"It's the long heels for it now, boys," cried de Spain. His companions closed up again.

"Save your horses," cautioned Scott, between strides. "It's a good ways home."

"Make for Calabasas," shouted Lefever.

"No," yelled Scott. "They would stand us a siege at Calabasas. While the trail is open make for the railroad."

A great globe of dazzling gold burst into the east above the distant hills. But the glory of the sunrise called forth no admiration from the three men hurrying a fourth urgently along the Sleepy Cat trail. Between breaths de Spain explained his awkward meeting with Nan, and of the strait he was in when Lefever's strong lungs enabled him to get away unscratched. But for a gunman a narrow squeak is as good as a wide one, and no one found fault with the situation. They had the advantage—the only question was whether they could hold it. And while they continued to cast anxious glances behind, Scott's Indian eyes first perceived signs on the horizon that marked their pursuit.

"No matter," declared Lefever. "This is a little fast for a fat man, anyway." He was not averse, either, to the prospect of a long-range exchange with the fighting mountaineers. All drew rein a little. "Suppose I cover the rear till we see what this is," suggested Lefever, limbering up as the other two looked back. "Push ahead with Sassoon. These fellows won't follow far."

"Don't be sure about that," muttered Scott. "Duke and Gale have got the best horses in the mountains, and they'd rather fight than eat. There they come now."

Dashing across a plain they themselves had just crossed, they could see three horsemen in hot chase. The pursued men rode carefully, and, scanning the ground everywhere ahead and behind, de Spain, Scott, and Lefever awaited the moment when their pursuers should show their hand. Scott was on the west of the line, and nearest the enemy.

"Who are they, Bob?" yelled Lefever.

Scott scrutinized the pursuers carefully. "One," he called back, "that big fellow on the right, is Deaf Sandusky, sure. Harvey Logan, likely, the middle man. The other I can't make out. Look!" he exclaimed, pointing to the foot-hills on their distant left. Two men, riding out almost abreast of them, were running their horses for a small canyon through which the trail led two miles ahead. "Some riding," cried Scott, watching the newcomers. "That farther man must be Gale Morgan. They are trying for the greasewood canyon, to cut us off."

"We can't stand for that," decided de Spain, surveying the ground around them. "There's not so much as a sage-brush here for cover."

Lefever pointed to his right; at some distance a dark, weather-beaten cone rose above the yellow desert. "Let's make a stand in the lava beds," he cried.

De Spain hesitated. "It takes us the wrong way." He pointed ahead. "Give them a run for that canyon, boys."

Urging their horses, the Sleepy Cat men rode at utmost speed to beat the flanking party to the trail gateway. For a few minutes it looked an even break between pursuers and pursued. The two men in the foot-hills now had a long angle to overcome, but they were doing a better pace than those of the Gap party behind, and half-way to the canyon it looked like a neck-and-neck heat for the narrow entrance. Lefever complained of the effort of keeping up, and at length reined in his horse. "Drop me here on the alkali, boys," he cried to the others. "I'll hold this end while you get through the canyon."

"No," declared de Spain, checking his pace. "If one stays, all stay. This is as good a time as any to find out what these fellows mean."

"But not a very good place," commented Scott, as they slowed, looking for a depression.

"It's as good for us as it is for them," returned de Spain abruptly. "We'll try it right here."

He swung out of his saddle, Lefever and Scott after an instant's reconnoissance following. Sassoon they dismounted. Scott lashed his wrists together, while de Spain and Lefever unslung their carbines, got their horses down, and, facing the west and south, spread themselves on the ground.

The men behind lost nothing of the defensive movement of the pursued party, and slowed up in turn. For the moment the flankers were out of sight, but they must soon appear on the crest of a rise between them and the canyon. Lefever was first down and first ready with his rifle to cover the men behind. These now spread out and came on, as if for a rush.

Lefever, picking Logan, the foremost, sent a warning shot in front of him. De Spain fired almost at the same moment toward the big man making a detour to the right of the leader. The two bullets puffed in the distant alkali, and the two horsemen, sharply admonished, swerved backward precipitately. After a momentary circling indecision, the three rode closer together for a conference, dismounted, and opened a return fire on the little party lying to.

The strategy of their halt and their firing was not hard to penetrate. The men from the foot-hills were still riding for the canyon. No views were exchanged among Sassoon's captors, but all understood that this move must be stopped. Lefever and Scott, without words, merely left the problem to de Spain as the leader. He lay on the right of the line as they faced south, and this brought him nearest to the riders out of the foot-hills. Taking advantage of a lull in the firing, he pulled his horse around between himself and the attacking party, and in such a position that he could command with his rifle the fast-moving riders to the west.

Something of a predicament confronted him. He was loath to take a human life in the effort to get a cutthroat jailed, and hated even to cripple a beast for it, but the two men must be stopped. Nor was it easy to pick up the range offhand, but meaning that the Morgans, if they were Morgans, should understand how a rush would be met, he sent one shot after another, short, beyond, and ahead of the horsemen, to check them, and to feel the way for closer shooting if it should be necessary. The two dashed on undaunted. De Spain perceived that warnings were wasted. He lowered his sights, and, waiting his chance as the leader of the foot-hill pursuers rode into a favorable range, he fired for his horse's head. The beast jumped convulsively and pitched forward, head down in a half somersault, throwing his rider violently to the ground. Scott and Lefever yelled loudly.

Out of the cloud of dust the man scrambled to his feet, looked coolly around, and brushed the alkali disgustedly from his eyes just as a second bullet from de Spain tore up the earth a few feet to one side of him. He jumped like a rabbit at this summons, and did not even make a further pretense at composure. Grabbing his hat from the ground, he ran like mad toward the hills. Meantime his mounted companion had turned about. De Spain sprang to his feet, jerked up his horse and cried: "Now for the canyon!" Pushing Sassoon into the saddle and profiting by the confusion, the railroad men rode hard for their refuge, and reached it without more molestation than an occasional shot from their distant pursuers on the main trail. De Spain and his scouts now felt assured of their escape. The foot-hills contingent was left far behind, and, though their remaining pursuers rode in at times with a show of rushing, the chase was a stern one, and could be checked whenever necessary. Halting at times in this way to breathe their horses, or to hold off the rear pursuit, de Spain with his two companions and their prisoner rode into Sleepy Cat, locked Sassoon up, and went to the Mountain House for breakfast.



CHAPTER VII

MAINTAINING A REPUTATION

The abduction of Sassoon, which signalized de Spain's entry into the stage-line management, created a sensation akin to the exploding of a bomb under the range. The whole mountain country, which concentrates, sensibly, on but one topic at a time, talked for a week of nothing else. No such defiance of the traditions of the Morgan rule along the reaches of the Spanish Sinks had been attempted in years—and it was recalled more than once, when de Spain's feat was discussed at the ranches, on the trails, and in the haunts of gunmen in Calabasas, that no one of those who had ever braved the wrath of the Sink rulers had lived indefinitely to boast of it.

Experienced men, therefore, in the high country—men of that class who, wherever found, are old in the ways of the world, and not promptly moved by new or youthful adventure—dismissed the incident after hearing the details, with the comment or the conclusion that there would hardly be for de Spain more than one additional chapter to the story, and that this would be a short one. The most active Morgans—Gale, Duke, and the easy-going Satterlee—were indeed wrought to the keenest pitch of revengeful anger. No question of the right or wrong of the arrest was discussed—justification was not considered. It was an overwhelmingly insolent invasion—and worst of all, a successful invasion, by one who had nothing but cool impudence, not even a budding reputation to justify his assault on the lifelong prestige of the Gap clan. Gale Morgan strode and rode the streets of Sleepy Cat looking for de Spain, and storming.

De Spain himself, somewhat surprised at the storm he had kicked up, heeded the counsel of Scott, and while the acute stage of the resentment raged along the trail he ran down for a few days to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Both Gale and Duke Morgan proclaimed, in certain public places in Sleepy Cat, their intention of shooting de Spain on sight; and as a climax to all the excitement of the week following his capture, the slippery Sassoon broke jail and, after a brief interval, appeared at large in Calabasas.

This feat of the Morgan satellite made a loud laugh at de Spain's expense. It mitigated somewhat the humiliation of Sassoon's friends, but it in no wise diminished their expressed resolve to punish de Spain's invasion. Lefever, who as the mixer among the stage men, kept close to the drift of public sentiment, decided after de Spain's return to Sleepy Cat that the stage-line authorities had gained nothing by Sassoon's capture.

"We ought to have thought of it before, Henry," he said frankly one night in Jeffries's office, "but we didn't think."

"Meaning just what, John?" demanded de Spain without real interest.

"Meaning, that in this country you can't begin on a play like pulling Sassoon out from under his friends' noses without keeping up the pace—without a second and third act. You dragged Sassoon by his hair out of the Gap; good. You surprised everybody; good. But you can't very well stop at that, Henry. You have raised hopes, you have led people to invest you with the faint glimmerings of a reputation. I say, the glimmerings, because such a feat by itself doesn't insure a permanent reputation, Henry. It is, so to say, merely a 'demand' reputation—one that men reserve the right to recall at any moment. And the worst of it is, if they ever do recall it, you are worse off than when before they extended the brittle bauble to you."

"Jingo, John! For a stage blacksmith you are some spieler." De Spain added an impatient, not to say contumelious exclamation concerning the substance of Lefever's talk. "I didn't ask them for a reputation. This man interfered with my guard—in fact, tried to cut his throat, didn't he?"

"Would have done it if Frank had been an honest man."

"That is all there is to it, isn't it? If Sassoon or anybody else gets in the way of the stages, I'll go after them again—that's all there is to it, isn't it?"

Lefever tapped the second finger of one fat hand gently on the table. "Practically; practically all, Henry, yes. You don't quite understand, but you have the right idea. What I am trying to hammer into your dense cocoanut is, that when a man has, gets, or is given a reputation out in this country, he has got to live up to it."

"What do you want me to do—back a horse and shoot two guns at once up and down Main Street, cowboy style?"

Lefever kept his patience without difficulty. "No, no. You'll understand."

"Scott advised me to run down to Medicine Bend for a few days to let the Morgans cool off."

"Right. That was the first step. The few days are a thing of the past. I suppose you know," continued Lefever, in as well-modulated a tone as he could assume to convey information that could not be regarded as wholly cheerful, "that they expect to get you for this Sassoon job."

De Spain flushed. But the red anger lasted only a moment. "Who are 'they'?" he asked after a pause.

"Deaf Sandusky, Logan, of course, the Calabasas bunch, and the Morgans."

De Spain regarded his companion unamiably. "What do they expect I'll be doing while they are getting me?"

Lefever raised a hand deprecatingly. "Don't be overconfident, Henry; that's your danger. I know you can take care of yourself. All I want to do is to get the folks here acquainted with your ability, without taking unnecessary chances. You see, people are not now asking questions of one another; they are asking them of themselves. Who and what is this newcomer—an accident or a genuine arrival? A common squib or a real explosion? Don't get excited," he added, in an effort to soothe de Spain's obvious irritation. "You have the idea, Henry. It's time to show yourself."

"I can't very well do business here without showing myself," retorted de Spain.

"But it is a thing to be managed," persisted Lefever. "Now, suppose—since the topic is up—we 'show' in Main Street for a while."

"Suppose we do," echoed de Spain ungraciously.

"That will crack the debut ice. We will call at Harry Tenison's hotel, and then go to his new rooms—go right to society headquarters first—that's my theory of doing it. If anybody has any shooting in mind, Tenison's is a quiet and orderly place. And if a man declines to eat anybody up at Tenison's, we put him down, Henry, as not ravenously hungry."

"One man I would like to see is that sheriff, Druel, who let Sassoon get out."

"Ready to interview him now?"

"I've got some telegrams to answer."

"Those will keep. The Morgans are in town. We'll start out and find somebody."

It was wet and sloppy outside, but Lefever was indifferent to the rain, and de Spain thought it would be undignified to complain of it.

When, followed by Lefever, he walked into the lobby of Tenison's hotel a few moments later the office was empty. Nevertheless, the news of the appearance of Sassoon's captor spread. The two sauntered into the billiard-hall, which occupied a deep room adjoining the office and opened with large plate-glass windows on Main Street. Every table was in use. A fringe of spectators in the chairs, ostensibly watching the pool games, turned their eyes toward de Spain—those that recognized him distinguishing him by nods and whispers to others.

Among several groups of men standing before the long bar, one party of four near the front end likewise engaged the interest of those keener loafers who were capable of foreseeing situations. These men, Satterlee Morgan, the cattleman; Bull Page, one of his cowboys; Sheriff Druel, and Judge Druel, his brother, had been drinking together. They did not see Lefever and his companion as the two came in through the rear lobby door. But Lefever, on catching sight of them, welcomed his opportunity. Walking directly forward, he laid his hand on Satt Morgan's shoulder. As the cattleman turned, Lefever, genially grasping his hand, introduced de Spain to each of the party in turn. What followed in the brief interval between the meeting of the six men and the sudden breaking up of the group a few moments later was never clearly known, but a fairly conclusive theory of it was afterward accepted by Sleepy Cat.

Morgan threw the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. "I heard," he said in a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, "you made a sunrise call on us one day last week."

"And I want to say," returned de Spain, equally amiable, "that if I had had any idea you folks would take it so hard—I mean, as an affront intended to any of you—I never would have gone into the Gap after Sassoon. I just assumed—making a mistake as I now realize—that my scrap would be with Sassoon, not with the Morgans."

Satt's face wrinkled into a humorous grin. "You sure kicked up some alkali."

De Spain nodded candidly. "More than I intended to. And I say—without any intention of impertinence to anybody else—Sassoon is a cur. I supposed when I brought him in here after so much riding, that we had sheriff enough to keep him." He looked at Druel with such composure that the latter for a moment was nonplussed. Then he discharged a volley of oaths, and demanded what de Spain meant. De Spain did not move. He refused to see the angry sheriff. "That is where I made my second mistake," he continued, speaking to Morgan and forcing his tone just enough to be heard. Druel, with more hard words, began to abuse the railroad for not paying taxes enough to build a decent jail. De Spain took another tack. He eyed the sheriff calmly as the latter continued to draw away and left de Spain standing somewhat apart from the rest of the group. "Then it may be I am making another mistake, Druel, in blaming you. It may not be your fault."

"The fault is, you're fresh," cried Druel, warming up as de Spain appeared to cool. The line of tipplers backed away from the bar. De Spain, stepping toward the sheriff, raised his hand in a friendly way. "Druel, you're hurting yourself by your talk. Make me your deputy again sometime," he concluded, "and I'll see that Sassoon stays where he is put."

"I'll just do that," cried Druel, with a very strong word, and he raised his hand in turn. "Next time you want him locked up, you can take care of him yourself."

The sharp crack of a rifle cut off the words; a bullet tore like a lightning-bolt across de Spain's neck, crashed through a mahogany pilaster back of the bar, and embedded itself in the wall. The shot had been aimed from the street for his head. The noisy room instantly hushed. Spectators sat glued to their chairs. White-faced players leaned motionless against the tables. De Spain alone had acted; all that the bartenders could ever remember after the single rifle-shot was seeing his hand go back as he whirled and shot instantly toward the heavy report. He had whipped out his gun and fired sidewise through the window at the sound.

That was all. The bartenders breathed and looked again. Men were crowding like mad through the back doors. De Spain, at the cigar case, looked intently into the rainy street, lighted from the corner by a dingy lamp. The four men near him had not stirred, but, startled and alert, the right hand of each covered the butt of a revolver. De Spain moved first. While the pool players jammed the back doors to escape, he spoke to, without looking at, the bartender. "What's the matter with your curtains?" he demanded, sheathing his revolver and pointing with an expletive to the big sheet of plate glass. "Is this the way you build up business for the house?"

Those close enough to the window saw that the bare pane had been cut, just above the middle, by two bullet-holes. Curious men examined both fractures when de Spain and Lefever had left the saloon. The first hole was the larger. It had been made by a high-powered rifle; the second was from a bullet of a Colt's revolver; it was remarked as a miracle of gun-play that the two were hardly an inch apart.

In the street a few minutes later, de Spain and Lefever encountered Scott, who, with his back hunched up, his cheap black hat pulled well down over his ears, his hands in his trousers pockets and his thin coat collar modestly turned against the drizzling rain, was walking across the parkway from the station.

"Sassoon is in town," exclaimed Lefever with certainty after he had told the story. He waited for the Indian's opinion. Scott, looking through the water dripping from the brim of his seasoned derby, gave it in one word. "Was," he amended with a quiet smile.

"Let's make sure," insisted Lefever. "Supposing he might be in town yet, Bob, where is he?"

Scott gazed up the street through the rain lighted by yellow lamps on the obscure corners, and looked down the street toward the black reaches of the river. "If he's here, you'll find him in one of two places. Tenison's——"

"But we've just come from Tenison's," objected Lefever.

"I mean, across the street, up-stairs; or at Jim Kitchen's barn. If he was hurried to get away," added Scott reflectively, "he would slip up-stairs over there as the nearest place to hide; if he had time he would make for the barn, where it would be easy to cache his rifle."

Lefever took the lapel of the scout's coat in his hand. "Then you, Bob, go out and see if you can get the whole story. I'll take the barn. Let Henry go over to Tenison's and wait at the head of the stairs till we can get back there. It is just around the corner—second floor—a dark hall running back, opposite the double doors that open into an anteroom. Stay there, Henry, till we come. It won't be long, and if we don't get track of him you may spot your man yourself."

De Spain found no difficulty in locating the flight of marble stairs that led to the gambling-rooms. It was the only lighted entrance in the side street. No light shone at the head of the stairs, but a doorway on the left opened into a dimly lighted anteroom and this, in turn, through a large arch, opened on a large room brilliantly lighted by chandeliers—one in the centre and one near each corner. Around three sides of this room were placed the keno layouts, roulette-wheels, faro-tables, and minor gambling devices. Off the casino itself small card-rooms opened.

The big room was well filled for a wet night. The faro-tables were busy, and at the central table at the farther end of the room—the table designated as Tenison's, because, at the rare intervals in which the proprietor dealt, he presided at this table—a group watched silently a game in progress. De Spain took a place in shadow near one side of the archway facing the street-door and at times looked within for the loosely jointed frame, crooked neck, tousled forehead, and malevolent face of the cattle thief. He could find in the many figures scattered about the room none resembling the one he sought.

A man entering the place spoke to another coming out. De Spain overheard the exchange. "Duke got rid of his steers yet?" asked the first.

"Not yet."

"Slow game."

"The old man sold quite a bunch this time. The way he's playing now he'll last twenty-four hours."

De Spain, following the newcomer, strolled into the room and, beginning at one side, proceeded in leisurely fashion from wheel to wheel and table to table inspecting the players. Few looked at him and none paid any attention to his presence. At Tenison's table he saw in the dealer's chair the large, white, smooth face, dark eyes, and clerical expression of the proprietor, whose presence meant a real game and explained the interest of the idlers crowded about one player whom de Spain, without getting closer in among the onlookers than he wanted to, could not see.

Tenison, as de Spain approached, happened to look wearily up; his face showed the set lines of a protracted session. He neither spoke nor nodded to the newcomer, but recognized him with a mere glance. Then, though his eyes had rested for only an instant on the new face, he spoke in an impassive tone across the intervening heads: "What happened to your red tie, Henry?"

De Spain put up his hand to his neck, and looked down at a loose end hanging from his soft cravat. It had been torn by the bullet meant for his head. He tucked the end inside his collar. "A Calabasas man tried to untie it a few minutes ago. He missed the knot."

Tenison did not hear the answer. He had reverted to his case. De Spain moved on and, after making the round of the scattered tables, walked again through the archway into the anteroom, only to meet, as she stood hesitating and apparently about to enter the room, Nan Morgan.



CHAPTER VIII

THE GAMBLING-ROOM

They confronted each other blankly. To Nan's confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress, fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her, fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.

This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up, furious. "What do you mean?" she exclaimed with indignation. "Let me pass."

The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to obstruct her. "You've made a mistake, I think," he said evenly.

"I have not," she replied with resentment. "Let me pass."

"I think you have. You don't know where you are going," he persisted, his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.

She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. "I know perfectly well where I am going," she retorted with heat.

"Then you know," he returned steadily, "that you've no business to enter such a place."

His opposition seemed only to anger her. "I know where I have business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter. You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!"

His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her resolve. "One question," he said, ignoring her angry words. "Have you ever been in these rooms before?"

He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it was only to collect herself. "Yes," she answered, looking up unflinchingly.

Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his interference, but he met her once more quietly. "I am sorry to hear it," he rejoined. "But that won't make any difference. You can't go in to-night."

"I will go in," she cried.

"No," he returned slowly, "you are not going in—not, at least, while I am here."

They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination. She resented every word he offered. "You are most insolent," she exclaimed. "You are interfering in something that is no concern of yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don't stand aside I'll call for help."

"Nan!" De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. "We met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth. Did I do it?"

"I don't care what you said or what you did——"

"Answer me," he said sharply, "did I tell you the truth?"

"I don't know or care——"

"Yes, you do know——"

"What you say or do——"

"I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if you like."

She looked at him with amazement. She seemed about to speak—to make another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again, put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward the stairs. De Spain followed her. "Let me take you to where you are going?"

Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single, scornful, furious word: "No!" She quickened her step from him in such confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: "Now, who the deuce was that?"

De Spain ignored his question by asking another: "Did you find him?" Lefever shook his head. "Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?"

"Nobody we want."

"Nothing going on?"

"Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I'll run over to the office and answer those telegrams."

De Spain started for the stairs. "Henry," called Lefever, as his companion trotted hastily down, "if you catch up to her, kindly apologize for a fat man."

But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street he ran into Scott. "Did you get the story?" demanded de Spain.

"Part of it."

"Was it Sassoon?"

Scott shook his head. "I wish it was."

"What do you mean?"

"Deaf Sandusky."

"Calabasas?"

Scott nodded. "You must have moved a couple of inches at the right nick, Henry. That man Sandusky," Bob smiled a sickly smile, "doesn't miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all around you."

The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. "Why," asked de Spain, boiling a little, "should that damned, hulking brute try to blow my head off just now?"

"Only for the good of the order, Henry," grinned the scout.

"Nice job Jeff has picked out for me," muttered de Spain grimly, "standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at." He drew in a good breath and threw up the wet brim of his hat. "Well, such is life in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage to get me—or I'll manage to get him—that all depends on how the happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it's bad luck to miss a man. We'll hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow John calls the butcher?" demanded de Spain.

"That's what everybody calls him, I guess."

The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the big room in front of them.

Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. "We'll go in and look at him." He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. "Think twice, John," suggested the Indian. "If there's any trouble in a crowd like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is pretty sure to get hurt."

"I don't mean to start anything," explained Lefever. "I only want de Spain to look at him."

But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players, together with the onlookers, and the dealer—whose tumbled hair fell partly over the visor that protected his eyes from the glare of the overhead light—made up the group. The table stood next to that of Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light, still held to his chair.

Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the size and extreme length of the outlaw's hand. He had heard of Sandusky's hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again the length of the hand of the average man.

De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of Sandusky's dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained now that de Spain perceived Sandusky's small, hard, brown eyes were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse, straw-colored hair—plastered recently over the forehead by a barber—the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand, the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin, and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky's brown shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass button.

At Sandusky's side sat his crony in all important undertakings—a much smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes. Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: "I am looking at you."

Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. "What are you looking at me for?" demanded Logan insolently.

De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry. "So I'll know you next time."

Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned his legs from under the table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so—comprehension dawning on him—his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott's hand rested heavily on him. "What's the row?" demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man. Logan pointed at de Spain. "That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight."

"With a man, Logan; not with a cub," retorted de Spain, matching insult with insult.

"Maybe I can do something for you," interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about lifting his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the best weapon. "If I can," he added stiffly, "I'm at your service."

De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky's eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last, since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged, and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.

Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.



CHAPTER IX

A CUP OF COFFEE

He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for reflection—indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.

But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang, failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan Morgan's eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit, by a glance, a word, a gesture—a mere turn of her head. There was in the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to please her—yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent on entering a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night. Association with outlaws—what might it not do for even such a girl? While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail, hoping to catch a sight of her.

On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to Nan if it were she. In another moment his ear told him there were two horses approaching. He waited for the couple to cross the bridge, and they passed him so close he could almost have touched the nearer rider. Then he realized, as the horse passing beside him shied, that it was Sandusky and Logan riding silently by.

For a week de Spain spent most of his time in Sleepy Cat trying to catch sight of Nan. His reflection on the untoward incidents that had set them at variance left him rebellious. He meditated more about putting himself right with her than about all his remaining concerns together. A strange fire had seized him—that fire of the imagination which scorns fair words and fine reasoning, but which, smothered, burns in secret until, fanned by the wind of accident, it bursts out the more fiercely because of the depths in which it has smouldered.

Every day that de Spain rode across the open country, his eyes turned to the far range and to Music Mountain. The rounded, distant, immutable peak—majestic as the sun, cold as the stars, shrouding in its unknown fastnesses the mysteries of the ages and the secrets of time—meant to him now only this mountain girl whom its solitude sheltered and to whom his thoughts continually came back.

Within two weeks he became desperate. He rode the Gap trail from Sleepy Cat again and again for miles and miles in the effort to encounter her. He came to know every ridge and hollow on it, every patch and stone between the lava beds and the Rat River. And in spite of the counsels of his associates, who warned him to beware of traps, he spent, under one pretext or another, much of the time either on the stages to and from Calabasas or in the saddle toward Morgan's Gap, looking for Nan.

Killing time in this way, after a fruitless ride, his persistence was one day most unexpectedly rewarded at the Calabasas barns. He had ridden through a hot sun from Sleepy Cat, passing the up stage half-way to Calabasas, and had struck from there directly out on the Sinks toward Morgan's Gap. Riding thence around the lower lava beds, he had headed for Calabasas, where he had an appointment to meet Scott and Lefever at five o'clock. When de Spain reached the Calabasas barn, McAlpin, the barn boss, was standing in the doorway. "You'd never be comin' from Sleepy Cat in the saddle!" exclaimed McAlpin incredulously. De Spain nodded affirmatively as he dismounted. "Hot ride, sir; a hot day," commented McAlpin, shaking his head dubiously as he called a man to take the horse, unstrapped de Spain's coat from the saddle, and followed the manager into the office.

The heat was oppressive, and de Spain unbuckled his cartridge-belt, slipped his revolver from the holster, mechanically stuck it inside his trousers waistband, hung the heavy belt up under his coat, and, sitting down, called for the stage report and asked whether the new blacksmith had sobered up. When McAlpin had given him all minor information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, was Nan Morgan's.

McAlpin, talking volubly, essayed to move on, but de Spain, stubbornly pausing, only continued to look at the handsome saddle-horse. McAlpin saw he was in for it, and resigned himself to an inquisition. When de Spain asked whose horse it was, McAlpin was ready. "That little pony is Nan Morgan's, sir."

De Spain made no comment. "Good-looking pony, sir," ventured McAlpin half-heartedly.

"What's it doing here?" demanded de Spain coldly.

Before answering, the barn boss eyed de Spain very carefully to see how the wind was setting, for the pony's presence confessed an infraction of a very particular rule. "You see," he began, cocking at his strict boss from below his visorless cap a questioning Scotch eye, "I like to keep on good terms with that gang. Some of them can be very ugly. It's better to be friends with them when you can—by stretching the barn rules a little once in a while—than to have enemies of 'em all the time—don't you think so, sir?"

"What's her horse doing here?" asked de Spain, without commenting on the long story, but also without showing, as far as the barnman could detect, any growing resentment at the infraction of his regulations.

McAlpin made even the most inconsequential approaches to a statement with a keen and questioning glance. "The girl went up to the Cat on the early stage, sir. She's coming back this afternoon."

"What is she riding away over here to Calabasas for to take the stage, instead of riding straight into Sleepy Cat?"

Once more McAlpin eyed him carefully. "The girl's been sick."

"Sick?"

"She ain't really fit to ride a step," confided the Scotch boss with growing confidence. "But she's been going up two or three times now to get some medicine from Doc Torpy—that's the way of it. There's a nice girl, sir—in a bunch o' ruffians, I know—though old Duke, she lives with, he ain't a half-bad man except for too many cards; I used to work for him—but I call her a nice girl. Do you happen to know her?"

De Spain had long been on guard. "I've spoken with her in a business way one or twice, Jim. I can't really say I know her."

"Nice girl. But that's a tough bunch in that Gap, sure as you're alive; yes, sir."

De Spain was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a hardy and enduring rider on a night round-up.

"Anything sick, Jim?" asked de Spain, walking on down the barn and looking at the horses. It was only the second time since he had given him the job that de Spain had called the barn boss "Jim," and McAlpin answered with the rising assurance of one who realizes he is "in" right. "Not so much as a sore hoof in either alley, Mr. de Spain. I try to take care of them, sir."

"What are we paying you, Jim?"

"Twenty-seven a week, sir; pretty heavy work at that."

"We'll try to make that thirty-two after this week."

McAlpin touched his cap. "Thank you kindly, sir, I'm sure. It costs like hell to live out here, Mr. de Spain."

"Lefever says you live off him at poker."

"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, sir! John will have his joke. He's always after me to play poker with him—I don't like to do it. I've got a family to support—he ain't. But by and far, I don't think John and me is ten dollars apart, year in and year out. Look at that bay, sir! A month ago Elpaso said that horse was all in—look at him now. I manage to keep things up."

"What did you say," asked de Spain indifferently, "had been the matter with Nan Morgan?" Her name seemed a whole mouthful to speak, so fearful was he of betraying interest.

"Why, I really didn't say, sir. And I don't know. But from what she says, and the way she coughs, I'm thinking it was a touch of this p-new-monia that's going around so much lately, sir."

His listener recalled swiftly the days that had passed since the night he had seen her wet through in the cold rain at Sleepy Cat. He feared Jim's diagnosis might be right. And he had already made all arrangements to meet the occasion now presenting itself. Circumstances seemed at last to favor him, and he looked at his watch. The down stage bringing Nan back would be due in less than an hour.

"Jim," he said thoughtfully, "you are doing the right thing in showing some good-will toward the Morgans."

"Now, I'm glad you think that, sir."

"You know I unintentionally rubbed their backs the wrong way in dragging Sassoon out."

"They're jealous of their power, I know—very jealous."

"This seems the chance to show that I have no real animosity myself toward the outfit."

Since de Spain was not looking at him, McAlpin cocked two keen and curious eyes on the sphinx-like birthmark of the very amiable speaker's face. However, the astute boss, if he wondered, made no comment. "When the stage comes in," continued de Spain quietly, "have the two grays—Lady and Ben—hitched to my own light Studebaker. I'll drive her over to the Gap myself."

"The very thing," exclaimed McAlpin, staring and struggling with his breath.

"In some way I've happened, both times I talked with her, to get in wrong—understand?" McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than once. "No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first take kindly to the idea of going with me."

"I see."

"But she ought to do it. She will be tired—it's a long, dusty ride for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill."

"So it is, so it is!"

De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid. "See that her pony is lame when she gets here—can't be ridden. But you'll take good care of him and send him home in a few days—get it?"

McAlpin half closed his eyes. "He'll be so lame it would stagger a cowboy to back him ten feet—and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust me!"

"No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?"

"No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River."

"If she insists on riding something, or even walking home," continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a peace-offering, "I'll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me here to-night, on the hay?"

"Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You've got a room right here up-stairs, didn't you know that?"

"Don't mind the bed," directed de Spain prudently. "I like the hay better."

"As you like; we've got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap. But the bed's all right, sir; it is, on me word."

With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his appeal for Nan's favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly faint in the heat and dust, when she arrived. He returned to McAlpin: "Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?"

"Go right down to the inn, sir. It's a new chap running it—a half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on. She'll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee."

It was four o'clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor the left.

As he approached the weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters and carvings.

De Spain pounded on the bar. His effort to attract attention met with no response. He walked to the left end of the bar, lifted the hand-rail that enclosed the space behind it, and pushed open the door between the mirrors leading to the back room. This, too, was empty. He called out—there was no response. He walked through a second door opening on an arcaded passageway toward the kitchen—not a soul was in sight. There was a low fire in the kitchen stove, but Mrs. McAlpin had apparently gone home for a while. Walking back toward the office, he remembered the covered way leading to a patio, which in turn opened on the main road. He perceived also that at the end next the office the covered way faced the window at the end of the long bar.

Irritated at the desertion of the place, due, he afterward learned, to the heat of the afternoon, and disappointed at the frustration of his purpose, he walked back through the rear room into the office. As he lifted the hand-rail and, passing through, lowered it behind him, he took out his watch to see how soon the stage was due. While he held the timepiece in his hand he heard a rapid clatter of hoofs approaching the place. Thinking it might be Scott and Lefever arriving from the south an hour ahead of time, he started toward the front door—which was still open—to greet them. Outside, hurried footsteps reached the door just ahead of him and a large man, stepping quickly into the room, confronted de Spain. One of the man's hands rested lightly on his right side. De Spain recognized him instantly; the small, drooping head, carried well forward, the keen eyes, the long hand, and, had there still been a question in his mind, the loud-patterned, shabby waistcoat would have proclaimed beyond doubt—Deaf Sandusky.



CHAPTER X

THE GLASS BUTTON

Even as the big fellow stepped lightly just inside and to the left—as de Spain stood—of the door and faced him, the encounter seemed to de Spain accidental. While Sandusky was not a man he would have chosen to meet at that time, he did not at first consider the incident an eventful one. But before he could speak, a second man appeared in the doorway, and this man appeared to be joking with a third, behind him. As the second man crossed the threshold, de Spain saw Sandusky's high-voiced little fighting crony, Logan, who now made way, as he stepped within to the right of the open door, for the swinging shoulders and rolling stride of Gale Morgan.

Morgan, eying de Spain with insolence, as was his wont, closed the door behind him with a bang. Then he backed his powerful frame significantly against it.

A blind man could have seen the completeness of the snare. An unpleasant feeling flashed across de Spain's perception. It was only for the immeasurable part of a second—while uncertainty was resolving itself into a rapid certainty. When Gale Morgan stepped into the room on the heels of his two Calabasas friends, de Spain would have sold for less than a cup of coffee all his chances for life. Nevertheless, before Morgan had set his back fairly against the door and the trap was sprung, de Spain had mapped his fight, and had already felt that, although he might not be the fortunate man, not more than one of the four within the room would be likely to leave it alive.

He did not retreat from where he halted at the instant Sandusky entered. His one slender chance was to hug to the men that meant to kill him. Morgan, the nearest, he esteemed the least dangerous of the three; but to think to escape both Sandusky and Logan at close quarters was, he knew, more than ought to be hoped for.

While Morgan was closing the door, de Spain smiled at his visitors: "That isn't necessary, Morgan: I'm not ready to run." Morgan only continued to stare at him. "I need hardly ask," added de Spain, "whether you fellows have business with me?"

He looked to Sandusky for a reply; it was Logan who answered in shrill falsetto: "No. We don't happen to have business that I know of. A friend of ours may have a little, maybe!" Logan, lifting his shoulders with his laugh, looked toward his companions for an answer to his joke.

De Spain's smile appeared unruffled: "You'll help him transact it, I suppose?"

Logan, looking again toward Sandusky, grinned: "He won't need any help."

"Who is your friend?" demanded de Spain good-naturedly. Logan's glance misled him; it did not refer to Sandusky. And even as he asked the question de Spain heard through the half-open window at the end of the bar the sound of hoofs. Hoping against hope for Lefever, the interruption cheered him. It certainly did not seem that his situation could be made worse.

"Well," answered Logan, talking again to his gallery of cronies, "we've got two or three friends that want to see you. They're waiting outside to see what you'll look like in about five minutes—ain't they, Gale?"

Some one was moving within the rear room. De Spain felt hope in every footfall he heard, and the mention this time of Morgan's name cleared his plan of battle. Before Gale, with an oath, could blurt out his answer, de Spain had resolved to fight where he stood, taking Logan first and Morgan as he should jump in between the two. It was at the best a hopeless venture against Sandusky's first shot, which de Spain knew was almost sure to reach a vital spot. But desperate men cannot be choosers.

"There's no time for seeing me like the present," declared de Spain, ignoring Morgan and addressing his words to Logan. "Bring your friends in. What are you complaining about, Morgan?" he asked, resenting the stream of abuse that Gale hurled at him whenever he could get a word in. "I had my turn at you with a rifle the other day. You've got your turn now. And I call it a pretty soft one, too—don't you, Sandusky?" he demanded suddenly of the big fellow.

Sandusky alone through the talk had kept an unbroken silence. He was eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did not know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it. What Sandusky was sensibly intent on was the determination that he should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of anybody's reputation. His eyes with this resolve shining in them rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain's question seemed to arouse him. "What's your name?" he demanded bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected in the strained tone.

"It's on the butt of my gun, Sandusky."

"What's that he says?" demanded the man known as the butcher, asking the question of Logan, but without taking his eyes off his shifty prey.

Logan raised his voice to repeat the words and to add a ribald comment.

"You make a good deal of noise," muttered Sandusky, speaking again to de Spain.

"That ought not to bother you much, Sandusky," shouted de Spain, trying to win a smile from his taciturn antagonist.

"His noise won't bother anybody much longer," put in Logan, whose retorts overflowed at every interval. But there was no smile even hinted at in the uncompromising vigilance of Sandusky's expressionless face. De Spain discounted the next few minutes far enough to feel that Sandusky's first shot would mean death to him, even if he could return it.

"I'll tell you, de Spain," continued Logan, "we're going to have a drink with you. Then we're going to prepare you for going back where you come from—with nice flowers."

"I guess you thought you could come out here and run over everybody in the Spanish Sinks," interposed Morgan, with every oath he could summon to load his words.

"Keep out, Morgan," exclaimed Logan testily. "I'll do this talking."

De Spain continued to banter. "Gentlemen," he said, addressing the three together and realizing that every moment wasted before the shooting added a grain of hope, "I am ready to drink when you are."

"He's ready to drink, Tom," roared Morgan in the deaf man's ear.

"I'm ready," announced Sandusky in hollow voice.

Still regarding de Spain with the most businesslike expression, the grizzled outlaw took a guarded step forward, his companions following suit. De Spain, always with a jealous regard for the relative distance between him and his self-appointed executioners, moved backward. In crossing the room, Sandusky, without objection from his companions, moved across their front, and when the four lined up at the bar their positions had changed. De Spain stood at the extreme left, Sandusky next, Logan beside him, and Gale Morgan, at the other end of the line, pretended to pound the bar for service. De Spain, following mountain etiquette in the circumstances, spread his open hands, palms down, on the bar. Sandusky's great palms slid in the same fashion over the checked slab in unspoken recognition of the brief armistice. Logan's hands came up in turn, and Morgan still pounded for some one to serve.

De Spain in the new disposition weighed his chances as being both better and worse. They had put Sandusky's first shot at no more than an arm's length from his prey, with Logan next to cover the possibility of the big fellow's failing to paralyze de Spain the first instant. On the other hand, de Spain, trained in the tactics of Whispering Smith and Medicine Bend gunmen, welcomed a short-arm struggle with the worst of his assailants closest at hand. One factor, too, that he realized they were reckoning with, gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure on Morgan's impatience. Logan looked again at his two companions and laughed.

Every hope de Spain had of possible help from the back room died with that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the scar-featured face of Sassoon peered cautiously from the gloom. The horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at the railroad man.

If it were possible to deepen it, the sinister spot on de Spain's face darkened. Something in his blood raged at the sight of the malevolent face. He glanced at Logan. "This," he smiled faintly, nodding toward Sassoon as he himself took a short step farther to the left, "is your drink, Harvey, is it?"

"No," retorted Logan loudly, "this is your drink."

"I'll take Sassoon," assented de Spain, good-natured again and shifting still another step to the left. "What do you fellows want now?"

"We want to punch a hole through that strawberry," said Logan, "that beauty-mark. Where did you get it, de Spain?"

"I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey," returned de Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might crowd him closer. "I was born with my beauty-mark—just as you were born with your damned bad manners," he added composedly, for in hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. "You can't help it, neither can I," he went on. "Somebody is bound to pay for putting that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk about either? Sassoon, set out for your friends—or I will. Spread, gentlemen, spread."

He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended, and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and saw only within his field of vision, a cut-glass button that fastened the bottom of Sandusky's greased waistcoat.

"You've waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de Spain," cried Logan shrilly. "You've turned one trick too many on the Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain't in this room, you'll never get him."

"Which means, I take it, you're going to try to get me," smiled de Spain.

"No," bellowed Morgan, "it means we have got you."

"You are fooling yourself, Harvey." De Spain addressed the warning to Logan. "And you, too, Sandusky," he added.

"We'll take care of that," grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence.

"You are jumping into another man's fight," protested de Spain steadily.

"Sassoon's fight is our fight," interrupted Morgan.

"I advise you," said de Spain once more, looking with the words at Sandusky and his crony, "to keep out of it."

"Sandusky," yelled Logan to his partner, "he advises me and you to keep out of this fight," he shrilly laughed.

"Sure," assented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes on de Spain.

Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sassoon, and pointed contemptuously toward the end of the bar. "Shike!" he cried, "step through the rail and take that man's gun."

De Spain, looking from one to the other of the four faces confronting him, laughed for the first time. But he was looking without seeing what he seemed to look at. In reality, he saw only a cut-glass button. He was face to face with taking a man's life or surrendering his own, and he knew the life must be taken in such a way as instantly to disable its possessor. These men had chosen their time and place. There was nothing for it but to meet them. Sassoon was stepping toward him, though very doubtfully. De Spain laughed again, dryly this time. "Go slow, Sassoon," he said. "That gun is loaded."

"If you want terms, hand over your gun to Sassoon," cried Logan.

"Not till it's empty," returned de Spain. "Do you want to try taking it?" he demanded of Logan, his cheeks burning a little darker.



Logan never answered the question. It was not meant to be answered. For de Spain asked it only to cover the spring he made at that instant into Sandusky's middle. Catlike though it was, the feint did not take the big fellow unprepared. He had heard once, when or where he could not tell, but he had never forgotten the hint, that de Spain, a boxer, was as quick with his feet as with his hands. The outlaw whirled. Both men shot from the hip; the reports cracked together. One bullet grazing the fancy button smashed through the gaudy waistcoat: the other, as de Spain's free hand struck at the muzzle of the big man's gun, tore into de Spain's foot. Sandusky, convulsed by the frightful shock, staggered against de Spain's arm, the latter dancing tight against him. Logan, alive to the trick but caught behind his partner, fired over Sandusky's right shoulder at de Spain's head, flattened sidewise against the gasping outlaw's breast. Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder into Logan's face. Logan, sinking to the floor, never moved again. Supporting with extraordinary strength the unwieldy bulk of the dying butcher, de Spain managed to steady him as a buffer against Morgan's fire until he could send a slug over Sandusky's head at the instant the latter collapsed. Morgan fell against the bar.

Sandusky's weight dragged de Spain down. For an instant the four men sprawled in a heap. Sassoon, who had not yet got an effective shot across at his agile enemy, dropping his revolver, dodged under the rail to close. De Spain, struggling to free himself from the dying man, saw, through a mist, the greenish eyes and the thirsty knife. He fired from the floor. The bullet shook without stopping his enemy, and de Spain, partly caught under Sandusky's body, thought, as Sassoon came on, the game was up. With an effort born of desperation, he dragged himself from under the twitching giant, freed his revolver, rolled away, and, with his sight swimming, swung the gun at Sassoon's stomach. He meant to kill him. The bullet whirled the white-faced man to one side and he dropped, but pulled himself, full of fight, to his knees and, knife in hand, panted forward. De Spain rolling hastily from him, staggered to his feet and, running in as Sassoon tried to strike, beat him senseless with the butt of his gun.

His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window, smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sassoon's horse trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he threw himself like a sack across the horse's back, lashed the brute through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly away.



CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE STORM

It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen, after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals, dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the darkness told of a pace forced for some hours.

"Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe," suggested the heavier of the two men guardedly to the taller one.

"Does this man know you?" muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe, stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his breast.

"Pedro knows me," returned Lefever, the other man, "but McAlpin says there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to the same gang—coiners, I believe, every one of them. They work here and push in Texas."

"Can you spot the room when you get up-stairs, where we saw that streak of light a minute ago?" demanded Pardaloe, gazing at the black front of the building.

"I can spot every foot of the place, up-stairs and down, in the dark," declared Lefever, peering through the inky night at the ruinous pile.

Instead of meeting de Spain, as appointed, Lefever had come in from the Thief River stage with Scott three hours late only to learn of the fight at the Inn and de Spain's disappearance. Jeffries had already sent a party, of whom Pardaloe, a man of Farrell Kennedy's from Medicine Bend, had been picked up as one, down from Sleepy Cat, to look for the missing man, and for hours the search had gone forward.

"Suppose you go back to the barn," suggested Pardaloe, "and wait there while I go in and have a little talk with the landlord."

"Why, yes, Pardaloe. That's an idea," assented Lefever feebly. Then he laid the first two fingers of his fat right hand on the lapel of his companion's coat: "Where should you like your body sent?" he asked in feigned confidence. "Concerning these little details, it's just as well to know your wishes now."

"You don't suppose this boob will try to fight, do you, when he knows Jeffries will burn the shack over his head if another railroad man is attacked in it?" demanded Pardaloe.

"The most ruinous habit I have had in life—and first and last I have contracted many—has been, trusting other people," observed Lefever. "A man shouldn't trust anybody—not even himself. We can burn the boob's shack down—of course: but if you go in there alone the ensuing blaze would be of no particular interest to you."

"All right. We go in together."

"Not exactly that, either. You go first. Few of these forty-four bullets will go through two men at once."

Ignoring Lefever's pleasantry, Pardaloe, pulling his hat brim through force of habit well over his eyes, shook himself loose and, like a big cat walking in water, stepped toward the door. He could move his tall, bony frame, seemingly covered only with muscles and sinews, so silently that in the dark he made no more sound than a spectre. But once before the door, with Lefever close at hand, he pounded the cracked panels till the windows shook. Some time elapsed before there was any response. The pounding continued till a flickering light appeared at a window. There was an ill-natured colloquy, a delay, more impatience, and at length the landlord reluctantly opened the door.

He held in his hand an oil-lamp. The chimney had been smoked in such a way that the light of the flame was thrown forward and not back. Lefever in the background, nothing disturbed, threw a flash-light back at the half-dressed innkeeper. His hair was tumbled sleepily across his forehead and his eyes—one showing a white scar across the pupil—set deep in retreating orbits, blinked under heavy brows. "What do you want?" he demanded. Pardaloe, without answering, pushed through the half-open door into the room.

"We're staying here to-night," announced Pardaloe, as simply as possible. Lefever had already edged into the doorway, pushing the stubborn innkeeper aside by sheer bulk of weight and size.

The sleepy man gave ground stubbornly. "I've got no beds," he growled surlily. "You can't stay here."

Lefever at once assumed the case for the intruders. "I could sleep this minute standing on my head," he declared. "And as for staying here, I can't stay anywhere else. What's your name, son?" he demanded, buttonholing in his off-hand way the protesting man.

"My name is Philippi," answered the one-eyed defiantly.

"Regards to Brutus, my dear fellow," retorted Lefever, seizing the man's hand as if happily surprised.

"You can't crowd in here, so you might as well move on," declared Philippi gruffly. "This is no hotel."

Lefever laughed. "No offense, Philippi, but would it be indiscreet to ask which side of your face hurts the most when you smile?"

"If you've got no beds, we won't bother you long," interposed Pardaloe.

"I'd like a pitcher of ice-water, anyway," persisted Lefever. "Sit down, noble Greek; we'll talk this over."

"Who are you fellows?" demanded Philippi, looking from one to the other.

"I am a prospector from the Purgatoire," answered Pardaloe.

Philippi turned his keen eye on Lefever. "You a railroad man?"

"No, sir," declared Lefever, dusting the alkali vigorously from his coat sleeve.

"What are you?"

John looked as modest as it was possible for him to look. "Few people ask me that, but in matter of fact I am an objet d'art."

"What's that?"

"Different things at different times to different men, Philippi," answered Lefever simply, exploring, while he spoke, different corners of the room with his flash-light. "At this moment—" he stopped suddenly, then resumed reassuringly—"I want a drink."

"Nothing doing," muttered the landlord sulkily.

Lefever's flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. "Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?" he demanded, walking significantly toward the vender's authority.

"Nothing in the house to-night."

"Then," announced Lefever calmly, "I arrest you."

Philippi started. "Arrest me?"

"For obtaining a thirst under false pretenses. Come, now, before we slip the irons on, get us something to eat. I'll go up-stairs and pick out a room to sleep in."

"I tell you," insisted Philippi profanely, "there are no rooms for you to sleep in up-stairs."

"And I," retorted Lefever, "tell you there are. Anyway, I left a sewing-machine up-stairs here three years ago, and promised to keep it oiled for the lady. This is a good time to begin."

With Lefever making the old steps creak, ahead, and Pardaloe, with his long, soft, pigeon-toed tread close behind, the unwilling landlord was taken up the stairs, and the two men thoroughly searched the house. Lefever lowered his voice when the hunt began through the bedrooms—few of which contained even a bed—but he kept up a running fire of talk that gave Philippi no respite from anxiety.

Outside the kitchen quarters, which likewise were rigorously searched, not a soul could be found in the house. One room only, over the kitchen, gave hope of uncovering something. The party reached the door of this room through a narrow, tortuous passageway along an attic gable. The door was locked. Philippi told them it belonged to a sheep-herder who did not use it often. He protested he had no key. Pardaloe knocked and, getting no response, tried unsuccessfully to force the lock. Lefever motioned him aside and, after knocking loudly on the door himself, laid his shoulder against it. The door creaked and sprung in crazy protest. The panels cracked, the stubborn frame gave, and with a violent crash Lefever pushed completely through the locked barrier and threw his flash-light inside. Pardaloe, urging the unwilling Philippi ahead, followed.

The room, unfinished under the rafters, was destitute of furnishings, and bore traces of long disuse. Stretched on the floor toward the middle of it, and side by side, lay two men. One of them was very large, the other not more than half his companion's size. Lefever kneeling over the man nearest the door listened for signs of breathing, and laid his head to the man's heart. Having completed his examination, he went around to the other—Pardaloe and Philippi silently watching—and looked him over with equal care. When he had done, he examined, superficially, the wounds of each man. Rising, he turned toward Philippi. "Were these men dead when you brought them up here?"

"I didn't bring 'em up," growled Philippi.

"You know them, Pardaloe?" asked Lefever. Pardaloe answered that he did. Lefever turned sharply on Philippi. "Where were you when this fight was going on?"

"Down at the stage barn."

"Getting your alibi ready. But, of course, you know that won't let you out, Philippi. Your best chance is to tell the truth. There were two others with this pair—where are Gale Morgan and Sassoon?"

"Satt Morgan was here with hay to-day. He took them over this evening to Music Mountain."

"Where were they hit?"

"Morgan was hit in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sassoon was hit in the side, and in the neck."

"Where is de Spain?"

"Dead, I reckon, by this time."

"Where's his body?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you think he is dead?"

"Sassoon said he was hit in the head."

"Yet he got away on horseback!"

"I'm telling you what Sassoon said; I didn't see him."

Lefever and Pardaloe rode back to the stage barn. "Certainly looks blue for Henry," muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. "Bob Scott," he added gloomily, "may find him somewhere on the Sinks."

At Sleepy Cat, Jeffries, wild with impatience, was on the telephone. Lefever, with McAlpin and Pardaloe standing at his side, reported to the superintendent all he could learn. "He rode away—without help, of course," explained Lefever to Jeffries in conclusion. "What shape he is in, it's pretty hard to say, Jeffries. Three more of the bunch, Vance Morgan, Bull Page, and a lame man that works for Bill Morgan, were waiting in the saddle at the head of the draw between the barn and the hotel for him if he should get away from the inn. Somehow, he went the other way and nobody saw hide nor hair of him, so far as I can learn. If he was able to make it, Jeff, he would naturally try for Sleepy Cat. But that's a pretty fair ride for a sound man, let alone a man that's hit—and everybody claims he was hit. If he wasn't hit he should have been in Sleepy Cat long before this. You say you've had men out across the river?"

"Since dark," responded Jeffries. "But, John," he asked, "could a man hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a get-away?"

"Henry might," answered Lefever laconically.

Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o'clock after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken place, they followed de Spain's jump through the broken sash into the patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy's country, but there was no gainsaying the trail—occasional flecks of blood blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led—not as the trailers hoped they would, in a wide detour across easy-riding country toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road—but farther and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man's land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.

Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head as he leaned over the pony's shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast of him. "It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind of riding."

Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain's revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain was no longer guiding Sassoon's pony; it was wandering at will.

Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had come almost completely about and headed again for Music Mountain. Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan's Gap and were practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.

"Here's a go," muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.

"Remember," interposed Scott mildly, "he is riding Sassoon's horse—the brute is naturally heading for home."

"Follow him home, then," said Lefever unhesitatingly.

Scott looked at his companion in surprise: "Near home, you mean, John," he suggested inoffensively. "For three of us to ride into the Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don't think the excitement would last long—for us."

The three were agreed, however, to follow up to the mouth of the Gap itself and did follow. Finding no trace of de Spain's movements in this quest, they rode separately in wide circles to the north and south, but without picking up a hoof-print that led anywhere or gave them any clew to the whereabouts of the missing man.

"There is one consolation," muttered Lefever, as they held to what each felt to be an almost hopeless search. "As long as Henry can stick to a saddle he can shoot—and the Morgans after yesterday afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find him."

Scott shook his head: "That brings us up against another proposition, John. De Spain hasn't got any cartridges."

Lefever turned sharply: "What do you mean?"

"His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat."

"Why didn't you tell me that before," demanded Lefever indignantly.

"I've been hoping all the time we'd find Henry and I wouldn't have to tell you."

In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scott's information was disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.

For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, badly wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information halted.

Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgan's stable, Sassoon's horse—the one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight, waiting at Sassoon's corral to be cared for. There could be, it was fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing rider.

Though Scott had known first of de Spain's helpless condition in his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the midst of a gloomy council at Jeffries's office, he was pressed for an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But, Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation of the faith that was in him. "In the first place," he said, "I've ridden a good deal with that man—pretty much all over the country north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nut's full of meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself. Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here, they don't. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk that's floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a mark here one day in Sleepy Cat."

Jeffries didn't interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.

"You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot into it, and expect to live to tell it," continued Scott mildly, "as to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man, without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at that, John, the man that fires the gun," murmured the scout, "ought to be behind a tree.

"You say he is hit. I grant it," he concluded. "But I knew him once when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a scrimmage outside Williams Cache two years ago."

"You don't believe, then, he's dead, Bob?" demanded Jeffries impatiently.

"Not till I see him dead," persisted Scott unmoved.



CHAPTER XII

ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN

De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon's saddle, was losing sight and consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.

The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained—flight, and he spurred his horse cruelly.

Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite beyond his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his infuriated horse flew along as if winged.

A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead. He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible between himself and more of the Morgans.