Stanley Mitchell topped the last rise in Morning Gate Pass in the late
afternoon. Cobre Basin spread deep and wide before him, ruddy in the low
sun; Cobre town and mines, on his left, loomed dim and misshapen in the
long dark shadows of the hills.
Awguan, top horse and foreman of Stanley's mount, swung pitapat down the
winding pass at a brisk fox trot. The gallop, as a road gait, is frowned
upon in the cow countries as immature and wasteful of equine energy.
He passed Loder's Folly, high above the trail--gray, windowless, and
forlorn; the trail dipped into the cool shadows, twisted through the mazy
deeps of Wait-a-Bit Cañon, clambered zigzag back to the sunlit slope, and
curved round the hillsides to join, in long levels, the wood roads on the
northern slopes.
As he turned into the level, Stanley's musings were broken in upon by a
sudden prodigious clatter. Looking up, he became aware of a terror,
rolling portentous down the flinty ridge upon him; a whirlwind streak of
billowed dust, shod with sparks, tipped by a hurtling color yet unknown
to man; and from the whirlwind issued grievous words.
Awguan leaped forward.
Bounding over boulders or from them, flashing through catclaw and
ocatillo, the appearance swooped and fell, the blend disjoined and
shaped to semblance of a very small red pony bearing a very small blue
boy. The pony's small red head was quite innocent of bridle; the bit was
against his red breast, held there by small hands desperate on the reins;
the torn headstall flapped rakishly about the red legs. Making the curve
at sickening speed, balanced over everlasting nothingness for a moment of
breathless equipoise, they took the trail.
Awguan thundered after. Stanley bent over, pelted by flying pebbles and
fragments of idle words.
Small chance to overhaul the prodigy on that ribbed and splintered hill;
Awguan held the sidelong trail at the red pony's heels. They dipped to
cross an arroyo; Stan lifted his head and shouted:
"Fall off in the sand!"
"Damnfido!" wailed the blue boy.
Sand flashed in rainbow arches against Awguan's brown face--he shut his
eyes against it; they turned up the hill beyond. A little space ahead
showed free of bush or boulder. Awguan took the hillside below the trail,
lowered his head, laid his ears back, and bunched his mighty muscles. He
drew alongside; leaning far over, heel to cantle, Stan threw his arm
about the small red neck, and dragged the red pony to a choking stand.
The small blue boy slipped to earth, twisted the soft bridle rein once
and again to a miraculous double half-hitch about the red pony's jaw,
and tightened it with a jerk.
"I've got him!" shrieked the blue boy.
The red pony turned mild bright eyes upon brown Awguan, and twitched red
velvet ears to express surprise, and wrinkled a polite nose.
"Hello! I hadn't noticed you before. Fine day, isn't it?" said the ears.
Awguan rolled his wicked eye and snorted. The blue boy shrilled a comment
of surprising particulars--a hatless boy in denim. Stanley turned his
head at a clatter of hoofs; Something Dewing, on the trail from town,
galloped to join them.
"That was a creditable arrest you made, Mitchell," he said, drawing rein.
"I saw it all from the top of Mule Hill. And I certainly thought our
Little Boy Blue was going to take the Big Trip. He'll make a hand!"
The gambler's eyes, unguarded and sincere for once, flashed quizzical
admiration at Little Boy Blue, who, concurrently with the above speech,
quavered forth his lurid personal opinions of the red pony. He was a
lean, large-eyed person, apparently of some nine or ten years--which left
his vocabulary unaccounted for; his face was smeared and bleeding,
scratched by catclaw; his apparel much betattered by the same reason.
He now checked a flood of biographical detail concerning the red pony
long enough to fling a remark their way:
"Ain't no Boy Blue--damn your soul! Name's Robteeleecarr!"
Dewing and Mitchell exchanged glances.
"What's that? What did he say?"
"He means to inform you," said Dewing, "that his name is Robert E.
Lee Carr." His glance swept appraisingly up the farther hill, and he
chuckled: "Old Israel Putnam would be green with envy if he had seen that
ride. Some boy!"
"He must be a new one to Cobre; I've never seen him before."
"Been here a week or ten days, and he's a notorious character already. So
is Nan-ná."
"Nan-ná, I gather, being the pony?"
"Exactly. Little Apache devil, that horse is. Robert's dad, one Jackson
Carr, is going to try freighting. He's camped over the ridge at Hospital
Springs, letting his horses feed up and get some meat on their bones.
Here! Robert E. Lee, drop that club or I'll put the dingbats on you
instanter! Don't you pound that pony! I saw you yesterday racing the
streets with the throat-latch of your bridle unbuckled. Serves you
right!"
Robert E. Lee reluctantly abandoned the sotol stalk he had been breaking
to a length suitable for admonitory purposes.
"All right! But I'll fix him yet--see if I don't! He's got to pack me
back up that hill after my hat. Gimme a knife, so's I can cut a saddle
string and mend this bridle." These remarks are expurgated.
He mended the bridle; he loosened the cinches and set the saddle back.
Stan, dismounting, made a discovery.
"I've lost a spur. Thought something felt funny. Noticed yesterday that
the strap was loose." He straightened up from a contemplation of his boot
heel; with a sudden thought, he searched the inner pocket of his coat.
"And that isn't all. By George, I've lost my pocketbook, and a lot of
money in it! But it can't be far; I've lost it somewhere on my boy chase.
Come on, Dewing; help me hunt for it."
They left the boy at his mending and took the back track. Before they had
gone a dozen yards Dewing saw the lost spur, far down the hill, lodged
under a prickly pear. Stanley, searching intently for his pocketbook, did
not see the spur. And Dewing said nothing; he lowered his eyelids to veil
a sudden evil thought, and when he raised them again his eyes, which for
a little had been clear of all save boyish mischief, were once more tense
and hard.
Robert E. Lee Carr clattered gayly by them and pushed up the hill to
recover his hat. The two men rode on slowly; a brown pocketbook upon a
brown hillside is not easy to find. But they found it at last, just where
Stanley had launched his pursuit of the hatless horseman. It had been
jostled from his pocket in the first wild rush. Stanley retrieved it with
a sigh of relief.
"Are you sure you had your spur here?" asked Dewing. "Maybe you lost it
before and didn't notice it."
"Oh, never mind the spur," said Stan. "I'm satisfied to get my money.
Let's wait for Little Boy Blue and we'll all go in together."
"Want to try a little game to-night?" suggested Dewing. "I could use that
money of yours. It seems a likely bunch--if it's all money. Pretty plump
wallet, I call it."
"No more for me," laughed Stanley. "You behold in me a reformed
character."
"Stick to that, boy," said Dewing. "Gambling is bad business."
It grew on to dusk when Robert E. Lee Carr rejoined them; it was pitch
dark when they came to the Carr camp-fire at Hospital Springs, close
beside the trail; when they reached Cobre, supper-time was over.
At the Mountain House Stanley ordered a special supper cooked for him,
with real potatoes and cow milk. Dewing refused a drink, pleading his
profession; and Stanley left his fat wallet in the Mountain House safe.
"Well, I'll say good-night now," said Dewing. "See you after supper?"
"Oh, I'll side you a ways yet. Goin' up to the shack to unsaddle. Always
like to have my horse eat before I do. And you'll not see me after
supper--not unless you are up at the post-office. I'm done with cards."
"I'd like to have a little chin with you to-morrow," said Dewing. "Not
about cards. Business. I'm sick of cards, myself. I'll never be able to
live 'em down--especially with this pleasing nickname of mine. I want
to talk trade. About your ranch: you've still got your wells and
water-holes? I was thinking of buying them of you and going in for the
straight and narrow. I might even stock up and throw in with you--but you
wouldn't want a partner from the wrong side of the table? Well, I don't
blame you--but say, Stan, on the level, it's a funny old world, isn't
it?"
"I'm going to take the stage to-morrow. See you when I come back. I'll
sell. I'm reformed about cattle, too," said Stan.
At the ball ground he bade Dewing good-night. The latter rode on to his
own hostelry at the other end of town. Civilization patronized the
Admiral Dewey as nearest the railroad; mountain men favored the Mountain
House as being nearest to grass.
Stanley turned up a side street to the one-roomed adobe house on the edge
of town that served as city headquarters for himself and Johnson. He
unsaddled in the little corral; he brought a feed of corn for brown
Awguan; he brought currycomb and brush and made glossy Awguan's sleek
sides, turning him loose at last, with a friendly slap, to seek pasture
on Cobre Hills. Then he returned to the Mountain House for the delayed
supper.
Meantime Mr. Something Dewing held a hurried consultation with Mr. Mayer
Zurich; and forthwith took horse again for Morning Gate Pass, slipping by
dark streets from the town, turning aside to pass Hospital Springs. Where
the arrest of the red pony had been effected, Dewing dismounted; below
the trail, a dozen yards away, he fished Mr. Stanley Mitchell's spur from
under a prickly pear; and returned in haste to Cobre.
After his supper Stanley strolled into Zurich's--The New York Store.
Unknown to him, at that hour brown Awguan was being driven back to his
little home corral, resaddled--with Stanley's saddle--and led away into
the dark.
Stanley exchanged greetings with the half-dozen customers who lingered at
the counters, and demanded his mail. Zurich handed out two fat letters
with the postmark of Abingdon, New York. While Stanley read them, Zurich
called across the store to a purchaser of cigars and tobacco:
"Hello, Wiley! Thought you had gone to Silverbell so wild and fierce."
"Am a-going now," said Wiley, "soon as I throw a couple or three drinks
under my belt."
"Say, Bat, do you think you'll make the morning train? It's going on nine
now."
"Surest thing you know! That span of mine can stroll along mighty peart.
Once I get out on the flat, we'll burn the breeze."
"Come over here, then," said Zurich. "I want you to take some cash and
send it down to the bank by express--about eight hundred; and some checks
besides. I can't wait for the stage--it won't get there till to-morrow
night. I've overdrawn my account, with my usual carelessness, and I want
this money to get to the bank before the checks do."
Stanley went back to his little one-roomed house. He shaved, bathed, laid
out his Sunday best, re-read his precious letters, and dropped off to
dreamless sleep.
Between midnight and one o'clock Bat Wiley, wild-eyed and raging, burst
into the barroom of the Admiral Dewey and startled with a tale of wrongs
such part of wakeful Cobre as there made wassail. At the crossing of
Largo Draw he had been held up at a gun's point by a single robber on
horseback; Zurich's money had been taken from him, together with some
seventy dollars of his own; his team had been turned loose; it had taken
him nearly an hour to catch them again, so delaying the alarm by that
much.
Boots and spurs; saddling of horses; Bob Holland, the deputy sheriff, was
called from his bed; a swift posse galloped into the night, joined at the
last moment by Mr. Dewing, who had retired early, but had been roused by
the clamor.
They came to Largo Crossing at daybreak. The trail of the robber's horse
led straight to Cobre, following bypaths through the mountains. The
tracks showed plainly that his coming had been by these same short cuts,
saving time while Bat Wiley had followed the tortuous stage road through
the hills. Halfway back a heavy spur lay in the trail; some one
recognized it as Stanley Mitchell's--a smith-wrought spur, painfully
fashioned from a single piece of drill steel.
They came to Cobre before sunup; they found brown Awguan, dejected and
sweat-streaked, standing in hip-shot weariness on the hill near his
corral. In the corral Stanley's saddle lay in the sand, the blankets
sweat-soaked.
Unwillingly enough, Holland woke Stan from a smiling sleep to arrest him.
They searched the little room, finding the mate to the spur found on the
trail, but nothing else to their purpose. But at last, bringing Stan's
saddle in before locking the house, Bull Pepper noticed a bumpy
appearance in the sheepskin lining, and found, between saddle skirt and
saddle tree, the stolen money in full, and even the checks that Zurich
had sent.
They haled Stan before the justice, who was also proprietor of the
Mountain House. Waiving examination, Stanley Mitchell was held to
meet the action of the Grand Jury; and in default of bond--his guilt
being assured and manifest--he was committed to Tucson Jail.
The morning stage, something delayed on his account, bore him away under
guard, _en route_, most clearly, for the penitentiary.