Beth had uttered that one cry only, as man and horse careened above the pit. She now sat dumbly staring where the two had disappeared. Nothing could she see of Van or his pony. A chill of horror attacked her, there in the blaze of the sun. It was not, even then, so much of herself and Elsa she was thinking—two helpless women, lost in this place of terrible silence; she was smitten by the fate of their guide.
Van, for his part, looked about as best he might, observing his situation comprehensively. He was safe for the moment. The ledge whereon he was bearing a portion of his weight was narrow and crumbling with old disintegration. The shrub to which he clung was as tough as wire cable, and had once been stoutly rooted in the crevice. Now, however, its hold had been weakened by the heavy strain upon it, and yet he must continue to trust a part of his weight to its branches. There was nothing, positively nothing, by which he could hope to climb to the trail up above.
He deliberately rested and fostered his breath, not a trifle of which had been jolted in violence from his body. Presently he raised his voice and called out, as cheerfully as possible:
"Ship ahoy! Hullo—Miss Laughing Water!"
For a moment there was no response. Beth was to utterly overcome to speak. She hardly dared believe it was his call she heard, issuing up from the tomb. She feared that her hope, her frantic imagination, her wish to have it so, had conjured up a voice that had no genuine existence. Her lips moved, but made no audible sound. She trembled violently. Van called again, with more of his natural power.
"Hullo! Hullo! Miss Beth—are you up there on the trail?"
"Oh, yes! Oh! what shall I do?" cried Beth in a sudden outburst of relief and pent-up emotions. "Tell me what to do!"
Van knew she was rather near at hand. The bridge and trail were certainly no more than twenty-five feet above his head. He could make her hear with little effort.
"Brace up and keep your nerve," he instructed. "We're O.K. up to date. Just ride ahead till you come to the flat. Let Elsa hold your mare. Can you hear me plainly?"
"Oh! yes—yes—then what next?" replied the worried girl.
Van resumed calmly: "You'll find a rawhide rope on Elsa's saddle. Come back with that, on foot. Then I'll tell you what to do. Don't try to hurry; take your time, and don't worry." After a moment, as he got no reply, he added: "Have you started?"
Beth had not budged her mare, for terror of what she must do. She was fortifying all her resolution. She answered with genuine bravery:
"Yes—I—I'll do what you say."
She took up the reins. Her pale face was set, but she did not close her eyes to cross the dizzying brink. The mare went forward—and Elsa's bay resumed his patient tagging, up to and past the fateful place where a part of the shelf-edge, having been dislodged, had let Van's pony fall.
For ten age-long minutes Van waited on his ledge, feeling the treacherous, rotted stuff break silently away beneath his feet. The shrub, too, was showing an earthy bit of root as it slowly but certainly relinquished its hold on the substance which the crevice had divided. The man could almost have calculated how many seconds the shelf and the shrub could sustain their living burden.
Then Beth returned. She had left her maid with the horses; she held the lasso in her hand. To creep on foot along the granite bridge was taxing the utmost of her courage. She could not ascertain precisely where it was that the horseman was waiting below. She was guided only by the broken ledge, where pony and all had disappeared. Therefore, she called to him weakly.
"Mr. Van—Mr. Van—where are you?"
Van's heart turned over in his breast.
"Just below that split boulder in the trail," he answered cheerily. "Go to that."
A silence succeeded, then he heard, in tremulous accents:
"I'm here—but how am I going to tie the rope?"
Van answered distinctly, for much depended on precision.
"Uncoil it first. On one end there's an eye that runs the loop. Open the loop to a pretty good size and slip it over the smaller portion of the boulder. Then push it well down in the crevice, and pull it tight."
He knew that the rope was far too short to loop the larger rock and reach his hands. He waited while he thought she might be working—as indeed she was—and presently added: "Got that done?"
"Yes," she called. "Yes—but are you sure——"
His hold was giving way. He answered crisply:
"Now drop me the end. Don't wait!"
His hold was giving way.[Illustration: His hold was giving way.]
His hold was giving way.[Illustration: His hold was giving way.]
Beth had forgotten all danger to herself. She had ceased to tremble. She paid out the rope with commendable promptness.
"Does it reach?" she cried. "Can you get it?"
He could not. Though sufficiently long it was ten feet away, on his right. His seconds were growing fearfully precious.
"Just shift it over, more towards Elsa," he called, still calmly. "Move it about ten feet."
It began to approach him jerkily. It halted, then once more it moved. The shrub in his grasp gave out an inch, and was coming from its anchorage. Then his fist was closed on the rope.
"All right!" he called. "Let go—and stand aside!"
"But—oh, if the rock shouldn't hold!" cried the girl. "Are you sure it won't pull over?"
He was not at all certain of the boulder. This explained his directions, "stand aside!" If it came—it must not involve the girl. There was nothing for him but to trust to its weight against his own. He was strong. He began to come up, bracing a foot against the crumbling wall, winding the rope around one of his legs—or his leg around the rope, and resting whensoever he could.
Beth stood there, nearly as tense as the rope. Her brown eyes were fixed on the bedded boulder; her face was more gray than its bulk.
At the edge, where the lasso impinged upon the granite, small particles were breaking and falling ominously. Scarcely daring to breathe, as she felt how the man was toiling up from the maw of the chasm, Beth could not bear to look where he must come—if come he ever should.
It seemed an eternity of waiting. At last, when new misgivings had seized upon her heart, she heard his labored breathing. Even then she did not turn. She feared to watch his efforts; she feared to break the spell. A minute later she heard his even voice.
"It's a wonderful view—from down below."
The glad, eager light in her eyes, which his eyes met from the brink, put strength in both his arms. He came up to safety in an outburst of vigor that was nothing short of magnificent.
"Oh!" said the girl, and she leaned against the wall in a sudden need for support.
"I really had no intention of—deserting like that," panted Van, with a smile that was just a trifle forced. "But it's so much easier to—drop into a habit than it—ever is to get out."
She made no reply, but remained where she was, weakly leaning against the wall and slowly regaining the strength she had lost at the moment of beholding him safe. She was not the fainting kind, but she was human—womanly human.
Van began immediately to release and re-coil the rope.
"Too bad to throw away a pony like that," he resumed regretfully. "I always intended, if he died a Christian death, to have his hide tanned for a rug."
He was saying anything, no matter what, to dissipate the reactionary collapse into which he feared the girl was falling.
"Now then," he added, when the rope was well in hand, "we've wasted all the time we can spare on a second-rate vaudeville performance. Come along."
He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail. For herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured—really safe again and whole—after that terrible plunge. But this from the horseman was impossible. He had not even thanked her for the rescue.
"You horrid, handsome wretch!" she murmured vexedly, stimulated to renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow way.
They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the horses. The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring:
"What for dit you did it—go down there?"
"Just for ducks," said Van. He halted for Beth's approach, put her up on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a promptness that was certainly amazing.
There was no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole affair was inexplicable—his attitude towards Searle at the station, his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.
Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom, for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn. His escape from death had been so slender—and he would not even rest!
The flat was, in reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits, in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.
After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down, lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a lake.
Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray floor with the keenest attention. He went on further, and halted again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.
At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of immensity, but rather gazed at him.
"What is it you expect to see?" she inquired at last. "Goldite isn't down there, is it?"
"I'm rather expecting—if I haven't miscalculated on the time—— There he is now," he answered, still staring afar off down upon the valley. He raised his arm and extended a finger to point towards the north-most limit of the level stretch of land. "Do you see that small, dark object in the road? That's a road, that slender yellow streak that you can follow."
Beth obeyed directions and thereby discerned, with remarkable clearness, the moving object, far away below. She did not in the least suspect its nature.
"Why, yes—what is it?" she asked with languid interest, having expected something more significant. "Is it some small animal?"
"Yes," responded Van. "It's Searle."
Beth was instantly all attention.
"Not Mr. Bostwick, in his car?"
Van continued to study the gray of the world-wide map.
"I rather wonder——" he mused, and there he halted, presently adding, "He's climbing a hill. You might not think so, looking down from here, but it's steep and sandy, for a car."
She was watching eagerly.
"And he's no further along towards Goldite than this?"
"He's had some tough old going," answered Van. "He's in luck to——" then to himself, as he continued to scan the scene for something he did not apparently find. "By Jupe! I'd have sworn Matt Barger——" He broke off abruptly, adding in a spirit of fairness, "Searle is getting right up to the ridge all right. Good boy! He must have a powerful motor under the—There! By George! I knew it! I knew it! Got him! right there in the gravel!"
The girl looked suddenly upon him, wholly unable to comprehend the sharp exclamations he was making.
"What has got him? What do you mean?" she demanded in vague alarm. "I don't see what you——"
"That's Matt every time—I thought so," he resumed, as he stepped a little closer to the girl. "Don't you see them?—those lively little specks, swarming all around the machine?"
Beth bent her gaze on the drama, far below—a play in which she knew but one of the characters, and nothing of the meaning of the scene.
"I see—yes—something like a lot of tiny ants—or something. What are they?—not robbers?—not men?"
"Part men, part hyenas," he told her quietly. "It's a lot of State convicts, escaped from their prison, two days free—and desperate."
She was suddenly very pale. Her eyes were blazing.
"Convicts! Out of prison?"
"A good long way out," he told her watching, "and clever enough to hike for the mines, with the camps all full of strangers. They learn to be good mixers, when they're trying to escape."
Beth gazed at him searchingly.
"You—knew they were out—and waiting on the road?"
"Everyone knew they were out—and I certainly thought big Matt would do precisely what you see he has done."
"Matt?" she echoed.
"The leader," he explained, "a clever brute as ever worried a sheriff."
She was not in the least interested in the personality of the convict thus described. Her mind had flown to another aspect of the case—the case involving herself.
"And this was why you wouldn't let us go in the auto?" she said. "You expected this?"
He looked at her quickly.
"Searle wouldn't take my advice, you know." His eyes were once more merry. "What could I do?"
"But Mr. Bostwick wouldn't have gone if you had told him!" she said. "Oh, I'm surprised you'd do it—let him go and be captured like that!" She was looking down upon the silent drama intently as she added: "I don't see why you ever did it!"
He was still amused.
"Oh, I thought perhaps Searle deserved it."
She blazed a little.
"You told him you hoped he'd meet congenial company on the road. You didn't mean——"
"Guilty as charged in the indictment. I guess I did."
"Oh! I wouldn't have thought——" she started, then she shivered in horror, reflecting swiftly on the fate that might have befallen herself and Elsa had they too been captured with Searle. It was all explained at last—the horseman's earnest talk with Dave, his quiet but grim refusal to permit herself and Elsa to remain with the car, and the hazardous ride he had since dared compel them to take at such peril to his life! And now, his persistent advance on foot, when perhaps he was painfully injured! He had done then such a service as she could never in her life forget. His treatment of Searle had perhaps, even as he said, been deserved. Nevertheless, Searle was much to her, very much, indeed—or had been—up to this morning—and she was worried.
"What do you think they will do?" she added in a spirit of contrition that came at once upon her. "They must be terrible men!"
"They won't do much but take his money and clothes, and maybe beg for a ride," said Van reassuringly. "They'll see he isn't fit to kill."
Beth glanced at him briefly, inquiringly. What a baffling light it was that played in the depths of his eyes! What manner of being was he, after all? She could not tell. And yet she felt she could trust him—she certainly knew not why. Despite his ways of raillery she felt he was serious, true as steel, and big in heart and nature.
"I mustn't forget to thank you," she murmured. "I mean for sparing us—all that. I do thank you, most sincerely, for——"
"Never mind that," he interrupted. "We're going to be late to lunch."
He turned once more to the trail and started off, in his active manner, together with a thorough indifference as to what became of Bostwick.
Beth, with a feeling that something ought yet to be done for Searle, down in the valley with the convicts, cast one helpless glance at the scene of the hold-up, then perforce urged her pony forward.
Van halted no more. He led the way doggedly onward, over the rises, through great silent forests, past crystal springs, and down dark, somber ravines. At a quarter of one he emerged from a gorge upon the level acre of a tiny cove, still high in the mountains fastnesses. Here he let out a whoop like an Indian, its echo filling all the place.
An answering call came clearly from somewhere near at hand. Beth felt a sudden alarm to know there were human beings near. What sort they were was a matter entirely of conjecture. Then presently she discovered a number of small, rude buildings, and a fair-sized cabin, planted next the hill. The door of the latter was open. A tall man appeared in the frame.
"This," said Van, who had waited for the girl to ride once more to his side, "is the Monte Cristo mine—the worst false alarm that ever disfigured the map."
The Monte Cristo mining property comprised a tunnel in the hill, a glory hole, a little toy quartz-mill—five stamps strong—the bunk-house, kitchen, blacksmith-shop, stable, corral, and four human beings. These latter were a Chinese cook named Algy, a Piute Indian half-breed called Cayuse, and two rare souls—Napoleon G. Blink and "Gettysburg"—miners, and boastful old worthies, long partnered and beloved by Van.
Just at present the tunnel was empty, the glory-hole was deserted, and the quartz-mill was silent. The mine had proved a failure. Van had expended many thousands of dollars and ten months of time to demonstrate the facts; and now, in possession of much new experience, an indomitable spirit, two tired partners, and a brand-new claim, he was facing his fate, as heretofore, with a wonderful boyish cheer.
Not all this knowledge was vouchsafed to Beth when she and her maid were presently put in possession of the place. With the utmost gravity Van introduced her by old Dave's appellation, Miss Laughing Water. The maid he merely called Elsa. His explanation as to whence they hailed, whither they were bound, why he had taken them in charge, and how he had lost the pinto pony, was notable chiefly for its brevity. He and his charges were hungry and somewhat pressed for time, he announced, and he therefore urged Algy to haste.
Dinner had been promptly served at twelve. Algy was therefore in despair—for Algy was proud of his art. He still had good red beans, most excellent coffee, corn-fed bacon, the best of bread and butter, a hunger-inspiring stew of lamb, white potatoes, fine apple sauce, and superlative gingerbread on hand in great abundance, however, but in spite of it all he spluttered.
"What's mallah you, Van?" he demanded several times. "Wha' for no tell me blingee ladies? How you s'plose I gettee dinner? Sominagot, you come like this, that velly superstich."
He would readily have laid down his very life for Van, but he laid a good dinner instead. During its preparation Beth and her maid sat down on a bench beside the bunk-house, in the presence of Cayuse, Napoleon, and Gettysburg, while Van led the horses to the stable for refreshment, and Algy talked to himself in pigeon English.
It was an odd situation for the girl from New. York, but she found herself amused. Both Napoleon and Gettysburg had been cast for amusing roles, which they did not always fill. Neither, as might be supposed from his name, had ever even smelled the faintest suggestion of things military. Napoleon had once been a sailor, or, to be more accurate, a river boatman. He was fat, short, red-headed, red-necked, red-nosed, and red-eyed. His hands were freckled, his arms were hairy. He turned his head to one side like a bird—and promptly fell in love with demure little Elsa.
Gettysburg was as thin as Napoleon was fat. He had a straggling gray beard, a very bald pate, high cheek bones, and a glass eye. This eye he turned towards the maid, perhaps because it was steady. He also had a nervous way of drawing one hand down his face till he lowered his jaw prodigiously, after which, like the handle of a knocker, it would fall back to place with quite a thump. He did this twice as he stared at Beth, and then he remarked:
"Quite a hike yit, down to Goldite."
"I suppose it is," said Beth in her interesting way. "How far is it, really, from here?"
"'Bout twenty miles of straight ahead, and two miles of straight up, and three of straight down—if a feller could go straight," said Gettysburg gravely, "but he can't."
Beth looked very much concerned. She had hoped they were almost there, and no more hills to climb or descend. She felt convinced they had ridden over twenty miles already, and the horseman had assured her it was thirty at the most, from the station so far behind the mountains.
"But—Mr. Van can't walk so far as that," she said. "I'm sure I don't see what——"
She was interrupted by the reappearance of Van himself.
"Isn't there a horse on the place?" he asked his partners collectively. "What have you done with the sorrel?"
Gettysburg arose. "Loaned him to A. C., yistiddy," said he. "But the outlaw's on the job."
"Not Vesuvius?" Van replied incredulously. "You don't mean to say he's turned up again unslaughtered?"
"Cayuse here roped him, up to Cedar flat," imparted Gettysburg. "Cornered him there in natural corral and fetched him home fer fun."
Napoleon added: "But Cayuse ain't been on board, you bet. He likes something more old-fashioned than Suvy. Split my bowsprit, I wouldn't tow no horse into port which I was afraid to board. When I was bustin' bronchos I liked 'em to be bad."
"Yes," agreed Gettysburg, "so bad they couldn't stand up."
A bright glitter came for a moment in Van's blue eyes.
"If Suvy's the only equine paradox on the place, he and I have got to argue things out this afternoon," he said, "but I'll have my dinner first."
Beth was listening intently, puzzled to know precisely what the talk implied. She was vaguely suspicious that Van, for the purpose of escorting her on, would find himself obliged to wage some manner of war with a horse of which the Indian was afraid.
Further discussion of the topic was interrupted now by the cook, who appeared to announce his dinner served. Beth and her maid were, therefore, directed by Van to a table set for two, while he, with Napoleon and Gettysburg for company, repaired to a place in the kitchen.
Beth was hungry. She ate with all the relish of a mountaineer. Algy, moreover, was a kitchen magician in the art of transforming culinary commonplaces into viands of toothsome delight. Elsa became speechlessly busy. Despite her wishes in the matter, Beth could hear the men talking beyond.
"So them convicts has hiked over this way already," said the voice of Gettysburg distinctly. "We heard from A. C. about the prison break, but he wasn't on to which ones they was."
"One is Matt Barger," Van informed them. "He's the only one I know."
"Matt Barger! NotyourMatt Barger?" demanded Gettysburg sharply.
Van nodded. "Mine when I had him."
Gettysburg arose excitedly.
"He ain't come hunting fer you as quick as this?" he inquired uneasily. "That ain't what's fetched him over to the desert?"
"Haven't asked him," answered Van. "He promised to look me up if ever he got out alive."
"Look you up!" Gettysburg was obviously over-wrought by the mere intelligence that Barger was at liberty. "You know what he'll do! You know him, boy! You know he'll keep his word. You can't go foolin' around alone. You've got to be——"
"Pass the beans," Van interrupted. He added more quietly: "Sit down, Gett, and shut the front door of your face."
Napoleon was eating, to "keep Van company." He pushed away his plate.
"Just our luck if these here derelicts was to foul us, skipper and crew," he observed ruefully. "Just our luck."
Gettysburg sat down, adding: "Why can't you wait, Van, wait till the whole kit and boodle of us can move to the bran'-new claim?"
Van finished half a cup of coffee.
"I told you I should continue on without delay. The horses will probably come to-night for all of you to follow me to-morrow."
"Then why don't you wait and go with us?" repeated Gettysburg. "We'll git there by noon, and you ain't got nuthin' to ride."
The horseman answered: "Suvy's the prettiest gaited thing you ever saw—when he gaits."
"Holy toads!" said the older man apprehensively, "you ain't sure-a-goin' to tackle the outlaw today?"
"I've always felt we'd come to it soon or late," was Van's reply. "And I've got to have a horse this afternoon. We can't kill each other but once."
"Supposen he stoves in your pilot-house," said Napoleon. "What shall we do about the claim, and all this cargo, and everything?"
"The claim? Work it, man, work it," Van responded. "What's a mining claim for but to furnish good hard work for a couple of old ring-tailed galoots who've shirked it all their lives?"
"Work it, yep, but what on?" asked Gettysburg. "We're as broke as a hatched-out egg."
"Haven't you worked on shinbones and heavenly hopes before?" inquired the busy leader of the partnership. "And that reminds me, Algy, what about you?" he added to the Chinese cook. "We can't afford a tippe-bob-royal chef of your dimensions after this. I guess you'll have to poison somebody else."
"What's mallah you, Van?" Algy demanded aggressively. "You makee me velly sick. You get velly lich I cook your glub. You go bloke, I cook alle same. Sominagot, I b'long go with you all time. You no got good luck I never want the money, you savvy? You go hell—go anywhere—I go same place—that's all. You talkee big fool, that velly superstich." He looked at Van fiercely to disguise a great alarm, a fear that he might, after all, be dismissed in the break-up impending.
Van shrugged his shoulders.
"Sentenced for life. All right, Algy, if your cooking kills us off, at least, as the brave young husband remarked, it will all be in the family."
Algy still looked as fierce as one of his heathen idols.
"You t'ink velly smart," he said, still concealing his feelings. "Lats!" and with that he went out to chop some wood.
"Batten me into the pantry!" said Napoleon. "I'll bet old Algy'd board the outlaw himself, fer you, Van, squall and all."
"That horse ain't human," Gettysburg exploded anew. "Van, you can't ride no such Fourth-of-July procession!"
"Shut up!" murmured Van, with a gesture towards the room where Beth and her maid were dining. He added aloud: "The chances are we'll find he's a cheap Sunday-school picnic. Napoleon, you and Cayuse go out and prepare his mind for work."
"Aye, aye," said Napoleon rising to go, "but I wish we had some soothin' syrup, skipper."
He and the Indian were heard to depart, by Beth, sitting back in her chair. She was greatly alarmed by all she had heard of vengeful convicts and the vicious horse, and could eat no more for nervous dread.
"That horse has killed his man, and you know it," said Gettysburg in a whisper that the girl distinctly overhead. "Boy, boy, let the Injun ride him first."
"There, there, ease off," Van answered quietly. "You keep the women entertained about the mill while Suvy and I are debating."
He gulped down a last drink of coffee, silenced the miner's further remonstrances, and departed by way of the kitchen door.
Beth arose hurriedly and hastened forth, intent upon immediate prevention, if possible, of any further ordeals undertaken in behalf of herself. She was thoroughly frightened. A prescience of something ominous impending seemed to grip her very heart. She glanced about, helplessly, unfamiliar with the place. Van was nowhere in sight. She started to run around the cabin when Gettysburg appeared in her path.
"Well, well," said he nervously, "now who'd a-thought you'd finished eatin'?"
"Oh please," she said, "please go tell Mr. Van I'd rather he wouldn't attempt to rideanyhorse again to-day. Will you please go tell him that?"
"You bet your patent leathers!" said Gettysburg. "You just go over and globe-trot the quartz-mill while I'm gone, and we'll fix things right in a shake."
He strode off in haste. Beth watched him go. She made no move towards the quartz-mill, which Gettysburg had indicated, over on the slope.
She soon grew restive, awaiting his return. Elsa came out and sat down. The old miner failed to reappear.
At length, unable to endure any longer her feeling of alarm and suspense, Beth resolutely followed where Gettysburg had gone, and soon came in sight of the stable and high corral. Then her heart struck a blow of excitement in her breast, and her knees began to weaken beneath her.
Too late to interfere in the struggle about to be enacted, the girl stood rigidly beside a great red pine tree, fixing her gaze upon Van, on whose heels, as he walked, jingled a glinting pair of spurs.
From the small corral he was leading forth as handsome an animal as Beth had ever seen, already saddled, bridled—and blindfolded. The horse was a chestnut, magnificently sculptured and muscled. He was of medium size, and as trim and hard as a nail. His coat fairly glistened in the sun.
Despite his beauty there was something about him that betokened menace. It was not altogether that the men all stood away—all save Van—nor yet that the need for a blindfold argued danger in his composition. There was something acutely disquieting in the backward folding of his ears, the quiver of his sinews, the reluctant manner of his stepping.
Beth did not and could not know that an "outlaw" is a horse so utterly abandoned to ways of broncho crime and equine deviltry that no man is able to break him—that having conquered man after man, perhaps even with fatal results to his riders, he has become absolutely depraved and impossible of submission. She only knew that her heart was beating rapidly, painfully, that her breath came in gasps, that her whole nervous system was involved in some manner of anguish. She saw the Chinese cook run past to witness the game, but all her faculties were focused on the man and horse—both sinister, tense, and grim.
Van had not turned in Beth's direction. He was wholly unaware of her presence. He halted when the horse was well out towards the center of the open, and the outlaw braced awkwardly, as if to receive an attack.
With the bridle reins held in his hand at the pommel of the saddle, Van stood for a moment by the chestnut's side, then, with incredible celerity of movement, suddenly placed his foot in the stirrup and was up and well seated before the blinded pony could have moved.
Nothing happened. No one made a sound. No one, apparently, save Beth, had expected anything to happen. She felt a rush of relief—that came prematurely.
Van now leaned forward, as the horse remained stiffly braced, and slipping the blindfold from the pony's eyes, sat back in the saddle alertly.
Even then the chestnut did not move. He had gone through this ordeal many times before. He had often been mounted—but not for long at a time. He had even been exhausted by a stubborn "broncho buster"—some hardy human burr who could ride a crazy comet—but always he had won in the end. In a word he had earned his sobriquet, which in broncho-land is never lightly bestowed.
Van was not in the least deceived. However, he was eager for the conflict to begin. He had no time to waste. He snatched off his hat, let out a wild, shrill yell, dug with his spurs and struck the animal a resounding slap on the flank, that, like a fulminate, suddenly detonated the pent-up explosives in the beast.
He "lit into" bucking of astounding violence with the quickness of dynamite.
It was terrific. For a moment Beth saw nothing but a mad grotesquerie of horse and man, almost ludicrously unnatural, and crazed with eccentric motion.
The horse shot up in the air like a loose, distorted piece of statuary, blown from its pedestal by some gigantic disturbance. He appeared to buckle in his mid-air leap like a bended thing of metal, then dropped to the earth, stiff-legged as an iron image, to bound up again with mad and furious gyrations that seemed to the girl to twist both horse and rider into one live mass of incongruity,
He struck like a ruin, falling from the sky, went up again with demon-like activity, once more descended—once more hurtled wildly aloft—and repeated this maneuver with a swiftness utterly bewildering.
Had some diabolical wind, together with a huge, volcanic force, taken insane possession of the animal, to fire him skyward, whirl him about, thrash him down viciously and fling him up again, time after time, he could not have churned with greater violence.
He never came down in the same place twice, but he always came down stiff-legged. The jolt was sickening. All about, in a narrow, earth-cut circle he bucked, beginning to grunt and warm to his work and hence to increase the deviltry and malice of his actions.
Van had yelled but that once. He saw nothing, knew nothing, save a dizzy world, abruptly gone crazy about him.
To Beth it seemed as if the horror would never have an end. One glimpse she had of Van's white face, but nothing could it tell of his strength or the lack thereof. She felt she must look and look till he was killed. There could be no other issue, she was sure. And for herself there could be no escape from the awful fascination of the merciless brute, inflicting this torture on the man.
It did end, however, rather unexpectedly—that particular phase of the conflict. The horse grew weary of the effort, made in vain, to dislodge the stubborn torment on his back. He changed the program with the deadliest of all a broncho's tricks.
Pausing for the briefest part of a second, while Van must certainly have been reeling with hideous motion and jolt, the chestnut quickly reared on high, to drop himself clean over backwards. It was thus that once he had crushed the life from a rider.
"Oh!" screamed Both, and she sank beside the tree.
The men all yelled. They were furious and afraid.
With hoofs wildly flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal in such an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, then dropped over sheer—as if to be shattered into fragments.
But a mass of the bronze-like group was detached, and fell to one side, on its thigh. It was Van. He had seen what was coming in time.
Instantly up, as the brute rolled quickly to arise, he leaped in the saddle, the horn of which had snapped, and he and the chestnut came erect together, as if miraculously the equestrian group had been restored.
"Yi! Yi!" he yelled, like the madman he was—mad with the heat of the fight—and he dug in his spurs with vicious might.
Back to it wildly, with fury increased, the broncho leaped responsively.
Here, there, all the field over, the demon thrashed, catapulting incredibly. He tried new tricks, invented new volcanics of motion, developed new whirlwinds of violence.
Once more, then, as he had on the first occasion, the beast reared up and fell backward to the earth. Once more Van dropped away from his bulk and caught him before he could rise. This time, however, he did not immediately mount—and the men went running to his side.
"Fer God's sake, boy, let me kill the brute!" cried Gettysburg taking up a club.
"I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him!" said Napoleon wildly, but without any weapon in his hands.
Beth beheld and heard it all. She was once more standing rigidly by her tree, unable to move or speak. She wished to run to Van as the men had run, but not to slay the broncho—only to beg the horseman not to mount again.
She saw him push the men away and stand like the broncho's guard. His face was streaked with blood—his blood—jolted alike from his mouth and nose by the shocks to which he had been subjected.
"Let the horse alone!" he commanded roughly. "Good stuff in this broncho—somewhere. Get me a bottle of water, right away—a big one—get it full."
His partners started at once to raise objections. The Indian stood by stolidly looking on.
"You can't go no further. Van, you can't——" started Gettysburg.
"Sominagot! Una ma, hong oy! Una ca see fut!" said the Chinese-cook, swearing vehemently in the language likeliest to count, and he ran at once towards the kitchen.
Van was replacing the blindfold on the broncho's eyes. The animal was panting, sweating, quivering in every muscle. His ears went backward and forward rapidly. The blindfold shut out a wild, unreasoning challenge and defiance that burned like a torch in his eyes.
Algy came running with a big bottle, filled and corked.
"Fer God's sake, leave me kill him!" Gettysburg was repeating automatically. "Van, if you ain't got no respect fer yourself, ain't you got none left fer us old doggone cusses?"
"Give me the bottle, Algy," Van replied. "You're the only game sport on the ranch."
Still he did not discover Beth. His attentions were engrossed by the horse. He was dizzy, dazed, but a dogged master still of his forces. Up he mounted to the saddle again, the bottle held firmly in his grasp.
"Slip off the blinder," he said to his friends, and Algy it was who obeyed.
"Damn you, now you buck!" cried Van wildly, and his heels ignited the volcano.
For five solid minutes the broncho redoubled his scheme of demoniac fury. Then he poised, let out a shrill scream of challenge, and abruptly raised to repeat the backward fall.
Up, up he went, an ungainly sight, and then—the heavens split in twain.
He was only well lifted from the earth when, with a thunderous, terrible blow, Van crashed the bottle downward, fairly between his ears, and burst it on his skull.
The weapon was shattered with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not have been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmed the brutish mind as with a cloud of lead.
Down swiftly he dropped to his proper position, perhaps with a fear that his crown was gaping open from impact with the sky. He was stunned by the blow upon his brain, and weakened in every fiber. He started to run, in terror of the thing, and the being still solid in the saddle. Wildly he went around the cove, in the panic of utter defeat.
The men began to cheer, their voices choked and hoarse. Van rode now as fate might ride the very devil. He spurred the horse to furious, exhausting speed, guiding him wildly around the mountain theater. Again and again they circled the grassy arena, till foam and lather whitened the broncho's flank, chest, and mouth, and his nostril burned red as living flame.
When at last the animal, weary and undone, would have sobered down to a trot or walk, Van forced him anew to crazy speed. At least five miles he drove him thus, till the broncho's sides, like the rider's face, were red with blood mingled with sweat.
Beth, at the climax, had gone down suddenly, leaning against the tree. She had not fainted, but was far too weak to stand. Her eyes only moved. She watched the two, that seemed welded into one, go racing madly against fatigue.
At last she beheld the look of the conquered—the utter surrender of the broken and subdued—gleam dully from the wilted pony's eyes. She pitied the animal she had feared and hated but a few brief moments before. She began to think that the man was perhaps the brute, after all, to ride the exhausted creature thus without a sign of mercy.
She rose to her feet as the two came at last to a halt, master and servant, conquered and conqueror, man and quivering beast.
Then Van got down, and her heart, that had pitied the horse, welled with deeper feeling for the rider. She had never in her life seen a face so drawn, so utterly haggard beneath a mask of red as that presented by the horseman.
Van nearly fell, but would not fall, and instead stood trembling, his arm by natural inclination now circling the neck of the pony.
"Well, Suvy," he said not ungently, "we gave each other hell. Hereafter we're going to be friends."
Beth heard him. She also saw the chestnut turn and regard the man with a look of appeal and dumb questioning in his eyes that choked her—with joy and compassion together. She someway knew that this man and horse would be comrades while they lived.
Half an hour afterward as she, Van, and Elsa rode forward as before, she saw the man in affection pat the broncho on the neck. And the horse pricked his ears in a newfound gladness in service and friendship that his nature could not yet comprehend.