Brand Blotters

by Raine, William MacLeod

  In this extremity Rosario was a first aid to the injured. She had betrayed the bandits without the least compunction, because they had ignored the oath of vengeance against the slayer of her son; but she nursed them all impartially and skillfully until the doctor arrived, late next day.

  Meanwhile Bellamy and McKinstra, guided by one of the outlaws, surprised Jeff and released Flatray, who returned with them to camp.

  With the doctor had come also four members of the Lee posse. To the deputy in charge Jack turned over his four prisoners and the gold recovered. As soon as the doctor had examined and dressed his wound he mounted and took the trail after MacQueen. With him rode Bellamy.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  MELISSY ENTERTAINS

  The notes of Schumann’s “Traümerei” died away. Melissy glanced over her music, and presently ran lightly into Chopin’s “Valse Au Petit Chien.” She was, after all, only a girl; and there were moments when she forgot to remember that she was wedded to the worst of unhanged villains. When she drowned herself fathoms deep in her music, she had the best chance of forgetting.

  Chaminade’s “The Flatterer” followed. In the midst of this the door opened quietly and closed again. Melissy finished, fingered her music, and became somehow aware that she was not alone. She turned unhurriedly on the seat and met the smiling eyes of her husband.

  From his high-heeled boots to his black, glossy hair, Black MacQueen was dusty with travel. Beside him was a gunny sack, tied in the middle and filled at both ends. Picturesque he was and always would be, but his present costume scarce fitted the presence of a lady. Yet of this he gave no sign. He was leaning back in a morris chair, rakish, debonair, and at his ease. Evidently, he had been giving appreciative ear to the music, and more appreciative eye to the musician.

  “So it’s you,” said Melissy, white to the lips.

  MacQueen arose, recovered his dusty hat from the floor, and bowed theatrically. “Your long-lost husband, my dear.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m visiting my wife. The explanation seems a trifle obvious.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Have I said I wanted anything?”

  “Then you had better leave. I’ll give you up if I get a chance.”

  He looked at her with lazy derision. “I like you angry. Your eyes snap electricity, sweet.”

  “Oh!” She gave a gesture of impatience. “Do you know that, if I were to step to that window and call out your name, the whole town would be in arms against you?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I shall, if you don’t go.”

  “Are you alone in the house?”

  “Why do you ask?” Her heart was beating fast.

  “Because you must hide me till night. Is your father here?”

  “Not now. He is hunting you—to kill you if he finds you.”

  “Servants?”

  “The cook is out for the afternoon. She will be back in an hour or two.”

  “Good! Get me food.”

  She did not rise. “I must know more. What is it? Are they hunting you? What have you done now?” A strong suppressed excitement beat in her pulses.

  “It is not what I have done, but what your friends have done. Yesterday I went to exchange West for the ransom money. Most of my men I had to take with me, to guard against foul play. We held the cañon from the flat tops, and everything went all right. The exchange was made. We took the ransom money back to the Cache. I don’t know how it was—whether somebody played me false and sold us, or whether your friend Flatray got loose and his posse stumbled in by accident. But there they were in the Cache when we got back.”

  “Yes?” The keenest agitation was in Melissy’s voice.

  “They took us by surprise. We fought. Two of my men ran away. Two were shot down. I was alone.”

  “And then?”

  The devil of torment moved in him. “Then I shot up one of your friend’s outfit, rode away, changed my mind, and went back, shot your friend, and hiked off into the hills with a pack horse loaded with gold.”

  Out of all this one thing stood out terribly to her. “You shot Jack Flatray—again!”

  He laughed. One lie more or less made no difference. “I sure did.”

  She had to moisten her lips before she could ask the next question: “You—killed him?”

  “No—worse luck!”

  “How do you know?”

  “He and another man were on the trail after me to-day. I saw them pass up Moose Creek from a ledge on which I was lying. If I had had a rifle, I would have finished the job; but my carbine was gone. It was too far for a six-gun.”

  “But, if you wounded him last night, how could he be trailing you to-day?”

  “I reckon it was a flesh wound. His shoulder was tied up, I noticed.” Impatiently he waved Flatray out of the conversation. “I didn’t come here to tell you about him. I got to get out on tonight’s train. This country has grown too hot for me. You’re going with me?”

  “No!”

  “Yes, by God!”

  “I’ll never go with you—never—never!” she cried passionately. “I’m free of the bargain. You broke faith. So shall I.”

  She saw his jaw clamp. “So you’re going to throw me down, are you?”

  Melissy stood before him, slim and straight, without yielding an inch. She was quite colorless, for he was a man with whose impulses she could not reckon. But one thing she knew. He could never take her away with him and escape. And she knew that he must know it, too.

  “If you want to call it that. You tricked me into marrying you. You meant to betray me all the time. Go, while there’s still a chance. I don’t want your blood on my hands.”

  It was characteristic of him that he always wanted more what he could not get.

  “Don’t answer so quick, girl. Listen to me. I’ve got enough in that sack to start us in the cattle business in Argentina. There’s more buried in the hills, if we need it. Girl, I tell you I’m going to run straight from to-day!”

  She laughed scornfully. “And in the same breath you tell me how much you have stolen and are taking with you. If you were a Crœsus, I wouldn’t go with you.” She flamed into sudden, fierce passion. “Will you never understand that I hate and detest you?”

  “You think you do, but you don’t. You love me—only you won’t let yourself believe it.”

  “There’s no arguing with such colossal conceit,” she retorted, with hard laughter. “It’s no use to tell you that I should like to see you dead at my feet.”

  Swiftly he slid a revolver from its holster, and presented it to her, butt first. “You can have your wish right easy, if you mean it. Go to it. There’s no danger. All you’ve got to give out is that I frightened you. You’ll be a heroine, too.”

  She looked at the weapon and at him, and the very thought of it made her sick. She saw the thing almost as if it were already done—the smoking revolver in her hand, and the man lying motionless before her.

  “Take it away,” she said, with a shudder.

  “You see, you can’t do it! You can’t even go to the window there and shout out that Black MacQueen is with you in the house. You don’t hate me at all, my dear.”

  “Because I won’t kill you with my own hand? You reason logically.”

  “Then why don’t you betray my presence? Why don’t you call your friends in to take me?”

  “I’m not sure that I won’t; but if I don’t, it will be for their sakes, and not for yours. They could not take you without loss of life.”

  “You’re right there,” he agreed, with a flash of his tigerish ferocity. “They couldn’t take me alive at all, and I reckon before I checked in a few of them would.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV

  BLACK MACQUEEN CASHES HIS CHECKS

  It was part of his supreme audacity to trust her. While he was changing his dusty, travel-stained clothes for some that belonged to her brother sh
e prepared a meal for him downstairs. A dozen times the impulse was on her to fly into the street and call out that Black MacQueen was in the house, but always she restrained herself. He was going to leave the country within a few hours. Better let him go without bloodshed.

  He came down to his dinner fresh from a bath and a shave, wearing a new tweed suit, which fitted him a trifle loosely, but was not unbecoming to his trim, lithe figure. No commercial traveler at a familiar hotel could have been more jauntily and blithely at home.

  “So you didn’t run away!” He grinned.

  “Not yet. I’m going to later. I owe you a meal, and I wanted to pay it first.”

  It was his very contempt of fear that had held her. To fool away half an hour in dressing, knowing that it was very likely she might be summoning men to kill him—to come down confident and unperturbed, possibly to meet his death—was such a piece of dare-deviltry as won reluctant admiration, in spite of her detestation of him. Even if she did not give him up, his situation was precarious in the extreme. All the trains were being watched; and in spite of this he had to walk boldly to the station, buy a ticket, and pass himself off for an ordinary traveler.

  Both knew that the chances were against him, but he gave no sign of concern or anxiety. Never had Melissy seen him so full of spirits. The situation would have depressed most men; him it merely stimulated. The excitement of it ran like wine through his blood. Driven from his hills, with every man’s hand against him, with the avenues of escape apparently closed, he was in his glory. He would play his cards out to the end, without whining, no matter how the game might go.

  Melissy washed the dishes, in order that the cook might not know that she had had a guest for luncheon. The two returned to the living room. It was his whim to have her play for him; and she was glad to comply, because it interfered with his wooing. She was no longer greatly afraid of him, for she knew that he was on his good behavior to win her liking.

  Fortune favored her. For some time they had heard the cook moving about in the kitchen. Once she had poked her head in to know whether her young mistress would like the cherry pie for dinner.

  “I didn’t know yez had company, Miss ’Lissie,” she had apologized.

  “This gentleman will stay to dinner,” Melissy had announced.

  At luncheon Melissy had not eaten with him; but at dinner it was necessary, on account of the cook, that she sit down, too. The meal had scarce begun when Kate came beaming in.

  “Shure, Miss ’Lissie, there’s another young gentleman at the door. It’s Mr. Bellamy. I tould him to come right in. He’s washing his face first.”

  Melissy rose, white as a sheet. “All right, Kate.”

  But as soon as the cook had left the room she turned to the outlaw. “What shall I do? What shall I do?”

  Little whimsical imps of mischief shone in his eyes. “Have him in and introduce him to your husband, my dear.”

  “You must go—quick. If I don’t get rid of him, you’ll be able to slip out the back way and get to the depot. He doesn’t know you are here.”

  MacQueen sat back and gave her his easy, reckless smile. “Guess again. Bellamy can’t drive me out.”

  She caught her hands together. “Oh, go—go! There will be trouble. You wouldn’t kill him before my very eyes!”

  “Not unless he makes the first play. It’s up to him.” He laughed with the very delight of it. “I’d as lief settle my account with him right now. He’s meddled too much in my affairs.”

  She broke out in a cry of distress: “You wouldn’t! I’ve treated you fair. I could have betrayed you, and I didn’t. Aren’t you going to play square with me?”

  He nodded. “All right. Show him in. He won’t know me except as Lieutenant O’Connor. It was too dark last night to see my face.”

  Bellamy came into the room.

  “How’s Jack?” Melissy asked quickly as she caught his hand.

  “Good as new. And you?”

  “All right.”

  The outlaw stirred uneasily in his seat. His vanity objected to another man holding the limelight while he was present.

  Melissy turned. “I think you have never met Lieutenant O’Connor, Mr. Bellamy. Lieutenant—Mr. Bellamy.”

  They shook hands. MacQueen smiled. He was enjoying himself.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Bellamy. You and Flatray have won the honors surely. You beat us all to it, sir. As I rode in this mornin’, everybody was telling how you rounded up the outlaws. Have you caught MacQueen himself?”

  “Not yet. We have reason to believe that he rode within ten miles of town this morning before he cut across to the railroad. The chances are that he will try to board a train at some water tank in the dark. We’re having them all watched. I came in to telephone all stations to look out for him.”

  “Where’s Jack?” Melissy asked.

  “He’ll be here presently. His arm was troubling him some, so he stopped to see the doctor. Then he has to talk with his deputy.”

  “You’re sure he isn’t badly hurt?”

  “No, only a scratch, he calls it.”

  “Did you happen on Dead Man’s Cache by accident?” asked MacQueen with well-assumed carelessness.

  Bellamy had no intention of giving Rosario away to anybody. “You might call it that,” he said evenly. “You know, I had been near there once when I was out hunting.”

  “Do you expect to catch MacQueen?” the outlaw asked, a faint hint of irony in his amused voice.

  “I can’t tell. That’s what I’m hoping, lieutenant.”

  “We hope for a heap of things we never get,” returned the outlaw, in a gentle voice, his eyes half shuttered behind drooping lids.

  Melissy cut into the conversation hurriedly. “Lieutenant O’Connor is going on the seven-five this evening, Mr. Bellamy. He has business that will take him away for a while. It is time we were going. Won’t you walk down to the train with us?”

  MacQueen swore softly under his breath, but there was nothing he could say in protest. He knew he could not take the girl with him. Now he had been cheated out of his good-byes by her woman’s wit in dragging Bellamy to the depot with them. He could not but admire the adroitness with which she had utilized her friend to serve her end.

  They walked to the station three abreast, the outlaw carrying as lightly as he could the heavy suitcase that held his plunder. Melissy made small talk while they waited for the train. She was very nervous, and she was trying not to show it.

  “Next time you come, lieutenant, we’ll have a fine stone depot to show you. Mr. West has promised to make Mesa the junction point, and we’re sure to have a boom,” she said.

  A young Mexican vaquero trailed softly behind them, the inevitable cigarette between his lips. From under his broad, silver-laced sombrero he looked keenly at each of the three as he passed.

  A whistle sounded clearly in the distance.

  The outlaw turned to the girl beside him. “I’m coming back some day soon. Be sure of that, Mrs. MacQueen.”

  The audacity of the name used, designed as it was to stab her friend and to remind Melissy how things stood, made the girl gasp. She looked quickly at Bellamy and saw him crush the anger from his face.

  The train drew into the station. Presently the conductor’s “All aboard!” served notice that it was starting. The outlaw shook hands with Melissy and then with the mine owner.

  “Good-bye. Don’t forget that I’m coming back,” he said, in a perfectly distinct, low tone.

  And with that he swung aboard the Pullman car with his heavy suitcase. An instant later the Mexican vaquero pulled himself to the vestibule of the smoking car ahead.

  MacQueen looked back from the end of the train at the two figures on the platform. A third figure had joined them. It was Jack Flatray. The girl and the sheriff were looking at each other. With a furious oath, he turned on his heel. For the evidence of his eyes had told him that they were lovers.

  MacQueen passed into the coach and flung himself down i
nto his section discontentedly. The savor of his adventure was gone. He had made his escape with a large share of the plunder, in spite of spies and posses. But in his heart he knew that he had lost forever the girl whom he had forced to marry him. He was still thinking about it somberly when a figure appeared in the aisle at the end of the car.

  Instantly the outlaw came to alert attention, and his hand slipped to the butt of a revolver. The figure was that of the Mexican vaquero whom he had carelessly noted on the platform of the station. Vigilantly his gaze covered the approaching man. Surely in Arizona there were not two men with that elastic tread or that lithe, supple figure.

  His revolver flashed in the air. “Stand back, Bucky O’Connor—or, by God, I’ll drill you!”

  The vaquero smiled. “Right guess, Black MacQueen. I arrest you in the name of the law.”

  Black’s revolver spat flame twice before the ranger’s gun got into action, but the swaying of the train caused him to stagger as he rose to his feet.

  The first shot of Bucky’s revolver went through the heart of the outlaw; but so relentless was the man that, even after that, his twitching fingers emptied the revolver. O’Connor fired only once. He watched his opponent crumple up, fling wild shots into the upholstery and through the roof, and sink into the silence from which there is no awakening on this side of the grave. Then he went forward and looked down at him.

  “I reckon that ends Black MacQueen,” he said quietly. “And I reckon Melissy Lee is a widow.”

  * * *

  Jack Flatray had met O’Connor at his own office and the two had come down to the station on the off chance that MacQueen might try to make his getaway from Mesa in some disguise. But as soon as he saw Melissy the sheriff had eyes for nobody else except the girl he loved. One sleeve of his coat was empty, and his shoulder was bandaged. He looked very tired and drawn; for he had ridden hard more than sixteen hours with a painful wound. But the moment his gaze met hers she knew that his thoughts were all for her and her trouble.