HOMING HEARTS
Jack crept closer, very carefully. He was morally certain that the
defenders held the ledge, but it would not do to make a mistake. Lives
were at stake--one life much more precious than his own.
He drew his revolver and snaked forward. There was nothing else to do
but take a chance. But he meant at least to minimize it, and certainly
not to let himself be captured alive.
It was strange that nobody yet had challenged him. He was close enough
now to peer into the darkness of the tunnel between the boulders and the
wall. There seemed to be no one on guard.
He crept forward to the last boulder, and his boot pressed against
something soft lying on the ground. It moved. A white, startled face was
lifted to his--a face that held only the darkness of despair.
He knelt, put down his revolver, and slipped an arm around the warm
young body.
"Thank God!" he cried softly. He was trembling in every limb. Tears
filled his voice. And over and over again he murmured, "Thank God!...
Thank God!"
The despair in the white face slowly dissolved. He read there doubt, a
growing certainty, and then a swift, soft radiance of joy and tears.
"I prayed for you, and you've come. God sent you to me. Oh, Jack, at
last!"
Her arms crept round his neck. He held her close and kissed the sweet
lips salt with tears of happiness.
He was ashamed of himself. Not since he had been a little boy had he
cried till now. His life had made for stoicism. But tears furrowed down
his lean, brown cheeks. The streak in him that was still tender-hearted
child had suddenly come to the surface. For he had expected to find her
dead at best; instead, her warm, soft body was in his arms, her eyes
were telling him an unbelievable story that her tongue as yet could find
no words to utter. There flamed in him, like fire in dead tumbleweeds, a
surge of glad triumph that inexplicably blended with humble
thankfulness.
To her his emotion was joy without complex. The Ranger was tough as a
hickory withe. She knew him hard as tempered steel to those whom he
opposed, and her heart throbbed with excitement at his tears. She alone
among all women could have touched him so. It came to her like a
revelation that she need never have feared. He was her destined mate.
Across that wide desert space empty of life he had come straight to her
as to a magnet.
And from that moment, all through the night, she never once thought of
being afraid. Her man was beside her. He would let no harm come to her.
Womanlike, she exulted in him. He was so lithe and brown and slender, so
strong and clean, and in all the world there was nothing that he feared.
With her hand in his she walked through the passage to where Dinsmore
held watch. The outlaw turned and looked at the Ranger. If anybody had
told him that a time would come when he would be glad to see Tex Roberts
for any purpose except to fight him, the bandit would have had a swift,
curt answer ready. But at sight of him his heart leaped. No hint of this
showed in his leathery face.
"Earnin' that dollar a day, are you?" he jeered.
"A dollar a day an' grub," corrected Jack, smiling.
"Much of a posse with you?"
"Dropped in alone. My men are camped a few miles back. Mr. Wadley is
with us."
"They got Gurley, I reckon. He tried to sneak away." Dinsmore flashed a
quick look toward Ramona and back at Jack. "Leastways I'm not bettin' on
his chances. Likely one of the 'Paches shot him."
"Mebbeso."
The girl said nothing. She knew that neither of the men believed Gurley
had been shot. Those horrible cries that had come out of the night had
been wrung from him by past-masters in the business of torture.
"You'd better get back an' hold the other end of the passage," suggested
Dinsmore. He jerked his head toward 'Mona. "She'll show you where."
Ramona sat beside her lover while he kept watch, her head against his
shoulder, his arm around her waist. Beneath the stars that were
beginning to prick through the sky they made their confessions of love
to each other. She told him how she had tried to hate him because of her
brother and could not, and he in turn told her how he had thought Arthur
Ridley was her choice.
"I did think so once--before I knew you," she admitted, soft eyes veiled
beneath long lashes. "Then that day you fought with the bull to save me:
I began to love you then."
They talked most of the night away, but in the hours toward morning he
made her lie down and rest. She protested that she couldn't sleep; she
would far rather sit beside him. But almost as soon as her head touched
the saddle she was asleep.
A little before dawn he went to waken her. For a moment the soft
loveliness of curved cheek and flowing lines touched him profoundly. The
spell of her innocence moved him to reverence. She was still a child,
and she was giving her life into his keeping.
The flush of sleep was still on her wrinkled cheek when she sat up at
his touch.
"The Apaches are climbing up the boulder field," he explained. "I didn't
want to waken you with a shot."
She stood before him in shy, sweet surrender, waiting for him to kiss
her before he took his post. He did.
"It's goin' to be all right," he promised her. "We'll drive 'em back an'
soon yore father will be here with the men."
"I'm not afraid," she said--"not the least littlest bit. But you're not
to expose yourself."
"They can't hit a barn door--never can. But I'll take no chances," he
promised.
During the night the Apaches had stolen far up the boulder bed and found
cover behind quartz slabs which yielded them protection as good as that
of the white man above. They took no chances, since there was plenty of
time to get the imprisoned party without rushing the fort. Nobody knew
they were here. Therefore nobody would come to their rescue. It was
possible that they had food with them, but they could not have much
water. In good time--it might be one sleep, perhaps two, possibly
three--those on the ledge must surrender or die. So the Indians
reasoned, and so the Ranger guessed that they would reason.
Jack lay behind his rocks as patiently as the savages did. Every ten or
fifteen minutes he fired a shot, not so much with the expectation of
hitting one of the enemy as to notify his friends where he was. Above
the canon wall opposite the sun crept up and poured a golden light into
the misty shadows of the gulch. Its shaft stole farther down the
hillside till it touched the yellowing foliage of the cottonwoods.
Up the canon came the sudden pop--pop--pop of exploding rifles. Drifted
up yells and whoops. The Indians hidden in the rock slide began to
appear, dodging swiftly down toward the trees. Jack let out the
"Hi-yi-yi" of the line-rider and stepped out from the boulders to get a
better shot. The naked Apaches, leaping like jack-rabbits, scurried for
cover. Their retreat was cut off from the right, and they raced up the
gorge to escape the galloping cowboys who swung round the bend. One of
the red men, struck just as he was sliding from a flat rock, whirled,
plunged down headfirst like a diver, and disappeared in the brush.
Jack waited to see no more. He turned and walked back into the cave
where his incomparable sweetheart was standing with her little fingers
clasped tightly together.
"It's all over. The 'Paches are on the run," he told her.
She drew a deep, long breath and trembled into his arms.
There Clint Wadley found her five minutes later. The cattleman brushed
the young fellow aside and surrounded his little girl with rough
tenderness. Jack waited to see no more, but joined Dinsmore outside.
After a long time Wadley, his arm still around Ramona, joined them on
the ledge.
"Boys, I'm no hand at talkin'," he said huskily. "I owe both of you a
damned sight more than I can ever pay. I'll talk with you later, Jack.
What about you, Dinsmore? You're in one hell of a fix. I'll get you out
of it or go broke."
"What fix am I in?" demanded the outlaw boldly. "They ain't got a thing
on me--not a thing. Suspicions aren't proof."
The Ranger said nothing. He knew that the evidence he could give would
hang Dinsmore before any Panhandle jury, and now his heart was wholly on
the side of the ruffian who had saved the life of his sweetheart. None
the less, it was his duty to take the man in charge and he meant to do
it.
"Hope you can make yore side of the case stick, Dinsmore. I sure hope
so. Anyway, from now on I'm with you at every turn of the road," the
cattleman promised.
"Much obliged," answered the outlaw with a lift of his lip that might
have been either a smile or a sneer.
"You've been trailin' with a bad outfit. You're a sure-enough wolf,
I've heard tell. But you're a man all the way, by gad."
"Did you figure I was yellow like Steve, Clint? Mebbe I'm a bad _hombre_
all right. But you've known me twenty years. What license have you ever
had to think I'd leave a kid like her for the 'Paches to play with?" The
hard eyes of the outlaw challenged a refutation of his claim.
"None in the world, Homer. You're game. Nobody ever denied you guts. An'
you're a better man than I thought you were."
Dinsmore splattered the face of a rock with tobacco juice and his
stained teeth showed in a sardonic grin.
"I've got a white black heart," he jeered.