"At all events you are a surprising reprobate," admitted the lumberman with a yawn. "Someday, though, I'll challenge you to a sending and receiving tourney. I began in a broker's office, and I'm fairly good myself."

But after Halloway had thrown himself down on his bed and his regular breathing attested his sound sleep, Brent slipped noiselessly out into the corridor. Halloway might feel certain of the girl's ability to fend for herself but with this crowd here to-night, running its wild gamut of dissipation, the less primitive man thought it as well to keep an eye on her safety.

Down the hall, dimly lighted by a single smoking lamp, he saw a figure which had been standing before Alexander's door, draw furtively back around the angle of a wall. From below stairs still came the din of wassailing.

Yet instead of alarm, a smile came to Brent's eyes, for he had recognized Bud Sellers and he no longer distrusted the boy's purposes.

In Alexander's room the lamp had long been blown out but to the eyes of the girl sleep did not come at once. She gazed at the window where occasional flashes of lightning woke and died. She was wondering what had happened back there at the house where her father lay wounded. Of Bud Sellers she thought only as of a man she had promised not to kill, though against him, as an instrumentality of her grief, resentment burned hot. She could not guess that he stood at that moment in the hallway, guarding her door and nursing in his contrite heart an unexpressed and hopeless worship of her.

For Bud, save when the liquor conquered him, was a kindly soul; even lovable as a faithful dog might be, though of that canine virtue people thought less than of his occasional rabies.

He had talked with Alexander—always impersonally—a scant half dozen times in his life—but since boyhood he had dreamed of her as a peasant may dream of exalted nobility—and his life had never known any other dream.

But if Alexander thought of Bud only as the author of her present anxiety, her thoughts strayed before she fell asleep, to another man.

The face and figure of that Colossus who had swung men right and left, rose before her and her worship of masculine strength and courage paid smiling tribute.

"I reckon he don't never hev ter use more'n half ther strength he's got in them arms an' shoulders of his'n," she told herself. It did not enter troublesomely into her reflections that she had marked also the infectious quality of his smile and the clear brightness of his eye with an interest that was purely feminine.

As her lids finally grew heavy she murmured to herself: "Ef I was like other gals I reckon I'd git sort of crazy erbout thet big feller. He's like a pine tree standin' up amongst saplin's—but I don't reckon a body could hardly ever git him clean, even ef they soaked him in hot suds fer a week of Sundays."

With that reflection—also fastidiously feminine—she turned on her side and slept.

It was into a room below that Lute Johnson stumbled long after midnight on most unsteady legs. Lute was not satisfied with his evening. He had been actuated in his attempted hazing of Alexander by Jase Mallows, who thought her pride should be humbled, yet sought to accomplish that end vicariously in order that the doors of future conquest might not be closed against himself. Lute's undertaking had not been a success and he sought his bed, sodden and bloodshot of eye. He was nursing grudges of varying degrees against Jase Mallows, Alexander, Halloway and finally against Bud Sellers.

He kicked off his brogans and as he leaned to blow out the light, he stumbled, sprawling headlong and carrying the lamp down with him. For a moment he lay where he had fallen, too dazed and befuddled to rise, but presently he clambered up, his eyes wide and terrified, for his rising was Phoenix-like—mantled in flame. With incredible swiftness the flimsy coverings of his bed had burst into a crimson glare and even his clothing was afire.

Beating out the flame that licked his shirt, he abandoned the rest and fled, howling like a madman. The thing which D. W. Kelly had feared had come to pass and the frame building was doomed to its gutting.

So frequently of late had ungodly bellowings and outcries broken the fitful rest of this house, that for a brief space, Lute's howls of alarm failed to carry their true significance. Some guests, startled out of their sleep, had the impulse rather to keep their doors tight shut than to open them, and through the tinder-like dryness of the place the flames roared up the boxed-in stairway as through a flue.

Bud Sellers heard the yells of the fugitive Lute, and before he had time to investigate, saw the stairhead vomiting smoke and fire. As he dashed for Alexander's room, another door opened through which Halloway and Brent ran out, carrying their shoes and coats.

"Let me in," shouted Bud, hammering on the panels. "Ther house is burnin' down an' ther steps is cut off."

At first there was no response, but at last the door swung in. It framed Alexander, clothed in shirt and trousers—but barefooted, and holding a pistol in her hand.

At the sight of Bud Sellers her face grew pallid.

"You!" she exclaimed with white-hot anger. "My paw lays over thar with yore bullet in his breast—an' ye comes runnin' hyar ter me fer a way ter git outen danger!"

The three men were crowding to the door but she stood barring it and she did not give back an inch. In deliberation she went on. "He laid a pledge on me not ter avenge him. Ef hit warn't fer thet, I'd kill ye whar ye stands."

"Fer God's sake, Alexander!" The mountaineer's voice was shrill with excitement. "Kill me if ye likes—but don't tarry. I come ter warn ye. Ther winder's ther only way out—an' thar hain't no time ter lose."

As if in corroboration, the first puff of brown smoke eddied through the open door. At first it came idly, driftingly, as if it had nothing to do with haste. Halloway pushed both Sellers and Brent ahead of him, and followed them in, slamming the door behind him.

"Talk outside," he commanded sharply. "Don't waste life-and-death minutes in this hell-trap!"

Alexander gazed absently as though unable to readjust her trend of thought so swiftly, then she said, quietly enough: "Thar's ther winder. Go through hit ef ye likes."

As for herself she turned to the task of tying up her pack of belongings with what seemed to the frenzied men insufferable deliberation.

"This is the third floor," snapped Halloway whose head was already thrust out of the window gauging possibilities of escape. "We'll have to tear up sheets and make a rope of them."

Brent leaped promptly to the task but Alexander looked at the huge body which blocked the window frame and a smile curled her lips. "You on a rope o' sheets!" She even laughed. "Ye mout es well entrust yourself ter a strand of flax thread!"

Through the floor licked a tongue of flame.

"Kain't you men jump—an' catch ther limb of thet thar sycamore," she added. "Hit hain't fur away—an' thet's how I'm aimin' ter leave myself."

Halloway turned an eager gaze upon the girl and even in the press of moments he remembered the role he was playing. "I reckon," he suggested, "I'd better lead off—ef thet flyin' limb holds me, it'll hold ther balance of ye."

What was genuinely in his mind was to be there to catch her if she missed her grip, but to forestall objection he thrust his body through the opening, measured the distance with a brief glance and launched himself outward. To use that fire escape one must catch the branch, and hold it without slipping, while he swung and groped with his feet for another limb below.

For Halloway the matter was done without doubt or wavering. It must be so done or result in a three-storied drop, but when he turned and looked back, bracing himself to catch Alexander, he saw her turn again into the room, out of his range of vision. He could see Brent and Bud vociferously arguing with her and then she reappeared and lifted her pack and rifle over the sill. As she played out the improvised line of bedding her eyes were angry and Halloway guessed that it was because the two men had refused to leave without waiting for her. Eventually when the room showed red beyond the frame she slipped through, poised herself as the man had done, and came outward as smoothly as an exhibition diver. She landed so close to Halloway that her hands clasped over his own and her breath fluttered against his cheek. For a fraction of an instant, he thought she might fail to hold her grip and one arm swept around her pressing her close to him. Even when he knew that she was safe he did not release her and his veins were pounding with the wild exaltation of contact.

Somewhat pantingly but coolly she commanded: "Move back. Give me room ter stand on—them others kain't foller whilst we're blockin' ther way."

Halloway had forgotten the others, and when Bud Sellers jumped, the last of all, it was only just in time. A shower of sparks puffed out of the window and inside sounded a crash of collapsing timbers.

"Well, where do we go now?" inquired Brent a quarter of an hour later and the girl turned on her heel. "As fer me," she replied, "I'm goin' back ter my rafts of timber. I've done had a lavish of this town."

"May we go too?" inquired Halloway. "We hain't got no roof over us neither—now."

"I reckon ye kin all come save only——" she paused a moment and added in hardened voice, "save only ther man thet sought ter slay my paw."

Bud's head drooped. He was still sweating, for when he left the sill, the place had been a furnace, but he said nothing, and instantly Alexander wheeled again and spoke impulsively.

"I've got ter crave yore pardon, Bud," she exclaimed. "Paw said he didn't hold no grudge ergin you nohow. An' I reckon ye've done sought right slavish ter make amends ternight."



CHAPTER VII

From down there at the boom as the blackest hours of the night passed, Halloway and Brent sat rubber-coated on the raft watching the inflamed redness that was wiping out all that end of the village. The age-seasoned frame houses there huddled close enough for the hot contagion to sweep them with typhoon speed and they went up in spurts like pitch barrels. The wind was high enough to romp ruthlessly with spark and blaze, until even the effort at fire-fighting had been abandoned. Happily the bluster had settled to a constant gale out of the south-west and the fire-tide rolled with it to the edge and not the core of the town and when it lapped at the reeking woods it hissed out in defeat.

Alexander had withdrawn to her improvised shack and wrapped herself in her blanket. Brent gazed with a sort of hypnotized intentness on the wildness of the picture before him—an orgy of fire, wind and water. Through the wet mountains the wind shrieked and buffetted until ancient trees, made brittle by long freezing, went down. At his back, beyond the boom, sounded the dirge of the swollen waters running out. That was like the wail of a maniac exhausted by his ravings. The stage was dropping as rapidly as it had risen. Ahead, tossing a mane of smoke and a spume of spark, reveled the demoniac spirit of Fire. Brent shuddered but Halloway struck a match just then for his dead pipe under the protection of his coat lapel and in the brief flare Brent saw that his eyes were agleam, feral and animal-like, and that his lips were wolfishly drawn back from his teeth.

"This is elemental!" Halloway burst out suddenly. "I glory in it. I've been sitting here drunker than any moonshine guzzler back there at that tavern to-night. Drunk on the wild wine of the elements—drunk from the skulls of Valhalla. Great God, I love it!"

Brent rose at last and sought refuge under the insufficient roof of one of the shacks, for a down-pour had come with the wind and in key with all the extravagance of the night's mood, it was a cloud-burst.

The city man tossed restlessly and once looking out across the stretch of the rafted logs, he saw a single figure stripped to the skin in the sheeted down-pour of cold rain. He saw it only when the lightning flashed with the spectral effect of beauty. It stood straight with back-flung shoulders and head upturned into the rain like some wild high-priest of storm worship. When a flare, brighter than the others limned the whole prospect into a dazzling instant, the features burst into clarity with eyes glowing like madness, and lips parted in wild exaltation.

"He'll have a chill before morning," growled Brent, but his astonishment at the hardihood of such a shower-bath would have been more severely taxed had he been able to see behind the screening walls of Alexander's shack.

For if the colossal man standing there as God made him, reveling in the sluicing of icy sheets of water, was a picture for a painter's delight, the figure of the woman, sheltered from any eye, but likewise stripped to the flesh was one almost as heroic and far lovelier. Alexander too, was availing herself of that strong tonic which would have brought collapse to a weakling. She stood tall, beautiful, a Diana with her wet and flowing hair loosed about her white shoulders and her bosom rising and falling to the elation of the storm-bath.

The hurricane passed in the forenoon of that day leaving the ridges wet and inert, with the dejection of spent violence, but from gray clouds that hung in trailing wisps along the upper slopes a steady rain sobbed down. After breakfast Bud Sellers who had after all not availed himself of Alexander's permission to spend the night on the raft, came aboard and diffidently approached the girl.

He wore a hang-dog air but in his eyes was that same wistfulness of unspoken worship. Brent knew that he was trying to explain to Alexander his torture of self accusation because of the disaster born of his moment of drunken frenzy.

The girl stood looking at him, entirely oblivious to the devotion that was clear-writ in his eyes. While he talked she accorded him a hearing, but with lips tight pressed and the unforgettable picture in her mind of the stricken man who might even now be dead. He might have passed, with the pain of uncertainty clouding his last moments as to the success or failure of her venture.

With that burden on her heart it was difficult to listen to apologies and explanations. She knew that Bud would have burned his body to a crisp last night if need be in the effort to save her from a similar fate, but that only irritated her. She had not called for help. She had not needed help and this rush of volunteers to her rescue was, after all, only a denial of the principle for which she so militantly fought; the postulate that when she played a man's game she wished to be treated as a man, asking no favors.

Brent and Halloway overheard a little of what was said, for the two voices rose in inflection, under the urge of his earnestness and her feeling.

"I don't act pi'zen mean when I'm sober, Alexander—an' I strives not ter drink, knowin' full well thet hit plum crazes me— Hit don't seem like no common thirst— Hit comes on me like a plague and hit masters me ther same as spells or fits——. God, He knows I'd es lief hev raised my hand ergin my own daddy, ef I hed one, es erginst yore paw—I war frenzied."

"I don't know what made ye do hit, but I knows what ye done, Bud," said Alexander and her rich voice trembled under the tautness of her effort at control. "Ef a man kain't holp goin' mad like a dog—an' seekin' ter slay folks, I reckon he——" It was on her tongue to say that he ought to pay the mad-dog's penalty but she checked herself shortly and went on with less cruelty, "I reckon he's a right dangerous sort of feller ter hev 'round."

"All I asks, Alexander," he pleaded, "air thet ye gives me ther chanst ter make amends. Ef I feels ther cravin' masterin' me ergin, I'll go ter town an' git ther police ter lock me up in ther jail-house an' keep me thar, tell I comes back ter my senses."

"Hit hain't a thing ye kin handily make amends fer," she reminded him, "but I've done pledged myself ter let hit go unavenged and I knows too, thet I'm beholden ter ye fer last night. None-the-less——" The color paled from her cheeks and she shook her head. "None-the-less until I gits back home—an' knows whether my paw is livin' or dead——" her words came very slowly and with an effort, "I kain't say thet thar won't be black hatred in my heart erginst ye."

He nodded somewhat miserably. "No, I don't hardly reckon ye kin tutor yore feelin's no different," he acknowledged as he turned away, but from that moment he had dedicated himself to a vasselage out of which he hoped to salvage no personal reward.

When she had watched him tramp up the muddy slope from the bank to the street, Alexander lifted her chin and tossed her head, as if to shake away some cobwebbing thought from the brain. Then with an energetic step she came over and without preamble announced, "Mr. Brent, I don't aim ter tarry hyar no longer then ther soonest time I kin git out. Let's me an' you talk business."

Brent nodded. "Is it confidential? Do you want me to send this man away?" he inquired, with a mischievous glance at the giant whose eyes, save when they dropped before her own, remained fixed on the girl with a devouring intentness.

Alexander shook her head. "What fer?" she demanded. "I reckon we hain't got no need of whisperin' erbout our transactions."

She paused for an instant and went on. "Paw an' you measured up that timber back yon, didn't ye? An' ye agreed on ther price too, didn't ye?"

"We settled both points. I have a memorandum, but——"

"I knows what ye aims ter say," interrupted Alexander. "Ye means ter name hit ter me thet them logs hain't all hyar because some of 'em busted loose comin' through ther gorge. What I wanted ter ask ye is thet you an' me should measure up thet raft now an' figger out what's gone, so thet I kin tell paw——" She halted as abruptly as though a blow on the mouth had broken off the utterance and a paroxysm of pain crossed her face. The ever present dread had struck back that there might be no father to whom she could report. With a swift recovery, though, she finished. "So thet I kin fotch tidin's back home es ter how much we gits."

When these reckonings had been made Brent inquired: "Do you understand the terms of this contract between your father and myself?"

Her reply was guarded. "We've done talked hit over."

"It was agreed," the buyer told her, "that I was to accept this stuff and pay for it at some point from which I could deliver it in the Bluegrass either by rail or navigable water. If you like, I'm ready to pay now."

He had seen Alexander under some trying circumstances and never with any hint of breakdown, yet just now he wondered if unexpected good tidings were not about to accomplish what bad news could not—carry out the dam of her own hard-schooled repression on a flood of tears. Her eyes became suddenly misty and her lips trembled. She started to speak, then gulped and remained silent. But gradually the color flowed back into her cheeks, as pink as the laurel blossom's deep center, and once more she gave her head that characteristic toss as though in contempt for her moment of weakness.

"Mr. Brent, I hain't seekin' no favors an' I don't want nothin' but my dues. I didn't know ye stood obleeged ter pay us 'twell ther logs went down ter ther lowlands, but——" Though her words were slowly, even tediously enunciated they seemed to come with difficulty. "But ef I could take thet money back thar—an' tell him hit war all settled up——" The fullness of what that meant to her gained in force because she got no further with her explanation and Brent said with a brusqueness, affected to veil his own sympathy: "Come on, let's go to the bank."

The bank at Coal City is a small box of brick, with two rooms. At the front the cashier's grating stands. At the rear is a bare chamber furnished with a small stove, a deal table and a few hickory-withed chairs. It is here that directors meet and hinterland financiers negotiate. Into this sanctum Brent led Alexander Macedonia McGivins, and for no particular reason, save that no one had forbidden it, Halloway accompanied them.

The timber buyer scribbled his calculations on the back of an envelope and submitted the results to the girl, who gravely nodded her satisfaction.

"Then," said Brent with an air of relief, "there remain only two things more. I shall now draw you a check for four thousand and ninety-one dollars and fifty cents, and you will sign a receipt."

Halloway was sitting in the background where he could indulge in all the staring he liked, and since Alexander had swum into his ken, that had become a large order. As Brent finished, the girl who had been sitting at the table with a pen in her hand, suddenly pushed back her chair and into her eyes came an amazed disappointment—a keen anxiety. For a moment she looked blankly at the man who was opening his check book. She suddenly felt that she had been confronted with a financial problem that lay beyond her experience and one which she deeply distrusted. It was as though affairs hitherto simple, except for physical dangers, had run into a channel of subtler and therefore more alarming complication.

None of this escaped Halloway's lynx-like gaze but to Brent who was smoothing out the folded check, it went unobserved.

Suddenly Alexander bent forward, her cheeks coloring with embarrassment and caught at the signer's wrist as spasmodically as though it were a death warrant to which he meant to set his signature.

"Don't write me no check!" she exclaimed somewhat desperately, then, covered with confusion she added, "I don't aim ter insult ye none—but I don't know much erbout fotched-on ways. I wants ter tote thet thar payment back home—in real money."

Except with Brent, Halloway had never thus far broken out of character. Having assumed to be a mountain lumberman, he had consistently talked as one—acted as one.

Now he came out of his chair as though a mighty spring had uncurled under him, and slapped an outspread hand to his forehead.

"Great jumping Jehosaphat!" he exclaimed, and turning in her chair, the young woman studied him in perplexity. But Halloway's slip was brief and his recovery instant. Since Brent sat there staring in speechless bewilderment at Alexander, the giant launched himself into the breach.

"Tote four thousand dollars in silver an' paper an' gold across them trails in saddle bags!" His voice suddenly mounted into domineering vehemence. "Tote hit over wild an' la'relly mountings with this hyar country full of drunken scalawags thet would do murder for a ten dollar bill! Hev ye done gone plum bereft of reason?"

Alexander's first confusion of manner had come from the fear that her refusal of a check might seem tainted with the discourtesy of suspicion. Now in the face of actual opposition it stiffened instantly into hostility. The perplexity died from her face and her eyes blazed. For a moment she met the excited gaze of the man who towered over her and then in a coldly scornful voice she spoke, not to him, but to Brent. "I reckon ye war right, Mr. Brent, when ye asked me whether I wanted this man sent way. Thar hain't no need of his tarryin' hyar."

"Just a moment, Alexander," smiled Brent, enjoying in spite of himself his friend's discomfiture. "We'll pack him off, if you say so, but first hear what we both have to say. He's right. With this gang of scoundrels in and about town it would be madness to carry that much money. The size of this deal will set tongues wagging. When you start out everyone will know it. You'd never get home alive."

"I don't know nothin' about checks an' sometimes banks bust," she obdurately insisted. "I wants ter show my paw cash money. Ef he 'lows I'm man enough ter do his business thet's enough, hain't it?"

"A rifle-gun in ther la'rel hes done overcome plenty of men afore ye," asserted Halloway with the deep boom of sullenness in his voice. "Ye hain't no army of men, I reckon."

They wrestled with her in argument for the better part of an hour but she was as immovable as the bed-rock of her mountains.

Brent even raised the point, despite the withering contempt with which he knew she would greet it, that he might decline to recognize her authority to act for her father but from a hip pocket of her trousers she produced a worn wallet and from the wallet she extracted a general and properly attested power of attorney to transact all business.

"I hed ter hev thet," she announced coolly, "because so many damn fool men 'lowed thet a woman couldn't do business."

The end of it was that Brent himself cashed his check, and counted out in specie and currency a sum large enough to become in effect a price on her head. When the money had been done up in heavy paper, sealed by the cashier with wax, and identified with her own signature, she consented to permit it to lie in the safe overnight since the roads were not yet passable, though even then she cannily inquired of the bank employe: "I reckon ye hain't got no objection ter my countin' hit up afresh afore I sets out, hev ye?"

Later that day Lute Brown, who it may be said in passing, had served a term in state prison for house-breaking, dropped casually into the bank and asked the cashier to "back a letter" for him, since writing was not one of his own strong points. The cashier was obliging, and in as much as gossip was usually sparse in that community went on the while chatting with the president of the institution, who had just come in.

"True as text," said the cashier, while Lute Brown waited. "She wouldn't take no check. She was plum resolved to have her money in cash—and she aims to hire a mule and start out soon to-morrow morning toting it along with her."

"I'd hate to undertake it," said the president briefly and the cashier agreed: "Me an' you both. Why she wouldn't even hear of takin' no bodyguard along with her."

Later in the day Lute Brown addressed a caucus attended by a half dozen men, including Jase Mallows.

That meeting took place behind closed doors and though a general accord of purpose prevailed there was some dissension as to detail.

"We kain't skeercely shoot her outen hand es she rides along," demurred a conscientious objector, who, however, fully endorsed the plan of lightening her financial burden. "She's a woman, fer all her brashness in her callin' herself a man."

The virtuous sentiment was not popularly received. It might even have been scoffed into limbo had not Jase Mallows leaned forward, twirling his mustache, and made himself heard.

"Ye're damn right hit won't do ter kill her. I aims ter wed that gal some day, an' afore I'd see her lay-wayed an' kilt, I'd tell this hull story ter ther town marshall."

An ominous growl went up at that but Jase continued staunchly.

"Howsomever we needn't hev no fallin' out over that. I've got a plan wharby she kin be robbed without hurtin' her an' wharby atter ye've done got ther money, I kin 'pear ter rescue her an' tek her offen yore hands."

As he outlined his guileful proposition the scowls of his listeners gave way to grins of full approval and admiration.

"Who's goin' ter diskiver what route she rides?" demanded one of those annoyingly exact persons who mar all great dreams by the injection of practicalities.

Again Jase laughed. "Thar hain't but one way she kin go—hit'll be days afore any other route's fordable. She's got ter fare past Crabapple post office an' through Wolf-pen gap."

That afternoon Brent went to the telegraph office. He wanted to wire his concern that the timber was safe and the deal closed, but while still a short distance from the railroad station, which was also the telegrapher's office, he saw Lute Brown go into the place and fell to wondering what business carried him hither. So he timed his entrance and sauntered in just as the fellow was turning away from the operator's chair.

Brent himself lounged about idly, because the man at the table had opened his key and begun sending. Neither Brown nor the operator gave any indication of interest in the arrival of a third person.

To neither of them did it occur that Brent was versed in the Morse code, and Brent volunteered no information on the subject.

None the less he was listening and as the dots and dashes fell into letters and the letters into words, he read, as if from a book, this message:

"Woman starts out in morning with bundle by way of Crabapple post office. Lute."

Brent filed his own message and passed the time of day with the operator, but when he was outside he cursed the need of slow walking as he made his way to the rafts. Alexander was not there. No one had seen her for two hours and, from her shack, both pack and rifle had been removed.

Halloway's face when Brent found him and told him his story, first blackened into the thunder cloud darkness, then as suddenly paled into dread.

"By God, Brent," he whispered hoarsely, catching the other's arm in a grip that almost broke it, "what if she suspects us too—and has already set out to give us the slip? She hasn't a chance to get through before these outlaws intercept her. She'd have to stop—somewhere this side the gap—and go on in the morning."

"Come on," snorted Brent, "we've got to go to the livery stable and see if she's hired a mule."

"If she's seeking to give us the slip, she's probably changed that plan too—and set out on foot. It's a safe bet, though, that she didn't go without her precious money. Let's try the bank."

They went, Brent needing to strike a sort of dog-trot to hold the long striding pace of the other.

The bank was closed for the day.



CHAPTER VIII

"Well, what next?" inquired Brent blankly.

"We might manage to seize and make a hostage of Lute Brown—and even the telegraph operator," began Halloway, somewhat haltingly. "But their disappearance would prove a sort of warning and they may not be the leading spirits. Did you gather from that telegram where they mean to hold her up?"

"No—nor even to whom the message went. He'd begun sending when I got in."

"Of course we couldn't prove that the operator understood the portent of the message but I know the fellow—his name is Wicks, and I think he's a bad egg."

"Where does the bank cashier live?" inquired Brent.

"Three miles out along Deephole Branch—and he has no telephone," growled the Titan. Suddenly through the baffled perplexity of his eyes broke the light of dawning idea, and he spoke with a greater certitude.

"If these high-binders have used the wire once they may do it again," he exclaimed. "At all events that's the point to watch at present."

"I suppose you mean I must loaf around there and eavesdrop—for anything that may come over." Brent's tone was unenthusiastic. "It's logical enough too—but if the girl's started out alone, time is precious."

Halloway had straightened out of his doleful uncertainty. Plans were swiftly taking shape in his mind.

"No. You've been there once. If you went back it's just possible that into the fellow's dull mind might steal a ghost of suspicion. I'm ready to take my turn now, though I hate the damned inactivity. I am a presumed illiterate. I struggle over the printed page—and with me loafing in his office he would chat away over his wire undisturbed."

"And what shall I be doing?"

"There'll be enough to keep you busy, I should say. Get in touch with any of the bank employes you can locate. Try to learn whether or not Alexander has actually started. Have Lute watched and see with whom he talks. Get together a dozen men we can trust at a pinch. Have them ready, if necessary, to take the saddle on a moment's notice. It may come down to a race over the trail."

Brent's face fell.

"With my limited acquaintance," he objected, "how in God's name am I to pick such men?"

"No man who looked into the dog-like eyes of young Bud Sellers," asserted Halloway, "could doubt that he'd give his life for that girl. He can also keep his mouth tight. Tell him the whole story and take his orders. I'm off now to sit on my shoulder blades in the telegraph office."

About the post office loitered a small crowd drawn together by the instinct for companionship and to that gathering place Brent turned first in search of Bud.

It proved a happy choice and when he had, with a seeming of casualness, led his man into a quieter spot he demanded, "What has become of Alexander?"

He thought that the young mountaineer stiffened a bit and that his face became mask-like. But this may have been the jealous tendency of a hopeless passion, and when Brent swiftly narrated all that he and Halloway had learned, the secretiveness of guise fell away from the listening face and the body trembled as if stricken with a chill, but a chill of rage and indignation which had no kinship with timorousness.

"Hit looks like hit would hev been safer an' handier fer Alexander jest ter ride on back home with ther same crowd thet come down-river with her—they're all got ter make ther same journey," was his first comment, but after a moment he shook his head. "Howsomever, I reckon thet they don't aim ter hasten back so damn fast. They hain't been in a town fer a long spell an' they seeks ter tarry—an' quite several of 'em air fellers I mistrusts anyhow."

"Can't you pick out enough dependable men for an immediate start if need be?"

Bud laughed shortly. "Did ye 'low, atter hearin' what ye jest narrated that I'd be liable ter stand hitched fer long? I'll pick 'em out all right—an' speedily."

Into his suddenly narrowing eye shot a menacing gleam. "An' ef them fellers undertakes ter harm her, afore God, thar's goin' ter be some shovelin' of grave-yard dirt, too."

Brent sought out the bank president who lived in town and put his terse question as to whether Alexander had withdrawn from the safe, her package of money.

"She hadn't been there again up to the time of my leaving," the banker replied, "but, I came away before closing."

The telegraph office in the railway station was a dingy place of cobwebbed murk. It was also the express office, and in helter-skelter disarray lay a litter of uncalled-for plow-shares and such articles as go from the end of the rails into that hinterland where lies an isolated world of crag and loneliness.

Except for the operator—who was also ticket-agent and general factotum—it was now empty and dull of light with its smeared window glasses between its interior and the dispirited grayness of the outer skies. The dust-covered papers and miscellany which cumbered the table long undisturbed, spoke of an idle office and of hours unedged with interest.

As Halloway's great bulk shadowed the door, Wicks glanced up, and nodded with a somewhat surly unwelcome.

"Did ye want anything," he asked shortly.

"No, just loafin' 'round," drawled the visitor as he settled indolently into a chair which creaked its complaint under his weight.

For a short while the two kept up a perfunctory semblance of conversation, but between these interchanges of comment, lengthening intervals elapsed.

Wicks sat inertly gazing at those familiar stains on the wall which long familiarity had made hateful to him. His expression was moody and only occasionally did he turn to glance at his unbidden guest.

Halloway's head had fallen forward on his chest and soon his heavy breathing became that of a man who is napping.

Finally the other opened his key and sounded the call for Viper, a hamlet ten miles away, though in practical effect it was more distant since the road between twisted painfully over ridge and through gorge. It was on an infrequently used freight spur but it boasted communication with the world by wire—and it was important now because it was a town through which Alexander must pass on her way from Coal City to the mouth of Shoulder-blade Creek.

The metallic voice of the telegraph key subsided, and shortly came the response. Halloway still breathed heavily on—a sleeping giant whose ears were very much awake. This was no official message paying toll, but a private conversation between operators bent on whiling away dull moments. Moreover it was evidently the continuation of talk previously commenced so that to the eavesdropper it was like a continued story of which he had missed the opening chapters.

"Upward of four thousand dollars," tapped out Wicks. "That's big money, but the more men that split it the less each feller gets, so they don't want too many from Viper."

Halloway realized at once that this lantern-jawed operator had a swift and sure sending finger, and when the answer came it was, in contrast, labored and ragged. It was as if two men talked, one in rapid and clear-clipped syllables—the other in a stutter.

Said Viper, "There might be neck-stretching too if too many tongues make talk. Jess will have the boys ready at the place soon in the morning. They will wait for orders there."

"At the place!" Halloway in his counterfeited sleep cursed to himself. If instead of those indefinite words the point had been named he would have gained something tangible. He knew now however beyond a doubt that both operators were conspirators and he had gleaned one comforting assurance—the plans contemplated no joining of forces until to-morrow. Those at the far end were still uninstructed. If it came to a race to-night that gave a better chance.

Then Viper cut off and Wicks, with a sigh of boredom, settled back in his chair once more and gave himself over to silence.

Finally Halloway stirred out of his slumber and stretched himself.

"I reckon," he admitted shamefacedly, "I must hev fell asleep. That damn fire broke up my rest last night." With which comment he slouched, still sleepily, out of the place, rubbing his eyes as he went, with ham-like fists.

At the rafts he found Bud Sellers, and a round dozen men of Bud's selection. Looking them over, Halloway privately approved. There was not an eye in the number that was not hawk-clear; or a figure that was not nail-hard. These were fellows cut to a pattern of action, but even in their excellent average, one stood out with an individualism which immediately struck the observer.

He was introduced as Jerry O'Keefe, but Halloway would not have needed the name, once he had seen the lazy challenging twinkle in the gray-blue eyes, to spot him as a man of Irish blood. O'Keefe had need to look up to meet the glance of the giant, but that was for him unusual. Into most eyes he looked down, for when he stood in his socks he was six feet two inches of hard-bitten sinew and man-flesh.

"Where's Brent?" asked Halloway, and Bud Sellers, whose manner had fallen into the stillness of one chafing against delay, replied tersely, "He hain't come back yit."

Soon, though, he arrived, and by now the west was reddening toward sunset.

In a situation calling for absolute parsimony in the economy of time it would have meant moments salvaged for the trio of men, who must act as commanders of the rest, to have gone at once into a discussion of the results of their several investigations. Yet that was impossible, since for Halloway to tell his story to both would mean revealing his knowledge of telegraphy. So while he and Brent talked first alone, Bud Sellers stood apart, and into that fertile soil of mountain suspicion crept a vague questioning as to why full confidence was denied him—a suspicion which was later to bear fruit.

When he had been told all, save of Halloway's eavesdropping, he made his own report.

"Myself, I hain't found out much, save thet I've got ther men ready, an' thet I seed Lute Brown talkin' with Jase Mallows a spell back."

It was arranged that half of the force should proceed at top speed to Crabapple post office and mobilize there; that Halloway himself should push through to Viper and eavesdrop on the telegraph key, and that the others should loaf about Coal City watching the suspects and gleaning what information they could. The men of the last named contingent were to play hounds on the heels of the plotters and seek to follow them without being discovered.

While the three were still in council at one end of the raft, Bud came suddenly to his feet and his jaw dropped in amazement. There striding down the bank to the boom, with a face as freshly pink as a wild rose, was Alexander herself, with her pack on her back.

She saw the gathering of men, some with faces that were unfamiliar to her, and halted to inspect them. Into her eyes came something like a smoulder as though in resentment of unwarranted trespassing, then seeing Bud and Halloway and Brent she came aboard and demanded curtly, "What be all these men doin' hyar?"

For an instant no one responded to her question. The reaction of unexpected relief from driving anxiety left them wordless. Finally Brent laughed nervously.

"It would appear that they are here for no reason whatsoever," he said, "though a few minutes ago we thought it a matter of life and death." Her nonplussed expression was sufficiently full of interrogation to cue a fuller explanation and Brent embarked upon the summarized recital of what they had discovered.

Alexander's eyes widened into amazement, and she caught one lip between her white teeth. She stood very straight and indignant, and the men acknowledged to themselves that she had never seemed so beautiful before, nor so militant.

"So they aimed ter lay-way me," she murmured incredulously and Halloway made prompt answer. "Yes, and ye mighty nigh walked right into th'ar dead-fall. Don't ye see now how plum reckless yore plan is? Whar was ye at anyhow?"

The girl impatiently tossed her head. "I fared out a leetle way ter see how ther roads looked," she said. "I wanted ter mek sure that I could get a daybreak start in the morning. I hain't nobody's sugar ner salt that I kain't stir abroad without meltin', be I?"

"We saw that your pack was gone too—and we 'lowed——" began Halloway, but she interrupted him with a curt explanation. "Thet shack war leakin' like a sieve. I didn't aim ter hev all my belongin's mildewed an' rusted—so I left 'em at ther store."

"This crowd kin see ye through without mishap, I reckon. We've done planned hit all out." That contribution came from the giant who seemed to have become general spokesman but the young woman stood silent and absorbed; a delicate pucker between her brows, and the violet pools of her eyes cloud-riffled. At last she announced firmly, "I'm beholden ter all of ye but I've got ter study this matter out by myself. I'll come back hyar in a little spell an' tell ye what decision I've done reached."

"As for getting a daybreak start," Brent observed as she turned away, "You can't get into the bank until it opens."

Once more she had overlooked the unfamiliar complications of financial usage.

Jerry O'Keefe had been lounging with the other recruits of Bud's gathering, looking river-ward until the sound of voices, whose words he could not distinguish, brought him lazily around. As he stood when the first view of Alexander broke on his vision, so he remained—immovable. The low and bantering laughter of his companions for his rapt statuesqueness, fell on deaf ears. His lips parted and his eyes held as under hypnotism.

Jerry stared with a craned neck at Alexander McGivins until slowly his body came round to an easier posture, but upon his steady and unmoving fixity of eye, the rest of him moved as upon an axis. Into the gray-blue irises came a live kindling and with seeming unconsciousness of those about him, he said solemnly, "Afore God, I aims ter wed with thet gal!"

Alexander had strolled outward along a bluff, leaving the town at her back, because she wanted to think without interruption. In her home over yonder across the broken ridges her father might be lying, anxiety ridden—or he might be already dead. An obsession of haste spurred her with the roweling of suspense and with the companionship of her troubled thoughts she walked on and on.

When at length she turned she had decided certain matters, and in the growing dusk she met a man who smilingly accosted her and halted in her path. It was Jase Mallows and she confronted him with a high head and, in remembrance of his swaggering impertinence, spoke imperiously.

"I don't want ter hev no speech with ye, Jase, now ner never, but I owes ye wages fer ther wuck ye done on them rafts. Come ter ther bank termorrer at openin' time and I'll pay ye off."

The mountaineer's face fell into a scowl of resentment. To be rebuffed was galling enough. To be relegated to a servile status was unendurable, yet he refashioned his expression at once into a smile.

"Thar hain't no tormentin' haste, Alexander," he assured her evenly. "Any time'll do—any time at all, but I'm leavin' town ternight."

"Suit yerself," she answered with calculated curtness and would have gone on but he fell into step with her and dropped his voice into so earnest a timbre that despite her dislike for him she listened.

"Alexander—hit hain't none of my business—an' I knows ye're mad at me but yore paw an' me dwells neighbors—an' I'm goin' ter forewarn ye about somethin'."

"Alright," the voice was frigid. "Go ahead. Everybody's forewarnin' me right now."

"I've done heered thet this Brent party air a mighty slick customer. Don't give him no undue lee-way ter fleece ye. Ther man Halloway, thet's hangin' around him's a pretty desperate sort too, by ther repute folks gives him. When ye settled up accounts with thet outfit, ye kain't skeercely be too heedful. I'd either make 'em give me cash money—or else hev a lawyer 'round ter see thet everythin's alright."

"My paw," declared the girl indignantly, "he's got full trust in Mr. Brent an' so hev I." She dismissed him with a glance under which his own bravado wilted and he made no further effort to walk at her side. But in the gathering dusk, the wet desolation about her seemed to creep into Alexander's heart. With so many charges of foul play floating about, of whom could she feel certain? Then the answer came. There was, perhaps, only one. So long as he remained sober, Bud Sellers would remain dependable. From the bank overlooking the boom she called his name and when he had leaped to respond, she led him out of hearing.

"Bud," she said tensely. "Ye knows how heavy-hearted with dread I be about my paw. Ye knows thet when I left him I wasn't no ways sure I'd ever lay eyes on his livin' face ergin. I ain't sure now." Her voice threatened to break and to control it she pitched it into a harder tone. "Ye knows, too, who's fault thet air."

He answered very low and very miserably. "Yes, I knows full well—an' I've done been in torment—ever since."

"Ef he's still alive an' gits well——" she went on, "thar won't be no grudge atween us. Ye says ye seeks ter make amends. Ye knows what hit means ter him whether I gits thet money back safe or not."

"Yes, I knows thet too."

Alexander laughed a little bitterly. "I've jest been forewarned thet I kain't trust nuther Brent ner Halloway. I hain't sayin' I believes hit; I reckon hit's sheer slander—but——" All unconsciously a note of pathos crept into her voice, the pathos of one who must fight alone against unseen forces. "But, how am I goin' ter tell, fer dead sure, who I kin trust?"

Sellers remembered that all he knew of the robbery plot was hearsay—that his informants had excluded him from a part of their consultations. An ugly possibility took vague shape in his mind, but his answer was brief.

"Ye kin trust me 'twell hell freezes."

Alexander nodded. "Ye're ther one man I ought ter hev a blood-hatred erginst—an' yit, so long es ye stays sober, I knows what ye says air true."

Suddenly she laid both her hands on his shoulders and under her touch a tremor raced through his arteries. The mountains seemed to grow unsteady. "Ye're ther only man hyar I kin plum, teetotally depend on. When the bank opens termorrer, I wants ye ter be thar. I don't want ye ter go with me on ther trip back home. I hain't goin' ter suffer nobody ter do that—but thar's a thing I may need ye ter do."

"Es God's lookin' down on us, ef a man kin do hit——" he swore in an emotion-shaken voice, "hit'll be done."

Later that evening Alexander announced her decision and from it she refused to depart. As soon as she could transact business at the bank the next day she would set out on a hired mule, with the money in her saddle-bags. She would tolerate no escort, because one person could travel secretly where several could not. However when she had progressed a certain distance she would turn the mule back. The only reason for its use, at all, would be to make it appear that she was going by the route which the robbers assumed.

Then, depending upon a woodcraft which she trusted, she would swing out at a circle on foot, holding to the laurel thickets and pass, not through but around and above the Gap, which seemed the logical place for a holdup. She consented that her assembled body-guard should, if they insisted, push on and mobilize at Viper, where if suspicious circumstances warranted, they might be near enough to take emergency action. If she came through safely to Perry Center, she would be secure in the house of a kinsman and from there on would have little to fear.

At ten o'clock the next morning Alexander came out of the bank, followed by Bud Sellers, who carried his own saddle-bags over his arm, as if he too contemplated a journey. Brent, in order to avoid the appearance of too close a participation in her affairs, did not accompany her—nor was Halloway anywhere in evidence.

As the girl went out to where her hired mule stood hitched, various observers along the ragged street noted that her rifle was strapped under the saddle skirt in such a way that it could not be speedily loosened. They also watched as, with no pretense of concealment, she stuffed into her saddle-hags a parcel done up in heavy brown paper, and made conspicuous by the bank's red sealing wax. Then, still scornful of evasion, she mounted and rode away as straight-shouldered and militant a figure as Jeanne d'Arc herself.

Bud Sellers, looking after her from the door of the bank, was gloomy of countenance beyond his wont.



CHAPTER IX

As the mule ambled along the mired streets of the wretched hamlet there were eyes following its course that masked an interest beyond the usual. If certain men who had attended yesterday's caucus still loafed inactively about the sidewalks, it was not because they were indifferent to possible developments, but in obedience to a settled plan. Last night a party had set forth ahead. Its members were now stationed at appointed posts in spots so lonely and so silent that one might have passed them at a stone's throw without suspecting their presence. They had gone singly and by different ways—at the start. Others had come to cooperate from Viper and the net was spread with meticulous care and completeness. For communication and signaling the voices of forest things were available; the caw of the crow in the timber, the bark of the fox in the thicket, the note of those birds that the winter had not driven south.

Alexander's journey would not have been easy, had she ridden with no prize to safeguard. There were washouts and quicksands; treacherous fords and shelving precipices to be encountered, but here was a fortune guarded only by a woman whose recklessness led her toward disaster.

"She's plum askin' fer hit—beggin' fer hit," grinned Lute Brown who with a single companion strode along a wet and tangled trail shortly after sunrise. "An' I reckon she'll get hit."

Soon after Alexander had taken her departure those interested in town also began drifting toward the outbound trail. There must be, for every campaign, a rear-guard as well as an advance.

But the three to whose earnest advice the young woman from Shoulder-blade had turned a deaf ear, had not been content to accept dismissal—or inactivity. Halloway and Sellers knew that the dangers of which she made little could not be blinked at and they dared not trust to luck nor rely solely upon her dauntlessness to see her through.

As for Halloway he had left Coal City under cover of the dawn's twilight, while the white fog of mountain mornings still veiled the world. He had gone on foot since, with his tireless strength, he could so travel across the "roughs" at better than a mounted pace and be less cumbered. His destination was the telegraph office at Viper. Jerry O'Keefe and a handful of others were to mobolize inconspicuously there—though they were to remain seemingly disconnected and await his instructions. Brent was to come on later and in his command, though not in his immediate company, were to be Bud Sellers and several more.

The chief difficulty, of course, lay in communication. It was rather a matter of groping in the dark, and the only plan which had seemed feasible had been to divide the intervening country into zones and to arrange outwardly innocent signals which should designate the locality in which it might become imperative to gather and strike. Telephones were few, and those that existed purely local in radius, but since mining properties were dotted over the terrain there were, here and there, scattered "talkin' boxes."

By neither telegraph nor 'phone would it be practicable to talk frankly, but Halloway meant to learn what he could, and Brent was to call him up from time to time—if he could. His inquiries would be couched in questions as to possible purchases of timber for next season's cutting and the germ of the reply would be suggestions of locations—which he would understand.

Alexander rode on alone and the ways were, at first, as deserted as though they had never been fashioned for human usage. Between Coal City and Viper lay a distance of ten miles but they were zig-zag and semi-perpendicular miles with torrential waters to be forded. She meant to ride only about four of them before abandoning her mule for the detour on foot. But when she had left the town only a little way two horsemen came up behind her. She knew neither of them, and they were immature boys, with the empty and vacuous faces of almost degenerate illiteracy. They seemed unarmed but since it was vital to Alexander's scheme to ride unwatched it became important to have them either go ahead or to distance them. Accordingly she urged her mule into a lumbering canter and when a turn of the road had been reached slowed down only to discover with a backward glance that the others had galloped too, and were still close in her rear. Crossing a brook, she paused to let her mule drink and they passed her slowly, staring with the unabashed fixity and hanging jaws at the unaccustomed sight of a woman riding astride in the clothing of a man. Then they went forward at a snail's pace.

Alexander could feel no degree of security until the timber masked her course and whether by intent or accident, these chance fellow wayfarers had become a definite menace. So, fretting at the delay, she waited there for some time, and when she made the next turning, she saw them waiting with no apparent purpose in life save to pass and repass her.

She rode by again, this time with an angry coloring of her cheeks and shook her lazy beast into a trot. Behind her trotted the two.

Eventually the girl drew rein, squarely and belligerently confronting the troublesome though inoffensive looking pair.

"Hain't I got a license ter travel ther highway without bein' follered an' bedeviled," she demanded angrily, and the two youths seemed at first too abashed for speech. One of them, who was an almost albino blond, flushed to the roots of his pale hair.

"I reckon hit jest chanced thet-a-way," he stammered. "We kinderly happens ter be travelin' ther same direction, an' goin' ther same rate, thet's all."

"Well don't let hit chanst thet way no more!" Her eyes were flaming now with a blue light like burning alcohol. "You choose yore gait an' let me choose mine. Take ther road or give hit, either way."

The second lad had found his tongue by this time and he elected to use it truculently.

"This high-road's public property, I reckon," he announced. "A man kin ride as he sees fit."

Alexander could not afford to parley and the suspicion was strong upon her that the twain were less guileless than their seeming. She flashed out a revolver and issued an ultimatum. "I warns ye both now. I'm agoin' ter stand right hyar long enough ter count a hundred. If either one of ye's in sight at ther end of thet time, I'm ergoin' ter begin shootin'. Ef I sees ye ergin naggin' round me from now on, I'm goin' ter begin shootin' too,—an' shoot ter kill."

She meant it, and after a questioning glance they knew that she meant it. With some grumbled incoherence, they went on. They even went at a gallop, and Alexander saw them no more. But perhaps even after that they saw her.

Halloway came early into the hamlet of Viper, bedraggled with travel. He knew that among the men about him must be at least several accomplices to the conspiracy which he sought to defeat. He had been in Coal City for only a few days past and never in Viper until now; so until someone drifted in who remembered his interference at the tavern he would not necessarily be recognized as having any connection with Alexander's affairs. Indeed he had been seen with her so little that he might altogether escape association with her in the minds of these fellows. On the other hand any stranger would in all probability be held under unremitting surveillance and he must therefore proceed with extreme caution.

Jerry O'Keefe was lounging about the streets, gossiping with acquaintances, but when Halloway passed him and brushed his shoulders, neither gave any sign of recognition and Halloway brought up at last, though with seeming aimlessness, at the telegraph office.

There, besides the man who sat at the key, he discovered three others, all of unfamiliar mien, but he gathered from the scowls which they bent on him that he was something less than welcome. Palpably the present occupants of that small room preferred to remain uninterrupted in the discussion of such matters as might arise, yet they did not wish to manifest open or undue anxiety to a stranger.

"Howdy, men," began the new arrival affably as he stood towering over the telegraph operator. Then looking down at that person he added with awkward, back-country diffidence: "Stranger, be ye ther feller thet works thet thar telegraph?"

The seated man looked up and nodded.

"I promised a man by ther name of Brent back thar in Coal City ter kinderly see ef anybody along ther road I come hed any timber they sought ter sell." The giant still spoke with a hulking shyness. "I hain't l'arned nothin', because I come through soon in ther mornin' an' ther roads was empty, but I reckon I'd better send him a message ter thet effect."

Halloway noticed that, as he talked, the other men watched him narrowly though, as he glanced in their direction, they fell at once into a semblance of carelessness. The operator grunted, as he shoved forward a blank with the instructions, "write out your telegram."

Halloway modestly thrust back the paper.

"I kin write—some——" he said, "but not skeercely good enough fer thet. I 'lowed I'd get ye ter do hit fer me. Just say I haven't heered of no timber fer sale. His name's Will Brent an' mine's Jack Halloway."

As the seated man grudgingly scribbled, the newcomer lounged lazily nearby, but just as the man at the key was about to begin sending, his instrument fell into a frenzied activity. Halloway thought that the other loiterers, who were really no more genuinely loitering than himself, made a poor showing of indifference, and that their attitudes betrayed their eagerness of waiting for whatever was coming over.

Finally the electric chatter ended. The seated man had cut in once or twice with questions, and at the end he rose from his chair, not with a regularly transcribed message, but with a few hastily jotted notes on a sheet of paper in his hand.

Impulse had brought him to his feet but he stood hesitant, bethinking himself of the presence of the interloper, and Halloway broke in with a drawling inquiry pitched to a stupid inflection.

"Did ye send my message, Stranger? Did they say he war there?"

The operator flung him a churlish glance and a short answer. "Thet office was busy," he said. "They didn't hev no time ter take your talk jest now." Then with exaggerated carelessness he turned to one of the other loungers. "Joe, ef ye'll come inter ther baggage room, I'll see ef thet express parcel o' yourn's in thar. I think hit came afore ther high-water."

"I reckon," murmured Halloway disappointedly, "I'll hev ter wait a spell an' see kin I git my man later on," and making that observation he settled into his chair with a seeming of permanent intent.

Meanwhile, in the privacy of the baggage room, the station-agent was whispering excitedly to his companion. The man in his chair beyond the door could of course hear no word of that hurried conference, but after all he had no need to do so. He had read its essence at first hand from the wire and it had run about like this:

"She driv two of our fellows back with a pistol when they sought to follow her, but she left her mule and turned into the timber five miles this side of Coal City."

Halloway had congratulated himself that to this extent at least Alexander had succeeded, but his pleasure had been short-lived for the operator here at Viper had flashed back the interrogation, "What then," and the other—who Halloway figured must be cutting in from Wolf-Pen Gap—rapped out the disquieting reply:

"They're combin' ther timber fer her. Have your boys there head her off at the mouth of Chimney-pot Fork in case she circles round the Gap."

A detail which might prove important struck Halloway as he listened. He had recognized the sending from the other end as a man may recognize a speaking voice.

It had been years since he had himself operated a key; but like many adept telegraphers he could distinguish not only the dots and dashes of the code, but also the individual peculiarities of their rapping out. Now he would have been willing to take oath that the hand which had sent this news was the same quick, sure hand that he had watched at work yesterday.

That would indicate that Wicks had either deserted his post at Coal City, or left it in charge of a relief man, and that he had come to Wolf-Pen to operate a disused key nearer the scene of action.

Through the open door of the telegraph office Halloway, now burning with impatience, could see Jerry O'Keefe strolling aimlessly along the sidewalk a half a block away. Jerry too was waiting for instructions and ready, once he had received them, to lead his own force out, with that light in his eye that had dwelt there when he first saw Alexander.

Halloway rose, yawned, and stretched himself. As he did so his hands almost brushed the ceiling.

"I reckon," he asserted, "I won't tarry no longer. Mebby I'll come back again." But before he had reached the threshold the operator and his companion stood looking on from the baggage room door. Even unlettered Machiavellis must have their flashes of inspiration, premonition, "hunch," or whatever you may choose to call it. Suddenly, into the telegrapher's consciousness flashed the suspicion that in the departure of this unknown observer lurked some hidden menace. In what that danger lay he was all at sea but it was a thing he felt and upon which he acted. The knight of the ticker jerked his head and raised a hand, and before Halloway's own arms had descended from the heights to which his yawn had stretched them, he found two pistols squarely presented to his broad chest, and heard a voice instruct with unmistakable finality, "Keep them hands up!"

Keeping them up, Halloway could still see across the shoulders of his captors the distant figure of Jerry O'Keefe but with him he could not communicate.

As he stood, rapidly thinking, it occurred to him that his strength and agility might perhaps even yet avail him. With a lunge he might carry down the two armed figures and escape, but before undertaking that he turned his head for a backward glance and decided against the experiment. Besides the Station Agent stood the third fellow, also with a drawn and leveled weapon.

The Operator spoke again somewhat nervously. He had acted so strenuously on pure impulse and not without a certain misgiving. Now he felt the need of some explanation.

"Boys, when that instrument ticked a while back," he mendaciously asserted, "hit was ther town marshal at Coal City talkin'. He described this man an' said he was wanted thar fer settin' ther hotel on fire day before yesterday. We hain't got no choice but ter hold him."

Going to the drawer of his desk the speaker produced a pair of handcuffs and rattled them as he explained, "Ther revenue man left these hyar. Put 'em on him, Joe."

With the two pistols still pressed close Halloway slowly lowered his wrists and submitted to the indignity of their shackling. Had any human possibility of a break for freedom presented itself he would have embraced it, but the three guns had the look of business and the three faces back of them were flinty with purpose.

As the locks snapped into the grooves of the bracelets the telegrapher commented in sardonic afterthought.

"Ther revenuer fergot ter leave ther key. I don't know how we'll ever git them things loose ergin."

They led him at once back into a dark corner of the baggage room and bestowed him there in a chair, where with a revolver against his temple, they gagged him and lashed him by waist and legs. His hands being sufficiently manacled they did not bind further.

Alexander had, when she came to a place which was rocky enough to leave no footprints, slipped from her saddle, taken her rifle and saddle-bags from their fastenings and disappeared into the timber. The mule she knew would sooner or later be recognized and returned to the stable, but she did not want it recognized too promptly so she led it with her into the woods and turned it loose well up on the mountain side. From that moment she disappeared with a completeness which attested her woodcraft. It was as though she had been and then had ceased to be. The way she elected to go followed the crests, since it is better when "hiding-out" to look down than to be looked down upon.

The sodden woods gave a quieter footing than had they been frosty and brittle underfoot, but even had it been otherwise she had the art of silent movement.

She knew that sooner or later her ruse would be discovered by the watchers of the conspiracy, but she asked only two hours of freedom. After that she would be as difficult to find as the rabbit that has gained the heart of the briar patch.

Once lying high up on a sheer and poroused precipice, she had seen a party of horsemen ride by, far below, and she laughed inwardly to herself, guessing at their purpose and object.

She came eventually to the sharp spur where that particular stretch of ridge ended in a precipitous break. That meant that she must for awhile go down to lower and more perilous levels. This was the final, dubious stage of her journey and with it behind her, she would feel that she had won through to security.

Because she was young and strong enough to laugh at fatigue and bold enough to find a certain joy in recklessness, her spirits began to mount. There are huntsmen who will tell you that the wily and experienced fox comes to relish the chase more keenly than the pack which courses him. Alexander went on with a smile in her eyes.

But when she had gone down into the cloistered shadows of the valley her spirits descended too and when she slipped through the thickets and reached a certain point, something like despair tightened about her heart. Across the line of her march boiled a freshet which might as well have been a river. To swim it with her impediments was impossible and though it might carry her dangerously close to the road which she sought to avoid, she had no choice. She must follow it until a crossing developed.

As a woodsman, Alexander acknowledged few peers but this was to her, unfamiliar country. She was moreover pitting her skill against one who was her equal if not her superior, and who knew every trail and by-way hereabouts. He was a youth with a vacuous, almost idiotic face, whom she had that same day encountered. He had left her sight, but had never been too remote to follow or gauge her course and what he learned he relayed to others. In due time he had known without going further just where she must bring up—for he knew the condition of that stream—and its crossings.

The girl came, in due course, upon a broken litter of giant boulders, each the size of a small house, which lay scattered where at last the water grew shallow. She could even make out a point where one might cross dryshod by leaping from rock to rock.

It was in a fashion a place of mystery and foreboding, for each of those titanic rocks, with its age-long smoothness and greenness was a screen whose other side might harbor things only to be guessed. There one must risk an ambuscade, trusting to one's star, and Alexander loosened her pistol and shifted her saddle-bags to her left shoulder and her rifle to her left hand.

Then she started forward—-and one by one left the boulders behind her until she came to the last. As she rounded the final shoulder of sandstone her hand was knocked up and her pistol fell clattering.

Her ambuscaders had known a thing which she had not—that for all the roomy freedom of the woods she must come out at last through this one passage—as wine must come out through the neck of the bottle.

About her closed a tightly grouped handful of men whose faces were masked and whose bodies were covered by the uniformity of black rubber coats.

Alexander did not surrender tamely. With the strength and the desperation of a tigress she gave them battle, until the sheer force of their numbers had smothered her into helplessness. Her coat was ripped and her shirt hung in tatters from one curved shoulder before they pinioned her and silenced her lips with a bandage.

After that they blind-folded her and carried her up and down hill, twisting beyond all chance of guessing the course, to a place where the air was cool with that freshness of quality that characterizes a cavern. There they stood her upright and removed the bandage.

About her was a flare of torches and the grotesque play of shadows between the grotto-like walls of an abandoned coal mine. About her too ranged in the spectral formality of masked faces and black rubber coats; of peaked hats with low turned brims, stood the circle of her captors.

"Now, Alexander McGivins," proclaimed a deep and solemnly pitched voice, "ye stands before ther dread an' awful conclave of ther order of ther Ku-Klux; ther regulators of sich as defies proper an' decorous livin'. We charges ye with unwomanly shamelessness an' with ther practicin' of witchcraft."



CHAPTER X

For a moment as she turned observant eyes about the walls of the place to which she had been brought, Alexander almost hoped that the astonishing statement of the spokesman was a true one—that in store for her, instead of robbery and possible outrage, lay only the judgment of the punitive clan. Such punishment might be brutally severe but she could face it in such fashion as would vindicate her claim of playing a man's game in a man's way.

So she stood there meeting the eyes that glared at her through the slit masks with a splendid assumption of scorn and defiance. She was keyed to that mood which makes it possible for martyrs to acquit themselves, even at the stake, with a victorious disdain.

Through this section of the mountains there had never been, since reconstruction days, any survival of the Ku-Klux in a true sense, but now and then, as in all wild and violent countries, sporadic "regulations" occurred in which masked men took a faltering law into their own less faltering hands. Sometimes it was a bastard Ku-Klux in the original meaning of the term, a Vigilance Committee operating against abuses which the law failed to check. Oftener it was a masquerade behind which moved designs of personal hatred and vengeance. Sometimes the wife-beater or the harlot was punished. Sometimes the stronger enemy persecuted the weaker.

While Alexander waited for the next development, her captors prolonged the silence in order that the suspense of unguessed things should sap her courage.

The entrance through which they had come showed only as a darker spot in the shadowed vagueness of a far wall of rock, but there was a squareness about it which suggested a mineshaft. The walls themselves were streaked with black seams of coal and dug into tunnels that led in unknown directions.

The place was lighted by several lanterns of feeble power and a number of pine torches, and between the spot where they had stationed her and the crescent of dark figures that stood as silent accusers and judges, ran a trickling rivulet of water. At that detail Alexander smiled, for she knew that it was part and parcel of the absurdity contained in the allegation of witchcraft. The black art is powerless, by mountain tradition, to cross running water.

A bat fluttered zig-zag about the place brushing her cheek, but Alexander was not the sort of woman to be frightened by a bat.

When the calculated silence had held for perhaps five full minutes, the standing men meanwhile remaining as motionless as though they were themselves carved from coal, Alexander spoke.

"Why don't ye say somethin'," she demanded. "I've got friends thet'll be s'archin' these hills fer me right vigorous ef I don't git ter Viper in good time."

It was a bold and provocative speech, but it failed to tempt the silent men out of the pose they had assumed. They knew the effect of protracted silence and impending danger to sap even an assertive courage and for five other minutes they stood wordless and motionless. Only their shadows moved under the torch-light, wavering fitfully from small to large, from light to dark like draperies in a wind.

Finally the man at the center who appeared to exercise a sort of command moved a step forward and raised both hands. The others lifted high their right arms and in a sepulchral voice the spokesman demanded, "Does ye all solemnly sw'ar, by ther dreadful oath ye've done tuck, with yore lives forfeit fer disloyalty or disobedience, ter try this wench on ther charge of outragin' decorum—an' practicin' ther foul charms of witchcraft? Does ye all sw'ar ter deal with her in full an' unmitigated jestice despite thet she s'arves Satan with a comely face and a comely body? Does ye all sw'ar?"

The raised hands, with a unanimous and solemn gesture, fell over the hearts of the questioned and then came aloft once more, still as if with a single nerve impulse. In a unison out of which no separate voice emerged sounded the reply: "We does!"

Alexander laughed, but it must be confessed that that was pure bravado. She knew that on the backwaters of many creeks were cabins where simple folks invoked charms against witchcraft and did so with genuine dread. She knew that many others, less candid, laughed at old superstitions yet acknowledged them in their hearts. In her case the witchcraft charge was of course a cloak for subterfuge, but it was a jest which might bear bitterly serious results.

"Alexander McGivins," began the spokesman afresh, "we charges ye with these weighty matters; thet ye glories in callin' yoreself a he-woman—refusin' ter accept God's mandate an' castin' mortification on yore own sex by holdin' on ter shameless notions. We charges ye with settin' ther example of unwomanly behavior before ther eyes of young gals, an' we aims ter make a sample of ye.

"We furthermore charges ye with practicin' witchcraft; with castin' spells an' performin' devil's work." He wheeled and demanded suddenly; "Number Thirteen, I calls on ye ter step forward an' testify. How does witches gain thar black powers?"

The answering voice, was plainly disguised, and it came with the lugubrious quality of calculated awesomeness.

"By compact with Satan."

"Number Thirteen, how is sich-like compacts made?"

"Thar's ways an' ways. A body kin go up ter a mounting top fer nine nights an' shoot through a kerchief at ther moon, cussin' ther Almighty each separate time, an' ownin' Satan fer master."

"Number Thirteen, what powers does Satan give these hyar sarvants of his'n?"

"They gains ther baleful power ter kill folks with witch balls, rolled tight outen ther hair of a cow or a varmint. By runnin' a hand over a rifle gun they kin make hit shoot crooked. They kin spell a houn' dog so thet he back-tracks 'stid of trailin' for'ards. They kin bring on all manner of pestilence an' make cows go dry an' hosses fling their riders. They kin——"

"Thet's enough, Number Thirteen," announced the spokesman. "Thet's a lavish of evil. How kin they be hindered from this deviltry?"

"Thar's means of liftin' spells, but nothin' save death hitself cures ther witches."

"Number Thirteen, how does ye go about hit, ter slay a witch?"

"By shootin' with a silver bullet run outen a mould thet's done been rubbed with willow-sprigs."

"Number Thirteen, in the event of need, hev ye got sich a bullet hyar?"

"Each one of us hes got one."

Once more the apparent head of the clan turned to the girl. "Woman, air ye guilty or not guilty?"

"I reckon," suggested Alexander coolly, "ye'd better ask Number Thirteen. He 'pears ter know 'most everything."

But the spokesman declined to be lured by frivolous taunt from his vantage ground of solemnity. He turned his head and gravely inquired: "Number Thirteen, how does ye det'armine ther guilt of a witch?"

"Ef a preacher comes nigh, she kain't help turnin' her back."

"I reckon we hain't skeercely got no preacher handy ter test her with," interrupted the master of ceremonies drily, and the other went on.

"Ef she stays hyar 'twell midnight a sperit in ther guise of a black cat'll appear ter do her biddin'."

On the ground lay the saddle-bags and the rifle; as yet unmolested. Before they had loosened the blindfold from her eyes she had been subjected to the needless indignity of bound wrists and now she was entirely helpless.

Her coat hung on her tattered during the struggle and her flannel shirt had been rent until both garments sagged from her shoulders, leaving bare the white curves of their flesh. The circle had fallen silent again. It remained silent for a half hour, then the man who had acted as chief inquisitor drew aside that other whom Alexander knew only as Number Thirteen, and, apart, they conferred in lowered voices. In the manner of these two, the captive recognized indications of anxiety. Palpably some detail of their plans had gone awry and that miscarriage, whatever its nature, was troubling their peace of mind. Had she understood more fully it would likewise have troubled her.

The conventional and successful course of highway robbery runs in the channel of a swift accomplishment and a rapid getaway. Yet this crew, leaving the saddle-bags uninvestigated at their feet, were solemnly playing out their farce at the expense of valuable time—time which should have stood for miles put between themselves and pursuit.

Was the difficulty that of disposing of her? If so, she stood face to face with a stark and grim extremity. Murder and concealment of a lifeless body, here, would be easy enough. These men were desperadoes, and if dire enough need pressed them they would not, she thought, balk overlong at the idea of killing a woman.

Yet the leader, studiously maintaining his Ku-Klux masquerade, parleyed with his underlings and consulted a heavy nickel-cased watch. His gesture showed a petulant impatience. The men in the silent circle stirred uneasily and from time to time low growls broke from their muffled lips. Obviously they were awaiting some development which though overdue had not materialized.

The half hour became an hour, then doubled itself to a full two—in oppressive silence.

"What be ye awaitin' fer?" Alexander demanded in a taunting voice, though inwardly she felt that the peril was pregnant and immediate. The only satisfaction she could deny them now was that of any confessed fear.

This time the speaker snarled his answer back at her angrily, without any consistent attempt at holding the ritualistic impressiveness of manner.

"Mebby we're waitin' fer midnight—twell ther black cat comes."

Alexander could not guess that all these malefactors were on tenterhooks of misgiving because the arrangement entered into as a concession to the vanity of Jase Mallows had failed; the fictitious rescue which was to re-establish him in the eyes of the girl and give to them the chance to practice highway robbery, still stopping short of murder. The whole scheme had been cut to that pattern and it was now too late to evolve a new strategy. The trial was to have seemed genuine. It was to have been followed by a fictitious battle in which the alleged regulators were to have been put to flight by the victorious entry of Jase himself with his underlings. The girl, snatched from the jaws of death by his valor would henceforth rest under such obligations as could be recompensed only by her favor—but in the melee, her money would disappear.

Jase had not come—and the captive whom he was to take off their hands must either be done to death or liberated with a wagging tongue.

Eventually the masked head-highwayman led two of his men aside. He recognized that having compacted with Jase they could not ignore him. In a whisper he ventured the suggestion, "Mebby Jase hes done come ter grief. Mebby we'd better kill ther gal atter all an' git away. But if we does we've got ter git Jase afore he has time ter blab an' hang us all."

Halloway spending a long and dreary day bound to his chair in the baggage-room at Viper had succeeded in wriggling his lips free of the bandage. As yet that was only an academic victory. Unless there stood in the room where the instrument ticked a sufficiently strong force of his friends to wage a successful battle, any sound from his lips would mean only death for them and himself—without material advantage to his cause.

Twice during his long inactivity the raucous sound of a telephone bell jangled and he heard a voice replying to some inquiry, "No, he hain't been here." The question so answered, he guessed, had come from Brent seeking to locate him and confer with him as he came along the road between Coal City and Viper. He thought very grimly and with bitter futility of the force waiting so near and so eagerly keyed to action under O'Keefe, which one minute of private speech would launch into a hurricane effectiveness. In mad moments he had even tried to break the chain between the steel bracelets that bit into his wrists. His Samson strength had strained until the arteries swelled in his temples and it has been almost enough—but not quite. A link had stretched a bit, but the wrists had been so lacerated that the effort had to be abandoned.

Then when the day was spent towards late afternoon he caught the chatter of the key again, somewhat confused by the intervening wall, but though he missed part of the message he caught a few words which were pregnant with meaning . . . "got her . . . in mine shaft . . . back of Gap."

Now, Halloway told himself, as tortured sweat of suspense dripped down his face, he must somehow convey word to Jerry O'Keefe—but how? He had the facts—the location—the certainty and he could use none of his vital information.

He twisted his two gyved hands around and got one of them into his coat pocket. He brought out the pipe which he could neither fill nor light, but there was a certain steadying comfort in feeling its cool stem between his teeth.

During the captive's leisure for reflection he had been pondering one point which had puzzled him. From what telegraph office out there in the wilds was Wicks acting as intelligence bureau? Obviously he must be near the Gap itself as the station wire followed the railroad.

Then he remembered a device that he had seen used about mining properties and laughed at his own stupidity in remaining as long baffled. The few telephones hereabouts were party lines where all conversation could be overheard and so, for the use of highwaymen, they were unavailable. Wicks had merely brought a key, a battery and a ground wire with him and he had cut in on a telephone line. There were, he remembered now, two instruments on the operator's table here. One was the twin to the thing upon which the resourceful Wricks was playing.

Brent and Bud Sellers had ridden with spirits rapidly sinking since they had drawn near to that territory which lay adjacent to Wolf-Pen Gap. The failure to reach Halloway by 'phone at Viper was a bad augury, since it left them in the position of an army whose intelligence bureau has collapsed.

The two horsemen had ridden through wintry forests along steep and difficult roads where it seemed that they alone represented humanity. Of course Alexander, herself, might be traveling as uneventfully as themselves, but they could feel no great confidence in that hope and now there was nothing to do but to push on to Viper, perhaps passing by spots where they were sorely needed, as they went, and to try to find Halloway, whose silence left them groping in the dark.

Will Brent was, in the sense of present requirements, no woodsman. He knew the forests as a lumber expert knows them, but the seemingly trivial and minute indications that another might have read, carried for him no meaning.

However, he put his dependence in Bud Sellers whose knowledge of such lore amounted to wizardry, and at one point Bud halted abruptly gazing down with absorbtion from his saddle.

"Right hyar," he said shortly, "Alexander stopped an' hed speech with two horsemen. Ther looks of hit don't pleasure me none nuther."

"Why?" inquired Brent, and the mountaineer drew his brow into an apprehensive furrow. "Fer a spell back, I've been watchin' these signs with forebodin's. Alexander wasn't ridin' at no stiddy gait. She'd walk her mule, then gallop him—then she'd pull down an' halt. These other two riders did jest what she did—kain't ye read ther story writ out in ther marks of them mule-irons on ther mud?"

Brent shook his head in bewilderment.

"Well, hit's all too damn plain an' hit would 'pear ter signify that Alexander sought ter shake off two fellers thet didn't low ter be shook off. Right hyar they all stopped, an' parleyed some."

"Why?"

"Because three mules stood hyar fer a leetle spell—ye kin see whar they stomped, an' movin' mules don't stomp twice or thrice over ther same spot. Then two of 'em went on gallopin'—and one went on walkin'. Yes this is whar she got rid of 'em, but I misdoubts ef they lost sight of her."

A little further Bud showed Brent where the two mules had turned aside to the right and, a mile further on, where Alexander had also abandoned the main road and gone to the left.

"She held ter ther highway a mile further then she 'lowed ter," growled Sellers. "Thar's jest one reasonable cause fer thet. She knowed she war bein' spied on, an' she aimed ter shake 'em off. I wonder did she shake 'em off."

When they had almost reached the Gap itself and were proceeding warily they came to a narrow ford at whose edge Bud drew rein.

"Let's pause an' study this hyar proposition out afore we rides on any further," he suggested.

It was a particularly wild and desolate spot where the road bent so sharply that they had turned a corner and come upon the crossing of the water without a previous view. They had been riding toward what had seemed a sheer wall of bluff, and that abrupt angle had brought them to a point where the road dipped sharply down and lost itself in the rapidly running waters of a narrow creek. On the opposite shore the road came out again with a right-angle turn to thread its course along a shelf of higher ground as a narrow cornice might run along a wall. Below was a drop to the creek; above the perpendicular uplift of the precipice.

"This hyar's ther commencement of Wolf-Pen Gap," Bud Sellers enlightened his companion. "This is just erbout whar they aimed ter lay-way her at. I shouldn't marvel none ef some of 'em's watchin' us from them thickets up on thet bluff right now."

"Then let's hurry across," Brent nervously suggested. "Once we get over the stream the cliff itself will shield us. They can't shoot straight down."

"Oh, I reckon they don't hardly aim ter harm us," reassured Bud. "An' anyhow we've got ter tutor this matter jest right. Thet creek's norrer but hit's deep beyond fordin'. We needs must swim our mules acros't."

Brent shuddered at the sight of the chill water but Bud went on inexorably. "Now, ye've got ter start as fur up es ye handily kin—because ther current's swift—an' if hit carries yer beyond thet small bend ye comes out in quicksand. Jest foller me. I'll go fust."

Brent had faced a number of adventures of late, but for this newest one he had little stomach. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and prepared to go ahead and follow his companion's lead, since need left no alternative.

As Bud's mule thrust its fore-feet into the creek's edge the creature balked and the young man kicked him viciously. Brent was waiting with bated breath when abruptly from overhead came the clean, sharp bark of a rifle. Brent's hat went spinning from his head and he felt the light sting of a grazing wound along his scalp. It seemed to be in the same instant that he heard Bud's revolver barking its retort towards the point from which the flash had gleamed. There followed a second report and the zip of a bullet burying itself in wood, and then he heard Bud yelling, "Go on!"

Realizing that once across the narrow stream he would be under shelter, he kicked and belabored his mule to the take-off. There was a downward plunge, a floundering in the icy water, and then an unsteady sensation as the beast struck out to swim. The current had taken its effect so that mule and rider were being carried down channel faster than they were gaining across, but Brent instinctively turned his head to see what had become of his guide.

He saw an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all! He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight, making for the protection of the turn about which they had come. Twice before he gained safety the rifle above spat out venomously, but missed the fleeing target.

Such a confusion seized upon Brent that he never knew how he got across that creek. Ahead had lain quicksand, above a rifle in the laurel and in his own entrails an overpowering nausea of betrayed confidence. His comrade had deserted him—had run away!

Somehow, his own mount had won across and was plodding up to solid roadway once more and there safe, for the moment at least, he halted and looked back.

Hoping against hope, Brent waited for five minutes with a clammy sweat on his forehead, but there was still no sign of a returning Bud Sellers. Then Brent unwillingly admitted that it was a pure and unmitigated case of desertion under fire.

"My God," he groaned. "He quit me cold—quit like a dog! He simply cut and ran!"

With a sickened heart he rode on. His head ached from the near touch of the assassin's bullet. He was not even watching for a second ambuscade, and fortunately for him, there was none. But with dulled observation he passed by a place where, close to the road, a shaft ran back into an abandoned coal mine and he followed his dejected course without suspecting that at that moment Alexander was being held a prisoner in the cavern to which that shaft gave access.



CHAPTER XI

The men who had come into town for the purpose of co-operating with Jerry O'Keefe and with Halloway had of course drifted in singly and with no seeming of cohesion. It was vital that they should avoid any manifest community of purpose, yet they were armed, ready and alert, awaiting only a signal to gather out of scattered elements into a close-knit force with heavy striking-power.

As they waited through the day for the call which did not come they began to feel the dispirited gloom of men keyed to action and kept interminably waiting—but none of them dropped away.

It was close to sundown when Brent himself arrived, and since he failed to encounter Jerry O'Keefe on the streets he did not pause to search for him, but went direct to the telegraph office. It had not been disclosed to O'Keefe how close to the heart of the conspiracy was the operator and the young man with the Irish eyes had not been stirred to any deep suspicion in that quarter.

Brent himself had not considered it a reasonable assumption that to such a powerful fellow as Halloway harm could come in so public a place. Yet Halloway had meant to make that office his headquarters and now Brent made it his first destination.

Through the open door and the smeared window spilled out a yellow and sickly light.

Inside sat two men, but a glance told Brent that neither of them worked the key. The pair were gaunt and sinister of aspect and they were not town folk but creek-dwellers. One was evil-visaged to a point of gargoyle hideousness. The other was little better, and he raised a face to inspect the man in the door which some malignant sculptor might have modeled in pure spite, pinching it viciously here and there into sharp angles of grotesqueness. Yet in the eyes Brent recognized keenness and determination.