"Pardaloe," said de Spain, his left arm pointing menacingly and walking instantly toward him, "pull that curtain or pull your gun, quick." At that moment Nan, in hat and coat, reappeared in the archway behind de Spain. Pardaloe jerked down the curtain and started for the door. De Spain had backed up again. "Stop, Pardaloe," he called. "My men are outside that door. Stand where you are," he ordered, still enforcing his commands with his right hand covering the holster at his hip. "I leave this room first. Nan, are you ready?" he asked, without looking at her.

"Yes."

Her uncle's face whitened. "Don't leave this house to-night, Nan," he said menacingly.

"You've forced me to, Uncle Duke."

"Don't leave this house to-night."

"I can't protect myself in it."

"Don't leave this house--most of all, with that man!" He pointed at de Spain with a frenzy of hatred. Without answering, the two were retreating into the semidarkness of the dining-room. "Nan," came her uncle's voice, hoa.r.s.e with feeling, "you're saying good-by to me forever."

"No, uncle," she cried. "I am only doing what I have to do."

"I tell you I don't want to drive you from this roof, girl."

A rush of wind from an opening door was the only answer from the dark dining-room. The two Morgans started forward together. The sudden gust sucked the flame of the living-room lamp up into the chimney and after a brief, sharp struggle extinguished it. In the confusion it was a moment before a match could be found. When the lamp was relighted the Morgans ran into the dining-room. The wind and rain poured in through the open north door. But the room was empty.

Duke turned on his nephew with a choking curse. "This," he cried, beside himself with fury, "is your work!"

CHAPTER XXVI

FLIGHT

It was a forbidding night. Moisture-laden clouds, drifting over the Superst.i.tion Range, emptied their fulness against the face of the mountains in a downpour and buried the Gap in impenetrable darkness.

De Spain, catching Nan's arm, spoke hurriedly, and they hastened outside toward the kitchen. "We must get away quick," he said as she b.u.t.toned her coat. And, knowing how she suffered in what she was doing, he drew her into the shelter of the porch and caught her close to him. "It had to come, Nan. Don't shed a tear. I'll take you straight to Mrs. Jeffries. When you are ready, you'll marry me; we'll make our peace with your Uncle Duke together. Great G.o.d! What a night!

This way, dearie."

"No, to the stable, Henry! Where's your horse?"

"Under the pine, and yours, too. I found the pony, but I couldn't find your saddle, Nan."

"I know where it's hidden. Let's get the horses."

"Just a minute. I stuck my rifle under this porch." He stooped and felt below the stringer. Rising in a moment with the weapon on his arm, the two hurried around the end of the house toward the pine-tree.

They had almost reached this when a murmur unlike the sounds of the storm made de Spain halt his companion.

"What is it?" she whispered. He listened intently. While they stood still the front door of the house was opened hurriedly. A man ran out along the porch toward the stable. Neither Nan nor de Spain could make out who it was, but de Spain heard again the suspicious sound that had checked him. Without speaking, he took Nan and retreated to the corner of the house. "There is somebody in that pine," he whispered, "waiting for me to come after the horses. Sa.s.soon may have found them. I'll try it out, anyway, before I take a chance. Stand back here, Nan."

He put her behind the corner of the house, threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired as nearly as he could in the darkness toward and just above the pine. Without an instant's hesitation a pistol-shot answered from the direction in which he had fired, and in another moment a small fusillade followed. "By the Almighty," muttered de Spain, "we must have our horses, Nan. Stay right here. I'll try driving those fellows off their perch."

She caught his arm. "What are you going to do?"

"Run in on them from cover, wherever I can find it, Nan, and push them back. We've got to have those horses."

"Henry, we can get others from the stable."

"There may be more men waiting there for us."

"If we could only get away without a fight!"

"This is Sa.s.soon and his gang, Nan. You heard Pardaloe. These are not your people. I've got to drive 'em, or we're gone, Nan."

"Then I go with you."

"No."

"Yes!" Her tone was unmistakable.

"Nan, you can't do it," whispered de Spain energetically. "A chance bullet----"

She spoke with decision: "I go with you. I can use a rifle. Better both of us be killed than one. Help me up on this roof. I've climbed it a hundred times. My rifle is in my room. Quick, Henry."

Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand, caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her second foot on de Spain's shoulder, gained the sloping roof, and scrambled on her hands and knees up toward the window of her room.

The heavy rain and the slippery boards made progress uncertain, but with scarcely any delay, she reached her window and pushed open the cas.e.m.e.nt sash. A far-off peal of thunder echoed down from the mountains. Luckily, no flash had preceded it, and Nan, rifle in hand, slid safely down to the end of the lean-to, where de Spain, waiting, caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine, and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every shot--and not to fire often.

In this way, amid the falling of rain and the uncharted dangers of the darkness, they advanced on the pine-tree. Surprisingly little effort seemed necessary to drive off whoever held it. De Spain made his way slowly but safely to the disputed point and then understood--the horses were gone.

He had hardly rejoined Nan, who waited at a safe distance, and told her the bad news, when a fresh discharge of shots came from two directions--seemingly from the house and the stable. A moment later they heard sharp firing far down the Gap. This was their sole avenue of escape. It was bad enough, under the circ.u.mstances, to negotiate the trail on horseback--but to expose Nan, who had but just put herself under his protection, to death from a chance bullet while stumbling along on foot, surrounded by enemies--who could follow the flash of their own shots if they were forced to use their rifles, and close in on them at will--was an undertaking not to be faced.

They withdrew to the shelter of a large rock familiar to Nan even in the dark. While de Spain was debating in his mind how to meet the emergency, she stood at his side, his equal, he knew, in courage, daring, and resource, and answered his rapid questions as to possible gateways of escape. The rain, which had been abating, now ceased, but from every fissure in the mountains came the roar of rushing water, and little openings of rock and waterway that might have offered a chance when dry were now out of the question. In fact, it was Nan's belief that before morning water would be running over the main trail itself.

"Yet," said de Spain finally, "before morning we must be a long way from this particular spot, Nan. Lefever is down there--I haven't the slightest doubt of that. Sa.s.soon has posted men at the neck of the Gap--that's the first thing he would do. And if John heard my rifle when I first shot, he would be for breaking in here, and his men, if they've come up, would b.u.mp into Sa.s.soon's. It would be insane for us to try to get out over the trail with Sa.s.soon holding it against Lefever--we might easily be hit by our friends instead of our enemies.

I'll tell you what, Nan, suppose I scout down that way alone and see what I can find out?"

He put the proposal very lightly, realizing almost as soon as he made it what her answer would be. "Better we go together," she answered in the steady tone he loved to hear. "If you were killed, what would become of me? I should rather be shot than fall into his hands after this--if there was ever a chance for it before, there'd be no mercy now. Let's go together."

He would not consent, and she knew he was right. But what was right for one was right, she told him, for both, and what was wrong for one was wrong for both. "Then, I'll tell you," he said suddenly, as when after long uncertainty and anxious doubt one chooses an alternative and hastens to follow it. "Retreat is the thing for us, Nan. Let's make for Music Mountain and crawl into our cave till morning. Lefever will get in here some time to-morrow. Then we can connect with him."

They discussed the move a little further, but there seemed no escape from the necessity of it, despite the hardship involved in reaching the refuge; and, realizing that no time was to be lost, they set out on the long journey. Every foot of the troublesome way offered difficulties. Water impeded them continually. It lay in shallow pools underfoot and slipped in running sheets over the sloping rocks that lay in their obscure path. Sometimes de Spain led, sometimes Nan picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.

Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had cut them off their refuge.

"No use, Nan," said de Spain. "There isn't any other trail, is there?"

She told him there was no other. "And this will run all night," she added. "Sometimes it runs like this for days. I ought to have known there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry," she said, turning to him and as if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, "how did you happen to come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?"

"I came because you sent for me," he answered, surprised.

"But I didn't send for you."

He stopped, dumfounded. "What do you mean, Nan?" he demanded uneasily.

"I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you away."