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Rathburn’s eyes had narrowed and hardened; his words were cold and menacing––deadly in their absolute sincerity.
“What––what do you mean?” stammered the mines manager.
“I take it you’re not deaf,” snapped out Rathburn. “Maybe you don’t know it, Sautee, but so help me, you’re takin’ a chance by acting like you didn’t get me.”
Sautee’s thin face was twitching in a spasm of commingled rage and fear.
“The Coyote!” he breathed.
“Who told you that?” demanded Rathburn on the instant.
Sautee gripped the sides of his chair, and his face went a shade more pallid.
“Carlisle,” he confessed in a strained voice.
Rathburn laughed, and the mines manager shivered as he heard.
“Now, Sautee, we’ll quit beatin’ around the bush,” Rathburn said through his teeth. “We’ll get down to business together, or I’ll begin to search your place here. But if I have to search, I’ll search alone. There ain’t so much chance of a shot bein’ heard way up the street; an’ there ain’t much chance of me bein’ caught on that hoss of mine if I don’t want to get caught. Also, I’m beginning to feel like I was in a hurry. Fork over that money!”
Sautee looked just an instant longer into the eyes of the man towering over him. Then he rose, shaking, dry-lipped, and knelt down by the head of the bed. He lifted a piece of the carpet, opened a small trapdoor, reached inside, and brought out a bundle of bank notes. Rathburn took the money from him.
Sautee still was kneeling as he heard Rathburn144walk lightly to the front door and insert the key in the lock. He tried to cry out, but the effort resulted only in a croak in his throat. He heard the door close softly.
“The Coyote!” he mumbled, passing a hand across his forehead.
The echoes of galloping hoofs came to him as he scrambled to his feet and staggered toward the door.
145CHAPTER XXAPPEAL TO THE LAW
For some moments Sautee stood in the darkened doorway staring up the moonlit street. The echoes of Rathburn’s flight had died away. The town was still. Sautee did not cry out, although he had recovered a considerable measure of his composure. He listened intently and finally grunted with satisfaction.
“Up the road,” he muttered. “That means he is making for the pass over the mountains.”
He walked hurriedly through his office into the living room. There he stood for a spell beside the table on which burned the lamp. His brows were knit into a heavy frown. He seemed debating a question in his mind. He tapped with nervous fingers on the table top.
“Pshaw,” he said aloud, his face darkening. “He’s an outlaw.”
He put on his coat and dropped an automatic pistol into a side pocket. After another moment of hesitation he blew out the light and walked quickly out of the place, locking the door after him.
He hurried up the street to the jail. He found the jailer dozing in the little front office and did not attempt to disturb him. From the jail he hurried another short distance up the street and turned in at a little house located some distance back from the sidewalk. He knocked loudly on the door, and after a brief wait repeated the performance.
A light showed, and the front door opened. Mannix, the deputy, looked out.
146
“Let me in,” said Sautee briefly. “There’s been another robbery.”
Mannix swung the door wide and stepped aside. He wore an ulster over his night clothes, and his bare feet were thrust into slippers. He scowled at the mines manager as he shut the door.
“More of the company’s money gone?” he asked with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.
Sautee nodded. “Some twenty-odd thousand,” he said soberly; “and I believe the man that got it is responsible for the holdups that have been pulled off around here.”
“Who got it?” Mannix asked quickly.
“Rathburn,” Sautee announced.
Mannix smiled in undisgusted contempt. “Your own fault,” he pointed out. “Wouldn’t give me a chance to investigate. Said you had a scheme that would show him up one way or the other. Wouldn’t let me in on it, an’ I was fool enough to let you have a try, although I don’t believe I could have held him anyhow.”
“Just it,” said Sautee. “Wouldn’t have done any good to keep him in jail, and I thought I had a two-way scheme that would either show him up, as you say, or get me an excellent messenger. I intrusted Rathburn with a package to carry to the mines office. He’s a gunman, a desperado, probably a killer, and I thought it would appeal to him to be put in a place of trust. If he fell down––then I figured you’d be able to get him like you said you could.”
Mannix snorted. “After tryin’ a fool scheme you want to shift the business onmyshoulders, eh? Well, Sautee, you’ve never shown much confidence in my ability, an’ you don’t have to show any now. It looks to me as if the finishing of this play is all up to you.”
147
“Oh, no, it isn’t,” said Sautee confidently. “You’ll be most mighty glad to take out after him.”
“Suppose you wait an’ see how quick I start,” Mannix retorted angrily. “What’s the matter? Didn’t he carry out your orders? I suppose you gave him a bundle of money to make off with. Sautee, I believe you’re a fool!”
The mines manager winced and then frowned. “I gave him the money to carry to the mine,” he confessed without flinching. “He came back with a story about being held up, and when he saw that I didn’t believe him and intended to turn him back to you, he pulled a gun on me and made his get-away. He lit out through town for the road to the hogback and the pass over the mountains.”
Mannix laughed harshly. “You’re clever, Sautee; there’s no getting away from how clever you are. Now you want me to go chasing up to the hogback to head him off. Well, I’m tellin’ you that I don’t know where he’s gone, an’ I ain’t starting out after him at any two o’clock in the morning. If you’d have kept your nose out of this he’d still be all safe an’ quiet in jail. That’s final, so you might as well clear out an’ give me a chance to get some sleep.”
Sautee merely smiled after this speech from the disgusted deputy.
“Since I intrusted Rathburn with that job I’ve found out something about him which takes the case out of my hands entirely,” he said with a smirk. “I don’t care if you don’t start after him till day after to-morrow. But if your chief––the sheriff––finds out that you didn’t hit the trail to-night he’ll likely ask you for your badge!”
“Are you threatening me?” Mannix demanded loudly.
“No, I’m only stating facts,” Sautee replied stoutly.148“That man who calls himself Rathburn is The Coyote!”
Mannix didn’t start. He appeared hardly interested. Only the keen, penetrating quality of the steady gaze he directed at the mines manager betrayed the fact that his faculties were aroused.
“The Coyote hit back for Arizona after that deal he was mixed up in over in Dry Lake, across the range,” he said with conviction.
“Oh, he did?” Sautee sneered openly. “Well, you had him in jail last night, and you can probably get him again, if you start right out after him.”
“What makes you think this fellow Rathburn is The Coyote?” demanded Mannix.
“Carlisle knows him by sight, and he told me.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” the deputy asked sternly.
“Because Carlisle didn’t tell me until after I told him what I’d done,” Sautee evaded. “Then I didn’t have the––ah––nerve, under the circumstances, to come to you with the news. At that, I thought he might go through with it.”
Mannix swore softly. “Giving a pay-roll messenger’s job to a man who’s got a price on his head a mile long!” he exclaimed savagely. “Why didn’t Carlisle come to me?”
Sautee shrugged. “I’m not responsible for Carlisle. Maybe he didn’t feel sure of it, and maybe he’s just naturally jealous of The Coyote and wants to bring him in himself. Carlisle is a gunman, as you know, and a good one.”
“I know it,” snapped out Mannix; “and I know both Carlisle an’ you are a pair of bunglers. I guess you wanted to show me up, but you’ve gone about it in a way that won’t get you anything nor hurt me, I’ll see to that.”
149
Sautee smiled as the deputy hurried out of the room.
In a few minutes Mannix returned fully dressed and carrying a rifle. The deputy’s face was severe, and his eyes burned with the fire of the man hunt. He signaled impatiently to the mine manager to follow him. As they walked across the little porch and around to the rear of the house where Mannix kept his car the deputy talked fast.
“I’m goin’ up to the hogback. He ain’t had start enough to get up there yet on a horse, an’ I’ll beat him to it. It’ll be daylight in about two hours, an’ I’ll be there till daylight. If you think you can do it, get out some of the men an’ cover the trails to the mine on horses. He might try to get over that way. Then you better take your car and go up to the mine by the road as fast as you can to tell ’em to be on the lookout. Watch out on the hogback, for I’ll be up there, parked with my lights out.”
He had reached his small garage when he finished giving his instructions, and Sautee, with a promise to do as he had been told as quickly as possible, ran down the street toward the Red Feather, where a light still shone.
The news that The Coyote and Rathburn were one and the same, and that he had robbed the mining company that night and was probably responsible for the other holdups, created an immediate sensation among the few gamblers in the resort. Sautee added to the excitement by quoting rewards at random, and the forming of two posses to comb the trails to the mine and beyond was under way at once.
Sautee ran to his office and got out his small car. He stopped at the Red Feather and took one of the men from the mine with him. He stopped150again when he reached the Carlisle cabin, pounded on the doors, and looked in the windows. But the place was deserted, and Sautee’s features were wreathed in perplexity as he went back to his car.
“That’s queer,” he said as he climbed into his seat.
“What’s that?” asked the man beside him.
But Sautee’s answer was drowned in the roar of the motor as he sped up the road toward the hogback and the mine.
151CHAPTER XXIA CAPTURE
When Rathburn rode away from Sautee’s quarters he galloped up the street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted. Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent toward the Dixie Queen.
He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this occasion one would not have noted an attitude of uncertainty about his manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man’s description of this trail, and he had determined general directions the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the desert in the east.
He was halfway to the mine when he saw the gleam of an automobile’s lights in the road far below.
“Sautee got busy right quick,” he said aloud. “I152’spect they’re hustlin’ up to head me off at the hogback. They’re figuring I’d try to go back the way I come in.”
He smiled grimly in the soft moonlight, and his gaze turned toward the east, where the stars glowed over the shadowy reaches of desert which he could not see, but the very thought of which stirred something in his soul.
Then he pushed on up the trail toward the mine. For more than an hour he rode, and then, when he came to the crest of a ridge just below the Dixie Queen, he saw the lights of an automobile in the road to the right of him.
“Now what?” he ejaculated. “They ain’t figurin’ I’d come up here!”
He sat his horse with features again wreathed in perplexity. He scowled at the approaching gleam of light. In the direction of the hogback he could see nothing. Nor could he see the horsemen already on the trail below him and on the ridge trail to eastward.
The little mine village was directly below him. The few buildings huddled together below the big mine dump were dark. The mine buildings, too, were dark. A faint glow showed in the east––harbinger of the dawn.
The left side of the automobile was toward him when it stopped in the little street below. A man climbed out and walked around in front of the car, and Rathburn grunted in recognition as he made out the familiar form of Sautee, the mine manager.
He saw Sautee and another leave the car and walk toward a building at the lower end of the street. He could see them fairly well in the moonlight and realized that in a comparatively short time153it would be daylight. He turned his horse down the slope.
When he reached the rear of the few buildings which formed the mining village, catering to the wants of the Dixie Queen workers, Rathburn edged along to the lower end where he left his horse in the shadow of a building directly across from the one which Sautee and his companion had entered, and in the windows of which a light now shone.
He stole across the street. Peering in one of the windows he saw that the room was an office. Sautee was standing before a desk, talking to another man. Rathburn quickly surmised that this man had accompanied Sautee from the town. Even as he looked, Sautee finished his speech by striking a palm with his fist, and his companion strode toward the door.
Rathburn darted around the side of the building into the shadow as the man came out and hurried up a wide road toward the mine buildings above. Then Rathburn ran around to the front of the building and quietly opened the door.
Sautee had seated himself at the desk, and he swung about in his chair as he heard the door open. He looked again into the black bore of Rathburn’s gun. His eyes bulged, and this time they shone with genuine terror.
“It was sure in the pictures for us to meet again, Sautee,” said Rathburn easily. “Our business wasn’t finished. We ain’t through yet.”
“There isn’t any more money,” Sautee gasped out. “There’s no money up here at all.”
“Oh, yes, there is,” said Rathburn with a mirthless smile. “There’s twenty-odd thousand dollars in my right-hand coat pocket. Now I wonder what you’ve got in yours. It don’t stand to reason you’d start out this time without a gun. Stand up!”
154
Sautee rose. His face was ashen. He held his hands high as Rathburn pressed his weapon against his chest and relieved him of the automatic which he carried. Rathburn felt his other pockets and then smiled agreeably. He tossed the automatic on the desk.
“All right, we’ll get goin’,” he announced, indicating the open door. “We’ll have to hurry, for I take it you’ve sent for somebody from the mine.”
“Where are we going?” asked Sautee without moving.
“We’re goin’ for a little mornin’ walk, if you act reasonable,” replied Rathburn. “That was my intention. But if you don’t want to go–––”
He shrugged, and as Sautee looked fixedly at him, he cocked his gun.
Sautee hurried toward the door with Rathburn following him closely. When they were outside Rathburn directed Sautee across the street. When they reached Rathburn’s horse Rathburn quickly mounted and motioned to the mines manager to precede him into the timber behind the little village. When they gained the shelter of the timber they gradually circled around until they struck a trail which led up above the mine. They started up this, Sautee leading the way on foot with Rathburn following on his horse and keeping his gun trained on the mines manager’s back.
“Don’t worry,” Rathburn crooned. “I won’t shoot you in the back, Sautee. That wouldn’t be accordin’ to my ethics. But I’d have to stop you if you made a break to leave the present company.”
Sautee plodded on, his breath coming in gasps, the perspiration standing out on his forehead.
The trail joined with another well-worn path a short distance above the mine. The eastern sky now was light, and Rathburn saw a stone building155above them. He also saw that they were on the steep slope of the big mountain on which the Dixie Queen was located, and that there was a rift in this mountain to the left which indicated the presence of a pass there.
In a few minutes they reached the stone building. It had an iron door across which was painted the legend:
DANGER POWDER––DYNAMITE KEEP AWAY
DANGER POWDER––DYNAMITE KEEP AWAY
Rathburn dismounted and tossed the reins over his horse’s head so the animal would stand.
“That place looks like a natural jail,” he commented.
“It’s the mine’s powder house,” said Sautee, wiping his wet forehead.
“Sure,” Rathburn rejoined, “that’s just what it is. I expect there’s enough powder in there to blow half this mountain off.”
He walked to the door and took out his gun as he examined the padlock.
“What are you going to do?” asked Sautee excitedly.
“I’m goin’ to blow the lock off,” said Rathburn coolly.
“Don’t do it!” cried Sautee. “There’s high-percentage dynamite in there and T N T caps that we use on road work––dozens of boxes of it. You might set it off!”
Rathburn looked at the quaking mine manager speculatively. “That’s right,” he said finally, turning aside to grin to himself. “I guess any little jar might start it workin’. It goes off easy, I’ve heard.”
“There are caps and detonators in there, too,”156said Sautee quickly. “You might shoot into them some way, you never can tell. Well, it would be as bad for you as for me.” He uttered the last sentence in a note of triumph.
Rathburn was looking at the far-flung view below. He turned a hard gaze on Sautee. “What difference do you suppose it would make to me if that stuff in there goes off?” he demanded in a harsh voice. “Look down there!”
Sautee looked and drew in his breath with a gasp.
In the clear light of the blossoming dawn the whole panorama of the lower mountain country was spread out before them. To the left, under the towering peaks of the divide, the rounded crest of the hogback was discernible, and a black spot marked the location of Mannix’s automobile.
“There’s a car over there,” said Rathburn, noting the direction of Sautee’s gaze.
Almost directly below them a number of mounted men filed over a ridge and again disappeared in the timber. Off to the right more horsemen were to be seen.
“Looks like there was a posse or two out this morning,” said Rathburn in a forbidding voice. “I reckon I ain’t such a fool as not to know who they’re lookin’ for, Sautee. Now maybe you can figure out why I ain’t as scared of that powder house as you are.”
“I can stop them!” cried Sautee in a shaking voice.
“Sure,” Rathburn agreed. “You can say you lied about me takin’ the money–––”
“I’ll tell ’em you gave it back!” said Sautee hoarsely. “I’ll tell ’em you brought it on up to the mine and that it’s in the safe. I’ll square it–––”
“But you can’t square the rewards that are out for The Coyote,” said Rathburn sternly. “You’ve157stepped into a bigger game than you thought, Sautee, an’ it’s got plumb out of your hands.”
He turned on the mine manager fiercely. “Whatever happens, remember this: Once a man gets a bad reputation in a country like this or the country I come from, he’s got it for keeps. He can’t get away from it no matter how he acts or what he does. Mine has drove me away from the place where I belong; it’s followed me here; I can’t lose it; an’ the way things has been going, by glory, I don’t know if Iwantto lose it!”
Sautee cowered back under the fierceness in Rathburn’s manner.
“An’ you can tell ’em, if you ever have a chance to talk again, that I earned my reputation square! I ain’t involved nobody else, an’ I ain’t stole from any poor people, an’ I never threw my gun down on a man who didn’t start for his first.”
The deadly earnestness and the note of regret in Rathburn’s tone caused Sautee to forget his uneasiness temporarily and stare at the man in wonder. Rathburn’s eyes were narrowed, his gaze was steel blue, and his face was drawn into hard, grim lines as he looked out upon the far-flung, glorious vista below them, broken here and there by the movement of mounted men.
“Maybe I––I–––” Sautee faltered in his speech. His words seemed impotent in the face of Rathburn’s deadly seriousness.
Rathburn turned abruptly to the powder house door.
“Wait!” cried Sautee.
The mines manager dug frantically into his pockets and drew out a bunch of keys.
“There are some locks on this property to which there are only two keys,” he explained nervously.158“This is one of them, and I carry the second key. Here!”
He held out the key ring with one key extended.
Rathburn thrust his gun back into its holster and took the keys. In a moment he had unlocked the padlock and swung open the iron door, exposing case after case of high explosive within the stone structure.
Sautee was staring at him in dire apprehension.
Rathburn pointed toward the rift in the mountain on the left above them. Sautee looked and saw a man and a boy riding down the trail.
“That looks to me like the man that held me up last night,” said Rathburn. “He looks like one of the men, anyway. Maybe he’s found out he didn’t get much, eh? Maybe he’s coming back because he didn’t have enough to make a get-away with. Maybe he thinks he was double crossed or something.”
Sautee’s features were working in a spasm of fear and worry. Suddenly he turned on Rathburn.
“Why don’t you get away?” he asked in eager pleading. “That trail will take you out of the mountains and down into the desert country. You’re from the desert, aren’t you? You can make it. You’ve made a good haul. Go! It’ll be better for me and all of us!”
Rathburn laughed bitterly. “I can’t go because I’m a worse fool than you are,” he said acridly. “Get in there. Sneaking lizards, man, can’t you see I’m tempted to put a shot into one of them boxes and blow us both to kingdom come?”
Sautee shrank back into the powder house, and Rathburn slammed the door.
As Rathburn snapped the padlock and thrust the keys into his pocket his eyes again sought the trail to the left above him. No one was in sight. The man159and the boy had disappeared in a bend or depression in the trail.
But when he looked down toward the hogback he saw a car coming up the road toward the mine. A number of horsemen had taken its place on the hogback.
Rathburn ran for his horse.
160CHAPTER XXIIA SECOND CAPTURE
Rathburn rode straight up the trail which led from the powder house toward the pass over the big mountain. His eyes were gleaming with satisfaction, but several times they clouded with doubt, and he felt the bank notes in his coat pocket. Each time, however, he would shake his head and push on up the trail with renewed energy.
Looking backward and downward, he could see the posses gathering in the street of the mine village. He sensed the excitement which had followed the sudden disappearance of Sautee and smiled grimly. He saw that the automobile from the hogback had reached the village. Scores of men were clustered about it. He knew Mannix was taking personal charge of the man hunt; but there was a chance to get away!
He looked wistfully eastward. Somewhere off there, beyond the rolling foothills, was the desert. He thrilled. It had been there he had made his first mistake. Goaded by the loss of his small cattle ranch he had taken revenge on the man who had foreclosed on him and others in a similar predicament. He had held up the bank and restored a small measure of the losses. Even then the profit of the unscrupulous money lender had been enormous.
But the law had marked Rathburn. The gunmen who were jealous of his reputation as an expert at the draw had forced him to fall back upon that draw to protect his life. Thus he had been driven to obtain a living in the best way he could, and something161in the dangerous, uncertain life of the outlaw had appealed to his wild blood.
Sautee had said the money in his pocket was a good haul. Why not? He looked again to eastward. Over the big mountain––into the timber––a circling back––a straight cut east–––
He knew he could do it. He had evaded posses before––posses composed of trained men who were accustomed to take the man trail. It would actually be rare sport to play with the crowd below. His left hand dropped idly into his coat pocket, and he started as he fingered what was there. Then his brow became furrowed, and he scowled.
“Maybe I ain’t such a good guesser after all,” he muttered. “Maybe I’m just what I told Sautee––a fool.”
He caught sight of a man and a boy above him. Another instant and they were lost to view.
Rathburn suddenly put the spurs to his horse, and the dun surged up the steep trail. As he rode, Rathburn took his rawhide lariat from its place on the saddle. At a point above where the trail twisted about a huge outcropping of rock he turned off, dismounted, and crept to the top of the rocks. Quickly he surveyed the trail above. Then he slipped back down to his horse, got in the saddle, and took up a position just at the lower end of the outcropping, some little distance back from the trail and above it. He held the lariat ready in his hands.
He sat his horse quietly––listening. The wind had died with the dawn, and there was no sound in the hills. The sun was mounting in the sky to eastward. Rathburn looked out over the timbered slopes below with wistful eyes. Suddenly his gaze became alert. The sound of horses upon the rocky trail above the outcropping came to his ears.
Gradually the sound became more and more distinct.162He could hear the hoofs of the horses striking against the rock of the trail. He shook out the noose of his rope, and it sang as it whirled in the air.
The head of a horse had hardly pushed past the rock when Rathburn’s noose went swirling downward and dropped true over its target. The man in the saddle loosed a string of curses as he felt the rawhide lariat tighten about his arms and chest. His horse shied, and he was dragged from the saddle, landing on his feet, but falling instantly.
The second horse reared back, and Rathburn’s gun covered the boy in the saddle. Rathburn, keeping tight hold on the rope hand over hand, and retaining his gun in his right hand at the same time, ran down the short pitch. The boy’s horse became still, and while the youth stared Rathburn trussed up the first rider and then stood off to look at him.
“Just takin’ a mornin’ ride, Carlisle?” he asked cheerfully. “Or did you forget something? Don’t make any false moves, kid. I ain’t in a playful mood.”
The boy continued to stare, but Carlisle’s face was black with rage, and curses flowed from his lips.
“That won’t get you anything,” Rathburn said coolly. “You might better be doin’ some tall thinking instead of cussing. You ain’t got the cards stacked for this deal, Carlisle.”
“What’s your game?” Carlisle managed to get out.
“It’s a deep one,” Rathburn replied dryly. “An’ it’s too complicated to tell you now. I’m goin’ to give you a chance to do the thinking I mentioned a while back. I ain’t takin’ your gun or your horse. The only thing I’m takin’ is a chance, an’ I ain’t takin’ it onyouraccount.”
For an instant Rathburn’s eyes burned with fury. Then he dragged Carlisle into the shelter of the rocks, to the side of the trail, and tied his horse near by.163Mounting, he motioned to the boy to ride down the trail ahead of him. He looked at the big hat and the overalls the boy wore. The youth looked wildly about and then drove the spurs into his mount and dashed down the trail with Rathburn close behind, calling to him to take it easy.
Just as they reached a spot directly above the powder house the boy reined in his horse. Rathburn saw he was looking down at the turbulent scene in the street of the little village below the mine. Then the boy swayed in the saddle, and Rathburn had just time to fling himself to the ground and catch the senseless form in his arms as it toppled.
He put his burden down on the grass beside the trail and led his horse into the timber and tied him. Next he picked up the boy and made his way down to the powder house. The shouts of many men came to him from far below. He succeeded in getting out the keys and unlocking the padlock which secured the door of the powder house. Then he opened the door, covered the frightened mine manager with his gun, and carried his burden in with one arm.
“One of the accomplices,” he said briefly to Sautee, as he put the lad down and loosened the shirt at the throat. “He’ll come around in a minute.”
Sautee’s eyes were popping from his head. He leaned back upon the cases of dynamite and passed a clammy hand over his brow.
“I’ve got Carlisle, too,” said Rathburn. “Takin’ it all around from under it ain’t a bad morning’s haul.”
Sautee now stared at him with a new look in his eyes––a look in which doubt struggled with terror.
“I don’t believe youareThe Coyote!” he blurted out.
“Who do you reckon I might be, if I ain’t?” Rathburn asked quietly.
164
“You might be some kind of a deputy or something.”
Rathburn laughed harshly. “It just happens I’m the man some folks call The Coyote,” he said. “I don’t like the name, but it was wished on me, an’ I can’t seem to shake it off. If I wasn’t the man you think I am you wouldn’t be in such a tight fix, Sautee.”
Rathburn’s words conveyed a subtle menace which was not lost on the mine manager. Sautee cringed and rubbed his hands in his nervous tension.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Listen!” exclaimed Rathburn.
From below came the echoes of shouts and other sounds which conveyed the intelligence that a large body of men was on the move up to the mine and the mountain slope above.
“They’re after me,” said Rathburn bitterly. “They think I stole the pay-rolls. They can’t get me, Sautee––not alive. An’ if they get me the other way I’m goin’ to see to it somehow that I don’t get blamed for these jobs up here. Now, do you begin to see daylight?”
Sautee wet his dry lips. The figure on the floor stirred. The shouts from below sounded more distinct.
Rathburn’s gun leaped into his hand. “You better start hoping the shootin’ don’t begin till we understand each other, Sautee,” he said grimly. “We’ve come to the show-down!”
165CHAPTER XXIIIQUICK FACTS
Disregarding the sounds which continued to come from below, Rathburn stood, gun in hand, regarding Sautee with a grim countenance and a cold look in his keen, gray eyes.
“I saw that truck driver held up, Sautee. I was on a ridge below the divide. I saw the tall man in the black slicker, his pardner, an’ the boy. I didn’t figure it would do any good to tell Mannix I’d taken in the show, an’ I was on my way to the desert. I’d be there now if Carlisle hadn’t overstepped the mark in that Red Feather place.”
Sautee pricked up his ears. “You let them arrest you,” he said. “Why–––”
“Because I knew Mannix didn’t know who I was an’ didn’t have anything on me,” said Rathburn quickly. “An’ I got peevish at Carlisle an’ plumb suspicious when he tried to make things look bad for me right there at the start. I began to wise up to the whole lay when you got me out of jail.”
Sautee’s face went white again.
“Your fine explanations of why you couldn’t get that money up to the mine were thin as water, Sautee. You could get that money up there if you wanted to, an’ when you asked me to carry the package to the mine it was a dead out-an’-out give-away. I reckon you didn’t play me to have any sense, an’ I don’t think you gave Carlisle credit for havin’ the brains of a jack rabbit, either.”
Rathburn laughed as the mine manager stared at mention of Carlisle’s name again.
166
“Don’t worry,” he said contemptuously. “I know it was Carlisle who held me up. I take it he figured that you’d actually put money in that package. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was him that you got to try that stunt. An’ he started away with the package as soon as he got it instead of sneakin’ back home to split with you. He double crossed you an’ you double crossed him an’ me. Now I’m double crossing the two of you.”
Sautee’s look had changed to one of anger. He glared at Rathburn, forgetting his predicament.
“You’d have a fine time proving any of this nonsense,” he found the courage to say.
“I’m not only goin’ to prove what I’ve said so far, but I’m goin’ to prove that these robberies were a put-up job between you an’ Carlisle, with somebody helping you,” said Rathburn. “I’ve been in the mining game myself, Sautee, but in our country men spend their lives hunting metal to make some bunch of stockholders rich. Maybe they get something out of it themselves, an’ maybe they don’t; but they’re square, an’ the men that run the mines are square ’most always. Anyway they develop properties, an’ that’s more’n you’re doing. You’re not doing this camp any good. You’re bleeding the mine an’ the company, too.”
“And I suppose you––The Coyote––are taking a hand in this business as a matter of principle,” sneeringly replied Sautee.
“I didn’t take a hand,” Rathburn pointed out sternly. “You an’ Carlisle forced a hand on me, an’ I’m goin’ to play it out. I’ve another reason, too,” he added mysteriously.
“Did you say you had Carlisle?” Sautee asked in feigned anxiety.
“I’ve got him dead to rights,” replied Rathburn167shortly, taking some paper and a pencil from a pocket.
Sautee looked at him curiously as he started to write on the paper. “Going to write it all out and leave it?” he asked sneeringly.
“I’m going to put it outside the powder house in a place where Mannix or some of the others will be sure to find it,” was the puzzling answer.
“I suppose they’ll believe it quicker if it’s in writing,” said Sautee bravely.
Rathburn finished writing, folded the paper, and placed it in the left-hand pocket of his coat. He carefully put away the pencil. His next act caused Sautee real concern.
Using a drill which was there for the purpose, evidently, Rathburn broke open a box of dynamite caps and a box of dynamite. A single coil of fuse was lying on a box. He quickly affixed the cap to a stick of the dynamite and crimped on a two-foot length of fuse. Then he moved the opened box of dynamite to the doorway and struck the stick with cap and fuse attached into it.
“There,” he said, evidently greatly satisfied with his work. “That fuse will burn about two minutes–––” He paused. “That’s too long,” he concluded.
Perspiration again stood out on Sautee’s forehead as he watched Rathburn cut off a foot of the fuse.
“That’s better,” said Rathburn with a queer smile. “That’ll burn about a minute. Time enough.”
Sautee stared in horrified fascination at the foot of fuse which stuck straight out from the box of dynamite in the doorway. “What––what are you going to do?” he gasped out.
“Listen, Sautee,” said Rathburn coolly. “When that stick of powder explodes it’ll set off the box an’168the other boxes, an’ instead of a powder house here there’ll be a big hole in the side of the mountain.”
“Man––man––you’re not going to do––that!” Sautee’s words came in a hoarse whisper.
“I reckon that’s what I’m goin’ to have to do,” said Rathburn as he bent over the form on the floor of the powder house.
The boy’s eyes were open and were staring into Rathburn’s.
Rathburn lifted him to his feet, where he stood unsteadily. Again the gun was in Rathburn’s hand.
“This party is goin’ to leave us,” he said to the frightened mine manager. “I’m goin’ to step just outside for a minute. It’s your chance to make a break, Sautee; but if you try it I’ll send a bullet into that cap. Maybe you heard somewhere that I can shoot tolerably well,” he concluded in his drawl.
Sautee gripped the sides of the boxes piled behind him.
Rathburn led the boy outside and said quickly: “Just what is this man Carlisle to you?”
A look of fear, remorse, dejection––all commingled and pleading––came into the dark eyes that looked up into his.
Rathburn didn’t wait for a verbal answer.
“Your horse is just up the trail a piece,” he said hurriedly. “Get up there––go up behind the powder house, so the men below can’t see you. Swing off into the timber to the left and get down out of here. I’ll keep their attention. Go home.”
He waited a moment until he saw that his instructions were being carried out, then he leaped again to the doorway of the powder house.
Sautee’s face was livid, and his teeth were chattering. Rathburn took a match from his shirt pocket.
“Stop!” screamed Sautee. “I’ll talk. You were169right. It was a frame-up. I’ll tell everything––everything!”
The perspiration was streaming from his face, and his voice shook with terror.
“You’ll have a chance to talk in less than a minute,” said Rathburn calmly.
A chorus of shouts came from the trail just below the powder house as a number of men came into view.
Rathburn stepped in front of the door with the match in his left hand and his gun in his right.
170CHAPTER XXIVTHE SHOW-DOWN
A wild chorus of yells greeted him. He had surmised that the men had seen him coming back down the trail to the powder house with his human burden. Now he called Sautee into view. They would most naturally assume that it was the mine manager he had been carrying.
“Come to the door where they can see you,” he called to Sautee.
The ring in his voice brought Sautee, white-faced and shivering, to the doorway beside Rathburn.
Another round of yells followed the mine manager’s appearance. Then there was a sudden stillness. Rathburn saw that the crowd was made up mostly of miners. They paused in the wide place in the trail just below the powder house, and Mannix pushed to the fore.
“I want you, Coyote,” he called sternly.
“Now, don’t you think I know it?” replied Rathburn in a voice which carried to all the members of the mob. “You don’t want me for robbing this mine, Mannix; you want me for something you don’t know anything about––because I’ve got a record. Wait a minute!”
He shot out the words as the mob pushed a step forward.
“If you fellows take a couple more steps in this direction I’ll put a bullet into this box of dynamite!”
The movement stopped instantly. Men stared up at him breathlessly, for they realized that he meant what he said.