CHAD DECIDES TO GET BUSY
After his failure to stop Yeager's escape, Culvera lost no time before
starting a party in pursuit. He knew there was small chance of finding
the American in that rolling sea of hills, but there was at least no
harm in making the attempt.
As he walked to Pasquale's headquarters to make a report of the affair,
Culvera's mind was full of vague suspicions. How had this man escaped?
Had the old general freed him for some purpose of his own? Ramon had
seen condemned prisoners released by his chief before. Always within a
short time some enemy or doubtful friend of Pasquale had died a violent
death. Was it his turn now? Could it be that Pasquale was anticipating
his treachery?
To learn that the general was out at three o'clock in the morning lent
no reassurance to his fears. After a moment's consideration the young
man turned his steps toward the house where Yeager had been confined.
But before starting he stopped in the shadow of a barn to see that his
revolvers were loose in the scabbards and in good working order. Nor did
he cross the moonlit open direct, but worked to his destination by a
series of tacks that kept him almost all the time in the darkness.
The seventeen-year-old sentry was still doing duty outside the prison.
At sight of Culvera he stopped rolling a cigarette to snatch up his
rifle and fling a challenge at him.
"How is it that you have let your prisoner escape?" demanded the officer
in Spanish after he had given the countersign.
"Escape? No, señor. Listen. Do you not hear him move?" replied in the
boy in the same tongue. "I think the Gringo is having a fit. For
ten--twenty--minutes he has beat on the floor and kicked at the walls.
To die at daybreak is not to his liking."
"Mil diablos! I tell you I saw him ride away. It is some one else in
there."
"Some one else! But, no--that is impossible. Who else could it be?" As
he asked the question the boy's jaw fell slack. A horrible suspicion
pushed itself into his mind.
"Estupido!" he continued in growing terror. "Can it be--the general?"
"We shall see."
Culvera stepped to the door. It was locked and the key gone. He called
aloud. His only answer was a strange, muffled sound like a groan and the
beating of feet upon the floor.
With the butt of the sentry's rifle he hammered in the door at the lock
and by exerting all his strength forced the fastening. Lying in the
middle of the room, bound hand and foot, with his furious face upturned
to the moonlight, was Gabriel Pasquale. Culvera asked no foolish
questions, wasted no time. Kneeling beside his superior officer, he cut
the handkerchief that gagged him and the ropes that tied his limbs.
Together Ramon and the guard lifted him to his feet and held him for a
moment until his legs regained their power.
"What devil has done this outrage?" asked Ramon.
For a time Pasquale could only swallow and grunt. When the power of
speech returned, he broke into fierce and terrible maledictions. His
lieutenant listened in silence, extreme concern in his respectful face,
an unholy amusement bubbling up behind the deferential exterior.
"Then it was the Gringo?" he asked when his chief ran out of breath and
for the moment ceased cursing.
The insurgent leader went off into another explosion of rage. He would
cut his heart out while the American devil was still alive. He would
stake him out on the desert to broil to death beneath a Mexican sun.
Culvera showed the hat that he had punctured with his bullet. "Thus near
I came to avenging you, general. See! One inch lower and I would have
taken off the top of his head. Already Fuentes is pursuing him. Perhaps
this Yeager may be dragged back to justice."
Culvera asked no questions as to why the general was alone with a
condemned man at such an hour nor as to how the American had succeeded
in overpowering him. He understood that his chief's wounded vanity was
torturing the man enough to render curiosity unsafe. But the boyish
sentry did not know this. He ventured on a sympathetic question.
"But, señor, Your Excellency, how did this Gringo devil, who was
unarmed, take away your revolver and tie you?"
Pasquale, teeth clenched, whirled upon him. "You--dog of a peon--let
your prisoner walk away without a challenge and then dare to question
_me_!"
The old soldier's fist shot out like a pile-driver. The blow lifted the
boy from his feet and flung him like a sack of meal against the wall.
His body hung there a moment, then dropped to the ground. A faint groan
was the only sound that showed he was not unconscious.
The general strode from the room, Culvera at his heels. The brown mask
of his face told no stories of how the younger man was enjoying
himself.
Before he slept, Ramon had one more pleasant task before him. He roused
Harrison to tell him the news. He sat smiling on the foot of the bed,
his eyes mocking the startled face of the prizefighter.
"I come to bring you good news, señor," he jeered. "Your countryman has
escaped."
Harrison sat up in bed. "What's that? Escaped, did you say? Where to?"
The Mexican swept one arm around airily. "How should I know? He's
gone--broke out. He's taken a horse with him."
"A horse!" repeated Harrison stupidly.
"Just so--a horse. To ride upon, doubtless, since he was in somewhat of
a hurry. Odd that a horse happened to be waiting saddled for him at two
in the morning. Not so?"
The American groped toward the point. "You mean--that he had friends,
that some one helped him to get away?"
The other man shrugged his shoulders. "Do I? Quien sabe? Anyhow, he's
gone. Must be very disappointing to you, since you had promised yourself
to see his translation to heaven at sunrise."
Harrison expressed himself bitterly in language emphatic and profane.
Meanwhile Culvera smiled pleasantly and sympathetically. "You run
Pasquale a close second. He cursed the roof off when he found breath."
"I'm not through with Yeager yet. Believe _me_, he'll have one
heluvatime before I'm done," boasted the prizefighter savagely.
"You're still in entire accord with the chief. Yet our friend the Gringo
rides away in safety and laughs at you both. Ramon Culvera takes his hat
off to Señor Yeager. He has played a winning game with courage and
brains."
"I beat his fool head off when he joined the Lunar Company--the very day
he joined. When I meet up with him again, I'll repeat," Harrison
bragged, hammering the pillow with his clenched fist.
The Mexican looked politely incredulous. "Maybeso. This I say only.
Yeager has played one game with Pasquale, one with you, and one with me.
He comes out best each time. Of a sureness he is a strong man, wise,
cool, resourceful. Is it not so?"
The prizefighter sputtered with wounded vanity. "Him! The boob's nothing
but a lucky guy. You'd ought to 'a' seen him after I fixed his map that
first day. Down and out he was, take my word for it."
"If Señor Harrison says so," assented Culvera with polite mockery. "But
as you say, he laughs best who laughs last. And that reminds me. He
left a note to be forwarded a friend. Pasquale was too crazy mad to see
it, so I put it in my pocket."
He handed to the other man the note Steve had written for Threewit. The
prizefighter read it in the dim light laboriously.
"It was written, you perceive, before Pasquale shoved his big head into
a trap and gave him a chance to escape," explained the insurgent
officer.
As Harrison read, certain phases of the situation arranged themselves
before his dull mind. He was acutely disappointed at the escape of his
enemy, since it was not likely the man would ever be caught again so
neatly. But now he forced himself to look beyond this to the
consequences. Yeager would tell all he knew when he reached Los Robles.
With the troopers warned against him Harrison knew he could no longer
move to and fro as freely on the American side. The very fact that he
was a suspect would greatly hamper his dealings. The Seymours would
probably turn against him for betraying the man who had risked his life
to save Phil from the effects of his folly. And what about Ruth? He knew
he held her by fear of trouble to Phil and by means of a sort of
magnetic clamp he had always imposed upon her will. Would she throw him
over now after she heard the story of the cowpuncher?
His eyes were still fastened sulkily on the note while he was slowly
realizing these things. One line seemed to stand out from the rest.
_Bust up that marriage if you can._
Harrison ground his teeth with impotent rage. This range-rider always
had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If
ever he got the chance again to stamp him out--! The strong fingers of
the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten on the throat of the
gay youth who had worsted him in the duel the prizefighter had forced
upon him. The cowpuncher had introduced himself by knocking him down. A
few hours later he had turned a bruised and bleeding face up to him and
laughed without fear as if it were of no consequence.
Yeager had stolen from him his reputation as a daring rider and a good
shot. He had driven him from the Lunar Company. Now he was going back to
spoil his plans for making money by rustling American stock and sending
contraband goods across the line. Not only that; he was going to take
from him the girl he was engaged to marry.
"By God! I'll give him a run for it," the prizefighter announced
savagely and suddenly.
"For what?" asked Culvera maliciously.
"My business," retorted Harrison harshly, reaching for his clothes.
Half an hour later he was galloping toward the north. If he could reach
Los Robles before Yeager did, he would turn a trick that would still
leave the odds in his favor.