As he walked to Pasquale's headquarters to make a report of the affair, Culvera's mind was full of vague suspicions. How had this man escaped? Had the old general freed him for some purpose of his own? Ramon had seen condemned prisoners released by his chief before. Always within a short time some enemy or doubtful friend of Pasquale had died a violent death. Was it his turn now? Could it be that Pasquale was anticipating his treachery?
To learn that the general was out at three o'clock in the morning lent no reassurance to his fears. After a moment's consideration the young man turned his steps toward the house where Yeager had been confined. But before starting he stopped in the shadow of a barn to see that his revolvers were loose in the scabbards and in good working order. Nor did he cross the moonlit open direct, but worked to his destination by a series of tacks that kept him almost all the time in the darkness.
The seventeen-year-old sentry was still doing duty outside the prison. At sight of Culvera he stopped rolling a cigarette to snatch up his rifle and fling a challenge at him.
"How is it that you have let your prisoner escape?" demanded the officer in Spanish after he had given the countersign.
"Escape? No, señor. Listen. Do you not hear him move?" replied in the boy in the same tongue. "I think the Gringo is having a fit. For ten—twenty—minutes he has beat on the floor and kicked at the walls. To die at daybreak is not to his liking."
"Mil diablos! I tell you I saw him ride away. It is some one else in there."
"Some one else! But, no—that is impossible. Who else could it be?" As he asked the question the boy's jaw fell slack. A horrible suspicion pushed itself into his mind.
"Estupido!" he continued in growing terror. "Can it be—the general?"
"We shall see."
Culvera stepped to the door. It was locked and the key gone. He called aloud. His only answer was a strange, muffled sound like a groan and the beating of feet upon the floor.
With the butt of the sentry's rifle he hammered in the door at the lock and by exerting all his strength forced the fastening. Lying in the middle of the room, bound hand and foot, with his furious face upturned to the moonlight, was Gabriel Pasquale. Culvera asked no foolish questions, wasted no time. Kneeling beside his superior officer, he cut the handkerchief that gagged him and the ropes that tied his limbs. Together Ramon and the guard lifted him to his feet and held him for a moment until his legs regained their power.
"What devil has done this outrage?" asked Ramon.
For a time Pasquale could only swallow and grunt. When the power of speech returned, he broke into fierce and terrible maledictions. His lieutenant listened in silence, extreme concern in his respectful face, an unholy amusement bubbling up behind the deferential exterior.
"Then it was the Gringo?" he asked when his chief ran out of breath and for the moment ceased cursing.
The insurgent leader went off into another explosion of rage. He would cut his heart out while the American devil was still alive. He would stake him out on the desert to broil to death beneath a Mexican sun.
Culvera showed the hat that he had punctured with his bullet. "Thus near I came to avenging you, general. See! One inch lower and I would have taken off the top of his head. Already Fuentes is pursuing him. Perhaps this Yeager may be dragged back to justice."
Culvera asked no questions as to why the general was alone with a condemned man at such an hour nor as to how the American had succeeded in overpowering him. He understood that his chief's wounded vanity was torturing the man enough to render curiosity unsafe. But the boyish sentry did not know this. He ventured on a sympathetic question.
"But, señor, Your Excellency, how did this Gringo devil, who was unarmed, take away your revolver and tie you?"
Pasquale, teeth clenched, whirled upon him. "You—dog of a peon—let your prisoner walk away without a challenge and then dare to question me!"
The old soldier's fist shot out like a pile-driver. The blow lifted the boy from his feet and flung him like a sack of meal against the wall. His body hung there a moment, then dropped to the ground. A faint groan was the only sound that showed he was not unconscious.
The general strode from the room, Culvera at his heels. The brown mask of his face told no stories of how the younger man was enjoying himself.
Before he slept, Ramon had one more pleasant task before him. He roused Harrison to tell him the news. He sat smiling on the foot of the bed, his eyes mocking the startled face of the prizefighter.
"I come to bring you good news, señor," he jeered. "Your countryman has escaped."
Harrison sat up in bed. "What's that? Escaped, did you say? Where to?"
The Mexican swept one arm around airily. "How should I know? He's gone—broke out. He's taken a horse with him."
"A horse!" repeated Harrison stupidly.
"Just so—a horse. To ride upon, doubtless, since he was in somewhat of a hurry. Odd that a horse happened to be waiting saddled for him at two in the morning. Not so?"
The American groped toward the point. "You mean—that he had friends, that some one helped him to get away?"
The other man shrugged his shoulders. "Do I? Quien sabe? Anyhow, he's gone. Must be very disappointing to you, since you had promised yourself to see his translation to heaven at sunrise."
Harrison expressed himself bitterly in language emphatic and profane.
Meanwhile Culvera smiled pleasantly and sympathetically. "You run Pasquale a close second. He cursed the roof off when he found breath."
"I'm not through with Yeager yet. Believe me, he'll have one heluvatime before I'm done," boasted the prizefighter savagely.
"You're still in entire accord with the chief. Yet our friend the Gringo rides away in safety and laughs at you both. Ramon Culvera takes his hat off to Señor Yeager. He has played a winning game with courage and brains."
"I beat his fool head off when he joined the Lunar Company—the very day he joined. When I meet up with him again, I'll repeat," Harrison bragged, hammering the pillow with his clenched fist.
The Mexican looked politely incredulous. "Maybeso. This I say only. Yeager has played one game with Pasquale, one with you, and one with me. He comes out best each time. Of a sureness he is a strong man, wise, cool, resourceful. Is it not so?"
The prizefighter sputtered with wounded vanity. "Him! The boob's nothing but a lucky guy. You'd ought to 'a' seen him after I fixed his map that first day. Down and out he was, take my word for it."
"If Señor Harrison says so," assented Culvera with polite mockery. "But as you say, he laughs best who laughs last. And that reminds me. He left a note to be forwarded a friend. Pasquale was too crazy mad to see it, so I put it in my pocket."
He handed to the other man the note Steve had written for Threewit. The prizefighter read it in the dim light laboriously.
"It was written, you perceive, before Pasquale shoved his big head into a trap and gave him a chance to escape," explained the insurgent officer.
As Harrison read, certain phases of the situation arranged themselves before his dull mind. He was acutely disappointed at the escape of his enemy, since it was not likely the man would ever be caught again so neatly. But now he forced himself to look beyond this to the consequences. Yeager would tell all he knew when he reached Los Robles. With the troopers warned against him Harrison knew he could no longer move to and fro as freely on the American side. The very fact that he was a suspect would greatly hamper his dealings. The Seymours would probably turn against him for betraying the man who had risked his life to save Phil from the effects of his folly. And what about Ruth? He knew he held her by fear of trouble to Phil and by means of a sort of magnetic clamp he had always imposed upon her will. Would she throw him over now after she heard the story of the cowpuncher?
His eyes were still fastened sulkily on the note while he was slowly realizing these things. One line seemed to stand out from the rest.
Bust up that marriage if you can.
Harrison ground hi
s teeth with impotent rage. This range-rider always had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If ever he got the chance again to stamp him out—! The strong fingers of the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten on the throat of the gay youth who had worsted him in the duel the prizefighter had forced upon him. The cowpuncher had introduced himself by knocking him down. A few hours later he had turned a bruised and bleeding face up to him and laughed without fear as if it were of no consequence.
Yeager had stolen from him his reputation as a daring rider and a good shot. He had driven him from the Lunar Company. Now he was going back to spoil his plans for making money by rustling American stock and sending contraband goods across the line. Not only that; he was going to take from him the girl he was engaged to marry.
"By God! I'll give him a run for it," the prizefighter announced savagely and suddenly.
"For what?" asked Culvera maliciously.
"My business," retorted Harrison harshly, reaching for his clothes.
Half an hour later he was galloping toward the north. If he could reach Los Robles before Yeager did, he would turn a trick that would still leave the odds in his favor.
* * *
CHAPTER XII
INTO THE DESERT
Ruth was baking apple pies in the kitchen. In her eyes there was a smile and there were little dimples near the corners of her mouth. Evidently she was thinking of something pleasant. Her nimble fingers ran around the edge of the upper crust with a fork and scalloped a design. At odd moments she would burst into a little rhapsody of song that appeared to bubble out of her heart.
Some one stepped into the doorway and shut out the sunlight. Her questioning glance lifted, to meet the heavy frown of the man to whom she was engaged. At sight of him the sunshine was extinguished from her face, just as it had seemed to be from the room when his broad shoulders had filled the opening.
"You—Chad!" she cried. "I thought—"
"Well, I ain't. I'm here," he broke in roughly. "And you don't look glad to death to see me either."
Her gentle eyes reproached him. "You're always welcome. You know that."
His harsh face softened a little as he stepped forward and kissed her. "Maybe I do, but maybe I like to hear you say so. Girl, I've come to take you with me."
"With you? Where?" Alarm was in the eyes that flashed to meet his.
"To Noche Buena."
"But—what for?"
"Ain't it reason enough that I want you to go? We can get married at Arixico to-night."
She broke into protest disjointed and a little incoherent. "You promised me that—that I could have all the time I wanted. You said—you said—"
"That was when I was here to look after you. But I'll be staying in Sonora quite a while the way my business affairs look. I need you—and what's the sense of waiting, anyhow?"
"No—no! I don't want to—not now. Please don't ask it, Chad, I—I don't want to get married—yet."
Sobs began to choke up her voice. Tears welled up in her eyes.
"I don't see why you don't," he insisted sullenly. "Ain't trying to back out, are you?"
"No, but—"
"You better not," he retorted with a threatening look. "I ain't the kind of man it's safe to jilt."
"You promised me all the time I wanted," she repeated. "You wouldn't hurry me. That was what you said," she sobbed, breaking down suddenly.
"All right," he conceded ungraciously. "I'm not forcing you to marry me now. But I thought it best, seeing as I've got to ask you to go with me, anyhow. O' course I can put you in charge of Carmen to chaperon you. She's the woman that keeps house for Pasquale. But it kinder seemed to me it would be better if you went as my wife. Then I could take care of you."
"Go with you—now? What do you mean, Chad?"
"It's this fellow Yeager. He's shot himself, and he wants to see you before he dies." From his pocket he took the note Steve had written to Threewit and handed it to Ruth. "You don't have to go, but I hate to turn down a fellow when he's all in and ready to quit the game."
She read the note, her face like chalk. Not for a moment did she doubt that the cowpuncher had written it. Even if her mind had harbored any vague suspicions one line in the letter would have swept them away. Bust up that marriage if you can. She knew to what marriage he referred. Nobody but Yeager could have written those words.
"But he says—he says"—her voice shook, but she forced herself to go on—"that this letter isn't to be sent until his death."
"Yep. So it does. But he got to asking for you. So I just lit out to give you a chance to go if you want to. It's up to you. Do just as you please."
"Of course I'll go. Is he—is he as bad as he says?"
"Pretty bad, the doc says. But I reckon he's good for a day or two. My advice would be to start right away, though, if you want to see him alive."
"Yes. That would be best. I'll see mother now." She stopped at the door and leaned against the jamb a little faintly, then turned toward him. "It was fine of you to come, Chad. I know you don't like him. But—I won't forget."
"Oh, tha's all right," he mumbled.
"Have you seen Mr. Threewit yet?" she asked.
"Threewit—no." He was for a moment puzzled at her question. "No—he's out getting a set somewheres in the hills."
Ruth came back and took the note from Harrison's reluctant fingers. "He ought to get this at once. I'll send Billie Brown out with it. He'll explain to Mr. Threewit about us going on ahead and not waiting for him."
The prizefighter did not quite like the idea. He would rather have kept the note himself and burnt it later. But it was out of his charge now. Without stirring doubts he could not make any objection. Anyhow, he would be in Sonora and safely married to Ruth long before the deception was discovered.
Mrs. Seymour made her protest against such an unconventional trip, but Ruth rode her objections down after the fashion of American girls.
"Why can't I go for a ride with the man to whom I'm engaged? What's wrong with it? I'll stay with the lady that keeps house for General Pasquale. In two or three days I'll be back. Don't say no, mommsie." Her voice broke a little as she pleaded the cause. "He's dying—Mr. Yeager is—and he wants to see me. I'd always blame myself if I didn't go. I've just got to go."
"I don't see why you have to go riding all over the country to see one man when you're engaged to another. In my time—"
"If Chad doesn't object, why should you?"
"Oh, I know you'll go. I suppose it's all right, but I wish Phil could go with you too."
"So do I, but of course he can't. Chad says that affairs are so disturbed across the line that probably the Government won't make Phil any trouble, but that if he showed himself in Sonora some of the friends of that man Mendoza would be sure to kill him."
"I suppose so." Mrs. Seymour sighed. Her harum-scarum young son was on her mind a good deal. "Now, don't you fret, honey, about Steve Yeager. He's the kind of man that will take a lot of killing. A man who has lived outdoors in the saddle for a dozen years is liable to get over a wound that would finish some one else."
In his haste to reach Los Robles before Yeager the prizefighter had ruined the horse he rode. He picked up another one cheap and got for Ruth her brother's pony. Within an hour of his arrival the two animals were brought round for the start.
The mother, still a little troubled in her mind, took Harrison aside for a last word.
"Chad Harrison, you look after my little girl and see no harm comes to her. If anything happens to her I'll never forgive you."
"Rest easy about that, Mrs. Seymour. You don't think any more of Ruth than I do. If I thought there was any danger I sure wouldn't take her. She'll come back to you safe and sound," he promised.
They rode away in the afternoon sunlight toward the south. It had been understood that they were to spend the night at the Lazy B Ranch, but at the point where the road for the ranch deflected from the main pike Harrison drew rein.
/> "Too bad there isn't another ranch farther on. It's a little better than six o'clock now. We'll lose a heap of time by stopping here. Soon the moon will be out and we could keep going till we reach Lone Tree Spring. Stopping there for two or three hours' rest, we could ride in to Noche Buena by breakfast time. But I reckon you're tired, ain't you?"
"I'm not—not a bit," she answered eagerly. "Let's go on. It's cooler traveling in the evening, anyhow."
He appeared to hesitate, then shook his head. "No—o, I expect that wouldn't be proper. If you was a boy instead of a girl I'd say sure."
"Don't let's be silly, Chad," she pleaded. "We want to get there as soon as we can. It makes no difference if I am a girl."
"I promised your maw I'd take good care of you. Would it be doing that to let you stay up 'most all night?"
"Of course it would. We can sleep some at Lone Tree. I want to go on, Chad."
"All right," he conceded with a manner of reluctance.
This was what Harrison desired. If Yeager reached Los Robles before night a search party would be sent out. It would go straight toward the Lazy B. Chad wanted to get across the line and put as many miles as possible between him and the pursuit.
Deep into the desert they struck, keeping for the most part to a rapid road gait. The dusty miles spun out behind them as they covered white sunbaked levels, cut across rough hillsides of rubble, dipped into sandy washes, and wound forward through wastes of cactus and zacaton.
By the time the moon was riding high in the heavens Ruth was very tired. Her shoulders drooped and she clung to the pommel of the saddle. But she did not ask Chad to stop and let her rest. She would rather have been whipped than have confessed exhaustion. Whenever she thought he might be looking at her, the weary shoulders straightened with a pathetic attempt at jauntiness.
The man knew how completely fagged she was. Riding behind her through the silver night, his greedy eyes noted her game struggle not to give in. He saw the flowing lines of the girlish figure relax with fatigue. No longer was the gallant little dusky head poised lightly above the flat straight back. But he made no offer to rest. It was essential that they should get beyond any chance of capture by her friends. Once he had her safely in his hands she might sleep round the clock undisturbed.
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