by Max Brand
The old rancher drew out his revolver, but it seemed to watchful Charlie Mark that he moved with unnecessary deliberation, and, when he fired, Charlie could tell that it was a random shot that did not cause the fugitive even to look around over his shoulder. Lang, groaning with rage, tore the weapon from it’s owner with his left hand and opened fire, but by this time the swiftly moving white horse had carried the outlaw into the veil of darkness, and he was safe.
“You might have drilled him clean,” said Lang, casting down the revolver with an oath and flinging himself back into a seat. “You might have finished him easy, if you’d wanted to. Why didn’t you want to? Because you’re running in the same gang with him. That’s how you get your money. By heaven, I’d, swear to it. You and him are in cahoots. How else does he learn what he knows about the folks that travel in this here stagecoach?”
The rancher listened calmly to this tirade. “Did I ever see you before you climbed into this stage?” he asked.
As the answer to this question would have torn the theory of Lang to shreds, he made no answer, but with a groan proffered his arm to the girls to complete the bandage.
They finished a hasty job, during which he turned his attention and his complaints to the driver, who was now down picking up his guns and shoving them back into the holsters with the greatest equanimity.
“And I suppose,” said Lang, “that all I’ll get out of the stage company will be that they’re sorry. Is that it? You run your stage through a gang of outlaws and don’t send no guard, and …”
“‘You’ve talked enough,” said Jake with sudden anger. “If you got any more talking to do, let’s hear why you sew up your money in the lining of your coat. And let’s hear how you got that money? Seemed like you weren’t none too anxious to have the Red Devil tell about it a while back.”
Lang looked about him with wicked eyes and twitching lips, but, from the cold face of the rancher to the angered face of Jake and the openly contemptuous face of Charlie Mark, he found no ally. Eventually, giving no thanks to the teachers for their care, he dropped back in his place and dropped his forehead into the palm of his left hand.
And only then did the old rancher look to Charlie Mark, raise his eyebrows, and smile ever so faintly. Plainly he felt they were more or less akin, and that this tall fellow was a stranger in their midst. The insinuation in some way shrewdly flattered young Mark.
He fell into a brown study in the meantime. Vaguely, on either side and before him, he heard the shrill, pleasant voices of the girls and the growls of Jake and the groans of Lang. They were busily commenting on the hold-up in all of its phases, from the hair-raising daring of that drop out of the overhanging scrub oak to the appearance of the beautiful white horse. But, although Charlie Mark was thinking of the same subject, he was concentrating on it with such prodigious intentness that he actually heard not a word of the conversation of the others.
There were many strange features about the affair. In the first place, there he sat, a sure shot, a truly deadly hand with a revolver with a weapon in his clothes, and yet from the first glimpse of that red hair above the mask, he had not even dreamed of resistance. If he had had money in any large sum with him, it might have been otherwise, and he assured himself that it would have been otherwise. But in his heart of hearts he knew that he would not have had the hardihood to oppose the Red Devil for an instant. The man was too formidable to be encountered.
His own easy surrender was one thing, and that of Jake was another. Jake Trowbridge was not a light-handed fellow by any means, and yet Jake had apparently no more dreamed of fighting back than had Charlie Mark. The old rancher was another. He, it seemed, had been an eyewitness of the doings of the bandit before this date. And what he had seen had convinced him that resistance was foolish. Yet he was a grim old chap, and certainly he was the sort to fight for money, even for a nickel, to say nothing of $8,000.
But what of Lang? He fought back, but only in desperation. In fact, the marvel of the affair was that so many fearless fighting men could have been so completely dominated by another that, from the first, resistance seemed madness.
And how was it done?
Doubtless the outlaw was a marksman of the most accurate nicety, as witness the consummate skill with which he had sent his shot through the gun arm of Lang, and then had calmly called his shot to the fraction of an inch. It was astounding that he could afford to shoot to disarm in such a crisis, instead of merely shooting to kill. Yet Charlie Mark was no mean marksman himself, and in time, if he had to use a revolver for the sake of his safety and his livelihood, he might attain to a similar degree of power with weapons.
It was not the weapon, however, that had made the Red Devil so tremendously commanding a figure from his first appearance in the coach. It was simply his reputation. He was the Red Devil, and that name was to him both sword and shield. Men were disarmed by the mention of it. His battle was won by his appearance. Perhaps he had done mighty things in the first place to build up this repute, but certain it was that he need do nothing now.
These thoughts were turning around and around in the active brain of Charlie Mark as he entered the village in the coach. He dismounted from it so absentmindedly that he hardly heard the exclamations that poured out around him on all sides. But first he announced that he was not going to use the rest of his ticket, and he sold it to the first man who wished to go on from that point. Next he went to the hotel and secured a room for the night. Having done this, he went directly to the blacksmith shop and secured from the blacksmith, in whose corral he had seen some fine horses, a lithe-limbed young chestnut that seemed to have both endurance and speed. Saddle and bridle were added from the diminishing store of Charlie’s money.
He went back to the hotel and flung himself on his bed for a sleep as deep as if he were stunned. In the morning he got up, breakfasted, saddled, and rode away before the gray of dawn had turned into a rosier light.
The plan, which had formed in his mind during the trip into the village after the hold-up, had grown there during the evening, and at length he was determined to make the desperate effort.
His needs were $20,000 at once. Such a sum he could hardly expect to receive from his father. Without that amount of money he could never go East and step back into the place he had recently abandoned. From the short dialogue between the Red Devil and Lang, he gathered that a sum as large as this, or nearly as large, must be the spoil of the robber for this single, easy feat.
Gambling was a profitable pursuit, but it seemed to be nothing compared with this profession of outlawry. And the determination of Charlie Mark, to put it shortly, was to take the trail of the robber, run him down, and hold him up, just as he, the Red Devil, held up the rest of the world.
It was a sufficiently rash determination, but Charlie Mark had been reduced to a position fully as desperate. He must have that money, and, as he drew nearer to his home and his father, he realized more and more fully that the grim old man would never supply him with half this amount. Moreover, the bare demand would ruin his credit at home forever. The little bald-headed rancher, sitting opposite him in the coach, had reminded him forcibly of his father. What the one would not give, the other would not give. And who could imagine the man with the red, polished skin, the hairless face, giving $20,000 to pay off a gambling debt?
Reflections such as these had determined Mark to take the step, but he was so good a man of action that, once he had made up his mind, he dismissed his anxiety. Riding out of the village in the cold, morning light, he had a song bubbling on his lips. Of course there was barely one chance in a hundred that he could even find a clear trail. But he gambled on that chance, and, going straight to the gulch, he found it easy to pick up the beginning of the stranger’s flight.
VII
The continuation, however, was by no means so simple as the opening of the trail. All day he rode through the mountains, sometimes stumbling of
f of what he thought to be the trail, and sometimes coming back on it. The dimness of the evening found him saddle weary and saddle sore in a district that was perfectly unfamiliar to him.
He began to find that his long absence from the West and the ways of the West had turned him into a veritable tenderfoot. Not only was his eye dulled, but his strength had been sapped by dissipation in the East. And now, with the first shadows of night swinging across the valley in which he found himself, he gave up his task, turned about, and struck at random on what he thought was the back trail toward the village from which he had started. Presently the chill certainty struck him that he must spend the night in the wilderness.
In this gloomy mood, careless of the way his horse took after that long day of anxious hope and searching, he began to climb the steep side of the hill and was halfway to the top when the scent of frying bacon hurried him to the crest and opened his eyes in the hope of finding the nearby house from which the tempting odor had proceeded. To his utter astonishment, however, there was no habitation in sight. He rubbed his eyes and peered again on all sides, but still he could see no sign of a habitation. To be sure the shadows of the evening had deepened to such a degree that he could not distinguish objects at any considerable distance, but certainly he could look far enough to have detected the origin of that pleasant scent of bacon.
But, so far as he could tell, the odor came literally out of the ground. He stared in bewilderment at the hillside. There was no orifice. There was nothing among that litter of vast boulders to indicate the entrance to a cave, or a lean-to put up against one of the rocks. His horse, too, began to lift and cock its head, as it smelled the food of man, which, in the natural course of events, ought to include its own share of fodder. And such was Charlie Mark’s amazement at his situation that he allowed the animal to retrace its steps down the side of the hill.
Halfway to the bottom the horse paused, and Charlie Mark, thinking that the animal might have come by instinct to the root of the mystery, examined the situation carefully. But there was no hint of a dwelling of men, or even of an open-air campfire. Indeed the scent of frying bacon was gone entirely. Mark turned the horse, therefore, and, with an oath of exasperation drove it at a cruel gallop up the steep crest. But here he brought it to a halt once more, with a wrench at the reins that made the poor beast throw up its head and half rear with the suddenness of its stop. The odor had returned out of the barren rocks.
Charlie Mark threw himself off the horse and knelt. But the scent immediately disappeared. Half frantic with this will-o’-the-wisp odor, he flung himself into the saddle again and sat, musing, when, to his surprise, the horse for a second time turned and wandered slowly down among the boulders of the side of that rude gulch. This time when the animal halted, Charlie Mark dismounted, determined to investigate more thoroughly. He advanced not according to what he saw, but according to the direction in which the head of the horse pointed. Presently he came to an immense boulder, fully twenty feet high and fitting solidly into the side of the gorge. Rather than a rock, it seemed an outcropping, as if here the broken ends of strata projected through the thin outer masking of soil.
With a scowl Charlie Mark considered this unprepossessing monster, and then moved around to the side of the rock. There was a narrow crevice, not more than two feet wide, he thought, or three at the most, between the right side of the huge rock and the hill. He stepped to it and found that there was nothing but sheer blackness within. He reached out, expecting that his hand would strike the rough surface of the stone, but his arm fell through an arc of thin air. With a stifled grunt of surprise, Charlie Mark advanced a long pace, holding out his hand, but still there was no sign of reaching an end of the passage.
Here he stopped, drew his revolver, and made sure that it was ready for firing. Raising his hands above his head, he had made out that the rock was squared away in a manner most unusual for the careless natural chisels of wind and weather. In fact, he could almost swear that he had felt the places that had been nicked out with hammer and drill.
Armed and prepared for whatever might come, he found that the passage suddenly terminated in the original direction, but veered to the right. He followed for five or six steps, turned again, and in another moment he was at the entrance of a commodious cave, some seven feet in height and fifteen feet or more in breadth, that extended an unknown distance into the bosom of the hill.
It was rudely fitted out as a dwelling and stable. In the distance he saw the glimmering figure of the white horse, and to the right and left saddles and guns leaned against the wall or were suspended from it. Altogether there was equipment for quite an establishment, and the whole was set off and fitfully illuminated by the blaze of a small fire, which glowed and darted up small flames from between two rocks. The pans scattered about showed that it was the cooking fire, and the only human being in sight was at once the cook and the diner.
He was a young fellow of not more than twenty-five years, brown faced, wide-shouldered, handsome in a lean-featured way, with a restless habit of hands and eyes. Charlie Mark regarded him with great interest. Why he did not at once advance and announce himself, he could not afterward be sure, but there was something about the silence with which the other sat there that detained him, and in another instant Charlie Mark saw a thing that was sure to keep him quiet. It was no more or less than a shimmering wig of red hair—flame-red hair—hanging from the pommel of a saddle on the wall.
Beyond any doubt it identified the solitary cave dweller. Indeed, it seemed to Charlie Mark, now that he knew, that he should have been able to distinguish the robber, even without the wig, by his build and a certain energy of movement, snakelike for suddenness, catlike for grace.
This was the Red Devil in his permanent abode, and luck had brought Charlie Mark to it—luck and the instinct of his wise-headed horse. Somewhere in this cave must be hidden no end of treasure. For many years now, as he gathered from the conversation he had heard in the stagecoach, the Red Devil had been the terror of the mountains and he must have stored up immense amounts of loot. And what more secure cache than this cave, where he had been willing to trust his own person, as the furnishings of the place showed? Without more ado, Charlie Mark raised his revolver and took careful aim.
But as he held it, the outlaw stiffened and turned his head, with a suddenness that caught the breath of young Mark. He saw that lean, handsome face, intent with listening, and he saw large, glowing-bright eyes, fixed upon him. So it seemed at least, although the intervening walls of shadow must, of course, make him invisible to the outlaw. Yet Charlie Mark lowered the gun and waited, only praying that he would not be discovered.
He was not, and presently the Red Devil turned again to his plate of food.
Mark decided that he must get nearer for his shot, and consequently nearer he crept, nearer and nearer until the light of the little fire began to play faintly on his hands. He was moving with the most painstaking care, his revolver thrusting forward with every move of the right hand; there was no possible sound, yet half a dozen times as he drifted along, he saw the other straighten and stiffen in alarm and listen. But he did not again turn, apparently using reason to club his alert senses back into a false sense of security.
What an equipment of hair-trigger nerves the fellow must have. And in the meantime, thought Mark, what if he shot the man, and then was unable to discover the site on which he had buried the treasure? The last thought was enough to stop the beating of his heart. Should he attempt to hold up this expert fighter? Should he attempt to cover him with the gun and then, having tied him, draw out the information he wanted, promising in return freedom?
It would be easy to promise freedom. He could forget his promise, once he had located the loot. But that money he must have. It was not enough, now, that the reward on the head of the Red Devil, alive or dead, would just clear his gambling debts. The buried money must be brought out into the light of day where it would
serve Charlie Mark, as he had always yearned to be served, with a sufficient capital to start gambling on a large scale. With the proper backing to start with, he had the dexterity of wits and fingers to enable him to pry open the richest wallets in the land.
Now he was not twenty feet away, and, rising to his knees and thence to a crouching position, he presented his revolver and covered the outlaw securely.
“Hands up!”
The first word made the head of the outlaw jerk up. Then, although Mark saw the swelling of the tensed muscles along the shoulders, the robber did not stir save to raise his hands slowly. At the shoulders they hesitated and seemed to be fighting, and then again they rose to the position of helplessness above his head. With wonderful nerve, he managed to sit looking steadily away from the danger behind him.
Charlie Mark admired him from the bottom of his cold heart. What a gambler this man would have made!
He picked up from the ground the noose end of a fallen lariat, and, with left-handed dexterity, he threw it. Fair and true it dropped over the shoulders of the outlaw and squeezed against his side the arms, the raised elbows that were still below the level of the shoulders.
There was a stifled curse from the outlaw, and that was all. At the exultant command of Charlie Mark, he rose and stood patiently while Mark relieved him of gun and knife. Then obediently he turned and took his place on the stone near the wall, which Charlie pointed out.
VIII
Mark now kicked a quantity of wood onto the fire. As the flames rose, illuminating the cave, he sat down in comfort and looked at his victim. It was a vastly more thrilling thing to confront those big, brilliant eyes, he found, than to look into the face of the richest gambler in the world. The stakes were money on one hand, life on the other. And life, for some reason, seemed more precious than coin, an observation that the hard-headed Charlie had never before made.