A CUP OF COFFEE
He was willing, after a long and bootless search, to confess to
himself that he would rather see Nan Morgan for one minute than
all women else in the world for a lifetime. The other incidents of
the evening would have given any ordinary man enough food for
reflection--indeed they did force de Spain to realize that his life
would hang by a slender thread while he remained at Sleepy Cat and
continued to brave the rulers of the Sinks.
But this danger, which after all was a portion of his responsibility
in freeing his stages from the depredations of the Calabasas gang,
failed to make on him the moving impression of one moment of Nan
Morgan's eyes. She could upset him completely, he was forced to admit,
by a glance, a word, a gesture--a mere turn of her head. There was in
the whole world nothing he wanted to do so much as in some way to
please her--yet it seemed his ill luck to get continually deeper into
her bad graces. It had so stunned and angered him to meet her intent
on entering a gambling-hall that he was tormented the whole night.
Association with outlaws--what might it not do for even such a girl?
While her people were not all equally reprobate, some of them at least
were not far better than the criminals of Calabasas. To conceive of
her gambling publicly in Sleepy Cat was too much. He had even taken a
horse, after cautiously but persistently haunting the streets for an
hour, and ridden across the river away out on the mountain trail,
hoping to catch a sight of her.
On his way back to town from this wild-goose chase, he heard the sound
of hoofs. He was nearing the river and he turned his horse into a
clump of trees beside the bridge. The night was very dark, but he was
close to the trail and had made up his mind to speak to Nan if it were
she. In another moment his ear told him there were two horses
approaching. He waited for the couple to cross the bridge, and they
passed him so close he could almost have touched the nearer rider.
Then he realized, as the horse passing beside him shied, that it was
Sandusky and Logan riding silently by.
For a week de Spain spent most of his time in Sleepy Cat trying to
catch sight of Nan. His reflection on the untoward incidents that had
set them at variance left him rebellious. He meditated more about
putting himself right with her than about all his remaining concerns
together. A strange fire had seized him--that fire of the imagination
which scorns fair words and fine reasoning, but which, smothered,
burns in secret until, fanned by the wind of accident, it bursts out
the more fiercely because of the depths in which it has smouldered.
Every day that de Spain rode across the open country, his eyes turned
to the far range and to Music Mountain. The rounded, distant,
immutable peak--majestic as the sun, cold as the stars, shrouding in
its unknown fastnesses the mysteries of the ages and the secrets of
time--meant to him now only this mountain girl whom its solitude
sheltered and to whom his thoughts continually came back.
Within two weeks he became desperate. He rode the Gap trail from
Sleepy Cat again and again for miles and miles in the effort to
encounter her. He came to know every ridge and hollow on it, every
patch and stone between the lava beds and the Rat River. And in spite
of the counsels of his associates, who warned him to beware of traps,
he spent, under one pretext or another, much of the time either on the
stages to and from Calabasas or in the saddle toward Morgan's Gap,
looking for Nan.
Killing time in this way, after a fruitless ride, his persistence was
one day most unexpectedly rewarded at the Calabasas barns. He had
ridden through a hot sun from Sleepy Cat, passing the up stage
half-way to Calabasas, and had struck from there directly out on
the Sinks toward Morgan's Gap. Riding thence around the lower lava
beds, he had headed for Calabasas, where he had an appointment to
meet Scott and Lefever at five o'clock. When de Spain reached the
Calabasas barn, McAlpin, the barn boss, was standing in the
doorway. "You'd never be comin' from Sleepy Cat in the saddle!"
exclaimed McAlpin incredulously. De Spain nodded affirmatively as he
dismounted. "Hot ride, sir; a hot day," commented McAlpin, shaking
his head dubiously as he called a man to take the horse, unstrapped
de Spain's coat from the saddle, and followed the manager into the
office.
The heat was oppressive, and de Spain unbuckled his cartridge-belt,
slipped his revolver from the holster, mechanically stuck it inside
his trousers waistband, hung the heavy belt up under his coat, and,
sitting down, called for the stage report and asked whether the new
blacksmith had sobered up. When McAlpin had given him all minor
information called for, de Spain walked with him out into the barn to
inspect the horses. Passing the very last of the box-stalls, the
manager saw in it a pony. He stopped. No second glance was needed to
tell him it was a good horse; then he realized that this wiry,
sleek-legged roan, contentedly munching at the moment some company
hay, was Nan Morgan's.
McAlpin, talking volubly, essayed to move on, but de Spain, stubbornly
pausing, only continued to look at the handsome saddle-horse. McAlpin
saw he was in for it, and resigned himself to an inquisition. When de
Spain asked whose horse it was, McAlpin was ready. "That little pony
is Nan Morgan's, sir."
De Spain made no comment. "Good-looking pony, sir," ventured McAlpin
half-heartedly.
"What's it doing here?" demanded de Spain coldly.
Before answering, the barn boss eyed de Spain very carefully to see
how the wind was setting, for the pony's presence confessed an
infraction of a very particular rule. "You see," he began, cocking at
his strict boss from below his visorless cap a questioning Scotch eye,
"I like to keep on good terms with that gang. Some of them can be very
ugly. It's better to be friends with them when you can--by stretching
the barn rules a little once in a while--than to have enemies of 'em
all the time--don't you think so, sir?"
"What's her horse doing here?" asked de Spain, without commenting on
the long story, but also without showing, as far as the barnman could
detect, any growing resentment at the infraction of his regulations.
McAlpin made even the most inconsequential approaches to a statement
with a keen and questioning glance. "The girl went up to the Cat on
the early stage, sir. She's coming back this afternoon."
"What is she riding away over here to Calabasas for to take the stage,
instead of riding straight into Sleepy Cat?"
Once more McAlpin eyed him carefully. "The girl's been sick."
"Sick?"
"She ain't really fit to ride a step," confided the Scotch boss with
growing confidence. "But she's been going up two or three times now to
get some medicine from Doc Torpy--that's the way of it. There's a nice
girl, sir--in a bunch o' ruffians, I know--though old Duke, she lives
with, he ain't a half-bad man except for too many cards; I used to
work for him--but I call her a nice girl. Do you happen to know her?"
De Spain had long been on guard. "I've spoken with her in a business
way one or twice, Jim. I can't really say I know her."
"Nice girl. But that's a tough bunch in that Gap, sure as you're
alive; yes, sir."
De Spain was well aware the canny boss ought to know. McAlpin had
lived at one time in the Gap, and was himself reputed to have been a
hardy and enduring rider on a night round-up.
"Anything sick, Jim?" asked de Spain, walking on down the barn and
looking at the horses. It was only the second time since he had given
him the job that de Spain had called the barn boss "Jim," and McAlpin
answered with the rising assurance of one who realizes he is "in"
right. "Not so much as a sore hoof in either alley, Mr. de Spain. I
try to take care of them, sir."
"What are we paying you, Jim?"
"Twenty-seven a week, sir; pretty heavy work at that."
"We'll try to make that thirty-two after this week."
McAlpin touched his cap. "Thank you kindly, sir, I'm sure. It costs
like hell to live out here, Mr. de Spain."
"Lefever says you live off him at poker."
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, sir! John will have his joke. He's always after me to
play poker with him--I don't like to do it. I've got a family to
support--he ain't. But by and far, I don't think John and me is ten
dollars apart, year in and year out. Look at that bay, sir! A month
ago Elpaso said that horse was all in--look at him now. I manage to
keep things up."
"What did you say," asked de Spain indifferently, "had been the matter
with Nan Morgan?" Her name seemed a whole mouthful to speak, so
fearful was he of betraying interest.
"Why, I really didn't say, sir. And I don't know. But from what she
says, and the way she coughs, I'm thinking it was a touch of this
p-new-monia that's going around so much lately, sir."
His listener recalled swiftly the days that had passed since the night
he had seen her wet through in the cold rain at Sleepy Cat. He feared
Jim's diagnosis might be right. And he had already made all
arrangements to meet the occasion now presenting itself. Circumstances
seemed at last to favor him, and he looked at his watch. The down
stage bringing Nan back would be due in less than an hour.
"Jim," he said thoughtfully, "you are doing the right thing in showing
some good-will toward the Morgans."
"Now, I'm glad you think that, sir."
"You know I unintentionally rubbed their backs the wrong way in
dragging Sassoon out."
"They're jealous of their power, I know--very jealous."
"This seems the chance to show that I have no real animosity myself
toward the outfit."
Since de Spain was not looking at him, McAlpin cocked two keen and
curious eyes on the sphinx-like birthmark of the very amiable
speaker's face. However, the astute boss, if he wondered, made no
comment. "When the stage comes in," continued de Spain quietly, "have
the two grays--Lady and Ben--hitched to my own light Studebaker. I'll
drive her over to the Gap myself."
"The very thing," exclaimed McAlpin, staring and struggling with his
breath.
"In some way I've happened, both times I talked with her, to get in
wrong--understand?" McAlpin, with clearing wits, nodded more than
once. "No fault of mine; it just happened so. And she may not at first
take kindly to the idea of going with me."
"I see."
"But she ought to do it. She will be tired--it's a long, dusty ride
for a well woman, let alone one that has been ill."
"So it is, so it is!"
De Spain looked now shamelessly at his ready-witted aid. "See that her
pony is lame when she gets here--can't be ridden. But you'll take good
care of him and send him home in a few days--get it?"
McAlpin half closed his eyes. "He'll be so lame it would stagger a
cowboy to back him ten feet--and never be hurt a mite, neither. Trust
me!"
"No other horse that she could ride, in the barn?"
"No horse she could ride between Calabasas and Thief River."
"If she insists on riding _something_, or even walking home,"
continued de Spain dubiously, for he felt instinctively that he should
have the task of his life to induce Nan to accept any kind of a
peace-offering, "I'll ride or walk with her anyway. Can you sleep me
here to-night, on the hay?"
"Sleep you on a hair mattress, sir. You've got a room right here
up-stairs, didn't you know that?"
"Don't mind the bed," directed de Spain prudently. "I like the hay
better."
"As you like; we've got plenty of it fresh up-stairs, from the Gap.
But the bed's all right, sir; it is, on me word."
With arrangements so begun, de Spain walked out-of-doors and looked
reflectively up the Sleepy Cat road. One further refinement in his
appeal for Nan's favor suggested itself. She would be hungry, possibly
faint in the heat and dust, when she arrived. He returned to McAlpin:
"Where can I get a good cup of coffee when the stage comes in?"
"Go right down to the inn, sir. It's a new chap running it--a
half-witted man from Texas. My wife is cooking there off and on.
She'll fix you up a sandwich and a cup of good coffee."
It was four o'clock, and the sun beat fiercely on the desert. De Spain
walked down to the inn unmindful of the heat. In summer rig, with his
soft-shirt collar turned under, his forearms bare, and his thoughts
engaged, he made his way rapidly on, looking neither to the right nor
the left.
As he approached the weather-beaten pile it looked no more inviting in
sunshine than it had looked in shadow; and true to its traditions, not
a living being was anywhere to be seen. The door of the office stood
ajar. De Spain, pushing it all the way open, walked in. No one greeted
him as he crossed the threshold, and the unsightly room was still bare
of furnishings except for the great mahogany bar, with its two very
large broken mirrors and the battered pilasters and carvings.
De Spain pounded on the bar. His effort to attract attention met with
no response. He walked to the left end of the bar, lifted the
hand-rail that enclosed the space behind it, and pushed open the door
between the mirrors leading to the back room. This, too, was empty. He
called out--there was no response. He walked through a second door
opening on an arcaded passageway toward the kitchen--not a soul was in
sight. There was a low fire in the kitchen stove, but Mrs. McAlpin had
apparently gone home for a while. Walking back toward the office, he
remembered the covered way leading to a patio, which in turn opened on
the main road. He perceived also that at the end next the office the
covered way faced the window at the end of the long bar.
Irritated at the desertion of the place, due, he afterward learned, to
the heat of the afternoon, and disappointed at the frustration of his
purpose, he walked back through the rear room into the office. As he
lifted the hand-rail and, passing through, lowered it behind him, he
took out his watch to see how soon the stage was due. While he held
the timepiece in his hand he heard a rapid clatter of hoofs
approaching the place. Thinking it might be Scott and Lefever arriving
from the south an hour ahead of time, he started toward the front
door--which was still open--to greet them. Outside, hurried footsteps
reached the door just ahead of him and a large man, stepping quickly
into the room, confronted de Spain. One of the man's hands rested
lightly on his right side. De Spain recognized him instantly; the
small, drooping head, carried well forward, the keen eyes, the long
hand, and, had there still been a question in his mind, the
loud-patterned, shabby waistcoat would have proclaimed beyond
doubt--Deaf Sandusky.