by Zane Grey
“Fellow coming back from the house already,” he presently added.
“Got the wrong address again. They’ll be happening on the right one pretty soon.”
“Soon as they’re amply satisfied we ain’t under the beds, or hid between the covers of some of them magazines. Blamed if they ain’t lit a lamp.”
Gordon gave a sudden exclamation of dismay. A Mexican had appeared at the back door of the cottage with a tin box in his hand.
“I’m the blamedest idiot out of an asylum,” he cried bitterly. “All the proofs of my claim are in that box. You know I brought it back from Santa Fé with me.”
“Ain’t that too bad?”
Gordon rose, the lines of his mouth set fast and hard.
“I’m going down after it. If I lose those papers, the whole game’s spoilt for me. I’ve got to have them, and I’m going to.”
“Don’t be a goat. How can you take it from a whole company of them?”
“I’ll watch my chance. It may be the fellow will hide it somewhere till he wants it again.”
“I’m going, too, then.”
“See here, Steve. Be sensible. If we both go down, it’s a sure thing they will stumble on us.”
“Too late, anyhow. They’re coming up after us.”
“So much the better. We’ll cut across to the left, slip down, and take them in the rear. Likely as not we’ll find it there.”
“All right. Whatever you say, Dick.”
They slipped away into the semi-darkness, taking advantage of every bit of cover they could find. Not until they were a long stone’s throw from the trail did the young miner begin the descent.
Occasionally they could hear voices over to the right as they silently slipped down. It was no easy thing to negotiate that stiff mountainside in the darkness, where a slip would have sent one of them rolling down into the sharp rock-slide beneath. Presently they came to a rockrim, a sheer descent of twenty-five feet down the perpendicular face of a cliff.
They followed the ledge to the left, hoping to find a trough through which they might discover a way down. But in this they were disappointed.
“We’ll have to go back. There’s a place we passed where perhaps it may be done. We’ve got to try it, anyhow,” said Gordon, in desperation.
Retracing their steps, they came to the point Dick had meant. It looked bad enough, in all conscience, but from the rocks there jutted halfway down a dwarf oak that had found rooting in a narrow cleft.
The young man worked his body over the edge, secured a foothold in some tiny scarp that broke the smoothness of the face, and groped, with one hand and then the other, for some hold that would do to brace his weight. He found one, lowered himself gingerly, and tested another foothold in a little bunch of dry moss.
“All right. My rifle, Steve.”
It was handed down. At that precise moment there came to them the sound of approaching voices.
“Your gun, Steve! Quick. Now, then, over you come. That’s right—no, the other hand—your foot goes there—easy, now.”
They stood together on a three-inch ledge, their heels projecting over space. Nor had they reached this precarious safety any too soon, for already their pursuers were passing along the rim above.
One of them stopped on the edge, scarce eight feet above them.
“They must have come this way,” he said to a companion. “But I expect they’re hitting the trail about a mile from here.”
“Si, Pablo. Can you feed me a cigareet?” the other asked.
The men below, scarce daring to breathe, waited, while the matches glimmered and the cigarettes puffed to a glow. Every instant they anticipated discovery; and they were in such a position that, if it came, neither of them could use his weapons. For they were cramped against the wall with their rifles by their sides, so bound by the situation that to have lifted them to aim would have been impossible.
“The American—he has escaped us this time,” one of them said as they moved off.
“Maldito, the devil has given him wings to fly away,” replied Pablo.
After the sound of their footsteps had died, Gordon resumed his descent. He reached the stunted oak in safety, and was again joined by his friend.
“Looks like we’re caught here, Steve. There ain’t a sign of a foothold below,” the younger man whispered.
“Mebbe the branches of that tree will bend over.”
“We’ll have to try it, anyhow. If it breaks with me, I’ll get to the bottom, just the same. Here goes.”
Catching hold of the branches, he swung down and groped with his feet for a resting-place.
“Nothing doing, Steve.”
“What blamed luck!”
“Hold on! Here’s a cleft, away over to the right. Let me get a hold on that gun to steady me. That’s all right. The rest’s easy. I’ll give you a hand across—that’s right. Now we’re there.”
At the very foot of the cliff an unexplainable accident occurred. Dick’s rifle went off with noise enough to wake the seven sleepers.
“Come on, Steve. We got to get out of here,” he called to his partner, and began to run down the hill toward their cabin.
He covered ground so fast that the other could not keep up with him. From above there came the crack of a rifle, then another and another, as the men on the ridge sighted their prey. A spatter of bullets threw up the dirt around them. Dick felt a red-hot flame sting his leg, but, though he had been hit, to his surprise he was not checked.
Topping the brow of a little rise, he caught sight of the cabin, and, to his consternation, saw that smoke was pouring from the door and that within it was alight with flames.
“The beggars have set fire to it,” he cried aloud.
So far as he could see, four men had been left below. They did not at first catch sight of him as he dodged forward in the shadows of the alders at the foot of the hill. Nor did they see him even when he stopped among the rocks at the rear, for their eyes were on Davis and their attention focused upon him.
He had come puffing to the brow of the hillock Gordon had already passed, when a shout from the ridge apprised those below of his presence. Cut off above and below, there was nothing left for Steve but a retreat down the road. He could not possibly advance in the face of four rifles, and he knew, too, that the best aid he could offer his friend was to deflect the attention of the watchers from him.
He fell back promptly, running from boulder to boulder in his retreat, pursued cautiously by the enemy. His ruse would have succeeded admirably, so far as Dick was concerned, except for that young man himself. He could not sit quiet and see his friend the focus of the fire.
Wherefore, it happened that the attackers of Davis were halted momentarily by a disconcerting fusillade from the rear. The “American devil” had come out into the open, and was dropping lead among them.
At this juncture a rider galloped into view from the river gorge along which wound the road. He pulled his jaded horse to a halt beside the old miner and leaped to the ground.
Without waiting an instant for their fire to cease, he ran straight forward toward the pursuing Mexicans.
As he came into the moonlight, Dick saw with surprise that the newcomer was Don Manuel Pesquiera. He was hatless, apparently too unarmed. But not for a second did this stop him as he sprinted forward.
Straight for the spitting rifles Don Manuel ran, face ablaze with anger. He had covered half the distance before the weapons wavered groundward.
“Don Manuel!” cried Sebastian, perturbed by this apparition flying through the night toward them.
Dick waited only long enough to make sure that hostilities had for the moment ceased against his friend before beginning his search for the tin box.
He quartered back and forth over the gr
ound behind the burning house without result, circled it rapidly, his eyes alert to catch the shine of the box in the moonbeams, and examined the space among the rocks at the base of the hill. Nowhere did he see what he wanted.
“I’ll have to take a whirl at the house. Some of them may have carried it back inside,” he told himself.
As he stepped toward the door, Don Manuel came round the corner. At his heels were Steve and the four Mexicans who had but a few minutes before been trying industriously to exterminate the miner.
Don Manuel bowed punctiliously to Gordon.
“I beg to express my very great regrettance at this untimely attack,” he said.
“Don’t mention it, don. This business of chasing over the hills in the moonlight is first-class for the circulation of the blood, I expect. Most of us got quite a bit of exercise, first and last.”
Dick spoke with light irony; but one distraught half of his attention was upon the burning house.
“Nevertheless, you will permeet me to regret, señor,” returned the young Spaniard stiffly.
“Ce’tainly. You’re naturally sore that you didn’t get first crack at me. Don’t blame you a bit,” agreed Dick cheerfully but absently. “Funny thing is that one of your friends happened to send his message to my address, all right. Got me in the left laig, just before you butted in and spoiled their picnic so inconsiderate.”
“You are then wounded, sir?”
“Not worth mentioning, don. Just a little accident. Wouldn’t happen again in a thousand years. Never did see such poor shots as your valley lads. Say, will you excuse me just a minute? I got some awful important business to attend to.”
“Most entirely, Señor Gordon.”
“Thanks. Won’t be a minute.”
To Pesquiera’s amazement, he dived through the door, from which smoke poured in clouds, and was at once lost to sight within.
“He is a madman,” the Spaniard murmured.
“Or devil,” added Sebastian significantly. “You will see, señor, he will come out safe and unharmed.”
But he did not come out at all, though the minutes dragged themselves away one after another.
“I’m going after him,” cried Davis, starting forward.
But Don Manuel flung strong arms about him, and threw the miner back into the hands of the Mexicans.
“Hold him,” he cried in Spanish.
“Let me go. Let me go, I say!” cried the miner, struggling with those who detained him.
But Pesquiera had already gone to the rescue. He, too, plunged through the smoke. Blinded unable to breathe, he groped his way across the door lintel into the blazing hut.
The heat was intense. Red tongues of flame licked out from all sides toward him. But he would not give up, though he was gasping for breath and could not see through the dense smoke.
A sweep of wind brushed the smoke aside for an instant, and he saw the body of his enemy lying on the floor before him. He stooped, tried to pick it up, but was already too far gone himself.
Almost overcome, he sank to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold with him.
A hundred fiery dragons sprang unleashed at him. The heat, the stifling smoke were more than flesh and blood could endure. He stumbled over a fallen chair, got up and plowed forward again, still with that dead weight in his arms; collapsed again, and yet once more pulled himself to his feet by the sheer strength of the dogged will in him.
So, at last, like a drunken man, he reeled into safety, the very hair and clothes of the man on fire from the inferno he had just left.
A score of eager hands were ready to relieve him of his burden, to support his lurching footsteps. Two of them were the strong brown hands of the woman he loved more than any other on earth, the woman who had galloped into sight just in time to see him come staggering from that furnace with the body of the man who was his hated rival. It was her soft hands that smothered the fire in his hair, that dragged the burning coat from his back.
He smiled wanly, murmured “Valencia,” and fainted in her arms.
Gordon clutched in his stiffened fingers a tin box blistered by the heat.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE TIN BOX
Dick Gordon lay on a bed in a sunny south room at the Corbett place.
He was swathed in bandages, and had something the appearance of a relic of the Fourth of July, as our comic weeklies depict Young America the day after that glorious occasion. But, except for one thing which he had on his mind, the Coloradoan was as imperturbably gay as ever.
He had really been a good deal less injured than his rescuer; for, though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but he had not been forced to inhale smoke.
Wound in leg and all, the doctor had considered him out of danger long before he felt sure of Don Manuel.
The young Spaniard lay several days with his life despaired of. The most unremitting nursing on the part of his cousin alone pulled him through.
She would not give up; would not let his life slip away. And, in the end, she had won her hard fight. Don Manuel, too, was on the road to recovery.
While her cousin had been at the worst, Valencia Valdés saw the wounded Coloradoan only for a minute of two each day; but, with Pesquiera’s recovery, she began to divide her time more equitably.
“I’ve been wishing I was the bad case,” Dick told her whimsically when she came in to see him. “I’ll bet I have a relapse so the head nurse won’t always be in the other sick room.”
“Manuel is my cousin, and he has been very, very ill,” she answered in her low, sweet voice, the color in her olive cheeks renewed at his words.
The eyes of the Anglo-Saxon grew grave.
“How is Don Manuel to-night?”
“Better. Thank Heaven.”
“That’s what the doctor told me.”
Dick propped himself on an elbow and looked directly at her, that affectionate smile of his on his face.
“Miss Valdés, do you know, ever since I’ve been well enough, I’ve been hoping that if one of us had to cross the Great Divide it would be me?”
Her troubled eyes studied him.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it would seem more right that way. I came here and made all this trouble in the valley. I insulted him. I had in mind another hurt to him that we won’t discuss just now. Then, when it comes to a showdown, he just naturally waltzes into Hades and saves my life for me at the risk of his own. No, ma’am, I sure couldn’t have stood it if he had died.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” she answered softly, her eyes dim.
“How else could I feel, and be a white man? I tell you, it makes me feel mean to think about that day I threw him in the water. Just because I’m a great big husky, about the size of two of him, I abused my strength and—”
“Just a moment,” the girl smiled. “You are forgetting he struck you first.”
“Oh, well! I reckon I could have stood that.”
“Will you be willing to tell him how you feel about it?”
“Will I? Well, I guess yes.”
The young woman’s eyes were of starry radiance. “I’m so glad—so happy. I’m sure everything will come right, now.”
He nodded, smiling.
“That’s just the way I feel, Miss Valencia. They couldn’t go wrong, after this—that is, they couldn’t go clear wrong.”
“I’m quite certain of that.”
“I want to go on record as saying that Manuel Pesquiera is the gamest man I k
now. That isn’t all. He’s a thoroughbred on top of it. If I live to be a hundred I’ll never be as fine a fellow. My hat’s off to him.”
There was a mist in her soft eyes as she poured a glass of ice water for him. “I’m so glad to hear you say that. He is such a splendid fellow.”
He observed she was no longer wearing the solitaire and thought it might be to spare his feelings. So he took the subject as a hunter does a fence.
“I wish you all the joy in the world, Miss Valdés. I know you’re going to be very happy. I’ve got my wedding present all picked out for you,” he said audaciously.
She was busy tidying up his dresser, but he could see the color flame into her cheeks.
“You have a very vivid imagination, Mr. Gordon.”
“Not necessary in this case,” he assured her.
“You’re quite sure of that, I suppose,” she suggested with a touch of ironic mockery.
“I haven’t read any announcement in the paper,” he admitted.
“It is always safe to wait for that.”
“Which is another way of saying that it is none of my business. But then you see it is.” He offered no explanation of this statement, nor did he give her time to protest. “Now about that wedding present, Miss Valdés. It’s in a tin box I had in the cabin before the fire. Can you tell me whether it was saved? My recollection is that I had it at the time the rafter put me to sleep. But of course I don’t remember anything more till I found myself in bed here.”
“A tin box? Yes; you had it in your hands when Manuel brought you out. They could hardly pry your fingers from it.”
“Would you mind having that box brought to me, Miss Valdés? I want to be sure the present hasn’t been injured by fire.”
“Of course not. I don’t just know where it is, but it must be somewhere about the place.”
She was stepping toward the door, with that fine reaching grace of a fawn that distinguished her, when his voice stopped her. She stopped, delicate head poised and half turned, apparently waiting for further directions.
