A VENTURE IN THE DARK
Pushing his way hastily forward when he could make haste; crawling
slowly on his hands and knees when held by opposing rock; feeling for
narrow footholds among loose and treacherous fragments; flattening
himself like a leech against the face of the precipice when the
narrowing ledge left him only inches under foot; clinging with torn
hands to every favoring crevice, and pausing when the peril was
extreme for fresh strength, de Spain dragged his injured foot across
the sheer face of El Capitan in the last shadows of the day's failing
light.
Half-way across, he stopped to look down. Far below lay the valley
shrouded in night. Where he stood, stars, already bright, lighted the
peaks. But nowhere in the depths could he see any sign of life. Spent
by his effort, de Spain reached the rendezvous Nan had indicated, as
nearly as the stars would tell him, by ten o'clock. He fell asleep in
the aspen grove. Horsemen passing not a hundred yards away roused
him.
He could not tell how many or who they were, but from the sounds he
judged they were riding into the Gap. The moon was not yet up, so he
knew it was not much after midnight. The ground was very cold, and he
crawled farther on toward the road along which Nan had said he might
look for her. It was only after a long and doubtful hour that he heard
the muffled footfalls of a horse. He stood concealed among the smaller
trees until he could distinguish the outlines of the animal, and his
eye caught the figure of the rider.
De Spain stepped out of the trees, and, moving toward Nan, caught her
hand and helped her to the ground.
She enjoined silence, and led the horse into the little grove.
Stopping well within it, she stooped and began rearranging the
mufflers on the hoofs.
"I'm afraid I'm too late," she said. "How long have you been here?"
She faced de Spain with one hand on the pony's shoulder.
"How could you get here at all?" he asked, reaching clandestinely for
her other hand.
"I got terribly frightened thinking of your trying El Capitan. Did you
have any falls?"
"You see I'm here--I've even slept since. You! How could you get here
at all with a horse?"
"If I'm only not too late," she murmured, drawing her hand away.
"I've loads of time, it's not one o'clock."
"They are hiding on both trails outside watching for you--and the moon
will be up--" She seemed very anxious. De Spain made light of her
fears. "I'll get past them--I've got to, Nan. Don't give it a
thought."
"Every corner is watched," she repeated anxiously.
"But I tell you I'll dodge them, Nan."
"They have rifles."
"They won't get a chance to use them on me."
"I don't know what you'll think of me--" He heard the troubled note in
her voice.
"What do you mean?"
She began to unbutton her jacket. Throwing back the revers she felt
inside around her waist, unfastened after a moment and drew forth a
leathern strap. She laid it in de Spain's hands. "This is yours," she
said in a whisper.
He felt it questioningly, hurriedly, then with amazement. "Not a
cartridge-belt!" he exclaimed.
"It's your own."
"Where--?" She made no answer. "Where did you get it, Nan?" he
whispered hurriedly.
"Where you left it."
"How?" She was silent. "When?"
"To-night."
"Have you been to Calabasas and back to-night?"
"Everybody but Sassoon is in the chase," she replied uneasily--as if
not knowing what to say, or how to say it. "They said you should never
leave the Gap alive--they are ready with traps everywhere. I didn't
know what to do. I couldn't bear--after what--you did for me
to-night--to think of your being shot down like a dog, when you were
only trying to get away."
"I wouldn't have had you take a ride like that for forty belts!"
"McAlpin showed it to me the last time I was at the stage barn,
hanging where you left it." He strapped the cartridges around him.
"You should never have taken that ride for it. But since you have--"
He had drawn his revolver from his waistband. He broke it now and held
it out. "Load it for me, Nan."
"What do you mean?"
"Put four more cartridges in it yourself. Except for your cartridge,
the gun is empty. When you do that you will know none of them ever
will be used against your own except to protect my life. And if you
have any among them whose life ought to come ahead of mine--name him,
or them, now. Do as I tell you--load the gun."
He took hold of her hands and, in spite of her refusals, made her do
his will. He guided her hand to draw the cartridges, one after
another, from his belt, and waited for her to slip them in the
darkness into the empty cylinder, to close the breech, and hand the
gun back.
"Now, Nan," he said, "you know me. You may yet have doubts--they will
all die. You will hear many stories about me--but you will say: 'I put
the cartridges in his revolver with my own hands, and I know he won't
abuse the means of defense I gave him myself.' There can never be any
real doubts or misunderstandings between us again, Nan, if you'll
forgive me for making a fool of myself when I met you at Tenison's. I
didn't dream you were desperate about the way your uncle was playing;
I pieced it all together afterward." He waited for her to speak, but
she remained silent.
"You have given me my life, my defense," he continued, passing from a
subject that he perceived was better left untouched. "Who is nearest
and dearest to you at home?"
"My Uncle Duke."
"Then I never will raise a hand against your Uncle Duke. And this man,
to-night--this cousin--Gale? Nan, what is that man?"
"I hate him."
"Thank God! So do I!"
"But he is a cousin."
"Then I suppose he must be one of mine."
"Unless he tries to kill you."
"He won't be very long in trying that. And now, what about yourself?
What have you got to defend yourself against him, and against every
other drunken man?"
She laid her own pistol without a word in de Spain's hand. He felt it,
opened, closed, and gave it back. "That's a good defender--when it's
in reach. When it's at home it's a poor one."
"It will never be at home again except when I am."
"Shall I tell you a secret?"
"What is it?" asked Nan unsuspectingly.
"We are engaged to be married." She sprang from him like a deer. "It's
a dead secret," he said gravely; "nobody knows it yet--not even you."
"You need never talk again like that if you want to be friends with
me," she said indignantly. "I hate it."
"Hate it if you will; it's so. And it began when you handed me that
little bit of lead and brass on the mountain to-night, to defend your
life and mine."
"I'll hate you if you persecute me the way Gale does. The moon is
almost up. You must go."
"What have you on your feet, Nan?"
"Moccasins." He stooped down and felt one with his hand. She drew her
foot hastily away. "What a girl to manage!" he exclaimed.
"I'm going home," she said with decision.
"Don't for a minute yet, Nan," he pleaded. "Think how long it will be
before I can ever see you again!"
"You may never see anybody again if you don't realize your danger
to-night. Can you ride with a hackamore?"
"Like a dream."
"I didn't dare bring anything else."
"You haven't told me," he persisted, "how you got away at all." They
had walked out of the trees. He looked reluctantly to the east. "Tell
me and I'll go," he promised.
"After I went up to my room I waited till the house was all quiet.
Then I started for Calabasas. When I came back I got up to my room
without being seen, and sat at the window a long time. I waited till
all the men stopped riding past. Then I climbed through the window and
down the kitchen roof, and let myself down to the ground. Some more
men came past, and I hid on the porch and slipped over to the horse
barns and found a hackamore, and went down to the corral and hunted
around till I found this little pinto--she's the best to ride
bareback."
"I could ride a razorback--why take all that trouble for me?"
"If you don't start while you have a chance, you undo everything I
have tried to do to avoid a fight."
The wind, stirring softly, set the aspen leaves quivering. The stars,
chilled in the thin, clear night air, hung diamond-like in the heavens
and the eastern sky across the distant desert paled for the rising
moon. The two standing at the horse's head listened a moment together
in the darkness. De Spain, leaning forward, said something in a low,
laughing voice. Nan made no answer. Then, bending, he took her hand
and, before she could release it, caught it up to his lips.
* * * * *
For a long time after he had gone she stood, listening for a
shot--wondering, breathless at moments, whether de Spain could get
past the waiting traps. The moon came up, and still lingering, torn
with suspense, she watched a drift of fleecy clouds darken it. She
scanned anxiously the wrinkled face of the desert which, with a
woman's craft, hides at night the accidents of age. It seemed to Nan
as if she could overlook every foot of the motionless sea for miles
before her; but she well knew how much it could conceal of ambush and
death even when it professed so fairly to reveal all. Strain her ears
as she would, the desert gave back no ripple of sound. No shot echoed
from its sinister recesses--not even the clatter of retreating hoofs.
De Spain, true to all she had ever heard of his Indian-like stealth,
had left her side unabashed and unafraid--living, laughing, paying
bold court to her even when she stubbornly refused to be courted--and
had made himself in the twinkling of an eye a part of the silence
beyond--the silence of the night, the wind, the stars, the waste of
sand, and of all the mystery that brooded upon it. She would have
welcomed, in her keen suspense, a sound of some kind, some reminder
that he yet lived and could yet laugh; none came.
When it seemed as if an hour must have passed Nan felt her way
noiselessly home. She regained her room as she had left it, through
her east window, and, throwing herself across her bed, fell into a
heavy sleep.
* * * * *
Day was breaking when the night boss, standing in the doorway at the
Calabasas barns, saw a horseman riding at a leisurely pace up the
Thief River road. The barnman scrutinized the approaching stranger
closely. There was something strange and something familiar in the
outlines of the figure. But when the night-rider had dismounted in
front of the barn door, turned his horse loose, and, limping stiffly,
walked forward on foot, the man rubbed his eyes hard before he could
believe them. Then he uttered an incredulous greeting and led Henry de
Spain into the barn office.
"There's friends of yours in your room up-stairs right now," he
declared, bulging with shock. De Spain, sitting down, forbade the
barnman to disturb them, only asking who they were.
When he had asked half a dozen more leisurely questions and avoided
answering twice as many, the barnman at de Spain's request helped him
up-stairs. Beside himself with excitement, the night boss turned,
grinning, as he laid one hand on the door-knob and the other on de
Spain's shoulder.
"You couldn't have come," he whispered loudly, "at a better time."
The entryway was dark, and from the silence within the room one might
have thought its occupants, if there were such, wrapped in slumber.
But at intervals a faint clicking sound could be heard. The night man
threw open the door. By the light of two stage dash-lamps, one set on
the dresser and the other on a window-ledge, four men sat about a
rickety table in a life-and-death struggle at cards. No voice broke
the tense silence, not even when the door was thrown broadly open.
No one--neither Lefever, Scott, Frank Elpaso, nor McAlpin--looked up
when de Spain walked into the room and, with the night man tiptoeing
behind, advanced composedly toward the group. Even then his presence
would have passed unnoticed, but that Bob Scott's ear mechanically
recorded the limping step and transmitted to his trained intelligence
merely notice of something unusual.
Scott, picking up his cards one at a time as Lefever dealt, raised his
eyes. Startling as the sight of the man given up for dead must have
been, no muscle of Bob Scott's body moved. His expression of surprise
slowly dissolved into a grin that mutely invited the others, as he had
found out for himself, to find out for themselves.
Lefever finished his deal, threw down the pack, and picked up his
hand. His suspicious eyes never rose above the level of the faces at
the table; but when he had thumbed his cards and looked from one to
the other of the remaining players to read the weather-signals, he
perceived on Scott's face an unwonted expression, and looked to where
the scout's gaze was turned for an explanation of it. Lefever's own
eyes at the sight of the thinned, familiar face behind Elpaso's chair,
starting, opened like full moons. The big fellow spread one hand out,
his cards hidden within it, and with the other hand prudently drew
down his pile of chips. "Gentlemen," he said lightly, "this game is
interned." He rose and put a silent hand across the table over
Elpaso's shoulder. "Henry," he exclaimed impassively, "one question,
if you please--and only one: How in thunder did you do it?"