The shadows of evening were falling when Saleratus Bill returned from pasturing the wearied horses. Bob had been too exhausted to look about him, even to think. From a cache the gun-man produced several bags of food and a side of bacon. Evidently Bright's Cove was one of his familiar haunts. After a meal which Bob would have enjoyed more had he not been so dead weary, his captor motioned him to one of the bunks. Only too glad for an opportunity to rest, Bob tumbled in, clothes and all.
About midnight he half roused, feeling the mountain chill. He groped instinctively; his hand encountered a quilt, which he drew around his shoulders.
When he awoke it was broad daylight. A persistent discomfort which had for an hour fought with his drowsiness for the ascendancy, now disclosed itself as a ligature tying his elbows at the back. Evidently Saleratus Bill had taken this precaution while the young man slept. Bob could still use his hands and wrists, after a fashion; he could walk about but he would be unable to initiate any effective offence. The situation was admirably analogous to that of a hobbled horse. Moreover, the bonds were apparently of some broad, soft substance like sacking or harness webbing, so that, after Bob had moved from his constrained position, they did not excessively discommode him.
He had no means of guessing what the hour might be, and no sounds reached him from the other parts of the house. His muscles were sore and bruised. For some time he was quite content to lie on his side, thinking matters over.
From his knowledge of the connection between Baker and Oldham, Oldham and his captor, Bob had no doubt as to the purpose of his abduction; nor did he fail to guess that now, with the chief witness out of the way, the trial would be hurried where before it had been delayed. Personally he had little to fear beyond a detention—unless he should attempt to escape, or unless a searching party might blunder on his traces. Bob had already made up his mind to use his best efforts to get away. As to the probabilities of a rescue blundering on this retreat, he had no means of guessing; but he shrewdly concluded that Saleratus Bill was taking no chances.
That individual now entered; and, seeing his captive awake, gruffly ordered him to rise. Bob found an abundant breakfast ready, to which he was able to do full justice. In the course of the meal he made several attempts on his jailer's taciturnity, but without success. Saleratus Bill met all his inquiries, open and guarded, with a sullen silence or evasive, curt replies.
"It don't noways matter why you're here, or how you're here. Youarehere, and that's all there's to it."
"How long do I stay?"
"Until I get ready to let you go."
"How can you get word from Mr. Oldham when to let me off?" asked Bob.
But Saleratus Bill refused to rise to the bait.
"I'll let you go when I get ready," he repeated.
Bob was silent for some time.
"You know this lets me off from my promise," said he, nodding backward toward his elbows. "I'll get away if I can."
Saleratus Bill, for the first time, permitted himself a smile.
"There's two ways out of this place," said he—"where we come in, and over north on the trail. You can see every inch—both ways—from here. Besides, don't make no mistakes. I'll shoot you if you make a break."
Bob nodded.
"I believe you," said he.
As though to convince Bob of the utter helplessness of any attempt, Saleratus Bill, leaving the dishes unwashed, led the way in a tour of the valley. Save where the wagon road descended and where the steep side hill of the north wall arose, the boundaries were utterly precipitous. From a narrow gorge, flanked by water-smoothed rock aprons, the river boiled between glassy perpendicular cliffs.
"There ain't no swimming-holes in that there river," remarked Saleratus Bill grimly.
Bob, leaning forward, could just catch a glimpse of the torrent raging and buffeting in the narrow box cañon, above which the mountains rose tremendous. No stream growths had any chance there. The place was water and rock—nothing more. In the valley itself willows and alders, well out of reach of high water, offered a partial screen to soften the savage vista.
The round valley itself, however, was beautiful. Ripening grasses grew shoulder high. Shady trees swarmed with birds. Bees and other insects hummed through the sun-warmed air.
In vain Bob looked about him for the horses, or for signs of them. They were nowhere to be seen. Saleratus Bill, reading his perplexity, grinned sardonically.
"Yore friends might come in here," said he, evidently not unwilling to expose to Bob the full hopelessness of the latter's case. "And if so, they can trail us in;and then trail us out again!" He pointed to the lacets of the trail up the north wall. He grinned again. "You and I'd just crawl down a mile of mine shaft."
Having thus, to his satisfaction, impressed Bob with the utter futility of an attempt to escape, Saleratus Bill led the way back to the deserted village. There he turned deliberately on his captive.
"Now, young feller, you listen to me," said he. "Don't you try no monkey business. There won't be no questions asked, none whatever. As long as you set and look at the scenery, you won't come to no harm; but the minute you make even a bluff at gettin' funny—even if yore sorry the next minute—I'll shoot. And don't you never forget and try to get nearer to me than three paces. Don't forget that! I don't rightly want to hurt you; but I'd just as leave shoot you as anybody else."
To this view of the situation Bob gave the expected assent.
The next three days were ones of routine. Saleratus Bill spent his time rolling brown-paper cigarettes at a spot that commanded both trails. Bob was instructed to keep in sight. He early discovered the cheering fact that trout were to be had in the glass-green pools; and so spent hours awkwardly manipulating an improvised willow pole equipped with the short line and the Brown Hackle without which no mountaineer ever travels the Sierras. His bound elbows and the crudity of his tackle lost him many fish. Still, he caught enough for food; and his mind was busy.
Canvassing the possibilities, Bob could not but admit that Saleratus Bill knew his job. The river was certain death, and led nowhere except into mysterious and awful granite gorges; the outlets by roads were well in sight. For one afternoon Bob seriously contemplated hazarding a personal encounter. He conceived that in some manner he could get rid of his bonds at night; that Saleratus Bill must necessarily sleep; and that there might be a chance to surprise the gun-man then. But when night came, Saleratus Bill disappeared into the outer darkness; nor did he return until morning. He might have spent the hours camped under the trees of the more remote meadow, whence in the brilliant moonlight he could keep tabs on the trails, or he might be lying near at hand; Bob had no means of telling. Certainly, again the young man reluctantly acknowledged to himself, Saleratus Bill knew his job!
Nevertheless, as the days slipped by; and Bob's physical strength returned in its full measure, his active and bold spirit again took the initiative. A slow anger seized possession of him. The native combative stubbornness of the race asserted itself, the necessity of doing something, the inability tamely to submit to imposed circumstances. Bob's careful analysis of the situation as a whole failed to discover any feasible plan. Therefore he abandoned trying to plan ahead, and fell back on those always-ready and comfortable aphorisims of the adventurous—"sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and "one thing at a time." Obviously, the first thing to do was to free his arms; after that he would see what he would see.
Every evening Saleratus Bill took the candle and departed, leaving Bob to find his own way to his bunk. This was the time to cut his bonds; if at all. Unfortunately Bob could find nothing against which to cut them. Saleratus Bill had carefully removed every abrasive possibility in the two rooms. Bob very wisely relinquished the idea of passing the threshold in search of a suitable rock or piece of tin. He had no notion of risking a bullet until something was likely to be gained by it.
Finally his cogitations brought him an idea. Saleratus Bill was attentive enough to such of the simple creature comforts as were within his means. Bob's pipe had been well supplied with tobacco. On the fourth evening Bob filled it just as his jailor was about to take away the candle for the night.
"Just a minute," said Bob. "Let me have a light."
Bill set the candle on the table again, and retired the three paces which he never forgot rigidly to maintain between himself and his captive. Bob thereupon lit his pipe and nodded his thanks. As soon as Saleratus Bill had well departed, however, he retired to his bunk room, shutting the door carefully after him. There, with great care, he deliberately set to work to coax into flame a small fire on the old hearth, using as fuel the rounds of a broken chair, and as ignition the glowing coal in the bowl of his pipe. Before the hearth he had managed to hang the heavy quilt from his bunk, so that the flicker of the flames should not be visible from the outside.
The little fire caught, blazed for a few moments, and fell to a steady glow. Bob fished out one of the chair rungs, jammed the cool end firmly in one of the open cracks between the timbers of the room, turned his back, and deliberately pressed the band around his elbows against the live coal.
A smell of burning cloth immediately filled the air. After a moment the coal went out. Bob replaced the charred rung in the fire, extracted another, and repeated the operation.
It was exceedingly difficult to gauge the matter accurately, as Bob soon found out to his cost. He managed to burn more holes in his garment—and himself—than in the bonds. However, he kept at it, and after a half hour's steady and patient effort he was able to snap asunder the last strands. He stretched his arms over his head in an ecstasy of physical freedom.
That was all very well, but what next? Bob was suddenly called to a decision which had up to that moment seemed inconceivably remote. Heretofore, an apparent impossibility had separated him from it. Now that impossibility was achieved.
A moment's thought convinced him of the senseless hazard of attempting to slip out through any of the doors or windows. The moon was bright, and Saleratus Bill would have taken his precautions. Bob attacked the floor. Several boards proved to be loose. He pried them up cautiously, and so was enabled to drop through into the open space beneath the house. Thence it was easy to crawl away. Saleratus Bill's precautions were most likely taken, Bob argued to himself, with a view toward a man bound at the elbows, not to a man with two hands. In this he was evidently correct, for after a painful effort, he found himself among the high grasses of the meadow.
There were now, as he recognized, two courses open to him: he could either try to discover Saleratus Bill's sleeping place and by surprise overpower that worthy as he slept; or he could make the best of the interim before his absence was discovered to get as far away as possible. Both courses had obvious disadvantages. The most immediate to the first alternative was the difficulty, failing some clue, of finding Saleratus Bill's sleeping place without too positive a risk of discovery; the most immediate to the second was the difficulty of getting to the other side of the river. As Saleratus Bill might be at any one of a thousand places, in or out of doors; whereas the river could be crossed only by the bridge. Bob, without hesitation, chose the latter.
Therefore he made his way cautiously to that structure. It proved to be lying in broad moonlight. As it constituted the only link with the outside world to the south, Bob could not doubt that his captor had arranged to keep it in sight.
The bridge was, as has been said, suspended across a strait between two rocks by means of heavy wire cables. Slipping beneath these rocks and into the shadow, Bob was rejoiced to find that between the stringers and the shore, smaller cables had been bent to act as guy lines. If he could walk "hand over hand," the distance comprised by the width of the stream he could pass the river below the level of the bridge floor. He measured the distance with his eye. It did not look farther than the length of the gymnasium at college. He seized the cable and swung himself out over the waters.
Immediately the swift and boiling current, though twenty feet below, seemed to suck at his feet. The swirling and flashing of the water dizzied his brain with the impression of falling upstream. He had to fix his eyes on the black flooring above his head. The steel cable, too, was old and rusted and harsh. Bob's hands had not for many years grasped a rope strongly, and in that respect he found them soft. His muscles, cramped more than he had realized by the bonds of his captivity, soon began to drag and stretch. When halfway across, suspended above a ravening torrent; confronted, tired, by an effort he had needed all his fresh energies to put forth, Bob would have given a good deal to have been able to clamber aboard the bridge, risk or no risk. It was, however, a clear case of needs must. He finished the span on sheer nerve and will power; and fell thankfully on the rocks below the farther abutment. For a half minute he lay there, stretching slowly his muscles and straightening his hands, which had become cramped like claws. Then he crept, always in the shadow, to the level of the meadow.
Bob was learning to be a mountaineer. Therefore, on the way down, he had subconsciously noted that from the head of the meadow a steep dry wash climbed straight up to intersect the road. The recollection came to the surface of his mind now. If he could make his way up this wash, he would gain three advantages: he would materially shorten his journey by cutting off a mile or so of the road-grade's twists and doublings; he would avoid the necessity of showing himself so near the Cove in the bright moonlight; and he would leave no tracks where the road touched the valley. Accordingly he turned sharp to the left and began to pick his way upstream, keeping in close to the river and treading as much as possible on the water-worn rocks. The willows and elders protected him somewhat. In this manner he proceeded until he had come to the smooth rock aprons near the gorge from which the river flowed. Here, in accordance with his intention of keeping close in the shadow of the mountain, he was to turn to the right until he should have arrived at the steep "chimney" of the wash. He was about to leave the shelter of the last willows when he looked back. As his eyes turned, a flash of moonlight struck them full, like the heliographing of a mirror. He fixed his gaze on the bushes from which the flicker had come. In a moment it was repeated. Then, stooping low, a human figure hurried across a tiny opening, and once again the moonlight reflected from the worn and shining revolver in its hand.
In some manner Saleratus Bill had discovered the young man's escape, and had already eliminated the other possibilities of his direction of flight. Bob shuddered at this evidence of the rapidity with which the expert trailer had arrived at the correct conclusion. He could not now skirt the mountain, as he had intended, for that would at once expose him in full view; he could not return by the way he had come, for that would bring him face to face with his enemy. It would avail him little to surrender, for the gun-man would undoubtedly make good his threats; fidelity to such pledges is one of the few things sacred to the race. With some vague and desperate idea of defence, Bob picked up a heavy branch of driftwood. Then, as the man drew nearer, Bob scrambled hastily over the smooth apron to the tiny beach that the eddies had washed out below the precipice.
Here for the moment he was hidden, but he did not flatter himself he would long remain so. He cast his eyes about him for a way of escape. To the one side was the river, in front of him was the rock apron with his enemy, to the other side and back of him was a sheer precipice. In his perplexity he looked down. A gleam of metal caught his eye. He stooped and picked up the half of a worn horseshoe. Even in his haste of mind, he cast a passing wonderment on how it had come there.
If Bob had not been trained by his river work in the ways of currents, he might sooner have thought of the stream. But well he knew that Saleratus Bill had spoken right when he had said that there were "no swimming holes" here. The strongest swimmer could not have taken two strokes in that cauldron of seething white water. But now, as Bob looked, he saw that a little back eddy along the perpendicularity of the cliff slowed the current close to the sheer rock. It might be just possible, with luck, to win far enough along this cliff to lie concealed behind some outjutting boulder until Saleratus Bill had examined the beach and gone his way. Bob was too much in haste to consider the unexplained tracks he must leave on the sand.
He thrust the branch he carried into the still black water. To his surprise it hit bottom at a foot's depth. Promptly he waded in. Sounding ahead, he walked on. The underwater ledge continued. The water never came above his knees. Out of curiosity he tapped with his branch until he had reached the edge of the submerged shelf. It proved to be some four feet wide. Beyond it the water dropped off sheer, and the current nearly wrenched the staff from Bob's hand.
In this manner he proceeded cautiously for perhaps a hundred feet. Then he waded out on another beach.
He found himself in a pocket of the cliffs, where the precipice so far drew back as to leave a clear space of four or five acres in the river bottom. Such pockets, or "coves," are by no means unusual in the inaccessible depths of the great box cañons of the Sierras. Often the traveller can look down on them from above, lying like green gems in their settings of granite, but rarely can he descend to examine them. Thankfully Bob darted to one side. Here for a moment he might be safe, for surely no one not driven by such desperation as his own would dream of setting foot in the river.
A loud snort almost at his elbow, and a rush of scurrying shapes, startled him almost into crying aloud. Then out into the moonlight from the shadow of the cliffs rushed two horses. And Bob, seeing what they were, sprang from his fancied security into instant action, for in a flash he saw the significance of the broken horseshoe on the beach, the sunken ledge, and the secret of the horses' pasture. By sheer chance he had blundered on one of Saleratus Bill's outlaw retreats.
Hastily he skirted the walls of the tiny valley. They were unbroken. The river swept by tortured and tumbled. He ran to the head of the cove. No sunken ledge there rewarded him. Instead, the river at that point swept inward, so that the full force of the current washed the very shores.
Bob searched the prospect with eager eye. Twelve or fifteen feet upstream, and six or seven feet out from the cliff, stood a huge round boulder. That alone broke the shadowy expanse of the river, which here rushed down with great velocity. Manifestly it was impossible to swim to this boulder. Bob, however, conceived a daring idea. At imminent risk and by dint of frantic scrambling he worked his way along the cliff until he had gained a point opposite the boulder and considerably above it. Then, without hesitation, he sprang as strongly as he was able sidewise from the face of the cliff.
He landed on the boulder with great force, so that for a moment he feared he must have broken some bones. Certainly his breath was all but knocked from his body. Spread out flat on the top of the rock, he moved his limbs cautiously. They seemed to work all right. He backed cautiously until he lay outspread on the upstream slope of the boulder. At just this moment he caught the sinister figure of Saleratus Bill moving along the sunken ledge.
For the first time Bob remembered the tracks he must have left and the man's skill at trailing. A rapid review of his most recent actions reassured him at one point; in order to gain to the first of the minor cliff projections by means of which he had spread-eagled along the face of the rock, he had been forced to step into the very shallow water at the stream's edge. Thus his last footprints led directly into the river.
The value of this impression, conjoined with the existence of a ledge below over which he had already waded safely, was not lost on Bob's preception. As has been stated, his earlier experience in river driving had given him an intimate knowledge of the action of currents. Casting his eye hastily down the moonlit river, he seized his hat from his head and threw it low and skimming toward an eddy opposite him as he lay. The river snatched it up, tossed it to one side or another, and finally carried it, as Bob had calculated, within a few feet of the ledge along which Saleratus Bill was still making his way.
The gun-man, of course, caught sight of it, and even made an attempt to capture it as it floated past, but without avail. It served, however, to prepossess his mind with the idea that Bob had been swept away by the river, so that when, after a careful examination of the tiny cove, he came to the trail leading into the water, he was prepared to believe that the young man had been carried off his feet in an attempt to wade out past the cliff. He even picked up a branch, with which he poked at the bottom. A short and narrow rock projection favoured his hypothesis, for it might very well happen that merely an experimental venture on so slanting and slippery a footing would prove fatal. Saleratus Bill examined again for footprints emerging; threw his branch into the river, and watched the direction of its course; and then, for the first time, slipped the worn and shiny old revolver into its holster. He spent several moments more reexamining the cove, glanced again at the river, and finally disappeared, wading slowly back around the sunken ledge.
Bob's next task was to regain solid land. For some minutes he sat astride the boulder, estimating the force and directions of the current. Then he leaped. As he had calculated, the stream threw him promptly against the bank below. There his legs were immediately sucked beneath the overhanging rock that had convinced Saleratus Bill of his captive's fate. It seemed likely now to justify that conviction. Bob clung desperately, until his muscles cracked, but was unable so far to draw his legs from underneath the rock as to gain a chance to struggle out of water. Indeed, he might very well have hung in that equilibrium of forces until tired out, had not a slender, water-washed alder root offered itself to his grasp. This frail shrub, but lightly rooted, nevertheless afforded him just the extra support he required. Though he expected every instant that the additional ounces of weight he from moment to moment applied to it would tear it away, it held. Inch by inch he drew himself from the clutch of the rushing water, until at length he succeeded in getting the broad of his chest against the bank. A few vigorous kicks then extricated him.
For a moment or so he lay stretched out panting, and considering what next was to be done. There was a chance, of course—and, in view of Saleratus Bill's shrewdness, a very strong chance—that the gun-man would add to his precautions a wait and a watch at the entrance to the cove. If Bob were to wade out around the ledge, he might run fairly into his former jailer's gun. On the other hand, Saleratus Bill must be fairly well convinced of the young man's destruction, and he must be desirous of changing his wet clothes. Bob's own predicament, in this chill of night, made him attach much weight to this latter consideration. Besides, any delay in the cove meant more tracks to be noticed when the gun-man should come after the horses. Bob, his teeth chattering, resolved to take the chance of instant action.
Accordingly he waded back along the sunken ledge, glided as quickly as he could over the rock apron, and wormed his way through the grasses to the dry wash leading up the side of the mountains. Here fortune had favoured him, and by a very simple, natural sequence. The moon had by an hour sailed farther to the west; the wash now lay in shadow.
Bob climbed as rapidly as his wind would let him, and in that manner avoided a chill. He reached the road at a broad sheet of rock whereon his footsteps left no trace. After a moment's consideration, he decided to continue directly up the mountainside through the thick brush. This travel must be uncertain and laborious; but if he proceeded along the road, Saleratus Bill must see the traces he would indubitably leave. In the obscurity of the shady side of the mountain he found his task even more difficult than he had thought possible. Again and again he found himself puzzled by impenetrable thickets, impassable precipices, rough outcrops barring his way. By dint of patience and hard work, however, he gained the top of the mountain. At sunrise he looked back into Bright's Cove. It lay there peacefully deserted, to all appearance; but Bob, looking very closely, thought to make out smoke. The long thread of the road was quite vacant.
Bob had no very clear idea of where he was, except that it was in the unfriendly Durham country. It seemed well to postpone all public appearances until he should be beyond a chance that Saleratus Bill might hear of him. Bob was quite satisfied that the gun-man should believe him to have been swept away by the current.
Accordingly, after he had well rested from his vigorous climb, he set out to parallel the dim old road by which the two had entered the Cove. At times this proved so difficult a matter that Bob was almost on the point of abandoning the hillside tangle of boulders and brush in favour of the open highway. He reflected in time that Saleratus Bill must come out by this route; and he shrewdly surmised the expert trailer might be able from some former minute observation to recognize his footprints. Therefore he struggled on until the road dipped down toward the lower country. He remembered that, on the way in, his captor had led him first down the mountain, and then up again. Bob resolved to abandon the road and keep to the higher contours, trusting to cut the trail where it again mounted to his level. To be sure, it was probable that there existed some very good reason why the road so dipped to the valley—some dike, ridge or deep cañon impassable to horses. Bob knew enough of mountains to guess that. Still, he argued, that might not stop a man afoot.
The rest of a long, hard day he spent in proving this latter proposition. The country was very broken. A dozen times Bob scrambled and slid down a gorge, and out again, doing thus an hour's work for a half mile gain. The sun turned hot, and he had no food. Fortunately water was abundant. Toward the close of the afternoon he struck in to a long slope of pine belt, and conceived his difficulties over.
After the heat and glare of the rocks, the cool shadows of the forest were doubly grateful. Bob lifted his face to the wandering breezes, and stepped out with fresh vigour. The way led at first up the narrow spine of a "hogback," but soon widened into one of the ample and spacious parks peculiar to the elevations near the summits of the First Rampart. Occasional cattle tracks meandered here and there, but save for these Bob saw no signs of man's activities—no cuttings, no shake-bolts, no blazes on the trees to mark a way. Nevertheless, as he rose on the slow, even swell of the mountain the conviction of familiarity began to force its way in him. The forest was just like every other forest; there was no outlook in any direction; but all the same, with that instinct for locality inherent in a natural woodsman, he began to get his bearings, to "feel the lay of the country," as the saying is. This is probably an effect of the subconscious mind in memory; a recognition of what the eye has seen without reporting to the conscious mind. However that may be, Bob was not surprised when toward sunset he came suddenly on a little clearing, a tiny orchard, and a house built rudely of logs and shakes.
Relieved that he was not to spend the night without food and fire, he vaulted the "snake" fence, and strode to the back door. A woman was frying venison steaks.
"Hullo, Mrs. Ward," Bob shouted at her. "That smells good to me; I haven't had a bite since last night!"
The woman dropped her pan and came to the door. A lank and lean Pike County Missourian rose from the shadows and advanced.
"Light and rest yo' hat, Mr. Orde!" he called before he came well into view. "But yo' already lighted, and you ain't go no hat!" he cried in puzzled tones. "Whar yo'all from?"
"Came from north," Bob replied cheerfully, "and I lost my horse down a cañon, and my hat in a river."
"And yere yo' be plumb afoot!"
"And plumb empty," supplemented Bob. "Maybe Mrs. Ward will make me some coffee," he suggested with a side glance at the woman who had once tried to poison him.
She turned a dull red under the tan of her sallow complexion.
"Shore, Mr. Orde—" she began.
"We didn't rightly understand each other," Bob reassured her. "That was all."
"Did she-all refuse you coffee onct?" asked Ward. "What yo' palaverin' about?"
"She isn't refusing to make me some now," said Bob.
He spent the night comfortably with his new friends who a few months ago had been ready to murder him. The next morning early, supplied with an ample lunch, he set out. Ward offered him a riding horse, but he declined.
"I'd have to send it back," said he, "and, anyway, I'd neither want to borrow your saddle nor ride bareback. I'd rather walk."
The old man accompanied him to the edge of the clearing.
"By the way," Bob mentioned, as he said farewell, "if some one asks you, just tell them you haven't seen me."
The old man stopped short.
"What-for a man?" he asked.
"Any sort."
A frosty gleam crept into the old Missourian's eye.
"I'll keep hands off," said he. He strode on twenty feet. "I got an extra gun—" said he.
"Thanks," Bob interrupted. "But I'll get organized better when I get home."
"Hope you git him," said the old man by way of farewell. "He won't git nothing out of me," he shot back over his shoulder.
Bob now knew exactly where he was going. Reinvigorated by the food, the night's rest, and the cool air of these higher altitudes, he made good time. By four o'clock of the afternoon he at last hit the broad, dusty thoroughfare over which were hauled the supplies to Baker's upper works. Along this he swung, hands in pockets, a whistle on his lips, the fine, light dust rising behind his footsteps. The slight down grade released his tired muscles from effort. He was enjoying himself.
Then he came suddenly around a corner plump against a horseman climbing leisurely up the grade. Both stopped.
If Bob had entertained any lingering doubt as to Oldham's complicity in his abduction, the expression on the land agent's face would have removed it. For the first time in public Oldham's countenance expressed a livelier emotion than that of cynical interest. His mouth fell open and his eyeglasses dropped off. He stared at Bob as though that young man had suddenly sprung into visibility from clear atmosphere. Bob surveyed him grimly.
"Delighted to see me, aren't you?" he remarked. A slow anger surged up within him. "Your little scheme didn't work, did it? Wanted me out of the way, did you? Thought you'd keep me out of court! Well, I'm here, just as I said I'd be here. You can pay your villainous tool or kick him out, as you please. He's failed, and he won't get another chance. You miserable whelp!"
But Oldham had recovered his poise.
"Get out of my way. I don't know what you are talking about. I'll land you in the penitentiary a week after you appear in court. You're warned."
"Oh, I've been warned for some time. But first I'll land you."
"Really! How?"
"Right here and now," said Bob stepping forward.
Oldham reined back his horse, and drew from his side pocket a short, nickel-plated revolver.
"Let me pass!" he commanded harshly. He presented the weapon, and his gray eyes contracted to pin points.
"Throw that thing away," said Bob, laying his hand on the other man's bridle. "I'm going to give you the very worst licking you ever heard tell of!"
The young man's muscles were tense with the expectation of a shot. To his vast astonishment, at his last words Oldham turned deadly pale, swayed in the saddle, and the revolver clattered past his stirrup to fall in the dust. With a snarl of contempt at what he erroneously took for a mere physical cowardice, Bob reached for his enemy and dragged him from the saddle.
The chastisement was brief, but effective. Bob's anger cooled with the first blow, for Oldham was no match for his younger and more vigorous assailant. In fact, he hardly offered any resistance. Bob knocked him down, shook him by the collar as a terrier shakes a ground squirrel, and cast him fiercely in the dust. Oldham sat up, his face bleeding slightly, his eyes bewildered with the suddenness of the onslaught. The young man leaned over him, speaking vehemently to rivet his attention.
"Now you listen to me," said he. "You leave me alone. If I ever hear any gossip, even, about what you will or will not do to me, I'll know where it started from. The first word I hear from any one anywhere, I'll start for you."
He looked down for a moment at the disorganized man seated in the thick, white dust that was still floating lazily around him. Then he turned abruptly away and resumed his journey.
For ten seconds Oldham sat as Bob had left him. His hat and eyeglasses were gone, his usually immaculate irongray hair rumpled, his clothes covered with dust. A thin stream of blood crept from beneath his close-clipped moustache. But the most striking result of the encounter, to one who had known the man, was in the convulsed expression of his countenance. A close friend would hardly have recognized him. His lips snarled, his eyes flared, the muscles of his face worked. Ordinarily repressed and inscrutable, this crisis had thrown him so far off his balance that, as often happens, he had fallen to the other extreme. Sniffling and half-sobbing, like a punished schoolboy, he dragged himself to where his revolver lay forgotten in the dust. Taking as deliberate aim as his condition permitted, he pulled at the trigger. The hammer refused to rise, or the cylinder to revolve. Abandoning the self-cocking feature of the arm, he tried to cock it by hand. The mechanism grated sullenly against the grit from the road. Oldham worked frantically to get the hammer to catch. By the time he had succeeded, his antagonist was out of reach. With a half-scream of baffled rage, he hurled the now useless weapon in the direction of the young man's disappearance. Then, as Oldham stood militant in the dusty road, a change came over him. Little by little the man resumed his old self. A full minute went by. Save for the quicker breathing, a spectator might have thought him sunk in reverie. At the end of that time the old, self-contained, reserved, cynical Oldham stepped from his tracks, and set methodically to repair damages.
First he searched for and found his glasses, fortunately unbroken. At the nearest streamlet he washed his face, combed his hair, brushed off his clothes. The saddle horse browsed not far away. Finally he walked down the road, picked up the revolver, cleaned it thoroughly of dust, tested it and slipped it into his pocket. Then he resumed his journey, outwardly as self-possessed as ever.
Near the upper dam he had another encounter. The dust of some one approaching warned him some time before the traveller came in sight. Oldham reined back his horse until he could see who it was; then he spurred forward to meet Saleratus Bill.
The gun-man was lounging along at peace with all the world, his bridle rein loose, his leg slung over the pommel of his saddle. At the sight of his employer, he grinned cheerfully.
Oldham rode directly to him.
"Why aren't you attending to your job?" he demanded icily.
"Out of a job," said Saleratus Bill cheerfully.
"Why haven't you kept your man in charge?"
"I did until he just naturally had one of those unavoidable accidents."
"Explain yourself."
"Well. I ain't never been afraid of words. He's dead; that's what."
"Indeed," said Oldham, "Then I suppose I met his ghost just now; and that a spirit gave me this cut lip."
Saleratus Bill swung his leg from the saddle horn and straightened to attention.
"Did he have a hat on?" he demanded keenly.
"Yes—no—I believe not. No, I'm sure he didn't."
"It's him, all right." He shook his head reflectively, "I can't figure it."
Oldham was staring at him with deadly coldness.
"Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain," he sneered—"five hundred dollars worth at any rate."
Saleratus Bill detailed what he knew of the whole affair. Oldham listened to the end. His cynical expression did not change; and the unlighted cigar that he held between his swollen lips never changed its angle.
"And so he just nat'rally disappeared," Saleratus Bill ended his recital. "I can't figure it out."
Then Oldham spat forth the cigar. His calm utterly deserted him. He thrust his livid countenance out at his man.
"Figure it out!" he cried. "You pin-headed fool! You had an unarmed man tied hand and foot, in a three-thousand-foot hole, and you couldn't keep him! And one of the smallest interests involved is worth more than everything your worthless hide can hold! I picked you out for this job because I thought you reliable. And now you come to me with 'I can't figure it out!' That's all the explanation or excuse you bring! You miserable, worthless cur!"
Saleratus Bill was looking at him steadily from his evil, red-rimmed eyes.
"Hold on," he drawled. "Go slow. I don't stand such talk."
Oldham spurred up close to him.
"Don't you try any of your gun-play or intimidation on me," he fairly shouted. "I won't stand for it. You'll hear what I've got to say, just as long as I choose to say it."
He eyed the gun-man truculently. Certainly even Bob could not have accused him of physical cowardice at that moment.
Saleratus Bill stared back at him with the steady, venomous glare of a rattlesnake. Then his lips, under his straggling, sandy moustache, parted in a slow grin.
"Say your say," he conceded. "I reckon you're mad; I reckon that boy man-handled you something scand'lous."
At the words Oldham's face became still more congested.
"But you look a-here," said Saleratus Bill, suddenly leaning across from his saddle and pointing a long, lean finger. "You just remember this: I took this yere job with too many strings tied to it. I mustn't hurt him; and I must see no harm comes to him; and I must be noways cruel to mama's baby. You had me hobbled, and then you cuss me out because I can't get over the rocks. If you'd turned me loose with no instructions except to disappear your man, I'd have earned my money."
He dropped his hand to the butt of his six-shooter, and looked his principal in the eye.
"I'm just as sorry as you are that he made this get-away," he continued slowly. "Now I got to pull up stakes and get out. Nat'rally he'll make it too hot for me here. Then I could use that extry twenty-five hundred that was coming to me on this job. But it ain't too late. He's got away once; but he ain't in court yet. I can easy keep him out, if the original bargain stands. Of course, I'm sorry he punched your face."
"Damn his soul!" burst out Oldham.
"Just let me deal with him my way, instead of yours," repeated Saleratus Bill.
"Do so," snarled Oldham; "the sooner the better."
"That's all I want to hear," said the gun-man, and touched spurs to his horse.
Bob's absence had occasioned some speculation, but no uneasiness, at headquarters. An officer of the Forest Service was too often called upon for sudden excursions in unexpected emergencies to make it possible for his chiefs to keep accurate track of all his movements. A day's trip to the valley might easily be deflected to a week's excursion to the higher peaks by any one of a dozen circumstances. The report of trespassing sheep, a tiny smoke above distant trees, a messenger sent out for arbitration in a cattle dispute, are samples of the calls to which Bob must have hastened no matter on what errand he had been bound.
He arrived at headquarters late in the afternoon. Already a thin wand of smoke wavered up through the trees from Amy's little, open kitchen. The open door of the shed office trickled forth a thin clicking of typewriters. Otherwise the camp seemed deserted.
At Bob's halloo, however, both Thorne and old California John came to the door. In two minutes he had all three gathered about the table under the three big firs.
"In the first place, I want to say right now," he began, "that I have the evidence to win the land case against the Modoc Mining Company."
"How?" demanded Thorne, leaning forward eagerly.
"Baker has boasted, before two witnesses, that his mineral entries were fraudulent and made simply to get water rights and timber."
"Those witnesses will testify?"
"They will."
"Who are they?"
"Mr. Welton and myself."
"Glory be!" cried Thorne, springing to his feet and clapping Bob on the back. "We've got him!"
"So that's what you've been up to for the past week!" cried Amy. "We've been wondering where you had disappeared to!"
"Well, not precisely," grinned Bob; "I've been in durance vile."
In response to their questionings he detailed a semi-humorous account of his abduction, detention and escape. His three auditors listened with the deepest attention.
As the recital progressed to the point wherein Bob described his midnight escape, Amy, unnoticed by the others, leaned back and closed her eyes. The colour left her face for a moment, but the next instant had rushed back to her cheeks in a tide of deeper red. She thrust forward, her eyes snapping with indignation.
"They are desperate; there's no doubt of it," was Thorne's comment. "And they won't stop at this. I wish the trial was to-morrow. We must get your testimony in shape before anything happens."
Amy was staring across the table at them, her lips parted with horror.
"You don't think they'll try anything worse!" she gasped.
Bob started to reassure her, but Thorne in his matter-of-fact way broke in.
"I don't doubt they'll try to get him proper, next time. We must get out papers and the sheriff after this Saleratus Bill."
"He'll be almighty hard to locate," put in California John.
"And I think we'd better not let Bob, here, go around alone any more."
"I don't think he ought to go around at all!" Amy amended this vigorously.
Bob shot at her an obliquely humorous glance, before which her own fell. Somehow the humour died from his.
"Bodyguard accepted with thanks," said he, recovering himself. "I've had enough Wild West on my own account." His words and the expression of his face were facetious, but his tones were instinct with a gravity that attracted even Thorne's attention. The Supervisor glanced at the young man curiously, wondering if he were going to lose his nerve at the last. But Bob's personal stake was furthest from his mind. Something in Amy's half-frightened gesture had opened a new door in his soul. The real and insistent demands of the situation had been suddenly struck shadowy while his forces adjusted themselves to new possibilities.
"Ware's your man," suggested California John. "He's a gun-man, and he's got a nerve like a saw mill man."
"Where is Ware?" Thorne asked Amy.
"He's over at Fair's shake camp. He will be back to-morrow."
"That's settled, then. How about Welton? Is he warned? You say he'll testify?"
"If he has to," replied Bob, by a strong effort bringing himself back to a practical consideration of the matter in hand. "At least he'll never perjure himself, if he's called. Welton's case is different. Look here; it's bound to come out, so you may as well know the whole situation."
He paused, glancing from one to another of his hearers. Thorne's keen face expressed interest of the alert official; California John's mild blue eye beamed upon him with a dawning understanding of the situation; Amy, intuitively divining a more personal trouble, looked across at him with sympathy.
"John, here, will remember the circumstance," said Bob. "It happened about the time I first came out here with Mr. Welton. It seems that Plant had assured him that everything was all arranged so our works and roads could cross the Forest, so we went ahead and built them. In those days it was all a matter of form, anyway. Then when we were ready to go ahead with our first season's work, up steps Plant and asks to see our permission, threatening to shut us down! Of course, all he wanted was money."
"And Welton gave it to him?" cried Amy.
"It wasn't a case of buy a privilege," explained Bob, "but of life itself. We were operating on borrowed money, and just beginning our first year's operations. The season is short in these mountains, as you know, and we were under heavy obligations to fulfil a contract for sawed lumber. A delay of even a week meant absolute ruin to a large enterprise. Mr. Welton held off to the edge of danger, I remember, exhausting every means possible here and at Washington to rush through the necessary permission."
"Why didn't he tell the truth—expose Plant? Surely no department would endorse that," put in Amy, a trifle subdued in manner.
"That takes time," Bob pointed out. "There was no time."
"So Welton came through," said Thorne drily. "What has that got to do with it?"
"Baker paid the money for him," said Bob.
"Well, they're both in the same boat," remarked Thorne tranquilly. "I don't see that that gives him any hold on Welton."
"He threatens to turn state's evidence in the matter, and seems confident of immunity on that account."
"He can't mean it!" cried Amy.
"Sheer bluff," said Thorne.
"I thought so, and went to see him. Now I am sure not. He means it; and he'll do it when this case against the Modoc Company is pushed."
"I thought you said Welton would testify?" observed Thorne.
"He will. But naturally only if he is summoned."
"Then what----"
"Oh, I see. Baker never thought he could keep Welton from telling the truth, but knew perfectly well he would not volunteer the evidence. He used his hold over Welton to try to keep me from bringing forward this testimony. Sort of relied on our intimacy and friendship."
"But you will testify?"
"I think I see my duty that way," said Bob in a troubled voice.
"Quite right," said Thorne, dispassionately; "I'm sorry." He arose from the table. "This is most important. I don't often issue positive prohibitions in my capacity of superior officer; but in this instance I must. I am going to request you not to leave camp on any errand unless accompanied by Ranger Ware."
Bob nodded a little impatiently. California John paused before following his chief into the office.
"It's good sense, boy," said he, "and nobody gives a darn for your worthless skin, you know. It's just the information you got inside it."
"Right," laughed Bob, his brow clearing. "I forgot."
California John nodded at him, and disappeared into the office.
Bob turned to Amy with a laughing comment that died on his lips. The girl was standing very straight on the other side of the table. One little brown hand grasped and crushed the edge of her starched apron; her black brows were drawn in a straight line of indignation beneath which her splendid eyes flashed; her rounded bosom, half-defined by the loose, soft blue of her simple gown, rose and fell rapidly.
"And you're going to do it?" she threw across at him.
Bob, bewildered, stared at her.
"You're going to deliver over your friend to prison?" She moved swiftly around the table to stand close to him. "Surely you can't mean to do that! You've worked with him, and lived with him—and he's a dear, jolly old man!"
"Hold on!" cried Bob, recovering from the first shock, and beginning to enjoy the situation. "You don't understand. If I don't give my testimony, think what the Service will lose in the Basin."
"Lose!" she cried indignantly. "What of it? Do you think if I had a friend who was near and dear to me I'd sacrifice him for all the trees in the mountains? How can you!"
"Et tu Brute!" said Bob a little wearily. "Where is all the no-compromise talk I've heard at various times, and the high ideals, and the loyalty to the Service at any cost, and all the rest of it? You're not consistent."
Amy eyed him a little disdainfully.
"You've got to save that poor old man," she stated. "It's all very easy for you to talk of duty and the rest of it, but the fact remains that you're sending that poor old man to prison for something that isn't his fault, and it'll break his heart."
"He isn't there yet," Bob pointed out. "The case isn't decided."
"It's all very well for you to talk that way," said Amy, "for all you have to do is to satisfy your conscience and bear your testimony. But if testifying would land you in danger of prison, you might feel differently about it."
Bob thought of George Pollock, and smiled a trifle bitterly. Welton might get off with a fine, or even suspended sentence. There was but one punishment for those accessory before the fact to a murder. Amy was eyeing him reflectively. The appearance of anger had died. It was evident that she was thinking deeply.
"Why doesn't Mr. Welton protect himself?" she inquired at length. "If he turned state's evidence before that man Baker did, wouldn't it work that way around?"
"I don't believe it would," said Bob. "Baker was not the real principal in the offence, only an accessory. Besides, even if it were possible, Mr. Welton would not do such a thing. You don't know Welton."
Amy sank again to reflection, her eyes losing themselves in a gaze beyond the visible world. Suddenly she threw up her head with a joyous chuckle.
"I believe I have it!" she cried. She nodded her head several times as though to corroborate with herself certain points in her plan. "Listen!" she said at last. "As I understand it, Baker is really liable on this charge of bribing Plant as much as Mr. Welton is."
"Yes; he paid the money."
"So that if it were not for the fact that he intends to gain immunity by telling what he knows, he would get into as much trouble as Mr. Welton."
"Of course."
"Well, don't you know enough about it all to testify? Weren't you there?"
Bob reflected.
"Yes, I believe I was present at all the interviews."
"Then," cried Amy triumphantly, "you can issue complaint againstbothBaker and Mr. Welton on a charge of bribery, and Baker can't possibly wriggle out by turning state's evidence, because your evidence will be enough."
"Do you expect me to have Mr. Welton arrested on this charge?" cried Bob.
"No, silly! But you can go to Baker, can't you, and say to him: 'See here, if you try to bring up this old bribery charge against Welton, I'll get in ahead of you and have youbothup. I haven't any desire to raise a fuss, nor start any trouble; but if you are bound to get Mr. Welton in on this, I might as well get you both in.' He'd back out, you see!"
"I believe he would!" cried Bob. "It's a good bluff to make."
"It mustn't be a bluff," warned Amy. "You must mean it. I don't believe he wants to face a criminal charge just to get Mr. Welton in trouble, if he realizes that you are both going to testify anyway. But if he thinks you're bluffing, he'll carry it through."
"You're right," said Bob slowly. "If necessary, we must carry it through ourselves."
Amy nodded.
"I'll take down a letter for you to Baker," she said, "and type it out this evening. We'll say nothing to anybody."
"I must tell Welton of our plan," said Bob; "I wouldn't for the world have to spring this on him unprepared. What would he think of me?"
"We'll see him to-morrow—no, next day; we have to wait for Ware, you know."
"Am I forgiven for doing my plain duty?" asked Bob a trifle mischievously.
"Only if our scheme works," declared Amy. Her manner changed to one of great seriousness. "I know your way is brave and true, believe me I do. And I know what it costs you to follow it. I respect and admire the quality in men that leads them so straightly along the path. But I could not do it. Ideas and things are inspiring and great and to be worked for with enthusiasm and devotion, I know. No one loves the Service more than I, nor would make more personal sacrifices for her. But people are warm and living, and their hearts beat with human life, and they can be sorry and glad, happy and brokenhearted. I can't tell you quite what I mean, for I cannot even tell myself. I only feel it. I could turn my thumbs down on whole cohorts of senators and lawyers and demagogues that are attacking us in Washington and read calmly in next day's paper how they had been beheaded recanting all their sins against us. But I couldn't get any nearer home. Why, the other day Ashley told me to send a final and peremptory notice of dispossession to the Main family, over near Bald Knob, and I couldn't do it. I tried all day. I knew old Main had no business there, and is worthless and lazy and shiftless. But I kept remembering how his poor old back was bent over. Finally I made Ashley dictate it, and tried to keep thinking all the time that I was nothing but a machine for the transmission of his ideas. When it comes to such things I'm useless, and I know I fall short of all higher ideals of honour and duty and everything else."
"Thank God you do," said Bob gravely.