ll not wait for your father’s report, Miss Lee. I work independent of other men. That is how I get the wonderful results I do.”
His conceit nettled her; also, it stung her filial loyalty. “My father was the best sheriff this county ever had,” she said stiffly.
He smiled satirically. “Still, I reckon I’ll handle this my own way—unless your father’s daughter wants to go partners with me in it.”
She gave him a look intended to crush his impudence. “No, thank you.”
He ate a breakfast which she had the cook prepare hurriedly for him, and departed on the horse for which she had telephoned to the nearest livery224stable. Melissy was a singularly fearless girl; yet she watched him go with a decided relief, for which she could not account. He rode, she observed, like a centaur—flat-backed, firm in the saddle with the easy negligence of a plainsman. He turned as he started, and waved a hand debonairly at her.
“If I have any luck, I’ll bring back one of the Roaring Fork bunch with me—a present for a good girl, Miss Melissy.”
She turned on her heel and went inside. Anger pulsed fiercely through her. He laughed at her, made fun of her, and yet called her by her first name. How dared he treat her so! Worst of all, she read admiration bold and unveiled in the eyes that mocked her.
Half an hour later Flatray, riding toward town with his prisoner in front of him, heard a sudden sharp summons to throw up his hands. A man had risen from behind a boulder, and held him covered steadily.
Jack looked at the fellow without complying. He needed no second glance to tell him that this man was not one to be trifled with. “Who are you?” he demanded quietly.
“Never mind who I am. Reach for the sky.”
The captured outlaw had given a little whoop, and was now loosening the rope from his neck. “You’re the goods, Cap! I knew the boys would pull it off for me, but I didn’t reckon on it so durn soon.”225
“Shut up!” ordered the man behind the gun, without moving his eyes from Flatray.
“I’m a clam,” retorted the other.
“I’m waiting for those hands to go up; but I’ll not wait long, seh.”
Jack’s hands went up reluctantly. “You’ve got the call,” he admitted.
They led him a couple of hundred yards from the trail and tied him hand and foot. Before they left him the outlaw whom he had captured evened his score. Three times he struck Flatray on the head with the butt of his revolver. He was lying on the ground bleeding and senseless when they rode away toward the hills.
Jack came to himself with a blinding headache. It was some time before he realized what had happened. As soon as he did he set about freeing himself. This was a matter of a few minutes. With the handkerchief that was around his neck he tied up his wounds. Fortunately his hair was very thick and this had saved him from a fractured skull. Dizzily he got to his feet, found his horse, and started toward Mesa.
Not many people were on the streets when the sheriff passed through the suburbs of the little town, for it was about the breakfast hour. One stout old negro mammy stopped to stare in surprise at his bloody head.
“Laws a mussy, Mistah Flatray, what they done be’n a-doin’ to you-all?” she asked.226
The sheriff hardly saw her. He was chewing the bitter cud of defeat and was absorbed in his thoughts. He was still young enough to have counted on the effect upon Melissy of his return to town with one of the abductors as his prisoner.
It happened that she was on the porch watering her flower boxes when he passed the house.
“Jack!” she cried, and on the heels of her exclamation: “What’s the matter with you? Been hurt?”
A gray pallor had pushed through the tan of her cheeks. She knew her heart was beating fast.
“Bumped into a piece of bad luck,” he grinned, and told her briefly what had occurred.
She took him into the house and washed his head for him. After she saw how serious the cuts were she insisted on sending for a doctor. When his wounds were dressed she fed him and made him lie down and sleep on her father’s bed.
The sun was sliding down the heavens to a crotch in the hills before he joined her again. She was in front of the house clipping her roses.
“Is the invalid better?” she asked him.
“He’s a false alarm. But he did have a mighty thumping headache that has gone now.”
“I’ve been wondering why you didn’t meet Lieutenant O’Connor. He must have taken the road you came in on.”
The young man’s eyes lit. “Is Bucky here already?”227
“He was. He’s gone. I was greatly disappointed in him. He’s not half the man you think he is.”
“Oh, but he is. Everybody says so.”
“I never saw a more conceited man, or a more hateful one. There’s something about him—oh, I don’t know. But he isn’t good. I’m sure of that.”
“His reputation isn’t of that kind. They say he’s devoted to his wife and kids.”
“His wife and children.” Melissy recalled the smoldering admiration in his bold eyes. She laughed shortly. “That finishes him with me. He’s married, is he? Well, I know the kind of husband he is.”
Jack flashed a quick look at her. He guessed what she meant. But this did not square at all with what his friends had told him of O’Connor.
“Did he ask for me?”
“No. He said he preferred to play a lone hand. His manner was unpleasant all the time. He knows it all. I could see that.”
“Anyhow, he’s a crackerjack in his line. Have you heard from your father since he set out?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, I’m going to start to-night with a posse for the Cache. If O’Connor comes back, tell him I’ll follow the Roaring Fork.”
“You’ll not go this time without a gun, Jack,” she said with a ghost of a smile.
“No. I want to make good this trip.”228
“You did splendidly before. Not one man in a hundred would have done so well.”
“I’m a wonder,” he admitted with a grin.
“But you will take care of yourself—not be foolish.”
“I don’t aim to take up residence in Boot Hill cemetery if I can help it.”
“Boone and his men are dangerous characters. They are playing for high stakes. They would snuff your life out as quick as they would wink. Don’t forget that.”
“You don’t want me to lie down before Dunc Boone, do you?”
“No-o. Only don’t be reckless. I told father the same.”
Her dear concern for him went to Jack’s head, but he steadied himself before he answered. “I’ve got one real good reason for not being reckless. I’ll tell you what it is some day.”
Her shy, alarmed eyes fled his at once. She began an account of how her father had gathered his posse and where she thought he must have gone.
After dinner Jack went downtown. Melissy did some household tasks and presently moved out to the cool porch. She was just thinking about going back in when a barefoot boy ran past and whistled. From the next house a second youngster emerged.
“That you, Jimmie?”229
“Betcherlife. Say, ’ve you heard about the sheriff?”
“Who? Jack Flatray! Course I have. The Roaring Fork outfit ambushed him, beat him up, and made him hit the trail for town.”
“Aw! That ain’t news. He’s started back after them again. Left jes’ a little while ago. I saw him go—him ’n’ Farnum ’n’ Charley Hymer ’n’ Hal Yarnell ’n’ Mr. Bellamy.”
“Bet they git ’em.”
“Bet they don’t.”
“Aw, course they’ll git ’em, Tom.”
The other youngster assumed an air of mystery. He swelled his chest and strutted a step or two nearer. Urbane condescension oozed from him.
“Say, Jimmie. C’n you keep a secret?”
“Sure. Course I can.”
“Won’t ever snitch?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Well, then—I’m Black MacQueen, the captain of the Roaring Fork bad men.”
“You!” Incredulity stared from Jimmie’s bulging eyes.
“You betcher. I’m him, here in disguise as a kid.”
The magnificent boldness of this claim stole Jimmie’s breath for an instant. He was two years younger than his friend, but he did not quite know whether to applaud or to jeer. Before he could230make up his mind a light laugh rippled to them from behind the vines on the Lee porch.
The disguised outlaw and his friend were startled. Both fled swiftly, with all the pretense of desperate necessity young conspirators love to assume.
Melissy went into the house and the laughter died from her lips. She knew that either her father’s posse or that of Jack Flatray would come into touch with the outlaws eventually. When the clash came there would be a desperate battle. Men would be killed. She prayed it might not be one of those for whom she cared most.
231CHAPTER IVTHE REAL BUCKY AND THE FALSE
Number seven was churning its way furiously through brown Arizona. The day had been hot, with a palpitating heat which shimmered over the desert waste. Defiantly the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, a great ball of fire, leaving behind a brilliant splash of bold colors. Now this, too, had disappeared. Velvet night had transformed the land. Over the distant mountains had settled a smoke-blue film, which left them vague and indefinite.
Only three passengers rode in the Pullman car. One was a commercial traveler, busy making up his weekly statement to the firm. Another was a Boston lady, in gold-rimmed glasses and a costume that helped the general effect of frigidity. The third looked out of the open window at the distant hills. He was a slender young fellow, tanned almost to a coffee brown, with eyes of Irish blue which sometimes bubbled with fun and sometimes were hard as chisel steel. Wide-shouldered and lean-flanked232he was, with well-packed muscles, which rippled like those of a tiger.
At Chiquita the train stopped, but took up again almost instantly its chant of the rail. Meanwhile, a man had swung himself to the platform of the smoker. He passed through that car, the two day coaches, and on to the sleeper; his keen, restless eyes inspected every passenger in the course of his transit. Opposite the young man in the Pullman he stopped.
“May I ask if you are Lieutenant O’Connor?”
“My name, seh.”
The young man in the seat had slewed his head around sharply, and made answer with a crisp, businesslike directness.
The new-comer smiled. “I’ll have to introduce myself, lieutenant. My name is Flatray. I’ve come to meet you.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Flatray. I hope that together we can work this thing out right. MacQueen has gathered a bunch that ought to be cleaned out, and I reckon now’s the time to do it. I’ve been reading about him for a year. I’ve got a notion he’s about the ablest thing in bad men this Territory has seen for a good many years.”
Flatray sat down on the seat opposite O’Connor. A smile flicked across his face, and vanished. “I’m of that opinion myself, lieutenant.”
“Tell me all about this affair of the West kidnapping,” the ranger suggested.233
The other man told the story while O’Connor listened, alert to catch every point of the narrative.
The face of the lieutenant of rangers was a boyish one—eager, genial, and frank; yet, none the less, strength lay in the close-gripped jaw and in the steady, watchful eye. His lithe, tense body was like a coiled spring; and that, too, though he seemed to be very much at ease.
With every sentence that the other spoke, O’Connor was judging Flatray, appraising him for a fine specimen of a hard-bitten breed—a vigilant frontiersman, competent to the finger tips. Yet he was conscious that, in spite of the man’s graceful ease and friendly smile, he did not like Flatray. He would not ask for a better man beside him in a tight pinch; but he could not deny that something sinister which breathed from his sardonic, devil-may-care face.
“So that’s how the land lies,” the sheriff concluded. “My deputies have got the pass to the south blocked; Lee is closing in through Elkhorn; and Fox, with a strong posse, is combing the hills beyond Dead Man’s Cache. There’s only one way out for him, and that is over Powderhorn Pass. Word has just reached us that MacQueen is moving in that direction. He is evidently figuring to slip out over the hills during the night. I’ve arranged for us to be met at Barker’s Tank by a couple of the boys, with horses. We’ll drop off the train quietly when it slows up to water, so that none234of his spies can get word of our movements to him. By hard riding we’d ought to reach Powderhorn in time to head him off.”
The ranger asked incisive questions, had the topography of the country explained to him with much detail, and decided at last that Flatray was right. If MacQueen were trying to slip out, they might trap him at the pass; if not, by closing it they would put the cork in the bottle that held him.
“We’ll try it, seh. Y’u know this country better than I do, and I’ll give y’u a free hand. Unless there’s a slip up in your calculations, you’d ought to be right.”
“Good enough, lieutenant. I’m betting on those plans myself,” the other answered promptly, and added, as he looked out into the night: “By that notch in the hills, we’d ought to be close to the tank now. She’s slowing up. I reckon we can slip out to the vestibule, and get off at the far side of the track without being noticed much.”
This they found easy enough. Five minutes later number seven was steaming away into the distant desert. Flatray gave a sharp, shrill whistle; and from behind some sand dunes emerged two men and four horses.
“Anything new?” asked the sheriff as they came nearer.
“Not a thing, cap,” answered one of them.
“Boys, shake hands with the famous Lieutenant O’Connor,” said Flatray, with a sneer hid by the235darkness. “Lieutenant, let me make you acquainted with Jeff Jackson and Buck Lane.”
“Much obliged to meet you,” grinned Buck as he shook hands.
They mounted and rode toward the notch in the hills that had been pointed out to the ranger. The moon was up; and a cold, silvery light flooded the plain. Seen in this setting, the great, painted desert held more of mystery, of beauty, and less of the dead monotony that glared endlessly from arid, barren reaches. The sky of stars stretched infinitely far, and added to the effect of magnitude.
The miles slipped behind them as they moved forward, hour after hour, their horses holding to the running walk that is the peculiar gait of the cow country. They rode in silence, with the loose seat and straight back of the vaquero. Except the ranger, all were dressed for riding—Flatray in corduroys and half-knee laced boots; his men in overalls, chaps, flannel shirts, and the broad-brimmed sombrero of the Southwest. All four were young men; but there was an odd difference in the expressions of their faces.
Jackson and Lane had the hard-lined faces, with something grim and stony in them, of men who ride far and hard with their lives in their hands. The others were of a higher type. Flatray’s dark eyes were keen, bold, and restless. One might have guessed him a man of temperament, capable of any extremes of conduct—often the victim of his own236ungovernable whims and passions. Just as he looked a picture of all the passions of youth run to seed, so the ranger seemed to show them in flower. There was something fine and strong and gallant in his debonair manner. His warm smile went out to a world that pleased him mightily.
They rode steadily, untired and untiring. The light of dawn began to flicker from one notched summit to another. Out of the sandy waste they came to a water hole, paused for a drink, and passed on. For the delay of half an hour might mean the escape of their prey.
They came into the country of crumbling mesas and painted cliffs, of hillsides where greasewood and giant cactus struggled from the parched earth. This they traversed until they came to plateaus, terminating in foothills, crevassed by gorges deep and narrow. The cañons grew steeper, rock ridges more frequent. Gradually the going became more difficult.
Trails they seldom followed. Washes, with sides like walls, confronted them. The ponies dropped down and clambered up again like mountain goats. Gradually they were ascending into the upper country, which led to the wild stretches where the outlaws lurked. In these watersheds were heavy pine forests, rising from the gulches along the shoulders of the peaks.
A maze of cañons, hopelessly lost in the hill tangle into which they had plunged, led deviously to a237twisting pass, through which they defiled, to drop into a vista of rolling waves of forest-clad hills. Among these wound countless hidden gulches, known only to those who rode from out them on nefarious night errands.
The ranger noted every landmark, and catalogued in his mind’s map every gorge and peak; from what he saw, he guessed much of which he could not be sure. It would be hard to say when his suspicions first became aroused. But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must be Powderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as to cut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and farther into the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the Roaring Fork country, he did not need to be told he was in the power of MacQueen’s gang.
Yet he gave no sign of what he knew. As daylight came, so that they could see each other distinctly, his face showed no shadow of doubt. It was his cue to be a simple victim of credulity, and he played it to the finish.
Without warning, through a narrow gulch which might have been sought in vain for ten years by a stranger, they passed into the rim of a bowl-shaped valley. Timber covered it from edge to edge, but over to the left a keen eye could see a thinning of the foliage. Toward this they went, following the sidehill and gradually dipping down238through heavy underbrush. Before him the officer of rangers saw daylight, and presently a corral, low roofs, and grazing horses.
“Looks like some one lives here,” he remarked amiably.
They were already riding into the open. In front of one of the log cabins the man who had called himself Flatray swung from his saddle.
“Better ’light, lieutenant,” he suggested carelessly. “We’ll eat breakfast here.”
“Don’t care if we do. I could eat a leather mail sack, I’m that hungry,” the ranger answered, as he, too, descended.
His guide was looking at him with an expression of open, malevolent triumph. He could scarce keep it back long enough to get the effect he wanted.
“Yes, we’ll eat breakfast here—and dinner, and supper, and breakfast to-morrow, and then about two more breakfasts.”
“I reckon we’ll be too busy to sit around here,” laughed his prisoner.
The other ignored his comment. “And after that, it ain’t likely you’ll do much more eating.”
“I don’t quite get the point of that joke.”
“You’ll get it soon enough! You’dsavezit now, if you weren’t a muttonhead. As it is, I’ll have to explain it. Do you remember capturing Tony Chaves two years ago, lieutenant?”
The ranger nodded, with surprise in his round, innocent eyes.239
“What happened to him?” demanded the other. A child could have seen that he was ridden by a leering, savage triumph.
“Killed trying to escape four days later.”
“Who killed him?”
“I did. It was necessary. I regretted it.”
A sudden spasm of cruelty swept over the face of the man confronting him. “Tony was my partner.”
“Your partner?”
“That’s right. I’ve been wanting to say ‘How d’ye do?’ ever since, Lieutenant O’Connor. I’m right glad to meet you.”
“But—I don’t understand.” He did, however.
“It’ll soak through, by and by. Chew on this: You’ve got just ninety-six hours to live—exactly as long as Tony lived after you caught him! You’ll be killed trying to escape. It will be necessary, just as you say it was with him; but I reckon I’ll not do any regretting to speak of.”
“You would murder me?”
“Well, I ain’t particular about the word I use.” MacQueen leaned against the side of his horse, his arm thrown across its neck, and laughed in slow maliciousness. “Execute is the word I use, though—if you want to know.”
He had made no motion toward his weapon, nor had O’Connor; but the latter knew without looking that he was covered vigilantly by both of the other men.240
“And who are you?” the ranger asked, though he was quite sure of the answer.
“Men call me Black MacQueen,” drawled the other.
“MacQueen! But you said——”
“That I was Flatray. Yep—I lied.”
O’Connor appeared to grope with this in amazement.
“One has to stretch the truth sometimes in my profession,” went on the outlaw smoothly. “It may interest you to know that yesterday I passed as Lieutenant O’Connor. When I was O’Connor I arrested Flatray; and now that I am Flatray I have arrested O’Connor. Turn about is fair play, you know.”
“Interesting, if true,” O’Connor retorted easily.
“You can bank on its truth, my friend.”
“And you’re actually going to kill me in cold blood.”
The black eyes narrowed. “Just as I would a dog,” said the outlaw, with savage emphasis.
“I don’t believe it. I’ve done you no harm.”
MacQueen glanced at him contemptuously. The famous Bucky O’Connor looked about as competent as a boy in the pimply age.
“I thought you had better sense. Do you think I would have brought you to Dead Man’s Cache if I had intended you to go away alive? I’m afraid, Lieutenant Bucky O’Connor, that you’re a much overrated man. Your reputation sure would have241blown up, if you had lived. You ought to thank me for preserving it.”
“Preserving it—how?”
“By bumping you off before you’ve lost it.”
“Sho! You wouldn’t do that,” the ranger murmured ineffectively.
“We’ll see. Jeff, I put him in your charge. Search him, and take him to Hank’s cabin. I hold you responsible for him. Bring me any papers you find on him. When I find time, I’ll drop around and see that you’re keeping him safe.”
Bucky was searched, and his weapons and papers removed. After being handcuffed, he was chained to a heavy staple, which had been driven into one of the log walls. He was left alone, and the door was locked; but he could hear Jeff moving about outside.
With the closing of the door the vacuous look slipped from his face like a mask. The loose-lipped, lost-dog expression was gone. He looked once more alert, competent, fit for the emergency. It had been his cue to let his adversary underestimate him. During the long night ride he had had chances to escape, had he desired to do so. But this had been the last thing he wanted.
The outlaws had chosen to take him to their fastness in the hills. He would back himself to use the knowledge they were thrusting upon him, to bring about their undoing. Only one factor in the case had come upon him as a surprise. He had not242reckoned that they would have a personal grudge against him. And this was a factor that might upset all his calculations.
It meant that he was playing against time, with the chances of the game all against him. He had forty-eight hours in which to escape—and he was handcuffed, chained, locked up, and guarded. Truly, the outlook was not radiant.
243CHAPTER VA PHOTOGRAPH
On the third morning Beauchamp Lee returned to Mesa—unshaven, dusty, and fagged with hard riding. He brought with him a handbill which he had picked up in the street. Melissy hung over him and ministered to his needs. While he was eating breakfast he talked.
“No luck yet, honey. He’s hiding in some pocket of the hills, I reckon; and likely there he’ll stay till the hunt is past. They don’t make them any slicker than Dunc, dad gum his ugly hide!”
“What is that paper?” his daughter asked.
Lee curbed a disposition toward bad language, as he viewed it with disgust. “This here is bulletin number one, girl. It’s the cheekiest, most impudent thing I ever saw. MacQueen serves notice to all the people of this county to keep out of this fight. Also, he mentions me and Jack Flatray by name—warning us that, if we sit in the game, hell will be popping for us.”
“What will you do?”
“Do? I’ll get back to my boys fast as horseflesh244will get me there, once I’ve had a talk with that beef buyer from Kansas City I made an appointment to see before this thing broke loose. You don’t allow I’m going to let any rustler dictate to me what I’ll do and what I won’t—do you?”
“Where do you reckon he had this printed?” she asked.
“I don’t reckon, I know. Late last night a masked man woke up Jim Snell. You know, he sleeps in a room at the back of the printing office. Well, this fellow made him dress, set up this bill, and run off five hundred copies while he stood over him. I’ll swan I never heard of such cheek!”
Melissy told what she had to tell—after which her father shaved, took a bath, and went out to meet the buyer from Kansas City. His business kept him until noon. After dinner Melissy’s saddle horse was brought around, and she joined her father to ride back with him for a few miles.
About three o’clock she kissed him good-bye, and turned homeward. After she had passed the point where the Silver Creek trail ran into the road she heard the sound of a galloping horse behind. A rider was coming along the trail toward town. He gained on her rapidly, and presently a voice hailed her gayly:
“The top o’ the mornin’ to you, Miss ’Lissie.”
She drew up to wait for him. “My name is still Miss Lee,” she told him mildly, by way of correction.245
“I’m glad it is, but we can change it in three minutes at any time, my dear,” he laughed.
She had been prepared to be more friendly toward him, but at this she froze again.
“Did you leave Mrs. O’Connor and the children well?” she asked pointedly, looking directly at him.
His smile vanished, and he stared at her in a very strange fashion. She had taken the wind completely out of his sails. It had not occurred to him that O’Connor might be a married man. Nor did he know but that it might be a trick to catch him. He did the only thing he could do—made answer in an ironic fashion, which might mean anything or nothing.
“Very well, thank you.”
She saw at once that the topic did not allure him, and pushed home her advantage. “You must miss Mrs. O’Connor when you are away on duty.”
“Must I?”
“And the children, too. By the way, what are their names?”
“You’re getting up a right smart interest in my family, all of a sudden,” he countered.
“One can’t talk about the weather all the time.”
He boldly decided to slay the illusion of domesticity. “If you want to know, I have neither wife nor children.”
“But I’ve heard about them all,” she retorted.
“You have heard of Mrs. O’Connor, no doubt;246but she happens to be the wife of a cousin of mine.”
The look which she flashed at him held more than doubt.
“You don’t believe me?” he continued. “I give you my word that I’m not married.”
They had left the road, and were following a short cut which wound down toward Tonti, in and out among the great boulders. The town, dwarfed to microscopic size by distance, looked, in the glare of the sunlight, as if it were made of white chalk. Along the narrow trail they went singly, Melissy leading the way.
She made no answer, but at the first opportunity he forced his horse to a level with hers.
“Well—you heard what I said,” he challenged.
“The subject is of no importance to me,” she said.
“It’s important to me. I’m not going to have you doing me an injustice. I tell you I’m not married. You’ve got to believe me.”
Her mind was again alive with suspicions. Jack had told her Bucky O’Connor was married, and he must have known what he was talking about.
“I don’t know whether you are married or not. I am of the opinion that Lieutenant O’Connor has a wife and three children. More than once I have been told so,” she answered.
“You seem to know a heap about the gentleman.”247
“I know what I know.”
“More than I do, perhaps,” he suggested.
Her eyes dilated. He could see suspicion take hold of her.
“Perhaps,” she answered quietly.
“Does that mean you think I’m not Bucky O’Connor?” He had pushed his pony forward so as to cut off her advance, and both had halted for the moment.
She looked at him with level, fearless eyes. “I don’t know who you are.”
“But you think I’m not Lieutenant O’Connor of the rangers?”
“I don’t know whether you are or not.”
“There is nothing like making sure. Just look over this letter, please.”
She did so. It was from the governor of the Territory to the ranger officer. While he was very complimentary as to past services, the governor made it plain that he thought O’Connor must at all hazards succeed in securing the release of Simon West. This would be necessary for the good name of the Territory. Otherwise, a widespread report would go out that Arizona was a lawless place in which to live.
Melissy folded the letter and handed it back. “I beg your pardon, Lieutenant O’Connor. I see that I was wrong.”
“Forget it, my dear. We all make mistakes.” He had that curious mocking smile which so often248hovered about his lips. She felt as though he were deriding her—as though his words held some hidden irony which she could not understand.
“The governor seems very anxious to have you succeed. It will be a black eye for Arizona if this band of outlaws is not apprehended. You don’t think, do you, that they will do Mr. West any harm, if their price is not paid? They would never dare.”
He took this up almost as though he resented it. “They would dare anything. I reckon you’ll have to get up early in the mornin’ to find a gamer man than Black MacQueen.”
“I wouldn’t call it game to hurt an old man whom he has in his power. But you mustn’t let it come to that. You must save him. Are you making any progress? Have you run down any of the band? And while I think of it—have you seen to-day’s paper?”
“No—why?”
“The biggest story on the front page is about the West case. It seems that this MacQueen wired to Chicago to Mr. Lucas, president of one of the lines on the Southwestern system, that they would release Mr. West for three hundred thousand dollars in gold. He told him a letter had been mailed to the agent at Mesa, telling under just what conditions the money was to be turned over; and he ended with a threat that, if steps were taken to capture the gang, or if the money were not handed249over at the specified time, Mr. West would disappear forever.”
“Did the paper say whether the money would be turned over?”
“It said that Mr. Lucas was going to get into touch with the outlaws at once, to effect the release of his chief.”
A gleam of triumph flashed in the eyes of the man. “That’s sure the best way.”
“It won’t help your reputation, will it?” she asked. “Won’t people say that you failed on this case?”
He laughed softly, as if at some hidden source of mirth. “I shouldn’t wonder if they did say that Bucky O’Connor hadn’t made good this time. They’ll figure he tried to ride herd on a job too big for him.”
Her surprised eye brooded over this, too. Here he was defending the outlaw chief, and rejoicing at his own downfall. There seemed to be no end to the contradictions in this man. She was to run across another tangled thread of the puzzle a few minutes later.
She had dismounted to let him tighten the saddle cinch. Owing to the heat, he had been carrying his coat in front of him. He tossed it on a boulder by the side of the trail, in such a way that the inside pocket hung down. From it slid some papers and a photograph. Melissy looked down at the picture, then instantly stooped and picked it up. For it was250a photograph of a very charming woman and three children, and across the bottom of it was written a line.
“To Bucky, from his loving wife and children.”
The girl handed it to the man without a word, and looked him full in the face.
“Bowled out, by ginger!” he said, with a light laugh.
But as she continued to look at him—a man of promise, who had plainly traveled far on the road to ruin—the conviction grew on her that the sweet-faced woman in the photograph was no loving wife of his. He was a man who might easily take a woman’s fancy, but not one to hold her love for years through the stress of life. Moreover, Bucky O’Connor held the respect of all men. She had heard him spoken of, and always with a meed of affection that is given to few men. Whoever this graceless scamp was, he was not the lieutenant of rangers.
The words slipped out before she could stop them: “You’re not Lieutenant O’Connor at all.”
“Playing on that string again, are you?” he jeered.
“I’m sure of it this time.”
“Since you know who I’m not, perhaps you can tell me, too, who I am.”
In that instant before she spoke, while her steady eyes rested on him, she put together many things251which had puzzled her. All of them pointed to one conclusion. Even now her courage did not fail her. She put it into words quietly:
“You are that villain Black MacQueen.”
He stared at her in surprise. “By God, girl—you’re right. I’m MacQueen, though I don’t know how you guessed it.”
“I don’t know how I kept from guessing it so long. I can see it, now, as plain as day, in all that you have done.”
After that they measured strength silently with their eyes. If the situation had clarified itself, with the added knowledge of the girl had come new problems. Let her return to Mesa, and he could no longer pose as O’Connor; and it was just the audacity of this double play that delighted him. He was the most reckless man on earth; he loved to take chances. He wanted to fool the officers to his heart’s content, and then jeer at them afterward. Hitherto everything had come his way.
But if this girl should go home, he could not show his face at Mesa; and the spice of the thing would be gone. He was greatly taken with her beauty, her daring, and the charm of high spirits which radiated from her. Again and again he had found himself drawn back to her. He was not in love with her in any legitimate sense; but he knew now that, if he could see her no more, life would be a savorless thing, at least until his fancy had spent itself. Moreover, her presence at Dead Man’s252Cache would be a safeguard. With her in his power, Lee and Flatray, the most persistent of his hunters, would not dare to move against the outlaws.
Inclination and interest worked together. He decided to take her back with him to the country of hidden pockets and gulches. There, in time, he would win her love—so his vanity insisted. After that they would slip away from the scene of his crimes, and go back to the world from which he had years since vanished.
The dream grew on him. It got hold of his imagination. For a moment he saw himself as the man he had been meant for—the man he might have been, if he had been able to subdue his evil nature. He saw himself respected, a power in the community, going down to a serene old age, with this woman and their children by his side. Then he laughed derisively, and brushed aside the vision.
“Why didn’t the real Lieutenant O’Connor arrive to expose you?” she asked.
“The real Bucky is handcuffed and guarded at Dead Man’s Cache. I don’t think he’s enjoying himself to-day.”
“You’re getting quite a collection of prisoners. You’ll be starting a penitentiary on your own account soon,” she told him sharply.
“That’s right. And I’m taking another one back with me to-night.”
“Who is he?”253
“It’s a lady this time—Miss Melissy Lee.”
His words shook her. An icy hand seemed to clamp upon her heart. The blood ebbed even from her lips, but her brave eyes never faltered from his.
“So you war on women, too!”
He gave her his most ironic bow. “I don’t war on you, my dear. You shall have half of my kingdom, if you ask it—and all my heart.”
“I can’t use either,” she told him quietly. “But I’m only a girl. If you have a spark of manliness in you, surely you won’t take me a prisoner among those wild, bad men of yours.”
“Those wild, bad men of mine are lambs when I give the word. They wouldn’t lift a hand against you. And there is a woman there—the mother of one of my boys, who was shot. We’ll have you chaperoned for fair.”
“And if I say I won’t go?”
“You’ll go if I strap you to your saddle.”
It was characteristic of Melissy that she made no further resistance. The sudden, wolfish gleam in his eyes had told her that he meant what he said. It was like her, too, that she made no outcry; that she did not shed tears or plead with him. A gallant spirit inhabited that slim, girlish body; and she yielded to the inevitable with quiet dignity. This surprised him greatly, and stung his reluctant admiration. At the same time, it set her apart from him and hedged her with spiritual barriers. Her254body might ride with him into captivity; she was still captain of her soul.
“You’re a game one,” he told her, as he helped her to the saddle.
She did not answer, but looked straightforward between her horse’s ears, without seeing him, waiting for him to give the word to start.