"Good night, Pardaloe."

Bending forward, limp, in his chair, supporting his head vacantly on his hands, trying to think and fearing to think, de Spain heard Pardaloe's measured tread on the descending steps, and listened mechanically to the retreating echoes of his footsteps down the shaded street. Minute after minute pa.s.sed. De Spain made no move. A step so light that it could only have been the step of a delicate girlhood, a step free as the footfall of youth, poised as the tread of womanhood and beauty, came down the stairs. Slight as she was, and silent as he was, she walked straight to him in the darkness, and, sinking between his feet, wound her hands through his two arms. "I heard everything, Henry," she murmured, looking up. An involuntary start of protest was his only response. "I was afraid of a plot against you. I stayed at the head of the stairs. Henry, I told you long ago some dreadful thing would come between us--something not our fault. And now it comes to dash our cup of happiness when it is filling. Something told me, Henry, it would come to-night--some bad news, some horror laid up against us out of a past that neither you nor I are to blame for. In all my sorrow I am sorriest, Henry, for you. Why did I ever cross your path to make you unhappy when blood lay between your people and mine?

My wretched uncle! I never dreamed he had murder on his soul--and of all others, that murder! I knew he did wrong--I knew some of his a.s.sociates were criminals. But he has been a father and mother to me since I could creep--I never knew any father or mother."

She stopped, hoping perhaps he would say some little word, that he would even pat her head, or press her hand, but he sat like one stunned. "If it could have been anything but this!" she pleaded, low and sorrowfully. "Oh, why did you not listen to me before we were engulfed! My dear Henry! You who've given me all the happiness I have ever had--that the blood of my own should come against you and yours!"

The emotion she struggled with, and fought back with all the strength of her nature, rose in a resistless tide that swept her on, in the face of his ominous silence, to despair. She clasped her hands in silent misery, losing hope with every moment of his stoniness that she could move him to restraint or pity toward her wretched foster-father.

She recalled the merciless words he had spoken on the mountain when he told her of his father's death. Her tortured imagination pictured the horror of the sequel, in which the son of the murdered man should meet him who had taken his father's life. The fate of it, the hopelessness of escape from its awful consequence, overcame her. Her breath, no longer controlled, came brokenly, and her voice trembled.

"You have been very kind to me, Henry--you've been the only man I've ever known that always, everywhere, thought of me first. I told you I didn't deserve it, I wasn't worthy of it----"

His hands slipped silently over her hands. He gathered her close into his arms, and his tears fell on her upturned face.

CHAPTER x.x.x

HOPE FORLORN

There were hours in that night that each had reason long to remember; a night that seemed to bring them, in spite of their devotion, to the end of their dream. They parted late, each trying to soften the blow as it fell on the other, each professing a courage which, in the face of the revelation, neither could clearly feel.

In the morning Jeffries brought down to de Spain, who had spent a sleepless night at the office, a letter from Nan.

De Spain opened it with acute misgivings. Hardly able to believe his eyes, he slowly read:

DEAREST:

A wild hope has come to me. Perhaps we don't know the truth of this terrible story as it really is. Suppose we should be condemning poor Uncle Duke without having the real facts? Sa.s.soon was a wretch, Henry, if ever one lived--a curse to every one. What purpose he could serve by repeating this story, which he must have kept very secret till now, I don't know; but there was some reason. I _must_ know the whole truth--I feel that I, alone, can get hold of it, and that you would approve what I am doing if you were here with me in this little room, where I am writing at daybreak, to show you my heart.

Long before you get this I shall be speeding toward the Gap. I am going to Uncle Duke to get from him the exact truth. Uncle Duke is breaking--has broken--and now that the very worst has come, and we must face it, he will tell me what I ask. Whether I can get him to repeat this to you, to come to you, to throw himself on your pity, my dearest one, I don't know. But it is for this I am going to try, and for this I beg of your love--the love of which I have been so proud!--that you will let me stay with him until I at least learn everything and can bring the whole story to you. If I can bring him, I will.

And I shall be safe with him--perfectly safe. Gale has been driven away. Pardaloe, I know I can trust, and he will be under the roof with me. _Please, do not try to come to me._ It might ruin everything. Only forgive me, and I shall be back with what I hope for, or what I fear, very, very soon. Not till then can I bear to look into your eyes. You have a better right than anyone in the world to know the whole truth, cost what it may. Be patient for only a little while with

NAN.

It was Jeffries who said, afterward, he hoped never again to be the bearer of a letter such as that. Never until he had read and grasped the contents of Nan's note had Jeffries seen the bundle of resource and nerve and sinew, that men called Henry de Spain, go to pieces. For once, trouble overbore him.

When he was able to speak he told Jeffries everything. "It is my fault," he said hopelessly. "I was so crippled, so stunned, she must have thought--I see it now--that I was making ready to ride out by daybreak and shoot Duke down on sight. It's the price a man must pay, Jeffries, for the ability to defend himself against this bunch of hold-up men and a.s.sa.s.sins. Because they can't get me, I'm a 'gunman'----"

"No, you're not a 'gunman.'"

"A gunman and nothing else. That's what everybody, friends and enemies, reckon me--a gunman. You put me here to clean out this Calabasas gang, not because of my good looks, but because I've been, so far, a fraction of a second quicker on a trigger than these double-d.a.m.ned crooks.

"I don't get any fun out of standing for ten minutes at a time with a sixty-pound safety-valve dragging on my heart, watching a man's eye to see whether he is going to pull a gun on me and knock me down with a slug before I can pull one and knock him down. I don't care for that kind of thing, Jeff. h.e.l.l's delight! I'd rather have a little ranch with a little patch of alfalfa--enough alfalfa to feed a little bunch of cattle, a hundred miles from every living soul. What I would like to do is to own a piece of land under a ten-cent ditch, and watch the wheat sprout out of the desert."

Jeffries, from behind his pipe, regarded de Spain's random talk calmly.

"I do feel hard over my father's death," he went on moodily. "Who wouldn't? If G.o.d meant me to forget it, why did he put this mark on my face, Jeff? I did talk pretty strong to Nan about it on Music Mountain. She accused me then of being a gunman. It made me hot to be set down for a gunman by her. I guess I did give it back to her too strong. That's the trouble--my bark is worse than my bite--I'm always putting things too strong. I didn't know when I was talking to her then that Sandusky and Logan were dead. Of course, she thought I was a butcher. But how could I help it?

"I did feel, for a long time, I'd like to kill with my own hands the man that murdered my father, Jeff. My mother must have realized that her babe, if a man-child, was doomed to a life of bloodshed. I've been trying to think most of the night what she'd want me to do now. I don't know what I _can_ do, or can't do, when I set eyes on that old scoundrel. He's got to tell the truth--that's all I say now. If he lies, after what he made my mother suffer, he ought to die like a dog--no matter who he is.

"I don't want to break Nan's heart. What can I do? Hanging him here in Sleepy Cat, if I could do it, wouldn't help her feelings a whole lot.

If I could see the fellow--" de Spain's hands, spread before him on the table, drew up tight, "if I could get my fingers on his throat, for a minute, and talk to him, tell him what I think of him--I might know what I would want to do--Nan might be there to see and judge between us. I'd be almost willing to leave things to her to settle herself. I only want what's right. But," the oath that recorded his closing threat was collected and pitiless, "if any harm comes to that girl now from this wild trip back among those wolves--G.o.d pity the men that put it over. I'll wipe out the whole accursed clan, if I have to swing for it right here in Sleepy Cat!"

John Lefever, Jeffries, Scott in turn took him in hand to hold him during three days, to restrain the fury of his resentment, and keep him from riding to the Gap in a temper that each of them knew would mean only a tragedy worse than what had gone before. Mountain-men who happened in and out of Sleepy Cat during those three days remember how it seemed for that time as if the attention of every man and woman in the whole country was fixed on the new situation that balked de Spain.

They knew only that Nan had gone back to her people, not why she had gone back; but the air was eager with surmise and rumor as to what had happened, and in this complete overturning of all de Spain's hopes, what would happen before the story ended.

Even three days of tactful representation and patient admonition from cool-headed counsellors did not accomplish all they hoped for in de Spain's att.i.tude. His rage subsided, but only to be followed by a settled gloom that they knew might burst into uncontrollable anger at any moment.

A report reached McAlpin that Gale Morgan was making ready to return to Music Mountain with the remnant of Sandusky's gang, to make a demand on Duke for certain property and partnership adjustments. This rumor he telephoned to Jeffries. Before talking with de Spain, Jeffries went over the information with Lefever. The two agreed it was right, in the circ.u.mstances, that de Spain should be nearer than Sleepy Cat to Nan. Moreover, the period of waiting she had enjoined on him was almost complete.

Without giving de Spain the story fully, the two men talking before him let the discussion drift toward a proposal on his part to go down to Calabasas, where he could more easily keep track of any movement to or from the Gap, and this they approved. De Spain, already chafing under a hardly endured restraint, lost no time in starting for Calabasas, directing Lefever to follow next day.

It added nothing to his peace of mind in the morning to learn definitely from McAlpin that Gale Morgan, within twenty-four hours, had really disappeared from Calabasas. No word of any kind had come from Music Mountain for days. No one at Calabasas was aware even that Nan had gone into the Gap again. Bob Scott was at Thief River. De Spain telephoned to him to come up on the early stage, and turned his attention toward getting information from Music Mountain without violating Nan's injunction not to frustrate her most delicate effort with her uncle.

As a possible scout to look into her present situation and report on it, McAlpin could point only to Bull Page. Bull was a ready instrument, but his present value as an a.s.sistant had become a matter of doubt, since practically every man in the Gap had threatened within the week to blow his head off--though Bull himself felt no scruples against making an attempt to reach Music Mountain and get back again.

It was proposed by the canny McAlpin to send him in with a team and light wagon, ostensibly to bring out his trunk, which, if it had not been fed to the horses, was still in Duke's barn. As soon as a rig could be got up Page started out.

It was late November. A far, clear air drew the snow-capped ranges sharply down to the eye of the desert--as if the speckless sky, lighted by the radiant sun, were but a monster gla.s.s rigged to trick the credulous retina. De Spain, in the saddle in front of the barn, his broad hat brim set on the impa.s.sive level of the Western horseman, his lips seeming to compress his thoughts, his lines over his forearm, and his hands half-slipped into the pockets of his snug leather coat, watched Page with his light wagon and horses drive away.

Idling around the neighborhood of the barns in the saddle, de Spain saw him gradually recede into the long desert perspective, the perspective which almost alone enabled the watcher to realize as he curtained his eyes behind their long, steady lashes from the blazing sun, that it was a good bit of a way to the foot of the great outpost of the Superst.i.tion Range.

De Spain's restlessness prevented his remaining quietly anywhere for long. As the morning advanced he cantered out on the Music Mountain trail, thinking of and wishing for a sight of Nan. The deadly shock of Pardaloe's story had been dulled by days and nights of pain. His deep-rooted love and his loneliness had quieted his impulse for vengeance and overborne him with a profound sadness. He realized how different his feelings were now from what they had been when she knelt before him in the darkened room and, not daring to plead for mercy for her uncle, had asked him only for the pity for herself that he had seemed so slow to give. Something reproached him now for his coldness at the moment that he should have thought of her suffering before his own.

The crystal brightness of the day brought no elation to his thoughts.

His attention fixed on nothing that did not revert to Nan and his hunger to see her again. If he regarded the majestic mountain before him, it was only to recall the day she had fed him at its foot, long before she loved him--he thought of that truth now--when he lay dying on it. If the black reaches of the lava beds came within view, it was only to remind him that, among those desolate rocks, this simple, blue-eyed girl, frail in his eyes as a cobweb despite her graceful strength, had intrusted all her life and happiness to him, given her fresh lips to his, endured without complaint the headstrong ardor of his caresses and, by the pretty mockery of her averted eyes, provoked his love to new adventure.

Memory seemed that morning as keen as the fickle air--so sharply did it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in the penumbra of his thoughts seemed to leave something he could not shake off--a vague, haunting fear, as if of some impending tragedy that should wreck their future.

It was while riding in this way that his eyes, reading mechanically the wagon trail he was aimlessly following--for no reason other than that it brought him, though forbidden, a little closer to her--arrested his attention. He checked his horse. Something, the trail told him, had happened. Page had stopped his horses. Page had met two men on horseback coming from the Gap. After a parley--for the horses had tramped around long enough for one--the wagon had turned completely from the trail and struck out across the desert, north; the two hors.e.m.e.n, or one with a led horse, had started back for the Gap.

All of this de Spain gathered without moving his horse outside a circle of thirty feet. What did it mean? Page might have fallen in with cronies from the Gap, abandoned his job, and started for Sleepy Cat, but this was unlikely. He might have encountered enemies, been pointedly advised to keep away from the Gap, and pretended to start for Sleepy Cat, to avoid trouble with them. Deeming the second the more probable conclusion, de Spain, absorbed in his speculations, continued toward the Gap to see whether he could not pick up the trail of Page's rig farther on.

Within a mile a further surprise awaited him. The two hors.e.m.e.n, who had headed for the Gap after stopping Page, had left the trail, turned to the south, down a small draw, which would screen them from sight, and set out across the desert.

No trail and no habitation lay in the direction they had taken--and it seemed clearer to de Spain that the second horse was a led horse.

There was a story in the incident, but his interest lay in following Page's movements, and he spurred swiftly forward to see whether his messenger had resumed the Gap trail and gone on with his mission. He followed this quest almost to the mountains, without recovering any trace of Page's rig. He halted. It was certain now that Page had not gone into the Gap.

Perplexed and annoyed, de Spain, from the high ground on which he sat his horse, cast his eyes far out over the desert. The brilliant sunshine flooded it as far as the eye could reach. He scanned the vast s.p.a.ce without detecting a sign of life anywhere, though none better than he knew that any abundance of it might be there. But his gaze caught something of interest on the farthest northern horizon, and on this his scrutiny rested a long time. A soft brown curtain rose just above the earth line against the blue sky. Toward the east it died away and toward the west it was cut off by the Superst.i.tion peaks.

De Spain, without giving the weather signs much thought, recognized their import, but his mind was filled with his own anxieties and he rode smartly back toward Calabasas, because he was not at ease over the puzzles in the trail. When he reached the depression where the hors.e.m.e.n had, without any apparent reason, turned south, he halted.

Should he follow them or turn north to follow Page's wanderings? If Page had been scared away from the Gap, for a time, he probably had no information that de Spain wanted, and de Spain knew his cunning and persistence well enough to be confident he would be back on the Gap road, and within the cover of the mountains, before a storm should overtake him. On the north the brown curtain had risen fast and already enveloped the farthest peaks of the range. Letting his horse stretch its neck, he hesitated a moment longer trying to decide whether to follow the men to the south or the wagon to the north. A woman might have done better. But no good angel was there to guide his decision, and in another moment he was riding rapidly to the south with the even, brown, misty cloud behind him rolling higher into the northern sky.

CHAPTER x.x.xI