"But where has he gone?" demanded Lefever, pointing with his hand.

"There is the road both ways for three miles." Scott nodded toward the snow-capped peak of Music Mountain. "Over to Morgan's, most likely. He knows no one would follow him into the Gap. Just for fun, now, let's see."

Dismounting, the Indian scrutinized the hoof-prints where the horse had stood. Getting into the saddle again, he led the way, bending over his horse's neck and stopping frequently to read the trail, half a mile out along the Gap road, until he could once more readily point out the hoof-prints to his companions. "That is Sa.s.soon," he announced. "I know the heels. And I know he rides this horse; it belongs to Gale Morgan. Sa.s.soon," Scott smiled sympathetically on Lefever, "is half-way to Morgan's Gap."

"After him!" cried Lefever hotly. De Spain looked inquiringly at the guard. Scott shook his head. "That would be all right, but there's two other Calabasas men in the Gap this afternoon it wouldn't be nice to mix with--Deaf Sandusky and Harvey Logan."

"We won't mix with them," suggested de Spain.

"If we tackle Sa.s.soon, they'll mix with us," explained Scott. He reflected a moment. "They always stay at Gale Morgan's or Duke's. We might sneak Sa.s.soon out without their getting on. Sa.s.soon knows he is safe in the Gap; but he'll hide even after he gets there. He takes two precautions for every other man's one. Sa.s.soon is a wonder at hiding out. I've got the Thief River run this afternoon----"

De Spain looked at him. "Well?"

Scott's face softened into the characteristic smile--akin to a quiet grin--that it often wore. "If I didn't have to go through to-day, and the three of us could get to the Gap before daylight to-morrow morning, I would give Sa.s.soon a run for his money in spite of the other fellows."

"Don't take your run this afternoon," directed de Spain. "Telephone Sleepy Cat for a subst.i.tute. Suppose we go back, get something to eat, and you two ride singly over toward the Gap this afternoon; lie outside under cover to see whether Sa.s.soon or his friends leave before night--there's only one way out of the place, they tell me. Then I will join you, and we'll ride in before daylight, and perhaps catch him while everybody is asleep."

"If you do," predicted Scott, in his deliberate way of expressing a conclusion, "I think you'll get him."

It was so arranged.

CHAPTER V

ROUNDING UP Sa.s.sOON

De Spain joined his a.s.sociates at dark outside the Gap. Neither Sa.s.soon nor his friends had been seen. The night was still, the sky cloudless, and as the three men with a led horse rode at midnight into the mountains, the great red heart of the Scorpion shone afire in the southern sky. Spreading out when they rode between the mountain walls, they made their way without interruption silently toward their rendezvous, an aspen grove near which Purgatoire Creek makes its way out of the Gap and, cutting a deep gash along the edge of the range for a hundred miles, empties into the Thief.

Scott was the first to reach the trees. The little grove spreads across a slope half a mile wide between the base of one towering cliff, still bearing its Spanish name, El Capitan, and the gorge of the Purgatoire. To the east of this point the trails to Calabasas and to Sleepy Cat divide, and here Scott and Lefever received de Spain, who had ridden slowly and followed Scott's injunctions to keep the red star to the right of El Capitan all the way across the Sinks.

Securing their horses, the three stretched out on the open ground to wait for daylight. De Spain was wakeful, and his eyes rested with curiosity on the huge bulk of Music Mountain, rising overwhelmingly above him. Through the Gap that divided the great, sentinel-like front of El Capitan, marking the northern face of the mountain rift, from Round Top, the south wall of the opening, stars shone vividly, as if lighting the way into the silent range beyond.

The breathing of his companions soon a.s.sured de Spain that both were asleep. The horses were quiet, and the night gave no sound save that vaguely through the darkness came the faint brawl of tiny cataracts tumbling down far mountain heights. De Spain, lying on his side, his head resting on his elbow, and his hands clasped at the back of his neck, meditated first on how he should capture Sa.s.soon at daybreak, and then on Nan Morgan and her mountain home, into which he was about to break to drag out a criminal. Sa.s.soon and his malice soon drifted out of his mind, but Nan remained. She stayed with him, it seemed, for hours--appearing and disappearing, in one aspect more alluring than another. Then her form outlined in the mists that rose from the hidden creek seemed to hover somewhere near until Scott's hand laid on the dreamer's shoulder drove it suddenly away. Day was at hand.

De Spain got up and shook off the chilliness and drowsiness of the night. It had been agreed that he, being less known in the Gap than either of his companions, could best attempt the difficult capture. It was strictly a _coup de main_, depending for its success on chance and nerve. The one that tried it might manage to bring out his man--or might be brought out himself. Between these alternatives there was not much middle ground, except that failing to find Sa.s.soon, or in case he should be intercepted with his prisoner, the intruder, escaping single-handed from a shower of bullets, might still get away. But Morgan's Gap men were esteemed fairly good marksmen.

Bob Scott, who knew the recess well, repeated his explicit directions as to how de Spain was to reach Sa.s.soon's shack. He repeated his description of its interior, told him where the bed stood, and even where Sa.s.soon ordinarily kept his knife and his revolver. The western sky was still dark when de Spain, mounting, discussed the last arrangements with his scouts and, taking the bridle of the led horse, turned toward Round Top. At its narrowest point the Gap opening is barely two miles wide, and the one road, in and out, lies among the rocks through this neck; toward it all trails inside the Gap converge.

De Spain gave his horse his head--it was still too dark to distinguish the path--and depended on his towering landmarks for his general direction. He advanced at a snail's pace until he pa.s.sed the base of El Capitan, when of a sudden, as he rode out from among high projecting rocks full into the opening, faint rays of light from the eastern dawn revealed the narrow, strangely enclosed and perfectly hidden valley before him. The eastern and southern sides still lay in darkness, but the stupendous cliffs frowning on the north and west were lighted somewhat from the east. The southern wall, though shrouded, seemed to rise in an unending series of beetling aretes.

De Spain caught his breath. No description he had ever heard of the nook that screened the Morgans from the outside world had prepared him for what he saw. From side to side of the gigantic mountain fissure, it could hardly be, de Spain thought, more than a few thousand yards--so completely was his sense of proportion stunned by the frowning cliffs which rose, at points, half a mile into the sky. But it was actually several miles from wall to wall, and the Gap was more than as much in depth, as it ran back to a mere wedge between unnamed Superst.i.tion peaks.

Every moment that he pushed ahead warned him that daylight would come suddenly and his time to act would be short. The trail he followed broadened into a road, and he strained his eyes for signs, first of life, and then of habitation. The little creek, now beside his way, flowed quietly albeit swiftly along, and his utmost vigilance could detect no living thing stirring; but a turn in the trail, marked by a large pine-tree and conforming to a bend of the stream, brought him up startled and almost face to face with a long, rambling ranch-house.

The gable end of the two-story portion of the building was so close to him that he instantly reined up to seek hiding from its upper and lower windows.

From Scott's accurate description he knew the place. This was Duke Morgan's ranch-house, set as a fortress almost at the mouth of the Gap. To pa.s.s it un.o.bserved was to compa.s.s the most ticklish part of his mission, and without changing his slow pace he rode on, wondering whether a bullet, if fired from any of the low, open windows--which he could almost throw his hat into as he trotted past--would knock him off his horse or leave him a chance to spur away. But no bullet challenged him and no sound came from the silent house. He cantered away from the peril, thinking with a kind of awe of Nan, asleep, so close, under that roof--confident, too, he had not been seen--though, in matter of fact, he had been.

He quickened his pace. The place he wanted to reach was more than a mile distant. Other cabins back toward the north wall could be seen dimly to his right, but all were well removed from his way. He found, in due time, the ford in the creek, as Scott had advised, made it without mishap, scrambled up a steep and rocky path, and saw confronting him, not far ahead, a small, ruinous-looking cabin shack.

Dismounting before this, he threw his lines, shook himself a little, and walked up to the cabin door. It was open.

The mild-minded conspirators who had planned the details of the abduction were agreed that if the effort could be made a success at all, there was but one way to effect it, and that was to act, in every step, openly. Any attempt to steal on Sa.s.soon unawares would be a desperate one; while to walk boldly into his cabin at daybreak would be to do only what his companions were likely at any time to do, and was the course least calculated to lead to serious trouble. None of the three were unaware of the psychological action of that peculiar instinct of danger possessed by men habitually exposed to surprise--they knew how easily it may be aroused in a sleeper by the unusual happening about him, and how cunningly it is allayed by counterfeiting within his hearing the usual course of normal events.

De Spain, following the chosen policy, called gruffly to the cabin inmate. There was no answer. All had sounded extremely plausible to de Spain at the time he listened to Bob Scott's ingenious antic.i.p.ation of the probabilities, and he had felt while listening to the subtle Indian that the job was not a complicated one.

But now, as he hitched his trouser band near to the b.u.t.t of his revolver with his right hand, and laid his left on the jamb of the door with an effort to feel at home, stepped unevenly across the threshold, and tried to peer into the interior darkness, Scott's strategy did not, for some reason, commend itself quite so convincingly to him. There seemed, suddenly, a great many chances for a slip in the programme. De Spain coughed slightly, his eyes meantime boring the darkness to the left, where Sa.s.soon's bed should be. The utmost scrutiny failed to disclose any sign of it or any sound of breathing from that corner. He took a few steps toward where the man should be asleep, and perceived beyond a doubt that there was no bed in the corner at all. He turned toward the other corner, his hand covering the b.u.t.t of his gun.

"h.e.l.lo, Shike!" he called out in a slightly strained tone of camaraderie, addressing Sa.s.soon by a common nickname. Then he listened. A trumpeting snore answered. No sound was ever sweeter to de Spain's ear. The rude noise cleared the air and steadied the intruder as if Music Mountain itself had been lifted off his nerves.

He tried again: "Where are you, Shike?" he growled. "What's this stuff on the floor?" he continued, shuffling his way ostentatiously to the other side of the room. But his noise-making was attended with the utmost caution. He had dropped, like a shot, flat on the floor and crawled, feeling his way, to the opposite side of the room, only to find, after much trouble, that the bed in the darkness was there, but it was empty. De Spain rose. For a moment he was nonplussed. An inside room remained, but Scott had said there was no bed within it. He felt his way toward the inner door. This was where he expected to find it, and it was closed. He laid a hand gingerly on the latch. "Where are you, Shike?" he demanded again, this time with an impatient expletive summoned for the occasion. A second fearful snore answered him. De Spain, relieved, almost laughed as he pushed the door open, though not sure whether a curse or a shot would greet him. He got neither.

And a welcome surprise in the dim light came through a stuffy pane of gla.s.s at one end of the room. It revealed at the other end a man stretched asleep on a wall bunk--a man that would, in all likelihood, have heard the stealthiest sound had any effort been made to conceal it, but to whose ears the rough voices of a mountain cabin are mere sleeping-potions.

The sleeper was destined, a moment later, to a ruder awakening than even his companion outlaws ever gave him. Lying unsuspectingly on his back, he woke to feel a hand laid lightly on his shoulder. The instinct of self-preservation acted like a flash. His eyes opened and his hands struck out like cat's paws to the right and left: no knife and no revolver met them. Instead, in the semidarkness a strange face bent over him. His fists shot out together, only to be caught in a vise that broke his arms in two at the elbows, and forced them back against his throat. Like lightning, he threw up his knees, drew himself into a heap, and shot himself out, hands, arms, legs, back, everything into one terrific spring. But the sinewy vise above only gave for the shock, then it closed again relentlessly in. A knee, like an anvil, pushed inexorably into his stomach and heart and lungs.

Another lay across his right arm, and his struggling left arm he could not, though his eyes burst with the strain from their sockets, release from where, eagle-like claws gripped at his throat and shut off his breath.

Again and again, with the fury of desperation, Sa.s.soon drew in his powerful frame, shot it out, twisted and struggled. Great veins swelled on his forehead, his breath burst in explosive gasps, he writhed from side to side--it was all one. After every effort the cruel fingers at his throat tightened. The heavy knee on his chest crushed more relentlessly. He lay still.

"Are you awake, Shike?" Sa.s.soon heard from the gloom above him. But he could not place the voice. "You seem to move around a good deal in your sleep. If you're awake, keep still. I've come from Sleepy Cat to get you. Don't mind looking for your gun and knife. Two men are with me. You can have your choice. We've got a horse for you. You can ride away from us here inside the Gap, and take what hits you in the back, or you can go to Sleepy Cat with us and stand your trial. I'll read your warrant when the sun gets a little higher. Get up and choose quick."

Sa.s.soon could not see who had subdued him, nor did he take long to decide what to do. Scott had predicted he would go without much fuss, and de Spain, now somewhat surprised, found Bob right in his forecast.

With less trouble than he expected, the captor got his man sullenly on horseback, and gave him severely plain directions as to what not to do. Sa.s.soon, neither bound nor gagged, was told to ride his horse down the Gap closely ahead of de Spain and neither to speak nor turn his head no matter what happened right or left. To get him out in this manner was, de Spain realized, the really ticklish part of the undertaking.

Fortune, however, seemed to favor his a.s.surance in invading the lions'

den. In the growing light the two men trotted smartly a mile down the trail without encountering a sign of life. When they approached the Morgan ranch-house de Spain again felt qualms. But he rode close to his prisoner, told him in restrained monologue what would happen if he made a noise, and even held him back in his pace as they trotted together past the Gap stronghold. Nevertheless, he breathed more freely when they left the house behind and the turn in the road put them out of range of its windows. He closed up the distance between himself and Sa.s.soon, riding close in to his side, and looked back at the house. He looked quickly, but though his eyes were off his path and his prisoner for only a fraction of a second, when he looked ahead again he saw confronting him, not a hundred yards away, a motionless horseman.

CHAPTER VI

HEELS FOR IT

With a sudden, low command to Sa.s.soon to check his horse, and without a movement that could be detected in the dawn ten yards away, de Spain with the thumb and finger of his right hand lifted his revolver from its scabbard, shifted his lines from his left hand to his right, rode closer to Sa.s.soon and pressed the muzzle of the gun to his prisoner's side. "You've got one chance yet, Shike, to ride out of here alive,"

he said composedly. "You know I am a rustler--cousin of John Rebstock's. My name is 'Frenchy'; I belong in Williams Cache. I rode in last night from Thief River, and you are riding out with me to start me on to the Sleepy Cat trail. If you can remember that much----"

While he spoke to Sa.s.soon his eyes were fixed on the rider halted in their path. De Spain stopped half-way through his sentence. The figure revealed in the half-light puzzled him at first. Then it confused and startled him. He saw it was not a man at all, but a woman--and a woman than whom he would rather have seen six men. It was Nan Morgan.

With her head never more decisively set under her mannish hat, her waist never more attractively outlined in slenderness, she silently faced de Spain in the morning gray. His face reflected his chagrined perplexity. The whole fabric of his slender plot seemed to go to pieces at the sight of her. At the mere appearance of his frail and motionless foe a feeling of awkward helplessness dissolved his easy confidence. He now reversed every move he had so carefully made with his hands and, resentfully eying Nan, rode in somewhat behind Sa.s.soon, doing nothing further than to pull his kerchief up about his neck, and wondering what would be likely to happen before the next three minutes were up. Beyond that flash the future held no interest for him--his wits had temporarily failed.

Of one thing he felt a.s.sured, that it was in no wise up to him to speak or do first. He could already see Nan's eyes. They were bent keenly first on him, then on his companion, and again on him. De Spain kept his face down as much as he dared, and his hat had been pulled well over it from the beginning. She waited so long before accosting the two men that de Spain, who was ready to hope any improbable thing, began to hope she might let them pa.s.s unchallenged. He had resolved, if she did not speak to push past without even looking at her. They were now almost abreast. His fine resolution went smash overboard. The very instinctive knowledge that her eyes were bent on his made him steal a glance at her in spite of himself. The next instant he was shamefacedly touching his hat. Though nothing was lost on her, Nan professed not to see the greeting. He even continued to dream she did not recognize him. Her eyes, in fact, were directed toward Sa.s.soon, and when she spoke her tone was dry with suspicion.

"Wait a moment, Sa.s.soon. Where are you going?" she demanded. Sa.s.soon hitched with one hand at his trousers band. He inclined his head sulkily toward his companion. "Starting a man on the trail for Sleepy Cat."

"Stop," she exclaimed sharply, for de Spain, pushing his own horse ahead, had managed without being observed, to kick Sa.s.soon's horse in the flank, and the two were pa.s.sing. Sa.s.soon at the resolute summons stopped. De Spain could do no less; both men, halting, faced their suspicious inquisitor. She scrutinized de Spain keenly. "What is this man doing in the Gap?"

"He come up from Thief River last night," answered Sa.s.soon monotonously.

"What is he doing here with you?" persisted Nan.