by B. M. Bower
Lone nodded, not daring to trust his tongue with speech just then. If he were to protect Lorraine later on, he knew that he must not defend her now.
“Hawkins told me she had some sort of hallucination that she had seen a man killed at Rock City, when she was wandering around in that storm,” Warfield went on in a careless, gossipy tone. “Just what was that about, Lone? You’re the one who found her and took her in to the ranch, I believe. She somehow mixed her delusion up with Fred Thurman, didn’t she?”
Lone made a swift decision. He was afraid to appear to hesitate, so he laughed his quiet little chuckle while he scrambled mentally for a plausible lie.
“I don’t know as she done that, quite,” he drawled humorously. “She was out of her head, all right, and talking wild, but I laid it to her being sick and scared. She said a man was shot, and that she saw it happen. And right on top of that she said she didn’t think they ought to stage a murder and a thunderstorm in the same scene, and thought they ought to save the thunder and lightning for the murderer to make his getaway by. She used to work for the moving pictures, and she was going on about some wild-west picture she thought she was acting a part in.
“Afterwards I told her what she’d been saying, and she seemed to kinda remember it, like a bad dream she’d had. She told me she thought the villain in one of the plays she acted in had pulled off a stage murder in them rocks. We figured it out together that the first crack of thunder had sounded like shooting, and that’s what started her off. She hadn’t ever been in a real thunderstorm before, and she’s scared of them. I know that one we had the other day like to of scared her into hysterics. I laughed at her and joshed her out of it.”
“Didn’t she ever say anything about Fred Thurman, then?” Warfield persisted.
“Not to me, she didn’t. Fred was dragged that night, and if she heard about a man being killed during that same storm, she might have said something about it. She might have wondered if that was what she saw. I don’t know. She’s pretty sensible—when she ain’t crazy.”
Warfield turned his horse, as if by accident, so that he was brought face to face with Lone. His eyes searched Lone’s face pitilessly.
“Lone, you know how ugly a story can grow if it’s left alone. Do you believe that girl actually saw a man shot? Or do you think she was crazy?”
Lone met Warfield’s eyes fairly. “I think she was plumb out of her head,” he answered. And he added with just the right degree of hesitation: “I don’t think she’s what you’d call right crazy, Mr. Warfield. Lots of folks go outa their heads and talk crazy when they get a touch of fever, and they get over it again.”
“Let’s have a fair understanding,” Warfield insisted. “Do you think I am justified in the course I am taking, or don’t you?”
“Hunting her up? Sure, I do! If you and Hawkins rode on home, I’d keep on hunting till I located her. If she’s been raving around like you say, she’s in no shape to be riding these hills alone. She’s got to be taken care of.”
Warfield gave him another sharp scrutiny and rode on. “I always prefer to deal in the open with every one,” he averred. “It may not be my affair, strictly speaking. The Quirt and the Sawtooth aren’t very intimate. But the Quirt’s having trouble enough to warrant any one in lending a hand; and common humanity demands that I take charge of the girl until she is herself again.”
“I don’t know as any one would question that,” Lone assented and ground his teeth afterwards because he must yield even the appearance of approval. He knew that Warfield must feel himself in rather a desperate position, else he would never trouble to make his motives so clear to one of his men. Indeed, Warfield had protested his unselfishness in the matter too much and too often to have deceived the dullest man who owned the slightest suspicion of him. Lone could have smiled at the sight of Senator Warfield betraying himself so, had smiling been possible to him then.
He dropped behind the two at the first rough bit of trail and felt stealthily to test the hanging of his six-shooter, which he might need in a hurry. Those two men would never lay their hands on Lorraine Hunter while he lived to prevent it. He did not swear it to himself; he had no need.
They rode on to Fred Thurman’s ranch, dismounted at Warfield’s suggestion—which amounted to a command—and began a careful search of the premises. If Warfield had felt any doubt of Lone’s loyalty he appeared to have dismissed it from his mind, for he sent Lone to the stable to search there, while he and Hawkins went into the house. Lone guessed that the two felt the need of a private conference after their visit to the Quirt, but he could see no way to slip unobserved to the house and eavesdrop, so he looked perfunctorily through all the sheds and around the depleted haystacks,—wherever a person could find a hiding place. He was letting himself down through the manhole in the stable loft when Swan’s voice, lowered almost to a whisper, startled him.
“What the hell!” Lone ejaculated under his breath. “I thought you were on another trail!”
“That trail leads here, Lone. Did you find Raine yet?”
“Not a sign of her. Swan, I don’t know what to make of it. I did think them two were stalling. I thought they either hadn’t seen her at all, or had got hold of her and were trying to square themselves on the insanity dodge. But if they know where she is, they’re acting damn queer, Swan. They want her. They haven’t got her yet.”
“They’re in the house,” Swan reassured Lone. “I heard them walking. You don’t think they’ve got her there, Lone?”
“If they have,” gritted Lone, “they made the biggest blunder of their lives bringing me over here. No, I could see they wanted to get off alone and hold a powwow. They expected she’d be at the Quirt.”
“I think Al Woodruff, he’s maybe got her, then,” Swan declared, after studying the matter briefly. “All the way he follows the trail over here, Lone. I could see you sometimes in the trail. He was keeping hid from the trail—I think because Raine was riding along, this morning, and he’s following. The tracks are that old.”
“They said they had trailed Raine this far, coming from the Sawtooth,” Lone told him worriedly. “What do you think Al would want——”
“Don’t she see him shoot Fred Thurman? By golly, I’m scared for that girl, Loney!”
Lone stared at him. “He wouldn’t dare!”
“A coward is a brave man when you scare him bad enough,” Swan stated flatly. “I’m careful always when I corner a coward.”
“Al ain’t a coward. You’ve got him wrong.”
“Maybe, but he kills like a coward would kill, and he’s scared he will be caught. Warfield, he’s scared, too. You watch him, Lone.
“Now I tell you what I do. Yack, he picks up the trail from here to where you can follow easy. We know two places where he didn’t go with her, and from here is two more trails he could take. But one goes to the main road, and he don’t take that one, I bet you. I think he takes that girl up Spirit Canyon, maybe. It’s woods and wild country in a few miles, and plenty of places to hide, and good chances for getting out over the top of the divide.
“I’m going to my cabin, and you don’t say anything when I leave. Warfield, he don’t want the damn Swede hanging around. So you go with them, Loney. This is to what you call a show-down.”
“We’ll want the dog,” Lone told him, but Swan shook his head. Hawkins and Warfield had come from the house and were approaching the stable. Swan looked at Lone, and Lone went forward to meet them.
“The Swede followed along on the ridge, and he didn’t see anything,” he volunteered, before Warfield could question him. “We might put his dog on the trail and see which way she went from here.”
Warfield thought that a good idea. He was so sure that Lorraine must be somewhere within a mile or two of the place that he seemed to think the search was practically over when Jack, nosing out the trail of Al Woodruff, went trotting toward Spirit Canyon.
“Took the wrong turn after she left the corrals here,” Warfield co
mmented relievedly. “She wouldn’t get far, up this way.”
“There’s the track of two horses,” Hawkins said abruptly. “That there is the girl’s horse, all right—there’s a hind shoe missing. We saw where her horse had cast a shoe, coming over Juniper Ridge. But there’s another horse track.”
Lone bit his lip. It was the other horse that Jack had been trailing so long. “There was a loose horse hanging around Thurman’s place,” he said casually. “It’s him, tagging along, I reckon.”
“Oh,” said Hawkins. “That accounts for it.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SWAN CALLS FOR HELP
Past the field where the horses were grazing and up the canyon on the side toward Skyline Meadow, that lay on a shoulder of Bear Top, the dog nosed unfalteringly along the trail. Now and then he was balked when the hoofprints led him to the bank of Granite Creek, but not for long. Jack appeared to understand why his trailing was interrupted and sniffed the bank until he picked up the scent again.
“Wonder if she changed off and rode that loose horse,” Hawkins said once, when the tracks were plain in the soft soil of the creek bank. “She might, and lead that horse she was on.”
“She wouldn’t know enough. She’s a city girl,” Lone replied, his heart heavy with fear for Lorraine.
“Well, she ain’t far off then,” Hawkins comforted himself. “Her horse acted about played out when she hit the ranch. She had him wet from his ears to his tail, and he was breathin’ like that Ford at the ranch. If that’s a sample of her riding, she ain’t far off.”
“Crazy—to ride up here. Keep your eyes open, boys. We must find her, whatever we do.” Warfield gazed apprehensively at the rugged steeps on either hand and at the timber line above them. “From here on she couldn’t turn back without meeting us—if I remember this country correctly. Could she, Hawkins?”
“Not unless she turned off, up here a mile or two, into that gulch that heads into Skyline,” said Hawkins. “There’s a stock trail part way down from the top where it swings off from the divide to Wilder Creek.”
Swan, walking just behind Hawkins, moved up a pace.
“I could go on Skyline with Yack, and I could come down by those trail,” he suggested diffidently, Swedishly, yet with a certain compelling confidence. “What you think?”
“I think that’s a damned good idea for a square head,” Hawkins told him, and repeated it to Warfield, who was riding ahead.
“Why, yes. We don’t need the dog, or the man either. Go up to the head of the gulch and keep your eyes open, Swan. We’ll meet you up here. You know the girl, don’t you?”
“Yas, Ay know her pretty good,” grinned Swan.
“Well, don’t frighten her. Don’t let her see that you think anything is wrong—and don’t say anything about us. We made the mistake of discussing her condition within her hearing, and it is possible that she understood enough of what we were saying to take alarm. You understand? Don’t tell girl she’s crazy.” He tapped his head to make his meaning plainer. “Don’t tell girl we’re looking for her. You understand?”
“Yas, Ay know English pretty good. Ay don’t tell too moch.” His cheerful smile brought a faint response from Senator Warfield. At Lone he did not look at all. “I go quick. I’m good climber like a sheep,” he boasted, and whistling to Jack, he began working his way up a rough, brush-scattered ledge to the slope above.
Lone watched him miserably, wishing that Swan was not quite so matter of fact in his man-chasing. If Al Woodruff, for some reason which Lone could not fathom, had taken Lorraine and forced her to go with him into the wilderness, Warfield and Hawkins would be his allies the moment they came up with him. Lone was no coward, but neither was he a fool. Hawkins had never distinguished himself as a fighter, but Lone had gleaned here and there a great deal of information about Senator Warfield in the old days when he had been plain Bill. When Lorraine and Al were overtaken, then Lone would need to show the stuff that was in him. He only hoped he would have time, and that luck would be with him.
“If they get me, it’ll be all off with her,” he worried, as he followed the two up the canyon. “Swan would have been a help. But he thinks more of catching Al than he does of helping Raine.”
He looked up and saw that already Swan was halfway up the canyon’s steep side, making his way through the brush with more speed than Lone could have shown on foot in the open, unless he ran. The sight heartened Lone a little. Swan might have some plan of his own,—an ambush, possibly. If he would only keep along within rifle shot and remain hidden, he would show real brains, Lone thought. But Swan, when Lone looked up again, was climbing straight away from the little searching party; and even though he seemed tireless on foot, he could not perform miracles.
Swan, however, was not troubling himself over what Lone would think, or even what Warfield was thinking. Contrary to Lone’s idea of him, Swan was tired, and he was thinking a great deal about Lorraine, and very little about Al Woodruff, except as Al was concerned with Lorraine’s welfare. Swan had made a mistake, and he was humiliated over his blunder. Al had kept himself so successfully in the background while Lone’s peculiar actions had held his attention, that Swan had never considered Al Woodruff as the killer. Now he blamed himself for Frank’s death. He had been watching Lone, had been baffled by Lone’s consistent kindness toward the Quirt, by the force of his personality which held none of the elements of cold-blooded murder. He had believed that he had the Sawtooth killer under observation, and he had been watching and waiting for evidence that would impress a grand jury. And all the while he had let Al Woodruff ride free and unsuspected.
The one stupid thing, in Swan’s opinion, which he had not done was to let Lone go on holding his tongue. He had forced the issue that morning. He had wanted to make Lone talk, had hoped for a weakening and a confession. Instead he had learned a good deal which he should have known before.
As he forged up the slope across the ridged lip of the canyon, his one immediate object was speed. Up the canyon and over the divide on the west shoulder of Bear Top was a trail to the open country beyond. It was perfectly passable, as Swan knew; he had packed in by that trail when he located his homestead on Bear Top. That is why he had his cabin up and was living in it before the Sawtooth discovered his presence.
Al, he believed, was making for Bear Top Pass. Once down the other side he would find friends to lend him fresh horses. Swan had learned something of these friends of the Sawtooth, and he could guess pretty accurately how far some of them would go in their service. Fresh horses for Al, food—perhaps even a cabin where he could hide Lorraine away—were to be expected from any one of them, once Al was over the divide.
Swan glanced up at the sun, saw that it was dropping to late afternoon and started in at a long, loose-jointed trot across the mountain meadow called Skyline. A few pines, with scattered clumps of juniper and fir, dotted the long, irregular stretch of grassland which formed the meadow. Range cattle were feeding here and there, so wild they lifted heads to stare at the man and dog, then came trotting forward, their curiosity unabated by the fact that they had seen these two before.
Jack looked up at his master, looked at the cattle and took his place at Swan’s heels. Swan shouted and flung his arms, and the cattle ducked, turned and galloped awkwardly away. Swan’s trot did not slacken. His rifle swung rhythmically in his right hand, the muzzle tilted downward. Beads of perspiration on his forehead had merged into tiny rivulets on his cheeks and dripped off his clean-lined, square jaw. Still he ran, his breath unlabored yet coming in whispery aspirations from his great lungs.
The full length of Skyline Meadow he ran, jumping the small beginning of Wilder Creek with one great leap that scarcely interrupted the beautiful rhythm of his stride. At the far end of the clearing, snuggled between two great pines that reached high into the blue, his squatty cabin showed red-brown against the precipitous shoulder of Bear Top peak, covered thick with brush and scraggy timber whipped incessantly by the wind th
at blew over the mountain’s crest.
At the door Swan stopped and examined the crude fastening of the door; made himself certain, by private marks of his own, that none had entered in his absence, and went in with a great sigh of satisfaction. It was still broad daylight, though the sun’s rays slanted in through the window; but Swan lighted a lantern that hung on a nail behind the door, carried it across the neat little room, and set it down on the floor beside the usual pioneer cupboard made simply of clean boxes nailed bottom against the wall. Swan had furnished a few extra frills to his cupboard, for the ends of the boxes were fastened to hewn slabs standing upright and just clearing the floor. Near the upper shelf a row of nails held Swan’s coffee cups,—four of them, thick and white, such as cheap restaurants use.
Swan hooked a finger over the nail that held a cracked cup and glanced over his shoulder at Jack, sitting in the doorway with his keen nose to the world.
“You watch out now, Yack. I shall talk to my mother with my thoughts,” he said, drawing a hand across his forehead and speaking in breathless gasps. “You watch.”
For answer Jack thumped his tail on the dirt floor and sniffed the breeze, taking in his overlapping tongue while he did so. He licked his lips, looked over his shoulder at Swan, and draped his pink tongue down over his lower jaw again.
“All right, now I talk,” said Swan and pulled upon the nail in his fingers.
The cupboard swung toward him bodily, end slabs and all. He picked up the lantern, stepped over the log sill and pulled the cupboard door into place again.
Inside the dugout Swan set the lantern on a table, dropped wearily upon a rough bench before it and looked at the jars beside him, lifted his hand and opened a compact, but thoroughly efficient field wireless “set.” His right fingers dropped to the key, and the whining drone of the wireless rose higher and higher as he tuned up. He reached for his receivers, ducked his head and adjusted them with one hand, and sent a call spitting tiny blue sparks from the key under his fingers.