At supper Bud noticed that Marian, standing at his right side, set down his cup of coffee with her right hand, and at the same instant he felt her left hand fumble in his pocket and then touch his elbow. She went on, and Bud in his haste to get outside drank his coffee so hot that it scalded his mouth. Jerry rose up and stepped backward over the bench as Bud passed him, and went out at his heels.
“Go play the piano for half an hour and then meet me where you got them mushrooms. And when you quit playing, duck quick. Tell Honey you'll be back in a minute. Have her hunt for music for yuh while you're out—or something like that. Don't let on.”
Bud might have questioned Jerry, but that cautious young man was already turning back to call something—to Dave, so Bud went around the corner, glancing into the pantry window as he passed. Marian was not in sight, nor was Honey at the moment when he stood beside the step of the post-office.
Boldness carries its own talisman against danger. Bud went in—without slamming the door behind him, you may be sure—and drew his small notebook from his inside pocket. With that to consult frequently, he sat down by the window where the failing light was strongest, and proceeded to jot down imaginary figures on the paper he pulled from his coat pocket and unfolded as if it were of no value whatever to him. The piano playing ordered by Jerry could wait.
What Marian had to say on this occasion could not be written upon a cigarette paper. In effect her note was a preface to Jerry's commands. Bud saw where she had written words and erased them so thoroughly that the cheap paper was almost worn through. She had been afraid, poor lady, but her fear could not prevent the writing.
“You must leave to-night for Crater and cash the checks given you to pay the bets. Go to Crater. If you don't know the way, keep due north after you have crossed Gold Gap. There's the stage road, but they'll watch that, I'm afraid. They mean to stop payment on the checks. But first they will kill you if they can. They say you cheated with that thoroughbred horse. They took their losses so calmly—I knew that they meant to rob you. To show you how I know, it was Lew you shot on the ridge that night. His rheumatism was caused by your bullet that nicked his shoulder. So you see what sort we are—go. Don't wait—go now.”
Bud looked up, and there was Honey leaning over the counter, smiling at him.
“Well, how much is it?” she teased when she saw he had discovered her.
Bud drew a line across the note and added imaginary columns of figures, his hat-brim hiding his face.
“Over eleven thousand dollars,” he announced, and twisted the paper in his fingers while he went over to her. “Almost enough to start housekeeping!”
Honey blushed and leaned to look for something which she pretended to have dropped and Bud seized the opportunity to tuck the paper out of sight. “I feel pretty much intoxicated to-night, Honey,” he said. “I think I need soothing, or something—and you know what music does to the savage breast. Let 's play.”
“All right. You've been staying away lately till I thought you were mad,” Honey assented rather eagerly, and opened the little gate in the half partition just as Bud was vaulting the counter, which gave her a great laugh and a chance for playful scuffling. Bud kissed her and immediately regretted the caress.
Jerry had told him to play the piano, but Bud took his mandolin and played that while Honey thumped out chords for him. As he had half expected, most of the men strayed in and perched here and there listening just as if there had not been a most unusual horserace to discuss before they slept. Indeed, Bud had never seen the Little Lost boys so thoughtful, and this silence struck him all at once as something sinister, like a beast of prey stalking its kill.
Two waltzes he played—and then, in the middle of a favorite two-step, a mandolin string snapped with a sharp twang, and Bud came as close to swearing as a well-behaved young man may come in the presence of a lady.
“Now I'll have to go get a new E string,” he complained. “You play the Danube for the boys—the way I taught you—while I get this fixed. I've an extra string down in the bunk-house; it won't take five minutes to get it.” He laid the mandolin down on his chair, bolted out through the screen door which he slammed after him to let Jerry know that he was coming, and walked halfway to the bunk-house before he veered off around the corner of the machine shed and ran.
Jerry was waiting by the old shed, and without a word he led Bud behind it where Sunfish was standing saddled and bridled.
“You got to go, Bud, while the going's good. I'd go with yuh if I dared,” Jerry mumbled guardedly. “You hit for Crater, Bud, and put that money in the bank. You can cut into the stage road where it crosses Oldman Creek, if you go straight up the race track to the far end, and follow the trail from there. You can't miss it—there ain't but one way to go. I got yuh this horse because he's worth more'n what the other two are, and he's faster. And Bud, if anybody rides up on yuh, shoot. Don't monkey around about it. And you RIDE!”
“All right,” Bud muttered. “But I'll have to go down in the pasture and get my money, first. I've got my own private bank down there, and I haven't enough in my pockets to play penny ante more than one round.”
“Hell!” Jerry's hand lifted to Bud's shoulder and gripped it for a minute. “That's right on the road to the Sinks, man!” He stood biting his lips, thinking deeply, turning his head now and then as little sounds came from the house: the waltz Honey was playing, the post-office door slamming shut.
“You tell me where that money's cached, Bud, and I'll go after it. I guess you'll have to trust me—I sure wouldn't let yuh go down to the pasture yourself right now. Where is it?”
“Look under that flat rock right by the gate post, where the top bars hit the ground. It's wrapped up in a handkerchief, so just bring the package. It's been easy to tuck things under the rock when I was putting up the bars. I'll wait here.”
“Good enough—I'd sure have felt easier if I'd known you wasn't carrying all that money.” Whereupon Jerry disappeared, and his going made no sound.
Bud stood beside Sunfish, wondering if he had been a fool to trust Jerry. By his own admission Jerry was living without the law, and this might easily be a smooth scheme of robbery. He turned and strained his eyes into the dusk, listening, trying to hear some sound that would show which way Jerry had gone. He was on the point of following him—suspicion getting the better of his faith—when Sunfish moved his head abruptly to one side, bumping Bud's head with his cheek. At the same instant a hand touched Bud's arm.
“I saw you from the kitchen window,” Marian whispered tensely. “I was afraid you hadn't read my note, or perhaps wouldn't pay any attention to it. I heard you and Jerry—of course he won't dare go with you and show you the short-cut, even if he knows it. There's a quicker way than up the creek-bed. I have Boise out in the bushes, and a saddle. I was afraid to wait at the barn long enough to saddle him. You go—he's behind that great pile of rocks, back of the corrals. I'll wait for Jerry.” She gave him a push, and Bud was so astonished that he made no reply whatever, but did exactly as she had told him to do.
Boise was standing behind the peaked outcropping of rock, and beside him was a stock-saddle which must have taxed Marian's strength to carry. Indeed, Bud thought she must have had wings, to do so much in so short a space of time; though when he came to estimate that time he decided that he must have been away from the house ten minutes, at least. If Marian followed him closely enough to see him duck behind the machine shed and meet Jerry, she could run behind the corral and get Boise out by way of the back door of the stable. There was a path, screened from the corral by a fringe of brush, which went that way. The truth flashed upon him that one could ride unseen all around Little Lost.
He was just dropping the stirrup down from the saddle horn when Marian appeared with Jerry and Sunfish close behind her. Jerry held out the package.
“She says she'll show you a short cut,” he whispered. “She says I don't know anything about it. I guess she's right—there's a lot I don't know. Lew 's gone, and she says she'll be back before daylight. If they miss Boise they'll think you stole him. But they won't look. Dave wouldn't slam around in the night on Boise—he thinks too much of him. Well—beat it, and I sure wish yuh luck. You be careful, Marian. Come back this way, and if you see a man's handkerchief hanging on this bush right here where I'm standing, it'll mean you've been missed.”
“Thank you, Jerry,” Marian whispered. “I'll look for it. Come, Bud—keep close behind me, and don't make any noise.”
Bud would have protested, but Marian did not give him a chance. She took up the reins, grasped the saddle horn, stuck her slipper toe in the stirrup and mounted Boise as quickly as Bud could have done it—as easily, too, making allowance for the difference in their height. Bud mounted Sunfish and followed her down the trail which led to the race track; but when they had gone through the brush and could see starlight beyond, she turned sharply to the left, let Boise pick his way carefully over a rocky stretch and plunged into the brush again, leaning low in the saddle so that the higher branches would not claw at her hair and face.
When they had once more come into open ground with a shoulder of Catrock Peak before them, Marian pulled up long enough to untie her apron and bind it over her hair like a peasant woman. She glanced back at Bud, and although darkness hid the expression on her face, he saw her eyes shining in the starlight. She raised her hand and beckoned, and Bud reined Sunfish close alongside.
“We're going into a spooky place now,” she leaned toward him to whisper. “Boise knows the way, and your horse will follow.”
“All right,” Bud whispered back. “But you'd better tell me the way and let me go on alone. I'm pretty good at scouting out new trails. I don't want you to get in trouble—”
She would not listen to more of that, but pushed him back with the flat of her bare hand and rode ahead of him again. Straight at the sheer bluff, that lifted its huge, rocky shape before them, she led the way. So far as Bud could see she was not following any trail; but was aiming at a certain point and was sure enough of the ground to avoid detours.
They came out upon the bank of the dry river-bed. Bud knew it by the flatness of the foreground and the general contour of the mountains beyond. But immediately they turned at a sharp angle, travelled for a few minutes with the river-bed at their backs, and entered a narrow slit in the mountains where two peaks had been rent asunder in some titanic upheaval when the world was young. The horses scrambled along the rocky bottom for a little way, then Boise disappeared.
Sunfish halted, threw his head this way and that, gave a suspicious sniff and turned carefully around the corner of a square-faced boulder. In front was blackness. Bud urged him a little with rein and soft pressure of the spurs, and Sunfish stepped forward. He seemed reassured to find firm, smooth sand under his feet, and hurried a little until Boise was just ahead clicking his feet now and then against a rock.
“Coming?” Marian's voice sounded subdued, muffled by the close walls of the tunnel-like crevice.
“Coming,” Bud assured her quietly “At your heels.”
“I always used to feel spooky when I was riding through here,” Marian said, dropping back so that they rode side by side, stirrups touching. “I was ten when I first made the trip. It was to get away from Indians. They wouldn't come into these places. Eddie and I found the way through. We were afraid they were after us, and so we kept going, and our horses brought us out. Eddie—is my brother.”
“You grew up here?” Bud did not know how much incredulity was in his voice. “I was raised amongst the Indians in Wyoming. I thought you were from the East.”
“I was in Chicago for three years,” Marian explained. “I studied every waking minute, I think. I wanted to be a singer. Then—I came home to help bury mother. Father—Lew and father were partners, and I—married Lew. I didn't know—it seemed as though I must. Father put it that way. The old story, Bud. I used to laugh at it in novels, but it does happen. Lew had a hold over father and Eddie, and he wanted me. I married him, but it did no good, for father was killed just a little more than a month afterwards. We had a ranch, up here in the Redwater Valley, about halfway to Crater. But it went—Lew gambled and drank and—so he took me to Little Lost. I've been there for two years.”
The words of pity—and more—that crowded forward for utterance, Bud knew he must not speak. So he said nothing at all.
“Lew has always held Eddie over my head,” she went on pouring out her troubles to him. “There's a gang, called the Catrock Gang, and Lew is one of them. I told you Lew is the man you shot. I think Dave Truman is in with them—at any rate he shuts his eyes to whatever goes on, and gets part of the stealings, I feel sure. That's why Lew is such a favorite. You see, Eddie is one—I'm trusting you with my life, almost, when I tell you this.
“But I couldn't stand by and not lift a hand to save you. I knew they would kill you. They'd have to, because I felt that you would fight and never give up. And you are too fine a man for those beasts to murder for the money you have. I knew, the minute I saw Jeff paying you his losings with a check, and some of the others doing the same, just what would happen. Jeff is almost as bad as the Catrockers, except that he is too cowardly to come out into the open. He gave you a check; and everyone who was there knew he would hurry up to Crater and stop payment on it, if he could do it and keep out of your sight. Those cronies of his would do the same—so they paid with checks.
“And the Catrock gang knew that. They mean to get hold of you, rob and-and-kill you, and forge the endorsement on the checks and let one man cash them in Crater before payment can be stopped. Indeed, the gang will see to it that Jeff stays away from Crater. Lew hinted that while they were about it they might as well clean out the bank. It wouldn't be the first time,” she added bitterly.
She stopped then and asked for a match, and when Bud gave her one she lighted a candle and held it up so that she could examine the walls. “It's a natural tunnel,” she volunteered in a different tone. “Somewhere along here there is a branch that goes back into the hill and ends in a blow-hole. But we're all right so far.”
She blew out the candle and urged Boise forward, edging over to the right.
“Wasn't that taking quite a chance, making a light?” Bud asked as they went on.
“It was, but not so great a chance as missing the way. Jerry didn't hear anything of them when he went to the pasture gate, and they may not come through this way at all. They may not realize at first that you have left, and even when they did they would not believe at first that you had gone to Crater. You see”—and in the darkness Bud could picture her troubled smile—“they think you are an awful fool, in some ways. The way you bet to-day was pure madness.”
“It would have been, except that I knew I could win.”
“They never bet like that. They always 'figure', as they call it, that the other fellow is going to play some trick on them. Half the time Jeff bets against his own horse, on the sly. They all do, unless they feel sure that their own trick is best.”
“They should have done that to-day,” Bud observed dryly. “But you've explained it. They thought I'm an awful fool.”
Out of the darkness came Marian's voice. “It's because you're so different. They can't understand you.”
Bud was not interested in his own foolishness just then. Something in her voice had thrilled him anew with a desire to help her and with the conviction that he was desperately in need of help. There was a pathetic patience in her tone when she summarized he whole affair in those last two sentences. It was as if she were telling him how her whole life was darkened because she herself was different—because they could not understand a woman so fine, so true and sweet.
“What will happen if you are missed? If you go back and discover Jerry's handkerchief on that bush, what will you do? You can't go back if they find out—” There was no need for him to finish that sentence.
“I don't know,” said Marian, “what I shall do. I hadn't thought much about it.”
“I haven't thought much about anything else,” Bud told her straightforwardly. “If Jerry flags you, you 'd better keep going. Couldn't you go to friends?”
“I could—if I had any. Bud, you don't understand. Eddie is the only relative I have on earth, that I know at all. He is—he's with the Catrockers and Lew dominates him completely. Lew has pushed Ed into doing things so that I must shield both or neither. And Eddie's just a boy. So I've no one at all.”
Bud studied this while they rode on through the defile that was more frequently a tunnel, since the succession of caves always had an outlet which Marian found. She had stopped now and dismounted, and they were leading their horses down a steep, scrambling place with the stars showing overhead.
“A blowhole,” Marian informed him briefly. “We'll come into another cave, soon, and while it's safe if you know it, I'll explain now that you must walk ahead of your horse and keep your right hand always in touch with the wall until we see the stars again. There's a ledge-five feet wide in the narrowest place, if you are nervous about ledges—and if you should get off that you'd have a drop of ten feet or so. We found that the ledge makes easier travelling, because the bottom is full of rocks and nasty depressions that are noticeable only with lights.”
She started off again, and Bud followed her, his gloved fingers touching the right wall, his soul humbled before the greatness of this little woman with the deep, troubled eyes. When they came out into the starlight she stopped and listened for what seemed to Bud a very long time.
“If they are coming, they are a long way behind us,” she said relievedly, and remounted. “Boise knows his trail and has made good time. And your horse has proven beyond all doubt that he's a thoroughbred. I've seen horses balk at going where we have gone.”
“And I've seen men who counted themselves brave as any, who wouldn't do what you are doing to-night; Jerry, for instance. I wish you'd go back. I can't bear having you take this risk.”
“I can't go back, Bud. Not if they find I've gone.” Then he heard her laugh quietly. “I can't imagine now why I stayed and endured it all this while. I think I only needed the psychological moment for rebellion, and to-night the moment came. So you see you have really done me a service by getting into this scrape. It's the first time I have been off the ranch in a year.”
“If you call that doing you a service, I'm going to ask you to let me do something also for you.” Bud half smiled to himself in the darkness, thinking how diplomatic he was. “If you're found out, you'll have to keep on going, and I take it you wouldn't be particular where you went. So I wish you 'd take charge of part of this money for me, and if you leave, go down to my mother, on the Tomahawk ranch, out from Laramie. Anyone can tell you where it is, when you get down that way If you need any money use it. And tell mother I sent her the finest cook in the country. Mother, by the way, is a great musician, Marian. She taught me all I know of music. You'd get along just fine with mother. And she needs you, honest. She isn't very strong, yet she can't find anyone to suit, down there—”
“I might not suit, either,” said Marian, her voice somewhat muffled.
“Oh, I'm not afraid of that. And—there's a message I want to send—I promised mother I'd—”
“Oh, hush! You're really an awfully poor prevaricator, Bud. This is to help me, you're planning.”
“Well—it's to help me that I want you to take part of the money. The gang won't hold you up, will they? And I want mother to have it. I want her to have you, too,—to help out when company comes drifting in there, sometimes fifteen or twenty strong. Especially on Sunday. Mother has to wait on them and cook for them, and—as long as you are going to cook for a bunch, you may as well do it where it will be appreciated, and where you'll be treated like a—like a lady ought to be treated.”
“You're even worse—” began Marian, laughing softly, and stopped abruptly, listening, her head turned behind them. “Sh-sh-someone is coming behind us,” she whispered. “We're almost through—come on, and don't talk!”
They plunged into darkness again, rode at a half trot over smooth, hard sand, Bud trusting himself wholly to Marian and to the sagacity of the two horses who could see, he hoped, much better than he himself could. His keen hearing had caught a faint sound from behind them—far back in the crevice-like gorge they had just quitted, he believed. For Marian's sake he stared anxiously ahead, eager for the first faint suggestion of starlight before them. It came, and he breathed freer and felt of his gun in its holster, pulling it forward an inch or two.
“This way, Bud,” Marian murmured, and swung Boise to the left, against the mountain under and through which they seemed to have passed. She led him into another small gorge whose extent he could not see, and stopped him with a hand pressed against Sunfish's shoulder.
“We'd better get down and hold our horses quiet,” she cautioned. “Boise may try to whinny, and he mustn't.”
They stood side by side at their horses' heads, holding the animals close. For a time there were no sounds at all save the breathing of the horses and once a repressed sigh from Marian. Bud remembered suddenly how tired she must be. At six o'clock that morning she had fed twelve men a substantial breakfast. At noon there had been dinner for several more than twelve, and supper again at six—and here she was, risking her life when she should be in bed. He felt for her free hand, found it hanging listlessly by her side and took it in his own and held it there, just as one holds the hand of a timid child. Yet Marian was not timid.
A subdued mutter of voices, the click of hoofs striking against stone, and the pursuers passed within thirty feet of them. Boise had lifted his head to nicker a salute, but Marian's jerk on the reins stopped him. They stood very still, not daring so much as a whisper until the sounds had receded and silence came again.
“They took the side-hill trail,” whispered Marian, pushing Boise backward to turn him in the narrow defile. “You'll have to get down the hill into the creek-bed and follow that until you come to the stage road. There may be others coming that way, but they will be two or three miles behind you. This tunnel trail cuts off at least five miles but we had to go slower, you see.
“Right here you can lead Sunfish down the bluff to the creek. It's all dry, and around the first bend you will see where the road crosses. Turn to the left on that and ride! This horse of yours will have to show the stuff that's in him. Get to Crater ahead of these men that took the hill trail. They'll not ride fast—they never dreamed you had come through here, but they came to cut off the distance and to head you off. With others behind, you must beat them all in or you'll be trapped between.”
She had left Boise tied hastily to a bush and was walking ahead of Bud down the steep, rocky hillside to show him the easiest way amongst the boulders Halfway down, Bud caught her shoulder and stopped her.
“I'm not a kid,” he said firmly. “I can make it from here alone. Not another step, young lady. If you can get back home You'll be doing enough. Take this—it's money, but I don't know how much. And watch your chance and go down to mother with that message. Birnie, of the Tomahawk outfit—you'll find out in Laramie where to go. And tell mother I'm all right, and she'll see me some day—when I've made my stake. God bless you, little woman. You're the truest, sweetest little woman in the world. There's just one more like you—that's mother. Now go back—and for God's sake he careful!”
He pressed money into her two hands, held them tightly together, kissed them both hurriedly and plunged down the hill with Sunfish slipping and sliding after him. For her safety, if not for his own, he meant to get away from there as quickly as possible.
In the creek bed he mounted and rode away at a sharp gallop, glad that Sunfish, thoroughbred though he was, had not been raised tenderly in stall and corral, but had run free with the range horses and had learned to keep his feet under him in rough country or smooth. When he reached the crossing of the stage road he turned to the left as Marian had commanded and put Sunfish to a pace that slid the miles behind him.
With his thoughts clinging to Marian, to the harshness which life had shown her who was all goodness and sweetness and courage, Bud forgot to keep careful watch behind him, or to look for the place where the hill trail joined the road, as it probably did some distance from Crater. It would be a blind trail, of course—since only the Catrock gang and Marian knew of it.
They came into the road not far behind him, out of rock-strewn, brushy wilderness that sloped up steeply to the rugged sides of Gold Gap mountains. Sunfish discovered them first, and gave Bud warning just before they identified him and began to shoot.
Bud laid himself along the shoulder of his horse with a handful of mane to steady him while he watched his chance and fired back at them. There were four, just the number he had guessed from the sounds as they came out of the tunnel. A horse ran staggering toward him with the others, faltered and fell. Bud was sorry for that. It had been no part of his plan to shoot down the horses.
The three came on, leaving the fourth to his own devices—and that, too, was quite in keeping with the type of human vultures they were. They kept firing at Bud, and once he felt Sunfish wince and leap forward as if a spur had raked him. Bud shot again, and thought he saw one horseman lurch backward. But he could not be sure—they were going at a terrific pace now, and Sunfish was leaving them farther and farther behind. They were outclassed, hopelessly out of pistol range, and they must have known it, for although they held to the chase they fired no more shots.
Then a dog barked, and Bud knew that he was passing a ranch. He could smell the fresh hay in the stacks, and a moment later he descried the black hulk of ranch buildings. Sunfish was running easily, his breath unlabored. Bud stood in the stirrups and looked back. They were still coming, for he could hear the pound of hoofs.
The ranch was behind him. Clear starlight was all around, and the bulk of near mountains. The road seemed sandy, yielding beneath the pound of Sunfish's hoofs. Bud leaned forward again in the saddle, and planned what he would do when he reached Crater; found time, also, to hope that Marian had gone back, and had not heard the shooting.
Another dog barked, this time on the right. Bud saw that they were passing a picket fence. The barking of this dog started another farther ahead and to the left. Houses so close together could only mean that he was approaching Crater. Bud began to pull Sunfish down to a more conventional pace. He did not particularly want to see heads thrust from windows, and questions shouted to him. The Catrock gang might have friends up this way. It would be strange, Bud thought, if they hadn't.
He loped along the road grown broader now and smoother. Many houses he passed, and the mouths of obscure lanes. Dogs ran out at him. Bud slowed to a walk and turned in the saddle, listening. Away back, where he had first met the signs of civilization, the dog he had aroused was barking again, his deep baying blurred by the distance. Bud grinned to himself and rode on at a walk, speaking now and then to an inquiring dog and calling him Purp in a tone that soothed.
Crater, he discovered in a cursory patrol of the place, was no more than an overgrown village. The court-house and jail stood on the main street, and just beyond was the bank. Bud rode here and there, examining closely the fronts of various buildings before he concluded that there was only the one bank in Crater. When he was quite sure of that he chose place near by the rear of the bank, where one horse and a cow occupied a comfortable corral together with hay. He unsaddled Sunfish and turned him there, himself returning to the bank before those other night-riders had more than reached the first straggling suburbs of the town.
On the porch of the court-house, behind a jutting corner pillar that seemed especially designed for the concealment of a man in Bud's situation, he rolled cigarette which he meant to smoke later on when the way was clear, and waited for the horsemen to appear.
Presently they came, rode to a point opposite the court-house and bank with no more than a careless glance that way, and halted in front of an uninviting hotel across the street. Two remained on their horses while the third pounded on the door and shook it by the knob and finally raised the landlord from his sleep. There was a conference which Bud witnessed with much interest. A lamp had been lighted in the bare office, and against the yellow glow Bud distinctly saw the landlord nod his head twice—which plainly betokened some sort of understanding.
He was glad that he had not stopped at the hotel. He felt much more comfortable on the court-house porch. “Mother's guardian angels must be riding 'point' to-night,” he mused.
The horsemen rode back to a livery stable which Bud had observed but had not entered. There they also sought for news of him, it would appear. You will recall, however, that Bud had ridden slowly into the business district of Crater, and his passing had been unmarked except by the barking of dogs that spent their nights in yammering at every sound and so were never taken seriously. The three horsemen were plainly nonplussed and conferred together in low tones before they rode on. It was evident that they meant to find Bud if they could. What they meant to do with him Bud did not attempt to conjecture. He did not intend to be found.
After a while the horsemen rode back to the hotel, got the landlord out with less difficulty than before and had another talk with him.
“He stole a horse from Dave Truman,” Bud heard one of the three say distinctly. “That there running horse Dave had.”
The landlord tucked in his shirt and exclaimed at the news, and Bud heard him mention the sheriff. But nothing came of that evidently. They talked further and reined their horses to ride back whence they came.
“He likely's give us the slip outside of town, some place,” one man concluded. “We'll ride back and see. If he shows up, he'll likely want to eat... And send Dick out to the Stivers place. We'll come a-running.” He had lowered his voice so that Bud could not hear what was to happen before the landlord sent Dick, but he decided he would not pry into the matter and try to fill that gap in the conversation.
He sat where he was until the three had ridden back down the sandy road which served as a street. Then he slipped behind the court-house and smoked his cigarette, and went and borrowed hay from the cow and the horse in the corral and made himself some sort of bed with his saddle blanket to help out, and slept until morning.
A woman with a checkered apron and a motherly look came to let her chickens out and milk the cow, and woke Bud so that she could tell him she believed he had been on a “toot”, or he never would have taken such a liberty with her corral. Bud agreed to the toot, and apologized, and asked for breakfast. And the woman, after one good look at him, handed him the milk bucket and asked him how he liked his eggs.
“All the way from barn to breakfast,” Bud grinned, and the woman chuckled and called him Smarty, and told him to come in as soon as the cow was milked.
Bud had a great breakfast with the widow Hanson. She talked, and Bud learned a good deal about Crater and its surroundings, and when he spoke of holdup gangs she seemed to know immediately what he meant, and told him a great deal more about the Catrockers than Marian had done. Everything from murdering and robbing a peddler to looting the banks at Crater and Lava was laid to the Catrockers. They were the human buzzards that watched over the country and swooped down wherever there was money. The sheriff couldn't do anything with them, and no one expected him to, so far as Bud could discover.
He hesitated a long time before he asked about Marian Morris. Mrs. Hanson wept while she related Marian's history, which in substance was exactly what Marian herself had told Bud. Mrs. Hanson, however, told how Marian had fought to save her father and Ed, and how she had married Lew Morris as a part of her campaign for honesty and goodness. Now she was down at Little Lost cooking for a gang of men, said Mrs. Hanson, when she ought to be out in the world singing for thousands and her in silks and diamonds instead of gingham dresses and not enough of them.
“Marian Collier is the sweetest thing that ever grew up in this country,” the old lady sniffled. “She's one in a thousand and when she was off to school she showed that she wasn't no common trash. She wanted to be an opery singer, but then her mother died and Marian done what looked to be her duty. A bird in a trap is what I call her.”
Bud regretted having opened the subject, and praised the cooking by way of turning his hostess's thoughts into a different channel. He asked her if she would accept him as a boarder while he was in town, and was promptly accepted.
He did not want to appear in public until the bank was opened, and he was a bit troubled over identification. There could be no harm, he reflected, in confiding to Mrs. Hanson as much as was necessary of his adventures. Wherefore he dried the dishes for her and told her his errand in town, and why it was that he and his horse had slept in her corral instead of patronizing hotel and livery stable. He showed her the checks he wanted to cash, and asked her, with flattering eagerness for her advice, what he should do. He had been warned, he said, that Jeff and his friends might try to beat him yet by stopping payment, and he knew that he had been followed by them to town.
“What You'll do will be what I tell ye,” Mrs Hanson replied with decision. “The cashier is a friend to me—I was with his wife last month with her first baby, and they swear by me now, for I gave her good care. We'll go over there this minute, and have talk with him. He'll do what he can for ye, and he'll do it for my sake.”
“You don't know me, remember,” Bud reminded her honestly.
The widow Hanson gave him a scornful smile and toss of her head. “And do I not?” she demanded. “Do you think I've buried three husbands and thinking now of the fourth, without knowing what's wrote a man's face? Three I buried, and only one died his bed. I can tell if a man's honest or not, without giving him the second look. If you've got them checks you should get the money on them—for I know their stripe. Come on with me to Jimmy Lawton's house. He's likely holding the baby while Minie does the dishes.”
Mrs. Hanson guessed shrewdly. The cashier of the Crater County Bank was doing exactly what she said he would be doing. He was sitting in the kitchen, rocking a pink baby wrapped in white outing flannel with blue border, when Mrs. Hanson, without the formality of more than one warning tap on the screen door, walked in with Bud. She held out her hands for the baby while she introduced the cashier to Bud. In the next breath she was explaining what was wanted of the bank.
“They've done it before, and ye know it's plain thievery and ought to be complained about. So now get your wits to work, Jimmy, for this friend of mine is entitled to his money and should have it if it is there to be had.”
“Oh, it's there,” said Jimmy. He looked at his watch, looked at the kitchen clock, looked at Bud and winked. “We open at nine, in this town,” he said. “It lacks half an hour—but let me see those checks.”
Very relievedly Bud produced them, watched the cashier scan each one to make sure that they were right, and quaked when Jimmy scowled at Jeff Hall's signature on the largest check of all. “He had a notion to use the wrong signature, but he may have lost his nerve. It's all right, Mr. Birnie. Just endorse these, and I'll take them into the bank and attend to them the first thing I do after the door is open. You'd better come in when I open up—”
“The gang had some talk about cleaning out the bank while they 're about it,” Bud remembered suddenly. “Can't you appoint me something, or hire me as a guard and let me help out? How many men do you have here in this bank?”
“Two, except when the president's in his office in the rear. That's fine of you to offer. We've been held up, once—and they cleaned us out of cash.” Jimmy turned to Mrs. Hanson. “Mother, can't you run over and have Jess come and swear Mr. Birnie in as a deputy? If I go, or he goes, someone may notice it and tip the gang off.”
Mrs. Hanson hastily deposited the baby in its cradle and went to call “Jess”, her face pink with excitement.
“You're lucky you stopped at her house instead of some other place,” Jimmy observed. “She's a corking good woman. As a deputy sheriff, you'll come in mighty handy if they do try anything, Mr. Birnie—if you're the kind of a man you look to be. I'll bet you can shoot. Can you?”
“If you scare me badly enough, I might get a cramp in my trigger finger,” Bud confessed. Jimmy grinned and went back to considering his own part.
“I'll cash these checks for you the first thing I do. And as deputy you can go with me. I'll have to unlock the door on time, and if they mean to stop payment, and clean the bank too, it will probably be done all at once. It has been a year since they bothered us, so they may need a little change. If Jess isn't busy he may stick around.”
“No one expects him to round up the gang, I heard.”
“No one expects him to go into Catrock Canyon after them. He'll round them up, quick enough, if he can catch them far enough from their holes.”
Jess returned with Mrs. Hanson, swore in a new deputy, eyed Bud curiously, and agreed to remain hidden across the road from the bank with a rifle. He nodded understandingly when Bud warned him that the looting was a matter of hearsay on his part, and departed with an awkward compliment to Mrs. Jim about hoping that the baby was going to look like her.
Jim lived just behind the bank, and a high board fence between the two buildings served to hide his coming and going. But Bud took off his hat and walked stooping,—by special request of Mrs. Hanson—to make sure that he was not observed.
“I think I'll stand out in front of the window,” said Bud when they were inside. “It will look more natural, and if any of these fellows show up I'd just as soon not show my brand the first thing.”
They showed up, all right, within two minutes of the unlocking of the bank and the rolling up of the shades. Jeff Hall was the first man to walk in, and he stopped short when he saw Bud lounging before the teller's window and the cashier busy within. Other men were straggling up on the porch, and two of them entered. Jeff walked over to Bud, who shifted his position enough to bring him facing Jeff, whom he did not trust at all.
“Mr. Lawton,” Jeff began hurriedly, “I want to stop payment on a check this young feller got from me by fraud. It's for five thousand eight hundred dollars, and I notify you—”
“Too late, Mr. Hall. I have already accepted the checks. Where did the fraud come in? You can bring suit, of course, to recover.”
“I'll tell you, Jimmy. He bet that my horse couldn't beat Dave Truman's Boise. A good many bet on the same thing. But my horse proved to have more speed, so a lot of them are sore.” Bud chuckled as other Sunday losers came straggling in.
“Well, it's too late. I have honored the checks,” Jimmy said crisply, and turned to hand a sealed manila envelope to the bookkeeper with whispered instructions. The bookkeeper, who had just entered from the rear of the office, turned on his heel and left again.
Jeff muttered something to his friends and went outside as if their business were done for the day.
“I gave you five thousand in currency and the balance in a cashier's check,” Jimmy whispered through he wicket. “Sent it to the house, We don't keep a great deal—ten thousand's our limit in cash, and I don't think you want to pack gold or silver—”
“No, I didn't. I'd rather—”
Two men came in, one going over to the desk where he apparently wrote a check, the other came straight to the window. Bud looked into the heavily bearded face of a man who had the eyes of Lew Morris. He shifted his position a little so that he faced the man's right side. The one at the desk was glancing slyly over his shoulder at the bookkeeper, who had just returned to his work.
“Can you change this twenty so I can get seven dollars and a quarter out of it?” asked the man at he window. As he slid the bill through the wicket he started to sneeze, and reached backward—for his handkerchief, apparently.
“Here's one,” said Bud. “Don't sneeze too hard, old-timer, or you're liable to sneeze your whiskers all off. It's happened before.”
Someone outside fired a shot in at Bud, clipping his hatband in front. At the sound of the shot the whiskered one snatched his gun out, and the cashier shot him. Bud had sent a shot through the outside window and hit somebody—whom, he did not know, for he had no time to look. The young fellow at the desk had whirled, and was pointing a gun shakily, first at he cashier and then at Bud. Bud fired and knocked he gun out of his hand, then stepped over the man he suspected was Lew and caught the young fellow by the wrist.
“You're Ed Collier—by your eyes and your mouth,” Bud said in a rapid undertone. “I'm going to get you out of this, if you'll do what I say. Will you?”
“He got me in here, honest,” the young fellow quaked. He couldn't be more than nineteen, Bud guessed swiftly.
“Let me through, Jimmy,” Bud ordered hurriedly. “You got the man that put up this job. I'll take the kid out the back way, if you don't mind.”
Jimmy opened the steel-grilled door and let them through.
“Ed Collier,” he said in a tone of recognition. “I heard he was trailing—”
“Forget it, Jimmy. If the sheriff asks about him, say he got out. Now, Ed, I'm going to take you over to Mrs. Hanson's. She'll keep an eye on you for a while.”
Eddie was looking at the dead man on the floor, and trembling so that he did not attempt to reply; and by way of Jimmy's back fence and the widow Hanson's barn and corral, Bud got Eddie safe into the kitchen just as that determined lady was leaving home with a shotgun to help defend the honor of the town.
Bud took her by the shoulder and told her what he wanted her to do. “He's Marian's brother, and too young to be with that gang. So keep him here, safe and out of sight, until I come. Then I'll want to borrow your horse. Shall I tie the kid?”
“And me an able-bodied woman that could turn him acrost my knee?” Mrs. Hanson's eyes snapped.
“It's more likely the boy needs his breakfast. Get along with ye!”
Bud got along, slipping into the bank by the rear door and taking a hand in the desultory firing in the street. The sheriff had a couple of men ironed and one man down and the landlord of the hotel was doing a great deal of explaining that he had never seen the bandits before. Just by way of stimulating his memory Bud threw a bullet close to his heels, and the landlord thereupon grovelled and wept while he protested his innocence.
“He's a damn liar, sheriff,” Bud called across the hoof-scarred road. “He was talking to them about eleven o'clock last night. There were three that chased me into town, and they got him up out of bed to find out whether I'd stopped there. I hadn't, luckily for me. If I had he'd have showed them the way to my room, and he'd have had a dead boarder this morning. Keep right on shedding tears, you old cut-throat! I was sitting on the court-house porch, last night, and I heard every word that passed between you and the Catrockers!”
“I've been suspicioning here was where they got their information right along,” the sheriff commented, and slipped the handcuffs on the landlord. Investigation proved that Jeff Hall and his friends had suddenly decided that they had no business with the bank that day, and had mounted and galloped out of town when the first shot was fired. Which simplified matters a bit for Bud.
In Jimmy Lawton's kitchen he received his money, and when the prisoners were locked up he saved himself some trouble with the sheriff by hunting him up and explaining just why he had taken the Collier boy into custody.
“You know yourself he's just a kid, and if you send him over the road he's a criminal for life. I believe I can make a decent man of him. I want to try, anyway. So you just leave me this deputy's badge, and make my commission regular and permanent, and I'll keep an eye on him. Give me a paper so I can get a requisition and bring him back to stand trial, any time he breaks out. I'll be responsible for him, sheriff.”
“And who in blazes are you?” the sheriff inquired, with a grin to remove the sting of suspicion. “Name sounded familiar, too!”
“Bud Birnie of the Tomahawk, down near Laramie; Telegraph Laramie if you like and find out about me.
“Good Lord! I know the Tomahawk like a book!” cried the sheriff. “And you're Bob Birnie's boy! Say! D'you remember dragging into camp on the summit one time when you was about twelve years old—been hidin' out from Injuns about three days? Well, say! I'm the feller that packed you into the tent, and fed yuh when yuh come to. Remember the time I rode down and stayed over night at yore place, the time Bill Nye come down from his prospect hole up in the Snowies, bringin' word the Injuns was up again?” The sheriff grabbed Bud's hand and held it, shaking it up and down now and then to emphasize his words.
“Folks called you Buddy, then. I remember yuh, helpin' your mother cook 'n' wash dishes for us fellers. I kinda felt like I had a claim on yuh, Buddy.
“Say, Bill Nye, he's famous now. Writin' books full of jokes, and all that. He always was a comical cuss. Don't you remember how the bunch of us laughed at him when he drifted in about dark, him and four burros—that one he called Boomerang, that he named his paper after in Laramie? I've told lots of times what he said when he come stoopin' into the kitchen—how Colorou had sent him word that he'd give Bill just four sleeps to get outa there. An, 'Hell!' says Bill. 'I didn't need any sleeps!' An' we all turned to and cooked a hull beef yore dad had butchered that day—and Bill loaded up with the first chunks we had ready, and pulled his freight. He sure didn't need any sleeps—”
“Yes, you bet I remember. Jesse Cummings is your name. I sure ought to remember you, for you and your partner saved my life, I expect. I thought I'd seen you before, when you made me deputy. How about the kid? Can I have him? Lew Morris, the man that kept him on the wrong side of the law, is dead, I heard the doctor say. Jimmy got him when he pulled his gun.”
“Why, yes—if the town don't git onto me turnin' him loose, I guess you can have the kid for all I care. He didn't take any part in the holdup, did he Buddy?”
“He was over by the customers' desk when Lew started, to hold up the cashier.”
“Well I got enough prisoners so I guess he won't be missed. But you look out how yuh git him outa town. Better wait til kinda late to-night. I sure would like to see him git a show. Them two Collier kids never did have a square deal, far as I've heard. But be careful, youngster. I want another term off this county if I can get it. Don't go get me in bad.”
“I won't,” Bud promised and hurried back to Mrs. Hanson's house.
That estimable lady was patting butter in a wooden bowl when Bud went in. She turned and brushed a wisp of gray hair from her face with her fore arm and sh-shed him into silent stepping, motioning toward an inner room. Bud tiptoed and looked, saw Ed Collier fast asleep, swaddled in a blanket, and grinned his approval.
He made sure that the sleep was genuine, also that the blanket swaddling was efficient. Moreover, he discovered that Mrs. Hanson had very prudently attached a thin wire to the foot of the blanket cocoon, had passed the wire through a knot hole in a cupboard set into the partition, and to a sheep bell which she no doubt expected to ring upon provocation—such as a prisoner struggling to release his feet from a gray blanket fastened with many large safety pins.
“He went right to sleep, the minute I'd fed him and tied him snug,” Mrs. Hanson murmured. “He was a sulky divvle and wouldn't give a decent answer to me till he had his stomach filled. From the way he waded into the ham and eggs, I guess a square meal and him has been strangers for a long time.”
Sleep and Ed Collier must have been strangers also, for Bud attended the inquest of Lew Morris, visited afterwards with Sheriff Cummings, who was full of reminiscence and wanted to remind Bud of everything that had ever happened within his knowledge during the time when they had been neighbors with no more than forty miles or so between them. The sheriff offered Bud a horse and saddle, which he promised to deliver to the widow's corral after the citizens of Crater had gone to bed. And while he did not say that it would be Ed's horse, Bud guessed shrewdly that it would. After that, Bud carefully slit the lining of his boots tucked money and checks into the opening he had made, and did a very neat repair job.
All that while Ed Collier slept. When Bud returned for his supper Ed had evidently just awakened and was lying on his back biting his lip while he eyed the wire that ran from his feet to the parting of a pair of calico curtains. He did not see Bud, who was watching him through a crack in the door at the head of the bed. Ed was plainly puzzled at the wire and a bit resentful. He lifted his feet until the wire was well slackened, held them poised for a minute and deliberately brought them down hard on the floor.
The result was all that he could possibly have expected. Somewhere was a vicious clang, the rattle of a tin pan and the approaching outcry of a woman. Bud retreated to the kitchen to view the devastation and discovered that a sheep bell not too clean had been dislodged from a nail and dragged through one pan of milk into another, where it was rolling on its edge, stirring the cream that had risen. As Mrs. Hanson rushed in from the back yard, Bud returned to the angry captive's side.
“I've got him safe,” he soothed Mrs. Hanson and her shotgun. “He just had a nightmare. Perhaps that breakfast you fed him was too hearty. I'll look after him now, Mrs. Hanson. We won't be bothering you long, anyway.”
Mrs. Hanson was talking to herself when she went to her milk pans, and Bud released Eddie Collier, guessing how humiliating it must be to be a young fellow pinned into a blanket with safety pins, and knowing from certain experiences of his own that humiliation is quite as apt to breed trouble as any other emotion.
Eddie sat up on the edge of the bed and stared at Bud. His eyes were like Marian's in shape and color, but their expression was suspicion, defiance, and watchfulness blended into one compelling stare that spelled Fear. Or so Bud read it, having trapped animals of various grades ever since he had caught the “HAWNTOAD”, and seen that look many, many times in the eyes of his catch.
“How'd you like to take a trip with me—as a kind of a partner?” Bud began carelessly, pulling a splinter off the homemade bed for which Mrs. Hanson would not thank him—and beginning to whittle it to a sharp point aimlessly, as men have a way of doing when their minds are at work upon a problem which requires—much constructive thinking.
“Pardner in what?” Eddie countered sullenly.
“Pardner in what I am planning to do to make money. I can make money, you know—and stay on friendly terms with the sheriff, too. That's better than your bunch has been able to do. I don't mind telling you—it's stale news, I guess—that I cleaned up close to twelve thousand dollars in less than a month, off a working capital of three thoroughbred horses and about sixty dollars cash. And I'll add the knowledge that I was playing against men that would slip a cold deck if they played solitaire, they were so crooked. And if that doesn't recommend me sufficiently, I'll say I'm a deputy sheriff of Crater County, and Jesse Cummings knows my past. I want to hire you to go with me and make some money, and I'll pay you forty a month and five per cent bonus on my profits at the end of two years. The first year may not show any profits, but the second year will. How does it sound to you?”
He had been rolling a cigarette, and now he offered the “makings” to Ed, who accepted them mechanically, his eyes still staring hard at Bud. He glanced toward the door and the one little window where wild cucumber vines were thickly matted, and Bud interpreted his glance.
“Lew and another Catrocker—the one that tried to rope me down in the Sinks—are dead, and three more are in jail. Business won't be very brisk with the Catrock gang for a while.”
“If you're trying to bribe me into squealing on the rest, you're a damn fool,” said Eddie harshly. “I ain't the squealing kind. You can lead me over to jail first. I'd rather take my chances with the others.” He was breathing hard when he finished.
“Rather than work for me?” Bud sliced off the sharp point which he had so carefully whittled, and began to sharpen a new one. Eddie watched him fascinatedly.
“Rather than squeal on the bunch. There's no other reason in God's world why you'd make me an offer like that. I ain't a fool quite, if my head does run up to a peak.”
Bud chewed his lip, whittled, and finally threw the splinter away. When he turned toward Eddie his eyes were shiny.
“Kid, you're breaking your sister's heart, following this trail. I'd like to see you give her a chance to speak your name without blinking back tears. I'd like to see her smile all the way from her dimples to her eyes when she thinks of you. That's why I made the offer—that and because I think you'd earn your wages.”
Eddie looked at him, looked away, staring vacantly at the wall. His eyelashes were blinking very fast, his lip began to tremble. “You—I—I never wanted to—I ain't worth saving—oh, hell! I never had a chance before—” He dropped sidewise on the bed, buried his face in his arms and sobbed hoarsely, like the boy he was.