301CHAPTER XXIIIDE SPAIN WORRIES
They parted that evening under the shadow of Music Mountain. Nan believed she could at least win her Uncle Duke over from any effort of Gale’s to coerce her. Her influence over her uncle had never yet failed, and she was firm in the conviction she could gain him to her side, since he had everything to win and nothing to lose by siding against Gale, whom he disliked and distrusted, anyway.
For de Spain there was manifestly nothing to do but doubtfully to let Nan try out her influence. They agreed to meet in Calabasas just as soon as Nan could get away. She hoped, she told him, to bring good news. De Spain arranged his business to wait at Calabasas for her, and was there, after two days, doing little but waiting and listening to McAlpin’s stories about the fire and surmises as to strange men that lurked in and about the place. But de Spain, knowing Jeffries was making an independent investigation into the affair, gave no heed to McAlpin’s suspicions.
To get away from the barn boss, de Spain took302refuge in riding. The season was drawing on toward winter, and rain clouds drifting at intervals down from the mountains made the saddle a less dependable escape from the monotony of Calabasas. Several days passed with no sight of Nan and no word from her. De Spain, as the hours and days went by, scanned the horizon with increasing solicitude. When he woke on the sixth morning, he was resolved to send a scout into the Gap to learn what he could of the situation. The long silence, de Spain knew, portended nothing good. And the vexing feature of his predicament was that he had at hand no trustworthy spy to despatch for information; to secure one would be a matter of delay. He was schooled, however, to making use of such material as he had at hand, and when he had made up his mind, he sent to the stable for Bull Page.
The shambling barn man, summoned gruffly by McAlpin, hesitated as he appeared at the office door and seemed to regard the situation with suspicion. He looked at de Spain tentatively, as if ready either for the discharge with which he was daily threatened or for a renewal of his earlier, friendly relations with the man who had been queer enough to make a place for him. De Spain set Bull down before him in the stuffy little office.
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“Bull,” he began with apparent frankness, “I want to know how you like your job.”
Wiping his mouth guardedly with his hand to play for time and as an introduction to a carefully worded reply, Bull parried. “Mr. de Spain, I want to ask you just one fair question.”
“Go ahead, Bull.”
Bull plunged promptly into the suspicion uppermost in his mind. “Has that slat-eyed, flat-headed, sun-sapped sneak of a Scotchman been complaining of my work?That, Mr. de Spain,” emphasized Bull, leaning forward, “is what I want to know first––is it a fair question?”
“Bull,” returned de Spain with corresponding and ceremonial emphasis, “it is a fair question between man and man. I admit it; it is a fair question. And I answer, no, Bull. McAlpin has had nothing on the face of the desert to do with my sending for you. And I add this because I know you want to hear it: he says he couldn’t complain of your work, because you never do any.”
“That man,” persisted Bull, reinforced by the hearty tone and not clearly catching the drift of the very last words, “drinks more liquor than I do.”
“He must be some tank, Bull.”
“And I don’t hide it, Mr. de Spain.”
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“You’d have to crawl under Music Mountain to do that. What I want to know is, do you like your job?”
On this point it was impossible to get an expression from Bull. He felt convinced that de Spain was pressing for an answer only as a preliminary to his discharge. “No matter,” interposed the latter, cutting Bull’s ramblings short, “drop it, Bull. I want you to do something for me, and I’ll pay for it.”
Bull, with a palsied smile and a deep, quavering note of gratitude, put up his shaky hand. “Say what. That’s all. I’ve been paid.”
“You know you’re a sot, Bull.”
Bull nodded. “I know it.”
“A disgrace to the Maker whose image you were made in.”
Bull started, but seemed, on reflection, to consider this a point on which he need not commit himself.
“Still, I believe there’s a man in you yet. Something, at any rate, you couldn’t completely kill with whiskey, Bull––what?”
Bull lifted his weak and watery eyes. His whiskey-seamed face brightened into the ghost of a smile. “What I’m going to ask you to do,” continued de Spain, “is a man’s job. You can get into the Gap without trouble. You are the305only man I can put my hand on just now, that can. I want you to ride over this morning and hang out around Duke Morgan’s place till you can get a chance to see Miss Nan–––”
At the mention of her name, Bull shook his head a moment in affirmative approval. “She’s a queen!” he exclaimed with admiring but pungent expletives. “A queen!”
“I think so, Bull. But she is in troublesome circumstances. You know Nan and I–––”
Bull winked in many ways.
“And her Uncle Duke is making us trouble, Bull. I want you to find her, speak with her, and bring word to me as to what the situation is. That doesn’t mean you’re to get drunk over there––in fact, I don’t think anybody over there would give you a drink–––”
“Don’t believe they would.”
“And you are to ride back here with what you can find out just as quick, after you get into the clear, as a horse will bring you.”
Bull passed his hand over his mouth with a show of resolution. It indicated that he was pulling himself together. Within half an hour he was on his way to the Gap.
For de Spain hours never dragged as did the hours between his starting and the setting of the sun that night without his return. And the sun306set behind Music Mountain in a drift of heavy clouds that brought rain. All evening it fell steadily. At eleven o’clock de Spain had given up hope of seeing his emissary before morning and was sitting alone before the stove in the office when he heard the sound of hoofs. In another moment Bull Page stood at the door.
He was a sorry sight. Soaked to the skin by the steady downpour; rain dripping intermittently from his frayed hat, his ragged beard, and tattered coat; shaking with the cold as if gripped by an ague, Bull, picking his staggering steps to the fire, and sinking in a heap into a chair, symbolized the uttermost tribute of manhood to the ravages of whiskey. He was not drunk. He had not even been drinking; but his vitality was gone. He tried to speak. It was impossible. His tongue would not frame words, nor his throat utter them. He could only look helplessly at de Spain as de Spain hastily made him stand up on his shaking knees, threw a big blanket around him, sat him down, kicked open the stove drafts, and called to McAlpin for more whiskey to steady the wreck of it crouching over the fire.
McAlpin after considerable and reluctant search produced a bottle, and unwilling, for more reasons than one, to trust it to Bull’s uncertain possession, brought a dipper. Bull held the dipper while de307Spain poured. McAlpin, behind the stove, hopped first on one foot and then on the other as de Spain recklessly continued to pour. When the liquor half filled the cup, McAlpin put out unmistakable distress signals, but Bull, watching the brown stream, his eyes galvanized at the sight, held fast to the handle and made no sign to stop. “Bull!” thundered the barn boss with an emphatic word. “That is Elpaso’s bottle. What are you dreaming of, man? Mr. de Spain, you’ll kill him. Don’t ye see he can’t tell ye to stop?”
Bull, with the last flickering spark of vitality still left within him, looked steadily up and winked at de Spain. McAlpin, outraged, stamped out of the room. Steadying the dipper in both hands, Bull with an effort passed one hand at the final moment preliminarily over his mouth, and, raising the bowl, emptied it. The poison electrified him into utterance. “I seen her,” he declared, holding his chin well down and in, and speaking in a pardonably proud throat.
“Good, Bull!”
“They’ve got things tied up for fair over there.” He spoke slowly and brokenly. “I never got inside the house till after supper. Toward night I helped Pardaloe put up the stock. He let me into the kitchen after my coaxing for a cup of coffee––he’s an ornery, cold-blooded guy, that308Pardaloe. Old Duke and Sassoon think the sun rises and sets on the top of his head––funny, ain’t it?”
De Spain made no comment. “Whilst I was drinking my coffee–––”
“Who gave it to you?”
“Old Bunny, the Mex. Pardaloe goes out to the bunk-house; I sits down to my supper, alone, with Bunny at the stove. All of a sudden who comes a-trippin’ in from the front of the house but Nan. I jumped up as strong as I could, but I was too cold and stiff to jump up real strong. She seen me, but didn’t pay no attention. I dropped my spoon on the floor. It didn’t do no good, neither, so I pushed a hot plate of ham gravy off the table. It hit the dog ’n’ he jumped like kingdom come. Old Bunny sails into me, Nan a-watchin’, and while Mex was pickin’ up and cleanin’ up, I sneaks over to the stove and winks at Nan. Say, you oughter seen her look mad at me. She was hot, but I kept a-winkin’ and I says to her kind of husky-like: ‘Got any letters for Calabasas to-night?’ Say, she looked at me as if she’d bore holes into me, but I stood right up and glared back at the little girl. ‘Come from there this mornin’,’ says I, low, ‘going back to-night. Some one waiting there for news.’
“By jing! Just as I got the words out o’ my309mouth who comes a-stalking in but Gale Morgan. The minute he seen me, he lit on me to beat the band––called me everything he could lay his tongue to. I let on I was drunk, but that didn’t help. He ordered me off the premises. ’N’ the worst of it was, Nan chimed right in and began to scold Bunny for lettin’ me in––and leaves the room, quick-like. Bunny put it on Pardaloe, and she and Gale had it, and b’jing, Gale put me out––said he’d pepper me. But wait till I tell y’ how she fooled him. It was rainin’ like hell, ’n’ it looked as if I was booked for a ride through it and hadn’t half drunk my second cup of coffee at that. I starts for the barn, when some one in the dark on the porch grabs my arm, spins me around like a top, throws a flasher up into my face, and there was Nan. ‘Bull,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to see you ride out in this with nothing to eat; come this way quick.’
“She took me down cellar from the outside, under the kitchen. When Gale goes out again she flings up the trap-door, speaks to Mex, pulls all the kitchen shades down, locks the doors, and I sets down on the trap-door steps ’n’ eats a pipin’ hot supper; say! Well, I reckon I drank a couple o’ quarts of coffee. ‘Bull,’ she says, ‘I never done you no harm, did I?’ ‘Never,’ says I, ‘and I never done you none, neither, did I? And310what’s more, I never will do you none.’ Then I up and told her. ‘Tell him,’ says she, ‘I can’t get hold of a horse, nor a pen, nor a piece of paper––I can’t leave the house but what I am watched every minute. They keep track of me day and night. Tell him,’ she says, ‘I can protect myself; they think they’ll break me––make me do what they want me to––marry––but they can’t break me, and I’ll never do it––tell him that.’
“‘But,’ says I, ‘that ain’t the whole case, Miss Nan. What he’ll ask me, when he’s borin’ through me withhiseyes like the way you’re borin’ me through with yours, is: When will you see him––when will he see you?’
“She looked worrit for a minit. Then she looks around, grabs up the cover of an empty ’bacco box and a fork and begins a-writing inside.” Bull, with as much of a smile as he could call into life from his broken nerves, opened up his blanket, drew carefully from an inside coat pocket an oilskin package, unwrapped from it the flat, square top of a tin tobacco box on which Nan had scratched a message, and handed it triumphantly to de Spain.
He read her words eagerly:
“Wait; don’t have trouble. I can stand anything better than bloodshed, Henry. Be patient.”
While de Spain, standing close to the lantern,311deciphered the brief note, Bull, wrapping his blanket about him with the air of one whose responsibility is well ended, held out his hands toward the blazing stove. De Spain went over the words one by one, and the letters again and again. It was, after all their months of ardent meetings, the first written message he had ever had from Nan. He flamed angrily at the news that she was prisoner in her own home. But there was much to weigh in her etched words, much to think about concerning her feelings––not alone concerning his own.
He dropped into his chair and, oblivious for a moment of his companion’s presence, stared into the fire. When he started from his revery Bull was asleep. De Spain picked him up, carried him in his blanket over to a cot, cut the wet rags off him, and, rolling him in a second blanket, walked out into the barn and ordered up a team and light wagon for Sleepy Cat. The rain fell all night.
312CHAPTER XXIVAN OMINOUS MESSAGE
Few men bear suspense well; de Spain took his turn at it very hard. For the first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a type whose defiance he despised––whose lawlessness he ordinarily warred on without compunction––but himself without the freedom that had always been his to act. Every impulse to take the bit in his teeth was met with the same insurmountable obstacle––Nan’s feelings––and the unpleasant possibility that might involve him in bloodshed with her kinspeople.
“Patience.” He repeated the word to himself a thousand times to deaden his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time, but Nan’s situation took most of his thought. For the first time he told John Lefever the story of Nan’s finding him on Music Mountain, of her aid in his escape, and the sequel of their friendship. Lefever gave it to Bob Scott in Jeffries’s office.
“What did I tell you, John?” demanded Bob mildly.
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“No matter what you told me,” retorted Lefever. “The question is: What’s he to do to get Nan away from there without shooting up the Morgans?”
De Spain had gone that morning to Medicine Bend. He got back late and, after a supper at the Mountain House, went directly to his room.
The telephone-bell was ringing when he unlocked and threw open his door. Entering the room, he turned on a light, closed the door behind him, and sat down to answer the call.
“Is this Henry de Spain?” came a voice, slowly pronouncing the words over the wire.
“Yes.”
“I have a message for you.”
“What is it?”
“From Music Mountain.”
“Go ahead.”
“The message is like this: ‘Take me away from here as soon as you can.’”
“Whom is that message from?”
“I can’t call any names.”
“Who are you?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. Good-by.”
“Hold on. Where are you talking from?”
“About a block from your office.”
314
“Do you think it a fair way to treat a man to–––”
“I have to be fair to myself.”
“Give me the message again.”
“‘Take me away from here as soon as you can.’”
“Where does it come from?”
“Music Mountain.”
“If you’re treating me fair––and I believe you mean to––come over to my room a minute.”
“No.”
“Let me come to where you are?”
“No.”
“Let me wait for you––anywhere?”
“No.”
“Do you know me?”
“By sight.”
“How did you know I was in town to-night?”
“I saw you get off the train.”
“You were looking for me, then?”
“To deliver my message.”
“Do you think that message means what it says?”
“I know it does.”
“Do you know what it means for me to undertake?”
“I have a pretty stiff idea.”
“Did you get it direct from the party who sent it?”
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“I can’t talk all night. Take it or leave it just where it is.”
De Spain heard him close. He closed his own instrument and began feverishly signalling central. “This is 101. Henry de Spain talking,” he said briskly. “You just called me. Ten dollars for you, operator, if you can locate that call, quick!”
There was a moment of delay at the central office, then the answer: “It came from 234––Tenison’s saloon.”
“Give me your name, operator. Good. Now give me 22 as quick as the Lord will let you, and ring the neck off the bell.”
Lefever answered the call on number 22. The talk was quick and sharp. Messengers were instantly pressed into service from the despatcher’s office. Telephone wires hummed, and every man available on the special agent’s force was brought into action. Livery-stables were covered, the public resorts were put under observation, horsemen clattered up and down the street. Within an incredibly short time the town was rounded up, every outgoing trail watched, and search was under way for any one from Morgan’s Gap, and especially for the sender of the telephone message.
De Spain, after instructing Lefever, hastened316to Tenison’s. His rapid questioning of the few habitués of the place and the bartender elicited only the information that a man had used the telephone booth within a few minutes. Nobody knew him or, if they did know him, refused to describe him in any but vague terms. He had come in by the front door and slipped out probably by the rear door––at all events, unnoticed by those questioned. By a series of eliminating inquiries, de Spain made out only that the man was not a Morgan. Outside, Bob Scott in the saddle waited with a led horse. The two men rode straight and hard for the river bridge. They roused an old hunter who lived in a near-by hut, on the town side, and asked whether any horseman had crossed the bridge. The hunter admitted gruffly that hehadheard a horse’s hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter, after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes; moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into town, and not out.
Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from the317saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed ahead.
The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen, not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient. “He could easily slip us,” Scott explained, “by leaving the trail for a minute while we rode past––if he knows his business––and I guess he does.”
“If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out, too, within half to three-quarters of an hour,” said de Spain. “But how could he have got out without being heard?”
“Maybe,” suggested Scott, “he forded the river.”
“Could he do it?”
“It’s a man’s job,” returned Scott, reflecting, “but it could be done.”
“If a man thought it necessary.”
“If he knew you by sight,” responded Scott unmoved, “he might have thought it necessary.”
Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been found anywhere in town from Morgan’s318Gap; whoever had taken a chance in delivering the message had escaped undetected.
Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.
“It’s one of two things,” declared Lefever, whose eyes were never dulled by late hours. “Either they’ve sent this to lure you into the Gap and ‘get’ you, or else––and that’s a great big ‘or else’––she needs you. Henry, did that message––I mean the way it was worded––sound like Nan Morgan?”
De Spain could hardly answer. “It did, and it didn’t,” he said finally. “But––” his companions saw during the pause by which his lips expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to be turned from it––“I am going to act just as if the word came from Nan and she does need me.”
More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever, after319conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.
“I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any game I play. In the first place it isn’t right to take you and Bob in where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn’t enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is a horror to that girl. I’ve got her feelings to think about as well as my own. I’ve decided what to do, John. I’m going in alone.”
“You’re going in alone!”
“To-night. Now, I’ll tell you what I’d like you to do if you want to: ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don’t hear from me by ten o’clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify Jeffries to look for a new manager.”
“On the contrary, if we don’t hear from you by ten o’clock, Henry, we will blaze our way in and drag out your body.” Lefever put up his hand to cut off any rejoinder. “Don’t discuss it. What happens after ten o’clock to-morrow morning, if we don’t hear from you before that, can’t possibly be of any interest to you or make any320difference.” He paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually associated with him. “Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school, my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound; but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just once too often, and got smashed all to hell. Aunt Lou didn’t say it exactly in that way––but such was the substance of the moral.
“You’ve pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man knows better than I that you never pulled one for the looks of the thing or to make people talk––or that you ever took a chance you didn’t feel you had to take. But, it isn’t humanly possible you can keep this up for all time; itcan’tgo on forever. The pitcher goes to the well once too often, Henry; there comes a time when it doesn’t come back.
“Understand––I’m not saying this to attempt to dissuade you from the worst job you ever started in on. I know your mind is made up. You won’t listen to me; you won’t listen to Scott; and I’m too good an Indian not to know where I321get off, or not to do what I’m told. But this is what I have been thinking of a long, long time; and this is what I feel I ought to say, here and now.”
The two men were sitting in de Spain’s room. De Spain was staring through the broad south window at the white-capped peaks of the distant range. He was silent for a time. “I believe you’re right, John,” he said after a while. “I know you are. In this case I am tied up more than I’ve ever been tied before; but I’ve got to see it through as best I can, and take what comes without whining. My mind is made up and, strange as it may sound to you, I feel that Iamcoming back. Not but what I know it’s due me, John. Not but what I expect to get it sometime. And maybe I’m wrong now; but I don’t feel as if it’s coming till I’ve given all the protection to that girl that a man can give to a woman.”
322CHAPTER XXVA SURPRISING SLIP
Scott was called by Lefever to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could before daybreak the following morning.
“It’s a short notice to get many men together––of the kind we want,” admitted Lefever. “You’ll have to skirmish some between now and midnight. What do you think you can do?”
Scott had already made up a tentative list. He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said nobody should go if he didn’t; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located––any one of them, Lefever knew, could give an account of himself under all circumstances.
While Scott was getting his men together, de Spain, accompanied by Lefever, was riding toward Music Mountain. Scott had urged on them but one parting caution––not to leave the aspens until323rain began falling. When he spoke there was not a cloud in the sky. “It’s going to rain to-night, just the same,” predicted Scott. “Don’t leave the trees till it gets going. Those Gap scouts will get under cover and be hunting for a drink the minute it gets cold––I know them. You can ride right over their toes, if you’ll be patient.”
The sun set across the range in a drift of grayish-black, low-lying clouds, which seemed only to await its disappearance to envelop the mountains and empty their moisture on the desert. By the time de Spain and Lefever reached the end of their long ride a misty rain was drifting down from the west. The two men had just ridden into the quaking asps when a man coming out of the Gap almost rode into them. The intruders had halted and were sufficiently hidden to escape notice, had not Lefever’s horse indiscreetly coughed. The man from the Gap reined up and called out. Lefever answered.
“It’s Bull Page,” declared de Spain, after the exchange of a few words, calling to Bull at the same time to come over to the shelter of the trees.
“What’s going on in there, Bull?” asked de Spain after Bull had told him that Gale had driven him out, and he was heading for Calabasas.
“You tell,” retorted Page. “Looks to me like old Duke’s getting ready to die. Gale says he’s324going to draw his will to-night, and don’t want nobody around––got old Judge Druel in there.”
De Spain pricked up his ears. “What’s that, Druel?” he demanded. Bull repeated his declaration. Lefever broke into violent language at the Sleepy Cat jurist’s expense, and ended by declaring that no will should be drawn in the Gap that night by Duke Morgan or anybody else, unless he and Bull were made legatees.
Beyond this nothing could be learned from Bull, who was persuaded without difficulty by Lefever to abandon the idea of riding to Calabasas through the rain, and to spend the night with him in the neighborhood, wherever fancy, the rain, and the wind––which was rising––should dictate.
While the two were talking de Spain tried to slip away, unobserved by Lefever, on his errand. He failed, as he expected to, and after some familiar abuse, rode off alone, fortified by every possible suggestion at the hands of a man to whom the slightest precaution was usually a joke.
Mountains never look blacker than when one rides into them conscious of the presence of enemies and alert for signs and sounds. But custom dulls the edge of apprehension. De Spain rode slowly up the main road without expecting to meet any one, and he reached the rise where the trail forked to Duke’s ranch unchallenged.325Here he stopped his horse and looked down toward the roof that sheltered Nan. Night had fallen everywhere, and the increasing rain obscured even the outline of the house. But a light shone through one uncurtained window. He waited some time for a sound of life, for a door to open or close, or for the dog to bark––he heard nothing. Slipping out of the wet saddle, he led his horse in the darkness under the shelter of the lone pine-tree and, securing him, walked slowly toward the house.
The light came from a window in the living-room. Up-stairs and toward the kitchen everything was dark. De Spain walked gingerly around to where he could command the living-room window. He could see within, the figures of three men but, owing to the dim light and the distance at which he stood, he could identify none of them with certainty. Mindful of the admonitions he had been loaded with, he tramped around the house in narrowing circles, pausing at times to look and listen. In like manner he circled the barn and stables, until he had made sure there was no ambush and that he was alone outside. He then went among the horses and, working with a flash-light, found Nan’s pony, a bridle and, after an ineffectual search for a saddle, led the bareback horse out to where his own326stood. Walking over to Nan’s window he signalled and called to her. Getting no answer, he tossed a bit of gravel up against her window. His signal met with no response and, caching his rifle under the kitchen porch, he stepped around to the front of the house, where, screened by a bit of shrubbery, he could peer at close range into the living-room.
Standing before the fire burning in the open hearth, and with his back to it, he now saw Gale Morgan. Sitting bolt upright beside the table, square-jawed and obdurate, his stubby brier pipe supported by his hand and gripped in his great teeth, Duke Morgan looked uncompromisingly past his belligerent nephew into the fire. A third and elderly man, heavy, red-faced, and almost toothless as he spoke, sat to the right of the table in a rocking-chair, and looked at Duke; this was the old lawyer and justice from Sleepy Cat, the sheriff’s brother––Judge Druel.
Nan was not to be seen. Gale, big and aggressive, was doing most of the talking, and energetically, as was his habit. Duke listened thoughtfully, but seemingly with coldness. Druel looked from Gale to Duke, and appeared occasionally to put in a word to carry the argument along.
De Spain suspected nothing of what they were talking about, but he was uneasy concerning Nan,327and was not to be balked, by any combination, of his purpose of finding her. To secure information concerning her was not possible, unless he should enter the house, and this, with scant hesitation, he decided to do.
He wore a snug-fitting leathern coat. He unbuttoned this and threw it open as he stepped noiselessly up to the door. Laying his hand on the knob, he paused, then, finding the door unlocked, he pushed it slowly open.
The wind, rushing in, upset his calculations and blew open the door leading from the hall into the living-room. A stream of light in turn shot through the open door, across the hall. Instantly de Spain stepped inside and directly behind the front door––which he now realized he dare not close––and stood expectant in the darkness. Gale Morgan, with an impatient exclamation, strode from the fireplace to close the front door.
As he walked into the hall and slammed the front door shut, he could have touched with his hand the man standing in the shadow behind it. De Spain, not hoping to escape, stood with folded arms, but under the elbow of his left arm was hidden the long muzzle of his revolver. Holding his breath, he waited. Gale’s mind was apparently filled with other things. He did not suspect the presence of an intruder, and he walked back into328the living-room, partly closing the second door. De Spain, following almost on his heels, stepped past this door, past the hall stairs opposite it, and through a curtained opening at the end of the hall into the dining-room. Barely ten feet from him, this room opened through an arch into the living-room, and where he stood he could hear all that was said.
“Who’s there?” demanded Duke gruffly.
“Nobody,” said Gale. “Go on, Druel.”
“That door never opened itself,” persisted Duke.
“The wind blew it open,” said Gale impatiently.
“I tell y’ it didn’t,” responded Duke sternly; “somebody came in there, or went out. Maybe she’s slipped y’.”
“Go up-stairs and see,” bellowed Gale at his uncle.
Duke walked slowly out into the hall and, with some difficulty, owing to his injured back, up the stairs. A curtain hung beside the arch where de Spain stood, and this he now drew around him. Gale walked into the hall again, searched it, and waited at the foot of the stairs. De Spain could hear Duke’s rough voice up-stairs, but could neither distinguish his words nor hear any response to them. Within a moment the elder man tramped heavily down again, saying only, “She’s329there,” and, followed by Gale, returned to the living-room.
“Now go on, Druel,” exclaimed Gale, sitting down impatiently, “and talk quick.”
Druel talked softly and through his nose: “I was only going to say it would be a good idea to have two witnesses.”
“Nita,” suggested Gale.
Duke was profane. “You couldn’t keep the girl in the room if she had Nita to help her. And I want it understood, Gale, between you and me, fair and square, that Nan’s goin’ to live right here with me after this marriage till I’m satisfied she’s willing to go to you––otherwise it can’t take place, now nor never.”
De Spain opened his ears. Gale felt the hard, cold tone of his crusty relative, and answered with like harshness: “What do you keep harping on that for? You’ve got my word. All I want of you is to keep yours––understand?”
“Come, come,” interposed Druel. “There’s no need of hard words. But we need two witnesses. Who’s going to be the other witness?”
Before any one could answer de Spain stepped out into the open archway before the three men. “I’ll act as the second witness,” he said.
With a common roar the Morgans bounded to their feet. They were not unused to sudden330onslaughts, nor was either of them a man to shrink from a fight at short quarters, if it came to that, but blank astonishment overwhelmed both. De Spain, standing slightly sidewise, his coat lapels flapped wide open, his arms akimbo, and his hands on his hips, faced the three in an attitude of readiness only. He had reckoned on the instant of indecision which at times, when coupled with apprehension, paralyzes the will of two men acting together. Under the circumstances either of the Morgans alone would have whipped a gun on de Spain at sight. Together, and knowing that to do so meant death to the one that took the first shot from the archway, each waited for the other; that fraction of a second unsettled their purpose. Instead of bullets, each launched curses at the intruder, and every second that passed led away from a fight.
De Spain took their oaths, demands, and abuse without batting an eye. “I’m here for the second witness,” was all he repeated, covering both men with short glances. Druel, his face muddily white as the whiskey bloat deserted it, shrunk inside his shabby clothes. He seemed, every time de Spain darted a look at him, to grow visibly smaller, until his loose bulk had shrivelled inside an armchair hardly large enough normally to contain it.
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De Spain with each epithet hurled at him took a dreaded forward step toward Gale, and Druel, in the line of fire, brought his knees up and his head down till he curled like a porcupine. Gale, game as he undoubtedly was, cornered, felt perhaps recollections of Calabasas and close quarters with the brown eyes and the burning face. What they might mean in this little room, which de Spain was crossing step by step, was food for thought. Nor did de Spain break his obstinate silence until their burst of rage had blown. “You’ve arranged your marriage,” he said at length. “Now pull it.”
“My cousin’s ready to marry me, and she’s goin’ to do it to-night,” cried Gale violently.
Duke, towering with rage, looked at de Spain and pointed to the hall door. “You hear that! Get out of my house!” he cried, launching a vicious epithet with the words.
“This isn’t your house,” retorted de Spain angrily. “This house is Nan’s, not yours. When she orders me out I’ll go. Bring her down,” he thundered, raising his voice to shut off Duke, who had redoubled his abuse. “Bring her into this room,” he repeated. “We’ll see whether she wants to get married. If she does, I’ll marry her. If she doesn’t, and you’ve been putting this up to force her into marrying, so help me God, you’ll332be carried out of this room to-night, or I will.” He whirled on her uncle with an accusing finger. “You used to be a man, Duke. I’ve taken from you here to-night what I would take from no man on earth but for the sake of Nan Morgan. She asked me never to touch you. But if you’ve gone into this thing to trap your own flesh and blood, your dead brother’s girl, living under your own protection, you don’t deserve mercy, and to-night you shall have what’s coming to you. I’ve fought you both fair, too fair. Now––before I leave––it’s my girl or both of you.”
He was standing near Druel. Without taking his eyes off the other men, he caught Druel with his left hand by the coat collar, and threw him half-way across the room. “Get up-stairs, you old carrion, and tell Nan Morgan, Henry de Spain is here to talk to her.”
Druel, frightened to death, scrambled into the hall. He turned on de Spain. “I’m an officer of the law. I arrest you for trespass and assault,” he shouted, shaking with fear.
“Arrestme?” echoed de Spain contemptuously. “You scoundrel, if you don’t climb those stairs I’ll send you to the penitentiary the day I get back to town. Up-stairs with your message!”
“It isn’t necessary,” said a low voice in the hall, and with the words Nan appeared in the333open doorway. Her face was white, but there was no sign of haste or panic in it; de Spain choked back a breath; to him she never had looked in her silence so awe-inspiring.
He addressed her, holding his left hand out with his plea. “Nan,” he said, controlling his voice, “these men were getting ready to marry you to Gale Morgan. No matter how you feel toward me now, you know me well enough to know that all I want is the truth: Was this with your consent?”
She stepped into the line of fire between her cousin and de Spain as she answered. “No. You know I shall never marry any man but you. This vile bully,” she turned a little to look at her angry cousin, “has influenced Uncle Duke––who never before tried to persecute or betray me––into joining him in this thing. They never could have dragged me into it alive. And they’ve kept me locked for three days in a room up-stairs, hoping to break me down.”
“Stand back, Nan.”
If de Spain’s words of warning struck her with terror of a situation she could not control, she did not reveal it. “No,” she said resolutely. “If anybody here is to be shot, I’ll be first. Uncle Duke, you have always protected me from Gale Morgan; now you join hands with him. You334drive me from this roof because I don’t know how I can protect myself under it.”
Gale looked steadily at her. “You promised to marry me,” he muttered truculently. “I’ll find a way to make you keep your word.”
A loud knocking interrupted him, and, without waiting to be admitted, Pardaloe, the cowboy, opened the front door and stalked boldly in from the hall.
If the situation in the room surprised him he gave no evidence of it. And as he walked in Nan disappeared. Pardaloe was drenched with rain, and, taking off his hat as he crossed the room to the fire, he shook it hard into the blazing wood.
“What do you want, Pardaloe?” snapped Duke.
Pardaloe shook his hat once more and turned a few steps so that he stood between the uncurtained window and the light. “The creek’s up,” he said to Duke in his peculiarly slow, steady tone. “Some of Satt’s boys are trying to get the cattle out of the lower corral.” He fingered his hat, looked first at Duke, then at Gale, then at de Spain. “Guess they’ll need a little help, so I asked Sassoon to come over––” Pardaloe jerked his head indicatively toward the front. “He’s outside with some of the boys now.”
“Tell Sassoon to come in here!” thundered Gale.