X
UNDER FIRE
Blue Lake, while but three miles farther eastward, flashed its jewelled waters into the sun from a plane fully five hundred feet higher than the tall chimneys of the ranch-house. About it stood the most precipitous granite cliffs to be found hereabouts. They rose, sheer and majestic, still another five hundred feet, here and there eight hundred and a thousand. The lake, half a mile in diameter, circular like some polished mirror presented by an ancient giant to his lady-love, was shut in everywhere by these crags and cliffs save at the west, where the overflowing water, going to swell the turbulent river, poured like molten crystal through a wide gorge. The farther cliffs marked the eastern boundary-line of the ranch. Beyond them lay a small plateau rimmed about on three sides by still other steep precipices.
Lee, coming to the water's edge sought to guess where the old Indian Trail came down. And again, startling him for a second time, Judith rode up.
She, too, had a fresh horse; she too now carried a rifle across her arm. Bud Lee frowned.
"What makes you so certain, Bud Lee," was her abrupt word of greeting, "that Bayne Trevors is back of this deal?"
"When did I say that?" he countered.
"Yesterday, when I told you Charlie Miller had been held up, you intimated that a long-headed man had planned the whole thing. That means Trevors, doesn't it?"
"One of us," said Lee calmly, ignoring her question and looking her straight in the eyes, "is going back. Which one?"
"Neither!" she retorted promptly. She even smiled confidently at him. "For I won't. And you won't."
"Do you need to be told," he asked her coolly, "that this is no sort of job for a girl? You'd only be in the way."
"If you want glittering generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a bumptious boor!"
With that she spurred by him, taking the trail which led off to the right and so under the cliffs and to the mouth of a great, ragged chasm. In spite of him, Bud Lee grinned after her. And, seeing that she was not to be turned back, he followed.
They left their horses and followed the old footpath, made their way into the chasm deeper and deeper and little by little climbed upward. The climb was less difficult than it looked, and fifteen minutes brought them to the upland plateau and to the door of an old cabin, made of logs, set back in a tiny grove of cedars.
"I haven't been here for a year," cried the girl, forgetful of the constraint which had held them until now. "It's like getting back home for the first time! I love it."
"So do I," Lee said within himself.
"Look!" exclaimed Judith. "Some one has been repairing the old cabin! He's made a bench yonder under the big tree, too. And he has walled in the spring with rocks, and… Who in the world can it be? There's even a little garden of wild flowers!"
Bud Lee, for no reason clear to himself, flushed. He offered no explanation at first. Here he spent many an hour when the time was his for idling, lying on the grass, looking out over the immensity of the wilderness; here he came many a night to sleep under the stars, far from the other boys, when his soul craved solitude; here upon many a Sunday, when work was slack, did he come to smoke alone, loaf alone, read from the few books on the cabin's shelves.
"Maybe," he suggested at last, when it was clear that Judith was going straight to the door, "this is where our stick-up gents hang out. Choice place for a cutthroat to hibernate, huh?"
"I don't believe it," answered Judith positively. "The man who made his hermitage here has a soul!"
Behind her back Lee smiled.
"We've got something to do," he said hastily, "without wasting time poking into old shacks. Where's the Indian Trail you talked about?"
"Shack!" cried Judith indignantly. "You make me sick. Bud Lee! I'd rather own this cabin and live here, than have a palace on Fifth Avenue!"
She knocked at the door, knowing that silence would answer her, but hoping to have a man, calm-eyed, gentle-voiced, a romantic hermit in all of his picturesqueness, come to the door.
"Going in?" asked Lee in well-simulated carelessness.
"No," she told him freezingly. "Why should I? Would you want people poking about into your home just because it was in the heart of the wilderness and you weren't there to drive them out?"
"No," answered Bud gravely. "Now that you ask me, I wouldn't! Let's go find that trail."
"But," continued Judith, "not being a fool, and realizing that one of the men we want might possibly be in hiding in here, I am going to peek in."
"Not being a fool," he repeated after her, adding gently, "and being a girl, which means filled with curiosity."
A disdainful shoulder gave him his answer. The door was unlocked, after immemorial Western custom, and Judith opened it. Lee heard her little gasp of pure delight.
"He's a dear, the man who lives here!" she announced positively. "You can just tell by looking at his home."
Looking in over her shoulder, Bud Lee wondered just what in his one-room shanty had caught her enthusiasm. He was secretly pleased that it had done so, though that "it" was somewhat vague in his masculine mind. There was the rock fireplace with an iron hook protruding from each side for coffee-pot and stew-pot; a bunk with a blanket smoothed over cedar-boughs; a shelf with a dozen books; little else, so far as he could see or remember, to catch at Judith's delight. Yet she, looking through woman's eyes, read in one quick "peek" the character of the dweller in this abode. One who was content with little, who loved a clean, outdoor life, and who was tranquilly above the pettiness of humanity. Judith closed the door softly.
"I'd like to look inside his books!" she confessed. "But I won't."
The lean horse foreman chuckled. Judith sniffed at him.
"You haven't any curiosity about such things as books," she retorted. "To be sure, why should you have?"
Again, leaving the cabin, she went before him. Going straight across the plateau, she showed him where one could clamber up a steep way to the ridge. Once up there, it was but ten minutes until, in a hollow, they found the monument marking a trail, a stone set upon a boulder.
It was after five o'clock. When, following the trail back and forth in its winding along the side of the ridge, they found the signs they sought, it was fast growing dark. But there, in a narrow defile where loose soil had filtered down, were tracks left by a large boot. Lee went down on his hands and knees to study them in the dusk. He got up with a little grunt and moved down the trail. Again he found tracks, this time more clearly defined. So dark was it now that they had lighted several matches.
"Two men," he announced wonderingly. "Fresh tracks, too. Made this morning or last night, I'll bet. One coming east from Indian Head. The other coming west from the plateau behind us. Who's he? Where'd he come from?"
"He's the second of the two men who shot at you," said Judith quickly. "Don't I know every trail in this neck of the woods, Bud Lee? He followed another old, worn-out trail on the south side of the ranch. They met here just as I knew they would!"
"What for?" Lee frowned through the darkness at her eager face. "What would they want to get together for? If they had any sense they would scatter and clean out of the country."
"Unless," Judith reminded him, "they don't intend to clean out at all! Unless they mean to stick to the cliffs and try their hands again at their sort of game. They'll figure that we will expect them to be a long way from here by now, won't they? Then where would they be safer than right here in these mountains? Give me a rifle and something to eat and I'll defy an army getting me out there. And think of it: If this is Trevors's work, if he means business, think what two gunmen on these heights could do to us. They could pick off a three-thousand-dollar stallion down in the pens; they could drop more than one prize bull or cow; and," she added sharply, "if they thought about girls as some men think, they could take a chance on scaring Judith Sanford out of the country."
Lee stared at her a long time in silence.
"I wouldn't have said," he offered finally, "that Bayne Trevors would make quite so strong a play as that."
"You wouldn't! Then look him in the eye! And where's his risk, if he's picked the right men, if he sees them through, keeping the back door open when they want to run for it? You just gamble your boots, Bud Lee, that Bayne Trevors…"
Without warning, without a sound of explosion came a wiry whine into the still air, a little venomous ping, and a bullet sped by just over their heads. But, through the gloom, they both saw the flash of the gun as it spat fire and lead, and, as though one impulse commanded them, Judith's rifle and Bud Lee's went to their shoulders and two reverberating reports rang out in answer.
"Lie down, damn it!" cried Bud Lee to the girl at his side, as again there came the flash from the cliffs off to the right and as again he answered it with his rifle.
"Lie down yourself!" snapped Judith. And once more her rifle spoke with his.
For one instant, framed against the darkening sky along the cliff edge five hundred yards away to the right, they saw the silhouette of a man, leaping from one boulder to another, a man who looked gigantically big in the uncertain light. They fired; he jumped again and passed out of sight.
"Got his nerve," grunted Lee as he pumped lead at the running figure.
As an answer there came the third flash, the bullet striking the trail in front of them. And then the fourth flash, from a point a hundred yards to the left of the other.
"That's Number Two," muttered Lee. "They've got us in the open, Judith. Let's beat it back to the cabin."
"I'm with you," said Judith, between shots. "It's just foolishness"… bang!… "sticking out here"… bang!… "for them to pop us off." Bang! Bang!
They ran then, Bud slipping in front of her, his tall body looming darkly between her and the cliffs whence the shots came. He slid along the sharp slope to the plateau, putting out his arms toward her. And as she came down, Bud Lee grunted and cursed under his breath. For there had been another flash out of the thickening night, this one from the refuge toward which they were running. A third man was shooting from the shelter of the cabin walls. And Lee had felt a stinging pain as though a hot iron had scorched its way along the side of his leg.
"Hurt much?" asked Judith quickly. Without waiting for an answer, she pumped two shots at the flash by the cabin.
"No," grunted Lee. "Just scared. And now what? I want to know."
XI
IN THE OLD CABIN
Bud Lee, in the thicker darkness lying along the edge of the plateau, sat with his back against the rocks while he gave swift first aid to his wound. He brought into requisition the knotted handkerchief from about his throat, bound it tightly around the calf of his leg, and said lightly to Judith:
"Just a fool scratch, you know. But I've no hankering to dribble out a lot of blood from it."
Judith made no answer. Lee took up his rifle and turned to the spot where she had been standing a moment ago. She was not there.
"Gone!" he grunted, frowning into the blackness hemming him in. "Now, what do you suppose she's up to? Fainted, most likely."
He got up and moved along the low rock wall, seeking her. A spurt of flame from the east corner of the cabin drew his eyes away from his search and he pumped three quick shots in answer.
"Little chance of hitting anything," he muttered. "Too blamed dark. Just fool's luck that I got mine in the leg."
Again he sought Judith, calling softly. There was no answer. Once more came the spurt of flame from the shelter of the cabin wall. Then fifty yards off to Lee's right, some fifty yards nearer the cabin, another shot.
The first suspicion that one of the men from the cliffs had made his way down to join issue at close quarters, was gone in a clear understanding. That was the bark of Judith's rifle; she had slipped away from him without an instant's delay and was creeping closer and closer to the cabin.
"Damn the girl!" cried Lee angrily. "She'll get her fool self killed!"
But as he ran forward to join her, he realized that she was doing the right thing—the only thing if they did not want to lie out here all night for the men on the cliffs to pick off in the morning light. He knew that she could shoot; it seemed that she could do everything that was a man's work and which a woman should know nothing about.
A fresh thought locked his hand like steel about his gun-stock. Suppose that Judith, in the mad thing she was attempting, should actually succeed in it, that she should bring down the man she was attacking? How would Bud Lee feel about it when the boys came to know? What would Bud Lee answer when they asked what he was doing about that time? "Nursin' a scratched leg? Mos' likely! Huh!" He could hear old Carson's dry cackle.
Frowning into the night, he thought that he could make out the dim blur of Judith's form. The girl was standing erect; shooting, too, for again the duel of red spurts of flame told where she and her quarry stood.
Meantime Lee ran on, changing his original purpose, swerving out from where Judith was moving forward, turning to the left, hopeful to come to close quarters with their assailant before she could go down under that sharp rifle-fire or could bring down the other. For certainly, if she kept on that way, the time would come when some one would stop hot lead.
Lee shifted his rifle to his left hand, taking his revolver into his right. From the cliffs came a shot and he grunted at it contemptuously. It could do nothing but assure those below that there was still some one up there.
"Three of them to our two," he estimated, "counting the two jaspers on the cliff. Two of us to their one, counting what's down here. And that's all that counts right this minute."
A shot from Judith; a shot from the cabin; two shots from the cliffs. The two shots from above brought fresh news; not only were they closer together, but they indicated the men up yonder were coming down. Lee hurried.
Then, at last, his narrowed eyes made out the faint outline of that which he sought. Close to the cabin, low down, evidently upon his knees, was the most important factor to be considered, now. Still Lee was too far away to be certain of a hit and he meant with all of the grim determination in him to hit something at last. He ran on drawing the fire away from Judith. A rifle-ball sang close to his side, another and an other. He lost the dim shape of the kneeling man, who, he thought, had risen from his knees and was standing, his body tight-pressed to the cabin.
"Why the devil doesn't he run for it?" wondered Lee.
But evidently, be the reason what it might, the man had no intention of running. A bullet cut through Lee's sleeve. At last Lee answered. He ran in closer as he fired and, running, emptied his revolver, jammed it into his waistband, clubbed his rifle … and realized with something of a shock that there were but the two rifles on the cliffs to take into consideration. That other rifle, at the cabin, was still. Out of ammunition? Or plugged? Or playing 'possum? Which?
"Stop shooting!" he shouted to Judith.
"I'm coming!" she cried back to him.
Almost at the same instant, their two rifles ready, they came to the cabin. Between them on the ground a man lay at the corner, moving helplessly, groping for his fallen gun, falling back.
"Open the door," said Bud. "I'll get him inside and we'll see who he is. Hurry, Judith; those other jaspers are working down this way as fast as they know how."
Judith, taking time to snatch up the fallen rifle, ran around to the door. Lee slipped his hands under the armpits of the wounded man and dragged him in Judith's wake. In the cabin, the door shut, Lee struck a match and went to a little shelf where there was a candle.
"Bill Crowdy!" gasped Judith.
Almost before Lee saw the man's face he saw the canvas bag tied to his belt, a bag identical with the one he himself had brought from the bank at Rocky Bend.
"The man that stuck up Charlie Miller," he said slowly. "And there's your thousand bucks, or I'm a liar. I get something of their play now: those two fellows up there were waiting to meet him and split the swag three ways. And I've got the guess they'll be asking a look-in yet!"
He dropped a heavy bar into its place across the door and then went to the two small windows and fastened the heavy oaken shutters. When he came back to Judith she was bending over the wounded man. Crowdy's eyes were closed; he looked to be on the verge of death. The girl's face was almost as white as Crowdy's.
Lee knelt and with quick fingers sought the wound. There was a hole in Crowdy's chest, high up near the throat, that was bleeding profusely. At first that seemed the only wound. But in a second Lee had found another. This was in the leg, and this, like Lee's, was bound tightly with a handkerchief.
"Got that, first rattle out of the box!" commented Lee. "See it? That's why he stuck on the job and didn't try to run for it. Looks like a rifle-ball had smashed the bone."
He didn't look up. His fingers, busy with the string at Crowdy's belt, brought away the canvas bag. There was blood on it; it was heavy and gave forth the mellow jangle of gold.
"You win back your thousand on to-night's play," he said, holding up the bag to Judith, lifting his eyes to her face.
But Judith shrank back, her eyes wide with horror.
"I don't want it! I can never touch it!" she whispered.
Suddenly she was shaking from head to foot, her eyes fixed in terrible fascination upon Crowdy's face. Lee tossed the bag to the bunk across the room, whence it fell clanking to the floor.
"Now she's going to faint," was his thought. "Well, I won't blame her so damn much. Poor little kid!"
But he did not look at her again. He tore away Crowdy's shirt to discover just how serious the wound in the chest was. The collar-bone had been broken; the ball had ploughed its way through the upper chest, well above the heart, and could be felt under the skin of the shoulder. Unless Bill Crowdy bled to death, he stood an excellent chance of doing time in the penitentiary. Lee stanched the flow of blood, made a rude bandage, and then, lifting the body gently, carried it to the bunk. Crowdy's lax arm, extended downward at the side of the bunk, seemed to be reaching again for the canvas bag; the red fingers touched it with their tips.
"Now," said Lee, speaking bluntly, afraid that a tone of sympathy might merely aid the girl to "shake to pieces," "we've got a chance to be on our way before Number Two and Number Three get into the game. Let's run for it, Judith."
Judith went to the bench by the fireplace and sank down upon it. For a moment she made no reply. Then she shook her head.
"We'll stay here until morning," she said finally, her voice surprising Lee, who had looked for a sign of weakening to accord with her sudden pallor and visible trembling.
"What for?" he wanted to know. "We'll have another fight on our hands if we do. Those fellows, this deep in it, are not going to quit while they know that there's all that money in the shack!"
"I don't care," said Judith firmly. "I won't run from them or anybody else I know! And, besides, Bud Lee, I am not going to give them the chance to get Crowdy away.… Do you think he is going to die?"
"No, I don't. Doc Tripp will fix him up."
"Then here I stay, for one. When I go, Bill Crowdy goes with me! He's going to talk, and he's going to help me send Bayne Trevors to the pen."
Bud Lee expressed all he had to say in a silent whistle. He'd made another mistake, that was all. Judith wasn't going to faint for him to-night.
"Then," he said presently, setting her the example, "slip some fresh cartridges into your rifle and get ready for more shooting. I'll put out the light and we'll wait for what's next."
Judith replenished the magazine of her rifle. Lee, watching from under the low-drawn brim of his hat, noted that her fingers were steady now. Crowdy moved on his bunk, lifted a hand weakly, groaned, and grew still. Presently he stirred again, asking weakly for water.
Lee went to the water-bucket standing in a corner. It happened to be half full. He filled a cup, and lifting Crowdy's head, held it to the fevered lips.
"Not exactly what you'd call fresh, is it, Crowdy?" he said lightly. "But the spring's outside and I'm scared to go out in the dark."
Crowdy drank thirstily and lay back, his eyes closed again. Lee rearranged his bandage.
"Put out the light now?" he asked Judith.
"No," she answered. "What's the use, Bud? There are no holes in the walls they could stick a gun-barrel through, are there?"
No one knew better than he that there were not.
"You see," said Judith, with a half-smile, heroically assumed, "I'm a little afraid of the dark, too! Anyway, since we've got to spend the night with a man in Crowdy's shape, it will be more cosey, won't it, with the light on?"
She even put out her hand to one of the books on the shelves which she could reach from her bench.
"And now," she added, "I'm sure that our hermit won't mind if we peep into his library, will he?"
"No," answered Lee gravely. "Most likely he'll be proud."
Lee found time to muse that life is made of incongruities, woman of inconsistencies. Here with a badly hurt man lying ten feet from her, with every likelihood of the night stillness being ripped in two by a rifle-shot, Judith sat and turned the pages of a book. It was a volume on the breeding and care of pure-blooded horses. Odd sort of thing for her hermit to have brought here with him! Her hand took down another volume. Horses again; a treatise by an eminent authority upon a newly imported line from Arabia. A third book; this, a volume of Elizabethan lyrics. Bud Lee flushed as he watched her. She turned the pages slowly, came back to the fly-leaf page, read the name scrawled there and, turning swiftly to Lee, said accusingly:
"David Burrill Lee, you are a humbug!"
"Wrong again," grinned Lee. "A hermit, you mean! 'A man with a soul.' . . ."
"Scat!" answered Judith. But, under Bud Lee's teasing eyes, the color began to come back into her cheeks. She had been a wee bit enthusiastic over her hermit, making of him a picturesque ideal. She had visioned him, even to the calm eyes, gentle voice. A quick little frown touched her brows as she realized that the eyes and voice which her fancy had bestowed upon the hermit were in actuality the eyes and voice of Bud Lee. But she had called him a dear. And Lee had been laughing at her all the time—had not told her, would never have told her. The thought came to her that she would like to slap Bud Lee's face for him. And she had told Tripp she would like to slap Pollock Hampton's. Good and hard!
XII
PARDNERS
From without came the low murmur of men's voices. Judith laid her book aside and drew her rifle across her knees, her eyes bright and eager. At infrequent intervals for perhaps three or four minutes the two voices came indistinctly to those in the cabin. Then silence for as long a time. And then a voice again, this time quite near the door, calling out clearly:
"Hey, you in there! Pitch the money out the window and we'll let you go."
"There's a voice," said Judith quietly, "to remember! I'll be able to swear to it in court."
Certainly a voice to remember, just as one remembers an unusual face for years, though it be but a chance one seen in a crowd. A voice markedly individual, not merely because it was somewhat high-pitched for a man's, but rather for a quality not easily defined, which gave to it a certain vibrant, unpleasant harshness, sounding metallic almost, rasping, as though with the hiss of steel surfaces rubbing. Altogether impossible to describe adequately, yet, as Judith said, not to be forgotten.
Judith noticed a puzzled look on Bud's face. He called out: "What did you say out there?"
Word for word came the command again:
"Pitch the money out of the window and we'll let you go."
Lee turned triumphantly to Judith.
"I've got his tag!" he whispered to her. "I played poker with that voice one night not four months ago in Rocky Bend!"
"Who is he?" Judith whispered back. "With Crowdy down, if we know who one of these men is, the rest will be easy. Who is he?"
"A bad egg," Lee told her gravely. "He's done time in the State pen. He's been out less than a year. Gunman, stick-up man, convicted once already for manslaughter …"
"Not Chris Quinnion, Bud Lee!" she cried excitedly. "Not Chris Quinnion!"
"Sh!" he commanded softly. "There's no use tipping our hand off to him. Yes; it's crooked Chris Quinnion. You don't know him, do you?"
He had never seen her eyes look as they looked now. They were as hard and bright as steel; no true woman's eyes, he thought swiftly. Rather the eyes of a man with murder in his heart.
"Then, thank God!" whispered Judith, her voice tense. "Can you keep a secret with me, Bud Lee? Were it not for the man calling to us now, Luke Sanford would be here in our stead. Crooked Chris Quinnion served his time in San Quentin because my father sent him there. And he had not been free six months before he kept his oath and murdered my poor old dad!"
"Well?" came the interrupting snarl of Quinnion's voice, like the ominous whine of an enraged animal. "What's the word?"
"Give us five minutes to think it over," returned Lee coolly. And, incredulous eyes on Judith's set face, he said gently: "I was on the ranch when the accident happened. He must have driven that heavy car a little too close to the edge of the grade. The bank just naturally gave way."
Judith, her lips tightly compressed, shook her head.
"You didn't find him under the car, did you? And the blow that killed him might have been dealt with some heavy weapon in the hands of a man standing behind him, mightn't it? I know, Bud Lee, I know!"
"How do you know?" he demanded intently. "You weren't here even."
"No. I was in San Francisco. But the day before I had a letter from father. He expected me home very soon. He was going out, he said in his letter, to look at the road over the mountain. He wrote that the grade was dangerous, especially at the very place where the car went over! He wanted me to know so that in case he could not get the work done on it before I came, I would be careful. On top of that would he go and run his car into such danger as that? Oh, I know!" she cried again, her hands hard upon her rifle. "I know, I tell you! From the first I suspected. I knew that Chris Quinnion had threatened a dozen times to 'get' father; I knew that soon or late he would try. I wrote Emmet Sawyer, our county sheriff, and told him what I believed, asked him to go to the spot and see what the signs told. A square man is Emmet Sawyer and as sharp as tacks."
"And he told you that you were mistaken?"
"He did nothing of the kind! He reported that the tracks of the car showed that it had kept well away from the bank, that evidently it had stopped there, that again it had gone on, swerving so as to run close to the edge! I know what happened: Father got out to look at the dangerous spot and to put up the sign he had brought with him and that was found in the road. Chris Quinnion had followed him, perhaps to shoot him down from behind, Chris Quinnion's way! Then he saw a safer way. He came up behind poor old dad and struck him in the head with something, rifle-barrel or revolver. He started the car up and let it run over the bank. He—"
She broke off then. Bud Lee felt that he knew what she would say if she could bring herself to go on; that she would tell how crooked Chris Quinnion had thrown the unconscious man down over the bank to lie, bruised and broken, by the wrecked car.
"You've got to be almighty sure before you make a charge like that," he reminded her. "If Quinnion had done it, why didn't Emmet Sawyer get the dead-wood on him?"
"Because," she whispered quickly, "a man fooled Sawyer! Yes, and fooled me! Quinnion established an alibi. A man whose word there was no reason to doubt said that Quinnion was with him at the time of the murder. And that man was—Bayne Trevors!"
"Trevors?" muttered Lee. He shook his head. "Trevors is a hard man, Judith. And he's a scoundrel, if you want to know! But frame up a murder deal—plan to murder Luke Sanford—No. I don't believe it!"
"Is he the man to miss a chance that lay at his hand? The main chance for him? The chance to hold a man like Chris Quinnion in the hollow of his hand, to make him do his bidding, to set him just such work as he is doing now? Answer me! Is Bayne Trevors above a deal like that?"
Bud Lee's answer was silence.
"And there is one other thing," went on Judith swiftly, "known to no one but Emmet Sawyer, whom I told, and me and Chris Quinnion: In father's letter he told me that a man had paid him some money the day before, and that he was going to drive to Rocky Bend to bank it. 'There are some tough customers in the country,' he wrote, 'and it's foolhardy to have too much money in our old safe.' That money, several hundred dollars, was never banked. It was not found on his body. Where did it go?"
"Even that doesn't incriminate Quinnion, you know."
"No. The rest is pure guesswork on my part. Guesswork based on what I know. Not enough to hang Chris Quinnion, Bud Lee. But enough to make me sure. He's working at Trevor's game right now. If we can prove that it is Trevors's game, it will go to show how worthless his alibi was."
"Well?" called Quinnion, the third time. "What about it? We ain't goin' to wait all night."
"Tell him," whispered Judith, her hand on Lee's arm, "to come and get it if he wants it! One of us can hold the cabin against the two of them while the other slips out in the dark and rides back to the ranch-house for help. If we're in luck, Bud Lee, we'll corner the bunch of them before daylight!"
Lee stood a moment looking down into her face, his mind filled with uncertainties. With all his soul he wished that Judith had not come with him to-night, that he had only himself to think of now. Quinnion, not to be further put off, called again, the snarl of his voice rising into ugly threat. Still Lee, thinking of Judith, hesitated.
"It's the only way," she insisted. "If we gave them the money they'd want Bill Crowdy next. If they got Crowdy away with them into the mountains I am not sure that they could not hide until they got him safe in Trevors's hands. Then we'd have the whole fight still to make, sooner or later. It's our one bet, Lee!"
And Bud Lee, seeing no better way ahead for them, blew out the candle, forced Judith to stand close to the rock chimney of the fireplace, took his station near her, and answered Quinnion, saying shortly:
"Come ahead when you're ready. We're waiting."
Quinnion's curse, the crack of his rifle, the flying splinters from the cabin door, came together like one implacable menace.
"And now, Bud Lee," cried Judith quickly, "I don't mind telling you, not seeing the end of the string we are playing, that you are a man to my liking!"
"My hat's off," said Lee, with grave simplicity. "And in any old kind of a fight a man wouldn't want a better pardner than I can reach now, putting out my hand. He'd want—just a thoroughbred! And now, little pardner, let's give them—fits!"
Judith, even as Quinnion's second shot tore into the door, laughed softly.
"Finish it as you began it, Bud Lee! Even George Washington swore at Monmouth, you know!"
So Bud Lee amended his words and spoke his thought:
"Then, pardner, let's give 'em hell!"
Crouching in the dark, reserving their own fire while they waited for something more definite than the bark of a rifle to shoot at, their hand met.
XIII
THE CAPTURE OF SHORTY
It came about, quite as matters often do, that at the three-mile-distant ranch headquarters it was one who knew comparatively little of the ways of this part of the world who was first to suspect that all was not well with Judith Sanford. To Pollock Hampton her failure to appear at dinner was significant.
Together with the other newcomers to the ranch from the city he had been deeply moved by yesterday's outlawry. Drawing upon a vivid imagination, he peopled the woods with desperate characters. When after dinner an hour passed without bringing Judith, he began to show signs of nervous anxiety. Without making his fears known to his friends, he went to the office and telephoned to Doc Tripp. All that Tripp could tell him was that he didn't know where Judith was and didn't care; she could take care of herself. Though the veterinarian didn't say as much, he was at the moment puzzled by the new sickness among the hogs and his irritable concern in this matter allowed him scant interest in other people's affairs.
Hampton learned from Mrs. Simpson that in the afternoon Judith after a hurried lunch had taken her rifle and ridden away. Where? Mrs. Simpson did not know. But she grasped the opportunity to confide in Hampton a certain suspicion which she held in connection with the robbery and killing of Bud Lee's horse under him—a suspicion which was growing rapidly into positive certainty. She didn't like to mention the matter to him, since Fujioki was his servant. But had he noted Fujioki and that other black Spanish, José? They had a community of interest which must extend far beyond racial kinship; they were, even at this very second, out in the courtyard together talking in subdued voices. Mrs. Simpson had been raised a lady, Mr. Hampton, sir; and she knew that in the best families one was not supposed to eavesdrop. But at a time like this.… Well, she had crept up behind the lilac-bushes and they were speaking guardedly about the hold-up! Almost in whispers, with every sign of guilt——
"Hurried lunch?" said Hampton. "Took her rifle, did she?"
His eyes had grown very serious as he stared down into Mrs. Simpson's concerned face.
"Send José to me," was what he said next.
"Aren't you afraid, Mr. Hampton?" she exclaimed, picturing to herself this pleasant young gentleman at death-grips with the sombre José. However, she obeyed and called José whom Hampton merely sent to the men's quarters with word for Carson and Lee to come to the house. Mrs. Simpson, witnessing the bloodless meeting from the hallway, was a little relieved and very much disappointed.
Hampton strode up and down the office, the frown gathering upon his usually smooth brows. Plainly if something had happened to Judith the present responsibility lay upon his shoulders as next in authority.
"Here I am," announced Carson briefly. "What is it?"
"I am a little worried, Carson," said Hampton, "about Miss Sanford."
"Huh?" grunted the old cattleman.
"Judith hasn't put in an appearance and it's growing late," continued Hampton hastily "I'm afraid——"
"Afraid? Afraid of what? You don't think she eloped with your Jap or stole the spoons, do you?" snapped Carson. He had been interrupted at the crucial point in a game of cribbage with Poker Face and the cattleman's weak spot was cribbage. He glared at Hampton belligerently.
"Where is Lee?" questioned Hampton sharply. "I told José I wanted the two of you. Why didn't he come?"
"Dunno," answered Carson, still without interest. "I ain't seen him. Wasn't in for supper——"
"I tell you," cried Hampton, angry at Carson's quiet acceptance of facts which to him were darkly significant, "he, too, was out with his rifle to-day; I saw him myself. Now he fails to show up! Don't you see what all this points to?"
Carson, who seldom lost his poise with one-half of his brain still given over to the hand he meant to play with Poker Face, merely sighed and shook his head.
"I'm real busy down at the bunk-house, Mr. Hampton," at last came his quiet answer, "where me an' Poker Face is figuring out something important. As for worrying about a man like Bud Lee or a girl like Judy, why, I just ain't going to do it a-tall. Most likely if you'll call up the Lower End——"
"I've done it!" Whirling in his impatient stride across the room, Hampton came swiftly to Carson's side. "They're not there. They left the Lower End this afternoon and came on here. Then, both armed, they rode away again at four or five o'clock. I tell you, man, something has happened to them."
"Don't believe it," retorted Carson. "Not for one little half-minute, I don't. What's to happen? Huh?"
"You know as well as I do what sort of characters are about. The man who robbed Charlie Miller—who shot at Bud Lee——"
"Whoa!" grinned Carson. "Don't you go and fool yourself. That stick-up gent is a clean hundred miles from here right now an' still going, real lively. If any other jasper lent him a hand, why, he's on his way, too. Not stopping to pick flowers. It's the way them kind plays the game."
Carson was so cheerfully certain, so amused at the thought of Bud Lee and Judith Sanford requiring anybody's assistance, so confident concerning the methods of outlaws, that finally Hampton sent him away, half assured, and went himself to his friends in the living-room. Here he found the major and Mrs. Langworthy reading and yawning. Marcia laughed at a jest of Farris's, while Rogers sought to interest her in himself. The every-day, homelike atmosphere had its effect in allaying his picturesque fears. Hampton noted how her handful of days in the country had done Marcia a world of good, putting fresh, warm color in her rather pale cheeks, breeding a new sparkle in her eyes. She was good to look upon.
He let half an hour slip by in restless inactivity. For, no matter what Carson might say or these people in here do, Judith had not yet come in. When Marcia addressed a bright remark to him, he started and stammered: "I beg your pardon!" They laughed at him, saying that Pollock Hampton was growing absent-minded in his old age. But their banter failed to reach him; he was telling himself that some accident might have befallen one or both of two persons whom he frankly admired for their efficiency.
By half past eight they had caught his uneasiness. At every little sound they turned expectantly. Still no Judith. Mrs. Simpson, comfortable woman that she was, came in, bustling with apprehension. Mrs. Langworthy shook off for a little her listlessness and recounted how she had watched "that girl" riding like a wild Indian toward the Upper End. Perhaps her gun had gone off accidentally.
"Or," she concluded with a touch of venom, "it wouldn't be above her to run off with that long horse foreman."
"Eh?" said the major. "Don't believe it. A fine fig—ahem. Where should she run to? And why run at all?"
Marcia looked a quick distress to Mr. Hampton.
"It is late," she said timidly, "Oh, Pollock! Do you think——"
No longer to be restrained, Hampton left them and went to his room for a rifle and cartridge-belt. He intended to slip out quietly, feeling that he would get from Farris and Rogers only the sort of disbelief he had gotten from Carson. Marcia met him in the hall; she had heard his quick steps and guessed that he was going out. Now clearly, though she was frightened, she was delighted with him. He had never thrilled her like this before. She had never guessed that Pollock Hampton could be so stern-faced, so purposeful. She whispered an entreaty that he be careful, then as he went out, ran back to the others, her eyes shining.
"Pollock is going to see what is the matter," she announced excitedly. Whereat Mrs. Langworthy stared at her and then indicated facially her supreme disgust. The major suggested taking something, the occasion so plainly demanding it.
Hampton passed swiftly through the courtyard. He saw the light of the bunk-house gleaming brightly. On his way down the knoll he came upon Tommy Burkitt.
"Is it Mr. Hampton?" asked Tommy, coming close in the darkness to peer at him.
"Yes. What is it? Who are you?"
"I'm Burkitt, Tommy Burkitt, you know—Bud Lee's helper. I—I am afraid something has happened. Lee hasn't come in yet; they tried to pick him off once already, you know——"
"Neither has Miss Sanford come in," said Hampton quickly, sensing here at last a fear that was fellow to his own. "They rode toward the Upper End. You know the way, Burkitt?"
He moved on toward the corral; Burkitt turned and came with him.
"Sure I know the trail," muttered Tommy. "You're goin' to see what's wrong with 'em! Miss Judy, too! My God——"
"Bring out a couple of horses," Hampton commanded crisply. "We've lost time enough already."
"I'll go tell Carson an' the boys——"
"I have already told Carson. He says it's all nonsense. Leave him alone."
Tommy, boy that he was, asked no further questions, but ran ahead and brought out two horses. In a twinkling he had saddled them, and the two riders, each with a rifle across his arm, were hurrying over the mountain trail.
In the blackness which lay along the upper river Hampton gave his horse a free rein and let it follow at Tommy's heels. The roar of the lashing water, the pounding of shod hoofs, the whining creak of saddle-leather were the only sounds coming to them out of the night. When, finally, they drew rein under the cliffs at the lake's edge all was silent save for the faint distant booming of the river below them.
"Now which way?" whispered Hampton, his voice eloquent of suppressed excitement and eagerness.
Tommy was shaking his head in uncertainty when suddenly from above there came to them the sharp report of a rifle. Then, like a bundle at firecrackers, a volley of half a dozen staccato shots.
"Listen to that, Burkitt," muttered Hampton. "They're at it now—we're on time——"
Tommy slipped from the saddle wordlessly, came to Hampton's side and tugged gently at his leg, whispering for him to get down. Leaving their horses there, they slipped into the utter darkness of the narrow chasm in the rocks which gave access to the plateau above.
"Now," cautioned Tommy guardedly, as they came to the top, "keep close to me if you don't want to take a header about a thousan' feet. Look!" He nudged Hampton and pointed. "There are two horses across yonder; Bud's an' Miss Judy's, most likely."
Hampton did not see them, did not seek to see them. Something new, vital, big, had swept suddenly into his life. He was at grips first-hand with unmasked, pulsing forces. A tremor went through him and he was not ashamed of it; for it was not the quaking of fear, but the thrill in the blood of a man who, plucked from a round of social artificialities, finds himself with the smell of burnt powder in his nostrils and who feels a swift eagerness for what may lie just yonder waiting for him. "They're at it now!" he whispered to Burkitt. Men—yes, and a girl—were shooting, not at just wooden and paper targets, but at other men! At men who shot back, and shot to kill.
"Listen," said Burkitt. "Somebody's in the old cabin; somebody's outside. Which is which? We got to be awful careful."
They began a slow, cautious approach, slipping from bush to bush, from tree to tree, standing motionless now and then to frown into the folds of the night's curtains. Abruptly the firing ceased. They made out vaguely the two forms of the attackers, having located them a moment ago by the spurting flames from their guns. Then, "Got enough in there?" came the snarling voice of Quinnion. "If you haven't, I'm going to burn you out an' be damned to you!"
He got an answer he little expected. For Hampton, running out into the open, now that he knew that Bud and Judith must be in the cabin, was firing as he came. Burkitt's rifle spoke with his.
"Run for it, Shorty!" yelled Quinnion. "You know where. We're up against the Blue Lake boys."
"Bud!" shouted Tommy. "Oh, Bud!"
"In the cabin," came Bud's ringing answer. "Give 'em hell, Tommy! Coming!"
With his words came the sound of the door snapping back against the wall, the reports of Tommy's rifle and Hampton's pumping hot lead after two racing forms.
"They'll get away!" shouted Hampton, a sudden red rage upon him. "Curse it! It's too dark——"
Then Tommy gave over shooting and yelled to Lee to hold his fire. For instead of two there were three flying forms, three fast-racing, blurring, shadowy shapes merging with the night. Pollock Hampton, his rifle clubbed in his hand, was running with a college sprinter's speed after Quinnion and Shorty, calling breathlessly:
"Look out, they'll get away!"
Once Quinnion stopped to shoot back. The hissing lead went wide of the pursuer and he gave over firing and settled down to good, hard running, disappearing from Hampton's staring eyes. But Shorty was still to be seen, running heavily.
"Don't shoot, Bud!" cried Tommy again as two figures ran out of the cabin. "Hampton's out there—the crazy fool——"
"Hampton, come back!" shouted Lee, running after him.
But Hampton was gaining on the heavy-set Shorty and had no thought of coming back. Nor a thought of anything in all the wide world just then but overtaking the flying figure in front of him. Shorty stumbled over a fallen log and rose, cursing and calling:
"Chris! Lend a hand."
That little chance of an uprooted tree saved Hampton's life that night. Shorty, falling, had dropped his gun and hurt his knee. For a moment he groped wildly for the lost rifle, then ran on without it. Hampton cleared the log, and with a yell rather befitting a victorious savage than the young man whom Mrs. Langworthy hoped to call her son, threw his long arms about Shorty's neck.
"I got him!" shouted Hampton. "By glory——"
Shorty drove a big brutal fist smashing into his captor's face. But Hampton merely lowered his head, hiding it against Shorty's heaving shoulder, and tightened his grip. Shorty struggled to his feet, shaking at him, tearing at him, driving one fist after the other into Hampton's body. But with a grimness of purpose as new to him as was the whole of to-night's adventure Hampton held on.
Judith and Lee and Burkitt came to them as they were falling again. Now suddenly, with other hard hands upon him, Shorty relaxed, and Hampton, his face bloody, his body sore, sank back. He had done a mad thing—but triumph lay in that he had done it.
"A man never can tell," muttered Bud Lee, with less thought of the captive than of the captor—"never can tell."
"I am thinking," said Judith wonderingly, "that I never quite did you justice, Pollock Hampton!"