Straight toward that wavering plume of flame in the north they rode swiftly, each man with his own thoughts and with few words. But whether a man thought of Florrie Engle gone or of the shooting of Sheriff Roberts or of the looting of Las Vegas or of a ranch raided, he was like his fellows in that he knew that at last Jim Galloway had come out into the open and that to-night must be Galloway's triumph or Galloway's death. And perhaps he wondered if his own saddle would run empty under the stars before another dawn.
Three or four miles from San Juan Norton made out an approaching rider, one who bent over his horse's mane, racing furiously. The figure, growing rapidly distinct as it drew on from the north, grew erect as the horseman saw Norton's posse. The rider jerked in his horse, pausing a moment as though in doubt whether he were meeting friend or foe. Then, when again he came on at the same headlong gallop, Norton recognized him. It was Elmer Page.
"They're fighting back yonder!" cried the boy wildly, his eyes shining with his excitement. "Brocky Lane sent me. . . . I haven't a rifle, who will give me a rifle? I'll give a man a hundred dollars for a rifle!"
"Easy, Elmer," said Norton sharply. "Tell us what Brocky sent you to say. Where are they?"
"Along the arroyo just off to the east of Mt. Temple. About a mile from the mountain . . . you know where the biggest boulders are all strung out along the arroyo? It's there. Brocky and a lot of cowboys are making a stand there, heading off the Kid and del Rio. So they can't get with the others, you know. . . . Why didn't somebody tell me about this?" he broke off, his voice shrill. "I haven't a rifle, just a cursed revolver. Who will ..."
Again Norton interrupted sternly.
"Let's have it straight, Elmer," he commanded. "Brocky and his men are along the arroyo, you say? And they're trying to keep between del Rio and the Kid's crowd and the other crowd? Some of the others are still on the mountain, then?"
"The mountain is full of them. They're pouring down and shooting as they come; Brocky's in between. . . ."
"How many men are with him?"
"About twenty. But . . . my God! Rickard's men and del Rio's are shooting from the east and the others are shooting from the west . . . poor old Tommy Rudge got shot in the stomach and Denny Blain is down and . . ."
"Del Rio and Rickard didn't come in machines did they?"
"No. Brocky said tell you they'd left their cars, sent them on filled with loot toward the south, where a lot of other Greasers are waiting for them; then the Kid and del Rio and about fifty men altogether started a big herd of horses and cattle this way. Brocky tried to stampede the herds, but the others are more than two to one, so he got his men in the arroyo and they're giving 'em hell from there."
"Galloway's on the other side?"
"No. Brocky said tell you Galloway hadn't shown up yet. We think he didn't expect things to get started so soon. One of Brocky's men riding in a little while ago from the other side of San Juan thought that he had seen Galloway and some one that looked like a girl riding with him toward the old crossroads where the Denbar place used to be. Brocky thinks maybe you can come in and head Galloway off and bust up the whole play that way."
So Galloway and "some one who looked like a girl" had ridden toward the old Denbar cross-roads. And Galloway had not yet joined his forces.
"Elmer," said Norton quickly, "ride on to San Juan. Tell John Engle what you have told me about Galloway. Tell him . . ."
"I won't!" cried Elmer, on the verge of hysteria. "I won't do it. Do it yourself; send some one else. I want to go with you; I want a rifle, I tell you! Didn't I see Tommy Rudge go down with a bullet in his belly? Didn't I see Denny when the Kid shot him?"
Norton laid a hand on Elmer's arm, speaking quietly.
"Listen, Elmer," he said. "We will do what we can where Brocky is. But that isn't all of the devilment to-night. Galloway got Florrie away somehow; she was the one riding with him toward the crossroads. It's up to you to ride on and ride like the devil and tell John Engle. . . . Come on, boys!"
Elmer sagged in his saddle as though he had been struck a heavy physical blow.
"Galloway got Fluff!" he muttered dully.
His gaze trailed along after the departing posse. Norton on his big roan was setting the pace, the steady swinging gallop to eat up the miles swiftly and yet not kill the horses before the journey's end. The others followed him, stringing out single file to take advantage of the trail. The moon picked them out with clear relief, a grim line of retribution. And yet the boy, while his eyes wandered after them, saw only little Fluff struggling in Jim Galloway's arms. . . .
Then suddenly he, too, was riding, but at a pace which took no heed of a horse's endurance, riding a gallant brute that stretched out its neck, nostrils flaring, hammering hoofs beating out the very staccato of urgent speed upon the flying sands. Already his revolver was tight clinched in a lifted hand. Already he had swerved a little from the distant lights of San Juan. He was taking the shortest line which led to Denbar's crossroads.
"Galloway's got Fluff," he said over and over, choking on the words.
An hour later Norton heard the first spitting of rifles. Another fifteen minutes of shod hoofs pounding through the broken hills and he saw the first spurts of flame cutting through the shadows where the trees clung to the arroyo. As he drew in his horse the men behind him closed up about him. He threw out his arm, pointing.
"Brocky's boys must be right down there," he said sharply. "The Kid and del Rio will be yonder; those are their horses. Young Page says there are about fifty of them."
A fusillade of rifle-shots interrupted him. Along a fifty or sixty yard front the Kid's and del Rio's men had crept in closer to Brocky's arroyo, worming their way upon their stomachs, and now fired together. There came a rattling reply from the creek, the shouting of cowboys.
"We'll take those fellows first," ordered Norton quickly. "They will see us when we climb that little rise. Spread out; go easy until we get to the top. Then, boys, let's see who can give them hell first and fastest."
They looked to their rifles for the last time and rode slowly up the short slope of the low-lying ridge. Then, as the first man topped it, there came a shout from the shadows in front, another shout, and the whizzing of rifle-balls. Norton used his spurs then; his big roan leaped forward and was racing down the farther slope; his men in a long line rode with him. And as he rode he lifted his own gun and poured his lead into the thickest of the shadows.
A wild shout of cheering broke from the arroyo; rifle-barrels grew hot in hot hands. On through the bright moonlight came the sheriff's posse, some of them firing as they rode, others saving their lead. To be seen from afar now, they drew many a shot toward themselves. And yet the target of a man riding swiftly over uneven ground and in the moonlight is not to be found overreadily by questing lead. When Norton called to his men to stop and dismount, taking advantage of a row of scattered boulders, not a saddle was empty.
Every man as he dismounted threw his horsed reins to the ground; the animals might bolt or they might not, some of them might not stop for many a mile, others would be found a hundred yards away. But they must all think less of that now than of what lay in front of them.
"That you, Norton?" came a cheery voice booming suddenly through the silence which had shut down as the newcomers disappeared among the boulders.
"Here, Brocky!" shouted Norton. "All right down there?"
"Pretty well," called Brocky. "They've winged three or four of us . . . they're damned rotten shots, Roddy. We've popped over a dozen of them."
There were other shouts then, tenor Mexican voices for the most part with the Kid's unmistakable snarl running through them. Men were calling in Spanish to their fellows across the arroyo. Whatever it was that Brocky was trying to say was lost in the din. And then again came a volley of rifle-shots.
Norton rose slowly to his feet, studying the situation with frowning eyes. A bullet hissed high overhead, another cut by his side, another went shrieking off into the night. But while they whined in his ears he laid his rude plans.
The arroyo wound and twisted this way and that through the broken uplands. Where Brocky Lane had placed his men so as to defy the union of the two bands of outlaws it described a wide rude arc curving about the spur from Mt. Temple. Here the cowboys, with some twenty or thirty feet separating each man from his nearest fellow, were extended along a line which must be about two hundred yards long. The Mexicans to the eastward, where del Rio and Kid Rickard and Moraga were, were bunched in the protecting shadows of a field of boulders such as those where the sheriff's men lay.
"We could stick here all night and get nothing done," said Norton to the men close to him. "Rickard's gang could have charged down on Brocky long ago if they'd had the stomach for that sort of thing. They've got the numbers on us; they more than had the count on Brocky's outfit; with those jaspers on the mountainside they could have turned the trick. But that sort hasn't the desire for a scrap unless they can pull it from behind a rock. And, by the same token, they won't last five minutes in the face of a charge. Get me?"
"But the ginks on the mountain will pick us off pretty lively as we hit the trail down the slope here," said a thoughtful voice.
Then Norton explained further. He meant to eliminate the other crowd; it could be done. When he gave the word every man was to jump to his feet and make the first half of his charge the bloodless one down into the arroyo toward Brocky Lane. Then, Norton's men and Brocky's united, they could surge up the creek's banks and make their flying attack, coming in between the two other factions so that the men on the mountain must hold their fire or kill as many of their own crowd as of the others.
The suggestion was accepted without discussion. When Norton said "Ready," they were ready; when he jumped to his feet and ran down toward the arroyo, they ran with him. A shout of laughter went up from each side of the dry water-course as jeering voices announced triumphantly that the Gringoes were afraid. And with the shouts came rifle-shots.
But to the last man of them they reached the arroyo safely, and ducking low, trotted on to join the cowboys. In a moment more Norton had found Brocky Lane, had explained his plan, had had Brocky's silent nod for an answer. In quiet voices the men passed the word along the line. Those from the farther end drew in closer so that their whole body of something better than thirty men occupied but a brief section of the arroyo.
"Get your wind first, boys," Norton admonished them. "Better fill your clips, too, while you've got the chance. And count on using a six gun before you're through. All right? Let's show 'em the sort of a scrap a Gringo can put up."
Then again they were running, the unwavering line of thirty men, but with a difference which the outlaws might not mistake. And as they ran they held their fire for a little, knowing how useless and suicidal it would be to pause half-way. But presently they were answering shot with shot, pausing, going down upon one knee, taking a moment's advantage of a friendly rock, pouring lead into the agitated groups among the boulders, springing up, running on again, every man fighting the fight his own way, the thirty of them making the air tingle with their shouts as they bore onward.
Then it was man to man and often enough one man to two or three, dark forms struggling, men striking with clubbed guns, men snatching at their side-arms, going down, rising or half rising, firing as long as a charge was in a gun or strength in a body. And as they fired and struck and called out after the fashion of the cowboy in a scrimmage the body of men before them wavered and broke and began to fall back.
Norton swung his clubbed empty rifle up in both hands and beat down a man firing at him with a revolver. All about him were struggling forms and he was sore beset now and then to know who was who. A fierce-mustachioed, black-browed man thrust a rifle toward his breast and pulled the trigger and screamed out his curses as Norton put a revolver bullet through him. A slender, boyish form sprang up upon a rock recklessly, training his rifle upon Brocky Lane. It was the Kid. But the Kid had met a man quicker, surer, than himself, and Brocky fired first. Kid Rickard spun and fell. Norton saw him drop but lost sight of him before the body struck the earth. He had found del Rio; del Rio had found him.
Two smoking revolvers were jerked up, two guns spoke through the clamor as one gun. The men were not ten feet apart as their guns spoke. Norton felt a bullet rip along his outer arm, the sensation that of a whip-lash cutting deep. He saw del Rio stagger back under the impact of a forty-five-caliber bullet which must have merely grazed him, since it did not knock him off his feet. Del Rio, his lips streaming his curses and hatred, fired again. But his wound had been sorer than Norton's, his aim was less steady, and now as he gave back it was to fall heavily and lie still.
It had lasted less than five minutes. "It's Jim Galloway's fight and Galloway don't come!" some one had shouted. They broke again, gave back and back . . . and then were running, every man of them scenting defeat and much worse than defeat unless he came to a horse before another five minutes. And after them, firing now as they ran, came Brocky's cowboys and Norton's men.
"They've got all of their horses over there together," yelled Brocky into Norton's ear. "The horses for those Ginneys who have been hiding out in the mountains, too. That's why I cut in between them that way. Now if we can only scatter their cayuses . . . why, Roddy, we'll have every damned one of 'em afoot to be rounded up when we get ready!"
And Brocky, limping as he went, had raced along after the others.
But Norton did not follow. His eyes had gone to the horses which he and the San Juan men had left beyond the little line of boulders. And, travelling that way, he had seen a lone horseman far off to the south, a horseman riding frantically, seeking to come to the lower slopes of Mt. Temple.
"Galloway!"
It seemed almost as though some great voice had shouted it to him through the din. Yonder, riding on his spurs, come at this late moment, was Jim Galloway. The man responsible for all of to-night's bloodshed, for the disappearance of Florrie, for the death of Billy Norton. "Coming, Jim Galloway!"
Did he say it? Or again was it a voice shouting to him, urging him on? He looked off to the east. Flying forms everywhere with other racing forms pursuing, firing as they ran. Horses jerking back, rearing, breaking away from the few men guarding them. Full defeat for Jim Galloway there. But to the west? Galloway coming on at top speed, shouting as he came, and, upon the mountain's lower slope the others of Galloway's men, armed and bloodthirsty. If Galloway came to them, whipped them with his tongue, stirring them with his magnetism . . . why, then, the fight was all to be fought over.
Now again Norton, too, was running, bearing down upon the straggling horses. He caught up the first dragging reins to lay his hand to, swung up into the saddle, measured swiftly the distance between Galloway and the men on the mountain . . . and used his spurs.
On came Jim Galloway, his wide, heavy shoulders not to be mistaken in the rich moonlight, his hat gone, his head up, a rifle across the saddle in front of him. Norton lost sight of him as he swept down into the bed of the arroyo, caught sight of him again from the farther side. Already Galloway was appreciably nearer his men, driving his horse mercilessly.
"If he comes to his crowd before I can stop him," was Norton's thought, "he'll put his game across on us yet. I've got to head him off and take the chances."
Nor were the odds to be overlooked. Galloway was still too far away to be stopped by a rifle-ball, and Norton, heading him off, would expose himself not only to Galloway's fire but to that of the men who were moving to a lower slope to meet their leader. And yet, with fate in the balance, here was no time for hesitation.
Now Galloway had seen him, had recognized him, perhaps, the thought coming naturally to him that it would be Roderick Norton who rode to cut him off. He shifted his rifle so that his right hand was on the grip, the barrel caught in his left; he had dropped his horse's reins. Norton was slipping a fresh clip into his gun, his own reins now upon his horse's neck. And now both men knew that unless a bullet stopped him Norton would cut across Galloway's path before he could come to his men.
"At him, Roddy, old boy! We're coming!"
Norton glanced over his shoulder and pressed on. Brocky had missed him, had seen, had called back a half dozen of his men and was following. Well, if he dropped, maybe Brocky and the others could get Jim Galloway. It really began to look as though Galloway had played out his string.
They were firing from the mountainside now, the bullets thus far flying wild of their rushing target. Norton shook his head and urged his horse to fresh endeavor. In a moment he would be fairly between Galloway and Galloway's last chance. His eye picked out the spot where he would dismount at that moment, a tumble of big boulders. He would swing down so that they would be between him and the mountain, so that nothing but moonlit open space lay between him and Jim Galloway.
While rifles cracked and spat fire and sprayed lead over him and about him he rode the last fifty yards. He reached the boulders, set his horse up, threw himself from the saddle, and with his back to the rock, his face toward Galloway, he lifted his rifle. Galloway, almost at the same instant, jerked in his own horse. He was so close that Norton caught his cry of rage.
"Hands up, Galloway!" cried the sheriff. "Hands up or I'll drop you."
But at last Galloway had come out into the open; at last there was no subterfuge to stand forth at his need; at last, gambler that he was, he accepted the even break of man to man. As Norton's voice rang out Galloway fired.
He shot twice before Norton pulled the trigger. Norton shot but the once. Galloway dropped his rifle, sat rigid a moment, toppled from the saddle. And his men, seeing him go down, cried out to one another and drew back into the mountain cañons.
"Funny thing," said Brocky Lane afterward. "Had the picture of a kid of a girl in his pocket! Must have carted it around for a year. Old Roddy's bullet tore right square through it."
It was a picture of Florrie Engle, taken years before. As Brocky said: "Just a kid of a girl." Where he got it nobody knew. But then there were other things about Jim Galloway which no one knew. Perhaps . . . Quien sabe!
During the late hours of the night and the following forenoon the thing was ended. Sheriff Roberts's deputies with a posse in automobiles had raced southward, intercepting those other cars despatched toward the border by the Kid and del Rio. Brocky Lane with a score of men had swept down upon the stolen herds, scattered them, fired fifty shots, emptied some three or four saddles, and sent the escaping rustlers flying toward the Mexican line. Singly and in small groups other men, farmers, cowboys, miners, and the dwellers of small settlements, joined with Norton's men, giving battle to those of Galloway's crowd who had drawn back into the fastnesses of Mt. Temple. In the afternoon Norton, with the aid of a handful of cowboys from Brocky's outfit and from Las Flores, escorted fifteen anxious-faced prisoners to the county-seat, where jail capacity was to be taxed. And night had come again, serene and peaceful with the glory of the moon and stars, when he rode once more into San Juan, sore and saddle-weary.
At the hotel he learned that Virginia had gone to the Engles. He left his jaded horse with Ignacio and walked down the street. In front of the Casa Blanca he stopped a moment, staring musingly at the solid adobe walls gleaming white in the moonlight. The place was quiet, deserted. No single light winked at him through door or window. It seemed to him to be brooding over the passing of Jim Galloway.
He found Florrie and Elmer strolling under the cottonwoods. They had scant interest in him, little time to bestow upon a mere mortal. Florrie could only cry ecstatically that Black Bill was a hero! He, all alone, had terrorized the Mexican woman guarding her, had saved her, had brought her back. And Elmer could only look pleased and stammer and whisper to Fluff to be still.
Virginia had heard his voice, the voice she had been listening for throughout so many long hours, and met him before he had come to the door.
"Oh, thank God, thank God!" she cried softly. "But . . . you are hurt?"
He forgot his wound as both arms closed about her. From somewhere at the rear of the house he heard Mrs. Engle's voice crying eagerly; "It's Roddy!" She was hurrying to greet him. What he had to say must be said briefly.
"My work is done," he said quickly. "I have put in my resignation this afternoon. They can get a new sheriff. I am going to be a rancher, my dear. And, Virginia . . ."
He was whispering to her, his lips close to her hair. And Virginia, though her face was suddenly hot with the flush mounting to her brow, gave him steadily for answer:
"Whenever you wish, Rod Norton!"
So it was only twenty-four hours later that Ignacio Chavez stood in the old Mission garden and made his bells talk, just the three upon the western arch, the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez, the golden-throated trio that tinkled to the touch of his cunning hand and seemed to laugh and sing and proclaim the gladdest of glad tidings. Then Ignacio drew his enrapt gaze earthward from the full moon and made out a man and a girl riding out into the night, riding toward the Ranch of the Flowers. And he made the bells laugh again.
"And to-morrow," vowed Ignacio solemnly, "not later than to-morrow or the day thereafter, you shall have your reward, amigos. You have told the world of heavy doings; you have rung for Jim Galloway dead; you have made the music for the wedding of el Señor Nortone. And it shall be I who will make a little roof like a house over you. You will see!"