How long she wandered, a prey to terror, calling helplessly in the blackness, she did not know. It seemed to her that she must always wander so, a perpetual prisoner condemned to this living grave. So that it was with a distinct shock of glad surprise she heard a voice answer faintly her calls. Calling and listening alternately, she groped her way in the direction of the sounds, and so at last came plump against the figure of the approaching rescuer.
"Who is it?" a hoarse voice demanded.
But before she could answer a match flared and was held close to her face. The same light that revealed her to him told the girl who this man was that had met her alone a million miles from human aid. The haggard, drawn countenance with the lifted upper lip and the sunken eyes that glared into hers belonged to the convict Nick Struve.
The match went out before either of them spoke.
"You— you here!" she exclaimed, and was oddly conscious that her relief at meeting even him had wiped out for the present her fear of the man.
"For God's sake, have you got anything to eat?" he breathed thickly.
It had been part of the play that each member of their little party should carry a dinner-pail just like an ordinary miner. Wherefore she had hers still in her hand.
"Yes, and I have a candle here. Have you another match?"
He lit the candle with a shaking hand.
"Gimme that bucket," he ordered gruffly, and began to devour ravenously the food he found in it, tearing at sandwiches and gulping them down like a hungry dog.
"What day is this?" he stopped to ask after he had stayed the first pangs.
She told him Tuesday.
"I ain't eaten since Saturday," he told her. "I figured it was a week. There ain't any days in this place— nothin' but night. Can't tell one from another."
"It's terrible," she agreed.
His appetite was wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weak with hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed him the dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in the trembling hands and unsteady gait.
"I'm about all in, what with hunger and all I been through. I thought I was out of my head when I heard you holler." He snatched up the candle from the place where he had set it and searched her face by its flame. "How come you down here? You didn't come alone. What you doin' here?" he demanded suspiciously.
"I came down with Mr. Dunke and a, friend to look over his mine. I had never been in one before."
"Dunke!" A spasm of rage swept the man's face. "You're a friend of his, are you? Where is he? If you came with him how come you to be roaming around alone?"
"I got lost. Then my light went out."
"So you're a friend of Dunke, that damned double-crosser! He's a millionaire, you think, a big man in this Western country. That's what he claims, eh?" Struve shook a fist into the air in a mad burst of passion. "Just watch me blow him higher'n a kite. I know what he is, and I got proof. The Judas! I keep my mug shut and do time while he gets off scot-free and makes his pile. But you listen to me, ma'am. Your friend ain't nothin' but an outlaw. If he got his like I got mine he'd be at Yuma to-day. Your brother could a-told you. Dunke was at the head of the gang that held up that train. We got nabbed, me and Jim. Burch got shot in the Catalinas by one of the rangers, and Smith died of fever in Sonora. But Dunke, curse him, he sneaks out and buys the officers off with our plunder. That's what he done— let his partners get railroaded through while he sails out slick and easy. But he made one mistake, Mr. Dunke did. He wrote me a letter and told me to keep mum and he would fix it for me to get out in a few months. I believed him, kept my mouth padlocked, and served seven years without him lifting a hand for me. Then, when I make my getaway he tries first off to shut my mouth by putting me out of business. That's what your friend done, ma'am."
"Is this true?" asked the girl whitely.
"So help me God, every word of it."
"He let my brother go to prison without trying to help him?"
"Worse than that. He sent him to prison. Jim was all right when he first met up with Dunke. It was Dunke that got him into his wild ways and led him into trouble. It was Dunke took him into the hold-up business. Hadn't been for him Jim never would have gone wrong."
She made no answer. Her mind was busy piecing out the facts of her brother's misspent life. As a little girl she remembered her big brother before he went away, good-natured, friendly, always ready to play with her. She was sure he had not been bad, only fatally weak. Even this man who had slain him was ready to testify to that.
She came back from her absorption to find Struve outlining what he meant to do.
"We'll go back this passage along the way you came. I want to find Mr. Dunke. I allow I've got something to tell him he will be right interested in hearing."
He picked up the candle and led the way along the tunnel. Margaret followed him in silence.
CHAPTER XI
THE SOUTHERNER TAKES A RISK
The convict shambled forward through the tunnel till he came to a drift which ran into it at a right angle.
"Which way now?" he demanded.
"I don't know."
"Don't know," he screamed. "Didn't you just come along here? Do you want me to get lost again in this hell-hole?"
The stricken fear leaped into his face. He had forgotten her danger, forgotten everything but the craven terror that engulfed him. Looking at him, she was struck for the first time with the thought that he might be on the verge of madness.
His cry still rang through the tunnel when Margaret saw a gleam of distant light. She pointed it out to Struve, who wheeled and fastened his eyes upon it. Slowly the faint yellow candle-rays wavered toward them. A man was approaching through the gloom, a large man whom she presently recognized as Dunke. A quick gasp from the one beside her showed that he too knew the man. He took a dozen running steps forward, so that in his haste the candle flickered out.
"That you, Miss Margaret?" the mine-owner called.
Neither she nor Struve answered. The latter had stopped and was waiting tensely his enemy's approach. When he was within a few yards of the other Dunke raised his candle and peered into the blackness ahead of him.
"What's the matter? Isn't it you, Miss Peggy?"
"No, it ain't. It's your old pal, Nick Struve. Ain't you glad to see him, Joe?"
Dunke looked him over without a word. His thin lips set and his gaze grew wall-eyed. The candle passed from right to left hand.
Struve laughed evilly. "No, I'm not going to pay you that way— not yet; nor you ain't going to rid yourself of me either. Want to know why, Mr. Millionaire Dunke, what used to be my old pal? Want to know why it ain't going to do you any good to drop that right hand any closeter to your hip pocket?"
Still Dunke said nothing, but the candle-glow that lit his face showed an ugly expression.
"Don't you whip that gun out, Joe Dunke. Don't you! 'Cause why? If you do you're a goner."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I kept the letter you wrote me seven years ago, and have put it where it will do you no good if anything happens to me. That's why you won't draw that gun, Joe Dunke. If you do it will send you to Yuma. Millionaire you may be, but that won't keep you from wearing stripes."
Struve's voice rang exultantly. From the look in the face of his old comrade in crime who had prospered at his expense, as he chose to think, he saw that for the time being he had got the whip-hand.
There was a long silence before Dunke asked hoarsely:
"What do you want?"
"I want you to hide me. I want you to get me out of this country. I want you to divvy up with me. Didn't we grub-stake you with the haul from the Overland? Don't we go share and share alike, the two of us that's left? Ain't that fair and square? You wouldn't want to do less than right by an old pal, cap, you that are so respectable and proper now. You ain't forgot the man that lay in the ditch with you the night we held up the flyer, the man that rode beside you when you shot—"
/> "For God's sake don't rake up forgotten scrapes. We were all young together then. I'll do what's right by you, but you got to keep your mouth shut and let me manage this."
"The way you managed it before when you let me rot at Yuma seven years," jeered Struve.
"I couldn't help it. They were on my trail and I had to lie low. I tell you I'll pull you through if you do as I say."
"And I tell you I don't believe a word you say. You double-crossed me before and you will again if you get a chance. I'll not let you out of my sight."
"Don't be a fool, Nick. How can I help you if I can't move around to make the arrangements for running you across the line?"
"And what guarantee have I got you ain't making arrangements to have me scragged? Think I'm forgetting Saturday night?"
The girl in the blackness without the candle-shine moved slightly.
"What's that?" asked Dunke, startled.
"What's what?"
"That noise. Some one moved."
Dunke's revolver came swiftly from his pocket.
"I reckon it must a-been the girl."
"What girl? Miss Kinney?"
Dunke's hard eyes fastened on the other like steel augers.
Margaret came forward and took wraithlike shape.
"I want you to take me to Mrs. Collins, Mr. Dunke," she said.
The steel probes shifted from Struve to her.
"What did you hear, Miss Kinney? This man is a storehouse of lies. I let him run on to see how far he would go."
Struve's harsh laugh filled the tunnel.
"Take me to Mrs. Collins," she reiterated wearily.
"Not till I know what you heard," answered Dunke doggedly.
"I heard everything," she avowed boldly. "The whole wretched, miserable truth."
She would have pushed past him, but he caught her arm.
"Let me go!"
"I tell you it's all a mistake. I can explain it. Give me time."
"I won't listen, I want never to see either of you again. What have I ever done that I should be mixed up with such men?" she cried, with bitter despair.
"Don't go off half-cocked. 'Course I'll take you to Mrs. Collins if you like. But you got to listen to what I say."
Another candle glimmered dimly in the tunnel and came toward them. It presently stopped, and a voice rolled along the vault.
"Hello, there!"
Margaret would have known that voice anywhere among a thousand. Now it came to her sweet as water after a drought. She slipped past Dunke and ran stumbling through the darkness to its source.
"Mr. Neill! Mr. Neill!"
The pitiful note in her voice, which he recognized instantly, stirred him to the core. Astonished that she should be in the mine and in trouble, he dashed forward, and his candle went out in the rush. Groping in the darkness her hands encountered his. His arms closed round her, and in her need of protection that brushed aside conventions and non-essentials, the need that had spoken in her cry of relief, in her hurried flight to him, she lay panting and trembling in his arms. He held her tight, as one who would keep his own against the world.
"How did you get here— what has happened?" he demanded.
Hurriedly she explained.
"Oh, take me away, take me away!" she concluded, nestling to him with no thought now of seeking to disguise her helpless dependence upon him, of hiding from herself the realization that he was the man into whose keeping destiny had ordained that she was to give her heart.
"All right, honey. You're sure all safe now," he said tenderly, and in the blackness his lips sought and met hers in a kiss that sealed the understanding their souls had reached.
At the sound of Neill's voice Dunke had extinguished the candle and vanished in the darkness with Struve, the latter holding him by the arm in a despairing grip. Neill shouted again and again, as he relighted his candle, but there came no answer to his calls.
"We had better make for the shaft," he said.
They set out on the long walk to the opening that led up to the light and the pure air. For a while they walked on in silence. At last he took her hand and guided her fingers across the seam on his wrist.
"It don't seem only four days since you did that, honey," he murmured.
"Did I do that?" Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.
"Don't, sweet. I deserved what I got and more. I'm ready with that apology you didn't want then, Peggy."
"But I don't want it now, either. I won't have it. Didn't I tell you I wouldn't? Besides," she added, with a little leap of laughter in her voice, "why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant to— to——"
He finished it for her.
"To marry, Peggy. I didn't know it then, but I knew it before you said good-by with your whip."
"And I didn't know it till next morning," she said.
"Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?"
"That was why I was so mean to you. I had to punish myself and you because I— liked you so well."
She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.
It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance of their common happiness. His joy pealed now delightedly.
"I can't believe it— that four days ago you wasn't on the earth for me. Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sassy ways."
"That's just the way I feel about you. It's really scandalous that in less than a week— just a little more than half a week— we should be engaged. We are engaged, aren't we?"
"Very much."
"Well, then— it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right. Isn't it?"
"It ce'tainly is."
"But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers. I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me."
"Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy."
"And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already."
She paused, startled at the impossible thought.
"It must have happened before I can remember, then," he laughed.
"Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern people do, they say."
"Then I'm an exception."
"And me— you don't know anything about me."
"A fellow has to take some risk or quit living," he told her gaily.
"When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?"
"The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating," he conceded. "I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting."
"Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk it."
And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss awaiting her.
CHAPTER XII
EXIT DUNKE
Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion. Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed.
"Got onto you, didn't she?"
Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat.
"I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still," he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the face.
Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp.
"What— what did you do— that for?" His furtive ratlike face looked venomous in its impotent anger. "I'll pay you for this— and don't you— forget it, Joe Dunke!"
"You'd
shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance."
"I ain't looking for no such chance. I—"
"That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively."
Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated. He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level, passed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.
"I'll arrange to get you out of here to-night and have you run across the line. I'm going to give you three hundred dollars. That's the last cent you'll ever get out of me. If you ever come back to this country I'll see that you're hanged as you deserve."
With that Dunke turned on his heel and was gone. But his contempt for the ruffian he had cowed was too fearless. He would have thought so if he could have known of the shadow that dogged his heels through the tunnel, if he could have seen the bare fangs that had gained Struve his name of "Wolf," if he could have caught the flash of the knife that trembled in the eager hand. He did not know that, as he shot up in the cage to the sunlight, the other was filling the tunnel with imprecations and wild threats, that he was hugging himself with the promise of a revenge that should be sure and final.
Dunke went about the task of making the necessary arrangements personally. He had his surrey packed with food, and about eleven o'clock drove up to the mine and was lowered to the ninth level. An hour later he stepped out of the cage with a prisoner whom he kept covered with a revolver.
A Texas Ranger Page 8
