Beulah Rutherford found it impossible to resume a relation of friendliness toward her guest. By nature she was elemental and direct. A few months earlier she had become the teacher of the Big Creek school, but until that time life had never disciplined her to repress the impulses of her heart. As a child she had been a fierce, wild little creature full of savage affections and generosities. She still retained more feminine ferocity than social usage permits her sex. It was not in her to welcome an enemy with smiles while she hated him in her soul. The best she could do was to hold herself to a brusque civility whenever she met Beaudry.
As for that young man, he was in a most unhappy frame of mind. He writhed at the false position in which he found himself. It was bad enough to forfeit the good opinion of this primitive young hill beauty, but it was worse to know that in a measure he deserved it. He saw, too, that serious consequences were likely to follow her discovery, and he waited with nerves on the jump for the explosion.
None came. When he dragged himself to dinner, Beulah was stiff as a ramrod, but he could note no difference in the manner of the rest. Was it possible she had not told her father? He did not think this likely, and his heart was in panic all through the meal.
Though he went to his room early, he spent a sleepless night full of apprehension. What were the Rutherfords waiting for? He was convinced that something sinister lay behind their silence.
After breakfast the ranchman rode away. Jeff and Slim Sanders jogged off on their cowponies to mend a broken bit of fence. Hal sat on the porch replacing with rivets the torn strap of a stirrup.
Beaudry could stand it no longer. He found his hostess digging around the roots of some rosebushes in her small garden. Curtly she declined his offer to take the spade. For a minute he watched her uneasily before he blurted out his intention of going.
"I'll move up to the other end of the park and talk windmill to the ranchers there, Miss Rutherford. You've been awfully good to me, but I won't impose myself on your hospitality any longer," he said.
He had dreaded to make the announcement for fear of precipitating a crisis, but the young woman made no protest. Without a word of comment she walked beside him to the house.
"Hal, will you get Mr. Street's horse?" she asked her brother. "He is leaving this morning."
Young Rutherford's eyes narrowed. It was plain that he had been caught by surprise and did not know what to do.
"Where you going?" he asked.
"What do you care where he is going? Get the horse—or I will," she ordered imperiously.
"I'm going to board at one of the ranches farther up the park," explained Roy.
"Better wait till dad comes home," suggested Hal.
"No, I'll go now." Royal Beaudry spoke with the obstinacy of a timid man who was afraid to postpone the decision.
"No hurry, is there?" The black eyes of Rutherford fixed him steadily.
His sister broke in impatiently. "Can't he go when he wants to, Hal? Get Mr. Street's horse." She whirled on Beaudry scornfully. "That is what you call yourself, isn't it—Street?"
The unhappy youth murmured "Yes."
"Let him get his own horse if he wants to hit the trail in such a hurry," growled Hal sulkily.
Beulah walked straight to the stable. Awkwardly Beaudry followed her after a moment or two. The girl was leading his horse from the stall.
"I'll saddle him, Miss Rutherford," he demurred, the blanket in his hand.
She looked at him a moment, dropped the bridle, and turned stiffly away. He understood perfectly that she had been going to saddle the horse to justify the surface hospitality of the Rutherfords to a man they despised.
Hal was still on the porch when Roy rode up, but Beulah was nowhere in sight. The young hillman did not look up from the rivet he was driving. Beaudry swung to the ground and came forward.
"I'm leaving now. I should like to tell Miss Rutherford how much I'm in her debt for taking a stranger in so kindly," he faltered.
"I reckon you took her in just as much as she did you, Mr. Spy." Rutherford glowered at him menacingly. "I'd advise you to straddle that horse and git."
Roy controlled his agitation except for a slight trembling of the fingers that grasped the mane of his cowpony. "You've used a word that isn't fair. I didn't come here to harm any of your people. If I could explain to Miss Rutherford—"
She stood in the doorway, darkly contemptuous. Fire flashed in her eyes, but the voice of the girl was coldly insolent.
"It is not necessary," she informed him.
Her brother leaned forward a little. His crouched body looked like a coiled spring in its tenseness. "Explain yourself down that road, Mr. Street—pronto," he advised.
Beaudry flashed a startled glance at him, swung to the saddle, and was away at a canter. The look in Rutherford's glittering eyes had sent a flare of fear over him. The impulse of it had lifted him to the back of the horse and out of the danger zone.
But already he was flogging himself with his own contempt. He had given way to panic before a girl who had been brought up to despise a quitter. She herself had nerves as steady as chilled steel. He had seen her clench her strong white little teeth without a murmur through a long afternoon of pain. Gameness was one of the fundamentals of her creed, and he had showed the white feather. It added to his punishment, too, that he worshiped pluck with all the fervor of one who knew he had none. Courage seemed to him the one virtue worth while; cowardice the unpardonable sin. He made no excuses for himself. From his father he inherited the fine tradition of standing up to punishment to a fighting finish. His mother, too, had been a thoroughbred. Yet he was a weakling. His heart pumped water instead of blood whenever the call to action came.
In dejection he rode up the valley, following the same hilly trail he had taken two days before with Miss Rutherford. It took him past the aspen grove at the mouth of the gulch which led to the Meldrum place. Beyond this a few hundred yards he left the main road and went through the chaparral toward a small ranch that nestled close to the timber. Beulah had told him that it belonged to an old German named Rothgerber who had lived there with his wife ever since she could remember.
Rothgerber was a little wrinkled old man with a strong South-German accent. After Beaudry had explained that he wanted board, the rancher called his wife out and the two jabbered away excitedly in their native tongue. The upshot of it was that they agreed to take the windmill agent if he would room in an old bunkhouse about two hundred yards from the main ranch building. This happened to suit Roy exactly and he closed the matter by paying for a week in advance.
The Rothgerbers were simple, unsuspecting people of a garrulous nature. It was easy for Beaudry to pump information from them while he ate supper. They had seen nothing of any stranger in the valley except himself, but they dropped casually the news that the Rutherfords had been going in and out of Chicito Cañon a good deal during the past few days.
"Chicito Cañon. That's a Mexican name, isn't it? Let's see. Just where is this gulch?" asked Beaudry.
The old German pointed out of the window. "There it iss, mein friend. You pass by on the road and there iss no way in—no arroyo, no gulch, no noddings but aspens. But there iss, shust the same, a trail. Through my pasture it leads."
"Anybody live up Chicito? I want everybody in the park to get a chance to buy a Dynamo Aermotor before I leave."
"A man named Meldrum. My advice iss—let him alone."
"Why?"
Rothgerber shook a pudgy forefinger in the air. "Mein friend—listen. You are a stranger in Huerfano Park. Gut. But do not ask questions about those who lif here. Me, I am an honest man. I keep the law. Also I mind my own pusiness. So it iss with many. But there are others—mind, I gif them no names, but—" He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, palm up. "Well, the less said the petter. If I keep my tongue still, I do not talk myself into trouble. Not so, Berta?"
The pippin-cheeked little woman nodded her head sagely.
In the course of the next few days Roy rode to and fro over the park trying to sell his windmill to the ranchers. He secured two orders and the tentative promise of others. But he gained no clue as to the place where Dingwell was hidden. His intuition told him that the trail up Chicito Cañon would lead him to the captive cattleman. Twice he skirted the dark gash of the ravine at the back of the pasture, but each time his heart failed at the plunge into its unknown dangers. The first time he persuaded himself that he had better make the attempt at night, but when he stood on the brink in the darkness the gulf at his feet looked like a veritable descent into Avernus. If he should be caught down here, his fate would be sealed. What Meldrum and Tighe would do to a spy was not a matter of conjecture. The thought of it brought goose-quills to his flesh and tiny beads of perspiration to his forehead.
Still, the peril had to be faced. He decided to go up the cañon in the early morning before the travel of the day had begun. The night before he made the venture he prepared an alibi by telling Mrs. Rothgerber that he would not come to breakfast, as he wanted to get an early start for his canvassing. The little German woman bustled about and wrapped up for him a cold lunch to eat at his cabin in the morning. She liked this quiet, good-looking young man whose smile was warm for a woman almost old enough to be his grandmother. It was not often she met any one with the charming deference he showed her. Somehow he reminded her of her own Hans, who had died from the kick of a horse ten years since.
Roy slept in broken cat-naps full of fearful dreams, from which he woke in terror under the impression that he was struggling helplessly in the net of a great spider which had the cruel, bloodless face of Tighe. It was three o'clock when he rose and began to dress. He slipped out of the cabin into the wet pasture. His legs were sopping wet from the long grass through which he strode to the edge of the gulch. On a flat boulder he sat shivering in the darkness while he waited for the first gray streaks of light to sift into the dun sky.
In the dim dawn he stumbled uncertainly down the trail into the cañon, the bottom of which was still black as night from a heavy growth of young aspens that shut out the light. There was a fairly well-worn path leading up the gulch, so that he could grope his way forward slowly. His feet moved reluctantly. It seemed to him that his nerves, his brain, and even his muscles were in revolt against the moral compulsion that drove him on. He could feel his heart beating against his ribs. Every sound startled him. The still darkness took him by the throat. Doggedly he fought against the panic impulse to turn and fly.
If he quit now, he told himself, he could never hold his self-respect. He thought of all those who had come into his life in connection with the Big Creek country trouble. His father, his mother, Dave Dingwell, Pat Ryan, Jess Tighe, the whole Rutherford clan, including Beulah! One quality they all had in common, the gameness to see out to a finish anything they undertook. He could not go through life a confessed coward. The idea was intolerably humiliating.
Then, out of the past, came to him a snatch of nonsense verse:—
"Li'l' ole hawss an' li'l' ole cow,Amblin' along by the ole haymow,Li'l' ole hawss took a bite an' a chew,'Durned if I don't,' says the ole cow, too."
So vivid was his impression of the doggerel that for an instant he thought he heard the sing-song of his father's tuneless voice. In sharp, clean-cut pictures his memory reproduced the night John Beaudry had last chanted the lullaby and that other picture of the Homeric fight of one man against a dozen. The foolish words were a bracer to him. He set his teeth and ploughed forward, still with a quaking soul, but with a kind of despairing resolution.
After a mile of stiff going, the gulch opened to a little valley on the right-hand side. On the edge of a pine grove, hardly a stone's throw from where Roy stood, a Mexicanjacallooked down into the cañon. The hut was a large one. It was built of upright poles daubed with clay. Sloping poles formed the roof, the chinks of which were waterproofed with grass. A wolf pelt, nailed to the wall, was hanging up to dry.
He knew that this was the home of Meldrum, the ex-convict.
Beaudry followed a bed of boulders that straggled toward the pine grove. It was light enough now, and he had to move with caution so as to take advantage of all the cover he could find. Once in the grove, he crawled from tree to tree. The distance from the nearest pine to the jacal was about thirty feet. A clump ofchollagrew thick just outside the window. Roy crouched behind the trunk for several minutes before he could bring himself to take the chance of covering that last ten yards. But every minute it was getting lighter. Every minute increased the likelihood of detection. He crept fearfully to the hut, huddled behind the cactus, and looked into the window.
A heavy-set man, with the muscle-bound shoulders of an ape, was lighting a fire in the stove. At the table, his thumbs hitched in a sagging revolver belt, sat Ned Rutherford. The third person in the room lay stretched at supple ease on a bed to one of the posts of which his right leg was bound. He was reading a newspaper.
"Get a move on you, Meldrum," young Rutherford said jauntily, with an eye on his prisoner to see how he took it. "I've got inside information that I need some hot cakes, a few slices of bacon, and a cup of coffee. How about it, Dave? Won't you order breakfast, too?"
The man on the bed shook his head indifferently. "Me, I'm taking the fast cure. I been reading that we all eat too much, anyhow. What's the use of stuffing—gets yore system all clogged up. Now, take Edison—he don't eat but a handful of rice a day."
"That's one handful more than you been eating for the past three days. Better come through with what we want to know. This thing ain't going to get any better for you. A man has got to eat to live."
"I'm trying out another theory. Tell you-all about how it works in a week or so. I reckon after a time I'll get real hungry, but it don't seem like I could relish any chuck yet." The cattleman fell to perusing his paper once more.
Royal Beaudry had never met his father's friend, Dave Dingwell, but he needed no introduction to this brown-faced man who mocked his guard with such smiling hardihood. They were trying to starve the secret out of him. Already his cheek showed thin and gaunt, dark circles shadowed the eyes. The man, no doubt, was suffering greatly, yet his manner gave no sign of it. He might not be master of his fate; at least, he was very much the captain of his soul. Pat Ryan had described him in a sentence. "One hundred and ninety pounds of divil, and ivery ounce of ivery pound true gold." There could not be another man in the Big Creek country that this description fitted as well as it did this starving, jocund dare-devil on the bed.
The savory odor of bacon and of coffee came through the open window to Beaudry where he crouched in the chaparral. He heard Meldrum's brusque "Come and get it," and the sound of the two men drawing up their chairs to the table.
"What's the use of being obstinate, Dave?" presently asked Rutherford from amid a pleasant chink of tin cups, knives, and forks. "I'd a heap rather treat you like a white man. This 'Pache business doesn't make a hit with me. But I'm obeying orders. Anyhow, it's up to you. The chuck-wagon is ready for you whenever you say the word."
"I don't reckon I'll say it, Ned. Eating is just a habit. One man wants his eggs sunny side up; another is strong for them hard-boiled. But eggs is eggs. When Dan went visitin' at Santa Fe, he likely changed his diet. For two or three days he probably didn't like the grub, then—"
With a raucous curse the former convict swung round on him. A revolver seemed to jump to his hand, but before he could fire, young Rutherford was hanging to his wrist.
"Don't you, Dan. Don't you," warned Ned.
Slowly Meldrum's eyes lost their savage glare. "One o' these days I'll pump lead into him unless he clamps that mouth of his'n. I won't stand for it." His voice trailed into a string of oaths.
Apparently his host's fury at this reference to his convict days did not disturb in the least the man on the bed. His good-natured drawl grew slightly more pronounced. "Wall yore eyes and wave yore tail all you've a mind to, Dan. I was certainly some indiscreet reminding you of those days when you was a guest of the Government."
"That's enough," growled Meldrum, slamming his big fist down on the table so that the tinware jumped.
"Sure it's enough. Too much. Howcome I to be so forgetful? If I'd wore a uniform two years for rustling other folks' calves, I reckon I wouldn't thank a guy—"
But Meldrum had heard all he could stand. He had to do murder or get out. He slammed the coffee-pot down on the floor and bolted out of the open door. His arms whirled in violent gestures as he strode away. An unbroken stream of profanity floated back to mark his anabasis.
Meldrum did not once look round as he went on his explosive way to the gulch, but Roy Beaudry crouched lower behind the cactus until the man had disappeared. Then he crawled back to the grove, slipped through it, and crept to the shelter of the boulder bed.
It would not do for him to return down the cañon during daylight, for fear he might meet one of the Rutherfords coming to relieve Ned. He passed from one boulder to another, always working up toward the wall of the gulch. Behind a big piece of sandstone shaped like a flatiron he lay down and waited for the hours to pass.
It was twilight when he stole down to the trail and began his return journey.
Dave Dingwell had sauntered carelessly out of the Legal Tender on the night of his disappearance. He was apparently at perfect ease with a friendly world. But if any one had happened to follow him out of the saloon, he would have seen an odd change in the ranchman. He slid swiftly along the wall of the building until he had melted into the shadows of darkness. His eyes searched the neighborhood for lurking figures while he crouched behind the trunk of a cottonwood. Every nerve of the man was alert, every muscle ready for action. One brown hand lingered affectionately close to the butt of his revolver.
He had come out of the front door of the gambling-house because he knew the Rutherfords would expect him, in the exercise of ordinary common sense, to leave by the rear exit. That he would be watched was certain. Therefore, he had done the unexpected and walked boldly out through the swinging doors.
As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out a horse in the clump of trees about twenty yards to the left. Whether it was Teddy he could not be sure, but there was no time to lose. Already a signal whistle had shrilled out from the other side of the street. Dave knew this was to warn the guards at the rear of the Legal Tender that their prey was in the open.
He made a dash for the tree clump, but almost as he reached it, he swung to the left and circled the small grove so as to enter it from the other side. As he expected, a man whirled to meet him. The unforeseen tactics of Dingwell had interfered with the ambush.
Dave catapulted into him head first and the two went down together. Before Dingwell could grip the throat of the man beneath him, a second body hurled itself through space at the cattleman. The attacked man flattened under the weight crushing him, but his right arm swept around and embraced the neck of his second assailant. He flexed his powerful forearm so as to crush as in a vice the throat of his foe between it and the hard biceps. The breath of the first man had for the moment been knocked out of him and he was temporarily not in the fight. The ranchman gave his full attention to the other.
The fellow struggled savagely. He had a gun in his right hand, but the fingers of Dave's left had closed upon the wrist above. Stertorous breathing gave testimony that the gunman was in trouble. In spite of his efforts to break the hold that kept his head in chancery, the muscles of the arm tightened round his neck like steel ropes drawn taut. He groaned, sighed in a ragged expulsion of breath, and suddenly collapsed.
Before he relaxed his muscles, Dingwell made sure that the surrender was a genuine one. His left hand slid down and removed the revolver from the nerveless fingers. The barrel of it was jammed against the head of the man above him while the rancher freed himself from the weight of the body. Slowly the cattleman got to his feet.
Vaguely he had been aware already that men were running toward the tree clump. Now he heard the padding of their feet close at hand. He ran to the horse and flung himself into the saddle, but before the animal had moved two steps some one had it by the bridle. Another man caught Dingwell by the arm and dragged him from the saddle. Before Dave could scramble to his feet again, something heavy fell upon his head and shook him to the heels. A thousand lights flashed in zigzags before his eyes. He sank back into unconsciousness.
The cowman returned to a world of darkness out of which voices came as from a distance hazily. A groan prefaced his arrival.
"Dave's waking up," one of the far voices said.
"Sure. When you tap his haid with a six-gun, you're liable to need repairs on the gun," a second answered.
The next words came to Dingwell more distinctly. He recognized the speaker as Hal Rutherford of the horse ranch.
"Too bad the boy had to hand you that crack, Dave. You're such a bear for fighting a man can't take any chances. Glad he didn't bust your haid wide open."
"Sure he didn't?" asked the injured man. "I feel like I got to hold it on tight so as to keep the blamed thing from flying into fifty pieces."
"Sorry. We'll take you to a doc and have it fixed up. Then we'll all go have a drunk. That'll fix you."
"Business first," cut in Buck Rutherford.
"That's right, Dave," agreed the owner of the horse ranch. "How about that gunnysack? Where did you hide it?"
Dingwell played for time. He had not the least intention of telling, but if he held the enemy in parley some of his friends might pass that way.
"What gunnysack, Hal? Jee-rusalem, how my head aches!" He held his hands to his temples and groaned again.
"Your head will mend—if we don't have to give it another crack," Buck told him grimly. "Get busy, Dave. We want that gold—pronto. Where did you put it?"
"WheredidI put it? That willing lad of yours has plumb knocked the answer out of my noodle. Maybe you're thinking of some one else, Buck." Dingwell looked up at him with an innocent, bland smile.
"Come through," ordered Buck with an oath.
The cattleman treated them to another dismal groan. "Gee! I feel like the day after Christmas. Was it a cannon the kid hit me with?"
Meldrum pushed his ugly phiz to the front. "Don't monkey away any time, boys. String him to one of these cottonwoods till he spits out what we want."
"Was it while you was visiting up at Santa Fe you learnt that habit of seeing yore neighbors hanged, Dan?" drawled Dingwell in a voice of gentle irony.
Furious at this cool reference to his penitentiary days, Meldrum kicked their captive in the ribs. Hal Rutherford, his eyes blazing, caught the former convict by the throat.
"Do that again and I'll hang yore hide up to dry." He shook Meldrum as if he were a child, then flung the gasping man away. "I'll show you who's boss of thisrodeo, by gum!"
Meldrum had several notches on his gun. He was, too, a rough-and-tumble fighter with his hands. But Hal Rutherford was one man he knew better than to tackle. He fell back, growling threats in his throat.
Meanwhile Dave was making discoveries. One was that the first two men who had attacked him were the gamblers he had driven from the Legal Tender earlier in the evening. The next was that Buck Rutherford was sending the professional tinhorns about their business.
"Git!" ordered the big rancher. "And keep gitting till you've crossed the border. Don't look back any. Jest burn the wind.Adios."
"They meant to gun you, Dave," guessed the owner of the horse ranch. "I reckon they daren't shoot with me loafing there across the road. You kinder disarranged their plans some more by dropping in at their back door. Looks like you'd 'a' rumpled up their hair a few if you hadn't been in such a hurry to make a get-away. Which brings us back to the previous question. The unanimous sense of the meeting is that you come through with some information, Dave. Where is that gunnysack?"
Dave, still sitting on the ground, leaned his back against a tree and grinned amiably at his questioner. "Sounds like you-all been to school to a parrot. You must 'a' quituated after you learned one sentence."
"We're waiting for an answer, Dave."
The cool, steady eyes of Dingwell met the imperious ones of the other man in a long even gaze. "Nothing doing, Hal."
"Even split, Dave. Fifty-fifty."
The sitting man shook his head. "I'll split the reward with you when I get it. The sack goes back to the express company."
"We'll see about that." Rutherford turned to his son and gave brisk orders. "Bring up the horses. We'll get out of here. You ride with me, Jeff. We'll take care of Dingwell. The rest of you scatter. We're going back to the park."
The Rutherfords and their captive followed no main road, but cut across country in a direction where they would be less likely to meet travelers. It was a land of mesquite and prickly pear. The sting of the cactus bit home in the darkness as its claws clutched at the riders winding their slow way through the chaparral.
Gray day was dawning when they crossed the Creosote Flats and were seen by a sheep-herder at a distance. The sun was high in the heavens before they reached the defile which served as a gateway between the foothills and the range beyond. It had passed the meridian by the time they were among the summits where they could look back upon rounded hills numberless as the billows of a sea. Deeper and always deeper they plunged into the maze of cañons which gashed into the saddles between the peaks. Blue-tinted dusk was enveloping the hills as they dropped down through a wooded ravine into Huerfano Park.
"Home soon," Dave suggested cheerfully to his captors. "I sure am hungry enough to eat a government mailsack. A flank steak would make a big hit with me."
Jeff looked at him in the dour, black Rutherford way. "This is no picnic, you'll find."
"Not to you, but it's a great vacation for me. I feel a hundred per cent better since I got up into all this ozone and scenery." Dingwell assured him hardily. "A man ought to take a trip like this every once in a while. It's great for what ails him."
Young Rutherford grunted sulkily. Their prisoner was the coolest customer he had ever met. The man was no fool. He must know he was in peril, but his debonair, smilinginsouciancenever left him for a moment. He was grit clear through.
The hooded eyes of Jess Tighe slanted across the table at his visitor. Not humor but mordant irony had given birth to the sardonic smile on his thin, bloodless lips.
"I reckon you'll be glad to know that you've been entertaining an angel unawares, Hal," he jeered. "I've been looking up your handsome young friend, and I can tell you what the 'R.B.' in his hat stands for in case you would be interested to know."
The owner of the horse ranch gave a little nod. "Unload your information, Jess."
Tighe leaned forward for emphasis and bared his teeth. If ever malevolent hate was written on a face it found expression on his now.
"'R.B.' stands for Royal Beaudry."
Rutherford flashed a question at him from startled eyes. He waited for the other man to continue.
"You remember the day we put John Beaudry out of business?" asked Tighe.
"Yes. Go on." Hal Rutherford was not proud of that episode. In the main he had fought fair, even though he had been outside the law. But on the day he had avenged the death of his brother Anson, the feud between him and the sheriff had degenerated to murder. A hundred times since he had wished that he had gone to meet the officer alone.
"He had his kid with him. Afterward they shipped him out of the country to an aunt in Denver. He went to school there. Well, I've had a little sleuthing done."
"And you've found out—?"
"What I've told you."
"How?"
"He said his name was Cherokee Street, but Jeff told me he didn't act like he believed himself. When yore girl remembered there was a street of that name in Denver, Mr. Cherokee Street was plumb rattled. He seen he'd made a break. Well, you saw that snapshot Beulah took of him and me on the porch. I sent it to a detective agency in Denver with orders to find out the name of the man that photo fitted. My idea was for the manager to send a man to the teachers of the high schools, beginning with the school nearest Cherokee Street. He done it. The third schoolmarm took one look at the picture and said the young fellow was Royal Beaudry. She had taught him German two years. That's howcome I to know what that 'R.B.' in the hat stands for."
"Perhaps it is some other Beaudry."
"Take another guess," retorted the cripple scornfully. "Right off when I clapped eyes on him, I knew he reminded me of somebody. I know now who it was."
"But what's he doing up here?" asked the big man.
The hawk eyes of Tighe glittered. "What do you reckon the son of John Beaudry would be doing here?" He answered his own question with bitter animosity. "He's gathering evidence to send Hal Rutherford and Jess Tighe to the penitentiary. That's what he's doing."
Rutherford nodded. "Sure. What else would he be doing if he is a chip of the old block? That's where his father's son ought to put us if he can."
Tighe beat his fist on the table, his face a map of appalling fury and hate. "Let him go to it, then. I've been a cripple seventeen years because Beaudry shot me up. By God! I'll gun his son inside of twenty-four hours. I'll stomp him off'n the map like he was a rattlesnake."
"No," vetoed Rutherford curtly.
"What! What's that you say?" snarled the other.
"I say he'll get a run for his money. If there's any killing to be done, it will be in fair fight."
"What's ailing you?" sneered Tighe. "Getting soft in your upper story? Mean to lie down and let that kid run you through to the pen like his father did Dan Meldrum?"
"Not in a thousand years," came back Rutherford. "If he wants war, he gets it. But I'll not stand for any killing from ambush, and no killing of any kind unless it has to be. Understand?"
"That sounds to me," purred the smaller man in the Western slang that phrased incredulity. Then, suddenly, he foamed at the mouth. "Keep out of this if you're squeamish. Let me play out the hand. I'll bump him offpronto."
"No, Jess."
"What do you think I am?" screamed Tighe. "Seventeen years I've been hog-tied to this house because of Beaudry. Think I'm going to miss my chance now? If he was Moody and Sankey rolled into one, I'd go through with it. And what is he—a spy come up here to gather evidence against you and me! Didn't he creep into your house so as to sell you out when he got the goods? Hasn't he lied from start to finish?"
"Maybe so. But he has no proof against us yet. We'll kick him out of the park. I'm not going to have his blood on my conscience. That's flat, Jess."
The eyes in the bloodless face of the other man glittered, but he put a curb on his passion. "What about me, Hal? I've waited half a lifetime and now my chance has come. Have you forgot who made me the misshaped thing I am? I haven't. I'll go through hell to fix Beaudry's cub the way he did me." His voice shook from the bitter intensity of his feeling.
Rutherford paced up and down the room in a stress of sentiency. "No, Jess. I know just how you feel, but I'm going to give this kid his chance. We gunned Beaudry because he wouldn't let us alone. Either he or a lot of us had to go. But I'll say this. I never was satisfied with the way we did it. When Jack Beaudry shot you up, he was fighting for his life. We attacked him. You got no right to hold it against his son."
"I don't ask you to come in. I'll fix his clock all right."
"Nothing doing. I won't have it." Rutherford, by a stroke of strategy, carried the war into the country of the other. "I gave way to you about Dingwell, though I hated to try that Indian stuff on him. He's a white man. I've always liked him. It's a rotten business."
"What else can you do? We daren't turn him loose. You don't want to gun him. There is nothing left but to tighten the thumbscrews."
"It won't do any good," protested the big man with a frown. "He's game. He'll go through.… And if it comes to a showdown, I won't have him starved to death."
Tighe looked at him through half-hooded, cruel eyes. "He'll weaken. Another day or two will do it. Don't worry about Dingwell."
"There's not a yellow streak in him. You haven't a chance to make him quit." Rutherford took another turn up and down the room diagonally. "I don't like this way of fighting. It's—damnable, man! I won't have any harm come to Dave or to the kid either. I stand pat on that, Jess."
The man with the crutches swallowed hard. His Adam's apple moved up and down like an agitated thermometer. When he spoke it was in a smooth, oily voice of submission, but Rutherford noticed that the rapacious eyes were hooded.
"What you say goes, Hal. You're boss of this round-up. I was jest telling you how it looked to me."
"Sure. That's all right, Jess. But you want to remember that public sentiment is against us. We've pretty near gone our limit up here. If there was no other reason but that, it would be enough to make us let this young fellow alone. We can't afford a killing in the park now."
Tighe assented, almost with servility. But the cattleman carried away with him a conviction that the man had yielded too easily, that his restless brain would go on planning destruction for young Beaudry just the same.
He was on his way up Chicito Cañon and he stopped at Rothgerber's ranch to see Beaudry. The young man was not at home.
"He start early this morning to canfass for his vindmill," the old German explained.
After a moment's thought Rutherford left a message. "Tell him it isn't safe for him to stay in the park; that certain parties know who 'R.B.' is and will sure act on that information. Say I said for him to come and see me as soon as he gets back. Understand? Right away when he reaches here."
The owner of the horse ranch left his mount in the Rothgerber corral and passed through the pasture on foot to Chicito. Half an hour later he dropped into thejacalof Meldrum.
He found the indomitable Dingwell again quizzing Meldrum about his residence at Santa Fe during the days he wore a striped uniform. The former convict was grinding his teeth with fury.
"I reckon you won't meet many old friends when you go back this time, Dan. Maybe there will be one or two old-timers that will know you, but it won't be long before you make acquaintances," Dave consoled him.
"Shut up, or I'll pump lead into you," he warned hoarsely.
The cattleman on the bed shook his head. "You'd like to fill me full of buckshot, but it wouldn't do at all, Dan. I'm the goose that lays the golden eggs, in a way of speaking. Gun me, and it's good-bye to that twenty thousand in the gunnysack." He turned cheerfully to Rutherford, who was standing in the doorway. "Come right in, Hal. Glad to see you. Make yourself at home."
"He's deviling me all the time," Meldrum complained to the owner of the horse ranch. "I ain't a-going to stand it."
Rutherford looked at the prisoner, a lean, hard-bitten Westerner with muscles like steel ropes and eyes unblinking as a New Mexico sun. His engaging recklessness had long since won the liking of the leader of the Huerfano Park outlaws.
"Don't bank on that golden egg business, Dave," advised Rutherford. "If you tempt the boys enough, they're liable to forget it. You've been behaving mighty aggravating to Dan."
"Me!" Dave opened his eyes in surprise. "I was just asking him how he'd like to go back to Santa Fe after you-all turn me loose."
"We're not going to turn you loose till we reach an agreement. What's the use of being pigheaded? We're looking for that gold and we're going to find it mighty soon. Now be reasonable."
"How do you know you're going to find it?"
"Because we know you couldn't have taken it far. Here's the point. You had it when Fox made his getaway. Beulah was right behind you, so we know you didn't get a chance to bury it between there and town. We covered your tracks and you didn't leave the road in that half-mile. That brings you as far as Battle Butte. You had the gunnysack when you crossed the bridge. You didn't have it when Slim Sanders met you. So you must have got rid of it in that distance of less than a quarter of a mile. First off, I figured you dropped the sack in Hague's alfalfa field. But we've tramped that all over. It's not there. Did you meet some one and give it to him? Or how did you get rid of it?"
"I ate it," grinned Dingwell confidentially.
"The boys are getting impatient, Dave. They don't like the way you butted in."
"That's all right. You're responsible for my safety, Hal. I'll let you do the worrying."
"Don't fool yourself. We can't keep you here forever. We can't let you go without an agreement. Figure out for yourself what's likely to happen?"
"Either my friends will rescue me, or else I'll escape."
"Forget it. Not a chance of either." Rutherford stopped, struck by an idea. "Ever hear of a young fellow called Cherokee Street?"
"No. Think not. Is he a breed?"
"White man." Rutherford took a chair close to Dingwell. He leaned forward and asked another question in a low voice. "Never happened to meet the son of John Beaudry, did you?"
Dingwell looked at him steadily out of narrowed eyes. "I don't get you, Hal. What has he got to do with it?"
"Thought maybe you could tell me that. He's in the park now."
"In the park?"
"Yes—and Jess Tighe knows it."
"What's he doing here?"
But even as he asked the other man, Dingwell guessed the answer. Not an hour before he had caught a glimpse of a white, strained face at the window. He knew now whose face it was.
"He's spying on us and sleuthing for evidence to send us to the pen. Think he'd be a good risk for an insurance company?"
Dave thought fast. "I don't reckon you're right. I put the kid through law school. My friends have likely sent him up here to look for me."
Rutherford scoffed. "Nothing to that. How could they know you are here? We didn't advertise it."
"No-o, but—" Dingwell surrendered the point reluctantly. He flashed a question at Rutherford. "Tighe will murder him. That's sure. You going to let him?"
"Not if I can help it. I'm going to send young Beaudry out of the park."
"Fine. Don't lose any time about it, Hal."
The Huerfano Park rancher made one more attempt to shake his prisoner. His dark eyes looked straight into those of Dingwell.
"Old-timer, what about you? I ain't enjoying this any more than you are. But it's clear out of my hands."
"Then why worry?" asked Dingwell, a little grin on his drawn face.
"Hell! What's the use of asking that? I'm no Injun devil," barked Rutherford irritably.
"Turn me loose and I'll forget all I've seen. I won't give you the loot, but I'll not be a witness against you."
The Huerfano Park ranchman shook his head. "No, we want that gold, Dave. You butted into our game and we won't stand for that."
"I reckon we can't make a deal, Hal."
The haggard eyes of the starving man were hard as tungsten-washed steel. They did not yield a jot.
A troubled frown dragged together the shaggy eyebrows of Rutherford as he snapped out his ultimatum.
"I like you, Dave. Always have. But you're in one hell of a hole. Don't feed yourself any fairy tales. Your number is chalked up, my friend. Unless you come through with what we want, you'll never leave here alive. I can't save you. There's only one man can—and that is your friend David Dingwell."
The other man did not bat an eyelid. "Trying to pass the buck, Hal? You can't get away with it—not for a minute." A gay little smile of derision touched his face. "I'm in your hands completely. I'll not tell you a damn thing. What are you going to do about it? No, don't tell me that Meldrum and Tighe will do what has to be done. You're the high mogul here. If they kill me, Hal Rutherford will be my murderer. Don't forget that for a second."
Rutherford carried home with him a heavy heart. He could see no way out of the difficulty. He knew that neither Meldrum nor Tighe would consent to let Dingwell go unless an agreement was first reached. There was, too, the other tangle involving young Beaudry. Perhaps he also would be obstinate and refuse to follow the reasonable course.
Beulah met him on the road. Before they had ridden a hundred yards, her instinct told her that he was troubled.
"What is it, dad?" she asked.
He compromised with himself and told her part of what was worrying him. "It's about your friend Street. Jess had him looked up in Denver. The fellow turns out to be a Royal Beaudry. You've heard of a sheriff of that name who used to live in this country? … Well, this is his son."
"What's he doing here?"
"Trying to get us into trouble, I reckon. But that ain't the point. I'm not worrying about what he can find out. Fact is that Tighe is revengeful. This boy's father crippled him. He wants to get even on the young fellow. Unless Beaudry leaves the park at once, he'll never go. I left word at Rothgerber's for him to come down and see me soon as he gets home."
"Will he come?" she asked anxiously.
"I don't know. If not I'll go up and fetch him. I don't trust Jess a bit. He'll strike soon and hard."
"Don't let him, dad," the girl implored.
The distressed eyes of the father rested on her. "You like this young fellow, honey?" he asked.
She flamed. "I hate him. He abused our hospitality. He lied to us and spied on us. I wouldn't breathe the same air he does if I could help it. But we can't let him be killed in cold blood."
"That's right, Boots. Well, he'll come down to-day and I'll pack him back to Battle Butte. Then we'll be shet of him."
Beulah passed the hours in a fever of impatience. She could not keep her mind on the children she was teaching. She knew Tighe. The decision of her father to send Beaudry away would spur the cripple to swift activity. Up at Rothgerber's Jess could corner the man and work his vengeance unhampered. Why did not the spy come down to the horse ranch? Was it possible that his pride would make him neglect the warning her father had left? Perhaps he would think it only a trap to catch him.
Supper followed dinner, and still Beaudry had not arrived. From the porch Beulah peered up the road into the gathering darkness. Her father had been called away. Her brothers were not at home. The girl could stand it no longer. She went to the stable and saddled Blacky.
Five minutes later she was flying up the road that led to the Rothgerber place.