182CHAPTER XIIIOLD ACQUAINTANCES
“You wanted to see me?”
The voice had the soft, slow intonation of the South, and it held some quality that haunted the memory. Or so Melissy thought afterward, but that may have been because of its owner’s appeal to sympathy.
“If you are Miss Yarnell.”
“Ferne Yarnell is my name.”
“Mr. Bellamy asked me to call on you. He sent this letter of introduction.”
A faint wave of color beat into the cheek of the stranger. “You know Mr. Bellamy then?”
“Yes. He would have been here to meet you, but he met with an accident yesterday.”
“An accident!” There was a quick flash of alarm in the lifted face.
“He told me to tell you that it was not serious. He was shot in the arm.”
“Shot. By whom?” She was ashen to the lips.
“By a man called Duncan Boone.”
“I know him. He is a dangerous man.”183
“Yes,” Melissy nodded. “I don’t think we know how very dangerous he is. We have all been deceived in him till recently.”
“Does he live here?”
“Yes. The strange thing is that he and Mr. Bellamy had never met in this country until a few days ago. There used to be some kind of a feud between the families. But you must know more about that than I do.”
“Yes. My family is involved in the feud. Mr. Bellamy is a distant cousin of mine.”
“So he told me.”
“Have you known him long?”
Melissy thought that there was a little more than curiosity in the quick look the young woman flung at her.
“I met him when he first came here. He was lost on the desert and I found him. After that we became very unfriendly. He jumped a mining claim belonging to my father. But we’ve made it up and agreed to be friends.”
“He wrote about the young lady who saved his life.”
Melissy smiled. “Did he say that I was a cattle and a stage rustler?”
“He said nothing that was not good.”
“I’m much obliged to him,” the Western girl answered breezily. “And now do tell me, Miss Yarnell, that you and your people have made up your mind to stay permanently.”184
“Father is still looking the ground over. He has almost decided to buy a store here. Yet he has been in the town only a day. So you see he must like it.”
Outside the open second story window of the hotel Melissy heard a voice that sounded familiar. She moved toward the window alcove, and at the same time a quick step was heard in the hall. Someone opened the door of the parlor and stood on the threshold. It was the man called Boone.
Melissy, from the window, glanced round. Her first impulse was to speak; her second to remain silent. For the Arkansan was not looking at her. His mocking ribald gaze was upon Ferne Yarnell.
That young woman looked up from the letter of introduction she was reading and a startled expression swept into her face.
“Dunc Boone,” she cried.
The man doffed his hat with elaborate politeness. “Right glad to meet up with you again, Miss Ferne. You was in short dresses when I saw you last. My, but you’ve grown pretty. Was it because you heard I was in Arizona that you came here?”
She rose, rejecting in every line of her erect figure his impudent geniality, his insolent pretense of friendliness.
“My brother is in the hotel. If he learns you are here there will be trouble.”
A wicked malice lay in his smiling eyes. “Trouble for him or for me?” he inquired silkily.185
His lash flicked her on the raw. Hal Yarnell was a boy of nineteen. This man had a long record as a gunfighter to prove him a desperate man. Moreover, he knew how hopelessly heart sick she was of the feud that for many years had taken its toll of blood.
“Haven’t you done us enough harm, you and yours? Go away. Leave us alone. That’s all I ask of you.”
He came in and closed the door. “But you see it ain’t all I ask of you, Ferne Yarnell. I always did ask all I could get of a girl as pretty as you.”
“Will you leave me, sir?”
“When I’m through.”
“Now.”
“No, I reckon not,” he drawled between half shuttered eyes.
She moved toward the door, but he was there before her. With a turn of his wrist he had locked it.
“This interview quits at my say-so, honey. Think after so many years of absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder you’re going to trample over me like I was a kid? Guess again.”
“Unlock that door,” she ordered.
“When I get good and ready. We’ll have our talk out first.”
Her eyes blazed. She was white as paper though she faced him steadily. But her heart wavered. She dared not call out for fear her brother might186hear and come to her assistance. This she must forestall at all costs.
A heel clicked in the alcove. For the first time Norris, or Boone as the Southern girl had called him, became aware of a third party in the room. Melissy was leaning out of the window. She called down to a man standing on the street.
“Jack, come up here quick. I want you.”
Boone took a step forward. “You here, ’Lissie Lee?”
She laughed scornfully. “Yes, I’m here. An unexpected pleasure, isn’t it?”
“Do you know Ferne Yarnell?” he asked, for once taken aback.
“It looks as if I do.”
His quick furtive eye fell upon an envelope on the floor. He picked it up. Upon it was written, “Miss Ferne Yarnell,” and in the corner, “Introducing Miss Lee.”
A muscle twitched in his face. When he looked up there was an expression of devilish malignity on it.
“Mr. Bellamy’s handwriting, looks like.” He turned to the Arizona girl. “Then I didn’t put the fellow out of business.”
“No, you coward.”
The angry color crept to the roots of his hair. “Better luck next time.”
The door knob rattled. Someone outside was trying to get in. Those inside the room paid no187obvious attention to him. The venomous face of the cattle detective held the women fascinated.
“When Dick Bellamy ambushed Shep he made a hell of a bad play of it. My old mammy used to say that the Boones were born wolves. I can see where she was right. The man that killed my brother gets his one of these days and don’t you forget it. You just stick around. We’re due to shoot this thing out, him and me,” the man continued, his deep-socketed eyes burning from the grim handsome face.
“Open the door,” ordered a voice from the hall, shaking the knob violently.
“You don’t know he killed your brother. Someone else may have done it. And it may have been done in self defence,” the Arkansas girl said to Boone in a voice so low and reluctant that it appeared the words were wrung from her by torture.
“Think I’m a buzzard head? Why for did he run away? Why did he jump for the sandhills soon as the word came to arrest him?” He snapped together his straight, thin-lipped mouth, much as a trap closes on its prey.
A heavy weight hurtled against the door and shook it to the hinges. Melissy had been edging to the right. Now with a twist of her lissom body she had slipped past the furious man and turned the key.
Jack Flatray came into the room. His glance swept the young women and fastened on the man.188In the crossed eyes of the two was the thrust of rapiers, the grinding of steel on steel, that deadly searching for weakness in the other that duelists employ.
The deputy spoke in a low soft drawl. “Mornin’, Boone. Holding an executive session, are you?”
The lids of the detective narrowed to slits. From the first there had been no pretense of friendship between these two. There are men who have only to look once at each other to know they will be foes. It had been that way with them. Causes of antagonism had arisen quickly enough. Both dominant personalities, they had waged silent unspoken warfare for the leadership of the range. Later over the favor of Melissy Lee this had grown more intense, still without having ever been put into words. Now they were face to face, masks off.
“Why yes, until you butted in, Mr. Sheriff.”
“This isn’t my busy day. I thought I’d just drop in to the meeting.”
“You’ve made a mistake. We’re not holding a cattle rustlers’ convention.”
“There are so many ladies present I can’t hear you, but maybe if you said it outside I could,” the deputy suggested gently, a gleam of steely anger in his eyes.
“Say it anywhere to oblige a friend,” sneered Boone.
From the moment of meeting neither man had lowered his gaze by the fraction of an inch. Red189tragedy was in the air. Melissy knew it. The girl from Arkansas guessed as much. Yet neither of them knew how to avert the calamity that appeared impending. One factor alone saved the situation for the moment. Flatray had not yet heard of the shooting of Bellamy. Had he known he would have arrested Boone on the spot and the latter would have drawn and fought it out.
Into the room sauntered Lee. “Hello, ’Lissie. Been looking for you an hour, honey. Mornin’, Norris. Howdy, Jack! Dad burn yore ornery hide, I ain’t see you long enough for a good talk in a coon’s age.”
Melissy seized on her father joyfully as an interposition of Providence. “Father, this is Miss Yarnell, the young lady I told you about.”
The ranchman buried her little hand in his big paw. “Right glad to meet up with you, Miss Yarnell. How do you like Arizona by this time? I reckon Melissy has introduced you to her friends. No? Make you acquainted with Mr. Flatray. Shake hands with Mr. Norris, Miss Yarnell. Where are you, Norris?”
The owner of the Bar Double G swung round, to discover for the first time that harmony was not present. Boone stood back with a sullen vindictive expression on his face.
“Why, what’s up, boys?” the rancher asked, his glance passing from one to another.190
“You ain’t in this, Lee,” Boone informed him. Then, to Flatray: “See you later.”
The deputy nodded carelessly. “Any time you like.”
The lank old Confederate took a step forward to call Boone back, but Melissy caught him by the sleeve.
“Let him go,” she whispered emphatically.
“I know my boss,” returned Lee with a laugh.
“If you’re quite through with me, Miss Lee, I’ll not intrude longer,” Flatray said.
“But I’m not,” spoke Melissy quickly.
She did not intend to let him get away to settle his quarrel with Boone.
“I’m rather busy,” he suggested.
“Your business will have to wait,” she came back decisively.
Lee laughed and clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Might as well know your boss too, boy.”
Melissy flushed with a flash of temper. “I’m nothing of the kind, dad.”
“Sho! A joke’s a joke, girl. That’s twice hand-runnin’ I get a call-down. You’re mighty high-heeled to-day, ’pears like.”
Jack smiled grimly. He understood some things that were hidden from Lee.
191CHAPTER XIVCONCERNING THE BOONE-BELLAMY-YARNELL FEUD
The story that Ferne Yarnell told them in the parlor of the hotel had its beginnings far back in the days before the great war. They had been neighbors, these three families, had settled side by side in this new land of Arkansas, had hunted and feasted together in amity. In an hour had arisen the rift between them that was to widen to a chasm into which much blood had since been spilt. It began with a quarrel between hotheaded young men. Forty years later it was still running its blind wasteful course.
Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of his capture.
The boast of the Boones was that they never192forgot an injury. They might wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts. Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas eve a brother of the murdered man—Captain Tom, as his old troopers still called him—met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed. From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.
The Boones took their time. Another decade passed. Old Richard Bellamy, father of the young man, was shot through the uncurtained window of his living rooms while reading the paper one night. Though related to the Yarnells, he had never taken any part in the feud beyond that of expressing his opinion freely. The general opinion was that he had been killed by Dunc Boone, but there was no conclusive evidence to back it. Three weeks later another one of the same faction met his fate. Captain Tom was ambushed while riding from his plantation to town and left dead on the road. Dunc Boone had been seen lurking near the spot, and immediately after the killing he was met by two hunters as he was slipping through the underbrush for the swamps. There was no direct evidence against the young man, but Captain Tom had been the most popular man in the county. Reckless though he was, Duncan Boone had been forced193to leave the country by the intensity of the popular feeling against him.
Again the feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken ne’er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced in Dunc.
A small part of the old plantation, heavily mortgaged, still belonged to Shep and was rented by him to a tenant, Jess Munro. He announced one day that he was going to collect the rent due him. Having been drinking heavily, he was in an abusive frame of mind. As it chanced he met young Hal Yarnell, just going into the office of his kinsman Dick Bellamy, with whom he was about to arrange the details of a hunting trip they were starting upon. Shep emptied his spleen on the boy, harking back to the old feud and threatening vengeance at their next meeting. The boy was white with rage, but he shut his teeth and passed upstairs without saying a word.
The body of Shep Boone was found next day by Munro among the blackberry bushes at the fence corner of his own place. No less than four witnesses had seen young Yarnell pass that way with a rifle in his hand about the same time that Shep194was riding out from town. They had heard a shot, but had thought little of it. Munro had been hoeing cotton in the field and had seen the lad as he passed. Later he had heard excited voices, and presently a shot. Other circumstantial evidence wound a net around the boy. He was arrested. Before the coroner held an inquest a new development startled the community. Dick Bellamy fled on a night train, leaving a note to the coroner exonerating Hal. In it he practically admitted the crime, pleading self defence.
This was the story that Ferne Yarnell told in the parlor of the Palace Hotel to Jack Flatray and the Lees.
Melissy spoke first. “Did Mr. Bellamy kill the man to keep your brother from being killed?”
“I don’t know. It must have been that. It’s all so horrible.”
The deputy’s eyes gleamed. “Think of it another way, Miss Yarnell. Bellamy was up against it. Your brother is only a boy. He took his place. A friend couldn’t have done more for another.”
The color beat into the face of the Arkansas girl as she looked at him. “No. He sacrificed his career for him. He did a thing he must have hated to do.”
“He’s sure some man,” Flatray pronounced.
A young man, slight, quick of step, and erect as a willow sapling, walked into the room. He looked195from one to another with clear level eyes. Miss Ferne introduced him as her brother.
A thought crossed the mind of the deputy. Perhaps this boy had killed his enemy after all and Bellamy had shouldered the blame for him. If the mine owner were in love with Ferne Yarnell this was a hypothesis more than possible. In either case he acquitted the slayer of blame. In his pocket was a letter from the sheriff at Nemo, Arkansas, stating that his county was well rid of Shep Boone and that the universal opinion was that neither Bellamy nor young Yarnell had been to blame for the outcome of the difficulty. Unless there came to him an active demand for the return of Bellamy he intended to let sleeping dogs lie.
No such demand came. Within a month the mystery was cleared. The renter Munro delivered himself to the sheriff at Nemo, admitting that he had killed Shep Boone in self defence. The dead man had been drinking and was exceedingly quarrelsome. He had abused his tenant and at last drawn on him. Whereupon Munro had shot him down. At first afraid of what might happen to him, he had stood aside and let the blame be shouldered upon young Yarnell. But later his conscience had forced him to a confession. It is enough here to say that he was later tried and acquitted, thus closing the chapter of the wastrel’s tragic death.
The day after the news of Munro’s confession reached Arizona Richard Bellamy called upon Flatray196to invite him to his wedding. As soon as his name was clear he had asked Ferne Yarnell to marry him.
PART IIDEAD MAN’S CACHE
PART II
DEAD MAN’S CACHE
199
CHAPTER IKIDNAPPED
As a lake ripples beneath a summer breeze, so Mesa was stirred from its usual languor by the visit of Simon West. For the little Arizona town was dreaming dreams. Its imagination had been aroused; and it saw itself no longer a sleepy cow camp in the unfeatured desert, but a metropolis, in touch with twentieth-century life.
The great Simon West, pirate of finance, empire builder, molder of the destinies of the mighty Southwestern Pacific system, was to touch the adobe village with his transforming wand and make of it a hive of industry. Rumors flew thick and fast.
Mesa was to be the junction for the new spur that would run to the big Lincoln dam. The town would be a division point; the machine shops of the system would be located there. Its future, if still a trifle vague, was potentially immense. Thus, with cheerful optimism, did local opinion interpret the visit of the great man.
Whatever Simon West may have thought of Mesa and its prospects, he kept behind his thin, close-shut lips. He was a dry, gray little man of200fifty-five, with sharp, twinkling eyes that saw everything and told nothing. Certainly he wore none of the visible signs of greatness, yet at his nod Wall Street trembled. He had done more to change the map of industrial America than any other man, alive or dead. Wherefore, big Beauchamp Lee, mayor of Mesa, and the citizens on the reception committee did their very best to impress him with the future of the country, as they motored out to the dam.
“Most promising spot on earth. Beats California a city block on oranges and citrons. Ever see an Arizona peach, Mr. West? It skins the world,” the big cattleman ran on easily.
The financier’s eye took in the girl sitting beside the chauffeur in the front seat, and he nodded assent.
Melissy Lee bloomed. She was vivid as a wild poppy on the hillsides past which they went flashing. But she had, too, a daintiness, a delicacy of coloring and contour, that suggested the fruit named by her father.
“You bet we raise the best here,” that simple gentleman bragged patriotically. “All we need is water, and the Lincoln dam assures us of plenty. Yes, sir! It certainly promises to be an Eden.”
West unlocked his lips long enough to say: “Any country can promise. I’m looking for one that will perform.”
“You’re seeing it right now, seh,” the mayor assured him, and launched into fluent statistics.201
West heard, saw the thing stripped of its enthusiasm, and made no comment either for or against. He had plenty of imagination, or he could never have accomplished the things he had done. However, before any proposition appealed to him he had to see money in the deal. Whether he saw it in this particular instance, nobody knew; and only one person had the courage to ask him point-blank what his intentions were. This was Melissy.
Luncheon was served in the pleasant filtered sunlight, almost under the shadow of the great dam.
On the way out Melissy had sat as demure and dovelike as it was possible for her to be. But now she showed herself to be another creature.
Two or three young men hovered about her; notable among them was a young fellow of not many words, good-humored, strong, with a look of power about him which the railroad king appreciated. Jack Flatray they called him. He was the newly-elected sheriff of the county.
The great man watched the girl without appearing to do so. He was rather at a loss to account for the exotic, flamelike beauty into which she had suddenly sparkled; but he was inclined to attribute it to the arrival of Flatray.
Melissy sat on a flat rock beside West, swinging her foot occasionally with the sheer active joy of life, the while she munched sandwiches and pickles. The young men bantered her and each other, and she flashed back retorts which gave them alternately202deep delight at the discomfiture of some other. Toward the close of luncheon, she turned her tilted chin from Flatray, as punishment for some audacity of his, and beamed upon the railroad magnate.
“It’s very good of you to notice me at last,” he said, with his dry smile.
“I was afraid of you,” she confided cheerfully.
“Am I so awesome?”
“It’s your reputation, you know. You’re quite a dragon. I’m told you gobble a new railroad every morning for breakfast.”
“’Lissie,” her father warned.
“Let her alone,” the great man laughed. “Miss Lee is going to give me the privilege of hearing the truth about myself.”
“But I’m asking. I don’t know what the truth is,” she protested.
“Well, what you think is the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter what we think about you. The important thing to know is what you think about us.”
“Am I to tell you what I think of you—with all these young men here?” he countered.
She was excited by her own impudence. The pink had spilled over her creamy cheeks. She flashed a look of pretended disdain at her young men. Nevertheless, she made laughing protest.
“It’s not me, but Mesa, that counts,” she answered ungrammatically. “Tell me that you’re203going to help us set orchards blossoming in these deserts, and we’ll all love you.”
“You offer an inducement, Miss Lee. Come—let us walk up to the Point and see this wonderful country of yours.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, let’s! I’m tired of boys, anyhow. They know nothing but nonsense.” She made a laughing moue at Flatray, and turned to join the railroad builder.
The young sheriff arose and trailed to his pony. “My marching orders, I reckon.”
They walked up the hill together, the great man and the untutored girl. He still carried himself with the lightness of the spare, wiry man who has never felt his age. As for her, she moved as one on springs, her slender, willowy figure beautiful in motion.
“You’re loyal to Mesa. Born and brought up there?” West asked Melissy.
“No. I was brought up on the Bar Double G ranch. Father sold it not long since. We’re interested in the Monte Cristo mine, and it has done so well that we moved to town,” she explained.
At the first bend in the mountain road Jack had turned in his saddle to look at her as she climbed the steep. A quarter of a mile farther up there was another curve, which swept the trail within sight of the summit. Here Flatray pulled up and got out his field glasses. Leisurely the man and the maid came into sight from the timber on the shoulder204of the hill, and topped the last ascent. Jack could discern Melissy gesturing here and there as she explained the lay of the land.
Something else caught and held his glasses. Four riders had emerged from a little gulch of dense aspens which ran up the Point toward the summit. One of these had with him a led horse.
“Now, I wonder what that means?” the sheriff mused aloud.
He was not left long in doubt. The four men rode swiftly, straight toward the man and the girl above. One of them swung from the saddle and stepped forward. He spoke to West, who appeared to make urgent protest. The dismounted rider answered. Melissy began to run. Very faintly there came to Flatray her startled cry. Simultaneously he caught the flash of the sun on bright steel. The leader of the four had drawn a revolver and was covering West with it. Instantly the girl stopped running. Plainly the life of the railroad president had been threatened unless she stopped.
The man behind the weapon swept a gesture in the direction of the led horse. Reluctantly West moved toward it, still protesting. He swung to the saddle, and four of the horses broke into a canter. Only the man with the drawn revolver remained on the ground with Melissy. He scabbarded his gun, took a step or two toward her, and made explanations. The girl stamped her foot, and half turned from him.205
He laughed, stepped still closer to her, and spoke again. Melissy, with tilted chin, seemed to be unaware that he existed. Another step brought him to her side. Once more he spoke. No stone wall could have given him less recognition. Then Jack let out a sudden fierce imprecation, and gave his pony the spur. For the man had bent forward swiftly, had kissed the girl on the lips once—twice—three times, had swept his hat off in a low, mocking bow, and had flung himself on his horse, and galloped off.
Pebbles and shale went flying from the horse’s hoofs as the sheriff tore down the trail toward Melissy. He cut off at an angle and dashed through cactus and over rain-washed gullies at breakneck speed, pounding up the stiff slope to the summit. He dragged his pony to a halt, and leaped off at the same instant.
Melissy came to him with flashing eyes. “Why didn’t you get here sooner?” she panted, as if she had been running; for the blind rage was strong in her.
His anger burst out to meet hers. “I wish I had!” he cried, with a furious oath.
“He insulted me. He laughed at me, and taunted me—and kissed me!”
Jack nodded. “I saw. If I had only had my rifle with me! Who was he?”
“He wore a mask. But I knew him. It was Dunc Boone.”206
“With the Roaring Fork gang?”
“I don’t know. Is he one of them?”
“I’ve been thinking so for years.”
“They must have known about our picnic. But what do they want with Mr. West?”
“He’s one of the world’s richest men.”
“But he doesn’t carry his money with him.”
“He carries his life.”
“They must mean to hold him for a ransom. Is that it?”
“You’ve guessed it. That’s the play.” Jack considered, his eyes on the far-away hills. When he spoke again it was with sharp decision. “Hit the trail back to town with your motor. Don’t lose a minute on the way. Send a dispatch to Bucky O’Connor. You’d ought to get him at Douglas. If not, some of his rangers will know where to reach him. Keep the wires hot till you’re in touch with him. Better sign my name. I’ve been writing him about this outfit. This job is cut out for Bucky, and we’ve got to get him on it.”
“And what areyougoing to do?”
“I can’t do much—I’m not armed. First time I’ve been caught that way since I’ve been sheriff. Came out to-day for a picnic and left my gun at home. But if they’re the Roaring Fork outfit, they’ll pass through the Elkhorn Cañon, heading for Dead Man’s Cache. I’m going to cut around Old Baldy and try to beat them to it. Maybe I can recognize some of them.”207
“But if they see you?”
“I ain’t aiming to let them see me.”
“Still, they may.”
His quiet eyes met hers steadily. “Yes, they may.”
They were friends again, though he had never fully forgiven her doubt of him. It might be on the cards that some day she would be more to him than a friend. Understanding perfectly the danger of what he proposed, she yet made no protest. The man who would storm her heart must be one who would go the limit, for her standards were those of the outdoor West. She, too, was “game” to the core; and she had never liked him better than she did at this moment. A man must be a man, and take his fighting chance.
“All right, Jack.”
Not for years before had she called him by his first name. His heart leaped, but he did not let even his look tell what he was feeling.
“I reckon I’ll cut right down from here, Melissy. Better not lose any time getting to town. So-long!” And with that he had swung to the saddle and was off.
Melissy ran swiftly down to the picnic party and cried out her news. It fell upon them like a bolt out of a June sky. Some exclaimed and wondered and deplored; but she was proud to see that her father took instant command, without an unnecessary word.208
“They’ve caught us in swimming, boys! We’ve got to burn the wind back to town for our guns. Dick, you ride around by the Powder Horn and gather up the boys on the ranch. Get Swain to swing around to the south and comb the lower gulches of the Roaring Fork. Tell him to get in touch with me soon as he can. I’ll come through by Elkhorn.”
Lee helped his daughter into the machine, and took his place beside her.
“Hit the high spots, Jim. I’ve got an engagement in the hills that won’t wait, prior to which I’ve got to get back to town immediate,” he told the chauffeur cheerfully; for he was beginning to enjoy himself as in the old days, when he had been the hard-riding sheriff of a border county which took the premium for bad men.
The motor car leaped forward, fell into its pace, and began to hum its song of the road as it ate up swiftly the miles that lay between the dam and Mesa.
209CHAPTER IIA CAPTURE
Flatray swung around Old Baldy through the sparse timber that edged its roots. He knew this country well; for he had run cattle here, and combed the draws and ridges on the annual spring and fall round-ups.
There was no trail to follow. Often the lay of the land forced him to a detour; for it was rough with washes, with matted cactus, and with a thick growth of netted mesquite and underbrush. But true as the needle of a compass, he turned back always to the direction he was following. He had the instinct for direction, sharpened almost to infallibility by the experience his work had given him.
So, hour after hour, he swung forward, pushing his horse over the ground in a sort of running walk, common to the plains. Sunset found him climbing from the foothills into the mountains beyond. Starlight came upon him in a saddle between the peaks, still plodding up by winding paths to the higher altitudes that make the ridge of the continent’s backbone.
The moon was up long before he struck a gulch210spur that led to Elkhorn Cañon. Whether he would be in time or not—assuming that he had guessed aright as to the destination of the outlaws—he could not tell. It would be, at best, a near thing. For, though he had come more directly, they had followed a trail which made the going much faster. Fast as the cow pony could pick its way along the rock-strewn gulch, he descended, eye and ear alert to detect the presence of another human being in this waste of boulders, of moonlit, flickering shadows, of dark awesome peaks.
His quick ear caught the faintest of sounds. He slipped from the saddle and stole swiftly forward to the point where the gulch joined the main cañon. Voices drifted to him—the sound of careless laughter, wafted by the light night wind. He had missed the outlaws by scarce a hundred yards. There was nothing for it but to follow cautiously. As he was turning to go back for his horse the moon emerged from behind a cloud and flooded the cañon with a cold, silvery light. It showed Jack a man and a horse standing scarce twenty yards from him. The man had his back to him. He had dismounted, and was tightening the cinches of his saddle.
Flatray experienced a pang of disappointment. He was unarmed. His second thought sent him flying noiselessly back to his horse. Deftly he unloosed the rope which always hung coiled below the saddle horn. On tiptoe he ran back to the gulch mouth, bearing to the right, so as to come directly211opposite the man he wanted. As he ran he arranged the lariat to his satisfaction, freeing the loop and making sure that the coil was not bound. Very cautiously he crept forward, taking advantage for cover of a boulder which rose from the bed of the gulch.
The man had finished tightening the girth. His foot rose to the stirrup. He swung up from the ground, and his right leg swept across the flank of the pony. It did not reach the stirrup; for, even as he rose, Jack’s lariat snaked forward and dropped over his head to his breast. It tightened sharply and dragged him back, pinioning his arms to his side. Before he could shake one of them free to reach the revolver in his chaps, he was lying on his back, with Flatray astride of him. The cattleman’s left hand closed tightly upon his windpipe, while the right searched for and found the weapon in the holster of the prostrate man.
Not until the steel rim of it pressed against the teeth of the man beneath him did Jack’s fingers loosen. “Make a sound, and you’re a dead man.”
The other choked and gurgled. He was not yet able to cry out, even had he any intention of so doing. But defiant eyes glared into those of the man who had unhorsed and captured him.
“Where are your pals bound for?” Flatray demanded.
He got no answer in words, but sullen eyes flung out an obstinate refusal to give away his associates.212
“I reckon you’re one of the Roaring Fork outfit,” Jack suggested.
“You know so darn much I’ll leave you to guess the rest,” growled the prisoner.
“The first thing I’ll guess is that, if anything happens to Simon West, you’ll hang for it, my friend.”
“You’ll have to prove some things first.”
Flatray’s hand slid into the man’s coat pocket, and drew forth a piece of black cloth that had been used as a mask.
“Here’s exhibit A, to begin with.”
The man on the ground suddenly gave an upward heave, grasped at the weapon, and let out a yell for help that echoed back from the cliff, while the cattleman let the butt of the revolver crash heavily down upon his face. The heavy gun came down three times before the struggling outlaw would subside, and then not before blood streamed from ugly gashes into his eyes.
“I’ve had enough, damn you!” the fellow muttered sullenly. “What do you want with me?”
“You’ll go along with me. Let out another sound, and I’ll bump you off. Get a move on you.”
Jack got to his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed—a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man213his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into the gulch.
Both mounted, Jack keeping the captive covered every moment of the time; and they began to retrace the way by which the young cattleman had just come.
After they had ridden about a quarter of a mile Flatray made a readjustment of the rope. He let the loop lie loosely about the neck of the outlaw, the other end of it being tied to the horn of his own saddle. Also, he tied the hands of the man in such a way that, though they were free to handle the bridle rein, he could not raise them from the saddle as high as his neck.
“If you make any sudden moves, you’ll be committing suicide. If you yell out, it will amount to about the same thing. It’s up to you to be good, looks like.”
The man cursed softly. He knew that the least attempt to escape or to attract the attention of his confederates would mean his undoing. Something about this young man’s cold eye and iron jaw told him that he would not hesitate to shoot, if necessary.
Voices came to them from the cañon. Flatray guessed that a reconnaissance of the gulch would be made, and prepared himself for it by deflecting his course from the bed of thearroyoat a point where the walls fell back to form a little valley. A214little grove of aspens covered densely the shoulder of a hillock some fifty yards back, and here he took his stand. He dismounted, and made his prisoner do the same.
“Sit down,” he ordered crisply.
“What for?”
“To keep me from blowing the top of your head off,” answered Jack quietly.
Without further discussion, the man sat down. His captor stood behind him, one hand on the shoulder of his prisoner, his eyes watching the point of the gulch at which the enemy would appear.
Two mounted men showed presently in silhouette. Almost opposite the grove they drew up.
“Mighty queer what has become of Hank,” one of them said. “But I don’t reckon there’s any use looking any farther. You don’t figure he’s aiming to throw us down—do you, Buck?”
“Nope. He’ll stick, Hank will. But it sure looks darned strange. Here’s him a-ridin’ along with us, and suddenly he’s missin’. We hear a yell, and go back to look for him. Nothin’ doin’. You don’t allow the devil could have come for him sudden—do you, Jeff?”
It was said with a laugh, defiantly, but none the less Jack read uneasiness in the manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years’ wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight.215The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.
Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. “Did you hear that, Buck?”
“What—what do you reckon it was, Jeff?”
Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.
The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men, afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.
He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes fell silent. “We’ll be moving,” he announced to his prisoner.
For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a halt.
“We’ll camp here till morning,” he announced when they reached a grassy park.
The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no216sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.
“Time to hit the trail.”
The outlaw murmured sleepily, “How’s that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand apiece!”
“Wake up! We’ve got to vamose out of here.”
Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master, and was cowed.