Out of the Depths

by Bennet, Robert Ames

  “Not far from here. He could not have gone any considerable distance along the top or side. He was down and riding away when I reached the crags, and I had not lost much time coming up the other side.”

  “It’ll take an Indian to make out his tracks on this dry ground,” remarked the cowman. “We’ll try a look, though, at his hawss’s hoof prints. Just keep behind, if you don’t mind.”

  He threw the reins over the head of his horse, and dismounted, to walk slowly along the more level ground at the foot of the slope. Blake followed, as he had requested, but scrutinizing the ground with a gaze no less keenly observant than that of his companion.

  “Mighty queer,” said Knowles, after they had carried their examination over a hundred yards. “Either he came down more slanting or else––”

  “What do you make of this?” Blake interrupted, bending over a blurred round print in the dust between two grass tufts.

  “Sho!” exclaimed the cowman as he peered at the mark. “That’s why, of course.”

  “Indian shoes,” said Blake.

  “You’ve seen a thing or two. You’re no tenderfoot,” remarked Knowles.

  “I have myself shrunk rawhide shoes on horses’ hoofs when short of iron shoes,” Blake explained. “This would make a hard trail to run down without hounds.”

  The cowman straightened and looked at his companion, his weather-beaten face set in quiet resolve.

  “I know what’s better than hounds,” he said. “This is one badman who has played his game once too often. I’m going to run him down if it takes all year and all the men in the county. There’s a couple of Ute bucks being held in the jail at Stockchute, to be tried for hunting deer. I’m going to get the loan of them. The sheriff will turn out with a posse, and we’ll trail that snake, if it takes us clear over into Utah.”

  “We’ll have a fair chance to get him with Ute trackers,” agreed Blake.

  Knowles shook his head. “Unless you’re particular to come along, Mr. Blake, I’d like you and Lafe to keep on with this survey. I’ve been worrying over the chance of losing my range, till it’s got on my nerves.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Knowles. I shall go ahead in the morning, if Ashton is able to rod. It will be best, I suppose, for my wife and Miss Chuckie to remain close at the ranch until you make sure where this trail leads.”

  “No; he’s a snake, but the Indian shoes prove he’s Western––He won’t strike at the ladies. Another thing, I’m going to give you Kid for guard.”

  “He may prefer to join the posse.”

  “Of course he’ll prefer that. You can count on Kid Gowan when it comes to a man hunt. He’ll stay, though, all right. I don’t want Mrs. Blake to think she has to stop indoors. With Kid on the lookout around your camp, the ladies can feel free to come and go any time between sunup and sundown, and you and Lafe can do what you want. There won’t be any more shooting, unless it’s by Kid.”

  “Very well,” said Blake. “I’m not anxious to play hide and seek with a man who shoots and runs. When can we expect the rope and spikes?”

  “That’s another thing,” replied Knowles. “Kid can be packing them and your camp outfit up to the cañon while you and Lafe are running your line of levels. He ought to be home by now. He was gone when the men turned out this morning. Soon as I get back I’ll send him up to camp with you. He can bring along Rocket, to be ready for a chase, providing we can find the brute. Queer about that hawss. Wanted to ride him this morning. Found he’d got out and gone off the way he used to before Lafe gentled him.”

  While talking, the two men had returned to the cowman’s horse and started around the hill to the camp. They found Isobel and Genevieve and the baby all engaged in entertaining Ashton. Knowles briefly congratulated the wounded man, and led his pony down to the pool for a drink. Blake had seated himself beside his wife. She handed the baby to him, and remarking that she also wished to drink, she followed Knowles.

  The cowman smiled at her reassuringly. “You’re not afraid of any more shooting, ma’am, are you?” he asked. “I’ve told your husband that Kid is to come up to keep guard. He will stay right along, unless that scoundrel is trailed down sooner.”

  “Then I shall have no fear, Mr. Knowles.”

  “You needn’t, and you and Chuckie can come and go just the same as ever. I don’t want your visit spoiled. It’s a great treat to all of us to have you with us.”

  “And to my husband and myself to be your guests! I have quite fallen in love with your daughter, Mr. Knowles. If you’ll permit me to say it, you are very fortunate to have so lovely and lovable a girl.”

  “Don’t I know it, ma’am!”

  “So beautiful––and her character as beautiful as her face. How you must prize her!”

  “Prize her!” repeated Knowles, his usual stolid face aglow with pride and tenderness. “Why, ma’am, I couldn’t hold her more in liking if she was my own flesh and blood!”

  Genevieve suddenly bent down to hide the intense emotion that had struck the color from her face. Yet after a moment’s pause, she spoke in a composed, almost casual tone: “Then Chuckie is not your own daughter?”

  “Not in the way you mean. Hasn’t she told you? I adopted her.”

  “I see,” remarked Genevieve, with a show of polite interest. “But of course, taking her when a young infant, she has always thought of you as her own father.”

  “No––what I can’t get over is that she feels that way, and I feel the same to her, though I never saw or heard of her till she was going on fourteen.”

  “Ah!” Genevieve could no longer suppress her agitation. “Then she is––I’m sure that she must be––You said she came from the East, from Chicago?”

  “No, ma’am! I didn’t say where she came from,” curtly replied the cowman.

  The shock of his brusqueness restored the lady to her usual quiet composure. Looking up into his face, she found it as blank and impenetrable as a cement wall.

  “You must pardon me,” she murmured. “I myself am a Chicago girl, so you must see how natural it is for me to hope that so sweet and beautiful a girl as Chuckie came from my city.”

  “Chuckie is my daughter,” stated Knowles in a flat tone.

  “If you will kindly permit me to explain. My husband––”

  “Chuckie is my daughter, legally adopted,” repeated the cowman. “You can see what she is like. If that is not enough, ma’am, I can’t prevent you from declining our hospitality, though we’d be mighty sorry to have you and your husband leave.”

  The tears started into Genevieve’s hazel eyes. “Mr. Knowles! how could you think for a moment that I––that we––”

  “Excuse me, ma’am!” he hastened to apologize. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You see, I’m kind of prejudiced along some lines. I’ve been bred up to the Western idea that it isn’t just etiquette to ask about people’s antecedents. Real Western, I mean. Our city folks are nearly as bad as you Easterners over family trees. As if a child isn’t as much descended from its mother’s maternal grandmother as from its father’s paternal grandfather!”

  Genevieve smiled at this adroit diversion of the subject by the seemingly simple Westerner, and replied: “My father’s and mother’s parents were farm people. My husband worked his way up out of the Chicago slums.”

  “He did?” The cowman could not conceal his astonishment. He looked curiously into the lady’s high-bred face. “Well, now, that sure is something to be right proud of––not that I’d have exactly expected you to think so. If you’ll excuse me, ma’am, I’m more surprised at the way you feel about it than that he was able to do such a big thing.”

  “No one is responsible for what he is born. But we are at least partly entitled to the credit or discredit of what we become,” she observed.

  “That’s good American doctrine, ma’am––Western American!” approved Knowles.

  “It should apply to women as well as men,” she stated.

  “It ought,” he dryl
y replied, and he jerked up the head of his pawing horse. “Here, you! I guess it’s high time we were starting in, ma’am. Kid may think he’s to lay over at the ranch until morning. We want to get him out here before dusk. I don’t reckon there’s any show of that snake coming back tonight, but it’s as well to be on the safe side.”

  He walked up the slope towards the others, unbuckling his cartridge belt as he went.

  “Sling on your saddle, honey,” he called to his daughter.

  The girl sprang up from beside Ashton and ran to fetch her own and Genevieve’s picketed ponies. Her father held out his belt and revolver to the engineer.

  “Here’s my Colt’s, Mr. Blake,” he said. “I have another at home. You won’t need it, but I may as well leave it. We’re going to lope in now, so as to hustle Kid out to you before night. Just swap me that yearling for my gun. It wouldn’t seem natural not to be toting something that can make a noise.”

  “Thomas never cries unless he needs attention,” Genevieve sought to defend her infant.

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s a good thing he knows that much already. You have to make yourself heard to get what you want in the world generally, as well as in hostleries and eating-houses.”

  Blake buckled on the cartridge belt, with its holstered revolver, and went to help saddle the ponies. Ashton watched him and Isobel narrowly. He was far from pleased with the familiarity of their talk and manner towards one another. Twice the girl put her hand on Blake’s arm.

  In marked contrast to this affectionate intimacy, Isobel was distrait and hurried when she came to take leave of the wounded man. He had risen to his feet, and she could not ignore his proffered hand. But she avoided his gaze and quickly withdrew her fingers from his warm clasp to hurry off.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXI

  MADONNA DOLOROSA

  Blake was cooking supper when, shortly before sunset, Gowan drove up to the waterhole, with a pony in lead behind the heavy wagon. Leaving the wagon with the rope and other articles of his load on the far side of the creek bed, he watered and picketed the horses, and came across to the tent with his rifle and a roll of blankets.

  “Howdy, Mr. Blake. Got here in time for supper, I see,” he remarked as he unburdened himself. “Met Mr. Knowles and the ladies down near the ranch. They told me about the shooting.” He faced about to stare at Ashton’s bandaged head. “They told me you came mighty near getting yours. You shore are a lucky tenderfoot.”

  Ashton shrugged superciliously. “The worst of it is the additional hole in my hat. I see you have a new one. Is that the latest style on the range?”

  “Stetson, brand A-1.,” replied the puncher. “How does it strike you, Mr. Blake?––and my new shirt? Having a dude puncher on our range kind of stirred up my emulosity. They don’t have real cowboy attire like his at an ordinary shorthorn cow town like Stockchute––but I did the best I could.”

  Blake made no response to this heavy badinage. He set the supper on the chuck-box, and laconically said: “Come and get it.”

  “Might have known you’ve been on round-up,” remarked Gowan, with an insistent sociability oddly at variance with his usual taciturn reserve. “According to Miss Chuckie, you’re some rider, and according to Mr. Knowles, you can shoot. I wouldn’t mind hearing from you direct about that shooting this morning.”

  Blake recounted the affair still more briefly than he had told it to Knowles.

  “That shore was a mighty close shave,” commented the puncher. “But you haven’t said what the fellow looked like.”

  “He wore ordinary range clothes,” replied Blake. “I couldn’t see him behind the rocks, and caught only a glimpse of him as he went around the ridge. His horse was much the same build and color as Rocket.”

  The puncher stared at Ashton with his cold unblinking eyes. “You shore picked out a Jim Dandy guide, Mr. Tenderfoot. According to this, it looks mighty like he’s gone and turned hawss thief. Mr. Knowles says your Rocket hawss has vamoosed. If he’s moving to Utah under your ex-guide, it’ll take some lively posse to head him. What d’you say, Mr. Blake?”

  “I think the man is apt soon to come to the end of his rope––after dropping through a trap door,” said the engineer.

  Gowan looked at him between narrowed eyelids, and paused with upraised coffee cup to reply: “A man that has shown the nerve this one has won’t let anyone get close enough to rope him.”

  “It will be either that or a bullet, before long,” predicted Blake. “The badman is getting to be rather out of date.”

  “Maybe a bullet,” admitted Gowan. “Never any rope, though, for his kind.––Guess I’ll turn in. It’s something of a drive over to Stockchute and back with the wagon, and I got up early. You and Ashton might go on watch until midnight, and turn me out for the rest of the night.”

  “Very well,” agreed Blake.

  The puncher stretched out on his blankets under a tree, a few yards from the tent. Ashton took the dishes down to sand-scour them at the pool, while Blake saw that everything damageable was disposed safe from the knife-like fangs of the coyotes.

  “How about keeping watch?” asked Ashton, when he returned with the cleansed dishes. “Shall I take first or second?”

  “Neither,” answered Blake. “You will need all the sleep and rest you can get. Tomorrow may be a hard day. Turn in at once.”

  “If you insist,” acquiesced Ashton. “I still am rather weak and dizzy.” He went to the tent and disappeared.

  Blake took the lantern and strolled across to the wagon, to look at the numerous articles brought by Gowan. He set the lantern over in the wagon bed on top of what seemed to be a heap of empty oat sacks, while he overhauled the load. It included three coils of rope of a hundred feet each, a keg of railroad spikes, two dozen picket-pins, two heavy hammers, a pick and shovel, and a crowbar.

  The last three articles had not been ordered by Blake. The puncher had brought them along, apparently with a hazy idea that the descent of the cañon would be something on the order of mining. There were also in the wagon two five-gallon kerosene cans to use in carrying water up the mountain, a sack of oats, Gowan’s saddle, and two packsaddles.

  In shifting one of the packsaddles to get at the hammers, Blake knocked it against the sack on which the lantern had been set. The lantern suddenly fell over on its side. Blake reached in to pick it up, and perceived that the sack was rising in a mound. He caught up one of the hammers, and held it poised for a stroke. From the sack came a muffled rattle. The hammer descended in a smashing blow.

  The sack rose and fell as if something under it was squirming about convulsively. But to Blake’s surprise it did not fall aside and disclose that which was making the violent movement. The squirming lessened. He grasped an outer corner of the sack and jerked it upward. It failed to flip into the air. The lower part sagged heavily. The squirmer was inside and––the mouth of the sack was tied fast.

  Blake looked at it thoughtfully. After some moments, he placed the sack where it had lain at first, and upset the keg of spikes on top of it. He then carefully examined Gowan’s saddle; but it told him nothing. He shook his head doubtfully, and returned to camp.

  Going quietly around to Gowan, he set down the lantern close before the puncher’s face and stopped to light a cigar. Gowan stirred restlessly and rolled half over, but did not open his eyes. Blake smoked his cigar, extinguished the lantern, and quietly stretched out on the edge of the sleeper’s blankets. In a few moments he, too, was asleep.

  About two o’clock Gowan stirred and rolled over, pulling at his blankets. Instantly Blake was wide awake. The puncher mumbled, drew the blankets closer about him, and lay quiet. Blake went into the tent and dozed on his own blankets until roused by the chill of dawn. He went down for a plunge in the pool, and was dressed and back at the fireplace, cooking breakfast, when Gowan started up out of his heavy slumber.

  “Yes, it’s getting along about that time,” Blake called to him cheerfully. “You might turn out Ash
ton. He has made as good a night of it as you have.”

  Gowan had been staring at the dawn, his lean jaw slack. As Blake spoke, he snapped his mouth shut and came over to confront the engineer. “You agreed to call me at midnight,” he said.

  “My apology!” politely replied Blake. “I know how you must feel about it. But I hope you will excuse me. I saw that you, like Ashton, needed a full night’s sleep, and so did not disturb you.”

  The puncher looked away and muttered: “I’m responsible for you to Mr. Knowles. He sent me here to guard you.”

  “That is true. Of course you will say it’s owing to no fault of mine that we have come through the night safely. Well, we have a big day’s work before us. May I ask you to call Ashton? Breakfast is ready.”

  At this the puncher sullenly went to rouse the sleeper. Ashton came out rubbing his eyes; but after a dip in the pool, he declared himself restored by his long sleep and ready for a day’s work. During the night his bandage had come loose. He would have tossed it away, but Blake insisted upon re-dressing the wound. He did so with as much skill and almost as much gentleness as had his wife.

  When Blake and Ashton left the camp, the puncher was leading the horses across to load their first packs. The two levelmen walked briskly up the valley, carrying only enough food and water to last themselves until evening, when Gowan was to have the camp moved to the top of High Mesa.

  Beginning from his bench-mark at the foot of the mountain, Blake carried the level line slantingly up the ridge side. The work was slow and tedious, since the telescope of the level could never be on a horizontal line either higher or lower respectively than the top and bottom of the thirteen-foot rod. This necessitated setting-up the instrument every few feet during the steepest part of the ascent.

  They saw nothing of Gowan, who had chosen a more roundabout but easier trail. At midmorning, however, they were overtaken by Genevieve and Isobel and Thomas Herbert Vincent Leslie Blake. Knowles had started for Stockchute to seek the aid of the sheriff and his Indian prisoners. The ladies divided the ascent into several stages, riding ahead of the surveyors and resting in the shade of a rock or pine until the men had passed them.