by Zane Grey
supper. Mescal arose and stepped across the threshold of
the cabin door.
"Hold on!" ordered Snap, as he approached with swift strides. "Stick out
your hands!"
Some of the rustlers grumbled; and one blurted out: "Aw no, Snap, don't
tie her up--no!"
"Who says no?" hissed the Mormon, with snapping teeth. As he wheeled
upon them his Colt seemed to leap forward, and suddenly quivered at
arm's-length, gleaming in the ruddy fire-rays.
Holderness laughed in the muzzle of the weapon. "Go ahead, Snap, tie up
your lady love. What a tame little wife she's going to make you! Tie her
up, but do it without hurting her."
The rustlers growled or laughed at their leader's order. Snap turned to
his task. Mescal stood in the doorway and shrinkingly extended her
clasped hands. Holderness whirled to the fire with a look which betrayed
his game. Snap bound Mescal's hands securely, thrust her inside the
cabin, and after hesitating for a long moment, finally shut the door.
"It's funny about a woman, now, ain't it?" said Nebraska,
confidentially, to a companion. "One minnit she'll snatch you bald-
headed; the next, she'll melt in your mouth like sugar. An' I'll be
darned if the changeablest one ain't the kind to hold a feller longest.
But it's h--l. I was married onct. Not any more for mine! A pal I had
used to say thet whiskey riled him, thet rattlesnake pisen het up his
blood some, but it took a woman to make him plumb bad. D--n if it ain't
so. When there's a woman around there's somethin' allus comin' off."
But the strain, instead of relaxing, became portentous. Holderness
suddenly showed he was ill at ease; he appeared to be expecting arrivals
from the direction of Seeping Springs. Snap Naab leaned against the side
of the door, his narrow gaze cunningly studying the rustlers before him.
More than any other he had caught a foreshadowing. Like the desert-hawk
he could see afar. Suddenly he pressed back against the door, half
opening it while he faced the men.
"Stop!" commanded Holderness. The change in his voice was as if it had
come from another man. "You don't go in there!"
"I'm going to take the girl and ride to White Sage," replied Naab, in
slow deliberation.
"Bah! You say that only for the excuse to get into the cabin with her.
You tried it last night and I blocked you. Shut the door, Naab, or
something'll happen."
"There's more going to happen than ever you think of, Holderness. Don't
interfere now, I'm going."
"Well, go ahead--but you won't take the girl!"
Snap Naab swung off the step, slamming the door behind him.
"So-ho!" he exclaimed, sneeringly. "That's why you've made me foreman,
eh?" His claw-like hand moved almost imperceptibly upward while his pale
eyes strove to pierce the strength behind Holderness's effrontery. The
rustler chief had a trump card to play; one that showed in his sardonic
smile.
"Naab, you don't get the girl."
"Maybe you'll get her?" hissed Snap.
"I always intended to."
Surely never before had passion driven Snap's hand to such speed. His
Colt gleamed in the camp-fire light. Click! Click! Click! The hammer
fell upon empty chambers.
"H--l!" he shrieked.
Holderness laughed sarcastically.
"That's where you're going!" he cried. "Here's to Naab's trick with a
gun--Bah!" And he shot his foreman through the heart.
Snap plunged upon his face. His hands beat the ground like the shuffling
wings of a wounded partridge. His fingers gripped the dust, spread
convulsively, straightened, and sank limp.
Holderness called through the door of the cabin. "Mescal, I've rid you
of your would-be husband. Cheer-up!" Then, pointing to the fallen man,
he said to the nearest bystanders: "Some of you drag that out for the
coyotes."
The first fellow who bent over Snap happened to be the Nebraska rustler,
and he curiously opened the breech of the six-shooter he picked up. "No
shells!" he said. He pulled Snap's second Colt from his belt, and
unbreeched that. "No shells! Well, d--n me!" He surveyed the group of
grim men, not one of whom had any reply.
Holderness again laughed harshly, and turning to the cabin, he fastened
the door with a lasso.
It was a long time before Hare recovered from the startling revelation
of the plot which had put Mescal into Holderness's power. Bad as Snap
Naab had been he would have married her, and such a fate was infinitely
preferable to the one that now menaced her. Hare changed his position
and settled himself to watch and wait out the night. Every hour
Holderness and his men tarried at Silver Cup hastened their approaching
doom. Hare's strange prescience of the fatality that overshadowed these
men had received its first verification in the sudden taking off of Snap
Naab. The deep-scheming Holderness, confident that his strong band meant
sure protection, sat and smoked and smiled beside the camp-fire. He had
not caught even a hint of Snap Naab's suggested warning. Yet somewhere
out on the oasis trail rode a man who, once turned from the saving of
life to the lust to kill, would be as immutable as death itself. Behind
him waited a troop of Navajos, swift as eagles, merciless as wolves,
desert warriors with the sunheated blood of generations in their veins.
As Hare waited and watched with all his inner being cold, he could
almost feel pity for Holderness. His doom was close. Twice, when the
rustler chief had sauntered nearer to the cabin door, as if to enter,
Hare had covered him with the rifle, waiting, waiting for the step upon
the threshold. But Holderness always checked himself in time, and Hare's
finger eased its pressure upon the trigger.
The night closed in black; the clouded sky gave forth no starlight; the
wind rose and moaned through the cedars. One by one the rustlers rolled
in their blankets and all dropped into slumber while the camp-fire
slowly burned down. The night hours wore on to the soft wail of the
breeze and the wild notes of far-off trailing coyotes.
Hare, watching sleeplessly, saw one of the prone figures stir. The man
raised himself very cautiously; he glanced at his companions, and looked
long at Holderness, who lay squarely in the dimming light. Then he
softly lowered himself. Hare wondered what the rustler meant to do.
Presently he again lifted his head and turned it as if listening
intently. His companions were motionless in deep-breathing sleep. Gently
he slipped aside his blankets and began to rise. He was slow and guarded
of movement; it took him long to stand erect. He stepped between the
rustlers with stockinged feet which were as noiseless as an Indian's,
and he went toward the cabin door.
He softly edged round the sleeping Holderness, showing a glinting six-
shooter in his hand. Hare's resolve to kill him before he reached the
door was checked. What did it mean, this rustler's stealthy movements,
his passing by Holderness with his drawn weapon! Again doom hovered over
the rustler chief. If he stirred!-
-Hare knew instantly that this softly
stepping man was a Mormon; he was true to Snap Naab, to the woman
pledged in his creed. He meant to free Mescal.
If ever Hare breathed a prayer it was then. What if one of the band
awakened! As the rustler turned at the door his dark face gleamed in the
flickering light. He unwound the lasso and opened the door without a
sound.
Hare whispered: "Heavens! if he goes in she'll scream! that will wake
Holderness--then I must shoot--I must!"
But the Mormon rustler added wisdom to his cunning and stealth.
"Hist!" he whispered into the cabin. "Hist!"
Mescal must have been awake; she must have guessed instantly the meaning
of that low whisper, for silently