A CAPTURE
When Rathburn rode away from Sautee's quarters he galloped up the
street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his
horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made
another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted.
Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent
toward the Dixie Queen.
He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to
the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest
of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this
occasion one would not have noted an attitude of uncertainty about his
manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man's
description of this trail, and he had determined general directions
the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following
new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with
which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this
instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose
steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was
in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the
desert in the east.
He was halfway to the mine when he saw the gleam of an automobile's
lights in the road far below.
"Sautee got busy right quick," he said aloud. "I 'spect they're
hustlin' up to head me off at the hogback. They're figuring I'd try to
go back the way I come in."
He smiled grimly in the soft moonlight, and his gaze turned toward the
east, where the stars glowed over the shadowy reaches of desert which
he could not see, but the very thought of which stirred something in
his soul.
Then he pushed on up the trail toward the mine. For more than an hour
he rode, and then, when he came to the crest of a ridge just below the
Dixie Queen, he saw the lights of an automobile in the road to the
right of him.
"Now what?" he ejaculated. "They ain't figurin' I'd come up here!"
He sat his horse with features again wreathed in perplexity. He
scowled at the approaching gleam of light. In the direction of the
hogback he could see nothing. Nor could he see the horsemen already on
the trail below him and on the ridge trail to eastward.
The little mine village was directly below him. The few buildings
huddled together below the big mine dump were dark. The mine
buildings, too, were dark. A faint glow showed in the east--harbinger
of the dawn.
The left side of the automobile was toward him when it stopped in the
little street below. A man climbed out and walked around in front of
the car, and Rathburn grunted in recognition as he made out the
familiar form of Sautee, the mine manager.
He saw Sautee and another leave the car and walk toward a building at
the lower end of the street. He could see them fairly well in the
moonlight and realized that in a comparatively short time it would be
daylight. He turned his horse down the slope.
When he reached the rear of the few buildings which formed the mining
village, catering to the wants of the Dixie Queen workers, Rathburn
edged along to the lower end where he left his horse in the shadow of
a building directly across from the one which Sautee and his companion
had entered, and in the windows of which a light now shone.
He stole across the street. Peering in one of the windows he saw that
the room was an office. Sautee was standing before a desk, talking to
another man. Rathburn quickly surmised that this man had accompanied
Sautee from the town. Even as he looked, Sautee finished his speech by
striking a palm with his fist, and his companion strode toward the
door.
Rathburn darted around the side of the building into the shadow as the
man came out and hurried up a wide road toward the mine buildings
above. Then Rathburn ran around to the front of the building and
quietly opened the door.
Sautee had seated himself at the desk, and he swung about in his chair
as he heard the door open. He looked again into the black bore of
Rathburn's gun. His eyes bulged, and this time they shone with genuine
terror.
"It was sure in the pictures for us to meet again, Sautee," said
Rathburn easily. "Our business wasn't finished. We ain't through
yet."
"There isn't any more money," Sautee gasped out. "There's no money up
here at all."
"Oh, yes, there is," said Rathburn with a mirthless smile. "There's
twenty-odd thousand dollars in my right-hand coat pocket. Now I wonder
what you've got in yours. It don't stand to reason you'd start out
this time without a gun. Stand up!"
Sautee rose. His face was ashen. He held his hands high as Rathburn
pressed his weapon against his chest and relieved him of the automatic
which he carried. Rathburn felt his other pockets and then smiled
agreeably. He tossed the automatic on the desk.
"All right, we'll get goin'," he announced, indicating the open door.
"We'll have to hurry, for I take it you've sent for somebody from the
mine."
"Where are we going?" asked Sautee without moving.
"We're goin' for a little mornin' walk, if you act reasonable,"
replied Rathburn. "That was my intention. But if you don't want to
go----"
He shrugged, and as Sautee looked fixedly at him, he cocked his gun.
Sautee hurried toward the door with Rathburn following him closely.
When they were outside Rathburn directed Sautee across the street.
When they reached Rathburn's horse Rathburn quickly mounted and
motioned to the mines manager to precede him into the timber behind
the little village. When they gained the shelter of the timber they
gradually circled around until they struck a trail which led up above
the mine. They started up this, Sautee leading the way on foot with
Rathburn following on his horse and keeping his gun trained on the
mines manager's back.
"Don't worry," Rathburn crooned. "I won't shoot you in the back,
Sautee. That wouldn't be accordin' to my ethics. But I'd have to stop
you if you made a break to leave the present company."
Sautee plodded on, his breath coming in gasps, the perspiration
standing out on his forehead.
The trail joined with another well-worn path a short distance above
the mine. The eastern sky now was light, and Rathburn saw a stone
building above them. He also saw that they were on the steep slope of
the big mountain on which the Dixie Queen was located, and that there
was a rift in this mountain to the left which indicated the presence
of a pass there.
In a few minutes they reached the stone building. It had an iron door
across which was painted the legend:
DANGER POWDER--DYNAMITE KEEP AWAY
Rathburn dismounted and tossed the reins over his horse's head so the
animal would stand.
"That place looks like a natural jail," he commented.
"It's the mine's powder house," said Sautee, wiping his wet forehead.
"Sure," Rathburn rejoined, "that's just what it is. I expect there's
enough powder in there to blow half this mountain off."
He walked to the door and took out his gun as he examined the
padlock.
"What are you going to do?" asked Sautee excitedly.
"I'm goin' to blow the lock off," said Rathburn coolly.
"Don't do it!" cried Sautee. "There's high-percentage dynamite in
there and T N T caps that we use on road work--dozens of boxes of it.
You might set it off!"
Rathburn looked at the quaking mine manager speculatively. "That's
right," he said finally, turning aside to grin to himself. "I guess
any little jar might start it workin'. It goes off easy, I've heard."
"There are caps and detonators in there, too," said Sautee quickly.
"You might shoot into them some way, you never can tell. Well, it
would be as bad for you as for me." He uttered the last sentence in a
note of triumph.
Rathburn was looking at the far-flung view below. He turned a hard
gaze on Sautee. "What difference do you suppose it would make to me if
that stuff in there goes off?" he demanded in a harsh voice. "Look
down there!"
Sautee looked and drew in his breath with a gasp.
In the clear light of the blossoming dawn the whole panorama of the
lower mountain country was spread out before them. To the left, under
the towering peaks of the divide, the rounded crest of the hogback was
discernible, and a black spot marked the location of Mannix's
automobile.
"There's a car over there," said Rathburn, noting the direction of
Sautee's gaze.
Almost directly below them a number of mounted men filed over a ridge
and again disappeared in the timber. Off to the right more horsemen
were to be seen.
"Looks like there was a posse or two out this morning," said Rathburn
in a forbidding voice. "I reckon I ain't such a fool as not to know
who they're lookin' for, Sautee. Now maybe you can figure out why I
ain't as scared of that powder house as you are."
"I can stop them!" cried Sautee in a shaking voice.
"Sure," Rathburn agreed. "You can say you lied about me takin' the
money----"
"I'll tell 'em you gave it back!" said Sautee hoarsely. "I'll tell 'em
you brought it on up to the mine and that it's in the safe. I'll
square it----"
"But you can't square the rewards that are out for The Coyote," said
Rathburn sternly. "You've stepped into a bigger game than you
thought, Sautee, an' it's got plumb out of your hands."
He turned on the mine manager fiercely. "Whatever happens, remember
this: Once a man gets a bad reputation in a country like this or the
country I come from, he's got it for keeps. He can't get away from it
no matter how he acts or what he does. Mine has drove me away from the
place where I belong; it's followed me here; I can't lose it; an' the
way things has been going, by glory, I don't know if I _want_ to lose
it!"
Sautee cowered back under the fierceness in Rathburn's manner.
"An' you can tell 'em, if you ever have a chance to talk again, that I
earned my reputation square! I ain't involved nobody else, an' I ain't
stole from any poor people, an' I never threw my gun down on a man who
didn't start for his first."
The deadly earnestness and the note of regret in Rathburn's tone
caused Sautee to forget his uneasiness temporarily and stare at the
man in wonder. Rathburn's eyes were narrowed, his gaze was steel blue,
and his face was drawn into hard, grim lines as he looked out upon the
far-flung, glorious vista below them, broken here and there by the
movement of mounted men.
"Maybe I--I----" Sautee faltered in his speech. His words seemed
impotent in the face of Rathburn's deadly seriousness.
Rathburn turned abruptly to the powder house door.
"Wait!" cried Sautee.
The mines manager dug frantically into his pockets and drew out a
bunch of keys.
"There are some locks on this property to which there are only two
keys," he explained nervously. "This is one of them, and I carry the
second key. Here!"
He held out the key ring with one key extended.
Rathburn thrust his gun back into its holster and took the keys. In a
moment he had unlocked the padlock and swung open the iron door,
exposing case after case of high explosive within the stone
structure.
Sautee was staring at him in dire apprehension.
Rathburn pointed toward the rift in the mountain on the left above
them. Sautee looked and saw a man and a boy riding down the trail.
"That looks to me like the man that held me up last night," said
Rathburn. "He looks like one of the men, anyway. Maybe he's found out
he didn't get much, eh? Maybe he's coming back because he didn't have
enough to make a get-away with. Maybe he thinks he was double crossed
or something."
Sautee's features were working in a spasm of fear and worry. Suddenly
he turned on Rathburn.
"Why don't you get away?" he asked in eager pleading. "That trail will
take you out of the mountains and down into the desert country. You're
from the desert, aren't you? You can make it. You've made a good haul.
Go! It'll be better for me and all of us!"
Rathburn laughed bitterly. "I can't go because I'm a worse fool than
you are," he said acridly. "Get in there. Sneaking lizards, man, can't
you see I'm tempted to put a shot into one of them boxes and blow us
both to kingdom come?"
Sautee shrank back into the powder house, and Rathburn slammed the
door.
As Rathburn snapped the padlock and thrust the keys into his pocket
his eyes again sought the trail to the left above him. No one was in
sight. The man and the boy had disappeared in a bend or depression in
the trail.
But when he looked down toward the hogback he saw a car coming up the
road toward the mine. A number of horsemen had taken its place on the
hogback.
Rathburn ran for his horse.