by Unknown
Very slowly he crept forward, always with one eye to his retreat. Why did nobody answer the barking of the dogs? Was he being watched all the time? But how could he be, since he was completely cloaked in darkness?
So at last he came to the nearest cabin, crept to the window, and looked in. A man lay on a bed. His hands and feet were securely tied and a second rope wound round so as to bind him to the bunk.
Flatray tapped softly on a pane. Instantly the head of the bound man slewed round.
"Friend?"
The prisoner asked it ever so gently, but the sheriff heard.
"Yes."
"The top part of the window is open. You can crawl over, I reckon."
Jack climbed on the sill and from it through the window. Almost before he reached the floor his knife was out and he was slashing at the ropes.
"Better put the light out, pardner," suggested the man he was freeing, and the officer noticed that there was no tremor in the cool, steady voice.
"That's right. We'd make a fine mark through the window."
And the light went out.
"I'm Bucky O'Connor. Who are you?"
"Jack Flatray."
They spoke together in whispers. Though both were keyed to the highest pitch of excitement they were as steady as eight-day clocks. O'Connor stretched his limbs, flexing them this way and that, so that he might have perfect control of them. He worked especially over the forearm and fingers of his right arm.
Flatray handed him a revolver.
"Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant."
"All right. It's the cabin next to this."
They climbed out of the window noiselessly and crept to the next hut. The door was locked, the window closed.
"We've got to smash the window. Nothing else for it," Flatray whispered.
"Looks like it. That means we'll have to shoot our way out."
With the butt of his rifle the sheriff shattered the woodwork of the window, driving the whole frame into the room.
"What is it?" a frightened voice demanded.
"Friends, Mr. West. Just a minute."
It took them scarce longer than that to free him and to get him into the open. A Mexican woman came screaming out of an adjoining cabin.
The young men caught each an arm of the capitalist and hurried him forward.
"Hell'll be popping in a minute," Flatray explained.
But they reached the shelter of the underbrush without a shot having been fired. Nor had a single man appeared to dispute their escape.
"Looks like most of the family is away from home to-night," Bucky hazarded.
"Maybe so, but they're liable to drop in any minute. We'll keep covering ground."
They circled round toward the sheriff's horse. As soon as they reached it West, still stiff from want of circulation in his cramped limbs, was boosted into the saddle.
"It's going to be a good deal of a guess to find our way out of the Cache," Jack explained. "Even in the daytime it would take a 'Pache, but at night--well, here's hoping the luck's good."
They found it not so good as they had hoped. For hours they wandered in mesquit, dragged themselves through cactus, crossed washes, and climbed hills.
"This will never do. We'd better give it up till daylight. We're not getting anywhere," the sheriff suggested.
They did as he advised. As soon as a faint gray sifted into the sky they were on the move again. But whichever way they climbed it was always to come up against steep cliffs too precipitous to be scaled.
The ranger officer pointed to a notch beyond a cowbacked hill. "I wouldn't be sure, but it looks like that was the way they brought me into the Cache. I could tell if I were up there. What's the matter with my going ahead and settling the thing? If I'm right I'll come back and let you know."
Jack looked at West. The railroad man was tired and drawn. He was not used to galloping over the hills all night.
"All right. We'll be here when you come back," Flatray said, and flung himself on the ground.
West followed his example.
It must have been half an hour later that Flatray heard a twig snap under an approaching foot. He had been scanning the valley with his glasses, having given West instructions to keep a lookout in the rear. He swung his head round sharply, and with it his rifle.
"You're covered, you fool," cried the man who was strutting toward them.
"Stop there. Not another step," Flatray called sharply.
The man stopped, his rifle half raised. "We've got you on every side, man." He lifted his voice. "Jeff--Hank--Steve! Let him know you're alive."
Three guns cracked and kicked up the dust close to the sheriff.
"What do you want with us?" Flatray asked, sparring for time.
"Drop your gun. If you don't we'll riddle you both."
West spoke to Jack promptly. "Do as he says. It's MacQueen."
Flatray hesitated. He could kill MacQueen probably, but almost certainly he and West would pay the penalty. He reluctantly put his rifle down. "All right. It's your call."
"Where's O'Connor?"
The sheriff looked straight at him. "Haven't you enough of us for one gather?"
The outlaws were closing in on them cautiously.
"Not without that smart man hunter. Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"The devil you don't."
"We separated early this morning--thought it would give us a better chance for a getaway." Jack gave a sudden exclamation of surprise. "So it was Black MacQueen himself who posed as O'Connor down at Mesa."
"Guessed it right, my friend. And I'll tell you one thing: you've made the mistake of your life butting into Dead Man's Cache. Your missing friend O'Connor was due to hand in his checks to-day. Since you've taken his place it will be you that crosses the divide, Mr. Sheriff. You'd better tell where he is, for if we don't get Mr. Bucky it will be God help J. Flatray."
The dapper little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen would go the limit in deviltry if he set his mind to it.
Yet Flatray answered easily, without any perceptible hesitation: "I reckon I'll play my hand and let Bucky play his."
"Suits me if it does you. Jeff, collect that hardware. Now, while you boys beat up the hills for O'Connor, I'll trail back to camp with these two all-night picnickers."
CHAPTER IX
A BARGAIN
Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at that distance who they were. Her watch told her that it was four-thirty. She had slept scarcely at all during the night, but now she lay down on the bed in her clothes.
The next she knew, Rosario was calling her to get up for breakfast. The girl dressed and followed Rosario to the adjoining cabin. MacQueen was not there, and Melissy ate alone. She was given to understand that she might walk up and down in front of the houses for a few minutes after breakfast. Naturally she made the most of the little liberty allowed her.
The old squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a lead pencil.
The young woman walked leisurely past the cabin for perhaps a dozen yards.
"That'll be about far enough. You don't want to tire yourself, Miss Lee," Buck Lane called, with a grin.
Melissy stopped, stood looking at the mountains for a few minutes, and turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerch
ief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as if in doubt.
"I'm tired," she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms.
"Si, señorita," answered her attendant quietly.
Once inside, Melissy lay down on her bed, with her back to the window, and smoothed out the torn envelope. On one side were some disjointed memoranda which she did not understand.
K. C. & T. 93 D. & R. B. 87 Float $10,000,000 Cortes for extension.
That was all, but certainly a strange puzzle for a Navajo squaw to set her.
She turned the paper over, to find the other side close-packed with writing.
Miss Lee:
In the last cabin but one is a prisoner, your friend Sheriff Flatray. He is to be shot in an hour. I have offered any sum for his life and been refused. For God's sake save him somehow.
Simon West. Jack Flatray here, and about to be murdered! The thing was incredible. And yet--and yet---- Was it so impossible, after all? Some one had broken into the Cache and released the prisoners. Who more likely than Jack to have done this? And later they had captured him and condemned him for what he had done.
Melissy reconstructed the scene in a flash. The Indian squaw was West. He had been rigged up in that paraphernalia to deceive any chance mountaineer who might drop into the valley by accident.
No doubt, when he first saw Melissy, the railroad magnate had been passing his time in making notes about his plans for the system he controlled. But when he had caught sight of her, he had written the note, under the very eyes of the guard, had torn the envelope as if it were of no importance, and tossed the pieces away. He had taken the thousandth chance that his note might fall into the hands of the person to whom it was directed.
All this she understood without giving it conscious thought. For her whole mind was filled with the horror of what she had learned. Jack Flatray, the man she loved, was to be killed. He was to be shot down in an hour.
With the thought, she was at her door--only to find that it had been quietly locked while she lay on the bed. No doubt they had meant to keep her a close prisoner until the thing they were about to do was finished. She beat upon it, called to Rosario to let her out, wrung her hands in her desperation. Then she remembered the window. It was a cheap and flimsy case, and had been jammed so that her strength was not sufficient to raise it.
Her eye searched the room for a weapon, and found an Indian tom-tom club. With this she smashed the panes and beat down the wooden cross bars of the sash. Agile as a forest fawn, she slipped through the opening she had made and ran toward the far cabin.
A group of men surrounded the door; and, as she drew near, it opened to show three central figures. MacQueen was one, Rosario Chaves a second; but the most conspicuous was a bareheaded young man, with his hands tied behind him. He was going to his death, but a glance was enough to show that he went unconquered and unconquerable. His step did not drag. There was a faint, grave smile on his lips; and in his eye was the dynamic spark that proclaimed him still master of his fate. The woolen shirt had been unbuttoned and pulled back to make way for the rope that lay loosely about his neck, so that she could not miss the well-muscled slope of his fine shoulders, or the gallant set of the small head upon the brown throat.
The man who first caught sight of Melissy spoke in a low voice to his chief. MacQueen turned his head sharply to see her, took a dozen steps toward her, then upbraided the Mexican woman, who had run out after Melissy.
"I told you to lock her door--to make sure of it."
"Si, señor--I did."
"Then how----" He stopped, and looked to Miss Lee for an explanation.
"I broke the window."
The outlaw noticed then that her hand was bleeding. "Broke the window! Why?"
"I had to get out! I had to stop you!"
He attempted no denial of what he was about to do. "How did you know? Did Rosario tell you?" he asked curtly.
"No--no! I found out--just by chance."
"What chance?" He was plainly disconcerted that she had come to interfere, and as plainly eager to punish the person who had disclosed to her this thing, which he would have liked to do quietly, without her knowledge.
"Never mind that. Nobody is to blame. Say I overheard a sentence. Thank God I did, and I am in time."
There was no avoiding it now. He had to fight it out with her. "In time for what?" he wanted to know, his eyes narrowing to vicious pin points.
"To save him."
"No--no! He must die," cried the Mexican woman.
Melissy was amazed at her vehemence, at the passion of hate that trembled in the voice of the old woman.
MacQueen nodded. "It is out of my hands, you see. He has been condemned."
"But why?"
"Tell her, Rosario."
The woman poured her story forth fluently in the native tongue. O'Connor had killed her son--did not deny that he had done it. And just because Tony had tried to escape. This man had freed the ranger. Very well. He should take O'Connor's place. Let him die the death. A life for a life. Was that not fair?
Flatray turned his head and caught sight of Melissy. A startled cry died on his lips.
"Jack!" She held out both hands to him as she ran toward him.
The sheriff took her in his arms to console her. For the girl's face was working in a stress of emotion.
"Oh, I'm in time--I'm in time. Thank God I'm in time."
Jack waited a moment to steady his voice. "How came you here, Melissy?"
"He brought me--Black MacQueen. I hated him for it, but now I'm glad--so glad--because I can save you."
Jack winced. He looked over her shoulder at MacQueen, taking it all in with an air of pleasant politeness. And one look was enough to tell him that there was no hope for him. The outlaw had the complacent manner of a cat which has just got at the cream. That Melissy loved him would be an additional reason for wiping him off the map. And in that instant a fierce joy leaped up in Flatray and surged through him, an emotion stronger than the fear of death. She loved him. MacQueen could not take that away from him.
"It's all a mistake," Melissy went on eagerly. "Of course they can't blame you for what Lieutenant O'Connor did. It is absurd--ridiculous."
"Certainly." MacQueen tugged at his little black mustache and kept his black eyes on her constantly. "That's not what we're blaming him for. The indictment against your friend is that he interfered when it wasn't his business."
"But it was his business. Don't you know he's sheriff? He had to do it." Melissy turned to the outlaw impetuously.
"So. And I have to play my hand out, too. It wipes out Mr. Flatray. Sorry, but business is business."
"But--but----" Melissy grew pale as the icy fear gripped her heart that the man meant to go on with the crime. "Don't you see? He's the sheriff?"
"And I never did love sheriffs," drawled MacQueen.
The girl repeated herself helplessly. "It was his sworn duty. That was how he looked at it."
A ghost of an ironic smile flitted across the face of the outlaw chief. "Rosario's sworn duty is to avenge her son's death. That is how she looks at it. The rest of us swore the oath with her."
"But Lieutenant O'Connor had the law back of him. This is murder!"
"Not at all. It is the law of the valley--a life for a life."
"But---- Oh, no--no--no!"
"Yes."
The finality of it appalled her. She felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. She knew that argument and entreaty were of no avail, yet she desperately besought first one and then another of them to save the prisoner. Each in turn shook his head. She could see that none of them, save Rosario, bore him a grudge; yet none would move to break the valley oath. At the last, she was through with her promises and her prayers. She had spent them all, and had come up against the wall of blank d
espair.
Then Jack's grave smile thanked her. "You've done what you could, Melissy."
She clung to him wildly. "Oh, no--no! I can't let you go, Jack. I can't. I can't."
"I reckon it's got to be, dear," he told her gently.