In planning the raid on Raysville, Brule had made one fatal mistake.
This mistake was the choosing of the hour before midnight for the start
of operations. Raysville had not yet gone to bed when the outlaws swept
into town. The street had been fairly well lighted and, while apparently
deserted, the resorts were teeming with life. Moreover, the denizens of
the town were far from tame. The camp had drawn rough characters from
all along the border: men who would use fists or firearms at the drop of
the hat. Brule had been actuated in selecting the early hour because he
wanted several hours for flight. Now, with the safe of the Golden Nugget
rifled, and much of the money taken from the cash drawers of the gaming
tables, the hour of flight had arrived.
In the darkness in the gambling hall it was impossible to tell friend
from foe. The firing ceased and the crowd surged toward the wide front
doors, which crashed outward with the impact of scores of struggling
men. Pandemonium raged in the street, with riderless horses dashing
about, mounted men charging the crowd, guns winking like fireflies
against the shadows. As Brule and the other outlaws emerged from the
resort, they caught horses and mounted, or ran around the building to
get their horses which had been left in the trees. And Brule, still
clinging to his bag of plunder, headed the dash for the road out of
town.
Lane and Joan reached the shelter of the trees with bullets clipping the
leaves over their heads. The man left with the horses had been unable to
keep them together and they had scattered.
“Where’d you leave your horse?” Lane asked Joan.
She pointed up along the slope. “Did—did I kill him?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” returned Lane sharply. “An’ this is no time to be
thinking about _that_. Lead me to your horse, an’ _hurry!_”
At this juncture the outlaws coming from the front of the building
clashed with the men who were running after Lane and the girl. The night
became hideous with shouts, yells, and curses. A man came plunging into
the timber. It was Neff. He stopped short when he made out Lane.
A curse came from his lips. “Brule would have got McClure if it hadn’t
been for you, you double-crosser!” he shouted hoarsely.
His gun whipped up, but Lane’s weapon spit fire from his hip a fraction
of a second before Neff’s shot went wild. Neff wavered and fell
backward, full length, under the trees, the moonlight spattering his
still form with silver spangles through the interlaced branches.
Lane again grasped Joan’s arm and they hurried along the slope to where
the girl’s horse was tethered to a sapling. Lane jerked the tie-knot
loose and ordered her into the saddle. The shooting now came from down
the road, where residents of the lower town were trying to stop the
flight of the outlaws. Escape in that direction was impossible. Lane had
no horse. To attempt to make the street in hopes of catching a mount, or
to remain and search the slope, was out of the question. There was but
one thing to do.
“It’s the upper trail,” he told Joan. “Did you come in that way?”
The girl shook her head. “I came up from below,” she answered.
“I’ll lead you out,” he said quickly, and started afoot along the slope
for the perilous trail at the head of the canyon.
They reached the foot of the trail and started up. Lane warned the girl
to let her horse have its own way on the narrow path above precipices
and across the shale slopes, for the animal’s instinct could be trusted
to keep it on the trail. Joan now was taking his orders willingly. She
asked only one question, and that concerned her brothers.
“I didn’t see them after we split up in town,” said Lane. “They went to
the bank. But they had plenty of chance for a getaway.”
This seemed to satisfy her and they went on up the ridge. But escape was
not to be so easy, as Lane discovered almost immediately. The whole camp
had been roused by the commotion at The Nugget. The word spread quickly
that bandits were holding up the town. From cabins, boarding houses and
mine bunk houses, men swarmed with whatever weapons they possessed,
eager for a fight, for a chance to shoot and kill! And some of these,
coming down from a mine at the head of the gulch, spotted the pair going
up the steep trail. They followed with shouts and yells and occasional
shots, scrambling up the trail after the fugitives.
Lane stopped at a wide place in the trail and motioned Joan on. “Follow
this trail to the top of the ridge,” he told her; “then you can go north
an’ down an’ hit the trail for home. You can’t get lost because you
can’t get off this——”
“What about yourself?” she demanded.
“I’m goin’ to hold this crowd until you’re well away,” he said. “An’ you
better get goin’ or I won’t be able to do it.”
“I’ll stick with you,” she flashed. “Two guns are better than one.”
“I’m not goin’ to do it with my gun!” he cried. “Go on! Don’t you see
you’ll get both of us caught?”
He slapped her horse on the flank and the animal started ahead. Then
Lane scrambled up the steep slope above the trail and picked his way
along to where the trail narrowed above a cliff. Boulders were plentiful
and, as the vanguard of the pursuers hove in view, Lane sent a boulder
hurtling down the slope and across the trail. The men coming up stopped
in their tracks as another boulder followed the first, breaking off a
portion of the edge of the trail. They turned and crowded back upon each
other. One man slipped, lost his footing, and went over the cliff with a
horrible cry. The others started pellmell back down the dangerous path.
Lane’s own position was extremely perilous. He had scarcely any footing
and was holding to a cedar bush with his left hand. But he had an
inspiring idea. It was to dislodge a huge boulder above him and send it
crashing down to demolish the trail over the cliff and thus effectively
prevent further pursuit.
Slowly, inch by inch, he succeeded in getting up the slope behind the
great boulder, which was balanced on an outcropping of granite. He clung
to a bush and pushed with his feet. The big stone rocked. He pushed
again to give it momentum and then made the supreme effort. The boulder
rolled off its base and plunged downward, cutting a wide gash in the
trail and dropping hundreds of feet to the base of the cliffs below.
But with the sudden loosening of the rock, Lane’s full weight tugged at
the bush and it came out by the roots. He slid downward in the path the
rushing boulder had made. He threw out his arms, grasping at whatever
came within reach, digging his fingers into the dirt, bruising them and
breaking his nails on loose rocks. But he stayed the speed of his slide
and with a twist of his body succeeded in rolling to one side, so that
he slipped down on the trail and came to a stop with an arm and a leg
over the edge. He drew back and lay on his back, panting and looking up
at the cold stars. For some moments he experienced a feeling of weakness
because of his narrow escape.
Meanwhile, his predicament was observed by the men below. With cries of
triumph, they started back up the trail. Lane got to his feet, his hand
whipping to his holster. It was empty. His gun was somewhere in the dirt
above. He looked about quickly. To attempt the steep slope from that
spot was suicide. The great boulder had cut a deep gash in the trail and
the gash was filled with loose gravel; also it sloped downward. To cross
to the farther side of the trail was, therefore, out of the question.
Lane smiled. At least there would be no pursuit of Joan. He walked down
the trail toward the mob. Fierce yells greeted him. He held up a hand.
“Just turn around an’ march back,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “I’ll
follow you, an’ I’m unarmed.” He raised his hands and turned around
slowly so the men could see his empty holster.
The men were undecided, yet what Lane suggested seemed the only thing to
do. “All right,” said the leader, “but if you try any tricks you’ll find
out that I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.”
“An’ a gun in your hand,” said Lane sarcastically; “that ought to be
enough.”
They went down the trail, with the men continually twisting their necks
to keep an eye on their captive. When they reached the floor of the
canyon they spread about him and walked down the middle of the street.
There were cries from both sides of the street and soon a crowd was
following. “They’ve got another one,” Lane heard a man shout. It told
him that some of the outlaws had been taken—perhaps all of them. It made
him uneasy because of Will and Frank French. He hoped the brothers had
got away. “He had a boy with him,” was another sally from his captors
that disturbed Lane.
They turned in at a building at the lower end of the street. Here was a
large crowd and there were ominous mutterings, cries, and threats as
Lane was led inside. He saw Sheriff McClure at a desk, and several
others, evidently special deputies, standing about. This, as Lane knew
at sight, was the Raysville jail.
When McClure saw Lane, he rose from his desk and stepped into another
room. “Bring him along,” he told one of the deputies. “I want to speak
to him alone.”
This seemed to excite some curiosity, but Lane speedily found himself
alone with Sheriff McClure in a little private office. “Sit down,” said
the sheriff, indicating a chair on the opposite side of the desk.
Lane sat down as directed and drew tobacco and papers from his shirt
pocket.
“Who was that boy with you?” asked the official in his soft, drawling,
tired voice.
“What makes you think I had a boy with me?” Lane countered. He knew, of
course, that Joan French, with her trim, slender figure, soft cheeks,
and smooth chin, could readily be mistaken for a boy.
“I have eyes an’ can see,” said the sheriff. “What’s your name?”
“Lane,” came the reply after a few moments of hesitation. Then: “You got
anything in particular against me, sheriff?”
“I have something very particular against all who were in with Brule on
this deal,” replied McClure. “You came in here, blew the bank safe, an’
made off with a good bunch of cash besides what was taken at The Nugget.
It might even have been worse if I hadn’t happened up this way just by
chance, arriving when the festivities were at full blast. If I had been
half an hour sooner, nothing would have happened. How’d you come to join
up with Brule, or did he send for you?”
“He didn’t send for me, which is about all I’ve got to say along _that_
line,” Lane replied.
McClure leaned over the desk, tapping its surface with the fingers of
both hands. “Peculiar thing,” he said, looking up suddenly into Lane’s
eyes. “You didn’t stumble into Brule accidentally when he turned to draw
down on me; you did it on purpose.”
“What makes you think so, sheriff?” asked Lane pleasantly.
“As I said before, I have eyes an’ can see,” replied the sheriff in a
complaining voice. “You didn’t want Brule to plug me, for some reason I
do not know but would _like_ to know; an’ I didn’t want to plug Brule
because I wanted to capture him. So you helped things all aroun’.”
“Did you capture him?” Lane asked casually, affecting little interest.
“Not tonight,” the sheriff confessed. “_You’re_ the only important man
we got.” He took a cigar out of his vest pocket and bit off the end.
“Me!” Lane exclaimed. “Important? Where’d you get tangled up with that
notion, sheriff?”
McClure calmly put the match to his cigar and puffed slowly before he
replied. “You’re a stranger aroun’ here an’ you don’t belong to that
gang. You’ve just joined up. You’re no bank robber or holdup man, an’ I
don’t think you’re an outlaw. If you was, you’d never have bumped into
Brule tonight an’ then shot the gun out of his hand instead of givin’ it
to him in the heart when he drew down on you. You had some reason for
goin’ in with the gang, but it doesn’t look to me like it was just to
make some money out of a robbery. You had another reason. That’s why
you’re important. An’ that boy you helped out shot one of my deputies.
That’s another reason why you’re important.”
Lane laughed. “You’re mistaken, sheriff,” he said, sobering. “It wasn’t
the—the boy who shot your man, it was myself. I don’t want the boy to
take the blame for something he didn’t do.”
The sheriff nodded amicably. “That makes you, an’ the boy, too, all the
more important—you wanting to take the blame, I mean. I’m goin’ to hold
you in hopes that you’ll see the light an’ talk, an’ I’m giving you my
word that you won’t lose anything by it.” He rose and went to the door,
indicating to Lane that he was to follow.
The sheriff led the way through another door into the cell room. “I want
this fellow kept away from the rest of ’em,” he told the turnkey. “Put
him in the scrub room.”
Lane was led to a small cell at the end of the tier which was used as a
storeroom for pails, mops, brooms, and other cleaning implements. The
barred door clanged shut after him, a key grated in the lock, and he
found himself alone.