CHAPTER XVIITHE SEARCH
THE face of Squawtooth Canby was drawn and haggard as he rode his big black into the Mangan-Hatton camp and dismounted before the office tent.
“Tell Mr. Mangan I wanta see him, will ye?” he asked plaintively of the assistant bookkeeper, who just then appeared around the corner of the tent.
“He’s up in the cut, Mr. Canby,” informed the young man. “I’ll phone up for him.”
“Do that,” said Canby. “Tell ’im I’ll be ridin’ to meet ’im.”
He rode off toward the calico buttes, and soon saw the contractor riding toward him from the fifty-foot rock cut in the saddle.
Hunt Mangan’s face was serious, too, as he unsmilingly rode up and gripped the cowman’s hand.
“You’ve heard about it, o’ course, Hunt?” Squawtooth began.
“Yes,” Mangan replied.
“I’ve come to ask a favor of ye,” said Squawtooth. “Me and my boys and the dep’ty sheriffs was out all night scourin’ the desert, and even made ’er up into the mountains a ways. Ain’t seenhide ner hair of ’em, and ain’t even struck their trail. The boys are restin’ up a bit at Squawtooth now; but I can’t rest with her out there in the wilderness somewhere, in that fella’s clutches. There’ll be murder when I find ’em, Hunter. But I come to ask ye if ye could le’ me have some men to help run ’em down. That is, till we c’n get the desert rats together and get at the business right. I’ll pay the men their reg’lar wages, o’ course, and’ll give the man that locates ’em five hundred dollars to slip in his jeans. And, o’ course, I’ll make it right with you, Hunt, for disturbin’ the course o’ yer work.”
“It’s all made right with me this moment, Mr. Canby,” Mangan feelingly told him. “I was going to look you up and offer my services as soon as I attended a pressing little matter up in the cut. I’m sorry you were obliged to hunt me up.
“Now, I’m going to give you twenty-five men. I’ve been looking into the matter, and can scout up that many who claim they can ride. We haven’t many saddles, and our stock’s not fast nor fit for such work; but we’ll strap blankets and sacks on some of our lightest mules and do the best we can.”
“I thank ye,” Squawtooth said simply. “I already sent word up in the mountains for Martin and Toddlebike to fetch down a string o’ hosses, and they oughta get in some time late this afternoon. We got a lot o’ saddles at the ranch, butmighty few mounts this time o’ year. I’ve phoned and sent messengers all over the desert hereabouts. By evenin’ at the latest we oughta have a hundred mounted men on their trail. What d’ye think o’ the proposition, anyway, Hunt? I’m plumb floored—can’t think, it seems.”
The contractor was careful with his reply.
“My advice, Mr. Canby,” he said, “would be for you not to take this matter too seriously. Your daughter——”
“Not take ’em seriously! Why, man, ain’t my only daughter—my poor, innocent, inexperienced little child—out there somewhere with that ruffian! Didn’t he coerce her into turnin’ him loose and gettin’ horses and runnin’ away with him? Serious—why——”
“Just a moment,” interposed Mangan. “I am positive that Falcon the Flunky is not a ruffian.”
“Why, you don’t even know his name, man! Didn’t him and that big-eared Jasper with the chop-suey face hold up the stage? And then spend the money fer mules an’ tools, and have the nerve to come right out here with ’em. Why——”
“Just a moment again, please. Doesn’t it strike you that both Falcon the Flunky and Halfaman Daisy are far too shrewd to do such a stupid thing as you have suggested?
“Put yourself in their shoes, Mr. Canby. If you had stolen fourteen thousand dollars’ worth ofgold from the stage, and killed the driver, would you buy mules and harness and wheelers and return to your job on the desert? It strikes me as a bit ridiculous.”
“Shrewd! Yes! That’s jest the point. Them two knew they’d likely be caught on the inside. A man with saddle-pocket ears like that fella Daisy’s got couldn’t get away from the constable down to Opaco. Andhecan’t stop a dog fight! So they was jest clever enough to fog it right back here; and they says to themselves: ‘We’ll go back and go to work again, and nobody’ll ever suspicion us then.’”
“And the mules and equipment?”
“Well”—Squawtooth grew hesitant—“they’d think up some way to explain that. How did that boy Daisy explain it, anyway? I never heard.”
“He said that Falcon the Flunky had loaned him the money to buy them—six thousand seven hundred dollars—and that he drew the amount from a Los Angeles bank.”
“A likely yarn! A flunky drawin’ that amount from the bank! And how ’bout the pink necktie?”
“Daisy admitted it to be his. Said he’d used it as the finding of it indicated. Said he and The Falcon had been in the mountains looking for mules on pasture there, and had got lost and eventually given up the search for them.”
“Oh, say! And you swallowed that, Hunt!”
“It’s as easily downed as the idea that those two held up the stage, then deliberately came back here to return to work—mules or no mules.”
“I can’t agree.”
“In defending this pair,” said Hunt Mangan, “you may not know that I am passing up an opportunity to further my own wishes, Mr. Canby. But my sense of justice and the proportion of things makes me say what I have said.”
“What d’ye mean by that?”
“If I could think Falcon the Flunky guilty—and help to prove him guilty—I’m sure your daughter would have nothing more to do with him. And that is what I selfishly want. I love Manzanita, Mr. Canby.”
The fierce blue eyes of Squawtooth filled unexpectedly.
“I know that, Hunt,” he said. “I—I’m glad. She’s young and crazy with the heat—plumb loco!—that’s all’s the matter with the girl. Lack o’ years and experience. I’d like fer ye to marry her, Hunt, once she gets outa this scrape. She’s just a kid without a mother—she don’t savvy. But I’m scared—Lord, I’m scared! That low-down c’y-ote will——”
“Again I can’t agree,” Mangan stopped him. “Mr. Canby, I’ve handled men as you’ve handled cattle. I’ve employed hundreds and hundreds—no, thousands and thousands. I’m naturally a prettygood judge of them. This Falcon the Flunky is no reprobate, I’m positive.”
“What is he, then?”
“That I can’t say. I know no more about him than you do—except instinctively.”
“But didn’t he run away with my girl?”
“I am inclined to the belief,” returned Mangan, with a little smile, “that your girl ran away with him.”
“She did, o’ course—seein’s she was outside the closet and he was in it, tied. She deceived me, Hunt. She made me think she was agin’ The Falcon, and agreed to what I was goin’ to do. Then I’m no more’n gone when—bingo!—she turns ’im loose, and together they fork saddles and fogs it. She done it, o’ course, but he’d pulled the wool over her eyes and made ’er.”
“I can’t blame him,” Hunt objected. “Things looked a little hot when you and the deputies and your vaqueros started for Squawtooth. I guess I’d have hit the trail myself, under the circumstances.”
“Maybe; maybe. O’ course he’d protect ’imself, guilty or not guilty. Well, we’ll get ’im and see, anyway—that is, if the desert folks don’t get too rambunctious and fix ’im so he can’t talk before we get a chance at ’im. But, Hunter, this won’t make any difference in yer feelin’s toward the girl, will it?”
“Not the slightest,” Mangan told him. “But I’ve given up hope. Falcon the Flunky is her choice, I know. She has decided.”
“Oh, no, no! She’ll ferget all that.”
Mangan shook his head. “She’s a steadfast little body,” he said. “Girls like her don’t forget—don’t shift about in their affections from one to another. She’s too simple—too sincere for that. No; I’m out of it.”
Canby tried to encourage him, but he remained firm in the belief that The Falcon had won Manzanita’s affections. Squawtooth left him within half an hour and went about his arrangements for a big, concerted effort to hunt down the missing couple. As yet no word had come from the sheriff at the county seat, but it was known that Halfaman Daisy had been safely lodged in the jail at Opaco, awaiting the sheriff’s orders. By four o’clock Mart and Toddlebike rode in from the mountains with a string of saddle stock. By four-thirty the hundred that Squawtooth had predicted would gather were at the ranch, awaiting the signal to start.
Though little could be done during the remaining daylight of that twenty-four hours, they moved off soon and spread out fanwise over the desert, searching for a trail or clews. They picked up the trail that evening, and long before darkness came had followed it for many miles.
Night overtook them, and they went into thefoothills to camp close to water. Next morning, as early as they could see, they were away again. They trailed the roan and the pinto mare into the mountains, and eventually found the unsaddled horses, still showing evidences of their hard trip, in the meadow on the mountaintop. But here the trail played out abruptly.
On every side of the meadow they searched through the timber diligently, but found absolutely nothing to signify which way the fugitives had gone after deserting their horses.
Then at dusk some one turned over a pile of brush and found the saddles.
It was too late to proceed farther that night, so they repaired to a mountain lake to camp until morning. Meantime, Indian trailers were on the way to them from beyond Opaco—experts whom the sheriff had often employed, sharp-eyed aborigines who could detect signs of a person’s progress where a white man would see nothing.
These arrived at dark. And in the event that they should fail, Squawtooth had sent a messenger to the resorts on the coast side of the mountains to telephone the sheriff for the county bloodhounds—highly bred dogs that had been known to pick up a man’s trail twenty hours old.
But this night came the expected windstorm.