The old man—in the mountains a man is called old after he passes forty—was heavy, and the fall a serious one. He picked himself up while the men were recovering his horse, knocked the horse over with a piece of jagged rock when the frightened beast was brought back, climbed into the saddle again, and rode all the way into town.

But when his business was done, Duke, too, was done. He could neither sit a horse, nor sit in a wagon. Doctor Torpy, after an examination, told him he was booked for the hospital. A stream of profane protest made no difference with his adviser, and, after many threats and hard words, to the hospital the hard-shelled mountaineer was taken. Sleepy Cat was stirred at the news, and that the man who had defied everybody in the mountains for twenty years should have been laid low and sent to the hospital by a mere bronco was the topic of many comments.

The men that had driven the cattle with Duke, having been paid off, were now past getting home, and there were no telephones in the Gap. De Spain, who was at Calabasas, knew Nan would not be alarmed should her uncle not return that night. But early in the morning a messenger from McAlpin rode to her with a note, telling her of the accident.

Whatever his vices, Duke had been a good protector to his dead brother's child. He had sent her to good schools and tried to revive in her, despite her untoward surroundings, the better traditions of the family as it had once flourished in Kentucky. Nan took the saddle for Sleepy Cat in haste and alarm. When she reached her uncle's bedside she understood how seriously he had been hurt, and the doctor's warnings were not needed to convince her he must have care.

Duke refused to let her leave him, in any case, and Nan relieved the nurse, and what was of equal moment, made herself custodian of the cash in hand before Duke's town companions could get hold of it. Occasional trips to the Gap were necessary as the weeks passed and her uncle could not be moved. These Nan had feared as threatening an encounter either by accident, or on his part designed, with de Spain. But the impending encounter never took place. De Spain, attending closely to his own business, managed to keep accurate track of her whereabouts without getting in her way. She had come to Sleepy Cat dreading to meet him and fearing his influence over her, but this apprehension, with the passing of a curiously brief period, dissolved into a confidence in her ability to withstand further interference, on any one's part, with her feelings.

Gale Morgan rode into town frequently, and Nan at first painfully apprehended hearing some time of a deadly duel between her truculent Gap admirer and her persistent town courtier—who was more considerate and better-mannered, but no less dogged and, in fact, a good deal more difficult to handle.

As to the boisterous mountain-man, his resolute little cousin made no secret of her detestation of him. She denied and defied him as openly as a girl could and heard his threats with continued indifference. She was quite alone, too, in her fear of any fatal meeting between the two men who seemed determined to pursue her.

The truth was that after Calabasas, de Spain, from Thief River to Sleepy Cat, was a marked man. None sought to cross his path or his purposes. Every one agreed he would yet be killed, but not the hardiest of the men left to attack him cared to undertake the job themselves. The streets of the towns and the trails of the mountains were free as the wind to de Spain. And neither the town haunts of Calabasas men nor those of their Morgan Gap sympathizers had any champion disposed to follow too closely the alert Medicine Bend railroader.

In and about the hospital, and in the town itself, Nan found the chief obstacle to her peace of mind in the talk she could not always avoid hearing about de Spain. Convalescents in the corridors, practically all of them men, never gathered in sunny corners or at the tables in the dining-room without de Spain's name coming in some way into the talk, to be followed with varying circumstantial accounts of what really had happened that day at Calabasas.

And with all the known escapades in which he had figured, exhausted as topics, by long-winded commentators, more or less hazy stories of his earlier experiences at Medicine Bend in the company of Whispering Smith were dragged into the talk. One convalescent stage-guard at the hospital told a story one night at supper about him that chilled Nan again with strange fears, for she knew it to be true. He had had it from McAlpin himself, so the guard said, that de Spain's father had long ago been shot down from ambush by a cattleman and that Henry de Spain had sworn to find that man and kill him. And it was hinted pretty strongly that de Spain had information when he consented to come to Sleepy Cat that the assassin still lived, and lived somewhere around the head of the Sinks.

That night, Nan dreamed. She dreamed of a sinister mark on a face that she had never before seen—a face going into bronzed young manhood with quick brown eyes looking eagerly at her. And before her wondering look it faded, dreamlike, into a soft mist, and where it had been, a man lay, lifting himself on one arm from the ground—his sleeve tattered, his collar torn, his eyes half-living, half-dead, his hair clotted, his lips stiffened and distended, his face drawn. And all of this dissolved into an image of de Spain on horseback, sudden, alert, threatening, looking through the mist at an enemy. Then Nan heard the sharp report of a rifle and saw him whirl half around—struck—in his saddle, and fall. But he fell into her arms, and she woke sobbing violently.

She was upset for the whole day, moody and apprehensive, with a premonition that she should soon see de Spain—and, perhaps, hurt again. The dream unnerved her every time she thought of him. That evening the doctor came late. When he walked in he asked her if she knew it was Frontier Day, and reminded her that just a year ago she had shot against Henry de Spain and beaten the most dangerous man and the deadliest shot on the mountain divide in her rifle match. How he had grown in the imagination of Sleepy Cat and Music Mountain, she said to herself—while the doctor talked to her uncle—since that day a year ago! Then he was no more than an unknown and discomfited marksman from Medicine Bend, beaten by a mountain girl: now the most talked-of man in the high country. And the suspicion would sometimes obtrude itself with pride into her mind, that she who never mentioned his name when it was discussed before her, really knew and understood him better than any of those that talked so much—that she had at least one great secret with him alone.

When leaving, the doctor wished to send over from his office medicine for her uncle. Nan offered to go with him, but the doctor said it was pretty late and Main Street pretty noisy: he preferred to find a messenger.

Nan was sitting in the sick-room a little later—B-19 in the old wing of the hospital, facing the mountains—when there came a rap on the half-open door. She went forward to take the medicine from the messenger and saw, standing before her in the hall, de Spain.

She shrank back as if struck. She tried to speak. Her tongue refused its office. De Spain held a package out in his hand. "Doctor Torpy asked me to give you this."

"Doctor Torpy? What is it?"

"I really don't know—I suppose it is medicine." She heard her uncle turn in his bed at the sound of voices. Thinking only that he must not at any cost see de Spain, Nan stepped quickly into the hall and faced the messenger. "I was over at the doctor's office just now," continued her visitor evenly, "he asked me to bring this down for your uncle." She took the package with an incoherent acknowledgment. Without letting her eyes meet his, she was conscious of how fresh and clean and strong he looked, dressed in a livelier manner than usual—a partly cowboy effect, with a broader Stetson and a gayer tie than he ordinarily affected. De Spain kept on speaking: "The telephone girl in the office down-stairs told me to come right up. How is your uncle?"

She regarded him wonderingly: "He has a good deal of pain," she answered quietly.

"Too bad he should have been hurt in such a way. Are you pretty well, Nan?" She thanked him.

"Have you got over being mad at me?" he asked.

"No," she averred resolutely.

"I'm glad you're not," he returned, "I'm not over being mad at myself. Haven't seen you for a long time. Stay here a good deal, do you?"

"All the time."

"I'll bet you don't know what day this is?"

Nan looked up the corridor, but she answered to the point: "You'd lose."

"It's our anniversary." She darted a look of indignant disclaimer at him. But in doing so she met his eyes. "Have you seen the decorations in Main Street?" he asked indifferently. "Come out for a minute and look at them."

She shook her head: "I don't care to," she answered, looking restlessly, this time, down the corridor.

"Come to the door just a minute and see the way they've lighted the arches." She knew just the expression of his eyes that went with that tone. She looked vexedly at him to confirm her suspicion. Sure enough there in the brown part and in the lids, it was, the most troublesome possible kind of an expression—hard to be resolute against. Her eyes fell away, but some damage had been done. He did not say another word. None seemed necessary. He just kept still and something—no one could have said just what—seemed to talk for him to poor defenseless Nan. She hesitated helplessly: "I can't leave uncle," she objected at last.

"Ask him to come along."

Her eyes fluttered about the dimly lighted hall: de Spain gazed on her as steadily as a charmer. "I ought not to leave even for a minute," she protested weakly.

"I'll stay here at the door while you go."

Irresolute, she let her eyes rest again for a fraction of a second on his eyes; when she drew a breath after that pause everything was over. "I'd better give him his medicine first," she said, looking toward the sick-room door.

His monosyllabic answer was calm: "Do." Then as she laid her hand on the knob of the door to enter the room: "Can I help any?"

"Oh, no!" she cried indignantly.

He laughed silently: "I'll stay here."

Nan disappeared. Lounging against the window-sill opposite the door, he waited. After a long time the door was stealthily reopened. Nan tiptoed out. She closed it softly behind her: "I waited for him to go to sleep," she explained as she started down the corridor with de Spain. "He's had so much pain to-day: I hope he will sleep."

"I hope so, too," exclaimed de Spain fervently.

Nan ignored the implication. She looked straight ahead. She had nothing to say. De Spain, walking beside her, devoured her with his eyes; listened to her footfalls; tried to make talk; but Nan was silent.

Standing on the wide veranda outside the front door, she assented to the beauty of the distant illumination but not enthusiastically. De Spain declared it could be seen very much better from the street below. Nan thought she could see very well where they stood. But by this time she was answering questions—dryly, it is true and in monosyllables, but answering. De Spain leading the way a step or two forward at a time, coaxed her down the driveway.

She stood again irresolute, he drinking in the fragrance of her presence after the long separation and playing her reluctance guardedly. "Do you know," she exclaimed with sudden resentment, "you make it awfully hard to be mean to you?"

With a laugh he caught her hand and made her walk down the hospital steps. "You may be as mean as you like," he answered indifferently. "Only, never ask me to be mean to you."

"I wish to heaven you would be," she retorted.

"Do you remember," he asked, "what we were doing a year ago to-day?"

"No." Before he could speak again she changed her answer: "Yes, I do remember. If I said 'no' you'd be sure to remind me of what we were doing. We can't see as well here as we could from the steps."

"But from here, you have the best view in Sleepy Cat of Music Mountain."

"We didn't come out here to see Music Mountain."

"I come here often to look at it. You won't let me see you—what can I do but look at where you live? How long are you going to keep me away from you?"

Nan did not answer. He urged her to speak. "You know very well it is my people that will never be friendly with you," she replied. "How can I be?"

They were passing a lawn settee. He sat down. She would not follow. She stood in a sort of protest at his side, but he did not release her hand. "I'll tell you how you can be," he returned. "Make me one of your people."

"That never can be," she declared stubbornly. "You know it as well as I do. Why do you say such things?" she demanded, drawing away her hand.

"Do you want to know?"

"No."

"It's because I love you."

She strove to command herself: "Whether you do or not can't make any difference," she returned steadily. "We are separated by everything. There's a gulf between us. It never can be crossed. We should both of us be wretched if it ever were crossed."

He had risen from the bench and caught her hand: "It's because we haven't crossed it we're wretched," he said determinedly. "Cross it with me now!" He caught her in his arms. She struggled to escape. She knew what was coming and fought to keep her face from him. With resistless strength and yet carefully as a mother with an obstinate child, he held her slight body against his breast, relentlessly drawing her head closer. "Let me go!" she panted, twisting her averted head from the hollow of his arm. Drinking in the wine of her frightened breath, he bent over her in the darkness until his pulsing eagerness linked her warm lips to his own. She had surrendered to his first kiss.

He spoke. "The gulf's crossed. Are you so awfully wretched?"

They sank together down on the bench. "What," she faltered, "will become of me now?"

"You are better off now than you ever were, Nan. You've gained this moment a big brother, a lover you can drag around the world after you with a piece of thread."

"You act as if I could!"

"I mean it: it's true. I'm pledged to you forever—you, to me, forever. We'll keep our secret till we can manage things; and we will manage them. Everything will come right, Nan, because everything must come right."

"I only hope you are not wrong," she murmured, her eyes turned toward the sombre mountains.



CHAPTER XIX

DANGER

With never such apprehension, never such stealth, never so heavy a secret, so sensible a burning in cheek and eye, as when she tiptoed into her uncle's room at midnight, Nan's heart beat as the wings of a bird beat from the broken door of a cage into a forbidden sky of happiness. She had left the room a girl; she came back to it a woman.

Sleep she did not expect or even ask for; the night was all too short to think of those tense, fearful moments that had pledged her to her lover. When the anxieties of her situation overwhelmed her, as they would again and again, she felt herself in the arms of this strange, resolute man whom all her own hated and whom she knew she already loved beyond all power to put away. In her heart, she had tried this more than once: she knew she could not, would not ever do it, or even try to do it, again.

She rejoiced in his love. She trusted. When he spoke she believed this man whom no one around her would believe; and she, who never had believed what other men avowed, and who detested their avowals, believed de Spain, and secretly, guiltily, glowed in every word of his devotion and breathed faint in its every caress.

Night could hardly come fast enough, after the next long day. A hundred times during that day she reminded herself, while the slow, majestic sun shone simmering on the hot desert, that she had promised to steal out into the grounds the minute darkness fell—he would be waiting. A hundred times in the long afternoon, Nan looked into the cloudless western sky and with puny eager hands would have pushed the lagging orb on its course that she might sooner give herself into the arms where she felt her place so sure, her honor so safe, her helplessness so protected, herself so loved.

How her cheeks burned after supper when she asked her uncle for leave to post a letter down-town! How breathless with apprehension she halted as de Spain stepped from the shadow of the trees and drew her importunately beneath them for the kiss that had burned on her troubled lips all day! How, girl-like, knowing his caresses were all her own—knowing she could at an instant call forth enough to smother her—she tyrannized his importuning and, like a lovely miser, hoarded her responsiveness under calm eyes and laconic whispers until, when she did give back his eagerness, she made his senses reel.

How dreamily she listened to every word he let fall in his outpouring of devotion; how gravely she put up her hand to restrain his busy intrusion, and asked if he knew that no man in the world, least of all her fierce and burly cousin, had ever touched her lips until he himself forced a kiss on them the night before: "And now!" She hid her face against his shoulder. "Oh, Henry, how I love you! I'm so ashamed, I couldn't tell you if it weren't night: I'll never look you in the face again in the daytime."

And when he told her how little he himself had had to do with, and how little he knew about girls, even from boyhood, how she feigned not to believe, and believed him still! They were two children raised in the magic of an hour to the supreme height of life and dizzy together on its summit.

"I don't see how you can care for me, Henry. Oh, I mean it," she protested, holding her head resolutely up. "You know who we are, away off there in the mountains. Every one hates us; I suppose they've plenty of reason to: we hate everybody else. And why shouldn't we? We're at war with every one. You know, better than I do, what goes on in the Gap. I don't want to know; I try not to know; Uncle Duke tries to keep things from me. When you began to act—as if you cared for me—that day on Music—I couldn't believe you meant it at all. And yet—I'm afraid I liked to try to think you did. When you looked at me I felt as if you could see right through me."

Confidences never came to an end.

And diplomacy came into its own almost at once in de Spain's efforts to improve his relations with the implacable Duke. The day came when Nan's uncle could be taken home. De Spain sent to him a soft-spoken emissary, Bob Scott, offering to provide a light stage, with his compliments, for the trip. The intractable mountaineer, with his refusal to accept the olive-branch, blew Bob out of the room. Nan was crushed by the result, but de Spain was not to be dismayed.

Lefever came to him the day after Nan had got her uncle home. "Henry," he began without any preliminaries, "there is one thing about your precipitate ride up Music Mountain that I never got clear in my mind. After the fight, your cartridge-belt was hanging up in the barn at Calabasas for two weeks. You walked in to us that morning with your belt buckled on. You told us you put it on before you came up-stairs. What? Oh, yes, I know, Henry. But that belt wasn't hanging down-stairs with your coat earlier in the evening. No, Henry: it wasn't, not when I looked. Don't tell me such things, because—I don't know. Where was the belt when you found it?"

"Some distance from the coat, John. I admit that. I'll tell you: some one had moved the belt. It was not where I left it. I was hurried the morning I rode in and I can't tell you just where I found it."

Lefever never batted an eyelash. "I know you can't, Henry. Because you won't. That Scotch hybrid McAlpin knows a few things, too, that he won't tell. All I want to say is, you can trust that man too far. He's got all my recent salary. Every time Jeffries raises my pay that hairy-pawed horse-doctor reduces it just so much a month. And he does it with one pack of fifty-two small cards that you could stick into your vest pocket."

"McAlpin has a wife and children to support," suggested de Spain.

"Don't think for a moment he does it," returned Lefever vehemently. "I support his wife and children, myself."

"You shouldn't play cards, John."

"It was by playing cards that I located Sassoon, just the same. A little game with your friend Bull Page, by the way. And say, that man blew into Calabasas one day here lately with a twenty-dollar bill; it's a fact. Now, where do you suppose he got twenty dollars in one bill? I know I had it two hours after he got there and then in fifteen minutes that blamed bull-whacker you pay thirty-two a week to took it away from me. But I got Sassoon spotted. And where do you suppose Split-lips is this minute?"

"Morgan's Gap."

"Quite so—and been there all the time. Now, Bob has the old warrant for him: the question is, how to get him out."

De Spain reflected a moment before replying: "John, I'd let him alone just for the present," he said at length.

Lefever's eyes bulged: "Let Sassoon alone?"

"He will keep—for a while, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want to stir things up too strong over that way just at the minute, John."

"Why not?"

De Spain shuffled a little: "Well, Jeffries thinks we might let things rest till Duke Morgan and the others get over some of their soreness."

Lefever, astonished at the indifference of de Spain to the opportunity of nabbing Sassoon, while he could be found, expostulated strongly. When de Spain persisted, Lefever, huffed, confided to Bob Scott that when the general manager got ready he could catch Sassoon himself.

De Spain wanted for Nan's sake, as well as his own, to see what could be done to pacify her uncle and his relatives so that a wedge might be driven in between them and their notorious henchman, and Sassoon brought to book with their consent; on this point, however, he was not quite bold-faced enough to take his friends into his confidence.

De Spain, as fiery a lover as he was a fighter, stayed none of his courting because circumstances put Music Mountain between him and his mistress. And Nan, after she had once surrendered, was nothing behind in the chances she unhesitatingly took to arrange her meetings with de Spain. He found in her, once her girlish timidity was overcome and a woman's confidence had replaced it, a disregard of consequences, so far as their own plans were concerned, that sometimes took away his breath.

The very day after she had got her uncle home, with the aid of Satterlee Morgan and an antiquated spring wagon, Nan rode, later in the afternoon, over to Calabasas. The two that would not be restrained had made their appointment at the lower lava beds half-way between the Gap and Calabasas. The sun was sinking behind the mountain when de Spain galloped out of the rocks as Nan turned from the trail and rode toward the black and weather-beaten meeting-place.

They could hardly slip from their saddles fast enough to reach each other's arms—Nan, trim as a model in fresh khaki, trying with a handkerchief hardly larger than a postage-stamp to wipe the flecks of dust from her pink cheeks, while de Spain, between dabs, covered them with importunate greetings. Looking engrossed into each other's eyes, and both, in their eagerness, talking at once, they led their horses into hiding and sat down to try to tell all that had happened since their parting. Wars and rumors of wars, feuds and raidings, fights and pursuits were no more to them than to babes in the woods. All that mattered to them—sitting or pacing together and absorbed, in the path of the long-cold volcanic stream buried in the shifting sands of the desert—was that they should clasp each other's clinging hands, listen each to the other's answering voice, look unrestrained into each other's questioning eyes.

They met in both the lava beds—the upper lay between the Gap and town—more than once. And one day came a scare. They were sitting on a little ledge well up in the rocks where de Spain could overlook the trail east and west, and were talking about a bungalow some day to be in Sleepy Cat, when they saw men riding from the west toward Calabasas. There were three in the party, one lagging well behind. The two men leading, Nan and de Spain made out to be Gale Morgan and Page. They saw the man coming on behind stop his horse and lean forward, his head bent over the trail. He was examining the sand and halted quite a minute to study something. Both knew what he was studying—the hoof-prints of Nan's pony heading toward the lava. Nan shrank back and with de Spain moved a little to where they could watch the intruder without being seen. Nan whispered first: "It's Sassoon." De Spain nodded. "What shall we do?" breathed Nan.

"Nothing yet," returned her lover, watching the horseman, whose eyes were still fixed on the pony's trail, but who was now less than a half mile away and riding straight toward them.

De Spain, his eyes on the danger and his hand laid behind Nan's waist, led the way guardedly down to where their horses stood. Nan, needing no instructions for the emergency, took the lines of the horses, and de Spain, standing beside his own horse, reached his right hand over in front of the pommel and, regarding Sassoon all the while, drew his rifle slowly from its scabbard. The blood fled Nan's cheeks. She said nothing. Without looking at her, de Spain drew her own rifle from her horse's side, passed it into her hand and, moving over in front of the horses, laid his left hand reassuringly on her waist again. At that moment, little knowing what eyes were on him in the black fragments ahead, Sassoon looked up. Then he rode more slowly forward. The color returned to Nan's cheeks: "Do you want me to use this?" she murmured, indicating the rifle.

"Certainly not. But if the others turn back, I may need it. Stay right here with the horses. He will lose the trail in a minute now. When he reaches the rock I'll go down and keep him from getting off his horse—he won't fight from the saddle."

But with an instinct better than knowledge, Sassoon, like a wolf scenting danger, stopped again. He scanned the broken and forbidding hump in front, now less than a quarter of a mile from him, questioningly. His eyes seemed to rove inquisitively over the lava pile as if asking why a Morgan Gap pony had visited it. In another moment he wheeled his horse and spurred rapidly after his companions.

The two drew a deep breath. De Spain laughed: "What we don't know, never hurts us." He drew Nan to him. Holding the rifle muzzle at arm's length as the butt rested on the ground, she looked up from the shoulder to which she was drawn: "What should you have done if he had come?"

"Taken you to the Gap and then taken him to Sleepy Cat, where he belongs."

"But, Henry, suppose——"

"There wouldn't have been any 'suppose.'"

"Suppose the others had come."

"With one rifle, here, a man could stand off a regiment. Nan, do you know, you fit into my arm as if you were made for it?"

His courage was contagious. When he had tired her with fresh importunities he unpinned her felt hat and held it out of reach while he kissed and toyed with and disarranged her hair. In revenge, she snatched from his pocket his little black memorandum-book and some letters and read, or pretended to read them, and seizing her opportunity she broke from him and ran with the utmost fleetness up into the rocks.

In two minutes they had forgotten the episode almost as completely as if it never had been. But when they left for home, they agreed they would not meet there again. They knew that Sassoon, like a jackal, would surely come back, and more than once, until he found out just what that trail or any subsequent trail leading into the beds meant. The lovers laughed the jackal's spying to scorn and rode away, bantering, racing, and chasing each other in the saddle, as solely concerned in their happiness as if there were nothing else of moment in the whole wide world.



CHAPTER XX

FACING THE MUSIC

They had not underestimated the danger from Sassoon's suspicious malevolence. He returned next morning to read what further he could among the rocks. It was little, but it spelled a meeting of two people—Nan and another—and he was stimulated to keep his eyes and ears open for further discoveries. Moreover, continuing ease in seeing each other, undetected by hostile eyes, gradually rendered the lovers less cautious in their arrangements. The one thing that possessed their energies was to be together.

De Spain, naturally reckless, had won in Nan a girl hardly more concerned. Self-reliant, both of them, and instinctively vigilant, they spent so much time together that Scott and Lefever, who, before a fortnight had passed after Duke's return home, surmised that de Spain must be carrying on some sort of a clandestine affair hinting toward the Gap, only questioned how long it would be before something happened, and only hoped it would not be, in their own word, unpleasant. It was not theirs in any case to admonish de Spain, nor to dog the movements of so capable a friend even when his safety was concerned, so long as he preferred to keep his own counsel—there are limits within which no man welcomes uninvited assistance. And de Spain, in his long and frequent rides, his protracted absences, indifference to the details of business and careless humor, had evidently passed within these limits.

What was stage traffic to him compared to the sunshine on Nan's hair; what attraction had schedules to offer against a moment of her eyes; what pleasing connection could there be between bad-order wheels and her low laugh?

The two felt they must meet to discuss their constant perplexities and the problems of their difficult situation; but when they reached their trysting-places, there was more of gayety than gravity, more of nonchalance than concern, more of looking into each other's hearts than looking into the troublesome future. And there was hardly an inviting spot within miles of Music Mountain that one or the other of the two had not waited near.

There were, of course, disappointments, but there were only a few failures in their arrangements. The difficulties of these fell chiefly on Nan. How she overcame them was a source of surprise to de Spain, who marvelled at her innocent resource in escaping the demands at home and making her way, despite an array of obstacles, to his distant impatience.

Midway between Music Mountain and Sleepy Cat a low-lying wall of lava rock, in part sand-covered and in part exposed, parallels and sometimes crosses the principal trail. This undulating ridge was a favorite with de Spain and Nan, because they could ride in and out of hiding-places without more than just leaving the trail itself. To the west of this ridge, and commanding it, rose rather more than a mile away the cone called Black Cap.

"Suppose," said Nan one afternoon, looking from de Spain's side toward the mountains, "some one should be spying on us from Black Cap?" She pointed to the solitary rock.

"If any one has been, Nan, with a good glass he must have seen exchanges of confidence over here that would make him gnash his teeth. I know if I ever saw anything like it I'd go hang. But the country around there is too rough for a horse. Nobody even hides around Black Cap, except some tramp hold-up man that's crowded in his get-away. Bob Scott says there are dozens of mountain-lions over there."

But Sassoon had the unpleasant patience of a mountain-lion and its dogged persistence, and, hiding himself on Black Cap, he made certain one day of what he had long been convinced—that Nan was meeting de Spain.

The day after she had mentioned Black Cap to her lover, Nan rode over to Calabasas to get a bridle mended. Galloping back, she encountered Sassoon just inside the Gap. Nan so detested him that she never spoke when she could avoid it. On his part he pretended not to see her as she passed. When she reached home she found her Uncle Duke and Gale standing in front of the fireplace in the living-room. The two appeared from their manner to have been in a heated discussion, one that had stopped suddenly on her appearance. Both looked at Nan. The expression on their faces forewarned her. She threw her quirt on the table, drew off her riding-gloves, and began to unpin her hat; but she knew a storm was impending.

Gale had been made for a long time to know that he was an unwelcome visitor, and Nan's greeting of him was the merest contemptuous nod. "Well, uncle," she said, glancing at Duke, "I'm late again. Have you had supper?"

Duke always spoke curtly; to-night his heavy voice was as sharp as an axe. "Been late a good deal lately."

Nan laid her hat on the table and, glancing composedly from one suspicious face to the other, put her hands up to rearrange her hair. "I'm going to try to do better. I'll go out and get my supper if you've had yours." She started toward the dining-room.

"Hold on!" Nan paused at her uncle's ferocious command. She looked at him either really or feignedly surprised, her expression changing to one of indignation, and waited for him to speak. Since he did no more than glare angrily at her, Nan lifted her brows a little. "What do you want, uncle?"

"Where did you go this afternoon?"

"Over to Calabasas," she answered innocently.

"Who'd you meet there?" Duke's tone snapped with anger. He was working himself into a fury, but Nan saw it must be faced. "The same people I usually meet—why?"

"Did you meet Henry de Spain there this afternoon?"

Nan looked squarely at her cousin and returned his triumphant expression defiantly before she turned her eyes on her uncle. "No," she said collectedly. "Why?"

"Do you deny it?" he thundered.

"Yes, I deny it. Why?"

"Did you see de Spain at Calabasas this afternoon?"

"No."

"See him anywhere else?"

"No, I did not. What do you mean? What," demanded his niece with spirit, "do you want to know? What are you trying to find out?"

Duke turned in his rage on Gale. "There! You hear that—what have you got to say now?" he demanded with an abusive oath.

Gale, who had been hardly able to refrain from breaking in, answered fast. "What have I got to say?" he roared. "I say I know what I'm talking about. I say she's lying, Duke."

Nan's face turned white with anger. Before she could speak her uncle took up the words. "Hold on," he shouted. "Don't tell me she lies." He launched another hot expletive. "I know she doesn't lie!"

Gale jumped forward, his finger pointed at Nan. "Look here, do you deny you are meeting Henry de Spain all over the desert?"

Nan's anger supported her without a tremor. "Who are you to ask me whom I meet or don't meet?"

"You've been meeting de Spain right along, haven't you? You met him down the Sleepy Cat trail near Black Cap, didn't you?"

Nan stood with her back against the end of the table where her uncle's first words had stopped her, and she looked sidewise toward her cousin. In her answer he heard as much contempt as a girl's voice could carry to a rejected lover. "So you've turned sneak!"

Gale roared a string of bad words.

"You hire that coyote, Sassoon, to spy for you, do you?" demanded Nan coolly. "Aren't you proud of your manly relation, uncle?" Duke was choking with rage. He tried to speak to her, but he could not form his words. "What is it you want to know, uncle? Whether it is true that I meet Henry de Spain? It is. I do meet him, and we're engaged to be married when you give us permission, Uncle Duke—and not till then."

"There you have it," cried Gale. "There's the story. I told you so. I've known it for a week, I tell you." Nan's face set. "Not only," continued her cousin jeeringly, "meeting that——"

Almost before the vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll horsewhip you. Go to Henry de Spain's face, you skulker, and say that if you dare."

"Put down that quirt, Nan," yelled her uncle.

"I won't put it down," she exclaimed defiantly. "And he will get a good lashing with it if he says one more word about Henry de Spain."

"Put down that quirt, I tell you," thundered her uncle.

She whirled. "I won't put it down. This hulking bully! I know him better than you do." She pointed a quivering finger at her cousin. "He insulted me as vilely as he could only a few months ago on Music Mountain. And if this very same Henry de Spain hadn't happened to be there to protect me, you would have found me dead next morning by my own hand. Do you understand?" she cried, panting and furious. "That's what he is!"

Her uncle tried to break in. "Stop!" she exclaimed, pointing at Gale. "He never told you that, did he?"

"No; nor you neither," snapped Duke hoarsely.

"I didn't tell you," retorted Nan, "because I've been trying to live with you here in peace among these thieves and cutthroats, and not keep you stirred up all the time. And Henry de Spain faced this big coward and protected me from him with an empty revolver! What business of yours is it whom I meet, or where I go?" she demanded, raining her words with flaming eyes on her belligerent cousin. "I will never marry you to save you from the hangman. Now leave this house." She stamped her foot. "Leave this house, and never come into it again!"

Gale, beside himself with rage, stood his ground. He poured all that he safely could of abuse on Nan's own head. She had appeased her wrath and made no attempt to retort, only looking at him with white face and burning eyes as she breathed defiance. Duke interfered. "Get out!" he said to Gale harshly. "I'll talk to her. Go home!"

Not ceasing to mutter threats, Gale picked up his hat and stamped out of the house, slamming the doors. Duke, exhausted by the quarrel, sat down, eying his niece. "Now what does this mean?" he demanded hoarsely.

She tried to tell him honestly and frankly all that her acquaintance with de Spain did mean—dwelling no more than was necessary on its beginning, but concealing nothing of its development and consequences, nothing of her love for de Spain, nor of his for her. But no part of what she could say on any point she urged softened her uncle's face. His square hard jaw from beginning to end looked like stone.

"So he's your lover?" he said harshly when she had done.

"He wants to be your friend," returned Nan, determined not to give up.

Duke looked at her uncompromisingly: "That man can't ever be any friend of mine—understand that! He can't ever marry you. If he ever tries to, so help me God, I'll kill him if I hang for it. I know his game. I know what he wants. He doesn't care a pinch of snuff about you. He thinks he can hit me a blow by getting you away from me."

"Nothing could be further from the truth," exclaimed Nan hopelessly.

Duke struck the table a smashing blow with his fist. "I'll show Mr. de Spain and his friends where they get off."

"Uncle Duke, if you won't listen to reason, you must listen to sense. Think of what a position you put me in. I love you for all your care of me. I love him for his affection for me and consideration of me—because he knows how to treat a woman. I know he wouldn't harm a hair on your head, for my sake, yet you talk now of bloodshed between you two. I know what your words mean—that one of you, or both of you are to be killed for a senseless feud. He will not stand up and let any man shoot him down without resistance. If you lay your blood on his head, you know it would put a stain between him and me that never could be washed out as long as we lived. If you kill him I could never stay here with you. His blood would cry out every day and night against you."

Duke's violent finger shot out at her. "And you're the gal I took from your mammy and promised I'd bring up a decent woman. You've got none o' her blood in you—not a drop. You're the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding the tobacco-beds."

Nan clasped her hands. "Don't blame me because I'm your brother's child. Blame me because I'm a woman, because I have a heart, because I want to live and see you live, and to see you live in peace instead of what we do live in—suspicion, distrust, feuds, alarms, and worse. I'm not ungrateful, as you plainly say I am. I want you to get out of what you are in here—I want to be out of it. I'd rather be dead now than to live and die in it. And what is this anger all for? Nothing. He offers you his friendship—" She could speak no further. Her uncle with a curse left her alone. When she arose in the early morning he had already gone away.



CHAPTER XXI

A TRY OUT

Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.

De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home—justly apprehensive of his intentions—made frantic efforts to get word to de Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph—a publicity that she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach him at Medicine Bend.

As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke's efforts to get track of de Spain. Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his inquiries—and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its anticipation was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated, without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.

Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day—wild for a scrap of news, yet dreading one—she saddled her pony and rode alone into Sleepy Cat after nightfall to meet the train on which de Spain had told her he would return from the east. She rode straight to the hospital, instead of going to the livery-barn, and leaving her horse, got supper and walked by way of unfrequented streets down-town to the station to wait for the train.

Never had she felt so miserable, so helpless, so forsaken, so alone. With the thought of her nearest relative, the man who had been a father to her and provided a home for her as long as she could remember, seeking to kill him whose devotion had given her all the happiness she had ever known, and whose safety meant her only pledge of happiness for the future—her heart sank.

When the big train drew slowly, almost noiselessly, in, Nan took her place where no incoming passenger could escape her gaze and waited for de Spain. Scanning eagerly the figures of the men that walked up the long platform and approached the station exit, the fear that she should not see him battled with the hope that he would still appear. But when all the arrivals had been accounted for, he had not come.

She turned, heavy-hearted, to walk back uptown, trying to think of whom she might seek some information concerning de Spain's whereabouts, when her eye fell on a man standing not ten feet away at the door of the baggage-room. He was alone and seemed to be watching the changing of the engines, but Nan thought she knew him by sight. The rather long, straight, black hair under the broad-brimmed Stetson hat marked the man known and hated in the Gap as "the Indian." Here, she said to herself, was a chance. De Spain, she recalled, spoke of no one oftener than this man. He seemed wholly disengaged.

Repressing her nervous timidity, Nan walked over to him. "Aren't you Mr. Scott?" she asked abruptly.

Scott, turning to her, touched his hat as if quite unaware until that moment of her existence. "Did Mr. de Spain get off this train?" she asked, as Scott acknowledged his identity.

"I didn't see him. I guess he didn't come to-night." Nan noticed the impassive manner of his speaking and the low, even tones. "I was kind of looking for him myself."

"Is there another train to-night he could come on?"

"I don't think he will be back now before to-morrow night."

Nan, much disappointed, looked up the line and down. "I rode in this afternoon from Music Mountain especially to see him." Scott, without commenting, smiled with understanding and encouragement, and Nan was so filled with anxiety that she welcomed a chance to talk to somebody. "I've often heard him speak of you," she ventured, searching the dark eyes, and watching the open, kindly smile characteristic of the man. Scott put his right hand out at his side. "I've ridden with that boy since he was so high."

"I know he thinks everything of you."

"I think a lot of him."

"You don't know me?" she said tentatively.

His answer concealed all that was necessary. "Not to speak to, no."

"I am Nan Morgan."

"I know your name pretty well," he explained; nothing seemed to disturb his smile.

"And I came in—because I was worried over something and wanted to see Mr. de Spain."

"He is buying horses north of Medicine Bend. The rain-storm yesterday likely kept him back some. I don't think you need worry much over anything though."

"I don't mean I am worrying about Mr. de Spain at Medicine Bend," disclaimed Nan with a trace of embarrassment.

"I know what you mean," smiled Bob Scott. She regarded him questioningly. He returned her gaze reassuringly as if he was confident of his ground. "Did your pony come along all right after you left the foot-hills this afternoon?"

Nan opened her eyes. "How did you know I came through the foot-hills?"

"I was over that way to-day." Something in the continuous smile enlightened her more than the word. "I noticed your pony went lame. You stopped to look at his foot."

"You were behind me," exclaimed Nan.

"I didn't see you," he countered prudently.

She seemed to fathom something from the expression of his face. "You couldn't have known I was coming in," she said quickly.

"No." He paused. Her eyes seemed to invite a further confidence. "But after you started it would be a pity if any harm came to you on the road."

"You knew Uncle Duke was in town?" Scott nodded. "Do you know why I came?"

"I made a guess at it. I don't think you need worry over anything."

"Has Uncle Duke been talking?"

"Your Uncle Duke doesn't talk much, you know. But he had to ask questions."

"Did you follow me down from the hospital to-night?"

"I was coming from my house after supper. I only kept close enough to you to be handy."

"Oh, I understand. And you are very kind. I don't know what to do now."

"Go back to the hospital for the night. I will send Henry de Spain up there just as soon as he comes to town."

"Suppose Uncle Duke sees him first."

"I'll see that he doesn't see him first."

"Where is Uncle Duke to-night, do you know?"

"Lefever says he is up-street somewhere."

"That means Tenison's," said Nan. "You need not be afraid to speak plainly, as I must. Uncle Duke is very angry—I am deathly afraid of their meeting."

Even de Spain himself, when he came back the next night, seemed hardly able to reassure her. Nan, who had stayed at the hospital, awaited him there, whither Scott had directed him, with her burden of anxiety still upon her. When she had told all her story, de Spain laughed at her fears. "I'll bring that man around, Nan, don't worry. Don't believe we shall ever fight. I may not be able to bring him around to-morrow, or next week, but I'll do it. It takes two to quarrel, you know."

"But you don't know how unreasoning Uncle Duke is when he is angry," said Nan mournfully. "He won't listen to anybody. He always would listen to me until now. Now, he says, I have gone back on him, and he doesn't care what happens. Think, Henry, where it would put me if either of you should kill the other. Henry, I've been thinking it all over for three days now. I see what must come. It will break both our hearts, I know, but they will be broken anyway. There is no way out, Henry—none."

"Nan, what do you mean?"

"You must give me up."

They were sitting in the hospital garden, he at her side on the bench that he called their bench. It was here he had made his unrebuked avowal—here, he had afterward told her, that he began to live. "Give you up," he echoed with gentleness. "How could I do that? You're like the morning for me, Nan. Without you there's no day; you're the kiss of the mountain wind and the light of the stars to me. Without the thought of you I'd sicken and faint in the saddle, I'd lose my way in the hills; without you there would be no to-morrow. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, if I think of you strength wells into my heart like a spring. I never could give you up."

He told her all would be well because it must be well; that she must trust him; that he would bring her safe through every danger and every storm, if she would only stick to him. And Nan, sobbing her fears one by one out on his breast, put her arms around his neck and whispered that for life or death, she would stick.

It was not hard for de Spain next morning to find Duke Morgan. He was anxious on Nan's account to meet him early. The difficulty was to meet him without the mob of hangers-on whose appetite had been whetted with the prospect of a death, and perhaps more than one, in the meeting of men whose supremacy with the gun had never been successfully disputed. It required all the diplomacy of Lefever to "pull off" a conference between the two which should not from the start be hopeless, because of a crowd of Duke's partisans whose presence would egg him on, in spite of everything, to a combat. But toward eleven o'clock in the morning, de Spain having been concealed like a circus performer every minute earlier, Duke Morgan was found, alone, in a barber's hands in the Mountain House. At the moment Duke left the revolving-chair and walked to the cigar stand to pay his check, de Spain entered the shop through the rear door opening from the hotel office.

Passing with an easy step the row of barbers lined up in waiting beside their chairs, de Spain walked straight down the open aisle, behind Morgan's back. While Duke bent over the case to select a cigar, de Spain, passing, placed himself at the mountain-man's side and between him and the street sunshine. It was taking an advantage, de Spain was well aware, but under the circumstances he thought himself entitled to a good light on Duke's eye.

De Spain wore an ordinary sack street suit, with no sign of a weapon about him; but none of those who considered themselves favored spectators of a long-awaited encounter felt any doubt as to his ability to put his hand on one at incomparably short notice. There was, however, no trace of hostility or suspicion in de Spain's greeting.

"Hello, Duke Morgan," he said frankly. Morgan looked around. His face hardened when he saw de Spain, and he involuntarily took a short step backward. De Spain, with his left hand lying carelessly on the cigar case, faced him. "I heard you wanted to see me," continued de Spain. "I want to see you. How's your back since you went home?"

Morgan eyed him with a mixture of suspicion and animosity. He took what was to him the most significant part of de Spain's greeting first and threw his response into words as short as words could be chopped: "What do you want to see me about?"

"Nothing unpleasant, I hope," returned de Spain. "Let's sit down a minute."

"Say what you got to say."

"Well, don't take my head off, Duke. I was sorry to hear you were hurt. And I've been trying to figure out how to make it easier for you to get to and from town while you are getting strong. Jeffries and I both feel there's been a lot of unnecessary hard feeling between the Morgans and the company, and we want to ask you to accept this to show some of it's ended." De Spain put his left hand into his side pocket and held out an unsealed envelope to Morgan. Duke, taking the envelope, eyed it distrustfully. "What's this?" he demanded, opening it and drawing out a card.

"Something for easier riding. An annual pass for you and one over the stage line between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat—with Mr. Jeffries's compliments."

Like a flash, Morgan tore the card pass in two and threw it angrily to the floor. "Tell 'Mr.' Jeffries," he exclaimed violently, "to——"

The man that chanced at that moment to be lying in the nearest chair slid quietly but imperiously out from under the razor and started with the barbers for the rear door, wiping the lather from one unshaven side of his face with a neck towel as he took his hasty way. At the back of the shop a fat man, sitting in a chair on the high, shoe-shining platform, while a negro boy polished him, rose at Morgan's imprecation and tried to step over the bootblack's head to the floor below. The boy, trying to get out of the way, jumped back, and the fat man fell, or pretended to fall, over him—for it might be seen that the man, despite his size, had lighted like a cat on his feet and was instantly half-way up to the front of the shop, exclaiming profanely but collectedly at the lad's awkwardness, before de Spain had had time to reply to the insult.

The noise and confusion of the incident were considerable. Morgan was too old a fighter to look behind him at a critical moment. No man could say he had meant to draw when he stamped the card underfoot, but de Spain read it in his eye and knew that Lefever's sudden diversion at the rear had made him hesitate; the crisis passed like a flash. "Sorry you feel that way, Duke," returned de Spain, undisturbed. "It is a courtesy we were glad to extend. And I want to speak to you about Nan, too."

Morgan's face was livid. "What about her?"

"She has given me permission to ask your consent to our marriage," said de Spain, "sometime in the reasonable future."

It was difficult for Duke to speak at all, he was so infuriated. "You can get my consent in just one way," he managed to say, "that's by getting me."

"Then I'm afraid I'll never get it, for I'll never 'get' you, Duke."

A torrent of oaths fell from Morgan's cracked lips. He tried to tell de Spain in his fury that he knew all about his underhanded work, he called him more than one hard name, made no secret of his deadly enmity, and challenged him to end their differences then and there.

De Spain did not move. His left hand again lay on the cigar case. "Duke," he said, when his antagonist had exhausted his vituperation, "I wouldn't fight you, anyway. You're crazy angry at me for no reason on earth. If you'll give me just one good reason for feeling the way you do toward me, and the way you've always acted toward me since I came up to this country, I'll fight you."

"Pull your gun," cried Morgan with an imprecation.

"I won't do it. You call me a coward. Ask these boys here in the shop whether they agree with you on that. You might as well call me an isosceles triangle. You're just crazy sore at me when I want to be friends with you. Instead of pulling my gun, Duke, I'll lay it out on the case, here, to show you that all I ask of you is to talk reason." De Spain, reaching with his left hand under the lapel of his coat, took a Colt's revolver from its breast harness and laid it, the muzzle toward himself, on the plate-glass top of the cigar stand. It reduced him to the necessity of a spring into Morgan for the smallest chance for his life if Morgan should draw; but de Spain was a desperate gambler in such matters even at twenty-eight, and he laid his wagers on what he could read in another's eye.

"There's more reasons than one why I shouldn't fight you," he said evenly. "Duke, you're old enough to be my father—do you realize that? What's the good of our shooting each other up?" he asked, ignoring Morgan's furious interruptions. "Who's to look after Nan when you go—as you must, before very many years? Have you ever asked yourself that? Do you want to leave her to that pack of wolves in the Gap? You know, just as well as I do, the Gap is no place for a high-bred, fine-grained girl like Nan Morgan. But the Gap is your home, and you've done right to keep her under your roof and under your eye. Do you think I'd like to pull a trigger on a man that's been a father to Nan? Damnation, Duke, could you expect me to do it, willingly? Nan is a queen. The best in the world isn't good enough for her—I'm not good enough, I know that. She's dear to you, she is dear to me. If you really want to see me try to use a gun, send me a man that will insult or abuse her. If you want to use your own gun, use it on me if I ever insult or abuse her—is that fair?"

"Damn your fine words," exclaimed Morgan slowly and implacably. "They don't pull any wool over my eyes. I know you, de Spain—I know your breed——"

"What's that?"

Morgan checked himself at that tone. "You can't sneak into my affairs any deeper," he cried. "Keep away from my blood! I know how to take care of my own. I'll do it. So help me God, if you ever take any one of my kin away from me—it'll be over my dead body!" He ended with a bitter oath and a final taunt: "Is that fair?"

"No," retorted de Spain good-naturedly, "it's not fair. And some day, Duke, you'll be the first to say so. You won't shake hands with me now, I know, so I'll go. But the day will come when you will."

He covered his revolver with his left hand, and replaced it under his coat. The fat man who had been leaning patiently against a barber's chair ten feet from the disputants, stepped forward again lightly as a cat. "Henry," he exclaimed, in a low but urgent tone, his hand extended, "just a minute. There's a long-distance telephone call on the wire for you." He pointed to the office door. "Take the first booth, Henry. Hello, Duke," he added, greeting Morgan with an extended hand, as de Spain walked back. "How are you making it, old man?"

Duke Morgan grunted.

"Sorry to interrupt your talk," continued Lefever. "But the barns at Calabasas are burning—telephone wires from there cut, too—they had to pick up the Thief River trunk line to get a message through. Makes it bad, doesn't it?" Lefever pulled a wry face. "Duke, there's somebody yet around Calabasas that needs hanging, isn't there? Yes."



CHAPTER XXII

GALE PERSISTS

When within an hour de Spain joined Nan, tense with suspense and anxiety, at the hospital, she tried hard to read his news in his face.

"Have you seen him?" she asked eagerly. De Spain nodded. "What does he say?"

"Nothing very reasonable."

Her face fell. "I knew he wouldn't. Tell me all about it, Henry—everything."

She listened keenly to each word. De Spain gave her a pretty accurate recital of the interview, and Nan's apprehension grew with her hearing of it.

"I knew it," she repeated with conviction. "I know him better than you know him. What shall we do?"

De Spain took both her hands. He held them against his breast and stood looking into her eyes. When he regarded her in such a way her doubts and fears seemed mean and trivial. He spoke only one word, but there was a world of confidence in his tone: "Stick."

She arched her brows as she returned his gaze, and with a little troubled laugh drew closer. "Stick, Nan," he repeated. "It will come out all right."

She paused a moment. "How can you know?"

"I know because it's got to. I talked it all over with my best friend in Medicine Bend, the other day."

"Who, Henry?"

"Whispering Smith. He laughed at your uncle's opposing us. He said if your uncle only knew it, it's the best thing that could happen for him. And he said if all the marriages opposed by old folks had been stopped, there wouldn't be young folks enough left to milk the cows."

"Henry, what is this report about the Calabasas barns burning?"

"The old Number One barn is gone and some of the old stages. We didn't lose any horses, and the other barns are all right. Some of our Calabasas or Gap friends, probably. No matter, we'll get them all rounded up after a while, Nan. Then, some fine day, we're going to get married."

De Spain rode that night to Calabasas to look into the story of the fire.

McAlpin, swathed in bandages, made no bones about accusing the common enemy. No witnesses could be found to throw any more light on the inquiry than the barn boss himself. And de Spain made only a pretense of a formal investigation. If he had had any doubts about the origin of the fire they would have been resolved by an anonymous scrawl, sent through the mail, promising more if he didn't get out of the country.

But instead of getting out of the country, de Spain continued as a matter of energetic policy to get into it. He rode the deserts stripped, so to say, for action and walked the streets of Sleepy Cat welcoming every chance to meet men from Music Mountain or the Sinks. It was on Nan that the real hardships of the situation fell, and Nan who had to bear them alone and almost unaided.

Duke came home a day or two later without a word for Nan concerning his encounter with de Spain. He was shorter in the grain than ever, crustier to every one than she had ever known him—and toward Nan herself fiercely resentful. Sassoon was in his company a great deal, and Nan knew of old that Sassoon was a bad symptom. Gale, too, came often, and the three were much together. In some way, Nan felt that she herself was in part the subject of their talks, but no information concerning them could she ever get.

One morning she sat on the porch sewing when Gale rode up. He asked for her uncle. Bonita told him Duke had gone to Calabasas. Gale announced he was bound for Calabasas himself, and dismounted near Nan, professedly to cinch his saddle. He fussed with the straps for a minute, trying to engage Nan in the interval, without success, in conversation. "Look here, Nan," he said at length, studiously amiable, "don't you think you're pretty hard on me, lately?"

"No, I don't," she answered. "If Uncle Duke didn't make me, I'd never look at you, or speak to you—or live in the same mountains with you."

"I don't think when a fellow cares for you as much as I do, and gets out of patience once in a while, just because he loves a girl the way a red-blooded man can't help loving her, she ought to hold it against him forever. Think she ought to, Nan?" he demanded after a pause. She was sewing and had kept silence.

"I think," she responded, showing her aversion in every syllable, "before a man begins to talk red-blood rot, he ought to find out whether the girl cares for him, or just loathes the sight of him."

He regarded her fixedly. Paying no attention to him, but bending in the sunshine over her sewing, her hand flying with the needle, her masses of brown hair sweeping back around her pink ears and curling in stray ringlets that the wind danced with while she worked, she inflamed her brawny cousin's ardor afresh. "You used to care for me, Nan. You can't deny that." Her silence was irritating. "Can you?" he demanded. "Come, put up your work and talk it out. I didn't use to have to coax you for a word and a smile. What's come over you?"

"Nothing has come over me, Gale. I did use to like you—when I first came back from school. You seemed so big and fine then, and were so nice to me. I did like you."

"Why didn't you keep on liking me?"

Nan made no answer. Her cousin persisted. "You used to talk about thinking the world of me," she said at last; "then I saw you one Frontier Day, riding around Sleepy Cat with a carriage full of women."

Gale burst into a huge laugh. Nan's face flushed. She bent over her work. "Oh, that's what's the matter with you, is it?" he demanded jocularly. "You never mentioned that before."

"That isn't the only thing," she continued after a pause.

"Why, that was just some Frontier Day fun, Nan. A man's got to be a little bit of a sport once in a while, hasn't he?"

"Not if he likes me." She spoke with an ominous distinctness, but under her breath. He caught her words and laughed again. "Pshaw, I didn't think you'd get jealous over a little thing like that, Nan. When there's a celebration on in town, everybody's friendly with everybody else. If you lay a little thing like that up against me, where would the rest of the men get off? Your strawberry-faced Medicine Bend friend is celebrating in town most of the time."

Her face turned white. "What a falsehood!" she exclaimed hotly. Looking at her, satisfied, he laughed whole-heartedly again. She rose, furious. "It's a falsehood," she repeated, "and I know it."

"I suppose," retorted Gale, regarding her jocosely, "you asked him about it."

He had never seen her so angry. She stamped her foot. "How dare you say such a thing! One of those women was at the hospital—she is there yet, and she is going to die there. She told Uncle Duke's nurse the men they knew, and whom they didn't know, at that place. And Henry de Spain, when he heard this miserable creature had been taken to the hospital, and Doctor Torpy said she could never get well, told the Sister to take care of her and send the bills to him, because he knew her father and mother in Medicine Bend and went to school with her there when she was a decent girl. Go and hear what she has to say about Henry de Spain, you contemptible falsifier."

Gale laughed sardonically. "That's right. I like to see a girl stick to her friends. De Spain ought to take care of her. Good story."

"And she has other good stories, too, you ought to hear," continued Nan undismayed. "Most of them about you and your fine friends in town. She told the nurse it's you who ought to be paying her bills till she dies."

Gale made a disclaiming face and a deprecating gesture. "No, no, Nan—let de Spain take care of his own. Be a sport yourself, girlie, right now." He stepped nearer her. Nan retreated. "Kiss and make up," he exclaimed with a laugh. But she knew he was angry, and knew what to guard against. Still laughing, he sprang toward her and tried to catch her arm.

"Don't touch me!" she cried, jumping away with her hand in her blouse.

"You little vixen," he exclaimed with an oath, "what have you got there?" But he halted at her gesture, and Nan, panting, stood her ground.

"Keep away!" she cried.

"Where did you get that knife?" thundered Gale.

"From one who showed me how to use it on a coward!"

He affected amusement and tried to pass the incident off as a joke. But his dissimulation was more dangerous, she knew, than his brutality, and he left her the prey to more than one alarm and the renewed resolve never to be taken off her guard. That night he came back. He told her uncle, glancing admiringly at Nan as he recounted the story, how she had stood her ground against him in the morning.

Nor did Nan like the way her uncle acted while he listened—and afterward. He talked a good deal about Gale and the way she was treating her cousin. When Nan declared she never would have anything to do with him, her uncle told her with disconcerting bluntness to get all that out of her head, for she was going to marry him. When she protested she never would, Duke told her, with many harsh oaths, that she should never marry de Spain even if he had to kill him or get killed to stop it, and that if she had any sense she would get ready to marry her cousin peaceably, adding, that if she didn't have sense, he would see himself it was provided for her.

His threats left Nan aghast. For two days she thought them all over. Then she dressed to go to town. On her way to the barn her uncle intercepted her. "Where you going?"

"To Sleepy Cat," returned Nan, regarding him collectedly.

"No, you're not," he announced bluntly.

Nan looked at him in silence. "I don't want you running to town any more to meet de Spain," added Duke, without any attempt to soften his injunction.

"But I've got to go to town once in a while, whether I meet Henry de Spain or not, Uncle Duke."

"What do you have to go for?"

"Why, for mail, supplies—everything."

"Pardaloe can attend to all that."

Nan shook her head. "Whether he can or not, I'm not going to be cut off from going to Sleepy Cat, Uncle Duke—nor from seeing Henry de Spain."

"Meaning to say you won't obey, eh?"

"When I'm going to marry a man it isn't right to forbid me seeing him."

"You're not going to marry him; you're going to marry Gale, and the quicker you make up your mind to it the better."

"You might better tell me I am going to marry Bull Page—I would marry him first. I will never marry Gale Morgan in the living world, and I've told you so more than once."

He regarded his niece a moment wrathfully and, without replying, walked back to the house. Nan, upset but resolute, went on to the barn and asked Pardaloe to saddle her pony. Pardaloe shuffled around in an obliging way, but at the end of some evasion admitted he had orders not to do it. Nan flamed at the information. She disliked Pardaloe anyway, not for any reason she could assign beyond the fact that he had once been a chum of Gale's. But she was too high-spirited to dispute with him, and returned to the house pink with indignation. Going straight to her uncle, she protested against such tyranny. Duke was insensible alike to her pleas and her threats.

But next morning Nan was up at three o'clock. She made her way into the barn before a soul was stirring, and at daybreak was well on her way to Sleepy Cat. She telephoned to de Spain's office from the hospital and went to breakfast. De Spain joined her before she had finished, and when they left the dining-room she explained why she had disappointed him the day before. He heard the story with misgivings.

"I'll tell you how it looks to me, Nan," he said when she had done. "You are like a person that's being bound tighter every day by invisible cords. You don't see them because you are fearless. You are too fearless, Nan," he added, with apprehension reflected in the expression of his face. "I'll tell you what I wish you'd do, and I say it knowing you won't do it," he concluded.

She made light of his fears, twisting his right hand till it was helpless in her two hands and laughing at him. "How do you know I won't do it?"

"Because I've asked you before. This is it: marry me, now, here, to-day, and don't take any more chances out there."

"But, Henry," protested Nan, "I can't marry you now and just run away from poor Uncle Duke. If you will just be patient, I'll bring him around to our side."

"Never, Nan."

"Don't be so sure. I know him better than you do, and when he comes for anybody, he comes all at once. Why, it's funny, Henry. Now that I'm picking up courage, you're losing it!"

He shook his head. "I don't like the way things are going."

"Dearie," she urged, "should I be any safer at home if I were your wife, than I am as your sweetheart. I don't want to start a horrible family war by running away, and that is just what I certainly should do."

De Spain was unconvinced. But apprehension is short-lived in young hearts. The sun shone, the sky spread a speckless blue over desert and mountain, the day was for them together. They did not promise all of it to themselves at once—they filched its sweetness bit by bit, moment by moment, and hour by hour, declaring to each other they must part, and dulling the pain of parting with the anodyne of procrastination. Thus, the whole day went to their castles and dreams. In a retired corner of the cool dining-room at the Mountain House, they lingered together over a long-drawn-out dinner. The better-informed guests by asides indicated their presence to others. They described them as the hardy couple who had first met in a stiff Frontier Day rifle match, which the girl had won. Her defeated rival—the man now most regarded and feared in the mountain country—was the man with the reticent mouth, mild eyes, curious birthmark, and with the two little, perplexed wrinkles visible most of the time just between his dark eyebrows, the man listening intently to every syllable that fell from the lips of the trimly bloused, active girl opposite him, leaning forward in her eagerness to tell him things. Her jacket hung over the back of her chair, and she herself was referred to by the more fanciful as queen of the outlaw camp at Music Mountain.

They two were seen together that day about town by many, for the story of their courtship was still veiled in mystery and afforded ground for the widest speculation, while that of their difficulties, and such particulars as de Spain's fruitless efforts to conciliate Duke Morgan and Duke's open threats against de Spain's life were widely known. All these details made the movement and the fate of the young couple the object of keenly curious comment.

In the late afternoon the two rode almost the whole length of Main Street together on their way to the river bridge. Every one knew the horseflesh they bestrode—none cleaner-limbed, hardier, or faster in the high country. Those that watched them amble slowly past, laughing and talking, intent only on each other, erect, poised, and motionless, as if moulded to their saddles, often spoke of having seen Nan and her lover that day. It was a long time before they were seen riding down Main Street together again.



CHAPTER XXIII

DE SPAIN WORRIES

They parted that evening under the shadow of Music Mountain. Nan believed she could at least win her Uncle Duke over from any effort of Gale's to coerce her. Her influence over her uncle had never yet failed, and she was firm in the conviction she could gain him to her side, since he had everything to win and nothing to lose by siding against Gale, whom he disliked and distrusted, anyway.

For de Spain there was manifestly nothing to do but doubtfully to let Nan try out her influence. They agreed to meet in Calabasas just as soon as Nan could get away. She hoped, she told him, to bring good news. De Spain arranged his business to wait at Calabasas for her, and was there, after two days, doing little but waiting and listening to McAlpin's stories about the fire and surmises as to strange men that lurked in and about the place. But de Spain, knowing Jeffries was making an independent investigation into the affair, gave no heed to McAlpin's suspicions.

To get away from the barn boss, de Spain took refuge in riding. The season was drawing on toward winter, and rain clouds drifting at intervals down from the mountains made the saddle a less dependable escape from the monotony of Calabasas. Several days passed with no sight of Nan and no word from her. De Spain, as the hours and days went by, scanned the horizon with increasing solicitude. When he woke on the sixth morning, he was resolved to send a scout into the Gap to learn what he could of the situation. The long silence, de Spain knew, portended nothing good. And the vexing feature of his predicament was that he had at hand no trustworthy spy to despatch for information; to secure one would be a matter of delay. He was schooled, however, to making use of such material as he had at hand, and when he had made up his mind, he sent to the stable for Bull Page.

The shambling barn man, summoned gruffly by McAlpin, hesitated as he appeared at the office door and seemed to regard the situation with suspicion. He looked at de Spain tentatively, as if ready either for the discharge with which he was daily threatened or for a renewal of his earlier, friendly relations with the man who had been queer enough to make a place for him. De Spain set Bull down before him in the stuffy little office.

"Bull," he began with apparent frankness, "I want to know how you like your job."

Wiping his mouth guardedly with his hand to play for time and as an introduction to a carefully worded reply, Bull parried. "Mr. de Spain, I want to ask you just one fair question."

"Go ahead, Bull."

Bull plunged promptly into the suspicion uppermost in his mind. "Has that slat-eyed, flat-headed, sun-sapped sneak of a Scotchman been complaining of my work? That, Mr. de Spain," emphasized Bull, leaning forward, "is what I want to know first—is it a fair question?"

"Bull," returned de Spain with corresponding and ceremonial emphasis, "it is a fair question between man and man. I admit it; it is a fair question. And I answer, no, Bull. McAlpin has had nothing on the face of the desert to do with my sending for you. And I add this because I know you want to hear it: he says he couldn't complain of your work, because you never do any."

"That man," persisted Bull, reinforced by the hearty tone and not clearly catching the drift of the very last words, "drinks more liquor than I do."

"He must be some tank, Bull."

"And I don't hide it, Mr. de Spain."

"You'd have to crawl under Music Mountain to do that. What I want to know is, do you like your job?"

On this point it was impossible to get an expression from Bull. He felt convinced that de Spain was pressing for an answer only as a preliminary to his discharge. "No matter," interposed the latter, cutting Bull's ramblings short, "drop it, Bull. I want you to do something for me, and I'll pay for it."

Bull, with a palsied smile and a deep, quavering note of gratitude, put up his shaky hand. "Say what. That's all. I've been paid."

"You know you're a sot, Bull."

Bull nodded. "I know it."

"A disgrace to the Maker whose image you were made in."

Bull started, but seemed, on reflection, to consider this a point on which he need not commit himself.

"Still, I believe there's a man in you yet. Something, at any rate, you couldn't completely kill with whiskey, Bull—what?"

Bull lifted his weak and watery eyes. His whiskey-seamed face brightened into the ghost of a smile. "What I'm going to ask you to do," continued de Spain, "is a man's job. You can get into the Gap without trouble. You are the only man I can put my hand on just now, that can. I want you to ride over this morning and hang out around Duke Morgan's place till you can get a chance to see Miss Nan——"

At the mention of her name, Bull shook his head a moment in affirmative approval. "She's a queen!" he exclaimed with admiring but pungent expletives. "A queen!"

"I think so, Bull. But she is in troublesome circumstances. You know Nan and I——"

Bull winked in many ways.

"And her Uncle Duke is making us trouble, Bull. I want you to find her, speak with her, and bring word to me as to what the situation is. That doesn't mean you're to get drunk over there—in fact, I don't think anybody over there would give you a drink——"

"Don't believe they would."

"And you are to ride back here with what you can find out just as quick, after you get into the clear, as a horse will bring you."

Bull passed his hand over his mouth with a show of resolution. It indicated that he was pulling himself together. Within half an hour he was on his way to the Gap.

For de Spain hours never dragged as did the hours between his starting and the setting of the sun that night without his return. And the sun set behind Music Mountain in a drift of heavy clouds that brought rain. All evening it fell steadily. At eleven o'clock de Spain had given up hope of seeing his emissary before morning and was sitting alone before the stove in the office when he heard the sound of hoofs. In another moment Bull Page stood at the door.

He was a sorry sight. Soaked to the skin by the steady downpour; rain dripping intermittently from his frayed hat, his ragged beard, and tattered coat; shaking with the cold as if gripped by an ague, Bull, picking his staggering steps to the fire, and sinking in a heap into a chair, symbolized the uttermost tribute of manhood to the ravages of whiskey. He was not drunk. He had not even been drinking; but his vitality was gone. He tried to speak. It was impossible. His tongue would not frame words, nor his throat utter them. He could only look helplessly at de Spain as de Spain hastily made him stand up on his shaking knees, threw a big blanket around him, sat him down, kicked open the stove drafts, and called to McAlpin for more whiskey to steady the wreck of it crouching over the fire.

McAlpin after considerable and reluctant search produced a bottle, and unwilling, for more reasons than one, to trust it to Bull's uncertain possession, brought a dipper. Bull held the dipper while de Spain poured. McAlpin, behind the stove, hopped first on one foot and then on the other as de Spain recklessly continued to pour. When the liquor half filled the cup, McAlpin put out unmistakable distress signals, but Bull, watching the brown stream, his eyes galvanized at the sight, held fast to the handle and made no sign to stop. "Bull!" thundered the barn boss with an emphatic word. "That is Elpaso's bottle. What are you dreaming of, man? Mr. de Spain, you'll kill him. Don't ye see he can't tell ye to stop?"

Bull, with the last flickering spark of vitality still left within him, looked steadily up and winked at de Spain. McAlpin, outraged, stamped out of the room. Steadying the dipper in both hands, Bull with an effort passed one hand at the final moment preliminarily over his mouth, and, raising the bowl, emptied it. The poison electrified him into utterance. "I seen her," he declared, holding his chin well down and in, and speaking in a pardonably proud throat.

"Good, Bull!"

"They've got things tied up for fair over there." He spoke slowly and brokenly. "I never got inside the house till after supper. Toward night I helped Pardaloe put up the stock. He let me into the kitchen after my coaxing for a cup of coffee—he's an ornery, cold-blooded guy, that Pardaloe. Old Duke and Sassoon think the sun rises and sets on the top of his head—funny, ain't it?"

De Spain made no comment. "Whilst I was drinking my coffee——"

"Who gave it to you?"

"Old Bunny, the Mex. Pardaloe goes out to the bunk-house; I sits down to my supper, alone, with Bunny at the stove. All of a sudden who comes a-trippin' in from the front of the house but Nan. I jumped up as strong as I could, but I was too cold and stiff to jump up real strong. She seen me, but didn't pay no attention. I dropped my spoon on the floor. It didn't do no good, neither, so I pushed a hot plate of ham gravy off the table. It hit the dog 'n' he jumped like kingdom come. Old Bunny sails into me, Nan a-watchin', and while Mex was pickin' up and cleanin' up, I sneaks over to the stove and winks at Nan. Say, you oughter seen her look mad at me. She was hot, but I kept a-winkin' and I says to her kind of husky-like: 'Got any letters for Calabasas to-night?' Say, she looked at me as if she'd bore holes into me, but I stood right up and glared back at the little girl. 'Come from there this mornin',' says I, low, 'going back to-night. Some one waiting there for news.'

"By jing! Just as I got the words out o' my mouth who comes a-stalking in but Gale Morgan. The minute he seen me, he lit on me to beat the band—called me everything he could lay his tongue to. I let on I was drunk, but that didn't help. He ordered me off the premises. 'N' the worst of it was, Nan chimed right in and began to scold Bunny for lettin' me in—and leaves the room, quick-like. Bunny put it on Pardaloe, and she and Gale had it, and b'jing, Gale put me out—said he'd pepper me. But wait till I tell y' how she fooled him. It was rainin' like hell, 'n' it looked as if I was booked for a ride through it and hadn't half drunk my second cup of coffee at that. I starts for the barn, when some one in the dark on the porch grabs my arm, spins me around like a top, throws a flasher up into my face, and there was Nan. 'Bull,' she says, 'I'm sorry. I don't want to see you ride out in this with nothing to eat; come this way quick.'

"She took me down cellar from the outside, under the kitchen. When Gale goes out again she flings up the trap-door, speaks to Mex, pulls all the kitchen shades down, locks the doors, and I sets down on the trap-door steps 'n' eats a pipin' hot supper; say! Well, I reckon I drank a couple o' quarts of coffee. 'Bull,' she says, 'I never done you no harm, did I?' 'Never,' says I, 'and I never done you none, neither, did I? And what's more, I never will do you none.' Then I up and told her. 'Tell him,' says she, 'I can't get hold of a horse, nor a pen, nor a piece of paper—I can't leave the house but what I am watched every minute. They keep track of me day and night. Tell him,' she says, 'I can protect myself; they think they'll break me—make me do what they want me to—marry—but they can't break me, and I'll never do it—tell him that.'

"'But,' says I, 'that ain't the whole case, Miss Nan. What he'll ask me, when he's borin' through me with his eyes like the way you're borin' me through with yours, is: When will you see him—when will he see you?'

"She looked worrit for a minit. Then she looks around, grabs up the cover of an empty 'bacco box and a fork and begins a-writing inside." Bull, with as much of a smile as he could call into life from his broken nerves, opened up his blanket, drew carefully from an inside coat pocket an oilskin package, unwrapped from it the flat, square top of a tin tobacco box on which Nan had scratched a message, and handed it triumphantly to de Spain.