1 files changed, 9977 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/1809-0.txt b/1809-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f7e0cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/1809-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9977 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bucky O’Connor, by William Macleod Raine
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Bucky O’Connor
+       A Tale of the Unfenced Border
+
+Author: William Macleod Raine
+
+Release Date: July, 1999 [eBook #1809]
+[Most recently updated: January 25, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Mary Starr and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUCKY O’CONNOR ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+BUCKY O’CONNOR
+
+A Tale of the Unfenced Border
+
+By William MacLeod Raine
+
+
+
+
+To My Brother
+ EDGAR C. RAINE
+
+MY DEAR WANDERER:
+
+I write your name on this page that you may know we hold you not less
+in our thoughts because you have heard and answered again the call of
+the frozen North, have for the time disappeared, swallowed in some of
+its untrodden wilds. As in those old days of 59 Below On Bonanza, the
+long Winter night will be of interminable length. Armed with this note
+of introduction then, Bucky O’Connor offers himself, with the best bow
+of one Adventurer to another, as a companion to while away some few of
+those lonely hours.
+
+March, 1910, Denver.
+
+
+
+
+BUCKY O’CONNOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ BUCKY O’CONNOR
+ CHAPTER I. ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS 
+ CHAPTER II. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION 
+ CHAPTER III. THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF 
+ CHAPTER IV. A BLUFF IS CALLED 
+ CHAPTER V. BUCKY ENTERTAINS 
+ CHAPTER VI. BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY 
+ CHAPTER VII. IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS 
+ CHAPTER VIII. FIRST BLOOD! 
+ CHAPTER IX. "ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D.” 
+ CHAPTER X. THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER 
+ CHAPTER XI. "STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.” 
+ CHAPTER XII. A CLEAN WHITE MAN’S OPTION 
+ CHAPTER XIII. BUCKY’S FIRST-RATE REASONS 
+ CHAPTER XIV. LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI 
+ CHAPTER XV. IN THE SECRET CHAMBER 
+ CHAPTER XVI. JUAN VALDEZ SCORES 
+ CHAPTER XVII. HIDDEN VALLEY 
+ CHAPTER XVIII. A DINNER FOR THREE 
+ CHAPTER XIX. A VILLON OF THE DESERT 
+ CHAPTER XX. BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY 
+ CHAPTER XXI. THE WOLF PACK 
+ CHAPTER XXII. FOR A GOOD REASON 
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+ENTER “BEAR-TRAP” COLLINS
+
+
+She had been aware of him from the moment of his spectacular entrance,
+though no slightest sign of interest manifested itself in her indolent,
+incurious eyes. Indeed, his abundant and picturesque area was so vivid
+that it would have been difficult not to feel his presence anywhere,
+let alone on a journey so monotonous as this was proving to be.
+
+It had been at a water-tank, near Socorro, that the Limited, churning
+furiously through brown Arizona in pursuit of a lost half-hour, jarred
+to a sudden halt that shook sleep from the drowsy eyes of bored
+passengers. Through the window of her Pullman the young woman in
+Section 3 had glimpsed a bevy of angry train officials eddying around a
+sturdy figure in the center, whose strong, lean head rose confidently
+above the press. There was the momentary whirl of a scuffle, out of the
+tangle of which shot a brakeman as if propelled from a catapult. The
+circle parted, brushed aside by a pair of lean shoulders, muscular and
+broad. Yet a few moments and the owner of the shoulders led down the
+aisle to the vacant section opposite her a procession whose tail was
+composed of protesting trainmen.
+
+“You had no right to flag the train, Sheriff Collins, and you’ll have
+to get off; that’s all there is to it,” the conductor was explaining
+testily.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” returned the offender with easy good nature,
+making himself at home in Section 4. “Tell the company to send in its
+bill. No use jawing about it.”
+
+“You’ll have to get off, sir.”
+
+“That’s right—at Tucson.”
+
+“No, sir. You’ll have to get off here. I have no authority to let you
+ride.”
+
+“Didn’t I hear you say the train was late? Don’t you think you’d arrive
+earlier at the end of your run if your choo-choo got to puffing?”
+
+“You’ll have to get off, sir.”
+
+“I hate to disoblige,” murmured the owner of the jingling spurs, the
+dusty corduroys, and the big, gray hat, putting his feet leisurely on
+the cushion in front of him. “But doesn’t it occur to you that you are
+a man of one idea?”
+
+“This is the Coast Limited. It doesn’t stop for anybody—not even for
+the president of the road.”
+
+“You don’t say! Well, I ce’tainly appreciate the honor you did me in
+stopping to take me on.” His slight drawl was quite devoid of concern.
+
+“But you had no right to flag the train. Can’t you understand
+_anything?_” groaned the conductor.
+
+“You explain it again to me, sonny. I’m surely thick in the haid,”
+soothed the intruder, and listened with bland good-humor to the
+official’s flow of protest.
+
+“Well—well! Disrupted the whole transcontinental traffic, didn’t I? And
+me so innocent, too. Now, this is how I figured it out. Here’s me in a
+hurry to get to Tucson. Here comes your train a-foggin’—also and
+likewise hittin’ the high spots for Tucson. Seemed like we ought to
+travel in company, and I was some dubious she’d forget to stop unless I
+flagged her. Wherefore, I aired my bandanna in the summer breeze.”
+
+“But you don’t understand.” The conductor began to explain anew as to a
+dull child. “It’s against the law. You’ll get into trouble.”
+
+“Put me in the calaboose, will they?”
+
+“It’s no joke.”
+
+“Well, it does seem to be worrying you,” Mr. Collins conceded. “Don’t
+mind me. Free your mind proper.”
+
+The conductor, glancing about nervously, noticed that passengers were
+smiling broadly. His official dignity was being chopped to mince-meat.
+Back came his harassed gaze to the imperturbable Collins with the
+brown, sun-baked face and the eyes blue and untroubled as an Arizona
+sky. Out of a holster attached to the sagging belt that circled the
+corduroy trousers above his hips gleamed the butt of a revolver. But in
+the last analysis the weapon of the occasion was purely a moral one.
+The situation was one not covered in the company’s rule book, and in
+the absence of explicit orders the trainman felt himself unequal to
+that unwavering gaze and careless poise. Wherefore, he retreated,
+muttering threats of what the company would do.
+
+“Now, if I had only known it was against the law. My thick haid’s
+always roping trouble for me,” the plainsman confided to the Pullman
+conductor, with twinkling eyes.
+
+That official unbent. “Talking about thick heads, I’m glad my porter
+has one. If it weren’t iron-plated and copper-riveted he’d be needing a
+doctor now, the way you stood him on it.”
+
+“No, did I? Ce’tainly an accident. The nigger must have been in my way
+as I climbed into the car. Took the kink out of his hair, you say?
+Here, Sam!” He tossed a bill to the porter, who was rolling affronted
+eyes at him. “Do you reckon this is big enough to plaster your injured
+feelings, boy?”
+
+The white smile flashed at him by the porter was a receipt for
+indemnity paid in full.
+
+Sheriff Collins’ perception of his neighbor across the aisle was more
+frank in its interest than the girl’s had been of him. The level,
+fearless gaze of the outdoors West looked at her unabashed,
+appreciating swiftly her points as they impinged themselves upon his
+admiration. The long, lithe lines of the slim, supple body, the languid
+grace missing hauteur only because that seemed scarce worth while, the
+unconscious pride of self that fails to be offensive only in a young
+woman so well equipped with good looks as this one indubitably was the
+rider of the plains had appraised them all before his eyes dismissed
+her from his consideration and began a casual inspection of the other
+passengers.
+
+Inside of half an hour he had made himself _persona grata_ to everybody
+in the car except his dark-eyed neighbor across the way. That this
+dispenser of smiles and cigars decided to leave her out in the
+distribution of his attentions perhaps spoke well for his discernment.
+Certainly responsiveness to the geniality of casual fellow passengers
+did not impress Mr. Collins as likely to be an outstanding, quality in
+her. But with the drummer from Chicago, the young mining engineer going
+to Sonora, the two shy little English children just in front of him
+traveling to meet their father in California, he found intuitively
+common ground of interest. Even Major Mackenzie, the engineer in charge
+of the large irrigation project being built by a company in southern
+Arizona, relaxed at one of the plainsman’s humorous tales.
+
+It was after Collins had half-depopulated the car by leading the more
+jovial spirits back in search of liquid refreshments that an urbane
+clergyman, now of Boston but formerly of Pekin, Illinois, professedly
+much interested in the sheriff’s touch-and-go manner as presumably
+quite characteristic of the West, dropped into the vacant seat beside
+Major Mackenzie.
+
+“And who might our energetic friend be?” he asked, with an ingratiating
+smile.
+
+The young woman in front of them turned her head ever so slightly to
+listen.
+
+“Val Collins is his name,” said the major. “Sometimes called ‘Bear-trap
+Collins.’ He has always lived on the frontier. At least, I met him
+twelve years ago when he was riding mail between Aravaipa and Mesa. He
+was a boy then, certainly not over eighteen, but in a desperate fight
+he had killed two men who tried to hold up the mail. Cow-puncher,
+stage-driver, miner, trapper, sheriff, rough rider, politician—he’s
+past master at them all.”
+
+“And why the appellation of ‘Bear-trap,’ may I ask?” The smack of
+pulpit oratory was not often missing in the edifying discourse of the
+Reverend Peter Melancthon Brooks.
+
+“Well, sir, that’s a story. He was trapping in the Tetons about five
+years ago thirty miles from the nearest ranch-house. One day, while he
+was setting a bear-trap, a slide of snow plunged down from the tree
+branches above and freed the spring, catching his hand between its
+jaws. With his feet and his other hand he tried to open that trap for
+four hours, without the slightest success. There was not one chance in
+a million of help from outside. In point of fact, Collins had not seen
+a human being for a month. There was only one thing to do, and he did
+it.”
+
+“And that was?”
+
+“You probably noticed that he wears a glove over his left hand. The
+reason, sir, is that he has an artificial hand.”
+
+“You mean—” The Reverend Peter paused to lengthen his delicious thrill
+of horror.
+
+“Yes, sir. That’s just what I mean. He hacked his hand off at the wrist
+with his hunting-knife.”
+
+“Why, the man’s a hero!” cried the clergyman, with unction.
+
+Mackenzie flung him a disgusted look. “We don’t go much on heroes out
+here. He’s game, if that’s what you mean. And able, too. Bucky O’Connor
+himself isn’t any smarter at following a trail.”
+
+“And who is Bucky O’Connor?”
+
+“He’s the man that just ran down Fernendez. Think I’ll have a smoke,
+sir. Care to join me?”
+
+But the Pekin-Bostonian preferred to stay and jot down in his note-book
+the story of the bear-trap, to be used later as a sermon illustration.
+This may have been the reason he did not catch the quick look that
+passed without the slightest flicker of the eyelids between Major
+Mackenzie and the young woman in Section 3. It was as if the old
+officer had wired her a message in some code the cipher of which was
+known only to them.
+
+But the sheriff, returning at the head of his cohorts, caught it, and
+wondered what meaning might lie back of that swift glance. Major
+Mackenzie and this dark-eyed beauty posed before others as strangers,
+yet between them lay some freemasonry of understanding to which he had
+not the key.
+
+Collins did not know that the aloofness in the eyes of Miss
+Wainwright—he had seen the name on her suit-case—gave way to horror
+when her glance fell on his gloved hand. She had a swift, shuddering
+vision of a grim-faced man, jaws set like a vise, hacking at his wrist
+with a hunting-knife. But the engaging impudence of his eye, the
+rollicking laughter in his voice, shut out the picture instantly.
+
+The young man resumed his seat, and Miss Wainwright her listless
+inspection of the flying stretches of brown desert. Dusk was beginning
+to fall, and the porter presently lit the lamps. Collins bought a
+magazine from the newsboy and relapsed into it, but before he was well
+adjusted to reading the Limited pounded to a second unscheduled halt.
+
+Instantly the magazine was thrown aside and Collins’ curly head thrust
+out of the window. Presently the head reappeared, simultaneously with
+the crack of a revolver, the first of a detonating fusillade.
+
+“Another of your impatient citizens eager to utilize the unspeakable
+convenience of rapid transit,” suggested the clergyman, with ponderous
+jocosity.
+
+“No, sir; nothing so illegal,” smiled the cattleman, a whimsical light
+in his daredevil eyes. He leaned forward and whispered a word to the
+little girl in front of him, who at once led her younger brother back
+to his section.
+
+“I had hoped it would prove to be more diverting experience for a
+tenderfoot,” condescended the gentleman of the cloth.
+
+“It’s ce’tainly a pleasure to be able to gratify you, sir. You’ll be
+right pleased to know that it is a train hold-up.” He waved his hand
+toward the door, and at the word, as if waiting for his cue, a masked
+man appeared at the end of the passage with a revolver in each hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
+
+
+“Hands up!”
+
+There was a ring of crisp menace in the sinister voice that was a spur
+to obedience. The unanimous show of hands voted “Aye” with a hasty
+precision that no amount of drill could have compassed.
+
+It was a situation that might have made for laughter had there been
+spectators to appreciate. But of whatever amusement was to be had one
+of the victims seemed to hold a monopoly. Collins, his arm around the
+English children by way of comfort, offered a sardonic smile at the
+consternation his announcement and its fulfillment had created, but
+none of his fellow passengers were in the humor to respond.
+
+The shock of an earthquake could not have blanched ruddy faces more
+surely. The Chicago drummer, fat and florid, had disappeared completely
+behind a buttress of the company’s upholstery.
+
+“God bless my soul!” gasped the Pekin-Bostonian, dropping his eyeglass
+and his accent at the same moment. The dismay in his face found a
+reflection all over the car. Miss Wainwright’s hand clutched at her
+breast for an instant, and her color ebbed till her lips were ashen,
+but her neighbor across the aisle noticed that her eyes were steady and
+her figure tense.
+
+“Scared stiff, but game,” was his mental comment.
+
+“Gents to the right and ladies to the left; line up against the walls;
+everybody waltz.” called the man behind the guns, with grim humor.
+
+The passengers fell into line as directed, Collins with the rest.
+
+“You’re calling this dance, son; it’s your say-so, I guess,” he
+conceded.
+
+“Keep still, or I’ll shoot you full of holes,” growled the autocrat of
+the artillery.
+
+“Why, sure! Ain’t you the real thing in Jesse Jameses?” soothed the
+sheriff.
+
+At the sound of Collins’ voice, the masked man had started perceptibly,
+and his right hand had jumped forward an inch or two to cover the
+speaker more definitely. Thereafter, no matter what else engaged his
+attention, the gleaming eyes behind the red bandanna never wandered for
+a moment from the big plainsman. He was taking no risks, for he
+remembered the saying current in Arizona, that after Collins’ hardware
+got into action there was nothing left to do but plant the deceased and
+collect the insurance. He had personal reasons to know the fundamental
+accuracy of the colloquialism.
+
+The train-conductor fussed up to the masked outlaw with a ludicrous
+attempt at authority. “You can’t rob the passengers on this train. I’m
+not responsible for the express-car, but the coaches—”
+
+A bullet almost grazed his ear and shattered a window on its way to the
+desert.
+
+“Drift, you red-haired son of a Mexican?” ordered the man behind the
+red bandanna. “Git back to that seat real prompt. This here’s taxation
+without representation.”
+
+The conductor drifted as per suggestion.
+
+The minutes ticked themselves away in a tense strain marked by pounding
+hearts. The outlaw stood at the end of the aisle, watching the sheriff
+alertly.
+
+“Why doesn’t the music begin?” volunteered Collins, by way of
+conversation, and quoted: “On with the dance. Let joy be unconfined.”
+
+A dull explosion answered his question. The bandits were blowing open
+the safe in the express-car with dynamite, pending which the looting of
+the passengers was at a standstill.
+
+A second masked figure joined his companion at the end of the passage
+and held a hurried conversation with him. Fragments of their low-voiced
+talk came to Collins.
+
+“Only thirty thousand in the express-car. Not a red cent on the old man
+himself.”
+
+“Where’s the rest?” The irritation in the newcomer’s voice was
+pronounced.
+
+Collins slewed his head and raked him with keen eyes that missed not a
+detail. He was certain that he had never seen the man before, yet he
+knew at once that the trim, wiry figure, so clean of build and so
+gallant of bearing, could belong only to Wolf Leroy, the most ruthless
+outlaw of the Southwest. It was written in his jaunty insolence, in the
+flashing eyes. He was a handsome fellow, white-toothed, black-haired,
+lithely tigerish, with masterful mouth and eyes of steel, so far as one
+might judge behind the white mask he wore. Alert, cruel, fearless from
+the head to the heel of him, he looked the very devil to lead an
+enterprise so lawless and so desperate as this. His vigilant eyes swept
+contemptuously up and down the car, rested for a moment on the young
+woman in Section 3, and came back to his partner.
+
+“Bah! A flock of sheep—tamest bunch of spring lambs we ever struck.
+I’ll send Scotty in to go through them. If anybody gets gay, drop him.”
+And the outlaw turned on his heel.
+
+Another of the highwaymen took his place, a stout, squat figure in the
+flannel shirt, spurs, and chaps of a cow-puncher. It took no second
+glance to tell Collins this bandy-legged fellow had been a rider of the
+range.
+
+“Come, gentlemen, get a move on you,” Collins implored. “This train’s
+due at Tucson by eight o’clock. We’re more than an hour late now. I’m
+holding down the job of sheriff in that same town, and I’m awful
+anxious to get a posse out after a bunch of train-robbers. So burn the
+wind, and go through the car on the jump. Help yourself to anything you
+find. Who steals my purse takes trash. ’Tis something, nothing. ’Twas
+mine; ’tis his. That’s right, you’ll find my roll in that left-hand
+pocket. I hate to have you take that gun, though. I meant to run you
+down with that same old Colt’s reliable. Oh, well, just as you say. No,
+those kids get a free pass. They’re going out to meet papa at Los
+Angeles, boys. See?”
+
+Collins’ running fire of comment had at least the effect of restoring
+the color to some cheeks that had been washed white and of snatching
+from the outlaws some portion of their sense of dominating the
+situation. But there was a veiled vigilance in his eyes that belied his
+easy impudence.
+
+“That lady across the aisle gets a pass, too, boys,” continued the
+sheriff. “She’s scared stiff now, and you won’t bother her, if you’re
+white men. Her watch and purse are on the seat. Take them, if you want
+them, and let it go at that.”
+
+Miss Wainwright listened to this dialogue silently. She stood before
+them cool and imperious and unwavering, but her face was bloodless and
+the pulse in her beautiful soft throat fluttered like a caged bird.
+
+“Who’s doing this job?” demanded one of the hold-ups, wheeling savagely
+on the impassive officer “Did I say we were going to bother the lady?
+Who’s doing this job, Mr. Sheriff?”
+
+“You are. I’d hate to be messing the job like you—holding up the wrong
+train by mistake.” This was a shot in the dark, and it did not quite
+hit the bull’s-eye. “I wouldn’t trust you boys to rob a hen-roost, the
+amateur way you go at it. When you get through, you’ll all go to
+drinking like blue blotters. I know your kind—hell-bent to spend what
+you cash in, and every mother’s son of you in the pen or with his toes
+turned up inside of a month.”
+
+“Who’ll put us there?” gruffly demanded the bowlegged one.
+
+Collins smiled at him with confidence superb “Mebbe I will—and if I
+don’t Bucky O’Connor will—those of you that are left alive when you go
+through shooting each other in the back. Oh, I see your finish to a
+fare-you-well.”
+
+“Cheese it, or I’ll bump you off.” The first out law drove his gun into
+the sheriff’s ribs.
+
+“That’s all right. You don’t need to punctuate that remark. I line up
+with the sky-pilot and chew the cud of silence. I merely wanted to
+frame up to you how this thing’s going to turn out. Don’t come back at
+me and say I didn’t warn you, sonnie.”
+
+“You make my head ache,” snarled the bandy-legged outlaw sourly, as he
+passed down with his sack, accumulating tribute as he passed down the
+aisle with his sack, accumulating tribute as he went.
+
+The red-kerchiefed robber whooped when they came to the car conductor.
+“Dig up, Mr. Pullman. Go way down into your jeans. It’s a right smart
+pleasure to divert the plunder of your bloated corporation back to the
+people. What! Only fifty-seven dollars. Oh, dig deeper, Mr. Pullman.”
+
+The drummer contributed to the sack eighty-four dollars, a diamond
+ring, and a gold watch. His hands were trembling so that they played a
+tattoo on the sloping ceiling above him.
+
+“What’s the matter, Fatty? Got a chill?” inquired one of the robbers,
+as he deftly swept the plunder into the sack.
+
+“For—God’s sake—don’t shoot. I have—a wife—and five children,” he
+stammered, with chattering teeth.
+
+“No race suicide for Fatty. But whyfor do they let a sick man like you
+travel all by his lone?”
+
+“I don’t know—I—Please turn that weapon another way.”
+
+“Plumb chuck full of malaria,” soliloquized the owner of the weapon,
+playfully running its business end over the Chicago man’s anatomy.
+“Shakes worse’n a pair of dice. Here, Fatty. Load up with quinine and
+whisky. It’s sure good for chills.” The man behind the bandanna gravely
+handed his victim back a dollar. “Write me if it cures you. Now for the
+sky-pilot. No white chips on this plate, parson. It’s a contribution to
+the needy heathen. You want to be generous. How much do you say?”
+
+The man of the cloth reluctantly said thirty dollars, a Lincoln penny,
+and a silver-plated watch inherited from his fathers. The watch was
+declined with thanks, the money accepted without.
+
+The Pullman porter came into the car under compulsion of a revolver in
+the hand of a fourth outlaw, one in a black mask. His trembling finger
+pointed out the satchel and suit-case of Major Mackenzie, and under
+orders he carried out the baggage belonging to the irrigation engineer.
+Collin observed that the bandit in the black mask was so nervous that
+the revolver in his hand quivered like an aspen in the wind. He was
+slenderer and much shorter than the Mexican, so that the sheriff
+decided he was a mere boy.
+
+It was just after he had left that three shots in rapid succession rang
+out in the still night air.
+
+The red-bandannaed one and his companion, who had apparently been
+waiting for the signal, retreated backward to the end of the car, still
+keeping the passengers covered. They flung rapidly two or three bullets
+through the roof, and under cover of the smoke slipped out into the
+night. A moment later came the thud of galloping horses, more shots,
+and, when the patter of hoofs had died away—silence.
+
+The sheriff was the first to break it. He thrust his brown hands deep
+into his pockets and laughed—laughed with the joyous, rollicking
+abandon of a tickled schoolboy.
+
+“Hysterics?” ventured the mining engineer sympathetically.
+
+Collins wiped his eyes. “Call ’em anything you like. What pleases me is
+that the reverend gentleman should have had this diverting experience
+so prompt after he was wishing for it.” He turned, with concern, to the
+clergyman. “Satisfied, sir? Did our little entertainment please, or
+wasn’t it up to the mark?”
+
+But the transported native of Pekin was game. “I’m quite satisfied, if
+you are. I think the affair cost you a hundred dollars or so more than
+it did me.”
+
+“That’s right,” agreed the sheriff heartily. “But I don’t grudge it—not
+a cent of it. The show was worth the price of admission.”
+
+The car conductor had a broadside ready for him. “Seems to me you shot
+off your mouth more than you did that big gun of yours, Mr. Sheriff.”
+
+Collins laughed, and clapped him on the back. “That’s right. I’m a
+regular phonograph, when you wind me up.” He did not think it necessary
+to explain that he had talked to make the outlaws talk, and that he had
+noted the quality of their voices so carefully that he would know them
+again among a thousand. Also he had observed—other things—the garb of
+each of the men he had seen, their weapons, their manner, and their
+individual peculiarities.
+
+The clanking car took up the rhythm of the rails as the delayed train
+plunged forward once more into the night. Again the clack of tongues,
+set free from fear, buzzed eagerly. The glow of the afterclap of danger
+was on them, and in the warm excitement each forgot the paralyzing fear
+that had but now padlocked his lips. Courage came flowing back into
+flabby cheeks and red blood into hearts of water.
+
+At the next station the Limited stopped, and the conductor swung from a
+car before the wheels had ceased rolling and went running into the
+telegraph office.
+
+“Fire a message through for me, Pat. The Limited has been held up,” he
+announced.
+
+“Held up?” gasped the operator.
+
+“That’s right. Get this message right through to Sabin. I’m not going
+to wait for an answer. Tell him I’ll stop at Apache for further
+instructions.”
+
+With which the conductor was out again waving his lantern as a signal
+for the train to start. Sheriff Collins and Major Mackenzie had entered
+the office at his heels. They too had messages to send, but it was not
+until the train was already plunging into the night that the station
+agent read the yellow slips they had left and observed that both of
+them went to the same person.
+
+“Lieutenant Bucky O’Connor, Douglas, Arizona,” was the address he read
+at the top of each. His comment serves to show the opinion generally in
+the sunburned territory respecting one of its citizens.
+
+“You’re wise guys, gents, both of yez. This is shure a case for the
+leftenant. It’s send for Bucky quick when the band begins to play,” he
+grinned.
+
+Sitting down, he gave the call for Tucson, preparatory to transmitting
+the conductor’s message to the division superintendent. His fingers
+were just striking the first tap when a silken voice startled him.
+
+“One moment, friend. No use being in a hurry.”
+
+The agent looked up and nearly fell from his stool. He was gazing into
+the end of a revolver held carelessly in the hand of a masked man
+leaning indolently on the counter.
+
+“Whe—where did you come from?” the operator gasped.
+
+“Kaintucky, but I been here a right smart spell. Why? You takin’ the
+census?” came the drawling answer.
+
+“I didn’t hear youse come in.”
+
+“I didn’t hear you come in, either,” the man behind the mask mocked.
+But even as he spoke his manner changed, and crisp menace rang in his
+voice. “Have you sent those messages yet?”
+
+“Wha—what messages?”
+
+“Those lying on your desk. I say, have you sent them?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Hand them over here.”
+
+The operator passed them across the counter without demur.
+
+“Now reach for the roof.”
+
+Up shot the station agent’s hands. The bandit glanced over the written
+sheets and commented aloud:
+
+“Huh! One from the conductor and one from Mackenzie. I expected those.
+But this one from Collins is ce’tainly a surprise party. I didn’t know
+he was on the train. Lucky for him I didn’t, or mebbe I’d a-put his
+light for good and all. Friend, I reckon we’ll suppress these messages.
+Military necessity, you understand.” And with that he lightly tore up
+the yellow sheets and tossed them away.
+
+“The conductor will wire when he reaches Apache,” the operator
+suggested, not very boldly.
+
+The outlaw rolled a cigarette deftly and borrowed a match. “He most
+surely will. But Apache is seventy miles from here. That gives us an
+extra hour and a half, and with us right now time is a heap more
+valuable than money. You may tell Bucky O’Connor when you see him that
+that extra hour and a half cinches our escape, and we weren’t on the
+anxious seat any without it.”
+
+It may have been true, as the train robber had just said, that time was
+more valuable to him then than money, but if so he must have held the
+latter of singularly little value. For he sat him down on the counter
+with his back against the wall and his legs stretched full length in
+front of him and glanced over the Tucson _Star_ in leisurely fashion,
+while Pat’s arms still projected roofward.
+
+The operator, beginning to get over his natural fright, could not
+withhold a reluctant admiration of this man’s aplomb. There was a
+certain pantherish lightness about the outlaw’s movements, a trim grace
+of figure which yet suggested rippling muscles perfectly under control,
+and a quiet wariness of eye more potent than words at repressing
+insurgent impulses. Certainly if ever there was a cool customer and one
+perfectly sure of himself, this was he.
+
+“Not a thing in the _Star_ to-day,” Pat’s visitor commented, as he
+flung it away with a yawn. “I’ll let a thousand dollars of the express
+company’s money that there will be something more interesting in it
+to-morrow.”
+
+“That’s right,” agreed the agent.
+
+“But I won’t be here to read it. My engagements take me south. I’ll
+make a present to the great Lieutenant O’Connor of the information.
+We’re headed south, tell him. And tell Mr. Sheriff Collins, too—happy
+to entertain him if he happens our way. If it would rest your hands any
+there’s no law against putting them in your trousers pockets, my
+friend.”
+
+From outside there came a short sharp whistle. The man on the counter
+answered it, and slipped at once to the floor. The door opened, to let
+in another masked form, but one how different from the first! Here was
+no confidence almost insolent in its nonchalance. The figure was slight
+and boyish, the manner deprecating, the brown eyes shy and shrinking He
+was so obviously a novice at outlawry that fear sat heavy upon his
+shoulders. When he spoke, almost in a whisper, his teeth chattered.
+
+“All ready, sir.”
+
+“The wires are cut?” demanded his leader crisply.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“On both sides?”
+
+“On both sides.”
+
+His chief relieved the operator of the revolver in his desk, broke it,
+emptied out the shells, and flung them through the window, then tossed
+the weapon back to its owner.
+
+“You’ll not shoot yourself by accident now,” he explained, and with
+that he had followed his companion into the night.
+
+There came to the station agent the sound of galloping horses, growing
+fainter, until a heavy silence seemed to fill the night. He stole to
+the door and locked it, pulled down the window blinds, and then
+reloaded his revolver with feverish haste. This done, he sat down
+before his keys with the weapon close at hand and frantically called
+for Tucson over and over again. No answer came to him, nor from the
+other direction when he tried that. The young bandit had told the
+truth. His companions had cut the wires and so isolated from the world
+for the time the scene of the hold-up. The agent understood now why the
+leader of the outlaws had honored him with so much of his valuable
+time. He had stayed to hold back the telegrams until he knew the wires
+were cut.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+THE SHERIFF INTRODUCES HIMSELF
+
+
+Bear-trap Collins, presuming on the new intimacy born of an exciting
+experience shared in common, stepped across the aisle, flung aside Miss
+Wainwright’s impedimenta, and calmly seated himself beside her. She was
+a young woman capable of a hauteur chillier than ice to undue
+familiarity, but she did not choose at this moment to resent his
+assumption of a footing that had not existed an hour ago. Picturesque
+and unconventional conduct excuses itself when it is garbed in
+picturesque and engaging manners. She had, besides, other reasons for
+wanting to meet him, and they had to do with a sudden suspicion that
+flamed like tow in her brain. She had something for which to thank
+him—much more than he would be likely to guess, she thought—and she was
+wondering, with a surge of triumph, whether the irony of fate had not
+made his pretended consideration for her the means of his undoing.
+
+“I am sorry you lost so much, Miss Wainwright,” he told her.
+
+“But, after all, I did not lose so much as you. Her dark, deep-pupiled
+eyes, long-lashed as Diana’s, swept round to meet his coolly.
+
+“That’s a true word. My reputation has gone glimmering for fair, I
+guess.” He laughed ruefully. “I shouldn’t wonder, ma’am, when election
+time comes round, if the boys ain’t likely to elect to private life the
+sheriff that lay down before a bunch of miscreants.”
+
+“Why did you do it?”
+
+His humorous glance roamed round the car. “Now, I couldn’t think it
+proper for me to shoot up this sumptuous palace on wheels. And wouldn’t
+some casual passenger be likely to get his lights put out when the band
+began to play? Would you want that Boston church to be shy a preacher,
+ma’am?”
+
+Her lips parted slightly in a curve of scorn. “I suppose you had your
+reasons for not interfering.”
+
+“Surely, ma’am. I hated to have them make a sieve of me.”
+
+“Were you afraid?”
+
+“Most men are when Wolf Leroy’s gang is on the war path.”
+
+“Wolf Leroy?”
+
+“That was Wolf who came in to see they were doing the job right. He’s
+the worst desperado on the border—a sure enough bad proposition, I
+reckon. They say he’s part Spanish and part Indian, but all pisen.
+Others say he’s a college man of good family. I don’t know about that,
+for nobody knows who he really is. But the name is a byword in the
+country. People lower their voices when they speak of him and his
+night-riders.”
+
+“I see. And you were afraid of him?”
+
+“Very much.”
+
+Her narrowed eyes looked over the strong lines of his lean face and
+were unconvinced. “I expect you found a better reason than that for not
+opposing them.”
+
+He turned to her with frank curiosity. “I’d like real well to have you
+put a name to it.”
+
+But he was instantly aware that her interest had been side tracked.
+Major Mackenzie had entered the car and was coming down the aisle.
+Plainer than words his eyes asked a question, and hers answered it.
+
+The sheriff stopped him with a smiling query: “Hit hard, major?”
+
+Mackenzie frowned. “The scoundrels took thirty thousand from the
+express car, I understand. Twenty thousand of it belonged to our
+company. I was expecting to pay off the men next Tuesday.”
+
+“Hope we’ll be able to run them down for you,” returned Collins
+cheerfully. “I suppose you lay it to Wolf Leroy’s gang?”
+
+“Of course. The work was too well done to leave any doubt of that.” The
+major resumed his seat behind Miss Wainwright.
+
+To that young woman the sheriff repeated his unanswered question in the
+form of a statement. “I’m waiting to learn that better reason, ma’am.”
+
+She was possessed of that spice of effrontery more to be desired than
+beauty. “Shall we say that you had no wish to injure your friends?”
+
+“My friends?”
+
+Her untender eyes mocked his astonishment. “Do I choose the wrong
+word?” she asked, with an audacity of a courage that delighted him.
+“Perhaps they are not your friends—these train robbers? Perhaps they
+are mere casual acquaintances?”
+
+His bold eyes studied with a new interest her superb, confident
+youth—the rolling waves of splendid Titian hair, the lovely, subtle
+eyes with the depths of shadowy pools in them, the alluring lines of
+long and supple loveliness. Certainly here was no sweet, ingenuous
+youth all prone to blushes, but the complex heir of that world-old
+wisdom the weaker sex has shaped to serve as a weapon against the
+strength that must be met with the wit of Mother Eve.
+
+“You ce’tainly have a right vivid imagination, ma’am,” he said dryly.
+
+“You are quite sure you have never seen them before?” her velvet voice
+asked.
+
+He laughed. “Well, no—I can’t say I am.”
+
+“Aren’t you quite sure you have seen them?”
+
+Her eyes rested on him very steadily.
+
+“You’re smart as a whip, Miss Wainwright. I take off my hat to a young
+lady so clever. I guess you’re right. About the identity of one of
+those masked gentlemen I’m pretty well satisfied.”
+
+She drew a long breath. “I thought so.”
+
+“Yes,” he went on evenly, “I once earmarked him so that I’d know him
+again in case we met.”
+
+“I beg pardon. You—what?”
+
+“Earmarked him. Figure of speech, ma’am. You may not have observed that
+the curly-headed person behind the guns was shy the forefinger of his
+right hand. We had a little difficulty once when he was resisting
+arrest, and it just happened that my gun fanned away his trigger
+finger.” He added reminiscently:
+
+“A good boy, too, Neil was once. We used to punch together on the
+Hashknife. A straight-up rider, the kind a fellow wants when Old Man
+Trouble comes knocking at the door. Well, I reckon he’s a miscreant
+now, all right.”
+
+“They knew _you_—at least two of them did.”
+
+“I’ve been pirootin’ around this country, boy and man, for fifteen
+years. I ain’t responsible for every yellow dog that knows me,” he
+drawled.
+
+“And I noticed that when you told them not to rob the children and not
+to touch me they did as you said.”
+
+“Hypnotism,” he suggested, with a smile.
+
+“So, not being a child, I put two and two together and draw an
+inference.”
+
+He seemed to be struggling with his mirth. “I see you do. Well, ma’am,
+I’ve been most everything since I hit the West, but this is the first
+time I’ve been taken for a train robber.”
+
+“I didn’t say that,” she cried quickly.
+
+“I think you mentioned an inference.” The low laugh welled out of him
+and broke in his face. “I’ve been busy on one, too. It’s a heap nearer
+the truth than yours, Miss Mackenzie.”
+
+Her startled eyes and the swift movement of her hand toward her heart
+showed him how nearly he had struck home, how certainly he had
+shattered her cool indifference of manner.
+
+He leaned forward, so close that even in the roar of the train his low
+whisper reached her. “Shall I tell you why the hold-ups didn’t find
+more money on your father or in the express car, Miss Mackenzie?”
+
+She was shaken, so much so that her agitation trembled on her lips.
+
+“Shall I tell you why your hand went to your breast when I first
+mentioned that the train was going to be held up, and again when your
+father’s eyes were firing a mighty pointed question at you?”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean,” she retorted, again mistress of herself.
+
+Her gallant bearing compelled his admiration. The scornful eyes, the
+satirical lift of the nostrils, the erect, graceful figure, all flung a
+challenge at him. He called himself hard names for putting her on the
+rack, but the necessity to make her believe in him was strong within
+him.
+
+“I noticed you went right chalky when I announced the hold-up, and I
+thought it was because you were scared. That was where I did you an
+injustice, ma’am, and you can call this an apology. You’ve got sand. If
+it hadn’t been for what you carry in the chamois skin hanging on the
+chain round your neck you would have enjoyed every minute of the little
+entertainment. You’re as game as they make them.”
+
+“May I ask how you arrived at this melodramatic conclusion?” she asked,
+her disdainful lip curling.
+
+“By using my eyes and my ears, ma’am. I shouldn’t have noticed your
+likeness to Major Mackenzie, perhaps, if I hadn’t observed that there
+was a secret understanding between you. Now, whyfor should you be
+passing as strangers? I could guess one reason, and only one. There
+have twice been attempted hold-ups of the paymaster of the Yuba
+reservoir. It was to avoid any more of these that Major Mackenzie took
+charge personally of paying the men. He has made good up till now. But
+there have been rumors for months that he would be held up either
+before leaving the train or while he was crossing the desert. He didn’t
+want to be seen taking the boodle from the express company at Tucson.
+He would rather have the impression get out that this was just a casual
+visit. It occurred to him to bring along some unsuspected party to help
+him out. The robbers would never expect to find the money on a woman.
+That’s why the major brought his daughter with him. Doesn’t it make you
+some uneasy to be carrying fifty thousand in small bills sewed in your
+clothes and hung round your neck?”
+
+She broke into musical laughter, natural and easy. “I don’t happen to
+have fifty thousand with me.”
+
+“Oh, well, say forty thousand. I’m no wizard to guess the exact
+figure.”
+
+Her swift glance at him was almost timid.
+
+“Nor forty thousand,” she murmured.
+
+“I should think, ma’am, you’d crinkle more than a silk-lined lady
+sailing down a church aisle on Sunday.”
+
+A picture in the magazine she was toying with seemed to interest her.
+
+“I expect that’s the signal for ‘Exit Collins.’ I’ll say good-by till
+next time, Miss Mackenzie.”
+
+“Oh, is there going to be a next time?” she asked, with elaborate
+carelessness.
+
+“Several of them.”
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+He took a notebook from his pocket and wrote.
+
+“I ain’t the son of a prophet, but I’m venturing a prediction,” he
+explained.
+
+She had nothing to say, and she said it competently.
+
+“Concerning an investment in futurities I’m making,” he continued.
+
+Her magazine article seemed to be beginning, well.
+
+“It’s a little guess about how this train robbery is coming out. If you
+don’t mind, I’ll leave it with you.” He tore the page out, put it in an
+empty envelope, sealed the flap, and handed it to her.
+
+“Open it in a month, and see whether my guess is a good one.”
+
+The dusky lashes swept round indolently. “Suppose I were to open it
+to-night.”
+
+“I’ll risk it,” smiled the blue eyes.
+
+“On honor, am I?”
+
+“That’s it.” He held out a big, brown hand.
+
+“You’re going to try to capture the robbers, are you?”
+
+“I’ve been thinking that way—with the help of Lieutenant Bucky
+O’Connor, I mean.”
+
+“And I suppose you’ve promised yourself success.”
+
+“It’s on the knees of chance, ma’am. We may get them. They may get us.”
+
+“But this prediction of yours?” She held up the sealed envelope.
+
+“That’s about another matter.”
+
+“But I don’t understand. You said—” She gave him a chance to explain.
+
+“It ain’t meant you should. You’ll understand plenty at the proper
+time.”
+
+He offered her his hand again. “We’re slowing down for Apache.
+Good-by—till next time.”
+
+The suede glove came forward, and was buried in his handshake.
+
+He understood it to be an unvoiced apology of its owner for her
+suspicions, and his instinct was correct. For how could her doubts hold
+their ground when he had showed himself a sharer in her secret and a
+guardian of it? And how could anything sinister lie behind those frank,
+unwavering eyes or consist with that long, clean stride that was
+carrying him so forcefully to the vestibule?
+
+At Apache no telegrams were found waiting for those who had been
+expecting them. Communication with the division superintendent at
+Tucson uncovered the fact that no message of the hold-up had yet
+reached him. It was an easy guess for Collins to find the reason.
+
+“We’re in the infant class, major,” he told Mackenzie, with a sardonic
+laugh. “Leroy must have galloped down the line direct to the station
+after the hold-up. Likely enough he went into the depot just as we went
+out. That gives him the other hour or two he needs to make his getaway
+with the loot. Well, it can’t be helped now. If I can only reach Bucky
+there’s one chance in fifty he can head them off from crossing into
+Sonora. Soon as I can get together a posse I’ll take up the trail from
+the point of the hold-up. But they’ll have a whole night’s start on me.
+That’s a big handicap.”
+
+From Apache Collins sent three dispatches. One was to his deputy,
+Dillon, at Tucson. It read:
+
+“Get together at once posse of four and outfit same for four days.”
+
+Another went to Sabin, the division superintendent:
+
+“Order special to carry posse with horses from Tucson to Big Gap. Must
+leave by midnight. Have track clear.”
+
+The third was a notification to Lieutenant O’Connor, of the Arizona
+Rangers, of the hold-up, specifying time and place of the occurrence.
+The sheriff knew it was not necessary to add that the bandits were
+probably heading south to get into Sonora. Bucky would take that for
+granted and do his best to cover the likely spots of the frontier.
+
+It was nearly eleven when the Limited drew in to Tucson. Sabin was on
+the platform anxiously awaiting their arrival. Collins reached him even
+before the conductor.
+
+“Ordered the special, Mr. Sabin?” he asked, in a low voice.
+
+The railroad man was chewing nervously on an unlit cigar. “Yes,
+sheriff. You want only an engine and one car, I suppose.”
+
+“That will be enough. I’ve got to go uptown now and meet Dillon.
+Midnight sharp, please.”
+
+“Do you know how much they got?” Sabin whispered.
+
+“Thirty thousand, I hear, besides what they took from the passengers.
+The conductor will tell you all about it. I’ve got to jump to be
+ready.”
+
+A disappointment awaited him in the telegrapher’s room at the depot. He
+found a wire, but not from the person he expected. The ranger in charge
+at Douglas said that Lieutenant O’Connor was at Flagstaff, but pending
+that officer’s return he would put himself under the orders of Sheriff
+Collins and wait for instructions.
+
+The sheriff whistled softly to himself and scratched his head. Bucky
+would not have waited for instructions. By this time that live wire
+would have finished telephoning all over Southern Arizona and would
+himself have been in the saddle. But Bucky in Flagstaff, nearly three
+hundred miles from the battlefield, so far as the present emergency
+went, might just as well be in Calcutta. Collins wired instructions to
+the ranger and sent a third message to the lieutenant.
+
+“I expect I’ll hear this time he’s skipped over to Winslow,” he told
+himself, with a rueful grin.
+
+The special with the posse on board drew out at midnight sharp. It
+reached the scene of the holdup before daybreak. The loading board was
+lowered and the horses led from the car and picketed. Meanwhile two of
+the men lit a fire and made breakfast while the others unloaded the
+outfit and packed for the trail. The first faint streaks of gray dawn
+were beginning to fleck the sky when Collins and Dillon, with a
+lantern, moved along the railroad bed to the little clump of
+cottonwoods where the outlaws had probably lain while they waited for
+the express. They scanned this ground inch by inch. The coals where
+their camp-fire had been were still alive. Broken bits of food lay
+scattered about. Half-trampled into the ground the sheriff picked up a
+narrow gold chain and locket. This last he opened, and found it to
+contain a tiny photograph of a young mother and babe, both laughing
+happily. A close search failed to disclose anything else of interest.
+
+They returned to their companions, ate breakfast, and saddled. It was
+by this time light enough to be moving. The trail was easy as a printed
+map, for the object of the outlaws had been haste rather than secrecy.
+The posse covered it swiftly and without hesitation.
+
+“Now, I wonder why this trail don’t run straight south instead of
+bearing to the left into the hills. Looks like they’re going to cache
+their stolen gold up in the mountains before they risk crossing into
+Sonora. They figure Bucky’ll be on the lookout for them,” the sheriff
+said to his deputy.
+
+“I believe you’ve guessed it, Val. Stands to reason they’ll want to get
+rid of the loot soon as they can. Oh, hell!”
+
+Dillon’s disgust proved justifiable, for the trail had lost itself in a
+mountain stream, up or down which the outlaws must have filed. A month
+later and the creek would have been dry. But it was still spring. The
+mountain rains had not ceased feeding the brook, and of this the
+outlaws had taken advantage to wipe out their trail.
+
+The sheriff looked anxiously at the sky. “It’s fixin’ to rain, Jim.
+Don’t that beat the Dutch? If it does, that lets us out plenty.”
+
+The men they were after might have gone either upstream or down. It was
+impossible to know definitely which, nor was there time to follow both.
+Already big drops of rain were splashing down.
+
+“We’ll take a chance, and go up. They’re probably up in the hills
+somewhere right now,” said Collins, with characteristic decision.
+
+He had guessed right. A mile farther upstream horses had clambered to
+the bank and struck deeper into the hills. But already rain was falling
+in a brisk shower. The posse had not gone another quarter of a mile
+before the trail was washed out. They were now in a rough and rocky
+country getting every minute steeper.
+
+“It’s going to be like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack, Val,” Dillon
+growled.
+
+Collins nodded. “We ain’t got one chance in a hundred, Jim, but I
+reckon we’ll take that chance.”
+
+For three days they blundered around in the hills before they gave it
+up. The first night, about dusk, the pursuers were without knowing it
+so warm that one of the bandits lay with his rifle on a rock rim not a
+stone’s throw above them as they wound through a little ravine. But
+Collins got no glimpse of the robbers. At last he reluctantly gave the
+word to turn back. Probably the men he wanted had already slipped down
+to the plains and across to Mexico. If not, they might play hide and
+seek with him a month in the recesses of these unknown mountains.
+
+Next morning the sheriff struck a telephone wire, tapped it, got Sabin
+on the line, told him of his failure and that he was returning to
+Tucson. About the middle of the afternoon the dispirited posse reached
+its sidetracked special.
+
+A young man lay stretched full length on the loading board, with a
+broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes. He wore a gray flannel shirt and
+corduroy trousers thrust into half-leg laced boots. At the sound of
+voices he turned lazily on his side and watched the members of the
+posse swing wearily from their saddles. An amiable smile, not wholly
+free of friendly derision, lit his good-looking face.
+
+“Oh, you sheriff,” he drawled.
+
+Collins swung round, as if he had been pricked with a knife point. He
+stared an instant before he let out a shout of welcome and fell upon
+the youth.
+
+“Bucky, by thunder!”
+
+The latter got up nimbly in time to be hospitably thumped and punched.
+He was a lithe, slender young fellow, of medium height, and he carried
+himself lightly with that manner of sunburned competency given only by
+the rough-and-tumble life of the outdoors West.
+
+While the men reloaded the car he and the sheriff stood apart and
+talked in low tones. Collins told what he knew, both what he had seen
+and inferred, and Bucky heard him to the end.
+
+“Yes, it ce’tainly looks like one of Wolf Leroy’s jobs,” he agreed.
+“Nobody else but Leroy would have had the nerve to follow you right up
+to the depot and put the kibosh on sending those wires. He’s surely
+game from the toes up. Think of him sittin’ there reading the newspaper
+half an hour after he held up the Limited!”
+
+“Did he do that, Bucky?” The sheriff’s tone conceded admiration.
+
+“He did. He’s the only train robber ever in the business that could
+have done it. Oh, the Wolf’s tracks are all over this job.”
+
+“No doubt about that. I told you I recognized York Neil by him being
+shy that trigger finger I fanned off down at Tombstone. Well, they say
+he’s one of the Wolf’s standbys.”
+
+“Yes. I warned him two months ago that if he didn’t break away he’d die
+sudden. Somehow I couldn’t persuade him he was an awful sick man right
+then. You saw four of these hold-ups in all, didn’t you, Val?”
+
+“Four’s right. First off Neil, then the fellow I took to be the Wolf.
+After he went out a bowlegged fellow came in, and last a slim little
+kid that was a sure enough amateur, the way his gun shook.”
+
+“Any notion how many more there were?”
+
+“I figured out two more. A big gazabo in a red wig held up Frost, the
+engineer. He knew it was a wig because he saw long black hair peeping
+out around his neck. Then there must ’a’ been another in charge of
+blowing up the express car, a Mexican, from the description the
+messenger gives of him.”
+
+Bucky nodded. “Looks like you got it figured about right, Val. The
+Mexican is easy to account for. The Wolf spends about half his time
+down in Chihuahua and trains with some high-class greasers down there.
+Well, we’ll see what we’ll see. I’ll set my rangers at rounding up the
+border towns a bit, and if I don’t start anything there I’ll hike down
+into Mexico and see what’s doing. I’ll count on you to run the Arizona
+end of it while I’m away, Val. The Wolf’s outfit is a pretty wild one,
+and it won’t be long till something begins to howl. We’ll keep an eye
+on the gambling halls and see who is burning up money. Oh, they’ll
+leave plenty of smoke behind them,” the ranger concluded cheerfully.
+
+“There will be plenty of smoke if we ever do round ’em up, not to
+mention a heap of good lead that will be spilled,” the sheriff agreed
+placidly. “Well, all I got to say is the sooner the quicker. The bunch
+borrowed a mighty good.45 of mine I need in my biz. I kinder hanker to
+get it back _muy pronto_.”
+
+“Here’s hoping,” Bucky nodded gayly. “I bet there will be a right
+lively wolf hunt. Hello! The car’s loaded. All aboard for Tucson.”
+
+The special drew out from the side track and gathered speed. Soon the
+rhythmic chant of the rails sounded monotonously, and the plains on
+either side of the track swam swiftly to the rear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+A BLUFF IS CALLED
+
+
+Torpid lay Aravaipa in a coma of sunheat. Its adobe-lined streets
+basked in the white glare of an Arizona spring at midday. One or two
+Papago Indians, with their pottery wares, squatted in the shade of the
+buildings, but otherwise the plaza was deserted. Not even a moving dog
+or a lounging peon lent life to the drowsy square. Silence profound and
+peace eternal seemed to brood over the land.
+
+Such was the impression borne in upon the young man riding townward on
+a wiry buckskin that had just topped the rise which commanded the
+valley below. The rider presented a striking enough appearance to take
+and hold the roving eye of any young woman in search of romance. He was
+a slender, lithe young Adonis of medium height. His hair and eyebrows
+left one doubtful whether to pronounce them black or brown, but the
+eyes called for an immediate verdict of Irish blue. Every inch of him
+spoke of competency—promised mastership of any situation likely to
+arise. But when the last word is said it was the eyes that dominated
+the personality. They could run the whole gamut of emotions, or they
+could be impervious as a stone wall. Now they were deep and innocent as
+a girl’s, now they rollicked with the buoyant youth in them. Comrades
+might see them bubbling with fun, and the next moment enemies find them
+opaque as a leaden sky. Not the least wonder of them was that they
+looked out from under long lashes, soft enough for any maiden, at a
+world they appraised with the shrewdness of a veteran.
+
+The young man drew rein above the valley, sitting his horse in the
+easy, negligent fashion of one that lives in the saddle. A thumb was
+hitched carelessly in the front pocket of his chaps, which pocket
+served also as a holster for the .45 that protruded.
+
+Even in the moment that he sat there a change came over Aravaipa. As a
+summer shower sweeps across a lake so something had ruffled the town to
+sudden life. From stores and saloons men dribbled, converging toward a
+common centre hurriedly.
+
+“I reckon, Bucky, the band has begun to play,” the rider told himself
+aloud. “Mebbe we better move on down in time for the music.”
+
+But no half-expected revolver shots shattered the stillness, even
+though interest did not abate.
+
+“There’s ce’tainly something doing at the Silver Dollar this glad
+mo’ning. Chinks, greasers, and several other kinds of citizens driftin’
+that way, not to mention white men. I expect there will be room for
+you, Bucky, if you hurry before the seats are all sold out.”
+
+He cantered down the plaza, swung from the saddle, threw the rein over
+the pony’s head to the ground, and jingled across the sidewalk into the
+gambling house. It was filled with a motley crowd of miners, vaqueros,
+tourists, cattlemen, Mexicans, Chinese, and a sample of the rest of the
+heterogeneous population of the Southwest. Behind this assemblage the
+newcomer tiptoed in vain to catch a glimpse of the cause of the
+excitement. Wherefore, he calmly removed an almond-eyed Oriental from a
+chair on which he was standing, tipped the ex-Cantonese a half dollar,
+and appropriated the point of vantage himself.
+
+There was a cleared space in the corner by the roulette table, and
+here, his chair tipped back against the wall and a glass of whisky in
+front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of humanity. He was a
+man of about fifty years, large boned and gaunt. Dressed in fringed
+buckskin trousers and a silver-laced Mexican sombrero, he affected the
+long hair, the sweeping mustache, and the ferocious aspect that are the
+custom of the pseudo-Westerners who do business in the East with fake
+medical remedies. Around his waist was a belt garnished with knives by
+the dozen. These were long and pointed, sharpened to a razor edge. One
+of them was in his hand poised for a throw at the instant Bucky mounted
+the chair and looked over the densely packed mass of heads in front of
+him.
+
+The ranger’s keen glance swept to the wall and took in the target. A
+slim lad of about fifteen stood against it with his arms outstretched.
+Above and below each hand and on either side of the swelling throat
+knives quivered in the frame wall. There was a flash of steel, and the
+seventh knife sank into the wood so close to the crisp curls that a
+lock hung by a hair, almost completely severed by the blade. The boy
+choked back a scream, his big brown eyes dilating with terror.
+
+The bully sipped at his highball and deliberately selected another
+knife. To Bucky’s swift inspection it was plain he had drunk too much
+and that a very little slip might make an end of the boy. The
+fascinated horror in the lad’s gaze showed that he realized his danger.
+
+“Now, f’ler cit’zens, I will continue for your ’musement by puttin’
+next two knives on right and lef’ sides of his cheek. Observe, pleash,
+that these will land less than an inch from hish eyes. As the champion
+knife thrower in the universe I claim—”
+
+What he claimed his audience had to guess, for at this instant another
+person took a part in the act. Bucky had stepped lightly across the
+intervening space on the shoulders of the tightly packed crowd and had
+dropped as lightly to the ground in front of the astonished champion of
+the universe.
+
+“I reckon you’ve about wore out that target. What’s the matter with
+trying a brand new one,” drawled the ranger, his quiet, unwavering eye
+fixed on the bloated, mottled face of the imitation “bad man.”
+
+The bully, half seas over, leaned forward and gripped his knife. He was
+sober enough to catch the jeer running through the other’s words
+without being sufficiently master of himself to appreciate the menace
+that underlay them.
+
+“Wha’s that? Say that again!” he burst out, purple to the collar line.
+He was not used to having beardless boys with long, soft eyelashes
+interfering with his amusements, and a blind rage flooded his heart.
+
+“I allowed that a change of targets would vary the entertainment, if
+you haven’t any objections, seh,” the blue-eyed stranger explained
+mildly.
+
+“Who is this kid?” demanded the bully, with a sweep of his arm toward
+the intruder.
+
+Nobody seemed to know, wherefore the ranger himself gave the
+information mildly:
+
+“Bucky O’Connor they call me.”
+
+A faint murmur of surprise soughed through the crowd, for Bucky
+O’Connor of the Arizona Rangers was by way of being a public hero just
+now on account of his capture of Fernendez, the stage robber. But the
+knife thrower had but lately arrived in the country. The youth carried
+with him none of the earmarks of his trade, unless it might be that
+quiet, steady gaze that seemed to search the soul. His voice was soft
+and drawling, his manner almost apologetic. In the smile that came and
+went was something sweet and sunny, in his bearing a gay charm that did
+not advertise the recklessness that bubbled from his daredevil spirit.
+Surely here was an easy victim upon whom to vent his spleen, thought
+the other in his growing passion.
+
+“You want to be my target, do you?” he demanded, tugging ferociously at
+his long mustache.
+
+“If you please, seh.”
+
+The fellow swore a vile oath. “Just as you say. Line up beside the
+other kid.”
+
+With three strides Bucky reached the wall, and turned.
+
+“Let ’er go,” his gentle voice murmured.
+
+He was leaning back easily against the wall, his thumb hitched
+carelessly in the revolver pocket of his worn leather chaps. He looked
+at ease, every jaunty inch of him, but a big bronzed cattleman who had
+just pushed his way in noticed that the frosty blue eyes never released
+for an instant those of the enemy.
+
+The bully at the table passed an uncertain hand over his face to clear
+his blurred vision, poised the cruel blade in his hand, and sent it
+flashing forward with incredible swiftness. The steel buried itself two
+inches deep in the soft pine beside Bucky’s head. So close had it
+shaved him that a drop of blood gathered and dropped from his ear to
+the floor.
+
+“Good shot,” commented the ranger quietly, and on the instant his
+revolver seemed to leap from its holster to his hand. Without raising
+or moving his arm in the least, Bucky fired.
+
+Again a murmur eddied through the crowd. The bullet had neatly bored
+the bully’s ear. He raised his hand in dazed fashion and brought it
+away covered with blood. With staring eyes he looked at his moist red
+fingers, then at his latest victim, who was proving such an unexpected
+surprise.
+
+The big cattleman, who by this time had pushed a way with his broad
+shoulders to the front, observed the two men attentively with a
+derisive smile on his frank face. He was seeing a bluff called, and he
+enjoyed it.
+
+“You’ll be able to wear earrings, Mr. Champion of the Universe, after I
+have ventilated the other,” suggested the ranger affably. “Come again,
+seh.”
+
+But his opponent had had enough, and more than enough. It was one thing
+to browbeat a harmless boy, quite another to measure courage with a
+young gamecock like this. He had all the advantage of the first move.
+He was an expert and could drive his first throw into the youth’s
+heart. But at bottom he was a coward and lacked the nerve, if not the
+inclination, to kill. If he took up that devil-may-care challenge he
+must fight it out alone. Moreover, as his furtive glance went round the
+ring of faces, he doubted whether a rope and the nearest telegraph pole
+might not be his fate if he went the limit. Sourly he accepted defeat,
+raging in his craven spirit at the necessity.
+
+“Hell! I don’t fight with boys,” he snarled,
+
+“So?”
+
+Bucky moved forward with the curious lightness of a man spring-footed.
+His gaze held the other’s shifting eyes as he plucked the knife from
+his opponent’s hand.
+
+“Unbuckle that belt,” he ordered.
+
+All said, the eye is a prince of weapons. It is a moral force more
+potent than the physical, and by it men may measure strength to a
+certainty. So now these two clinched and battled with it till the best
+man won. The showman’s look gave way before the stark courage of the
+other. His was no match for the inscrutable, unwavering eye that
+commanded him. His fingers began to twitch, edged slowly toward his
+waist. For an instant they fumbled at the buckle of the belt, which
+presently fell with a rattle to the floor.
+
+“Now, roll yore trail to the wall. Face this way! Arms out! That’s
+good! You rest there comfortable while I take these pins down and let
+the kid out.”
+
+He removed the knives that hemmed in the boy and supported the
+half-fainting figure to a chair beside the roulette table. But always
+he remained in such a position as to keep the big bully he was baiting
+in view. The boy dropped into the chair and covered his face with his
+hands, sobbing with deep, broken breaths. The ranger touched
+caressingly the crisp, fair hair that covered the head in short curls.
+
+“Don’t you worry, bub. Now, don’t you. It’s all over with now. That
+coyote won’t pester you any more. Will you, Mr. False Alarm Bad Man?”
+
+At the last words he wheeled suddenly to the showman. “You’re right
+sorry already you got so gay, ain’t you? Come! Speak yore little piece,
+please.”
+
+He waited for an answer, and his gaze held fast to the bloated face
+that cringed before his attack.
+
+“What’s your name?”
+
+“Jay Hardman,” quavered the now thoroughly sobered bad man.
+
+“Dead easy jay, I reckon you mean. Now, chirp, up and tell the boy how
+sorry you are you got fresh with your hardware.”
+
+“He’s my boy. I guess I can do what I like with him,” the man burst out
+angrily. “I wasn’t hurting him any, either. That’s part of our show,
+to—”
+
+Bucky fondled suggestively the revolver in his hand. A metallic click
+came to his victim.
+
+“Don’t you shoot at me again,” the man broke off to scream.
+
+The Colt clipped the sentence and the man’s other ear.
+
+“You can put in your order now for them earrings we were mentionin’,
+Mr. Deadeasy. You see, I had to puncture this one so folks would know
+they were mates.”
+
+“I’ll put you in the pen for this,” the fellow whined, in terror.
+
+“Funny how you will get off the subject. We were discussin’ an apology
+when you got to wandering in yore haid.”
+
+The mottled face showed white in patches. Beads of perspiration stood
+out on the forehead of Hardman. “I didn’t aim to hurt him any. I’ll be
+right glad to explain to you—”
+
+A bullet plowed a path through the long hair that fell to the showman’s
+shoulders and snipped a lock from it.
+
+“You don’t need to explain a thing to me, seh. I’m sure resting easy in
+my mind. But as you were about to re-mark you’re fair honin’ for a
+chance to ask the kid’s pardon. Now, ain’t I a mind reader, seh?”
+
+A trembling voice stammered huskily an apology.
+
+“Better late than too late. Now, I’ve a good mind to take a vote
+whether I’d better unload the rest of the pills in this old reliable
+medicine box at you. Mebbe I ought to pump one into that coyote heart
+of yours.”
+
+The fellow went livid. “My God, you wouldn’t kill an unarmed man, would
+you?”
+
+For answer the ranger tossed the weapon on the table with a scornful
+laugh and strode up to the other. The would-be bad man towered six
+inches above him, and weighed half as much again. But O’Connor whirled
+him round, propelled him forward to the door, and kicked him into the
+street.
+
+“I’d hate to waste a funeral on _him_,” he said, as he sauntered back
+to the boy at the table.
+
+The lad was beginning to recover, though his breath still came with a
+catch. His rag of a handkerchief was dabbing tears out of his eyes.
+O’Connor noticed how soft his hands and how delicate his features.
+
+“This kid ain’t got any more business than a rabbit going around in the
+show line with that big scoundrel. He’s one of these gentle,
+rock-me-to-sleep-mother kids that ought to stay in the home nest and
+not go buttin’ into this hard world. I’ll bet a doughnut he’s an
+orphan, though.”
+
+Bucky had been brought up in the school of experience, where every
+student keeps his own head or goes to the wall. All his short life he
+had played a lone hand, as he would have phrased it. He had campaigned
+in Cuba as a mere boy. He had ridden the range and held his own on the
+hurricane deck of a bucking broncho. From cowpunching he had graduated
+into the tough little body of territorial rangers at the head of which
+was “Hurry Up” Millikan. This had brought him a large and turbulent
+experience in the knack of taking care of himself under all
+circumstances. Naturally, a man of this type, born and bred to the code
+of the outdoors West, could not fail of a certain contempt for a boy
+that broke down and cried when the game was going against him.
+
+But Bucky’s contempt was tolerant, after all. He could not deny his
+sympathy to a youngster in trouble. Again he touched gently the lad’s
+crisp curls of burnished gold.
+
+“Brace up, bub. The worst is yet to come,” he laughed awkwardly. “I
+reckon there’s no use spillin’ any more emotion over it. He ain’t your
+dad, is he?”
+
+The lad’s big brown eyes looked up into the serene blue ones and found
+comfort in their strength. “No, he’s my uncle—and my master.”
+
+“This is a free country, son. We don’t have masters if we’re good
+Americans, though we all have to take orders from our superior
+officers. You don’t need to serve this fellow unless you want to.
+That’s a cinch.”
+
+The boy’s troubled eyes were filmed with reminiscent terror. “You don’t
+know him. He is terrible when he is angry,” he murmured.
+
+“I don’t think it,” returned Bucky contemptuously. “He’s the worst
+blowhard ever. Say the word and I’ll run the piker out of town for
+you.”
+
+The boy whipped up the sleeve of the fancy Mexican jacket he wore and
+showed a long scar on his arm. “He did that one day when he was angry
+at me. He pretended to others that it was an accident, but I knew
+better. This morning I begged him to let me leave him. He beat me, but
+he was still mad; and when he took to drinking I was afraid he would
+work himself up to stick me again with one of his knives.”
+
+Bucky looked at the scar in the soft, rounded arm and swept the boy
+with a sudden puzzled glance that was not suspicion but wonder.
+
+“How long have you been with him, kid?”
+
+“Oh, for years. Ever since I was a little fellow. He took me after my
+father and mother died of yellow fever in New Orleans. His wife hates
+me too, but they have to have me in the show.”
+
+“Then I guess you had better quit their company. What’s your name?”
+
+“Frank Hardman. On the show bills I have all sorts of names.”
+
+“Well, Frank, how would you like to go to live on a ranch?”
+
+“Where he wouldn’t know I was?” whispered the boy eagerly.
+
+“If you like. I know a ranch where you’d be right welcome.”
+
+“I would work. I would do anything I could. Really, I would try to pay
+my way, and I don’t eat much,” Frank cried, his eyes as appealing as a
+homeless puppy’s.
+
+Bucky smiled. “I expect they can stand all you eat without going to the
+poorhouse. It’s a bargain then. I’ll take you out there to-morrow.”
+
+“You’re so good to me. I never had anybody be so good before.” Tears
+stood in the big eyes and splashed over.
+
+“Cut out the water works, kid. You want to take a brace and act like a
+man,” advised his new friend brusquely.
+
+“I know. I know. If you knew what I have done maybe you wouldn’t ask me
+to go with you. I—I can’t tell you anything more than that,” the
+youngster sobbed.
+
+“Oh, well. What’s the diff? You’re making a new start to-day. Ain’t
+that right?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Call me Bucky.”
+
+“Yes, sir. Bucky, I mean.”
+
+A hand fell on the ranger’s shoulder and a voice in his ear. “Young
+man, I want you.”
+
+The lieutenant whirled like a streak of lightning, finger on trigger
+already. “I’ll trouble you for yore warrant, seh,” he retorted.
+
+The man confronting him was the big cattleman who had entered the
+Silver Dollar in time to see O’Connor’s victory over the showman. Now
+he stood serenely under Bucky’s gun and laughed.
+
+“Put up your .45, my friend. It’s a peaceable conference I want with
+you.”
+
+The level eyes of the young man fastened on those of the cattleman,
+and, before he spoke again, were satisfied. For both of these men
+belonged to the old West whose word is as good as its bond, that West
+which will go the limit for a cause once under taken without any
+thought of retreat, regardless of the odds or the letter of the law.
+Though they had never met before, each knew at a glance the manner of
+man the other was.
+
+“All right, seh. If you want me I reckon I’m here large as life,” the
+ranger said,
+
+“We’ll adjourn to the poker room upstairs then, Mr. O’Connor.”
+
+Bucky laid a hand on the shoulder of the boy. “This kid goes with me.
+I’m keeping an eye on him for the present.”
+
+“My business is private, but I expect that can be arranged. We’ll take
+the inner room and let him have the outer.”
+
+“Good enough. Break trail, seh. Come along, Frank.”
+
+Having reached the poker room upstairs, that same private room which
+had seen many a big game in its day between the big cattle kings and
+mining men of the Southwest, Bucky’s host ordered refreshments and then
+unfolded his business.
+
+“You don’t know me, lieutenant, do you?”
+
+“I haven’t that pleasure, seh.”
+
+“I am Major Mackenzie’s brother.”
+
+“Webb Mackenzie, who came from Texas last year and bought the Rocking
+Chair Ranch?”
+
+“The same.”
+
+“I’m right glad to meet you, seh.”
+
+“And I can say the same.”
+
+Webb Mackenzie was so distinctively a product of the West that no other
+segment of the globe could have produced him. Big, raw-boned, tanned to
+a leathery brick-brown, he was as much of the frontier as the ten
+thousand cows he owned that ran the range on half as many hills and
+draws. He stood six feet two and tipped the beam at two hundred twelve
+pounds, not an ounce of which was superfluous flesh. Temperamentally,
+he was frank, imperious, free-hearted, what men call a prince. He wore
+a loose tailor-made suit of brown stuff and a broad-brimmed light-gray
+Stetson. For the rest, you may see a hundred like him at the yearly
+stock convention held in Denver, but you will never meet a man even
+among them with a sounder heart or better disposition.
+
+“I’ve got a story to tell you, Lieutenant O’Connor,” he began. “I’ve
+been meaning to see you and tell it ever since you made good in that
+Fernendez matter. It wasn’t your gameness. Anybody can be game. But it
+looked to me like you were using the brains in the top of your head,
+and that happens so seldom among law officers I wanted to have a talk
+with you. Since yesterday I’ve been more anxious. For why? I got a
+letter from my brother telling me Sheriff Collins showed him a locket
+he found at the place of the T. P. Limited hold-up. That locket has in
+it a photograph of my wife and little girl. For fifteen years I haven’t
+seen that picture. When I saw it last ’twas round my little baby’s
+neck. What’s more, I haven’t seen her in that time, either.”
+
+Mackenzie stopped, swallowed hard, and took a drink of water.
+
+“You haven’t seen your little girl in fifteen years,” exclaimed Bucky.
+
+“Haven’t seen or heard of her. So far as I know she may not be alive
+now. This locket is the first hint I have had since she was taken away,
+the very first news of her that has reached me, and I don’t know what
+to make of that. One of the robbers must have been wearing it, the way
+I figure it out. Where did he get it? That’s what I want to know.”
+
+“Suppose you tell me the story, seh,” suggested the ranger gently.
+
+The cattleman offered O’Connor a cigar and lit one himself. For a
+minute he puffed slowly at his Havana, leaning far back in his chair
+with eyes reminiscent and half shut. Then he shook himself back into
+the present and began his tale.
+
+“I don’t reckon you ever heard tell of Dave Henderson. It was back in
+Texas I knew him, and he’s been missing sixteen years come the eleventh
+of next August. For fifteen years I haven’t mentioned his name, because
+Dave did me the dirtiest wrong that one man ever did another. Back in
+the old days he and I used to trail together. We was awful thick, and
+mostly hunted in couples. We began riding the same season back on the
+old Kittredge Ranch, and we went in together for all the kinds of
+spreeing that young fellows who are footloose are likely to do. Fact
+is, we suited each other from the ground up. We frolicked round
+a-plenty, like young colts will, and there was nothing on this green
+earth Dave could have asked from me that I wouldn’t have done for him.
+Nothing except one, I reckon, and Dave never asked that of me.”
+
+Mackenzie puffed at his cigar a silent moment before resuming. “It
+happened we both fell in love with the same girl, little Frances Clark,
+of the Double T Ranch. Dave was a better looker than me and a more
+taking fellow, but somehow Frances favored me from the start. Dave
+stayed till the finish, and when he seen he had lost he stood up with
+me at the wedding. We had agreed, you see, that whoever won it wasn’t
+to break up our friendship.
+
+“Well, Frankie and I were married, and in course of time we had two
+children. My boy, Tom, is the older. The other was a little girl, named
+after her mother.” The cattleman waited a moment to steady his voice,
+and spoke through teeth set deep in his Havana. “I haven’t seen her, as
+I said, since she was two years and ten months old—not since the night
+Dave disappeared.”
+
+Bucky looked up quickly with a question on his lips, but he did not
+need to word it.
+
+Mackenzie nodded. “Yes, Dave took her with him when he lit out across
+the line for Mexico.”
+
+But I’ll have to go back to something that happened earlier. About
+three months before this time Dave and me were riding through a cut in
+the Sierra Diablo Mountains, when we came on a Mexican who had been
+wounded by the Apaches. I reckon we had come along just in time to
+scare them off before they finished him. We did our best for him, but
+he died in about two hours. Before dying, he made us a present of a map
+we found in his breast pocket. It showed the location of a very rich
+mine he had found, and as he had no near kin he turned it over to us to
+do with as we pleased.
+
+“Just then the round-up came on, and we were too busy to pay much
+attention to the mine. Each of us would have trusted the other with his
+life, or so I thought. But we cut the paper in half, each of us keeping
+one part, in order that nobody else could steal the secret from the one
+that held the paper. The last time I had been in El Paso I had bought
+my little girl a gold chain with two lockets pendent. These lockets
+opened by a secret spring, and in one of them I put my half of the map.
+It seemed as safe a place as I could devise, for the chain never left
+the child’s neck, and nobody except her mother, Dave, and I knew that
+it was placed there. Dave hid his half under a rock that was known to
+both of us. The strange thing about the story is that my false friend,
+in the hurry of his flight, forgot to take his section of the map with
+him. I found it under the rock next day, so that his vile treachery
+availed him nothing from a mercenary point of view.”
+
+“Didn’t take his half of the map with him. That’s right funny,” Bucky
+mused aloud.
+
+“We never could understand why he didn’t.”
+
+“Mebbe if you understood that a heap of things might be clear that are
+dark now.”
+
+“Mebbe. Knowing Dave Henderson as I did, or, rather, as I thought I
+did, such treachery as his was almost unbelievable. He was the
+sweetest, sunniest soul I ever knew, and no two brothers could have
+been as fond of each other as we seemed to be. But there was no chance
+of mistake. He had gone, and taken our child with him, likely in
+accordance with a plan of revenge long cherished by him. We never heard
+of him or the child again. They disappeared as completely as if the
+earth had swallowed them up. Our cook, too, left with him that evil
+night.”
+
+“Your cook?” It was the second comment Bucky had ventured, and it came
+incisively. “What manner of man was he?”
+
+“A huge, lumbering braggart. I could never understand why Dave took the
+man with him.”
+
+“If he did.”
+
+“But I tell you he did. They disappeared the same night, and the trail
+showed they went the same road. We followed them for about an hour next
+day, but a heavy rain came up and blotted out the tracks.”
+
+“What was the cook’s name?”
+
+“Jeff Anderson.”
+
+“Have you a picture of him, or one of your friend?”
+
+“Back at the ranch I had pictures of Dave, but I burned them after he
+left. Yes, I reckon we have one of Anderson, standing in front of the
+chuck wagon.”
+
+“Send it to me, please.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+The ranger asked a few questions that made clearer the situation on the
+day of the kidnapping, and some more concerning Anderson, then fell
+again into the role of a listener while Mackenzie concluded his story.
+
+“All these years I have kept my eyes open, confident that at last I
+would discover something that would help me to discover the whereabouts
+of my child, or, at least, give me a chance to punish the scoundrel who
+betrayed my confidence. Yesterday my brother’s letter gave the first
+clue we have had. I want that lead worked. Ferret this thing out to the
+bottom, lieutenant. Get me something definite to go on. That’s what I
+want you to do. Run the thing to earth, get at the facts, and find my
+child for me. I’ll give you carte blanche up to a hundred thousand
+dollars. All I ask of you is to make good. Find the little girl, or
+else bring me face to face with that villain Henderson. Can you do it?”
+
+O’Connor was strangely interested in this story of treachery and
+mystery. He rose with shining eyes and held out his hand. “I don’t
+know, seh, but I’ll try damned hard to do three things: find out what
+has become of the little girl, of Dave Henderson, and of the scoundrel
+who stole your baby because he thought the map was in the pocket.”
+
+“You mean that you don’t think Dave—”
+
+“That is exactly what I mean. Your cook, Anderson, kidnapped the child,
+looks like to me. I saw that locket Collins found. My guess was that
+the marks on the end of the chain were deep teeth marks. The man that
+stole your baby tried first to cut the chain with his teeth so as to
+steal the chain. You see, he could not find the clasp in the dark. Then
+the child wakened and began to cry. He clapped a hand over its mouth
+and carried the little girl out of the room. Then he heard somebody
+moving about, lost his nerve, and jumped on the horse that was waiting,
+saddled, at the door. He took the child along simply because he had to
+in order to get the chain and the secret he thought it held.”
+
+“Perhaps; but that does not prove it was not Dave.”
+
+“It’s contributory evidence, seh. Your friend could have slipped the
+chain from her neck any day, or he could have opened the locket and
+taken the map. No need for him to steal in at night. Do you happen to
+remember whether your little girl had any particular aversion to the
+cook?”
+
+The cattleman’s forehead frowned in thought. “I do remember, now, that
+she was afraid of him. She always ran screaming to her mother when he
+tried to be friendly with her. He was a sour sort of fellow.”
+
+“That helps out the case a heap, for it shows that he wanted to make
+friends with her and she refused. He was thus forced to take the chain
+when she was asleep instead of playing with her till he had discovered
+the spring and could simply take the map.”
+
+“But he didn’t know anything about the map. He was not in our
+confidence.”
+
+“You and your friend talked it over evenings when he was at the ranch,
+and other places, too, I expect.”
+
+“Yes, our talk kind of gravitated that way whenever we got together.”
+
+“Well, this fellow overheard you. That’s probable, at least.”
+
+“But you’re ignoring the important fact. Dave disappeared too that
+night, with my little girl.”
+
+Bucky cut in sharply with a question. “Did he? How do you know he
+disappeared _with_ her? Why not _after?_ That’s the theory my mind is
+groping on just now.”
+
+“That’s a blind trail to me. Why _after?_ And what difference does it
+make?”
+
+“All the difference in the world. If he left after the cook, you have
+been doing him an injustice for fifteen years, seh.”
+
+Mackenzie leaned forward, excitement burning in his eyes. “Prove that,
+young man, and I’ll thank you to the last day of my life. It’s for my
+wife’s sake more than my own I want my little girl back. She jes’ pines
+for her every day of her life. But for my friend—if you can give me
+back the clean memory of Dave you’ll have done a big thing for me, Mr.
+O’Connor.”
+
+“It’s only a working theory, but this is what I’m getting at. You and
+Henderson had arranged to take an early start on a two days’ deer hunt
+next mo’ning. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”
+
+“We were to start about four. Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, let’s suppose a case. Along comes Dave before daybreak, when the
+first hooters were beginning to call. Just as he reaches your ranch he
+notices a horse slipping away in the darkness. Perhaps he hears the
+little girl cry out. Anyhow, instead of turning in at the gate, he
+decides to follow. Probably he isn’t sure there’s anything wrong, but
+when he finds out how the horse he’s after is burning the wind his
+suspicions grow stronger. He settles down to a long chase. In the
+darkness, we’ll say, he loses his man, but when it gets lighter he
+picks up the trail again. The tracks lead south, across the line into
+Mexico. Still he keeps plodding on. The man in front sees him behind
+and gets scared because he can’t shake him off. Very likely he thinks
+it is you on his track. Anyhow, while the child is asleep he waits in
+ambush, and when Henderson rides up he shoots him down. Then he pushes
+on deeper into Chihuahua, and proceeds to lose himself there by
+changing his name.”
+
+“You think he murdered Dave?” The cattleman got up and began to pace up
+and down the floor.
+
+“I think it possible.”
+
+Webb Mackenzie’s face was pallid, but there was a new light of hope in
+it. “I believe you’re right. God knows I hope so. That may sound a
+horrible thing to say of my best friend, but if it has got to be one or
+the other—if it is certain that my old bunkie came to his death foully
+in Chihuahua while trying to save my baby, or is alive to-day, a
+skulking coward and villain—with all my heart I hope he is dead.” He
+spoke with a passionate intensity which showed how much he had cared
+for his early friend, and how much the latter’s apparent treachery had
+cut him. “I hope you’ll never have a friend go back on you, Mr.
+O’Connor, the one friend you would have banked on to a finish. Why,
+Dave Henderson saved my life from a bunch of Apaches once when it was
+dollars to doughnuts he would lose his own if he tried it. We were
+prospecting in the Galiuros together, and one mo’ning when he went down
+to the creek to water the hawsses he sighted three of the red devils
+edging up toward the cabin. There might have been fifty of them there
+for all he knew, and he had a clear run to the plains if he wanted to
+back one of the ponies and take it. Most any man would have saved his
+own skin, but not Dave. He hoofed it back to the cabin, under fire
+every foot of the way, and together we made it so hot for them that
+they finally gave up getting us. We were in the Texas Rangers together,
+and pulled each other through a lot of close places. And then at the
+end—Why, it hurt me more than it did losing my own little girl.”
+
+Bucky nodded. Since he was a man and not a father, he could understand
+how the hurt would rankle year after year at the defalcation of his
+comrade.
+
+“That’s another kink we have got to unravel in this tangle. First off,
+there’s your little girl, to find if she is still alive. Second, we
+must locate Dave Henderson or his grave. Third, there’s something due
+the scoundrel who is responsible for this. Fourthly, brethren, there’s
+that map section to find. And lastly, we’ve got to find just how this
+story you’ve told me got mixed with the story of the holdup of the
+Limited. For it ce’tainly looks as if the two hang together. I take it
+that the thing to do is to run down the gang that held up the Limited.
+Once we do that, we ought to find the key to the mystery of your little
+girl’s disappearance. Or, at least, there is a chance we shall. And
+it’s chances we’ve got to gamble on in this thing.”
+
+“Good enough. I like the way you go at this. Already I feel a heap
+better than I did.”
+
+“If the cards fall our way you’re going to get this thing settled once
+for all. I can’t promise my news will be good news when I get it, but
+anything will be better than the uncertainty you’ve been in, I take
+it,” said Bucky, rising from his chair.
+
+“You’re right there. But, wait a moment. Let’s drink to your success.”
+
+“I’m not much of a sport,” Bucky smiled. “Fact is, I never drink, seh.”
+
+“Of course. I remember, now. You’re the good bad man of the West,”
+Mackenzie answered amiably. “Well, I drink to you. Here’s good hunting,
+lieutenant.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+“I suppose you’ll get right at this thing?”
+
+“I’ve got to take that kid in the next room out to my ranch first. I
+won’t stand for that knife thrower making a slave of him.”
+
+“What’s the matter with me taking the boy out to the Rocking Chair with
+me? My wife and I will see he’s looked after till you return.”
+
+“That would be the best plan, if it won’t trouble you too much. We’d
+better keep his whereabouts quiet till this fellow Hardman is out of
+the country.”
+
+“Yes, though I hardly think he’d be fool enough to show up at the
+Rocking Chair. If my vaqueros met up with him prowling around they
+might show him as warm a welcome as you did half an hour ago.”
+
+“A chapping would sure do him a heap of good,” grinned Bucky, and so
+dismissed the Champion of the World from his mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+BUCKY ENTERTAINS
+
+
+Bucky began at once to tap the underground wires his official position
+made accessible to him. These ran over Southern Arizona, Sonora, and
+Chihuahua. All the places to which criminals or frontiersmen with money
+were wont to resort were reported upon. For the ranger’s experience had
+taught him that since the men he wanted had money in their pockets to
+burn gregarious impulse would drive them from the far silent places of
+the desert to the roulette and faro tables where the wolf and the lamb
+disport themselves together.
+
+The photograph from Webb Mackenzie of the cook Anderson reached him at
+Tucson the third day after his interview with that gentleman, at the
+same time that Collins dropped in on him to inquire what progress he
+was making.
+
+O’Connor told him of the Aravaipa episode, and tossed across the table
+to him the photograph he had just received.
+
+“If we could discover the gent that sat for this photo it might help
+us. You don’t by any chance know him, do you, Val?”
+
+The sheriff shook his head. “Not in my rogues’ gallery, Bucky.”
+
+The ranger again examined the faded picture. A resemblance in it to
+somebody he had met recently haunted vaguely his memory. As he looked
+the indefinite suggestion grew sharp and clear. It was a photograph of
+the showman who had called himself Hardman. All the trimmings were
+lacking, to be sure—the fierce mustache, the long hair, the buckskin
+trappings, none of them were here. But beyond a doubt it was the same
+shifty-eyed villain. Nor did it shake Bucky’s confidence that Mackenzie
+had seen him and failed to recognize the man as his old cook. The
+fellow was thoroughly disguised, but the camera had happened to catch
+that curious furtive glance of his. But for that O’Connor would never
+have known the two to be the same.
+
+Bucky was at the telephone half an hour. In the middle of the next
+afternoon his reward came in the form of a Western Union billet. It
+read:
+
+“Eastern man says you don’t want what is salable here.”
+
+The lieutenant cut out every other word and garnered the wheat of the
+message:
+
+“Man you want is here.”
+
+The telegram was marked from Epitaph, and for that town the ranger and
+the sheriff entrained immediately.
+
+Bucky’s eye searched in vain the platform of the Epitaph depot for
+Malloy, of the Rangers, whose wire had brought him here. The cause of
+the latter’s absence was soon made clear to him in a note he found
+waiting for him at the hotel:
+
+“The old man has just sent me out on hurry-up orders. Don’t know when
+I’ll get back. Suggest you take in the show at the opera house to-night
+to pass the time.”
+
+It was the last sentence that caught Bucky’s attention. Jim Malloy had
+not written it except for a reason. Wherefore the lieutenant purchased
+two tickets for the performance far back in the house. From the local
+newspaper he gathered that the showman was henceforth to be a resident
+of Epitaph. Mr. Jay Hardman, or Signor Raffaello Cavellado, as he was
+known the world over by countless thousands whom he had entertained,
+had purchased a corral and livery stable at the corner of Main and
+Boothill Streets and solicited the patronage of the citizens of Hualpai
+County. That was the purport of the announcement which Bucky ringed
+with a pencil and handed to his friend.
+
+That evening Signor Raffaello Cavellado made a great hit with his
+audience. He swaggered through his act magnificently, and held his
+spectators breathless. Bucky took care to see that a post and the
+sheriff’s big body obscured him from view during the performance.
+
+After it was over O’Connor and the sheriff returned to the hotel, where
+also Hardman was for the present staying, and sent word up to his room
+that one of the audience who had admired very much the artistic
+performance would like the pleasure of drinking a glass of wine with
+Signor Cavellado if the latter would favor him with his company in room
+seven. The Signor was graciously pleased to accept, and followed his
+message of acceptance in person a few minutes later.
+
+Bucky remained quietly in the corner of the room back of the door until
+the showman had entered, and while the latter was meeting Collins he
+silently locked the door and pocketed the key.
+
+The sheriff acknowledged Hardman’s condescension brusquely and without
+shaking hands. “Glad to meet you, seh. But you’re mistaken in one
+thing. I’m not your host. This gentleman behind you is.”
+
+The man turned and saw Bucky, who was standing with his back against
+the door, a bland smile on his face.
+
+“Yes, seh. I’m your host to-night. Sheriff Collins, hyer, is another
+guest. I’m glad to have the pleasure of entertaining you, Signor
+Raffaello Cavellado,” Bucky assured him, in his slow, gentle drawl,
+without reassuring him at all.
+
+For the fellow was plainly disconcerted at recognition of his host. He
+turned with a show of firmness to Collins. “If you’re a sheriff, I
+demand to have that door opened at once,” he blustered.
+
+Val put his hands in his pockets and tipped back his chair. “I ain’t
+sheriff of Hualpai County. My jurisdiction don’t extend here,” he said
+calmly.
+
+“I’m an unarmed man,” pleaded Cavellado.
+
+“Come to think of it, so am I.”
+
+“I reckon I’m holding all the aces, Signor Cavellado,” explained the
+ranger affably. “Or do you prefer in private life to be addressed as
+Hardman—or, say, Anderson?”
+
+The showman moistened his lips and offered his tormentor a blanched
+face.
+
+“Anderson—a good plain name. I wonder, now, why you changed it?”
+Bucky’s innocent eyes questioned him blandly as he drew from his pocket
+a little box and tossed it on the table. “Open that box for me, Mr.
+Anderson. Who knows? It might explain a heap of things to us.”
+
+With trembling fingers the big coward fumbled at the string. With all
+his fluent will he longed to resist, but the compelling eyes that met
+his so steadily were not to be resisted. Slowly he unwrapped the paper
+and took the lid from the little box, inside of which was coiled up a
+thin gold chain with locket pendant.
+
+“Be seated,” ordered Bucky sternly, and after the man had found a chair
+the ranger sat down opposite him.
+
+From its holster he drew a revolver and from a pocket his watch. He
+laid them on the table side by side and looked across at the
+white-lipped trembler whom he faced.
+
+“We had better understand each other, Mr. Anderson. I’ve come here to
+get from you the story of that chain, so far as you know it. If you
+don’t care to tell it I shall have to mess this floor up with your
+remains. Get one proposition into your cocoanut right now. You don’t
+get out of this room alive with your secret. It’s up to you to choose.”
+
+Quite without dramatics, as placidly as if he were discussing railroad
+rebates, the ranger delivered his ultimatum. It seemed plain that he
+considered the issue no responsibility of his.
+
+Anderson stared at him in silent horror, moistening his dry lips with
+the tip of his tongue. Once his gaze shifted to the sheriff but found
+small comfort there. Collins had picked up a newspaper and was absorbed
+in it.
+
+“Are you going to let him kill me?” the man asked him hoarsely.
+
+He looked up from his newspaper in mild protest at such unreason. “Me?
+I ain’t sittin’ in this game. Seems like I mentioned that already.”
+
+“Better not waste your time, signor, on side issues,” advised the man
+behind the gun. “For I plumb forgot to tell you I’m allowing only three
+minutes to begin your story, half of which three has already slipped
+away to yesterday’s seven thousand years. Without wantin’ to hurry you,
+I suggest the wisdom of a prompt decision.”
+
+“Would he do it?” gasped the victim, with a last appeal to Collins.
+
+“Would he what? Oh, shoot you up. Cayn’t tell till I see. If he says he
+will he’s liable to. He always was that haidstrong.”
+
+“But—why—why—”
+
+“Yes, it’s sure a heap against the law, but then Bucky ain’t a lawyer.
+I don’t reckon he cares sour grapes for the law—as law. It’s a right
+interesting guess as to whether he will or won’t.”
+
+“There’s a heap of cases the law don’t reach prompt. This is one of
+them,” contributed the ranger cheerfully. He pocketed his watch and
+picked up the .45. “Any last message or anything of that sort, signor?
+I don’t want to be unpleasant about this, you understand.”
+
+The whilom bad man’s teeth chattered. “I’ll tell you anything you want
+to know.”
+
+“Now, that’s right sensible. I hate to come into another man’s house
+and clutter it up. Reel off your yarn.”
+
+“I don’t know—what you want.”
+
+“I want the whole story of your kidnapping of the Mackenzie child, how
+came you to do it, what happened to Dave Henderson, and full directions
+where I may locate Frances Mackenzie. Begin at the beginning, and I’ll
+fire questions at you when you don’t make any point clear to me. Turn
+loose your yarn at me hot off the bat.”
+
+The man told his story sullenly. While he was on the round-up as cook
+for the riders he had heard Mackenzie and Henderson discussing together
+the story of their adventure with the dying Spaniard and their hopes of
+riches from the mine he had left them. From that night he had set
+himself to discover the secret of its location, had listened at windows
+and at keyholes, and had once intercepted a letter from one to the
+other. By chance he had discovered that the baby was carrying the
+secret in her locket, and he had set himself to get it from her.
+
+But his chance did not come. He could not make friends with her, and at
+last, in despair of finding a better opportunity, he had slipped into
+her room one night in the small hours to steal the chain. But it was
+wound round her neck in such a way that he could not slip it over her
+head. She had awakened while he was fumbling with the clasp and had
+begun to cry. Hearing her mother moving about in the next room, he had
+hastily carried the child with him, mounted the horse waiting in the
+yard, and ridden away.
+
+In the road he became aware, some time later, that he was being
+pursued. This gave him a dreadful fright, for, as Bucky had surmised,
+he thought his pursuer was Mackenzie. All night he rode southward
+wildly, but still his follower kept on his trail till near morning,
+when he eluded him. He crossed the border, but late that afternoon got
+another fright. For it was plain he was still being followed. In the
+endless stretch of rolling hills he twice caught sight of a rider
+picking his way toward him. The heart of the guilty man was like water.
+He could not face the outraged father, nor was it possible to escape so
+dogged a foe by flight. An alternative suggested itself, and he
+accepted it with sinking courage. The child was asleep in his arms now,
+and he hastily dismounted, picketed his horse, and stole back a quarter
+of a mile, so that the neighing of his bronco might not betray his
+presence. Then he lay down in a dense mesquit thicket and waited for
+his foe. It seemed an eternity till the man appeared at the top of a
+rise fifty yards away. Hastily Anderson fired, and again. The man
+toppled from his horse, dead before he struck the ground. But when the
+cook reached him he was horrified to see that the man he had killed was
+a member of the Rurales, or Mexican border police. In his guilty terror
+he had shot the wrong man.
+
+He fled at once, pursued by a thousand fears. Late the next night he
+reached a Chihuahua village, after having been lost for many hours. The
+child he still carried with him, simply because he had not the heart to
+leave it to die in the desert alone. A few weeks later he married an
+American woman he met in Sonora. They adopted the child, but it died
+within the year of fever.
+
+Meanwhile, he was horrified to learn that Dave Henderson, following
+hard on his trail, had been found bending over the spot where the dead
+soldier lay, had been arrested by a body of Rurales, tried hurriedly,
+and convicted to life imprisonment. The evidence had been purely
+circumstantial. The bullet found in the dead body of the trooper was
+one that might have come from his rifle, the barrel of which was empty
+and had been recently fired. For the rest, he was a hated _Americano_,
+and, as a matter of course, guilty. His judges took pains to see that
+no message from him reached his friends in the States before he was
+buried alive in the prison. In that horrible hole an innocent man had
+been confined for fifteen years, unless he had died during that time.
+
+That, in substance, was the story told by the showman, and Bucky’s
+incisive questions were unable to shake any portion of it. As to the
+missing locket, the man explained that it had been broken off by
+accident and lost. When he discovered that only half the secret was
+contained on the map section he had returned the paper to the locket
+and let the child continue to carry it. Some years after the death of
+the child, Frances, his wife had lost the locket with the map.
+
+“And this chain and locket—when did you lose them?” demanded Bucky
+sharply.
+
+“It must have been about two months ago, down at Nogales, that I sold
+it to a fellow. I was playing faro and losing. He gave me five dollars
+for it.”
+
+And to that he stuck stoutly, nor could he be shaken from it. Both
+O’Connor and the sheriff believed he was lying, for they were convinced
+that he was the bandit with the red wig who had covered the engineer
+while his companions robbed the train. But of this they had no proof.
+Nor did Bucky even mention his suspicion to Hardman, for it was his
+intention to turn him loose and have him watched. Thus, perhaps, he
+would be caught corresponding or fraternizing with some of the other
+outlaws. Collins left the room before the showman, and when the latter
+came from the hotel he followed him into the night.
+
+Meanwhile, Bucky went out and tapped another of his underground wires.
+This ran directly to the Mexican consul at Tucson, to whom Bucky had
+once done a favor of some importance, and from him to Sonora and
+Chihuahua. It led to musty old official files, to records already
+yellowed with age, to court reports and prison registers. In the end it
+flashed back to Bucky great news. Dave Henderson, arrested for the
+murder of the Rurales policeman, was still serving time in a Mexican
+prison for another man’s crime. There in Chihuahua for fifteen years he
+had been lost to the world in that underground hole, blotted out from
+life so effectually that few now remembered there had been such a
+person. It was horrible, unthinkable, but none the less true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+BUCKY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+
+
+For a week Bucky had been in the little border town of Noches, called
+there by threats of a race war between the whites and the Mexicans.
+Having put the quietus on this, he was returning to Epitaph by way of
+the Huachuca Mountains. There are still places in Arizona where rapid
+transit can be achieved more expeditiously on the back of a bronco than
+by means of the railroad, even when the latter is available. So now
+Bucky was taking a short cut across country instead of making the two
+train changes, with the consequent inevitable delays that would have
+been necessary to travel by rail.
+
+He traveled at night and in the early morning, to avoid the heat of the
+midday sun, and it was in the evening of the second and last day that
+the skirts of happy chance led him to an adventure that was to affect
+his whole future life. He knew a waterhole on the Del Oro, where cows
+were wont to frequent even in the summer drought, and toward this he
+was making in the fag-end of the sultry day. While still some hundred
+yards distant he observed a spiral of smoke rising from a camp-fire at
+the spring, and he at once made a more circumspect approach. For it
+might be any one of a score of border ruffians who owed him a grudge
+and would be glad to pay it in the silent desert that tells no tales
+and betrays no secrets to the inquisitive.
+
+He flung the bridle-rein over his pony’s neck and crept forward on
+foot, warily and noiselessly. While still some little way from the
+water-hole he was arrested by a sound that startled him. He could make
+out a raucous voice in anger and a pianissimo accompaniment of womanish
+sobs.
+
+“You’re mine to do with as I like. I’m your uncle. I’ve raised you from
+a kid, and, by the great mogul! you can’t sneak off with the first
+good-for nothing scoundrel that makes eyes at you. Thought you had
+slipped away from me, you white-faced, sniveling little idiot, but I’ll
+show you who is master.”
+
+The lash of a whip rose and fell twice on quivering flesh before Bucky
+leaped into the fireglow and wrested the riding-whip from the hands of
+the angry man who was plying it.
+
+“Dare to touch a woman, would you?” cried the ranger, swinging the whip
+vigorously across the broad shoulders of the man. “Take that—and
+that—and that, you brute!”
+
+But when Bucky had finished with the fellow and flung him a limp,
+writhing huddle of welts to the ground, three surprises awaited him.
+The first was that it was not a woman he had rescued at all, but a boy,
+and, as the flickering firelight played on his face, the ranger came to
+an unexpected recognition. The slim lad facing him was no other than
+Frank Hardman, whom he had left a few days before at the Rocking Chair
+under the care of motherly Mrs. Mackenzie. The young man’s eyes went
+back with instant suspicion to the fellow he had just punished, and his
+suspicions were verified when the leaping light revealed the face of
+the showman Anderson.
+
+Bucky laughed. “I ce’tainly seem to be interfering in your affairs a
+good deal, Mr. Anderson. You may take my word for it that you was the
+last person in the world I expected to meet here, unless it might be
+this boy. I left him safe at a ranch fifty miles from here, and I left
+you a staid business man of Epitaph. But it seems neither of you stayed
+hitched. Why for this yearning to travel?”
+
+“He found me where I was staying. I was out riding alone on an errand
+for Mrs. Mackenzie when he met me and made me go with him. He has
+arranged to have me meet his wife in Mexico. The show wouldn’t draw
+well without me. You know I do legerdemain,” Frank explained, in his
+low, sweet voice.
+
+“So you had plans of your own, Mr. Anderson. Now, that was right
+ambitious of you. But I reckon I’ll have to interfere with them again.
+Go through him, kid, and relieve him of any guns he happens to be
+garnished with. Might as well help yourself to his knives, too. He’s so
+fond of letting them fly around promiscuous he might hurt himself.
+Good. Now we can sit down and have a friendly talk. Where did you say
+you was intending to spend the next few weeks before I interrupted so
+unthinking and disarranged your plans? I’m talking to you, Mr.
+Anderson.”
+
+“I was heading for Sonora,” the man whined.
+
+What Bucky thought was: “Right strange direction to be taking for
+Sonora. I’ll bet my pile you were going up into the hills to meet some
+of Wolf Leroy’s gang. But why you were taking the kid along beats me,
+unless it was just cussedness.” What he said was:
+
+“Oh, you’ll like Epitaph a heap better. I allow you ought to stay at
+that old town. It’s a real interesting place. Finished in the adobe
+style and that sort of thing. The jail’s real comfy, too.”
+
+“Would you like something to eat, sir?” presently asked Frank timidly.
+
+“Would I? Why, I’m hungry enough to eat a leather mail-sack. Trot on
+your grub, young man, and watch my smoke.”
+
+Bucky did ample justice to the sandwiches and lemonade the lad set in
+front of him, but he ate with a wary eye on a possible insurrection on
+the part of his prisoner.
+
+“I’m a new man,” he announced briskly, when he had finished. “That veal
+loaf sandwich went sure to the right spot. If you had been a young lady
+instead of a boy you couldn’t fix things up more appetizing.”
+
+The lad’s face flushed with embarrassment, apparently at the ranger’s
+compliment, and the latter, noticed how delicate the small face was. It
+made an instinctive, wistful appeal for protection, and Bucky felt an
+odd little stirring at his tender Irish heart.
+
+“Might think I was the kid’s father to see what an interest I take in
+him,” the young man told himself reprovingly. “It’s all tommyrot, too.
+A boy had ought to have more grit. I expect he needed that licking all
+right I saved him from.”
+
+When Bucky had eaten, the camp things were repacked for travel. Epitaph
+was only twenty-three miles away, and the ranger preferred to ride in
+the cool of the night rather than sit up till daybreak with his
+prisoner. Besides, he could then catch the morning train from that town
+and save almost a day.
+
+So hour after hour they plodded on, the prisoner in front, O’Connor in
+the center, and Frank Hardman bringing up the rear. It was an Arizona
+night of countless stars, with that peculiar soft, velvety atmosphere
+that belongs to no other land or time. In the distance the jagged,
+violet line of mountains rose in silhouette against a sky not many
+shades lighter, while nearer the cool moonlight flooded a land grown
+magical under its divine touch.
+
+The ranger rode with a limp ease that made for rest, his body shifting
+now and again in the saddle, so as to change the weight and avoid
+stiffness.
+
+It must have been well past midnight that he caught the long breath of
+a sigh behind him. The trail had broadened at that point, for they were
+now down in the rolling plain, so that two could ride abreast in the
+road. Bucky fell back and put a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the
+boy.
+
+“Plumb fagged out, kid?” he asked.
+
+“I am tired. Is it far?”
+
+“About four miles. Stick it out, and we’ll be there in no time.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Don’t call me sir. Call me Bucky.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+Bucky laughed. “You’re ce’tainly the queerest kid I’ve run up against.
+I guess you didn’t scramble up in this rough-and-tumble West like I
+did. You’re too soft for this country.” He let his firm brown fingers
+travel over the lad’s curly hair and down the smooth cheek. “There it
+is again. Shrinking away as if I was going to hurt you. I’ll bet a
+biscuit you never licked the stuffing out of another fellow in your
+life.”
+
+“No, sir,” murmured the youth, and Bucky almost thought he detected a
+little, chuckling laugh.
+
+“Well, you ought to be ashamed of it. When come back from old Mexico
+I’m going to teach you how to put up your dukes. You’re going to ride
+the range with me, son, and learn to stick to your saddle when the
+bronc and you disagrees. Oh, I’ll bet all you need is training. I’ll
+make a man out of you yet,” the ranger assured his charge cheerfully.
+“Will you?” came the innocent reply, but Bucky for a moment had the
+sense of being laughed at.
+
+“Yes, I ‘will you,’ sissy,” he retorted, without the least
+exasperation. “Don’t think you know it all. Right now you’re riding
+like a wooden man. You want to take it easy in the saddle. There’s
+about a dozen different positions you can take to rest yourself.” And
+Bucky put him through a course of sprouts. “Don’t sit there laughing at
+folks that knows a heap more than you ever will get in your noodle, and
+perhaps you won’t be so done up at the end of a little jaunt like
+this,” he concluded. And to his conclusion he presently added a
+postscript: “Why, I know kids your age can ride day and night for a
+week on the round-up without being all in. How old are you, son?”
+
+“Eighteen.”
+
+“That’s a lie,” retorted the ranger, with immediate frankness. “You’re
+not a day over fifteen, I’ll bet.”
+
+“I meant to say fifteen,” meekly corrected the youth.
+
+“That’s another of them. You meant to say eighteen, but you found I
+wouldn’t swallow it. Now, Master Frank, you want to learn one thing
+prompt if you and I are to travel together. I can’t stand a liar. You
+tell the truth, or I’ll give you the best licking you ever had in your
+life.”
+
+“You’re as bad a bully as he is,” the boy burst out, flushing angrily.
+
+“Oh, no, I’m not,” came the ranger’s prompt unmoved answer. “But just
+because you’re such a weak little kid that I could break you in two
+isn’t any reason why I should put up with any foolishness from you. I
+mean to see that you act proper, the way an honest kid ought to do.
+Savvy?”
+
+“I’d like to know who made you my master?” demanded the boy hotly.
+
+“You’ve ce’tainly been good and spoiled, but you needn’t ride your high
+hawss with me. Here’s the long and the short of it. To tell lies ain’t
+square. If I ask you anything you don’t want to answer tell me to go to
+hell, but don’t lie to me. If you do I’ll punish you the same as if you
+were my brother, so long as you trail with me. If you don’t like it,
+cut loose and hit the pike for yourself.”
+
+“I’ve a good mind to go.”
+
+Bucky waved a hand easily into space. “That’s all right, too, son.
+There’s a heap of directions you can hit from here. Take any one you
+like. But if I was as beat as you are, I think I’d keep on the Epitaph
+road.” He laughed his warm, friendly laugh, before the geniality of
+which discord seemed to melt, and again his arm went round the other’s
+weary shoulders with a caressing gesture that was infinitely
+protecting.
+
+The boy laughed tremulously. “You’re awfully good to me. I know I’m a
+cry-baby, sissy boy, but if you’ll be patient with me I’ll try to be
+gamer.”
+
+It certainly was strange the way Bucky’s pulse quickened and his blood
+tingled when he touched the little fellow and heard that velvet voice’s
+soft murmur. Yes, it surely was strange, but perhaps the young
+Irishman’s explanation was not the correct one, after all. The cause he
+offered to himself for this odd joy and tender excitement was perfectly
+simple.
+
+“I’m surely plumb locoed, or else gone soft in the haid,” he told
+himself grimly.
+
+But the reason for those queer little electric shocks that pulsed
+through him was probably a more elemental and primeval one than even
+madness.
+
+Arrived at Epitaph, Bucky turned loose his prisoner with a caution and
+made his preparations to leave immediately for Chihuahua. Collins had
+returned to Tucson, but was in touch with the situation and ready to
+set out for any point where he was needed.
+
+Bucky, having packed, was confronted with a difficulty. He looked at
+it, and voiced his perplexity.
+
+“Now, what am I going to do with you, Curly Haid? I expect I had better
+ship you back to the Rocking Chair.”
+
+“I don’t want to go back there. He’ll come out again and find me after
+you leave.”
+
+“Where do you want to go, then? If you were a girl I could put you in
+the convent school here,” he reflected aloud.
+
+Again that swift, deep blush irradiated the youth’s cheeks. “Why can’t
+I go with you?” he asked shyly.
+
+The ranger laughed. “Mebbe you think I’m going on a picnic. Why, I’m
+starting out to knock the chip off Old Man Trouble’s shoulder. Like as
+not some greaser will collect Mr. Bucky’s scalp down in _mañana_ land.
+No, sir, this doesn’t threaten to be a Y. P. S. C. E. excursion.”
+
+“If it is so dangerous as that, you will need help. I’m awful good at
+making up, and I can speak Spanish like a native.”
+
+“Sho! You don’t want to go running your neck into a noose. It’s a
+jail-break I’m planning, son. There may be guns a-popping before we get
+back to God’s country—if we ever do. Add to that, trouble and then
+some, for there’s a revolution scheduled for old Chihuahua just now, as
+your uncle happens to know from reliable information.”
+
+“Two can always work better than one. Try me, Bucky,” pleaded the boy,
+the last word slipping out with a trailing upward inflection that was
+irresistible.
+
+“Sure you won’t faint if we get in a tight pinch, Curly?” scoffed
+O’Connor, even though in his mind he was debating a surrender. For he
+was extraordinarily taken with the lad, and his judgment justified what
+the boy had said.
+
+“I shall not be afraid if you are with me.”
+
+“But I may not be with you. That’s the trouble. Supposing I should be
+caught, what would you do?”
+
+“Follow any orders you had given me before that time. If you had not
+given any, I would use my best judgment.”
+
+“I’ll give them now,” smiled Bucky. “If I’m lagged, make straight for
+Arizona and tell Webb Mackenzie or Val Collins.”
+
+“Then you _will_ take me?” cried the boy eagerly.
+
+“Only on condition that you obey orders explicitly. I’m running this
+cutting-out expedition.”
+
+“I wouldn’t think of disobeying.”
+
+“And I don’t want you to tell me any lies.”
+
+“No.”
+
+Bucky’s big brown fist caught the little one and squeezed it. “Then
+it’s a deal, kid. I only hope I’m doing right to take you.”
+
+“Of course you are. Haven’t you promised to make a man of me?” And
+again Bucky caught that note of stifled laughter in the voice, though
+the big brown eyes met his quite seriously.
+
+They took the train that night for El Paso, Bucky in the lower berth
+and his friend in the upper of section six of one of the Limited’s
+Pullman cars. The ranger was awake and up with the day. For a couple of
+hours he sat in the smoking section and discussed politics with a
+Chicago drummer. He knew that Frank was very tired, and he let him
+sleep till the diner was taken on at Lordsburg. Then he excused himself
+to the traveling man.
+
+“I reckon I better go and wake up my pardner. I see the chuck-wagon is
+toddling along behind us.”
+
+Bucky drew aside the curtains and shook the boy gently by the shoulder.
+Frank’s eyes opened and looked at the ranger with that lack of
+comprehension peculiar to one roused suddenly from deep sleep.
+
+“Time to get up, Curly. The nigger just gave the first call for the
+chuck-wagon.”
+
+An understanding of the situation flamed over the boy’s face. He
+snatched the curtains from the Arizonian and gathered them tightly
+together. “I’ll thank you not to be so familiar,” he said shortly from
+behind the closed curtains.
+
+“I beg your pahdon, your royal highness. I should have had myself
+announced and craved an audience, I reckon,” was Bucky’s ironic retort;
+and swiftly on the heels of it he added. “You make me tired, kid.”
+
+O’Connor was destined to be “made tired” a good many times in the
+course of the next few days. In all the little personal intimacies
+Frank possessed a delicate fastidiousness outside the experience of the
+ranger. He was a scrupulously clean man himself, and rather nice as to
+his personal habits, but it did not throw him into a flame of
+embarrassment to brush his teeth before his fellow passengers. Nor did
+it send him into a fit if a friend happened to drop into his room while
+he was finishing his dressing. Bucky agreed with himself that this
+excess of shyness was foolishness, and that to indulge the boy was
+merely to lay up future trouble for him. A dozen times he was on the
+point of speaking his mind on the subject, but some unusual quality of
+innocence in the lad tied his tongue.
+
+“Blame it all, I’m getting to be a regular old granny. What Master
+Frank needs is a first-class dressing-down, and here the little cuss
+has got me bluffed to a fare-you-well so that I’m mum as a hooter on
+the nest,” he admitted to himself ruefully. “Just when something comes
+up that needs a good round damn I catch that big brown Sunday school
+eye of his, and it’s Bucky back to Webster’s unabridged. I’ve got to
+quit trailing with him, or I’ll be joining the church first thing I
+know. He makes me feel like I want to be _good_, confound the little
+swindle.”
+
+Notwithstanding the ranger’s occasional moments of exasperation, the
+two got along swimmingly. Each of them found a continued pleasure in
+delving into the other’s unexplored mental recesses. They drifted into
+one of those quick, spontaneous likings that are rare between man and
+man. Some subtle quality of affection bubbled up like a spring in the
+hearts of each for the other. Young Hardman could perhaps have
+explained what lay at the roots of it, but O’Connor admitted that he
+was “buffaloed” when he attempted an analysis of his unusual feeling.
+
+From El Paso a leisurely run on the Mexican Central Pacific took them
+to Chihuahua, a quaint old city something about the size of El Paso.
+Both Bucky and his friend were familiar with the manners of the
+country, so that they felt at home among the narrow adobe streets, the
+lounging, good-natured peons, and the imitation Moorish architecture.
+They found rooms at a quiet, inconspicuous hotel, and began making
+their plans for an immediate departure in the event that they succeeded
+in their object.
+
+At a distance it had seemed an easy thing to plan the escape of David
+Henderson and to accomplish it by craft, but a sight of the heavy stone
+walls that encircled the prison and of the numerous armed guards who
+paced to and fro on the walls, put a more chilling aspect on their
+chances.
+
+“It isn’t a very gay outlook,” Bucky admitted cheerfully to his
+companion, “but I expect we can pull it off somehow. If these Mexican
+officials weren’t slower than molasses in January it might have been
+better to wait and have him released by process of law on account of
+Hardman’s confession. But it would take them two or three years to come
+to a decision. They sure do hate to turn loose a gringo when they have
+got the hog-tie on him. Like as not they would decide against him at
+the last, then. Course I’ve got the law machinery grinding, too, but
+I’m not banking on it real heavy. We’ll get him out first any old way,
+then get the government to O. K. the thing.”
+
+“How were you thinking of proceeding?”
+
+“I expect it’s time to let you in on the ground floor, son. I reckon
+you happen to know that down in these Spanish countries there’s usually
+a revolution hatching. There s two parties among the aristocrats, those
+for the government and those ferninst. The ‘ins’ stand pat, but the
+‘outs’ have always got a revolution up their sleeves. Now, there’s
+mostly a white man mixed up in the affair. They have to have him to run
+it and to shoot afterward when the government wins. You see, somebody
+has to be shot, and it’s always so much to the good if they can line up
+gringoes instead of natives. Nine times out of ten it’s an
+Irish-American lad that is engineering the scheme. This time it happens
+to be Mickey O’Halloran, an old friend of mine. I’m going to put it up
+to Mick to find a way.”
+
+“But it isn’t any affair of his. He won’t do it, will he?”
+
+“Oh, I thought I told you he was Irish.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And spoiling for trouble, of course. Is it likely he could keep his
+fist out of the hive when there’s such a gem of a chance to get stung?”
+
+It had been Frank’s suggestion that they choose rooms at a hotel which
+open into each other and also connect with an adjoining pair. The
+reason for this had not at first been apparent to the ranger, but as
+soon as they were alone Frank explained.
+
+“It is very likely that we shall be under surveillance after a day or
+two, especially if we are seen around the prison a good deal. Well,
+we’ll slip out the back way to-night, disguised in some other rig, come
+boldly in by the front door, and rent the rooms next ours. Then we
+shall be able to go and come, either as ourselves or as our neighbors.
+It will give us a great deal more liberty.”
+
+“Unless we should get caught. Then we would have a great deal less.
+What’s your notion of a rig-up to disguise us, kid?”
+
+“We might have several, in case of emergencies. For one thing, we could
+easily be street showmen. You can do fancy shooting and I can do
+sleight-of-hand tricks or tell fortunes.”
+
+“You would be a gipsy lad?”
+
+The youngster blushed. “A gipsy girl, and you might be my husband.”
+
+“I’m no play actor, even if you are,” said Bucky. “I don’t want to be
+your husband, thank you.”
+
+“All you would have to do is to be sullen and rough. It is easy
+enough.”
+
+“And you think you could pass for a girl? You’re slim and soft enough,
+but I’ll bet you would give it away inside of an hour.”
+
+The boy laughed, and shot a swift glance at O’Connor under his long
+lashes. “I appeared as a girl in one of the acts of the show for years.
+Nobody ever suspected that I wasn’t.”
+
+“We might try it, but we have no clothes for the part.”
+
+“Leave that to me. I’ll buy some to-day while you are looking the
+ground over for our first assault an the impregnable fortress.”
+
+“I don’t know. It seems to me pretty risky. But you might buy the
+things, and we’ll see how you look in them. Better not get all the
+things at the same store. Sort of scatter your purchases around.”
+
+They separated at the door of the hotel, Frank to choose the materials
+he needed, and O’Connor to look up O’Halloran and get a permit to visit
+the prison from the proper authorities. When the latter returned
+triumphantly with his permit he found the boy busy with a needle and
+thread and surrounded by a litter of dress-making material.
+
+“I’m altering this to fit me and fixing it up,” he explained.
+
+“Holy smoke! Who taught you to sew?” asked Bucky, in surprise.
+
+“My aunt, Mrs. Hardman. I used to do all the plain sewing on my
+costumes. Did you see your friend and get your permit?”
+
+“You bet I did, and didn’t. Mickey was out, but I left him a note. The
+other thing I pulled off all right. I’m to be allowed to visit the
+prison and make a careful inspection of it at my leisure. There’s
+nothing like a pull, son.”
+
+“Does the permit say you are to be allowed to steal any one of the
+prisoners you take a fancy to? asked Frank, with a smile.
+
+“No, it forgot to say that. When do you expect to have that toggery
+made?”
+
+“A good deal of it is already made, as you see. I’m just making a few
+changes. Do you want to try on your suit?”
+
+“Is _this_ mine?” asked the ranger, picking up with smiling contempt
+the rather gaudy blouse that lay on a chair.
+
+“Yes, sir, that is yours. Go and put it on and we’ll see how it fits.”
+
+Bucky returned a few minutes later in his gipsy uniform, with a
+deprecating grin.
+
+“I’ll have to stain your face. Then you’ll do very well,” said Frank,
+patting and pulling at the clothes here and there. “It’s a good fit, if
+I do say it that chose it. The first thing you want to do when you get
+out in it is to roll in the dust and get it soiled. No respectable
+gipsy wears new clothes. Better have a tear or two in it, too.”
+
+“You ce’tainly should have been a girl, the way you take to clothes,
+Curly.”
+
+“Making up was my business for a good many years, you know,” returned
+the lad quietly. “If you’ll step into the other room for about fifteen
+minutes I’ll show you how well I can do it.”
+
+It was a long half-hour later that Bucky thumped on the door between
+the rooms. “Pretty nearly ready, kid? Seems to me it is taking you a
+thundering long time to get that outfit on.”
+
+“How long do you think it ought to take a lady to dress?”
+
+“Ten minutes is long enough, and fifteen, say, if she is going to a
+dance. You’ve been thirty-five by my Waterbury.”
+
+“It’s plain you never were married, Mr. Innocent. Why, a girl can’t fix
+her hair in less than half an hour.”
+
+“Well, you got a wig there, ain’t you? It doesn’t take but about five
+seconds to stick that on. Hurry up, _amigo!_ I’m clean through this old
+newspaper.”
+
+“Read the advertisements,” came saucily through the door.
+
+“I’ve read the durned things twice.”
+
+“Learn them by heart,” the sweet voice advised.
+
+“Oh, you go to Halifax!”
+
+Nevertheless, Mr. Bucky had to wait his comrade’s pleasure. But when he
+got a vision of the result, it was so little what he had expected that
+it left him staring in amazement, his jaw fallen and his eyes
+incredulous.
+
+The vision swept him a low bow. “How do you like Bonita?” it demanded
+gaily.
+
+Bucky’s eyes circled the room, to make sure that the boy was not hidden
+somewhere, and came back to rest on his surprise with a look that was
+almost consternation. Was this vivid, dazzling creature the boy he had
+been patronizing, lecturing, promising to thrash any time during the
+past four days? The thing was unbelievable, not yet to be credited by
+his jarred brain. How incredibly blind he had been! What an idiot of
+sorts! Why, the marks of sex sat on her beyond any possibility of
+doubt. Every line of the slim, lissom figure, every curve of the soft,
+undulating body, the sweep of rounded arm, of tapering waist-line, of
+well-turned ankle, contributed evidence of what it were folly to ask
+further proof. How could he have ever seen those lovely, soft-lashed
+eyes and the delicate little hands without conviction coming home to
+him? And how could he have heard the low murmur of her voice, the catch
+of her sobs, without knowing that they were a denial of masculinity?
+
+She was dressed like a Spanish dancing girl, in short kilts, red sash,
+and jaunty little cap placed sidewise on her head. She wore a wig of
+black hair, and her face was stained to a dusky, gipsy hue. Over her
+thumb hung castanets and in her hand was a tambourine. Roguishly she
+began to sway into a slow, rhythmic dance, beating time with her
+instruments as she moved. Gradually the speed quickened to a faster
+time. She swung gracefully to and fro with all the lithe agility of the
+race she personified. No part could have been better conceived or
+executed. Even physically she displayed the large, brilliant eyes, the
+ringleted, coal-black hair, the tawny skin, and the flashing smile that
+showed small teeth of dazzling ivory, characteristic of the Romanies he
+had met. It was a daring part to play, but the young man watching
+realized that she had the free grace to carry it out successfully. She
+danced the fandango to a finish, swept him another low bow, and
+presented laughingly to him the tambourine for his donation. Then,
+suddenly flinging aside the instrument, she curtsied and caught at his
+hand.
+
+“Will the señor have his fortune told?”
+
+Bucky drew a handful of change from his pocket and selected a gold
+eagle. “I suppose I must cross your palm with gold,” he said, even
+while his subconscious mind was running on the new complication
+presented to him by this discovery.
+
+He was very clear about one thing. He must not let her know that he
+knew her for a girl. To him she must still be a boy, or their relation
+would become impossible. She had trusted in her power to keep her
+secret from him. On no other terms would she have come with him; of so
+much he was sure, even while his mind groped for a sufficient reason to
+account for an impulse that might have impelled her. If she found out
+that he knew, the knowledge would certainly drive her at once from him.
+For he knew that not the least charm of the extraordinary fascination
+she had for him lay in her sweet innocence of heart, a fresh innocence
+that consisted with this gay Romany abandon, and even with a mental
+experience of the sordid, seamy side of life as comprehensive as that
+of many a woman twice her age. She had been defrauded out of her
+childish inheritance of innocence, but, somehow, even in her foul
+environment the seeds of a rare personal purity had persistently sprung
+up and flourished. Some flowers are of such native freshness that no
+nauseous surroundings can kill their fragrance. And this was one of
+them.
+
+Meanwhile, her voice ran on with the patter of her craft. There was the
+usual dark woman to be circumvented and the light one to be rewarded.
+Jealousies and rivalries played their part in the nonsense she glibly
+recited, and somewhere in the future lay, of course, great riches and
+happiness for him.
+
+With a queer little tug at his heart he watched the dainty finger that
+ran so lightly over his open palm, watched, too, the bent head so
+gracefully fine of outline and the face so mobile of expression when
+the deep eyes lifted to his in question of the correctness of her
+reading. He would miss the little partner that had wound himself so
+tightly round his heart. He wondered if he would find compensating joy
+in this exquisite creature whom a few moments had taken worlds distant
+from him.
+
+Suddenly tiring of her diversion, she dropped his hand. “You don’t say
+I do it well,” she charged, aware suspiciously, at last, of his grave
+silence.
+
+“You do it very well indeed. I didn’t think you had it in you, kid.
+What’s worrying me is that I can never live up to such a sure enough
+gipsy as you.”
+
+“All you have to do is to look sour and frown if anybody gets too
+familiar with me. You can do that, can’t you?”
+
+“You bet I can,” he answered promptly, with unnecessary emphasis.
+
+“And look handsome,” she teased.
+
+“Oh, that will be easy for me—since you are going to make me up. As a
+simple child of nature I’m no ornament to the scenery, but art’s a heap
+improving sometimes.”
+
+She thought, but did not say, that art would go a long way before it
+could show anything more pleasing than this rider of the plains. It was
+not alone his face, with the likable blue eyes that could say so many
+things in a minute, but the gallant ease of his bearing. Such a springy
+lightness, such sinewy grace of undulating muscle, were rare even on
+the frontier. She had once heard Webb Mackenzie say of him that he
+could whip his weight in wildcats, and it was easy of belief after
+seeing how surely he was master of the dynamic power in him. It is the
+emergency that sifts men, and she had seen him rise to several with a
+readiness that showed the stuff in him.
+
+That evening they slipped out unobserved in the dusk, and a few minutes
+later a young gipsy and his bride presented themselves at the inn to be
+put up. The scowling young Romany was particular, considering that he
+spent most nights in the open, with a sky for a roof. So the master of
+the inn thought when he rejected on one pretense or another the first
+two rooms that were shown him. He wanted two rooms, and they must
+connect. Had the innkeeper such apartments? The innkeeper had, but he
+would very much like to see the price in advance if he was going to
+turn over to guests of such light baggage the best accommodations in
+the house. This being satisfactorily arranged, the young gipsies were
+left to themselves in the room they had rented.
+
+The first thing that the man did when they were alone was to roll a
+cigarette, which operation he finished deftly with one hand, while the
+other swept a match in a circular motion along his trousers leg. In
+very fair English the Spanish gipsy said: “You ce’tainly ought to learn
+to smoke, kid. Honest, it’s more comfort than a wife.”
+
+“How do you know, since you are not married?” she asked archly.
+
+“I been noticing some of my poor unfortunate friends,” he grinned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+IN THE LAND OF REVOLUTIONS
+
+
+The knock that sounded on the door was neither gentle nor apologetic.
+It sounded as if somebody had flung a baseball bat at it.
+
+O’Connor smiled, remembering that soft tap of yore. “I reckon—” he was
+beginning, when the door opened to admit a visitor.
+
+This proved to be a huge, red-haired Irishman, with a face that served
+just now merely as a setting for an irresistible smile. The owner of
+the flaming head looked round in surprise on the pair of Romanies and
+began an immediate apology to which a sudden blush served as
+accompaniment.
+
+“Beg pardon. I didn’t know. The damned dago told me—” He stopped in
+confusion, with a scrape and a bow to the lady.
+
+“Sir, I demand an explanation of this most unwarrantable intrusion,”
+spoke the ranger haughtily, in his best Spanish.
+
+A patter of soft foreign vowels flowed from the stranger’s
+embarrassment.
+
+“You durned old hawss-stealing greaser, cayn’t you talk English?”
+drawled the gipsy, with a grin.
+
+The other’s mouth fell open with astonishment He stared at the slim,
+dusky young Spaniard for an instant before he fell upon him and began
+to pound his body with jovial fists.
+
+“You would, would you, you old pie-eating fraud! Try to fool your Uncle
+Mick and make him think you a greaser, would you? I’ll learn yez to
+play horse with a fullgrown, able-bodied white man.” He punctuated his
+points with short-arm jolts that Bucky laughingly parried.
+
+“Before ladies, Mick! Haven’t you forgot your manners, Red-haid?”
+
+Swiftly Mr. O’Halloran came to flushed rigidity. “Madam, I must still
+be apologizing. The surprise of meeting me friend went to me head, I
+shouldn’t wonder.”
+
+Bucky doubled up with apparent mirth. “Get into the other room, Curly,
+and get your other togs on,” he ordered. “Can’t you see that Mick is
+going to fall in love with you if he sees you a minute longer, you
+young rascal? Hike!”
+
+“Don’t you talk that way to a lady, Bucky,” warned O’Halloran, again
+blushing vividly, after she had disappeared into the next room. “And I
+want to let yez have it right off the bat that if you’ve been leading
+that little Mexican señorita into trouble you’ve got a quarrel on with
+Mike O’Halloran.”
+
+“Keep your shirt on, old fire-eater. Who told you I was wronging her
+any?”
+
+“Are you married to her?”
+
+“You bet I ain’t. You see, Mick, that handsome lady you’re going to
+lick the stuffing out of me about is only a plumb ornery sassy young
+boy, after all.”
+
+“No!” denied Mick, his eyes two excited interrogation-points. “You
+can’t stuff me with any such fairy-tale, me lad.”
+
+“All right. Wait and see,” suggested the ranger easily. “Have a smoke
+while you’re falling out of love.”
+
+“You young limb, I want you to tell me all about it this very minute,
+before I punch holes in yez.”
+
+Bucky lit his cigar, leaned back, and began to tell the story of Frank
+Hardman and the knife-thrower. Only one thing he omitted to tell, and
+that was the conviction that had come home to him a few moments ago
+that his little comrade was no boy, but a woman. O’Halloran was a
+chivalrous Irishman, a daredevil of an adventurer, with a pure love of
+freedom that might very likely in the end bring him to face a row of
+loaded carbines with his back to a wall, but Bucky had his reticencies
+that even loyal friendship could not break down. This girl’s secret he
+meant to guard until such time as she chose of her own free will to
+tell it.
+
+Frank returned just as he finished the tale of the knife episode, and
+Mick’s frank open eyes accused him of idiocy for ever having supposed
+that this lad was a woman. Why, he was a little fellow not over
+fifteen—not a day past fifteen, he would swear to that. He was, to be
+sure, a slender, girlish young fellow, a good deal of a sissy by the
+look of him, but none the less a sure enough boy. Convinced of this,
+the big Irishman dismissed him promptly from his thoughts and devoted
+himself to Bucky.
+
+“And what are yez doing down in greaser land? Thought you was rustling
+cows for a living somewheres in sunburnt Arizona,” he grinned amiably.
+
+“Me? Oh, I came down on business. We’ll talk about that presently.
+How’s your one-hawss revolution getting along, Reddy? I hope it’s right
+peart and healthy.”
+
+O’Halloran’s eyes flashed a warning, with the slightest nod in the
+world toward the boy.
+
+“Don’t worry about him. He’s straight as a string and knows how to keep
+his mouth shut. You can tell him anything you would me.” He turned to
+the boy sitting quietly in an inconspicuous corner. “Mum’s the word,
+Frank. You understand that, of course?”
+
+The boy nodded. “I’ll go into the next room, if you like.”
+
+“It isn’t necessary. Fire ahead, Mike.”
+
+The latter got up, tiptoed to each door in turn, flung it suddenly open
+to see that nobody was spying behind it, and then turned the lock. “I
+have use for me head for another year or two, and it’s just as well to
+see that nobody is spying. You understand, Bucky, that I’m risking me
+life in telling you what I’m going to. If you have any doubts about
+this lad—” He stopped, keen eyes fixed on Frank.
+
+“He’s as safe as I am, Mike. Is it likely I would take any risks about
+a thing of that sort with my old bunkie’s tough neck inviting the
+hangman?” asked O’Connor quietly.
+
+“Good enough. The kid looks stanch, and, anyhow, if you guarantee him
+that’s enough for me.” He accepted another of the ranger’s cigars,
+puffed it to a red glow, and leaned back to smile at his friend.
+“Glory, but it’s good to see ye, Bucky, me bye. You’ll never know how a
+man’s eyes ache to see a straight-up white man in this land of
+greasers. It’s the God’s truth I’m telling ye when I say that I haven’t
+had a scrimmage with me hands since I came here. The only idea this
+forsaken country has of exchanging compliments is with a knife in the
+dark.” He shook his flaming head regretfully at the deplorably lost
+condition of a country where the shillalah was unknown as a social
+institution.
+
+“If I wasn’t tied up with this Valdez bunch I’d get out to-morrow, and
+sometimes I have half a mind to pull out anyhow. If you’ve never been
+associated, me lad, with half a dozen most divilishly polite señors,
+each one of them watching the others out of the corner of his slant
+eyes for fear they are going to betray him or assassinate him first,
+you’ll never know the joys of life in this peaceful and contented land
+of indolence. Life’s loaded to the guards with uncertainties, so eat,
+drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you hang, or your friend will carve
+ye in the back with a knife, me old priest used to say, or something
+like it. ’Tis certain he must have had in mind the Spanish-American, my
+son.”
+
+“Which is why you’re here, you old fraud,” smiled Bucky. “You’ve got to
+grumble, of course, but you couldn’t be dragged away while there’s a
+chance of a row. Don’t I know you of old, Reddy?”
+
+“Anyway, here I am, with me neck so near to the rope it fairly aches
+sometimes. If you have any inclinations toward suicide, I’ll be glad to
+introduce ye to me revolutionary friends.”
+
+“Thank you, no. The fact is that we have a little private war of our
+own on hand, Mike. I was thinking maybe you’d like to enlist, old
+filibuster.”
+
+“Is the pay good?”
+
+“Nothing a day and find yourself,” answered Bucky promptly.
+
+“No reasonable man could ask fairer than that,” agreed O’Halloran, his
+grin expanding. “Well, then, what’s the row? Would ye like to be
+dictator of Chihuahua or Emperor of Mexico?”
+
+“There’s an American in the government prison here under a life
+sentence. He is not guilty, and he has already served fifteen years.”
+
+“He is like to serve fifteen more, if he lives that long.”
+
+“Wrong guess. I mean to get him out.”
+
+“And I’m meaning to go to Paradise some day, but will I?”
+
+“You’re going to help me get him out, Mike.”
+
+“Who told ye that, me optimistic young friend?”
+
+“I didn’t need to be told.”
+
+“Well, I’ll not lift a finger, Bucky—not a finger.”
+
+“I knew you wouldn’t stand to see a man like Henderson rot in a
+dungeon. No Irishman would.”
+
+“You needn’t blarney me. I’m too old a bird to be caught with chaff.
+It’s a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I’m not
+running the criminal jurisprudence of Mexico meself.”
+
+“And I said to Webb Mackenzie: ‘Mickey O’Halloran is the man to see;
+he’ll know the best way to do it as nobody else would.’ I knew I could
+depend on you.”
+
+“You’ve certainly kissed the blarney stone, Mr. O’Connor,” returned the
+revolutionist dryly. “Well, then, what do you want me to do?”
+
+“Nothing much. Get Henderson out and help us to get safely from the
+country whose reputation you black-eye so cheerfully.”
+
+“Mercy of Hiven! Bring me the moon and a handful of stars, says he, as
+cool as you please.”
+
+The ranger told the story of Henderson and Mackenzie’s lost child in
+such a way that it lost nothing in the telling. O’Halloran was moved.
+“’Tis a damned shame about this man Henderson,” he blurted out.
+
+Bucky leaned back comfortably and waved airily his brown hand. “It’s up
+to you,” his gay, impudent eyes seemed to say.
+
+“I don’t say I won’t be able to help you,” conceded O’Halloran. “It
+happens, me bye, that you’ve dropped in on me just before the band
+begins to play.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “There’s a
+shipment of pianos being brought down the line this week. The night
+after they arrive I’m looking for music.”
+
+“I see. The piano boxes are filled with rifles and ammunition.”
+
+“You have a mind like a tack, Bucky. Rifles is the alias of them
+pianos. They’ll make merry music once we get them through.”
+
+“That’s all very well, but have you reckoned with the government at
+Mexico? Chihuahua isn’t the whole country, Mickey. Suppose President
+Diaz takes a hand in the game and sends troops in on you?”
+
+“He won’t,” answered the other, with a wink. “He’s been seen. The
+president isn’t any too friendly to that old tyrant Megales, who is now
+governor here. There’s an election next week. The man that gets most
+votes will be elected, and I’m thinking, Bucky, that the man with most
+rifles will the most votes. Now, says Diaz, in effect, with an official
+wave of his hand, ‘Settle your own rows, gintlemen. I don’t give a damn
+whether Megales or Valdez is governor of Chihuahua, subject, of coorse,
+to the will of the people.’ Then he winks at Valdez wid his off eye as
+much as to say: ‘Go in an’ win, me boy; me prayers are supporting ye.
+But be sure ye do nothing too illegal.’ So there ye are, Bucky. If ould
+Megales was to wake up election morning and find that the
+polling-places was in our hands, his soldiers disarmed or bought over,
+and everything contributing smoothly to express the will of the people
+in electing him to take a swift hike out of Chihuahua, it is likely
+that he might accept the inevitable as the will of fate and make a
+strategic retreat to climes more healthy.”
+
+“And if in the meantime he should discover those rifles, or one of
+those slant-eyed señors should turn out a Benedict Arnold, what then,
+my friend?”
+
+“Don’t talk in that cruel way. You make me neck ache in anticipation,”
+returned O’Halloran blithely.
+
+“I think we’ll not travel with you in public till after the election,
+Mr. O’Halloran,” reflected Bucky aloud.
+
+“’Twould be just as well, me son. My friends won’t be overpopular with
+Megales if the cards fall his way.”
+
+“If you win, I suppose we may count Henderson as good as a free man?”
+
+“It would be a pity if me pull wouldn’t do a little thing like that,”
+scoffed the conspirator genially.
+
+“But, win or lose, I may be able to help you. We need musicians to play
+those pianos we’re bringing in. Well, the most dependable men we can
+set to play some of them are the prisoners in the fortress. There’s
+likely to be a wholesale jail delivery the night before the election.
+Now, it’s just probable that the lads we free will fight to keep their
+freedom. That’s why we use them. They _have_ to be true to us because,
+if they don’t, _whichever side wins_ back they go to jail.”
+
+“Of course. I wish I could take a hand myself. But I can’t, because I’m
+a soldier of a friendly power. We’ll get Henderson out the night before
+the election and leave on the late train. You’ll have to arrange the
+program in time for us to catch that train.”
+
+O’Halloran looked drolly at him. “I’m liking your nerve, young man. I
+pull the chestnuts out of the fire for yez and, likely enough, get
+burned. You walk off with your chestnut, and never a ‘Thank ye’ for
+poor Mickey the catspaw.”
+
+“It doesn’t look like quite a square deal, does it?” laughed the
+ranger. “Well, we might vary the program a bit. Bucky O’Connor, Arizona
+ranger, can’t stop and take a hand in such a game, but I don’t know
+anything to prevent a young gipsy from Spain staying over a few days.”
+
+“If you stay, I shall,” announced the boy Frank.
+
+“You’ll do nothing of the kind, seh. You’ll do just as I say, according
+to the agreement you made with me when I let you come,” was Bucky’s
+curt answer. “We’re not playing this game to please you, Master Frank.”
+
+Yet though the ranger spoke curtly, though he still tried to hold
+toward his comrade precisely the same attitude as he had before
+discovering her sex, he could not put into his words the same
+peremptory sting that, he had done before when he found that
+occasionally necessary. For no matter how severely he must seem to deal
+with her to avoid her own suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to
+keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very
+different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with
+which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into
+a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at
+once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even
+front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills
+that shot his pulses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+FIRST BLOOD!
+
+
+Occasionally Alice Mackenzie met Collins on the streets of Tucson. Once
+she saw him at the hotel where she was staying, deep in a discussion
+with her father of ways and means of running down the robbers of the
+Limited. He did not, however, make the least attempt to push their
+train acquaintanceship beyond the give and take of casual greeting.
+Without showing himself unfriendly, he gave her no opportunity to
+determine how far they would go with each other. This rather piqued
+her, though she would probably have rebuffed him if he had presumed
+far. Of which probability Val Collins was very well aware.
+
+They met one morning in front of a drug store downtown. She carried a
+parasol that was lilac-trimmed, which shade was also the outstanding
+note of her dress. She was looking her very best, and no doubt knew it.
+To Val her dainty freshness seemed to breathe the sweetness of spring
+violets.
+
+“Good morning, Miss Mackenzie. Weather like this I’m awful glad I ain’t
+a mummy,” he told her. “The world’s mighty full of beautiful things
+this glad day.”
+
+“Essay on the Appreciation of Nature, by Professor Collins,” she
+smiled.
+
+“To be continued in our next,” he amended. “Won’t you come in and have
+a sundae? You look as if you didn’t know it, but the rest of us have
+discovered it’s a right warm morning.”
+
+Looking across the little table at him over her sundae, she questioned
+him with innocent impudence. “I saw you and dad deep in plans Tuesday.
+I suppose by now you have all the train robbers safely tucked away in
+the penitentiary?”
+
+“Not yet,” he answered cheerfully.
+
+“Not yet!” Her lifted eyebrows and the derisive flash beneath mocked
+politely his confidence. “By this time I should think they might be
+hunting big game in deepest Africa.”
+
+“They might be, but they’re not.”
+
+“What about that investment in futurities you made on the train? The
+month is more than half up. Do you see any chance of realizing?”
+
+“It looks now as if I might be a false prophet, but I feel way down
+deep that I won’t. In this prophet’s business confidence is half the
+stock in trade.”
+
+“Really. I’m very curious to know what it is you predicted. Was it
+something good?”
+
+“Good for me,” he nodded.
+
+“Then I think you’ll get it,” she laughed. “I have noticed that it is
+the people that expect things—and then go out and take them—that
+inherit the earth these days. The meek have been dispossessed.”
+
+“I’m glad I have your good wishes.”
+
+“I didn’t say you had, but you’ll get along just as well without them,”
+she answered with a cool little laugh as she rose.
+
+“I’d like to discuss that proposition with you more at length. May I
+call on you some evening this week, Miss Mackenzie?”
+
+There was a sparkle of hidden malice in her answer. “You’re too late,
+Mr. Collins. We’ll have to leave it undiscussed. I’m going to leave
+to-day for my uncle s ranch, the Rocking Chair.”
+
+He was distinctly disappointed, though he took care not to show it.
+Nevertheless, the town felt empty after her train had gone. He was glad
+when later in the day a message came calling him to Epitaph. It took
+him at least seventy-five miles nearer her.
+
+Before he had been an hour at Epitaph the sheriff knew he had struck
+gold this time. Men were in town spending money lavishly, and at a
+rough description they answered to the ones he wanted. Into the Gold
+Nugget Saloon that evening dropped Val Collins, big, blond, and jaunty.
+He looked far less the vigorous sheriff out for business than the
+gregarious cowpuncher on a search for amusement.
+
+Del Hawkes, an old-time friend of his staging days, pounced on him and
+dragged him to the bar, whence his glance fell genially on the roulette
+wheel and its devotees, wandered casually across the impassive poker
+and Mexican monte players, took in the enthroned musicians, who were
+industriously murdering “La Paloma,” and came to rest for barely an
+instant at a distant faro table. In the curly-haired good-looking young
+fellow facing the dealer he saw one of the men he had come seeking. Nor
+did he need to look for the hand with the missing trigger finger to be
+sure it was York Neil—that same gay, merry-hearted York with whom he
+used to ride the range, changed now to a miscreant who had elected to
+take the short cut to wealth.
+
+But the man beside Neil, the dark-haired, pallid fellow from whose
+presence something at once formidable and sinister and yet gallant
+seemed to breathe—the very sight of him set the mind of Collins at work
+busily upon a wild guess. Surely here was a worthy figure upon whom to
+set the name and reputation of the notorious Wolf Leroy.
+
+Yet the sheriff’s eyes rested scarce an instant before they went
+traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in
+the object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one,
+picturesque in its diversity. For here had drifted not only the
+stranded derelicts of a frontier civilization, but selected types of
+all the turbid elements that go to make up its success. Mexican,
+millionaire, and miner brushed shoulders at the roulette-wheel.
+Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and plainsman, tourist and tailor,
+bucked the tiger side by side with a democracy found nowhere else in
+the world. The click of the wheel, the monotonous call of the croupier,
+the murmur of many voices in alien tongues, and the high-pitched
+jarring note of boisterous laughter, were all merged in a medley of
+confusion as picturesque as the scene itself.
+
+“Business not anyways slack at the Nugget,” ventured Collins, to the
+bartender.
+
+“No, I don’t know as ’tis. Nearly always somethin’ doing in little old
+Epitaph,” answered the public quencher of thirsts, polishing the glass
+top of the bar with a cloth.
+
+“Playing with the lid off back there, ain’t they?” The sheriff’s nod
+indicated the distant faro-table.
+
+“That’s right, I guess. Only blue chips go.”
+
+“It’s Wolf Leroy—that Mexican-looking fellow there,” Hawkes explained
+in a whisper. “A bad man with the gun, they say, too. Well, him and
+York Neil and Scotty Dailey blew in last night from their mine, up at
+Saguache. Gave it out he was going to break the bank, Leroy did.
+Backing that opinion usually comes high, but Leroy is about two
+thousand to the good, they say.”
+
+“Scotty Dailey? Don’t think I know him.”
+
+“That shorthorn in chaps and a yellow bandanna is the gentleman; him
+that’s playing the wheel so constant. You don’t miss no world-beater
+when you don’t know Scotty. He’s Leroy’s Man Friday. Understand they’ve
+struck it rich. Anyway, they’re hitting high places while the mazuma
+lasts.”
+
+“I can’t seem to locate their mine. What’s its brand?”
+
+“The Dalriada. Some other guy is in with them; fellow by the name of
+Hardman, if I recollect; just bought out a livery barn in town here.”
+
+“Queer thing, luck; strikes about as unexpected as lightning. Have
+another, Del?”
+
+“Don’t care if I do, Val. It always makes me thirsty to see people I
+like. Anything new up Tucson way?”
+
+The band had fallen on “Manzanilla,” and was rending it with variations
+when Collins circled round to the wheel and began playing the red. He
+took a place beside the bow-legged vaquero with the yellow bandanna
+knotted loosely round his throat. For five minutes the cow-puncher
+attended strictly to his bets. Then he cursed softly, and asked Collins
+to exchange places with him.
+
+“This place is my hoodoo. I can’t win—” The sentence died in the man’s
+throat, became an inarticulate gurgle of dismay.
+
+He had looked up and met the steady eyes of the sheriff, and the
+surprise of it had driven the blood from his heart. A revolver thrust
+into his face could not have shaken him more than that serene smile.
+
+Collins took him by the arm with a jovial laugh meant to cover their
+retreat, and led him into one of the curtained alcove rooms. As they
+entered he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Leroy and Neil
+were still intent on their game. Not for a moment, not even while the
+barkeeper was answering their call for liquor, did the sheriff release
+Scotty from the rigor of his eyes, and when the attendant drew the
+curtain behind him the officer let his smile take on a new meaning.
+
+“What did I tell you, Scotty?”
+
+“Prove it,” defied Scotty. “Prove it—you can’t prove it.”
+
+“What can’t I prove?”
+
+“Why, that I was in that—” Scotty stopped abruptly, and watched the
+smile broaden on the strong face opposite him. His dull brain had come
+to his rescue none too soon.
+
+“Now, ain’t it funny how people’s thoughts get to running on the same
+thing? Last time I met up with you there you was collecting a hundred
+dollars and keep-the-change cents from me, and now here you are
+spending it. It’s ce’tinly curious how both of us are remembering that
+little seance in the Pullman car.”
+
+Scotty took refuge in a dogged silence. He was sweating fear.
+
+“Yes, sir. It comes up right vivid before me. There was you a-trainin’
+your guns on me—”
+
+“I wasn’t,” broke in Scotty, falling into the trap.
+
+“That’s right. How come I to make such a mistake? Of cou’se you carried
+the sack and York Neil held the guns.”
+
+The man cursed quietly, and relapsed into silence.
+
+“Always buy your clothes in pairs?”
+
+The sheriff’s voice showed only a pleasant interest, but the outlaw’s
+frightened eyes were puzzled at this sudden turn.
+
+“Wearing a bandanna same color and pattern as you did the night of our
+jamboree on the Limited, I see. That’s mightily careless of you, ain’t
+it?”
+
+Instinctively a shaking hand clutched at the kerchief. “It don’t cut
+any ice because a hold-up wears a mask made out of stuff like this.”
+
+“Did I say it was a mask he wore?” the gentle voice quizzed.
+
+Scotty, beads of perspiration on his forehead, collapsed as to his
+defense. He fell back sullenly to his first position: “You can’t prove
+anything.”
+
+“Can’t I?” The sheriff’s smile went out like a snuffed candle. Eyes and
+mouth were cold and hard as chiseled marble. He leaned forward far
+across the table, a confident, dominating assurance painted on his
+face. “Can’t I? Don’t you bank on that. I can prove all I need to, and
+your friends will prove the rest. They’ll be falling all over
+themselves to tell what they know—and Mr. Dailey will be holding the
+sack again, while Leroy and the rest are slipping out.”
+
+The outlaw sprang to his feet, white to the lips.
+
+“It’s a damned lie. Leroy would never—” He stopped, again just in time
+to bite back the confession hovering on his lips. But he had told what
+Collins wanted to know.
+
+The curtain parted, and a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe
+figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face
+gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before
+they came home to the sheriff.
+
+“And what is it Leroy would never do?” a gibing voice demanded silkily.
+
+Scotty pulled himself together and tried to bluff, but at the look on
+his chief’s face the words died in his throat.
+
+Collins did not lift a finger or move an eyelash, but with the first
+word a wary alertness ran through him and starched his figure to
+rigidity. He gathered himself together for what might come.
+
+“Well, I am waiting. What it is Leroy would never do?” The voice
+carried a scoff with it, the implication that his very presence had
+stricken conspirators dumb.
+
+Collins offered the explanation.
+
+“Mr. Dailey was beginning a testimonial of your virtues just as you
+right happily arrived in time to hear it. Perhaps he will now proceed.”
+
+But Dailey had never a word left. His blunders had been crying ones,
+and his chief’s menacing look had warned him what to expect. The
+courage oozed out of his heart, for he counted himself already a dead
+man.
+
+“And who are you, my friend, that make so free with Wolf Leroy’s name?”
+It was odd how every word of the drawling sentence contrived to carry a
+taunt and a threat with it, strange what a deadly menace the glittering
+eyes shot forth.
+
+“My name is Collins.”
+
+“Sheriff of Pica County?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The eyes of the men met like rapiers, as steady and as searching as
+cold steel. Each of them was appraising the rare quality of his
+opponent in this duel to the death that was before him.
+
+“What are you doing here? Ain’t Pica County your range?”
+
+“I’ve been discussing with your friend the late hold-up on the
+Transcontinental Pacific.”
+
+“Ah!” Leroy knew that the sheriff was serving notice on them of his
+purpose to run down the bandits. Swiftly his mind swept up the factors
+of the situation. Should he draw now and chance the result, or wait for
+a more certain ending? He decided to wait, moved by the consideration
+that even if he were victorious the lawyers were sure to draw out of
+the fat-brained Scotty the cause of the quarrel.
+
+“Well, that don’t interest me any, though I suppose you have to explain
+a heap how come they to hold you up and take your gun. I’ll leave you
+and your jelly-fish Scotty to your gabfest. Then you better run back
+home to Tucson. We don’t go much on visiting sheriffs here.” He turned
+on his heel with an insolent laugh, and left the sheriff alone with
+Dailey.
+
+The superb contempt of the man, his readiness to give the sheriff a
+chance to pump out of Dailey all he knew, served to warn Collins that
+his life was in imminent danger. On no hypothesis save one—that Leroy
+had already condemned them both to death in his mind—could he account
+for such rashness. And that the blow would fall soon, before he had
+time to confer with other officers, was a corollary to the first
+proposition.
+
+“He’ll surely kill me on sight,” Scotty burst out.
+
+“Yes, he’ll kill you,” agreed the sheriff, “unless you move first.”
+
+“Move how?”
+
+“Against him. Protect yourself by lining up with me. It’s your only
+show on earth.”
+
+Dailey’s eyes flashed. “Then, by thunder, I ain’t taking it! I’m no
+coyote, to round on my pardners.”
+
+“I give it to you straight. He means murder.”
+
+Perspiration poured from the man’s face. “I’ll light out of the
+country.”
+
+The sheriff shook his head. “You’d never get away alive. Besides, I
+want you for holding up the Limited. The safest place for you is in
+jail, and that’s where I’m going to put you. Drop that gun! Quick!
+That’s right. Now, you and I are going out of this saloon by the back
+door. I’m going to walk beside you, and we’re going to laugh and talk
+as if we were the best of friends, but my hand ain’t straying any from
+the end of my gun. Get that, amigo? All right. Then we’ll take a little
+_pasear_.”
+
+As Collins and his prisoner reappeared in the main lobby of the Gold
+Nugget, a Mexican slipped out of the back door of the gambling-house.
+The sheriff called Hawkes aside.
+
+“I want you to call a hack for me, Del. Bring it round to the back
+door, and arrange with the driver to whip up for the depot as soon as
+we get in. We ought to catch that 12:20 up-train. When the hack gets
+here just show up in the door. If you see Leroy or Neil hanging around
+the door, put your hand up to your tie. If the coast is clear, just
+move off to the bar and order something.”
+
+“Sure,” said Hawkes, and was off at once, though just a thought
+unsteady from his frequent libations.
+
+Both hands of the big clock on the wall pointed to twelve when Hawkes
+appeared again in the doorway at the rear of the Gold Nugget. With a
+wink at Collins, he made straight for the cocktail he thought he
+needed.
+
+“Now,” said the sheriff, and immediately he and Dailey passed through
+the back door.
+
+Instantly two shots rang out. Collins lurched forward to the ground,
+drawing his revolver as he fell. Scotty, twisting from his grasp, ran
+in a crouch toward the alley along the shadow of the buildings. Shots
+spattered against the wall as his pursuers gave chase. When the Gold
+Nugget vomited from its rear door a rush of humanity eager to see the
+trouble, the noise of their footsteps was already dying in the
+distance.
+
+Hawkes found his friend leaning against the back of the hack, his
+revolver smoking in his hand.
+
+“For God’s sake, Val!” screamed Hawkes. “Did they get you?”
+
+“Punctured my leg. That’s all. But I expect they’ll get Dailey.”
+
+“How come you to go out when I signaled you to stay?”
+
+“Signaled me to stay, why—”
+
+Collins stopped, unwilling to blame his friend. He knew now that
+Hawkes, having mixed his drinks earlier in the evening, had mixed his
+signals later.
+
+“Get me a horse, Del, and round up two or three of the boys. I’ve got
+to get after those fellows. They are the ones that held up the Limited
+last week. Find out for me what hotel they put up at here. I want their
+rooms searched. Send somebody round to the corrals, and let me know
+where they stabled their horses. If they left any papers or
+saddle-bags, get them for me.”
+
+Fifteen minutes later Collins was in the saddle ready for the chase,
+and only waiting for his volunteer posse to join him. They were just
+starting when a frightened Chinaman ran into the plaza with the news
+that there had been shooting just back of his laundry on the edge of
+town and that a man had been killed.
+
+When the sheriff reached the spot, he lowered himself from the saddle
+and limped over to the black mass huddled against the wall in the
+bright moonlight. He turned the riddled body over and looked down into
+the face of the dead man. I was that of the outlaw, Scotty Dailey. That
+the body had been thoroughly searched was evident, for all around him
+were scattered his belongings. Here an old letter and a sack of
+tobacco, its contents emptied on the ground; there his coat and vest,
+the linings of each of them ripped out and the pockets emptied. Even
+the boots and socks of the man had been removed, so thorough had been
+the search. Whatever the murderers had been looking for it was not
+money, since his purse, still fairly well lined with greenbacks, was
+found behind a cactus bush a few yards away.
+
+“What in time were they after?” frowned Collins. “If it wasn’t his
+money—and it sure wasn’t—what was it? I ce’tainly would like to know
+what the Wolf wanted so blamed bad. Guess I’ll not follow Mr. Leroy
+just now till my leg is in better shape. Maybe I had better investigate
+a little bit round town first.”
+
+The body was taken back to the Gold Nugget and placed on a table,
+pending the arrival of the undertaker. It chanced that Collins, looking
+absently over the crowd, glimpsed a gray felt hat that looked familiar
+by reason of a frayed silver band found it. Underneath the hat was a
+Mexican, and him the sheriff ordered to step forward.
+
+“Where did you get that hat, Manuel?”
+
+“My name is José—José Archuleta,” corrected the olive-hued one.
+
+“I ain’t worrying about your name, son. What I want to know is where
+you found that hat.”
+
+“In the alley off the plaza, señor.”
+
+“All right. Chuck it up here.”
+
+“_Muy bien, señor_.” And the dusty hat was passed from hand to hand
+till it reached the sheriff.
+
+Collins ripped off the silver band and tore out the sweat-pad. It was
+an off chance—one in a thousand—but worth trying none the less. And a
+moment later he knew it was the chance that won. For sewed to the
+inside of the discolored sweat-pad was a little strip of silk. With his
+knife he carefully removed the strip, and found between it and the
+leather a folded fragment of paper closely covered with writing. He
+carried this to the light, and made it out to be a memorandum of
+direction of some sort. Slowly he spelled out the poorly written words:
+
+From Y. N. took Unowhat. Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight
+feet direckly west. Fifty yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke.
+Then eighteen to nerest cotonwood. J. H. begins hear.
+
+
+Collins read the scrawl twice before an inkling of its meaning came
+home to him. Then in a flash his brain was lighted. It was a memorandum
+of the place where Dailey’s share of the plunder was buried.
+
+His confederates had known that he had it, and had risked capture to
+make a thorough search for the paper. That they had not found it was
+due only to the fact that the murdered man had lost his hat as he
+scurried down the streets before them.
+
+The doctor, having arrived, examined the wound and suggested an
+anaesthetic. Collins laughed.
+
+“I reckon not, doc. You round up that lead pill and I’ll endure the
+grief without knockout drops.”
+
+While the doctor was probing for the bullet lodged in his leg, the
+sheriff studied the memorandum found in Dailey’s hat. He found it
+blind, disappointing work, for there was no clearly indicated
+starting-point. Bit by bit he took it:
+
+From Y. N. took Unowhat.
+
+
+This was clear enough, so far as it went. It could only mean that from
+York Neil the writer had taken the plunder to hide. But _where_ did he
+take it? From what point? A starting-point must be found somewhere, or
+the memorandum was of no use. Probably only Neil could supply the
+needed information, now that Dailey was dead.
+
+Went twenty yards strate for big rock. Eight feet direckly west. Fifty
+yards in direcksion of suthern Antelope Peke. Then eighteen to nerest
+cotonwood.
+
+
+All this was plain enough, but the last sentence was the puzzler.
+
+J. H. begins hear.
+
+
+Was J. H. a person? If so, what did he begin. If Dailey had buried his
+plunder, what had J. H. left to do?
+
+But _had_ he buried it? Collins smiled. It was not likely he had handed
+it over to anybody else to hide for him. And yet—
+
+He clapped his hand down on his knee. “By the jumping California frog,
+I’ve got it!” he told himself. “They hid the bulk of what they got from
+the Limited all together. Went out in a bunch to hide it. Blind-folded
+each other, and took turn about blinding up the trail. No one of them
+can go get the loot without the rest. When they want it, every one of
+these memoranda must be Johnny-on-the-spot before they can dig up the
+mazuma. No wonder Wolf Leroy searched so thorough for this bit of
+paper. I’ll bet a stack of blue chips against Wolf’s chance of heaven
+that he’s the sorest train-robber right this moment that ever punctured
+a car-window.”
+
+Collins laughed softly, nor had the smile died out of his eyes when
+Hawkes came into the room with information to the point. He had made a
+round of the corrals, and discovered that the outlaws’ horses had been
+put up at Jay Hardman’s place, a tumble-down feed-station on the edge
+of town.
+
+“Jay didn’t take kindly to my questions,” Hawkes explained, “but after
+a little rock-me-to-sleep-mother talk I soothed him down some, and cut
+the trail of Wolf Leroy and his partners. The old man give me several
+specimens of langwidge unwashed and uncombed when I told him Wolf and
+York was outlaws and train-robbers. Didn’t believe a word of it, he
+said. ’Twas just like the fool officers to jump an innocent party. I
+told Jay to keep his shirt on—he could turn his wolf lose when they
+framed up that he was in it. Well, sir! I plumb thought for a moment he
+was going to draw on me when I said that. Say he must be the fellow
+that’s in on that mine, with Leroy and York Neil. He’s a big,
+long-haired guy.”
+
+Collins’ eyes narrowed to slits, as they always did when he was
+thinking intensely. Were their suspicions of the showman about to be
+justified? Did Jay Hardman’s interest in Leroy have its source merely
+in their being birds of a feather, or was there a more direct community
+of lawlessness between them? Was he a member of Wolf Leroy’s murderous
+gang? Three men had joined in the chase of Dailey, but the tracks had
+told him that only two horses had galloped from the scene of the murder
+into the night. The inference left to draw was that a local accomplice
+had joined them in the chase of Scotty, and had slipped back home after
+the deed had been finished.
+
+What more likely than that Hardman had been this accomplice? Hawkes
+said he was a big long-haired fellow. So was the man that had held up
+the engineer of the Limited. He was—“J. H. begins hear.” Like a flash
+the ill-written scrawl jumped to his sight. “J. H.” was Jay Hardman.
+What luck!
+
+The doctor finished his work, and Collins tested his leg gingerly.
+“Del, I’m going over to have a little talk with the old man. Want to go
+along?”
+
+“You bet I do, Val”—from Del Hawkes.
+
+“You mustn’t walk on that leg for a week or two yet, Mr. Collins,” the
+doctor explained, shaking his head.
+
+“That so, doctor? And it nothing but a nice clean flesh-wound! Sho!
+I’ve a deal more confidence in you than that. Ready, Del?”
+
+“It’s at your risk then, Mr. Collins.”
+
+“Sure.” The sheriff smiled. “I’m living at my own risk, doctor. But I’d
+a heap rather be alive than daid, and take all the risk that’s coming,
+too. But since you make a point of it, I’ll do most of my walking on a
+bronco’s back.”
+
+They found Mr. Hardman just emerging from the stable with a saddle-pony
+when they rode into the corral. At a word from Collins, Hawkes took the
+precaution to close the corral gate.
+
+The fellow held a wary position on the farther side of his horse, the
+while he ripped out a raucous string of invectives.
+
+“Real fluent, ain’t he?” murmured Hawkes, as he began to circle round
+to flank the enemy.
+
+“Stay right there, Del Hawkes. Move, you redhaided son of a brand
+blotter, and I’ll pump holes in you!” A rifle leveled across the saddle
+emphasized his sentiments.
+
+“Plumb hospitable,” grinned Hawkes, coming promptly to a halt.
+
+Collins rode slowly forward, his hand on the butt of the revolver that
+still lay in its scabbard. The Winchester covered every step of his
+progress, but he neither hastened nor faltered, though he knew his life
+hung in the balance. If his steely blue eyes had released for one
+moment the wolfish ones of the villain, if he had hesitated or hurried,
+he would have been shot through the head.
+
+But the eyes of a brave man are the king of weapons. Hardman’s fingers
+itched at the trigger he had not the courage to pull. For such an
+unflawed nerve he knew himself no match.
+
+“Keep back,” he screamed. “Damn it, another step and I’ll fire!”
+
+But he did not fire, though Collins rode up to him, dismounted, and
+threw the end of the rifle carelessly from him.
+
+“Don’t be rash, Hardman. I’ve come here to put you under arrest for
+robbing the T. P. Limited, and I’m going to do it.”
+
+The indolent, contemptuous drawl, so free of even a suggestion of the
+strain the sheriff must have been under, completed his victory. The
+fellow lowered his rifle with a peevish oath.
+
+“You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, Mr. Collins.”
+
+“I guess not,” retorted the sheriff easily. “Del, you better relieve
+Mr. Hardman of his ballast. He ain’t really fit to be trusted with a
+weapon, and him so excitable. That Winchester came awful near going
+off, friend. You don’t want to be so careless when you’re playing with
+firearms. It’s a habit that’s liable to get you into trouble.”
+
+Collins had not shaved death so closely without feeling a reaction of
+boyish gaiety at his adventure. It bubbled up in his talk like
+effervescing soda.
+
+“Now we’ll go into a committee of the whole, gentlemen, adjourn to the
+stable, and have a little game of ‘Button, button, who’s got the
+button?’ You first, Mr. Hardman. If you’ll kindly shuck your coat and
+vest, we’ll begin button-hunting.”
+
+They diligently searched the miscreant without hiding anything
+pertaining to “J. H. begins hear.”
+
+“He’s bound to have it somewhere,” asseverated Collins. “It don’t stand
+to reason he was making his getaway without that paper. We got to be
+more thorough, Del.”
+
+Hawkes, under the direction of his friend, ripped up linings and tore
+away pockets from clothing. The saddle on the bronco and the
+saddle-blankets were also torn to pieces in vain.
+
+Finally Hawkes scratched his poll and looked down on the wreckage. “I
+hate to admit it, Val, but the old fox has got us beat; it ain’t on his
+person.”
+
+“Not unless he’s got it under his skin,” agreed Collins, with a grin.
+
+“Maybe he ate it. Think we better operate and find out?”
+
+An idea hit the sheriff. He walked up to Hardman and ordered him to
+open his mouth.
+
+The jaws set like a vise.
+
+Collins poked his revolver against the closed mouth. “Swear for us, old
+bird. Get a move on you.”
+
+The mouth opened, and Collins inserted two fingers. When he withdrew
+them they brought a set of false teeth. Under the plate was a tiny
+rubber bag that stuck to it. Inside the bag was a paper. And on it was
+written four lines in Spanish. Those lines told what he wanted to know.
+They, too, were part of a direction for finding hidden treasure.
+
+The sheriff wired at once to Bucky, in Chihuahua. Translated into plain
+English, his cipher dispatch meant: “Come home at once. Trail getting
+red hot.”
+
+But Bucky did not come. As it happened, that young man had other fish
+to fry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+“ADORE HAS ONLY ONE D.”
+
+
+After all, adventures are to the adventurous. In this prosaic twentieth
+century the Land of Romance still beckons to eager eyes and gallant
+hearts. The rutted money-grabber may deny till he is a nerve-racked
+counting-machine, but youth, even to the end of time, will laugh to
+scorn his pessimism and venture with elastic heel where danger and
+mystery offer their dubious hazards.
+
+So it was that Bucky and his little comrade found nothing of dulness in
+the mission to which they had devoted themselves. In their task of
+winning freedom for the American immured in the Chihuahua dungeon they
+already found themselves in the heart of a web of intrigue, the stakes
+of which were so high as to carry life and death with them in the
+balance. But for them the sun shone brightly. It was enough that they
+played the game and shared the risks together. The jocund morning was
+in their hearts, and brought with it an augury of success based on
+nothing so humdrum or tangible as reason.
+
+O’Connor carried with him to the grim fortress not only his permit for
+an inspection, but also a note from O’Halloran that was even more
+potent in effect. For Colonel Ferdinand Gabilonda, warden of the
+prison, had a shrewd suspicion that a plot was under way to overthrow
+the unpopular administration of Megales, and though he was an
+office-holder under the present government he had no objection to
+ingratiating himself with the opposition, providing it could be done
+without compromising himself openly. In other words, the warden was
+sitting on the fence waiting to see which way the cat would jump. If
+the insurgents proved the stronger party, he meant to throw up his hat
+and shout “Viva Valdez.” On the other hand, if the government party
+crushed them he would show himself fussily active in behalf of Megales.
+Just now he was exerting all his diplomacy to maintain a pleasant
+relationship with both. Since it was entirely possible that the big
+Irishman O’Halloran might be the man on horseback within a very few
+days, the colonel was all suave words and honeyed smiles to his friend
+the ranger.
+
+Indeed he did him the unusual honor of a personally conducted
+inspection. Gabilonda was a fat little man, with a soft, purring voice
+and a pompous manner. He gushed with the courteous volubility of his
+nation, explaining with great gusto this and that detail of the work.
+Bucky gave him outwardly a deferent ear, but his alert mind and eyes
+were scanning the prisoners they saw. The ranger was trying to find in
+one of these scowling, defiant faces some resemblance to the picture
+his mind had made of Henderson.
+
+But Bucky looked in vain. If the man he wanted was among these he had
+changed beyond recognition. In the end he was forced to ask Gabilonda
+plainly if he would not take him to see David Henderson, as he knew a
+man in Arizona who was an old friend of his, and he would like to be
+able to tell him that he had seen his friend.
+
+Henderson was breaking stone when O’Connor got his first glimpse of
+him. He continued to swing his hammer listlessly, without looking up,
+when the door opened to let in the warden and his guests. But something
+in the ranger’s steady gaze drew his eyes. They were dull eyes, and
+sullen, but when he saw that Bucky was an American, the fire of
+intelligence flashed into them.
+
+“May I speak to him?” asked O’Connor.
+
+“It is against the rules, señor, but if you will be brief—” The colonel
+shrugged, and turned his back to them, in order not to see. It must be
+said for Gabilonda that his capacity for blinking what he did not think
+it judicious to see was enormous.
+
+“You are David Henderson, are you not?” The ranger asked, in a low
+voice.
+
+Surprise filtered into the dull eyes. “That was my name,” the man
+answered bitterly. “I have a number now.”
+
+“I come from Webb Mackenzie to get you out of this,” the ranger said.
+
+The man’s eyes were no longer dull now, but flaming with hatred. “Curse
+him, I’ll take nothing from his hands. For fifteen years he has let me
+rot in hell without lifting a hand for me.”
+
+“He thought you dead. It can all be explained. It was only last week
+that the mystery of your disappearance was solved.”
+
+“Then why didn’t he come himself? It was to save his little girl I got
+myself into this place. If I had been in his shoes I would have come if
+I’d had to crawl on my hands and knees.”
+
+“He doesn’t know yet you are here. I wrote him simply that I knew where
+you were, and then I came at once.” Bucky glanced round warily at the
+fat colonel gazing placidly out of the barred window. “I mean to rescue
+you, and I knew if he were here his impulsiveness would ruin
+everything.”
+
+“Do you mean it? For God’s sake! don’t lie to me. If there’s no hope
+for me, don’t say there is.” The prisoner’s voice shook and his hands
+trembled. He was only the husk of the man he had been, but it did
+Bucky’s heart good to see that the germ of life was still in him. Back
+in Arizona, on the Rocking Chair Ranch, with the free winds of the
+plains beating on his face, he would pick up again the old strands of
+his broken life, would again learn to love the lowing of cattle and the
+early morning call of the hooter to his mate.
+
+“I mean it. As sure as I stand here I’ll get you out, or, if I don’t,
+Webb Mackenzie will. We’re calling the matter to the attention of the
+United States Government, but we are not going to wait till that time
+to free you. Keep up your courage, man. It is only for a little time
+now.”
+
+Tears leaped to the prisoner’s eyes. He had been a game man in the dead
+years that were past, none gamer in Texas, and he could still face his
+jailers with an impassive face; but this first kindly word from his
+native land in fifteen years to the man buried alive touched the fount
+of his emotions. He turned away and leaned against the grating of his
+cell, his head resting on his forearm. “My God! man, you don’t know
+what it means to me. Sometimes I think I shall go mad and rave. After
+all these years. But I know you’ll fail—It’s too good to be true,” he
+finished quietly.
+
+“I’ll not fail, though I may be delayed. But I can’t say more.
+Gabilonda is coming back. Next time I see you it will be to take you
+out to freedom. Think of that always, and believe it.”
+
+Gabilonda bowed urbanely. “If the señor has seen all he cares to of
+this department we will return to the office,” he suggested suavely.
+
+“Certainly, colonel. I can’t appreciate too much your kindness in
+allowing me to study your system so carefully.”
+
+“Any friend of my friend the Señor O’Halloran is cherished deeply in my
+heart,” came back the smiling colonel, with a wave of his plump, soft
+hand.
+
+“I am honored, sir, to receive such consideration at the hands of so
+distinguished a soldier as Colonel Gabilonda,” bowed Bucky gravely, in
+his turn, with the most flowery Spanish he could muster.
+
+There was another half-hour of the mutual exchange of compliments
+before O’Connor could get away. Alphonse and Gaston were fairly
+outdone, for the Arizonian, with a smile hidden deep behind the
+solemnity of his blue eyes, gave as good as he got. When he was at last
+fairly in the safety of his own rooms he gave way to limp laughter
+while describing to his little friend that most ceremonious parting.
+
+“He pressed me to his manly bay window, Curly, and allowed he was plumb
+tickled to death to have met me. Says I, coming back equal strong,
+’twas the most glorious day of my life.”
+
+“Oh, I know _you_,” answered young Hardman, with a smile.
+
+“A friend of his friend O’Halloran—”
+
+“Mr. O’Halloran was here while you were away. He seemed very anxious to
+see you; said he would call again in an hour. I think it must be
+important.”
+
+Came at that instant O’Halloran’s ungentle knock, on the heels of which
+his red head came through the open door.
+
+“You’re the very lad I’m wanting to see, Bucky,” he announced, and
+followed this declaration by locking all the doors and beckoning him to
+the center of the room.
+
+“Is that tough neck of yours aching again, Reddy?” inquired his friend
+whimsically.
+
+“It is that, me bye. There’s the very divil to pay,” he whispered.
+
+“Cough it out, Mike.”
+
+“That tyrant Megales is onto our game. Somebody’s leaked, or else he
+has a spy in our councils—as we have in his, the ould scoundrel.”
+
+“I see. Your spy has told you that his spy has reported to him—”
+
+“That the guns are to be brought in to-night. He has sent out a guard
+to bring them in safely to _him_. If he gets them, our game is up, me
+son, and you can bet your last nickle on that.”
+
+“If he gets them! Is there a chance for us?”
+
+“Glory be! there is. You see, he doesn’t know that we know what he has
+done. For that reason he sent out only a guard of forty men. If he sent
+more we would suspect what he was doing, ye see. That is the way the
+old fox reasoned. But forty—they were able to slip out of the city on
+last night’s train in civilian’s clothes and their arms in a couple of
+coffins.”
+
+“Why didn’t he send a couple of hundred men openly, and at the same
+time arrest you all?”
+
+“That doesn’t suit his book at all. For one thing, he probably doesn’t
+know all of us, and he doesn’t want to bag half of us and throw the
+rest into immediate rebellion. It’s his play not to force the issue
+until after the election, Bucky. He controls all the election machinery
+and will have himself declared reëlected, the old scamp,
+notwithstanding that he’s the most unpopular man in the State. To
+precipitate trouble now would be just foolishness, he argues. So he’ll
+just capture our arms, and after the election give me and my friends
+quiet hell. Nothing public, you know—just unfortunate assassinations
+that he will regret exceedingly, me bye. But I have never yit been
+assassinated, and, on principle, I object to being trated so. It’s very
+destructive to a man’s future usefulness.”
+
+“And so?” laughed the ranger.
+
+“And so we’ve arranged to take a few lads up the line and have a train
+hold-up. I’m the robber-in-chief. Would ye like to be second in command
+of the lawless ruffians, me son?”
+
+Bucky met his twinkling eye gaily. “Mr. O’Connor is debarred from
+taking part in such an outrageous affair by international etiquette,
+but he knows a gypsy lad would be right glad to join, I reckon.”
+
+“Bully for him. If you’ll kindly have him here I’ll come around and
+collect him this evening at eight-thirty sharp.”
+
+“I hope you’ll provide a pleasant entertainment for him.”
+
+“We’ll do our best,” grinned the revolutionist. “Music provided by
+Megales’ crack military band. A lively and enjoyable occasion
+guaranteed to all who attend. Your friend will meet some of the
+smartest officers in the State. It promises to be a most sumptuous
+affair.”
+
+“Then my friend accepts with pleasure.”
+
+After the conspirator had gone, Frank spoke up. “You wouldn’t go away
+with him and leave me here alone, would you?”
+
+“I ce’tainly shouldn’t take you with me, kid. I don’t want my little
+friend all shot up by greasers.”
+
+“If you’re going, I want to go, too. Supposing—if anything were to
+happen to you, what could I do?”
+
+“Leave the country by the next train. Those are the orders.”
+
+“You’re always talking about a square deal. Do you think that is one? I
+might say that I don’t want _you_ shot. You don’t care anything about
+my feelings.” The soft voice had a little break in it that Bucky loved.
+
+He walked across to his partner, that rare, tender smile of his in his
+eyes. “If I’m always talking about a square deal I reckon I have got to
+give you one. Now, what would you think a square deal, Curly? Would it
+be square for me to let my friend O’Halloran stand all the risk of this
+and then me take the reward when Henderson has been freed by him? Would
+that be your notion of the right telling?”
+
+“I didn’t say that, though I don’t see why you have to mix yourself up
+in his troubles. Why should you go out and kill these soldiers that
+haven’t injured you?”
+
+“I’m not going to kill any of them,” he smiled “Besides, that isn’t the
+way I look at it. This fellow Megales is a despot. He has made out to
+steal the liberty of the people from them. President Diaz can’t
+interfere because the old rascal governor does everything with that
+smooth, oily way of his under cover of law. It’s up to some of the
+people to put up a good strong kick for themselves. I ain’t a bit sorry
+to give them the loan of my foot while they are doing it.”
+
+“Then can’t I go, too? I don’t want to be left alone here and you away
+fighting.”
+
+Bucky’s eyes gleamed. He dared an experiment in an indifferent drawl.
+“Whyfor don’t you want to stay alone, kid? Are you afraid for yourself
+or for me?”
+
+His partner’s cheeks were patched with roses. Shyly the long, thick
+lashes lifted and let the big brown eyes meet his blue ones. “Maybe I’m
+afraid for both of us.”
+
+“Would you care if one of their pills happened along in the scrimmage
+and put me out of business? Honest, would you?”
+
+“You haven’t any right to talk that way. It’s cruel,” was the reply
+that burst from the pretty lips, and he noticed that at his suggestion
+the roses had died from soft cheeks.
+
+“Well, I won’t talk that way any more, little partner,” he answered
+gaily, taking the small hand in his. “For reasons good. I’m fire-proof.
+The Mexican bullet hasn’t been cast yet that can find Bucky O’Connor’s
+heart.”
+
+“But you mustn’t think that, either, and be reckless,” was the next
+injunction. The shy laugh rang like music. “That’s why I want to go
+along, to see that you behave yourself properly.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll behave,” he laughed; for the young man found it very easy to
+be happy when those sweet eyes were showing concern for him. “I’ve got
+several good reasons why I don’t aim to get bumped off just yet. Heaps
+of first-rate reasons. I’ll tell you what some of them are one of these
+days,” he dared to add.
+
+“You had better tell me now.” The gaze that fell before his steady eyes
+was both shy and eager.
+
+“No, I reckon I’ll wait, Curly,” he answered, turning away with a long
+breath. “Well, we better go out and get some grub, tortillas and
+frijoles, don’t you think?”
+
+“Just as you like.” The lad’s breath was coming a little fast. They had
+been on the edge of some moment of intimacy that Bucky’s partner both
+longed for and dreaded. “But you have not told me yet whether I can go
+with you.”
+
+“You can’t. I’m sorry. I’d like first-rate to take you, if you want to
+go, but I can’t do it. I hate to disappoint you if you’re set on it,
+but I’ve got to, kid. Anything else you want I’ll be glad to do.”
+
+He added this last because Frank looked so broken-hearted about it.
+
+“Very well.” Swift as a flash came the demand: “Tell me these heaps of
+first-rate reasons you were mentioning just now.”
+
+Under the sun-tan he flushed. “I reckon I’ll have to make another
+exception, Curly. Those reasons ain’t ripe yet for telling.”
+
+“Then if you are—if anything happens—I’ll never know them. And you
+promised you would tell me—you, who pretend to hate a liar so,” she
+scoffed.
+
+“Would it do if I wrote those reasons and left them in a sealed
+envelope? Then in case anything happened you could open it and satisfy
+that robust curiosity of yours.” He recognized that he had trapped
+himself, and he was making the best bargain left him.
+
+“You may write them, if you like. But I’m going to open the letter,
+anyway. The reasons belong to me now. You promised.”
+
+“I’ll make a new deal with you, then,” he smiled. “I’ll take awful good
+care of myself to-night if you’ll promise not to open the envelope for
+two weeks unless—well, unless that something happens that we ain’t
+expecting.”
+
+“Call it a week, and it’s a bargain.”
+
+“Better say when we’re back across the line again. That may be inside
+of three days, if everything goes well,” he threw in as a bait.
+
+“Done. I’m to open the letter when we cross the line into Texas.”
+
+Bucky shook the little hand that was offered him and wished mightily
+that he had the right to celebrate with more fervent demonstrations.
+
+That afternoon the ranger wrote with a good deal of labor the letter he
+had promised. It appeared to be a difficult thing for him to deliver
+himself even on paper of those good and sufficient reasons. He made and
+destroyed no less than half a dozen openings before at last he was
+fairly off. Meanwhile, Master Frank, busy over some alterations in
+Bucky’s gypsy suit, took pleasure in deriding with that sweet voice the
+harassed correspondent.
+
+“It might be a love letter from the pains you take with it. Would you
+like me to come and help you with it?” the sewer railed merrily.
+
+“I ain’t used to letter writing much,” apologized the scribe, wiping
+his bedewed brow, which had suddenly gone a shade more flushed.
+
+“Apparently not. I expect, from the time you give it, the result will
+be a literary classic.”
+
+“Don’t you disturb me, Curly, or I’ll never get done,” implored the
+tortured ranger.
+
+“You’re doing well. You’ve only been an hour and a half on six lines,”
+the tormentor mocked.
+
+Womanlike, she was quite at her ease, since he was very far indeed from
+being at his. Yet she had a problem of her own she was trying to
+decide.
+
+Had he discovered, after all, that she was not a boy, and had his
+reasons—the ones he was trying to tell in that disturbing
+letter—anything to do with that discovery? Such a theory accounted for
+several things she had noticed in him of late. There was an added
+respect in his manner for her. He never now invaded the room recognized
+as hers without a specific invitation, nor did he seem any longer to
+chafe at the little personal marks of fastidiousness that had at first
+appeared to annoy him. To be sure, he ordered her about, just as he had
+been in the habit of doing at first. But it was conceivable that this
+might be a generous blind to cover up his knowledge of her sex.
+
+“How do you spell guessed—one s or two?” he presently asked, out of the
+throes of composition.
+
+She spelled it, and added demurely: “Adore has only one d”
+
+Bucky laid down his pen and pretended to glare at him. “You young
+rascal, what do you mean by bothering me like that? Act like that, you
+young imp, and you’ll never grow up to be a gentleman.”
+
+Their glances caught and held, the minds of each of them busy over that
+last prediction of his. For one long instant masks were off and both
+were trying to find an answer to a question in the eyes opposite. Then
+voluntarily each gaze released the other in a confusion of sweet shame.
+For the beating of a lash, soul had looked into naked soul, all
+disguise stripped from them. She knew that he knew. Yet in that instant
+when his secret was surprised from him another secret, sweeter than the
+morning song of birds, sang its way into both their hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE HOLD-UP OF THE M. C. P. FLYER
+
+
+Agua Negra is twelve miles from Chihuahua as the crow flies, but if one
+goes by rail one twists round thirty sinuous miles of rough mountainous
+country in the descent from the pass to the capital of the State. The
+ten men who slipped singly or by twos out of the city in the darkness
+that evening and met at the rendezvous of the Santa Dolorosa mission
+did not travel by rail to the pass, but followed a horseback trail
+which was not more than half the distance.
+
+At the mission O’Halloran and his friend found gathered half a dozen
+Mexicans, one or two of them tough old campaigners, the rest young
+fellows eager for the excitement of their first active service.
+
+“Is Juan Valdez here yet?” asked O’Halloran, peering around in the
+gloom.
+
+“Not yet; nor Manuel Garcia,” answered a young fellow.
+
+Bucky was introduced to those present under the name of Alessandro
+Perdoza, and presently also to the two missing members of the party who
+arrived together a few moments later. Juan Valdez was the son of the
+candidate who was opposing the reelection of Megales, and Manuel Garcia
+was his bosom friend, and the young man to whom his sister was engaged.
+They were both excellent types of the honorable aristocratic young
+Mexican. They were lightly built, swarthy young men, possessed of that
+perfect grace and courtesy which can be found at its best in the
+Spanish races. Gay, handsome young cavaliers as they were, filled with
+the pride of family, Bucky thought them almost ideal companions for
+such a harebrained adventure as this. The ranger was a social democrat
+to the marrow. He had breathed in with the Southwest breezes the
+conviction that every man must stand on his own bottom, regardless of
+adventitious circumstance, but he was not fool enough to think all men
+equal. It had been his experience that some men, by grace of the
+strength in them, were born to be masters and others by their weakness
+to be servants. He knew that the best any civilization can offer a man
+is a chance. Given that, it is up to every man to find his own niche.
+
+But though he had no sense of deference to what is known as good blood,
+Bucky had too much horse sense to resent the careless, half-indifferent
+greeting which these two young sprouts of aristocracy bestowed on the
+rest of the party. He understood that it was the natural product of
+their education and of that of the others.
+
+“Are we all here?” asked Garcia.
+
+“All here,” returned O’Halloran briskly. “Rodrigo will guide the party.
+I ride next with Señor Garcia. Perdoza and Señor Valdez will bring up
+the rear. Forward, gentlemen, and may the Holy Virgin bring a happy
+termination to our adventure.” He spoke in Mexican, as they all did,
+though for the next two hours conversation was largely suspended, owing
+to the difficulty of the precipitous trail they were following.
+
+Coming to a bit of the road where they were able to ride two abreast,
+O’Connor made comment on the smallness of their number. “O’Halloran
+must have a good deal of confidence in his men. Forty to ten is rather
+heavy odds, is it not, señor?”
+
+“There are six more to join us at the pass. The wagons have gone round
+by the road and the drivers will assist in the attack.”
+
+“Of course it is all in the surprise. I have seen three men hold up a
+train with five hundred people on it. Once I knew a gang to stick up a
+treasure train with three heavily armed guards protecting the gold.
+They got them right, with the drop on them, and it was good-by to the
+mazuma.”
+
+“Yes, if they have had any warning or if our plans slip a cog anywhere
+we shall be repulsed to a certainty.”
+
+By the light of a moon struggling out from behind rolling clouds Bucky
+read eleven-thirty on his watch when the party reached Agua Negra. It
+was still thirty minutes before the Flyer was due, and O’Halloran
+disposed his forces with explicit directions as to the course to be
+followed by each detail. Very rapidly he sketched his orders as to the
+present disposition of the wagons and the groups of attackers. When the
+train slowed down to remove the obstacles they placed on the track,
+Garcia and another young man were to command parties covering the train
+from both sides, while Rodrigo and one of the drivers were to cover the
+engineer and the fireman.
+
+O’Halloran himself, with Bucky and young Valdez, rode rapidly in the
+direction of the approaching train. At Concho the engine would take on
+water for the last stiff climb of the ascent, and here he meant to
+board the train unnoticed, just as it was pulling out, in order to
+emphasize the surprise at the proper moment and render resistance
+useless. If the troopers were all together in the car next the one with
+the boxes of rifles, he calculated that they might perhaps be taken
+unawares so sharply as to render bloodshed unnecessary.
+
+Concho was two miles from the summit, and when the three men galloped
+down to the little station the headlight of the approaching engine was
+already visible. They tied their horses in the mesquit and lurked in
+the thick brush until the engine had taken water and the signal for the
+start was given. Then O’Halloran and Bucky slipped across in the
+darkness to the train and swung themselves to the platform of the last
+car. To Valdez, very much against his will, had fallen the task of
+taking the horses back to Agua Negra. Since the track wound round the
+side of the mountain in such a way as to cover five miles in making the
+summit from Concho, the young Mexican had ample time to get back to the
+scene of action before the train arrived.
+
+The big Irishman and Bucky rested quietly in the shadows of the back
+platform for some time. Then they entered the last car, passed through
+it, and on to the next. In the sleeper they met the conductor, but
+O’Halloran quietly paid their fares and passed forward. As they had
+hoped, the whole detail of forty men were in a special car next to the
+one containing the arms consigned to Michael O’Halloran, importer of
+pianos.
+
+Lieutenant Chaves, in charge of the detail sent out to see that the
+rifles reached Governor Megales instead of the men who had paid for
+them, was finding his assignment exceedingly uninteresting. There was
+at Chihuahua a certain black-eyed dona with whom he had expected to
+enjoy a pleasant evening’s flirtation. It was confounded luck that it
+had fallen to him to take charge of the escort for the guns. He had
+endured in consequence an unpleasant day of dusty travel and many hours
+of boredom through the evening. Now he was cross and sleepy, which
+latter might also be said of the soldiers in general.
+
+He was connected with a certain Arizona outfit which of late had been
+making money very rapidly. If one more coup like the last could be
+pulled off safely by his friend Wolf Leroy he would resign from the
+army and settle down. It would then no longer be necessary to bore
+himself with such details as this.
+
+There was, of course, no necessity for alertness in his present
+assignment. The opposition was scarcely mad enough to attempt taking
+the guns from forty armed men. Chaves devoutly hoped they would, in
+order that he might get a little glory, at least, out of the affair.
+But of course such an expectation would be ridiculous. No, the journey
+would continue to be humdrum to the end, he was wearily assured of
+that, and consequently attempted to steal a half hour’s sleep while
+propped against a window with his feet in the seat opposite.
+
+The gallant lieutenant was awakened by a cessation of the drumming of
+the wheels. Opening his eyes, he saw that the train was no longer in
+motion. He also saw—and his consciousness of that fact was much more
+acute—the rim of a revolver about six inches from his forehead. Behind
+the revolver was a man, a young Spanish gypsy, and he was offering the
+officer very good advice.
+
+“Don’t move, sir. No cause for being uneasy. Just sit quiet and
+everything will be serene. No, I wouldn’t reach for that revolver, if I
+were you.”
+
+Chaves cast a hurried eye down the car, and at the end of it beheld the
+huge Irishman, O’Halloran, dominating the situation with a pair of
+revolvers. Chaves’ lambs were ranged on either side of the car, their
+hands in the air. Back came the lieutenant’s gaze to the impassive face
+in front of him. Taken by and large, it did not seem an auspicious
+moment for garnering glory. He decided to take the advice bestowed on
+him.
+
+“Better put your hands up and vote with your men. Then you won’t be
+tempted to play with your gun and commit suicide. That’s right, sir.
+I’ll relieve you of it if you don’t object.”
+
+Since the lieutenant had no objections to offer, the smiling gypsy
+possessed himself of the revolver. At the same instant two more men
+appeared at the end of the car. One of them was Juan Valdez and another
+one of the mule-skinners. Simultaneously with their entrance rang out a
+most disconcerting fusillade of small arms in the darkness without.
+Megales’ military band, as O’Halloran had facetiously dubbed them to
+the ranger, arrived at the impression that there were about a thousand
+insurgents encompassing the train. Chaves choked with rage, but the
+rest of the command yielded to the situation very tranquilly, with no
+desire to offer themselves as targets to this crackling explosion of
+Colts. _Muy bien!_ After all, Valdez was a better man to serve than the
+fox Megales.
+
+Swiftly Valdez and the wagon driver passed down the car and gathered
+the weapons from the seats of the troopers. Raising a window, they
+passed them out to their friends outside. Meanwhile, the sound of an
+axe could be heard battering at the door of the next car, and presently
+the crash of splintering wood announced that an entrance had been
+forced.
+
+“Breaking furniture, I reckon,” drawled Bucky, in English, for the
+moment forgetful of the part he was playing. “I hope they’ll be all
+right careful of them pianos and not mishandle them so they’ll get out
+of tune.”
+
+“So, señor, you are American,” said Chaves, in English, with a sinister
+smile.
+
+O’Connor shrugged, answering in Spanish: “I am Romany. Who shall say,
+whether American, or Spanish, or Bohemian? All nations call to me, but
+none claim me, señor.”
+
+The lieutenant continued to smile his meaning grin. “Yet you are
+American,” he persisted.
+
+“Oh, as you please. I am what you will, lieutenant.”
+
+“You speak the English like a native.”
+
+“You are complimentary.”
+
+Chaves lifted his eyebrows. “For believing that you are in costume,
+that you are wearing a disguise, Mr. American?”
+
+Bucky laughed outright, and offered a gay retort. “Believe me,
+lieutenant, I am no more disguised as a gypsy than you are as a
+soldier.”
+
+The Mexican officer flushed with anger at the suggestion of contempt in
+the careless voice. His generalship was discredited. He had been
+outwitted and made to yield without a blow. But to have it flung in his
+teeth with such a debonair insolence threw him into a fury.
+
+“If you and I ever meet on equal terms, señor, God pity you,” he ground
+out between his set jaws.
+
+Bucky bowed, answering the furious anger in the man’s face as much as
+his words. “I shall try to be careful not to offer myself a sheath for
+a knife some dark night,” he scoffed.
+
+A whistle blew, and then again. The revolver of Bucky rang out almost
+on the same instant as those of O’Halloran. Under cover of the smoke
+they slipped out of the car just as Rodrigo leaped down from the cab of
+the engine. Slowly the train began to back down the incline in the same
+direction from which it had come. The orders given the engineer were to
+move back at a snail’s pace until he reached Concho again. There he was
+to remain for two hours. That Chaves would submit to this O’Halloran
+did not for a moment suspect.
+
+But the track would be kept obstructed till six o’clock in the morning,
+and a sufficient guard would wait in the underbrush to see that the
+right of way was not cleared. In the meantime the wagons would be
+pushing toward Chihuahua as fast as they could be hurried, and the rest
+of the riders would guard them till they separated on the outskirts of
+the town and slipped quietly in. In order to forestall any telegraphic
+communication between Lieutenant Chaves and his superiors in the city,
+the wires had been cut. On the face of it, the guns seemed to be safe.
+Only one thing had O’Halloran forgotten. Eight miles across the hills
+from Concho ran the line of the Chihuahua Northern.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+“STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.”
+
+
+The two young Spanish aristocrats rode in advance of the convoy on the
+return trip, while O’Halloran and Bucky brought up the rear. The roads
+were too rough to permit of rapid travel, but the teams were pushed as
+fast as it could safely be done in the dark. It was necessary to get
+into the city before daybreak, and also before word reached Megales of
+the coup his enemies had made. O’Halloran calculated that this could be
+done, but he did not want to run his margin of time too fine.
+
+“When the governor finds we have recaptured the arms, will he not have
+all your leaders arrested today and thrown into the prison?” asked the
+ranger.
+
+“He will—if he can lay hands on them. But he had better catch his hare
+before he cooks it. I’m thinking that none of us will be at home to-day
+when his men come with a polite invitation to go along with them.”
+
+“Then he’ll spend all day strengthening his position. With this warning
+he will be a fool if he can’t make himself secure before night, when
+the army is on his side.”
+
+“Oh, the army is on his side, is it? Now, what would you say if most of
+the officers were ready to come over to us as soon as we declare
+ourselves? And ye speak of strengthening his position. The beauty of
+his position, me lad, from our point of view, is that he doesn’t know
+his weak places. He’ll be the most undeceived man in the State when the
+test comes—unless something goes wrong.”
+
+“When do you propose to attack the prison?”
+
+“To-night. To-morrow is election day, and we want all the byes we can
+on hand to help us out.”
+
+“Do you expect to throw the prison doors wide open—let every scoundrel
+in Chihuahua loose on the public.”
+
+“We couldn’t do that, since half of them are loose already,” retorted
+O’Halloran dryly. “And as for the rest—we expect to make a selection,
+me son, to weed out a few choice ruffians and keep them behind the
+bars. But if ye know anything about the prisons of this country, you’re
+informed, sir, that half the poor fellows behind bars don’t belong
+there so much as the folk that put them there. I’m Irish, as ye are
+yourself, and it’s me instinct to fight for the under dog. Why
+shouldn’t the lads rotting behind those walls have another chance at
+the game? By the mother of Moses! they shall, if Mike O’Halloran has
+anything to say about it.”
+
+“You ce’tainly conduct your lawful elections in a beautifully lawless
+way,” grinned the ranger.
+
+“And why not? Isn’t the law made for man?”
+
+“For which man—Megales?”
+
+“In order to give the greatest liberty to each individual man. But here
+comes young Valdez riding back as if he were in a bit of a hurry.”
+
+The filibuster rode forward and talked with the young man for a few
+minutes in a low voice. When he rejoined Bucky he nodded his head
+toward the young man, who was again headed for the front of the column.
+“There’s the best lad in the State of Chihuahua. He’s a Mexican, all
+right, but he has as much sense as a white man. He doesn’t mix issues.
+Now, the lad’s in love with Carmencita Megales, the prettiest
+black-eyed lass in Mexico, and, by the same token, so is our friend
+Chaves, who just gave us the guns a little while ago. But Valdez is a
+man from the heel of him to the head. Miss Carmencita has her nose in
+the air because Juan doesn’t snuggle up to ould Megales and flatter him
+the same way young Chaves does. So the lad is _persona non grata_ at
+court with the lady, and that tin soldier who gave up the guns without
+a blow gets the lady’s smiles. But it’s my opinion that, for all her
+haughty ways, miss would rather have our honest fighting lad than a
+roomful of the imitation toy kind.”
+
+A couple of miles from the outskirts of the city the wagons separated,
+and each was driven to the assigned place for the hiding of the rifles
+till night. At the edge of the town Bucky made arrangements to join his
+friend again at the monument in the centre of the plaza within fifteen
+minutes. He was to bring his little partner with him, and O’Halloran
+was to take them to a place where they might lie in hiding till the
+time set for the rising.
+
+“I would go with ye, but I want to take charge of the unloading. Don’t
+lose any time, lad, for as soon as Megales learns of what has happened
+his fellows will scour the town for every mother’s son of us. Of course
+you have been under surveillance, and it’s likely he’ll try to bag you
+with the rest of us. It was a great piece of foolishness me forgetting
+about the line of the Chihuahua Northern and its telegraph. But there’s
+a chance Chaves has forgot, too. Anyway, get back as soon as you can;
+after we’re hidden, it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack
+to put his fat finger on us.”
+
+Bucky went singing up the stairway of the hotel to his room. He was
+keen to get back to his little friend after the hazards of the night,
+eager to see the brown eyes light up with joy at sight of him and to
+hear the soft voice with the trailing inflection drawl out its shy
+questions. So he took the stairs three at a time, with a song on his
+lips and in his heart.
+
+“’Tis you shall reign, shall reign alone
+    My dark Rosaleen!
+    My own Rosaleen!
+’Tis you shall have the golden throne,
+’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone
+    My dark Rosaleen!”
+
+
+O’Connor, somewhat out of breath, was humming the last line when he
+passed through the gypsy apartments and opened his own door, to meet
+one of the surprises of his life. Yet he finished the verse, though he
+was looking down the barrels of two revolvers in the hands of a pair of
+troopers, and though Lieutenant Chaves, very much at his ease, sat on
+the table dangling his feet.
+
+Bucky’s sardonic laughter rang out gayly. “I ce’tainly didn’t expect to
+meet you here, lieutenant. May I ask if you have wings?”
+
+“Not exactly, señor. But it is quite possible you may have before
+twenty-four hours,” came the swift retort.
+
+“Interesting, if true,” remarked the ranger carelessly, tossing his
+gloves on the bed. “And may I ask to what I am indebted for the
+pleasure of a visit from you?”
+
+“I am returning your call, sir, and at the very earliest opportunity. I
+assure you that I have been in the city less than ten minutes, Señor
+whatever-you-choose-to-call-yourself. My promptness I leave you to
+admire.”
+
+“Oh, you’re prompt enough, lieutenant. I noticed that when you handed
+over your gun to me so lamblike.” He laughed it out flippantly,
+buoyantly, though it was on his mind to wonder whether the choleric
+little officer might not kill him out of hand for it.
+
+But Chaves merely folded his arms and looked sternly at the American
+with a manner very theatrical. “Miguel, disarm the prisoner,” he
+ordered.
+
+“So I’m a prisoner,” mused Bucky aloud. “And whyfor, lieutenant?”
+
+“Stirring up insurrection against the government. The prisoner will not
+talk,” decreed his captor, a frowning gaze attempting to quell him.
+
+But here the popinjay officer reckoned without his host, for that
+gentleman had the most indomitable eyes in Arizona. It was not
+necessary for him to stiffen his will to meet the other’s attack. His
+manner was still lazy, his gaze almost insolent in its indolence, but
+somewhere in the blue eyes was that which told Chaves he was his
+master. The Mexican might impotently rebel—and did; he might feed his
+vanity with the swiftness of his revenge, but in his heart he knew that
+the moment was not his, after all, or that it was his at least with no
+pleasure unalloyed.
+
+“The prisoner will not talk,” repeated Bucky, with drawling mockery.
+“Sure he will, general. There’s several things he’s awful curious to
+know. One of them is how you happen to be Johnnie-on-the-spot so
+opportune.”
+
+The lieutenant’s dignity melted before his vanity. Having so excellent
+a chance to sun the latter, he delivered himself of an oration. After
+all, silent contempt did not appear to be the best weapon to employ
+with this impudent fellow.
+
+“Señor, no Chaves ever forgets an insult. Last night you, a common
+American, insulted me grossly—me, Lieutenant Ferdinand Chaves, me, of
+the bluest Castilian blood.” He struck himself dramatically on the
+breast. “I submit, señor, but I vow revenge. I promised myself to spit
+on you, to spit on your Stars and Stripes, the flag of a nation of
+dirty traders. Ha! I do so now in spirit. The hour I have longed for is
+come.”
+
+Bucky took one step forward. His eyes had grown opaque and flinty.
+“Take care, you cur.”
+
+Swiftly Chaves hurried on without pressing the point. He had a
+prophetic vision of his neck in the vise grip of those brown, sinewy
+hands, and, though his men would afterward kill the man, small good
+would he get from that if the life were already squeezed out of him.
+
+“And so what do I do? I think, and having thought I act with the
+swiftness of a Chaves. How? I ride across country. I seize a hand car.
+My men pump me to town on the roadbed of the Northern. I telephone to
+the hotels and find where Americans are staying. Then I come here like
+the wind, arrest your friend, and send him to prison, arrest you also
+and send you to the gallows.”
+
+“That’s real kind of you, general,” replied Bucky, in irony sportive.
+“But you really are putting yourself out too much for me. I reckon I’ll
+not trouble you to go so far. By the way, did I understand you to say
+you had arrested a friend of mine?”
+
+Indifferently he flung out the question, if his voice were index of his
+feeling, but his heart was pumping faster than it normally ought.
+
+“He is in prison, where you will shortly join him. Soldiers, to the
+commandant with your captive.”
+
+If Bucky had had any idea of attempting escape, he now abandoned it at
+once. The place of all places where he most ardently desired to be at
+that moment was in the prison with his little comrade. His desire
+marched with that of Chaves so far, and the latter could not hurry him
+there too fast to suit him.
+
+One feature of the situation made him chuckle, and that was this: The
+fiery lieutenant, intent first of all on his revenge, had given first
+thought to the capture of the man who had made mincemeat of his vanity
+and rendered him a possible subject of ridicule to his fellow officers.
+So eager had he been to accomplish this that he had failed as yet to
+notify his superiors of what had happened, with the result that the
+captured guns had been safely smuggled in and hidden. Bucky thought he
+could trust O’Halloran to see that he did not stay long behind bars and
+bolts, unless indeed the game went against that sanguine and most
+cheerful plotter. In which event—well, that was a contingency that
+would certainly prove embarrassing to the ranger. It might indeed turn
+out to be a good deal more than embarrassing in the end. The thing that
+he had done would bear a plain name if the Megales faction won the
+day—and the punishment for it would be easy to guess. But it was not of
+himself that O’Connor was thinking. He had been in tight places before
+and squeezed safely out. But his little friend, the one he loved better
+than his life, must somehow be extricated, no matter how the cards
+fell.
+
+The ranger was taken at once before General Carlo, the ranking army
+officer at Chihuahua, and, after a sharp preliminary examination, was
+committed to prison. The impression that O’Connor got of Carlo was not
+a reassuring one. The man was a military despot, apparently, and a
+stickler for discipline. He had a hanging face, and, in the Yaqui war,
+had won the nickname of “the butcher” for his merciless treatment of
+captured natives. If Bucky were to get the same short shrift as they
+did—and he began to suspect as much when his trial was set for the same
+day before a military tribunal—it was time for him to be setting what
+few worldly affairs he had in order. Technically, Megales had a legal
+right to have him put to death and the impression lingered with Bucky
+that the sly old governor would be likely to do that very thing and
+later be full of profuse regrets to the United States Government that
+inadvertently a citizen of the great republic had been punished by
+mistake.
+
+Bucky was registered and receipted for at the prison office, after
+which he was conducted to his cell. The corridors dripped as he
+followed under ground the guide who led the way with a flickering
+lantern. It was a gruesome place to contemplate as a permanent abode.
+But the young American knew that his stay here would be short, whether
+the termination of it were liberty or the gallows.
+
+Reaching the end of a narrow, crooked corridor that sloped downward,
+the turnkey unlocked a ponderous iron door with a huge key, and one of
+the guards following at Bucky’s heels, pushed him forward. He fell down
+two or three steps and came to a sprawling heap on the floor of the
+cell.
+
+From the top of the steps came a derisive laugh as the door swung to
+and left him in utter darkness.
+
+Stiffly the ranger got to his knees and was about to rise when a sound
+stopped him. Something was panting in deep breaths at the other side of
+the cell. A shiver of terror went goose-quilling down O’Connor’s back.
+Had they locked him up with some wild beast, to be torn to pieces? Or
+was this the ghost of some previous occupant? In such blackness of
+gloom it was easy to believe, or, at least, to imagine impossible
+conceptions that the light of day would have scattered in an instant.
+He was afraid—afraid to the marrow.
+
+And then out of the darkness came a small, trembling voice: “Are you a
+prisoner, too, sir?”
+
+Bucky wanted to shout aloud his relief—and his delight. The sheer joy
+of his laughter told him how badly he had been frightened. That
+voice—were he sunk in twice as deep and dark an inferno—he would know
+it among a thousand. He groped his way forward toward it.
+
+“Oh, little pardner, I’m plumb tickled to death you ain’t a ghost,” he
+laughed.
+
+“It is—Bucky?” The question joyfully answered itself.
+
+“Right guess. Bucky it is.”
+
+He had hold of her hands by this time, was trying to peer down into the
+happy-brown eyes he knew were scanning him. “I can’t see you yet, Curly
+Haid, but it’s sure you, I reckon. I’ll have to pass my hand over your
+face the way a blind man does,” he laughed, and, greatly daring, he
+followed his own suggestion, and let his fingers wander across her
+crisp, thick hair, down her soft, warm cheeks, and over the saucy nose
+and laughing mouth he had often longed to kiss.
+
+Presently she drew away shyly, but the lilt of happiness in her voice
+told him she was not offended. “I can see you, Bucky.” The last word
+came as usual, with that sweet, hesitating, upward inflection that made
+her familiarity wholly intoxicating, even while the comradeship of it
+left room for an interpretation either of gay mockery or something
+deeper. “Yes, I can see you. That’s because I have been here longer and
+am more used to the darkness. I think I’ve been here about a year.” He
+felt her shudder. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
+
+“No gladder than I am to feel you,” he answered gayly. “It’s worth the
+price of admission to find you here, girl o’mine.”
+
+He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as
+words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him that
+he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was
+vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had
+made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling
+between them.
+
+“I knew you knew I was a girl,” she murmured.
+
+“You knew more than that,” he challenged joyfully.
+
+But, in woman’s way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at
+too impetuous a speed for her reluctance. “How long have you known that
+I wasn’t a boy—not from the first, surely?”
+
+“I don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t. I was sure locoed,” he
+confessed. “It was when you came out dressed as a gypsy that I knew.
+That explained to me a heap of things I never had understood before
+about you.”
+
+“It explained, I suppose, why I never had licked the stuffing out of
+any other kid, and why you did not get very far in making a man out of
+me as you promised,” she mocked.
+
+“Yes, and it explained how you happened to say you were eighteen. By
+mistake you let the truth slip out. Course I wouldn’t believe it.”
+
+“I remember you didn’t. I think you conveyed the impression to me
+diplomatically that you had doubts.”
+
+“I said it was a lie,” he laughed. “I sure do owe you a heap of
+apologies for being so plumb dogmatic when you knew best. You’ll have
+to sit down on me hard once in a while, or there won’t be any living
+with me.”
+
+Blushingly she did some more ignoring. “That was the first time you
+threatened to give me a whipping,” she recalled aloud.
+
+“My goodness! Did I ever talk so foolish?”
+
+“You did, and meant it.”
+
+“But somehow I never did it. I wonder why I didn’t.”
+
+“Perhaps I was so frail you were afraid you would break me.”
+
+“No, that wasn’t it. In the back of my haid somewhere there was an
+instinct that said: ‘Bucky, you chump, if you don’t keep your hands off
+this kid you’ll be right sorry all your life.’ Not being given to many
+ideas, I paid a heap of respect to that one.”
+
+“Well, it’s too bad, for I probably needed that whipping, and now
+you’ll never be able to give it to me.”
+
+“I shan’t ever want to now.”
+
+Saucily her merry eyes shot him from under the long lashes. “I’m not so
+sure of that. Girls can be mighty aggravating.”
+
+“That’s the way girls are meant to be, I expect,” he laughed. “But
+fifteen-year-old boys have to be herded back into line. There’s a
+difference.”
+
+She rescued her hands from him and led the way to a bench that served
+for a seat. “Sit down here, sir. There are one or two things that I
+have to explain.” She sat down beside him at the farther end of the
+bench.
+
+“This light is so dim, I can’t see you away over there,” he pleaded,
+moving closer.
+
+“You don’t need to see me. You can hear me, can’t you?”
+
+“I reckon.”
+
+She seemed to find a difficulty in beginning, even though the darkness
+helped her by making it impossible for him to see her embarrassment.
+Presently he chuckled softly. “No, ma’am, I can’t even hear you. If
+you’re talking, I’ll have to come closer.”
+
+“If you do, I’ll get up. I want you to be really earnest.”
+
+“I never was more earnest in my life, Curly.”
+
+“Please, Bucky? It isn’t easy to say it, and you mustn’t make it
+harder.”
+
+“Do you have to say it, pardner?” he asked, more seriously.
+
+“Yes, I have to say it.” And swiftly she blurted it out. “Why do you
+suppose I came with you to Mexico?”
+
+“I don’t know.” He grappled with her suggestion for a moment. “I
+suppose—you said it was because you were afraid of Hardman.”
+
+“Well, I wasn’t. At least, I wasn’t afraid that much. I knew that I
+would have been quite safe next time with the Mackenzies at the ranch.”
+
+“Then why was it?”
+
+“You can’t think of any reason?” She leaned forward and looked directly
+into his eyes—eyes as honest and as blue as an Arizona sky.
+
+But he stood unconvicted—nay, acquitted. The one reason she had dreaded
+he might offer to himself had evidently never entered his head.
+Whatever guesses he might have made on the subject, he was plainly
+guiltless of thinking she might have come with him because she was in
+love with him.
+
+“No, I can’t think of any other reason, if the one you gave isn’t the
+right one.”
+
+“Quite sure?”
+
+“Quite sure, pardner.”
+
+“Think! Why did you come to Chihuahua?”
+
+“To run down Wolf Leroy’s gang and to get Dave Henderson out of
+prison.”
+
+“Perhaps there is a reason why I should want him out of prison, a
+better reason than you could possibly have.”
+
+“I don’t savvy it. How can there be? You don’t know him, do you? He’s
+been in prison almost ever since you were born.” And on top of his last
+statement Bucky’s eyes began to open with a new light. “Good heavens!
+It can’t be possible. You’re not Webb Mackenzie’s little girl, are
+you?”
+
+She did not answer him in words, but from her neck she slipped a chain
+and handed it to him. On the chain hung a locket.
+
+The ranger struck a match and examined the trinket. “It’s the very
+missing locket. See! Here’s the other one. Compare them together.” He
+touched the spring and it opened, but the match was burned out and he
+had to light another. “Here’s the mine map that has been lost all these
+years. How did you get this? Have you always had it? And how long have
+you known that you were Frances Mackenzie?”
+
+His questions tumbled out one upon another in his excitement.
+
+She laughed, answering him categorically. “I don’t know, for sure. Yes,
+at least a great many years. Less than a week.”
+
+“But—I don’t understand—”
+
+“And won’t until you give me a chance to do some of the talking,” she
+interrupted dryly.
+
+“That’s right. I reckon I am getting off left foot first. It’s your
+powwow now,” he conceded.
+
+“So long as I can remember exactly I have always lived with the man
+Hardman and his wife. But before that I can vaguely recall something
+different. It has always seemed like a kind of fairyland, for I was a
+very little tot then. But one of the things I seem to remember was a
+sweet, kind-eyed mother and a big, laughing father. Then, too, there
+were horses and lots of cows. That is about all, except that the chain
+around my neck seemed to have some connection with my early life.
+That’s why I always kept it very carefully, and, after one of the
+lockets broke, I still kept it and the funny-looking paper inside of
+it.”
+
+“I don’t understand why Hardman didn’t take the paper,” he interrupted.
+
+“I suppose he did, and when he discovered that it held only half the
+secret of the mine he probably put it back in the locket. I see you
+have the other part.”
+
+“It was lost at the place where the robbers waited to hold up the T. P.
+Limited. Probably you lost it first and one of the robbers found it.”
+
+“Probably,” she said, in a queer voice.
+
+“What was the first clue your father had had for many years about his
+little girl. He happened to be at Aravaipa the day you and I first met.
+I guess he took a fancy to me, for he asked me to take this case up for
+him and see if I couldn’t locate you. I ran Hardman down and made him
+tell me the whole story. But he lied about some of it, for he told me
+you were dead.”
+
+“He is a born liar,” the girl commented. “Well, to get on with my
+story. Anderson, or Hardman, as he now calls himself, except when he
+uses his stage name of Cavallado, went into the show business and took
+me with him. When I was a little bit of a girl he used to use me for
+all sorts of things, such as a target for his knife throwing and to
+sell medicine to the audience. Lots of people would buy because I was
+such a morsel of a creature, and I suppose he found me a drawing card.
+We moved all over the country for years. I hated the life. But what
+could I do?”
+
+“You poor little lamb,” murmured the man. “And when did you find out
+who you were?”
+
+“I heard you talking to him the night you took him back to Epitaph, and
+then I began to piece things together. You remember you went over the
+whole story with him again just before we reached the town.”
+
+“And you knew it was you I was talking about?”
+
+“I didn’t know. But when you mentioned the locket and the map, I knew.
+Then it seemed to me that since this man Henderson had lost so many
+years of his life trying to save me I must do something for him. So I
+asked you to take me with you. I had been a boy so long I didn’t think
+you would know the difference, and you did not. If I hadn’t dressed as
+a girl that time you would not know yet.”
+
+“Maybe, and maybe not,” he smiled. “Point is, I do know, and it makes a
+heap of difference to me.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” she said hurriedly. “I’m more trouble now.”
+
+“That ain’t it,” he was beginning, when a thought brought him up short.
+As the daughter of Webb Mackenzie this girl was no longer a penniless
+outcast, but the heiress of one-half interest in the big Rocking Chair
+Ranch, with its fifteen thousand head of cattle. As the first he had a
+perfect right to love her and to ask her to marry him, but as the
+latter—well, that was quite a different affair. He had not a cent to
+bless himself with outside of his little ranch and his salary, and,
+though he might not question his own motives under such circumstances,
+there would be plenty who would question them for him. He was an
+independent young man as one could find in a long day’s ride, and his
+pride rose up to padlock his lips.
+
+She looked across at him in shy surprise, for all the eagerness had in
+an instant been sponged from his face. With a hard, impassive
+countenance he dropped the hand he had seized and turned away.
+
+“You were saying—” she suggested.
+
+“I reckon I’ve forgot what it was. It doesn’t matter, anyhow.”
+
+She was hurt, and deeply. It was all very well for her to try her
+little wiles to delay him, but in her heart she longed to hear the
+words he had been about to say. It had been very sweet to know that
+this brown, handsome son of Arizona loved her, very restful to know
+that for the first time in her life she could trustfully let her
+weakness lean on the strength of another. And, more than either, though
+she sometimes smilingly pretended to deny it to herself, was the
+ultimate fact that she loved him. His voice was music to her, his
+presence joy. He brought with him sunshine, and peace, and happiness.
+
+He was always so reliable, so little the victim of his moods. What
+could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was
+she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something
+in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it
+was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that
+her hero had feet of clay like other men.
+
+She felt her heart begin to swell, and choked back a sob. It wrung him
+to hear the little breath catch, but he was a man, strong-willed and
+resolute. Though he dug his finger nails into his palms till the flesh
+was cut he would not give way to his desire.
+
+“You’re not angry at me—Bucky?” she asked softly.
+
+“No, I’m not angry at you.” His voice was cold because he dared not
+trust himself to let his tenderness creep into it.
+
+“I haven’t done anything that I ought not to? Perhaps you think it
+wasn’t—wasn’t nice to—to come here with you.”
+
+“I don’t think anything of the kind,” his hard voice answered. “I think
+you’re a prince, if you want to know.”
+
+She smiled a little wanly, trying to coax him back into friendliness.
+“Then if I’m a prince you must be a princess,” she teased.
+
+“I meant a prince of good fellows.”
+
+“Oh!” She could be stiff, too, if it came to that.
+
+And at this inopportune moment the key turned harshly and the door
+swung open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+A CLEAN WHITE MAN’S OPTION
+
+
+The light of a lantern coming down the steps blinded them for a moment.
+Behind the lantern peered the yellow face of the turnkey. “Ho, there,
+_Americano!_ They want you up above,” the man said. “The generals, and
+the colonels, and the captains want a little talk with you before they
+hang you, señor.”
+
+The two soldiers behind the fellow cackled merrily at his wit, and the
+encouraged turnkey tried again.
+
+“We shall trouble you but a little time. Only a few questions, señor,
+an order, and then _poco tiempo_, after a short walk to the
+gallows—paradise.”
+
+“What—what do you mean?” gasped the girl whitely.
+
+“Never mind, _muchacho_. This is no affair of yours. Your turn will
+come later. Have no fear of that,” nodded the wrinkled old parchment
+face.
+
+“But—but he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
+
+“Ho, ho! Let him explain that to the generals and the colonels,”
+croaked the old fellow. “And that you may explain the sooner, señor,
+hurry—let your feet fly!”
+
+Bucky walked across to the girl he loved and took her hands in his.
+
+“If I don’t come back before three hours read the letter that I wrote
+you yesterday, dear. I have left matches on that bench so that you may
+have a light. Be brave, pardner. Don’t lose your nerve, whatever you
+do. We’ll both get out of this all right yet.”
+
+He spoke in a low voice, so that the guards might not hear, and it was
+in kind that she answered.
+
+“I’m afraid, Bucky; afraid away down deep. You don’t half believe
+yourself what you say. I can’t stand it to be here alone and not know
+what’s going on. They might be—be doing what that man said, and I not
+know anything about it till afterward.” She broke down and began to
+sob. “Oh, I know I’m a dreadful little coward, but I can’t be like
+you—and you heard what he said.”
+
+“Sho! What he says is nothing. I’m an American citizen, and I reckon
+that will carry us through all right. Uncle Sam has awful long arms,
+and these greasers know it. I’m expecting to come back here again,
+little pardner. But if I don’t make it, I want you, just as soon as
+they turn you loose, to go straight to your father’s ranch.”
+
+“Come! This won’t do. Look alive, señor,” the turnkey ordered, and to
+emphasize his words reached a hand forward to pluck away the sobbing
+lad. Bucky caught his wrist and tightened on it like a vise. “Hands
+off, here!” he commanded quietly.
+
+The man gave a howl of pain and nursed his hand gingerly after it was
+released.
+
+“Oh, Bucky, make him let me go, too,” the girl wailed, clinging to his
+coat.
+
+Gently he unfastened her fingers. “You know I would if I could, Curly;
+but it isn’t my say-so.”
+
+And with that he was gone. Ashen-faced she watched him go, and as soon
+as the door had closed groped her way to the bench and sank down on it,
+her face covered with her hands. He was going to his death. Her lover
+was going to his death. Why had she let him go? Why had she not done
+something—thought of some way to save him?
+
+The ranger’s guards led him to the military headquarters in the next
+street from the prison. He observed that nearly a whole company of
+Rurales formed the escort, and this led him to conclude that the
+government party was very uneasy as to the situation and had taken
+precautions against a possible attempt at rescue. But no such attempt
+was made. The sunny streets were pretty well deserted, except for a few
+lounging peons hardly interested enough to be curious. The air of
+peace, of order, sat so incongruously over the plaza that Bucky’s heart
+fell. Surely this was the last place on earth for a revolution to make
+any headway of consequence. His friends were hidden away in holes and
+cellars, while Megales dominated the situation with his troops. To
+expect a reversal of the situation was surely madness.
+
+Yet even while the thought was in his mind he caught a glimpse in a
+doorway of a man he recognized. It was Rodrigo, one of his allies of
+the previous night’s escapade, and it seemed to him that the man was
+trying to tell him something with his eyes. If so, the meaning of his
+message failed to carry home, for after the ranger had passed he dared
+not look back again.
+
+So far as the trial itself went, O’Connor hoped for nothing and was the
+less disappointed. One glance at his judges was enough to convince him
+of the futility of expectation. He was tried by a court-martial
+presided over by General Carlo. Beside him sat a Colonel Onate and
+Lieutenant Chaves. In none of the three did he find any room for hope.
+Carlo was a hater of Americans and a butcher by temperament and choice,
+Chaves a personal enemy of the prisoner, and Onate looked as grim an
+old scoundrel as Jeffreys the hanging judge of James Stuart. Governor
+Megales, though not technically a member of the court, was present, and
+took an active part in the prosecution. He was a stout, swarthy little
+man, with black, beady eyes that snapped restlessly to and fro, and
+from his manner to the officers in charge of the trial it was plain
+that he was a despot even in his own official family.
+
+The court did not trouble itself with forms of law. Chaves was both
+principal witness and judge, notwithstanding the protest of the
+prisoner. Yet what the lieutenant had to offer in the way of testimony
+was so tinctured with bitterness that it must have been plain to the
+veriest novice he was no fit judge of the case.
+
+But Bucky knew as well as the judges that his trial was a merely
+perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and,
+indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several
+times he interrupted the proceedings to urge haste.
+
+It took them just fifteen minutes from the time the young American was
+brought into the room to find him guilty of treason and to decide upon
+immediate execution as the fitting punishment.
+
+General Carlo turned to the prisoner. “Have you anything to say before
+I pronounce sentence of death upon you?”
+
+“I have,” answered Bucky, looking him straight in the eyes. “I am an
+American, and I demand the rights of a citizen of the United States.”
+
+“An American?” Incredulously Megales lifted his eyebrows. “You are a
+Spanish gypsy, my friend.”
+
+The ranger was fairly caught in his own trap. He had donned the gypsy
+masquerade because he did not want to be taken for what he was, and he
+had succeeded only too well. He had played into their hands. They
+would, of course, claim, in the event of trouble with the United
+States, that they had supposed him to be what his costume proclaimed
+him, and they would be able to make good their pretense with a very
+decent appearance of candor. What an idiot of sorts he had been!
+
+“We understand each other perfectly, governor. I know and you know that
+I am an American. As a citizen of the United States I claim the
+protection of that flag. I demand that you will send immediately for
+the United States consul to this city.”
+
+Megales leaned forward with a thin, cruel smile on his face. “Very
+well, señor. Let it be as you say. Your friend, Señor O’Halloran, is
+the United States consul. I shall be very glad to send for him if you
+can tell me where to find him. Having business with him to-day, I have
+despatched messengers who have been unable to find him at home. But
+since you know where he is, and are in need of him, perhaps you can
+assist me with information of value.”
+
+Again Bucky was fairly caught. He had no reason to doubt that the
+governor spoke truth in saying that O’Halloran was the United States
+consul. There were in the city as permanent residents not more than
+three or four citizens of the United States. With the political
+instinct of the Irish, it would be very characteristic of O’Halloran to
+work his “pull” to secure for himself the appointment. That he had not
+happened to mention the fact to his friend could be accounted for by
+reason of the fact that the duties of the office at that place were few
+and unimportant.
+
+“We are waiting, señor. If you will tell us where we may send?” hinted
+Megales.
+
+“I do not know any more than you do, if he is not at home.”
+
+The governor’s eyes glittered. “Take care, señor. Better sharpen your
+memory.”
+
+“It’s pretty hard to remember what one never knew,” retorted the
+prisoner.
+
+The Mexican tyrant brought his clinched fist slowly down on the table
+in front of him. “It is necessary to remember, sir. It is necessary to
+answer a few questions. If you answer them to our satisfaction you may
+yet save your life.”
+
+“Indeed!” Bucky swept his fat bulk scornfully from head to foot. “If I
+were what you think me, do you suppose I would betray my friends?”
+
+“You have no option, sir. Answer my questions, or die like a dog.”
+
+“You mean that you would not think you had any option if you were in my
+place, but since I’m a clean white man there’s an option. By God! sir,
+it doesn’t take me a whole lot of time to make it, either. I’ll see you
+rot in hell before I’ll play Judas.”
+
+The words rang like a bell through the room, not loud, but clear and
+vibrant. There was a long instant’s silence after the American finished
+speaking, and as his eyes swept from one to another of the enemy Bucky
+met with a surprise. On Colonel Onate’s face was a haggard look of
+fear—surely it was fear—that lifted in relief at the young man’s brave
+challenge. He had been dreading something, and the dread was lifted.
+Onate! Onate! The ranger’s memory searched the past few days to locate
+the name. Had O’Halloran mentioned it? Was this man one of the officers
+expected to join the opposition when it declared itself against
+Megales? He had a vague recollection of the name, and he could have
+heard it only through his friend.
+
+“Was Juan Valdez a member of the party that took the rifles from
+Lieutenant Chaves and his escort?”
+
+Bucky laughed out his contempt.
+
+“Speak, sir,” broke in Chaves. “Answer the governor, you dog.”
+
+“If I speak, it will be to tell you what a cur I think you.”
+
+Chaves flushed angrily and laid a hand on his revolver. “Who are you
+that play dice with death, like a fool?”
+
+“My name, seh, is Bucky O’Connor.”
+
+At the words a certain fear, followed by a look of triumph, passed over
+the face of Chaves. It was as if he had had an unpleasant shock that
+had instantly proved groundless. Bucky did not at the time understand
+it.
+
+“Why don’t you shoot? It’s about your size, you pinhead, to kill an
+unarmed man.”
+
+“Tell all you know and I promise you your life.” It was Megales who
+spoke.
+
+“I’ll tell you nothing, except that I’m Bucky O’Connor, of the Arizona
+Rangers. Chew on that a while, governor, and see how it tastes. Kill
+me, and Uncle Sam is liable to ask mighty loud whyfor; not because I’m
+such a mighty big toad in the puddle, but because any man that stands
+under that flag has back of him the biggest, best, and gamest country
+on God’s green footstool.” Bucky spoke in English this time, straight
+as he could send it.
+
+“In that case, I think sentence may now be pronounced, general.”
+
+“I warn you that the United States will exact vengeance for my death.”
+
+“Indeed!” Politely the governor smiled at him with a malice almost
+devilish. “If so, it will be after you are dead, Señor Bucky O’Connor,
+of the Arizona Rangers.”
+
+Colonel Onate leaned forward and whispered something to General Carlo,
+who shook his head and frowned. Presently the black head of Chaves
+joined them, and the three were in excited discussion. Arms waved like
+signals, as is usual among the Latin races who talk with their hands
+and expressive shrugs of the shoulders. Outvoted by two to one, Onate
+appealed to the governor, who came up and listened, frowning, to both
+sides of the debate. In their excitement the voices raised, and to
+Bucky came snatches of phrases that told him his life hung in the
+balance. Carlo and Chaves were for having him executed out of hand, at
+latest, by sunset. The latter was especially vindictive. Indeed, it
+seemed to the ranger that ever since he had mentioned his name this man
+had set himself more malevolently to compass his death. Onate
+maintained, on the other hand, that their prisoner was worth more to
+them alive than dead. There was a chance that he might weaken before
+morning and tell secrets. At worst they would still have his life as a
+card to hold in case of need over the head of the rebels. If it should
+turn out that this was not needed, he could be executed in the morning
+as well as to-night.
+
+It may be conceived with what anxiety Bucky listened to the whispered
+conversation and waited for the decision of the governor. He was a game
+man, noted even in a country famous for its courageous citizens, but he
+felt strangely weak now as he waited with that leather-crusted face of
+his bereft of all expression.
+
+“Give him till morning to weaken. If he still stays obstinate, hang him
+in the dawn,” decided the governor, his beady eyes fixed on the
+prisoner.
+
+Not a flicker of the eyelid betrayed the Arizonian’s emotion, but for
+an instant the world swam dizzily before him. Safe till morning! Before
+then a hundred chances might change the current of the game in his
+favor. How brightly the sunshine flooded the room! What a glorious
+world it was, after all! Through the open window poured the rich,
+full-throated song of a meadow lark, and the burden of its blithe song
+was, “How good is this life the mere living.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+BUCKY’S FIRST-RATE REASONS
+
+
+How long Frances Mackenzie gave herself up to despair she never knew,
+but when at last she resolutely took herself in hand it seemed hours
+later. “Bucky told me to be brave, he told me not to lose my nerve,”
+she repeated to herself over and over again, drawing comfort from the
+memory of his warm, vibrant voice. “He said he would come back, and he
+hates a liar. So, of course, he will come.” With such argument she
+tried to allay her wild fears.
+
+But on top of all her reassurances would come a swift, blinding vision
+of gallant Bucky being led to his death that crumpled her courage as a
+hammer might an empty egg shell. What was the use of her pretending all
+was well when at that very moment they might be murdering him? Then in
+her agony she would pace up and down, wringing her hands, or would beat
+them on the stone walls till the soft flesh was bruised and bleeding.
+
+It was in the reaction, after one of these paroxysms of despair, that
+in her groping for an anchor to make fast her courage she thought of
+his letter.
+
+“He said in three hours I was to read it if he didn’t come back. It
+must be more than three hours now,” she said aloud to herself, and knew
+a fresh dread at his prolonged absence beyond the limit he had set.
+
+In point of fact, he had been gone less than three-quarters of an hour,
+but in each one of them she had lived a lifetime of pain and died many
+deaths.
+
+By snatches she read her letter, a sentence or a fragment of a sentence
+at a time as the light served. Luckily he had left a case nearly full
+of matches, and one after another of them dropped, charred and burned
+out, before she had finished reading. After she had read it, her first
+love letter, she must needs go over it again, to learn by heart the
+sweet phrases in which he had wooed her. It was a commonplace note
+enough, far more neutral than the strong, virile writer who had lacked
+the cunning to transmit his feeling to ink and paper. But, after all,
+it was from him, and it told the divine message, however haltingly. No
+wonder she burned her little finger tips from the flame of the matches
+creeping nearer unheeded. No wonder she pressed it to her lips in the
+darkness and dreamed her happy dream in those few moments when she was
+lost in her love before cruel realities pressed home on her again.
+
+“I told you, Little Curly Haid, that I had first-rate reasons for not
+wanting to be killed by these Mexicans. So I have, the best reasons
+going. But they are not ripe to tell you, and so I write them.
+
+“I guessed your secret, little pardner, right away when I seen you in a
+girl’s outfit. If I hadn’t been blind as a bat I would have guessed it
+long since, for all the time my feelings were telling me mighty loud
+that you were the lovingest little kid Bucky had ever come across.
+
+“I’ll not leave you to guess my secret the way you did me yours, dear
+Curly, but right prompt I’ll set down adore (with one D) and say you
+hit the bull’s-eye that time without expecting to. But if I was saying
+it I would not use any French words sweetheart, but plain American. And
+the word would be l-o-v-e, without any D’s. Now you have got the
+straight of it, my dear. I love you—love you—love you, from the crown
+of that curly hear to the soles of your little feet. What’s more, you
+have got to love me, too, since I am,
+
+“Your future husband,
+“BUCKY O’CONNOR.
+
+
+“P. S.—And now, Curly, you know my first-rate reasons for not meaning
+to get shot up by any of these Mexican fellows.”
+
+So the letter ran, and it went to her heart directly as rain to the
+thirsty roots of flowers. He loved her. Whatever happened, she would
+always have that comfort. They might kill him, but they could not take
+away that. The words of an old Scotch song that Mrs. Mackenzie sang
+came back to her:
+
+“The span o’ life’s nae large eneugh,
+    Nor deep enough the sea,
+Nor braid eneugh this weary warld,
+    To part my love frae me.”
+
+
+No, they could not part their hearts in this world or the next, and
+with this sad comfort she flung herself on the rough bed and sobbed.
+She would grieve still, but the wildness of her grief and despair was
+gone, scattered by the knowledge that however their troubles eventuated
+they were now one in heart.
+
+She was roused after a long time by the sound of the huge key grating
+in the lock. Through the opened door a figure descended, and by an
+illuminating swing of the turnkey’s lantern she saw that it was Bucky.
+Next moment the door had closed and they were in each other’s arms.
+Bucky’s stubborn pride, the remembrance of the riches which of a sudden
+had transformed his little partner into an heiress and set a high wall
+of separation between them, these were swept clean away on a great wave
+of love which took Bucky off his feet and left him breathless.
+
+“I had almost given you up,” she cried joyfully.
+
+Again he passed his hand across her face. “You’ve been crying, little
+pardner. Were you crying on account of me?”
+
+“On account of myself, because I was afraid I had lost you. Oh, Bucky,
+isn’t it too good to be true?”
+
+The ranger smiled, remembering that he had about fourteen hours to
+live, if the Megales faction triumphed. “Good! I should think it is.
+Bully! I’ve been famished to see Curly Haid again.”
+
+“And to know that everything is going to come out all right and that we
+love each other.”
+
+“That’s right good hearing and most ce’tainly true on my side of it.
+But how do you happen to know it so sure?” he laughed gayly.
+
+“Why, your letter, Bucky. It was the dearest letter. I love it.”
+
+“But you weren’t to read it for three hours,” he pretended to reprove,
+holding her at arm’s length to laugh at her.
+
+“Wasn’t it three hours? It seemed ever so much longer.”
+
+“You little rogue, you didn’t play fair.” And to punish her he drew her
+soft, supple body to him in a close embrace, and for the first time
+kissed the sweet mouth that yielded itself to him.
+
+“Tell me all about what happened to you,” she bade him playfully, after
+speech was again in order.
+
+“Sure.” He caught her hand to lead her to the bench and she winced
+involuntarily.
+
+“I burned it,” she explained, adding, with a ripple of shy laughter:
+“When I was reading your letter. It doesn’t really hurt, though.”
+
+But he had to see for himself and make much over the little blister
+that the flame of a match revealed to him. For they were both very much
+in love, and, in consequence, bubbling over with the foolishness that
+is the greatest inherited wisdom of the ages.
+
+But though her lover had acquiesced so promptly to her demand for a
+full account of his adventures since leaving her, that young man had no
+intention of offering an unexpurged edition of them. It was his hope
+that O’Halloran would storm the prison during the night and effect a
+rescue. If so, good; if not, there was no need of her knowing that for
+them the new day would usher in fresh sorrow. So he gave her an account
+of his trial and its details, told her how he had been convicted, and
+how Colonel Onate had fought warily to get the sentence of execution
+postponed in order to give their friends a chance to rescue them.
+
+“When Megales remanded me to prison I wanted to let out an Arizona
+yell, Curly. It sure seemed too good to be true.”
+
+“But he may want the sentence carried out some time, if he changes his
+mind. Maybe in a week or two he may take a notion that—” She stopped,
+plainly sobered by the fear that the good news of his return might not
+be final.
+
+“We won’t cross that bridge till we come to it. You don’t suppose our
+friends are going to sit down and fold their hands, do you? Not if I’ve
+got Mike O’Halloran and young Valdez sized up right. Fur is going to
+begin to fly pretty soon in this man’s country. But it’s up to us to
+help all we can, and I reckon we’ll begin by taking a preliminary
+survey of this wickiup.”
+
+Wickiup was distinctly good, since the word is used to apply to a frail
+Indian hut, and this cell was nothing less than a tomb built in the
+solid rock by blowing out a chamber with dynamite and covering the
+front with a solid sheet of iron, into which a door fitted. It did not
+take a very long investigation to prove to Bucky that escape was
+impossible by any exit except the door, which meant the same thing as
+impossible at all under present conditions. Yet he did not yield to
+this opinion without going over every inch of the walls many times to
+make sure that no secret panel opened into a tunnel from the room.
+
+“I reckon they want to keep us, Curly. Mr. Megales has sure got us real
+safe this time. I’d be plumb discouraged about breaking jail out of
+this cage. It’s ce’tainly us to stay hitched a while.”
+
+About dark tortillas and frijoles were brought down to them by the
+facetious turnkey, who was accompanied as usual by two guards.
+
+“Why don’t my little birdies sing?” he asked, with a wink at the
+soldiers. “One of them will not do any singing after daybreak
+to-morrow. Ho, ho, my larks! Tune up, tune up!”
+
+“What do you mean about one not singing after daybreak?” asked the
+girl, with eyes dilating.
+
+“What! Hasn’t he told you? Señor the ranger is to be hanged at the dawn
+unless he finds his tongue for Governor Megales. Ho, ho! Our birdie
+must speak even if he doesn’t sing.” And with that as a parting shot
+the man clanged the door to after him and locked it.
+
+“You never told me, Bucky. You have been trying to deceive me,” she
+groaned.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “What was the use, girlie? I knew it would
+worry you, and do no good. Better let you sleep in peace, I thought.”
+
+“While you kept watch alone and waited through the long night. Oh,
+Bucky!” She crept close to him and put her arms around his neck,
+holding him tight, as if in the hope that she could keep him against
+the untoward fate that was reaching for him. “Oh, Bucky, if I could
+only die for you!”
+
+“Don’t give up, little friend. I don’t. Somehow I’ll slip out, and then
+you’ll have to live for me and not die for me.”
+
+“What is it that the governor wants you to say that you won’t?”
+
+“Oh, he wants me to sell our friends. I told him to go climb a giant
+cactus.”
+
+“Of course you couldn’t do that,” she sighed regretfully.
+
+He laughed. “Well, hardly, and call myself a white man.”
+
+“But—” She blanched at the alternative. “Oh, Bucky, we must do
+something. We must—we must.”
+
+“It ain’t so bad as it looks, honey. You want to remember that Mike
+O’Halloran is on deck. What’s the matter with him knocking out a home
+run and bringing us both in. I put a heap of confidence in that
+red-haided Irishman,” he answered cheerfully.
+
+“You say that just to—to give me courage. You don’t really think he can
+do anything,” she said wanly.
+
+“That’s just what I think, Curly. Some men have a way of getting things
+done. When you look at O’Halloran you feel this, the same as you do
+when you look at Val Collins. Oh, he’ll get us out all right. I’ve been
+in several tighter holes than this one.” His mention of Collins
+suggested a diversion, and he took up a less distressing theme lightly.
+“Wonder what Val is doing at this precise moment. I’ll bet he’s
+beginning to make things warm for Wolf Leroy’s bunch of miscreants.
+We’ll have the robbers of the Limited behind the bars within two weeks
+now, or I miss my guess.”
+
+He had succeeded in diverting her attention better than he had dared to
+hope. Her big eyes fixed on his much as if he had raised for her some
+forgotten spectre.
+
+“That’s another thing I must tell you. I didn’t think to before. But I
+want you to know all about me now. Don’t think me bad, Bucky. I’m only
+a girl. I couldn’t help myself,” she pleaded.
+
+“What is it you have done that is so awful?” he smiled, and went to
+gather her into his arms.
+
+She stayed him with a gesture of her hand. “No, not yet. Mebbe after
+you know you won’t want to. I was one of the robbers of the Limited.”
+
+“You—what!” he exclaimed, for once struck dumb with sheer amazement.
+
+“Yes, Bucky. I expect you’ll hate me now. What is it you called me—a
+miscreant? Well, that’s what I am.”
+
+His arms slipped round her as she began to sob, and he gentled her till
+she could again speak. “Tell me all about it, little Curly.” he said.
+
+“I didn’t go into it because I wanted to. My master made me. I don’t
+know much about the others, except that I heard the names they called
+each other.”
+
+“Would you know them again if you saw them? But of course you would.”
+
+“Yes. But that’s it, Bucky. I hated them all, and I was in mortal fear
+all the time. Still—I can’t betray them. They thought I went in freely
+with them—all but Hardman. It wouldn’t be right for me to tell what I
+know. I’ve got to make you see that, dear.”
+
+“You’ll not need to argue that with me, honey. I see it. You must keep
+quiet. Don’t tell anybody else what you’ve told me.”
+
+“And will they put me in the penitentiary when the rest go there?”
+
+“Not while Bucky O’Connor is alive and kicking,” he told her
+confidently.
+
+But the form in which he had expressed his feeling was unfortunate. It
+brought them back to the menace of their situation. Neither of them
+could tell how long he would be alive and kicking. She flung herself
+into his arms and wept till she could weep no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI
+
+
+When the news reached O’Halloran that Megales had scored on the
+opposition by arresting Bucky O’Connor, the Irishman swore fluently at
+himself for his oversight in forgetting the Northern Chihuahua. So far
+as the success of the insurgents went, the loss of the ranger was a
+matter of no importance, since O’Halloran knew well that nothing in the
+way of useful information could be cajoled or threatened out of him.
+But, personally, it was a blow to the filibuster, because he knew that
+the governor would not hesitate to execute his friend if his fancy or
+his fears ran that way, and the big, red-headed Celt would not have let
+Bucky go to death for a dozen teapot revolutions if he could help it.
+
+“And do you think you’re fit to run even a donation party, you great,
+blundering gumph?” Mike asked himself, in disgust. “You a conspirator!
+You a leader of a revolution! By the ghost of Brian Boru, you had
+better run along back to the kindergarten class.”
+
+But he was not the man to let grass grow under his feet while he
+hesitated how to remedy his mistake. Immediately he got in touch with
+Valdez and a few of his party, and decided on a bold counterstroke
+that, if successful, would oppose a checkmate to the governor’s check
+and would also make unnecessary the unloosing of the State prisoners on
+the devoted heads of the people.
+
+“But mind, gentlemen,” said Juan Valdez plainly, “the governor must not
+be injured personally. I shall not consent to any violence, no matter
+what the issue. Furthermore, I should like to be given charge of the
+palace, in order to see that his wants are properly provided for. We
+cannot afford to have our movement discredited at the outset by
+unnecessary bloodshed or by any wanton outrages.”
+
+O’Halloran smothered a smile. “Quite right, señor. Success at all
+hazards, but, if possible, success with peace. And, faith, subject to
+the approval of the rest of those present, I do hereby appoint you
+keeper of the governor’s person and his palace, as well as all that do
+dwell therein, including his man servants, his maid servants, and his
+daughter. We hold you personally responsible for their safe keeping.
+See that none of them cherish the enemy or give aid and comfort to
+them.” The Irishman finished, with a broad smile that seemed to say:
+“Begad, there’s a clear field. Go in and win, me bye.”
+
+Nothing could be done in broad daylight, while the troops of the
+government party patrolled the streets and were prepared to pounce on
+the first suspects that poked their noses out of the holes where they
+were hidden. Nevertheless, their spies were busy all day, reporting to
+the opposition leaders everything that happened of interest. In the
+course of the day General Valdez, the father of Juan, was arrested on
+suspicion of complicity and thrown into prison, as were a score of
+others thought to be in touch with the Valdez faction. All day the
+troops of the governor were fussily busy, but none of the real leaders
+of the insurgents was taken. For General Valdez, though he had been
+selected on account of his integrity and great popularity to succeed
+Megales, was unaware of the plot on foot to retire the dictator from
+power.
+
+It was just after nightfall that a farmer drove into Chihuahua with a
+wagonload of alfalfa. He was halted once or twice by guards on the
+streets, but, after a very cursory inspection, was allowed to pass. His
+route took him past the back of the governor’s palace, an impressive
+stone affair surrounded by beautiful grounds. Here he stopped, as if to
+fasten a tug. Out of the hay tumbled fifteen men armed with rifles and
+revolvers, all of them being careful to leave the wagon on the side
+farthest from the palace.
+
+“Now, me lads, we’re all heroes by our talk. It’s up to us to make
+good. I can promise one thing: by this time to-morrow we’ll all be live
+patriots or dead traitors. Which shall it be?”
+
+O’Halloran’s concluding question was a merely rhetorical one, for
+without waiting for an answer he started at the double toward the
+palace, taking advantage of the dense shrubbery that offered cover up
+to the last twenty yards. This last was covered with a rush so rapid
+that the guard was surprised into a surrender without a protest.
+
+Double guard was on duty on account of the strained situation, but the
+officer in charge, having been won over to the Valdez side, had taken
+care to pick them with much pains. As a consequence, the insurgents met
+friends in place of enemies, and within three minutes controlled fully
+the palace. Every entrance was at once closed and guarded, so that no
+news of the reversal could reach the military barracks.
+
+So silently had the palace been taken that, except the guards and one
+or two servants held as prisoners, not even those living within it were
+aware of anything unusual.
+
+“Señor Valdez, you are appointed to notify the señorita that she need
+not be alarmed at what has occurred. Señor Garcia will act as captain
+of the day, and allow nobody to leave the building under any pretext
+whatever. I shall personally put the tyrant under arrest. Rodrigo and
+José will accompany me.”
+
+O’Halloran left his subordinates at the door when he entered the
+apartments of the governor. The outer room was empty, and the Irishman
+passed through it to the inner one, where Megales was accustomed to
+take his after-dinner siesta.
+
+To-night, however, that gentleman was in no mood for peaceful
+reflection followed by slumber. He was on the edge of a volcano, and he
+knew it. The question was whether he could hold the lid on without an
+eruption. General Valdez he dared not openly kill, on account of his
+fame and his popularity, but that pestilent Irishman O’Halloran could
+be assassinated and so could several of his allies—if they only gave
+him time. That was the rub. The general dissatisfaction at his rule had
+been no secret, of course, but the activity of the faction opposing
+him, the boldness and daring with which it had risked all to overthrow
+him, had come as so complete a surprise that he had been unprepared to
+meet it. Everywhere to-night his guards covered the city, ready to
+crush rebellion as soon as it showed its head. Carlo was in personal
+charge of the troops, and would remain so until after the election
+to-morrow, at which he would be declared formally reëlected. If he
+could keep his hands on the reins for twenty-four hours more the worst
+would be past. He would give a good deal to know what that mad
+Irishman, O’Halloran, was doing just now. If he could once get hold of
+him, the opposition would collapse like a house of cards.
+
+At that precise moment in walked the mad Irishman pat to the Mexican’s
+thought of him.
+
+“_Buenos noches_, excellency. I understand you have been looking for
+me. I am, señor, yours to command.” The big Irishman brought his heels
+together and gave a mocking military salute.
+
+The governor’s first thought was that he was a victim of treachery, his
+second that he was a dead man, his third that he would die as a Spanish
+gentleman ought. He was pale to the eyes, but he lost no whit of his
+dignity.
+
+“You have, I suppose, taken the palace,” he said quietly.
+
+“As a loan, excellency, merely as a loan. After to-morrow it will be
+returned you in the event you still need it,” replied O’Halloran
+blandly.
+
+“You expect to murder me, of course?”
+
+The big Celt looked shocked. “Not at all! The bulletins may perhaps
+have to report you accidentally killed or a victim of suicide.
+Personally I hope not.”
+
+“I understand; but before this lamentable accident happens I beg leave
+to assure myself that the palace really is in your hands, señor. A mere
+formality, of course.” The governor smiled his thin-lipped smile and
+touched a bell beside him.
+
+Twice Megales pressed the electric bell, but no orderly appeared in
+answer to it. He bowed to the inevitable.
+
+“I grant you victor, Señor O’Halloran. Would it render your victory
+less embarrassing if I were to give you material immediately for that
+bulletin on suicide?” He asked the question quite without emotion, as
+courteously as if he were proposing a stroll through the gardens.
+
+O’Halloran had never liked the man. The Irish in him had always boiled
+at his tyranny. But he had never disliked him so little as at this
+moment. The fellow had pluck, and that was one certain passport to the
+revolutionist’s favor.
+
+“On the contrary, it would distress me exceedingly. Let us reserve that
+bulletin as a regrettable possibility in the event that less drastic
+measures fail.”
+
+“Which means, I infer, that you have need of me before I pass by the
+Socratic method,” he suggested, still with that pale smile set in
+granite “I shall depend on you to let me know at what precise hour you
+would like to order an epitaph written for me. Say the word at your
+convenience, and within five minutes your bulletin concerning the late
+governor will have the merit of truth.”
+
+“Begad, excellency, I like your spirit. If it’s my say-so, you will
+live to be a hundred. Come the cards are against you. Some other day
+they may fall more pat for you. But the jig’s up now.”
+
+“I am very much of your opinion, sir,” agreed Megales.
+
+“Then why not make terms?”
+
+“Such as—”
+
+“Your life and your friends’ lives against a graceful capitulation.”
+
+“Our lives as prisoners or as free men?”
+
+“The utmost freedom compatible with the circumstances. Your friends may
+either leave or remain and accept the new order of things. I’m afraid
+it will be necessary for you and General Carlo to leave the state for
+your own safety. You have both many enemies.”
+
+“With our personal possessions?”
+
+“Of course. Such property as you cannot well take may be left in the
+hands of an agent and disposed of later.”
+
+Megales eyed him narrowly. “Is it your opinion, on honor, that the
+general and I would reach the boundaries of the State without being
+assassinated?”
+
+“I pledge you my honor and that of Juan Valdez that you will be safely
+escorted out of the country if you will consent to a disguise. It is
+only fair to him to say that he stands strong for your life.”
+
+“Then, sir, I accept your terms if you can make it plain to me that you
+are strong enough to take the city against General Carlo.”
+
+From his pocket O’Halloran drew a typewritten list and handed it to the
+governor, who glanced it over with interest.
+
+“These army officers are all with you?”
+
+“As soon as the word is given.”
+
+“You will pardon me if I ask for proof?”
+
+“Certainly. Choose the name of any one of them you like and send for
+him. You are at liberty to ask him whether he is pledged to us.”
+
+The governor drew a pencil-mark through a name. O’Halloran clapped his
+hands and Rodrigo came into the room.
+
+“Rodrigo, the governor desires you to carry a message to Colonel Onate.
+He is writing it now. You will give Colonel Onate my compliments and
+ask him to make as much haste as is convenient.”
+
+Megales signed and sealed the note he was writing and handed it to
+O’Halloran, who in turn passed it to Rodrigo.
+
+“Colonel Onate should be here in fifteen minutes at the farthest. May I
+in the meantime offer you a glass of wine, Dictator O’Halloran?” At the
+Irishman’s smile, the Mexican governor hastened to add,
+misunderstanding him purposely: “Perhaps I assume too much in taking
+the part of host here. May I ask whether you will be governor in person
+or by deputy, señor?”
+
+“You do me too much honor, excellency. Neither in person nor by deputy,
+I fear. And, as for the glass of wine—with all my heart. Good liquor is
+always in order, whether for a funeral or a marriage.”
+
+“Or an abdication, you might add. I drink to a successful reign, Señor
+Dictator: _Le roi est mort; vive le roi!_”
+
+The Irishman filled a second glass. “And I drink to Governor Megales, a
+brave man. May the cards fall better for him next time he plays.”
+
+The governor bowed ironically. “A brave man certainly, and you might
+add: ‘Who loses his stake without striking one honest blow for it.’”
+
+“We play with stacked cards, excellency. Who can forestall the
+treachery of trusted associates?”
+
+“Sir, your apology for me is very generous, no less so than the terms
+you offer,” returned Megales sardonically.
+
+O’Halloran laughed. “Well, if you don’t like my explanations I shall
+have to let you make your own. And, by the way, may I venture on a
+delicate personal matter, your excellency?”
+
+“I can deny you nothing to-night, señor,” answered Megales, mocking at
+himself.
+
+“Young Valdez is in love with your daughter. I am sure that she is fond
+of him, but she is very loyal to you and flouts the lad. I was
+thinking, sir, that—”
+
+The Spaniard’s eye flashed, but his answer came suavely as he
+interrupted: “Don’t you think you had better leave Señor Valdez and me
+to arrange our own family affairs? We could not think of troubling you
+to attend to them.”
+
+“He is a good lad and a brave.”
+
+Megales bowed. “Your recommendation goes a long way with me, señor,
+and, in truth, I have known him only a small matter of twenty years
+longer than you.”
+
+“Never a more loyal youngster in the land.”
+
+“You think so? A matter of definitions, one may suppose. Loyal to the
+authorized government of his country, or to the rebels who would
+illegally overthrow it?”
+
+“Egad, you have me there, excellency. ’Tis a question of point of view,
+I’m thinking. But you’ll never tell me the lad pretended one thing and
+did another. I’ll never believe you like that milksop Chaves better.”
+
+“Must I choose either a fool or a knave?”
+
+“I doubt it will be no choice of yours. Juan Valdez is an ill man to
+deny what he sets his heart on. If the lady is willing—”
+
+“I shall give her to the knave and wash my hands of her. Since treason
+thrives she may at last come back to the palace as its mistress. _Quien
+sabe?_”
+
+“Less likely things have happened. What news, Rodrigo?” This last to
+the messenger, who at that moment appeared at the door.
+
+“Colonel Onate attends, señor.”
+
+“Show him in.”
+
+Onate was plainly puzzled at the summons to attend the governor, and
+mixed with his perplexity was a very evident anxiety. He glanced
+quickly at O’Halloran as he entered, as if asking for guidance, and
+then as questioningly at Megales. Had the Irishman played Judas and
+betrayed them all? Or was the coup already played with success?
+
+“Colonel Onate, I have sent for you at the request of Governor Megales
+to set his mind at rest on a disturbing point. His health is failing
+and he considers the advisability of retiring from the active cares of
+state. I have assured him that you, among others, would, under such
+circumstances, be in a friendly relation to the next administration. Am
+I correct in so assuring him?”
+
+Megales pierced him with his beady eyes. “In other words, Colonel
+Onate, are you one of the traitors involved in this rebellion?”
+
+“I prefer the word patriot, señor,” returned Onate, flushing.
+
+“Indeed I have no doubt you do. I am answered,” he exclaimed
+scornfully. “And what is the price of patriotism these days, colonel?”
+
+“Sir!” The colonel laid his hand on his sword.
+
+“I was merely curious to know what position you would hold under the
+new administration.”
+
+O’Halloran choked a laugh, for by chance the governor had hit the nail
+on the head. Onate was to be Secretary of State under Valdez, and this
+was the bait that had been dangled temptingly under his nose to induce
+a desertion of Megales.
+
+“If you mean to reflect upon my honor I can assure you that my
+conscience is clear,” answered Onate blackly.
+
+“Indeed, colonel, I do not doubt it. I have always admired your
+conscience and its adaptability.” The governor turned to O’Halloran. “I
+am satisfied, Senior Dictator. If you will permit me—”
+
+He walked to his desk, unlocked a drawer, and drew forth a parchment,
+which he tossed across to the Irishman. “It is my commission as
+governor. Allow me to place it in your hands and put myself at the
+service of the new administration.”
+
+“If you will kindly write notes, I will send a messenger to General
+Carlo and another to Colonel Gabilonda requesting their attendance. I
+think affairs may be quickly arranged.”
+
+“You are irresistible, señor. I hasten to obey.”
+
+Megales sat down and wrote two notes, which he turned over to
+O’Halloran. The latter read them, saw them officially sealed, and
+dispatched them to their destinations.
+
+When Gabilonda was announced, General Carlo followed almost at his
+heels. The latter glanced in surprise at O’Halloran.
+
+“Where did you catch him, excellency?” he asked.
+
+“I did not catch him. He has caught me, and, incidentally, you,
+general,” answered the sardonic Megales.
+
+“In short, general,” laughed the big Irishman, “the game is up.”
+
+“But the army—You haven’t surrendered without a fight?”
+
+“That is precisely what I have done. Cast your eye over that paper,
+general, and then tell me of what use the army would be to us. Half the
+officers are with the enemy, among them the patriotic Colonel Onate,
+whom you see present. A resistance would be futile, and would only
+result in useless bloodshed.”
+
+“I don’t believe it,” returned Carlo bluntly.
+
+“Seeing is believing, general,” returned O’Halloran, and he gave a
+little nod to Onate.
+
+The colonel left the room, and two or three minutes later a bell began
+to toll.
+
+“What does that mean?” asked Carlo.
+
+“The call to arms, general. It means that the old régime is at an end
+in Chihuahua. _Viva Valdez_.”
+
+“Not without a struggle,” cried the general, rushing out of the room.
+
+O’Halloran laughed. “I’m afraid he will not be able to give the
+countersign to Garcia. In the meantime, excellency, pending his return,
+I would suggest that you notify Colonel Gabilonda to turn over the
+prison to us without resistance.”
+
+“You hear your new dictator, colonel,” said Megales.
+
+“Pardon me, your excellency, but a written order—”
+
+“Would relieve you of responsibility. So it would. I write once more.”
+
+He was interrupted as he wrote by a great shout from the plaza. “_Viva
+Valdez!_” came clearly across the night air, and presently another that
+stole the color from the cheek of Megales.
+
+“Death to the tyrant! Death to Megales!” repeated the governor, after
+the shouts reached them. “I fear, Señor Dictator, that your pledge to
+see me across the frontier will not avail against that mad-dog mob.” He
+smiled, waving an airy hand toward the window.
+
+The Irishman set his bulldog jaw. “I’ll get you out safely or, begad!
+I’ll go down fighting with you.”
+
+“I think we are likely to have interesting times, my dear dictator. Be
+sure I shall watch your doings with interest so long as your friends
+allow me to watch anything in this present world.” The governor turned
+to his desk and continued the letter with a firm hand. “I think this
+should relieve you of responsibility, colonel.”
+
+By this time General Carlo had reentered the room, with a crestfallen
+face.
+
+O’Halloran had been thinking rapidly. “Governor, I think the safest
+place for you and General Carlo, for a day or two, will be in the
+prison. I intend to put my friend O’Connor in charge of its defense,
+with a trustworthy command. There is no need of word reaching the mob
+as to where you are hidden. I confess the quarters will be narrows
+but—”
+
+“No narrower than those we shall occupy very soon if we do not accept
+your suggestion,” smiled Megales. “_Buenos!_ Anything to escape the
+pressing attentions of your friends outside. I ask only one favor, the
+loan of a revolver, in order that we may disappoint the mad dogs if
+they overpower the guard of Señor O’Connor.”
+
+Hastily O’Halloran rapped out orders, gathered together a little force
+of five men, and prepared to start. Both Carlo and Megales he furnished
+with revolvers, that they might put an end to their lives in case the
+worst happened. But before they had started Juan Valdez and Carmencita
+Megales came running toward them.
+
+“Where are you going? It is too late. The palace is surrounded!” cried
+the young man. “Look!” He swept an excited arm toward the window.
+“There are thousands and thousands of frenzied people calling for the
+lives of the governor and General Carlo.”
+
+Carlo shook like a leaf, but Megales only smiled at O’Halloran his
+wintry smile. “That is the trouble in keeping a mad dog, señor. One
+never knows when it may get out of leash and bite perhaps even the hand
+that feeds it.”
+
+Carmencita flung herself, sobbing, into the arms of her father and
+filled the palace with her screams. Megales handed her over promptly to
+her lover.
+
+“To my private office,” he ordered briskly. “Come, general, there is
+still a chance.”
+
+O’Halloran failed to see it, but he joined the little group that
+hurried to the private office. Megales dragged his desk from the corner
+where it set and touched a spring that opened a panel in the wall.
+Carlo, blanched with fear at the threats and curses that filled the
+night, sprang toward the passageway that appeared.
+
+Megales plucked him back. “One moment, general. Ladies first.
+Carmencita, enter.”
+
+Carlo followed her, after him the governor, and lastly Gabilonda,
+tearing himself from a whispered conversation with O’Halloran. The
+panel swung closed again, and Valdez and O’Halloran lifted back the
+desk just as Garcia came running in to say that the mob would not be
+denied. Immediately O’Halloran threw open a French window and stepped
+out to the little railed porch upon which it opened. He had the chance
+of his life to make a speech, and that is the one thing that no
+Irishman can resist. He flung out from his revolver three shots in
+rapid succession to draw the attention of the mob to him. In this he
+succeeded beyond his hopes. The word ran like wildfire that the mad
+Irishman, O’Halloran, was about to deliver a message to them, and from
+all sides of the building they poured to hear it. He spoke in Mexican,
+rapidly, his great bull voice reaching to the utmost confines of the
+crowd.
+
+“Fellow lovers of liberty, the hour has struck that we have worked and
+prayed for. The glorious redemption of our State has been accomplished
+by your patriotic hands. An hour ago the tyrants, Megales and Carlo,
+slipped out of the palace, mounted swift horses, and are galloping
+toward the frontier.”
+
+A roar of rage, such as a tiger disappointed of its kill might give,
+rose into the night. Such a terrible cry no man made of flesh and blood
+could hear directed at him and not tremble.
+
+“But the pursuit is already on. Swift riders are in chase, with orders
+not to spare their horses so only they capture the fleeing despots. We
+expect confidently that before morning the tyrants will be in our
+hands. In the meantime, let us show ourselves worthy of the liberty we
+have won. Let us neither sack nor pillage, but show our great president
+in the City of Mexico that not ruffians but an outraged people have
+driven out the oppressors.”
+
+The huge Celt was swimming into his periods beautifully, but it was
+very apparent to him that the mob must have a vent for its stored
+excitement. An inspiration seized him.
+
+“But one sacred duty calls to us from heaven, my fellow citizens.
+Already I see in your glorious faces that you behold the duty. Then
+forward, patriots! To the plaza, and let us tear down, let us destroy
+by fire, let us annihilate the statue of the dastard Megales which
+defaces our fair city. Citizens, to your patriotic duty!”
+
+Another wild yell rang skyward, and at once the fringes of the crowd
+began to vanish plazaward, its centre began to heave, its flanks to
+stir. Three minutes later the grounds of the palace were again dark and
+empty. The Irishman’s oratory had won the day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+IN THE SECRET CHAMBER
+
+
+The escaping party groped its way along the passage in the wall, down a
+rough, narrow flight of stone steps to a second tunnel, and along this
+underground way for several hundred yards. Since he was the only one
+familiar with the path they were traversing, the governor took the lead
+and guided the others. At a distance of perhaps an eighth of a mile
+from the palace the tunnel forked. Without hesitation, Megales kept to
+the right. A stone’s throw beyond this point of divergence there began
+to be apparent a perceptible descent which terminated in a stone wall
+that blocked completely the way.
+
+Megales reached up and put his weight on a rope suspended from the
+roof. Slowly the solid masonry swung on a pivot, leaving room on either
+side for a person to squeeze through. The governor found it a tight
+fit, as did also Gabilonda.
+
+“I was more slender last time I passed through there. It has been
+several years since then,” said the governor, giving his daughter a
+hand to assist her through.
+
+They found themselves in a small chamber fitted up as a living room in
+a simple way. There were three plain chairs, a bed, a table, and a
+dresser, as well as a cooking stove.
+
+“This must be close to the prison. We have been coming in that
+direction all the time. It is strange that it could be so near and I
+not know of it,” said the warden, looking around curiously.
+
+Megales smiled. “I am the only person alive that knew of the existence
+of this room or of the secret passage until half an hour ago. I had it
+built a few years since by Yaquis when I was warden of the prison. The
+other end, the one opening from the palace, I had finished after I
+became governor.”
+
+“But surely the men who built it know of its existence.”
+
+Again Megales smiled. “I thought you knew me better, Carlo. The Yaquis
+who built this were condemned raiders. I postponed their execution a
+few months while they were working on this. It was a convenience both
+to them and to me.”
+
+“And is also a convenience to me,” smiled Carlo, who was beginning to
+recover from his terror.
+
+“But I don’t quite understand yet how we are to get out of here except
+by going back the way we came,” said Gabilonda.
+
+“Which for some of us might prove a dangerously unhealthy journey.
+True, colonel, and therefore one to be avoided.” Megales stepped to the
+wall, spanned with his fingers a space from the floor above a joint in
+the masonry, and pressed against the concrete. Inch by inch the wall
+fell back and opened into a lower corridor of the prison, the very one
+indeed which led to the cell in which Bucky and his love were
+imprisoned. Cautiously the Spaniard’s glance traveled down the passage
+to see it was empty before he opened the panel door more than enough to
+look through. Then he beckoned to Gabilonda. “Behold, doubting Thomas!”
+
+The warden gasped. “And I never knew it, never had a suspicion of it.”
+
+“But this only brings us from one prison to another,” objected the
+general. “We might be penned in here as well as at the castle.”
+
+“Even that contingency has been provided for. You noticed, perhaps,
+where the tunnel forked. The left branch runs down to the river-wash,
+and by ten minutes’ digging with the tools lying there one can force an
+exit.”
+
+“Your excellency is certainly a wonder, and all this done without
+arousing the least suspicion of anybody,” admired the warden.
+
+“The wise man, my dear colonel, prepares for emergencies; the fool
+trusts to his luck,” replied the governor dryly.
+
+“Are we to stay here for the present, colonel?” broke in the governor’s
+daughter. “And can you furnish accommodations for the rest of us if we
+stay all night, as I expect we must?”
+
+“My dear señorita, I have accommodations and to spare. But the trouble
+is that your presence would become known. I should be the happiest’ man
+alive to put my all at the accommodation of Chihuahua’s fairest
+daughter. But if it should get out that you are here—” Gabilonda
+stopped to shrug his fat shoulders at the prospect.
+
+“We shall have to stay here, or, at least, in the lower tier of cells.
+I’m sorry, Carmencita, but there is no other course compatible with
+safety,” decided Megales promptly.
+
+The warden’s face cleared. “That is really not a point for me to
+decide, governor. This young American, O’Connor, is now in charge of
+the prison. I must release him at once, and shall then bring him here
+to confer with you as to means of safety.”
+
+Bucky’s eyes opened wide when Gabilonda and Megales came alone and
+without a lantern to his cell. In the darkness it was impossible to
+recognize them, but once within the closed cell the warden produced a
+dark lantern from under his coat.
+
+“Circumstances have arisen that make the utmost vigilance necessary,”
+explained the warden. “I may begin my explanations by congratulating
+you and your young friend. Let me offer a thousand felicitations.
+Neither of you are any longer prisoners.”
+
+If he expected either of them to fall on his neck and weep tears of
+gratitude at his pompous announcement, the colonel was disappointed.
+From the darkness where the ranger’s little partner sat on the bed came
+a deep sigh of relief, but O’Connor did not wink an eyelash.
+
+“I may conclude, then, that Mike O’Halloran has been getting in his
+work?” was his cool reply.
+
+“Exactly, señor. He is the man on horseback and I travel afoot,” smiled
+Megales.
+
+Bucky looked him over coolly from head to foot. “Still I can’t quite
+understand why your ex-excellency does me the honor of a personal
+visit.”
+
+“Because, señor, in the course of human events Providence has seen fit
+to reverse our positions. I am now your prisoner and you my jailer,”
+explained Megales, and urbanely added a whimsical question. “Shall you
+have me hanged at dawn?”
+
+“It would be a pleasure, and, I reckon, a duty too. But I can’t promise
+till I’ve seen Mike. Do some more explaining, colonel. I want to know
+all about the round-up O’Halloran is boss of. Did he make a right good
+gather?”
+
+The subtleties of American humor baffled the little Mexican, but he
+appreciated the main drift of the ranger’s query, and narrated with
+much gesticulation the story of the coup that O’Halloran had pulled off
+in capturing the government leaders.
+
+“It was an exceedingly neat piece of strategy,” its victim admitted. “I
+would give a good deal to have the privilege of hanging your red-headed
+friend, but since that is denied me, I must be grateful he does not
+take a fancy to hang me.”
+
+“In case he doesn’t, your excellency,” was Bucky’s addendum.
+
+“I understand he has decided to deport me,” retorted Megales lightly.
+“It is perhaps better politics, on the whole, better even than a knife
+in the back.”
+
+“Unless rumor is a lying jade, you should be a good judge of that,
+governor,” said the American, eyeing him sternly.
+
+Megales shrugged. “One of the penalties of fame is that one gets credit
+for much he does not deserve. There was your immortal General Lincoln,
+a wit so famous in your country that every good story is fathered upon
+him, I understand. So with your humble servant. Let a man accomplish
+his vendetta upon the body of an enemy, and behold! the world cries: ‘A
+victim of Megales.’”
+
+“Still, if you deserve your reputation as much as our immortal General
+Lincoln deserves his, the world may be pardoned for an occasional
+error.” O’Connor turned to the warden. “What does he mean by saying
+that he is my prisoner? Have you a message for me from O’Halloran,
+colonel?”
+
+“It is his desire, señor, that, pending the present uncertain state of
+public opinion, you accept the command of the prison and hold safe all
+persons detained here, including his excellency and General Carlo. He
+desired me to assure you that as soon as is possible he will arrive to
+confer with you in person.”
+
+“Good enough, and are you a prisoner, too, colonel?”
+
+“I did not so understand Señor O’Halloran.”
+
+“If you’re not you have to earn your grub and lodgings. I’ll appoint
+you my deputy, colonel. And, first off, my orders are to lock up his
+excellency and General Carlo in this cell till morning.”
+
+“The cell, Señor O’Connor, is damp and badly ventilated,” protested
+Gabilonda.
+
+“I know that a heap better than you do, colonel,” said Bucky dryly.
+“But if it was good enough for me and my pardner, here, I reckon it’s
+good enough for them. Anyhow, we’ll let them try it, won’t we, Frank.”
+
+“If you think best, Bucky.”
+
+“You bet I do.”
+
+“And what about the governor’s daughter?” asked Gabilonda.
+
+“You don’t say! Is she a guest of this tavern?”
+
+The colonel explained how they had reached the prison and the
+circumstances that had led to their hurried flight, while the ranger
+whistled the air of a cowboy song, his mind busy with this new phase of
+the case.
+
+“She’s one of these here Spanish blue-blooded señoritas used to guitar
+serenades under her window. Now, what would you do with her in a jail,
+Bucky?” he asked himself, in humorous dismay; but even as he reflected
+on it his roving eye fell on his friend. “The very thing. I’ll take
+Curly Haid in to her and let them fall in love with each other. You’re
+liable to be some busy, Bucky, and shy on leisure to entertain a lady,
+let alone two.”
+
+And so he arranged it. Leaving the former governor and General Carlo in
+the cell just vacated by them, Frances and he accompanied Gabilonda to
+the secret room behind the corridor wall.
+
+All three parties to the introduction that followed acknowledged
+secretly to a surprise. Miss Carmencita had expected the friend of big,
+rough, homely O’Halloran to resemble him in kind, at least. Instead,
+she looked on a bronzed young Apollo of the saddle with something of
+that same lithe grace she knew and loved in Juan Valdez. And the shy
+boy beside him—why, the darling was sweet enough to kiss. The big,
+brown, helpless eyes, the blushing, soft cheeks, the crop of thick,
+light curls were details of an extraordinarily taking picture. Really,
+if these two were fair specimens, Americans were not so bad, after all.
+Which conclusion Juan Valdez’s fondness for that race may have helped
+in part to form.
+
+But if the young Spanish girl found a little current of pleasure in her
+surprise, Bucky and his friend were aware of the same sensation. All
+the charm of her race seemed summed up in Carmencita Megales. She was
+of blue blood, every feature and motion told that. The fine, easy set
+of her head, the fire in the dark, heavy-lashed eyes, the sweep of
+dusky chin and cheek and throat certified the same story. She had, too,
+that coquettish hint of uncertainty, that charm of mystery so fatal in
+its lure to questing man. Even physically the contradiction of sex
+attracted. Slender and lissom as a fawn, she was yet a creature of
+exquisitely rounded curves. Were her eyes brown or black or—in the
+sunlight—touched with a gleam of copper? There was always uncertainty.
+But much more was there fire, a quality that seemed to flash out from
+her inner self. She was a child of whims, a victim of her moods. Yet in
+her, too, was a passionate loyalty that made fickleness impossible. She
+knew how to love and how to hate, and, despite her impulses, was
+capable of surrender complete and irrevocable.
+
+All of this Bucky did not read in that first moment of meeting, but the
+shrewd judgment behind the level blue eyes came to an appraisal roughly
+just. Before she had spoken three sentences he knew she had all her
+sex’s reputed capacity for injustice as well as its characteristic
+flashes of generosity.
+
+“Are you one of the men who have rebelled against my father and
+attempted to murder him?” she flashed.
+
+“I’m the man he condemned to be hanged tomorrow morning at dawn for
+helping Juan Valdez take the guns,” retorted Bucky, with a laugh.
+
+“You are his enemy, and, therefore, mine.”
+
+“I’m a friend of Michael O’Halloran, who stood between him and the mob
+that wanted to kill him.”
+
+“Who first plotted against him and seduced his officers to betray him,”
+she quickly replied.
+
+“I reckon, ma’am, we better agree to disagree on politics,” said Bucky
+good-naturedly. “We’re sure liable to see things different from each
+other. Castile and Arizona don’t look at things with the same eyes.”
+
+She looked at him just then with very beautiful and scornful ones, at
+any rate. “I should hope not.”
+
+“You see, we’re living in the twentieth century up in the sunburned
+State,” said Bucky, with smiling aplomb.
+
+“Indeed! And we poor Chihuahuans?”
+
+“When I see the ladies I think you’re ce’tainly in the golden age, but
+when I break into your politics, I’m some reminded of that Richard
+Third fellow in the Shakespeare play.”
+
+“Referring, I presume, to my father?” she demanded haughtily.
+
+“In a general way, but eliminating the most objectionable points of the
+king fellow.”
+
+“You’re very kind.” She interrupted her scorn to ask him where he meant
+her to sleep.
+
+He glanced over the room. “This might do right here, if we had that bed
+aired.”
+
+“Do you expect to put me in irons?”
+
+“Not right away. Colonel, I’ll ask you to go to the office and notify
+me as soon as Señor O’Halloran arrives.” He waited till the colonel had
+gone before adding: “I’m going to leave this boy with you, señorita,
+for a while. He’ll explain some things to you that I can’t. In about an
+hour I’ll be back, perhaps sooner. So long, Curly. Tell the lady your
+secret.” And with that Bucky was out of the room.
+
+“Your secret, child! What does he mean?”
+
+The flame of color that swept into the cheeks of Frances, the appeal in
+the shamed eyes, held Carmencita’s surprised gaze. Then coolly it
+traveled over the girl and came back to her burning face.
+
+“So that’s it, is it?”
+
+But the scorn in her voice was too much for Frances. She had been
+judged and condemned in that cool stare, and all the woman in her
+protested at its injustice.
+
+“No, no, no!” she cried, running forward and catching at the other’s
+hand. “I’m not that. You don’t understand.”
+
+Coldly Carmencita disengaged her hand and wiped it with her kerchief.
+“I understand enough. Please do not touch me.”
+
+“May I not tell you my story?”
+
+“I’ll not trouble you. It does not interest me.”
+
+“But you will listen?” implored the other.
+
+“I must ask to be excused.”
+
+“Then you are a heartless, cruel woman,” flamed Frances. “I’m good—as
+good as you are.” The color patched her cheek and ebbed again. “I
+wouldn’t treat a dog as you do me. Oh, cruel, cruel!”
+
+The surprising extravagance of her protest, the despair that rang in
+the fresh young voice, caught the interest of the Mexican girl. Surely
+such a heart-broken cry did not consist with guilt. But the facts—when
+a young and pretty girl masquerades through the country in the garb of
+a boy with a handsome young man, not much room for doubt is left.
+
+Frances was quick to see that the issue was reopened. “Oh, señorita, it
+isn’t as you think. Do I look like—” She broke off to cover with her
+hands a face in which the pink and white warred with alternate success.
+“I ought not to have come. I ought never to have come. I see that now.
+But I didn’t think he would know. You see, I had always passed as a boy
+when I wanted to.”
+
+“A remarkably pretty one, child,” said Miss Carmencita, a smile
+dimpling her cheeks. “But how do you mean that you had passed as a
+boy?”
+
+Frances explained, giving a rapid sketch of her life with the Hardmans
+during which she had appeared every night on the stage as a boy without
+the deception being suspected. She had cultivated the tricks and ways
+of boys, had tried to dress to carry out the impression, and had always
+succeeded until she had made the mistake of putting on a gypsy girl’s
+dress a couple of days before.
+
+Carmencita heard her out, but not as a judge. Very early in the story
+her doubts fled and she succumbed to the mothering instinct in her. She
+took the American girl in her arms and laughed and cried with her; for
+her imagination seized on the romance of the story and delighted in its
+fresh unconventionality. Since she had been born Carmencita’s life had
+been ordered for her with precision by the laws of caste. Her
+environment wrapped her in so that she must follow a set and beaten
+path. It was, to be sure, a flower-strewn one, but often she impotently
+rebelled against its very orderliness. And here in her arms was a
+victim of that adventurous romance she had always longed so
+passionately to know. Was it wonder she found it in her heart to both
+love and envy the subject of it?
+
+“And this young cavalier—the Señor Bucky, is it you call him?—surely
+you love him, my dear.”
+
+“Oh, señorita!” The blushing face was buried on her new friend’s
+shoulder. “You don’t know how good he is.”
+
+“Then tell me,” smiled the other. “And call me Carmencita.”
+
+“He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man
+like him.”
+
+Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. “I’m sure this
+paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you?
+But I am sure he couldn’t help it.”
+
+“Sometimes I think he does, but once—” Frances broke off to ask, in a
+pink flame: “How does a lover act?”
+
+Miss Carmencita’s laughter rippled up. “Gracious me, have you never had
+one before.”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing
+serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard
+you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as _Romeo_,
+devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love,” she
+laughed.
+
+Frances’ face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger
+was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him.
+Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want.
+
+“Must he do all that? Must he make verses?” she asked blankly, not
+being able to associate Bucky with poetasting.
+
+“He must,” teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish
+garb. “And why not with so fair a _Rosalind_ for a subject?” She broke
+off to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in
+the United States, where she had attended school:
+
+“From the east to western Ind,
+No jewel is like Rosalind.
+Her worth being mounted on the wind,
+Through all the world bears Rosalind.
+
+All the pictures, fairest lin’d,
+Are but black to Rosalind.
+Let no face be kept in mind
+But the fair of Rosalind.”
+
+
+“So your Shakespeare has it, does he not?” she asked, reverting again
+to the Spanish language, in which they had been talking. But swift on
+the heels of her raillery came repentance. She caught the dispirited
+girl to her embrace laughingly. “No, no, child! Nonsense ripples from
+my tongue. These follies are but for a carpet lover. You shall tell me
+more of your Señor Bucky and I shall make no sport of it.”
+
+When Bucky returned at the expiration of the time he had set himself,
+he found them with their arms twined about each other’s waists,
+whispering the confidences that every girl on the threshold of
+womanhood has to tell her dearest friend.
+
+“I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me,” smiled Bucky to
+Miss Carmencita.
+
+“A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better.”
+
+Bucky’s eyes rested for a moment almost tenderly on Frances. “I reckon
+he is better worth knowing,” he said.
+
+“Indeed! And you so brave, and patient, and good?” she mocked.
+
+“Oh! Am I all that?” asked Bucky easily.
+
+“So I have been given to understand.”
+
+Out of the corner of his eye O’Connor caught the embarrassed,
+reproachful look that Frances gave her audacious friend, and he found
+it easy to fit quotation marks round the admirable qualities that had
+just been ascribed to him. He guessed himself blushing _à deux_ with
+his little friend, and also divined Miss Carmencita’s roguish merriment
+at their confusion.
+
+“I _am_ all those things you mentioned and a heap more you forgot to
+say,” claimed the ranger boldly, to relieve the situation. “Only I
+didn’t know for sure that folks had found it out. My mind’s a heap
+easier to know I’m being appreciated proper at last.”
+
+Under her long, dark lashes Miss Carmencita looked at him in gentle
+derision. “I’m of opinion, sir, that you get all the appreciation that
+is good for you.”
+
+Bucky carried the war into the enemy’s country. “Which same, I expect,
+might be said of Chihuahua’s most beautiful belle. And, talking of
+Señor Valdez reminds me that I owe a duty to his father, who is
+confined here. I’ll be saying good night ladies.”
+
+“It’s high time,” agreed Miss Megales. “Talking of Señor Valdez,
+indeed!”
+
+“Good night, Curly said.”
+
+“Good night, Bucky.”
+
+To which, in mocking travesty, added, in English, Miss Carmencita, who
+seemed to have an acute attack of Shakespeare:
+
+“Good night, good night; parting is such sweet sorrow
+That I shall say good night till It be morrow.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+JUAN VALDEZ SCORES
+
+
+The first thing Bucky did after leaving the two young women was to go
+down in person with one of the guards to the cell of David Henderson.
+The occupant of the cell was asleep, but he woke up when the two men
+entered.
+
+“Who is it?” he demanded.
+
+“Webb Mackenzie’s man come to release you,” answered Bucky.
+
+The prisoner fell to trembling like an aspen. “God, man, do you mean
+it?” he begged. “You wouldn’t deceive an old man who has lived fifteen
+years in hell?”
+
+“It’s true, friend, every word of it. You’ll live to ride the range
+again and count your cattle on the free hillside. Come with me up to
+the office and we’ll talk more of it.”
+
+“But may I? Will they let me?” trembled Henderson, fearful lest his cup
+of joy be dashed from him. “I’m not dreaming, am I? I’ll not wake the
+way I often do and find that it is all a dream, will I?” He caught at
+the lapel of O’Connor’s coat and searched his face.
+
+“No, your dreams are true at last, Dave Henderson. Come, old friend,
+take a drink of this to steady you. It’s all coming out right now.”
+
+Tears streamed down the face of the man rescued from a living grave. He
+dashed them away impatiently with a shaking hand. “I used to be as game
+as other men, young man, and now you see what a weakling I am. Don’t
+judge me too hard. Happiness is a harder thing to stand than pain or
+grief. They’ve tried to break my spirit many a time and they couldn’t,
+but you’ve done it now with a word.”
+
+“You’ll be all right as soon as you are able to realize it. I don’t
+wonder the shock unnerves you. Have you anything you want to take out
+of here with you before you leave forever?”
+
+Pathetically the prisoner looked round on his few belongings. Some of
+them had become endeared to him by years of use and association, but
+they had served their time. “No, I want to forget it all. I came in
+with nothing. I’ll take out nothing. I want to blot it all out like a
+hideous nightmare.”
+
+Bucky ordered Colonel Gabilonda to bring up from his cell General
+Valdez and the other arrested suspects. They reached the office at the
+same time as Mike O’Halloran, who greeted them with the good news that
+the day was won. The Megales faction had melted into mist, and all over
+the city a happy people was shouting for Valdez.
+
+“I congratulate you, general. We have just telegraphed the news over
+the State that Megales has resigned and fled. There can be no doubt
+that you will be elected governor to-morrow and that the people’s party
+will win the day with an unprecedented vote. Glory be, Chihuahua is at
+last free from the heel of tyranny. _Viva Valdez! Viva Chihuahua
+libre!_”
+
+Bucky at once introduced to General Valdez the American prisoner who
+had suffered so long and unjustly. He recited the story of the
+abduction of the child, of Henderson’s pursuit, of the killing of the
+trooper, and of the circumstantial evidence that implicated the Texan
+and upon which he was convicted. He then drew from his pocket a signed
+and attested copy of the confession of the knife thrower and handed it
+to the general.
+
+Valdez looked it over, asked an incisive question or two of Bucky,
+heard from Henderson his story, and, after a few moments’ discussion of
+the matter with O’Halloran, promised a free pardon as his first
+official act after being elected to the governorship, in case he should
+be chosen.
+
+The vote next day amply justified the hopes of O’Halloran and his
+friends. The whole ticket, sent out by telegraph and messengers
+throughout the State, was triumphantly elected by large majorities.
+Only in one or two out-of-the-way places, where the news of the fall of
+Megales did not arrive in time to affect the voting, did the old
+government party make any showing worthy of consideration.
+
+It was after Valdez’s election had been made certain by the returns
+that O’Halloran and Juan Valdez posted to the prison and visited father
+and daughter. They separated in the lower corridor, one to visit the
+defeated governor, the other Miss Carmencita. The problem before Juan
+Valdez was to induce that young woman to remain in Chihuahua instead of
+accompanying her father in his flight. He was a good fighter, and he
+meant to win, if it were a possibility. She had tacitly admitted that
+she loved him, but he knew that she felt that loyalty demanded she stay
+by her father in his flight.
+
+When O’Halloran was admitted to the cell where the governor and the
+general were staying he laughed aloud.
+
+“Faith, gentlemen, is this the best accommodation Governor Valdez can
+furnish his guests? We must petition him to improve the sanitation of
+his hotel.”
+
+“We are being told, one may suppose, that General Valdez is the newly
+elected governor?”
+
+“Right, your excellency, elected by a large majority to succeed the
+late Governor Megales.”
+
+“Late!” The former governor lifted his eyebrows. “Am I also being told
+that necessity demands the posting of the suicide bulletin, after all?”
+
+“Not at all. Sure, I gave you me word, excellency. And that is one of
+the reasons why I am here. We have arranged to run a special down the
+line to-night, in order to avoid the risk of the news leaking out that
+you are still here. Can you make your arrangements to take that train,
+or will it hurry your packing too much?”
+
+Megales laughed. “I have nothing to take with me except my daughter.
+The rest of my possessions may be forwarded later.”
+
+“Oh, your daughter! Well, that’s pat, too. What about the lad, Valdez?”
+
+“Are you his representative, señor?”
+
+“Oh, he can talk for himself.” O’Halloran grinned. “He’s doing it right
+now, by the same token. Shall we interrupt a tête-à-tête and go pay our
+compliments to Miss Carmencita? You will want to find out whether she
+goes with you or stays here.”
+
+“Assuredly. Anything to escape this cave.”
+
+Miss Carmencita was at that moment reiterating her everlasting
+determination to go wherever her father went. “If you think, sir, that
+your faithlessness to him is a recommendation of your promised
+faithfulness to me, I can only wish you more light on the feelings of a
+daughter,” she was informing Valdez, when her father slipped through
+the panel door and stood before her.
+
+“Brava, señorita!” he applauded, with subtle irony, clapping his hands.
+“Brava, brava!”
+
+That young woman swam blushingly toward him and let her face disappear
+in an embrace.
+
+“You see, one can’t have everything, Señor Valdez,” continued Megales
+lightly. “For me, I cannot have both Chihuahua and my life; you, it
+seems, cannot have both your successful revolution and my daughter.”
+
+“Your excellency, she loves me. Of that I am assured. It rests with you
+to say whether her life will be spoiled or not. You know what I can
+offer her in addition to a heart full of devotion. It is enough. Shall
+she be sacrificed to her loyalty to you?” the young man demanded, with
+all the ardor of his warm-blooded race.
+
+“It is no sacrifice to love and obey my father,” came a low murmur from
+the former governor’s shoulder.
+
+“Since the world began it has been the law of life that the young
+should leave their parents for a home of their own,” Juan protested.
+
+“So the Scripture says,” agreed Megales sardonically. “It further
+counsels to love one’s enemies, but, I think, omits mention of the
+enemies of one’s father.”
+
+“Sir, I am not your enemy. Political exigencies have thrown us into
+different camps, but we are not so small as to let such incidentals
+come between us as a vital objection in such a matter.”
+
+“You argue like a lawyer,” smiled the governor. “You forget that I am
+neither judge nor jury. Tyrant I may have been to a fickle people that
+needed a firm hand to rule them, but tyrant I am not to my only
+daughter.”
+
+“Then you consent, your excellency?” cried Valdez joyously.
+
+“I neither consent nor refuse. You must go to a more final authority
+than mine for an answer, young man.”
+
+“But you are willing she should follow where her heart leads?”
+
+“But certainly.”
+
+“Then she is mine,” cried Valdez.
+
+“I am not,” replied the girl indignantly over her shoulder.
+
+Megales turned her till her unconsenting eyes met his. “Do you want to
+marry this young man, Carmencita?”
+
+“I never told him anything of the sort,” she flamed.
+
+“I didn’t quite ask what you had told him. The question is whether you
+love him.”
+
+“But no; I love you,” she blushed.
+
+“I hope so,” smiled her father. “But do you love him? An honest answer,
+if you please.”
+
+“Could I love a rebel?”
+
+“No Yankee answers, _muchacha_. Do you love Juan Valdez?”
+
+It was Valdez that broke triumphantly the moment’s silence that
+followed. “She does. She does. I claim the consent of silence.”
+
+But victory spoke too prematurely in his voice. Cried the proud Spanish
+girl passionately: “I hate him!”
+
+Megales understood the quality of her hate, and beckoned to his future
+son-in-law. “I have some arrangements to make for our journey to-night.
+Would it distress you, señor, if I were to leave you for a while?”
+
+He slipped out and left them alone.
+
+“Well?” asked O’Halloran, who had remained in the corridor.
+
+“I think, Señor Dictator, I shall have to make the trip with only
+General Carlo for a companion,” answered the Spaniard.
+
+The Irishman swung his hat. “Hip, hip, hurrah! You’re a gentleman I
+could find it in me heart to both love and hate, governor.”
+
+“And you’re a gentleman,” returned the governor, with a bow, “I could
+find it in my heart to hang high as Haman without love or hate.”
+
+Michael linked his arm in that of his excellency.
+
+“Sure, you’re a broth of a lad, Señor Megales,” he said irreverently,
+in good, broad Irish brogue. “Here, me bye, where are you hurrying?” he
+added, catching at the sleeve of Frances Mackenzie, who was slipping
+quietly past.
+
+“Please, Mr. O’Halloran, I’ve been up to the office after water. I’m
+taking it to Señorita Carmencita.”
+
+“She doesn’t want water just now. You go back to the office, son, and
+stay there thirty minutes. Then you take her that water,” ordered
+O’Halloran.
+
+“But she wanted it as soon as I could get it, sir.”
+
+“Forget it, kid, just as she has. Water! Why, she’s drinking nectar of
+the gods. Just you do as I tell ye.”
+
+Frances was puzzled, but she obeyed, even though she could not
+understand his meaning. She understood better when she slid back the
+panel at the expiration of the allotted time and caught a glimpse of
+Carmencita Megales in the arms of Juan Valdez.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+HIDDEN VALLEY
+
+
+Across the desert into the hills, where the sun was setting in a great
+splash of crimson in the saddle between two distant peaks, a bunch of
+cows trailed heavily. Their tongues hung out and they panted for water,
+stretching their necks piteously to low now and again. For the heat of
+an Arizona summer was on the baked land and in the air that palpitated
+above it.
+
+But the end of the journey was at hand and the cowpuncher in charge of
+the drive relaxed in the saddle after the easy fashion of the vaquero
+when he is under no tension. He did not any longer cast swift, anxious
+glances behind him to make sure no pursuit was in sight. For he had
+reached safety. He knew the ‘Open sesame’ to that rock wall which rose
+sheer in front of him. Straight for it he and his companion took their
+gather, swinging the cattle adroitly round a great slab which concealed
+a gateway to the secret cañon. Half a mile up this defile lay what was
+called Hidden Valley, an inaccessible retreat known only to those who
+frequented it for nefarious purposes.
+
+It was as the man in charge circled round to head the lead cows in that
+a faint voice carried to him. He stopped, listening. It came again, a
+dry, parched call for help that had no hope in it. He wheeled his pony
+as on a half dollar, and two minutes later caught sight of an exhausted
+figure leaning against a cottonwood. He needed no second guess to
+surmise that she was lost and had been wandering over the sandy desert
+through the hot day. With a shout, he loped toward her, and had his
+water bottle at her lips before she had recovered from her glad
+surprise at sight of him.
+
+“You’ll feel better now,” he soothed. “How long you been lost, ma’am?”
+
+“Since ten this morning. I came with my aunt to gather poppies, and
+somehow I got separated from her and the rig. These hills look so
+alike. I must have got turned round and mistaken one for another.”
+
+“You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told you,”
+he said indignantly.
+
+“Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best,” she replied, with quick
+scorn of her own self-sufficiency.
+
+“Well, it’s all right now,” the cowpuncher told her cheerfully. He
+would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had come to
+being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon that faint
+wafted call of hers.
+
+He put her on his horse and led it forward to the spot where the cattle
+waited at the gateway. Not until they came full upon them did he
+remember that it was dangerous for strange young women to see him with
+those cattle and at the gateway to the Hidden cañon.
+
+“They are my uncle’s cattle. I could tell the brand anywhere. Are you
+one of his riders? Are we close to the Rocking Chair Ranch?” she cried.
+
+He flung a quick glance at her. “Not very close. Are you from the
+Rocking Chair?”
+
+“Yes. I’m Mr. Mackenzie’s niece.”
+
+“Major Mackenzie’s daughter?” demanded the man quickly.
+
+“Yes.” She said it with a touch of annoyance, for he looked at her as a
+man does who has heard of her before. She knew that the story had been
+bruited far and wide of how she had passed through the hands of the
+train robbers carrying thirty thousand dollars on her person. She had
+no doubt that it was in this connection her rescuer had heard of her.
+
+He drew off to one side and called his companion to him.
+
+“Hardman, you ride up to the ranch and tell Leroy I’ve just found Miss
+Mackenzie wandering around on the desert, lost. Ask him whether I’m to
+bring her up. She’s played out and can’t travel far, tell him.”
+
+The showman rode on his errand and the other returned to Helen.
+
+“You better light, ma’am. We’ll have to wait here a few minutes,” he
+explained.
+
+He helped her dismount. She did not understand why it was necessary to
+wait, but that was his business and not hers. Her roving eyes fell upon
+the cattle again.
+
+“They _are_ my uncle’s, aren’t they?”
+
+“They were,” he corrected. “Cattle change hands a good deal in this
+country,” he added dryly.
+
+“Then you’re not one of his riders?” Her stark eyes passed over him
+swiftly.
+
+“No, ma’am.”
+
+“Are we far from the Rocking Chair?”
+
+“A right smart distance. You’ve been traveling, you see, for eight or
+nine hours.”
+
+It occurred to her that there was something elusive, something not
+quite frank, about the replies of this young man. Her glance raked him
+again and swept up the details of his person. One of them that
+impressed itself upon her mind was the absence of a finger on his right
+hand. Another was that he was a walking arsenal. This startled her,
+though she was not yet afraid. She relapsed into silence, to which he
+seemed willing to consent. Once and again her glance swept him. He
+looked a tough, weather-beaten Westerner, certainly not a man whom a
+woman need be afraid to meet alone on the plains, but the oftener she
+looked the more certain she became that he was not a casual puncher
+busy at the legitimate work of his craft.
+
+“Do you—live near here?” she asked presently.
+
+“I live under my hat, ma’am,” he told her.
+
+“Sometimes near here, sometimes not so near.”
+
+This told her exactly nothing.
+
+“How far did you say it was to the Rocking Chair?”
+
+“I didn’t say.”
+
+At the sound of a horses footfall she turned, and she saw that whereas
+they had been two, now they were three. The newcomer was a slender,
+graceful man, dark and lithe, with quick, piercing eyes, set deep in
+the most reckless, sardonic face she had ever seen.
+
+The man bowed, with a sweep of his hat almost derisive. “Miss
+Mackenzie, I believe.”
+
+She met him with level eyes that confessed no fear.
+
+“Who are you, sir?”
+
+“They call me Wolf Leroy.”
+
+Her heart sank. “You and he are the men that held up the Limited.”
+
+“If we are, you are the young lady that beat us out of thirty thousand
+dollars. We’ll collect now,” he told her, with a silky smile and a
+glitter of white, even teeth.
+
+“What do you mean? Do you think I carry money about with me?”
+
+“I didn’t say that. We’ll put it up to your father.”
+
+“My father?”
+
+“He’ll have to raise thirty thousand dollars to redeem his daughter.”
+He let his bold eyes show their admiration. “And she’s worth every cent
+of it.”
+
+“Do you mean—” She read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and
+broke off. There was no need to ask him what he meant.
+
+“That’s what I mean exactly, ma’am. You’re welcome to the hospitality
+of Hidden Valley. What’s ours is yours. You’re welcome to stay as long
+as you like, but I reckon _you’re not welcome to go whenever you want
+to_—not till we get that thirty thousand.”
+
+“You talk as if he were a millionaire,” she told him scornfully.
+
+“The major’s got friends that are. If it’s a showdown he’ll dig the
+dough up. I ain’t a bit worried about that. His brother, Webb, will
+come through.”
+
+“Why should he?” She stood as straight and unbending as a young pine,
+courage regnant in the very poise of the fine head. “You daren’t harm a
+hair of my head, and he knows it. For your life, you daren’t.”
+
+His eyes glittered. Wolf Leroy was never a safe man to fling a
+challenge at. “Don’t you be too sure of that, my dear. There ain’t one
+thing on this green earth I daren’t do if I set my mind to it. And your
+friends know it.”
+
+The other man broke in, easy and unmoved. “Hold yore hawses, cap. We
+got no call to be threatening this young lady. We keep her for a ransom
+because that’s business. But she’s as safe here as she would be at the
+Rocking Chair. She’s got York Neil’s word for that.”
+
+The Wolf snarled. “The word of a miscreant. That’ll comfort her a heap.
+And York Neil’s word don’t always go up here.”
+
+The cowpuncher’s steady eyes met him. “It’ll go this time.”
+
+The girl gave her champion a quiet little nod and a low “Thank you.” It
+was not much, but enough. For on the frontier “white men” do not war on
+women. Her instinct gave just the right manner of treating his help. It
+assumed that since he was what he was he could do no less. Moreover, it
+had the unexpected effect of spurring the Wolf’s vanity, or something
+better than his vanity. She could see the battle in his face, and the
+passing of its evil, sinister expression.
+
+“Beg your pardon, Miss Mackenzie. York’s right. I’ll add my word to his
+about your safety. I’m a wolf, they’ll tell you. But when I give my
+word I keep it.”
+
+They turned and followed through the gateway the cattle which Hardman
+and another rider were driving up the cañon. Presently the walls fell
+back, the gulch opened to a saucer-shaped valley in which nestled a
+little ranch.
+
+Leroy indicated it with a wave of his hand. “Welcome to Hidden Valley,
+Miss Mackenzie,” he said cynically.
+
+“Afraid I’m likely to wear my welcome out if you keep me here until my
+father raises thirty thousand dollars,” she said lightly.
+
+“Don’t you worry any about that. We need the refining influences of
+ladies’ society here. I can see York’s a heap improved already. Just to
+teach us manners you’re worth your board and keep.” Then hardily, with
+a sweeping gesture toward the weary cattle: “Besides, your uncle has
+sent up a contribution to help keep you while you visit with us.”
+
+York laughed. “He sent it, but he didn’t know he was sending it.”
+
+Leroy surrendered his room to Miss Mackenzie and put at her service the
+old Mexican woman who cooked for him. She was a silent, taciturn
+creature, as wrinkled as leather parchment and about as handsome, but
+Alice found safety in the very knowledge of the presence of another
+woman in the valley. She was among robbers and cutthroats, but old
+Juanita lent at least a touch of domesticity to a situation that would
+otherwise have been impossible. The girl was very uneasy in her mind. A
+cold dread filled her heart, a fear that was a good deal less than
+panic-terror, however. For she trusted the man Neil even as she
+distrusted his captain. Miscreant he had let himself be called, and
+doubtless was, but she knew no harm could befall her from his
+companions while he was alive to prevent it. A reassurance of this came
+to her that evening in the fragment of a conversation she overheard.
+They were passing her window which she had raised on account of the
+heat when the low voices of two men came to her.
+
+“I tell you I’m not going, Leroy. Send Hardman,” one said.
+
+“Are you running this outfit, or am I, Neil?”
+
+“You are. But I gave her my word. That’s all there’s to it.”
+
+Alice was aware that they had stopped and were facing each other
+tensely.
+
+“Go slow, York. I gave her my word, too. Do you think I’m allowing to
+break it while you’re away?”
+
+“No, I don’t. Look here, Phil. I’m not looking for trouble. You’re
+major-domo of this outfit What you say goes—except about this girl. I’m
+a white man, if I’m a scoundrel.”
+
+“And I’m not?”
+
+“I tell you I’m not sayin’ that,” the other answered doggedly.
+
+“You’re hinting it awful loud. I stand for it this time, York, but
+never again. You butt in once more and you better reach for your
+hardware simultaneous. Stick a pin in that.”
+
+They had moved on again, and she did not hear Neil’s answer.
+Nevertheless, she was comforted to know she had one friend among these
+desperate outlaws, and that comfort gave her at least an hour or two of
+broken, nappy sleep.
+
+In the morning when she had dressed she found her room door unlocked,
+and she stepped outside into the sunshine. York Neil was sitting on the
+porch at work on a broken spur strap. Looking up, he nodded a casual
+good morning. But she knew why he was there, and gratitude welled up in
+her heart. Not a young woman who gave way to every impulse, she yielded
+to one now, and shook hands with him. Their eyes met for a moment and
+he knew she was thanking him.
+
+An eye derisive witnessed the handshake. “An alliance against the teeth
+of the wolf, I’ll bet. Good mo’ning, Miss Mackenzie,” drawled Leroy.
+
+“Good morning,” she answered quietly, her hands behind her.
+
+“Sleep well?”
+
+“Would you expect me to?”
+
+“Why not, with York here doing the virgin-knight act outside your
+door?”
+
+Her puzzled eyes discovered that Neil’s face was one blush of
+embarrassment.
+
+“He slept here on the po’ch,” explained Leroy, amused. “It’s a great
+fad, this outdoor sleeping. The doctors recommend it strong for sick
+people. You wouldn’t think to look at him York was sick. He looks plumb
+husky. But looks are right deceptive. It’s a fact, Miss Mackenzie, that
+he was so sick last night I wasn’t dead sure he’d live till mo’ning.”
+
+The eyes of the men met like rapiers. Neil said nothing, and Leroy
+dropped him from his mind as if he were a trifle and devoted his
+attention to Alice.
+
+“Breakfast is ready, Miss Mackenzie. This way, please.”
+
+The outlaw led her to the dining room, where the young woman met a
+fresh surprise. The table was white with immaculate linen and shone
+with silver. She sat down to breakfast food with cream, followed by
+quail on toast, bacon and eggs, and really good coffee. Moreover, she
+discovered that this terror of the border knew how to handle his knife
+and fork, was not deficient in the little niceties of table decorum. He
+talked, and talked well, ignoring, like a perfect host, the relation
+that existed between them. They sat opposite each other and ate alone,
+waited upon by the Mexican woman. Alice wondered if he kept solitary
+state when she was not there or ate with the other men.
+
+It was evening before Hardman returned from the mission upon which he
+had been sent in place of the obstinate Neil. He reported at once to
+Leroy, who came smilingly to the place where she was sitting on the
+porch to tell her his news.
+
+“Webb Mackenzie’s going to raise that thirty thousand, all right. He’s
+promised to raise it inside of three days,” he told her triumphantly.
+
+“And shall I have to stay here three whole days?”
+
+He looked with half-shut, smoldering eyes at her slender exquisiteness,
+compact of a strange charm that was both well-bred and gypsyish. There
+was a scarce-veiled passion in his gaze that troubled her. More than
+once that day she had caught it.
+
+“Three days ain’t so long. I could stand three months of you and wish
+for more,” he told her.
+
+Lightly she turned the subject, but not without a chill of fear. Three
+days was a long time. Much might happen if this wolf slipped the leash
+of his civilization.
+
+It was next day that an incident occurred which was to affect the
+course of events more than she could guess at the time. A bunch of wild
+hill steers had been driven down by Hardman, Reilly, and Neil in the
+afternoon and were inclosed in the corral with the cows from the
+Rocking Chair Ranch. Just before sunset Leroy, who had been away all
+day, returned and sauntered over from the stable to join Alice. It
+struck the girl from his flushed appearance that he had been drinking.
+In his eye she found a wild devil of lawlessness that set her heart
+pounding. If Neil and he clashed now there would be murder done. Of
+that she felt sure.
+
+That she set herself to humor the Wolf’s whims was no more for her own
+safety than for that of the man who had been her friend. She curbed her
+fears, clamped down her startled maiden modesty, parried his advances
+with light words and gay smiles. Once Neil passed, and his eyes asked a
+question. She shook her head, unnoticed by Leroy. She would fight her
+own battle as long as she could. It was to divert him that she proposed
+they go down to the corral and look at the wild cattle the men had
+driven down. She told him she had heard a great deal about them, but
+had never seen any. If he would go with her she would like to look at
+them.
+
+The outlaw was instantly at her service, and they sauntered across. In
+her hand the girl carried a closed umbrella she had been using to keep
+off the sun.
+
+They stood at the gate of the corral looking at the long-legged, shaggy
+creatures, as wild and as active almost as hill deer. On horseback one
+could pass to and fro among them without danger, but in a closed corral
+a man on foot would have taken a chance. Nobody knew this better than
+Leroy. But the liquor was still in his head, and even when sober he was
+reckless beyond other men.
+
+“They need water,” he said, and with that opened the gate and started
+for the windmill.
+
+He sauntered carelessly across, with never a glance at the dangerous
+animals among which he was venturing. A great bull pawed the ground
+lowered its head, and made a rush at the unconscious man. Alice called
+to him to look out, then whipped open the gate and ran after him. Leroy
+turned, and, in a flash, saw that which for an instant filled him with
+a deadly paralysis. Between him and the bull, directly in the path of
+its rush, stood this slender girl, defenseless.
+
+Even as his revolver flashed out from the scabbard the outlaw knew he
+was too late to save her, for she stood in such a position that he
+could not hit a vital spot. Suddenly her umbrella opened in the face of
+the animal. Frightened, it set its feet wide and slithered to a halt so
+close to her that its chorus pierced the silk of the umbrella. With one
+hand Leroy swept the girl behind him; with the other he pumped three
+bullets into the forehead of the bull. Without a groan it keeled over,
+dead before it reached the ground.
+
+Alice leaned against the iron support of the windmill. She was so white
+that the man expected her to sink down. One glance showed him other
+cattle pawing the ground angrily.
+
+“Come!” he ordered, and, putting an arm round her waist, he ran with
+her to the gate. Yet a moment, and they were through in safety.
+
+She leaned against him helpless for an instant before she had strength
+to disengage herself. “Thank you. I’m all right now.”
+
+“I thought you were going to faint,” he explained.
+
+She nodded. “I nearly did.”
+
+His face was colorless. “You saved my life.”
+
+“Then we’re quits, for you saved mine,” she answered, with a shaken
+attempt at a smile.
+
+He shook his head. “That’s not the same at all. I had to do that, and
+there was no risk to it. But you chose to save me, to risk your life
+for mine.”
+
+She saw that he was greatly moved, and that his emotion had swept away
+the effects of the liquid as a fresh breeze does a fog.
+
+“I didn’t know I was risking my life. I saw you didn’t see.”
+
+“I didn’t think there was a woman alive had the pluck to do it—and for
+me, your enemy. That what you count me, isn’t it—an enemy?”
+
+“I don’t know. I can’t quite think of you as friend, can I?”
+
+“And yet I would have protected you from any danger at any cost.”
+
+“Except the danger of yourself,” she said, in low voice, meeting him
+eye to eye.
+
+He accepted her correction with a groan, an wheeled away, leaning his
+arms on the corral fence and looking away to that saddle between the
+peak which still glowed with sunset light.
+
+“I haven’t met a woman of your kind before in ten years,” he said
+presently. “I’ve lived on your looks, your motions, the inflections of
+your voice. I suppose I’ve been starved for that sort of thing and
+didn’t know it till you came. It’s been like a glimpse of heaven to
+me.” He laughed bitterly: and went on: “Of course, I had to take to
+drinking and let you see the devil I am. When I’m sober you would be as
+safe with me as with York. But the excitement of meeting you—I have to
+ride my emotions to death so as to drain them to the uttermost. Drink
+stimulates the imagination, and I drank.”
+
+“I’m sorry.”
+
+Her voice said more than the words. He looked at her curiously. “You’re
+only a girl. What do you know about men of my sort? You have been
+wrappered and sheltered all your life. And yet you understand me better
+than any of the people I meet. All my life I have fought with myself. I
+might have been a gentleman and I’m only a wolf. My appetites and
+passions, stronger than myself dragged me down. It was Kismet, the
+destiny ordained for me from my birth.”
+
+“Isn’t there always hope for a man who knows his weaknesses and fights
+against them?” she asked timidly.
+
+“No, there is not,” came the harsh answer. “Besides, I don’t fight. I
+yield to mine. Enough of that. It is you we have to consider, not me.
+You have saved my life, and I have got to pay the debt.”
+
+“I didn’t think who you were,” her honesty compelled her to say.
+
+“That doesn’t matter. You did it. I’m going to take you back to your
+father and straight as I can.”
+
+Her eyes lit. “Without a ransom?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You pay your debts like a gentleman, sir.”
+
+“I’m not coyote all through.”
+
+She could only ignore the hunger that stared out of his eyes for her.
+“What about your friends? Will they let me go?”
+
+“They’ll do as I say. What kicking they do will be done mostly in
+private, and when they’re away from me.”
+
+“I don’t want to make trouble for you.”
+
+“You won’t make trouble for me. If there’s any trouble it will be for
+them,” he said grimly.
+
+Neither of them made any motion toward the house. The girl felt a
+strange impulse of tenderness toward this man who had traveled so fast
+the road to destruction. She had seen before that deep hunger of the
+eyes, for she was of the type of woman that holds a strong attraction
+for men. It told her that he had looked in the face of his happiness
+too late—too late by the many years of a misspent life that had decreed
+inexorably the character he could no longer change.
+
+“I am sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t see that in you at first. I
+misjudged you. One can’t label men just good or bad, as the novelists
+used to. You have taught me that—you and Mr. Neil.”
+
+His low, sardonic laughter rippled out. “I’m bad enough. Don’t make any
+mistake about that, Miss Mackenzie. York’s different. He’s just a good
+man gone wrong. But I’m plain miscreant.”
+
+“Oh, no,” she protested.
+
+“As bad as they make them, but not wolf clear through,” he said again.
+“Something’s happened to me to-day. It won’t change me. I’ve gone too
+far for that. But some morning when you read in the papers that Wolf
+Leroy died with his boots on and everybody in sight registers his
+opinion of the deceased you’ll remember one thing. He wasn’t a wolf to
+you—not at the last.”
+
+“I’ll not forget,” she said, and the quick tears were in her eyes.
+
+York Neil came toward them from the house. It was plain from his manner
+he had a joke up his sleeve.
+
+“You’re wanted, Phil,” he announced.
+
+“Wanted where?”
+
+“You got a visitor in there,” Neil said, with a grin and a jerk of his
+thumb toward the house. “Came blundering into the draw sorter
+accidental-like, but some curious. So I asked him if he wouldn’t light
+and stay a while. He thought it over, and figured he would.”
+
+“Who is it?” asked Leroy.
+
+“You go and see. I ain’t giving away what your Christmas presents are.
+I aim to let Santa surprise you a few.”
+
+Miss Mackenzie followed the outlaw chief into the house, and over his
+shoulder glimpsed two men. One of them was the Irishman, Cork Reilly,
+and he sat with a Winchester across his knees. The other had his back
+toward them, but he turned as they entered, and nodded casually to the
+outlaw. Helen’s heart jumped to her throat when she saw it was Val
+Collins.
+
+The two men looked at each other steadily in a long silence. Wolf Leroy
+was the first to speak.
+
+“You damn fool!” The swarthy face creased to an evil smile of derision.
+
+“I ce’tainly do seem to butt in considerable, Mr. Leroy,” admitted
+Collins, with an answering smile.
+
+Leroy’s square jaw set like a vise. “It won’t happen again, Mr.
+Sheriff.”
+
+“I’d hate to gamble on that heavy,” returned Collins easily. Then he
+caught sight of the girl’s white face, and rose to his feet with
+outstretched hand.
+
+“Sit down,” snapped out Reilly.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right I’m shaking hands with the lady. Did you think I
+was inviting you to drill a hole in me, Mr. Reilly?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+A DINNER FOR THREE
+
+
+“I thought we bumped you off down at Epitaph,” Leroy said.
+
+“Along with Scotty? Well, no. You see, I’m a regular cat to kill, Mr.
+Leroy, and I couldn’t conscientiously join the angels with so lame a
+story as a game laig to explain my coming,” said Collins cheerfully.
+
+“In that case—”
+
+“Yes, I understand. You’d be willing to accommodate with a hole in the
+haid instead of one in the laig. But I’ll not trouble you.”
+
+“What are you doing here? Didn’t I warn you to attend to your own
+business and leave me alone?”
+
+“Seems to me you did load me up with some good advice, but I plumb
+forgot to follow it.”
+
+The Wolf cursed under his breath. “You came here at your own risk,
+then?”
+
+“Well, I did and I didn’t,” corrected the sheriff easily. “I’ve got a
+five-thousand policy in the Southeastern Life Insurance Company, so I
+reckon it’s some risk to them. And, by the way, it’s a company I can
+recommend.”
+
+“Does it insure against suicide?” asked Leroy, his masked, smiling face
+veiling thinly a ruthless purpose.
+
+“And against hanging. Let me strongly urge you to take out a policy at
+once,” came the prompt retort.
+
+“You think it necessary?”
+
+“Quite. When you and York Neil and Hardman made an end of Scotty you
+threw ropes round your own necks. Any locoed tenderfoot would know
+that.”
+
+The sheriff’s unflinching look met the outlaw’s black frown serene and
+clear-eyed.
+
+“And would he know that you had committed suicide when you ran this
+place down and came here?” asked Leroy, with silken cruelty.
+
+“Well, he ought to know it. The fact is, Mr. Leroy, that it hadn’t
+penetrated my think-tank that this was your hacienda when I came
+mavericking in.”
+
+“Just out riding for your health?”
+
+“Not exactly. I was looking for Miss Mackenzie. I cut her trail about
+six miles from the Rocking Chair and followed it where she wandered
+around. The trail led directly away from the ranch toward the
+mountains. That didn’t make me any easy in my mind. So I just jogged
+along and elected myself an investigating committee. I arrived some
+late, but here I am, right side up—and so hearty welcome that my friend
+Cork won’t hear of my leaving at all. He don’t do a thing but entertain
+me—never lets his attention wander. Oh, I’m the welcome guest, all
+right. No doubt about that.”
+
+Wolf Leroy turned to Alice. “I think you had better go to your room,”
+he said gently.
+
+“Oh, no, no; let me stay,” she implored. “You would never—you would
+never—” The words died on her white lips, but the horror in her eyes
+finished the question.
+
+He met her gaze fully, and answered her doggedly. “You’re not in this,
+Miss Mackenzie. It’s between him and me. I shan’t allow even you to
+interfere.”
+
+“But—oh, it is horrible! for two minutes.”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“You must! Please.”
+
+“What use?”
+
+Let me see you alone
+
+Her troubled gaze shifted to the strong, brown, sun-baked face of the
+man who had put himself in this deadly peril to save her. His keen,
+blue-gray eyes, very searching and steady, met hers with a courage she
+thought splendid, and her heart cried out passionately against the
+sacrifice.
+
+“You shall not do it. Oh, please let me talk it over with you.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Have you forgotten already?—and you said you would always remember.”
+She almost whispered it.
+
+She had stung his consent at last. “Very well,” he said, and opened the
+door to let her pass into the inner room.
+
+But she noticed that his eyes were hard as jade.
+
+“Don’t you see that he came here to save me?” she cried, when they were
+alone. “Don’t you see it was for me? He didn’t come to spy out your
+place of hiding.”
+
+“I see that he has found it. If I let him go, he will bring back a
+posse to take us.”
+
+“You could ride across the line into Mexico.”
+
+“I could, but I won’t.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because, Miss Mackenzie, the money we took from the express car of the
+Limited is hidden here, and I don’t know where it is; because the sun
+won’t ever rise on a day when Val Collins will drive me out of
+Arizona.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean about the money, but you must let him go.
+You spoke of a service I had done you. This is my pay.”
+
+“To turn him loose to hunt us down?”
+
+“He’ll not trouble you if you let him go.”
+
+A sardonic smile touched his face. “A lot you know of him. He thinks it
+his duty to rid the earth of vermin like us. He’d never let up till he
+got us or we got him. Well, we’ve got him now, good and plenty. He took
+his chances, didn’t he? It isn’t as if he didn’t know what he was up
+against. He’ll tell you himself it’s a square deal. He’s game, and he
+won’t squeal because we win and he has to pay forfeit.”
+
+The girl wrung her hands despairingly.
+
+“It’s his life or mine—and not only mine, but my men’s,” continued the
+outlaw. “Would you turn a wolf loose from your sheep pen to lead the
+pack to the kill?”
+
+“But if he were to promise—”
+
+“We’re not talking about the ordinary man—he’d promise anything and lie
+to-morrow. But Sheriff Collins won’t do it. If you think you can twist
+a promise out of him not to take advantage of what he has found out
+you’re guessing wrong. When you think he’s a quitter, just look at that
+cork hand of his, and remember how come he to get it. He’ll take his
+medicine proper, but he’ll never crawl.”
+
+“There must be some way,” she cried desperately,
+
+“Since you make a point of it, I’ll give him his chance.”
+
+“You’ll let him go?” The joy in her voice was tremulously plain.
+
+He laughed, leaning carelessly against the mantelshelf. But his
+narrowed eyes watched her vigilantly. “I didn’t say I would let him go.
+What I said was that I’d give him a chance.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“They say he’s a dead shot. I’m a few with a gun myself. We’ll ride
+down to the plains together, and find a good lonely spot suitable for a
+graveyard. Then one of us will ride away, and the other will stay, or
+perhaps both of us will stay.”
+
+She shuddered. “No—no—no. I won’t have it.”
+
+“Afraid something might happen to me, ma’am?” he asked, with a queer
+laugh,
+
+“I won’t have it.”
+
+“Afraid, perhaps, he might be the one left for the coyotes and the
+buzzards?”
+
+She was white to the lips, but at his next word the blood came flaming
+back to her cheeks.
+
+“Why don’t you tell the truth? Why don’t you; say you love him, and be
+done with it? Say it and I’ll take him back to Tucson with you safe as
+if he were a baby.”
+
+She covered her face with her hands, but with two steps he had reached
+her and captured he hands.
+
+“The truth,” he demanded, and his eyes compelled.
+
+“It is to save his life?”
+
+He laughed harshly. “Here’s melodrama for you! Yes—to save your lover’s
+life.”
+
+She lifted her eyes to his bravely. “What you say is true. I love him.”
+
+Leroy bowed ironically. “I congratulate Mr. Collins, who is now quite
+safe, so far as I am concerned. Meanwhile, lest he be jealous of your
+absence, shall we return now?”
+
+Some word of sympathy for the reckless scamp trembled on her lips, but
+her instinct told her would hold it insult added to injury, and she
+left her pity unvoiced.
+
+“If you please.”
+
+But as he heeled away she laid a timid hand on his arm. He turned and
+looked grimly down at the working face, at the sweet, soft, pitiful
+eyes brimming with tears. She was pure woman now, all the caste pride
+dissolved in yearning pity.
+
+“Oh, you lamb—you precious lamb,” he groaned, and clicked his teeth
+shut on the poignant pain of his loss.
+
+“I think you’re splendid,” she told him. “Oh, I know what you’ve
+done—that you are not good. I know you’ve wasted your life and lived
+with your hand against every man’s. But I can’t help all that. I look
+for the good in you, and I find it. Even in your sins you are not
+petty. You know how to rise to an opportunity.”
+
+This man of contradictions, forever the creature of his impulses, gave
+the lie to her last words by signally failing to rise to this one. He
+snatched her to him, and looked down hungry-eyed at her sweet beauty,
+as fresh and fragrant as the wild rose in the copse.
+
+“Please,” she cried, straining from him with shy, frightened eyes.
+
+For answer he kissed her fiercely on the cheeks, and eyes, and mouth.
+
+“The rest are his, but these are mine,” he laughed mirthlessly.
+
+Then, flinging her from him, he led the way into the next room. Flushed
+and disheveled, she followed. He had outraged her maiden instincts and
+trampled down her traditions of caste, but she had no time to think of
+this now.
+
+“If you’re through explaining the mechanism of that Winchester to
+Sheriff Collins we’ll reluctantly dispense with your presence, Mr.
+Reilly. We have arranged a temporary treaty of peace,” the chief outlaw
+said.
+
+Reilly, a huge lout of a fellow with a lowering countenance, ventured
+to expostulate. “Ye want to be careful of him. He’s quicker’n chain
+lightning.”
+
+His chief exploded with low-voiced fury. “When I ask your advice, give
+it, you fat-brained son of a brand blotter. Until then padlock that
+mouth of yours. _Vamos_.”
+
+Reilly vanished, his face a picture of impotent malice, and Leroy
+continued:
+
+“We’re going to the Rocking Chair in the morning, Mr. Collins—at least,
+you and Miss Mackenzie are going there. I’m going part way. We’ve
+arranged a little deal all by our lones, subject to your approval. You
+get away without that hole in your head. Miss Mackenzie goes with you,
+and I get in return the papers you took off Scotty and Webster.”
+
+“You mean I am to give up the hunt?” asked Collins.
+
+“Not at all. I’ll be glad to death to see you blundering in again when
+Miss Mackenzie isn’t here to beg you off. The point is that in exchange
+for your freedom and Miss Mackenzie’s I get those papers you left in a
+safety-deposit vault in Epitaph. It’ll save me the trouble of sticking
+up the First National and winging a few indiscreet citizens of that
+burgh. Savvy?”
+
+“That’s all you ask?” demanded the surprised sheriff.
+
+“All I ask is to get those papers in my hand and a four-hour start
+before you begin the hunt. Is it a deal?”
+
+“It’s a deal, but I give it to you straight that I’ll be after you as
+soon as the four hours are up,” returned Collins promptly. “I don’t
+know what magic Miss Mackenzie used. Still, I must compliment her on
+getting us out mighty easy.”
+
+But though the sheriff looked smilingly at Alice, that young woman,
+usually mistress of herself in all emergencies, did not lift her eyes
+to meet his. Indeed, he thought her strangely embarrassed. She was as
+flushed and tongue-tied as a country girl in unaccustomed company. She
+seemed another woman than the self-possessed young beauty he had met a
+month before on the Limited, but he found her shy abashment charming.
+
+“I guess you thought you had come to the end of the passage, Mr.
+Collins,” suggested the outlaw, with listless curiosity.
+
+“I didn’t know whether to order the flowers or not, but way down in my
+heart I was backing my luck,” Collins told him.
+
+“Of course it’s understood that you are on parole until we separate,”
+said Leroy curtly.
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Then we’ll have supper at once, for we’ll have to be on the road
+early.” He clapped his hands together, and the Mexican woman appeared.
+Her master flung out a command or two in her own language.
+
+“_Poco tiempo_,” she answered, and disappeared.
+
+In a surprisingly short time the meal was ready, set out on a table
+white with Irish linen and winking with cut glass and silver.
+
+“Mr. Leroy does not believe at all in doing when in Rome as the Romans
+do,” Alice explained to Collins, in answer to his start of amazement.
+“He’s a regular Aladdin. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to see electric
+lights come on next.”
+
+“One has to attempt sometimes to blot out the forsaken desert,” said
+Leroy. “Try this cut of slow elk, Miss Mackenzie. I think you’ll like
+it.”
+
+“Slow elk! What is that?” asked the girl, to make talk.
+
+“Mr. Collins will tell you,” smiled Leroy.
+
+She turned to the sheriff, who first apologized, with a smile, to his
+host. “Slow elk, Miss Mackenzie, is veal that has been rustled. I
+expect Mr. Leroy has pressed a stray calf into our Service.”
+
+“I see,” she flashed. “Pressed veal.”
+
+The outlaw smiled at her ready wit, and took on himself the burden of
+further explanation. “And this particular slow elk comes from a ranch
+on the Aravaipa owned by Mr. Collins. York shot it up in the hills a
+day or two ago.”
+
+“Shouldn’t have been straying so far from its range,” suggested
+Collins, with a laugh. “But it’s good veal, even if I say it that
+shouldn’t.”
+
+“Thank you,” burlesqued the bandit gravely, with such an ironic touch
+of convention that Alice smiled.
+
+After dinner Leroy produced cigars, and with the permission of Miss
+Mackenzie the two men smoked while the conversation ran on a topic as
+impersonal as literature. A criticism of novels and plays written to
+illustrate the frontier was the line into which the discussion fell,
+and the girl from the city, listening with a vivid interest, was
+pleased to find that these two real men talked with point and a sense
+of dexterous turns. She felt a sort of proud proprietorship in their
+power, and wished that some of the tailors’ models she had met in
+society, who held so good a conceit of themselves, might come under the
+spell of their strong, tolerant virility. Whatever the difference
+between them, it might be truly said of both that they had lived at
+first hand and come in touch closely with all the elemental realities.
+One of them was a romantic villain and the other an unromantic hero,
+but her pulsing emotions morally condemned one no more than the other.
+
+This was the sheer delight of her esthetic sense of fitness, that
+strong men engaged in a finish fight could rise to so perfect a
+courtesy that an outsider could not have guessed the antagonism that
+ran between them, enduring as life.
+
+Leroy gave the signal for breaking up by looking at his watch. “Afraid
+I must say ‘Lights out.’ It’s past eleven. We’ll have to be up and on
+our way with the hooters. Sleep well, Miss Mackenzie. You don’t need to
+worry about waking. I’ll have you called in good time. _Buenos
+noches_.”
+
+He held the door for her as she passed out; and, in passing, her eyes
+rose to meet his.
+
+“_Buenos noches, señor;_ I’m sure I shall sleep well to-night,” she
+said.
+
+It had been the day of Alice Mackenzie’ life. Emotions and sensations,
+surging through her, had trodden on each other’s heels. Woman-like, she
+welcomed the darkness to analyze and classify the turbid chaos of her
+mind. She had been swept into sympathy with an outlaw, to give him no
+worse name. She had felt herself nearer to him than to some honest men
+she could name who had offered her their love.
+
+Surely, that had been bad enough, but worse was to follow. This
+discerning scamp had torn aside her veils of maiden reserve and exposed
+the secret fancy of her heart, unknown before even to herself. She had
+confessed love for this big-hearted sheriff and frontiersman. Here she
+could plead an ulterior motive. To save his life any deception was
+permissible. Yes, but where lay the truth? With that insistent demand
+of the outlaw had rushed over her a sudden wave of joy. What could it
+mean unless it meant what she would not admit that it could mean? Why,
+the man was impossible. He was not of her class. She had scarce seen
+him a half-dozen times. Her first meeting with him had been only a
+month ago. One month ago—
+
+A remembrance flashed through her that brought her from the bed in a
+barefoot search for matches. When the candle was relit he slipped a
+chamoisskin pouch from her neck and from it took a sealed envelope. It
+was the note in which the sheriff on the night of the train robbery had
+written his prediction of how the matter would come out. She was to
+open the envelope in a month, and the month was up to-night.
+
+As she tore open the flap it came to her with one of her little
+flashing smiles that she could never have guessed under what
+circumstances she would read it. By the dim flame of a guttering
+candle, in a cotton nightgown borrowed from a Mexican menial, a
+prisoner of the very man who had robbed her and the recipient of a
+practical confession of love from him not three hours earlier! Surely
+here was a situation to beggar romance. But before she had finished
+reading the reality was still more unbelievable.
+
+
+I have just met for the first time the woman I am going to marry if God
+is good to one. I am writing this because I want her to know it as soon
+as I decently can. Of course, I am not worthy of her, but then I don’t
+know any man that is.
+
+So the fact goes—I’m bound to marry her if there’s nobody else in the
+way. This isn’t conceit. It is a deep-seated certainty I can’t get away
+from, and don’t want to. When she reads this, she will think it a piece
+of foolish presumption. My hope is she will not always think so. Her
+Lover,
+
+
+VAL COLLINS.
+
+
+Her swift-pulsing heart was behaving very queerly. It seemed to hang
+delightfully still, and then jump forward with odd little beats of joy.
+She caught a glimpse of her happy face, and blew out the light for
+shame, groping her way back to bed with the letter carefully guarded
+against crumpling by her hand.
+
+Foolish presumption indeed. Why, he had only seen her once, and he said
+he would marry her with never a by-your-leave! Wasn’t that what he had
+said? She had to strike another match to learn the lines that had not
+stuck word for word in her mind, and after that another match to get a
+picture of the scrawl to visualize in the dark.
+
+How dared he take her for granted? But what a masterly way of wooing
+for the right man! What idiotic folly if he had been the wrong one! Was
+he, then, the right one? She questioned herself closely, but came to no
+more definite answer than this—that her heart went glad with a sweet
+joy to know he wanted to marry her.
+
+She resolved to put him from her mind, and in this resolve she fell at
+last into smiling sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+A VILLON OF THE DESERT
+
+
+When Alice Mackenzie looked back in after years upon the incidents
+connected with that ride to the Rocking Chair, it was always with a
+kind of glorified pride in her villain-hero. He had his moments, had
+this twentieth-century Villon, when he represented not unworthily the
+divinity in man; and this day held more than one of them. Since he was
+what he was, it also held as many of his black moods.
+
+The start was delayed, owing to a cause Leroy had not foreseen. When
+York went, sleepy-eyed, to the corral to saddle the ponies, he found
+the bars into the pasture let down, and the whole _remuda_ kicking up
+its heels in a paddock large as a goodsized city. The result was that
+it took two hours to run up the bunch of ponies and another half-hour
+to cut out, rope, and saddle the three that were wanted. Throughout the
+process Reilly sat on the fence and scowled.
+
+Leroy, making an end of slapping on and cinching the last saddle,
+wheeled suddenly on the Irishman. “What’s the matter, Reilly?”
+
+“Was I saying anything was the matter?”
+
+“You’ve been looking it right hard. Ain’t you man enough to say it
+instead of playing dirty little three-for-a-cent tricks—like letting
+down the corral-bars?”
+
+Reilly flung a look at Neil that plainly demanded support, and then
+descended with truculent defiance from the fence.
+
+“Who says I let down the bars? You bet I am man enough to say what I
+think; and if ye think I ain’t got the nerve—”
+
+His master encouraged him with ironic derision. “That’s right, Reilly.
+Who’s afraid? Cough it up and show York you’re game.”
+
+“By thunder, I _am_ game. I’ve got a kick coming, sorr.”
+
+“Yes?” Leroy rolled and lit a cigarette, his black eyes fixed intently
+on the malcontent. “Well, register it on the jump. I’ve got to be off.”
+
+“That’s the point.” The curly-headed Neil had lounged up to his
+comrade’s support. “_Why_ have you got to be off? We don’t savvy your
+game, cap.”
+
+“Perhaps you would like to be major-domo of this outfit, Neil?” scoffed
+his chief, eying him scornfully.
+
+“No, sir. I ain’t aimin’ for no such thing. But we don’t like the way
+things are shaping. What does all this here funny business mean,
+anyhow?” His thumb jerked toward Collins, already mounted and waiting
+for Leroy to join him. “Two days ago this world wasn’t big enough to
+hold him and you. Well, I git the drop on him, and then you begin to
+cotton up to him right away. Big dinner last night—champagne corks
+popping, I hear. What I want to know is what it means. And here’s this
+Miss Mackenzie. She’s good for a big ransom, but I don’t see it ambling
+our way. It looks darned funny.”
+
+“That’s the ticket, York,” derided Leroy. “Come again. Turn your wolf
+loose.”
+
+“Oh! I ain’t afraid to say what I think.”
+
+“I see you’re not. You should try stump-speaking, my friend. There’s a
+field fox you there.”
+
+“I’m asking you a question, Mr. Leroy.”
+
+“That’s whatever,” chipped in Reilly.
+
+“Put a name to it.”
+
+“Well, I want to know what’s the game, and where we come in.”
+
+“Think you’re getting the double-cross?” asked Leroy pleasantly, his
+vigilant eyes covering them like a weapon.
+
+“Now you’re shouting. That’s what I’d like right well to know. There
+_he_ sits”—with another thumbjerk at Collins—“and I’m a Chink if he
+ain’t carryin’ them same two guns I took offen him, one on the train
+and one here the other day. I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t all right, cap. But
+what I do say is—how about it?”
+
+Leroy did some thinking out loud. “Of course I might tell you boys to
+go to the devil. That’s my right, because you chose me to run this
+outfit without any advice from the rest of you. But you’re such
+infants, I reckon I had better explain. You’re always worrying those
+fat brains of yours with suspicions. After we stuck up the Limited you
+couldn’t trust me to take care of the swag. Reilly here had to cook up
+a fool scheme for us all to hide it blindfold together. I told you
+straight what would happen, and it did. When Scotty crossed the divide
+we were in a Jim Dandy of a hole. We had to have that paper of his to
+find the boodle. Then Hardman gets caught, and coughs up his little
+recipe for helping to find hidden treasure. Who gets them both? Mr.
+Sheriff Collins, of course. Then he comes visiting us. Not being a
+fool, he leaves the documents behind in a safety-deposit vault. Unless
+I can fix up a deal with him, Mr. Reilly’s wise play buncoes us and
+himself out of thirty thousand dollars.”
+
+“Why don’t you let him send for the papers first?”
+
+“Because he won’t do it. Threaten nothing! Collins ain’t that kind of a
+hairpin. He’d tell us to shoot and be damned.”
+
+“So you’ve got it fixed with him?” demanded Neil.
+
+“You’ve a head like a sheep, York,” admired Leroy. “_You_ don’t need
+any brick-wall hints to hit you. As your think-tank has guessed, I have
+come to an understanding with Collins.”
+
+“But the gyurl—I allow the old major would come down with a right smart
+ransom.”
+
+“Wrong guess, York. I allow he would come down with a right smart posse
+and wipe us off the face of the earth. Collins tells me the major has
+sent for a couple of Apache trailers from the reservation. That means
+it’s up to us to hike for Sonora. The only point is whether we take
+that buried money with us or leave it here. If I make a deal with
+Collins, we get it. If I don’t, it’s somebody else’s gold-mine.
+Anything more the committee of investigation would like to know?”
+concluded Leroy, as his cold eyes raked them scornfully and came to
+rest on Reilly.
+
+“Not for mine,” said Neil, with an apologetic laugh. “I’m satisfied. I
+just wanted to know. And I guess Cork corroborates.”
+
+Reilly growled something under his breath, and turned to hulk away.
+
+“One moment. You’ll listen to _me_, now. You have taken the liberty to
+assume I was going to sell you out. I’ll not stand that from any man
+alive. To-morrow night I’ll get back from Tucson. We’ll dig up the loot
+and divide it. And right then we quit company. You go your way and I go
+mine.” And with that as a parting shot, Leroy turned on his heel and
+went direct to his horse.
+
+Alice Mackenzie might have searched the West with a fine-tooth comb and
+not found elsewhere two such riders for an escort as fenced her that
+day. Physically they were a pair of superb animals, each perfect after
+his fashion. If the fair-haired giant, with his lean, broad shoulders
+and rippling flow of muscles, bulked more strikingly in a display of
+sheer strength, the sinewy, tigerish grace of the dark Apollo left
+nothing to be desired to the eye. Both of them had been brought up in
+the saddle, and each was fit to the minute for any emergency likely to
+appear.
+
+But on this pleasant morning no test of their power seemed likely to
+arise, and she could study them at her ease without hindrance. She had
+never seen Leroy look more the vagabond enthroned. For dress, he wore
+the common equipment of Cattleland—jingling spurs, fringed chaps,
+leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck,
+and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, an
+inimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows.
+Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion,
+making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick,
+flashing smiles.
+
+He countered by telling her what he had heard York say to Reilly of
+her. “She’s a princess, Cork,” York had said. “Makes my Epitaph gyurl
+look like a chromo beside her. Somehow, when she looks at a fellow, he
+feels like a whitewashed nigger.”
+
+All of them laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to
+banter her by insisting that they knew exactly what York meant.
+
+“You can be very splendid when you want to give a man that whitewashed
+feeling; he isn’t right sure whether he’s on the map or not,”
+reproached the train-robber.
+
+She laughed in the slow, indolent way she had, taking the straw hat
+from her dark head to catch better the faint breath of wind that was
+soughing across the plains.
+
+“I didn’t know I was so terrible. I don’t think _you_ ever had any awe
+of anybody, Mr. Leroy.” Her soft cheek flushed in unexpected memory of
+that moment when he had brushed aside all her maiden reserves and
+ravished mad kisses from her. “And Mr. Collins is big enough to take
+care of himself,” she added hastily, to banish the unwelcome
+recollection.
+
+Collins, with his eyes on the light-shot waves that crowned her vivid
+face, wondered whether he was or not. If she had been a woman to desire
+in the queenly, half-insolent indifference of manner with which she had
+first met him, how much more of charm lay in this piquant gaiety, in
+the warm sweetness of her softer and more pliant mood! It seemed to him
+she had the gift of comradeship to perfection.
+
+They unsaddled and ate lunch in the shade of the live-oaks at El Dorado
+Springs, which used to be a much-frequented watering-hole in the days
+when Camp Grant thrived and mule-skinners freighted supplies in to feed
+Uncle Sam’s pets. Two hours later they stopped again at the edge of the
+Santa Cruz wash, two miles from the Rocking Chair Ranch.
+
+It was while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud
+of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked
+long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed the binoculars
+to Leroy.
+
+“Five of them; and that round-bellied Papago pony in front belongs to
+Sheriff Forbes, or I’m away wrong.”
+
+Leroy lowered the glasses, after a long, unflurried inspection. “Looks
+that way to me. Expect I’d better be burning the wind.”
+
+In a few sentences he and Collins arranged a meeting for next day up in
+the hills. He trailed his spurs through the dust toward Alice
+Mackenzie, and offered her his brown hand and wistful smile
+irresistible. “Good-by. This is where you get quit of me for good.”
+
+“Oh, I hope not,” she told him impulsively. “We must always be
+friends.”
+
+He laughed ruefully. “Your father wouldn’t indorse those unwise
+sentiments, I reckon—and I’d hate to bet your husband would,” he added
+audaciously, with a glance at Collins. “But I love to hear you say it,
+even though we never could be. You’re a right game, stanch little
+pardner. I’ll back that opinion with the lid off.”
+
+“You should be a good judge of those qualities. I’m only sorry you
+don’t always use them in a good cause.”
+
+He swung himself to his saddle. “Good-by.”
+
+“Good-by—till we meet again.”
+
+“And that will be never. So-long, sheriff. Tell Forbes I’ve got a
+particular engagement in the hills, but I’ll be right glad to meet him
+when he comes.”
+
+He rode up the draw and disappeared over the brow of the hillock. She
+caught another glimpse of him a minute later on the summit of the hill
+beyond. He waved a hand at her, half-turning in his saddle as he rode.
+
+Presently she lost him, but faintly the wind swept back to her a
+haunting snatch of uncouth song:
+
+“Oh, bury me out on the lone prairee,
+In my narrow grave just six by three,”
+
+
+Were the words drifted to her by the wind. She thought it pathetically
+likely he might get the wish of his song.
+
+To Sheriff Forbes, dropping into the draw a few minutes later with his
+posse, Collins was a well of misinformation literally true. Yes, he had
+followed Miss Mackenzie’s trail into the hills and found her at a
+mountain ranch-house. She had been there a couple of days, and was
+about to set out for the Rocking Chair with the owner of the place,
+when he arrived and volunteered to see her as far as her uncle’s ranch.
+
+“I reckon there ain’t any use asking you if you seen anything of Wolf
+Leroy’s outfit,” said Forbes, a weather-beaten Westerner with a shrewd,
+wrinkled face.
+
+“No, I reckon there’s no use asking me that,” returned Collins, with a
+laugh that deceptively seemed to include the older man in the joke.
+
+“We’re after them for rustling a bunch of Circle 33 cows. Well, I’ll be
+moving. Glad you found the lady, Val. She don’t look none played out
+from her little trek across the desert. Funny, ain’t it, how she could
+have wandered that far and her afoot?”
+
+The Arizona sun was setting in its accustomed blaze of splendor, when
+Val Collins and Alice Mackenzie put their horses again toward the ranch
+and the rainbow-hued west. In his contented eyes were reflected the
+sunshine and a serenity born of life in the wide, open spaces. They
+rode in silence for long, the gentle evening breeze blowing in soughs.
+
+“Did you ever meet a man of such promises gone wrong so utterly? He
+might have been anything—and it has come to this, that he is hunted
+like a wild beast. I never saw anything so pitiful. I would give
+anything to save him.”
+
+He had no need to ask to whom she was referring. “Can’t be done. Good
+qualities bulge out all over him, but they don’t count for anything.
+‘Unstable as water.’ That’s what’s the matter with him. He is the slave
+of his own whims. Hence he is only the splendid wreck of a man, full of
+all kinds of rich outcropping pay-ore that pinch out when you try to
+work them. They don’t raise men gamer, but that only makes him a more
+dangerous foe to society. Same with his loyalty and his brilliancy.
+He’s got a haid on him that works like they say old J. E. B. Stuart’s
+did. He would run into a hundred traps, but somehow he always worked
+his men out of them. That’s Leroy, too. If he had been an ordinary
+criminal he would have been rounded up years ago. It’s his audacity,
+his iron nerve, his good horse-sense judgment that saves his skin. But
+he’s certainly up against it at last.”
+
+“You think Sheriff Forbes will capture him?”
+
+He laughed. “I think it more likely he’ll capture Forbes. But we know
+now where he hangs out, and who he is. He has always been a mystery
+till now. The mystery is solved, and unless he strikes out for Sonora,
+Leroy is as good as a dead man.”
+
+“A dead man?”
+
+“Does he strike you as a man likely to be taken alive? I look to see a
+dramatic exit to the sound of cracking Winchesters.”
+
+“Yes, that would be like him,” she confessed with shudder. “I think he
+was made to lead a forlorn hope. Pity it won’t be one worthy of the
+best in him.”
+
+“I guess he does have more moments set to music than most of us, and
+I’ll bet, too, he has hidden way in him a list of ‘Thou shalt nots.’ I
+read a book once by a man named Stevenson that was sure virgin gold. He
+showed how every man, no matter how low he falls, has somewhere in him
+a light that burns, some rag of honor for which he is still fighting
+I’d hate to have to judge Leroy. Some men, I reckon, have to buck
+against so much in themselves that even failure is a kind of success
+for them.”
+
+“Yet you will go out to hunt him down?” she’ said, marveling at the
+broad sympathy of the man.
+
+“Sure I will. My official duty is to look out for society. If something
+in the machine breaks loose and goes to ripping things to pieces, the
+engineer has to stop the damage, even if he has to smash the rod that’s
+causing the trouble.”
+
+The ponies dropped down again into the bed of the wash, and plowed
+across through the heavy sand. After they had reached the solid road,
+Collins resumed conversation at a new point.
+
+“It’s a month and a day since I first met you Miss Mackenzie,” he said,
+apparently apropos of nothing.
+
+She felt her blood begin to choke. “Indeed!”
+
+“I gave you a letter to read when I was on the train.”
+
+“A letter!” she exclaimed, in well-affected surprise.
+
+“Did you think it was a book of poems? No, ma’am, it was a letter. You
+were to read it in a month. Time was up last night. I reckon you read
+it.”
+
+“Could I read a letter I left at Tucson, when it was a hundred miles
+away?” she smiled with sweet patronage.
+
+“Not if you left it at Tucson,” he assented, with an answering smile.
+
+“Maybe I _did_ lose it.” She frowned, trying to remember.
+
+“Then I’ll have to tell you what was in it.”
+
+“Any time will do. I dare say it wasn’t important.”
+
+“Then we’ll say _this_ time.”
+
+“Don’t be stupid, Mr. Collins. I want to talk about our desert Villon.”
+
+“I said in that letter—”
+
+She put her pony to a canter, and they galloped side by side in silence
+for half a mile. After she had slowed down to a walk, he continued
+placidly, as if oblivious of an interruption:
+
+“I said in that letter that I had just met the young lady I was
+expecting to marry.”
+
+“Dear me, how interesting! Was she in the smoker?”
+
+“No, she was in Section 3 of the Pullman.”
+
+“I wish I had happened to go into the other Pullman, but, of course, I
+couldn’t know the young lady you were interested in was riding there.”
+
+“She wasn’t.”
+
+“But you’ve just told me—”
+
+“That I said in the letter you took so much trouble to lose that I
+expected to marry the young woman passing under the name of Miss
+Wainwright.”
+
+“Sir!”
+
+“That I expected—”
+
+“Really, I am not deaf, Mr. Collins.”
+
+“—expected to marry her, just as soon as she was willing.”
+
+“Oh, she is to be given a voice in the matter, is she?”
+
+“Ce’tainly, ma’am.”
+
+“And when?”
+
+“Well, I had been thinking now was a right good time.”
+
+“It can’t be too soon for me,” she flashed back, sweeping him with
+proud, indignant eyes.
+
+“But I ain’t so sure. I rather think I’d better wait.”
+
+“No, no! Let us have it done with once and for all.”
+
+He relapsed into a serene, abstracted silence.
+
+“Aren’t you going to speak?” she flamed.
+
+“I’ve decided to wait.”
+
+“Well, _I_ haven’t. Ask me this minute, sir, to marry you.”
+
+“Ce’tainly, if you cayn’t wait. Miss Mackenzie, will you—”
+
+“No, sir, I won’t—not if you were the last man on earth,” she
+interrupted hotly, whipping herself into a genuine rage. “I never was
+so insulted in my life. It would be ridiculous if it weren’t so—so
+outrageous. You _expect_, do you? And it isn’t conceit, but a
+deep-seated certainty you can’t get away from.”
+
+He had her fairly. “Then you _did_ read the letter.”
+
+“Yes, sir, I read it—and for sheer, unmatched impudence I have never
+seen its like.”
+
+“Now, I wish you would tell me what you _really_ think,” he drawled.
+
+Not being able, for reasons equestrian, to stamp her foot, she gave her
+bronco the spur.
+
+When Collins again found conversation practicable, the Rocking Chair, a
+white adobe huddle in the moonlight, lay peacefully beneath them in the
+alley.
+
+“It’s a right quaint old ranch, and it’s seen a heap of
+rough-and-tumble life in its day. If those old adobe bricks could tell
+stories, I expect they could put some of these romances out of
+business.” Miss Mackenzie’s covert glance questioned suspiciously what
+this diversion might mean.
+
+“All this country’s interesting. Take Tucson now that burg is loaded to
+the roofs with live stories. It’s an all-right business town, too—the
+best in the territory,” he continued patriotically. “She ain’t so great
+as Douglas on ore or as Phoenix on lungers, but when it comes, to the
+git-up-and-git hustle, she’s there rounding up the trade from early
+morn till dine.”
+
+He was still expatiating in a monologue with grave enthusiasm on the
+town of his choice, when they came to the pasture fence of the ranch.
+
+“Some folks don’t like it—call it adobe-town, and say it’s full of
+greasers. Everybody to his taste, I say. Little old Tucson is good
+enough for me.”
+
+She gave a queer little laugh as he talked. She had put a taboo on his
+love story herself, but she resented the perfectly unmoved good humor
+with which he seemed to be accepting her verdict. She made up her mind
+to punish him, but he gave her no chance. As he helped her to dismount,
+he said:
+
+“I’ll take the horses round to the stable, Miss Mackenzie. Probably I
+won’t see you again before I leave, but I’m hoping to meet you again in
+Tucson one of these days. Good-by.”
+
+She nodded a curt good-by and passed into the house. She was vexed and
+indignant, but had too strong a sense of humor not to enjoy a joke even
+when it was against herself.
+
+“I forgot to ask him whether he loves me or Tucson more, and as one of
+the subjects seems to be closed I’ll probably never find out,” she told
+herself, but with a queer little tug of pain in her laughter.
+
+Next moment she was in the arms of her father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY
+
+
+To minimize the risk, Megales and Carlo left the prison by the secret
+passage, following the fork to the river bank and digging at the
+piled-up sand till they had forced an exit. O’Halloran met them here
+with horses, and the three men followed the riverwash beyond the limits
+of the town and cut across by a trail to a siding on the Central
+Mexican Pacific tracks. The Irishman was careful to take no chances,
+and kept his party in the mesquit till the headlight of an approaching
+train was visible.
+
+It drew up at the siding, and the three men boarded one of the two cars
+which composed it. The coach next the engine was occupied by a dozen
+trusted soldiers, who had formerly belonged to the bodyguard of
+Megales. The last car was a private one, and in it the three found
+Henderson, Bucky O’Connor, and his little friend, the latter still
+garbed as a boy.
+
+Frances was exceedingly eager to don again the clothes proper to her
+sex, and she had promised herself that, once habited as she desired,
+nothing could induce her ever to masquerade again. Until she met and
+fell in love with the ranger she had thought nothing of it, since it
+had been merely a matter of professional business to which she had been
+forced. Indeed, she had sometimes enjoyed the humor of the deception.
+It had lent a spice o enjoyment to a life not crowded with it. But
+after she met Bucky there had grown up in her a new sensitiveness. She
+wanted to be womanly, to forget her turbid past and the shifts to which
+she had sometimes been put. She had been a child; she was now a woman.
+She wanted to be one of whom he need be in no way ashamed.
+
+When their train began to pull out of the depot at Chihuahua she drew a
+deep sigh of relief.
+
+“It’s good to get away from here back to the States. I’m tired of plots
+and counterplots. For the rest of my life I want to be just a woman,”
+she said to Bucky.
+
+The young man smiled. “I reckon I must quit trying to make you a
+gentleman. Fact is, I don’t want you to be one any more.”
+
+She slanted a look at him to see what that might mean and another up
+the car to make sure that Henderson was out of hearing.
+
+“It was rather hopeless, wasn’t it?” she smiled. “We’ll do pretty well
+if we succeed in making me a lady in course of time. I’ve a lot to
+learn, you know.”
+
+“Well, you got lots of time to learn it,” he replied cheerfully. “And
+I’ve got a notion tucked away in the back of my haid that you haven’t
+got such a heap to study up. Mrs. Mackenzie will put you next to the
+etiquette wrinkles where you are shy.”
+
+A shadow fell on the piquant, eager face beside him. “Do you think she
+will love me?”
+
+“I don’t think. I know. She can’t help it.”
+
+“Because she is my mother? Oh, I hope that is true.”
+
+“No, not only because she is your mother.”
+
+She decided to ask for no more reasons. Henderson, pleased at the wide
+stretch of plain as only one who had missed the open air for many years
+could be, was on the observation platform in the rear of the car, one
+glance at his empty seat showed her. There was no safety for her
+shyness in the presence of that proverbial three which makes a crowd,
+and she began to feel her heart again in panic as once before. She took
+at once the opening she had given.
+
+“I do need a mother so much, after growing up like Topsy all these
+years. And mine is the dearest woman in the world. I fell in love with
+her before, and I did not know who she was when I was at the ranch.”
+
+“I’ll agree to the second dearest in the world, but I reckon you shoot
+too high when you say the plumb dearest.”
+
+“She is. We’ll quarrel if you don’t agree,” trying desperately to
+divert him from the topic she knew he meant to pursue. For in the past
+two days he had been so busy helping O’Halloran that he had not even
+had a glimpse of her. As a consequence of which each felt half-dubious
+of the other’s love, and Frances felt wholly shy about expressing her
+own or even listening to his.
+
+“Well, we’re due for a quarrel, I reckon. But we’ll postpone it till we
+got more time to give it.” He drew a watch from his pocket and glanced
+at it “In less than fifteen minutes Mike and our two friends who are
+making their getaway will come in that door Henderson just went out of.
+That means we won’t get a chance to be alone together, for about two
+days. I’ve got something to say to you, Curly Haid, that won’t keep
+that long with out running my temperature clear up. So I’m allowing to
+say it right now immediate. No, you don’t need to turn them brown
+appealers on me. It won’t do a mite of good. It’s Bucky to the bat and
+he’s bound to make a hit or strike out.”
+
+“I think I hear Mr. Henderson coming,” murmured Frances, for lack of
+something more effective to say.
+
+“Not him. He’s hogtied to the scenery long enough to do my business.
+Now, it won’t take me long if I get off right foot first. You read my
+letter, you said?”
+
+“Which letter?” She was examining attentively the fringe of the sash
+she wore.
+
+“Why, honey, that love-letter I wrote you. If there was more than one
+it must have been wrote in my sleep, for I ce’tainly disremember it.”
+
+He could just hear her confused answer: “Oh, yes, I read that. I told
+you that before.”
+
+“What did you think? Tell me again.”
+
+“I thought you misspelled feelings.”
+
+“You don’t say. Now, ain’t that too bad? But, girl o’ mine, I expect
+you were able to make it out, even if I did get the letters to milling
+around wrong. I meant them feelings all right. Outside of the spelling,
+did you have any objections to them,
+
+“How can I remember what you wrote in that letter several days ago?”
+
+“I’ll bet you know it by heart, honey, and, if you don’t, you’ll find
+it in your inside vest pocket, tucked away right close to your heart.”
+
+“It isn’t,” she denied, with a blush.
+
+“Sho! Pinned to your shirt then, little pardner. I ain’t particular
+which. Point is, if you need to refresh that ailin’ memory of yours,
+the document is—right handy. But you don’t need to. It just says one
+little sentence over and over again. All you have got to do is to say
+one little word, and you don’t have to say it but once.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” her lips voiced.
+
+“You understand me all right. What my letter said was ‘I love you,’ and
+what you have got to say is: ‘Yes’.”
+
+“But that doesn’t mean anything.”
+
+“I’ll make out the meaning when you say it.”
+
+“Do I have to say it?”
+
+“You have to if you feel it.”
+
+Slowly the big brown eyes came up to meet his bravely. “Yes, Bucky.”
+
+He caught her hands and looked down into her pure, sweet soul.
+
+“I’m in luck,” he breathed deeply. “In golden luck to have you look at
+me twice. Are you sure?”
+
+“Sure. I loved you that first day I met you. I’ve loved you every day
+since,” she confessed simply.
+
+Full on the lips he kissed her.
+
+“Then we’ll be married as soon as we reach the Rocking Chair.”
+
+“But you once said you didn’t want to be my husband,” she taunted
+sweetly. “Don’t you remember? In the days when we were gipsies.”
+
+“I’ve changed my mind. I want to, and I’m in a hurry.”
+
+She shook her head. “No, dear. We shall have to wait. It wouldn’t be
+fair to my mother to lose me just as soon as she finds me. It is her
+right to get acquainted with me just as if I belonged to her alone. You
+understand what I mean, Bucky. She must not feel as if she never had
+found me, as if she never had been first with me. We can love each
+other more simply if she doesn’t know about you. We’ll have it for a
+secret for a month or two.”
+
+She put her little hand on his arm appealingly to win his consent. His
+eyes rested on it curiously, Then he took it in his big brown one and
+turned it palm up. Its delicacy and perfect finish moved him, for it
+seemed to him that in the contrast between the two hands he saw in
+miniature the difference of sex. His showed strength and competency and
+the roughness that comes of the struggle of life. But hers was
+strangely tender and confiding, compact of the qualities that go to
+make up the strength of the weak. Surely he deserved the worst if he
+was not good to her, a shield and buckler against the storms that must
+beat against them in the great adventure they were soon to begin
+together.
+
+Reverently he raised the little hand and kissed its palm.
+
+“Sure, sweetheart I had forgotten about your mother’s claim. We can
+wait, I reckon,” he added with a smile. “You must always set me
+straight when I lose the trail of what’s right, Curly Haid. You are to
+be a guiding-star to me.”
+
+“And you to me. Oh, Bucky, isn’t it good?”
+
+He kissed her again hurriedly, for the train was jarring to a halt.
+Before he could answer in words, O’Halloran burst into the coach, at
+the head of his little company.
+
+“All serene, Bucky. This is the last scene, and the show went without a
+hitch in the performance anywhere.”
+
+Bucky smiled at Frances as he answered his enthusiastic friend:
+
+“That’s right. Not a hitch anywhere.”
+
+“And say, Bucky, who do you think is in the other coach dressed as one
+of the guards?”
+
+“Colonel Roosevelt,” the ranger guessed promptly.
+
+“Our friend Chaves. He’s escaping because he thinks we’ll have him
+assassinated in revenge,” the big Irishman returned gleefully. “You
+should have seen his color, me bye, when he caught sight of me. I asked
+him if he’d been reduced to the ranks, and he begged me not to tell you
+he was here. Go in and devil him.”
+
+Bucky glanced at his lover. “No, I’m so plumb contented I haven’t the
+heart.”
+
+
+At the Rocking Chair Ranch there was bustle and excitement. Mexicans
+scrubbed and scoured under the direction of Alice and Mrs. Mackenzie,
+and vaqueros rode hither and thither on bootless errands devised by
+their nervous master. For late that morning a telephone call from
+Aravaipa had brought Webb to the receiver to listen to a telegram. The
+message was from Bucky, then on the train on his way home.
+
+“The best of news. Reach the Rocking Chair tonight.”
+
+That was the message which had disturbed the serenity of big Webb
+Mackenzie and had given to the motherly heart of his wife an unusual
+flutter. The best of news it could not be, for the ranger had already
+written them of the confession of Anderson, which included the
+statement of the death of their little daughter. But at least he might
+bring the next best news, information that David Henderson was free at
+last and his long martyrdom ended.
+
+So all day hurried preparations were being made to receive the honored
+guests with a fitting welcome. The Rocking Chair was a big ranch, and
+its hospitality was famous all over the Southwest. It was quite
+unnecessary to make special efforts to entertain, but Webb and his wife
+took that means of relieving the strain on them till night.
+
+Higher crept the hot sun of baked Arizona. It passed the zenith and
+began to descend toward the purple hills in the west, went behind them
+with a great rainbow splash of brilliancy peculiar to that country.
+Dusk came, and died away in the midst of a love-concert of quails.
+Velvet night, with its myriad stars, entranced the land and made magic
+of its hills and valleys.
+
+For the fiftieth time Webb dragged out his watch and consulted it.
+
+“I wish that young man had let us know which way he was coming, so I
+could go and meet them. If they come by the river they should be in the
+Box canyon by this time. But if I was to ride out, like as not they
+would come by the mesa,” he sputtered.
+
+“What time is it, Webb?” asked his wife, scarcely less excited.
+
+He had to look again, so absent-minded had been his last glance at the
+watch. “Nine-fifteen. Why didn’t I telephone to Rogers and ask him to
+find out which way they were coming? Sometimes I’m mighty
+thick-headed.”
+
+As Mackenzie had guessed, the party was winding its way through the Box
+Canyon at that time of speaking. Bucky and Frances led the way,
+followed by Henderson and the vaquero whom Mackenzie had telephoned to
+guide them from Aravaipa.
+
+“I reckon this night was made for us, Curly Haid. Even good old Arizona
+never turned out such a one before. I expect it was ordered for us ever
+since it was decided we belonged to each other. That may have been
+thousands of years ago.” Bucky laughed, to relieve the tension, and
+looked up at the milky way above. “We’re like those stars, honey. All
+our lives we have been drifting around, but all the time it had been
+decided by the God-of-things-as-they-are that our orbits were going to
+run together and gravitate into the same one when the right time came.
+It has come now.”
+
+“Yes, Bucky,” she answered softly. “We belong, dear.”
+
+“Hello, here’s the end of the cañon. The ranch lies right behind that
+spur.”
+
+“Does it?” Presently she added: “I’m all a-tremble, Bucky. To think I’m
+going to meet my father and my mother for the first time really, for I
+don’t count that other time when we didn’t know. Suppose they shouldn’t
+like me.”
+
+“Impossible. Suppose something reasonable,” her lover replied.
+
+“But they might not. You think, you silly boy, that because you do
+everybody must. But I’m so glad I’m clothed and in my right mind again.
+I couldn’t have borne to meet my mother with that boys suit on. Do you
+think I look nice in this? I had to take what I could find ready-made,
+you know.”
+
+Unless his eyes were blinded by the glamour of love, he saw the
+sweetest vision of loveliness he had known. Such a surpassing miracle
+of soft, dainty curves, such surplusage of beauty in bare throat,
+speaking eye, sweet mouth, and dimpled cheeks! But Bucky was a lover,
+and perhaps no fair judge, for in that touch of vagueness, of
+fairy-land, lent by the moonlight, he found the world almost too
+beautiful to believe. Did she look _nice?_ How beggarly words were to
+express feelings, after all.
+
+The vaquero with them rode forward and pointed to the valley below,
+where the ranch-house huddled in a pellucid sea of moonlight.
+
+“That’s the Rocking Chair, sir.”
+
+Presently there came a shout from the ranch, and a man galloped toward
+them. He passed Bucky with a wave of his hand and made directly for
+Henderson.
+
+“Dave! Dave, old partner,” he cried, leaping from his horse and
+catching the other’s hand. “After all these years you’ve risen from the
+dead and come back to me.” His voice was broken with emotion.
+
+“Come! Let’s canter forward to the ranch,” said Bucky to Frances and
+the vaquero, thinking it best to leave the two old comrades together
+for a while.
+
+Mrs. Mackenzie and Alice met them at the gate. “Did you bring him? Did
+you bring Dave?” the older lady asked eagerly.
+
+“Yes, we brought him,” answered Bucky, helping Frances to dismount.
+
+He led the girl to her mother. “Mrs. Mackenzie, can you stand good
+news?”
+
+She caught at the gate. “What news? Who is this lady?”
+
+“Her name is Frances.”
+
+“Frances what?”
+
+“Frances Mackenzie. She is your daughter, returned, after all these
+years, to love and be loved.”
+
+The mother gave a little throat cry, steadied herself, and fell into
+the arms of her daughter. “Oh, my baby! My baby! Found at last.”
+
+Quietly Bucky slipped away to the stables with the ponies. As quietly
+Alice disappeared into the house. This was sacred ground, and not even
+their feet should rest on it just now.
+
+When Bucky returned to the house, he found his sweetheart sitting
+between her father and mother, each of whom was holding one of her
+hands. Henderson had retired to clean himself up. Happy tears were
+coursing down the cheeks of the mother, and Webb found it necessary to
+blow his nose frequently. He jumped up at sight of the ranger.
+
+“Young man, you’re to blame for this. You’ve found my friend and you’ve
+found my daughter. Brought them both back to us on the same day. What
+do you want? Name it, and it’s yours, if I can give it.”
+
+Bucky looked at Frances with a smile in his eyes. He knew very well
+what he wanted, but he was under bonds not to name it yet.
+
+“I’ll set you up in the cattle business, sir. I’ll buy you sheep, if
+you prefer. I’ll get you an interest in a mine. Put a name to what you
+want.”
+
+“I’m no robber. You paid the expenses of my trip. That’s all I want
+right now.”
+
+“It’s not all you’ll get. Do you think I’m a cheap piker? No, sir.
+You’ve got to let me grub-stake you.” Mackenzie thumped a clinched fist
+down on the table.
+
+“All right, seh. You’re the doctor. Give me an interest in that map and
+I’ll prospect the mine this summer, if I can locate it.”
+
+“Good enough, and I’ll finance the proposition. You and Dave can take
+half-shares in the property. In the meantime, are you open to an
+engagement?”
+
+“Depends what it is,” replied Bucky cautiously.
+
+“My foreman’s quit on me. Gone into business for himself. I’m looking
+for a good man. Will you be my major-domo?”
+
+Bucky’s heart leaped. He had been thinking of how he must report almost
+immediately to HurryUp Millikan, of the rangers. Now, he could resign
+from that body and stay near his love. Certainly things were coming his
+way.
+
+“I’d like to try it, seh,” he answered. “I may not make good, but I
+sure would like to have a chance at it.”
+
+“Make good! Of course you’ll make good. You’re the best man in Arizona,
+sir,” cried Webb extravagantly. He wheeled on his new-found daughter.
+“Don’t you think so, Frankie?”
+
+Frances blushed, but answered bravely: “Yes, sir. He makes everything
+right when he takes hold of it.”
+
+“Good. We’re not going to let him get away from us after making us so
+happy, are we, mother? This young man is going to stay right here. We
+never had but one son, and we are going to treat him as much like one
+as we can. Eh, mother?”
+
+“If he will consent, Webb.” She went up to the ranger and kissed his
+tanned cheek. “You must pardon an old woman whom you’ve made very
+happy.”
+
+Again Bucky’s laughing blue eyes met the brown ones of his sweetheart.
+
+“Oh, I’ll consent, all right, and I reckon, ma’am, it’s mighty good of
+you to treat me so white. I’ll sure try to please you.”
+
+Webb thumped him on the back. “Now, you’re shouting. We want you to be
+one of us, young man.”
+
+Once more that happy, wireless message of eyes followed by O’Connor’s
+assent. “That’s what I want myself, seh.”
+
+Bucky found a surprise waiting for him at the stables. A heavy hand
+descended upon his shoulder. He whirled, and looked up into the face of
+Sheriff Collins.
+
+“You here, Val?” he cried in surprise.
+
+“That’s what. Any luck, Bucky?”
+
+They went out and sat down on the big rocks back of the corral. Here
+each told the other his story, with certain reservations. Collins had
+just got back from Epitaph, where he had been to get the fragments of
+paper which told the secret of the buried treasure. He was expecting to
+set out in the early morning to meet Leroy.
+
+“I’ll go with you,” said Bucky immediately.
+
+Val shook his head. “No, I’m to go alone. That’s the agreement.”
+
+“Of course if that’s the agreement.” Nevertheless, the ranger formed a
+private intention not to be far from the scene of action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+THE WOLF PACK
+
+
+“Good evening, gentlemen. Hope I don’t intrude on the festivities.”
+
+Leroy smiled down ironically on the four flushed, startled faces that
+looked up at him. Suspicion was alive in every rustle of the men’s
+clothes. It breathed from the lowering countenances. It itched at the
+fingers longing for the trigger. The unending terror of a bandit’s life
+is that no man trusts his fellow. Hence one betrays another for fear of
+betrayal, or stabs him in the back to avoid it.
+
+The outlaw chief had slipped into the room so silently that the first
+inkling they had of his presence was that gentle, insulting voice. Now,
+as he lounged easily before them, leg thrown over the back of a chair
+and thumbs sagging from his trouser pockets, they looked the picture of
+schoolboys caught by their master in a conspiracy. How long had he been
+there? How much had he heard? Full of suspicion and bad whisky as they
+were, his confident contempt still cowed the very men who were planning
+his destruction. A minute before they had been full of loud threats and
+boastings; now they could only search each other’s faces sullenly for a
+cue.
+
+“Celebrating Chaves’ return from manana land, I reckon. That’s the
+proper ticket. I wonder if we couldn’t afford to kill another of
+Collins’ fatted calves.”
+
+Mr. Hardman, not enjoying the derisive raillery, took a hand in the
+game. “I expect the boys hadn’t better touch the sheriff’s calves, now
+you and him are so thick.”
+
+“We’re thick, are we?” Leroy’s indolent eyes narrowed slightly as they
+rested on him.
+
+“Ain’t you? It sure seemed that way to me when I looked out of that
+mesquit wash just above Eldorado Springs and seen you and him eating
+together like brothers and laughing to beat the band. You was so clost
+to him I couldn’t draw a bead on him without risking its hitting you.”
+
+“Spying, eh?”
+
+“If that’s the word you want to use, cap. And you were enjoying
+yourselves proper.”
+
+“Laughing, were we? That must have been when he told me how funny you
+looked in the ‘altogether’ shedding false teeth and information about
+hidden treasure.”
+
+“Told you that, did he?” Mr. Hardman incontinently dropped repartee as
+a weapon too subtle, and fell back on profanity.
+
+“That’s right pat to the minute, cap, what you say about the
+information he leaks,” put in Neil. “How about that information? I’ll
+be plumb tickled to death to know you’re carrying it in you vest
+pocket.”
+
+“And if I’m not?”
+
+“Then ye are a bigger fool than I had expected sorr, to come back here
+at all,” said the Irishman truculently.
+
+“I begin to think so myself, Mr. Reilly. Why keep faith with a set of
+swine like you?”
+
+“Are you giving it to us that you haven’t got those papers?”
+
+Leroy nodded, watching them with steady, alert eyes. He knew he stood
+on the edge of a volcano that might explode at any moment.
+
+“What did I tell yez?” Reilly turned savagely to the other disaffected
+members of the gang. “Didn’t I tell yez he was selling us out?”
+
+Somehow Leroy’s revolver seemed to jump to his hand without a motion on
+his part. It lay loosely in his limp fingers, unaimed and undirected.
+
+“_Say that again, please_.”
+
+Beneath the velvet of Leroy’s voice ran a note more deadly than any
+threat could have been. It rang a bell for a silence in which the clock
+of death seemed to tick. But as the seconds fled Reilly’s courage oozed
+away. He dared not accept the invitation to reach for his weapon and
+try conclusions with this debonair young daredevil. He mumbled a
+retraction, and flung, with a curse, out of the room.
+
+Leroy slipped the revolver back in his holster and quoted, with a
+laugh:
+
+“To every coward safety,
+And afterward his evil hour.”
+
+
+“What’s that?” demanded Neil. “I ain’t no coward, even if Jay is. I
+don’t knuckle under to any man. You got a right to ante up with some
+information. I want to know why you ain’t got them papers you promised
+to bring back with you.”
+
+“And I, too, señor. I desire to know what it means,” added Chaves, his
+eyes glittering.
+
+“That’s the way to chirp, gentlemen. I haven’t got them because Forbes
+blundered on us, and I had to take a _pasear_ awful sudden. But I made
+an appointment to meet Collins to-morrow.”
+
+“And you think he’ll keep it?” scoffed Neil.
+
+“I know he will.”
+
+“You seem to know a heap about him,” was the significant retort.
+
+“Take care, York.”
+
+“I’m not Hardman, cap. I say what I think.
+
+“And you think?” suggested Leroy gently.
+
+“I don’t know what to think yet. You’re either a fool or a traitor. I
+ain’t quite made up my mind. When I find out you’ll ce’tainly hear from
+me straight. Come on, boys.” And Neil vanished through the door.
+
+An hour later there came a knock at Leroy’s door. Neil answered his
+permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To
+the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they
+had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic
+of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging,
+that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the
+atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.
+
+“I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you’d bring another
+brand of poison out to the boys. I can’t go this stuff. Just remember
+that, will you?”
+
+The outlaw chief’s hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a
+primer. They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps.
+Though this last he doubted. It wouldn’t be like Neil to plan his
+murder, and it wouldn’t be like the others to give him warning and meet
+him in the open. Warily he stood behind the table, watching their
+awkward embarrassment with easy assurance. Carefully he placed face
+downward on the table the Villon he had been reading, but he did it
+without lifting his eyes from them.
+
+“You have business with me, I presume.”
+
+“That’s what we have,” cried Reilly valiantly, from the rear.
+
+“Then suppose we come to it and get the room aired as soon as
+possible,” Leroy said tartly.
+
+“You’re such a slap-up dude you’d ought to be a hotel clerk, cap.
+You’re sure wasted out here. So we boys got together and held a little
+election. Consequence is, we—fact is, we—”
+
+Neil stuck, but Reilly came to his rescue.
+
+“We elected York captain of this outfit.”
+
+“To fill the vacancy created by my resignation. Poor York! You’re the
+sacrifice, are you? On the whole, I think you fellows have made a wise
+choice. York’s game, and he won’t squeal on you, which is more than I
+could say of Reilly, or the play actor, or the gentlemen from
+Chihuahua. But you want to watch out for a knife in the dark, York.
+‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,’ you know.”
+
+“We didn’t come here to listen to a speech, cap, but to notify you we
+was dissatisfied, and wouldn’t have you run the outfit any longer,”
+explained Neil.
+
+“In that event, having heard the report of the committee, if there’s no
+further new business, I declare this meeting adjourned _sine die_.
+Kindly remove the perfume tubs, Captain Neil, at your earliest
+convenience.”
+
+The quartette retreated ignominiously. They had come prepared to gloat
+over Leroy’s discomfiture, and he had mocked them with that insolent
+ease of his that set their teeth in helpless rage.
+
+But the deposed chief knew they had not struck their last blow.
+Throughout the night he could hear the low-voiced murmur of their
+plottings, and he knew that if the liquor held out long enough there
+would be sudden death at Hidden Valley before twenty-four hours were
+up. He looked carefully to his rifle and his revolvers, testing several
+shells to make sure they had not been tampered with in his absence.
+After he had made all necessary preparations, he drew the blinds of his
+window and moved his easy-chair from its customary place beside the
+fire. Also he was careful not to sit where any shadow would betray his
+position. Then back he went to his Villon, a revolver lying on the
+table within reach.
+
+But the night passed without mishap, and with morning he ventured forth
+to his meeting with the sheriff. He might have slipped out from the
+back door of his cabin and gained the canyon, by circling unobserved,
+up the draw and over the hogback, but he would not show by these
+precautions any fear of the cutthroats with whom he had to deal. As was
+his scrupulous custom, he shaved and took his morning bath before
+appearing outdoors. In all Arizona no trimmer, more graceful figure of
+jaunty recklessness could be seen than this one stepping lightly forth
+to knock at the bunk-house door behind which he suspected were at least
+two men determined on his death by treachery.
+
+Neil came to the door in answer to his knock and within he could see
+the villainous faces at bloodshot eyes of two of the others peering at
+him.
+
+“Good mo’ning, Captain Neil. I’m on my way to keep that appointment I
+mentioned last night I’d ce’tainly be glad to have you go along.
+Nothing like being on the spot to prevent double-crossing.”
+
+“I’m with you in the fling of a cow’s tail. Come on, boys.”
+
+“I think not. You and I will go alone.”
+
+“Just as you say. Reilly, I guess you better saddle Two-step and the
+Lazy B roan.”
+
+“I ain’t saddling ponies for Mr. Leroy,” returned Reilly, with thick
+defiance.
+
+Neil was across the room in two strides. “When I tell you to do a
+thing, jump! Get a move on and saddle those broncs.”
+
+“I don’t know as—”
+
+“_Vamos!_”
+
+Reilly sullenly slouched out.
+
+“I see you made them jump,” commented the former captain audibly,
+seating himself comfortably on a rock. “It’s the only way you’ll get
+along with them. See that they come to time or pump lead into them.
+You’ll find there’s no middle way.”
+
+Neil and Leroy had hardly passed beyond the rock-slide before the
+others, suspicion awake in their sodden brains, dodged after them on
+foot. For three miles they followed the broncos as the latter picked
+their way up the steep trail that led to the Dalriada Mine.
+
+“If Mr. Collins is here, he’s lying almighty low,” exclaimed Neil, as
+he swung from his pony at the foot of the bluff from the brow of which
+the gray dump of the mine straggled down like a Titan’s beard.
+
+“Right you are, Mr. Neil.”
+
+York whirled, revolver in hand, but the man who had risen from behind
+the big boulder beside the trail was resting both hands on the rock
+before him.
+
+“You’re alone, are you?” demanded York.
+
+“I am.”
+
+Neil’s revolver slid back into its holster. “Mornin’, Val. What’s new
+down at Tucson?” he said amiably.
+
+“I understood I was to meet you alone, Mr. Leroy,” said the sheriff
+quickly, his blue-gray eyes on the former chief.
+
+“That was the agreement, Mr. Collins, but it seems the boys are on the
+anxious seat about these little socials of ours. They’ve embraced the
+notion that I’m selling them. I hated to have them harassed with
+doubts, so I invited the new majordomo of the ranch to come with me. Of
+cou’se, if you object—”
+
+“I don’t object in the least, but I want him to understand the
+agreement. I’ve got a posse waiting at Eldorado Springs, and as soon as
+I get back there we take the trail after you. Bucky O’Connor is at the
+head of the posse.”
+
+York grinned. “We’ll be in Sonora then, Val. Think I’m going to wait
+and let you shoot off my other fingers?”
+
+Collins fished from his vest pocket the papers he had taken from
+Scotty’s hat and from Webster. “I think I’ll be jogging along back to
+the springs. I reckon these are what you want.”
+
+Leroy took them from him and handed them to Neil. “Don’t let us detain
+you any longer, Mr. Collins. I know you’re awful busy these days.”
+
+The sheriff nodded a good day, cut down the hill on the slant, and
+disappeared in a mesquit thicket, from the other side of which he
+presently emerged astride a bay horse.
+
+The two outlaws retraced their way to the foot of the hill and
+remounted their broncos.
+
+“I want to say, cap, that I’m eating humble-pie in big chunks right
+this minute,” said Neil shamefacedly, scratching his curly poll and
+looking apologetically at his former chief. “I might ’a’ knowed you was
+straight as a string, all I’ve seen of you these last two years. If
+those coyotes say another word, cap—”
+
+An exploding echo seemed to shake the mountain, and then another. Leroy
+swayed in the saddle, clutching at his side. He pitched forward, his
+arms round the horse’s neck, and slid slowly to the ground.
+
+Neil was off his horse in an instant, kneeling beside him. He lifted
+him in his arms and carried him behind a great outcropping boulder.
+
+“It’s that hound Collins,” he muttered, as he propped the wounded man’s
+head on his arm. “By God, I didn’t think it of Val.”
+
+Leroy opened his eyes and smiled faintly. “Guess again, York.”
+
+“You don’t mean—”
+
+He nodded. “Right this time—Hardman and Chaves and Reilly. They shot to
+get us both. With us out of the way they could divide the treasure
+between them.”
+
+Neil choked. “You ain’t bad hurt, old man. Say you ain’t bad hurt,
+Phil.”
+
+“More than I can carry, York; shot through and through. I’ve been
+doubtful of Reilly for a long time.”
+
+“By the Lord, if I don’t get the rattlesnake for this!” swore Neil
+between his teeth. “Ain’t there nothin’ I can do for you, old pardner?”
+
+In sharp succession four shots rang out. Neil grasped his rifle,
+leaning forward and crouching for cover. He turned a puzzled face
+toward Leroy. “I don’t savvy. They ain’t shooting at us.”
+
+“The sheriff,” explained Leroy. “They forgot him, and he doubled back
+on them.”
+
+“I’ll bet Val got one of them,” cried Neil, his face lighting.
+
+“He’s got one—or he’s quit living. That’s a sure thing. Why don’t you
+circle up on them from behind, York?”
+
+“I hate to leave you, cap—and you so bad. Can’t I do a thing for you?”
+
+Leroy smiled faintly. “Not a thing. I’ll be right here when you get
+back, York.”
+
+The curly-headed young puncher took Leroy’s hand in his, gulping down a
+boyish sob. “I ain’t been square with you, cap. I reckon after
+this—when you git well—I’ll not be such a coyote any more.”
+
+The dying man’s eyes were lit with a beautiful tenderness. “There’s one
+thing you can do for me, York.... I’m out of the game, but I want you
+to make a new start.... I got you into this life, boy. Quit it, and
+live straight. There’s nothing to it, York.”
+
+The cowboy-bandit choked. “Don’t you worry about me, cap. I’m all
+right. I’d just as lief quit this deviltry, anyhow.”
+
+“I want you to promise, boy.” A whimsical, half-cynical smile touched
+Leroy’s eyes. “You see, after living like a devil for thirty years, I
+want to die like a Christian. Now, go, York.”
+
+After Neil had left him, Leroy’s eyes closed. Faintly he heard two more
+shots echoing down the valley, but the meaning of them was already lost
+to his wandering mind.
+
+Neil dodged rapidly round the foot of the mountain with intent to cut
+off the bandits as they retreated. He found the sheriff crouching
+behind a rock scarce two hundred yards from the scene of the murder. At
+the same moment another shot echoed from well over to the left.
+
+“Who can that be?” Neil asked, very much puzzled.
+
+“That’s what’s worrying me, York,” the sheriff returned.
+
+Together they zigzagged up the side of the mountain. Twice from above
+there came sounds of rifle shots. Neil was the first to strike the
+trail to the mine. None too soon for as he stepped upon it, breathing
+heavily from his climb, Reilly swung round a curve and whipped his
+weapon to his shoulder. The man fired before York could interfere and
+stood watching tensely the result of his shot. He was silhouetted
+against the skyline, a beautiful mark, but Neil did not cover him.
+Instead, he spoke quietly to the other.
+
+“Was it you that killed Phil, Reilly?”
+
+The man whirled and saw Neil for the first time. His answer was
+instant. Flinging up his rifle, he pumped a shot at York.
+
+Neil’s retort came in a flash. Reilly clutched at his heart and toppled
+backward from the precipice upon which he stood. Collins joined the
+cowpuncher and together they stepped forward to the point from which
+Reilly had plunged down two hundred feet to the jagged rocks below.
+
+At the curve they came face to face with Bucky O’Connor. Three weapons
+went up quicker than the beating of an eyelash. More slowly each went
+down again.
+
+“What are you doing here, Bucky?” the sheriff asked.
+
+“Just pirootin’ around, Val. It occurred to me Leroy might not mean to
+play fair with you, so I kinder invited myself to the party. When I
+heard shooting I thought it was you they had bushwhacked, so I sat in
+to the game.”
+
+“You guessed wrong, Bucky. Reilly and the others rounded on Leroy.
+While they were at it they figured to make a clean job and bump off
+York, too. From what York says Leroy has got his.”
+
+The ranger turned a jade eye on the outlaw. “Has Mr. Neil turned honest
+man, Val? Taken him into your posse, have you?” he asked, with an edge
+of irony in his voice.
+
+The sheriff laid a hand on the shoulder of the man who had been his
+friend before he turned miscreant.
+
+“Don’t you worry about Neil, Bucky,” he advised gently. “It was York
+shot Reilly, after York had cut loose at him, and I shouldn’t wonder if
+that didn’t save your life. Neil has got to stand the gaff for what
+he’s done, but I’ll pull wires to get his punishment made light.”
+
+“Killed Reilly, did he?” repeated O’Connor. “I got Anderson back
+there.”
+
+“That makes only one left to account for. I wonder who he is?” Collins
+turned absent-mindedly to Neil. The latter looked at him out of an
+expressionless face. Even though his confederate had proved traitor he
+would not betray him.
+
+“I wonder,” he said.
+
+Bucky laughed. “Made a mistake that time, Val.”
+
+“I plumb forgot the situation for a moment,” the sheriff grinned.
+“Anyhow, we better be hittin’ his trail.”
+
+“How about Phil?” Neil suggested.
+
+“That’s right. One of us has ce’tainly got to go back and attend to
+him.”
+
+“You and Neil go back. I’ll follow up this gentleman who is escaping,”
+the ranger said.
+
+And so it was arranged. The two men returned from their grim work of
+justice to the place where the outlaw chief had been left. His eyes lit
+feebly at sight of them.
+
+“What news, York?” he asked.
+
+“Reilly and Hardman are killed. How are you feelin’, cap?” The
+cow-puncher knelt beside the dying outlaw and put an arm under his
+head.
+
+“Shot all to pieces, boy. No, I got no time to have you play doctor
+with me.” He turned to Collins with a gleam of his unconquerable
+spirit. “You came pretty near making a clean round-up, sheriff. I’m the
+fourth to be put out of business. You’d ought to be content with that.
+Let York here go.”
+
+“I can’t do that, but I’ll do my best to see he gets off light.”
+
+“I got him into this, sheriff. He was all right before he knew me. I
+want him to get a chance now.”
+
+“I wish I could give him a pardon, but I can’t do it. I’ll see the
+governor for him though.”
+
+The wounded man spoke to Collins alone for a few minutes, then began to
+wander in his mind He babbled feebly of childhood days back in his
+Kentucky home. The word most often on his lips was “Mother.” So, with
+his head resting on Neil’s arm and his hand in that of his friend, he
+slipped away to the Great Beyond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+FOR A GOOD REASON
+
+
+The young ladies, following the custom of Arizona in summer, were
+riding by the light of the stars to avoid the heat of the day. They
+rode leisurely, chatting as their ponies paced side by side. For though
+they were cousins they were getting acquainted with each other for the
+first time. Both of them found this a delightful process, not the less
+so because they were temperamentally very different. Each of them knew
+already that they were going to be great friends. They had exchanged
+the histories of their lives, lying awake girl fashion to talk into the
+small hours, each omitting certain passages, however, that had to do
+with two men who were at that moment approaching nearer every minute to
+them.
+
+Bucky O’Connor and Sheriff Collins were returning to the Rocking Chair
+Ranch from Epitaph, where they had just been to deposit twenty-seven
+thousand dollars and a prisoner by the name of Chaves. Just at the
+point where the road climbed from the plains and reached the summit of
+the first stiff hill the two parties met and passed. The ranger and the
+sheriff reined in simultaneously. Yet a moment and all four of them
+were talking at once.
+
+They turned toward the ranch, Bucky and Frances leading the way. Alice,
+riding beside her lover in the darkness, found the defenses upon which
+she had relied begin to fail her. Nevertheless, she summoned them to
+her support and met him full armed with the evasions and complexities
+of her sex.
+
+“This _is_ a surprise, Mr. Collins,” he was informed in her best
+society voice.
+
+“And a pleasure?”
+
+“Of course. But I’m sorry that father has been called to Phoenix. I
+suppose you came to tell him about your success.”
+
+“To brag about it,” he corrected. “But not to your father—to his
+daughter.”
+
+“That’s very thoughtful of you. Will you begin now?”
+
+“Not yet. There is something I have to tell you, Miss Mackenzie.”
+
+At the gravity in his voice the lightness slipped from her like a
+cloak.
+
+“Yes. Tell me your news. Over the telephone all sorts of rumors have
+come to us. But even these were hearsay.”
+
+“I thought of telephoning you the facts. Then I decided to ride out and
+tell you at once. I knew you would want to hear the story at first
+hand.”
+
+Her patrician manner was gone. Her eyes looked their thanks at him.
+“That was good of you. I have been very anxious to get the facts. One
+rumor was that you have captured Sir Leroy. Is it true?”
+
+It seemed to her that his look was one of grave tenderness. “No, that
+is not true. You remember what we said of him—of how he might die?”
+
+“He is dead—you killed him,” she cried, all the color washed from her
+face.
+
+“He is dead, but I did not kill him.”
+
+“Tell me,” she commanded.
+
+He told her, beginning at the moment of his meeting with the outlaws at
+the Dalriada dump and continuing to the last scene of the tragedy. It
+touched her so nearly that she could not hear him through dry-eyed.
+
+“And he spoke of me?” She said it in a low voice, to herself rather
+than to him.
+
+“It was just before his mind began to wander—almost his last conscious
+thought. He said that when you heard the news you would remember. What
+you were to remember he didn’t say. I took it you would know.”
+
+“Yes. I was to remember that he was not all wolf to me.” She told it
+with a little break of tears in her voice.
+
+“Then he told me to tell you that it was the best way out for him. He
+had come to the end of the road, and it would not have been possible
+for him to go back.” Presently Collins added gently: “If you don’t mind
+my saying so, I think he was right. He was content to go, quite game
+and steady in his easy way. If he had lived, there could have been no
+going back for him. It was his nature to go the limit. The tragedy is
+in his life, not in his death.”
+
+“Yes, I know that, but it hurts one to think it had to be—that all his
+splendid gifts and capabilities should end like this, and that we are
+forced to see it is best. He might have done so much.”
+
+“And instead he became a miscreant. I reckon there was a lack in him
+somewhere.”
+
+“Yes, there was a great lack in him somewhere.”
+
+They were silent for a time. She broke it to ask about York Neil.
+
+“You wouldn’t send him to prison after doing what he did, would you?”
+
+“Meaning what?”
+
+“You say yourself he helped you against the other outlaws. Then he
+showed you where to start in finding the buried money. He isn’t a bad
+man. You know how he stood by me when I was a prisoner,” she pleaded.
+
+He nodded. “That goes a long way with me, Miss Mackenzie. The governor
+is a right good friend of mine. I meant to ask him for a pardon. I
+reckon Neil means to live straight from now on. He promised Leroy he
+would. He’s only a wild cow-puncher gone wrong, and now he’s haided
+right he’ll pull up and walk the narrow trail.”
+
+“But can you save him from the penitentiary?”
+
+Collins smiled. “He saved me the trouble. Coming through the Cañon Del
+Oro in the night, he ducked. I reckon he’s in Mexico now.”
+
+“I’m glad.”
+
+“Well, I ain’t sorry myself, though I helped Bucky hunt real thorough
+for him.”
+
+“Father will be pleased to know you got the treasure back,” Alice said
+presently, after they had ridden a bit in silence.
+
+“And your father’s daughter, Miss Alice—is she pleased?”
+
+“What pleases father pleases me.” Her voice, cool as the plash of ice
+water, might have daunted a less resolute man. But this one had long
+since determined the manner of his wooing and was not to be driven from
+it.
+
+“I’m glad of that. Your father’s right friendly to me,” he announced,
+with composure.
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Sho! I ain’t going to run away and hide because you look like you
+don’t know I’m in Arizona. What kind of a lover would I be if I broke
+for cover every time you flashed those dark eyes at me?”
+
+“Mr. Collins!”
+
+“My friends call me Val,” he suggested, smiling.
+
+“I was going to ask, Mr. Collins, if you think you can bully me.”
+
+“It might be a first rate thing for you if I did, Miss Mackenzie. All
+your life you haven’t done anything but trample on sissy boys. Now, I
+expect I’m not a sissy boy, but a fair imitation of a man, and I
+shouldn’t wonder but you’d find me some too restless for a door-mat.”
+His maimed hand happened to be resting on the saddle horn as he spoke,
+and the story of the maiming emphasized potently the truth of his
+claim.
+
+“Don’t you assume a good deal, Mr. Collins, when you imply that I have
+any desire to master you?”
+
+“Not a bit,” he assured her cheerfully. “Every woman wants to boss the
+man she’s going to marry, but if she finds she can’t she’s glad of it,
+because then she knows she’s got a man.”
+
+“You are quite sure I am going to marry you?” she asked gently—too
+gently, he thought.
+
+“I’m only reasonably sure,” he informed her. “You see, I can’t tell for
+certain whether your pride or your good sense is the stronger.”
+
+She caught a detached glimpse of the situation, and it made for
+laughter.
+
+“That’s right, I want you should enjoy it,” he said placidly.
+
+“I do. It’s the most absurd proposal—I suppose you call it a
+proposal—that ever I heard.”
+
+“I expect you’ve heard a good many in your time.
+
+“We’ll not discuss that, if you please.”
+
+“I AM more interested in this one,” he agreed.
+
+“Isn’t it about time to begin on Tucson?”
+
+“Not to-day, ma’am. There are going to be a lot of to-morrows for you
+and me, and Tucson will have to wait till then.”
+
+“Didn’t I give you an answer last week?”
+
+“You did, but I didn’t take it. Now I’m ready for your sure-enough
+answer.”
+
+She flashed a look at him that mocked his confidence. “I’ve heard about
+the vanity of girls, but never in my experience have I met any so
+colossal as this masculine vanity now on exhibit. Do you really think,
+Mr. Collins, that all you have to do to win a woman is to look
+impressive and tell her that you have decided to marry her?”
+
+“Do I look as if I thought that?” he asked her.
+
+“It is perfectly ridiculous—your absurd attitude of taking everything
+for granted. Well, it may be the Tucson custom, but where I come from
+it is not in vogue.”
+
+“No, I reckon not. Back there a boy persuades girl he loves her by
+ruining her digestion with candy and all sorts of ice arrangements from
+soda-fountain. But I’m uncivilized enough to assume you’re a woman of
+sense and not a spoiled schoolgirl.”
+
+The velvet night was attuned to the rhythm of her love. She felt
+herself, in this sea of moon romance, being swept from her moorings.
+Star-eyed, she gazed at him while she still fought again his dominance.
+
+“You _are_ uncivilized. Would you beat me when I didn’t obey?” she
+asked tremulously.
+
+He laughed in slow contentment. “Perhaps; but I’d love you while I did
+it.”
+
+“Oh, you would love me.” She looked across under her long lashes, not
+as boldly as she would have liked, and her gaze fell before his. “I
+haven t heard before that that was in the compact you proposed. I don’t
+think you have remembered to mention it.”
+
+He swung from the saddle and put a hand to her bridle rein.
+
+“Get down,” he ordered.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because I say so. Get down.”
+
+She looked down at him, a man out of a thousand and for her one out of
+a hundred million. Before she was conscious of willing it she stood
+beside him. He trailed the reins of the ponies, and in two strides came
+back to her.
+
+“What—do you—want?”
+
+“I want you, girl.” His arm swept round her, and he held her while he
+looked down into her shining eyes. “So I haven’t told you that I love
+you. Did you need to be told?”
+
+“We must go on,” she murmured weakly. “Frances and Lieutenant
+O’Connor—”
+
+“—Have their own love-affairs to attend to.
+
+“We’ll manage ours and not intrude.”
+
+“They might think—”
+
+He laughed in deep delight, “—that we love each other. They’re welcome
+to the thought. I haven’t told you that I love you, eh? I tell you now.
+It’s my last trump, and right here I table it. I’m no desert poet, but
+I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap
+the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter
+what mood you’re in—when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you
+laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God’s world has
+the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you’re glad or mad, I
+want you just the same. That’s the reason why I’m going to make you
+love me.”
+
+“You can’t do it.” Her voice was very low and not quite steady.
+
+“Why not—I’ll show you.”
+
+“But you can’t—for a good reason.”
+
+“Put a name to it.”
+
+“Because. Oh, you big blind man—because I love you already.” She
+burlesqued his drawl with a little joyous laugh: “I reckon if you’re
+right set on it I’ll have to marry you, Val Collins.”
+
+His arm tightened about her as if he would hold her against the whole
+world. His ardent eyes possessed hers. She felt herself grow faint with
+a poignant delight. Her lips met his slowly in their first kiss.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUCKY O’CONNOR ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
+Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
+on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
+  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
+  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
+  United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
+  you are located before using this eBook.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg™ License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
+other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
+Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+provided that:
+
+• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
+  works.
+
+• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you “AS-IS”, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
+
+Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™'s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+