"You were looking for me, then?"

"To deliver my message."

"Do you think that message means what it says?"

"I know it does."

"Do you know what it means for me to undertake?"

"I have a pretty stiff idea."

"Did you get it direct from the party who sent it?"

"I can't talk all night. Take it or leave it just where it is."

De Spain heard him close. He closed his own instrument and began feverishly signalling central. "This is 101. Henry de Spain talking,"

he said briskly. "You just called me. Ten dollars for you, operator, if you can locate that call, quick!"

There was a moment of delay at the central office, then the answer: "It came from 234--Tenison's saloon."

"Give me your name, operator. Good. Now give me 22 as quick as the Lord will let you, and ring the neck off the bell."

Lefever answered the call on number 22. The talk was quick and sharp.

Messengers were instantly pressed into service from the despatcher's office. Telephone wires hummed, and every man available on the special agent's force was brought into action. Livery-stables were covered, the public resorts were put under observation, hors.e.m.e.n clattered up and down the street. Within an incredibly short time the town was rounded up, every outgoing trail watched, and search was under way for any one from Morgan's Gap, and especially for the sender of the telephone message.

De Spain, after instructing Lefever, hastened to Tenison's. His rapid questioning of the few habitues of the place and the bartender elicited only the information that a man had used the telephone booth within a few minutes. n.o.body knew him or, if they did know him, refused to describe him in any but vague terms. He had come in by the front door and slipped out probably by the rear door--at all events, unnoticed by those questioned. By a series of eliminating inquiries, de Spain made out only that the man was not a Morgan. Outside, Bob Scott in the saddle waited with a led horse. The two men rode straight and hard for the river bridge. They roused an old hunter who lived in a near-by hut, on the town side, and asked whether any horseman had crossed the bridge. The hunter admitted gruffly that he _had_ heard a horse's hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter, after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes; moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into town, and not out.

Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from the saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed ahead.

The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen, not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient.

"He could easily slip us," Scott explained, "by leaving the trail for a minute while we rode past--if he knows his business--and I guess he does."

"If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out, too, within half to three-quarters of an hour," said de Spain. "But how could he have got out without being heard?"

"Maybe," suggested Scott, "he forded the river."

"Could he do it?"

"It's a man's job," returned Scott, reflecting, "but it could be done."

"If a man thought it necessary."

"If he knew you by sight," responded Scott unmoved, "he might have thought it necessary."

Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been found anywhere in town from Morgan's Gap; whoever had taken a chance in delivering the message had escaped undetected.

Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.

"It's one of two things," declared Lefever, whose eyes were never dulled by late hours. "Either they've sent this to lure you into the Gap and 'get' you, or else--and that's a great big 'or else'--she needs you. Henry, did that message--I mean the way it was worded--sound like Nan Morgan?"

De Spain could hardly answer. "It did, and it didn't," he said finally. "But--" his companions saw during the pause by which his lips expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to be turned from it--"I am going to act just as if the word came from Nan and she does need me."

More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever, after conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.

"I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any game I play. In the first place it isn't right to take you and Bob in where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn't enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is a horror to that girl. I've got her feelings to think about as well as my own. I've decided what to do, John. I'm going in alone."

"You're going in alone!"

"To-night. Now, I'll tell you what I'd like you to do if you want to: ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don't hear from me by ten o'clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify Jeffries to look for a new manager."

"On the contrary, if we don't hear from you by ten o'clock, Henry, we will blaze our way in and drag out your body." Lefever put up his hand to cut off any rejoinder. "Don't discuss it. What happens after ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if we don't hear from you before that, can't possibly be of any interest to you or make any difference." He paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually a.s.sociated with him. "Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school, my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound; but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just once too often, and got smashed all to h.e.l.l. Aunt Lou didn't say it exactly in that way--but such was the substance of the moral.

"You've pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man knows better than I that you never pulled one for the looks of the thing or to make people talk--or that you ever took a chance you didn't feel you had to take. But, it isn't humanly possible you can keep this up for all time; it _can't_ go on forever. The pitcher goes to the well once too often, Henry; there comes a time when it doesn't come back.

"Understand--I'm not saying this to attempt to dissuade you from the worst job you ever started in on. I know your mind is made up. You won't listen to me; you won't listen to Scott; and I'm too good an Indian not to know where I get off, or not to do what I'm told. But this is what I have been thinking of a long, long time; and this is what I feel I ought to say, here and now."

The two men were sitting in de Spain's room. De Spain was staring through the broad south window at the white-capped peaks of the distant range. He was silent for a time. "I believe you're right, John," he said after a while. "I know you are. In this case I am tied up more than I've ever been tied before; but I've got to see it through as best I can, and take what comes without whining. My mind is made up and, strange as it may sound to you, I feel that I _am_ coming back. Not but what I know it's due me, John. Not but what I expect to get it sometime. And maybe I'm wrong now; but I don't feel as if it's coming till I've given all the protection to that girl that a man can give to a woman."

CHAPTER XXV

A SURPRISING SLIP

Scott was called by Lefever to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could before daybreak the following morning.

"It's a short notice to get many men together--of the kind we want,"

admitted Lefever. "You'll have to skirmish some between now and midnight. What do you think you can do?"

Scott had already made up a tentative list. He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said n.o.body should go if he didn't; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located--any one of them, Lefever knew, could give an account of himself under all circ.u.mstances.

While Scott was getting his men together, de Spain, accompanied by Lefever, was riding toward Music Mountain. Scott had urged on them but one parting caution--not to leave the aspens until rain began falling. When he spoke there was not a cloud in the sky. "It's going to rain to-night, just the same," predicted Scott. "Don't leave the trees till it gets going. Those Gap scouts will get under cover and be hunting for a drink the minute it gets cold--I know them. You can ride right over their toes, if you'll be patient."

The sun set across the range in a drift of grayish-black, low-lying clouds, which seemed only to await its disappearance to envelop the mountains and empty their moisture on the desert. By the time de Spain and Lefever reached the end of their long ride a misty rain was drifting down from the west. The two men had just ridden into the quaking asps when a man coming out of the Gap almost rode into them.

The intruders had halted and were sufficiently hidden to escape notice, had not Lefever's horse indiscreetly coughed. The man from the Gap reined up and called out. Lefever answered.

"It's Bull Page," declared de Spain, after the exchange of a few words, calling to Bull at the same time to come over to the shelter of the trees.

"What's going on in there, Bull?" asked de Spain after Bull had told him that Gale had driven him out, and he was heading for Calabasas.

"You tell," retorted Page. "Looks to me like old Duke's getting ready to die. Gale says he's going to draw his will to-night, and don't want n.o.body around--got old Judge Druel in there."

De Spain p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "What's that, Druel?" he demanded. Bull repeated his declaration. Lefever broke into violent language at the Sleepy Cat jurist's expense, and ended by declaring that no will should be drawn in the Gap that night by Duke Morgan or anybody else, unless he and Bull were made legatees.

Beyond this nothing could be learned from Bull, who was persuaded without difficulty by Lefever to abandon the idea of riding to Calabasas through the rain, and to spend the night with him in the neighborhood, wherever fancy, the rain, and the wind--which was rising--should dictate.