by Unknown
Now he appealed to Morse. "If they get me, will you try to save Miss McRae? This fellow West is a devil, I hear."
The officer caught a gleam of hot red eyes. "I'll 'tend to that. We'll mix first, him 'n' me. Question now is, do I get a gun?"
"What for?"
"Didn't you hear him make his brags about what he was gonna do to me? If there's shootin' I'm in on it, ain't I?"
"No. You're a prisoner. I can't arm you unless your life is in danger."
West pulled up his horse about sixty yards from the rocks. He shouted a profane order. The purport of it was that Beresford had better come out with his hands up if he didn't want to be dragged out by a rope around his neck. The man's speech crackled with oaths and obscenity.
The constable stepped into the open a few yards. "What do you want?" he asked.
"You." The whiskey-runner screamed it in a sudden gust of passion. "Think you can make a fool of Bully West? Think you can bust up our cargo an' get away with it? I'll show you where you head in at."
"Don't make any mistake, West," advised the officer, his voice cold as the splash of ice-water. "Three of us are here, all with rifles, all dead shots. If you attack us, some of you are going to get killed."
"Tha's a lie. You're alone--except for Tom Morse, an' he ain't fool enough to fight to go to jail. I've got you where I want you." West swung from the saddle and came straddling forward. In the uncertain light he looked more like some misbegotten ogre than a human being.
"That's far enough," warned Beresford, not a trace of excitement in manner or speech. His hands hung by his sides. He gave no sign of knowing that he had a revolver strapped to his hip ready for action.
The liquor smuggler stopped to pour out abuse. He was working himself up to a passion that would justify murder. The weapon in his hand swept wildly back and forth. Presently it would focus down to a deadly concentration in which all motion would cease.
The torrent of vilification died on the man's lips. He stared past the constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come. Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. What was McRae's girl doing at the camp of the officer?
It was characteristic of him that he suspected the worst of her. Either Tom Morse or this red-coat had beaten him to his prey. Jealousy and outraged vanity flared up in him so that discretion vanished.
The barrel of his revolver came down and began to spit flame.
Beresford gave orders. "Back to the rocks." He retreated, backward, firing as he moved.
The companions of West surged forward. Shots, shouts, the shifting blur of moving figures, filled the night. Under cover of the darkness the defenders reached again the big rocks.
The constable counted noses. "Everybody all right?" he asked. Then, abruptly, he snapped out: "Who was responsible for that crazy business of you coming out into the open?"
"Me," said the girl. "I wanted that West to know you weren't alone."
"Didn't you know better than to let her do it?" the officer demanded of Morse.
"He couldn't help it. He tried to keep me back. What right has he to interfere with me?" she wanted to know, stiffening.
"You'll do as I say now," the constable said crisply. "Get back of that rock there, Miss McRae, and stay there. Don't move from cover unless I tell you to."
Her dark, stormy eyes challenged his, but she moved sullenly to obey. Rebel though she was, the code of the frontier claimed and held her respect. She had learned of life that there were times when her will must be subordinated for the general good.
CHAPTER IX
TOM MAKES A COLLECTION
The attackers drew back and gathered together for consultation. West's anger had stirred their own smoldering resentment at the police, had dominated them, and had brought them on a journey of vengeance. But they had not come out with any intention of storming a defended fortress. The enthusiasm of the small mob ebbed.
"I reckon we done bit off more'n we can chaw," Harvey Gosse murmured, rubbing his bristly chin. "I ain't what you might call noways anxious to have them fellows spill lead into me."
"Ten of us here. One man, an Injun, an' a breed girl over there. You lookin' for better odds, Harv?" jeered the leader of the party.
"I never heard that a feller was any less dead because an Injun or a girl shot him," the lank smuggler retorted.
"Be reasonable, Bully," urged Barney with his ingratiating whine. "We come out to fix the red-coat. We figured he was alone except for Tom, an' o' course Tom's with us. But this here's a different proposition. Too many witnesses ag'in' us. I reckon you ain't tellin' us it's safe to shoot up Angus McRae's daughter even if she is a métis."
"Forget her," the big whiskey-runner snarled. "She won't be a witness against us."
"Why won't she?"
"Hell's hinges! Do I have to tell you all my plans? I'm sayin' she won't. That goes." He flung out a gesture of scarcely restrained rage. He was not one who could reason away opposition with any patience. It was his temperament to override it.
Brad Stearns rubbed his bald head. He always did when he was working out a mental problem. West's declaration could mean only one of two things. Either the girl would not be alive to give witness or she would be silent because she had thrown in her lot with the big trader.
The old-timer knew West's vanity and his weakness for women. From Tom Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl. Now he had no doubt what the man intended.
But what of her? What of the girl he had seen at her father's camp, the heart's desire of the rugged old Scotchman? In the lightness of her step, in the lift of her head, in speech and gesture and expression of face, she was of the white race, an inheritor of its civilization and of its traditions. Only her dusky color and a certain wild shyness seemed born of the native blood in her. She was proud, passionate, high-spirited. Would she tamely accept Bully West for her master and go to his tent as his squaw? Brad didn't believe it. She would fight--fight desperately, with barbaric savagery.
Her fight would avail her nothing. If driven to it, West would take her with him into the fastnesses of the Lone Lands. They would disappear from the sight of men for months. He would travel swiftly with her to the great river. Every sweep of his canoe paddle would carry them deeper into that virgin North where they could live on what his rifle and rod won for the pot. A little salt, pemmican, and flour would be all the supplies he needed to take with them.
Brad had no intention of being a cat's-paw for him. The older man had come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason. He did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.
"Don't go with me, Bully," Stearns said. "Count me out. Right here's where I head for Whoop-Up."
He turned his horse's head and rode into the darkness.
West looked after him, cursing. "We're better off without the white-livered coyote," he said at last.
"Brad ain't so fur off at that. I'd like blame well to be moseyin' to Whoop-Up my own self," Gosse said uneasily.
"You'll stay right here an' go through with this job, Harv," West told him flatly. "All you boys'll do just that. If any of you's got a different notion we'll settle that here an' now. How about it?" He straddled up and down in front of his men, menacing them with knotted fists and sulky eyes.
Nobody cared to argue the matter with him. He showed his broken teeth in a sour grin.
"Tha's settled, then," he went on. "It's my say-so. My orders go--if there's no objections."
His outthrust head, set low on the hunched shoulders, moved from right to left threateningly as his gaze passed from one to another. If there were any objections they were not mentioned aloud.
"Now we know where we're at," he continued. "It'll be thisaway. Most of us will scatter out an' fire at the rocks from the front here; the others'll sneak round an' come up from behind--get right into the rocks before this bully-puss fellow knows it. If you get a chance, plug him in the b
ack, but don't hurt the Injun girl. Y' understand? I want her alive an' not wounded. If she gets shot up, some one's liable to get his head knocked off."
But it did not, after all, turn out quite the way West had planned it. He left out of account one factor--a man among the rocks who had been denied a weapon and any part in the fighting.
The feint from the front was animated enough. The attackers scattered and from behind clumps of brush grass and bushes poured in a fire that kept the defenders busy. Barney, with the half-breeds and the Indian at heel, made a wide circle and crept up to the red sandstone outcroppings. He did not relish the job any more than those behind him did, but he was a creature of West and usually did as he was told after a bit of grumbling. It was not safe for him to refuse.
To Tom Morse, used to Bully West and his ways, the frontal attack did not seem quite genuine. It was desultory and ineffective. Why? What trick did Bully have up his sleeve? Tom put himself in his place to see what he would do.
And instantly he knew. The real attack would come from the rear. With the firing of the first shot back there, Bully West would charge. Taken on both sides the garrison would fall easy victims.
The constable and Onistah were busy answering the fire of the smugglers. Sleeping Dawn was crouched down behind two rocks, the barrel of her rifle gleaming through a slit of open space between them. She was compromising between the orders given her and the anxiety in her to fight back Bully West. As much as she could she kept under cover, while at the same time firing into the darkness whenever she thought she saw a movement.
Morse slipped rearward on a tour of investigation. The ground here fell away rather sharply, so that one coming from behind would have to climb over a boulder field rising to the big rocks. It took Tom only a casual examination to see that a surprise would have to be launched by way of a sort of rough natural stairway.
A flat shoulder of sandstone dominated the stairway from above. Upon this Morse crouched, every sense alert to detect the presence of any one stealing up the pass. He waited, eager and yet patient. What he was going to attempt had its risk, but the danger whipped the blood in his veins to a still excitement.
Occasionally, at intervals, the rifles cracked. Except for that no other sound came to him. He could keep no count of time. It seemed to him that hours slipped away. In reality it could have been only a few minutes.
Below, from the foot of the winding stairway, there was a sound, such a one as might come from the grinding of loose rubble beneath the sole of a boot. Presently the man on the ledge heard it again, this time more distinctly. Some one was crawling up the rocks.
Tom peered into the darkness intently. He could see nothing except the flat rocks disappearing vaguely in the gloom. Nor could he hear again the crunch of a footstep on disintegrated sandstone. His nerves grew taut. Could he have made a mistake? Was there another way up from behind?
Then, at the turn of the stairway, a few feet below him, a figure rose in silhouette. It appeared with extraordinary caution, first a head, then the barrel of a rifle, finally a crouched body followed by bowed legs. On hands and knees it crept forward, hitching the weapon along beside it. Exactly opposite Morse, under the very shadow of the sloping ledge on which he lay, the figure rose and straightened.
The man stood there for a second, making up his mind to move on. He was one of the half-breeds West had brought with him. Almost into his ear came a stern whisper.
"Hands up! I've got you covered. Don't move. Don't say a word."
Two arms shot skyward. In the fingers of one hand a rifle was clenched.
Morse leaned forward and caught hold of it. "I'll take this," he said. The brown fingers relaxed. "Skirt round the edge of the rock there. Lie face down in that hollow. Got a six-shooter."
He had. Morse took it from him.
"If you move or speak one word, I'll pump lead into you," the Montanan cautioned.
The half-breed looked into his chill eyes and decided to take no chances. He lay down on his face with hands stretched out exactly as ordered.
His captor returned to the shoulder of rock above the trail. Presently another head projected itself out of the darkness. A man crept up, and like the first stopped to take stock of his surroundings.
Against the back of his neck something cold pressed.
"Stick up your hands, Barney," a voice ordered.
The little man let out a yelp. "Mother o' Moses, don't shoot."
"How many more of you?" asked Morse sharply.
"One more."
The man behind the rifle collected his weapons and put Barney alongside his companion. Within five minutes he had added a third man to the collection.
With a sardonic grin he drove them before him to Beresford.
"I'm a prisoner an' not in this show, you was careful to explain to me, Mr. Constable, but I busted the rules an' regulations to collect a few specimens of my own," he drawled by way of explanation.
Beresford's eyes gleamed. The debonair impudence of the procedure appealed mightily to him. He did not know how this young fellow had done it, but he must have acted with cool nerve and superb daring.
"Where were they? And how did you get 'em without a six-shooter?"
"They was driftin' up the pass to say 'How-d'you-do?' from the back stairway. I borrowed a gun from one o' them. I asked 'em to come along with me and they reckoned they would."
The booming of a rifle echoed in the rocks to the left. From out of them Jessie McRae came flying, something akin to terror in her face.
"I've shot that West. He tried to run in on me and--and--I shot him." Her voice broke into an hysterical sob.
"Thought I told you to keep out of this," the constable said. "I seem to have a lot of valuable volunteer help. What with you and friend Morse here--" He broke off, touched at her distress. "Never mind about that, Miss McRae. He had it coming to him. I'll go out and size up the damage to him, if his friends have had enough--and chances are they have."
They had. Gosse advanced waving a red bandanna handkerchief as a flag of truce.
"We got a plenty," he said frankly. "West's down, an' another of the boys got winged. No use us goin' on with this darned foolishness. We're ready to call it off if you'll turn Morse loose."
Beresford had walked out to meet him. He answered, curtly. "No."
The long, lank whiskey-runner rubbed his chin bristles awkwardly. "We 'lowed maybe--"
"I keep my prisoners, both Morse and Barney."
"Barney!" repeated Gosse, surprised.
"Yes, we've got him and two others. I don't want them. I'll turn 'em over to you. But not Morse and Barney. They're going to the post with me for whiskey-running."
Gosse went back to the camp-fire, where the Whoop-Up men had carried their wounded leader. Except West, they were all glad to drop the battle. The big smuggler, lying on the ground with a bullet in his thigh, cursed them for a group of chicken-hearted quitters. His anger could not shake their decision. They knew when they had had enough.
The armistice concluded, Beresford and Morse walked over to the camp-fire to find out how badly West was hurt.
"Sorry I had to hit you, but you would have it, you know," the constable told him grimly.
The man snapped his teeth at him like a wolf in a trap. "You didn't hit me, you liar. It was that li'l' hell-cat of McRae. You tell her for me I'll get her right for this, sure as my name's Bully West."
There was something horribly menacing in his rage. In the jumping light of the flames the face was that of a demon, a countenance twisted and tortured by the impotent lust to destroy.
Morse spoke, looking steadily at him in his quiet way. "I'm servin' notice, West, that you're to let that girl alone."
There was a sound in the big whiskey-runner's throat like that of an infuriated wild animal. He glared at Morse, a torrent of abuse struggling for utterance. All that he could say was, "You damned traitor."
The eyes of the younger man did not waver. "It goes. I'll see you're shot like
a wolf if you harm her."
The wounded smuggler's fury outleaped prudence. In a surge of momentary insanity he saw red. The barrel of his revolver rose swiftly. A bullet sang past Morse's ear. Before he could fire again, Harvey Gosse had flung himself on the man and wrested the weapon from his hand.
Hard-eyed and motionless, Morse looked down at the madman without saying a word. It was Beresford who said ironically, "Talking about those who keep faith."
"You hadn't oughta of done that, Bully," Gosse expostulated. "We'd done agreed this feud was off for to-night."