Ignacio Chavez, because thus he could be of service to el señor Roderico Nortone whom he admired vastly and loved like a brother, drew to the dregs upon his fine Latin talent, doubled up and otherwise contorted and twisted his lithe body until the sweat stood out upon his forehead. His groans would have done ample justice to the occasion had he been dying.
Virginia treated him sparingly to a harmless potion she had secured at her room on the way, put the bottle into the hands of Ignacio's withered and anxious old mother, informed the half dozen Indian onlookers that she had arrived in time and that the bell-ringer would live, and then was impatient to go with Engle to Struve's hotel. Here Engle left her to return to his home and to send the saddle-horse he had promised Norton.
"You can ride, can't you, Virginia?" he had asked.
"Yes," she assured him.
"Then I'll send Persis around; she's the prettiest thing in horseflesh you ever saw. And the gamest. And, Virginia . . ."
He hesitated. "Well?" she asked.
"There's not a squarer, whiter man in the world than Rod Norton," he said emphatically. "Now good night and good luck, and be sure to drop in on us to-morrow."
She watched him as he went swiftly down the street; then she turned into the hotel and down the hall, which echoed to the click of her heels, and to her room. She had barely had time to change for her ride and to glance at her "war bag" when a discreet knock sounded at her door. Going to the door she found that it was Julius Struve instead of Norton.
"You are to come with me," said the hotel keeper softly. "He is waiting with the horses."
They passed through the dark dining-room, into the pitch black kitchen and out at the rear of the house. A moment Struve paused, listening. Then, touching her sleeve, he hurried away into the night, going toward the black line of cottonwoods, the girl keeping close to his heels.
At the dry arroyo Norton was waiting, holding two saddled horses. Without a word he gave her his hand, saw her mounted, surrendered Persis's jerking reins into her gauntletted grip and swung up to the back of his own horse. In another moment, and still in silence, Virginia and Norton were riding away from San Juan, keeping in the shadows of the trees, headed toward the mountains in the north.
And now suddenly Virginia found that she was giving herself over utterly, unexpectedly to a keen, pulsing joy of life. She had surrendered into the sheriff's hands the little leather-case which contained her emergency bottles and instruments; they had left San Juan a couple of hundred yards behind, their horses were galloping; her stirrup struck now and then against Norton's boot. John Engle had not been unduly extravagant in praise of the mare Persis; Virginia sensed rather than saw clearly the perfect, beautiful creature which carried her, delighted in the swinging gallop, drew into her soul something of the serene glory of a starlit night on the desert. The soft thud of shod hoofs upon yielding soil was music to her, mingled as it came with the creak of saddle leather, the jingle of bridle and spur-chains. She wondered if there had ever been so perfect a night, if she had ever mounted so finely bred a saddle animal.
Far ahead the San Juan mountains lifted their serrated ridge of ebony. On all other sides the flat-lands stretched out seeming to have no end, suggesting to the fancy that they were kin in vastitude to the clear expanse of the sky. On all hands little wind-shaped ridges were like crests of long waves in an ocean which had just now been stilled, brooded over by the desert silence and the desert stars.
"I suppose," said Norton at last, "that it's up to me to explain."
"Then begin," said Virginia, "by telling me where we are going."
He swung up his arm, pointing.
"Yonder. To the mountains. We'll reach them in about two hours and a half. Then, in another two hours or so, we'll come to where Brocky is. Way up on the flank of Mt. Temple. It's going to be a long, hard climb. For you, at the end of a tiresome day. . . ."
"How about yourself?" she asked quickly, and he knew that she was smiling at him through the dark. "Unless you're made of iron I'm almost inclined to believe that after your friend Brocky I'll have another patient. Who is he, by the way?"
"Brocky Lane? I was going to tell you. You saw something stirring in the patio at Engle's? I had seen it first; it was Ignacio who had slipped in under the wide arch from the gardens at the rear of the house. He had been sent for me by Tom Cutter, my deputy. Brocky Lane is foreman of a big cattle-ranch lying just beyond the mountains; he is also working with me and with Cutter, although until I've told you nobody knows it but ourselves and John Engle. . . . Before the night is out you'll know rather a good deal about what is going on, Miss Page," he added thoughtfully.
"More than you'd have been willing for me to know if circumstance hadn't forced your hand?"
"Yes," he admitted coolly. "To get anywhere we've had to sit tight on the game we're playing. But, from the word Cutter brings, poor old Brocky is pretty hard hit, and I couldn't take any chances with his life even though it means taking chances in another direction."
He might have been a shade less frank; and yet she liked him none the less for giving her the truth bluntly. He was but tacitly admitting that he knew nothing of her; and yet in this case he would prefer to call upon her than on Caleb Patten.
"No, I don't trust Patten," he continued, the chain of thought being inevitable. "Not that I'd call him crooked so much as a fool for Jim Galloway to juggle with. He talks too much."
"You wish me to say nothing of to-night's ride?"
"Absolutely nothing. If you are missed before we get back Struve will explain that you were called to see old Ramorez, a half-breed over yonder toward Las Estrellas. That is, provided we get back too late for it to appear likely that you are just resting in your room or getting things shipshape in your office. That's why I am explaining about Brocky."
"Since you represent the law in San Juan, Mr. Norton," she told him, "since, further, Mr. Engle indorses all that you are doing, I believe that I can go blindfolded a little. I'd rather do that than have you forced against your better judgment to place confidence in a stranger."
"That's fair of you," he said heartily. "But there are certain matters which you will have to be told. Brocky Lane has been shot down by one of Jim Galloway's crowd. It was a coward's job done by a man who would run a hundred miles rather than meet Brocky in the open. And now the thing which we don't want known is that Lane even so much as set foot on Mt. Temple. We don't want it known that he was anywhere but on Las Cruces Rancho; that he was doing anything but give his time to his duties as foreman there."
"In particular you don't want Jim Galloway to know?"
"In particular I don't want Jim Galloway to so much as suspect that Brocky Lane or Tom Cutter or myself have any interest in Mt. Temple," he said emphatically.
"But if the man who shot him is one of Galloway's crowd, as you say. . . ."
"He'll do no talking for a while. After having seen Brocky drop he took one chance and showed half of his cowardly carcass around a boulder. Whereupon Brocky, weak and sick and dizzy as he was, popped a bullet into him."
She shuddered.
"Is there nothing but killing of men among you people?" she cried sharply. "First the sheepman from Las Palmas, then Brocky Lane, then the man who shot him. . . ."
"Brocky didn't kill Moraga," Norton explained quietly. "But he dropped him and then made him throw down his gun and crawl out of the brush. Then Tom Cutter gathered him in, took him across the county line, gave him into the hands of Ben Roberts who is sheriff over there, and came on to San Juan. Roberts will simply hold Moraga on some trifling charge, and see that he keeps his mouth shut until we are ready for him to talk."
"Then Brocky Lane and Tom Cutter were together on Mt. Temple?"
"Near enough for Tom to hear the shooting."
They grew silent again. Clearly Norton had done what explaining he deemed necessary and was taking her no deeper into his confidences. She told herself that he was right, that these were not merely his own personal secrets, that as yet he would be unwise to trust a stranger further than he was forced to. And yet, unreasonably or not, she felt a little hurt. She had liked him from the beginning and from the beginning she felt that in a case such as his she would have trusted to intuition and have held back nothing. But she refrained from voicing the questions which none the less insisted upon presenting themselves to her: What was the thing that had brought both Brocky Lane and Tom Cutter to Mt. Temple? What had they been seeking there in a wilderness of crag and cliff? Why was Roderick Norton so determined that Jim Galloway should not so much as suspect that these men were watchful in the mountains? What sinister chain of circumstance had impelled Moraga, who Norton said was Galloway's man, to shoot down the cattle foreman? And Galloway himself, what type of man must he be if all that she had heard of him were true; what were his ambitions, his plans, his power?
Before long Norton pointed out the shadowy form of Mt. Temple looming ever vaster before them, its mass of rock, of wind-blown, wind-carved peaks lifted in sombre defiance against the stars. It brooded darkly over the lower slopes, like an incubus it dominated the other spines and ridges, its gorges filled with shadow and mystery, its precipices making the sense reel dizzily. And somewhere up there high against the sky, alone, suffering, perhaps dying, a man had waited through the slow hours, and still awaited their coming. How slowly she and Norton were riding, how heartless of her to have felt the thrill of pleasure which had possessed her so utterly an hour ago!
Or less than an hour. For now again, wandering out far across the open lands, came the heavy mourning of the bell.
"How far can one hear it?" she asked, surprised that from so far its ringing came so clearly.
"I don't know how many miles," he answered. "We'll hear it from the mountain. I should have heard it to-day, long before I met you by the arroyo, had I not been travelling through two big bands of Engle's sheep."
Behind them San Juan drawn into the shadows of night but calling to them in mellow-toned cadences of sorrow, before them the sombre canons and iron flanks of Mt. Temple, and somewhere, still several hours away, Brocky Lane lying helpless and perhaps hopeless; grim by day the earth hereabouts was inscrutable by night, a mighty, primal sphinx, lip-locked, spirit-crushing. The man and girl riding swiftly side by side felt in their different ways according to their different characters and previous experience the mute command laid upon them, and for the most part their lips were hushed.
There came the first slopes, the talus of strewn, broken, disintegrating rock, and then the first of the cliffs. Now the sheriff rode in the fore and Virginia kept her frowning eyes always upon his form leading the way. They entered the broad mouth of a ravine, found an uneven trail, were swallowed up by its utter and impenetrable blackness.
"Give Persis her head," Norton advised her. "She'll find her way and follow me."
His voice, low-toned as it was, stabbed through the silence, startling her, coming unexpectedly out of the void which had drawn him and his horse gradually beyond the quest of her straining eyes. She sighed, sat back in her saddle, relaxed, and loosened her reins.
For an hour they climbed almost steadily, winding in and out. Now, high above the bed of the gorge, the darkness had thinned about them; more than once the girl saw the clear-cut silhouette of man and beast in front of her or swerving off to right or left. When, after a long time, he spoke again he was waiting for her to come up with him. He had dismounted, loosened the cinch of his saddle and tied his horse to a stunted, twisted tree in a little flat.
"We have to go ahead on foot now," he told her as he put out his hand to help her down. And then as they stood side by side: "Tired much?"
"No," she answered. "I was just in the mood to ride."
He took down the rope from her saddle strings, tied Persis, and, saying briefly, "This way," again went on. She kept her place almost at his heels, now and again accepting the hand he offered as their way grew steeper underfoot. Half an hour ago she knew that they had swerved off to the left, away from the deep gorge into whose mouth they had ridden so far below; now she saw that they were once more drawing close to the steep-walled cañon. Its emptiness, black and sinister, lay between them and a group of bare peaks which stood up like cathedral spires against the sky.
"This would be simple enough in the daytime," Norton told her during one of their brief pauses. "In the dark it's another matter. Not tired out, are you?"
"No," she assured him the second time, although long ago she would have been glad to throw herself down to rest, were their errand less urgent.
"We've got some pretty steep climbing ahead of us yet," he went on quietly. "You must be careful not to slip. Oh," and he laughed carelessly, "you'd stop before you got to the bottom, but then a drop of even half a dozen feet is no joke here. If you'll pardon me I'll make sure for you."
With no further apology or explanation he slipped the end of a rope about her waist, tying it in a hard knot. Until now she had not even known that he had brought a rope; now she wondered just how hazardous was the hidden trail which they were travelling; if it were in truth but the matter of half a dozen feet which she would fall if she slipped? He made the other end of the short tether fast about his own body, said "Ready?" and again she followed him closely.
There came little flat spaces, then broken boulders to clamber over, then steep, rugged climbs, when they grasped the rough rocks with both hands and moved on with painful slowness. It seemed to the girl that they had been climbing for long, tedious hours since they had slipped out of their saddles; though to him she said nothing, locking her lips stubbornly, she knew that at last she was tired, very tired, that an end of this laborious ascent must come soon or she would be forced to stop and lie down and rest.
"Fifteen minutes more," said the sheriff, "and we're there. We'll use the first five minutes of it for a rest, too."
He made her sit down, unstoppered a canteen which, like the coil of rope, she had not known he carried, and gave her a drink of water which seemed to her the most wonderfully strength-making, life-giving draft in the world. Then he dropped down at her side, looked at his watch in the light of a flaring match carefully cupped in his hand, and lighted his pipe.
"Nearly midnight," he told her.
Without replying she lay back against the slope of the mountain, closed her eyes and relaxed, breathing deeply. Her chest expanded deeply to the long indrawn breath which filled her lungs with the rare air. She felt suddenly a little sleepy, dreaming longingly of the unutterable content one could find in just going to sleep with the cliff-scarred mountainside for couch.
She stirred and opened her eyes. Rod Norton, the sheriff of San Juan, a man who a few brief hours ago had been unknown to her, his name unfamiliar, sat two paces from her, smoking. She and this man of whom she still knew rather less than nothing were alone in the world; just the two of them lifted into the sky, separated by a dreary stretch of desert lands from other men and women . . . bound together by a bit of rope. She tried to see his face; the profile, more guessed than seen, appeared to her fancy as unrelenting as the line of cliff just beyond him, clear-cut against the sky.
Yet somehow . . . she did not definitely formulate the thought of which she was at the time but dimly, vaguely conscious . . . she was glad that she had come to San Juan. And she was not afraid of the silent man at her side, nor sorry that circumstance had given them this night and its labors.
Norton knocked out his pipe. Together they got to their feet.
"More careful than ever now," he cautioned her. "Look out for each step and go slowly. We're there in ten minutes. Ready?"
"Ready," she answered.
Those remaining ten minutes tried all that there was of endurance in Virginia Page. Often Norton, bidding her wait a moment, climbed on to some narrow ledge above her and, drawing the rope steadily through his hands, gave her what aid he could; often, clinging with hand and foot she thought breathlessly of the steep fall of cliff which the darkness hid from her eyes, but which grew ever steeper in her mind as she struggled on. He had said it would be easier in daylight; she wondered if after all it would not have been more difficult could she have seen just what were the chances she was taking at every moment. But more and more she came to have utter faith in the quiet man going on before her, and in the piece of rope which stretched taut between them.
"And now," said Norton at last, when once more he had drawn her up to him and they stood close together upon a narrow ledge, "we've got a good, safe trail under foot. Good news, eh?"
But as he moved on now he kept her hand locked tight in his own. Their "good, safe trail" was a rough ledge running almost horizontally along the cliffside, its trend scarcely perceptibly upward. Within twenty steps it led them into a wide, V-shaped fissure in the rocks. Then came a sort of cup in a nest of rugged peaks, its bottom filled with imprisoned soil worn from the spires above. As Norton, relinquishing her hand, went forward swiftly she heard a man's voice saying weakly:
"That you, Rod?"
"I came as soon as I could, Brocky." Norton, standing close to a big outjutting boulder upon the far side of the cup, was bending over the cattleman. "How are you making out, old man?"
"I've sure been having one hell of a nice little party," grunted Brocky Lane faintly. "A man's so damn close to heaven on these mountain tops. . . . Who's that?"
Virginia came forward quickly and went down on her knees at Lane's side.
"I'm Dr. Page," she said quietly. "Now if you'll tell me where you're hit . . . and if Mr. Norton will get me some sort of a light. A fire will have to do. . . ."
Another little grunt came from Brocky Lane's tortured lips, this time a wordless expression of his unmeasured amazement.
"I didn't want Patten in on this," Norton explained. "Miss Page is a doctor; just got into San Juan to-day. She's a cousin of Engle. And she knows her business a whole lot better than Patten does, besides."
"Will you get the fire started immediately, Mr. Norton?" asked Virginia somewhat sharply. "Mr. Lane has waited long enough as it is."
"I'll be damned!" said Brocky Lane weakly. And then, more weakly still, in a voice which broke despite a manful effort to make it both steady and careless, "I never cuss like that unless I'm delerious, anyhow I never cuss when there's a lady. . . ."
"If you'll keep perfectly still," Virginia admonished him quickly, "I'll do all the talking that is necessary. Where is the wound?"
"You don't have to have a light, do you?" Brocky insisted on being informed. "You see, we can't have it. Where'm I hurt, you want to know? Mostly right here in my side."
Virginia's hands found the rude bandage, damp and sticky.
"It's nonsense about not having a light," she said, turning toward Norton.
"No," said the wounded man. "Nonsense nothing, is it Rod? How're we going to have a fire when my matches are all gone and Rod's matches. . . ."
"Mr. Norton," Virginia cut in crisply, "in spite of your friend's talk and in spite of the bluff he is putting up he is pretty badly hurt. You give me some sort of a light, I don't care if they see it down at San Juan, or you shoulder the responsibility. Which is it?"
Norton turned and was gone in the darkness; to Virginia's eyes it seemed that he was swallowed up by the cliff's themselves, as though they had opened and accepted him and closed after him. She supposed that he had gone to seek what scanty dry fuel one might find here. But in a moment he was back carrying a lighted lantern.
"Look here, Rod. . . ." expostulated Brocky.
"Shut up, Brocky," answered Norton quietly. And, passing the lantern to the girl. "If you'll carry that I'll carry Brocky. It's only a few steps and I won't hurt him. We can make him more comfortable there; and besides, we can't leave him out here in the sun to-morrow."
Somewhat mystified, Virginia took the lantern and her own surgical case from the sheriff and watched him stoop and gather the tall form of his friend into his arms. Then going the way he indicated, straight across the tiny flat, she lighted the way. She heard the wounded man groan once; then, his teeth set to guard his lips, Brocky was silent.
After a dozen steps she came to a steep-sided, narrow chasm giving passageway not six feet wide which twisted this way and that before her.
"Look out," called Norton sharply. "Watch where you step now. Go slow."
Virginia swinging her lantern up shoulder-high, looking ahead, grew instantly stock-still, a shiver tingling along her spine. The narrow defile through which she had passed had led out of the ring of peaks and now abruptly debouched into nothingness. As she had turned with the twisting passageway, expecting to see another wall of rock before her, she saw instead the sky filled with stars. She stood almost at the edge of a sheer precipice.
"Throw the light to the left now," commanded Norton. "See what looks like the entrance to a cave? We go in there."
She walked on, moving slowly, warily, a little faint from the one startled view before her, her body tight pressed to the rocks upon the left, her feet only a pace from the edge of the cliff. Now she saw the mouth of the cave, a black ragged hole just above a flat rock which thrust itself outward so that it seemed hanging, balanced insecurely, over the abyss. By the pale rays of the lantern she saw the fairly smooth, gently sloping floor of the cavern; then, stooping, she passed in, turned, and held the light for Norton.
He came on steadily, bearing his burden lightly. Still holding the lantern for him, turning as he came closer, she saw that the cave was lofty and wide, that it ran farther back into the mountain than her lantern's rays could follow.
"Back there," said Norton, "you'll find blankets. I'll hold him while you spread some out for him."
She hurried toward the farther end of the cave, came to a tumble of blankets against the wall, dragged out two or three, spreading them quickly. And then, while Norton was stooping to lay Brocky's limp form down, she busied herself with her case.
"He has fainted," she said quickly. "I'd like to examine the wound before he is conscious; it's going to hurt him. Pour me some water into any sort of basin or cup or anything else you've got here. Then stand by to help me if I need you. . . . Hold the lantern for me."
Swiftly, but Norton marked with what skilful fingers, she removed the bandage and made her examination. Norton, squatting upon his heels at her side, holding the lantern, after one frowning look at the wound, kept his eyes fixed upon her face. Brocky Lane was near his death and the sheriff knew it after that one look; his life lay, perhaps, in the hands of this girl. Norton had brought her when he might have brought Patten. Had he chosen wrongly?
He had noted her hands before; now they seemed to him the most wonderful hands ever possessed by either man or woman, strong, sure, quick, sensitive, utterly capable. He thought of Caleb Patten's hands, thick, a little inclined to be flabby.
"Open that bottle," she directed coolly. "One tablet into the water. That box has cotton and gauze in it . . . don't touch them! I want everything clean; just open the box and set it where I can get it."
One by one she gave her directions and the man obeyed swiftly and unquestioningly. He watched her probe the wound, saw her eyes narrow, knew that she had made her diagnosis. As she washed the ugly hole in the flesh and made her own bandage Brocky Lane was wincing, his eyes again open. Both men were watching her now, the same look in each eager pair of eyes. But until she had done and, with Norton's help, had made Lane as comfortable as possible upon his crude bed, she gave no answer to their mute pleading. Then she sat down upon the stone floor, caught her knees up in her clasped hands, and looked long and searchingly into Brocky Lane's face. The cowboy struggled with his muscles and triumphed over them, summoning a sick grin as he muttered:
"You're mighty good to take all this trouble. . . . I'm sure a hundred times obliged. . . ."
"And," she cut in abruptly, "you mean to tell me that you shot that man after he had put this hole in you? And then you made him crawl out of the brush and come to you?"
"I sure did," grunted Brocky. "And if my aim hadn't been sort of bad, me being all upset this way, I wouldn't have just winged old Moraga that way, either! When he's all cured up and I'm all well again. . . ."
Then he broke off and again his eyes, like Norton's, asked their question. This time she answered it, speaking slowly and thoughtfully.
"Mr. Brocky Lane, I congratulate you on three things, your physique first, your luck second, and third, your nerve. They are a combination that is hard to beat. I am very much inclined to the belief that in a month or so you'll be about as good as new."
Norton expelled a deep breath of relief; he realized suddenly that whatever this gray-eyed, strong-handed girl had said would have had his fullest credence. Brocky's grin grew a shade less strained.
"When you add to that combination," he muttered, "a sure-enough angel come to doctor a man. . . ."
"Growing delirious again," laughed Virginia. "Give him a little brandy, Mr. Norton. Then a smoke if he's dying for one. Then we'll try to get a little sleep, all of us. You see, I had virtually no sleep on the train last night and to-day has been a big day for me. If I'm going to do your friend any good I've got to get three winks. And, unless you're made out of reinforced sheet-iron, it's the same for you. You can lie down close to Mr. Lane so that he can wake you easily if he needs us. Now," and she rose, still smiling, but suddenly looking unutterably weary, "where is the guest-chamber?"
She did not tell them that not only last night, but the night before she had sat up in a day coach, saving every cent she could out of the few dollars which were to give her and her brother a new start in the world; there were many things which Virginia Page knew how to keep to herself.
"This way," said Norton, taking up the lantern. "We can really make you more comfortable than you'd think."
At the very least he could count confidently on treating her to a surprise. She followed him for forty or fifty feet toward the end of the cave and to an irregular hole in the side wall, through this, and into another cave, smaller than the first, but as big as an ordinary room. The floor was strewn with the short needles of the mountain pine. As she turned, looking about her, she noted first another opening in a wall suggesting still another cave; then, feeling a faint breath of the night air on her cheek she saw a small rift in the outer shell of rock and through it the stars thick in the sky.
"May you sleep well in Jim Galloway's hang-out," said Norton lightly. "May you not be troubled with the ghosts of the old cliff-dwellers whose house this was before our time. And may you always remember that if there is anything in the world that I can do for you all you have to do is let me know. Good night."
"Good night," she said.
He had left the lantern for her. She placed it on the floor and went across her strange bedroom to the hole in the rock through which the stars were shining. It seemed impossible that those stars out there were the same stars which had shone upon her all of her life long. She could fancy that she had gone to sleep in one world and now had awakened in another, coming into a far, unknown territory where the face of the earth was changed, where men were different, where life was new. And though her body was tired her spirit did not droop. Rather an old exhilaration was in her blood. She had stepped from an old, outworn world into a new one, and with a quick stir of the pulses she told herself that life was good where it was strenuous and that she was glad that Virginia Page had come to San Juan.
"And now," she mused sleepily when at last she lay down upon heaped-up pine-needles and drew over her the blanket Norton had brought, "I am going to sleep in the hang-out of Jim Galloway and the old home of the cliff-dwellers! Virginia Page, you are a downright lucky girl!"
Whereupon she blew out her lantern, smiled faintly at the stars shining upon her, sighed wearily and went to sleep.
As full consciousness of her surroundings returned slowly to her, Virginia Page at first thought that she had been awakened by the aroma of boiling coffee. Then, sitting up, wide awake, she knew that Norton had come to the doorway of her separate chamber and had called. She threw off her blanket and got up hastily.
It was still dark. She imagined that she had merely dozed and that Norton was summoning her because Brocky Lane was worse. A dim glow shone through the cave entrance, that flickering, uncertain light eloquent of a camp-fire. As her hands went swiftly and femininely to her hair, she heard Norton's voice in a laughing remark. Only then she knew that she had slept three or four hours, that the dawn was near, that it was time for her to return to San Juan.
"Good morning," she said brightly.
Norton, squatting by the fire, frying-pan in hand, turned and answered her nod; Brocky Lane, flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, a cigarette in his mouth, twisted a little where he lay, his eyes eager upon his doctor. Virginia came on into the full light, striking the pine-needles from her riding-habit.
"Time to eat and ride," said Norton, turning again to his task. "Bacon and coffee and exercise. Have you rested?"
"Perfectly. And Mr. Lane?"
"Me?" said Brocky. "Feeling fine."
Norton gave her a cup of warm water to wash her hands. Then she made a second, very careful examination of Brocky's wound, cleansing it and adjusting a fresh bandage.
"I want to start in half an hour," said the sheriff. "There'll be light enough then so that we can make time getting down to the horses and yet not enough light to show us up to a chance early rider down below. Then we'll swing off to the west, make a wide bend, ride through Las Estrellas and get back into San Juan when we please. That is you will; I'll leave you outside of Las Estrellas, showing you the way. And, while we eat, I am going to tell you something."
"About Galloway?" she asked quickly. "Explaining what you meant by Galloway's hang-out?"
"Yes. And more than that."
For a little she stood, looking at him very gravely. Then she spoke in utter frankness.
"Mr. Norton, I think that I can see your position; you were so circumstanced through Mr. Lane's being hurt that you had to bring either Dr. Patten or me here. You decided it would be wiser to bring me. There is something of a compliment in that, isn't there?"
"You don't know Caleb Patten yet!" growled Brocky a bit savagely.
"Already it seems to me," she went on, "that you have a pretty hard row to hoe. It is evident that you have discovered a sort of thieves' headquarters here; that, for your own reasons, you don't want it known that you have found it. To say that I am not curious about it all would be talking nonsense, of course. And yet I can assure you that I hold you under no obligation whatever to do any explaining. You are the sheriff and your job is to get results, not to be polite to the ladies."
But Norton shook his head.
"You know what you know," he said seriously. "I think that if you know a little more you will more readily understand why we must insist on keeping our mouths shut . . . all of us."
"In that case," returned the girl, "and before you boil that coffee into any more hopelessly black a concoction than it already is, I am ready to drink mine and listen. Coffee, Mr. Lane?"
"Had mine, thanks," answered Brocky. "Spin the yarn, Rod."
Norton put down his frying-pan, the bacon brown and crisp, and rose to his feet.
"Will you come this way a moment, Miss Page?" he asked. "To begin with, seeing is believing."
She followed him as she had, last night, back into the cave in which she had slept. But Norton did not stop here. He went on, Virginia still following him, came to that other hole in the rock wall which she had noted by the lantern light.
"In here," he said. "Just look."
He swept a match across his thigh, holding it up for her. She came to his side and looked in. First she saw a number of small boxes, innocent appearing affairs which suggested soda-crackers. Beyond them was something covered with a blanket; Norton stepped by her and jerked the covering aside. Startled, puzzled by what she saw, she looked to him wonderingly. Placed neatly, lying side by side, their metal surfaces winking back at the light of Norton's match, were a number of rifles. A score of them, fifty, perhaps.
"It looks like a young revolution!" she cried, her gaze held, her eyes fascinated by the unexpected.
"You've seen about everything now," he told her, the red ember of a burnt-out match dropping to the floor. "Those boxes contain cartridges. Now let's go back to Brocky."
"But they'll see that you have been here. . . ."
"I'll come back in a minute with the lantern; I want a further chance to look things over. Then I'll put the blanket back and see that not even that charred match gives us away. And we'd better be eating and getting started."
With a steaming tin of black coffee before her, a brown piece of bacon between her fingers, she forgot to eat or drink while she listened to Norton's story. At the beginning it seemed incredible; then, her thoughts sweeping back over the experiences of these last twenty-four hours, her eyes having before them the picture of a sheriff, grim-faced and determined, a wounded man lying just beyond the fire, the rough, rudely arched walls and ceiling of a cave man's dwelling about her, she deemed that what Norton knew and suspected was but the thing to be expected.
"Jim Galloway is a big man," the sheriff said thoughtfully. "A very big man in his way. My father was after him for a long time; I have been after him ever since my father's death. But it is only recently that I have come to appreciate Jim Galloway's caliber. That's why I could never get him with the goods on; I have been looking for him in the wrong places.
"I estimated that he was making money with the Casa Blanca and a similar house which he operates in Pozo; I thought that his entire game lay in such layouts and a bit of business now and then like the robbing of the Las Palmas man. But now I know that most of these lesser jobs are not even Galloway's affair, that he lets some of his crowd like the Kid or Antone or Moraga put them across and keep the spoils, often enough. In a word, while I've been looking for Jim Galloway in the brush he has been doing his stunt in the big timber! And now. . . ." The look in Norton's eyes suggested that he had forgotten the girl to whom he was talking. "And now I have picked up his trail!"
"And that's something," interposed Brocky Lane, a flash of fire in his own eyes. "Considering that no man ever knew better than Jim Galloway how to cover tracks."
"You see," continued Norton, "Jim Galloway's bigness consists very largely of these two things: he knows how to keep his hands off of the little jobs, and he knows how to hold men to him. Bisbee, of Las Palmas, goes down in the Casa Blanca; his money, perhaps a thousand dollars, finds its way into the pockets of Kid Rickard, Antone, and maybe another two or three men. Jim Galloway sees what goes on and does no petty haggling over the spoils; he gets a strangle-hold on the men who do the job; it costs him nothing but another lie or so, and he has them where he can count on them later on when he needs such men. Further, if they are arrested, Jim Galloway and Galloway's money come to the front; they are defended in court by the best lawyers to be had, men are bribed and they go free. As a result of such labors on Galloway's part I'd say at a rough guess that there are from a dozen to fifty men in the county right now who are his men, body and soul.
"With a gang like that at his back, a man of Galloway's type has grown pretty strong. Strong enough to plan . . . yes, and by the Lord, carry out! . . . the kind of game he's playing right now.
"A half-breed took sick and died a short time ago, a man whom I'd never set my eyes on particularly. It happened that he was a superstitious devil and that he was a second or third cousin of Ignacio Chavez. He was quite positive that unless the bells rang properly for him he would go to hell the shortest way. So he sent for Ignacio and wound up by talking a good deal. Ignacio passed the word on to me. And that was the first inkling I had of Galloway's real game. In a word, this is what it is:
"He plans on one big stroke and then a long rest and quiet enjoyment of the proceeds. You have seen the rifles; he'll arm a crowd of his best men . . . or his worst, as you please . . . swoop down on San Juan, rob the bank, shooting down just as many men as happen to be in the way, rush in automobiles to Pozo and Kepple's Town, stick up the banks there, levy on the Las Palmas mines, and then steer straight to the border. And, if all worked according to schedule, the papers across the country would record the most daring raid across the border yet, blaming the whole affair on a detachment of Gringo-hating Mexican bandits and revolutionists."
Virginia stared at him, half incredulously. But the look in Norton's eyes, the same look in Brocky Lane's, assured her.
"Why do you wait then?" she asked sharply. "If you know all this, why don't you arrest the man and his accomplices now? Before it is too late?"
"And have the whole country laugh at me? Where's my evidence? Just the word of a dead Indian, repeated by another Indian, and a few rifles hid in the mountains? Even if we proved the rifles were Galloway's, and I don't believe we could, how would we set about proving his intention? No; I've talked it all over with the district attorney and we can't move yet. We've got our chance at last; the chance to watch and get Jim Galloway with the goods on. But we've got to wait until he is just ready to strike. And then we are going to put a stop to lawlessness in San Juan once and for all."
"But," she objected breathlessly, "if he should strike before you are ready?"
"It is our one business in life that he doesn't do it. We know what he is up to; we have found this hiding-place; we shall keep an eye on it night and day. He doesn't know that we have been here; no one knows but ourselves. You see now, Miss Page, why I couldn't bring Patten here? Patten talks too much and Galloway knows every thought in Patten's mind. And you understand how important it is for you to forget that you have been here?"
She sat silent, staring into the embers of the dying fire.
"The thing which I can't understand," she said presently, "is that if Jim Galloway is the 'big man' that you say he is he should do as much talking as he must have done; that he should have told his plans to such a man as the Indian who told them to Ignacio Chavez."
"But he didn't tell all of this," Norton informed her. "The Indian died without guessing what I have told you. He merely knew that the rifles were here because Galloway had employed him to bring them and because he was the man who told Galloway of this hiding-place. He believed that Galloway's whole scheme was to smuggle a lot of arms and ammunition south and across the border, selling to the Mexicans. But from what little he could tell Chavez and from what we found out for ourselves, the whole play became pretty obvious. No, Galloway hasn't been talking and he has been playing as safe as a man can upon such business as this. His luck was against him, that's all, when the Indian died and insisted on being rung out by the San Juan bells. There's always that little element of chance in any business, legitimate or otherwise. . . . And now, if you'll finish your breakfast I'll show you a view you'll never forget and then we'll hit the trail."
"But, Mr. Lane," she asked, "you don't intend to leave him here all alone? He will get well with the proper attention; but be must have that."
"Within another hour or so," Norton told her, "Tom Cutter will be back with one of Brocky's cowboys. They'll move Lane into a cañon on the other side of the mountain. Oh, I know he oughtn't to be moved, but what else can we do? Besides, Brocky insists on it. Then they'll arrange to take care of him; if necessary you'll come out again to-morrow night?"
"Of course," she said. She went to Brocky and held out her hand to him. "I understand now, I think, why you would refuse to die, no matter how badly you were hurt, until you had helped Mr. Norton finish the work you have set your hands to. It's an honor, Mr. Lane, to have a patient like you."
Whereupon Brocky Lane grew promptly crimson and tongue-tied.
"And now the view, Mr. Norton, and I am ready to go."
He led the way to the outer ledge from which last night they had entered the cave.
"In daylight you can see half round the world from here," he said as they stood with their backs to the rock. "Now you can get an idea of what it's like."
Below her was the chasm formed by these cliffs standing sheer and fronting other tall cliffs looming blackly, the stars beginning to fade in the sky above them. Norton pushed a stone outward with his boot; she heard it strike, rebound, strike again . . . and then there was silence; when the falling stone reached the bottom no sound came back to tell her how far it had dropped.
Turning a little to look southward, she saw the cliffs standing farther and farther back on each side so that the eye might travel between them and out over the lower slopes and the distant stretches of level land which, more now than ever, seemed a great limitless sea. The stars were paling rapidly; the first glint of the new day was in the air, the world lay shadowy and silent and lifeless, softened in the seeming, but, as in the daytime, slumbrous under an atmosphere of brooding mystery.
"When you told me last night . . . when you put your rope around me and said that I might fall half a dozen feet. . . ."
"Had we fallen it would have been a hundred feet, many a time," he said quietly. "But I knew we wouldn't fall. And," looking into her face with an expression in his eyes which the shadows hid, "I shouldn't have sought to minimize the danger to you had I known you as well as I think I know you now."
"Thank you," she said lightly. But she was conscious of a warm pleasurable glow throughout her entire being. It was good to live life in the open, it was good to stand upon the cliff tops with a man like Roderick Norton, it was good to have such a man speak thus.