"I tell you, Harry, I can't endure it. I couldn't face anyone I know. I want to run away—far, far away, where nobody ever heard of balloons or automobiles, or me."
"Polly, you aren't afraid of a little talk, are you? Everyone is saying how brave you were, and, here, when the danger's over, I find you a flimsy little coward!"
She picked up one of a pile of newspapers that lay on the stand beside her, and thrust it before Harry's eyes with a manner at once questioning and rebuking. He read the head lines:
Miss Pauline Marvin Has Remarkable ExperienceAfter Accident on Palisades.
Harry laughed and patted her hand reassuringly. "Oh, but that's only one of them," wailed Pauline. "Look at this one:
"Can any woman live after that," she cried.
"Why, it's no crime to be lost in a balloon," said Harry. "See, they tell it just as it was—they make you a real heroine."
"A man might live it down, dear, but a woman, never! To be 'lost in the sky' is altogether too giddy. Margaret!" she called.
The maid stepped quickly forward.
"You may pack my things, Margaret, and be sure to put in some warm winter ones. Is the snow on mountains cold like real snow, or is it like the frosting on cake?" she inquired, turning again to Harry.
"What are you up to this time?" he demanded.
"Montana first," she proclaimed with a melodramatic flourish. "And if I am followed by my fame or by my relatives—I shall go on—to the end of the world."
Harry had long ago abandoned the idea of laughing at her whims. Even the most fantastic of her projects was serious to her.
He merely looked at her in mute suspense awaiting the fall of the blow.
"You needn't begin to see trouble-yet," she laughed. "But I am going, Harry. I'm going to accept Mary Haines's invitation and visit her and her nice, queer husband on their ranch. You remember Mrs. Haines, that dear Western girl that we met on the steamer when she was on her honeymoon?"
"Well, it's pretty tough just at this time," objected Harry. "Business is bothersome, and I ought to be here; but if you insist . . . "
"Oh, you're not coming with me," stated Pauline, cheerily. "In the first place you are not invited, and in the second place you are not needed in the least. Now get me a telegraph blank."
He came back with the desired paper and a fountain pen and she scribbled:
Mrs. Mary Haines, Rockvale, Montana. Care Double Cross Ranch.
Arrive Thursday at 8 a.m. Will explain haste when see you.,
Pauline Marvin."
"Run down and 'phone that to the telegraph office," she told Harry. "And now for the packing, Margaret." She thrust a tiny foot in a pink slipper over the edge of the bed.
"But you are ill, Miss Marvin," protested the nurse with a first faint assertion of authority.
"That's so," said Polly. "How can we get around that? Oh, yes; it's time for your airing, dear—and when you come back I shall be well and packed."
"Plenty of air," suggested Harry sarcastically from the doorway, "if it takes you as long to pack as it does to put on your hat."
Pauline flung him a laughing grimace and he strode off to the library. As he was repeating the brief message to the telegraph office he did not hear the light footfalls that ceased at the library door, nor could he see the drawn, gray face of Owen who heard the message spoken over the telephone, and was passing up the stairs with his slow, dignified tread when Harry came into the hall.
"Good morning, Mr. Harry. I see you are quite yourself again.Yesterday was a terrible day."
"You do look done up," retorted Harry, curtly, as he picked up his hat.
Owen's step was not slow or dignified after the door shut upon Harry.He sprang up the last stairs and into his own room.
Here on a small writing desk was another telephone. He snatched it up nervously and gave the call number of the place where he had held his first conference with Hicks.
He held a brief conversation over the wire, snapped down the receiver, sprang to a wardrobe for his hat and stick and hurried from the house.
The dullness that a sleepless night had left in his eyes had disappeared. The fear that had shaken him ever since the uncanny reappearance of Harry and Pauline was dissipated, or at least concealed by a new hope—a new plan of destruction.
He knew only that Pauline was going away and that she must be followed —no matter whither her whims might lead.
Hicks was seated in a corner of the rendezvous drinking whiskey and water. He was plainly in a black mood.
"You got a pretty fat roll yesterday, Hicks. But," Owen drew out his wallet, "here is a little. Get yourself ready to make a trip tomorrow. I'll let you know the time and the train."
Hicks looked covetously at the bills, but he demurred: "You mean we're after them two again!"
"Hicks, we must be after them because one of them will soon be after us."
"Where they goin' now?"
"Rockvale, Montana. That is, the girl's going. What I haven't found out yet is whether Harry goes, too. If he stays here, I'll stay, and you'll go West."
"After Pauline?"
"Ahead of her!"
"And then what?"
"Then you will have to use your own judgment. But don't get excited and kill her, Hicks."
He accompanied the sharp warning with the alleviating roll of yellowbacks, which Hicks quickly deposited in an inside pocket.
The next morning they shook hands at the gate of the Pennsylvania station. Hicks looking a bit uncomfortable but much improved, in a suit of new clothes, and carrying a suitcase, hurried to catch the flyer for the West. A few hours later Owen was wishing a happy journey to Pauline at the same station rail.
Mary Haines stood in the low doorway of the Double Cross ranch house and gazed down the sun-baked road to where, in the far distance, a little wisp of dust was visible.
Laughing, she turned and called to someone inside the house. A towering, slow-moving, but quick-eyed man, in a flannel shirt, with corduroys tucked into the tops of spurred boots, appeared on the stoop. Hal Haines was so tall that his broad-brimmed hat grazed the porch roof of the house.
"Hal! Hal!" she cried eagerly. "What do you think? Pauline Marvin is coming to visit us—Pauline Marvin!"
"The little girl we met on the ship that I had to yarn to about the wild West?"
"Yes, of course. How you did lie to her! Goodness, I hope that's not why she's coming. She'll be awfully disappointed."
"Oh, I don't know as it's necessary to disappoint her," said Haines."If the State of Montana don't know how to entertain a lady from theEast as she likes to be entertained it's time to quit bein' a State atall."
"Hal!" Mrs. Haines eyed her husband sternly. "I want you to remember who Pauline Marvin is. I'm not going to have her frightened by any of your wild jokes."
Haines burst into a ringing laugh.
"Honest, my dear, I promised that young lady if she ever came to Rockvale she'd see all the Wild West I told her about. I gave her my word. You don't want to make me out a liar, do you?"
"You can say that conditions have changed greatly in the last two years."
"Oh, come, just one little hold-up the day she gets here. She'll think it's great. She'll think she's the lost heiress that was carried off in the mountains—the one I told her about."
"I tell you I will not hear a word of it. She may be ill or something; it would scare her to death."
"I'll ask her if she's ill before I let the boys rob the buck-board.What dye say, mother? Just this once."
His boyish joy in the prank brought laughter to her eyes, and he knew that his sins would be condoned.
Four days later Hicks, who looked as far from home in his excellent clothes as the clothes looked far from home in Rockvale, alighted, from a lumbering local train. He made an inquiry of a man on the platform, and, carrying a heavy suitcase, slouched up the main street of the town.
Ham Dalton's place was the one the man had directed him to, and Hicks, I after engaging the best rooms in the house for seventy-five cents, scrubbed a little of the dust of travel from his person and went down to the bar and gambling room. The drink of whiskey he got made even his trained throat writhe, and he strolled over to the poker table to join a group of calm and plainly-armed spectators of high play.
From the conversation he learned that the dam at Red Gut was washed out; that Case Egan, a noted rancher, was in jail for shooting a deputy sheriff, and that Hal Haines was expecting a "millionairess gal" visitor from New York.
"When'll she be on?" drawled one of the players.
"Tomorrow's express."
"Sence when did the express stop at Rockvale?"
"Sence the president o' the road told it to stop for this here young person," replied the informant crushingly.
Hicks was scanning the faces of the men about him with a purposeful eye. Especially he watched one—a lean man in red shirt and leather breeches, booted and spurred, who stood near the table.
Hicks approached him. "Hello, Patten," he said.
The man whirled so sharply that the revolver he had drawn, in whirling, caught in Hick's coat and jerked him into the middle of the room. The poker game went on without a sound or sign of interruption. The bartender took a casual look at Hicks and the gunman, then went on talking to a customer, as before.
"Hello, Hicks," said Patten, putting up the gun. "I'm much obliged that I didn't kill you. We don't greet old friends quite so hasty out here, boy, as you do in New York—especially when we haven't heard our right name in some years," he added in a lowered voice.
"How long have you been here, Pat?"
"Eight-nine-twelve years; ever since that friend of yours, Mr. Owen, paid me $10,000 for getting rid of a certain—what he called a certain obstacle."
"Which you didn't get rid of?"
"No, he made the mistake of paying me in advance, and it didn't seem necessary to harm anybody."
"Got any of the money left?"
The lean gunman held his head back and guffawed.
"It's near here, I guess, but it ain't mine. It dropped between this bar and that table."
"Do you want a little job?" asked Hicks. "But let's go in the back room."
They strolled into an empty wine room and ordered drinks.
"What kind of a job?" asked Patten.
Hicks leaned across the table and whispered rapidly. His old acquaintance drew back, with a sudden suspicion.
"But no foolin' this time," warned Hicks. "Only part money in advance."
He produced $5,000 in bills from his trousers pocket, but secreted it again quickly as the waiter appeared.
Patten got up and sauntered out into the barroom, returning presently with three men of his own brand—broad-built, grim-eyed ruffians of the far north country—three of Case Egan's cattlemen.
In the meantime Mrs. Haines was flustered not only by the prospect of meeting her distinguished friend, but by the tumultuous staging of the great hold-up scene that was to mark Pauline's welcome. Hal had been up at three o'clock in the morning rehearsing the boys in their parts. He had set off at five o'clock for the station.
As Pauline, trim in her traveling suit of gray and blithe in the clear Western air, tripped from the express, all Rockvale was there to meet her. Hal Haines, mighty man that he was in the region, was red with pride as the girl who could stop the express at Rockvale gave him her hand in happy greeting.
As he helped her into the two-seated buckboard, no one in the crowd noticed the man who had arrived the night before standing on the platform and pointing out the girl to Tom Patten who was seen to mount and ride rapidly away.
"I hope you saved some of that lovely Wild West for me, Mr. Haines," said Pauline, as the finest pair of horses in the Double Cross stable whisked them along the road to the ranch.
"Very little left, Miss Marvin—very little left; still—whoa, there! What's this?"
At a bend in the road five masked and mounted men had dashed from cover and quickly surrounded the buckboard with a small circle of leveled gun-barrels.
Pauline had time to cry out only once before she felt herself gripped by powerful hands and dragged from the wagon seat, where Hal Haines sat shaking with laughter. He stood up and started to draw his revolver slowly. From behind him a lasso was thrown lightly and the noose tightened around his arms.
He kept on laughing, although he was a little afraid the boys were overdoing matters. He knew his wife would never forgive him for this actual kidnapping of Pauline—he certainly had never intended it.
And she was really frightened. He could tell that by her cries as she was thrust across the pommel of the masked leader's horse and the horse was spurred to a tearing gallop down the road.
Haines tried to shout a command and call the joke off, but the riders had all followed after their leader, and he was alone in the buckboard.
"They needn't have been so realistic with their knots," he said, as he struggled to free himself from the rope.
It was ten minutes before he wriggled free. He picked up the lines and drove on toward the ranch—a little nervous now over the receptions he would get, but still laughing.
At the fork where the road to the mountains left the main highway, Haines flashed out his revolver in real excitement. Another group of five masked men had driven their horses out of a clump of small trees. They fired their revolvers as they surrounded the buckboard. Then suddenly discovering that there was no woman passenger, they tore off their masks and came up with quick, eager inquiries.
Perhaps for the first time in his life Hal Haines knew what fear was— not fear for himself, but for another.
"Boys, there was another party on the road. They took her. I took 'em for you," he said in a stifled voice. "Come on. Cabot, give me your horse; take the rig back and tell Mrs. Haines."
He sprang into the saddle, and, filling their revolvers as they rode, the band of jesters, who had suddenly turned so grimly serious, dashed back toward town.
Two miles from where Tom Patten had swung Pauline to his saddle bow they picked up the train hoofs that left the road and made toward the mountains.
The men who had set out so gaily a few hours before rode silently, fiercely now. Mile after mile swept behind them as they held to the trail. Sometimes it followed the roads, sometimes it broke over open country. At last it reached the hills and stopped at the river.
Patten's band had ridden in the water upstream. After a mile of it the leader ordered three of them out on the south side. They left silently, rode five miles across country and separated, each taking a different route. Patten and one companion kept on with Pauline who was now almost insensible. At last they left the stream on the north bank and climbed into the higher hill country where they entered a thicket and stopped.
"Here we are," said Patten. His companion dismounted and liftedPauline from the other's saddle.
With a swift daring and dexterity, born of fear, she flung aside his arms and sprang toward the horse he had just left. She tried to mount, but her strength was gone. They tied her feet with a rope and seated her on a great fallen tree, while they cleared away a tangle of bushes and began to tug with their combined strength at a giant rock, which the bushes had concealed.
The stone moved inch by inch until behind it Pauline saw, with a chill shudder, the black opening of a cave.
She flung herself from the log pleading piteously. They cut the rope that bound her feet and led her to the cave. As the giant stone was rolled back into its place she uttered one wild far-echoing cry. Then darkness!
For many minutes Pauline lay prostrate. A dim light from some hidden orifice in the top of the cave behind a shelving wall, seemed to become brighter as her eyes became more accustomed to the shadows. She arose and began to inspect the cave.
It was a chamber of rock about forty feet long and twenty feet wide. The bottom and roof converged slightly towards the end farthest from the giant boulder that formed the door. But even there the cave was twenty-five feet high.
The boulder door was set into the rock portal, and not a wisp of light came through the brush that, covered the crevice. Pauline, after a brief hopeless test of her frail strength against the weight of the granite mass, moved slowly along the wall to the extremity of the chamber.
Here, about seven feet from the floor, ran a ledge of rock, between two and three feet in width; and, from this ledge upward the wall slanted at an angle of forty-five degrees to a wide shelf or fissure. It was from this fissure that the faint light came.
Pauline groped her way back along the other wall to the front of the cave again. Despairing, she sat down on the chill stone. The events of the last few hours had left her in a state of mental vertigo. The hold-up of the buckboard and her carrying off by the bandits seemed fantastically impossible.
So this was her "escape" from scenes of adventure. This was the "great, safe, quiet West," where she should forget her perils in New York and wait for others to forget them. She thought of her promise to Harry that she would not try to get into any more scrapes. In her former dangers—even when there seemed hope—she had a buoying trust that there was one man who could save her. He had always saved her. In his protecting shelter she had come to feel almost immune from harm. But with Harry three thousand miles away and totally ignorant of her need of him no sense of imagined protection sustained her now. She took it for granted that Mr. Haines had been made a prisoner or killed. She knew the word would reach Mrs. Haines and the latter would invoke all the powers in the State to find her; but she was, sure she would be dead before anyone unearthed this fearful hiding place.
The light at the far end of the cave grew steadily more dim and Pauline judged that the day was waning.
A rustling sound caught her ear. Sounds are animate or inanimate.This was unmistakably the sound of a living thing.
Pauline trembled a little but she stood up. Was it man or beast that she had for companion in the mysterious cave?
She took a faltering step forward. The sound seemed to come nearer. The cave had gone almost pitch dark, and, suddenly, from the mid-level of the back wall—from the rock ledge—there flashed upon the sight of the imprisoned girl two beady, burning eyes.
Hal Haines' best driving team was lathered with foam and the buckboard swung through the gate on two wheels as Bill Cabot drove back to the Double Cross Ranch.
The young cowboy whom Haines had ordered to carry the news of disaster to Mrs. Haines, seeing the buckboard and only Cabot driving, knew instantly that something had gone wrong.
"What is it, Will?" she called, running down to the gate. "Didn't she come? Has anything happened to Hal?"
"She was held up and carried off, Mrs. Haines."
"I know; I know. You played the joke; but what happened?" She looked at the foaming horses. "What made you drive home like this?" she demanded.
"She wasn't carried off by us, Mrs. Haines. Some other crowd got ahead of us—some crowd that meant what they was doing. The Boss and the boys has got the trail by this time, I guess. The Boss said I should come and tell you."
For a moment Mrs. Haines looked at him in doubt.
"Is this another joke, Will?" she asked. "There hasn't been a hold-up in this section for ten years."
"I guess the jokin' is all knocked out've all of us," answered Bill, turning shamefacedly away. "No, ma'am, this is the truth and—and I wish the Boss had took some one else's horse instid of mine."
"Never mind. They'll have all the men in Montana out to find thatgirl, if this isn't a hoax," cried Mrs. Haines in a voice that choked."Go tell the other boys to get ready. The Sheriff will want them, ifHal doesn't."
She sped back to the house and with a trembling hand rang the bell of the old-fashioned telephone that furnished a new blessing to the ranches.
A moment later Curt Sikes, the telegraph operator at Rockvale, almost fell from his chair as he took the following message over the wire at Mrs. Haines's dictation:
Harry Marvin,
Fifth Avenue, New York:
Pauline kidnapped. Come at once.
Mary Haines.
"What—what's it mean, Mrs. Haines?" he gasped into the transmitter."It ain't the young lady that Hal Just took off the express, is it?"
"Yes, that's who it is, Curt. Cabot and the boys are coming into town as fast as they can ride; but you call Sheriff Hill and get as many men as you can-in case we need them. You'll hurry, won't you, Curt?"
"Yes, ma'am; and I'll get your message right on the wire. They'll put it ahead all along the line."
If Curt's speed in getting the telegram away was inspired partly by burning need of telling the news to Rockvale that did not reflect on Curt. He flashed after the New York message a terse call up and down the line to "Find the Sheriff," and then bolted out to the platform. His shout was heard not only at the little hotel across the street from the station, but at the city limits of Rockvale a good mile away. Rockvale answered the shout as a clan answering the beacozes flare. When Curt Sikes shouted it meant news.
His messages along the line had little effect. He had spent the morning flaunting the news to fellow operators and rival communities that the Express had stopped at Rockvale. They had only half believed that, and now this added flourish was too much. Even Sheriff Hill, whom the message overtook at Gatesburg, fifteen miles south, laughed when he read it, and started for Rockvale only because he was going there anyway to get Case Egan.
"There ain't much doubt which is now our leadin' city—Butte or Rockvale," he remarked as he swung to his saddle and set off with two deputies.
He found something more than overdone home town pride in Rockvale, however. The narrow streets were filled with men, women and curious, wide-mouthed children. Horses, packed for long riding, with rifles bolstered to the saddles, were tied all along the rails of both the main hotel and the station. Curt Sikes was the center of a changing but ever interested group, but two of the Haines posse who had just come in without any report of capture, but with all the vivid news of the hold-up were now the main objects of attention.
Briefly they told the story of the pursuit. With Haines leading they had struck a trail that took them to the river. They had waded the river and found no trail on the other side. Knowing the bandits had taken to the middle of the stream, Haines had divided his party. He sent two men down stream, one on each side and he and the three others rode up stream, two on each side.
After long rough riding Haines had found a trail coming out of the water. All four had followed it a long way. There were three bandits making the trail, but the three stopped and each took a different direction, one straight up into the hills, one straight down into the valley, and the other off here towards town. Haines and one man had started on the trail to the hills. The other two—the two talking now—had each taken one of the other trails, but had lost them. They thought Haines would lose his, too. It had been a clean, up-to-date expert piece of work—this kidnapping. The getaway had been a work of art, just as the hold-up had been a wonder-piece of stage setting.
"You saw all the gang that held you up?" asked the Sheriff.
"We wasn't held up—tha'd a been a little too rich, I guess," said one of the cowboys. "It was Boss Haines an' the girl that was stopped."
"Well, then, I mean did Haines see the gang? Were any of themIndians?"
"Injuns? No. The Boss thinks some of 'em were cattle-crooks from the Case Egan outfit. I guess they ain't no Montana Injuns that'd start anythin' like that."
"You guess a lot more than you know," said the Sheriff quietly. "I may be calling on any of you boys for some fast work against old Red Snake any of these days."
"What's the trouble, Sheriff?"
"Oh, just one of their devils brewing bad medicine again up at Shi-wah-ki village. Red Snake always was a little bit crazy—talking about the thieving white man that stole his country and looking for a chance to get the rest of his people killed off."
"I heard that down at Hallick's last week," drawled a man in the crowd. "The Sioux is only waitin' for the Great White Queen to come out o' the heart o' the airth an' lead 'em on the warpath. They got a surprisin' plenty o' arms, too, for reservation Injuns. Know that, Sheriff?"
The Sheriff nodded slowly. "I wish Haines would get in," he said. "I'd like to have a talk with him before we start. But it's getting late."
The dull thudding of tired horses hoofs from the other side of the hill below town came, to him as an answer. Presently Haines and his companion joined, silently, the eager crowd at the station.
The owner of the Double Cross seemed to have aged ten years since he had driven away with Pauline from that same station platform only a few hours before. He would have given all the acres of the Double Cross for just a word about Pauline; he would have given his life to know that she was alive.
"There's nothing for it, Sheriff, but to rake the whole country," he said wearily. "They've hidden her somewheres, if they haven't killed her. And if they've killed her, mind, it's me you're to hang for it."
The Sheriff laid a strong hand on his old friend's shoulder. "I can get the state militia out to look for that girl, Hal," he said. "By the way, is there anything—anything queer about her?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Why, only that her folks have been writing to the Governor at Helena.Sikes just gave me this from Governor Casson himself. Who is thisRaymond Owen? Who's been wiring to the Governor?"
"That's her guardian, I think. H'm," mused Haines as he read the message, "that is queer. I wish they'd have wired me that yesterday."
The Sheriff folded the telegram and putting it back in his pocket, stepped up on a box near the hotel door.
"I want to call for a hundred volunteer citizens to go hunt this girl," he announced.
A minute later, all that was left of Rockvale was the buildings and the women, children and old men who stood watching a cloud of dust blotting the sunset glow and listening to the retreating clatter of a flying cavalcade.
Sikes kept the office open late. At 7 o'clock he telephoned to Mrs.Haines at the Double Cross:
"What does he say?" she cried.
"Just one word—Comin'," said Curt in an aggrieved voice. "He could've sent ten words fer the same price," he grumbled.
Red Snake was one of the younger chiefs of the Sioux. He was too young to have had a share in the bloody last stand of his race in their Montana wilderness; but he was old enough to have watched the dwindling of spirit and power among them for twenty years.
And every day of watching kindled new hate in the breast of the Indian. In him the spirit of his fathers had left the old unquenchable belief in the Day of Restoration, when, by some supernatural intervention, the Indians would return to their lands, the lands revert to their primeval state, and civilization be lost in the obliterating wilderness.
The officers of the Agency had had trouble with Red Snake on several occasions. Twice he had started out at the head of war parties and had been caught just in time to prevent bloodshed among the isolated settlers. But of late he had been docile and peaceful. The new disturbances—the occasional shooting of a cowboy and the petty stealing of cattle dated from the beginning of the sway of a new medicine man in Red Snake's principal village of Shi-wah-ki.
His name was of many syllables in the native language, but he was known as Big Smoke. He was a young Indian who had spent some years among the whites in the Southwest, had made a pretense at getting an education, but had reverted violently to the life and faith of his fathers. Big smoke had predicted to Red Snake the coming of the Great White Queen, who would empower the arms of the red man to overthrow the whites and would make him again master of his rightful lands.
Red Snake, squatted on a blanket beside his teepee, listened with immobile features but with a thrilled heart. He summoned a council of the chiefs, secretly, and the medicine man addressed his message to them also.
Thereafter the Indians of Shi-wah-ki were restive. Their growing spirit of rebellion manifested itself in foolish little offenses against the white men. These were punished with the white man's customary sternness and this increased the rancor of the Indians. It increased, too, their eagerness for the fulfillment of the strange prophecy of the coming of the White Queen.
On the very day when the white man's village of Rockvale was in a hubbub of excitement because of the kidnapping of Pauline, the village of Shi-wah-ki was tumultuous with a different fervor.
Into the circle of the assembled chiefs, rimmed with awed faces of squaws and papooses, had danced the weird figure of Big Smoke. He had been called upon by Red Snake to announce what further of the White Queen his medicine had revealed.
Big Smoke wore the head of a wolf with cow's horns set over the ears. His lithe red body was covered with a long bear skin. His legs were bare to the tops of his gaily beaded moccasins.
He circled the silent group with fantastic gyrations and stopped finally in the center. Lifting his hands, he addressed the tribe. First, in glowing rhetoric, he pictured the ancient glory of the Sioux —their wealth in lands, their prowess in the hunt, their triumph over all other red men. He told of their long and brave struggle with the white man, who by the intervention of wicked gods had been enabled to conquer them. But the time of vengeance and retribution had come after long years. The Indian was to return to his own.
"The Great Spirit is sending us a leader," said Rig Smoke. "The Great Spirit has spoken to me and said: 'Lo, I will send a White Queen with golden hair. She shall come from the heart of the Earth, and she shall lead your warriors against the oppressor."
This was the third time Big Smoke had said this. That was what made it most impressive to the listeners. Big Smoke had staked not only his reputation as a medicine man, but, also his life, upon this wonderful prediction, which had aroused his people as they had not been aroused in fifty years. For it was the law of the ancient code that fulfillment must follow immediately the third announcement of the miracle. If fulfillment failed there remained only the Great Death Stone in the valley. No prophet of the tribe had ever won in the race with the Death Stone.
And so the chiefs sat in respectful silence and the young braves arose eager for the war dance when Big Smoke finished speaking.
The dance, beginning slowly, waxed wilder; the tom-toms beat more vibrantly, until the whole village was encircled by the painted and bonneted tribesmen. The red glare of daylight fires illuminated the wild faces. The women cowered with their children beside the teepees. In the midst of the tumult, the medicine man stood with hands stretched upward calling on the Great Spirit to send the White Queen.
When the dance had subsided, the Council resumed its deliberations.
It was arranged that there should be a hunt that afternoon and the foxes or coyotes should be driven as near as possible to the settlements. This would be a means of reconnoitering and it would make the whites think the Indians were engaged in peaceful pursuits.
Pauline, after her first startled cry, stood spellbound by the two glowing eyes that shone from the far end of the cave.
There was no light now—save for the eyes. The rift in the roof from which the mysterious glow had come seemed to have been closed suddenly. The pitch darkness made the eyes doubly terrible, and just perceptibly they moved and flashed which showed they were living eyes.
Pauline longed to scream, but could not. Behind those fiery points imagination could picture all manner of horrible shapes. Was the creature about to spring upon her?
The eyes vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
The low rustling sound came again; then the utter silence.
Pauline, freed of the uncanny gaze, was able to think and act. If that animal could find its way into her prison house, there must be another entrance to the cave.
It was plain that the animal had been crouching on the slant rock above the ledge. Pauline began again to grope around the wall. She could touch the top of the ledge and now in several places she found small crevices in the wall by which she tried to climb.
Time and again she fell back. Her soft hands were torn by the jagged rock; her dress was in shreds; her golden hair fell down upon her shoulders. She might have been some preternatural dweller of the place.
At last her foot held firm in a crevice three feet above the floor.Clutching the ledge-top, she groped for another step—and found it.In a moment she was on the ledge.
She sank there, covering her face with her hands. The eyes had blazed again scarcely three feet away. She felt the breath of hot nostrils, the rough hair of a beast, as the thing sprang. She felt that the end had come, but she still clung to the ledge.
As she uncovered her eyes, slowly, she was astonished to see that the faint light had returned. It came, as she had thought, over a concealed shelf of stone above the rocky incline.
The eyes had vanished. The cave was still.
She began to scale the incline. Her hands and feet caught nubs and slits of the surface and a little higher she felt the cool dampness of earth and grasped the root of a tree. As she drew herself up, she looked over the shelf and saw, at one end of it, the open day.
She crawled a little way upon the shelf then stopped. She hardly dared to go on. What if the opening, large enough to admit the light, were too small for her to pass through? What if the light had been only a lure to torture her? What if she must return into the darkness with that thing unknown, the thing with the blazing eyes!
She crept on with her eyes shut. A stronger glow of light upon the closed lids told her she had reached the end of the shelving. The next moment would tell her if she had reached freedom or renewed captivity. She looked up.
Three of Red Snake's young warriors had gained most of the plaudits of the village during the afternoon of the hunt. They rode together and not only did they bring in many foxes and coyotes but much news of the white people. They had met armed men throughout all the mountain country, riding up and down the river. The armed men had greeted them fairly and had asked them for information of other white men who had stolen a girl and carried her away. The white men were thus fighting among themselves. It was a propitious time for the coining of the new Queen.
These three young men, about five o'clock in the afternoon, had just started the drive of a coyote towards the level country when the quarry doubled suddenly and turned into the hills.
With shouts and shots, the Indians pursued it, but their horses were no match for it on the devious wooded paths, and grunting their disgust they saw it dive into a burrow in a rocky hollow of the cliff.
They dismounted and stood about the mouth of the burrow grumbling and "cursing their luck" in an ancient tongue. At last two of them mounted and started to ride away, and their companion followed, slowly, leading his horse.
A sound made him turn his head. With a cry of mingled fear and joy, of awe and triumph, he threw himself prostrate before the mouth of the burrow.
The other Indians dashed back. They literally fell from their horses to the feet of the wonderful being who had risen from the heart of the earth—the promised goddess who would lead them against the oppressors. In the poor, disheveled person of Pauline, coming from her prison cave, they saw their great White Queen.
As the thrilled and frightened Indian lay prostrate at her feet, he might well have believed her to be some creature from another world.
Her face was very pale and round it fell in tumultuous glory the cascades of her golden hair. Her dress was torn to shreds by the jagged rocks and there was blood upon the delicate hands that she held out in pleading to the only living thing she saw-the red man.
He did not move. She stepped nearer and, stooping, gently touched his shoulder. At the touch he trembled like a leaf, but raised his head and looked at her with terror and awe and adoration in his eyes.
"Won't you help me? I have ben a prisoner in the cave. I must find Mr. Haines—Haines, do you hear? Or go to Rockvale—Rockvale," she repeated, hoping that the names at least he might understand.
He motioned questioningly toward his horse, and, at her nod, he sprang up and brought the animal to her side. Helping her to mount, he took the bridle and began to lead the way into the thickly wooded hills.
The journey was slow and arduous, but it was not long. Darkness had not yet fallen when the hill trail dipped into a valley, and Pauline's weary, hopeful eyes looked down upon a village on the plain.
The hope vanished quickly as she realized that the houses of the village were teepees and that the people that moved among them were braves and squaws.
An Indian boy of perhaps twelve years sprang suddenly from a thicket beside the trail, gave one glance at her, and, with a shriek, set off at full speed toward the teepees.
Cries sounded and resounded from the hills. Tom-toms were beating. She became aware that the Indians were swarming about her and acclaiming her a guest of unusual honor. They stopped her horse at the entrance to Red Snake's teepee. The great chief stepped forth himself, with Big Smoke, the medicine man, close behind him.
The prophet, who had foretold the coming of the Great White Queen, wore a mien of pride and triumph, even as he bowed low before Pauline. But of all the red folk in Shi-wah-ki village, Big Smoke was undoubtedly the most amazed at the fulfillment of his prophecy.
The braves who were assigned to lift Pauline from her horse and bear her into the Chief's teepee were surprised that one immortal should be so weak as almost to fall into their arms, so weary as to be scarcely able to walk. But Pauline, seated upon a high pile of furs within the teepee, where the weird light of a fire fell upon her pallid features and her flowing hair, presented a picture strange and marvelous.
They gathered around her, Red Snake and the medicine man in the center of the adobe, the lesser chiefs behind them, and in another circle the ranks of the braves.
Even in her utter exhaustion, the savage solemnity of the gathering fascinated Pauline. Had she been left alone she would have fallen asleep upon the piled furs; but this low muttering, grim-visaged assemblage of the red men forced her to respectful attention. That they honored her, she understood; but she saw, too, that the Indians were all armed and some of them were painted. As Red Snake arose to address the tribe a menacing murmur filled the teepee and the young chiefs whetted their knives upon the ground.
Red Snake's harangue, unintelligible to Pauline, had an electrical effect upon the Indians. Frequently as he spoke he turned toward her and always when he did so he bent his head upon his breast and raised his mighty arms in token of submission to a power mightier than his own.
As he finished, Pauline arose, swaying a little from her great weakness. She shook her head in token that she did not understand. Her outstretched, pleading hands bewildered, but subdued the warlike assembly.
Red Snake called a ringing summons, and from the rear circle of the audience shuffled forward the strangest man Pauline had ever seen. His undersized, stooping form was garbed in a miner's cast-off red shirt, a ranchman's ex-trousers, a pair of tattered moccasins and a much-dented derby hat, with a lone feather in the band of it. It was White Man's Hat, a half-breed interpreter.
As he approached, cringing and bowing, Pauline noted that a penetrating, not unkindly eye gleamed from under his bushy brow, scrutinizing her in flashes between his obeisances. Unlike the other Indians, he was not afraid to look the Great White Queen in the face, as he solemnly repeated the last words of Red Snake:
"According to the prophecy, you have come from the heart of the world to lead us against those who steal our land."
Pauline stood for a moment in complete bewilderment. Then, as the meaning of the words, with the meaning of the strange gathering, flashed upon her mind, she took a step forward, speaking in earnest protest.
But she spoke only to the Chief, for the Indians had broken all restraint and were crushing their way out of the teepee, with cries and brandishing of weapons. They swept the little interpreter with them. And Red Snake saw in Pauline's look and tone of appeal only the pleading of a wronged goddess for vengeance upon her enemies. He called the women of his household, who shyly led the Queen away.
Darkness had fallen as the women glided ahead of her to a spot outside the main village, where a spacious teepee had been erected apart. Only a peaceful moon and a firmament glittering with stars lighted their path. But from the town behind came terrifying yells, the rattle of tom-toms and occasionally a rifle shot as the braves prepared their spirits for the test of battle. Pauline found her new home filled with all the luxuries and sacred relics of the tribe. There were rugs richer than those in the Chief's house; the walls were festooned with strung beads, and on the large, low couch of bear skins lay the most splendid of Indian raiment.
The women, with better understanding than men of the earthly needs of immortals, made her lie down, while they bathed her aching temples and wounded hands, replaced her torn garments with a gorgeous blanket robe and smoothed her flying tresses into long comfortable braids. Other women came bringing food. And there was a pipe and a pouch of agency tobacco with which the goddess might soothe the hours before repose.
Pauline ate eagerly while the women looked oil in silent approval. When she had finished, she arose smiling and signed to them that she would rest. They left softly, and neither the exciting recollections of the day's adventures nor the tumult of the braves outside could hold her for a moment longer from the blessedness of sleep.
She slept far into the next morning. But so did the village, for the Indians had reveled to exhaustion. It was nearly noon before she attired herself in a fringed and beaded dress of buckskin, with leggings and exquisite little moccasins and laughingly permitted one of the women attendants to place a painted war feather in her hair. Thus clad and with her wide braids falling, she sat regally to receive the morning call of Red Snake. She was beginning to take a tremulous pleasure in the game of being an immortal. Pauline's questing spirit was too happy in adventure not to find a thrill in being thus translated from hungering captive to reigning queen, from queen to angel.
Red Snake's call was formal and politely brief. He brought with him the amusing interpreter to inquire if the Spirit had found comfort in the hospitality of his people, and more particularly if the war dance of the preceding night had given her satisfaction.
Pauline replied, with gracious solemnity, that her Spirit had found good repose and had been comforted by the pleasant music.
"And when will the White Queen lead us against our enemies—the men of her own color, but not of her kind?" inquired the Chief with child-like eagerness.
Pauline hesitated an instant after the interpreter repeated the question. Then, recovering herself, she answered gravely:
"Today, Red Snake, the Queen rests from her long journey out of the Happy Hunting Ground. Tomorrow also. Upon the next day, perhaps, she will lead the warriors."
The little interpreter's keen eyes flashed understandingly as he left out the word "perhaps" in repeating her answer.
Red Snake was elated. He made profound salutations, promised that the war party would do her honor, and hastened away to announce the news.
The interpreter lingered, pretending to smooth the door rug. He looked up suddenly and his eyes met Pauline's with an expression of friendly interest. Instinctively she accepted the tacitly offered friendship.
"You are a white man—you speak English," she said.
"Part white—part red. You speak all white," he added significantly.
"Of course," she whispered, stepping to his side. "I am not a Queen— not a Spirit. I do not know why they believe I am. But I must get away—to Rockvale, to Mr. Haines's ranch, to the white people anywhere. You will help me?"
He looked at her pityingly now. He had believed that she was an accomplice of the medicine man in a shrewd fraud, and he had merely wanted to share the joke, risky as it was. To find her an accidental and unwilling monarch struck him dumb.
"That is very hard," he said slowly. "Look!"
He parted the folds of the teepee door curtain so that she looked out toward the village. Three women sat next the door and beyond were groups of braves, still in their war paint, some conversing, some stalwart and still. They seemed to be doing nothing in particular.
"Well?" questioned Pauline.
He led her across the teepee to a narrow slit in the rear curtain. Through this she peered as she had peered through the door and saw exactly what she had seen though the door—women crouching at their tasks in the near foreground, an armed circle of warriors beyond. Now she understood.
"I am a prisoner then?"
"They will guard you night and day."
"Why?"
"It was prophesied that a Great White Queen would come to lead them to battle. You have come, as the prophet said, and you have promised to lead them to battle. Above all, be proud, and not afraid."
The ioterpreter hesitated a moment.
"There was another White Queen whose coming was prophesied many hundreds of years ago," he said. "She came. She led the Indians victory over other Indians and then she vanished in the strangest way. I would tell you of it—but I am afraid. They say her spirit is always near. Some day you may know how she vanished."
Before she could speak again, he had glided out of the teepee.
While Pauline was away Harry had planned to accomplish mighty labors.With masculine fatuity he let himself believe—before she went away—that a man can get more work done with his goddess afar than whenCupid has a desk in his office.
It did not take more than thirty-six hours to turn separation into bereavement; not more than forty-eight to turn his "freedom for work" into slavery to the fidgets. The office, instead of a refuge, became a prison to him. However, he made a pretense of sticking to the grind, and it was not until the Thursday on which his chartings showed Pauline would arrive at Rockvale that he actually quit and went home.
He slipped into the library to be alone. It was more restful here. As he sat in the great leather chair and unfolded a newspaper, the portrait of Pauline smiled brightly down at him in seeming camaraderie. At his side stood the Mummy so intimately associated with her and his dead father's strange vision from the tomb.
Harry began to read, but he was still nervous to the point of excitement, and his thoughts wandered from the words. He was suddenly conscious of another presence in the room. He let the paper fall and gazed intently at the portrait.
But a moment later, Harry Marvin sprang excitedly from the chair and fairly leaped towards the picture. From somewhere out of the dim air of the library a hand had reached and touched his. It had touched his shoulder and then, with a commanding finger, had pointed upward at the picture on the wall.
"The Mummy! It has warned again," gasped Harry. "Polly, Polly!" he cried to the portrait, "I'm coming. Just hold on."
He strode bark to the table and pressed a bell.
"Tell Reynolds to pack me up, Bemis," he charged the astonished butler. "Tell him it's for Montana in a rush. Have a machine ready for me in fifteen minutes."
Even Bemis's constitutional aversion to haste was overridden. He sped into the hall, calling to the valet, as Harry picked up a telephone.
"Hello, this is H. B. Marvin. I want our private car attached to theChicago flyer," he said. "No matter if it holds up the flyer, I'llhave President Grigsby's authorization in your hands in five minutes.Thank you. Goodbye."
As he reached the door of the machine, a messenger boy turned up the steps. Harry called to him, took the telegram and read Mrs. Haines' message: "Pauline kidnapped; come at once."
With a muffled ejaculation, he dropped the slip of paper and sprang into the car, which in ten minutes pulled up to the station just as the disgruntled, but curious trainmen were coupling the luxurious Marvinia to the eighteen-hour express.
Owen coming quietly down the steps of the Marvin house, picked up the telegram which Harry had let fall. Reading it, he smiled, and he was still smiling when another messenger boy followed him to the door. Owen took the second message and the smile broadened into an ugly grin as he read:
"Raymond Owen Fifth avenue, New York. All's well.Hicks."
Five days after the disappearance of Pauline, the express stopped again at Rockvale station. As Harry swung from the rear step to the dingy platform, there were many curious eyes to observe his arrival, but the watchers were mostly women and children. The men of Rockvale were still out on the long hunt for Pauline.
Harry hurried first to the station telephone. Sikes had got Mrs. Haines on the wire as soon as the smoke of the express had been sighted ten miles away. But all she could tell Harry was that there was nothing to tell. His lips were set in a hard line as he hung up the receiver. He asked a few hasty questions of Sikes, hurried across to the little hotel, paid for a room and hired a horse. Blankets and provisions strapped behind, he was out and away up the road to the mountains within an hour.
And while he urged his sturdy little mount to better speed on his uncharted journey, Pauline, not twenty miles away, was preparing for the last journey she might ever make.
The blow had fallen. Her royal place, her immortal power had vanished.
The Indians had permitted one postponement of the day of battle. She had said that the Spirits had spoken to her and warned against bloodshed upon that day. It should be the second day thereafter the Spirits had said. The Indians were disappointed, but they bowed to the edict.
The morrow passed quietly, but on the next day—the fifth of her royal captivity—she was summoned from her house by the assembled chiefs in battle paint and feathers. She tried to whisper through the doorway that the Spirits had forbidden again, but Red Snake answered:
"You are greater than all other Spirits; you will lead us today!"
"Tell them," said Pauline to the interpreter, "that the White Queen does not lead today!"
Red Snake, his face black with anger, after haranguing the chiefs, turned to Pauline:
"Daughter of the Earth—twice our warriors have been ready for battle and you would not lead them. Today you must go before the Oracle and prove your immortality. The Oracle will tell."
The warriors departed; only the little interpreter remained.
"What does it mean?" cried Pauline.
"It is the race with the Great Death Stone," he answered, and his own voice trembled. "But," he whispered, "I will ride. I will try to find help. Wait."
He slipped under the back of the teepee. Unseen by the excited Indians, he made his way to the line of ponies, with lariats and rifles swung from their saddles. He picked one and, mounting, rode slowly out of the village, speaking here and there to the braves he met.
Pauline, left alone, fell upon her knees and prayed.
Harry met Haines and two of his posse on the road to the mountains.
They were on their way back to a general rendezvous ordered by theSheriff, but Harry continued on his way up the mountain.
Mile after mile the little mustang put behind him while the sun was still high. On the slope of a hill they came to a crossroads, and Harry, riding almost blindly, reined to the right.
The pony swerved wildly to the left.
Instinctively Harry gave the frightened horse its head.
A half mile farther on the animal stopped and sniffed the wind. At the same instant Harry heard a feeble shout from the road. A weirdly garbed little half breed lay on the ground holding the bridle of the horse that had thrown him.
"Ankle gone," he explained. "Riding for help, I help was. You ride now. White girl—they're killing her up there now."
"White girl? Where? Talk fast, man."
"Two miles over the mountain and down to the valley straight ahead.You go to the bottom of the valley, not to the top—not where theIndians are. Climb tree; take my rope; it's the only chance now."
Harry caught the coiled lariat from the other's saddle and rode as he had never ridden before. All was vague in his mind, except that Pauline was near, was in peril, and he must reach her.
How, by road and trail, he ever reached the Valley of the Death Stone Harry never knew. Perhaps chance, perhaps some invisible courier guided him to the lonely spot. After long, hard riding he was attracted by the low rumble of many voices lifted in a sort of chant. Following the voices, he came to the foot of a steep cliff side where a long trench, partly of natural formation, partly hewn from the stone, made a chute or runway from mountain top to valley.
At the upper end of the runway a motley band of Indians were engaged in some weird worship. Harry started his horse up the steep in the shelter of the woods. When he came to a spot where a huge tree limb crossed the runway, he remembered the little half breed's words, "Climb the tree; it is the only chance."
Almost at the same instant from the midst of the Indian group emerged two giant braves carrying a white woman between them. They placed her in the runway. Her golden hair, unbound, floated on the wind.
Harry choked back a cry, threw aside his rifle, caught the lariat, and, swinging up the tree, crawled swiftly out on the overhanging limb. Concealed by the foliage he waited.
A rifle cracked, and, for the first time, he saw that at the top of the runway, behind Pauline, the stood a mighty boulder, almost perfectly round, the diameter of which—about five feet—fitted the trench so well that it could roll in it like a ball in a bowling gutter.
None even among the Indians knew how many times the Stone of Death had rolled and been dragged back again to the top of the cliff. The stains upon it were unnumbered. Up on its surface was written in blood the doom of the false prophets and pretending immortals. None had ever won in the race with the Death Stone.
The crack of the rifle was the signal for a group of red men to press behind the stone to free it on its fearful course. It was also the signal for Pauline to run. Her hair streamed wildly in the wind as she sped, like a frightened deer, down the deadly path.
The rifle sounded again and the Indians heaved the stone into the trench.
It rumbled as it came on. It gained upon the fleeing girl. They had planned to prolong the torture by giving her a hopeless lead.
Dancing, gesticulating, shouting, the Indians watched the race. Only one watcher was silent and motionless. Hidden by the leaves he braced himself upon the tree limb. For the first moments after the rock was released he had turned sick and dizzy. Now, as they came near—the thing relentless but inanimate pursuing the thing helpless, beautiful and most precious to him of all things in the world, not the quiver of a muscle hindered the desperate task that he had set himself.
A moment later he was sobbing like a child as he half dragged, half carried Pauline to his waiting horse. By the magic of luck, by the mystery of a protecting Fate, the lariat noose had fallen about her shoulders. To the amazed and terrified Indians up the cliff she had soared suddenly, spirit-like, out of the trench and vanished in the foliage of the tree, while the boulder thundered on, cheated of its prey.
But swiftly out of the woods upon the open plain below appeared a rider with a woman clasped before him on the saddle.
The baffled Indians scurried for their horses. They reached the valley. They gained upon the burdened horseman and his tired horse. They fired as they rode, the bullets spitting venomously in the dust around Harry and Pauline.
The pony stumbled. Harry jerked it up and it struggled bravely on, but the cries behind sounded louder.
The bullets hit nearer.
Suddenly the firing increased. There were more cries. And Harry, reining the pony saw, galloping over the ridge to the westward, the full posse of Hal Haines. They fired as they came. They cut between him and the Indians. He stopped the pony and lifted Pauline to the ground.
"My precious one, God bless you and forgive us all," sobbed Mrs. Haines as Polly was caught in her mothering embrace. "And you—you had to come all the way from New York to save her," she added, turning to Harry.
"Don't say anything about it, Mrs. Haines," he said in a stage whisper. "I came out here to rest and avoid publicity."