CONGENIAL COMPANY
He started ahead as he had before, with that show of utter unconcern
towards the girl that was absolutely new to her experience. Her eyes
were wide with appeal as she watched him striding up the trail. For
herself she wanted nothing; but her womanly nature craved some trifling
sign, some word of assurance that the man was uninjured--really safe
again and whole--after that terrible plunge. But this from the
horseman was impossible. He had not even thanked her for the rescue.
"You horrid, handsome wretch!" she murmured vexedly, stimulated to
renewed activity by her resentment; then she followed along the narrow
way.
They came to the flat, beyond the wall, where Elsa sat keeping the
horses. The maid looked the horseman over quite calmly, inquiring:
"What for dit you did it--go down there?"
"Just for ducks," said Van. He halted for Beth's approach, put her up
on the roan, and once more strode off in the trail ahead with a
promptness that was certainly amazing.
There was no understanding such a person. Beth gave it up. The whole
affair was inexplicable--his attitude towards Searle at the station,
his abduction of herself and the maid, and this trailing of the pair of
them across these terrible places, for no apparent reason in the world.
Her mare followed on in the tracks of the muscular figure, over whom,
for a moment, she had almost wished to yearn. His escape from death
had been so slender--and he would not even rest!
The flat was, in reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of
the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far
below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits,
in a conclave of peaks, arose to right and left.
After a time, as they swung around on the trend of the ridge, they came
abreast a mighty gap in the mountains to the left, and there, far down,
lay a valley as flattened by perspective as the unruffled surface of a
lake.
Here Van presently halted, peering down and searching the vast gray
floor with the keenest attention. He went on further, and halted
again, Beth meanwhile watching his face with increasing curiosity.
At the third of his stops she gazed no more on the panorama of
immensity, but rather gazed at him.
"What is it you expect to see?" she inquired at last. "Goldite isn't
down there, is it?"
"I'm rather expecting--if I haven't miscalculated on the time----
There he is now," he answered, still staring afar off down upon the
valley. He raised his arm and extended a finger to point towards the
north-most limit of the level stretch of land. "Do you see that small,
dark object in the road? That's a road, that slender yellow streak
that you can follow."
Beth obeyed directions and thereby discerned, with remarkable
clearness, the moving object, far away below. She did not in the least
suspect its nature.
"Why, yes--what is it?" she asked with languid interest, having
expected something more significant. "Is it some small animal?"
"Yes," responded Van. "It's Searle."
Beth was instantly all attention.
"Not Mr. Bostwick, in his car?"
Van continued to study the gray of the world-wide map.
"I rather wonder----" he mused, and there he halted, presently adding,
"He's climbing a hill. You might not think so, looking down from here,
but it's steep and sandy, for a car."
She was watching eagerly.
"And he's no further along towards Goldite than this?"
"He's had some tough old going," answered Van. "He's in luck to----"
then to himself, as he continued to scan the scene for something he did
not apparently find. "By Jupe! I'd have sworn Matt Barger----" He
broke off abruptly, adding in a spirit of fairness, "Searle is getting
right up to the ridge all right. Good boy! He must have a powerful
motor under the--There! By George! I knew it! I knew it! Got him!
right there in the gravel!"
The girl looked suddenly upon him, wholly unable to comprehend the
sharp exclamations he was making.
"What has got him? What do you mean?" she demanded in vague alarm. "I
don't see what you----"
"That's Matt every time--I thought so," he resumed, as he stepped a
little closer to the girl. "Don't you see them?--those lively little
specks, swarming all around the machine?"
Beth bent her gaze on the drama, far below--a play in which she knew
but one of the characters, and nothing of the meaning of the scene.
"I see--yes--something like a lot of tiny ants--or something. What are
they?--not robbers?--not men?"
"Part men, part hyenas," he told her quietly. "It's a lot of State
convicts, escaped from their prison, two days free--and desperate."
She was suddenly very pale. Her eyes were blazing.
"Convicts! Out of prison?"
"A good long way out," he told her watching, "and clever enough to hike
for the mines, with the camps all full of strangers. They learn to be
good mixers, when they're trying to escape."
Beth gazed at him searchingly.
"You--knew they were out--and waiting on the road?"
"Everyone knew they were out--and I certainly thought big Matt would do
precisely what you see he has done."
"Matt?" she echoed.
"The leader," he explained, "a clever brute as ever worried a sheriff."
She was not in the least interested in the personality of the convict
thus described. Her mind had flown to another aspect of the case--the
case involving herself.
"And this was why you wouldn't let us go in the auto?" she said. "You
expected this?"
He looked at her quickly.
"Searle wouldn't take my advice, you know." His eyes were once more
merry. "What could I do?"
"But Mr. Bostwick wouldn't have gone if you had told him!" she said.
"Oh, I'm surprised you'd do it--let him go and be captured like that!"
She was looking down upon the silent drama intently as she added: "I
don't see why you ever did it!"
He was still amused.
"Oh, I thought perhaps Searle deserved it."
She blazed a little.
"You told him you hoped he'd meet congenial company on the road. You
didn't mean----"
"Guilty as charged in the indictment. I guess I did."
"Oh! I wouldn't have thought----" she started, then she shivered in
horror, reflecting swiftly on the fate that might have befallen herself
and Elsa had they too been captured with Searle. It was all explained
at last--the horseman's earnest talk with Dave, his quiet but grim
refusal to permit herself and Elsa to remain with the car, and the
hazardous ride he had since dared compel them to take at such peril to
his life! And now, his persistent advance on foot, when perhaps he was
painfully injured! He had done then such a service as she could never
in her life forget. His treatment of Searle had perhaps, even as he
said, been deserved. Nevertheless, Searle was much to her, very much,
indeed--or had been--up to this morning--and she was worried.
"What do you think they will do?" she added in a spirit of contrition
that came at once upon her. "They must be terrible men!"
"They won't do much but take his money and clothes, and maybe beg for a
ride," said Van reassuringly. "They'll see he isn't fit to kill."
Beth glanced at him briefly, inquiringly. What a baffling light it was
that played in the depths of his eyes! What manner of being was he,
after all? She could not tell. And yet she felt she could trust
him--she certainly knew not why. Despite his ways of raillery she felt
he was serious, true as steel, and big in heart and nature.
"I mustn't forget to thank you," she murmured. "I mean for sparing
us--all that. I do thank you, most sincerely, for----"
"Never mind that," he interrupted. "We're going to be late to lunch."
He turned once more to the trail and started off, in his active manner,
together with a thorough indifference as to what became of Bostwick.
Beth, with a feeling that something ought yet to be done for Searle,
down in the valley with the convicts, cast one helpless glance at the
scene of the hold-up, then perforce urged her pony forward.
Van halted no more. He led the way doggedly onward, over the rises,
through great silent forests, past crystal springs, and down dark,
somber ravines. At a quarter of one he emerged from a gorge upon the
level acre of a tiny cove, still high in the mountains fastnesses.
Here he let out a whoop like an Indian, its echo filling all the place.
An answering call came clearly from somewhere near at hand. Beth felt
a sudden alarm to know there were human beings near. What sort they
were was a matter entirely of conjecture. Then presently she
discovered a number of small, rude buildings, and a fair-sized cabin,
planted next the hill. The door of the latter was open. A tall man
appeared in the frame.
"This," said Van, who had waited for the girl to ride once more to his
side, "is the Monte Cristo mine--the worst false alarm that ever
disfigured the map."