He read her words eagerly:

"Wait; don't have trouble. I can stand anything better than bloodshed, Henry. Be patient."

While de Spain, standing close to the lantern, deciphered the brief note, Bull, wrapping his blanket about him with the air of one whose responsibility is well ended, held out his hands toward the blazing stove. De Spain went over the words one by one, and the letters again and again. It was, after all their months of ardent meetings, the first written message he had ever had from Nan. He flamed angrily at the news that she was prisoner in her own home. But there was much to weigh in her etched words, much to think about concerning her feelings—not alone concerning his own.

He dropped into his chair and, oblivious for a moment of his companion's presence, stared into the fire. When he started from his revery Bull was asleep. De Spain picked him up, carried him in his blanket over to a cot, cut the wet rags off him, and, rolling him in a second blanket, walked out into the barn and ordered up a team and light wagon for Sleepy Cat. The rain fell all night.



CHAPTER XXIV

AN OMINOUS MESSAGE

Few men bear suspense well; de Spain took his turn at it very hard. For the first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a type whose defiance he despised—whose lawlessness he ordinarily warred on without compunction—but himself without the freedom that had always been his to act. Every impulse to take the bit in his teeth was met with the same insurmountable obstacle—Nan's feelings—and the unpleasant possibility that might involve him in bloodshed with her kinspeople.

"Patience." He repeated the word to himself a thousand times to deaden his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time, but Nan's situation took most of his thought. For the first time he told John Lefever the story of Nan's finding him on Music Mountain, of her aid in his escape, and the sequel of their friendship. Lefever gave it to Bob Scott in Jeffries's office.

"What did I tell you, John?" demanded Bob mildly.

"No matter what you told me," retorted Lefever. "The question is: What's he to do to get Nan away from there without shooting up the Morgans?"

De Spain had gone that morning to Medicine Bend. He got back late and, after a supper at the Mountain House, went directly to his room.

The telephone-bell was ringing when he unlocked and threw open his door. Entering the room, he turned on a light, closed the door behind him, and sat down to answer the call.

"Is this Henry de Spain?" came a voice, slowly pronouncing the words over the wire.

"Yes."

"I have a message for you."

"What is it?"

"From Music Mountain."

"Go ahead."

"The message is like this: 'Take me away from here as soon as you can.'"

"Whom is that message from?"

"I can't call any names."

"Who are you?"

"I can't tell you that."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. Good-by."

"Hold on. Where are you talking from?"

"About a block from your office."

"Do you think it a fair way to treat a man to——"

"I have to be fair to myself."

"Give me the message again."

"'Take me away from here as soon as you can.'"

"Where does it come from?"

"Music Mountain."

"If you're treating me fair—and I believe you mean to—come over to my room a minute."

"No."

"Let me come to where you are?"

"No."

"Let me wait for you—anywhere?"

"No."

"Do you know me?"

"By sight."

"How did you know I was in town to-night?"

"I saw you get off the train."

"You were looking for me, then?"

"To deliver my message."

"Do you think that message means what it says?"

"I know it does."

"Do you know what it means for me to undertake?"

"I have a pretty stiff idea."

"Did you get it direct from the party who sent it?"

"I can't talk all night. Take it or leave it just where it is."

De Spain heard him close. He closed his own instrument and began feverishly signalling central. "This is 101. Henry de Spain talking," he said briskly. "You just called me. Ten dollars for you, operator, if you can locate that call, quick!"

There was a moment of delay at the central office, then the answer: "It came from 234—Tenison's saloon."

"Give me your name, operator. Good. Now give me 22 as quick as the Lord will let you, and ring the neck off the bell."

Lefever answered the call on number 22. The talk was quick and sharp. Messengers were instantly pressed into service from the despatcher's office. Telephone wires hummed, and every man available on the special agent's force was brought into action. Livery-stables were covered, the public resorts were put under observation, horsemen clattered up and down the street. Within an incredibly short time the town was rounded up, every outgoing trail watched, and search was under way for any one from Morgan's Gap, and especially for the sender of the telephone message.

De Spain, after instructing Lefever, hastened to Tenison's. His rapid questioning of the few habitues of the place and the bartender elicited only the information that a man had used the telephone booth within a few minutes. Nobody knew him or, if they did know him, refused to describe him in any but vague terms. He had come in by the front door and slipped out probably by the rear door—at all events, unnoticed by those questioned. By a series of eliminating inquiries, de Spain made out only that the man was not a Morgan. Outside, Bob Scott in the saddle waited with a led horse. The two men rode straight and hard for the river bridge. They roused an old hunter who lived in a near-by hut, on the town side, and asked whether any horseman had crossed the bridge. The hunter admitted gruffly that he had heard a horse's hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter, after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes; moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into town, and not out.

Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from the saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed ahead.

The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen, not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient. "He could easily slip us," Scott explained, "by leaving the trail for a minute while we rode past—if he knows his business—and I guess he does."

"If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out, too, within half to three-quarters of an hour," said de Spain. "But how could he have got out without being heard?"

"Maybe," suggested Scott, "he forded the river."

"Could he do it?"

"It's a man's job," returned Scott, reflecting, "but it could be done."

"If a man thought it necessary."

"If he knew you by sight," responded Scott unmoved, "he might have thought it necessary."

Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been found anywhere in town from Morgan's Gap; whoever had taken a chance in delivering the message had escaped undetected.

Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.

"It's one of two things," declared Lefever, whose eyes were never dulled by late hours. "Either they've sent this to lure you into the Gap and 'get' you, or else—and that's a great big 'or else'—she needs you. Henry, did that message—I mean the way it was worded—sound like Nan Morgan?"

De Spain could hardly answer. "It did, and it didn't," he said finally. "But—" his companions saw during the pause by which his lips expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to be turned from it—"I am going to act just as if the word came from Nan and she does need me."

More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever, after conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.

"I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any game I play. In the first place it isn't right to take you and Bob in where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn't enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is a horror to that girl. I've got her feelings to think about as well as my own. I've decided what to do, John. I'm going in alone."

"You're going in alone!"

"To-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do if you want to: ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don't hear from me by ten o'clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify Jeffries to look for a new manager."

"On the contrary, if we don't hear from you by ten o'clock, Henry, we will blaze our way in and drag out your body." Lefever put up his hand to cut off any rejoinder. "Don't discuss it. What happens after ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if we don't hear from you before that, can't possibly be of any interest to you or make any difference." He paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually associated with him. "Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school, my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound; but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just once too often, and got smashed all to hell. Aunt Lou didn't say it exactly in that way—but such was the substance of the moral.

"You've pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man knows better than I that you never pulled one for the looks of the thing or to make people talk—or that you ever took a chance you didn't feel you had to take. But, it isn't humanly possible you can keep this up for all time; it can't go on forever. The pitcher goes to the well once too often, Henry; there comes a time when it doesn't come back.

"Understand—I'm not saying this to attempt to dissuade you from the worst job you ever started in on. I know your mind is made up. You won't listen to me; you won't listen to Scott; and I'm too good an Indian not to know where I get off, or not to do what I'm told. But this is what I have been thinking of a long, long time; and this is what I feel I ought to say, here and now."

The two men were sitting in de Spain's room. De Spain was staring through the broad south window at the white-capped peaks of the distant range. He was silent for a time. "I believe you're right, John," he said after a while. "I know you are. In this case I am tied up more than I've ever been tied before; but I've got to see it through as best I can, and take what comes without whining. My mind is made up and, strange as it may sound to you, I feel that I am coming back. Not but what I know it's due me, John. Not but what I expect to get it sometime. And maybe I'm wrong now; but I don't feel as if it's coming till I've given all the protection to that girl that a man can give to a woman."



CHAPTER XXV

A SURPRISING SLIP

Scott was called by Lefever to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could before daybreak the following morning.

"It's a short notice to get many men together—of the kind we want," admitted Lefever. "You'll have to skirmish some between now and midnight. What do you think you can do?"

Scott had already made up a tentative list. He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said nobody should go if he didn't; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located—any one of them, Lefever knew, could give an account of himself under all circumstances.

While Scott was getting his men together, de Spain, accompanied by Lefever, was riding toward Music Mountain. Scott had urged on them but one parting caution—not to leave the aspens until rain began falling. When he spoke there was not a cloud in the sky. "It's going to rain to-night, just the same," predicted Scott. "Don't leave the trees till it gets going. Those Gap scouts will get under cover and be hunting for a drink the minute it gets cold—I know them. You can ride right over their toes, if you'll be patient."

The sun set across the range in a drift of grayish-black, low-lying clouds, which seemed only to await its disappearance to envelop the mountains and empty their moisture on the desert. By the time de Spain and Lefever reached the end of their long ride a misty rain was drifting down from the west. The two men had just ridden into the quaking asps when a man coming out of the Gap almost rode into them. The intruders had halted and were sufficiently hidden to escape notice, had not Lefever's horse indiscreetly coughed. The man from the Gap reined up and called out. Lefever answered.

"It's Bull Page," declared de Spain, after the exchange of a few words, calling to Bull at the same time to come over to the shelter of the trees.

"What's going on in there, Bull?" asked de Spain after Bull had told him that Gale had driven him out, and he was heading for Calabasas.

"You tell," retorted Page. "Looks to me like old Duke's getting ready to die. Gale says he's going to draw his will to-night, and don't want nobody around—got old Judge Druel in there."

De Spain pricked up his ears. "What's that, Druel?" he demanded. Bull repeated his declaration. Lefever broke into violent language at the Sleepy Cat jurist's expense, and ended by declaring that no will should be drawn in the Gap that night by Duke Morgan or anybody else, unless he and Bull were made legatees.

Beyond this nothing could be learned from Bull, who was persuaded without difficulty by Lefever to abandon the idea of riding to Calabasas through the rain, and to spend the night with him in the neighborhood, wherever fancy, the rain, and the wind—which was rising—should dictate.

While the two were talking de Spain tried to slip away, unobserved by Lefever, on his errand. He failed, as he expected to, and after some familiar abuse, rode off alone, fortified by every possible suggestion at the hands of a man to whom the slightest precaution was usually a joke.

Mountains never look blacker than when one rides into them conscious of the presence of enemies and alert for signs and sounds. But custom dulls the edge of apprehension. De Spain rode slowly up the main road without expecting to meet any one, and he reached the rise where the trail forked to Duke's ranch unchallenged. Here he stopped his horse and looked down toward the roof that sheltered Nan. Night had fallen everywhere, and the increasing rain obscured even the outline of the house. But a light shone through one uncurtained window. He waited some time for a sound of life, for a door to open or close, or for the dog to bark—he heard nothing. Slipping out of the wet saddle, he led his horse in the darkness under the shelter of the lone pine-tree and, securing him, walked slowly toward the house.

The light came from a window in the living-room. Up-stairs and toward the kitchen everything was dark. De Spain walked gingerly around to where he could command the living-room window. He could see within, the figures of three men but, owing to the dim light and the distance at which he stood, he could identify none of them with certainty. Mindful of the admonitions he had been loaded with, he tramped around the house in narrowing circles, pausing at times to look and listen. In like manner he circled the barn and stables, until he had made sure there was no ambush and that he was alone outside. He then went among the horses and, working with a flash-light, found Nan's pony, a bridle and, after an ineffectual search for a saddle, led the bareback horse out to where his own stood. Walking over to Nan's window he signalled and called to her. Getting no answer, he tossed a bit of gravel up against her window. His signal met with no response and, caching his rifle under the kitchen porch, he stepped around to the front of the house, where, screened by a bit of shrubbery, he could peer at close range into the living-room.

Standing before the fire burning in the open hearth, and with his back to it, he now saw Gale Morgan. Sitting bolt upright beside the table, square-jawed and obdurate, his stubby brier pipe supported by his hand and gripped in his great teeth, Duke Morgan looked uncompromisingly past his belligerent nephew into the fire. A third and elderly man, heavy, red-faced, and almost toothless as he spoke, sat to the right of the table in a rocking-chair, and looked at Duke; this was the old lawyer and justice from Sleepy Cat, the sheriff's brother—Judge Druel.

Nan was not to be seen. Gale, big and aggressive, was doing most of the talking, and energetically, as was his habit. Duke listened thoughtfully, but seemingly with coldness. Druel looked from Gale to Duke, and appeared occasionally to put in a word to carry the argument along.

De Spain suspected nothing of what they were talking about, but he was uneasy concerning Nan, and was not to be balked, by any combination, of his purpose of finding her. To secure information concerning her was not possible, unless he should enter the house, and this, with scant hesitation, he decided to do.

He wore a snug-fitting leathern coat. He unbuttoned this and threw it open as he stepped noiselessly up to the door. Laying his hand on the knob, he paused, then, finding the door unlocked, he pushed it slowly open.

The wind, rushing in, upset his calculations and blew open the door leading from the hall into the living-room. A stream of light in turn shot through the open door, across the hall. Instantly de Spain stepped inside and directly behind the front door—which he now realized he dare not close—and stood expectant in the darkness. Gale Morgan, with an impatient exclamation, strode from the fireplace to close the front door.

As he walked into the hall and slammed the front door shut, he could have touched with his hand the man standing in the shadow behind it. De Spain, not hoping to escape, stood with folded arms, but under the elbow of his left arm was hidden the long muzzle of his revolver. Holding his breath, he waited. Gale's mind was apparently filled with other things. He did not suspect the presence of an intruder, and he walked back into the living-room, partly closing the second door. De Spain, following almost on his heels, stepped past this door, past the hall stairs opposite it, and through a curtained opening at the end of the hall into the dining-room. Barely ten feet from him, this room opened through an arch into the living-room, and where he stood he could hear all that was said.

"Who's there?" demanded Duke gruffly.

"Nobody," said Gale. "Go on, Druel."

"That door never opened itself," persisted Duke.

"The wind blew it open," said Gale impatiently.

"I tell y' it didn't," responded Duke sternly; "somebody came in there, or went out. Maybe she's slipped y'."

"Go up-stairs and see," bellowed Gale at his uncle.

Duke walked slowly out into the hall and, with some difficulty, owing to his injured back, up the stairs. A curtain hung beside the arch where de Spain stood, and this he now drew around him. Gale walked into the hall again, searched it, and waited at the foot of the stairs. De Spain could hear Duke's rough voice up-stairs, but could neither distinguish his words nor hear any response to them. Within a moment the elder man tramped heavily down again, saying only, "She's there," and, followed by Gale, returned to the living-room.

"Now go on, Druel," exclaimed Gale, sitting down impatiently, "and talk quick."

Druel talked softly and through his nose: "I was only going to say it would be a good idea to have two witnesses."

"Nita," suggested Gale.

Duke was profane. "You couldn't keep the girl in the room if she had Nita to help her. And I want it understood, Gale, between you and me, fair and square, that Nan's goin' to live right here with me after this marriage till I'm satisfied she's willing to go to you—otherwise it can't take place, now nor never."

De Spain opened his ears. Gale felt the hard, cold tone of his crusty relative, and answered with like harshness: "What do you keep harping on that for? You've got my word. All I want of you is to keep yours—understand?"

"Come, come," interposed Druel. "There's no need of hard words. But we need two witnesses. Who's going to be the other witness?"

Before any one could answer de Spain stepped out into the open archway before the three men. "I'll act as the second witness," he said.

With a common roar the Morgans bounded to their feet. They were not unused to sudden onslaughts, nor was either of them a man to shrink from a fight at short quarters, if it came to that, but blank astonishment overwhelmed both. De Spain, standing slightly sidewise, his coat lapels flapped wide open, his arms akimbo, and his hands on his hips, faced the three in an attitude of readiness only. He had reckoned on the instant of indecision which at times, when coupled with apprehension, paralyzes the will of two men acting together. Under the circumstances either of the Morgans alone would have whipped a gun on de Spain at sight. Together, and knowing that to do so meant death to the one that took the first shot from the archway, each waited for the other; that fraction of a second unsettled their purpose. Instead of bullets, each launched curses at the intruder, and every second that passed led away from a fight.

De Spain took their oaths, demands, and abuse without batting an eye. "I'm here for the second witness," was all he repeated, covering both men with short glances. Druel, his face muddily white as the whiskey bloat deserted it, shrunk inside his shabby clothes. He seemed, every time de Spain darted a look at him, to grow visibly smaller, until his loose bulk had shrivelled inside an armchair hardly large enough normally to contain it.

De Spain with each epithet hurled at him took a dreaded forward step toward Gale, and Druel, in the line of fire, brought his knees up and his head down till he curled like a porcupine. Gale, game as he undoubtedly was, cornered, felt perhaps recollections of Calabasas and close quarters with the brown eyes and the burning face. What they might mean in this little room, which de Spain was crossing step by step, was food for thought. Nor did de Spain break his obstinate silence until their burst of rage had blown. "You've arranged your marriage," he said at length. "Now pull it."

"My cousin's ready to marry me, and she's goin' to do it to-night," cried Gale violently.

Duke, towering with rage, looked at de Spain and pointed to the hall door. "You hear that! Get out of my house!" he cried, launching a vicious epithet with the words.

"This isn't your house," retorted de Spain angrily. "This house is Nan's, not yours. When she orders me out I'll go. Bring her down," he thundered, raising his voice to shut off Duke, who had redoubled his abuse. "Bring her into this room," he repeated. "We'll see whether she wants to get married. If she does, I'll marry her. If she doesn't, and you've been putting this up to force her into marrying, so help me God, you'll be carried out of this room to-night, or I will." He whirled on her uncle with an accusing finger. "You used to be a man, Duke. I've taken from you here to-night what I would take from no man on earth but for the sake of Nan Morgan. She asked me never to touch you. But if you've gone into this thing to trap your own flesh and blood, your dead brother's girl, living under your own protection, you don't deserve mercy, and to-night you shall have what's coming to you. I've fought you both fair, too fair. Now—before I leave—it's my girl or both of you."

He was standing near Druel. Without taking his eyes off the other men, he caught Druel with his left hand by the coat collar, and threw him half-way across the room. "Get up-stairs, you old carrion, and tell Nan Morgan, Henry de Spain is here to talk to her."

Druel, frightened to death, scrambled into the hall. He turned on de Spain. "I'm an officer of the law. I arrest you for trespass and assault," he shouted, shaking with fear.

"Arrest me?" echoed de Spain contemptuously. "You scoundrel, if you don't climb those stairs I'll send you to the penitentiary the day I get back to town. Up-stairs with your message!"

"It isn't necessary," said a low voice in the hall, and with the words Nan appeared in the open doorway. Her face was white, but there was no sign of haste or panic in it; de Spain choked back a breath; to him she never had looked in her silence so awe-inspiring.

He addressed her, holding his left hand out with his plea. "Nan," he said, controlling his voice, "these men were getting ready to marry you to Gale Morgan. No matter how you feel toward me now, you know me well enough to know that all I want is the truth: Was this with your consent?"

She stepped into the line of fire between her cousin and de Spain as she answered. "No. You know I shall never marry any man but you. This vile bully," she turned a little to look at her angry cousin, "has influenced Uncle Duke—who never before tried to persecute or betray me—into joining him in this thing. They never could have dragged me into it alive. And they've kept me locked for three days in a room up-stairs, hoping to break me down."

"Stand back, Nan."

If de Spain's words of warning struck her with terror of a situation she could not control, she did not reveal it. "No," she said resolutely. "If anybody here is to be shot, I'll be first. Uncle Duke, you have always protected me from Gale Morgan; now you join hands with him. You drive me from this roof because I don't know how I can protect myself under it."

Gale looked steadily at her. "You promised to marry me," he muttered truculently. "I'll find a way to make you keep your word."

A loud knocking interrupted him, and, without waiting to be admitted, Pardaloe, the cowboy, opened the front door and stalked boldly in from the hall.

If the situation in the room surprised him he gave no evidence of it. And as he walked in Nan disappeared. Pardaloe was drenched with rain, and, taking off his hat as he crossed the room to the fire, he shook it hard into the blazing wood.

"What do you want, Pardaloe?" snapped Duke.

Pardaloe shook his hat once more and turned a few steps so that he stood between the uncurtained window and the light. "The creek's up," he said to Duke in his peculiarly slow, steady tone. "Some of Satt's boys are trying to get the cattle out of the lower corral." He fingered his hat, looked first at Duke, then at Gale, then at de Spain. "Guess they'll need a little help, so I asked Sassoon to come over—" Pardaloe jerked his head indicatively toward the front. "He's outside with some of the boys now."

"Tell Sassoon to come in here!" thundered Gale.

De Spain's left arm shot out. "Hold on, Pardaloe; pull down that curtain behind you!"

"Don't touch that curtain, Pardaloe!" shouted Gale Morgan.

"Pardaloe," said de Spain, his left arm pointing menacingly and walking instantly toward him, "pull that curtain or pull your gun, quick." At that moment Nan, in hat and coat, reappeared in the archway behind de Spain. Pardaloe jerked down the curtain and started for the door. De Spain had backed up again. "Stop, Pardaloe," he called. "My men are outside that door. Stand where you are," he ordered, still enforcing his commands with his right hand covering the holster at his hip. "I leave this room first. Nan, are you ready?" he asked, without looking at her.

"Yes."

Her uncle's face whitened. "Don't leave this house to-night, Nan," he said menacingly.

"You've forced me to, Uncle Duke."

"Don't leave this house to-night."

"I can't protect myself in it."

"Don't leave this house—most of all, with that man!" He pointed at de Spain with a frenzy of hatred. Without answering, the two were retreating into the semidarkness of the dining-room. "Nan," came her uncle's voice, hoarse with feeling, "you're saying good-by to me forever."

"No, uncle," she cried. "I am only doing what I have to do."

"I tell you I don't want to drive you from this roof, girl."

A rush of wind from an opening door was the only answer from the dark dining-room. The two Morgans started forward together. The sudden gust sucked the flame of the living-room lamp up into the chimney and after a brief, sharp struggle extinguished it. In the confusion it was a moment before a match could be found. When the lamp was relighted the Morgans ran into the dining-room. The wind and rain poured in through the open north door. But the room was empty.

Duke turned on his nephew with a choking curse. "This," he cried, beside himself with fury, "is your work!"



CHAPTER XXVI

FLIGHT

It was a forbidding night. Moisture-laden clouds, drifting over the Superstition Range, emptied their fulness against the face of the mountains in a downpour and buried the Gap in impenetrable darkness. De Spain, catching Nan's arm, spoke hurriedly, and they hastened outside toward the kitchen. "We must get away quick," he said as she buttoned her coat. And, knowing how she suffered in what she was doing, he drew her into the shelter of the porch and caught her close to him. "It had to come, Nan. Don't shed a tear. I'll take you straight to Mrs. Jeffries. When you are ready, you'll marry me; we'll make our peace with your Uncle Duke together. Great God! What a night! This way, dearie."

"No, to the stable, Henry! Where's your horse?"

"Under the pine, and yours, too. I found the pony, but I couldn't find your saddle, Nan."

"I know where it's hidden. Let's get the horses."

"Just a minute. I stuck my rifle under this porch." He stooped and felt below the stringer. Rising in a moment with the weapon on his arm, the two hurried around the end of the house toward the pine-tree. They had almost reached this when a murmur unlike the sounds of the storm made de Spain halt his companion.

"What is it?" she whispered. He listened intently. While they stood still the front door of the house was opened hurriedly. A man ran out along the porch toward the stable. Neither Nan nor de Spain could make out who it was, but de Spain heard again the suspicious sound that had checked him. Without speaking, he took Nan and retreated to the corner of the house. "There is somebody in that pine," he whispered, "waiting for me to come after the horses. Sassoon may have found them. I'll try it out, anyway, before I take a chance. Stand back here, Nan."

He put her behind the corner of the house, threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired as nearly as he could in the darkness toward and just above the pine. Without an instant's hesitation a pistol-shot answered from the direction in which he had fired, and in another moment a small fusillade followed. "By the Almighty," muttered de Spain, "we must have our horses, Nan. Stay right here. I'll try driving those fellows off their perch."

She caught his arm. "What are you going to do?"

"Run in on them from cover, wherever I can find it, Nan, and push them back. We've got to have those horses."

"Henry, we can get others from the stable."

"There may be more men waiting there for us."

"If we could only get away without a fight!"

"This is Sassoon and his gang, Nan. You heard Pardaloe. These are not your people. I've got to drive 'em, or we're gone, Nan."

"Then I go with you."

"No."

"Yes!" Her tone was unmistakable.

"Nan, you can't do it," whispered de Spain energetically. "A chance bullet——"

She spoke with decision: "I go with you. I can use a rifle. Better both of us be killed than one. Help me up on this roof. I've climbed it a hundred times. My rifle is in my room. Quick, Henry."

Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand, caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her second foot on de Spain's shoulder, gained the sloping roof, and scrambled on her hands and knees up toward the window of her room. The heavy rain and the slippery boards made progress uncertain, but with scarcely any delay, she reached her window and pushed open the casement sash. A far-off peal of thunder echoed down from the mountains. Luckily, no flash had preceded it, and Nan, rifle in hand, slid safely down to the end of the lean-to, where de Spain, waiting, caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine, and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every shot—and not to fire often.

In this way, amid the falling of rain and the uncharted dangers of the darkness, they advanced on the pine-tree. Surprisingly little effort seemed necessary to drive off whoever held it. De Spain made his way slowly but safely to the disputed point and then understood—the horses were gone.

He had hardly rejoined Nan, who waited at a safe distance, and told her the bad news, when a fresh discharge of shots came from two directions—seemingly from the house and the stable. A moment later they heard sharp firing far down the Gap. This was their sole avenue of escape. It was bad enough, under the circumstances, to negotiate the trail on horseback—but to expose Nan, who had but just put herself under his protection, to death from a chance bullet while stumbling along on foot, surrounded by enemies—who could follow the flash of their own shots if they were forced to use their rifles, and close in on them at will—was an undertaking not to be faced.

They withdrew to the shelter of a large rock familiar to Nan even in the dark. While de Spain was debating in his mind how to meet the emergency, she stood at his side, his equal, he knew, in courage, daring, and resource, and answered his rapid questions as to possible gateways of escape. The rain, which had been abating, now ceased, but from every fissure in the mountains came the roar of rushing water, and little openings of rock and waterway that might have offered a chance when dry were now out of the question. In fact, it was Nan's belief that before morning water would be running over the main trail itself.

"Yet," said de Spain finally, "before morning we must be a long way from this particular spot, Nan. Lefever is down there—I haven't the slightest doubt of that. Sassoon has posted men at the neck of the Gap—that's the first thing he would do. And if John heard my rifle when I first shot, he would be for breaking in here, and his men, if they've come up, would bump into Sassoon's. It would be insane for us to try to get out over the trail with Sassoon holding it against Lefever—we might easily be hit by our friends instead of our enemies. I'll tell you what, Nan, suppose I scout down that way alone and see what I can find out?"

He put the proposal very lightly, realizing almost as soon as he made it what her answer would be. "Better we go together," she answered in the steady tone he loved to hear. "If you were killed, what would become of me? I should rather be shot than fall into his hands after this—if there was ever a chance for it before, there'd be no mercy now. Let's go together."

He would not consent, and she knew he was right. But what was right for one was right, she told him, for both, and what was wrong for one was wrong for both. "Then, I'll tell you," he said suddenly, as when after long uncertainty and anxious doubt one chooses an alternative and hastens to follow it. "Retreat is the thing for us, Nan. Let's make for Music Mountain and crawl into our cave till morning. Lefever will get in here some time to-morrow. Then we can connect with him."

They discussed the move a little further, but there seemed no escape from the necessity of it, despite the hardship involved in reaching the refuge; and, realizing that no time was to be lost, they set out on the long journey. Every foot of the troublesome way offered difficulties. Water impeded them continually. It lay in shallow pools underfoot and slipped in running sheets over the sloping rocks that lay in their obscure path. Sometimes de Spain led, sometimes Nan picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.

Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had cut them off their refuge.

"No use, Nan," said de Spain. "There isn't any other trail, is there?"

She told him there was no other. "And this will run all night," she added. "Sometimes it runs like this for days. I ought to have known there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry," she said, turning to him and as if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, "how did you happen to come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?"

"I came because you sent for me," he answered, surprised.

"But I didn't send for you."

He stopped, dumfounded. "What do you mean, Nan?" he demanded uneasily. "I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you away."

"Henry! I didn't send any message—when did you get one?"

"Last night, in my office in Sleepy Cat, from a man that refused to give his name."

"I never sent any message to you," she insisted in growing wonderment. "I have been locked in a room for three days, dearie. The Lord knows I wanted to send you word. Who ever telephoned a message like that? Was it a trap to get you in here?"

He told her the story—of the strenuous efforts he had made to discover the identity of the messenger—and how he had been balked. "No matter," said Nan, at last. "It couldn't have been a trap. It must have been a friend, surely, not an enemy."

"Or," said de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might escape, and putting his face close to hers, "some mildly curious person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the mountains both are trying to marry at once."

"Henry," every time she repeated his name de Spain cared less for what should happen in the rest of the world, "what are we going to do now? We can't stay here all night—and take what they will greet us with in the morning."

He answered her question with another: "What about trying to get out by El Capitan?"

She started in spite of herself. "I mean," he added, "just to have a look over there, Nan."

"How could you even have a look a night like this?" she asked, overcome at the thought of the dizzy cliff. "It would be certain death, Henry."

"I don't mean at the worst to try to cross it till we get a glimpse of daylight. But it's quite a way over there. I remember some good hiding-places along that trail. We may find one where I can build a little fire and dry you out. I'm more worried over you being wet all night than the rest of it. The question is, Can we find a trail up to where we want to go?"

"I know two or three," she answered, "if they are only not flooded."

The storm seemed to have passed, but the darkness was intense, and from above the northern Superstitions came low mutterings of thunder. Compelled to strike out over the rocks to get up to any of the trails toward El Capitan, Nan, helped by de Spain when he could help, led the ascent toward the first ledge they could hope to follow on their dangerous course.

The point at which the two climbed almost five hundred feet that night up Music Mountain is still pointed out in the Gap. An upturned rock at the foot, a stunted cedar jutting from the ledge at the point they finally gained, marked the beginning and end of their effort. No person, looking at that confused wall, willingly believes it could ever have been scaled in the dead of night. Torn, bruised, and exhausted, Nan, handed up by her lover, threw herself at last prostrate on the ledge at the real beginning of their trail, and from that vantage-point they made their way along the eastern side of Music Mountain for two miles before they stopped again to rest.

It was already well after midnight. A favoring spot was seized on by de Spain for the resting-place he wanted. A dry recess beneath an overhanging wall made a shelter for the fire that he insisted on building to warm Nan in her soaked clothing. He found cedar roots in the dark and soon had a blaze going. It was dangerous, both realized, to start a fire, but they concealed the blaze as best they could and took the chance—a chance that more nearly than any that had gone before, cost them their lives. But what still lay ahead of the two justified in de Spain's mind what he was doing. He acted deliberately in risking the exposure of their position to unfriendly eyes far distant.



CHAPTER XXVII

EL CAPITAN

The mutterings above the mountains now grew rapidly louder and while the two hovered over the fire, a thunder-squall, rolling wildly down the eastern slope, burst over the Gap. Its sudden fury put aside for a time all question of moving, and Nan's face took on a grave expression as she looked in the firelight at her companion, thinking of how far such a storm might imperil their situation, how far cut off their already narrow chance of escape.

De Spain—reclining close beside her, looking into the depths of her eyes as the flickering blaze revealed them, drying himself in their warmth and light, eating and drinking of their presence on the mountainside alone with him, and pledged to him, his protection, and his fortunes against the world—apparently thought of nothing beyond the satisfaction of the moment. The wind drove the storm against the west side of the huge granite peak under which they were sheltered and gave them no present trouble in their slender recess. But Nan knew even better than her companion the fickle fury of a range storm, and understood uncomfortably well how a sudden shift might, at any moment, lay their entire path open to its fierceness. She warned de Spain they must be moving, and, freshened by the brief rest, they set out toward El Capitan.

Their trail lay along granite levels of comparatively good going and, fleeing from the squall, they had covered more than half the distance that separated them from the cliff, when a second thunder-storm, seeming to rush in from the desert, burst above their heads. Drenched with rain, they were forced to draw back under a projecting rock. In another moment the two storms, meeting in the Gap, crashed together. Bolt upon bolt of lightning split the falling sheets of water, and thunder, exploding in their faces, stunned and deafened them.

Mountain peaks, played on by the wild light, leaped like spectres out of the black, and granite crags, searched by blazing shafts, printed themselves in ghostly flames on the retina; thunder, searching unnumbered gorges, echoed beneath the sharper crashes in one long, unending roll, and far out beyond the mountains the flooded desert tossed on a dancing screen into the glare, rippled like a madcap sea, and flashed in countless sheets of blinding facets. As if an unseen hand had touched a thousand granite springs above the Gap, every slender crevice spouted a stream that shot foaming out from the mountainsides. The sound of moving waters rose in a dull, vast roar, broken by the unseen boom of distant falls, launching huge masses of water into caverns far below. The storm-laden wind tore and swirled among the crowded peaks, and above all the angry sky moaned and quivered in the rage of the elements.

Nan leaned within de Spain's arm. "If this keeps up," he said after some time, "our best play is to give up crossing to-night. We might hide somewhere on the mountain to-morrow, and try it toward evening."

"Yes, if we have to," she answered. But he perceived her reluctant assent. "What I am afraid of, Henry, is, if they were to find us. You know what I mean."

"Then we won't hide," he replied. "The minute we get the chance we will run for it. This is too fierce to last long."

"Oh, but it's November!" Nan reminded him apprehensively. "It's winter; that's what makes it so cold. You never can tell in November."

"It won't last all night, anyway," he answered with confidence.

Despite his assurance, however, it did last all night, and it was only the lulls between the sharp squalls that enabled them to cover the trail before daylight. When they paused before El Capitan the fury of the night seemed largely to have exhausted itself, but the overcharged air hung above the mountains, trembling and moaning like a bruised and stricken thing. Lightning, playing across the inky heavens, blazed in constant sheets from end to end of the horizon. Its quivering glare turned the wild night into a kind of ghastly, uncertain day. Thunder, hoarse with invective, and hurled mercilessly back and forth by the fitful wind, drew farther and farther into the recess of the mountains, only to launch its anger against its own imprisoned echoes. Under it all the two refugees, high on the mountainside, looked down on the flooding Gap.

Their flight was almost ended. Only the sheer cliff ahead blocked their descent to the aspen grove. De Spain himself had already crossed El Capitan once, and he had done it at night—but it was not, he was compelled to remind himself, on a night like this. It seemed now a madman's venture and, without letting himself appear to do so, he watched Nan's face as the lightning played over it, to read if he could, unsuspected, whether she still had courage for the undertaking. She regarded him so collectedly, whether answering a question or asking one, that he marvelled at her strength and purpose. Hardly a moment passed after they had started until the eastern sky lightened before the retreating storm, and with the first glimmer of daylight, the two were at the beginning of the narrow foothold which lay for half a mile between them and safety.

Here the El Capitan trail follows the face of the almost vertical wall which, rising two thousand feet in the air, fronts the gateway of Morgan's Gap.

They started forward, de Spain ahead. There was nothing now to hurry them unduly, and everything to invite caution. The footholds were slippery, rivulets still crossed the uncertain path, and fragments of rock that had washed down on the trail, made almost every step a new hazard. The face of El Capitan presents, midway, a sharp convex. Just where it is thrown forward in this keen angle, the trail runs out almost to a knife-edge, and the mountain is so nearly vertical that it appears to overhang the floor of the valley.

They made half the stretch of this angle with hardly a misstep, but the advance for a part of the way was a climb, and de Spain, turning once to speak to Nan, asked her for her rifle, that he might carry it with his own. What their story might have been had she given it to him, none can tell. But Nan, holding back, refused to let him relieve her. The dreaded angle which had haunted de Spain all night was safely turned on hands and knees and, as they rounded it toward the east, clouds scudding over the open desert broke and shot the light of dawn against the beetling arete.

De Spain turned in some relief to point to the coming day. As he did so a gust of wind, sweeping against the sheer wall, caught him off his guard. He regained his balance, but a stone, slipping underfoot, tipped him sidewise, and he threw himself on his knees to avoid the dizzy edge. As he fell forward he threw up his hand to save his hat, and in doing so released his rifle, which lay under his hand on the rock. Before he could recover it the rifle slipped from reach. In the next instant he heard it bouncing from rock to rock, five hundred feet below.

Greatly annoyed and humiliated, he regained his feet and spoke with a laugh to reassure Nan. Just as she answered not to worry, a little singing scream struck their ears; something splashed suddenly close at hand against the rock wall; chips scattered between them. From below, the sound of a rifle report cracked against the face of the cliff. They were so startled, so completely amazed that they stood motionless. De Spain looked down and over the uneven floor of the Gap. The ranch-houses, spread like toys in the long perspective, lay peacefully revealed in the gray of the morning. Among the dark pine-trees he could discern Nan's own home. Striving with the utmost keenness of vision to detect where the shot had come from, de Spain could discover no sign of life around any of the houses. But in another moment the little singing scream came again, the blow of the heavy slug against the splintering rock was repeated, the distant report of the rifle followed.

"Under fire," muttered de Spain. He looked questioningly at Nan. She herself, gazing across the dizzy depths, was searching for the danger-point. A third shot followed at a seemingly regular interval—the deliberate interval needed by a painstaking marksman working out his range and taking his time to find it. De Spain watched Nan's search anxiously. "We'd better keep moving," he said. "Come! whoever is shooting can follow us a hundred yards either way." In front of de Spain a fourth bullet struck the rock. "Nan," he muttered, "I've got you into a fix. If we can't stop that fellow he is liable to stop us. Can you see anything?" he asked, waiting for her to come up.

"Henry!" She was looking straight down into the valley, and laid her hand on de Spain's shoulder. "Is there anything moving on the ridge—over there—see—just east of Sassoon's ranch-house?"

De Spain, his eyes bent on the point Nan indicated, drew her forward to a dip in the trail which, to one stretched flat, afforded a slight protection. He made her lie down, and just beyond her refuge chose a point where the path, broadening a little and rising instead of sloping toward the outer edge, gave him a chance to brace himself between two rocks. Flattened there like a target in mid-air, he threw his hat down to Nan and, resting on one knee, waited for the shot that should tumble him down El Capitan or betray the man bent on killing him. Squalls of wind, sweeping into the Gap and sucked upward on the huge expanse of rock below, tossed his hair and ballooned his coat as he buttoned it. Another bullet, deliberately aimed, chipped the rock above him. Nan, agonizing in her suspense, cried out she must join him and go with him if he went. He steadied her apprehension and with a few words reminded her, as a riflewoman, what a gamble every shot at a height such as they occupied, and with such a wind, must be. He reminded her, too, it was much easier to shoot down than up, but all the time he was searching for the flash that should point the assassin. A bullet struck again viciously close between them. De Spain spoke slowly: "Give me your rifle." Without turning his head he held out his hand, keeping his eyes rigidly on the suspicious spot on the ridge. "How far is it to that road, Nan?"

She looked toward the faint line that lay in the deep shadows below. "Three hundred yards."

"Nan, if it wasn't for you, I couldn't travel this country at all," he remarked with studious unconcern. "Last time I had no ammunition—this time, no rifle—you always have what's needed. How high are we, Nan?"

"Seven hundred feet."

"Elevate for me, Nan, will you?"

"Remember the wind," she faltered, adjusting the sight as he had asked.

With the cautioning words she passed the burnished weapon, glittering yet with the rain-drops, into his hand. A flash came from the distant ridge. Throwing the rifle to his shoulder, de Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the trail midway between Sassoon's ranch-house and a little bridge which he well remembered—he had crossed it the night he dragged Sassoon into town. It seemed a long time that he pressed the rifle back against his shoulder and held his eye along the barrel. He was wondering as he covered the crouching man with the deadly sight which of his enemies this might be. He even slipped the rifle from his shoulder and looked long and silently at the black speck before he drew the weapon back again into place. Then he fired before Nan could believe he had lined the sights. Once, twice, three times his hand fell and rose sharply on the lever, with every mark of precision, yet so rapidly Nan could not understand how he could discover what his shots were doing.

The fire came steadily back, and deliberately, without the least intimation of being affected by de Spain's return. It was a duel shorn of every element of equality, with an assassin at one end of the range, and a man flattened half-way up the clouds against El Capitan at the other, each determined to kill the other before he should stir one more foot.

Far above, an eagle, in morning flight, soared majestically out from a jutting crag and circled again and again in front of El Capitan, while the air sang with the whining dice that two gamblers against death threw across the gulf between them. Nan, half hidden in her trough of rock, watched the great bird poise and wheel above the deadly firing, and tried to close her eyes to the figure of de Spain above her, fighting for her life and his own.

She had never before seen a man shooting to kill another. The very horror of watching de Spain, at bay among the rocks, fascinated her. Since the first day they had met she had hardly seen a rifle in his hands.

Realizing how slightly she had given thought to him or to his skill at that time, she saw now, spellbound, how a challenge to death, benumbing her with fear, had transformed him into a silent, pitiless foeman, fighting with a lightning-like decision that charged every motion with a fatality for his treacherous enemy. Her rifle, at his shoulder, no longer a mere mechanism, seemed in his hands something weightless, sensible, alive, a deadly part of his arm and eye and brain. There was no question, no thought of adjusting or handling or haste in his fire, but only an incredible swiftness and sureness that sent across the thin-aired chasm a stream of deadly messengers to seek a human life. She could only hope and pray, without even forming the words, that none of her blood were behind the other rifle, for she felt that, whoever was, could never escape.

She tried not to look. The butt of the heating rifle lay close against the red-marked cheek she knew so well, and to the tips of the fingers every particle of the man's being was alive with strength and resource. Some strange fascination drew her senses out toward him as he knelt and threw shot after shot at the distant figure hidden on the ridge. She wanted to climb closer, to throw herself between him and the bullets meant for him. She held out her arms and clasped her hands toward him in an act of devotion. Then while she looked, breathlessly, he took his eyes an instant from the sights. "He's running!" exclaimed de Spain as the rifle butt went instantly back to his cheek. "Whoever he is, God help him now!"

The words were more fearful to Nan than an imprecation. He had driven his enemy from the scant cover of a rut in the trail, and the man was fleeing for new cover and for life. The speck of black in the field of intense vision was moving rapidly toward the ranch-house. Bullet after bullet pitilessly led the escaping wretch. Death dogged every eager footfall. Suddenly de Spain jerked the rifle from his cheek, threw back his head, and swept his left hand across his straining eyes. Once more the rifle came up to place and, waiting for a heartbeat, to press the trigger, he paused an instant. Flame shot again in the gray morning light from the hot muzzle. The rifle fell away from the shoulder. The black speck running toward the ranch-house stumbled, as if stricken by an axe, and sprawled headlong on the trail. Throwing the lever again like lightning, de Spain held the rifle back to his cheek.

He did not fire. Second after second he waited, Nan, lying very still, watching, mute, the dull-red mark above the wet rifle butt. No one had need to tell her what had happened. Too well she read the story in de Spain's face and in what she saw, as he knelt, perfectly still, only waiting to be sure there was no ruse. She watched the rifle come slowly down, unfired, and saw his drawn face slowly relax. Without taking his eyes off the sprawling speck, he rose stiffly to his feet. As if in a dream she saw his hand stretched toward her and heard, as he looked across the far gulf, one word: "Come!"

They reached the end of the trail. De Spain, rifle in hand, looked back. The sun, bursting in splendor across the great desert, splashed the valley and the low-lying ridge with ribboned gold. Farther up the Gap, horsemen, stirred by the firing, were riding rapidly down toward Sassoon's ranch-house. But the black thing in the sunshine lay quite still.



CHAPTER XXVIII

LEFEVER TO THE RESCUE

Lefever, chafing in the aspen grove under the restraint of waiting in the storm, was ready long before daylight to break orders and ride in to find de Spain.

With the first peep of dawn, and with his men facing him in their saddles, Lefever made a short explanation.

"I don't want any man to go into the Gap with me this morning under any misunderstanding or any false pretense," he began cheerfully. "Bob Scott and Bull will stay right here. If, by any chance, de Spain makes his way out while the rest of us are hunting for him, you'll be here to signal us—three shots, Bob—or to ride in with de Spain to help carry the rest of us out. Now, it's like this," he added, addressing the others. "You, all of you know, or ought to know—everybody 'twixt here and the railroad knows—that de Spain and Nan Morgan have fastened up to each other for the long ride down the dusty trail together. That, I take it, is their business. But her uncle, old Duke, and Gale, and the whole bunch, I hear, turned dead sore on it, and have fixed it up to beat them. You all know the Morgans. They're some bunch—and they stick for one another like hornets, and all hold together in a fight. So I don't want any man to ride in there with me thinking he's going to a wedding. He isn't. He may or may not be going to a funeral, but he's not going to a shivaree."

Frank Elpaso glanced sourly at his companions. "I guess everybody here is wise, John."

"I know you are, Frank," retorted Lefever testily; "that's all right. I'm only explaining. And I don't want you to get sore on me if I don't show you a fight." Frank Elpaso grunted. "I am under orders." John waved his hand. "And I can't do anything——"

"But talk," growled Frank Elpaso, not waving his hand.

Lefever started hotly forward in his saddle. "Now look here, Frank." He pointed his finger at the objecting ranger. "I'm here for business, not for pleasure. Any time I'm free you can talk to me——"

"Not till somebody gags you, John," interposed Elpaso moodily.

"Look here, Elpaso," demanded Lefever, spurring his horse smartly toward the Texan, "are you looking for a fight with me right here and now?"

"Yes, here and now," declared Elpaso fiercely.

"Or, there and then," interposed Kennedy, ironically, "some time, somewhere, or no time, nowhere. Having heard all of which, a hundred and fifty times from you two fellows, let us have peace. You've pulled it so often, over at Sleepy Cat, they've got it in double-faced, red-seal records. Let's get started."

"Right you are, Farrell," assented Lefever, "but——"

"Second verse, John. You're boss here; what are we going to do? That's all we want to know."

"Henry's orders were to wait here till ten o'clock this morning. There's been firing inside twice since twelve o'clock last night. He told me to pay no attention to that. But if the whole place hadn't been under water all night, I'd have gone in, anyway. This last time it was two high-powered guns, picking at long range and, if I'm any judge of rifles and the men probably behind them, some one must have got hurt. It's all a guess—but I'm going in there, peaceably if I can, to look for Henry de Spain; if we are fired on—we've got to fight for it. And if there's any talking to be done——"

"You can do it," grunted Elpaso.

"Thank you, Frank. And I will do it. I need not say that Kennedy will ride ahead with me, Elpaso and Wickwire with Tommie Meggeson."

Leaving Scott in the trees, the little party trotted smartly up the road, picking their way through the pools and across the brawling streams that tore over the trail toward Duke Morgan's place. The condition of the trail broke their formation continually and Lefever, in the circumstances, was not sorry. His only anxiety was to keep Elpaso from riding ahead far enough to embroil them in a quarrel before he himself should come up.

Half-way to Duke's house they found a small bridge had gone out. It cut off the direct road, and, at Elpaso's suggestion, they crossed over to follow the ridge up the valley. Swimming their horses through the backwater that covered the depression to the south, they gained the elevation and proceeded, unmolested, on their way. As they approached Sassoon's place, Elpaso, riding ahead, drew up his horse and sat a moment studying the trail and casting an occasional glance in the direction of the ranch-house, which lay under the brow of a hill ahead.

When Lefever rode up to him, he saw the story that Elpaso was reading in the roadway. It told of a man shot in his tracks as he was running toward the house—and, in the judgment of these men, fatally shot—for, while his companions spread like a fan in front of him, Lefever got off his horse and, bending intently over the sudden page torn out of a man's life, recast the scene that had taken place, where he stood, half an hour earlier. Some little time Lefever spent patiently deciphering the story printed in the rutted road, and marked by a wide crimson splash in the middle of it. He rose from his study at length and followed back the trail of the running feet that had been stricken at the pool. He stopped in front of a fragment of rock jutting up beside the road, studied it a while and, looking about, picked up a number of empty cartridge-shells, examined them, and tossed them away. Then he straightened up and looked searchingly across the Gap. Only the great, silent face of El Capitan confronted him. It told no tales.

"If this was Henry de Spain," muttered Elpaso, when Lefever rejoined his companions, "he won't care whether you join him now, or at ten o'clock, or never."

"That is not Henry," asserted Lefever with his usual cheer. "Not within forty rows of apple-trees. It's not Henry's gun, not Henry's heels, not Henry's hair, and thereby, not Henry's head that was hit that time. But it was to a finish—and blamed if at first it didn't scare me. I thought it might be Henry. Hang it, get down and see for yourselves, boys."

Elpaso answered his invitation with an inquiry. "Who was this fellow fighting with?"

"That, also, is a question. Certainly not with Henry de Spain, because the other fellow, I think, was using soft-nosed bullets. No white man does that, much less de Spain."

"Unless he used another rifle," suggested Kennedy.

"Tell me how they could get his own rifle away from him if he could fire a gun at all. I don't put Henry quite as high with a rifle as with a revolver—if you want to split hairs—mind, I say, if you want to split hairs. But no man that's ever seen him handle either would want to try to take any kind of a gun from him. Whoever it was," Lefever got up into his saddle again, "threw some ounces of lead into that piece of rock back there, though I don't understand how any one could see a man lying behind it.

"Anyway, whoever was hit here has been carried down the road. We'll try Sassoon's ranch-house for news, if they don't open on us with rifles before we get there."

In the sunshine a man in shirt sleeves, and leaning against the jamb, stood in the open doorway of Sassoon's shack, watching the invaders as they rode around the hill and gingerly approached. Lefever recognized Satt Morgan. He flung a greeting to him from the saddle.

Satt answered in kind, but he eyed the horsemen with reserve when they drew up, and he seemed to Lefever altogether less responsive than usual. John sparred with him for information, and Satterlee gave back words without any.

"Can't tell us anything about de Spain, eh?" echoed Lefever at length. "All right, Satt, we'll find somebody that can. Is there a bridge over to Duke's on this trail?"

Satt's nose wrinkled into his normal smile. "There is a bridge—" The report of three shots fired in the distance, seemingly from the mouth of the Gap, interrupted him. He paused in his utterance. There were no further shots, and he resumed: "There is a bridge that way, yes, but it was washed out last night. They're blockaded. Duke and Gale are over there. They're pretty sore on your man de Spain. You'd better keep away from 'em this morning unless you're looking for trouble."

Lefever, having all needed information from Scott's signal, raised his hand quickly. "Not at all," he exclaimed, leaning forward to emphasize his words and adding the full orbit of his eye to his sincerity of manner. "Not at all, Satt. This is all friendly, all friendly. But," he coughed slightly, as if in apology, "if Henry shouldn't turn up all right, we'll—ahem—be back."

None of his companions needed to be told how to get prudently away. At a nod from Lefever Tommie Meggeson, Elpaso, and Wickwire wheeled their horses, rode rapidly back to the turn near the hill and, facing about, halted, with their rifles across their arms. Lefever and Kennedy followed leisurely, and the party withdrew leaving Satterlee, unmoved, in the sunny doorway. Once out of sight, Lefever led the way rapidly down the Gap to the rendezvous.

Of all the confused impressions that crowded Nan's memory after the wild night on Music Mountain, the most vivid was that of a noticeably light-stepping and not ungraceful fat man advancing, hat in hand, to greet her as she stood with de Spain, weary and bedraggled in the aspen grove.

A smile flamed from her eyes when, turning at once, he rebuked de Spain with dignity for not introducing him to Nan, and while de Spain made apologies Lefever introduced himself.

"And is this," murmured Nan, looking at him quizzically, "really Mr. John Lefever whom I've heard so many stories about?"

She was conscious of his pleasing eyes and even teeth as he smiled again. "If they have come from Mr. de Spain—I warn you," said John, "take them with all reserve."

"But they haven't all come from Mr. de Spain."

"If they come from any of my friends, discredit them in advance. You could believe what my enemies say," he ran on; then added ingenuously, "if I had any enemies!" To de Spain he talked very little. It seemed to take but few words to exchange the news. Lefever asked gingerly about the fight. He made no mention whatever of the crimson pool in the road near Sassoon's hut.



CHAPTER XXIX

PUPPETS OF FATE

The house in the Gap that had sheltered Nan for many years seemed never so empty as the night she left it with de Spain. In spite of his vacillation, her uncle was deeply attached to her. She made his home for him. He had never quite understood it before, but the realization came only too soon after he had lost her. And his resentment against Gale as the cause of her leaving deepened with every hour that he sat next day with his stubborn pipe before the fire. Duke had acceded with much reluctance to the undertaking that was to force her into a marriage. Gale had only partly convinced him that once taken, the step would save her from de Spain and end their domestic troubles. The failure of the scheme left Duke sullen, and his nephew sore, with humiliation.

In spite of the alarms and excitement of the night, of Gale's determination that de Spain should never leave the Gap with Nan, and of the rousing of every man within it to cut off their escape, Duke stubbornly refused to pursue the man he so hated or even to leave the house in any effort to balk his escape. But Gale, and Sassoon who had even keener reason for hating de Spain, left Duke to sulk as he would, and set about getting the enemy without any help from the head of the house. In spite of the caution with which de Spain had covered his movements, and the flood and darkness of the night, Sassoon by a mere chance had got wind through one of his men of de Spain's appearance at Duke Morgan's, and had begun to plan, before Nan and de Spain had got out of the house, how to trap him.

Duke heard from Pardaloe, during the night and the early morning, every report with indifference. He only sat and smoked, hour after hour, in silence. But after it became known that de Spain had, beyond doubt, made good his escape, and had Nan with him, the old man's sullenness turned into rage, and when Gale, rankling with defeat, stormed in to see him in the morning, he caught the full force of Duke's wrath. The younger man taken aback by the outbreak and in drink himself, returned his abuse without hesitation or restraint. Pardaloe came between them before harm was done, but the two men parted with the anger of their quarrel deepened.

When Nan rode with de Spain into Sleepy Cat that morning, Lefever had already told their story to Jeffries over the telephone from Calabasas, and Mrs. Jeffries had thrown open her house to receive Nan. Weary from exposure, confusion, and hunger, Nan was only too grateful for a refuge.

On the evening of the second day de Spain was invited to join the family at supper. In the evening the Jeffrieses went down-town.

De Spain was talking with Nan in the living-room when the telephone-bell rang in the library.

De Spain took the call, and a man's voice answered his salutation. The speaker asked for Mr. de Spain and seemed particular to make sure of his identity.

"This," repeated de Spain more than once, and somewhat testily, "is Henry de Spain speaking."

"I'd like to have a little talk with you, Mr. de Spain."

"Go ahead."

"I don't mean over the telephone. Could you make it convenient to come down-town somewhere, say to Tenison's, any time this evening?"

The thought of a possible ambuscade deterred the listener less than the thought of leaving Nan, from whom he was unwilling to separate himself for a moment. Likewise, the possibility of an attempt to kidnap her in his absence was not overlooked. On the other hand, if the message came from Duke and bore some suggestion of a compromise in the situation, de Spain was unwilling to lose it. With these considerations turning in his mind, he answered the man brusquely: "Who are you?"

The vein of sharpness in the question met with no deviation from the slow, even tone of the voice at the other end of the wire. "I am not in position to give you my name," came the answer, "at least, not over the wire."

A vague impression suddenly crossed de Spain's mind that somewhere he had heard the voice before. "I can't come down-town to-night," returned de Spain abruptly. "If you'll come to my office to-morrow morning at nine, I'll talk with you."

A pause preceded the answer. "It wouldn't hardly do for me to come to your office in daylight. But if it would, I couldn't do it to-morrow, because I shan't be in town in the morning."

"Where are you talking from now?"

"I'm at Tenison's place."

"Hang you," said de Spain instantly, "I know you now." But he said the words to himself, not aloud.

"Do you suppose I could come up to where you are to-night for a few minutes' talk?" continued the man coolly.

"Not unless you have something very important."

"What I have is more important to you than to me."

De Spain took an instant to decide. "All right," he said impatiently; "come along. Only—" he paused to let the word sink in, "—if this is a game you're springing——"

"I'm springing no game," returned the man evenly.

"You're liable to be one of the men hurt."

"That's fair enough."

"Come along, then."

"Mr. Jeffries's place is west of the court-house?"

"Directly west. Now, I'll tell you just how to get here. Do you hear?"

"I'm listening."

"Leave Main Street at Rancherio Street. Follow Rancherio north four blocks, turn west into Grant Avenue. Mr. Jeffries's house is on the corner."

"I'll find it."

"Don't come any other way. If you do, you won't see me."

"I'm not afraid of you, Mr. de Spain, and I'll come as you say. There's only one thing I should like to ask. It would be as much as my life is worth to be seen talking to you. And there are other good reasons why I shouldn't like to have it known I had talked to you. Would you mind putting out the lights before I come up—I mean, in the front of the house and in the room where we talk?"

"Not in the least. I mean—I am always willing to take a chance against any other man's. But I warn you, come prepared to take care of yourself."

"If you will do as I ask, no harm will come to any one."

De Spain heard the receiver hung up at the other end of the wire. He signalled the operator hastily, called for his office, asked for Lefever, and, failing to get him, got hold of Bob Scott. To him he explained rapidly what had occurred, and what he wanted. "Get up to Grant and Rancherio, Bob, as quick as the Lord will let you. Come by the back streets. There's a high mulberry hedge at the southwest corner you can get behind. This chap may have been talking for somebody else. Anyway, look the man over when he passes under the arc-light. If it is Sassoon or Gale Morgan, come into Jeffries's house by the rear door. Wait in the kitchen for my call from the living-room, or a shot. I'll arrange for your getting in."

Leaving the telephone, de Spain rejoined Nan in the living-room. He told her briefly of the expected visit and explained, laughingly, that his caller had asked to have the lights out and to see him alone.

Nan, standing close to him, her own hand on his shoulder and her curling hair against his scarred cheek, asked questions about the incident because he seemed to be holding something back. She professed to be satisfied when he requested her to go up to her room and explained it was probably one of the men coming to tell about some petty thieving on the line or of a strike brewing among the drivers. He made so little of the incident that Nan walked up the stairs on de Spain's arm reassured. When he kissed her at her room door and turned down the stairs again, she leaned in the half-light over the banister, waving one hand at him and murmuring the last caution: "Be careful, Henry, won't you?"

"Dearie, I'm always careful."

"'Cause you're all I've got now," she whispered.

"You're all I've got, Nan, girl."

"I haven't got any home—or anything—just you. Don't go to the door yourself. Leave the front door open. Stand behind the end of the piano till you are awfully sure who it is."

"What a head, Nan!"

De Spain cut off the lights, threw open the front door, and in the darkness sat down on the piano stool. A heavy step on the porch, a little while later, was followed by a knock on the open door.

"Come in!" called de Spain roughly. The bulk of a large man filled and obscured for an instant the opening, then the visitor stepped carefully over the threshold. "What do you want?" asked de Spain without changing his tone. He awaited with keenness the sound of the answer.

"Is Henry de Spain here?"

The voice was not familiar to de Spain's ear. He told himself the man was unknown to him. "I am Henry de Spain," he returned without hesitation. "What do you want?"

The visitor's deliberation was reflected in his measured speaking. "I am from Thief River," he began, and his reverberating voice was low and distinct. "I left there some time ago to do some work in Morgan's Gap. I guess you know, full as well as I do, that the general office at Medicine Bend has its own investigators, aside from the division men. I was sent in to Morgan's Gap some time ago to find out who burned the Calabasas barn."

"Railroad man, eh?"

"For about six years."

"And you report to——?"

"Kennedy."

De Spain paused in spite of his resolve to push the questions. While he listened a fresh conviction had flashed across his mind. "You called me up on the telephone one night last week," he said suddenly.

The answer came without evasion. "I did."

"I chased you across the river?"

"You did."

"You gave me a message from Nan Morgan that she never gave you."

"I did. I thought she needed you right off. She didn't know me as I rightly am. I knew what was going on. I rode into town that evening and rode out again. It was not my business, and I couldn't let it interfere with the business I'm paid to look after. That's the reason I dodged you."

"There is a chair at the left of the door; sit down. What's your name?"

The man feeling around slowly, deposited his angular bulk with care upon the little chair. "My name"—in the tenseness of the dark the words seemed to carry added mystery—"is Pardaloe."

"Where from?"

"My home is southwest of the Superstition Mountains."

"You've got a brother—Joe Pardaloe?" suggested de Spain to trap him.

"No, I've got no brother. I am just plain Jim Pardaloe."

"Say what you have got to say, Jim."

"The only job I could get in the Gap was with old Duke Morgan—I've been working for him, off and on, and spending the rest of my time with Gale and Dave Sassoon. There were three men in the barn-burning. Dave Sassoon put up the job."

"Where is Dave Sassoon now?"

"Dead."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say."

Both men were silent for a moment.

"Yesterday morning's fight?" asked de Spain reluctantly.

"Yes, sir."

"How did he happen to catch us on El Capitan?"

"He saw a fire on Music Mountain and watched the lower end of the Gap all night. Sassoon was a wide-awake man."

"Well, I'm sorry, Pardaloe," continued de Spain after a moment. "Nobody could call it my fault. It was either he or I—or the life of a woman who never harmed a hair of his head, and a woman I'm bound to protect. He was running when he was hit. If he had got to cover again there was nothing to stop him from picking both of us off. I shot low—most of the lead must have gone into the ground."

"He was hit in the head."

De Spain was silent.

"It was a soft-nose bullet," continued Pardaloe.

Again there was a pause. "I'll tell you about that, too, Pardaloe," de Spain went on collectedly. "I lost my rifle before that man opened fire on us. Nan happened to have her rifle with her—if she hadn't, he'd 've dropped one or both of us off El Capitan. We were pinned against the wall like a couple of targets. If there were soft-nose bullets in her rifle it's because she uses them on game—bobcats and mountain-lions. I never thought of it till this minute. That is it."

"What I came up to tell you has to do with Dave Sassoon. From what happened to-day in the Gap I thought you ought to know it now. Gale and Duke quarrelled yesterday over the way things turned out; they were pretty bitter. This afternoon Gale took it up again with his uncle, and it ended in Duke's driving him clean out of the Gap."

"Where has he gone?"

"Nobody knows yet. Ed Wickwire told me once that your father was shot from ambush a good many years ago. It was north of Medicine Bend, on a ranch near the Peace River; that you never found out who killed him, and that one reason why you came up into this country was to keep an eye out for a clew."

"What about it?" asked de Spain, his tone hardening.

"I was riding home one night about a month ago from Calabasas with Sassoon. He'd been drinking. I let him do the talking. He began cussing you out, and talked pretty hard about what you'd done, and what he'd done, and what he was going to do—" Nothing, it seemed, would hurry the story. "Finally, Sassoon says: 'That hound don't know yet who got his dad. It was Duke Morgan; that's who got him. I was with Duke when he turned the trick. We rode down to de Spain's ranch one night to look up a rustler.' That," concluded Pardaloe, "was all Sassoon would say."

He stopped. He seemed to wait. There was no word of answer, none of comment from the man sitting near him. But, for one, at least, who heard the passionless, monotonous recital of a murder of the long ago, there followed a silence as relentless as fate, a silence shrouded in the mystery of the darkness and striking despair into two hearts—a silence more fearful than any word.

Pardaloe shuffled his feet. He coughed, but he evoked no response. "I thought you was entitled to know," he said finally, "now that Sassoon will never talk any more."

De Spain moistened his lips. When he spoke his voice was cracked and harsh, as if with what he had heard he had suddenly grown old.

"You are right, Pardaloe. I thank you. I—when I—in the morning. Pardaloe, for the present, go back to the Gap. I will talk with Wickwire—to-morrow."

"Good night, Mr. de Spain."

"Good night, Pardaloe."

Bending forward, limp, in his chair, supporting his head vacantly on his hands, trying to think and fearing to think, de Spain heard Pardaloe's measured tread on the descending steps, and listened mechanically to the retreating echoes of his footsteps down the shaded street. Minute after minute passed. De Spain made no move. A step so light that it could only have been the step of a delicate girlhood, a step free as the footfall of youth, poised as the tread of womanhood and beauty, came down the stairs. Slight as she was, and silent as he was, she walked straight to him in the darkness, and, sinking between his feet, wound her hands through his two arms. "I heard everything, Henry," she murmured, looking up. An involuntary start of protest was his only response. "I was afraid of a plot against you. I stayed at the head of the stairs. Henry, I told you long ago some dreadful thing would come between us—something not our fault. And now it comes to dash our cup of happiness when it is filling. Something told me, Henry, it would come to-night—some bad news, some horror laid up against us out of a past that neither you nor I are to blame for. In all my sorrow I am sorriest, Henry, for you. Why did I ever cross your path to make you unhappy when blood lay between your people and mine? My wretched uncle! I never dreamed he had murder on his soul—and of all others, that murder! I knew he did wrong—I knew some of his associates were criminals. But he has been a father and mother to me since I could creep—I never knew any father or mother."

She stopped, hoping perhaps he would say some little word, that he would even pat her head, or press her hand, but he sat like one stunned. "If it could have been anything but this!" she pleaded, low and sorrowfully. "Oh, why did you not listen to me before we were engulfed! My dear Henry! You who've given me all the happiness I have ever had—that the blood of my own should come against you and yours!" The emotion she struggled with, and fought back with all the strength of her nature, rose in a resistless tide that swept her on, in the face of his ominous silence, to despair. She clasped her hands in silent misery, losing hope with every moment of his stoniness that she could move him to restraint or pity toward her wretched foster-father. She recalled the merciless words he had spoken on the mountain when he told her of his father's death. Her tortured imagination pictured the horror of the sequel, in which the son of the murdered man should meet him who had taken his father's life. The fate of it, the hopelessness of escape from its awful consequence, overcame her. Her breath, no longer controlled, came brokenly, and her voice trembled.