32
It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raining––a dismal kind of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the street from the station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the train-despatchers. After an hour of indecision, marked by alternative fits of making up and unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to bed, into the telegraph-room, where black-haired Dick Grady sat at a key.
“How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat?” Grady asked at once.
“What fight?” demanded de Spain perfunctorily.
“The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat, eh, Henry?”
“What Morgan was in it?”
“Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there anything started when you left?”
“I didn’t hear of anything,” responded de Spain. But his indifference to the subject was marked.
“What’s the matter?” demanded the operator. “Aren’t you well to-night?”
“Perfectly.”
“Sleepy?”
33
De Spain roused himself. “Dick, have you got a Sleepy Cat wire open?”
“What do you want?”
“Tell Jeffries I’ll take that Thief River stage job.”
34CHAPTER IIITHE SPANISH SINKS
From a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down into the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In two extended groups, separated by a narrow but well-defined break, they constitute a magnificent rampart, named by Spaniards the Superstition Mountains, and they stretch beyond the horizon to the south, along the vast depression known locally as the Spanish Sinks. The break on the eastern side of the chain comes about twenty miles southwest of Sleepy Cat, and is marked on the north by the most striking, and in some respects most majestic peak in the range––Music Mountain; the break itself has taken the name of its earliest white settlers, and is called Morgan’s Gap. No railroad has ever yet penetrated this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines have been opened along these mountains, and are still being opened; but it lies to-day in much of the condition of primitive35savagery, and lawlessness, as the word is conventionally accepted, that obtained when the first rush was made for the Thief River gold-fields.
It is not to be understood that law is an unknown equation between Calabasas and Thief River, or even between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat. But as statute law it suffers so many infractions as to be hardly recognizable in the ordinary sense. Business is done in this country; but business must halt everywhere with its means of communication, and in the Music Mountain country it still rests on the facilities of a stage line. The stage line is a big and vigorous affair, a perfectly organized railroad adjunct with the best horses, the best wagons, the best freighting outfits that money can supply.
But this is by no means, in its civilizing effect, a railroad. A railroad drives lawlessness before it––the Music Mountain country still leans on stage-line law. The bullion wagons still travel the difficult roads. They look for safety to their armed horsemen; the four and six horse stages look to the armed guard, the wayfarer must look to his horse––and it should be a good one; the mountain rancher to his rifle, the cattle thief to the moonless night, the bandit to his wits, the gunman to his holster: these include practically36all of the people that travel the Spanish Sinks, except the Morgans and the Mormons. The Mormons looked to the Morgans for safety; the Morgans to themselves.
For many a year the Morgans have been almost overlords of the Music Mountain country. They own, or have laid claim to, an extended territory in the mountains, a Spanish grant. One of the first mountain Morgans married a Spanish girl, and during the early days, when the Morgans were not fighting some one out of court, they were fighting some one in court on their endless and involved titles.
But whether they won domain in lawsuit or lost it, one pearl of their holdings they never submitted to the jurisdiction of any tribunal other than their own arms. Morgan’s Gap opens south of Music Mountain, less than ten miles west of Calabasas. It is a narrow valley where valleys are more precious than water––for the mountain valley means water––and this in a country where water is much more precious than life. And some of the best of this land at the foot of Music Mountain was the maternal inheritance of Nan Morgan.
At Calabasas the Thief River stage line maintains completely equipped relay barns. They are over twenty miles from Sleepy Cat, but nearly fifty the other way from Thief River. The37unequal division is not due to what was desirable when the route was laid out, but to the limit of what man could do in the never-conquered desert. This supplies at Calabasas a spring, to tempt the unwary traveller still farther within its clutches. A large number of horses are kept at Calabasas, and the barn crews are quartered there in a company barrack. Along the low ridges and in the shallow depressions about Calabasas Spring there are a very few widely separated shacks, once built by freighters and occupied by squatter outlaws to be within reach of water. This gives the vicinity something of the appearance of a poorly sustained prairie-dog town. And except these shacks, there is nothing between Calabasas, Thief River, and the mountains except sunshine and alkali. I say nothing, meaning especially nothing, in the way of a human habitation.
But there is a queer inn at Calabasas. A pioneer Thief River prospector, mad with thirst, fought his way across the Sinks to the Calabasas Spring, and wandered thence one day into Sleepy Cat. In a delirium of gratitude he ordered built at Calabasas what he termed a hotel, to provide at that forbidden oasis for the luxurious comfort of future thirst-mad wanderers. It was built of lumber hauled a thousand miles, and equipped with luxuries brought three thousand––a fearsome,38rambling structure, big enough for all the prospectors in the Rocky Mountains.
Having built this monument, creditable to his good-will rather than his good sense, the unfortunate man went really mad, and had the sorry distinction of being the first person to be put in the insane asylum at Bear Dance. It had never occurred to him that any one had any title to, or that any madder man would lay any claim to, so accursed a spot as Calabasas. But old Duke Morgan announced in due time that the hotel was built on Morgan land, and belonged to the Morgans. Nobody outside a madhouse could be found to dispute with Duke Morgan a title to land within ten miles of Morgan’s Gap, and none but a lunatic would attempt to run a hotel at Calabasas, anyway. However, a solution of the difficulty was found: Duke’s colorable title gave the cue to his retainers in the Gap, and in time they carted away piecemeal most of the main building, leaving for years the kitchen and the servants’ quarters adjoining it to owls, lizards, scorpions, and spiders.
Meantime, to tap the fast-developing gold-fields, the freight route and stages had been put in, and the barns built at Calabasas. A need naturally developed for at least one feature of a hotel––a barroom. A newer lunatic answered the39call of civilization––a man only mildly insane stocked the kitchen range with liquors, and fitted up in a crude way the ice-boxes––where there never was ice––serving pantries, and other odd nooks for sleeping quarters. Here the thirsty stage passenger, little suspecting the origin of the facilities offered him for a drink, may choose strong drink instead of water––or rather, he is restricted to strong drink where water might once have been had––the spring being piped now half a mile to the barns for the horses. And this shack, as it is locally called, run by a Mexican, is still the inn at Calabasas. And it continues to contribute, through its stirring annals, to the tragic history of the continental divide.
It need hardly be said that Duke Morgan laid claim also to the Calabasas Spring. But on this the company, being a corporation, fought him. And after somewhat less of argument and somewhat more of siege and shooting, a compromise was reached whereby the company bought annually at an exorbitant price all of Duke, Satterlee, and Vance Morgan’s hay, and as the Morgans had small rivers of water in the mountains, and never, except when crowded, drank water, amodus vivendiwas arranged between the claimants. The only sufferer through this was the Mexican publican, who found every Morgan his landlord,40and demanding from him tithes over the bar. But force is usually met with cunning, and such Morgans as would not pay in advance at Calabasas, when thirsty, often found the half-mad publican out of goods.
The Calabasas Inn stood in one of the loneliest canyons of the whole seventy miles between Sleepy Cat and Thief River; it looked in its depletion to be what it was, a sombre, mysterious, sun, wind, and alkali beaten pile, around which no one by any chance ever saw a sign of life. It was a ruin like those pretentious deserted structures sometimes seen in frontier towns––relics of the wide-open days, which stand afterward, stark and sombre, to serve as bats’ nests or blind-pigs. The inn at Calabasas looked its part––a haunt of rustlers, a haven of nameless men, a refuge of road-agents.
The very first time de Spain made an inspection trip over the stage line with Lefever, he was conscious of the sinister air of this lonely building. He and Lefever had ridden down from the barn, while their horses were being changed, to look at the place. De Spain wanted to look over everything connected in any way, however remotely, with the operation of his wagons, and this joint, Lefever had told him, was where the freighters and drivers were not infrequently robbed of41their money. It was here that one of their own men, Bill McCarty, once “scratched a man’s neck” with a knife––which, Bill explained, he just “happened” to have in his hand––for cheating at cards. Lefever pointed out the unlucky gambler’s grave as he and de Spain rode into the canyon toward the inn.
Not a sign of any sort was displayed about the habitation. No man was invited to enter, no man warned to keep out, none was anywhere in sight. The stage men dismounted, threw their lines, pushed open the front door of the house and entered a room of perhaps sixteen by twenty feet. It had been the original barroom. A long, high, elaborately carved mahogany bar, as much out of keeping as it possibly could be with its surroundings, stretched across the farther side of the room. The left end, as they faced the bar, was brought around to escape a small window opening on a court or patio to the rear of the room. Back of the bar itself, about midway, a low door in the bare wall gave entrance to a rear room. Aside from this big, queer-looking piece of mahogany, the low window at the left end of it, and the low door at the back, the room presented nothing but walls. Two windows flanking the front door helped to light it, but not a mirror, picture, chair, table, bottle, or glass was to be seen. De Spain42covered every feature of the interior at a glance. “Quiet around here, John,” he remarked casually.
“This is the quietest place in the Rocky Mountains most of the time. But when it is noisy, believe me, it is noisy. Look at the bullet-holes in the walls.”
“The old story,” remarked de Spain, inspecting with mild-mannered interest the punctured plastering, “they always shoot high.”
He walked over to the left end of the bar, noting the hard usage shown by the ornate mahogany, and spreading his hands wide open, palms down, on the face of it, glanced at the low window on his left, opening on the gravelled patio. He peered, in the semidarkness, at the battered door behind the bar.
“Henry,” observed Lefever, “if you are looking for a drink, it would only be fair, as well as politic, to call the Mexican.”
“Thank you, John, I’m not looking for one. And I know you don’t drink.”
“You want to know, then, where the Mexican keeps his gun?” hazarded Lefever.
“Not especially. I just want to know–––”
“Everything.”
“What’s behind the bar. That’s natural, isn’t it?”
Very complete fittings and compartments told43of the labor spent in preparing this inner side for the convenience of the bartender and the requirements of exacting patrons, but nothing in the way of equipment, not so much as a pewter spoon, lay anywhere visible.
De Spain, turning, looked all around the room again. “You wouldn’t think,” he said slowly, “from looking at the place there was a road-agent within a thousand miles.”
“You wouldn’t think, from riding through the Superstition Mountains there was a lion within a thousand miles. I’ve hunted them for eleven years, and I never saw one except when the dogs drove ’em out; but for eleven years they saw me. If we haven’t been seen coming in here by some of this Calabasas bunch, I miss my guess,” declared Lefever cheerfully.
The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. “Come in, Pedro,” he cried reassuringly, “come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro,” he continued encouragingly, as the swarthy publican, low-browed and sullen, emerged very deliberately from the inner darkness into the obscurity of the barroom, and bent his one good eye searchingly on de Spain. “This,” Lefever’s left hand lay familiarly on the back of44de Spain’s shoulder, “is our new manager, Mr. Henry de Spain. Henry, shake hands with Mexico.”
This invitation to shake hands seemed an empty formality. De Spain never shook hands with anybody; at least if he did so, he extended, through habit long inured, his left hand, with an excuse for the soreness of his right. Pedro did not even bat his remaining eye at the invitation. The situation, as Lefever facetiously remarked, remained about where it was before he spoke, and nothing daunted, he asked de Spain what he would drink. De Spain sidestepped again by asking for a cigar. Lefever, professing he would not drink alone, called for cigarettes. While Pedro produced them, from nowhere apparently, as a conjurer picks cards out of the air, the sound of galloping horses came through the open door. A moment later three men walked, single file, into the room. De Spain stood at the left end of the bar, and Lefever introduced him to Gale Morgan, to David Sassoon, and to Sassoon’s crony, Deaf Sandusky, as the new stage-line manager. The later arrivals lined up before the bar, Sandusky next to Lefever and de Spain, so he could hear what was said. Pedro from his den produced two queer-looking bottles and a supply of glasses.
“De Spain,” Gale Morgan began bluntly, “one45of our men was put off a stage of yours last week by Frank Elpaso.” He spoke without any preliminary compliments, and his heavy voice was bellicose.
De Spain, regarding him undisturbed, answered after a little pause: “Elpaso told me he put a man off his stage last week for fighting.”
“No,” contradicted Morgan loudly, “not for fighting. Elpaso was drunk.”
“What’s the name of the man Elpaso put off, John?” asked de Spain, looking at Lefever.
Morgan hooked his thumb toward the man standing at his side. “Here’s the man right here, Dave Sassoon.”
Sassoon never looked a man in the face when the man looked at him, except by implication; it was almost impossible, without surprising him, to catch his eyes with your eyes. He seemed now to regard de Spain keenly, as the latter, still attending to Morgan’s statement, replied: “Elpaso tells a pretty straight story.”
“Elpaso couldn’t tell a straight story if he tried,” interjected Sassoon.
“I have the statement of three other passengers; they confirm Elpaso. According to them, Sassoon––” de Spain looked straight at the accused, “was drunk and abusive, and kept trying to put some of the other passengers off. Finally46he put his feet in the lap of Pumperwasser, our tank and windmill man, and Pumperwasser hit him.”
Morgan, stepping back from the bar, waved his hand with an air of finality toward his inoffensive companion: “Here is Sassoon, right here––he can tell the whole story.”
“Those fellows were miners,” muttered Sassoon. His utterance was broken, but he spoke fast. “They’ll side with the guards every time against a cattleman.”
“There’s only one fair thing to do, de Spain,” declared Morgan. He looked severely at de Spain: “Discharge Elpaso.”
De Spain, his hands resting on the bar, drew one foot slowly back. “Not on the showing I have now,” he said. “One of the passengers who joined in the statement is Jeffries, the railroad superintendent at Sleepy Cat.”
“Expect a railroad superintendent to tell the truth about a Calabasas man?” demanded Sassoon.
“I should expect him at least to be sober,” retorted de Spain.
“Sassoon,” interposed Morgan belligerently, “is a man whose word can always be depended on.”
“To convey his meaning,” intervened Lefever47cryptically. “Of course, I know,” he asserted, earnest to the point of vehemence. “Every one in Calabasas has the highest respect for Sassoon. That is understood. And,” he added with as much impressiveness as if he were talking sense, “everybody in Calabasas would be sorry to see Sassoon put off a stage. But Sassoon is off: that is the situation. We are sorry. If it occurs again–––”
“What do you mean?” thundered Morgan, resenting the interference. “De Spain is the manager, isn’t he? What we want to know is, what you are going to do about it?” he demanded, addressing de Spain again.
“There is nothing more to be done,” returned de Spain composedly. “I’ve already told Elpaso if Sassoon starts another fight on a stage to put him off again.”
Morgan’s fist came down on the bar. “Look here, de Spain! You come from Medicine Bend, don’t you? Well, you can’t bully Music Mountain men––understand that.”
“Any time you have a real grievance, Morgan, I’ll be glad to consider it,” said de Spain. “When one of your men is drunk and quarrelsome he will be put off like any other disturber. That we can’t avoid. Public stages can’t be run any other way.”
48
“All right,” retorted Morgan. “If you take that tack for your new management, we’ll see how you get along running stages down in this country.”
“We will run them peaceably, just as long as we can,” smiled de Spain. “We will get on with everybody that gives us a chance.”
Morgan pointed a finger at him. “I give you a chance, de Spain, right now. Will you discharge Elpaso?”
“No.”
Morgan almost caught his breath at the refusal. But de Spain could be extremely blunt, and in the parting shots between the two he gave no ground.
“Jeffries put me here to stop this kind of rowdyism on the stages,” he said to Lefever on their way back to the barn. “This is a good time to begin. And Sassoon and Gale Morgan are good men to begin with,” he added.
As the horses of the two men emerged from the canyon they saw a slender horsewoman riding in toward the barn from the Music Mountain trail. She stopped in front of McAlpin, the barn boss, who stood outside the office door. McAlpin, the old Medicine Bend barnman, had been promoted from Sleepy Cat by the new manager. De Spain recognized the roan pony, but, aside49from that, a glance at the figure of the rider, as she sat with her back to him, was enough to assure him of Nan Morgan. He spurred ahead fast enough to overhear a request she was making of McAlpin to mail a letter for her. She also asked McAlpin, just as de Spain drew up, whether the down stage had passed. McAlpin told her it had. De Spain, touching his hat, spoke: “I am going right up to Sleepy Cat. I’ll mail your letter if you wish.”
She looked at him in some surprise, and then glanced toward Lefever, who now rode up. De Spain was holding out his hand for the letter. His eyes met Nan’s, and each felt the moment was a sort of challenge. De Spain, a little self-conscious under her inspection, was aware only of her rather fearless eyes and the dark hair under her fawn cowboy hat.
“Thank you,” she responded evenly. “If the stage is gone I will hold it to add something.” So saying, she tucked the letter inside her blouse and spoke to her pony, which turned leisurely down the road.
“I’m trying to get acquainted with your country to-day,” returned de Spain, managing with his knee to keep his own horse moving alongside Nan as she edged away.
She seemed disinclined to answer, but the silence50and the awkwardness of his presence drew at length a dry disclaimer: “This is not my country.”
“I understood,” exclaimed de Spain, following his doubtful advantage, “you lived out this way.”
“I live near Music Mountain,” returned Nan somewhat ungraciously, using her own skill at the same time to walk her horse away from her unwelcome companion.
“I’ve heard of Music Mountain,” continued de Spain, urging his lagging steed. “I’ve often wanted to get over there to hunt.”
Nan, without speaking, ruthlessly widened the distance between the two. De Spain unobtrusively spurred his steed to greater activity. “You must have a great deal of game around you. Do you hunt?” he asked.
He knew she was famed as a huntress, but he could make no headway whatever against her studied reserve. He watched her hands, graceful even in heavy gloves; he noticed the neck-piece of her tan blouse, and liked the brown throat and the chin set so resolutely against him. He surmised that she perhaps felt some contempt for him because she had outshot him, and he continued to ask about game, hoping for a chance in some far-off time to redeem his marksmanship before her and giving her every possible chance to51invite him to try the hunting around Music Mountain.
She was deaf to the broadest hints; and when at length she excused herself and turned her pony from the Sleepy Cat road into the Morgan Gap trail, de Spain had been defeated in every attempt to arouse the slightest interest in anything he had said. But, watching with regret, at the parting, the trim lines of her figure as she dashed away on the desert trail, seated as if a part of her spirited horse, he felt only a fast-rising resolution to attempt again to break through her stubborn reticence and know her better.
52CHAPTER IVFIRST BLOOD AT CALABASAS
Nothing more than de Spain’s announcement that he would sustain his stage-guards was necessary to arouse a violent resentment at Calabasas and among the Morgan following. Some of the numerous disaffected were baiting the stages most of the time. They bullied the guards, fought the passengers, and fomented discontent among the drivers. In all Thief River disturbances, whether a raid on cattlemen, a stage hold-up, a gun fight, or a tedious war of words, the Calabasas men, sometimes apparently for the mere maintaining of prestige, appeared to take leading rôles. After de Spain’s declaration the grievance against Elpaso was made a general one along the line. His stage was singled out and ridden at times both by Sandusky and Logan––the really dangerous men of the Spanish Sinks––and by Gale Morgan and Sassoon to stir up trouble.
But old Frank Elpaso was far from being a fool. A fight with any one of these men meant53that somebody would be killed, and no one could tell just who, Elpaso shrewdly reckoned, until the roll-call at the end of it. He therefore met truculence with diplomacy, threatening looks with flattery, and hard words with a long story. Moreover, all Calabasas knew that Elpaso, if he had to, would fight, and that the eccentric guard was not actually to be cornered with impunity. Even Logan, who, like Sandusky, was known to be without fear and without mercy, felt at least a respect for Elpaso’s shortened shotgun, and stopped this side actual hostilities with him. When the June clean-up of the No. 2 Thief River mine came through––one hundred and six thousand dollars in gold bullion under double guard––and a Calabasas contingent of night-riders tried to stop the treasure, rumor along the Sinks had it that Elpaso’s slugs, delivered at the right moment, were responsible for Deaf Sandusky’s long illness at Bear Dance, and the failure of the subsequent masked attack on the up stage.
Sassoon, however, owing to the indignity now put upon him, also nourished a particular grievance against the meditative guard, and his was one not tempered either by prudence or calculation. His chance came one night when Elpaso had unwisely allowed himself to be drawn into a card game at Calabasas Inn. Elpaso was notoriously54a stickler for a square deal at cards. He was apparently the only man at Calabasas that hoped for such a thing, and certainly the only one so rash as to fight for it––yet he always did. A dispute on this occasion found him without a friend in the room. Sassoon reached for him with a knife.
McAlpin was the first to get the news at the barn. He gave first aid to the helpless guard, and, without dreaming he could be got to a surgeon alive, rushed him in a light wagon to the hospital at Sleepy Cat, where it was said that he must have more lives than a wildcat. Sassoon, not caring to brave de Spain’s anger in town, went temporarily into hiding. A second surgeon was brought from Medicine Bend, and heroic efforts were put forth to nurse again into life the feeble spark the assassin had left in the unlucky guard.
Word of this cutting reached de Spain at Thief River. He started for Calabasas, learned there during a brief stop what he could––which was, of course, next to nothing––of the affray, and posted on to Sleepy Cat.
A conference was held in Jeffries’s office. De Spain, Lefever, and some of the division staff discussed the situation raised by the affair. De Spain was instructed to see that Sassoon was brought in and made an example of for the benefit55of his Calabasas friends. Accordingly, while the guard’s life hung in the balance, the sheriff, Jim Druel, was despatched after Sassoon. A great deal of inquiry, much riding, and a lot of talk on Druel’s part accomplished nothing.
Lefever spoiled with impatience to get after Sassoon. “The only way we’ll ever get one of that gang is to go for him ourselves,” said he. The sheriff’s campaign did collapse. Sassoon could not be found although rumor was notorious that he continued to haunt Calabasas. Lefever’s irritation grew. “Never mind, John,” counselled de Spain, “forget about wanting him. Sometime one of us will stumble on him, and when we do we’ll shackle him.” The precaution was taken, meantime, to secure a warrant for the missing man, together with authority for either of the two to serve it. Elpaso, in the end, justified his old reputation by making a recovery––haltingly, it is true, and with perilous intervals of sinking, but a recovery.
It was while he still lay in the hospital and hope was very low that de Spain and Lefever rode, one hot morning, into Calabasas and were told by McAlpin that Sassoon had been seen within five minutes at the inn. To Lefever the news was like a bubbling spring to a thirsty man. His face beamed, he tightened his belt, shook out56his gun, and looked with benevolent interest on de Spain, who stood pondering. “If you will stay right here, Henry,” he averred convincingly, “I will go over and get Sassoon.”
The chief stage-guard, Bob Scott, the Indian, was in the barn. He smiled at Lefever’s enthusiasm. “Sassoon,” said he, “is slippery.”
“You’d better let us go along and see you do it,” suggested de Spain, who with the business in hand grew thoughtful.
“Gentlemen, I thank you,” protested Lefever, raising one hand in deprecation, the other resting lightly on his holster. “We still have somelittlereputation to maintain along the Sinks. Don’t let us make it aposseforSassoon.” No one opposed him further, and he rode away alone.
“It won’t be any trouble for John to bring Sassoon in,” murmured Scott, who spoke with a smile and in the low tone and deliberate manner of the Indian, “if he can find him.”
With de Spain, Scott remained in front of the barn, saddled horses in hand. They could see nothing of the scene of action, and de Spain was forced in idleness to curb his impatience. Lefever rode down to the inn without seeing a living thing anywhere about it. When he dismounted in front he thought he heard sounds within the barroom, but, pushing open the door and looking57circumspectly into the room before entering, he was surprised to find it empty.
There was something, under the circumstances and in the stimulus of danger, almost uncanny in the silence, the absence of any life whatever about the place. Lefever walked cautiously inside; there seemed no need of caution. No one was there to confront or oppose him. Surveying the interior with a rapid glance, he walked to the left end of the bar and, gun in readiness, looked apprehensively behind it. Not so much as a strainer was to be seen underneath. He noticed, however, that the sash of the low window on his left, which looked into the patio, was open, and two heel-marks in the hard clay suggested that a man might have jumped through. Whether these were Sassoon’s heels or another’s, Lefever decided they constituted his clew, and, running out of the front door, he sprang into his saddle and rode to where he could signal de Spain and Scott to come up.
He told his story as they joined him, and the three returned to the inn. Scott rode directly to the rear. Lefever took de Spain in to the bar, showed him the open sash, and pointed to the heel-prints. De Spain stepped through the window, Lefever following. An examination showed the slide of a spur-rowel behind one heel-mark and indications of a hasty jump.
58
While they bent over the signs that seemed to connect their quarry with the place, a door opened across the courtyard, and Pedro appeared. He was curiously dense to all inquiries, and Lefever, convinced that Sassoon was somewhere at hand, revenged himself by searching the place.
In the dark kitchen a very old woman and a slovenly girl were at work. No one else was to be found anywhere.
De Spain, who was the more experienced tracker, thought he could follow the footprints to the arched opening across the patio. This was closed only by a swinging gate, and afforded easy escape from a pursuer. At some distance outside this gate, as de Spain threw it open, sat Bob Scott on his horse. De Spain made inquiry of Scott. No one had been seen. Returning to Lefever, who, greatly chagrined, had convinced himself that Sassoon had got away, de Spain called Scott into the patio.
A better tracker than either of his companions, Scott after a minute confirmed their belief that Sassoon must have escaped by the window. He then took the two men out to where some one, within a few minutes, had mounted a horse and galloped off.
“But where has he gone?” demanded Lefever,59pointing with his hand. “There is the road both ways for three miles.” Scott nodded toward the snow-capped peak of Music Mountain. “Over to Morgan’s, most likely. He knows no one would follow him into the Gap. Just for fun, now, let’s see.”
Dismounting, the Indian scrutinized the hoof-prints where the horse had stood. Getting into the saddle again, he led the way, bending over his horse’s neck and stopping frequently to read the trail, half a mile out along the Gap road, until he could once more readily point out the hoof-prints to his companions. “That is Sassoon,” he announced. “I know the heels. And I know he rides this horse; it belongs to Gale Morgan. Sassoon,” Scott smiled sympathetically on Lefever, “is half-way to Morgan’s Gap.”
“After him!” cried Lefever hotly. De Spain looked inquiringly at the guard. Scott shook his head. “That would be all right, but there’s two other Calabasas men in the Gap this afternoon it wouldn’t be nice to mix with––Deaf Sandusky and Harvey Logan.”
“We won’t mix with them,” suggested de Spain.
“If we tackle Sassoon, they’ll mix with us,” explained Scott. He reflected a moment. “They always stay at Gale Morgan’s or Duke’s. We might sneak Sassoon out without their getting on.60Sassoon knows he is safe in the Gap; but he’ll hide even after he gets there. He takes two precautions for every other man’s one. Sassoon is a wonder at hiding out. I’ve got the Thief River run this afternoon–––”
De Spain looked at him. “Well?”
Scott’s face softened into the characteristic smile––akin to a quiet grin––that it often wore. “If I didn’t have to go through to-day, and the three of us could get to the Gap before daylight to-morrow morning, I would give Sassoon a run for his money in spite of the other fellows.”
“Don’t take your run this afternoon,” directed de Spain. “Telephone Sleepy Cat for a substitute. Suppose we go back, get something to eat, and you two ride singly over toward the Gap this afternoon; lie outside under cover to see whether Sassoon or his friends leave before night––there’s only one way out of the place, they tell me. Then I will join you, and we’ll ride in before daylight, and perhaps catch him while everybody is asleep.”
“If you do,” predicted Scott, in his deliberate way of expressing a conclusion, “I think you’ll get him.”
It was so arranged.
61CHAPTER VROUNDING UP SASSOON
De Spain joined his associates at dark outside the Gap. Neither Sassoon nor his friends had been seen. The night was still, the sky cloudless, and as the three men with a led horse rode at midnight into the mountains, the great red heart of the Scorpion shone afire in the southern sky. Spreading out when they rode between the mountain walls, they made their way without interruption silently toward their rendezvous, an aspen grove near which Purgatoire Creek makes its way out of the Gap and, cutting a deep gash along the edge of the range for a hundred miles, empties into the Thief.
Scott was the first to reach the trees. The little grove spreads across a slope half a mile wide between the base of one towering cliff, still bearing its Spanish name, El Capitan, and the gorge of the Purgatoire. To the east of this point the trails to Calabasas and to Sleepy Cat divide, and here Scott and Lefever received de Spain, who had ridden slowly and followed Scott’s62injunctions to keep the red star to the right of El Capitan all the way across the Sinks.
Securing their horses, the three stretched out on the open ground to wait for daylight. De Spain was wakeful, and his eyes rested with curiosity on the huge bulk of Music Mountain, rising overwhelmingly above him. Through the Gap that divided the great, sentinel-like front of El Capitan, marking the northern face of the mountain rift, from Round Top, the south wall of the opening, stars shone vividly, as if lighting the way into the silent range beyond.
The breathing of his companions soon assured de Spain that both were asleep. The horses were quiet, and the night gave no sound save that vaguely through the darkness came the faint brawl of tiny cataracts tumbling down far mountain heights. De Spain, lying on his side, his head resting on his elbow, and his hands clasped at the back of his neck, meditated first on how he should capture Sassoon at daybreak, and then on Nan Morgan and her mountain home, into which he was about to break to drag out a criminal. Sassoon and his malice soon drifted out of his mind, but Nan remained. She stayed with him, it seemed, for hours––appearing and disappearing, in one aspect more alluring than another. Then her form outlined in the mists that rose from the63hidden creek seemed to hover somewhere near until Scott’s hand laid on the dreamer’s shoulder drove it suddenly away. Day was at hand.
De Spain got up and shook off the chilliness and drowsiness of the night. It had been agreed that he, being less known in the Gap than either of his companions, could best attempt the difficult capture. It was strictly acoup de main, depending for its success on chance and nerve. The one that tried it might manage to bring out his man––or might be brought out himself. Between these alternatives there was not much middle ground, except that failing to find Sassoon, or in case he should be intercepted with his prisoner, the intruder, escaping single-handed from a shower of bullets, might still get away. But Morgan’s Gap men were esteemed fairly good marksmen.
Bob Scott, who knew the recess well, repeated his explicit directions as to how de Spain was to reach Sassoon’s shack. He repeated his description of its interior, told him where the bed stood, and even where Sassoon ordinarily kept his knife and his revolver. The western sky was still dark when de Spain, mounting, discussed the last arrangements with his scouts and, taking the bridle of the led horse, turned toward Round Top. At its narrowest point the Gap opening is barely two64miles wide, and the one road, in and out, lies among the rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge. De Spain gave his horse his head––it was still too dark to distinguish the path––and depended on his towering landmarks for his general direction. He advanced at a snail’s pace until he passed the base of El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly hidden valley before him. The eastern and southern sides still lay in darkness, but the stupendous cliffs frowning on the north and west were lighted somewhat from the east. The southern wall, though shrouded, seemed to rise in an unending series of beetling arêtes.
De Spain caught his breath. No description he had ever heard of the nook that screened the Morgans from the outside world had prepared him for what he saw. From side to side of the gigantic mountain fissure, it could hardly be, de Spain thought, more than a few thousand yards––so completely was his sense of proportion stunned by the frowning cliffs which rose, at points, half a mile into the sky. But it was actually several miles from wall to wall, and the Gap was more than as much in depth, as it ran back65to a mere wedge between unnamed Superstition peaks.
Every moment that he pushed ahead warned him that daylight would come suddenly and his time to act would be short. The trail he followed broadened into a road, and he strained his eyes for signs, first of life, and then of habitation. The little creek, now beside his way, flowed quietly albeit swiftly along, and his utmost vigilance could detect no living thing stirring; but a turn in the trail, marked by a large pine-tree and conforming to a bend of the stream, brought him up startled and almost face to face with a long, rambling ranch-house. The gable end of the two-story portion of the building was so close to him that he instantly reined up to seek hiding from its upper and lower windows.
From Scott’s accurate description he knew the place. This was Duke Morgan’s ranch-house, set as a fortress almost at the mouth of the Gap. To pass it unobserved was to compass the most ticklish part of his mission, and without changing his slow pace he rode on, wondering whether a bullet, if fired from any of the low, open windows––which he could almost throw his hat into as he trotted past––would knock him off his horse or leave him a chance to spur away. But no bullet challenged him and no sound came from the66silent house. He cantered away from the peril, thinking with a kind of awe of Nan, asleep, so close, under that roof––confident, too, he had not been seen––though, in matter of fact, he had been.
He quickened his pace. The place he wanted to reach was more than a mile distant. Other cabins back toward the north wall could be seen dimly to his right, but all were well removed from his way. He found, in due time, the ford in the creek, as Scott had advised, made it without mishap, scrambled up a steep and rocky path, and saw confronting him, not far ahead, a small, ruinous-looking cabin shack. Dismounting before this, he threw his lines, shook himself a little, and walked up to the cabin door. It was open.
The mild-minded conspirators who had planned the details of the abduction were agreed that if the effort could be made a success at all, there was but one way to effect it, and that was to act, in every step, openly. Any attempt to steal on Sassoon unawares would be a desperate one; while to walk boldly into his cabin at daybreak would be to do only what his companions were likely at any time to do, and was the course least calculated to lead to serious trouble. None of the three were unaware of the psychological action of that peculiar instinct of danger possessed by67men habitually exposed to surprise––they knew how easily it may be aroused in a sleeper by the unusual happening about him, and how cunningly it is allayed by counterfeiting within his hearing the usual course of normal events.
De Spain, following the chosen policy, called gruffly to the cabin inmate. There was no answer. All had sounded extremely plausible to de Spain at the time he listened to Bob Scott’s ingenious anticipation of the probabilities, and he had felt while listening to the subtle Indian that the job was not a complicated one.
But now, as he hitched his trouser band near to the butt of his revolver with his right hand, and laid his left on the jamb of the door with an effort to feel at home, stepped unevenly across the threshold, and tried to peer into the interior darkness, Scott’s strategy did not, for some reason, commend itself quite so convincingly to him. There seemed, suddenly, a great many chances for a slip in the programme. De Spain coughed slightly, his eyes meantime boring the darkness to the left, where Sassoon’s bed should be. The utmost scrutiny failed to disclose any sign of it or any sound of breathing from that corner. He took a few steps toward where the man should be asleep, and perceived beyond a doubt that there was no bed in the corner at all. He turned toward68the other corner, his hand covering the butt of his gun. “Hello, Shike!” he called out in a slightly strained tone of camaraderie, addressing Sassoon by a common nickname. Then he listened. A trumpeting snore answered. No sound was ever sweeter to de Spain’s ear. The rude noise cleared the air and steadied the intruder as if Music Mountain itself had been lifted off his nerves.
He tried again: “Where are you, Shike?” he growled. “What’s this stuff on the floor?” he continued, shuffling his way ostentatiously to the other side of the room. But his noise-making was attended with the utmost caution. He had dropped, like a shot, flat on the floor and crawled, feeling his way, to the opposite side of the room, only to find, after much trouble, that the bed in the darkness was there, but it was empty. De Spain rose. For a moment he was nonplussed. An inside room remained, but Scott had said there was no bed within it. He felt his way toward the inner door. This was where he expected to find it, and it was closed. He laid a hand gingerly on the latch. “Where are you, Shike?” he demanded again, this time with an impatient expletive summoned for the occasion. A second fearful snore answered him. De Spain, relieved, almost laughed as he pushed the door open,69though not sure whether a curse or a shot would greet him. He got neither. And a welcome surprise in the dim light came through a stuffy pane of glass at one end of the room. It revealed at the other end a man stretched asleep on a wall bunk––a man that would, in all likelihood, have heard the stealthiest sound had any effort been made to conceal it, but to whose ears the rough voices of a mountain cabin are mere sleeping-potions.
The sleeper was destined, a moment later, to a ruder awakening than even his companion outlaws ever gave him. Lying unsuspectingly on his back, he woke to feel a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. The instinct of self-preservation acted like a flash. His eyes opened and his hands struck out like cat’s paws to the right and left: no knife and no revolver met them. Instead, in the semidarkness a strange face bent over him. His fists shot out together, only to be caught in a vise that broke his arms in two at the elbows, and forced them back against his throat. Like lightning, he threw up his knees, drew himself into a heap, and shot himself out, hands, arms, legs, back, everything into one terrific spring. But the sinewy vise above only gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and70heart and lungs. Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and shut off his breath.
Again and again, with the fury of desperation, Sassoon drew in his powerful frame, shot it out, twisted and struggled. Great veins swelled on his forehead, his breath burst in explosive gasps, he writhed from side to side––it was all one. After every effort the cruel fingers at his throat tightened. The heavy knee on his chest crushed more relentlessly. He lay still.
“Are you awake, Shike?” Sassoon heard from the gloom above him. But he could not place the voice. “You seem to move around a good deal in your sleep. If you’re awake, keep still. I’ve come from Sleepy Cat to get you. Don’t mind looking for your gun and knife. Two men are with me. You can have your choice. We’ve got a horse for you. You can ride away from us here inside the Gap, and take what hits you in the back, or you can go to Sleepy Cat with us and stand your trial. I’ll read your warrant when the sun gets a little higher. Get up and choose quick.”
Sassoon could not see who had subdued him, nor did he take long to decide what to do. Scott71had predicted he would go without much fuss, and de Spain, now somewhat surprised, found Bob right in his forecast. With less trouble than he expected, the captor got his man sullenly on horseback, and gave him severely plain directions as to what not to do. Sassoon, neither bound nor gagged, was told to ride his horse down the Gap closely ahead of de Spain and neither to speak nor turn his head no matter what happened right or left. To get him out in this manner was, de Spain realized, the really ticklish part of the undertaking.
Fortune, however, seemed to favor his assurance in invading the lions’ den. In the growing light the two men trotted smartly a mile down the trail without encountering a sign of life. When they approached the Morgan ranch-house de Spain again felt qualms. But he rode close to his prisoner, told him in restrained monologue what would happen if he made a noise, and even held him back in his pace as they trotted together past the Gap stronghold. Nevertheless, he breathed more freely when they left the house behind and the turn in the road put them out of range of its windows. He closed up the distance between himself and Sassoon, riding close in to his side, and looked back at the house. He looked quickly, but though his eyes were off his72path and his prisoner for only a fraction of a second, when he looked ahead again he saw confronting him, not a hundred yards away, a motionless horseman.