Bruce Standing, a man of that strong, dominant, and self-centred
character which is prone to disregard the feelings of others, held
both Lynette Brooke and Babe Deveril his prey. But Jim Taggart, whose
professional business it appeared to be to bring in the girl, and
whose sore and aching head would not for many a day lose record of the
fact that it had been Babe Deveril who had forcibly put him out of the
running, had his own human purposes to serve, and set his nose to the
trail like a bloodhound. And yet, with these two bending every energy
to run them to earth, the two fugitives plunging headlong into the
friendly darkness were for the moment utterly lost to those who plunged
into the same darkness and in the same headlong style after them.
Hand in hand, chance-caught, and running swiftly, Lynette and Deveril
were in time to escape the first of their pursuers, a crowd of men who
got in one another's way, and who were too lately from the lighted
room of the house to see clearly outside. Behind Gallup's House was
the little creek which supplied the town with its water; it wound here
across a tiny flat, an open space save for its big cottonwoods. The
two, knowing that in the first heat of the chase opening at their heels
they were running from death, sped like two winged shadows merged into
one. After a hundred yards they hurled themselves into breast-high
bushes, a thick tangle--a growth which, in such a mad rush as theirs,
was no less formidable than a rock wall. They cast quick glances
backward; a score of men--appearing, in their widely spread formation
and from their cries and the racket of scuffling boots, to be a
hundred--shut off all retreat and made hopeless any thought to turn to
right or left.
"Down!" whispered Deveril. "Crawl for it! And quiet!"
On hands and knees they crawled into the thicket. Already hands and
faces were scratched, but they did not feel the scratches; already
their clothes were torn in many places. In a wild scramble they went
on, squeezing through narrow spaces, lying flat, wriggling, getting to
hands and knees again. And all the while with nerves jumping at each
breaking of a twig. It was only the shouting voices and the pounding
boots behind them that drowned in their pursuers' ears the sounds they
made.
"Still!" admonished Babe Deveril in a whisper.
And very still they lay, side by side, panting, in the heart of the
thicket. A voice called out, not twenty paces behind them:
"They're in there!" And another voice, louder than the first and more
insistent, they thanked their stars, boomed:
"No, no! They skirted the brush, off to the left, beating it for the
open! After 'em, boys!" And still other voices shouted and, it would
seem, every man of them had glimpsed his own tricking shadow and had
his own wild opinion.
Thus, for a brief enough moment, the pursuit was baffled.
"Slow and quiet does it!" It was for the third time Babe Deveril's
whisper, his lips close to her hair. "I see an opening. Follow close."
Lynette, still lying face down, lifted herself a little way upon her
two hands and looked after him.
"String 'em up!" a voice was calling. It was like the voice of a devil
down in hell, full of mob malice. She shivered. "They're murdering
devils. String 'em up!"
"Catch 'em first, you fool," called another voice. Again pounding boots
and ... far more sinister sound ... snapping brush where a man was
breaking his way straight into the thicket.
Like some grotesque, curiously shaped snake, Babe Deveril was writhing
along, ever deeper into the brush tangle, ahead of her. She began
crawling after him. Voices everywhere. And now dogs barking. A hundred
dogs, it seemed to her taut nerves. She knew dogs; she knew how they
went into a frenzy of excited joy when it was a question of a quarry,
any quarry; she knew the unfailing certainty of the dog's scent. She
began hurrying, struggling to get to her knees again....
"Sh! Down!"
She dropped down again and lay flat, scarce breathing. But once more
she saw the vague blot of Deveril's flat form wriggling on ahead of
her, almost gone now. It was so dark! She threw herself forward; she
threw her arm out and her hand brushed his boot. It was a wonderful
thing, to feel that boot. She was not alone. She began again following
him; dry, broken, and thorny twigs snared at her; they caught in her
clothes and in the laces of her boots; they tore at her skin. Yet this
time she was as silent a shadow as the shadow in front of her. On and
on and on, on endlessly through an eternity of darkness shot through
with dim star glimmerings, and pierced with horrible voices, she went.
She came out into an opening; she stood up. She was alone! And those
voices and the yelping of dogs and the scuffling of heavy, insensate,
merciless boots....
A hard, sudden hand caught her by the wrist. She whipped back, a scream
shaping her lips. But in time she clapped a hand over her mouth. She
was not alone; this was Babe Deveril, standing upright ... waiting for
her! She brought her hand down and clasped it, tight, over his hand.
"Run for it again," he whispered. "Off that way ... to the right. If we
can once get among those trees...."
Side by side, their hearts leaping, they ran. Gradually, but steadily,
the harsh noises grew fainter behind them. They gained the fringe of
trees; they splashed through the creek; they skirted a second tangle of
brush and rounded the crest of a hill. And steadily and swiftly now the
sounds of pursuit lessened behind them.
"And now," muttered Deveril, for the first time forsaking his cautious
whisper, "if we use what brains God gave us, we are free of that hell
pack."
"If they caught up with us?" she questioned him sharply.
"Most likely we'd both be swinging from a cottonwood in ten minutes!
There's no sanity in that crowd; it's all mob spirit. If it is true
that both Bruce Standing and Jim Taggart are dead.... Well, then,
Lynette Brooke, this is no place for you and me to-night! Come on!..."
"Babe Deveril," she returned, and now it was her fingers tightening
about his, "I'll never forget that you stood by me to-night!"
Babe Deveril, being himself and no other, a man reckless and unafraid
and eminently gay, and, so God made him, full of lilting appreciation
of the fair daughters of Eve, felt even at this moment her touch, like
so much warm quicksilver trickling through him from head to foot. He
gave her, in answer, a hearty pressure of the hand and his low, guarded
laughter, saying lightly:
"You interfere with the regular beating of a man's heart, Lynette
Brooke! But now you'll never remember to-night for any great measure
of hours, unless we step along. They'll hunt us all night. Come,
beautiful lady!"
Even then she marvelled at him. He, like herself, was tense and on
the _qui vive_; yet she sensed his utter fearlessness. She knew that
if they caught him and put a rope about his neck and led him under a
cottonwood branch, he would pay them back to the last with his light,
ringing laughter.
In this first wild rush they had had no time to think over what had
just happened; no time to cast ahead beyond each step deeper into
the night. Where they were going, what they were going to do--these
were issues to confront them later; now they were concerned with no
consideration other than haste and silence and each other's company.
To-night's section of destiny made of them, without any reasoning and
merely through an instinctive attraction, trail fellows. True, both
carried blurred pictures of what had occurred back there at the Gallup
House so few minutes ago, but these were but pictures, and as yet gave
rise to no logical speculation. As in a vision, she saw Timber-Wolf
sagging and falling as he strove to slew about; Deveril saw Taggart
rushing in at her heels, and then going down in a heap as a revolver
was flung in his face. Only dully at present were they concerned with
the query whether these two men were really dead. When one runs for his
life through the woods in a dark night, he has enough to do to avoid
limbs and tree trunks and keep on going.
Big Pine occupied the heart of a little upland flat. In ten minutes
Lynette and Deveril had traversed the entire stretch of partially level
land, and felt the ground begin to pitch sharply under foot. Here was a
sudden steep slope leading down into a rugged ravine; their sensation
was that of plunging over the brink of some direful precipice, feeling
at every instant that they were about to go tumbling into an abyss.
They were forced to go more slowly, sliding on their heels, ploughing
through patches of soil, stumbling across flinty areas.
"Down we go, as straight as we can," said Deveril. "And up on the other
side as straight as we can. Then we'll be in a bit of forest land where
the devil himself couldn't find us on a night like this.... How are you
standing the rough-stuff?"
It was the first time that he had given any indication of realizing
that her girl's body might not be equal to the work which they were
taking upon them. Swiftly she made her answer, saying lightly, despite
her labored breathing:
"Fine. This is nothing."
"If I hadn't forgotten my hat ... among other things," he chuckled,
"I'd take it off to you right now, Lynette Brooke!"
They paused and stood a moment in the gloom about the base of a big
boulder, listening. Now and then a man shouted; dogs still barked. But
the sounds were appreciably fainter, now that they had started down the
steeply pitching slope into the ravine.
"We can get away from them to-night," she said. "But to-morrow, when it
is light?"
"We'll see. For one thing, a chase like this always loses some of its
fine enthusiasm after the first spurt. For another, even if they did
pick us up to-morrow, they would have had time to cool off a bit; a mob
can't stay hot overnight. But give us a full night's head-start, and
I've a notion we've seen the last of them. Ready?"
"Always ready!"
Again they hurried on, straight down into the great cleft through the
mountains, swerving into brief détours only for upheaved piles of
boulders or for an occasional brushy tangle. In twenty minutes they
were down in the bed of the ravine, and splashing through a little
trickle of water; Lynette stooped and drank, while Deveril stood
listening; again, climbing now, they went on. The farther side of the
cañon was as steep as the one they had come down, and it was tedious
labor in the dark to make their way; at times they zigzagged one way
and another to lessen the sheerness of their path. And frequently now
they stopped and drank deep draughts of the clear mountain air.
Silence shut down about them, ruffled only by the soft wind stirring
across the mountain ridges. It was not that they were so soon out
of ear-shot of Big Pine; rather, this sudden lull meant that their
pursuers, done with the first moments of blind excitement, were now
gathering their wits and thinking coolly ... and planning. They would
be taking to horseback soon; scouting this way and that, organizing
and throwing out their lines like a great net. By now some one man,
perhaps Young Gallup, had taken charge and was directing them. The two
fugitives, senses sharpened, understood, and again hastened on. They
had not won to any degree of security, and felt with quickened nerves
the full menace of this new, sinister silence.
Onward and upward they labored, until at last they gained a less
steeply sloping timber belt, which stretched close under the peak of
the ridge. They walked more swiftly now; breathing was easier; there
were more and wider open spaces among the larger, more generously
spaced tree trunks.
"We'll strike into the Buck Valley road in a minute now," said Deveril.
"Then we'll have easy going...."
"And will leave tracks that they'll see in the morning!"
"Of course. Any fool ought to have thought of that," he muttered,
ashamed that it had been she instead of himself who had foreseen the
danger.
So they hearkened to the voice of caution and paralleled the road,
keeping a dozen or a score of paces to its side, and often tempted,
because of its comparative smoothness and the difficult brokenness of
the mountainside over which they elected to travel, to yield utterly to
its inviting voice. They turned back and glimpsed the twinkling lights
of Big Pine; they lost the lights as they forged on; they found them
again, grown fainter and fewer and farther away.
"Can you go on walking this way all night?" he asked her once.
"All night, if we have to," she told him simply.
They tramped along in silence, their boots rising and falling
regularly. The first tenseness, since human nerves will remain taut
only so long, had passed. They had time for thought now, both before
and after. Mentally each was reviewing all that had occurred to-night
and, building theoretically upon those happenings, was casting forward
into the future. The present was a path of hazard, and surely the
future lay shut in by black shadows. Yet both of them were young, and
youth is the time of golden hopes, no matter how drearily embraced by
stony facts. And youth, in both of them, despite the difference of
sex, was of the same order: a time of wild blood; youth at its animal
best, lusty, vigorous, dauntless, devil-may-care; theirs the spirits
which leap, hearts glad and fearless. And when, after a while, now and
then they spoke again, there was youth playing up to youth in its own
inevitable fashion; confidence asserting itself and begetting more
confidence; youth wearing its outer cloakings with its own inimitable
swagger.
They had trudged along the narrow mountain road for a full hour or more
when they heard the clattering noise of a horse's shod hoofs.
"I knew it," said Deveril sharply. "Damn them."
With one accord he and she withdrew hastily, slipping into the
convenient shadows thrown by a clump of trees, and peered forth through
a screen of high brush. The hurrying hoof beats came on, up-grade,
hence from the general direction of Big Pine. Two men, and riding neck
and neck, driving their horses hard. The riders drew on rapidly; were
for a fleeting moment vaguely outlined against a field of stars ...
swept on.
They came with a rush, with a rush they were gone. But Deveril, who
since he was taller, had seen more clearly than Lynette across the
brush, turned back to her eagerly, wondering if she had seen what he
had--if she had noted that one of the men loomed unusually large in the
saddle, and how the smaller at his side rode lopsidedly. In all reason
Bruce Standing should be dead by now or, at the very least, bedridden.
But when did Timber-Wolf ever do what other men expected of him? If he
were alive and not badly hurt; if Lynette knew this, then what? Deveril
would tell her, or would not tell her, as circumstances should decide
for him.
"Come on!" he cried sharply, certain that Lynette had not seen. "While
the night and the dark last. Let's hurry."
On and on they went until the dragging hours seemed endless. They saw
the wheeling progress of the stars; they saw the pools of gloom in the
woods deepen and darken; they felt, like thick black padded velvet,
the silence grow deeper, until it seemed scarcely ruffled by the thin
passing of the night air. Thus they put many a weary, hard-won mile
between them and Big Pine. Hours of that monotonous lifting of boot
after boot, of stumbling and straightening and driving on; of pushing
through brush copses, of winding wearily among the bigger boles of
the forest, of sliding down steep places and climbing up others, with
always the lure of the more easy way of the road tempting and mocking.
"We've got to find water again," said Deveril, out of a long silence.
"And we've got to dig ourselves in for a day of it. The dawn's coming."
For already the eastern sky stood forth in contrast against west and
south and north, a palely glimmering sweep of emptiness charged with
the promise of another day. The girl, too tired for speech, agreed
with a weary nod. She could think of nothing now, neither of past nor
present nor future, save of water, a long, cool bathing of burning
mouth and throat, and after that, rest and sleep. Her whole being was
resolved into an aching desire for these two simple balms to jaded
nature. Water and then sleep. And let the coming day bring what it
chose.
Long ago the mountain air, rare and sweet and clean, had grown cold,
but their bodies, warmed by exertion, were unaware of the chill. But
now, with fatigue working its will upon every laboring muscle, they
began to feel the cold. Lynette began shivering first; Deveril, when
they stopped a little while for one of their brief rests, began to
shiver with her.
Water was not to be found at every step in these mountains; they
labored on another three or four miles before they found it. Then they
came to a singing brook which shot under a little log bridge, and there
they lay flat, side by side, and drank their fill.
"And now, fair lady, to bed," said Deveril, looking at her curiously
and making nothing of her expression, since the starlight hid more
than it disclosed, and giving her as little glimpse of his own look.
"And when, I wonder, did you ever lay you down to sleep as you must
to-night?"
But he did see that she shivered. And yet, bravely enough, she answered
him, saying:
"Beggars must not be choosers, fair sir; and methinks we should go
down on our knees and offer up our thanks to Our Lady that we live and
breathe and have the option of choosing our sleeping places this night."
She had caught his cue, and her readiness threw him into a mood of
light laughter; he had drunk deep, and his youthful resilience buoyed
him up, and he found life, as always, a game far away and more than
worth the candle.
"You say truly, my fair lady," he said in mock gravity. "'Tis better to
sleep among the bushes than dangling at the end of a brief stretch of
rope."
But with all of their lightness of speech, which, after all, was but
the symbol of youth playing up to youth, the prospect was dreary
enough, and in their hearts there was little laughter. And the cold
bit at them with its icy teeth. A fire would have been more than
welcome, a thing to cheer as well as to warm; but a fire here, on the
mountainside, would have been a visible token of brainlessness; it
would throw its warmth five feet and its betraying light as many miles.
So, in the cold and dark they chose their sleeping place. Into a tangle
of fragrant bushes, not twenty paces from the Buck Valley road, they
crawled on hands and knees, as they had crawled into that first thicket
when pursuit yelped at their heels. Here they came by chance upon a
spot where two big pine-trees, standing close together companionably,
upreared from the very heart of the brushy tangle. Lynette could
scarcely drag her tired body here, caught and retarded by every twig
that clutched at her clothing. For the first time in her vigorous life
she came to understand the meaning of that ancient expression, "tired
to death." She felt herself drooping into unconsciousness almost
before her body slumped down upon the earth, thinly covered in fallen
leaves.
"I am sleepy," she murmured. "Almost dead for sleep...."
"You wonderful girl...."
"Sh! I can't talk any more. I can't think; I can't move; I can scarcely
breathe. Whether they find us in the morning or not ... it doesn't
matter to me now.... You have been good to me; be good to me still. And
... good-night, Babe Deveril ... Gentleman!"
He saw her, dimly, nestle down, cuddling her cheek against her arm,
drawing up her knees a little, snuggling into the very arms of mother
earth, like a baby finding its warm place against its mother's breast.
He sat down and slowly made himself a cigarette, and forgot for a
long time to light it, lost in his thoughts as he stared at her and
listened to her quiet breathing. He knew the moment that she went to
sleep. And in his heart of hearts he marvelled at her and called her
"a dead-game little sport." She, of a beauty which he in all of his
light adventurings found incomparable, had ventured with him, a man
unknown to her, into the depths of these solitudes and had never, for
a second, evinced the least fear of him. True, danger drove; and yet
danger always lay in the hands of a man, her sex's truest friend and
greatest foe. In his hands reposed her security and her undoing. And
yet, knowing all this, as she must, she lay down and sighed and went
to sleep. And her last word, ingenuous and yet packed to the brim with
human understanding, still rang in his ears.
"It's worth it," he decided, his eyes lingering with her gracefully
abandoned figure. "The whole damn thing, and may the devil whistle
through his fingers until his fires burn cold! And she's mine, and
I'll make her mine and keep her mine until the world goes dead. And my
friend, Wilfred Deveril, if you've ever said anything in your life,
you've said it now!"