FLIGHT
It was a forbidding night. Moisture-laden clouds, drifting over the
Superstition Range, emptied their fulness against the face of the
mountains in a downpour and buried the Gap in impenetrable darkness.
De Spain, catching Nan's arm, spoke hurriedly, and they hastened
outside toward the kitchen. "We must get away quick," he said as she
buttoned her coat. And, knowing how she suffered in what she was
doing, he drew her into the shelter of the porch and caught her close
to him. "It had to come, Nan. Don't shed a tear. I'll take you
straight to Mrs. Jeffries. When you are ready, you'll marry me; we'll
make our peace with your Uncle Duke together. Great God! What a night!
This way, dearie."
"No, to the stable, Henry! Where's your horse?"
"Under the pine, and yours, too. I found the pony, but I couldn't find
your saddle, Nan."
"I know where it's hidden. Let's get the horses."
"Just a minute. I stuck my rifle under this porch." He stooped and
felt below the stringer. Rising in a moment with the weapon on his
arm, the two hurried around the end of the house toward the pine-tree.
They had almost reached this when a murmur unlike the sounds of the
storm made de Spain halt his companion.
"What is it?" she whispered. He listened intently. While they stood
still the front door of the house was opened hurriedly. A man ran out
along the porch toward the stable. Neither Nan nor de Spain could make
out who it was, but de Spain heard again the suspicious sound that had
checked him. Without speaking, he took Nan and retreated to the corner
of the house. "There is somebody in that pine," he whispered, "waiting
for me to come after the horses. Sassoon may have found them. I'll try
it out, anyway, before I take a chance. Stand back here, Nan."
He put her behind the corner of the house, threw his rifle to his
shoulder, and fired as nearly as he could in the darkness toward and
just above the pine. Without an instant's hesitation a pistol-shot
answered from the direction in which he had fired, and in another
moment a small fusillade followed. "By the Almighty," muttered de
Spain, "we must have our horses, Nan. Stay right here. I'll try
driving those fellows off their perch."
She caught his arm. "What are you going to do?"
"Run in on them from cover, wherever I can find it, Nan, and push them
back. We've got to have those horses."
"Henry, we can get others from the stable."
"There may be more men waiting there for us."
"If we could only get away without a fight!"
"This is Sassoon and his gang, Nan. You heard Pardaloe. These are not
your people. I've got to drive 'em, or we're gone, Nan."
"Then I go with you."
"No."
"Yes!" Her tone was unmistakable.
"Nan, you can't do it," whispered de Spain energetically. "A chance
bullet----"
She spoke with decision: "I go with you. I can use a rifle. Better
both of us be killed than one. Help me up on this roof. I've climbed
it a hundred times. My rifle is in my room. Quick, Henry."
Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand,
caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on
the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her
second foot on de Spain's shoulder, gained the sloping roof, and
scrambled on her hands and knees up toward the window of her room.
The heavy rain and the slippery boards made progress uncertain, but
with scarcely any delay, she reached her window and pushed open the
casement sash. A far-off peal of thunder echoed down from the
mountains. Luckily, no flash had preceded it, and Nan, rifle in hand,
slid safely down to the end of the lean-to, where de Spain, waiting,
caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He
tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts
vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for
cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine,
and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every
shot--and not to fire often.
In this way, amid the falling of rain and the uncharted dangers of the
darkness, they advanced on the pine-tree. Surprisingly little effort
seemed necessary to drive off whoever held it. De Spain made his way
slowly but safely to the disputed point and then understood--the
horses were gone.
He had hardly rejoined Nan, who waited at a safe distance, and told
her the bad news, when a fresh discharge of shots came from two
directions--seemingly from the house and the stable. A moment later
they heard sharp firing far down the Gap. This was their sole avenue
of escape. It was bad enough, under the circumstances, to negotiate
the trail on horseback--but to expose Nan, who had but just put
herself under his protection, to death from a chance bullet while
stumbling along on foot, surrounded by enemies--who could follow the
flash of their own shots if they were forced to use their rifles, and
close in on them at will--was an undertaking not to be faced.
They withdrew to the shelter of a large rock familiar to Nan even in
the dark. While de Spain was debating in his mind how to meet the
emergency, she stood at his side, his equal, he knew, in courage,
daring, and resource, and answered his rapid questions as to possible
gateways of escape. The rain, which had been abating, now ceased, but
from every fissure in the mountains came the roar of rushing water,
and little openings of rock and waterway that might have offered a
chance when dry were now out of the question. In fact, it was Nan's
belief that before morning water would be running over the main trail
itself.
"Yet," said de Spain finally, "before morning we must be a long way
from this particular spot, Nan. Lefever is down there--I haven't the
slightest doubt of that. Sassoon has posted men at the neck of the
Gap--that's the first thing he would do. And if John heard my rifle
when I first shot, he would be for breaking in here, and his men, if
they've come up, would bump into Sassoon's. It would be insane for us
to try to get out over the trail with Sassoon holding it against
Lefever--we might easily be hit by our friends instead of our enemies.
I'll tell you what, Nan, suppose I scout down that way alone and see
what I can find out?"
He put the proposal very lightly, realizing almost as soon as he made
it what her answer would be. "Better we go together," she answered in
the steady tone he loved to hear. "If you were killed, what would
become of me? I should rather be shot than fall into his hands after
this--if there was ever a chance for it before, there'd be no mercy
now. Let's go together."
He would not consent, and she knew he was right. But what was right
for one was right, she told him, for both, and what was wrong for one
was wrong for both. "Then, I'll tell you," he said suddenly, as when
after long uncertainty and anxious doubt one chooses an alternative
and hastens to follow it. "Retreat is the thing for us, Nan. Let's
make for Music Mountain and crawl into our cave till morning. Lefever
will get in here some time to-morrow. Then we can connect with him."
They discussed the move a little further, but there seemed no escape
from the necessity of it, despite the hardship involved in reaching
the refuge; and, realizing that no time was to be lost, they set out
on the long journey. Every foot of the troublesome way offered
difficulties. Water impeded them continually. It lay in shallow pools
underfoot and slipped in running sheets over the sloping rocks that
lay in their obscure path. Sometimes de Spain led, sometimes Nan
picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of
the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.
Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears
warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the
mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the
waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a
dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling
water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock
which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they
dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the
two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had
cut them off their refuge.
"No use, Nan," said de Spain. "There isn't any other trail, is
there?"
She told him there was no other. "And this will run all night," she
added. "Sometimes it runs like this for days. I ought to have known
there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the
mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry," she said, turning to him and as
if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, "how did you happen to
come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?"
"I came because you sent for me," he answered, surprised.
"But I didn't send for you."
He stopped, dumfounded. "What do you mean, Nan?" he demanded uneasily.
"I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you
away."
"Henry! I didn't send any message--when did you get one?"
"Last night, in my office in Sleepy Cat, from a man that refused to
give his name."
"I never sent any message to you," she insisted in growing wonderment.
"I have been locked in a room for three days, dearie. The Lord knows I
wanted to send you word. Who ever telephoned a message like that? Was
it a trap to get you in here?"
He told her the story--of the strenuous efforts he had made to
discover the identity of the messenger--and how he had been balked.
"No matter," said Nan, at last. "It couldn't have been a trap. It
must have been a friend, surely, not an enemy."
"Or," said de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might
escape, and putting his face close to hers, "some mildly curious
person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men
would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the
mountains both are trying to marry at once."
"Henry," every time she repeated his name de Spain cared less for what
should happen in the rest of the world, "what are we going to do now?
We can't stay here all night--and take what they will greet us with in
the morning."
He answered her question with another: "What about trying to get out
by El Capitan?"
She started in spite of herself. "I mean," he added, "just to have a
look over there, Nan."
"How could you even have a look a night like this?" she asked,
overcome at the thought of the dizzy cliff. "It would be certain
death, Henry."
"I don't mean at the worst to try to cross it till we get a glimpse of
daylight. But it's quite a way over there. I remember some good
hiding-places along that trail. We may find one where I can build a
little fire and dry you out. I'm more worried over you being wet all
night than the rest of it. The question is, Can we find a trail up to
where we want to go?"
"I know two or three," she answered, "if they are only not flooded."
The storm seemed to have passed, but the darkness was intense, and
from above the northern Superstitions came low mutterings of thunder.
Compelled to strike out over the rocks to get up to any of the trails
toward El Capitan, Nan, helped by de Spain when he could help, led the
ascent toward the first ledge they could hope to follow on their
dangerous course.
The point at which the two climbed almost five hundred feet that night
up Music Mountain is still pointed out in the Gap. An upturned rock at
the foot, a stunted cedar jutting from the ledge at the point they
finally gained, marked the beginning and end of their effort. No
person, looking at that confused wall, willingly believes it could
ever have been scaled in the dead of night. Torn, bruised, and
exhausted, Nan, handed up by her lover, threw herself at last
prostrate on the ledge at the real beginning of their trail, and from
that vantage-point they made their way along the eastern side of Music
Mountain for two miles before they stopped again to rest.
It was already well after midnight. A favoring spot was seized on by
de Spain for the resting-place he wanted. A dry recess beneath an
overhanging wall made a shelter for the fire that he insisted on
building to warm Nan in her soaked clothing. He found cedar roots in
the dark and soon had a blaze going. It was dangerous, both realized,
to start a fire, but they concealed the blaze as best they could and
took the chance--a chance that more nearly than any that had gone
before, cost them their lives. But what still lay ahead of the two
justified in de Spain's mind what he was doing. He acted deliberately
in risking the exposure of their position to unfriendly eyes far
distant.