“Bushel o’ wheat, bushel o’ rye—All ’at ain’t ready, holler ‘I’!”—Hide and Seek.
“Bushel o’ wheat, bushel o’ rye—All ’at ain’t ready, holler ‘I’!”
—Hide and Seek.
Double Mountain lies lost in the desert, dwarfed by the greatness all about. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south into irregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, once the well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there was precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged. Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert. The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old road lay untrodden in the sun.
Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A traveler followed thatlonely road to Double Mountain; and behind, half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him. The traveler’s sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square; the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to the best of Jeff’s knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.
“Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day,” soliloquized Jeff. “Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon. Civilization’s getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double Mountain. If I can’t there’s no sort of use trying to get away on you! I’ll play hide-and-go-seek-’em. That’ll let you out, anyway, so cheer up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I’ll buy you and make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you’ll like it. Get along now!”
Twenty miles to Jeff’s right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an unbroken tangent of ninety miles’ stretch. A southbound passenger train crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date: behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shining straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this vast horizon she couldhardly be said to change place until, sighting beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed the trinomial line.
Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain—whence the name, Hidden, when done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed drowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on the hither rim of Escondido’s sunken valley.
Jeff knew the land as you know your hallway. That line of dust marked the trail from Escondido Valley to the farther gate of Double Mountain. Even if he should be lucky enough to get a change of mounts at the spring in Double Mountain Basin he would be intercepted. Escape by flight was impossible. To fight his way out was impossible. He had no gun; and, even if he had a gun, he could not see his way to fight, under the circumstances. The men who hunted him down were only doing the right thing as they saw it. Had Jeff been guilty, it would have been a different affair. Being innocent, he could make no fight for it. He was cornered.
“Said the little Eohippus:‘I’m going to be a horse!’”
“Said the little Eohippus:‘I’m going to be a horse!’”
So chanted Jeff, perceiving the hopelessness of his plight.
The best gift to man—or, if not the best, then at least the rarest—is the power to meet the emergency: to do your best and a little better than your best when nothing less will serve: to be a pinch hitter. It is to be thought that certain stages of affection, and more particularly the presence of its object, affect unfavorably the workings of pure intellect. Certain it is that capable Bransford, who had cut so sorry a figure in Eden garden, now, in these distressing but Eveless circumstances, rose to the occasion. Collected, resourceful, he grasped every possible angle of the situation and, with the rope virtually about his neck, cheerfully planned the impossible—the essence of his elastic plan being to climb that very rope, hand over hand, to safety.
“Going round the mountain is no good on a give-out horse. They’ll follow my tracks,” said Jeff to Jeff. Men who are much alone so shape their thoughts by voicing them, just as you practice conversation rather to make your own thought clear to yourself than to enlighten your victim—beg pardon—your neighbor. Just a slip of the tongue.Vecinois the Spanish for neighbor, you know. Not so much to enlighten your neighbor as to find out for yourself precisely what it is you think. “Hiding in the Basin is no good. Can’t get out. Would I were a bird! Only oneway. Got to go straight up—disappear—vanish in the air. ‘Up a chimney, up——’ Naw, that’s backward! ‘Up a chimney, down, or down a chimney, down; but not up a chimney, up, nor down a chimney, up!’ So that’s settled! Now let me see, says the little man. Mighty few Arcadians know me well enough not to be fooled—mebbe so. Lake? Lake won’t come. He’ll be busy. There’s Jimmy; but Jimmy’s got a shocking bad memory for faces sometimes, just now, my face. I think, maybe, I could manage Jimmy. The sheriff? That would be real awkward, I reckon. I’ll just play the sheriff isn’t in the bunch and build my little bluff according to that pleasing fancy; for if he comes along it is all off with little Jeff!
“Now lemme see! If Gwin’s working that little old mine of his—why, he’ll lie himself black in the face just for the principle of it. Mighty interestin’ talker, Gwin is. And if no one’s there, I’ll be there. Not Jeff Bransford; he got away. I’ll be Long—Tobe Long—working for Gwin. Tobe Long. I apprenticed my son to a miner, and the first thing he took was a new name!”
Far away on the side of Double Mountain he could even now see the white triangle of the tent at Gwin’s mine—the Ophir—and the gray dump spilling down the hillside. There was no smoke to be seen. Jeff made up his mind there was no one at the mine—which was what he devoutlyhoped—and further developed his gleeful hypothesis.
“Let’s see now, Tobe. Got to study this all out. They most always leave all their kegs full of water when they go away, so they won’t have to pack ’em up the first thing when they come back. If they did, I’m all right. If they didn’t, I’m in a hell of a fix! They’ll leave ’em full, though. Of course they did—else the kegs would all dry up and fall down.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Them fellows are ten or twelve miles back, I reckon. They’ll slow up so soon as they see I’m headed off. I’ll have time to fix things up—if only there’s water in the kegs at the mine!” He patted Alibi’s head: “Now, old man, do your damnedest! It’s pretty tough on you, but your part will soon be over.”
Alibi had made a poor night of it, what with doubling and twisting in the foothills, the bitter water of a gyp spring, and the scanty grass of a cedar thicket; but he did his plucky best. On the legal other hand, as Jeff had prophesied, the dustmakers behind had slackened their gait when they perceived, by the dust of Escondido trail, that their allies must cut the quarry off. So Alibi held his own with the pursuit.
He came to the rising ground leading to the sheer base of Double Mountain; then to the narrow Gap where the mountain had fallen asunder in some age-old cataclysm. To the left, the dumpof Ophir Mine hung on the hillside above the pass; and on the broad trail zigzagging up to it were burro-tracks, but no fresh tracks of men. The flaps of the white tent on the dump were tightly closed. There was no one at the mine. Jeff passed within the walls, through frowning gates of porphyry and gneiss, and urged Alibi up the cañon. It was half a mile to the spring. On the way he found three shaggy burros grazing beside the road. He drove them into the small pen by the spring and tossed his rope on the largest one. Then he unsaddled Alibi, tied him to the fence by the bridle rein, and searched his pockets for an old letter. This found, he penciled a note and tied it to the saddle. It was brief:
En Route, Four p.m.Please water my horse when he cools off.Your little friend,Jeff Bransford.P. S. Excuse haste.
En Route, Four p.m.
Please water my horse when he cools off.
Your little friend,Jeff Bransford.
P. S. Excuse haste.
He made a plain trail of high-heeled boot-tracks to the spring, where he drank deep; thence beyond, through the sandy soil, to the nearest rocky ridge. Then, careful that every step fell on a bare rock, he came circuitously back to the corral, climbed the fence, made his way to the tied burro, improvised a bridle of cunning half-hitches, slipped from the fence to the burro’sback—a burro, by the way, is a donkey—named the burro anew as Balaam, and went back down the cañon at the best pace of which the belabored and astonished Balaam was capable. As Jeff had hoped, the two other burros—or the other two burros, to be precise—followed sociably, braying remonstrance.
Without the mouth of the cañon Jeff rode up the steep trail to the mine, also to the great disgust of his mount; but he must not walk—it would leave boot-tracks. For the same reason, after freeing Balaam, his first action was to pull off the telltale boots and replace them with the smallest pair of hobnailed miner’s shoes in the tent. With these he carefully obliterated the few boot-tracks at the tent door.
The water-kegs were full; Jeff swore his joyful gratitude and turned his eye to the plain. The pursuing dust was still far away—seven miles, he estimated, or possibly eight. The three burros nibbled on the bushes below the dump; plainly intending to stay round camp with an eye for possible tips. Jeff gave his whole-hearted attention to themise-en-scène.
Never did stage manager toil so hard, so faithfully, so effectively as this one—or with so great a need. He took stock of the available stage properties, beginning with a careful inventory of the grub-chest. To betray ignorance of its possibilities or deficiencies would be fatal. Followinga narrow trail round a little shoulder of hill, he found the powder magazine. Taking three sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps, he searched the tent for the candle-box, lit a candle and went into the tunnel with a brisk trot. “If this was a case of fight, now, I’d have some pretty fair weapons here for close quarters,” said Jeff; “but the way I’m fixed I can’t. No fighting goes—unless Lake comes.”
In the tunnel his luck held good. He found a number of good-sized chunks of rock stacked along the wall near the breast—evidently reserved for the ore pile at a more convenient season. Beneath three of the largest of these rocks he carefully adjusted the three sticks of giant powder, properly capped and fused, lit the fuses and retreated to the safety of the dump. Three muffled detonations followed at short intervals. Having thus announced the presence of mining operations, he built a fire on the kitchen side of the dump to further advertise a mind conscious of its own rectitude. The pleasant shadow of the hills was cool about him; the flame rose clear and bright in the windless air, to be seen from far away.
He looked at the location papers in the monument by the ore stack; simultaneously, by way of economizing time, emptying a can of salmon. This was partly for the added verisimilitude of the empty tin, partly because he was ravenouslyhungry. You may guess how he emptied the tin.
The mine had changed owners since Jeff’s knowledge of it. It was no longer Gwin’s sole property. The notice bore the signatures of J. Gwin, C. W. Sanders and Walter Fleck. Jeff grinned and his eye brightened. He knew Fleck only slightly; but Fleck’s reputation among the cowmen was good—that is to say, as you would see it, very bad.
Pappy Sanders, postmaster and storekeeper of Escondido, was an old and sorely tried friend of Jeff’s. If Pappy had grub-staked the outfit——A far-away plan began to shape vaguely in his fertile brain. He took the little turquoise horse from his pocket and laid it in the till of the violated trunk. Were you told about the violated trunk? Never mind—he had done any amount of other things of which you have not been told; for it was his task, in the brief time allotted to him, to master all the innumerable details needful for an intelligent reading of his part. He must make no blunders.
He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient than himself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefully packed, spick-and-span camp; he rumpled the beds; strewed old clothes, books, candles, specimens, pipes and cigarette papers with lavish hand; made untidy, sprawling heaps of tin plates; knives,forks and spoons; spilled candle-grease and tobacco on the scoured table; and generally gave things a cozy and habitable appearance.
He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open book face downward on the table. (It was “Alice in Wonderland,” and he opened it at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye snatched titles from a shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note to himself—Mr. Tobe Long—in Gwin’s handwriting, folded the note to creases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinched it out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and other things, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford’s clothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.
The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honest sweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into his sweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days’ stubble on his face, simultaneously fishing razor and mug from the trunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust into his ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he even dropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had been performing independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. He threw on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner’s candlestick,with a lighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arranged further details—and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped and overworked man!
Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-way down the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buried therein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining to the defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus; a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, having been found in the trunk—what time also the little turquoise horse was transferred to Mr. Long’s pocket to bring him luck in his new career—a poor thing compared with the cowman’s keen blade, but better for Mr. Long’s purposes, as smelling strongly of dynamite. Then Mr. Long—Tobe—hid the grave by sliding and shoveling broken rock down the dump upon it.
Next he threw into a wheelbarrow drills, spoon, tamping stick, gads, drill-hammer, rock-hammer, canteen, shovel and pick—taking care, even in his haste, to select a properly matched set of drills—and trundled the barrow up the drift at a pace which would give a Miners’ Union the rabies. At the breast, he unshipped his cargo in right miner’s fashion, the drills in a graduated stepladder row along the wall; loaded the barrow with broken ore, a bit of charred fuse showing at the top, and wheeled it out at the same unprofessionalgait, leaving it on the dump just above the spot where his late sepulchral rites had freshened the appearance of the sunbeaten dump.
He next performed his ablutions in an amateurish and perfunctory fashion, scrupulously observing a well-defined waterline.
“There!” said Mr. Long. “I near made a break that time!” He went back to the barrow and trundled it assiduously to the tunnel’s mouth and back several times, carefully never in quite the same place—finally leaving it not above the sepulchered spoil, but near the ore stack, as befitted its valuable contents. “I got to think of everything. One wrong break’ll fix me good!” said Mr. Long. He felt his neck delicately, as if he detected some foreign presence there. “In the tunnel, now, there’s only the one place where the wheel can go; so it don’t matter so much in there.”
The fire having now burned down to proper coals, Mr. Long set about supper; with the corner of his eye on the lookout for the pursuers of the late Bransford. He set the coffee-pot by the fire—they were now in the edge of the tar-brush; there were only two of them. He put on a pot of potatoes in their jackets—he could see them plainly, diminutive black horsemen twinkling through the brush; he sliced bacon into a frying-pan and put it aside to await his cue; he disposed other cooking ware in lifelike attitudes nearthe fire—they were in the long shadow of Double Mountain; their horses were jaded; they rode slowly. He dropped the sour-dough jar and placed the broken pieces where they would be inconspicuously visible. Having thus a perfectly obvious excuse for not having sour-dough bread, which requires thirty-six hours of running start for preliminary rising, Jeff—Mr. Tobe Long—mixed up a just-as-good baking-powder substitute—they rode like young men; they rode like young men not to the saddle born, and Tobe permitted himself a chuckle: “By hooky, I’ve got an even chance for my little bluff!”
He shook his head reprovingly at himself for this last admission. With every minute he looked more like Tobe Long than ever—if only there had been any Tobe Long to look like. His mind ran upon nuggets, pockets, placers, faults, true fissure veins, the cyanide process, concentrates, chlorides, sulphides, assays, leases and bonds; his face took on the strained wistfulness which marks the confirmed prospector: hewasTobe Long!
The bell rang.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”—The Dictionary.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”
—The Dictionary.
“
Ho-o-e-ee! Hello-o!”
As the curtain rose to the flying echoes Long stepped to the edge of the dump, frying-pan in hand, and sent back an answering shout in the startled high note of a lonely man taken unawares.
“Hello-o!” He brandished his hospitable pan. Then he put it down, cupped hands to mouth and trumpeted a hearty welcome: “Chuck! Come up! Supper’s ready!”
“Can’t! See any one go by about two hours ago?”
“Hey? Louder!”
“See a man on a sorrel horse?”
“No-o! I been in the tunnel. Come up!”
“Can’t. We’re after an outlaw!”
“What?”
“After a murderer!”
“Wait a minute! I’ll be down. Too hard to yell so far.”
Mr. Long started precipitately down the zigzag; but the riders had got all the information of interest that Mr. Long could furnish and they were eager to be in at the death.
“Can’t wait! He’s inside the mountain, somewheres. Some of the boys are waiting for him at the other end.” They rode on.
Mr. Long posed for a statue of Disappointment, hung on the steep trail rather as if he might conclude to coil himself into a ball and roll down the hill to overtake them.
“Stop as you come back!” he bellowed. “Want to hear about it.”
Did Jeff—Mr. Long—did Mr. Long now attempt to escape? Not so. Gifted with prevision beyond most, Mr. Long’s mind misgave him that these young men would be baffled in their pleasing expectations. They would be back before sundown, very cross; and a miner’s brogan leaves a track not to be missed.
That Mr. Long was unfeignedly fatigued from the varied efforts of the day need not be mentioned, for that alone would not have stayed his flight; but the nearest water, save Escondido, was thirty-five miles; and at Escondido he would be watched for—not to say that, when he was missed, some of the searching party would straightway go to Escondido to frustrate him. Present escape was not to be thought of.
Instead, Mr. Long made a hearty meal from the simple viands that had been in course of preparation when he was surprised, eked out by canned corn fried in bacon grease to a crisp, golden brown. Then, after a cigarette, he betook himself to sharpening tools with laudable industry. The tools were already sharp, but that did not stop Mr. Long. He built a fire in the forge, set up a stepladder of matched drills in the blackened water of the tempering tub; he thrust a gad and one short drill into the fire. When the gad was at a good cherry heat he thrust it hissing into the tub to bring the water to a convincing temperature; and when reheated he did it again. From time to time he held the one drill to the anvil and shaped it, drawing it alternately to a chisel bit or a bull bit. Mr. Long could sharpen a drill with any, having been, in very truth, a miner of sorts—he could toy thus with one drill without giving it any very careful attention, and his thoughts were now busy on how best to be Mr. Long.
Accordingly from time to time he added an artistic touch to Mr. Long—grime under his fingernails, a smudge of smut on an eyebrow. His hands displeased him. After some experimenting to get the proper heat of it he grasped the partially cooled gad with the drill-pincers and held it very lightly to a favored few of those portions of the hand known to chiromaniacs as themounts of Jupiter, Saturn and other extinct immortals.
Satisfactory blisters-while-you-wait were thus obtained. These were pricked with a pin; some were torn to tatters, with dust and coal rubbed in to give them a venerable appearance. The pain was no light matter; but Mr. Long had a real affection for Mr. Bransford’s neck, and it is trifles like these that make perfection.
The next expedient was even more heroic. Mr. Long assiduously put stone-dust in one eye, leaving it tearful, bloodshot and violently inflamed; and the other one was sympathetically red. “Bit o’ steel in my eye,” explained Mr. Long. Unselfish devotion such as this is all too rare.
All this while, at proper intervals, Mr. Long sharpened and resharpened that one long-suffering drill. He tripped into the tunnel and smote a mighty blow upon the country rock with a pick—therefore qualifying that pick for repointing—and laid it on the forge as next on the list.
What further outrage he meditated is not known, for he now heard a horse coming up the trail. He was beating out a merry tattoo when a white-hatted head rose through a trapdoor—rose above the level of the dump, rather.
Hammer in hand, Long straightened up joyfully as best he could, but could not straighten up the telltale droop of his shoulders. It was not altogether assumed, either, this hump. Jeff—Mr.Long—had not done so much work of this sort for years and there was a very real pain between his shoulderblades. Still, but for the exigencies of art, he might have borne his neck less turtlewise than he did.
“Hello! Get him? Where’s your pardner?”
“Watching the gap.” The young man, rather breathless from the climb, answered the last question first as he led his horse on the dump. “No, we didn’t get him; but he can’t get away. Hiding somewhere in the Basin afoot. Found his horse. Pretty well done up.” The insolence of the outlaw’s letter smote him afresh; he reddened. “No tracks going out of the Basin. Two of our friends guarding the other end. They say he can’t get out over the cliffs anywhere. That so?” The speech came jerkily; he was still short of breath from his scramble.
“Not without a flying machine,” said Long. “No way out that I know of, except where the wagonroad goes. What’s he done?”
“Robbery! Murder! We’ll see that he don’t get out by the wagonroad,” asserted the youth confidently. “Watch the gaps and starve him out!”
“Oh, speaking of starving,” said Tobe, “go into the tent and I’ll bring you some supper while you tell me about it. Baked up another batch of bread on the chance you’d come back.”
“Why, thank you very much, Mr.——”
“Long—Tobe Long.”
“Mr. Long. My name is Gurdon Steele. Glad to meet you. Why, if you will be so kind—that is what I came up to see you about. If you can let us have what we need; of course we will pay you for it.”
“Of course you won’t!” It had not needed the offer to place Mr. Gurdon Steele quite accurately. He was a handsome lad, fresh-complexioned, dressed in the Western manner as practised on the Boardwalk. “You’re welcome to what I got, sure; but I ain’t got much variety. Gwin, the old liar, said he was coming out the twentieth—and sure enough he didn’t; so the grub’s running low. Table in the tent—come on!”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, you know! Rex—that’s my partner—is quite as hungry as I am, you see; but if you could give me something—anything you have—to take down there? I really couldn’t, you know!” The admirable doctrine ofnoblesse obligein its delicate application by this politeness, was easier for its practitioner than to put it into words suited to the comprehension of his hearer; he concluded lamely: “I’ll take it down there and we will eat it together.”
“See here,” said Tobe, “I’m as hungry to hear about your outlaw as you are to eat. I’ll just throw my bedding and a lot of chuck on your saddle. We’ll carry the coffee-pot and frying-panin our hands—and the sugar-can and things like that. You can tank up and give me the news in small chunks at the same time. Afterward two of us can sleep while one stands guard.”
This was done. It was growing dark when they reached the bottom of the hill. The third guardsman had built a fire.
“Rex, this is Mr. Long, who has been kind enough to grubstake us and share our watch with us.”
Mr. Steele, you have observed, had accepted Mr. Long without question; but his first impression of Mr. Long had been gained under circumstances highly favorable to the designs of the latter gentleman. Mr. Steele had come upon him unexpectedly, finding him as it werein medias res, with all his skillfully arranged scenery to aid the illusion. The case was now otherwise—the thousand-tongued vouching of his background lacked to him; Mr. Long had naught save his own unthinkable audacity to belie his face withal. From the first instant Mr. Rex Griffith was the prey of suspicions—acute, bigoted, churlish, deep, dark, distrustful, damnable, and so on down to zealous. He had a sharp eye; he wore no puttees; and Mr. Long had a vaguely uncomfortable memory, holding over from some previous incarnation, of having seen that long, shrewd face in a courtroom.
The host, on hospitable rites intent, likewiseall ears and eager questionings, was all unconscious of hostile surveillance. Nothing could be more carefree, more at ease than his bearing; his pleasant anticipatory excitement was the natural outlook for a lonely and newsless man. As the hart panteth for the water, so he thirsted for the story; but his impatient, hasty questions, following false scents, delayed the telling of the Arcadian tale. So innocent was he, so open and aboveboard, that Griffith, watching, alert, felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. Yet he watched, doubting still, though his reason rebelled at the monstrous imaginings of his heart. That the outlaw, unarmed and unasked, should venture—Pshaw! Such effrontery was inconceivable. He allowed Steele to tell the story, himself contributing only an occasional crafty question designed to enable his host to betray himself.
“Bransford?” interrupted Mr. Long. “Not Jeff Bransford—up South Rainbow way?”
“That’s the man,” said Steele.
“I don’t believe it,” said Long flatly. He was sipping coffee with his guests; he put his cup down. “I know him, a little. Hedon’t——”
“Oh, there’s no doubt of it!” interrupted Steele in his turn. He detailed the circumstances with skilful care. “Besides, why did he run away? Gee! You ought to have seen that escape! It was splendid!”
“Well, now, who’d ’a’ thought that?” demandedLong, still only half convinced. “He didn’t strike me like that kind of a man. Well, you never can tell! How come you fellows to be chasin’ him?”
“You see,” said Steele, “every one was sure he had gone up to Rainbow. The sheriff and posse is up there now, looking for him; but we four—Stone and Harlow, the chaps at the other end, were with us, you know—we were up in the foothills on a deerhunt. We were out early—sun-up is the best time for deer, they tell me—and we had a spyglass. Well, we just happened to see a man ride out from between two hills, quite a way off. Stone noticed right away that he was riding a sorrel horse. It was a sorrel horse that Bransford stole, you know. We didn’t suspect, though, who it was till a bit later. Then Rex tried to pick him up again and saw that he was going out of his way to avoid the ridges—keeping cover, you know. Then we caught on and took after him pell-mell. He had a big start; but he was riding slowly so as not to make a dust—that is, till he saw our dust. Then he lit out.”
“You’re not deputies, then?” said Long.
“Oh, no, not at all!” said Steele, secretly flattered. “So Harlow and Stone galloped off to town. The program was that they’d wire down to Escondido to have horses ready for them, come down on Number Six and head him off.They were not to tell any one in Arcadia. There’s five thousand dollars’ reward out for him—but it isn’t that exactly. It was a cowardly, beastly murder, don’t you know; and we thought it would be rather a big thing if we could take him alone.”
“You got him penned all right,” said Tobe. “He can’t get out, so far as I know, unless he runs over us or the men at the other end. By George, we must get away from this fire, too!” He set the example, dragging the bedding with him to the shelter of a big rock. “He could pick us off too slick here in the light. How’re you going to get him? There’s a heap of country in that Basin, all rough and broken, full o’ boulders—mighty good cover.”
“Starve him out!” said Griffith. This was base deceit. Deep in his heart he believed that the quarry sat beside him, well fed and contented. Yet the unthinkable insolence of it—if this were indeed Bransford—dulled his belief.
Long laughed as he spread down the bed. “He’ll shoot a deer. Maybe, if he had it all planned out, he may have grub cached in there somewhere. There’s watertanks in the rocks. Say, what are your pardners at the other side going to do for grub?”
“Oh, they brought out cheese and crackers and stuff,” said Gurd.
“I’ll tell you what, boys, you’ve bit off morethan you can chaw,” said Jeff—Tobe, that is. “He can’t get out without a fight—but, then, you can’t go in there to hunt for him without weakening your guard; and he’d be under shelter and have all the best of it. He’d shoot you so dead you’d never know what happened. I don’t want none of it! I’d as lief put on boxing gloves and crawl into a hole after a bear! Look here, now, this is your show; but I’m a heap older’n you boys. Want to know what I think?”
“Certainly,” said Rex.
“Goin’ to talk turkey to me?” An avaricious light came into Long’s eyes.
“Of course; you’re in on the reward,” said Rex diffidently and rather stiffly. “We are not in this for the money.”
“I can use the money—whatever share you want to give me,” said Long dryly; “but if you take my advice my share won’t be but a little. I think you ought to keep under shelter at the mouth of this cañon—one of you—and let the other one go to Escondido and send for help, quick, and a lot of it.”
“What’s the matter with you going?” asked Griffith disingenuously. He wanted Long to show his hand. It would never do to abandon the siege of Double Mountain to arrest thissoi-disantLong on mere suspicion. On the other hand, Mr. Rex Griffith had no idea of letting Long escape his clutches until his identity wasestablished, one way or the other, beyond all question.
That was why Long declined the offer. His honest gaze shifted. “I ain’t much of a rider,” he said evasively. Young Griffith read correctly the thought which the excuse concealed. Evidently Long considered himself an elder soldier, if not a better, than either of his two young guests, but wished to spare their feelings by not letting them find it out. Griffith found this plain solution inconsistent with his homicidal theory: a murderer, fleeing for his life, would have jumped at the chance.
There are two sides to every question. Let us, this once, prove both sides. Wholly oblivious to Griffith’s lynx-eyed watchfulness and his leading questions, Mr. Long yet recognized the futility of an attempt to ride away on Mr. Griffith’s horse with Mr. Griffith’s benison. There we have the other point of view.
“We’ll have to send for grub anyway,” pursued the sagacious Mr. Long. “I’ve only got a little left; and that old liar, Gwin, won’t be out for four days—if he comes then. And—er—look here now—if I was you boys I’d let the sheriff and his posse smoke your badger out. They get paid to tend to that—and it looks to me like some one was going to get hurt. You’ve done enough.”
All this advice was so palpably sound that thedoubter was, for the second, staggered—for a second only. This was the man he had seen in the prisoner’s dock. He was morally sure of it. For all the difference of appearance, this was the man. Yet those blasts—the far-seen fire—the hearty welcome—this delivery of himself into their hands?... Griffith scarcely knew what he did think. He blamed himself for his unworthy suspicions; he blamed Gurdy more for having no suspicions at all.
“Anything else?” he said. “That sounds good.”
Tobe studied for some time.
“Well,” he said at last, “there may be some way he can get out. I don’t think he can—but he might find a way. He knows he’s trapped; but likely he has no idea yet how many of us there are. So we know he’ll try, and he won’t be just climbing for fun. He’ll take a chance.”
Steele broke in:
“He didn’t leave any rope on his saddle.”
Tobe nodded.
“So he means to try it. Now here’s five of us here. It seems to me that some one ought to ride round the mountain the first thing in the morning, and every day afterward—only here’s hoping there won’t be many of ’em—to look for tracks. There isn’t one chance in a hundred he can climb out; but if he goes out of here afoot we’ve got him sure. The man on guard wants tokeep in shelter. It’s light to-night—there’s no chance for him to slip out without being seen. You say the old watchman ain’t dead yet, Mr. Griffith?”
“No. The latest bulletin was that he was almost holding his own.”
“Hope he gets well,” said Long. “Good old geezer! Now, cap, I’ve worked hard and you’ve ridden hard. Better set your guards and let the other two take a little snooze.”
Griffith was not proof against the insidious flattery of this unhesitant preference. He flushed with embarrassment and pleasure.
“Well, if I’m to be captain, Gurd will take the first guard—till eleven. Then you come on till two, Mr. Long. I’ll stand from then on till daylight.”
In five minutes Mr. Long was enjoying the calm and restful sleep of fatigued innocence; but his poor captain was doomed to have a bad night of it, with two Bransfords on his hands—one in the Basin and one in the bed beside him. His head was dizzy with the vicious circle. Like the gentlewoman of the nursery rhyme, he was tempted to cry: “Lawk ’a’ mercy on me, this is none of I!”
If he haled his bedmate to justice and the real Bransford got away—that would be a nice predicament for an ambitious young man! He was sensitive to ridicule, and he saw here such anopportunity to earn it as knocks but once at any man’s door.
If, on the other hand, while he held Bransford cooped tightly in the Basin, this thrice-accursed Long should escape him and there should be no Bransford in the Basin——What nonsense! What utter twaddle! Bransford was in the Basin. He had found his horse and saddle, his tracks; no tracks had come out of the Basin. Immediately on the discovery of the outlaw’s horse, Gurd had ridden back posthaste and held the pass while he, the captain, had gone to the mouth of the southern cañon and posted his friends. He had watched for tracks of a footman every step of the way, going and coming; there had been no tracks. Bransford was in the Basin. He watched the face of the sleeping man. But, by Heaven, this was Bransford!
Was ever a poor captain in such a predicament? A moment before he had fully and definitely decided once for all that this man was not Bransford, could not be Bransford; that it was not possible! His reason unwaveringly told him one thing, his eyesight the other!... Yet Bransford, or an unfortunate twin of his, lay now beside him—and, for further mockery, slept peacefully, serene, untroubled.... He looked upon the elusive Mr. Long with a species of horror! The face was drawn and lined. Yet, but forty-eight hours of tension would have leftBransford’s face not otherwise. He had noticed Bransford’s hands in the courtroom—noticed their well-kept whiteness, due, as he had decided, to the perennial cowboy glove. This man’s hands, as he had seen by the campfire, were blistered and calloused! Callouses were not made in a day. He took another look at Long. Oh, thunder!
He crept from bed. He whispered a word to sentry Steele; not to outline the distressing state of his own mind, but merely to request Steele not to shoot him, as he was going up to the mine.
He climbed up the trail, chewing the unpalatable thought that Gurdon had seen nothing amiss—yet Gurd had been at the trial! The captain began to wish he had never gone on that deerhunt.
He went into the tent, struck a match, lit a candle and examined everything closely. There was no gun in the camp and no cartridges. He found the spill of twisted paper under the table, smothered his qualms and read it. He noted the open book for future examination in English. And now Tobe’s labors had their late reward, for Rex missed nothing. Every effort brought fresh disappointment and every disappointment spurred him to fresh effort. He went into the tunnel; he scrutinized everything, even to the drills in the tub. The food supply tallied with Long’saccount. No detail escaped him and every detail confirmed the growing belief that he, Captain Griffith, was a doddering imbecile.
He returned to the outpost, convinced at last. Nevertheless, merely to quiet the ravings of his insubordinate instincts, now in open revolt, he restaked the horses nearer to camp and cautiously carried both saddles to the head of the bed. Concession merely encouraged the rebels to further and successful outrages—the government was overthrown.
He drew sentry Steele aside and imparted his doubts. That faithful follower heaped scorn, mockery, laughter and abuse upon his shrinking superior: recounted all the points, from the first blasts of dynamite to the present moment, which favored the charitable belief above mentioned as newly entertained by Captain Griffith concerning himself. This belief of Captain Griffith was amply indorsed by his subordinate in terms of point and versatility.
“Of course they look alike. I noticed that the minute I saw him—the same amount of legs and arms, features all in the fore part of his head, hair on top, one body—wonderful! Why, you pitiful ass, that Bransford person was a mighty keen-looking man in any company. This fellow’s a yokel—an old, rusty, cap-and-ball, single-shot muzzle-loader. The Bransford was an automatic, steel-frame, highvelocity——”
“The better head he has the more apt he is to do the unexpected——”
“Aw, shut up! You’ve got incipient paresis! Stuff your ears in your mouth and go to sleep!”
The captain sought his couch convinced, but holding his first opinion, savagely minded to arrest Mr. Long rather than let him have a gun to stand guard with. He was spared the decision. Mr. Long declined Gurdon’s proffered gun, saying that he would be right there and he was a poor shot anyway.
Gurdon slept; Long took his place—and Captain Rex, from the bed, watched the watcher. Never was there a more faithful sentinel than Mr. Long. Without relaxing his vigilance even to smoke, he strained every faculty lest the wily Bransford should creep out through the shadows. The captain saw him, a stooped figure, sitting motionless by his rock, always alert, peering this way and that, turning his head to listen. Once Tobe saw something. He crept noiselessly to the bed and shook his chief. Griffith came, with his gun. Something was stirring in the bushes. After a little it moved out of the shadows. It was a prowling coyote. The captain went back to bed once more convinced of Long’s fidelity, but resolved to keep a relentless eye on him just the same. And all unawares, as he revolved the day’s events in his mind, the captain dropped off to troubled sleep.
Mr. Long woke him at three. There had been a temptation to ride away, but the saddles were at the head of the bed, the ground was stony; he would be heard. He might have made an attempt to get both guns from under the pillow, but detection meant ruin for him, since to shoot these boys or to hurt them was out of the question. Escape by violence would have been easy and assured. Jeff preferred to trust his wits. He was enjoying himself very much.
When the captain got his relentless eyes open and realized what had chanced he saw that further doubt was unworthy. Half an hour later the unworthy captain stole noiselessly to Long’s bedside and saw, to his utter rage and distraction, that Mr. Bransford was there again. It was almost too much to bear. He felt that he should always hate Long, even after Bransford was safely hanged. Bransford’s head had slipped from Long’s pillow. Hating himself, Griffith subtly withdrew the miner’s folded overalls and went through the pockets.
He found there a knife smelling of dynamite, matches, a turquoise carved to what was plainly meant to be the form of a bad-tempered horse, and two small specimens of ore!
Altogether, the captain passed a wild and whirling night.