But who was to help him? Certainly none of his friends could know where he was hidden or of his plight–no help could come from them unless she told them. If she told them they would try to reach him. That would mean an appalling–an unthinkable–fight. If she told her uncle, could she keep him from killing de Spain? She believed not. He might promise to let him go. But she knew her uncle’s ferocious resentment, and how easy it would be for him to give her fine words and, in spite of them, for de Spain to be found dead some morning where he lay–there were plenty of men available for jobs such as that.
All came back to one terrifying alternative: Should she help this wretched man herself? And if he lived, would he repay her by shooting some one of her own kin?
The long ride to Calabasas went fast as the debate swept on, and the vivid shock of her strange experience recurred to her imagination.
She drew up before the big barn. Jim McAlpin was coming out to go to supper. Nan asked for her package and wanted to start directly back again. McAlpin refused absolutely to hear of it. He looked at her horse and professed to be shocked. He told her she had ridden hard, urged her to dismount, and sent her pony in to be rubbed, assuring Nan heartily there was not a man, outside the hostlers, within ten miles. While her horse was cared for, McAlpin asked, in his harmless Scotch way, about Gale.
Concerning Gale, Nan was non-committal. But she listened with interest, more or less veiled, to whatever running comment McAlpin had to offer concerning the Calabasas fight. “And I was sorry to see Gale mixed up in it,” he concluded, in his effort to draw Nan out, “sorry. And sorrier to think of Henry de Spain getting killed that way. Why, I knowed Henry de Spain when he was a baby in arms.” He put out his hand cannily. “I worked for his father before he was born.” His listener remained obdurate. There was nothing for it except further probing, to which, however, Jim felt abundantly equal. “Some say,” he suggested, looking significantly toward the door of the barn, and significantly away again, “that Henry went down there to pick a fight with the boys. But,” he asserted cryptically, “I happen to know that wasn’t so.”
“Then what did he go down there for?” demanded Nan indignantly, but not warily.
McAlpin, the situation now in hand, took his time to it. He leaned forward in a manner calculated to invite confidence without giving offense. “Miss Nan,” said he simply, “I worked for your Uncle Duke for five years–you know that.” Nan had, at least, heard it fifty times. “I think a good deal of him–I think a good deal of you, so does the missus, so does little Loretta–she’s always asking about you, the child is–and I hear and see a good deal here that other people don’t get next to–they can’t. Now Henry de Spain was here, with me, sitting right there where you are sitting, Miss Nan, in that chair,” declared McAlpin with an unanswerable finger, “not fifteen minutes before that fight began, he was there. I told you he never went down there to fight. Do you want the proof? I’ll tell you–I wouldn’t want anybody else to know–will you keep it?”
Nan seemed indifferent. “Girls are not supposed to keep secrets,” she said obstinately.
Her narrator was not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. “There is Henry de Spain’s coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you’ll find his belt of cartridges. Don’t take my word–look for yourself.”
Giving this information time to sink in, McAlpin continued. Nan’s eyes had turned, despite her indifference, to the coat; but she was thinking more intently about the belt which McAlpin asserted hung under it. “You want to know what he did go down to the hotel for that afternoon? I happen to know that, too,” averred McAlpin, sitting down, but respectfully, on the edge of the chair. “First I want to say this: I worked for your Uncle Duke five years.”
He paused to give Nan a chance to dispute the statement if she so desired. Then taking her despairing silence as an indorsement of his position in giving her a confidence, he went on: “Henry de Spain is dead,” he said quietly. She eyed him without so much as winking. “I wouldn’t tell it if he wasn’t. Some of the boys don’t believe he is. I’m not a pessimist–not a bit–but I’m telling you it’s a physical impossibility for a man to take the fire of four revolvers in the hands of four men like those four men, at arm’s length, and live. Henry de Spain is the cleverest man with a gun that ever rode the Spanish Sinks, but limits is limits; the boy’s dead. And he was always talking about you. It’s God’s truth, and since he’s dead it harms no one to tell it to you, though I’d never breathe it to another. He was fairly gone on you. Now that’s the fair truth: the man was gone on you. I knowed it, where others didn’t know it. I was the only one he could always ask about whether you’d been here, and when; and when you might be expected coming again–and all such things like that.
“You don’t have to knock me down, Miss Nan, to put me wise about a man’s being keen on a girl. I’m a married man,” declared McAlpin with modest pride. “He thought all the time he was fooling me, and keeping covered. Why, I laughed to myself at his tricks to get information without letting on! Now, that afternoon he came in here kind of moody. It was an anniversary for him, and a hard one–the day his father was shot from ambush–a good many years ago, but nary one of us had forgot it. Then he happened to see your pony–this same pony you’re riding to-day–a-standing back there in the box-stall. He asked me whose it was; and he asked me about you, and, by jinx! the way he perked up when I told him you were coming in on the stage that afternoon! When he heard you’d been sick, he was for going down to the hotel to get a cup of coffee–for you!” McAlpin, like any good story-teller, was already on his feet again. “He did it,” he exclaimed, “and you know what he got when he stepped into the barroom.” He took hold of de Spain’s coat and held it aside to enter his exhibit. “There,” he concluded, “is his cartridge-belt, hanging there yet. The boy is dead–why shouldn’t I tell you?”
Nan rode home much more excited, more bewildered than when she had ridden over. What should she do? It was already pretty clear to her that de Spain had not ridden unarmed to where she found him to ambush any of the Morgans. He was not dead; but he was not far from it if McAlpin was right and if she could credit her own senses in looking at him. What ought she to do?
Other things McAlpin had said crowded her thoughts. Strangest shock of all that this man of all other men should profess to care for her. She had shown anger when McAlpin dared speak of it; at least, she thought she had. And she still did not know how, sufficiently, to resent the thought of such audacity on de Spain’s part; but recalling all she could of his words and actions, she was forced to confess to herself that McAlpin’s assertions were confirmed in them–and that what McAlpin had said interpreted de Spain’s unvarying attitude toward her. This was, to say the least, a further awkward complication for her feelings. She already had enough to confuse them.
CHAPTER XIV
NAN DRIFTS
Without going in to speak to Gale, whom Bull Page, his nurse, reported very cross but not hurt much, Nan left her packet for him and rode home. Her uncle Duke was in town. She had the house to herself, with only Bonita, the old Mexican serving-woman, and Nan ate her late supper alone.
The longer she pondered on de Spain and his dilemma–and her own–the more she worried. When she went to bed, up-stairs in her little gable room, she thought sleep–never hard for her to woo–would relieve her of her anxiety for at least the night. But she waited in vain for sleep. She was continually asking herself whether de Spain was really very badly hurt, or whether he might be only tricking her into thinking he was. Assailed by conflicting doubts, she tossed on her pillow till a resolve seized her to go up again to his hiding-place and see what she could see or hear–possibly, if one were on foot, she could uncover a plot.
She dressed resolutely, buckled a holster to her side, and slipping a revolver–a new one that Gale had given her–into it for protection, she walked softly down-stairs and out of doors.
The night air was clear with a three-quarter moon well up in the sky. She took her way rapidly along the trail to the mountain, keeping as much as possible within the great shadows cast by the towering peaks. Not a sound met her acute listening as she pressed on–not a living thing seemed to move anywhere in the whole great Gap, except this slender-footed, keen-eyed girl, whose heart beat with apprehension of wiles, stratagems, and ambush concerning the venture she was making.
Breathing stealthily and keyed to a tense feeling of uncertainty and suspicion, Nan at length found herself below the ledge where de Spain was in hiding. She stopped and, with the craft of an Indian, stood perfectly still for a very long time before she began to climb up to where the enemy lay. Hearing no sound, she took courage and made the ascent. She reached without adventure the corner of the ledge where she had first seen him, and there, lying flat, listened again.
Hearing only the music of the little cascade, she swept the ledge as well as she could with her eyes, but it was now so far in shadow as to lie in impenetrable darkness. Hardly daring to breathe, she crept and felt her way over it with her hands, discovering nothing until she had almost reached de Spain’s retreat at the farther side. Then her heart stopped in an agony of fear–underneath the overhanging wall she heard voices.
To attempt to escape was as dangerous as to lie still. Had she dared, she would have retreated at once the way she came. Since she dared not, she was compelled to hear what was said, and, indeed, was eager to hear. De Spain had confederates, then, and had tricked her, after all. Whatever his plot, she was resolved to know it, and instead of retreating she took her revolver in hand and drew herself nearer. When she had gained her new position the mutterings, which had been indistinct, became audible. It was not two voices she had heard, but one–de Spain, she judged, was talking in his sleep.
But a moment later this explanation failed to satisfy her. The mutterings were too constant and too disconnected to be mistaken for sleep-talking–it dawned on Nan that this must be delirium. She could hear de Spain throwing himself from side to side, and the near and far sounds, as if of two voices, were explained. It was possible now for her to tell herself she was mistress of the situation. She crept nearer.
He was babbling in the chill darkness about ammunition, urging men to make haste, warning them of some one coming. He turned on the rock floor ceaselessly, sometimes toward her, sometimes from her, muttering of horses, water, passengers, wheels, wrecks. He made broken appeals to be chopped out, directed men where to use their axes. Nan listened to his ravings, overcome by the revelation of his condition. Once her uncle had lain sick of a fever and had been delirious; but that, her sole experience, was nothing to this. Once de Spain threw out a groping hand and, before she could escape, caught her skirt. Nan tried to pull away. His grip did not loosen. She took his hand in hers and, while he muttered meaningless words, forced his fingers open and drew away. His hand was dry and burning hot.
She told herself he must die if he remained longer unaided, and there were unpleasant possibilities, if he died where he lay. Such a death, so close to her own home might, if it were ever known, throw suspicion on her uncle and arouse the deeper resentment of the wounded man’s friends. If the least of pity played a part in suggesting that her safest course was to help de Spain, Nan kept its promptings as much as she could in the penumbra of her thoughts. She did not want to pity or to help him, she convinced herself; but she did not want his death laid to a Morgan plot–for none of his friends would ever believe de Spain had found his way alive and alone to where he lay.
All of this Nan was casting up in her mind as she walked home. She had already decided, but without realizing it, what to do, and was willing to assume that her mind was still open.
Toward daylight of the morning, de Spain dreamed he was not alone–that a figure moved silently in the faintness of the dawn–a figure he struggled to believe a reality, but one that tricked his wandering senses and left him, at the coming of another day, weaker, with failing courage, and alone.
But when he opened his eyes later, and with a clearer head, he found food and drink near. Unable to believe his sight, he fancied his wavering senses deceiving him, until he put out his hand and felt actually the substance of what he saw. He took up a bottle of milk incredulously, and sipped at it with the caution of a man not unused to periods of starvation. He broke eggs and swallowed them, at intervals, hungrily from the shell; and meat he cached, animal-like, in near-by crannies and, manlike, in his pockets.
He was determined, if she should come again, to intercept his visitor. For forty-eight hours he tried cat-naps with an occasional sandwich to keep up his strength. Nan returned unseen, and disappeared despite his watchfulness. A new supply of food proved she had been near, but that it would be hard to time her coming.
When she did come, the third time, an innocent snare discovered her presence. It was just before day, and de Spain had so scattered small obstacles–handfuls of gravel and little chips of rock–that should she cross the ledge in the dark she could hardly escape rousing him.
The device betrayed her. “I’m awake,” announced de Spain at once from his retreat. When she stopped at the words he could not see her; she had flattened herself, standing, against a wall of the ledge. He waited patiently. “You give me no chance to thank you,” he went on after a pause. Nan, drawing nearer, put down a small parcel. “I don’t need any thanks,” she replied with calculated coolness. “I am hoping when you are well enough you will go away, quietly, in the night. That will be the only way you can thank me.”
“I shall be as glad to go as you can be to have me,” rejoined de Spain. “But that won’t be thanking you as I am going to. If you think you can save my life and refuse my thanks as I mean to express them–you are mistaken. I will be perfectly honest. Lying out here isn’t just what I’d choose for comfort. But if by doing it I could see you once in two or three days–”
“You won’t see me again.”
“No news could be worse. And if I can’t, I don’t know how I’m going to get out at all. I’ve no horse–you know that. I can’t stand on my foot yet; if you had a light you might see for yourself. I think I showed you my gun. If you could tell me where I am–”
He halted on the implied question. Nan took ample time to reply.
“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know where you are?” she asked, and there was a touch of vexed incredulity in her tone.
De Spain seemed unmoved by her scepticism. “I can’t tell you anything else,” he said simply. “You couldn’t have any idea I crawled up here for the fun of it.”
“I’ve been trying to think,” she returned, and he perceived in the hardness of her voice how at bay she felt in giving him the least bit of information, “whether I ought to tell you anything at all–”
“I couldn’t very decently take any unfair advantage after what you’ve done, could I?”
“Then–you are in Morgan’s Gap,” she said swiftly, as if she wanted it off her mind.
There was no movement of surprise, neither was there any answer. “I supposed, when I found you here, you knew that,” she added less resolutely; the darkness and silence were plainly a strain.
“I know you are telling the truth,” he responded at length. “But I can hardly believe it. That’s the reason, of course, you did find me. I rode a good many miles that night without knowing where I was or what I was doing. I certainly never figured on winding up here. How could I get in here without being stopped?”
“Everybody inside the Gap was outside hunting for you, I suppose.”
“There isn’t much use asking where I am, in the Gap. I never was inside but once. I shouldn’t know if you did tell me.”
“You are at the foot of Music Mountain, about a mile from where I live.”
“You must have thought I meant to raid your house. I didn’t. I was hit. I got mixed up in trying to get away. You want me out of here?”
“Very much.”
“No more than I want to get out. Perhaps by to-morrow I could walk a few miles. I should have to assassinate somebody to get some ammunition.”
“It wouldn’t be hard for you to do that, I presume.”
Her words and her tone revealed the intensity of her dislike and the depth of her distrust.
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, without resentment: “You are ashamed already of saying that, aren’t you?”
“No, I am not,” she answered defiantly.
“Yes, you are. You know it isn’t true. If you believed it you never would have brought food here to save my life.”
“I brought it to save some of my own people from possible death at your hands–to prevent another fight–to see if you hadn’t manhood enough after being helped, to go away, when you were able to move, peaceably. One cartridge might mean one life, dear to me.”
“I know whose life you mean.”
“You know nothing about what I mean.”
“I know better than you know yourself. If I believed you, I shouldn’t respect you. Fear and mercy are two different things. If I thought you were only afraid of me, I shouldn’t think much of your aid. Listen–I never took the life of any man except to defend my own–”
“No murderer that ever took anybody’s life in this country ever said anything but that.”
“Don’t class me with murderers.”
“You are known from one end of the country to the other as a gunman.”
He answered impassively: “Did these men who call me a gunman ever tell you why I’m one?” She seemed in too hostile a mood to answer. “I guess not,” he went on. “Let me tell you now. The next time you hear me called a gunman you can tell them.”
“I won’t listen,” she exclaimed, restive.
“Yes, you will listen,” he said quietly; “you shall hear every word. My father brought sheep into the Peace River country. The cattlemen picked on him to make an example of. He went out, unarmed, one night to take care of the horses. My mother heard two shots. He didn’t come back. She went to look for him. He was lying under the corral gate with a hole smashed through his jaw by a rifle-bullet that tore his head half off.” De Spain did not raise his voice nor did he hasten his words. “I was born one night six months after that,” he continued. “My mother died that night. When a neighbor’s wife took me from her arm and wrapped me in a blanket, she saw I carried the face of my father as my mother had seen it the night he was murdered. That,” he said, “is what made me a ‘gunman.’ Not whiskey–not women–not cards–just what you’ve heard. And I’ll tell you something else you may tell the men that call me a gunman. The man that shot down my father at his corral gate I haven’t found yet. I expect to find him. For ten years I’ve been getting ready to find him. He is here–in these mountains. I don’t even know his name. But if I live, I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll tear open his head with a soft bullet in the way he tore my father’s open. After I get through with that man”–he hesitated–“they may call me whatever they like.”
The faint ghostliness of the coming day, writing its warning in the eastern sky, the bitter chill of the dying night, the slow, hard, impassive utterance, the darkness in which she stood listening to an enemy she could not see, the loneliness and danger of her situation combined to impress on the unwilling listener the picture of the murder, the tragic birth, and the mother’s death. “You want me out of the Gap,” de Spain concluded, his voice unchanged. “I want to get out. Come back, once more, in the daytime. I will see what I can do with my foot by that time.” He paused. “Will you come?”
She hesitated. “It would be too dangerous for me to come up here in the daytime. Trouble would follow.”
“Come at dusk. You know I am no murderer.”
“I don’t know it,” she persisted stubbornly. It was her final protest.
“Count, some day, on knowing it.”