by Zane Grey
“Oh! I thought you had gone,” she said as carelessly as she could with a voice not clear of tears.
“Were you crying because you were afraid I hadn’t?” he asked.
“I ran a cactus into my foot. And I didn’t say anything about crying.”
“Then if your foot is hurt you will want to ride. That seventeen miles might be too long a stroll before you get through with it.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do yet,” she answered shortly.
“I know what you’ll do.”
“Yes?”
“You’ll quit your foolishness and get on this hawss.”
She flushed angrily. “I won’t!”
He stooped down, gathered her up in his arms, and lifted her to the saddle.
“That’s what you’re going to do whether you like it or not,” he informed her.
“How are you going to make me stay here, now you have put me here?”
“I’m going to get on behind and hold you if it’s necessary.”
He was sensible enough of the folly of it all, but he did not see what else he could do. She had chosen to punish him through herself in a way that was impossible. It was a childish thing to do, born of some touch of hysteria her experience had induced, and he could only treat her as a child till she was safely back in civilization.
Their wills met in their eyes, and the man’s, masculine and dominant, won the battle. The long fringe of hers fell to the soft cheeks.
“It won’t be at all necessary,” she promised.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“That’s the way to talk.”
“If you care to know,” she boiled over, “I think you the most hateful man I ever met.”
“That’s all right,” he grinned ruefully. “You’re the most contrary woman I ever bumped into, so I reckon honors are easy.”
He strode along beside the horse, mile after mile, in a silence which neither of them cared to break. The sap of youth flowed free in him, was in his elastic tread, in the set of his broad shoulders, in the carriage of his small, well-shaped head. He was as lean-loined and lithe as a panther, and his stride ate up the miles as easily.
They nooned at a spring in the dry wash of Bronco Creek. After he had unsaddled and picketed he condescended to explain to her.
“We’ll stay here three hours or mebbe four through the heat of the day.”
“Is it far now?” she asked wearily.
“Not more than seven miles I should judge. Are you about all in?”
“Oh, no! I’m all right, thank you,” she said, with forced sprightliness.
His shrewd, hard gaze went over her and knew better.
“You lie down under those live-oaks and I’ll get some grub ready.”
“I’ll cook lunch while you lie down. You must be tired walking so far through the sun,” said Miss Kinney.
“Have I got to pick you up again and carry you there?”
“No, you haven’t. You keep your hands off me,” she flashed.
But nevertheless she betook herself to the shade of the live-oaks and lay down. When he went to call her for lunch he found her fast asleep with her head pillowed on her arm. She looked so haggard that he had not the heart to rouse her.
“Let her sleep. It will be the making of her. She’s fair done. But ain’t she plucky? And that spirited! Ready to fight so long as she can drag a foot. And her so sorter slim and delicate. Funny how she hangs onto her grudge against me. Sho! I hadn’t ought to have kissed her, but I’ll never tell her so.”
He went back to his coffee and bacon, dined, and lay down for a siesta beneath a cottonwood some distance removed from the live-oaks where Miss Kinney reposed. For two or three hours he slept soundly, having been in the saddle all night. It was mid-afternoon when he awoke, and the sun was sliding down the blue vault toward the sawtoothed range to the west. He found the girl still lost to the world in deep slumber.
The man from the Panhandle looked across the desert that palpitated with heat, and saw through the marvelous atmosphere the smoke of the ore-mills curling upward. He was no tenderfoot, to suppose that ten minutes’ brisk walking would take him to them. He guessed the distance at about two and a half hour’s travel.
“This is ce’tainly a hot evening. I expect we better wait till sundown before moving,” he said aloud.
Having made up his mind, it was characteristic of him that he was asleep again in five minutes. This time she wakened before him, to look into a wonderful sea of gold that filled the crotches of the hills between the purple teeth. No sun was to be seen—it had sunk behind the peaks—but the trail of its declension was marked by that great pool of glory into which she gazed.
Margaret crossed the wash to the cottonwood under which her escort was lying. He was fast asleep on his back, his gray shirt open at the bronzed, sinewy neck. The supple, graceful lines of him were relaxed, but even her inexperience appreciated the splendid shoulders and the long rippling muscles. The maidenly instinct in her would allow but one glance at him, and she was turning away when his eyes opened.
Her face, judging from its tint, might have absorbed some of the sun-glow into which she had been gazing.
“I came to see if you were awake,” she explained.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he smiled.
“I was thinking that we ought to be going. It will be dark before we reach Mal Pais.”
He leaped to his feet and faced her.
“C’rect.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
He relit the fire and put on the coffee-pot before he saddled the horse. She ate and drank hurriedly, soon announcing herself ready for the start.
She mounted from his hand; then without asking any questions he swung to a place behind her.
“We’ll both ride,” he said.
The stars were out before they reached the outskirts of the mining-camp. At the first house of the rambling suburbs Neill slipped to the ground and walked beside her toward the old adobe plaza of the Mexican town.
People passed them on the run, paying no attention to them, and others dribbled singly or in small groups from the houses and saloons. All of them were converging excitedly to the plaza.
“Must be something doing here,” said her guide. “Now I wonder what!”
Round the next turn he found his answer. There must have been present two or three hundred men, mostly miners, and their gazes all focussed on two figures which stood against a door at the top of five or six steps. One of the forms was crouched on its knees, abject, cringing terror stamped on the white villainous face upturned to the electric light above. But the other was on its feet, a revolver in each hand, a smile of reckless daring on the boyish countenance that just now stood for law and order in Mal Pais.
The man beside the girl read the situation at a glance. The handcuffed figure groveling on the steps belonged to the murderer Struve, and over him stood lightly the young ranger Steve Fraser. He was standing off a mob that had gathered to lynch his prisoner, and one glance at him was enough to explain how he had won his reputation as the most dashing and fearless member of a singularly efficient force. For plain to be read as the danger that confronted him was the fact that peril was as the breath of life to his nostrils.
CHAPTER VII
ENTER MR. DUNKE
“He’s my prisoner and you can’t have him,” the girl heard the ranger say.
The answer came in a roar of rage. “By God, we’ll show you!”
“If you want him, take him. But don’t come unless you are ready to pay the price!” warned the officer.
He was bareheaded and his dark-brown curly hair crisped round his forehead engagingly. Round his right hand was tied a blood-stain
ed handkerchief. A boy he looked, but his record was a man’s, and so the mob that swayed uncertainly below him knew. His gray eyes were steady as steel despite the fire that glowed in them. He stood at ease, with nerve unshaken, the curious lifted look of a great moment about the poise of his graceful figure.
“It is Lieutenant Fraser,” cried Margaret, but as she looked down she missed her escort.
An instant, and she saw him. He was circling the outskirts of the crowd at a run. For just a heart-beat she wondered what he was about, but her brain told her before her eye. He swung in toward the steps, shoulders down, and bored a way through the stragglers straight to the heart of the turmoil. Taking the steps in two jumps, he stood beside the ranger.
“Hello, Tennessee,” grinned that young man. “Come to be a pall-bearer?”
“Hello, Texas! Can’t say, I’m sure. Just dropped in to see what’s doing.”
Steve’s admiring gaze approved him a man from the ground up. But the ranger only laughed and said: “The band’s going to play a right lively tune, looks like.”
The man from the Panhandle had his revolvers out already. “Yes, there will be a hot time in the old town to-night, I shouldn’t wonder.”
But for the moment the attackers were inclined to parley. Their leader stepped out and held up a hand for a suspension of hostilities. He was a large man, heavily built, and powerful as a bear. There was about him an air of authority, as of one used to being obeyed. He was dressed roughly enough in corduroy and miner’s half-leg boots, but these were of the most expensive material and cut. His cold gray eye and thin lips denied the manner of superficial heartiness he habitually carried. If one scratched the veneer of good nature it was to find a hard selfishness that went to his core.
“It’s Mr. Dunke!” the young school-teacher cried aloud in surprise.
“I’ve got something to say to you, Mr. Lieutenant Ranger,” he announced, with importance.
“Uncork it,” was Fraser’s advice.
“We don’t want to have any trouble with you, but we’re here for business. This man is a cold-blooded murderer and we mean to do justice on him.”
Steve laughed insolently. “If all them that hollers for justice the loudest got it done to them, Mr. Dunke, there’d be a right smart shrinkage in the census returns.”
Dunke’s eye gleamed with anger. “We’re not here to listen to any smart guys, sir. Will you give up Struve to us or will you not?”
“That’s easy. I will not.”
The mob leader turned to the Tennessean. “Young man, I don’t know who you are, but if you mean to butt into a quarrel that ain’t yours all I’ve got to say is that you’re hunting an early grave.”
“We’ll know about that later, seh.”
“You stand pat, do you?”
“Well, seh, I draw to a pair that opens the pot anyhow,” answered Larry, with a slight motion of his weapons.
Dunke fell back into the mob, a shot rang out into the night, and the crowd swayed forward. But at that instant the door behind Fraser swung open. A frightened voice sounded in his ear.
“Quick, Steve!”
The ranger slewed his head, gave an exclamation of surprise, and hurriedly threw his prisoner into the open passage.
“Back, Larry! Lively, my boy!” he ordered.
Neill leaped back in a spatter of bullets that rained round him. Next moment the door was swung shut again.
“You all right, Nell?” asked Fraser quickly of the young woman who had opened the door, and upon her affirmative reply he added: “Everybody alive and kicking? Nobody get a pill?”
“I’m all right for one,” returned Larry. “But we had better get out of this passage. I notice our friends the enemy are sending their cards through the door after us right anxious.”
As he spoke a bullet tore a jagged splinter from a panel and buried itself in the ceiling. A second and a third followed.
“That’s c’rect. We’d better be ‘Not at home’ when they call. Eh, Nell?”
Steve put an arm affectionately round the waist of the young woman who had come in such timely fashion to their aid and ran through the passage with her to the room beyond, Neill following with the prisoner.
“You’re wounded, Steve,” the young woman cried.
He shrugged. “Scratch in the hand. Got it when I arrested him. Had to shoot his trigger finger off.”
“But I must see to it.”
“Not now; wait till we’re out of the woods.” He turned to his friend: “Nell, let me introduce to you Mr. Neill, from the Panhandle. Mr. Neill, this is my sister. I don’t know how come she to drop down behind us like an angel from heaven, but that’s a story will wait. The thing we got to do right now is to light a shuck out of here.”
His friend nodded, listening to the sound of blows battering the outer door. “They’ll have it down in another minute. We’ve got to burn the wind seven ways for Sunday.”
“What I’d like to know is whether there are two entrances to this rat-trap. Do you happen to know, Nell?” asked Fraser of his sister.
“Three,” she answered promptly. “There’s a back door into the court and a trap-door to the roof. That’s the way I came.”
“And it’s the way we’ll go. I might a-known you’d know all about it give you a quarter of a chance,” her brother said admiringly. “We’ll duck through the roof and let Mr. Dunke hold the sack. Lead the way, sis.”
She guided them along another passageway and up some stairs to the second story. The trap-door that opened to the flat roof was above the bed about six feet. Neill caught the edges of the narrow opening, drew himself up, and wriggled through. Fraser lifted his sister by the waist high enough for Larry to catch her hands and draw her up.
“Hurry, Steve,” she urged. “They’ve broken in. Hurry, dear.”
The ranger unlocked his prisoner’s handcuffs and tossed them up to the Tennessean.
“Get a move on you, Mr. Struve, unless you want to figure in a necktie party,” he advised.
But the convict’s flabby muscles were unequal to the task of getting him through the opening. Besides which, his wounded hand, tied up with a blood-soaked rag, impeded him. He had to be pulled from above and boosted from behind. Fraser, fit to handle his weight in wildcats, as an admirer had once put it, found no trouble in following. Steps were already heard on the stairs below when Larry slipped the cover to its place and put upon it a large flat stone which he found on the roof for that purpose. The fugitives crawled along the roof on their hands and knees so as to escape the observation of the howling mob outside the house. Presently they came into the shadows, and Nell rose, ran forward to a little ladder which led to a higher roof, and swiftly ascended. Neill, who was at her heels, could not fail to note the light supple grace with which she moved. He thought he had never seen a more charming woman in appearance. She still somehow retained the slim figure and taking ways of a girl, in conjunction with the soft rounded curves of a present-day Madonna.
Two more roofs were crossed before they came to another open trap-door. A lamp in the room below showed it to be a bedroom with two cots in it. Two children, one of them a baby, were asleep in these. A sweet-faced woman past middle age looked anxiously up with hands clasped together as in prayer.
“Is it you, Nellie?” she asked.
“Yes, mother, and Steve, and his friend. We’re all right.”
Fraser dropped through, and his sister let herself down into his arms. Struve followed, and was immediately handcuffed. Larry put back the trap and fastened it from within before he dropped down.
“We shall have to leave at once, mother, without waiting to dress the children,” explained Fraser. “Wrap them in blankets and take some clothes along. I’ll drop you at the hotel and slip my prisoner into the jail the back way if I can; that is
, if another plan I have doesn’t work.”
The oldest child awoke and caught sight of Fraser. He reached out his hands in excitement and began to call: “Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve back again.”
Fraser picked up the youngster. “Yes, Uncle Steve is back. But we’re going to play a game that Indians are after us. Webb must be good and keep very, very still. He mustn’t say a word till uncle tells him he may.”
The little fellow clapped his hands. “Goody, goody! Shall we begin now?”
“Right this minute, son. Better take your money with you, mother. Is father here?”
“No, he is at the ranch. He went down in the stage to-day.”
“All right, friends. We’ll take the back way. Tennessee, will you look out for Mr. Struve? Sis will want to carry the baby.”
They passed quietly down-stairs and out the back door. The starry night enveloped them coldly, and the moon looked down through rifted clouds. Nature was peaceful as her own silent hills, but the raucous jangle of cursing voices from a distance made discord of the harmony. They slipped along through the shadows, meeting none except occasional figures hurrying to the plaza. At the hotel door the two men separated from the rest of the party, and took with them their prisoner.
“I’m going to put him for safe-keeping down the shaft of a mine my father and I own,” explained Steve. “He wouldn’t be safe in the jail, because Dunke, for private reasons, has made up his mind to put out his lights.”
“Private reasons?” echoed the engineer.
“Mighty good ones, too. Ain’t that right?” demanded the ranger of Struve.
The convict cursed, though his teeth still chattered with fright from the narrow escape he had had, but through his prison jargon ran a hint of some power he had over the man Dunke. It was plain he thought the latter had incited the lynching in order to shut the convict’s mouth forever.
