Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the
trail.]
NAN OF
MUSIC MOUNTAIN
BY
FRANK H. SPEARMAN
AUTHOR OF
WHISPERING SMITH, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
N. C. WYETH
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons
Copyright, 1916, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published April, 1916
Printed in U. S. A.
TO MY SON
EUGENE LONERGAN SPEARMAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Frontier Day 1
II. The Thief River Stage Line 18
III. The Spanish Sinks 34
IV. First Blood at Calabasas 52
V. Rounding up Sassoon 61
VI. Heels for It 73
VII. Maintaining a Reputation 87
VIII. The Gambling-Room 101
IX. A Cup of Coffee 111
X. The Glass Button 124
XI. After the Storm 138
XII. On Music Mountain 154
XIII. Parley 167
XIV. Nan Drifts 182
XV. Crossing a Deep River 193
XVI. A Venture in the Dark 210
XVII. Strategy 222
XVIII. Her Bad Penny 237
XIX. Danger 250
XX. Facing the Music 262
XXI. A Try Out 273
XXII. Gale Persists 289
XXIII. De Spain Worries 302
XXIV. An Ominous Message 313
XXV. A Surprising Slip 323
XXVI. Flight 338
XXVII. El Capitan 349
XXVIII. Lefever to the Rescue 362
XXIX. Puppets of Fate 371
XXX. Hope Forlorn 386
XXXI. De Spain Rides Alone 399
XXXII. The Truth 408
XXXIII. Gambling With Death 420
XXXIV. At Sleepy Cat 428
ILLUSTRATIONS
De Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on
the trail. Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over
Sandusky's left shoulder. 135
"Stand away from that girl!" repeated de Spain harshly,
backing the words with a step forward. 200
"I've promised you I would. I will promise every time
you ask me." 417
NAN OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER I
FRONTIER DAY
Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit
on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of
the table. One of his small feet--his feet were encased in tight,
high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen's boots--usually rested on the
floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air.
This idiosyncrasy his companion, de Spain, had learned to tolerate.
But Lefever's subdued whistle, which seemed meditative, always
irritated de Spain more or less, despite his endeavor not to be
irritated. It was like the low singing of a tea-kettle, which, however
unobtrusive, indicates steam within. In fact, John Lefever, who was
built not unlike a kettle, and whose high, shiny forehead was topped
by a pompadour shock of very yellow hair, never whistled except when
there was some pressure on his sensibilities.
The warm sun streaming through the windows of the private office of
the division superintendent at Sleepy Cat, a railroad town lying
almost within gunshot of the great continental divide, would easily
have accounted for the cordial perspiration that illumined Lefever's
forehead. Not that a perspiration is easily achieved in the high
country; it isn't. None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever
was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the
face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain
plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads
on his companion's forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself
was properly responsible for their presence.
De Spain, tilted back in the superintendent's chair, sat near
Lefever--Jeffries had the mountain division then--his elbows resting
on the arms of the revolving-chair, and with his hands he gripped
rather defiantly the spindles supporting them; his feet were crossed
on the walnut rim of the shabby, cloth-topped table. In this attitude
his chin lay on his soft, open collar and tie, his sunburnt lips were
shut tight, and above and between his nervous brown eyes were two
little, vertical furrows of perplexity and regret. He was looking at
the dull-finish barrel of a new rifle, that lay across Lefever's lap.
At intervals Lefever took the rifle up and, whistling softly, examined
with care a fracture of the lever, the broken thumb-piece of which lay
on the table between the two men.
From the Main Street side of the large room came the hooting and
clattering of a Frontier Day celebration, and these noises seemed not
to allay the discomfort apparent on the faces of the two men.
"It certainly is warm," observed Lefever, apropos of nothing at all.
"Why don't you get out of the sun?" suggested de Spain shortly.
Lefever made a face. "I am trying to keep away from that noise."
"Hang it, John," blurted out de Spain peevishly, "what possessed you
to send for _me_ to do the shooting, anyway?"
His companion answered gently--Lefever's patience was noted even among
contained men--"Henry," he remonstrated, "I sent for you because I
thought you could shoot."
De Spain's expression did not change under the reproach. His bronzed
face was naturally amiable, and his mental attitude toward ill luck,
usually one of indifference, was rarely more than one of perplexity.
His features were so regular as to contribute to this undisturbed
expression, and his face would not ordinarily attract attention but
for his extremely bright and alive eyes--the frequent mark of an
out-of-door mountain life--and especially for a red birthmark, low on
his left cheek, disappearing under the turn of the jaw. It was merely
a strawberry, so-called, but an ineradicable stamp, and perhaps to a
less preoccupied man a misfortune. Henry de Spain, however, even at
twenty-eight, was too absorbed in many things to give thought to this
often, and after knowing him, one forgot about the birthmark in the
man that carried it. Lefever's reproach was naturally provocative. "I
hope now," retorted de Spain, but without any show of resentment, "you
understand I can't."
"No," persisted Lefever good-naturedly, "I only realize, Henry, that
this wasn't your day for the job."
The door of the outer office opened and Jeffries, the superintendent,
walked into the room; he had just come from Medicine Bend in his car.
The two men rose to greet him. He asked about the noise in the
street.
"That noise, William, comes from all Calabasas and all Morgan's
Gap," explained Lefever, still fondling the rifle. "The Morgans
are celebrating our defeat. They put it all over us. We were
challenged yesterday," he continued in response to the abrupt
questions of Jeffries. "The Morgans offered to shoot us offhand,
two hundred yards, bull's-eye count. The boys here--Bob Scott and some
of the stage-guards--put it up to me. I thought we could trim them by
running in a real gunman. I wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry
comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine,
by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun,"
explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. "The lever," he
added with a patient expletive, "broke."
"Give me the gun, John," interposed de Spain resignedly. "I'll lay it
on the track to-night for a train to run over."
"It was a time limit, you understand, William," persisted Lefever,
continuing to stick pins calmly into de Spain. "Henry got to shooting
too fast."
"That wasn't what beat me," exclaimed de Spain curtly. And taking up
the offending rifle he walked out of the room.
"Nor was it the most humiliating feature of his defeat," murmured
Lefever, as the door closed behind his discomfited champion. "What do
you think, William?" he grumbled on. "The Morgans ran in a girl to
shoot against us--true as there's a God in heaven. They put up Nan
Morgan, old Duke Morgan's little niece. And what do you think? She
shot the fingers clean off our well-known Black Hand scout. I never
before in my life saw Henry so fussed. The little Music Mountain skirt
simply put it all over him. She had five bull's-eyes to Henry's three
when the lever snapped. He forfeited."
"Some shooting," commented Jeffries, rapidly signing letters.
"We expected some when Henry unslung his gun," Lefever went on without
respecting Jeffries's preoccupation. "As it is, those fellows have
cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money?
They could start a bank this minute."
Sounds of revelry continued to pour in through the street window. The
Morgans were celebrating uncommonly. "Rubbing it in, eh, John?"
suggested Jeffries.
"Think of it," gasped Lefever, "to be beaten by an eighteen-year-old
girl."
"Now that," declared Jeffries, waking up as if for the first time
interested, "is exactly where you made your mistake, John. Henry is
young and excitable----"
"Excitable!" echoed Lefever, taken aback.
"Yes, excitable--when a girl is in the ring--why not? Especially a
trim, all-alive, up-and-coming, blue-eyed hussy like that girl of
Duke Morgan's. She would upset any young fellow, John."
"A girl from Morgan's Gap?"
"Morgan's Gap, nothing!" responded Jeffries scornfully. "What's that
got to do with it? Does that change the fire in the girl's eye, the
curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, John, or the color of
her cheek?" Lefever only stared. "De Spain got to thinking about the
girl," persisted Jeffries, "her eyes and neck and pink cheeks rattled
him. Against a girl you should have put up an old, one-eyed scout like
yourself, or me, or Bob Scott.
"There's another thing you forget, John," continued Jeffries, signing
even more rapidly. "A gunman shoots his best when there's somebody
shooting at him--otherwise he wouldn't be a gunman--he would be just
an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a
rooster feather in his hat. That's why you shoot well, John--because
you're a gunman, and not a marksman."
"That boy can shoot all around me, Jeff."
"For instance," continued Jeffries, tossing off signatures now with a
rubber stamp, and developing his incontestable theory at the same
time, "if you had put Gale Morgan up against Henry at, say five
hundred yards, and told them to shoot _at_ each other, instead of
against each other, you'd have got bull's-eyes to burn from de Spain.
And the Calabasas crowd wouldn't have your money. John, if you want to
win money, you must study the psychological."
There was abundance of raillery in Lefever's retort: "That's why you
are rich, Jeff?"
"No, I am poor because I failed to study it. That is why I am at
Sleepy Cat holding down a division. But now that you've brought Henry
up here, we'll keep him."
"What do you mean, keep him?" demanded Lefever, starting in protest.
"What do I mean?" thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even
when it didn't rain in the office. "I mean I need him. I mean the time
to shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de
Spain?" demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.
"Henry de Spain?" asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.
"No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts de
Spain," retorted Jeffries peevishly. "Don't you know the man we're
talking about?"
"Known him for ten years."
"Then why say 'Henry' de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He's
the only de Spain in these parts, isn't he? What kind of a fellow is
he?"
Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table,
one arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his
devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with
emphasis: "Why, if you want him short and sharp, he's a man with a
soft eye and a snap-turtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm
shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that
can wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more
shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it--if you want him
flat, that's Henry, as I size him."
Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: "Tell him to come in a minute,
John."
De Spain himself expressed contemptuous impatience when Lefever told
him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He
declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood
why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman's yell
that rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows--and
from up the street and down there were still a good many--was one of
derision at de Spain's galling defeat. When he at length consented to
talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a
positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De
Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and
Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.
"You are looking for promotion, aren't you?" he demanded threateningly.
"Yes, but not for motion without the 'pro,'" objected de Spain. "I
want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the
stage business."
"Temporarily, yes. But I've told you when you come back to the
division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running
the Thief River stages. Think of the salary."
"I have no immediate heirs."
"This is not a matter for joking, de Spain."
"I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the
last six months?"
"Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes," admitted Jeffries
brusquely; "that is to be expected where the specie shipments are
large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you
don't have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and
good guards--men willing to take any kind of a chance if the pay is
right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be
right."
"I have never as yet generally managed any stage line," remarked de
Spain, poking ridicule at the title, "no matter how modest an
outfit."
"You will never learn younger. There is a fascination," declared
Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to
give ease and conviction to his words, "about running a good stage
line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course,
nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United
States--nothing, I guess, in the world--that approaches the Thief
River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest
to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by
the Studebaker people." Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de
Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. "You've seen them! You
know what they are."
De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.
"Second-growth hickory in the gears," continued Jeffries encouragingly,
"ash tongues and boxes----"
"Some of those old buses look like ash-boxes," interposed de Spain
irreverently.
But Jeffries was not to be stopped: "Timkin springs, ball-bearing
axles--why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief
River stage."
"You are some wagon-maker, Jeff," said de Spain, regarding him
ironically.
Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. "This road, as you know, owns the
line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an
ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line
that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de
Spain, is a bad place."
"Is it?" de Spain asked as naively as if he had never heard of
Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and
notorious to both.
"There are a lot of bad men there," Jeffries went on, "who are bad
simply because they've never had a man to show them."
"The last 'general' manager was killed there, wasn't he?"
"Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn."
"Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?"
Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. "That's all right, Henry! They
won't get you." Again he extended his finger dogmatically: "If I
thought they would, I wouldn't send you down there."
"Thank you."
"You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn't hanging from
every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me."
"You're not getting shot at."
"No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high
country knows when he is to be made a target--that you well
understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea
of getting killed than I have--or you have."
"Don't include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right
away--the minute I take this job."
"We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough," declared
Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. "Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that
squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon--all hold-up men, every one of them!
Henry, I'm putting you in on that job because you've got nerve,
because you can shoot, because I don't think they can get you--and
paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the
Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry--" Jeffries leaned forward and
lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of
hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the
undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the
younger man under his spell. "Do you know," he repeated, "I suspect
that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind and beneath a lot of this
deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with
Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but
what Duke will help him out." Jeffries exploded with a slight but
forcible expletive. "Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into
Morgan's Gap that didn't find sympathy and shelter with some of the
Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River
stages."
"As bad as that?"
Jeffries turned to his desk. "Ask John Lefever."
De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He
advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his
hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was
unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if
on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and
asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but
the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they
began. So it was on this trying day--for Lefever was not able wholly
to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his
humiliation at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and
Morgan Gap victors.
But concerning the Morgans and their friends, Lefever, to whom
Jeffries had rudely referred the subject at the close of his talk with
de Spain, did abandon his habitual reticence. "Rustlers, thieves,
robbers, coiners, outlaws!" he exclaimed energetically.
"Is this because they got your money to-day, John?" asked de Spain.
"Never mind my money. I've got a new job with nothing to do, and
plenty of cash."
De Spain asked what the job was. "On the stages," announced Lefever.
"I am now general superintendent of the Thief River Line."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I act for the reorganization committee in buying
alfalfa for the horses and smokeless pipes for the guards. I am to be
your assistant."
"I'm not going to take that job, John."
"Yes, you are."
"Not if I know it. I am going back to Medicine Bend to-night." Lefever
took off his hat and twirled it skilfully on one hand, humming softly
the while. "John," asked de Spain after a pause, "who is that girl
that shot against me this afternoon?"
"That," answered Lefever, thinking, shocked, of Jeffries's words, "was
Nan Morgan."
"Who is she?"
"Just one of the Morgans; lives in the Gap with old Duke Morgan, her
uncle; lived there as long as I can remember. Some shot, Henry."
"How can she live in the Gap," mused de Spain, "with an outfit like
that?"
"Got nowhere else to live, I guess. I believe you'd better change your
mind, Henry, and stay with us."
"No," returned de Spain meditatively, "I'm not going to stay. I've had
glory enough out of this town for a while." He picked up his hat and
put it on. Lefever thought it well to make no response. He was charged
with the maintenance and operation of the stage-line arsenal at Sleepy
Cat, and spent many of his idle moments toying with the firearms. He
busied himself now with the mechanism of a huge revolver--one that the
stage-driver, Frank Elpaso, had wrecked on the head of a troublesome
negro coming in from the mines. De Spain in turn took off his hat,
poked the crown discontentedly, and, rising with a loss of amiability
in his features and manner, walked out of the room.
The late sun was streaming down the full length of Main Street. The
street was still filled with loiterers who had spent the day at the
fair, and lingered now in town in the vague hope of seeing a brawl or
a fight before sundown--cattlemen and cowboys from the northern
ranges, sheepmen from the Spider River country, small ranchers and
irrigators from the Bear basin, who picked their steps carefully, and
spoke with prudence in the presence of roisterers from the Spanish
Sinks, and gunmen and gamblers from Calabasas and Morgan's Gap. The
Morgans themselves and their following were out to the last
retainer.