The big room was well filled for a wet night. The faro-tables were busy, and at the central table at the farther end of the room–the table designated as Tenison’s, because, at the rare intervals in which the proprietor dealt, he presided at this table–a group watched silently a game in progress. De Spain took a place in shadow near one side of the archway facing the street-door and at times looked within for the loosely jointed frame, crooked neck, tousled forehead, and malevolent face of the cattle thief. He could find in the many figures scattered about the room none resembling the one he sought.
A man entering the place spoke to another coming out. De Spain overheard the exchange. “Duke got rid of his steers yet?” asked the first.
“Not yet.”
“Slow game.”
“The old man sold quite a bunch this time. The way he’s playing now he’ll last twenty-four hours.”
De Spain, following the newcomer, strolled into the room and, beginning at one side, proceeded in leisurely fashion from wheel to wheel and table to table inspecting the players. Few looked at him and none paid any attention to his presence. At Tenison’s table he saw in the dealer’s chair the large, white, smooth face, dark eyes, and clerical expression of the proprietor, whose presence meant a real game and explained the interest of the idlers crowded about one player whom de Spain, without getting closer in among the onlookers than he wanted to, could not see.
Tenison, as de Spain approached, happened to look wearily up; his face showed the set lines of a protracted session. He neither spoke nor nodded to the newcomer, but recognized him with a mere glance. Then, though his eyes had rested for only an instant on the new face, he spoke in an impassive tone across the intervening heads: “What happened to your red tie, Henry?”
De Spain put up his hand to his neck, and looked down at a loose end hanging from his soft cravat. It had been torn by the bullet meant for his head. He tucked the end inside his collar. “A Calabasas man tried to untie it a few minutes ago. He missed the knot.”
Tenison did not hear the answer. He had reverted to his case. De Spain moved on and, after making the round of the scattered tables, walked again through the archway into the anteroom, only to meet, as she stood hesitating and apparently about to enter the room, Nan Morgan.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GAMBLING-ROOM
They confronted each other blankly. To Nan’s confusion was added her embarrassment at her personal appearance. Her hat was wet, and the limp shoulders of her khaki jacket and the front of her silk blouse showed the wilting effect of the rain. In one hand she clutched wet riding-gloves. Her cheeks, either from the cold rain or mental stress, fairly burned, and her eyes, which had seemed when he encountered her, fired with some resolve, changed to an expression almost of dismay.
This was hardly for more than an instant. Then her lips tightened, her eyes dropped, and she took a step to one side to avoid de Spain and enter the gambling-room. He stepped in front of her. She looked up, furious. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed with indignation. “Let me pass.”
The sound of her voice restored his self-possession. He made no move to get out of her way, indeed he rather pointedly continued to obstruct her. “You’ve made a mistake, I think,” he said evenly.
“I have not,” she replied with resentment. “Let me pass.”
“I think you have. You don’t know where you are going,” he persisted, his eyes bent uncompromisingly on hers.
She showed increasing irritation at his attempt to exculpate her. “I know perfectly well where I am going,” she retorted with heat.
“Then you know,” he returned steadily, “that you’ve no business to enter such a place.”
His opposition seemed only to anger her. “I know where I have business. I need no admonitions from you as to what places I enter. You are impertinent, insulting. Let me pass!”
His stubborn opposition showed no signs of weakening before her resolve. “One question,” he said, ignoring her angry words. “Have you ever been in these rooms before?”
He thought she quailed the least bit before his searching look. She even hesitated as to what to say. But if her eyes fell momentarily it was only to collect herself. “Yes,” she answered, looking up unflinchingly.
Her resolute eyes supported her defiant word and openly challenged his interference, but he met her once more quietly. “I am sorry to hear it,” he rejoined. “But that won’t make any difference. You can’t go in to-night.”
“I will go in,” she cried.
“No,” he returned slowly, “you are not going in–not, at least, while I am here.”
They stood immovable. He tried to reason her out of her determination. She resented every word he offered. “You are most insolent,” she exclaimed. “You are interfering in something that is no concern of yours. You have no right to act in this outrageous way. If you don’t stand aside I’ll call for help.”
“Nan!” De Spain spoke her name suddenly and threateningly. His words fell fast, and he checked her for an instant with his vehemence. “We met in the Gap a week ago. I said I was telling you the exact truth. Did I do it?”
“I don’t care what you said or what you did–”
“Answer me,” he said sharply, “did I tell you the truth?”
“I don’t know or care–”
“Yes, you do know–”
“What you say or do–”
“I told you the truth then, I am telling it now. I will never see you enter a gambling-room as long as I can prevent it. Call for help if you like.”
She looked at him with amazement. She seemed about to speak–to make another protest. Instead, she turned suddenly away, hesitated again, put both her hands to her face, burst into tears, and hurried toward the stairs. De Spain followed her. “Let me take you to where you are going?”
Nan turned on him, her eyes blazing through her tears, with a single, scornful, furious word: “No!” She quickened her step from him in such confusion that she ran into two men just reaching the top of the stairs. They separated with alacrity, and gave her passage. One of the men was Lefever, who, despite his size, was extremely nimble in getting out of her urgent way, and quick in lifting his hat. She fairly raced down the flight of steps, leaving Lefever looking after her in astonishment. He turned to de Spain: “Now, who the deuce was that?”
De Spain ignored his question by asking another: “Did you find him?” Lefever shook his head. “Not a trace; I covered Main Street. I guess Bob was right. Nobody home here, Henry?”
“Nobody we want.”
“Nothing going on?”
“Not a thing. If you will wait here for Bob, I’ll run over to the office and answer those telegrams.”
De Spain started for the stairs. “Henry,” called Lefever, as his companion trotted hastily down, “if you catch up to her, kindly apologize for a fat man.”
But de Spain was balked of an opportunity to follow Nan. In the street he ran into Scott. “Did you get the story?” demanded de Spain.
“Part of it.”
“Was it Sassoon?”
Scott shook his head. “I wish it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Deaf Sandusky.”
“Calabasas?”
Scott nodded. “You must have moved a couple of inches at the right nick, Henry. That man Sandusky,” Bob smiled a sickly smile, “doesn’t miss very often. He was bothered a little by his friends being all around you.”
The two regarded each other for a moment in silence. “Why,” asked de Spain, boiling a little, “should that damned, hulking brute try to blow my head off just now?”
“Only for the good of the order, Henry,” grinned the scout.
“Nice job Jeff has picked out for me,” muttered de Spain grimly, “standing up in these Sleepy Cat barrooms to be shot at.” He drew in a good breath and threw up the wet brim of his hat. “Well, such is life in the high country, I suppose. Some fine day Mr. Sandusky will manage to get me–or I’ll manage to get him–that all depends on how the happening happens. Anyway, Bob, it’s bad luck to miss a man. We’ll hang that much of a handicap on his beef-eating crop. Is he the fellow John calls the butcher?” demanded de Spain.
“That’s what everybody calls him, I guess.”
The two rejoined Lefever at the head of the stairs and the three discussed the news. Even Lefever seemed more serious when he heard the report. Scott, when asked where Sandusky now was, nodded toward the big room in front of them.
Lefever looked toward the gambling-tables. “We’ll go in and look at him.” He turned to Scott to invite his comment on the proposal. “Think twice, John,” suggested the Indian. “If there’s any trouble in a crowd like that, somebody that has no interest in de Spain or Sandusky is pretty sure to get hurt.”
“I don’t mean to start anything,” explained Lefever. “I only want de Spain to look at him.”
But sometimes things start themselves. Lefever found Sandusky at a faro-table. At his side sat his partner, Logan. Three other players, together with the onlookers, and the dealer–whose tumbled hair fell partly over the visor that protected his eyes from the glare of the overhead light–made up the group. The table stood next to that of Tenison, who, white-faced and impassive under the heat and light, still held to his chair.
Lefever took a position at one end of the table, where he faced Sandusky, and de Spain, just behind his shoulder, had a chance to look the two Calabasas men closely over. Sandusky again impressed him as a powerful man, who, beyond an ample stomach, carried his weight without showing it. What de Spain most noted, as it lay on the table, was the size and extreme length of the outlaw’s hand. He had heard of Sandusky’s hand. From the tips of the big fingers to the base of the palm, this right hand, spread over his chips, would cover half again the length of the hand of the average man.
De Spain credited readily the extraordinary stories he had heard of Sandusky’s dexterity with a revolver or a rifle. That he should so lately have missed a shot at so close range was partly explained now that de Spain perceived Sandusky’s small, hard, brown eyes were somewhat unnaturally bright, and that his brows knit every little while in his effort to collect himself. But his stimulation only partly explained the failure; it was notoriously hard to upset the powerful outlaw with alcohol. De Spain noted the coarse, straw-colored hair–plastered recently over the forehead by a barber–the heavy, sandy mustache, freshly waxed by the same hand, the bellicose nostrils of the Roman nose, the broad, split chin, and mean, deep lines of a most unpromising face. Sandusky’s brown shirt sprawled open at the collar, and de Spain remembered again the flashy waistcoat, fastened at the last buttonhole by a cut-glass button.
At Sandusky’s side sat his crony in all important undertakings–a much smaller, sparer man, with aggressive shoulders and restless eyes. Logan was the lookout of the pair, and his roving glance lighted on de Spain before the latter had inspected him more than a moment. He lost no time in beginning on de Spain with an insolent question as to what he was looking at. De Spain, his eye bent steadily on him, answered with a tone neither of apology nor pronounced offense: “I am looking at you.”
Lefever hitched at his trousers cheerily and, stepping away from de Spain, took a position just behind the dealer. “What are you looking at me for?” demanded Logan insolently.
De Spain raised his voice to match exactly the tone of the inquiry. “So I’ll know you next time.”
Logan pushed back his chair. As he turned his legs from under the table to rise, a hand rested on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the brown face and feeble smile of Scott. Logan with his nearest foot kicked Sandusky. The big fellow looked up and around. Either by chance or in following the sound of the last voice, his glance fell on de Spain. He scrutinized for a suspicious instant the burning eyes and the red mark low on the cheek. While he did so–comprehension dawning on him–his enormous hands, forsaking the pile of chips with which both had been for a moment busy, flattened out, palms down, on the faro-table. Logan tried to rise. Scott’s hand rested heavily on him. “What’s the row?” demanded Sandusky in the queer tone of a deaf man. Logan pointed at de Spain. “That Medicine Bend duck wants a fight.”
“With a man, Logan; not with a cub,” retorted de Spain, matching insult with insult.
“Maybe I can do something for you,” interposed Sandusky. His eyes ran like a flash around the table. He saw how Lefever had pre-empted the best place in the room. He looked up and back at the man standing now at his shoulder, and almost between Logan and himself. It was the Indian, Scott. Sandusky felt, as his faculties cleared and arranged themselves every instant, that there was no hurry whatever about lifting his hand; but he could not be faced down without a show of resistance, and he concluded that for this occasion his tongue was the best weapon. “If I can,” he added stiffly, “I’m at your service.”
De Spain made no answer beyond keeping his eyes well on Sandusky’s eyes. Tenison, overhearing the last words, awoke to the situation and rose from his case. He made his way through the crowd around the disputants and brusquely directed the dealer to close the game. While Sandusky was cashing in, Tenison took Logan aside. What Tenison said was not audible, but it sufficed to quiet the little fellow. The only thing further to be settled was as to who should leave the room last, since neither party was willing to go first. Tenison, after a formal conference with Lefever and Logan, offered to take Sandusky and Logan by a private stairway to the billiard-room, while Lefever took de Spain and Scott out by way of the main entrance. This was arranged, and when the railroad men reached the street rain had ceased falling.
Scott warned de Spain to keep within doors, and de Spain promised to do so. But when they left him he started out at once to see whether he could not, by some happy chance, encounter Nan.
CHAPTER IX
A CUP OF COFFEE
He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for reflection–indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.
But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang, failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan Morgan’s eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit, by a glance, a word, a gesture–a mere turn of her head. There was in the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to please her–yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent on entering a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night. Association with outlaws–what might it not do for even such a girl? While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail, hoping to catch a sight of her.
On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to Nan if it were she. In another moment his ear told him there were two horses approaching. He waited for the couple to cross the bridge, and they passed him so close he could almost have touched the nearer rider. Then he realized, as the horse passing beside him shied, that it was Sandusky and Logan riding silently by.
For a week de Spain spent most of his time in Sleepy Cat trying to catch sight of Nan. His reflection on the untoward incidents that had set them at variance left him rebellious. He meditated more about putting himself right with her than about all his remaining concerns together. A strange fire had seized him–that fire of the imagination which scorns fair words and fine reasoning, but which, smothered, burns in secret until, fanned by the wind of accident, it bursts out the more fiercely because of the depths in which it has smouldered.
Every day that de Spain rode across the open country, his eyes turned to the far range and to Music Mountain. The rounded, distant, immutable peak–majestic as the sun, cold as the stars, shrouding in its unknown fastnesses the mysteries of the ages and the secrets of time–meant to him now only this mountain girl whom its solitude sheltered and to whom his thoughts continually came back.
Within two weeks he became desperate. He rode the Gap trail from Sleepy Cat again and again for miles and miles in the effort to encounter her. He came to know every ridge and hollow on it, every patch and stone between the lava beds and the Rat River. And in spite of the counsels of his associates, who warned him to beware of traps, he spent, under one pretext or another, much of the time either on the stages to and from Calabasas or in the saddle toward Morgan’s Gap, looking for Nan.
Killing time in this way, after a fruitless ride, his persistence was one day most unexpectedly rewarded at the Calabasas barns. He had ridden through a hot sun from Sleepy Cat, passing the up stage half-way to Calabasas, and had struck from there directly out on the Sinks toward Morgan’s Gap. Riding thence around the lower lava beds, he had headed for Calabasas, where he had an appointment to meet Scott and Lefever at five o’clock. When de Spain reached the Calabasas barn, McAlpin, the barn boss, was standing in the doorway. “You’d never be comin’ from Sleepy Cat in the saddle!” exclaimed McAlpin incredulously. De Spain nodded affirmatively as he dismounted. “Hot ride, sir; a hot day,” commented McAlpin, shaking his head dubiously as he called a man to take the horse, unstrapped de Spain’s coat from the saddle, and followed the manager into the office.
The heat was oppressive, and de Spain unbuckled his cartridge-belt, slipped his revolver from the holster, mechanically stuck it inside his trousers waistband, hung the heavy belt up under his coat, and, sitting down, called for the stage report and asked whether the new blacksmith had sobered up. When McAlpin had given him all minor information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry, sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company hay, was Nan Morgan’s.
McAlpin, talking volubly, essayed to move on, but de Spain, stubbornly pausing, only continued to look at the handsome saddle-horse. McAlpin saw he was in for it, and resigned himself to an inquisition. When de Spain asked whose horse it was, McAlpin was ready. “That little pony is Nan Morgan’s, sir.”
De Spain made no comment. “Good-looking pony, sir,” ventured McAlpin half-heartedly.
“What’s it doing here?” demanded de Spain coldly.
Before answering, the barn boss eyed de Spain very carefully to see how the wind was setting, for the pony’s presence confessed an infraction of a very particular rule. “You see,” he began, cocking at his strict boss from below his visorless cap a questioning Scotch eye, “I like to keep on good terms with that gang. Some of them can be very ugly. It’s better to be friends with them when you can–by stretching the barn rules a little once in a while–than to have enemies of ’em all the time–don’t you think so, sir?”
“What’s her horse doing here?” asked de Spain, without commenting on the long story, but also without showing, as far as the barnman could detect, any growing resentment at the infraction of his regulations.
McAlpin made even the most inconsequential approaches to a statement with a keen and questioning glance. “The girl went up to the Cat on the early stage, sir. She’s coming back this afternoon.”
“What is she riding away over here to Calabasas for to take the stage, instead of riding straight into Sleepy Cat?”
Once more McAlpin eyed him carefully. “The girl’s been sick.”
“Sick?”
“She ain’t really fit to ride a step,” confided the Scotch boss with growing confidence. “But she’s been going up two or three times now to get some medicine from Doc Torpy–that’s the way of it. There’s a nice girl, sir–in a bunch o’ ruffians, I know–though old Duke, she lives with, he ain’t a half-bad man except for too many cards; I used to work for him–but I call her a nice girl. Do you happen to know her?”
De Spain had long been on guard. “I’ve spoken with her in a business way one or twice, Jim. I can’t really say I know her.”
“Nice girl. But that’s a tough bunch in that Gap, sure as you’re alive; yes, sir.”
De Spain was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a hardy and enduring rider on a night round-up.
“Anything sick, Jim?” asked de Spain, walking on down the barn and looking at the horses. It was only the second time since he had given him the job that de Spain had called the barn boss “Jim,” and McAlpin answered with the rising assurance of one who realizes he is “in” right. “Not so much as a sore hoof in either alley, Mr. de Spain. I try to take care of them, sir.”
“What are we paying you, Jim?”
“Twenty-seven a week, sir; pretty heavy work at that.”
“We’ll try to make that thirty-two after this week.”
McAlpin touched his cap. “Thank you kindly, sir, I’m sure. It costs like hell to live out here, Mr. de Spain.”
“Lefever says you live off him at poker.”
“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, sir! John will have his joke. He’s always after me to play poker with him–I don’t like to do it. I’ve got a family to support–he ain’t. But by and far, I don’t think John and me is ten dollars apart, year in and year out. Look at that bay, sir! A month ago Elpaso said that horse was all in–look at him now. I manage to keep things up.”
“What did you say,” asked de Spain indifferently, “had been the matter with Nan Morgan?” Her name seemed a whole mouthful to speak, so fearful was he of betraying interest.
“Why, I really didn’t say, sir. And I don’t know. But from what she says, and the way she coughs, I’m thinking it was a touch of this p-new-monia that’s going around so much lately, sir.”
His listener recalled swiftly the days that had passed since the night he had seen her wet through in the cold rain at Sleepy Cat. He feared Jim’s diagnosis might be right. And he had already made all arrangements to meet the occasion now presenting itself. Circumstances seemed at last to favor him, and he looked at his watch. The down stage bringing Nan back would be due in less than an hour.
“Jim,” he said thoughtfully, “you are doing the right thing in showing some good-will toward the Morgans.”
“Now, I’m glad you think that, sir.”
“You know I unintentionally rubbed their backs the wrong way in dragging Sassoon out.”
“They’re jealous of their power, I know–very jealous.”
“This seems the chance to show that I have no real animosity myself toward the outfit.”
Since de Spain was not looking at him, McAlpin cocked two keen and curious eyes on the sphinx-like birthmark of the very amiable speaker’s face. However, the astute boss, if he wondered, made no comment. “When the stage comes in,” continued de Spain quietly, “have the two grays–Lady and Ben–hitched to my own light Studebaker. I’ll drive her over to the Gap myself.”
“The very thing,” exclaimed McAlpin, staring and struggling with his breath.
“In some way I’ve happened, both times I talked with her, to get in wrong–understand?” McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than once. “No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first take kindly to the idea of going with me.”
“I see.”
“But she ought to do it. She will be tired–it’s a long, dusty ride for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill.”
“So it is, so it is!”
De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid. “See that her pony is lame when she gets here–can’t be ridden. But you’ll take good care of him and send him home in a few days–get it?”
McAlpin half closed his eyes. “He’ll be so lame it would stagger a cowboy to back him ten feet–and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust me!”
“No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?”
“No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River.”
“If she insists on riding something, or even walking home,” continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a peace-offering, “I’ll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me here to-night, on the hay?”
“Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You’ve got a room right here up-stairs, didn’t you know that?”
“Don’t mind the bed,” directed de Spain prudently. “I like the hay better.”
“As you like; we’ve got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap. But the bed’s all right, sir; it is, on me word.”
With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his appeal for Nan’s favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly faint in the heat and dust, when she arrived. He returned to McAlpin: “Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?”
“Go right down to the inn, sir. It’s a new chap running it–a half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on. She’ll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee.”
It was four o’clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor the left.
As he approached the weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters and carvings.
De Spain pounded on the bar. His effort to attract attention met with no response. He walked to the left end of the bar, lifted the hand-rail that enclosed the space behind it, and pushed open the door between the mirrors leading to the back room. This, too, was empty. He called out–there was no response. He walked through a second door opening on an arcaded passageway toward the kitchen–not a soul was in sight. There was a low fire in the kitchen stove, but Mrs. McAlpin had apparently gone home for a while. Walking back toward the office, he remembered the covered way leading to a patio, which in turn opened on the main road. He perceived also that at the end next the office the covered way faced the window at the end of the long bar.
Irritated at the desertion of the place, due, he afterward learned, to the heat of the afternoon, and disappointed at the frustration of his purpose, he walked back through the rear room into the office. As he lifted the hand-rail and, passing through, lowered it behind him, he took out his watch to see how soon the stage was due. While he held the timepiece in his hand he heard a rapid clatter of hoofs approaching the place. Thinking it might be Scott and Lefever arriving from the south an hour ahead of time, he started toward the front door–which was still open–to greet them. Outside, hurried footsteps reached the door just ahead of him and a large man, stepping quickly into the room, confronted de Spain. One of the man’s hands rested lightly on his right side. De Spain recognized him instantly; the small, drooping head, carried well forward, the keen eyes, the long hand, and, had there still been a question in his mind, the loud-patterned, shabby waistcoat would have proclaimed beyond doubt–Deaf Sandusky.