even what Warfield was thinking. Contrary to Lone's idea of him, Swan
was tired, and he was thinking a great deal about Lorraine, and very
little about Al Woodruff, except as Al was concerned with Lorraine's
welfare. Swan had made a mistake, and he was humiliated over his
blunder. Al had kept himself so successfully in the background while
Lone's peculiar actions had held his attention, that Swan had never
considered Al Woodruff as the killer. Now he blamed himself for Frank's
death. He had been watching Lone, had been baffled by Lone's consistent
kindness toward the Quirt, by the force of his personality which held
none of the elements of cold-blooded murder. He had believed that he had
the Sawtooth killer under observation, and he had been watching and
waiting for evidence that would impress a grand jury. And all the while
he had let Al Woodruff ride free and unsuspected.
The one stupid thing, in Swan's opinion, which he had not done was to
let Lone go on holding his tongue. He had forced the issue that
morning. He had wanted to make Lone talk, had hoped for a weakening
and a confession. Instead he had learned a good deal which he should
have known before.
As he forged up the slope across the ridged lip of the canyon, his one
immediate object was speed. Up the canyon and over the divide on the
west shoulder of Bear Top was a trail to the open country beyond. It was
perfectly passable, as Swan knew; he had packed in by that trail when he
located his homestead on Bear Top. That is why he had his cabin up and
was living in it before the Sawtooth discovered his presence.
Al, he believed, was making for Bear Top Pass. Once down the other side
he would find friends to lend him fresh horses. Swan had learned
something of these friends of the Sawtooth, and he could guess pretty
accurately how far some of them would go in their service. Fresh horses
for Al, food--perhaps even a cabin where he could hide Lorraine
away--were to be expected from any one of them, once Al was over the
divide.
Swan glanced up at the sun, saw that it was dropping to late afternoon
and started in at a long, loose-jointed trot across the mountain meadow
called Skyline. A few pines, with scattered clumps of juniper and fir,
dotted the long, irregular stretch of grassland which formed the meadow.
Range cattle were feeding here and there, so wild they lifted heads to
stare at the man and dog, then came trotting forward, their curiosity
unabated by the fact that they had seen these two before.
Jack looked up at his master, looked at the cattle and took his place at
Swan's heels. Swan shouted and flung his arms, and the cattle ducked,
turned and galloped awkwardly away. Swan's trot did not slacken. His
rifle swung rhythmically in his right hand, the muzzle tilted downward.
Beads of perspiration on his forehead had merged into tiny rivulets on
his cheeks and dripped off his clean-lined, square jaw. Still he ran,
his breath unlabored yet coming in whispery aspirations from his great
lungs.
The full length of Skyline Meadow he ran, jumping the small beginning of
Wilder Creek with one great leap that scarcely interrupted the beautiful
rhythm of his stride. At the far end of the clearing, snuggled between
two great pines that reached high into the blue, his squatty cabin
showed red-brown against the precipitous shoulder of Bear Top peak,
covered thick with brush and scraggy timber whipped incessantly by the
wind that blew over the mountain's crest.
At the door Swan stopped and examined the crude fastening of the door;
made himself certain, by private marks of his own, that none had entered
in his absence, and went in with a great sigh of satisfaction. It was
still broad daylight, though the sun's rays slanted in through the
window; but Swan lighted a lantern that hung on a nail behind the door,
carried it across the neat little room, and set it down on the floor
beside the usual pioneer cupboard made simply of clean boxes nailed
bottom against the wall. Swan had furnished a few extra frills to his
cupboard, for the ends of the boxes were fastened to hewn slabs standing
upright and just clearing the floor. Near the upper shelf a row of nails
held Swan's coffee cups,--four of them, thick and white, such as cheap
restaurants use.
Swan hooked a finger over the nail that held a cracked cup and glanced
over his shoulder at Jack, sitting in the doorway with his keen nose to
the world.
"You watch out now, Yack. I shall talk to my mother with my thoughts,"
he said, drawing a hand across his forehead and speaking in breathless
gasps. "You watch."
For answer Jack thumped his tail on the dirt floor and sniffed the
breeze, taking in his overlapping tongue while he did so. He licked his
lips, looked over his shoulder at Swan, and draped his pink tongue down
over his lower jaw again.
"All right, now I talk," said Swan and pulled upon the nail in his
fingers.
The cupboard swung toward him bodily, end slabs and all. He picked up
the lantern, stepped over the log sill and pulled the cupboard door into
place again.
Inside the dugout Swan set the lantern on a table, dropped wearily upon
a rough bench before it and looked at the jars beside him, lifted his
hand and opened a compact, but thoroughly efficient field wireless
"set." His right fingers dropped to the key, and the whining drone of
the wireless rose higher and higher as he tuned up. He reached for his
receivers, ducked his head and adjusted them with one hand, and sent a
call spitting tiny blue sparks from the key under his fingers.
He waited, repeating the call. His blue eyes clouded with anxiety and
he fumbled the adjustments, coaxing the current into perfect action
before he called again. Answer came, and Swan bent over the table,
listening, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the opposite wall of the dugout.
Then, his fingers flexing delicately, swiftly, he sent the message that
told how completely his big heart matched the big body:
"Send doctor and trained nurse to Quirt ranch at once. Send men to
Bear Top Pass, intercept man with young woman, or come to rescue if
he don't cross. Have three men here with evidence to convict if we
can save the girl who is valuable witness. Girl being abducted in
fear of what she can tell. They plan to charge her with insanity.
Urgent. Hurry. Come ready to fight.
"S.V."
Swan had a code, but codes require a little time in the composition of a
message, and time was the one thing he could not waste. He heard the
gist of the message repeated to him, told the man at the other station
that lives were at stake, and threw off the current.
CHAPTER TWENTY
KIDNAPPED
Lorraine had once had a nasty fall from riding down hill at a gallop.
She remembered that accident and permitted Snake to descend Granite
Ridge at a walk, which was fortunate, since it gave the horse a chance
to recover a little from the strain of the terrific pace at which she
had ridden him that morning. At first it had been fighting fury that had
impelled her to hurry; now it was fear that drove her homeward where
Lone was, and Swan, and that stolid, faithful Jim. She felt that Senator
Warfield would never dare to carry out his covert threat, once she
reached home. Nevertheless, the threat haunted her, made her glance
often over her shoulder.
At the Thurman ranch, which she was passing with a sickening memory of
the night when she and Swan had carried her father there, Al Woodruff
rode out suddenly from behind the stable and blocked the trail, his
six-shooter in his hand, his face stony with determination. Lorraine
afterwards decided that he must have seen or heard her coming down the
ridge and had waited for her there. He smiled with his lips when she
pulled up Snake with a startled look.
"You're in such a hurry this morning that I thought the only way to get
a chance to talk to you was to hold you up," he said, in much the same
tone he had used that day at the ranch.
"I don't see why you want to talk to me," Lorraine retorted, not in the
least frightened at the gun, which was too much like her movie West to
impress her much. But her eyes widened at the look in his face, and she
tried to edge away from him without seeming to do so.
Al stopped her by the simple method of reaching out his left hand and
catching Snake by the cheek-piece of the bridle. "You don't have to see
why," he said. "I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've made up
my mind that I've got to have you with me--always. This is kinda sudden,
maybe, but that's the way the game runs, sometimes. Now, I want to tell
yuh one or two things that's for your own good. One is that I'll have my
way, or die getting it. Don't be scared; I won't hurt you. But if you
try to break away, I'll shoot you, that's all. I'm going to marry you,
see, first. Then I'll make love to you afterwards. I ain't asking you if
you'll marry me. You're going to do it, or I'll kill you."
Lorraine gazed at him fascinated, too astonished to attempt any move
toward escape. Al's hand slipped from the bridle down to the reins, and
still holding Snake, still holding the gun muzzle toward her, still
looking her straight in the eyes, he threw his right leg over the cantle
of his saddle and stepped off his horse.
"Put your other hand on the saddle horn," he directed. "I ain't going to
hurt you if you're good."
He twitched his neckerchief off--Lorraine saw that it was untied, and
that he must have planned all this--and with it he tied her wrists to
the saddle horn. She gave Snake a kick in the ribs, but Al checked the
horse's first start and Snake was too tired to dispute a command to
stand still. Al put up his gun, pulled a hunting knife from a little
scabbard in his boot, sliced two pairs of saddle strings from Lorraine's
saddle, calmly caught and held her foot when she tried to kick him,
pushed the foot back into the stirrup and tied it there with one of the
leather strings. Just as if he were engaged in an everyday proceeding,
he walked around Snake and tied Lorraine's right foot; then, to prevent
her from foolishly throwing herself from the horse and getting hurt, he
tied the stirrups together under the horse's belly.
"Now, if you'll be a good girl, I'll untie your hands," he said,
glancing up into her face. He freed her hands, and Lorraine immediately
slapped him in the face and reached for his gun. But Al was too quick
for her. He stepped back, picked up Snake's reins and mounted his own
horse. He looked back at her appraisingly, saw her glare of hatred and
grinned at it, while he touched his horse with the spurs and rode away,
leading Snake behind him.
Lorraine said nothing until Al, riding at a lope, passed the field at
the mouth of Spirit Canyon where the blaze-faced roan still fed with the
others. They were feeding along the creek quite close to the fence, and
the roan walked toward them. The sight of it stirred Lorraine out of her
dumb horror.
"You killed Fred Thurman! I saw you," she cried suddenly.
"Well, you ain't going to holler it all over the country," Al flung
back at her over his shoulder. "When you're married to me, you'll come
mighty close to keeping your mouth shut about it."
"I'll never marry you! You--you fiend! Do you think I'd marry a
cold-blooded murderer like you?"
Al turned in the saddle and looked at her intently. "If I'm all that,"
he told her coolly, "you can figure out about what'll happen to you if
you _don't_ marry me. If you saw what I done to Fred Thurman, what do
you reckon I'd do to _you_?" He looked at her for a minute, shrugged his
shoulders and rode on, crossing the creek and taking a trail which
Lorraine did not know. Much of the time they traveled in the water,
though it slowed their pace. Where the trail was rocky, they took it and
made better time.
Snake lagged a little on the upgrades, but he was well trained to lead
and gave little trouble. Lorraine thought longingly of Yellowjacket and
his stubbornness and tried to devise some way of escape. She could not
believe that fate would permit Al Woodruff to carry out such a plan.
Lone would overtake them, perhaps,--and then she remembered that Lone
would have no means of knowing which way she had gone. If Hawkins and
Senator Warfield came after them, her plight would be worse than ever.
Still, she decided that she must risk that danger and give Lone a clue.
She dropped a glove beside the trail, where it lay in plain sight of any
one following them. But presently Al looked over his shoulder, saw that
one of her hands was bare, and tied Snake's reins to his saddle and his
own horse to a bush. Then he went back down the trail until he found the
glove. He put it into his pocket, came silently up to Lorraine and
pulled off her other glove. Without a word he took her wrists in a firm
clasp, tied them together again to the saddle horn, pulled off her tie,
her hat, and the pins from her hair.
"I guess you don't know me yet," he remarked dryly, when he had
confiscated every small article which she could let fall as she rode. "I
was trying to treat yuh white, but you don't seem to appreciate it. Now
you can ride hobbled, young lady."
"Oh, I could _kill_ you!" Lorraine whispered between set teeth.
"You mean you'd like to. Well, I ain't going to give you a chance." His
eyes rested on her face with a new expression; an awakening desire for
her, an admiration for the spirit that would not let her weep and plead
with him.
"Say! you ain't going to be a bit hard to marry," he observed, his eyes
lighting with what was probably his nearest approach to tenderness. "I
kinda wish you liked me, now I've got you."
He shook her arm and laughed when she turned her face away from him,
then remounted his horse. Snake moved reluctantly when Al started on.
Lorraine felt hope slipping from her. With her hands tied, she could do
nothing at all save sit there and ride wherever Al Woodruff chose to
lead her horse. He seemed to be making for the head of Spirit Canyon, on
the side toward Bear Top.
As they climbed higher, she could catch glimpses of the road down which
her father had driven almost to his death. She studied Al's back as he
rode before her and wondered if he could really be cold-blooded enough
to kill without compunction whoever he was told to kill, whether he had
any personal quarrel with his victim or not. Certainly he had had no
quarrel with her father, or with Frank.
It was long past noon, and she was terribly hungry and very thirsty, but
she would not tell Al her wants if she starved. She tried to guess at
his plans and at his motive for taking her away like this. He had no
camping outfit, a bulkily rolled slicker forming his only burden. He
could not, then, be planning to take her much farther into the
wilderness; yet if he did not hide her away, how could he expect to keep
her? His motive for marrying her was rather mystifying. He did not seem
sufficiently in love with her to warrant an abduction, and he was too
cool for such a headlong action, unless driven by necessity. She
wondered what he was thinking about as he rode. Not about her, she
guessed, except when some bad place in the trail made it necessary for
him to stop, tie Snake to the nearest bush, lead his own horse past the
obstruction and come back after her. Several times this was necessary.
Once he took the time to examine the thongs on her ankles, apparently
wishing to make sure that she was not uncomfortable. Once he looked up
into her sullenly distressed face and said, "Tired?" in a humanly
sympathetic tone that made her blink back the tears. She shook her head
and would not look at him. Al regarded her in silence for a minute, led
Snake to his own horse, mounted and rode on.
He was a murderer; he had undoubtedly killed many men. He would kill her
if she attempted to escape--"and he could not catch me," Lorraine was
just enough to add. Yet she felt baffled; cheated of the full horror of
being kidnapped.
She had no knowledge of a bad man who was human in spots without being
repentant. For love of a girl, she had been taught to believe, the worst
outlaw would weep over his past misdeeds, straighten his shoulders, look
to heaven for help and become a self-sacrificing hero for whom audiences
might be counted upon to shed furtive tears.
Al Woodruff, however, did not love her. His eyes had once or twice
softened to friendliness, but love was not there. Neither was repentance
there. He seemed quite satisfied with himself, quite ready to commit
further crimes for sake of his own safety or desire. He was hard, she
decided, but he was not unnecessarily harsh; cruel, without being
wantonly brutal. He was, in short, the strangest man she had ever seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
"OH, I COULD KILL YOU!"
Before sundown they reached the timberland on Bear Top. The horses
slipped on the pine needles when Al left the trail and rode up a gentle
incline where the trees grew large and there was little underbrush. It
was very beautiful, with the slanting sun-rays painting broad yellow
bars across the gloom of the forest. In a little while they reached the
crest of that slope, and Lorraine, looking back, could only guess at
where the trail wound on among the trees lower down.
Birds called companionably from the high branches above them. A nesting
grouse flew chuttering out from under a juniper bush, alighted a short
distance away and went limping and dragging one wing before them,
cheeping piteously.
While Lorraine was wondering if the poor thing had hurt a leg in
lighting, Al clipped its head off neatly with a bullet from his
six-shooter, though Lorraine had not seen him pull the gun and did not
know he meant to shoot. The bird's mate whirred up and away through the
trees, and Lorraine was glad that it had escaped.
Al slid the gun back into his holster, leaned from his saddle and picked
up the dead grouse as unconcernedly as he would have dismounted, pulled
his knife from his boot and drew the bird neatly, flinging the crop and
entrails from him.
"Them juniper berries tastes the meat if you don't clean 'em out right
away," he remarked casually to Lorraine, as he wiped the knife on his
trousers and thrust it back into the boot-scabbard before he tied the
grouse to the saddle by its blue, scaley little feet.
When he was ready to go on, Snake refused to budge. Tough as he was, he
had at last reached the limit of his energy and ambition. Al yanked hard
on the bridle reins, then rode back and struck him sharply with his
quirt before Snake would rouse himself enough to move forward. He went
stiffly, reluctantly, pulling back until his head was held straight out
before him. Al dragged him so for a rod or two, lost patience and
returned to whip him forward again.
"What a brute you are!" Lorraine exclaimed indignantly. "Can't you see
now tired he is?"
Al glanced at her from under his eyebrows. "He's all in, but he's got to
make it," he said. "I've been that way myself--and made it. What I can
do, a horse can do. Come on, you yella-livered bonehead!"
Snake went on, urged now and then by Al's quirt. Every blow made
Lorraine wince, and she made the wincing perfectly apparent to Al, in
the hope that he would take some notice of it and give her a chance to
tell him what she thought of him without opening the conversation
herself.
But Al did not say anything. When the time came--as even Lorraine saw
that it must--when Snake refused to attempt a steep slope, Al still said
nothing. He untied her ankles from the stirrups and her hands from the
saddle horn, carried her in his arms to his own horse and compelled her
to mount. Then he retied her exactly as she had been tied on Snake.
"Skinner knows this trail," he told Lorraine. "And I'm behind yuh with a
gun. Don't forget that, Miss Spitfire. You let Skinner go to suit
himself--and if he goes wrong, you pay, because it'll be you reining
him wrong. Get along there, Skinner!"
Skinner got along in a businesslike way that told why Al Woodruff had
chosen to ride him on this trip. He seemed to be a perfectly dependable
saddle horse for a bandit to own. He wound in and out among the trees
and boulders, stepping carefully over fallen logs; he thrust his nose
out straight and laid back his ears and pushed his way through thickets
of young pines; he went circumspectly along the edge of a deep gulch,
climbed over a ridge and worked his way down the precipitous slope on
the farther side, made his way around a thick clump of spruces and
stopped in a little, grassy glade no bigger than a city lot, but with a
spring gurgling somewhere near. Then he swung his head around and looked
over his shoulder inquiringly at Al, who was coming behind, leading
Snake.
Lorraine looked at him also, but Al did not say anything to her or to
the horse. He let them stand there and wait while he unsaddled Snake,
put a drag rope on him and led him to the best grazing. Then, coming
back, he very matter-of-factly untied Lorraine and helped her off the
horse. Lorraine was all prepared to fight, but she did not quite know
how to struggle with a man who did not take hold of her or touch her,
except to steady her in dismounting. Unconsciously she waited for a cue,
and the cue was not given.
Al's mind seemed intent upon making Skinner comfortable. Still, he kept
an eye on Lorraine, and he did not turn his back to her. Lorraine looked
over to where Snake, too exhausted to eat, stood with drooping head and
all four legs braced like sticks under him. It flashed across her mind
that not even her old director would order her to make a run for that
horse and try to get away on him. Snake looked as if he would never move
from that position until he toppled over.
Al pulled the bridle off Skinner, gave him a half-affectionate slap on
the rump, and watched him go off, switching his tail and nosing the
ground for a likable place to roll. Al's glance went on to Snake, and
from him to Lorraine.
"You sure do know how to ride hell out of a horse," he remarked. "Now
he'll be stiff and sore to-morrow--and we've got quite a ride to make."
His tone of disapproval sent a guilty feeling through Lorraine, until
she remembered that a slow horse might save her from this man who was
all bad,--except, perhaps, just on the surface which was not altogether
repellent. She looked around at the tiny basin set like a saucer among
the pines. Already the dusk was painting deep shadows in the woods
across the opening, and turning the sky a darker blue. Skinner rolled
over twice, got up and shook himself with a satisfied snort and went
away to feed. She might, if she were patient, run to the horse when Al's
back was turned, she thought. Once in the woods she might have some
chance of eluding him, and perhaps Skinner would show as much wisdom
going as he had in coming, and take her down to the sageland.
But Skinner walked to the farther edge of the meadow before he stopped,
and Al Woodruff never turned his back to a foe. An owl hooted
unexpectedly, and Lorraine edged closer to her captor, who was gathering
dead branches one by one and throwing them toward a certain spot which
he had evidently selected for a campfire. He looked at her keenly, even
suspiciously, and pointed with the stick in his left hand.
"You might go over there by the saddle and set down till I get a fire
going," he said. "Don't go wandering around aimless, like a hen turkey,
watching a chance to duck into the brush. There's bear in there and lion
and lynx, and I'd hate to see you chawed. They never clean their
toe-nails, and blood poison generally sets in where they leave a
scratch. Go and set down."
Lorraine did not know how much of his talk was truth, but she went and
sat down by his saddle and began braiding her hair in two tight braids
like a squaw. If she did get a chance to run, she thought, she did not
want her hair flying loose to catch on bushes and briars. She had once
fled through a brush patch in Griffith Park with her hair flowing loose,
and she had not liked the experience, though it had looked very nice on
the screen.
Before she had finished the braiding, Al came over to the saddle and
untied his slicker roll and the grouse.
"Come on over to the fire," he said. "I'll learn yuh a trick or two
about camp cooking. If I'm goin' to keep yuh with me, you might just as
well learn how to cook. We'll be on the trail the biggest part of our
time, I expect."
He took her by the arm, just as any man might have done, and led her to
the fire that was beginning to crackle cheerfully. He set her down on
the side where the smoke would be least likely to blow her way and
proceeded to dress the grouse, stripping off skin and feathers together.
He unrolled the slicker and laid out a piece of bacon, a package of
coffee, a small coffeepot, bannock and salt. The coffeepot and the
grouse he took in one hand--his left, Lorraine observed--and started
toward the spring which she could hear gurgling in the shadows amongst
the trees.