“Sure, and I don’t,” Ellhorn replied promptly. “I reckon Emerson Mead never was afraid of anybody or anything.”
“Well, I’m glad you don’t,” Tom replied, his voice still shaking with sobs. “I couldn’t helpthinkin’ when he kept tellin’ us not to shoot, that maybe he was afraid, with all those guns in front and only us four against ’em, and I said to myself, ‘Good Lord, have I been runnin’ alongside a coward all these years!’ And I was sure sick for a minute. But I guess it was just his judgment that there’d better not be any shootin’ just now.”
Ellhorn looked over the empty hall with one eye shut. “Well, I reckon there would have been a heap o’ dead folks in this room by now if we-all had turned loose.”
“About as many as we-all had cartridges,” and Tuttle glanced at their well-filled belts. He was silent a moment, while he wiped his eyes and blew his nose, and his sobs gradually ceased. “No, Emerson couldn’t have been afraid. Though I sure thought for a minute I’d have to quit him. But you’re right, Nick. Emerson ain’t afraid of anything, livin’ or dead. It was just his judgment. And Emerson’s got powerful good judgment, too. I ought to have known better than to think anything else. But, Lord! I did hate to see that measly crowd sneakin’ out of here alive!”
The next morning there were only faint traces of the excitement of the day before. Men began to cross Main street from one side to the other, at first with cautious, apprehensive glances that swept the hostile territory and penetrated open doors and windows, but, as the day wore quietly on, with increasing confidence and unconcern. At noon Colonel Whittaker and Pierre Delarue walked over to the Palmleaf saloon, and while they clinked the ice in their mint juleps, good-natured and smiling, they leaned on the bar and chatted with the two or three Democrats who were in the room. An hour or so later, Judge Harlin strolled across to the White Horse saloon and called for a whisky straight. Then all Las Plumas knew that the war was over and went about its usual affairs as amiably as if the day before had never been.
At the breakfast table Pierre Delarue told his daughter about the mass-meeting, its balked determination to lynch Emerson Mead, and Mead’s subsequent arrest.
“But, Father, how could they be so sure that Mr. Mead killed him? Did they have any evidence?”
“Ah,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders protestingly,“you women never understand such things! Because Mead is a handsome young man and looks good-natured, you think he can’t possibly be a murderer. But it is well known that he had killed more than one man before he murdered poor Whittaker, and he is notorious as one of the worst cattle thieves in the southwest.”
“Father! These are dreadful things! Do you know them to be true?”
She looked across the table at him with horror in her face and eyes. Delarue considered her indulgently.
“Everybody knows them to be true. There is plenty of proof.”
“Then why hasn’t he been arrested and tried and—punished?”
“That is what many are saying now—why has he not been punished long before this? People have been lenient with him for a long time, but he has at last reached the end of his career. They are now determined that a stop shall be put to his crimes and that he shall suffer the punishment he has so long deserved.”
Marguerite was accustomed to having the remnants of her father’s down-town speeches served up at home, and her cooler judgment had learned not to put much dependence upon them. She gave a perfunctory assent and made another effort to reach facts.
“Yes, Father, it is certainly very dreadful thatsuch things should be allowed to go unpunished. But did any one see him stealing the Fillmore Company’s cattle, and do they really know that he killed Mr. Whittaker?”
“The proof is as clear as any unprejudiced person need want. Will Whittaker and some of his men caught Mead in the very act of driving into his own herd a steer plainly marked with their brand. They stopped him, and he foolishly tried to crawl out of his predicament by accusing them of driving the branded steer into his herd. A most absurd story! They had a quarrel, and Mead threatened to kill Whittaker. Immediately after that Will disappeared and has not been seen since. Evidently, he has been killed, and there is no one except Mead, who had threatened to kill him, who could possibly have had any motive for murdering him. The evidence may be circumstantial, but it is conclusive. Besides, if Mead had not known that the case against him was complete, he would not have given himself up last night as he did. And if he had not done so he would certainly have been lynched. The people were thoroughly aroused, and it was impossible to control their indignation.”
A little shiver ran through Marguerite’s frame and she turned away, looking much disturbed. Her father patted her head indulgently. “There, there, my dear child, these things do not concern you in the least. Don’t trouble yourself about public affairs.”
He hurried down-town and she sat alone, a littlefrown on her forehead and her mouth drooping, as she thought: “I can not believe he is a thief and a murderer, without more evidence than this. And still—how can it be that so many men are so sure of his guilt that—and he is in jail now—Oh, a thief and a murderer!”
She hurried from the room calling, “Paul! Paul!” The boy ran in from the veranda and she caught him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, kissing him over and over again and calling him her darling, her treasure, and all the dear names with which womankind voices its love, and at last, sobbing, buried her face in his flaxen curls. The child put his arms about her head and patted her cheek and said, “Poor sister! Poor Daisy!” until, frightened by her emotion, he too began to cry. The necessity of soothing and comforting him gave her that distraction which has been woman’s chief comfort since woman first had trouble. But her face was still sad and anxious when Wellesly appeared on the veranda in the late afternoon.
Albert Wellesly, who lived in Denver, disliked very much the occasional visits to Las Plumas which his financial interests made necessary. He was still on the under side of thirty, but his business associates declared that he possessed a shrewdness and a capacity that would have done credit to a man of twice his years. Possibly people not infatuated with commercial success might have said that his ability was nothing more than an unscrupulous determinationto grab everything in sight. Whatever it was, it had made him remarkably successful. The saying was common among those who knew him that everything he touched turned to gold. They also prophesied that in twenty years he would be one of the financial giants of the country. Las Plumas bored him to desperation, but on this occasion he thought it would be the part of wisdom to stay longer than had been his first intention. As long as the town was feverish with excitement he found it endurable. But when the dullness of peace settled over the streets again he walked about listlessly, wondering how he could manage to get through the day. At last he thought of Miss Delarue.
“That’s so!” he inwardly exclaimed. “I can go and find out if the English girl is in love with this handsome big fellow who has been stealing my cattle. I suppose it will be necessary for me to drink a cup of tea, but she will amuse me for an hour.”
Marguerite Delarue’s friends always thought of her and spoke of her as English, notwithstanding her French paternity. For her appearance and her temperament she had inherited from her English mother, who had given her also English training. Miss Delarue laughed at the forlorn dejection of Wellesly’s face and figure.
“My face is a jovial mask,” he gravely told her. “You should see the melancholy gloom that shrouds my mind.”
“I hope nothing has happened,” she exclaimed, with sudden alarm.
“That’s just the trouble, Miss Delarue. It’s because nothing does happen here, and I have to endure the aching void, that I am filled with such melancholy.”
“Surely there was enough excitement yesterday and last night.”
“Ah, yesterday! That was something like! But it was yesterday, and to-day the deadly dullness is enough to turn the blood in one’s veins to mud!”
“Then everything is quiet down-town? There is no more danger of trouble?”
“There is no danger of anything, except that every blessed person in the place may lie down in his tracks and fall into a hundred years’ sleep. I assure you, Miss Delarue, the town is as peaceful as the plain out yonder, and birds in their little nests are not nearly so quiet as are the valiant warriors of Las Plumas.”
“Oh, that is good! I am very glad, on my father’s account. He is so aggressive in his opinions that whenever there is any excitement of this kind I am anxious about him until the trouble is over.” She hesitated a moment, her lips trembling on the verge of further speech, and he waited for her to go on. “Mr. Wellesly,” she said, a note of uncertainty sounding in her voice, “you are not prejudiced by the political feeling which colors people’s opinions here. I wish you would tell me what youthink about this matter. Do you believe Mr. Mead has killed Will Whittaker?”
Wellesly noted her earnest expression and the intentness of her voice and pose, and he decided at once that this was not mere curiosity. He paused a moment, looking thoughtful. His keen, brilliant eyes were bent on her face.
“It’s a hard question you’ve asked me, Miss Delarue. One does not like to decide against a man in such serious accusations unless he can be sure. The evidence against Emerson Mead, in this murder case, is all circumstantial, it is true, but, at least to me, it is strongly convincing.” His eyes were almost closed, only a strip of brilliant gray light showing between their lids, but he was watching her narrowly. “We know that he has been stealing cattle from us. We have found many bearing our brand among his herds. Our men have even caught him driving them into his own bands. In fact, there is no doubt about this matter. Emerson Mead is a cattle thief of the wiliest sort.” He paused a moment, noting the horrified expression on her downcast face. But she did not speak, and he went on:
“About this murder, if murder it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker’s disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatenedto kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, is shockingly bad for Mead.”
She looked away, toward the Hermosa mountains looming sharp and jagged in the fierce afternoon sunlight, and he saw her lips tremble. Then, as if her will caught and held them, the movements ceased with a little inrush of breath. He lowered his voice and made it very kindly and sympathetic as he leaned toward her and went on:
“For your sake, I am very sorry for all this if Mr. Mead is a friend of yours. He is a very taking young fellow, with his handsome face and good-natured smile. But, also for your sake,” and his voice went down almost to a murmur, “I hope he is not a friend.”
There were tears in her eyes and distress, perplexity and pain in her face as she turned impulsively toward him, as if grasping at his sympathy.
“I have it!” he thought. “She is in love with Mead! Now we’ll find out how far it has gone. Papa Frenchy couldn’t have known of it.”
“I can not say he is a friend,” she said slowly. “He is scarcely an acquaintance. I have not met him, I think, more than half a dozen times, and only a few minutes each time. But he has always been so kind to my little brother that I find it hard to believe a man so gentle and thoughtful with a child could be so—criminal.”
“Ah! Love at first sight, probably not reciprocated!” was Wellesly’s mental comment. “I guessit is a case in which it would be proper to offer consolation, and watch the effect.” Gradually he led the conversation away from this painful topic and talked with her about other places in which she had lived. Then they drifted to more personal matters, to theories upon life and duty, and he spoke with the warmest admiration of what he called the ideal principles by which she guided her life and declared that they would be impossible to a man, unless he had the good fortune to be stimulated and helped by some noble woman who realized them in her own life. It was admiration of the most delicate, impersonal sort, seemingly directed not to the girl herself, but to the girl she had wished and tried to be. It set Marguerite Delarue’s heart a-flutter with pleasure. No one had ever given her such open and such delicate admiration, and she was too unsophisticated to conceal her delight. He smiled to himself at her evident pleasure in his words, and, with much the same feeling with which he might have cuddled a purring, affectionate kitten, he went a step farther and made love—a very shadowy, intangible sort of love, in a very indefinite sort of way.
Albert Wellesly usually made love to whatever woman happened to be at hand, if he had nothing else to do, or if he thought it would advance his interests. With men he was keen and forceful, studying them shrewdly, seeing quickly their weak points, turning these to his own advantage, andhelping himself over their heads by every means he could grasp. In his dealings and relations with women he aimed at the same masterful result, but while with men this might be attained in many ways, with women he held there was but one way, and that was to make love to them.
Marguerite bade him good-by with the same deep pain still in her heart, but pleased in spite of herself. His words had been laden heavily with the honey of admiration of a sort that to her serious nature was most pleasing, while about them had hovered the faintest, most elusive aroma of love. In her thought, she went over their long conversation again and again, and dwelt on all that he had said with constant delight. For to women admiration is always pleasing, even though they may know it to be insincere. To young women it is a wine that makes them feel themselves rulers of the earth, and to their elders it is a cordial which makes them forget their years.
Marguerite Delarue had had little experience with either love or admiration. Her heart had been virgin ground when her face had first flushed under the look in Emerson Mead’s brown eyes. And the first words of love to fall upon her ears had been the uncertain ones of Wellesly that afternoon. She conned them over to herself, saying that of course they meant only that he was a high-minded gentleman who admired high ideals. She repeated all that he had said on the subject of Mead’s guilt.
“He seemed fair and unprejudiced,” she thought, “but I can not believe it without certain proof. I know more about Mr. Mead than some of those who think they know so much, for I have seen him with my little Bye-Bye, and until they can prove what they say I shall believe him just as good as he seems to be.”
So she locked up in her heart her belief in Mead’s innocence, saying nothing about the matter to any one, till after a little that belief came to be like a secret treasure, hidden away from all other eyes, but in her own thought held most dear.
The jail at Las Plumas was a spreading, one-story adobe building, with a large, high-walled court at the back. This wall was also of adobe, some ten feet high and three feet thick, without an opening, and crowned with a luxuriant growth of prickly-pear cactus. At certain hours of the day the prisoners were allowed the freedom of this court, while a guard kept on them an occasional eye. Behind the court, and coming up to its very walls, was a small tract of land planted with vegetables, flowers and fruit trees and worked by an old Mexican who lived alone in a tiny hut at the farther end of the enclosure.
For two days after the night of Emerson Mead’s arrest his friends tried every device known to the law to get him free of the prison walls. But each attempt was cleverly met and defeated by the opposing party, and he was still behind the bars. Then Nick Ellhorn and Thomson Tuttle held a conference, and agreed that Mead must get back to his ranch at once in order to save his affairs from further injury.
“That’s what they are doin’ this thing for,” said Nick, “so they can get a good chance to steal all his cattle. And what they don’t steal they’ll scatterover the plains till it will be more than they’re worth to get ’em together again. They think they can just everlastingly do him up by keepin’ him in jail for a month.”
Tuttle broke out with an indignant oath. “It’s the meanest, low-downest, dirtiest, measliest trick they’ve ever tried to do, and that’s sayin’ a whole heap! But they’ll find out they’ve got more to buck against than they’re a-lookin’ for now!”
“You bet they will! They’ve got to travel mighty fast if they keep up with this procession! Talk about measly tricks! Tom, that Fillmore outfit’s the biggest cattle thief in the southwest. It’s just plum’ ridiculous to hear them talk about Emerson stealin’ their cattle! Why, if he’d stayed up nights to steal from them he couldn’t have got even for what they’ve taken from him.”
They talked over the plan Ellhorn had proposed and when it was all arranged Tuttle asked, “Shall we tell the judge?”
“Tell nothin’ to nobody!” Nick exclaimed. “The judge will find it out soon enough, and if we don’t tell him he won’t bother us with advice to give it up. We’ve got some horse sense, Tommy, and I reckon we-all can run this here excursion without help from any darn fool lawyer in the territory. If they’d left it to us in the first place, we’d have had Emerson at home long before this.”
“I guess we-all can play our part of this game if Emerson can play his.”
“Don’t you worry about Emerson. He’s ready to ride the devil through hell to get back to his round-up.”
The next morning Nick Ellhorn hunted up the Mexican who worked the garden behind the jail and talked through the enclosure with the old man, who was crippled and half blind. Ellhorn talked with him about the garden and finally said he would like to eat some onions. The Mexican pulled a bunch of young green ones for him, and he sat down on a bench under a peach tree near the wall of the jail-court to eat them. He sent the Mexican back to his hut for some salt, and at once began whistling loudly the air of “Bonnie Dundee.” Presently he broke into the words of the song and woke the echoes round about, as he and Emerson Mead had done on many a night around the camp-fire on the range:
“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,Come saddle my horse and call out my men.”
“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,Come saddle my horse and call out my men.”
There he stopped and waited, and in a moment a baritone voice on the other side of the wall took up the song:
“Come ope the west port and let us go freeTo follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
“Come ope the west port and let us go freeTo follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
Ellhorn went on singing as he threw one of his onions, then another, over the wall. One of themcame sailing back and fell beside the peach tree. Then he took a slip of folded paper from his pocket, tied it to another onion and sent it over the cactus-crowned adobe. The Mexican returned with the salt and they sat down together under the tree, chatting sociably. Presently Mead’s voice came floating out from behind the wall in the stirring first lines of the old Scotch ballad:
“To the lords of convention, ’twas Claverhouse spoke:‘If there are heads to be crowned, there are heads to be broke!’”
“To the lords of convention, ’twas Claverhouse spoke:‘If there are heads to be crowned, there are heads to be broke!’”
Nick chuckled, winked at the old Mexican, and hurried off to find Tuttle.
That evening, soon after the full darkness of night had mantled the earth, Nick Ellhorn and Tommy Tuttle rode toward the jail, leading an extra horse. Ellhorn gave Tuttle a lariat.
“You’d better manage this part,” he said in a low tone. “My arm’s not strong enough yet to be depended on in such ticklish matters. I tried it to-day with my gun, and it’s mighty near as steady as ever for shooting, but I won’t risk it on this.”
They rode into the Mexican’s garden and Ellhorn stood with the extra horse under the drooping branches of the peach tree. They listened and heard the sound of a soft whistling in thepatio, as if some one were idly walking to and fro.
“That’s him!” Ellhorn whispered excitedly.“That’s what I told him to be doing at just this time! He’s listening for us!” Ellhorn whistled softly several bars of the same air, which were at once repeated from within. Tuttle rode beside the wall and threw over it the end of his lariat. He waited until the whistling ceased, and then, winding the rope around the pommel, he struck home the spurs and the horse leaped forward, straining to the work. It was a trained cow-pony, Mead’s own favorite “cutting-out” horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle’s spurs. With a soft “f-s-s-t” the rope wore over the top of the wall and Mead’s tall form stood dimly outlined behind the battlement of cactus. He untied the rope from his waist, threw it to the ground, and with foot and fist thrust aside the bristling, sharp-spined masses, dropped over the outer edge, hung at full length by his hands for an instant, and landed in the soft earth at the bottom.
They heard his name called inside thepatio. It was the guard, who had just missed him. As they quickly mounted there came over the wall the sound of hurrying feet and the rapid conference of excited voices. Mead shot his revolver into the air and Ellhorn, lifting his voice to its loudest and fullest, sang:
“Come ope the west port and let us go freeTo follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
“Come ope the west port and let us go freeTo follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
“Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee!”
Spur met with flank and the three horses bounded forward, over the fence of the Mexican’s garden, and up the street at a breakneck gallop. They clattered across theacequiabridge and past Delarue’s place, where Mead, eagerly sweeping the house with a sidewise glance, had a brief glimpse of a brightly lighted room. Instantly his memory went back, as it had done a thousand times, to that day, more than a year before, when he had stood at the door of that room and had first seen Marguerite Delarue. As they galloped up the street the vision of the room and of the girl came vividly back—the inviting, homelike room, with its easy-chairs, its pictures and shaded lamps, its tables with their tidy litter of papers and fancy work, its pillowed lounges, and deep cushioned window-seats, and the tall, anxious-eyed girl with the sick child in her arms, held close to her breast. Unconsciously he turned his head, possessed for the moment by the vision, and looked back at the dark mass of the house and trees, lighted by the one gleaming window.
“Think they’ll follow us?” asked Tuttle, noticing the movement.
“Who? Oh! No, I guess not.”
Beyond the town, in the edge of the rising plain, they drew rein and listened for the sound of pursuing hoof-beats. Facing their horses roundabout, they bent forward, their hands hollowed behind their ears. Out of the darkness, where it wasgemmed by the lights of the town, came the sound of galloping horses.
“They’re after us!” cried Nick. “Three of ’em!”
Mead took off his sombrero and as his left hand sent it twirling through the air, a vague, black shape in the darkness, his right drew his revolver from its holster and three quick, sharp explosions flashed through the night. A pressure of his heels, and he was leaning far over from his darting horse and snatching the hat as it barely touched the gray earth. He held it up toward the sky and in the starlight three bullet holes showed dimly through the crown, inside the space a silver dollar could cover. Ellhorn waved his hat and sent his peculiar “Whoo-oo-ee-e!” back through the darkness toward the town. They listened again and heard the pursuing horsemen clattering over theacequiabridge and into the street through which they had come.
“I reckon we could keep ahead of ’em if we wanted to,” said Mead, “but we’ll make the pass, and then if they are still following we’ll teach them some manners.”
Ellhorn shouted out again his yell of defiance and clicked the trigger of his gun to follow it with a challenging volley of bullets, but Mead stopped him with a cautioning word that they might need all their cartridges.
They spurred their horses forward again and galloped over the rolling foothills, neck to neck andheel to heel. The cool, dry night air streamed into their faces, braced their nerves and filled their hearts with exultation. Behind them they could hear the hoof-beats of their pursuers, now gaining on them and again falling behind. On and on they went, sometimes sending back a defiant yell, but for the most part riding silently. They reached the steep grade leading to the mountain pass and eased their horses, letting them walk slowly up the incline. But the others took it at a furious pace, and presently, at the entrance to the pass, a voice shouted Mead’s name and ordered him to halt. Mead, laughing aloud, sent a pistol ball whizzing back through the darkness. Ellhorn and Tuttle followed his example, and their three pursuers discharged a volley in concert. The fugitives put spurs to their horses, and, turning in their saddles, fired rapidly back at the vague, moving shapes they could barely see in the darkness. Ellhorn heard an angry oath and guessed that somebody had been injured. The bullets whistled past their ears, and now and then they heard the dull ping of lead against the rocky walls of the narrow pass. Their horses had kept their wind through the slow walk up the hill and sprang forward with fresh, willing speed. But the others had been exhausted by the fierce gallop up the steep ascent, and could not hold the pace that Mead and his friends set for them. Slowly the officers fell back, until they were so far in the rear that they ceased shooting. Mead, Tuttle and Ellhorn put away theirrevolvers and galloped on in silence for some distance before they stopped to listen. Far back in the darkness they could hear the faint footfalls of the three horses.
“They blowed their horses so bad comin’ up the hill,” said Mead, “that they’ll never catch up with us again. I reckon they won’t try now. They’ll stay in Muletown to-night and go on to the Fillmore ranch to-morrow.”
“If they don’t turn round and go back,” said Ellhorn. “I don’t believe they’ll want to try this thing on at the ranch.”
“We’ll sure be ready for ’em if they show up there,” said Tuttle, the grim note of battle in his voice.
Ellhorn laughed joyously. “I guess we’re just goin’ to everlastingly get even with that Fillmore outfit!”
“Well, it will keep us busy, but we’ll do our best,” Mead cheerfully assented.
They galloped down the long eastern declivity of the mountain, stopping once at a miner’s camp, a little way off the road, to water and breathe their horses. A little later they stopped to listen again, but they could not catch the faintest sound of hoof-beats from the mountain side. They did not know whether their pursuers had turned about and gone back to Las Plumas, or were taking the road leisurely, intending to stop at Muletown until morning.
On again they galloped, neck to neck and heelto heel, with the starry sky above and the long level of the plain before them. Mead glanced to the north, where the Big Dipper, pivoted on the twinkling pole star, was swinging its mighty course through the blue spaces of the sky, and said, “It’s about midnight, boys.” The dim, faintly gleaming, dusty gray of the road contracted to a lance-like point in front of them and sped onward, seeming to cleave the wall of darkness and open the way through which they galloped. The three tall, broad-shouldered, straight-backed figures sat their horses with constant grace, galloping abreast, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace. The rhythmical, resounding hoof-beats made exhilarating music for their ears, and now and again Ellhorn’s yell went calling across the empty darkness or the sound of Mead’s or Tuttle’s gun cleft the air. On and on through the night they went, their wiry ponies with ears closely laid and muscles strained in willing compliance, the starry sky above and the long level of the plain behind them.
At Muletown they stopped to water their horses at the brimming pump-trough in the plaza and, as the thirsty creatures drank, Ellhorn glanced at the swinging starry Dipper in the northern sky again and said, “I reckon it’s three o’clock, boys.” Then on they went, clattering down the long adobe street, flanked by dim houses, dark and silent; and out into the rising edge of the plain, where it lifted itself into the uplands. The black silence was unbroken nowsave as a distant coyote filled the night with its yelping bark, or a low word from one or another of the riders told of human presence. On and on they galloped, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace. At last they swerved to the right and began mounting the low, rolling foothills of the Fernandez mountains. The cold night air, dry and sharp, stung their faces and cooled the sweating flanks of their horses. The creatures’ ears were bent forward, as if they recognized their surroundings, and their springing muscles were still strong and willing. Over the hills they galloped, the lance-like point of the road cleaving the black wall in front and the hoof-beats volleying into the silence and darkness behind them.
The gray walls of an adobe house took dim shape in the darkness, and beyond it a mass of trees, their leaves rustling in the night wind, told of running water. The three men halted and with lowered bridles allowed their horses to drink.
“Is this old Juan Garcia’s ranch?” Tuttle asked.
“Yes,” Mead replied, “old Juan still lives here. And a very good old fellow he is, too. He isn’t any lazier than he has to be, considering he’s a Mexican. He keeps his ranch in pretty good order, and he raises all the corn andchiliand wheat andfrijolesthat he needs himself and has some to sell, which is a very good record for a Mexican.”
“What’s become of his pretty daughter?” asked Ellhorn. “Is she married yet?”
“Amada? She’s still here, and she’s about the prettiest Mexican girl I ever saw. She’s a great belle among all the Mexicans from Muletown to the other side of the Fernandez mountains, and with some of the Americans, too. Will Whittaker used to hang around here a good deal, and Amada seemed to be pretty well stuck on him.”
Again the horses sprang to the pace they had kept so gallantly, and on and on their hoofs flew over the low, rolling hills. The riders sat their horses as if they were part and parcel of the beasts, horse and rider with one will and one motion, and all galloping on with rhythmic hoof-beats, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace, while the cold, dry night wind whistled past their ears and the stars measured their courses through the violet blue of the bending vault above. On they went over the slowly rising hills, and the slender, silver sickle of the old moon shone brightly in the graying east. Soon the mountains ranged themselves against the brightening sky, and as they galloped, on and on, the stars vanished, and from out the black void below the plain emerged, gray-green and grim, spreading itself out, miles and miles into the distance, to the rimming mass of mountains in the west. Still the hoof-beats rang out as the sky blushed with the dawn and the cloud-flecks flamed crimson and the peaks of the distant mountain range glittered with the first golden rays.
Neck to neck and heel to heel they galloped onover the faint track of the road, which now they could see, winding over the hills in front of them. The men spoke cheerily to the horses and patted their wet sides, and the spirited beasts still bent willingly to their task. The three riders sat erect, straight-shouldered, graceful in their saddles and the gentle morning breeze bathed their faces as on they rode over the hills, while the sun mounted above the Fernandez range and flooded all the plain with its soft, early light.
They swept around the curving bend in the road, where it half-circled the corrals, and Ellhorn’s lusty “Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee” rang out as they drew rein at Mead’s door; Las Plumas, the night and ninety miles behind them. Ellhorn’s yell brought the cook to the door, coffee-pot in hand, with twovaquerosfollowing close behind. One of these took the horses to the stables and the three friends stood up against the wall in the sunshine, stretching themselves. Mead took out his pocket-knife and began cutting the cactus spines from his swollen hands.
“I’m glad to have a chance to get rid of these things,” he said. “They’ve been stinging like hornets all night.”
Emerson Mead’s ranch house was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. There were also some colored posters and prints from weekly papers. A banjo stood in one corner of the dining room, while guns and revolvers of various kinds and patterns and belts heavy with cartridges hung against the walls or sprawled in corners.
The cook and housekeeper was a stockily built, round-faced Englishman, whom Mead had found stranded in Las Plumas. He had been put off the overland train at that place because the conductor had discovered that he was riding on a scalper’s ticket. Mead had taken a liking to the man’s jovial manner, and, being in need of a cook, had offered him the place. The Englishman, who said his name was Bill Haney, had accepted it gladly and had since earned his wage twice over by the care he took of the house and by the entertainment heafforded his employer. For he told many tales of his life in many lands, enough, had they all been true, to have filled the years of a Methuselah to overflowing. Mead did not believe any of his stories, and, indeed, strongly suspected that they were told for the purpose of throwing doubt upon any clue to his past life which he might inadvertently give. Good-natured and jovial though he was in face and talk and manner, there was a look at times in his small, keen, dark eyes which Mead did not like.
As Haney bustled about getting a fresh breakfast for the three men he said to Mead, “It’s mighty lucky you’ve come ’ome, sir. There’s been merry ’ell ’erself between our boys and the Fillmore boys, and they’re likely to be killin’ each other off at Alamo Springs to-day. They ’ad shots over a maverick yesterday, and the swearin’ they’ve been doin’ ’ad enough fire and brimstone in it to swamp ’ell ’erself.”
Haney’s conversation contained frequent reference to the abode of lost spirits, and always in the feminine gender. Mead asked him once why he always spoke of “hell” as “her,” and he replied:
“Well, sir, accordin’ to my reckonings, ’ell is a woman, or two women, or a thousand of ’em, accordin’ as a man ’as made it, and bein’ female it ’as to be called ’er.”
As the three men mounted fresh horses after a hasty breakfast, Nick Ellhorn said to Mead:
“Emerson, you’re in big luck that that confounded thug in the kitchen hasn’t cut your throat yet.”
“Oh, he won’t do anything to me,” Mead replied, smiling. “I reckon likely he is a thug, or a crook of some sort, but he won’t do me any harm.”
“Don’t you be too sure, Emerson,” said Tuttle, looking concerned. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, but I don’t think I’d like to have him around me on dark nights.”
“He is a good cook and he keeps the house as neat and clean as a woman would. He won’t try to do anything to me because I’m not big enough game. He knows I never keep money at the ranch, and that I haven’t got very much, any way. Besides, he’s seen me shoot, and I don’t think he wants to run up against my gun.”
They were hurrying to Alamo Springs, a watering place which Mead controlled farther up in the Fernandez mountains, where they arrived just in time to stop a pistol fight between the cow-boys of the opposing interests, half-a-dozen on each side, who had quarreled themselves into such anger that they were ready to end the whole matter by mutual annihilation.
Mead found that the round-up had progressed slowly during his absence. There had been constant quarreling, occasional exchange of shots, and unceasing effort on each side to retard the interests of the other. The Fillmore Company had routed the cow-boys of the small cattlemen, Mead’s included,and for the last two days had prevented them from joining in the round-up. Mead found his neighbors and their and his employees disorganized, angry, and determined on revenge. Accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, he galloped over the hills all that day and the next, visiting the camps on his own range and on the ranges of his neighbors who were leagued with him in the fight against the Fillmore Cattle Company. He smoothed down ruffled tempers, inquired into the justice of claims, gave advice, issued orders, and organized all the interests opposed to the cattle company into a compact, determined body.
After those two days there was a change in the way affairs were going, and the allied cattlemen began to win the disputes which were constantly coming up. There were not many more attempts to prevent the round-up from being carried on in concert, but there was no lessening of the bad temper and the bad words with which the work was done. Each side constantly harassed and defied the other, and each constantly accused the other of all the cattle-crimes known to the raisers of hoofed beasts. The mavericks were an unfailing source of quarrels. According to the Law of the Herds, as it is held in the southwest, each cattleman is entitled to whatever mavericks he finds on his own range, and none may say him nay. But the leagued cattle growers and the Fillmore people struggled valiantly over every unbranded calf they foundscurrying over the hillsides. Each side accused the other of driving the mavericks off the ranges on which they belonged, and thevaquerosbelonging to each force declared that they recognized as their own every calf which they found, no matter where or on whose range it chanced to be, and they branded it at once with small saddle irons if the other side did not prevent the operation.
Mead was the leader of his side, and, guarded always by his two friends, rode constantly over the ranges, helping in the bunching, cutting-out and branding of the cattle, giving orders, directing the movements of the herds and deciding quarrels. Colonel Whittaker came out from Las Plumas, and was as active in the management of the Fillmore Company’s interests as was Emerson Mead for those of his faction. Ellhorn and Tuttle would not allow Mead to go out of their sight. They rode with him every day and at night slept by his side. If he protested that he was in no danger, Ellhorn would reply:
“You-all may not need us, but I reckon you’re a whole heap less likely to need us if we’re right with you in plain view.”
And so they saw to it that they and their guns were never out of “plain view.” And, possibly in consequence, for the reputation of the three as men of dare-devil audacity and unequalled skill with rifle and revolver was supreme throughout that region, wherever the three tall Texans appeared thebattle was won. The maverick was given up, the quarrel was dropped, the brand was allowed, and the accusation died on its maker’s lips if Emerson Mead, Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn were present or came galloping to the scene.
The look of smiling good nature seldom left Mead’s face, but his lips were closely shut in a way that brought out lines of dogged resolution. He was determined that the cattle company should recognize as their right whatever claims he and his neighbors should make. Tuttle and Ellhorn talked over the situation with him many times, and they were as determined as he, partly from love of him and partly from lust of fight, that the cattle company should be vanquished and compelled to yield whatever was asked of it. But they took the situation less seriously than did Mead, looking upon the whole affair as something of a lark well spiced with the danger which they enjoyed.
Ellhorn heard one day that Jim Halliday was at the Fillmore ranch house, and they decided at once that his business was to lay hands upon Mead. It was also rumored that several people from Las Plumas had been riding over the Fernandez plain and the foothills of the Fernandez mountains trying to find Will Whittaker’s body or some clue to his disappearance. The three friends learned that all these people had been able to discover was that he had left the ranch on the morning of his disappearance with avaquero, a newly hired man who hadjust come out of the Oro Fino mountains, where he had been prospecting, in the hope of making another stake. A man had seen them driving down through the foothills, but after that all trace of them was lost. Old Juan Garcia and his wife, past whose house the road would have taken them, had been away, gathering firewood in the hills, but Amada, their daughter, had been at home all day, and she declared she had seen nothing of them, and that she did not think they could have gone past without her seeing them. It was accordingly argued that whatever had happened must have taken place not far from the junction of the main road with the road which led to Emerson Mead’s ranch, and all that region was searched for traces of recent burial.
The round-up was almost finished, and, so far, Emerson Mead had won the day. Backed always by his two friends, he had compelled the recognition of every general claim which had been made, and in most of the daily quarrels his side had come out victor.
Toward the end of the round-up, Mead and twovaqueros, accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, had worked all day, getting together a scattered band of cattle, and at night had them bunched at a water hole near the edge of his range. The next day they were to be driven a few miles farther and joined with the droves collected by the Fillmore Company’s men and by two or three of his neighbors for the last work of the spring round-up. In the evening one of the cow-boys was sent to the ranch house with a message to the foreman, and a little later the other was seized with a sudden illness from having drunk at an alkali spring during the day. Mead, Tuttle and Ellhorn then arranged to share the night in watches of three hours each with the cattle. Mead’s began at midnight. He saddled and mounted his horse and began the monotonous patrol of the herd.
There were some three hundred steers in the bunch of cattle. They lay, sleeping quietly, so closely huddled together that there was barely room for them to move. Occasionally, one lying at the outer edge got up, stretched himself, nibbled a few bunches of grass, and then lay down again. Now and then, as one changed his position, a long, blowing breath, or a satisfied grunt and groan, came out of the darkness. When Mead started his horse on the slow walk round and round the sleeping herd the sky was clear. In its violet-blue the stars were blazing big and bright, and he said to himself that the cattle would sleep quietly and he would probably have an uneventful watch. He let the horse poke round the circle at its own pace, while his thoughts wandered back to his last visit to Las Plumas and hovered about the figure of Marguerite Delarue as she stood beside her gate and took little Paul from his hands. With a sudden warming of the heart he saw again her tall figure in the pink gown, with the rose bloom in her cheeks and the golden glimmer in her brown hair and the loving mother-look in her eyes as she smiled at the happy child. But with a sigh and a shake of the head he checked his thoughts and sent them to the mass-meeting and the days he had spent in the jail.
Presently it occurred to him that his watch must be nearly over and he looked up at the Great Dipper, swinging on its north star pivot. Then he smiled at himself, for it seemed scarcely to havechanged position since he had mounted his horse. “Not an hour yet,” was his mental comment. Clouds were beginning to roll up from the horizon, and he could hear low mutterings of thunder and among the mountain tops see occasional flashes of lightning. Soon the sky was heavily overcast, and the darkness was so dense that it seemed palpable, like an enveloping, smothering cover, which might almost be grasped in the hands, torn down and thrown away. Mead could not see the horse’s head, so, letting the reins lie loosely on its neck, he allowed the animal to pick its own way around the circle.
The cattle began to show signs of nervousness, and from the huddled mass there came sounds of uneasy movements. Mead urged his horse into a quicker walk and with one leg over its neck as they went round and round the herd, he sang to them in a crooning monotone, like a mother’s lullaby to a babe that is just dropping into dreamland. It quieted the incipient disturbance, the rumbling thunder ceased for a time, and after a little moving about the cattle settled down to sleep again.
Suddenly, without forerunner or warning, a vivid flash of lightning cleft the clouds and a roar of thunder rattled and boomed from the mountain peaks. And on the instant, as one animal, hurled by sudden fright, the whole band of cattle was on its feet and plunging forward. There was a snorting breath, a second of muffled noise as they sprang to their feet, and the whole stampeded herd wasrushing pell-mell into the darkness. They chanced to head toward Mead, and he, idling along with one leg over his saddle horn, with a quick jab of the spur sent his pony in a long, quick leap to one side, barely in time to escape their maddened rush. A second’s delay and he and his horse would have been thrown down by the sheer overpowering mass of the frenzied creatures and trampled under their hoofs, for the horn of a plunging steer tore the leg of his overalls as the mad animals passed. Away went the herd, silent, through the dense blackness of the night, running at the top of their speed. And Mead, spurring his horse, was after them without a moment’s loss of time, galloping close beside the frightened beasts, alertly watchful lest they might suddenly change their course and trample him down. They ran in a close mass, straight ahead, paying heed to nothing, beating under their hoofs whatever stood in their way.
They rushed crazily on through the darkness which was so intense that Mead’s face seemed to cleave it as the head cleaves water when one dives. He galloped so close to the running band that by reaching out one arm he could almost touch one or another heaving side. But he could see nothing, not a tossing horn nor a lumbering back of the whole three hundred steers, except when an occasional flash of lightning gave him a second’s half-blinded glimpse of the plunging mass. By hearing rather than by sight he could outline the rushinghuddle at his right hand. And watching it as intently as if it had been a rattlesnake ready to strike, he galloped on by its side in a wild race through the darkness, over the plain, up and down hills, through cactus and sagebrush, over boulders and through treacherous, tunneled prairie dog towns, plunging headlong into whatever might be in front of them.
From the rushing herd beside him there came the muffled roar of their thousand hoofs, overtoned by the constant popping and scraping of their clashing horns. The noise filled his ears and could not quite be drowned even by the rattling peals of thunder. Swift drops of rain stung his face and the water of a pelting shower dripped from his hat brim and trickled from his boot heels. The beating rain, the vivid flashes of lightning and the loud peals of thunder drove the maddened creatures on at a still faster pace. Mead put frequent spurs to his horse and held on to the side of the mob of cattle, bent only on going wherever they went and being with them at the dawn, when it might be possible to get them under control.
They plunged on at a frenzied gallop through the darkness and the storm, and when at last the sky brightened and a wet, gray light made the earth dimly visible, Mead could see beside him a close huddle of lumbering, straining backs and over it a tangle of tossing and knocking horns. The crowding, crazy herd, and he beside it, were rushing pell-melldown a long, sloping hill. With one keen, sweeping glance through the dim light and the streaming rain he saw a clump of trees, which meant water, at the foot of the hill, and near it a herd of cattle, some lying down, and some standing with heads up, looking toward him; while his own senseless mass of thundering hoofs and knocking horns was headed straight toward them.
With a whooping yell he dashed at the head of the plunging herd, sent a pistol ball whizzing in front of their eyes and with a quick, sharp turn leaped his horse to one side, barely in time to escape the hoofs and horns of the nearest steer. They swerved a little, and making a detour he came yelling down upon them again, with his horse at its topmost speed, and sent a bullet crashing through the skull of the creature in the lead. It dropped to its knees, struggled a moment, fell over dead, and the herd turned a little more to the right. Spurring his horse till it leaped, straining, with outstretched legs, he charged the head of the rushing column again, and bending low fired his revolver close over their heads. Again they swerved a little to the right, and dashing past the foremost point he sent a pistol ball into the eye of the leader. It fell, struggling, and with a sudden jerk he swung the horse round on its hind legs and struck home the spurs for a quick, long leap, for he was directly in the front of the racing herd. As the horse’s fore feet came down on the wet earth it slipped, and fell to its knees,scrambled an instant and was up again, and leaped to one side with a bleeding flank, torn by the horns of the leading steer. The startled animals had made a more decided turn to the right, and by scarcely more than a hand’s breadth horse and rider had escaped their hoofs. The crazy, maddened creatures slackened their pace and the outermost ones and those in the rear began to drop off, one by one, grazing and tailing off behind in a straggling procession. Another rush, and Mead had the mob of cattle, half turned back on itself, struggling, twisting and turning in a bewildered mass. The stampeding impulse had been checked, but the senseless brutes were not yet subdued to their usual state.
Glancing down the hill to the clump of trees, he saw men rushing about and horses being saddled. Shouting and yelling, he rushed again at the turned flank of his herd, firing his pistol under their noses, forcing the leaders this time to turn tail completely and trot toward the rear of the band. The rest followed, and with another furious yell he swerved them again to the right and forced them into a circle, a sort of endless chain of cattle, trotting round and round. He knew they would keep up that motion until they were thoroughly subdued and restored to their senses, and would then scatter over the hillside to graze.
He had conquered the crazy herd of cattle, but four horsemen were galloping up the hill, and he knew they were part of the Fillmore Company’soutfit. He reloaded his revolver, put it in its holster, and rode a little way toward them. Then he checked his horse and waited, with his back to the “milling” herd, for them to come near enough to hail. Through the lances of the rain he could see that one of the men was Jim Halliday, the deputy sheriff from Las Plumas, who had arrested him on the night of the mass-meeting. Another he recognized as the Fillmore Company’s foreman, and the two others he knew were cow-boys. One of these he saw was a red-headed, red-whiskered Mexican known as Antone Colorow—Red Antony—who was famous in all that region for the skill with which he could throw the lariat. His eye was accurate and his wrist was quick and supple, and it was his greatest pride in life that the rope never missed landing where he meant it should.
The thunder clap which frightened the herd of cattle also roused Tuttle and Ellhorn, and through half-awakened consciousness they heard the noise of the stampede.
“What’s that! The cattle?” exclaimed Tuttle, rising on his elbow. Ellhorn jumped to his feet.
“Tom, there goes ten thousand dollars on the hoof and a-runnin’ like hell!”
“Where are the horses? Come on, Nick! Buck! Buck! Hello, Buck! Whoa! Here’s mine, Nick! Yours is over by the chuck wagon!”
Fumbling in the darkness, they hurried to release and saddle the hobbled horses, and, calling to the sick cow-boy that when the foreman should come in the morning he must make haste after them, they jumped upon the ponies and set out on the gallop through the darkness to trail the noise of the running cattle. With every flash of lightning Nick Ellhorn looked about with keen, quick glances, and with half-blinded eyes located mountain peaks and arroyos, considered the direction in which they were headed, and the general lay of the land, and after a time he broke out with a string of oaths:
“Tommy, them cow-brutes are headed straightfor Sweetwater Springs, and the Fillmore outfit’s camped there to-night! Jim Halliday is there, and so is that measly Wellesly, if he hasn’t gone back to town. He was out here two days ago. Emerson and the cattle will sure strike the Springs just about daylight, if they keep up their gait and nothing stops ’em!”
Tuttle swore angrily under his breath. “That’s just the snap they’ve been waitin’ for all this time! Their only show to get Emerson, or to kill him either, is to come down on him half a dozen to one, and they know it. Well, if they kill him he won’t be the first to drop—nor the last, either,” he added with a little break in his voice, as he gave his sombrero a nervous pull over his forehead.
“I reckon,” Ellhorn replied, “they don’t want to kill Emerson, as long as you and me are alive. They know what would happen afterward. Jim Halliday has got that same old warrant over there, and what they want to do is to shut him up in jail again.”
The first stinging drops of rain dashed in their faces and they buttoned their coats and galloped on in silence. Tuttle was the first to speak again:
“What’s that scrub Wellesly doing out here?”
“I don’t know, unless he came to bring ’em some brains. They need some bad enough. Wellesly and Colonel Whittaker have been ridin’ around over the range for the last two or three days, though I didn’t know about it till yesterday. I guess they’ve been so everlastingly beaten on every proposition that hethought he’d better come out himself and see if he couldn’t save the day for ’em on something.”
They hurried on in the trail of the roar from the stampeding herd, but suddenly Ellhorn’s horse struck his fore feet on the slope of a wet and slippery mound beside a prairie dog’s hole. Before the animal could recover, its feet slid down the bank into the mouth of the hole with a forward jerk, and it came down with a groaning cry of pain. Ellhorn rose to his feet in the stirrups, and as the horse struck the ground he stood astride its body and with a quick leap jumped to one side unhurt. By the light of a match, which Tuttle sheltered under his sombrero, standing bareheaded, meanwhile, with the rain running in streams down his neck, Ellhorn examined the fallen horse.
“He’s broke both his forelegs, Tom. There’s only one thing to do with him, now.”
Tuttle stroked the beast’s nose. “I reckon so, Nick. You-all better do it.” Then he turned away, while Ellhorn put his revolver to the horse’s head and ended its pain.
“Now, Tom, you go on after Emerson as fast as you can and I’ll hoof it back to camp and get Bob’s horse.”
“No, you-all jump on behind me, Nick, and we’ll go on together. Emerson will need us both in the morning. If that crowd gets after him maybe he can stand ’em off till we-all get there. But he’ll need us by daylight, Nick.”
“I ’low you’re right, Tommy, but ain’t you on that horse that always bucks at double?”
“Yes, but I reckon he’ll have to pack double, if you and me fork him.”
“You bet he will!” and Ellhorn leaped to the horse’s back behind Tuttle. “Whoo-oo-ee-ee!” Two pairs of spurs dug the horse’s flank and a rein as tight as a steel band held its head so high that bucking was impossible. The horse jumped and danced and stood on its hind legs and snorted defiance and with stiffened legs did its best to hump its back and dismount its unwelcome double burden. It might as well have tried to get rid of its own mane. The riders swayed and bent with its motion as if they were a part of its own bounding body. Tuttle gave the animal its head just enough to allow it to work off its disapproval harmlessly, and for the rest, it did nothing that he did not allow it to do. Finally it recognized the mastery, and, pretending to be dreadfully frightened by a sudden vivid flash of lightning, it started off on a run.