AN OMINOUS MESSAGE
Few men bear suspense well; de Spain took his turn at it very hard.
For the first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a
type whose defiance he despised--whose lawlessness he ordinarily
warred on without compunction--but himself without the freedom that
had always been his to act. Every impulse to take the bit in his teeth
was met with the same insurmountable obstacle--Nan's feelings--and the
unpleasant possibility that might involve him in bloodshed with her
kinspeople.
"Patience." He repeated the word to himself a thousand times to deaden
his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time,
but Nan's situation took most of his thought. For the first time he
told John Lefever the story of Nan's finding him on Music Mountain, of
her aid in his escape, and the sequel of their friendship. Lefever
gave it to Bob Scott in Jeffries's office.
"What did I tell you, John?" demanded Bob mildly.
"No matter what you told me," retorted Lefever. "The question is:
What's he to do to get Nan away from there without shooting up the
Morgans?"
De Spain had gone that morning to Medicine Bend. He got back late and,
after a supper at the Mountain House, went directly to his room.
The telephone-bell was ringing when he unlocked and threw open his
door. Entering the room, he turned on a light, closed the door behind
him, and sat down to answer the call.
"Is this Henry de Spain?" came a voice, slowly pronouncing the words
over the wire.
"Yes."
"I have a message for you."
"What is it?"
"From Music Mountain."
"Go ahead."
"The message is like this: 'Take me away from here as soon as you
can.'"
"Whom is that message from?"
"I can't call any names."
"Who are you?"
"I can't tell you that."
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. Good-by."
"Hold on. Where are you talking from?"
"About a block from your office."
"Do you think it a fair way to treat a man to----"
"I have to be fair to myself."
"Give me the message again."
"'Take me away from here as soon as you can.'"
"Where does it come from?"
"Music Mountain."
"If you're treating me fair--and I believe you mean to--come over to
my room a minute."
"No."
"Let me come to where you are?"
"No."
"Let me wait for you--anywhere?"
"No."
"Do you know me?"
"By sight."
"How did you know I was in town to-night?"
"I saw you get off the train."
"You were looking for me, then?"
"To deliver my message."
"Do you think that message means what it says?"
"I know it does."
"Do you know what it means for me to undertake?"
"I have a pretty stiff idea."
"Did you get it direct from the party who sent it?"
"I can't talk all night. Take it or leave it just where it is."
De Spain heard him close. He closed his own instrument and began
feverishly signalling central. "This is 101. Henry de Spain talking,"
he said briskly. "You just called me. Ten dollars for you, operator,
if you can locate that call, quick!"
There was a moment of delay at the central office, then the answer:
"It came from 234--Tenison's saloon."
"Give me your name, operator. Good. Now give me 22 as quick as the
Lord will let you, and ring the neck off the bell."
Lefever answered the call on number 22. The talk was quick and sharp.
Messengers were instantly pressed into service from the despatcher's
office. Telephone wires hummed, and every man available on the special
agent's force was brought into action. Livery-stables were covered,
the public resorts were put under observation, horsemen clattered up
and down the street. Within an incredibly short time the town was
rounded up, every outgoing trail watched, and search was under way for
any one from Morgan's Gap, and especially for the sender of the
telephone message.
De Spain, after instructing Lefever, hastened to Tenison's. His rapid
questioning of the few habitues of the place and the bartender
elicited only the information that a man had used the telephone booth
within a few minutes. Nobody knew him or, if they did know him,
refused to describe him in any but vague terms. He had come in by the
front door and slipped out probably by the rear door--at all events,
unnoticed by those questioned. By a series of eliminating inquiries,
de Spain made out only that the man was not a Morgan. Outside, Bob
Scott in the saddle waited with a led horse. The two men rode straight
and hard for the river bridge. They roused an old hunter who lived in
a near-by hut, on the town side, and asked whether any horseman had
crossed the bridge. The hunter admitted gruffly that he _had_ heard a
horse's hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter,
after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes;
moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into
town, and not out.
Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain
clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt
they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was
overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of
riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from
the saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring
he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed
ahead.
The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded
pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen,
not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient.
"He could easily slip us," Scott explained, "by leaving the trail for
a minute while we rode past--if he knows his business--and I guess he
does."
"If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out,
too, within half to three-quarters of an hour," said de Spain. "But
how could he have got out without being heard?"
"Maybe," suggested Scott, "he forded the river."
"Could he do it?"
"It's a man's job," returned Scott, reflecting, "but it could be
done."
"If a man thought it necessary."
"If he knew you by sight," responded Scott unmoved, "he might have
thought it necessary."
Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode
rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was
found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been
found anywhere in town from Morgan's Gap; whoever had taken a chance
in delivering the message had escaped undetected.
Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the
incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference
with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and
with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at
which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed
the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.
"It's one of two things," declared Lefever, whose eyes were
never dulled by late hours. "Either they've sent this to lure you
into the Gap and 'get' you, or else--and that's a great big 'or
else'--she needs you. Henry, did that message--I mean the way it
was worded--sound like Nan Morgan?"
De Spain could hardly answer. "It did, and it didn't," he said
finally. "But--" his companions saw during the pause by which his lips
expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to
be turned from it--"I am going to act just as if the word came from
Nan and she does need me."
More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was
proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever,
after conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the
three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of
Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.
"I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any
game I play. In the first place it isn't right to take you and Bob in
where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn't
enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is
a horror to that girl. I've got her feelings to think about as well as
my own. I've decided what to do, John. I'm going in alone."
"You're going in alone!"
"To-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do if you want to:
ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don't
hear from me by ten o'clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify
Jeffries to look for a new manager."
"On the contrary, if we don't hear from you by ten o'clock, Henry, we
will blaze our way in and drag out your body." Lefever put up his hand
to cut off any rejoinder. "Don't discuss it. What happens after ten
o'clock to-morrow morning, if we don't hear from you before that,
can't possibly be of any interest to you or make any difference." He
paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he
spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually associated
with him. "Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school,
my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go
to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound;
but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to
the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just
once too often, and got smashed all to hell. Aunt Lou didn't say it
exactly in that way--but such was the substance of the moral.
"You've pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man
knows better than I that you never pulled one for the looks of the
thing or to make people talk--or that you ever took a chance you
didn't feel you had to take. But, it isn't humanly possible you can
keep this up for all time; it _can't_ go on forever. The pitcher goes
to the well once too often, Henry; there comes a time when it doesn't
come back.
"Understand--I'm not saying this to attempt to dissuade you from the
worst job you ever started in on. I know your mind is made up. You
won't listen to me; you won't listen to Scott; and I'm too good an
Indian not to know where I get off, or not to do what I'm told. But
this is what I have been thinking of a long, long time; and this is
what I feel I ought to say, here and now."
The two men were sitting in de Spain's room. De Spain was staring
through the broad south window at the white-capped peaks of the
distant range. He was silent for a time. "I believe you're right,
John," he said after a while. "I know you are. In this case I am tied
up more than I've ever been tied before; but I've got to see it
through as best I can, and take what comes without whining. My mind is
made up and, strange as it may sound to you, I feel that I _am_ coming
back. Not but what I know it's due me, John. Not but what I expect to
get it sometime. And maybe I'm wrong now; but I don't feel as if it's
coming till I've given all the protection to that girl that a man can
give to a woman."