by Unknown
"How did you get here-- what has happened?" he demanded.
Hurriedly she explained.
"Oh, take me away, take me away!" she concluded, nestling to him with no thought now of seeking to disguise her helpless dependence upon him, of hiding from herself the realization that he was the man into whose keeping destiny had ordained that she was to give her heart.
"All right, honey. You're sure all safe now," he said tenderly, and in the blackness his lips sought and met hers in a kiss that sealed the understanding their souls had reached.
At the sound of Neill's voice Dunke had extinguished the candle and vanished in the darkness with Struve, the latter holding him by the arm in a despairing grip. Neill shouted again and again, as he relighted his candle, but there came no answer to his calls.
"We had better make for the shaft," he said.
They set out on the long walk to the opening that led up to the light and the pure air. For a while they walked on in silence. At last he took her hand and guided her fingers across the seam on his wrist.
"It don't seem only four days since you did that, honey," he murmured.
"Did I do that?" Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.
"Don't, sweet. I deserved what I got and more. I'm ready with that apology you didn't want then, Peggy."
"But I don't want it now, either. I won't have it. Didn't I tell you I wouldn't? Besides," she added, with a little leap of laughter in her voice, "why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant to-- to----"
He finished it for her.
"To marry, Peggy. I didn't know it then, but I knew it before you said good-by with your whip."
"And I didn't know it till next morning," she said.
"Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?"
"That was why I was so mean to you. I had to punish myself and you because I-- liked you so well."
She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.
It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance of their common happiness. His joy pealed now delightedly.
"I can't believe it-- that four days ago you wasn't on the earth for me. Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sassy ways."
"That's just the way I feel about you. It's really scandalous that in less than a week-- just a little more than half a week-- we should be engaged. We are engaged, aren't we?"
"Very much."
"Well, then-- it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right. Isn't it?"
"It ce'tainly is."
"But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers. I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me."
"Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy."
"And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already."
She paused, startled at the impossible thought.
"It must have happened before I can remember, then," he laughed.
"Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern people do, they say."
"Then I'm an exception."
"And me-- you don't know anything about me."
"A fellow has to take some risk or quit living," he told her gaily.
"When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?"
"The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating," he conceded. "I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting."
"Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk it."
And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss awaiting her.
CHAPTER XII
EXIT DUNKE
Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion. Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed.
"Got onto you, didn't she?"
Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat.
"I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still," he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the face.
Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp.
"What-- what did you do-- that for?" His furtive ratlike face looked venomous in its impotent anger. "I'll pay you for this-- and don't you-- forget it, Joe Dunke!"
"You'd shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance."
"I ain't looking for no such chance. I--"
"That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively."
Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated. He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level, passed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.
"I'll arrange to get you out of here to-night and have you run across the line. I'm going to give you three hundred dollars. That's the last cent you'll ever get out of me. If you ever come back to this country I'll see that you're hanged as you deserve."
With that Dunke turned on his heel and was gone. But his contempt for the ruffian he had cowed was too fearless. He would have thought so if he could have known of the shadow that dogged his heels through the tunnel, if he could have seen the bare fangs that had gained Struve his name of "Wolf," if he could have caught the flash of the knife that trembled in the eager hand. He did not know that, as he shot up in the cage to the sunlight, the other was filling the tunnel with imprecations and wild threats, that he was hugging himself with the promise of a revenge that should be sure and final.
Dunke went about the task of making the necessary arrangements personally. He had his surrey packed with food, and about eleven o'clock drove up to the mine and was lowered to the ninth level. An hour later he stepped out of the cage with a prisoner whom he kept covered with a revolver.
"It's that fellow Struve," he explained to the astonished engineer in the shaft-house. "I found him down below. It seems that Fraser took him down the Jackrabbit and he broke loose and worked through to our ground."
"Do you want any help in taking him downtown, sir? Shall I phone for the marshal?"
His boss laughed scornfully.
"When I can't handle one man after I've got him covered I'll let you know, Johnson."
The two men went out into the starlit night and got into the surrey. The play with the revolver had hitherto been for the benefit of Johnson, but it now became very real. Dunke jammed the rim close to the other's temple.
"I want that letter I wrote you. Quick, by Heaven! No fairy-tales, but the letter!"
"I swear, Joe--"
"The letter, you villain! I know you never let it go out of your possession. Give it up! Quick!"
Struve's hand stole to his breast, came out slowly to the edge of his coat, then leaped with a flash of something bright toward the other's throat. Simultaneously the revolver rang out. A curse, the sound of a falling body, and the frightened horses leaped forward. The wheels slipped over the edge of the narrow mountain road, and surrey, horses, and driver plunged a hundred feet down to the sharp, broken rocks below.
Johnson, hearing the shot, ran out and stumbled over a body lying in the road. By the bright moonlight he could see that it was that of his employer. The surrey was nowhere in sight, but he could easily make out where it had
slipped over the precipice. He ran back into the shaft-house and began telephoning wildly to town.
CHAPTER XIII
STEVE OFFERS CONGRATULATIONS
When Fraser reached the dining-room for breakfast his immediate family had finished and departed. He had been up till four o'clock and his mother had let him sleep as long as he would. Now, at nine, he was up again and fresh as a daisy after a morning bath.
He found at the next table two other late breakfasters.
"Mo'ning, Miss Kinney. How are you, Tennessee?" he said amiably.
Both Larry and the young woman admitted good health, the latter so blushingly that Steve's keen eyes suggested to him that he might not be the only one with news to tell this morning.
"What's that I hear about Struve and Dunke?" asked Neill at once.
"Oh, you've heard it. Well, it's true. I judge Dunke was arranging to get him out of the country. Anyhow, Johnson says he took the fellow out to his surrey from the shaft-house of the Mal Pais under his gun. A moment later the engineer heard a shot and ran out. Dunke lay in the road dead, with a knife through his heart. We found the surrey down in the canyon. It had gone over the edge of the road. Both the hawsses were dead, and Struve had disappeared. How the thing happened I reckon never will be known unless the convict tells it. My guess would be that Dunke attacked him and the convict was just a little bit more than ready for him."
"Have you any idea where Struve is?"
"The obvious guess would be that he is heading for Mexico. But I've got another notion. He knows that's where we will be looking for him. His record shows that he used to trail with a bunch of outlaws up in Wyoming. That was most twenty years ago. His old pals have disappeared long since. But he knows that country up there. He'll figure that down here he's sure to be caught and hanged sooner or later. Up there he'll have a chance to hide under another name."
Neill nodded. "That's a big country up there and the mountains are full of pockets. If he can reach there he will be safe."
"Maybe," the ranger amended quietly.
"Would you follow him?"
The officer's opaque gaze met the eyes of his friend. "We don't aim to let a prisoner make his getaway once we get our hands on him. Wyoming ain't so blamed far to travel after him-- if I learn he is there."
For a moment all of them were silent. Each of them was thinking of the fellow and the horrible trail of blood he had left behind him in one short week. Margaret looked at her lover and shuddered. She had not the least doubt that this man sitting opposite them would bring the criminal back to his punishment, but the sinister grotesque shadow of the convict seemed to fall between her and her happiness.
Larry caught her hand under the table and gave it a little pressure of reassurance. He spoke in a low voice. "This hasn't a thing to do with us, Peggy-- not a thing. They were already both out of your life."
"Yes, I know, but--"
"There aren't any buts." He smiled warmly, and his smile took the other man into their confidence. "You've been having a nightmare. That's past. See the sunshine on those hills. It's bright mo'ning, girl. A new day for you and for me."
Steve grinned. "This is awful sudden, Tennessee. You must a-been sawing wood right industrious on the hawssback ride and down in the tunnel. I expect there wasn't any sunshine down there, was there?"
"You go to grass, Steve."
"No, Tennessee is ce'tainly no two-bit man. Lemme see. One-- two-- three-- four days. That's surely going some," the ranger soliloquized.
"Mr. Fraser," the young woman reproved with a blush.
"Don't mind him, Peggy. He's merely jealous," came back Larry.
"Course I'm jealous. Whyfor not? What license have these Panhandle guys to come in and tote off our girls? But don't mind me. I'll pay strict attention to my ham and eggs and not see a thing that's going on."
"Lieutenant!" Miss Margaret was both embarrassed and shocked.
"Want me to shut my eyes, Tennessee?"
"Next time we get engaged you'll not be let in on the ground floor," Neill predicted.
"Four days! My, my! If that ain't rapid transit for fair!"
"You're a man of one idea, Steve. Cayn't you see that the fact's the main thing, not the time it took to make it one?"
"And counting out Sunday and Monday, it only leaves two days."
"Don't let that interfere with your breakfast. You haven't been elected timekeeper for this outfit, you know!"
Fraser recovered from his daze and duly offered congratulations to the one and hopes for unalloyed joy to the other party to the engagement.
"But four days!" he added in his pleasant drawl. "That's sure some precipitous. Just to look at him, ma'am"-- this innocently to Peggy-- "a man wouldn't think he had it in him to locate, stake out, and do the necessary assessment work on such a rich claim as the Margaret Kinney all in four days. Mostly a fellow don't strike such high-grade ore without a lot of--"
"That will do for you, lieutenant," interrupted Miss Kinney, with merry, sparkling eyes. "You needn't think we're going to let you trail this off into a compliment now. I'm going to leave you and see what Mrs. Collins says. She won't sit there and parrot 'Four days' for the rest of her life."
With which Mistress Peggy sailed from the room in mock hauteur.
When Larry came back from closing the door after her, his friend fell upon him with vigorous. hands to the amazement of Wun Hop, the waiter.
"You blamed lucky son of a gun," he cried exuberantly between punches. "You've ce'tainly struck pure gold, Tennessee. Looks like Old Man Good Luck has come home to roost with you, son."
The other, smiling, shook hands with him. "I'm of that opinion myself, Steve," he said.
Part II
THE GIRL OF LOST VALLEY
CHAPTER I
IN THE FIRE ZONE
"Say, you Teddy hawss, I'm plumb fed up with sagebrush and scenery. I kinder yearn for co'n bread and ham. I sure would give six bits for a drink of real wet water. Yore sentiments are similar, I reckon, Teddy."
The Texan patted the neck of his cow pony, which reached round playfully and pretended to nip his leg. They understood each other, and were now making the best of a very unpleasant situation. Since morning they had been lost on the desert. The heat of midday had found them plowing over sandy wastes. The declining sun had left them among the foothills, wandering from one to another, in the vain hope that each summit might show the silvery gleam of a windmill, or even that outpost of civilization, the barb-wire fence. And now the stars looked down indifferently, myriads of them, upon the travelers still plodding wearily through a land magically transformed by moonlight to a silvery loveliness that blotted out all the garish details of day.
The Texan drew rein. "We all been discovering that Wyoming is a powerful big state. Going to feed me a cigarette, Teddy. Too bad a hawss cayn't smoke his troubles away," he drawled, and proceeded to roll a cigarette, lighting it with one sweeping motion of his arm, that passed down the leg of his chaps and ended in the upward curve at his lips.
The flame had not yet died, when faintly through the illimitable velvet night there drifted to him a sound.
"Did you hear that, pardner?" the man demanded softly, listening intently for a repetition of it.
It came presently, from away over to the left, and, after it, what might have been taken for the popping of a distant bunch of firecrackers.
"Celebrating the Fourth some premature, looks like. What? Think not, Teddy! Some one getting shot up? Sho! You are romancin', old hawss."
Nevertheless he swung the pony round and started rapidly in the direction of the shots. From time to time there came a renewal of them, though the intervals grew longer and the explosions were now individual ones. He took the precaution to draw his revolver from the holster and to examine it carefully.
"Nothing like being sure. It's a heap better than being sorry afterward," he explained to the cow pony.
For the first time in twelve hours, he struck a road. Following this a
s it wound up to the summit of a hill, he discovered that the area of disturbance was in the valley below. For, as he began his descent, there was a flash from a clump of cotton-woods almost at his feet.