With the stealth of a Blackfoot brave, Peter Pape approached the powder
cart in temporary use as a rostrum. Jane he had left where her safety no
longer troubled him. His entire attention reached forward. Having gained
the cover of a venerable cottonwood whose drooping catkins fringed the
shafts of the lowering sun he stopped and deliberately listened, excused
by the necessity of discovering just what was underway.
The slow, accented perusal of the apple-cheeked little big man of law
was holding the attention of his assortment of thugs to a degree
favorable for a surprise assault.
"Eighteen and twelve will show
The spot. Begin below.
Above the crock
A block will rock,
As rocks wrong's overthrow."
To the last word the verse carried to Pape's ears, metered to match the
two lines recited to him by Jane from her memory of the mysterious,
stolen cryptogram. There seemed no reason to doubt that Allen was
reading the rhymed instructions of the late Lauderdale eccentric.
Swinton Welch was first to offer thin-voiced complaint against the
poem's ambiguity.
"That third verse strikes me as the hardest yet, judge. What do you
reckon them figures mean? I don't see as there's any way to decide
whether they stand for rods or yards or feet. Eighteen from what? Twelve
to which? Or do you suppose, now, it means that the spot is
eighteen-by-twelve?"
With a wave of one chubby hand the lawyer dismissed these demands. "When
quite a young man I knew the writer of this rhyme. It is characteristic
that he should have put everything as vaguely as possible. He'd have
made a wonderful detective, he was such a genius at involving instead of
solving things. I'm relying quite a bit on my own gumption in the
selection of this place. But I feel sure that I am right at last. We're
on a height, surrounded by the requisite number of poplars, aren't we?
The noises we hear from the city, spread about on every hand, might be
called by poetic license any kind of a roar. And the whole place is
shelved with rock. Since we can't seem to solve those figures, let's
blow off the entire top if necessary and trust to the integrity of the
'crock.' You arranged for the acetylene lights, Duffy?"
"They'll be here before dusk."
Pape could not see the speaker from his cover point, but recognized the
voice of him of the vegetable ears recently bested in combat.
"Have you thought about the crowd the flare's going to attract, Mr.
Allen?" the pugilist wanted to know.
"I've arranged for the police to stand guard over us."
The complacency with which the lawyer made this assertion had a nerving
effect upon Pape. His frame straightened with a jerk. His muscles
tightened. His thoughts sped up. If the police were enlisted with the
enemy through political "pull" of the ex-judge, it behooved him to
decide at once upon the exact nature of such changes as he, personally,
might be able to effect in the afternoon's program. Perhaps too close
upon decision, he acted.
"I have permits from the commissioner to cover every emergency," the
lawyer continued. "I can promise you that there'll be no interference
this time, even----"
"_Except_ from me!"
The correction issued from behind the cottonwood and was followed
immediately by the appearance of Peter Pape.
Samuel Allen's assurance gurgled in his throat and the apple-red faded
from his cheeks as he slid from his seat on the cart-tail to face the
unfriendly, blue-black eye of a Colt.
"The--the impossible person!" he stammered.
"The _possible_ person, don't you mean, judge? It's time you got the
general little scheme of me, even though I do look mussed up this
crowded afternoon."
Pape's jocularity was a surface effect. The serious cooeperation of his
every thought and muscle would be needed if he won against such odds.
With his gun he waved back two of the crew who, evidently more
accustomed to the glance of the unfriendly eye than was the jurist, were
edging nearer. Still grinning with pseudo-pleasantry, he tried to guard
against attack from behind by backing toward the second of the
ark-bedded carts.
"This morning, Allen, you got me out of limbo through your drag with the
law," he continued. "Didn't hope for a so-soon opportunity to refund
that debt. But don't think I ain't ready with the interest."
"The only way to keep you out of new trouble is to leave you in the
old," snorted the small big man. "If this gun-play is for my amusement,
I'll say that your methods are as perverted as your sense of humor.
You're about as practical as a Bolshevist. Pray desist. Also--pardon my
frankness--get out while you can--out of trouble that doesn't concern
you in the slightest."
"Pardon _my_ frankness--" Pape, too, could feign politeness--"but this
trouble does concern me in the greatest. I hate being in your debt. I
feel I should take this chance to pay and save you!"
"Save me--from what?"
Although the Colt still held his gaze, the jurist put the question with
manifest relief. Argument was his stock in profession--perhaps he hoped
from that.
Pape couldn't restrain an out-loud chuckle, so near did he seem to the
consummation of his promises to Jane. "Just you hand over Granddad
Lauderdale's crypt and those _carte_-blank permits and I'll save you
from being your own lawyer defending a charge of before-and-after
burglary. Urge 'em upon me, judge, then call off your crew and vamoose
pronto--which is roof-of-America for get out quick yourself."
Allen sent a glance of appeal among his hirelings, but elicited no
response. To them there was, in truth, a stronger appeal in the careless
way the Westerner handled his "hardware." They looked to be gunmen
themselves, but of the metropolitan sort that shoot singly from behind
or in concert before. Certain was it that some one would get punctured
did the revolver speak and each was concerned lest he be the ill-fated
human "tire."
Allen seemed left to his own devices. Crumpling the cryptic sheet in one
hand, he started slowly forward. Pape lifted his foot for a stride along
the cart-side. But some time elapsed before the sole of his boot again
met mother earth. With the suddenness of most successful attacks on a
rear guarded over-confidently, the one leg which, for the moment,
supported his weight was jerked from under with a violence that pitched
him face forward.
As he fell his revolver exclaimed, but only an indignant monosyllable. A
veritable avalanche of humanity descended upon him, hard in effect as
the rocky ground in their attack with gun butts and fists. For a second
time he had miscalculated odds; seemed at last to have met defeat. In
the act, as it were, of seizing the Sturgis' loot, he was put out by a
blow from a leather black-jack brought down upon his defenseless head by
an expert hand.
Some minutes must have passed before his brain again functioned. In the
interim he had been "hogtied," despite the fact that, literally, the
knots were not tied according to the Hoyle of the range. The first thing
he noticed on opening his eyes was that Judge Allen had been stripped of
his coat and the left sleeves of his outer and under shirts cut away to
give place to a bandage. Evidently his instinctive pull on the trigger
had sent a bullet into his preferred target, although lack of aim had
made it a wing shot.
That the moment was one in which he would best "play Injun" was Pape's
first cautionary thought. Not even to ease his painfully cramped limbs
did he attempt to move a muscle. After his first roving look, his eyes
fixed, with an acquisitive gleam at variance with his helplessness, upon
something protruding from the inside pocket of a coat that lay upon the
ground near his hurting head.
The something, or one very like it, he had seen before--a folded
document engraved in brown ink. The coat also he recognized as that torn
off the wounded lawyer.
He next discovered that his ears, as well as eyes, could function.
Without moving, he allowed them to be filled with sound notes upon the
disaster which had overtaken him.
The ex-judge: "--and I congratulate you, Duffy, on as neat a turn-table
as I've ever seen."
Even more than to the unctuousness of the voice did Pape object to the
jurist's punctuation by boot upon that section of his own anatomy within
easiest reach. His indignation, however, was diverted by the assurance
that it was his enemy of the cauliflower ear who had brought about his
fall.
"Easier than throwing a seven with your own bones, your honor," Duffy
answered. "Wild-and-woolly here was too tickled with himself to notice
me under the cart tightening of a bolt. All I had to do was lunge out
and grab an ankle."
"Hadn't you better go and let some doctor look at that arm, judge?" The
concerned voice was Swinton Welch's. "I'll direct operations until----"
"You think I'm going right on taking chances on your weakness, Welch?"
Allen's counter-demand snapped with disapproval. "I'll see this thing
through, no matter how it hurts. Send for a surgeon if you know one who
don't insist on reporting gun-shot patients. Come, let's get this
animated interruption stowed away before the police arrive. Questions
never asked are easiest answered."
"Leave us throw him in with the powder," suggested a scar-faced bruiser
new in the cast, so far as Pape recalled.
And so they might have disposed of him had not Duffy advanced a better
proposition. Nearby was a sort of cave where he had "hidden out" on a
former emergency, he declared. It was dark and dribbly as a tomb--an
ideal safe-deposit for excess baggage.
"To the tomb with the scorpion, then!"
Beneath his pudginess, the little lawyer seemed hard as the rocks he was
so anxious to blast. With a gesture, he ordered one of the crew to help
him on with his coat.
Pape relaxed the more as three of them laid hold and carried him across
the flat. Duffy acted as guide and the lawyer, who assuredly was taking
no chances, went along to satisfy himself as to the security of the
hide-away. Several yards inside the narrow mouth of Duffy's "sort of"
cave they dropped him upon the rock floor; left him without further
concern over when, if at all, he should return to consciousness.
For reasons which had filled him with such elation as nearly to expose
his 'possum part, Pape approved their selection of the cave. Now the
hope of victory out of defeat came to him with an admission of Allen
from the entrance:
"I do feel some weakened by this wound. Guess I'd better rest here a
little while. You fellows go back and start turning rocks. Try the tilty
ones first and use powder, when necessary, just as if I owned the park.
Remember, I've got the permits."
For five minutes or more Pape waited without any effort to free himself
except from the puddle of drippings in which they had chanced to deposit
him. Since all seemed quiet, he made sibilant venture.
"Jane ... _Jane_!"
The shadowy figure which at once appeared from out the darker recesses
assured him that luck had not entirely deserted him--that the
safe-deposit vault selected for him was the same in which he had
honor-bound the girl to watch and wait his summons. On entrance of his
pallbearers, she had retreated into the depths of the "tomb," quite as
he had hoped she would. And now--in just a minute--he'd show them how
alive was the dead man they had buried.
She knelt beside him; was bending over him.
"Oh, Peter--it is you, then? Are you hurt--wounded?" Her whisper was
guarded as his own had been.
"Yes--wounded sore but only in my feelings--over being outwitted."
"It's just as well I didn't know you in the gloom. I'd have thought you
dead and died myself. I was near-dead of nervousness already. Knowing
you were armed, I feared when I heard the gun report that you had shot
some one and been captured. I couldn't have stayed here doing nothing
much longer, despite my promise. Don't know just what I'd have done,
but----"
"But that's been decided for you," he supplied, in an ecstasy over the
confession back of her words. "You are here to un-hog-tie me. The
key-knot is pressing the small of my back, or I don't know the feel of
one. See what you can do."
She leaned over him, her hands clasped over his helpless ones. "Only if
you promise me," she bargained with a vague, tender smile which he just
could see, "that you won't go back at them again. Otherwise you're much
safer tied--hog or human."
"I'll promise anything if you'll just lower those lips one half an inch.
I think I can reach the rest of the way."
But she evidently decided to free him without the promise and trust to
his discretion. Helping him turn over, she busied herself with his
bonds. Long and strong as were her fingers, however, they made no
impression upon this particular key-knot, tied to stay tied with some
sailor-taught knack.
"Feel in my coat pocket," he suggested. "If they've left me a couple of
matches----"
She did. And they had. A stroke across his boot top lit one. The odor of
burning hemp did not offend their nostrils; rather, was more grateful
than the most subtle incense from the freedom promised in its fumes.
After the fourth and last Lucifer had been burned to a char, the girl
was able to fray and sunder the rest of the rope. The "key" turned, Pape
made short work of the other knots, shook off his bonds and gained his
feet. His first act of freedom was to seize and kiss the two
taper-tipped, nail-broken, burnt-finger hands which had liberated him.
"Sweet pardner!... Precious pal!"
Pape always remembered his "grave" and the ensuing silence within its
dank dark as the most cheerful place and the livest moment of his life.
Only the moment, however, did he allow himself.
"I've got to reward you by leaving you again, but not for long. Don't
bother promising this time. Just wait until I bring the real tenant of
this tomb."
Samuel Allen, while seated upon a bowlder of trap-rock that divided the
opening, watching the start of the delayed excavation, felt himself
seized without warning from behind. Before he had time to utter more
than a gasp he was dragged back into the cave. Perhaps pain from his
injured shoulder made him speechless. Possibly surprise at the assault
of the "scorpion," just now unconscious and soundly trussed, had
something to do with his inefficiency. He still seemed incapable of
protest when the captive-turned-captor searched his coat pockets and
extracted their contents.
Jane, the while, had taken advantage of her absolution from oath to
follow guardedly; with automatic ready now appeared from darkness into
the light of the entrance.
"If he so much as whines, shoot him--and shoot to kill this time!" Pape
directed. "He deserves punishment and on two counts, I think. Just a
minute. I want to make sure."
Stepping nearer the opening, he began to run through the letters and
documents taken from the jurist's coat.
"Jane Lauderdale! Can it really be you, my child?" At last Allen drew
upon his font of sebaceousness. "I hope that you, too, are not in the
power of this impossible----"
"She isn't. I'm in hers."
Pape had overheard; now wheeled around. A glance had satisfied him that
the cryptogram at last was in hand. The brown engravings, the familiar
look of which had held his eyes when he lay trussed in the open, had
confirmed his first suspicion of them. Folded with the crinkly parchment
was other detailed proof.
"You're under arrest, judge!" he snapped.
"How so? You're no officer and I--You can't----"
"Oh yes, I can. Some few of the impossibilities that are my pet pastime
ought to be accredited to the deputy sheriff of Snowshoe County,
Montana. Out with those dimpled wrists!"
With one length of the rope so recently misused on himself, Pape
improvised handcuffs; with another hoppled the ankles of the jurist.
Unnerved by his helplessness, the little great man began to whimper.
"You tried to murder me out there. Now you--you--arrest me for what?"
"Ask the man behind the Montana Gusher oil fraud--your dishonorable
self. We're going to give you opportunity--a little time alone with the
crook."
The accusation left Pape's lips with the assurance of a theorem. The
legal tricks played in Western courts against his earlier fight to
protect his good name long ago had convinced him that some legal mind
was master of the plot. The jurist's morning skill at court jugglery had
brought its flash of suspicion. But not until he had discovered Allen as
the Lauderdale enemy had there recurred to him Jane's exclamation,
clipped by her father, that some one they knew might be the promoter of
the oil fraud. Later had come the first sight of tell-tale stock
certificates in the small culprit's pocket, their worth as clinching
proof assured by his recent examination at the mouth of the cave.
For the moment Allen seemed staggered by the charge. He looked as though
he should find himself exceeding poor company.
Pape turned to Jane. "Once more may I borrow your gun, dear? Some one of
his plug-uglies seems to have appropriated mine own. Come."
"Don't leave me, child. Don't go with the wild-man," Allen urged the
girl. "He'll only lead you into more trouble. He can't escape my men
once I start them searching for him and the price he'll pay for trussing
me up like this----"
"It's worth a goodly price to show you how a truss-up feels," Pape
interrupted. "Of course I can't hope you'll stay caved much longer than
I, once the gang misses you. But I won't have trouble re-pinching you,
not while I hold these certificates of your guilt. To think, Jane, that
my trail's-end should run into yours this way! It looks--don't get
scared, now--but it does look a whole lot like Fate."
She regarded him, serious-eyed, yet with faintly smiling lips. "It
looked a whole lot like that to me the day you told dad and me about
your search for----"
The suggestion of a smile vanished as she turned directly toward the
wretched-looking little big man. "Wasn't 'Montana Gusher' the name of
that oil stock you stopped Aunt Helene's buying, Judge Allen? Ah, I
thought so!"
With a glance of contempt for the obviously guilty "family friend," she
followed Pape out of the cave. From the shadow of the wall they looked
out over the flat.
"We can't continue Western style," he observed with manifest regret.
"See the mounties? They're here under instructions to report to his
Honor the Judge and do his bidding. There's a limit, as I learned awhile
back, to what one can tackle in Gotham single-handed--that is to say,
with hope of success. We'll need an injunction to stop that stunt. Let's
go get it!"
Almost were they across the open space which they must cover to reach
their horses when a shouted command to halt told that Allen's gang had
sighted them. Instead of obeying, Pape snatched Jane's hand and urged
her into a run.
They gained a moment in the one lost to the enemy while Swinton Welch
explained to the police lieutenant the necessity of capturing them. They
reached their mounts, climbed their saddles and were on their way before
the pursuit started from the far side of the flat. A second time that
afternoon the consecrated precinct of Gotham's pleasure place staged a
race--this one quite official, with former pursuers turned quarry.