CHAPTER XXIV--LOST YET WON
With the stealth of a Blackfoot brave, Peter Pape approached the powdercart in temporary use as a rostrum. Jane he had left where her safety nolonger troubled him. His entire attention reached forward. Having gainedthe cover of a venerable cottonwood whose drooping catkins fringed theshafts of the lowering sun he stopped and deliberately listened, excusedby the necessity of discovering just what was underway.
The slow, accented perusal of the apple-cheeked little big man of lawwas holding the attention of his assortment of thugs to a degreefavorable 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 thetwo lines recited to him by Jane from her memory of the mysterious,stolen cryptogram. There seemed no reason to doubt that Allen wasreading the rhymed instructions of the late Lauderdale eccentric.
Swinton Welch was first to offer thin-voiced complaint against thepoem's ambiguity.
"That third verse strikes me as the hardest yet, judge. What do youreckon them figures mean? I don't see as there's any way to decidewhether they stand for rods or yards or feet. Eighteen from what? Twelveto which? Or do you suppose, now, it means that the spot iseighteen-by-twelve?"
With a wave of one chubby hand the lawyer dismissed these demands. "Whenquite a young man I knew the writer of this rhyme. It is characteristicthat he should have put everything as vaguely as possible. He'd havemade a wonderful detective, he was such a genius at involving instead ofsolving things. I'm relying quite a bit on my own gumption in theselection of this place. But I feel sure that I am right at last. We'reon 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 becalled by poetic license any kind of a roar. And the whole place isshelved with rock. Since we can't seem to solve those figures, let'sblow 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 thevoice 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 nervingeffect upon Pape. His frame straightened with a jerk. His musclestightened. His thoughts sped up. If the police were enlisted with theenemy through political "pull" of the ex-judge, it behooved him todecide at once upon the exact nature of such changes as he, personally,might be able to effect in the afternoon's program. Perhaps too closeupon decision, he acted.
"I have permits from the commissioner to cover every emergency," thelawyer continued. "I can promise you that there'll be no interferencethis time, even----"
"_Except_ from me!"
The correction issued from behind the cottonwood and was followedimmediately by the appearance of Peter Pape.
Samuel Allen's assurance gurgled in his throat and the apple-red fadedfrom his cheeks as he slid from his seat on the cart-tail to face theunfriendly, 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 thegeneral little scheme of me, even though I do look mussed up thiscrowded afternoon."
Pape's jocularity was a surface effect. The serious cooeperation of hisevery thought and muscle would be needed if he won against such odds.With his gun he waved back two of the crew who, evidently moreaccustomed to the glance of the unfriendly eye than was the jurist, wereedging nearer. Still grinning with pseudo-pleasantry, he tried to guardagainst attack from behind by backing toward the second of theark-bedded carts.
"This morning, Allen, you got me out of limbo through your drag with thelaw," he continued. "Didn't hope for a so-soon opportunity to refundthat 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 theold," 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 myfrankness--get out while you can--out of trouble that doesn't concernyou in the slightest."
"Pardon _my_ frankness--" Pape, too, could feign politeness--"but thistrouble does concern me in the greatest. I hate being in your debt. Ifeel 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 withmanifest relief. Argument was his stock in profession--perhaps he hopedfrom that.
Pape couldn't restrain an out-loud chuckle, so near did he seem to theconsummation of his promises to Jane. "Just you hand over GranddadLauderdale's crypt and those _carte_-blank permits and I'll save youfrom being your own lawyer defending a charge of before-and-afterburglary. Urge 'em upon me, judge, then call off your crew and vamoosepronto--which is roof-of-America for get out quick yourself."
Allen sent a glance of appeal among his hirelings, but elicited noresponse. To them there was, in truth, a stronger appeal in the carelessway the Westerner handled his "hardware." They looked to be gunmenthemselves, but of the metropolitan sort that shoot singly from behindor in concert before. Certain was it that some one would get punctureddid the revolver speak and each was concerned lest he be the ill-fatedhuman "tire."
Allen seemed left to his own devices. Crumpling the cryptic sheet in onehand, he started slowly forward. Pape lifted his foot for a stride alongthe cart-side. But some time elapsed before the sole of his boot againmet mother earth. With the suddenness of most successful attacks on arear guarded over-confidently, the one leg which, for the moment,supported his weight was jerked from under with a violence that pitchedhim face forward.
As he fell his revolver exclaimed, but only an indignant monosyllable. Averitable avalanche of humanity descended upon him, hard in effect asthe rocky ground in their attack with gun butts and fists. For a secondtime he had miscalculated odds; seemed at last to have met defeat. Inthe act, as it were, of seizing the Sturgis' loot, he was put out by ablow from a leather black-jack brought down upon his defenseless head byan expert hand.
Some minutes must have passed before his brain again functioned. In theinterim he had been "hogtied," despite the fact that, literally, theknots were not tied according to the Hoyle of the range. The first thinghe noticed on opening his eyes was that Judge Allen had been stripped ofhis coat and the left sleeves of his outer and under shirts cut away togive place to a bandage. Evidently his instinctive pull on the triggerhad sent a bullet into his preferred target, although lack of aim hadmade it a wing shot.
That the moment was one in which he would best "play Injun" was Pape'sfirst cautionary thought. Not even to ease his painfully cramped limbsdid he attempt to move a muscle. After his first roving look, his eyesfixed, with an acquisitive gleam at variance with his helplessness, uponsomething protruding from the inside pocket of a coat that lay upon theground near his hurting head.
The something, or one very like it, he had seen before--a foldeddocument engraved in brown ink. The coat also he recognized as that tornoff 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 thedisaster which had overtaken him.
The ex-judge: "--and I congratulate you, Duffy, on as neat a turn-tableas I've ever seen."
Even more than to the unctuousness of the voice did Pape object to thejurist's punctuation by boot upon that section of his own anatomy withineasiest reach. His indignation, however, was diverted by the assurancethat it was his enemy of the cauliflower ear who had brought about hisfall.
"Easier than throwing a
seven with your own bones, your honor," Duffyanswered. "Wild-and-woolly here was too tickled with himself to noticeme under the cart tightening of a bolt. All I had to do was lunge outand grab an ankle."
"Hadn't you better go and let some doctor look at that arm, judge?" Theconcerned 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 thingthrough, no matter how it hurts. Send for a surgeon if you know one whodon't insist on reporting gun-shot patients. Come, let's get thisanimated interruption stowed away before the police arrive. Questionsnever asked are easiest answered."
"Leave us throw him in with the powder," suggested a scar-faced bruisernew in the cast, so far as Pape recalled.
And so they might have disposed of him had not Duffy advanced a betterproposition. Nearby was a sort of cave where he had "hidden out" on aformer emergency, he declared. It was dark and dribbly as a tomb--anideal safe-deposit for excess baggage.
"To the tomb with the scorpion, then!"
Beneath his pudginess, the little lawyer seemed hard as the rocks he wasso anxious to blast. With a gesture, he ordered one of the crew to helphim on with his coat.
Pape relaxed the more as three of them laid hold and carried him acrossthe flat. Duffy acted as guide and the lawyer, who assuredly was takingno chances, went along to satisfy himself as to the security of thehide-away. Several yards inside the narrow mouth of Duffy's "sort of"cave they dropped him upon the rock floor; left him without furtherconcern over when, if at all, he should return to consciousness.
For reasons which had filled him with such elation as nearly to exposehis 'possum part, Pape approved their selection of the cave. Now thehope of victory out of defeat came to him with an admission of Allenfrom the entrance:
"I do feel some weakened by this wound. Guess I'd better rest here alittle while. You fellows go back and start turning rocks. Try the tiltyones 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 himselfexcept from the puddle of drippings in which they had chanced to deposithim. Since all seemed quiet, he made sibilant venture.
"Jane ... _Jane_!"
The shadowy figure which at once appeared from out the darker recessesassured him that luck had not entirely deserted him--that thesafe-deposit vault selected for him was the same in which he hadhonor-bound the girl to watch and wait his summons. On entrance of hispallbearers, she had retreated into the depths of the "tomb," quite ashe had hoped she would. And now--in just a minute--he'd show them howalive 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 wasguarded 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 youdead and died myself. I was near-dead of nervousness already. Knowingyou were armed, I feared when I heard the gun report that you had shotsome one and been captured. I couldn't have stayed here doing nothingmuch 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 theconfession back of her words. "You are here to un-hog-tie me. Thekey-knot is pressing the small of my back, or I don't know the feel ofone. See what you can do."
She leaned over him, her hands clasped over his helpless ones. "Only ifyou promise me," she bargained with a vague, tender smile which he justcould see, "that you won't go back at them again. Otherwise you're muchsafer 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 tohis discretion. Helping him turn over, she busied herself with hisbonds. Long and strong as were her fingers, however, they made noimpression upon this particular key-knot, tied to stay tied with somesailor-taught knack.
"Feel in my coat pocket," he suggested. "If they've left me a couple ofmatches----"
She did. And they had. A stroke across his boot top lit one. The odor ofburning hemp did not offend their nostrils; rather, was more gratefulthan the most subtle incense from the freedom promised in its fumes.After the fourth and last Lucifer had been burned to a char, the girlwas able to fray and sunder the rest of the rope. The "key" turned, Papemade short work of the other knots, shook off his bonds and gained hisfeet. His first act of freedom was to seize and kiss the twotaper-tipped, nail-broken, burnt-finger hands which had liberated him.
"Sweet pardner!... Precious pal!"
Pape always remembered his "grave" and the ensuing silence within itsdank 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'tbother promising this time. Just wait until I bring the real tenant ofthis tomb."
Samuel Allen, while seated upon a bowlder of trap-rock that divided theopening, watching the start of the delayed excavation, felt himselfseized without warning from behind. Before he had time to utter morethan a gasp he was dragged back into the cave. Perhaps pain from hisinjured shoulder made him speechless. Possibly surprise at the assaultof the "scorpion," just now unconscious and soundly trussed, hadsomething to do with his inefficiency. He still seemed incapable ofprotest when the captive-turned-captor searched his coat pockets andextracted their contents.
Jane, the while, had taken advantage of her absolution from oath tofollow guardedly; with automatic ready now appeared from darkness intothe light of the entrance.
"If he so much as whines, shoot him--and shoot to kill this time!" Papedirected. "He deserves punishment and on two counts, I think. Just aminute. I want to make sure."
Stepping nearer the opening, he began to run through the letters anddocuments taken from the jurist's coat.
"Jane Lauderdale! Can it really be you, my child?" At last Allen drewupon his font of sebaceousness. "I hope that you, too, are not in thepower of this impossible----"
"She isn't. I'm in hers."
Pape had overheard; now wheeled around. A glance had satisfied him thatthe cryptogram at last was in hand. The brown engravings, the familiarlook of which had held his eyes when he lay trussed in the open, hadconfirmed his first suspicion of them. Folded with the crinkly parchmentwas 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 pastimeought 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, Papeimprovised 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 dishonorableself. We're going to give you opportunity--a little time alone with thecrook."
The accusation left Pape's lips with the assurance of a theorem. Thelegal tricks played in Western courts against his earlier fight toprotect his good name long ago had convinced him that some legal mindwas master of the plot. The jurist's morning skill at court jugglery hadbrought its flash of suspicion. But not until he had discovered Allen asthe Lauderdale enemy had there recurred to him Jane's exclamation,clipped by her father, that some one they knew might be the promoter ofthe oil fraud. Later had come the first sight of tell-tale stockcertificates in the small culprit's pocket, their worth as clinchingproof assured by his recent examination at the mouth of the cave.
For the moment Allen seemed staggered by the charge. He looked a
s thoughhe should find himself exceeding poor company.
Pape turned to Jane. "Once more may I borrow your gun, dear? Some one ofhis plug-uglies seems to have appropriated mine own. Come."
"Don't leave me, child. Don't go with the wild-man," Allen urged thegirl. "He'll only lead you into more trouble. He can't escape my menonce I start them searching for him and the price he'll pay for trussingme up like this----"
"It's worth a goodly price to show you how a truss-up feels," Papeinterrupted. "Of course I can't hope you'll stay caved much longer thanI, 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, thatmy trail's-end should run into yours this way! It looks--don't getscared, now--but it does look a whole lot like Fate."
She regarded him, serious-eyed, yet with faintly smiling lips. "Itlooked a whole lot like that to me the day you told dad and me aboutyour search for----"
The suggestion of a smile vanished as she turned directly toward thewretched-looking little big man. "Wasn't 'Montana Gusher' the name ofthat oil stock you stopped Aunt Helene's buying, Judge Allen? Ah, Ithought so!"
With a glance of contempt for the obviously guilty "family friend," shefollowed Pape out of the cave. From the shadow of the wall they lookedout 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 hisHonor the Judge and do his bidding. There's a limit, as I learned awhileback, 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'sgo get it!"
Almost were they across the open space which they must cover to reachtheir horses when a shouted command to halt told that Allen's gang hadsighted them. Instead of obeying, Pape snatched Jane's hand and urgedher into a run.
They gained a moment in the one lost to the enemy while Swinton Welchexplained to the police lieutenant the necessity of capturing them. Theyreached their mounts, climbed their saddles and were on their way beforethe pursuit started from the far side of the flat. A second time thatafternoon the consecrated precinct of Gotham's pleasure place staged arace--this one quite official, with former pursuers turned quarry.
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