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�