Pape's ride down from the height of No-Man's Land was rapid as his
advisedly devious course would allow--rapid from his desire to
communicate his steer-led discovery to Jane Lauderdale with the least
possible delay and devious for two reasons. He did not wish to attract
the attention of the treasure blasters until after the girl had looked
them over. And he did not wish to fall into the hands of the police who
had hauled his run-amuck escutcheon out of the lake and taken him in
charge.
On reaching the meadow where he had asked his quondam pursuit pardners
to await him, he could sight none of them. He concluded that they had
cut for the nearest bridle path to avoid any such accounting to the park
authorities as had been exacted after last evening's irregularities.
Stansbury caution advised that he do likewise, but the Pape habit of
riding rough-shod by the short-cut trail overruled.
A demand upon him strong as physical force or a voiced cry caused him to
turn and peer into the mouth of a sort of gulch into which the green
tailed off. There he saw some one gray-clad, dismounted, waiting--Jane,
silently calling him.
Spurring to her, he found that the three had thought it advisable to
take cover in a small glen, irregularly oval in shape, that would have
served excellently as a bull-ring had its granite sides been tiered with
seats. Harford and Irene still sat their saddles, the girl holding rein
on the horse ridden by Jane, who evidently had reconnoitered that he
might not miss them on his promised return.
Pape's heart quickened from appreciation of her fealty. He decided if
possible to "cut out" her alone from her undependable "bunch" and show
her the discovery to which the beef-brute had led him--the latest
operation of the Lauderdale enemy.
"Why Not! So you're safe?" The glad cry was Irene's, as she pressed up
to him. "But my pet cow--don't tell me you let him get away?"
"The 'dar-rling' is on the road to the calaboose--pinched for all sorts
of crimes," returned Pape unfeelingly. "You'll need a larger crop of
bail weeds than you possibly can gather to make good your claim to him."
She, with a voice throb of regret: "That's what I get for not following.
A girl's got to keep on the heels of her live-stock, be he man or cow,
_these_ rapid days. Think of me sitting here, losing out as if I'd been
born a hundred years ago--_obeying_ a mere male!"
Jane had remounted and now rode up.
"But if the steer is arrested," she asked, "how do you come to be free?
Did you disown him?"
"Didn't have to." Pape's speech was that of a man in a hurry.
"Trail's-end for the red was an air pocket over a toy lake. He made a
magnificent splash and started swimming for the other shore. In the
water he was about as dangerous as a pollywog. Proved easy pickings for
that active little arrester of last night, Pudge O'Shay. Another
policeman sat in the stern of his commandeered row-boat, over-working a
piece of rope. I wish 'em joy taking my escutcheon in."
He omitted report of his own desperate feat of saving Polkadot and
himself a similar high-dive off the bluff edge. More authoritatively he
turned back to Irene.
"Likely his fate will make you feel some better over that obey
oversight. If you'd like to get the habit, you'd do me a favor by
hunting up the village pound and paying the dues put on that shield
rampant o' mine. Here's a roll that ought to be a gent cow's
sufficiency. And you'd favor me further by taking the family friend
along."
"You mean----"
"_Your_ Harfy. Maybe you can impress him with the desirability of
obeying orders. Got to confess I failed."
"You precious puzzle!"--the young lady of to-day. "You aren't--Oh, you
are--you _are_!"
"Are I--just what?"
"Jealous, you silly! Haven't I told you that Harfy long ago gave up
hopes of me, that he is as naught to me--ab-so-lutely naught more than a
friend who----"
"At that, he's more to you than he's shown himself to me," Pape
interposed with point.
Harford pulled up his mount's head with something the decisive fling of
his own. "I admit that I give orders better than take them. Come, Jane.
Come, Irene. Maybe I can get you out of this mess yet without unpleasant
consequences."
"And maybe, Jane, the consequences ain't going to be so plumb
unpleasant," Pape contested her attention with something the seriousness
he had shown at the foot of the Sturgis' steps. "In a certain some one
else's little matter of unfinished business that's demanding my time and
attention right now, I have pressing need of one assistant. Are you--do
you feel--well, willing?"
"But, Why Not, why not _me_?" Irene prevented immediate reply from her
cousin; spurred her mount close beside the obviously fastidious
Polkadot; at last dropped her battered-looking bunch of roses to clasp
the Westerner's arm. "You _know_ that I--And I _know_ that you--Don't
you, dar-rling--or do you? I am sure that I'm not _ashamed_
of--of--_You_ know. That is, I ain't if you aren't. Of course Jane is
calmer than I, but who wants to be calm nowadays? _I'm_ the one that's
willing and then some to tag along with you into difficulty and danger
and----"
Harford, heated of face and manner, interrupted.
"No one's going to tag with him into any more difficulty or danger. You
girls are going to keep your agreement, aren't you? You're both coming
peacefully along with me, now that I've let you wait long enough to see
that this person, rightly entitled 'The Impossible,' is safe."
"Let us wait--_you_ let us?" Irene flared. "A dozen of you couldn't have
forced me to desert him, Millsy Harford--not whilst I had _my_ health
and strength!"
Despite her ardor, Pape managed to free his arm of her hold. With his
eyes he re-asked the question put to Jane. He could see that she was
confused, annoyed, justifiably suspicious of the youngster vamp's
proprietorship.
"Don't you worry about any unfinished business of Miss Lauderdale,"
Harford added with augmented insolence. "I think she will concede that I
am more competent and quite as willing as you to attend any and all
such. On my advice she has given up her search for a mythical needle
mythically buried in this park haystack. Haven't you, Jane? _Haven't_
you, dear?"
Pape, while listening to the man, looked to the woman; gained her gaze,
saw her lips form to an unvoiced "No." Fresh love for her and fresh hate
for him--fresh suspicion and the courage thereof possessed him.
"Meantime, I suppose, your hirelings are tumbling up this park haystack
according to the directions of that cryptogram you took from Mrs.
Sturgis' wall-safe?"
"You damned blighter, you dare accuse me of theft?"
Pape laughed into the snarled demand. "And why not accuse? I don't like
you and I don't trust you. Miss Lauderdale's unfinished business is
safer in my hands than yours. You lie when you say that she has
transferred it to you. She knows who is the better man. In case you're
not sure, I am ready to show."
"No readier than I, you weak fish out of water." Harford's voice shook
into higher, harder notes. "You couldn't very well call me a thief and a
liar without showing. As I told you this morning you'll have to answer
to me if you raise any more of a row around Miss Lauderdale. When will
you give me a chance to----"
"Now?" Pape suggested.
"You don't mean here, before the girls, in a public place where the cops
are likely----"
"_Why not_?"
So the Queer Questioner's battle-cry!
Lightly though he laughed, he was heavy with hate, again moved by that
battleful mania which is the sanity of love. To him specific insults did
not matter so much. The importance of the whys, wheres or whences grew
all at once negligible. To have it out with the man who contested his
claim to his woman--to bring him down just on general principles--to
wring him and rend him and trample him, if need be, into acknowledgment
of his supreme impertinence--that was his present task.
A thought-flash of the moment before had thrown rays of suspicion
several ways through Pape's mind. Mills Harford knew of the Montana
Gusher swindle, as indicated by his jibe of that morning about an
"oil-stock shark." Being a real-estater of considerable success, he
might be a principal in that fraud. Certainly he did not seem the man to
have been a victim.
The idea that this "most prominent" suitor of Jane might be the leader
of the anti-Lauderdales was suggested by his bold attempt to deter the
girl from further investigation. That she herself considered him a
friend was in itself significant. He could not better have covered in
perpetrating an inimical act toward her than by first having won her
confidence with flattery as expertly administered as though he were
indeed one of those villainous "perfect lovers" with whom honest heroes
have to cope on stage and screen.
As an intimate of the household, Harford probably was in position to
know the worth of the late eccentric's buried "bone." He might well have
instigated that "inside" safe job at the Sturgis' and been responsible
for the trailing of the poke-bonnet lady to the East Sixty-third Street
hide-out, this last particularly pointed by his later appearance there
with his lawyer. And here in the glen, just as the out-croppings showed
plain the way to treasure's lead, he was ready to prevent Jane by force
from continuing her park prospecting while the excavations were underway
on the heights. All the circumstantials were suspicious.
Why not now? In view of possibilities, it had not taken one of Pape's
predisposition for action long to decide that the then and there were
none too soon for adjustment of their relative status. He and his
self-selected could spare time, he guessed, for a bout that would
settle--well, what it would settle.
"Climb down. Let's get it over before some ladylike rule of this
old-woman town of yours trips us up."
Pape was in the act of dismounting, in accordance with his own
suggestion, when Harford executed a surprise that nearly crowded him to
a fall. The attack was abetted by the inherent hostility of a
thoroughbred horse for cross-breeds of the range. As though trained for
just such participation, the blue-blood rammed into the piebald,
bringing his rider within tempting reach of the enemy ear. A whack more
dizzying than dangerous followed the equine impact.
"So that's--the game?" Pape gasped during his recovery. "You've
got--edge on me--with your--polo punch. But swords or pistols! I'm ready
for--any old fight that's fought--Harfy _dar_-_rling_."
He threw back into the leather, where he felt as much at home as any man
and jabbed his right foot back into its stirrup. Swinging his calico
cayuse he pressed back the horses astride which the two girls sat--Jane
with pale, set face, like a marble of avengement; Irene glitter-eyed and
high-hued from excitement. For a duel of chevaliers this particular
squared-circle hidden by Nature must be cleared. When the fair audience
was crowded to one side in "reserved" quadruped standing room, West
whirled and bore down on East.
Fights of diverse sorts had place in the variegated past of Peter Pape.
Rough-and-tumbles, knock-down-and-drag-outs, rim-fires or
lightning-draws--all such he had survived. But no past emergency had he
battled by fists on horseback. Once he had accepted the challenge,
however, the form of fight looked fairer than at first blow, since it
was unlikely that its instigator had more experience in stirrup battling
than he. As for rules, he, for one, felt quite as hazy as he would have
in some tilting bout of lance-laden knight of old. They would have to
make up the rules as they went along, he supposed.
"At 'em, Dot!" he wirelessed the frecked ear laid back in rancor against
a brushed-teeth nip of the over-groomed enemy mount. Not a heel urge did
the piebald need, any more than a jerk of the rein which, already, Pape
had twisted about the saddle horn. With a horse keen to knee pressure as
was this cow-pony, he had the advantage of both hands free for swing or
jab.
Straight at the aristocrats went the rough pair. Polkadot landed a
shoulder impact that all but toppled the spindle-legged black. The
while, his man-mate's bruising left, accomplished contact with the
Harford nose. At the "claret" which oozed from a feature perfect enough
in outline to have been inherited from classic Greek, Irene uttered a
cry in which sounded fear for the family friend and admiration of the
person impossible. Jane sat her horse, silent and outwardly composed,
except that the color had left even her lips.
In the break-away, the black kicked out viciously. But the pinto, with
skill acquired in growing-up days when he had trained with an Arizona
outlaw band, flirted his vari-colored rump out of harm's way. Already
the battle was bi-fold, the two men its instigators, their mounts
responsible for footwork.
On the second engagement, not counting that initial surprise attack
which had bordered on the foul, Harford handled his thoroughbred into a
position of such advantage that he drove a right to Pape's jaw. Rocked
from crown to toe, the Westerner saved himself a fall by going into just
such a clinch as he would have tried had they been balanced each on his
own two feet instead of his horse's four.
There was something superstitious in the look which distorted Harford's
good looks, as he found himself held helpless while his opponent
rallied--a look which suggested that he had put his all into that
upper-cut and was worse nerve-shocked than was its recipient physically
over failure to bring decision. There being no referee to command a
break, Pape came out of the clinch when he was ready, with the "spinner"
aid of a horse that turned ends on signal--and all within the space of a
blanket.
The break-away, unexpected by the Eastern immaculate, reduced him
sartorially to a plane with the Westerner. His stock and part of his
striped silk shirt remained in the Pape paws, torn from his neck and
back when Polkadot had capered. His dishevelment now matched that which
Pape had acquired in his struggle against momentum upon the cliff.
The equine pair also seemed possessed of battling madness. For a time
they fox-trotted about, keeping their riders beyond each other's reach,
while they fought an instinctive duel of their own. The black proved a
fore-and-after--pawed out ladylike blows with slender forefeet, then
lofted his heels in a way that jarred the human aboard him more than the
wary target. At a familiar knee signal, Polkadot suddenly rose on his
hindlegs as if for that bronco evolution known as sunfishing.
"Look out--he'll topple back and crush you!"
The outcry was forced from Jane.
As at once transpired, it proved unnecessary. The piebald had no
intention of falling back upon his man-pal. Instead, he hopped forward
on hind legs until he had the black cornered, then flung down with all
his weight. The thoroughbred, crushed to his knees, escaped by sheer
agility the sharp-shod hoofs; wriggled his fringe-bedecked neck and
satin shoulders from out the commoner's clutch.
Dumbly infuriated by his failure and urged by an imperative signal,
Polkadot pressed such advantage as was left him. By sparing the black no
time to recover, he gave Pape his opportunity. Head to tail the horses
met with terrific impact. For the second or so in which both staggered,
a stirrup each locked crushingly.
Followed two fist blows from Pape, so nearly simultaneous that no
on-looker could have been sure which did the work. He himself knew that
his right had led by enough of a count to jolt his rival's head into
fair position for his gnarled left. Far out from saddle he leaned to put
into that follow his last ounce of power. The blow landed nicely under
the Easterner's cleft chin. As the horses sprang apart, Harford toppled
and fell.
What would have been a clean knock-out of which no fistic specialist
need have been ashamed was spoiled by a mishap. The falling man's right
foot did not clear the trap-like stirrup of his English saddle. The
behavior of his thoroughbred too, was unfortunate. In a frenzy of alarm
the black sprang forward, then dashed for the entrance of the glen,
dragging his rider. Probably the fact that Harford was clear out, his
body inert, saved him an immediate hoof wound, but there was scarcely a
chance of his survival if hauled over the rocks of the entrance. His
horse, however, did not reach that barrier. Having his rival dragged to
injury or death was no more a part of Pape's program than was murder a
component of his hate. Before the black had covered two rods, Polkadot
was after him, for once dug by the spurs which he had every right to
consider worn for decorative purposes only. One hundred yards of green,
with the sharp teeth of the rock trap but fifty farther on, brought the
racing beasts neck and neck--brought Pape to an equestrian exploit
conceived on the way.
He kicked his right foot free of the wooden stirrup; encircled the
saddle horn with his knee; throwing his weight on the left stirrup,
leaned low. To retrieve a grounded hat or handkerchief from the saddle
at gallop pace he regarded as a simple form of exercise. To seize and
loft an unconscious man of Harford's build was difficulty multiplied by
his dead weight of some hundred-seventy pounds.
"Impossible!"
Pape's jaw set with the thought-challenge which had taken him over the
top of so varied contretemps--the word applied to him with such
significance by the snob whom he was about to save.
Why not achieve the impossible now as heretofore? He put the demand on
his tried muscles, risked two bounds of the black in making sure that
his grip upon the collar of Harford's coat was firm, then heaved upon
his burden. The initial inches of clearance were hardest--broke his
nails, tortured his fingers, almost snapped the sinews in his arm. Not
until his right hand was able to join his left did he breathe again.
And just in time was his double hold secured.
So quickly did the black horse swerve that the calico could not
synchronize. For a moment Harford's body and the taut stirrup were a
strained connecting link. Then Polkadot edged nearer and Pape was able
to lift the unconscious figure to a position of partial support across
his mount's forequarters.
But the stirrup still held, its iron shoe having been forced into the
leather of Harford's boot and fastened as in a vise. They might be
coupled together until the black ran down unless----
The stretch of strap gave Pape an idea. Quick almost as the thought he
drew his gun; took three shots; severed the link. Turning, he rode the
doubly burdened piebald back in the direction of the two girls, while
the thoroughbred sought exclusiveness in the far reaches of the glen.
Probably because of the frequent back-fire of motors and the blow-out of
tires which at times make Central Park suggest a West Virginia mining
town on fusillade day, the curiosity of no sparrow cop had been excited
by the gun reports.
Much more gently than he had gathered up his enemy, Pape now lowered him
to the turf and flung out of saddle to a kneeling position. A cursory
examination showed Harford's fine-featured face to be somewhat marred by
fist blows. But his body, so far as the emergency first aid could
determine, was intact. The last fear of a possible skull fracture was
dissipated when the brown eyes quivered open and the flaccid lips began
to move.
"He's trying to speak, Why Not," exclaimed Irene, a moment ahead of Jane
in dismounting. "Listen, _do_! In the novels I've read they always say
the most _important_ things when they're coming out of--of a hiatus or
whatever you call it."
Pape leaned close enough to grasp part of the effortful mumble.
"Didn't steal--anything. Sorry called you--names. Irene loves----"
That was as far as Harford got at the moment. And it was well, as the
perquisitory miss demanded the context of his utterances.
Now, the telling of lies was abhorrent to Peter Pape. Seldom did he
consider recourse to the slightest misrepresentation even when
straight-out talk made complexities. But he found himself tempted by an
inspiration as to how he might repay both enemy man and enemy girl for
the trouble they had caused him with the same slight elaboration of the
truth.
"It is your name on his lips," he informed the romantic miss.
"'Irene'--_you_ were his first thought. You're the one he wants, my
child, the one he calls for."
"Oh! _Oh_!" she murmured, her dark eyes expanding. "Then I haven't been
wrong--Harfy _has_ cared for me in secret all along?"
She knelt down beside the fallen family friend; hovered over him in an
egoistic ecstasy.
"Poor dar-rling--_how_ you must have loved me to have hidden it so well!
And all the time I thought that you--Oh, it is _thrilling_ that you
should have pretended to regard another, when in reality your _grande
passione_ was for me alone! If you'd been killed, I _never_ could have
forgiven myself--that is, I couldn't if I had found out afterwards. When
I think what you must have _suffered_, I wonder how I ever can
repay----"
"You've got a darn' good chance right here and now," interrupted Pape,
as a finishing touch to his ruse for punishing them and cutting-out Jane
from the "bunch." "He's coming around fast--ain't in any physical danger
if his heart is cheered up. 'Tis better far for him that you two
shouldest be alone when he comes clean to. You stay here and nurse
him--you owe him at least that much. When he's able to ride make for the
bridle path and home. The black is quieting down. You can catch him
without trouble. And don't be afraid of pouring out your love and
affection upon the poor man. It is your bounden duty as a woman and a
vamp. Love may save his life."
"But you, Why Not?"
A sudden fear lest she lose the old in the new acquirement strained her
face.
"I'll bear up some way. I, too, still have my health and strength." He
tried to mask his triumph in a dark, desperate frown. "Come, Jane. You
and I are no longer needed here."
He forestalled protest by remounting; gave the older girl a
half-humorous, wholly-apologetic look; led the way toward the heights.
Five minutes later they dropped rein in a clump of warty-ridged
hackberry bushes and started on afoot. On the way he made succinct
report of his discovery during the pursuit of the red. At that, he had
not prepared her--indeed, was far from prepared himself--for what they
soon saw from cover at the edge of the mesa.
The stage was set as on his dash across it in pursuit of the run-amuck.
But the actors--half a dozen in number, inclusive of Swinton Welch, and
none in laborer's garb--were now grouped about one of the supply carts.
Attention centered upon a man who sat the tail of this cart--one who had
not been about during Pape's preview. His pudgy hands held open before
him a sheet of paper from which he was reading aloud.
The pair in the bush stared at this man in amazement too breath-taking
for speech. Then their glances met, as if to read substantiation, each
in the other's eyes.
So, then, it was true! The _generalissimo_ issuing instructions was the
long-time friend and family counselor, ex-Judge Samuel Allen.