by Unknown
So, hour after hour, he swung forward, pushing his horse over the ground in a sort of running walk, common to the plains. Sunset found him climbing from the foothills into the mountains beyond. Starlight came upon him in a saddle between the peaks, still plodding up by winding paths to the higher altitudes that make the ridge of the continent's backbone.
The moon was up long before he struck a gulch spur that led to Elkhorn Cañon. Whether he would be in time or not--assuming that he had guessed aright as to the destination of the outlaws--he could not tell. It would be, at best, a near thing. For, though he had come more directly, they had followed a trail which made the going much faster. Fast as the cow pony could pick its way along the rock-strewn gulch, he descended, eye and ear alert to detect the presence of another human being in this waste of boulders, of moonlit, flickering shadows, of dark awesome peaks.
His quick ear caught the faintest of sounds. He slipped from the saddle and stole swiftly forward to the point where the gulch joined the main cañon. Voices drifted to him--the sound of careless laughter, wafted by the light night wind. He had missed the outlaws by scarce a hundred yards. There was nothing for it but to follow cautiously. As he was turning to go back for his horse the moon emerged from behind a cloud and flooded the cañon with a cold, silvery light. It showed Jack a man and a horse standing scarce twenty yards from him. The man had his back to him. He had dismounted, and was tightening the cinches of his saddle.
Flatray experienced a pang of disappointment. He was unarmed. His second thought sent him flying noiselessly back to his horse. Deftly he unloosed the rope which always hung coiled below the saddle horn. On tiptoe he ran back to the gulch mouth, bearing to the right, so as to come directly opposite the man he wanted. As he ran he arranged the lariat to his satisfaction, freeing the loop and making sure that the coil was not bound. Very cautiously he crept forward, taking advantage for cover of a boulder which rose from the bed of the gulch.
The man had finished tightening the girth. His foot rose to the stirrup. He swung up from the ground, and his right leg swept across the flank of the pony. It did not reach the stirrup; for, even as he rose, Jack's lariat snaked forward and dropped over his head to his breast. It tightened sharply and dragged him back, pinioning his arms to his side. Before he could shake one of them free to reach the revolver in his chaps, he was lying on his back, with Flatray astride of him. The cattleman's left hand closed tightly upon his windpipe, while the right searched for and found the weapon in the holster of the prostrate man.
Not until the steel rim of it pressed against the teeth of the man beneath him did Jack's fingers loosen. "Make a sound, and you're a dead man."
The other choked and gurgled. He was not yet able to cry out, even had he any intention of so doing. But defiant eyes glared into those of the man who had unhorsed and captured him.
"Where are your pals bound for?" Flatray demanded.
He got no answer in words, but sullen eyes flung out an obstinate refusal to give away his associates.
"I reckon you're one of the Roaring Fork outfit," Jack suggested.
"You know so darn much I'll leave you to guess the rest," growled the prisoner.
"The first thing I'll guess is that, if anything happens to Simon West, you'll hang for it, my friend."
"You'll have to prove some things first."
Flatray's hand slid into the man's coat pocket, and drew forth a piece of black cloth that had been used as a mask.
"Here's exhibit A, to begin with."
The man on the ground suddenly gave an upward heave, grasped at the weapon, and let out a yell for help that echoed back from the cliff, while the cattleman let the butt of the revolver crash heavily down upon his face. The heavy gun came down three times before the struggling outlaw would subside, and then not before blood streamed from ugly gashes into his eyes.
"I've had enough, damn you!" the fellow muttered sullenly. "What do you want with me?"
"You'll go along with me. Let out another sound, and I'll bump you off. Get a move on you."
Jack got to his feet and dragged up his prisoner. The man was a heavy-set, bowlegged fellow of about forty, hard-faced, and shifty-eyed--a frontier miscreant, unless every line of the tough, leathery countenance told a falsehood. But he had made his experiment and failed. He knew what manner of man his captor was, and he had no mind for another lesson from him. He slouched to his horse, under propulsion of the revolver, and led the animal into the gulch.
Both mounted, Jack keeping the captive covered every moment of the time; and they began to retrace the way by which the young cattleman had just come.
After they had ridden about a quarter of a mile Flatray made a readjustment of the rope. He let the loop lie loosely about the neck of the outlaw, the other end of it being tied to the horn of his own saddle. Also, he tied the hands of the man in such a way that, though they were free to handle the bridle rein, he could not raise them from the saddle as high as his neck.
"If you make any sudden moves, you'll be committing suicide. If you yell out, it will amount to about the same thing. It's up to you to be good, looks like."
The man cursed softly. He knew that the least attempt to escape or to attract the attention of his confederates would mean his undoing. Something about this young man's cold eye and iron jaw told him that he would not hesitate to shoot, if necessary.
Voices came to them from the cañon. Flatray guessed that a reconnaissance of the gulch would be made, and prepared himself for it by deflecting his course from the bed of the arroyo at a point where the walls fell back to form a little valley. A little grove of aspens covered densely the shoulder of a hillock some fifty yards back, and here he took his stand. He dismounted, and made his prisoner do the same.
"Sit down," he ordered crisply.
"What for?"
"To keep me from blowing the top of your head off," answered Jack quietly.
Without further discussion, the man sat down. His captor stood behind him, one hand on the shoulder of his prisoner, his eyes watching the point of the gulch at which the enemy would appear.
Two mounted men showed presently in silhouette. Almost opposite the grove they drew up.
"Mighty queer what has become of Hank," one of them said. "But I don't reckon there's any use looking any farther. You don't figure he's aiming to throw us down--do you, Buck?"
"Nope. He'll stick, Hank will. But it sure looks darned strange. Here's him a-ridin' along with us, and suddenly he's missin'. We hear a yell, and go back to look for him. Nothin' doin'. You don't allow the devil could have come for him sudden--do you, Jeff?"
It was said with a laugh, defiantly, but none the less Jack read uneasiness in the manner of the man. It seemed to him that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years' wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.
Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. "Did you hear that, Buck?"
"What--what do you reckon it was, Jeff?"
Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.
The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men, afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.
He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes fell silent. "We'll be moving," he announced to his prisoner.
For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the darkness grew with the passing hours. At l
ength Flatray had to call a halt.
"We'll camp here till morning," he announced when they reached a grassy park.
The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.
"Time to hit the trail."
The outlaw murmured sleepily, "How's that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand apiece!"
"Wake up! We've got to vamose out of here."
Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master, and was cowed.
CHAPTER III
THE TABLES TURNED
From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes which pierced one like bullets.
The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the surface.
"Mornin', gentlemen," he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.
"Mornin'," responded one of the loafers.
"I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor Lee."
"The mayor ain't to home," volunteered a lank, unshaven native in butternut jeans and boots.
"I think it was his house I inquired for," suggested the stranger.
"Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice--a big two-story brick, with a gallery and po'ches all round it."
Having thanked his informant, the stranger passed down the street. The curious saw him pass in at the mayor's gate and knock at the door. It opened presently, and disclosed a flash of white, which they knew to be the skirt of a girl.
"I reckon that's Miss 'Lissie," the others were informed by the unshaven one. "She's let him in and shet the door."
Inevitably there followed speculation as to who the arrival might be. That his coming had something to do with the affair of the West kidnapping, all were disposed to agree; but just what it might have to do with it, none of them could do more than guess. If they could have heard what passed between Melissy and the stranger, their curiosity would have been gratified.
"Good mornin', miss. Is Mayor Lee at home?"
"No--he isn't. He hasn't got back yet. Is there anything I can do for you?"
Two rows of even white teeth flashed in a smile. "I thought maybe there was something I could do for you. You are Miss Lee, I take it?"
"Yes. But I don't quite understand--unless you have news."
"I have no news--yet."
"You mean----" Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. "You are not Lieutenant O'Connor?"
"Am I not?" he smiled.
"I mean--are you?"
"At your service, Miss Lee."
She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona "bad men." Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew--game men all--hailed Bucky O'Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.
"Come in," the girl invited. "Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He's hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn't know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn't been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray's name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roaring Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn't armed. I'm troubled about him."
Again the young man's white-toothed smile flashed. "You'd better be. Anybody that goes hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured."
She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. "Yes--but he would go. He doesn't mean them to see him, if he can help it."
"Black sees a heap he isn't expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day."
"Yes--I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?"
"It's a big thing--the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?"
"That's what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn't have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him."
"Are they?"
She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man's voice, and laid it to his vanity. "I don't mean that they are. I mean that you are sure to get him," she hastened to add. "Father thinks you are wonderful."
"I'm much obliged to him," said the man, with almost a sneer.
He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him--which was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.
"I didn't look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven," she said. "I understood that was the earliest you could get here."
His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. "I found I could make an earlier train."
"I'm glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh."
"Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?" he asked.
"Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped."
"Did you know any of the men?"
She hesitated. "I thought one was Duncan Boone."
"What made you think so?"
"He was the leader, I think, moved the way he does." Her anger flashed for an instant. "And acted like him--detestably."
"Was he violent to West? Injure him?"
"No--he didn't do him any physical injury that I saw. I wasn't thinking about Mr. West."
"Surely he didn't lay hands on you!"
She looked up, in time to see the flicker of amusement sponged from his face. It stirred vague anger in her. "He was insolent and ungentlemanly."
"As how?"
"It doesn't matter how." Her manner specifically declined to particularize.
"Would you recognize him again if you met him? Describe him, if you can."
"Yes. I used to know him well--before he became known as an outlaw," she added after a perceptible hesitation. "There's something ravenous about him."
"You mean that he is fierce and bloodthirsty?"
"No--I don't mean that; though, for that matter, I don't think he would stick at anything. What I mean is that he is pantherine in his movements--more lithe and supple than most men are."
"Is he a big man?"
"No--medium size, and dark."
"There were four of them, you say?"
"Yes. Jack saw them, too, but at a distance."
"He reached you after they were out of sight?"
"They had been gone about five minutes when I saw him--five or ten. I couldn't be sure."
"Boone offered no personal indignity to you?"
"Why are you so sure?" she flashed.
"The story is that he is quite the ladies' man."
Melissy laughed scornfully.
At his request, she went over again
the story of the abduction, telling everything save the matter of the ravished kisses. This she kept to herself. She did not quite know why, except that there was something she did not like about this Bucky O'Connor. He had a trick of narrowing his eyes and gloating over her, as a cat gloats over its expected kill.
However, his confidence impressed her. Cocksure he was, and before long she knew him boastful; but competence sat on him, none the less. She thought she could see why he was held to be the most deadly bloodhound on a trail that even Arizona could produce. That he was fearless she did not need to be told, any more than she needed a certificate that on occasion he could be merciless. On the other hand, he fitted very badly with the character of the young lieutenant of rangers, as Jack Flatray had sketched it for her. Her friend's description of his hero had been enthusiastic. She decided that the young cattleman was a bad judge of men--though, of course, he had never actually met O'Connor.