The men who had come into town for the purpose of co-operating with
Jerry O'Keefe and with Halloway had of course drifted in singly and
with no seeming of cohesion. It was vital that they should avoid any
manifest community of purpose, yet they were armed, ready and alert,
awaiting only a signal to gather out of scattered elements into a
close-knit force with heavy striking-power.
As they waited through the day for the call which did not come they
began to feel the dispirited gloom of men keyed to action and kept
interminably waiting--but none of them dropped away.
It was close to sundown when Brent himself arrived, and since he failed
to encounter Jerry O'Keefe on the streets he did not pause to search
for him, but went direct to the telegraph office. It had not been
disclosed to O'Keefe how close to the heart of the conspiracy was the
operator and the young man with the Irish eyes had not been stirred to
any deep suspicion in that quarter.
Brent himself had not considered it a reasonable assumption that to
such a powerful fellow as Halloway harm could come in so public a
place. Yet Halloway had meant to make that office his headquarters and
now Brent made it his first destination.
Through the open door and the smeared window spilled out a yellow and
sickly light.
Inside sat two men, but a glance told Brent that neither of them worked
the key. The pair were gaunt and sinister of aspect and they were not
town folk but creek-dwellers. One was evil-visaged to a point of
gargoyle hideousness. The other was little better, and he raised a
face to inspect the man in the door which some malignant sculptor might
have modeled in pure spite, pinching it viciously here and there into
sharp angles of grotesqueness. Yet in the eyes Brent recognized
keenness and determination.
The newcomer casually inquired for the station agent and one of the
fellows stared at him morosely, making no reply. The other however,
supplied the curt information: "He's done gone out ter git him a snack
ter eat."
"I'm looking for a man named Halloway," said Brent. "A big upstandin'
fellow. Maybe you men know him?"
To the mountaineers who walk softly and speak low by custom it seemed
that the city man spoke with a volume and resonance quite needless in
such narrow confines.
"I knows him when I sees him," admitted the man who had answered the
first question. The other remained dumb.
"Has he been about here to-day?"
"No."
"I'll wait till the operator gets back," announced Brent with a
nonchalance difficult to maintain.
He did not take a seat but stood, studiously appraising the place while
he seemed to see little. After the depression attendant upon Bud's
desertion had followed an almost electric keenness; every gesture was
guarded and every nerve set now against any self-betrayal, for he felt
himself fencing in the dark with wily adversaries.
He sauntered idly over near the door to the baggage-room and beyond its
panels he could hear the scurry of rats at play among loose piles of
boxes and litter.
"Sounds like the rats are having a party in there," he suggested as
though laudibly resolved upon making conversation in a taciturn circle.
"Mebby they be." Still only one of the countrymen had spoken a
syllable.
"I'd like to put a good rat-dog in there and watch him work," laughed
Brent, turning again to face the door as though he found fascination in
the thought. Then idly he laid his hand on the knob as though to try
its opening, but he went no further. Just at the side of the lintel
hung a broken and extremely dirty mirror and a quick glance into its
revealing surface told him a full story. He saw the man with the
pinched features reach swiftly back of him and slide a rifle away from
its concealed place against the wall. He saw the other's hand go
flash-like under his coat and under his left arm-pit. He caught in
both faces a sudden and black malignity which told him, beyond
question, that they would not play but would kill.
Of course too he knew why and he made a point of standing there with
every evidence of having seen nothing or suspected nothing.
After that first glance he also carefully avoided the mirror which
might work revelation to them as well as to himself. Eventually he
turned, not directly toward them but toward the other end of the room
and carelessly walked its length that he might give emphasis to his
unhurried seeming before he came slowly about.
When he did so the two men sat as before. The rifle had already
disappeared. The hand that had swept holster-ward had swept out again.
Both faces were blankly unconcerned.
Brent dropped into a chair near the door and listened as the clatter
inside increased. The rats scrambled about with a multiplicity of
light gnawing sounds and the clicking of some trifles unstably
balanced. Then slowly the clicking ceased to be random.
It differed from the other little noises only to the practiced ears of
Brent himself. That was not because his ears were keener than the
other pairs, but because to others there was no comprehensible
connection between a faint tapping and the sequence of raps that spells
words in the Morse code.
It was strange that from rats at play should issue the coherent sense
of consecutive telegraphy.
Brent had been on the _qui-vive_, steadied against any self-betrayal,
yet now he struggled against the impulse to tremble with excitement.
His fingers gripping the chair arms threatened to betray him by their
tautness and he could feel cold perspiration dripping down his body.
He crossed his legs and slouched more indolently into his chair in the
attitude of a bored and vacant-minded man--but as he sat his brain was
focussed on the clicking.
"Am tied . . . up . . . here," spelled out the dots and dashes from the
baggage-room. "If you understand, scrape chair on floor." Brent
shifted his seat noisily.
"She . . . is . . . caught. . . ." There was a pause there.
"In God's name, how is he doing it?" Brent questioned himself, while
inside, bound to his chair, with cuffed wrists, Halloway went on
sending--rapping with a pipe stem between parted rows of strong teeth.
"She is held . . . in mine-shaft . . . back of Gap. . . ."
The pressure of concentrating on that faint, but infinitely important
sound, and the need of maintaining a semblance of weary dullness was
trying Brent's soul. He thanked Heaven for the taciturnity of his
companions.
"Get there . . . with all men possible . . . as for me----"
Brent came suddenly and noisily to his feet for just then the operator
appeared in the doorway and it would not do for these sounds to
continue after his coming.
"Well, here comes the man I've been waiting for," he announced loudly,
and once more the clatter in the baggage-room became the random of rats
at play. "I wanted to ask you if you had any message for William
Brent, from a man named Halloway," he inquired, still speaking as if
against the wind, and, receiving a brief negative, he turned toward the
outer door.
An exit under such circumstances is always difficult. To curb the urge
of haste, to remain casual under lynx-like eyes, these are not untrying
tasks. Any slip now and he might be in the same durance as Halloway
himself--and when he breathed the outer air it was with a deep-drawn
sigh of relief for delivery out of peril.
When he had established connection with O'Keefe and had given him the
main facts, withholding, however, his sources of information, he said:
"We must get Halloway free before we start."
"Like hell we must!" exploded Jerry. "So long es he lays thar they'll
figger they've done fooled us an' beat us. Ef we take him out, thar'll
be men in ther la'rel all the way we've got ter go, pickin' us off in
ther dark."
"You're right," assented Brent, "but he's been there all day, I guess."
"Wa'al then a leetle more hain't goin' ter hurt him none."
Fifteen minutes later, leaving separately but timed to come to a
rendezvous near the point of attack a good dozen men were on the trail
to the Gap.
Through wet and chilly thickets O'Keefe led Brent at a gait that made
his heart pound. There was a battle-joy in the mountaineer's eyes and
in them too, was something else inspired by certain dreams of the girl
he had seen only once and whom he had told himself he meant to marry.
Over broken gulches, along precipitous paths he led the way buoyantly
and now and then he broke into low almost inaudible crooning of an
ancient love song.
Vainly the crew of highwaymen in the mine awaited the arrival of the
seeming rescuer who was to take their captive off their hands and
relieve them of the necessity of murder. It had been understood that
Jase was to employ only a few attackers in the accomplishment of this
knightly deed. Few men could be spared from other duties, and the
smaller the force which he led to victory the more lustrous would be
his glory of achievement. There was to be a great deal of shooting and
shouting through the narrow entrance to the place--and the exaggerating
echoes of the rocky confines would multiply it into a convincing din of
battle.
The alleged Ku-Klux clansmen would fight their way out, leaving their
prisoner behind--and in the confusion--but not until then--the
saddle-bags would disappear.
It was all very simple, and prettily adjusted, but the difficulty was
that Jase had failed to arrive and the act was lagging without its
climax.
He failed because of unforeseen events. Pending the cue for his
entrance he and his fellow heroes were being employed as sentries
guarding the approaches to the place against invasion by outsiders.
Jase himself had for several hours been lying as flat as a lizard under
a matted clump of laurel on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a ford
which could not be rapidly crossed. His function was to see to it that
no one passed there whose coming might prove an embarrassment.
The rawness of the air caused his bones to ache and his muscles to
cramp, but he had been steadfast. He was playing for high stakes.
Finally two horsemen had appeared--and they were two who must not pass.
One of them was Brent and the other was Bud Sellers.
So Jase had opened fire and Bud had returned it--returned it and fled.
That left the sentinel with a result half successful and half
disastrous, and made it necessary for him to make a hurried short-cut
to another point past which Brent must shortly ride. There he would
finish the matter of disputing the road.
Mallows drew himself out of his cramped ambuscade and started for his
new point, to the completion of his business--but before he had taken
many steps a sudden and violent distress assailed him. He pressed his
hand to his side with a feeling of vague surprise and it came away
blood-covered. He stopped and took account of his condition--and found
himself shot in the chest. In the excitement of the moment he had not
felt the sting, but now he was becoming rapidly and alarmingly weak.
He stumbled on, but several times he fell, and each time it was with a
greater burden of effort that he regained his feet. He clamped his
teeth and pressed doggedly forward, but the ranges began to swim in
giddy circles and a thickening fog clouded his eyes. When he dropped
down next time he did not rise again.
As night fell in the mine the temper of the men there became
increasingly ugly. Some had recourse to the flasks that they carried
in their pockets, and as their blood warmed into an alcoholic glow,
their eyes, through the slits in their masks, began dwelling on
Alexander's beauty of figure and face with a menacing and predatory
greed.
Alexander McGivins was in the most actual and imminent of conceivable
perils.
The girl's hands were no longer bound. When the commander of the group
had realized that her imprisonment was not to terminate so shortly as
had been planned he had been magnanimous to the extent of freeing her
wrists, but he had granted her no further extension of freedom.
The girl had given them no satisfaction of weakening nerve, but in her
heart she kept hidden a qualm as the time lengthened and a number of
the men went on drinking their fiery moonshine.
The pack was growing restive, openly restive now, and after yet another
council among the more important bandits, the leader came over and made
an announcement.
"Ther Clan aims now ter discuss yore case amongst themselves. We air
goin' ter leave four men hyar ter keep watch over ye whilst we're
away--an' them four has orders ter kill ye if ye seeks ter escape."
He raised his hand above his head, and wheeling, marched out through
the shaft's opening, while behind him, trailing in single file and dead
silence, trooped all the henchmen save the four left on guard.
Alexander noted with a certain degree of satisfaction that the
saddle-bags were not removed by those who departed.
The blazing pine torches went out with the small procession, leaving
the cavern gloomily shadowed. The only light came now from two
lanterns--and the girl sickened with the realization that at least one
of her jailers was drunk.
As soon as the withdrawal of the chieftain brought a laxening of
discipline, he lurched over toward her and, crossing the trickle of
running water, bent forward, staring brazenly into her face.
Only his eyes were visible, but they were bestial and lecherous. After
a little he thrust out a hand and stroked the white shoulder which the
torn clothing had left bare. Instantly, in a transport of white-hot
fury, the girl sprang sidewise and sought to drag the mask from his
face. But sodden as he was, the fellow still held to his instincts of
self protection. He twisted and seized her in a violent grip,
pinioning her arms at her sides.
In Alexander's lithe body dwelt a strength quite equal to a fair fight
and had it been a fair fight she would probably have made short work of
him. Now caught unexpectedly into helplessness she still writhed and
twisted, fighting with savage knee-blows until she had freed her right
hand and then she struck out with no feminine uncertainty. The fellow
reeled back, and Alexander followed him up with lightning speed.
She had become a fury animated by a single purpose. She meant to
unmask her assailant and register his face for a future reprisal of
death. The man, recognizing that at all costs he must defeat that
recognition, was compelled to throw both elbows across his face and to
bear without further retaliation the blows she rained upon him--all
blows that were soundly effective.
The thing happened quickly and for an instant the other three stood
looking on in astonishment--even, at first, with amusement. But as the
fellow backed across the tiny brook he tripped and he fell sprawling
and his out-thrown hand carried down and extinguished one of the
lanterns from its precarious niche on a small shelf of rock.
Alexander, making most of her brief moment, leaped across the body that
had gone down and recovered from its place on top of the saddle-bags
the pistol that had been taken from her at the time of her capture.
The three who had so far remained non-combatants could maintain that
role no longer.
"Drop thet gun," yelled one as their own weapons leaped out. But
Alexander had thrown herself to the ground and at the same instant she
fired a single shot--not at any one of her jailers, but at the sole
remaining lantern, which was only ten feet distant.
Then as the place went black she came to her feet and plunged through
the darkness to the opposite wall where she had marked a pulpit-like
rock that would give her temporary shelter.
She guessed rightly that now for a while at least since she was known
to be armed, there would be a hesitation in the relighting of lanterns
or even in the striking of matches. That caution, in a situation which
had abruptly undergone a change of complexion, went farther. There was
even no sound of voices or of movement.
Alexander herself was groping warily for the rock, setting down each
foot with extreme and noiseless caution. At last she gained the
protection which she sought and waited. She wished she might have
regained her rifle but that had not been lying within reach when she
made her hurricane entrance into action.
There were remaining to her five cartridges in the revolver, and
somewhere there in the inky blackness about her were four men,
presumably ammunitioned without stint. Also their confederates would
shortly return, bearing flambeaux--and then her little moment of
advantage would end. Even if every cartridge at her command went
fatally home, the supply was inadequate to cope with such numbers.
The silence hung with a suspense that was well nigh unendurable and
when the filthy wings of a bat brushed her cheek again she had to bite
the blood out of her lips to stifle an outcry.
As black and seemingly as lifeless as the coal which men had sought
there was the cavern where she crouched. Alexander wondered why the
sound of her pistol, which must have thundered in ragged echoes through
the shaft, had not brought back the others. Now she was trapped and
there was no conceivable possibility of escape. At the touch of
unclean fingers she had seen red and struck out--and the rest had
followed as an avalanche follows a slipping stone.
At last when the breathless stillness could no longer be borne, she
cautiously stooped and raked her hand back and forth until it came in
contact with a loose stone. She must force those silent antagonists to
some sort of action so she tossed the missile outward and as it struck
with a light clatter, a waiting pistol barked and Alexander's own
roared back at the tiny spurt of flame.
Instantly, too, three others spoke, aimed at her flash and she heard
the spatter of lead against stone nearby. In the confined space the
fusillade bellowed blatantly, and slowly diminishing echoes lingered
after the firing itself ceased. Then once more the silence which was
more trying than gunnery settled.
Slowly an idea dawned in the girl's mind, and strengthened into
conviction. If the main group who had trailed out with torches had
been anywhere nearby, that crescendo of noise must have recalled them
in hot haste. That they had not come back must indicate that they had
never meant to return. They had permanently departed, leaving her in
the hands of a quartette selected as a robbing party, and an execution
squad. With that realization the matter resolved itself into a new
phase. She would eventually be murdered here in this rat-hole unless
she could, one by one, shoot to death the four unseen men who were her
companions there. Four enemies stood between herself and freedom--and
four cartridges were left in her weapon.
At last she crept cautiously out and made her tedious way to the center
of the place again. She must do something and the audacious plan born
of necessity involved the need of a light. If her hand felt flesh
instead, her pistol was ready.
But after much noiseless groping she came upon the overturned lantern
and she had encountered nothing else.
Back in the lee of the rock she boldly struck a match, kindled the
wick--and still as she reached up and set the thing on the boulder's
top the unbroken silence held.
She had hoped to draw their fire and account for some of them at least,
but now as she peeped cautiously out she found to her astonishment that
except for herself the cavern was empty.
She also became sure of another thing. Her saddle-bags were gone.
She came out then and having repossessed herself of her rifle took up a
position well to one side of the shaft's opening where anyone who
entered must pass her muzzle, but she did not venture into the passage
itself because she was sure that that way lay an ambuscade.
Then, beside the sickly illumination within, she recognized a new waver
of kerosene rays from beyond the entrance.
There was no sound, except that of very stealthy feet, and the light
came slowly.
Alexander hastened hack to her rock, holding close to the walls of the
cavern as she went, then ensconcing herself there, almost invisible in
the shadow, she waited with parted lips and a cocked rifle.