"Morgan's Gap."

"Quite so--and been there all the time. Now, Bob has the old warrant for him: the question is, how to get him out."

De Spain reflected a moment before replying: "John, I'd let him alone just for the present," he said at length.

Lefever's eyes bulged: "Let Sa.s.soon alone?"

"He will keep--for a while, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want to stir things up too strong over that way just at the minute, John."

"Why not?"

De Spain shuffled a little: "Well, Jeffries thinks we might let things rest till Duke Morgan and the others get over some of their soreness."

Lefever, astonished at the indifference of de Spain to the opportunity of nabbing Sa.s.soon, while he could be found, expostulated strongly.

When de Spain persisted, Lefever, huffed, confided to Bob Scott that when the general manager got ready he could catch Sa.s.soon himself.

De Spain wanted for Nan's sake, as well as his own, to see what could be done to pacify her uncle and his relatives so that a wedge might be driven in between them and their notorious henchman, and Sa.s.soon brought to book with their consent; on this point, however, he was not quite bold-faced enough to take his friends into his confidence.

De Spain, as fiery a lover as he was a fighter, stayed none of his courting because circ.u.mstances put Music Mountain between him and his mistress. And Nan, after she had once surrendered, was nothing behind in the chances she unhesitatingly took to arrange her meetings with de Spain. He found in her, once her girlish timidity was overcome and a woman's confidence had replaced it, a disregard of consequences, so far as their own plans were concerned, that sometimes took away his breath.

The very day after she had got her uncle home, with the aid of Satterlee Morgan and an antiquated spring wagon, Nan rode, later in the afternoon, over to Calabasas. The two that would not be restrained had made their appointment at the lower lava beds half-way between the Gap and Calabasas. The sun was sinking behind the mountain when de Spain galloped out of the rocks as Nan turned from the trail and rode toward the black and weather-beaten meeting-place.

They could hardly slip from their saddles fast enough to reach each other's arms--Nan, trim as a model in fresh khaki, trying with a handkerchief hardly larger than a postage-stamp to wipe the flecks of dust from her pink cheeks, while de Spain, between dabs, covered them with importunate greetings. Looking engrossed into each other's eyes, and both, in their eagerness, talking at once, they led their horses into hiding and sat down to try to tell all that had happened since their parting. Wars and rumors of wars, feuds and raidings, fights and pursuits were no more to them than to babes in the woods. All that mattered to them--sitting or pacing together and absorbed, in the path of the long-cold volcanic stream buried in the shifting sands of the desert--was that they should clasp each other's clinging hands, listen each to the other's answering voice, look unrestrained into each other's questioning eyes.

They met in both the lava beds--the upper lay between the Gap and town--more than once. And one day came a scare. They were sitting on a little ledge well up in the rocks where de Spain could overlook the trail east and west, and were talking about a bungalow some day to be in Sleepy Cat, when they saw men riding from the west toward Calabasas. There were three in the party, one lagging well behind. The two men leading, Nan and de Spain made out to be Gale Morgan and Page.

They saw the man coming on behind stop his horse and lean forward, his head bent over the trail. He was examining the sand and halted quite a minute to study something. Both knew what he was studying--the hoof-prints of Nan's pony heading toward the lava. Nan shrank back and with de Spain moved a little to where they could watch the intruder without being seen. Nan whispered first: "It's Sa.s.soon." De Spain nodded. "What shall we do?" breathed Nan.

"Nothing yet," returned her lover, watching the horseman, whose eyes were still fixed on the pony's trail, but who was now less than a half mile away and riding straight toward them.

De Spain, his eyes on the danger and his hand laid behind Nan's waist, led the way guardedly down to where their horses stood. Nan, needing no instructions for the emergency, took the lines of the horses, and de Spain, standing beside his own horse, reached his right hand over in front of the pommel and, regarding Sa.s.soon all the while, drew his rifle slowly from its scabbard. The blood fled Nan's cheeks. She said nothing. Without looking at her, de Spain drew her own rifle from her horse's side, pa.s.sed it into her hand and, moving over in front of the horses, laid his left hand rea.s.suringly on her waist again. At that moment, little knowing what eyes were on him in the black fragments ahead, Sa.s.soon looked up. Then he rode more slowly forward. The color returned to Nan's cheeks: "Do you want me to use this?" she murmured, indicating the rifle.

"Certainly not. But if the others turn back, I may need it. Stay right here with the horses. He will lose the trail in a minute now. When he reaches the rock I'll go down and keep him from getting off his horse--he won't fight from the saddle."

But with an instinct better than knowledge, Sa.s.soon, like a wolf scenting danger, stopped again. He scanned the broken and forbidding hump in front, now less than a quarter of a mile from him, questioningly. His eyes seemed to rove inquisitively over the lava pile as if asking why a Morgan Gap pony had visited it. In another moment he wheeled his horse and spurred rapidly after his companions.

The two drew a deep breath. De Spain laughed: "What we don't know, never hurts us." He drew Nan to him. Holding the rifle muzzle at arm's length as the b.u.t.t rested on the ground, she looked up from the shoulder to which she was drawn: "What should you have done if he had come?"

"Taken you to the Gap and then taken him to Sleepy Cat, where he belongs."

"But, Henry, suppose----"

"There wouldn't have been any 'suppose.'"

"Suppose the others had come."

"With one rifle, here, a man could stand off a regiment. Nan, do you know, you fit into my arm as if you were made for it?"

His courage was contagious. When he had tired her with fresh importunities he unpinned her felt hat and held it out of reach while he kissed and toyed with and disarranged her hair. In revenge, she s.n.a.t.c.hed from his pocket his little black memorandum-book and some letters and read, or pretended to read them, and seizing her opportunity she broke from him and ran with the utmost fleetness up into the rocks.

In two minutes they had forgotten the episode almost as completely as if it never had been. But when they left for home, they agreed they would not meet there again. They knew that Sa.s.soon, like a jackal, would surely come back, and more than once, until he found out just what that trail or any subsequent trail leading into the beds meant.

The lovers laughed the jackal's spying to scorn and rode away, bantering, racing, and chasing each other in the saddle, as solely concerned in their happiness as if there were nothing else of moment in the whole wide world.

CHAPTER XX

FACING THE MUSIC

They had not underestimated the danger from Sa.s.soon's suspicious malevolence. He returned next morning to read what further he could among the rocks. It was little, but it spelled a meeting of two people--Nan and another--and he was stimulated to keep his eyes and ears open for further discoveries. Moreover, continuing ease in seeing each other, undetected by hostile eyes, gradually rendered the lovers less cautious in their arrangements. The one thing that possessed their energies was to be together.

De Spain, naturally reckless, had won in Nan a girl hardly more concerned. Self-reliant, both of them, and instinctively vigilant, they spent so much time together that Scott and Lefever, who, before a fortnight had pa.s.sed after Duke's return home, surmised that de Spain must be carrying on some sort of a clandestine affair hinting toward the Gap, only questioned how long it would be before something happened, and only hoped it would not be, in their own word, unpleasant. It was not theirs in any case to admonish de Spain, nor to dog the movements of so capable a friend even when his safety was concerned, so long as he preferred to keep his own counsel--there are limits within which no man welcomes uninvited a.s.sistance. And de Spain, in his long and frequent rides, his protracted absences, indifference to the details of business and careless humor, had evidently pa.s.sed within these limits.

What was stage traffic to him compared to the sunshine on Nan's hair; what attraction had schedules to offer against a moment of her eyes; what pleasing connection could there be between bad-order wheels and her low laugh?

The two felt they must meet to discuss their constant perplexities and the problems of their difficult situation; but when they reached their trysting-places, there was more of gayety than gravity, more of nonchalance than concern, more of looking into each other's hearts than looking into the troublesome future. And there was hardly an inviting spot within miles of Music Mountain that one or the other of the two had not waited near.

There were, of course, disappointments, but there were only a few failures in their arrangements. The difficulties of these fell chiefly on Nan. How she overcame them was a source of surprise to de Spain, who marvelled at her innocent resource in escaping the demands at home and making her way, despite an array of obstacles, to his distant impatience.

Midway between Music Mountain and Sleepy Cat a low-lying wall of lava rock, in part sand-covered and in part exposed, parallels and sometimes crosses the princ.i.p.al trail. This undulating ridge was a favorite with de Spain and Nan, because they could ride in and out of hiding-places without more than just leaving the trail itself. To the west of this ridge, and commanding it, rose rather more than a mile away the cone called Black Cap.

"Suppose," said Nan one afternoon, looking from de Spain's side toward the mountains, "some one should be spying on us from Black Cap?" She pointed to the solitary rock.

"If any one has been, Nan, with a good gla.s.s he must have seen exchanges of confidence over here that would make him gnash his teeth.

I know if I ever saw anything like it I'd go hang. But the country around there is too rough for a horse. n.o.body even hides around Black Cap, except some tramp hold-up man that's crowded in his get-away. Bob Scott says there are dozens of mountain-lions over there."

But Sa.s.soon had the unpleasant patience of a mountain-lion and its dogged persistence, and, hiding himself on Black Cap, he made certain one day of what he had long been convinced--that Nan was meeting de Spain.

The day after she had mentioned Black Cap to her lover, Nan rode over to Calabasas to get a bridle mended. Galloping back, she encountered Sa.s.soon just inside the Gap. Nan so detested him that she never spoke when she could avoid it. On his part he pretended not to see her as she pa.s.sed. When she reached home she found her Uncle Duke and Gale standing in front of the fireplace in the living-room. The two appeared from their manner to have been in a heated discussion, one that had stopped suddenly on her appearance. Both looked at Nan. The expression on their faces forewarned her. She threw her quirt on the table, drew off her riding-gloves, and began to unpin her hat; but she knew a storm was impending.

Gale had been made for a long time to know that he was an unwelcome visitor, and Nan's greeting of him was the merest contemptuous nod.

"Well, uncle," she said, glancing at Duke, "I'm late again. Have you had supper?"

Duke always spoke curtly; to-night his heavy voice was as sharp as an axe. "Been late a good deal lately."

Nan laid her hat on the table and, glancing composedly from one suspicious face to the other, put her hands up to rearrange her hair.

"I'm going to try to do better. I'll go out and get my supper if you've had yours." She started toward the dining-room.

"Hold on!" Nan paused at her uncle's ferocious command. She looked at him either really or feignedly surprised, her expression changing to one of indignation, and waited for him to speak. Since he did no more than glare angrily at her, Nan lifted her brows a little. "What do you want, uncle?"

"Where did you go this afternoon?"

"Over to Calabasas," she answered innocently.