He lowered her, feet down, released her and watched her disappear. He swung about and ran back to the corral, his hurt arm throbbing with his exertion. He had entertained a brief thought of hiding in the cave himself, but the fear of madness from the bite had not left him, the suggestion of it coming on in an underground cavern sickened him with horror. He craved the open. He flung himself into the saddle of the black horse, once leader of a slick-ear herd of wild mustangs, magnificent for speed and symmetry, worthy a better master, and galloped out of the corral, out of the side-ravine, into the open park. The rough towel about his arm was becoming soaked. Every jump of the black horse seemed to increase the bleeding. The spurt of fictitious energy that had carried him through since the arrival of Cookie was dying away. But he was on a mount that none could match, he was going on a trail that was hard to follow, practically unknown. Unless he was headed off, he could break through. At Nipple Peaks he could rest, attend to his wound.
A shout, a bullet whistling past that nicked the stallion's ear and sent him plunging and bucking, warned him that his enemies had found the way in and were after him. He did not look back, but bent forward in his saddle and sunk the spurs into the black's flanks. The half-tamed mustang's indignant bounds spoiled the aim of the marksmen, and, though the steel-nosed missiles hummed like bees about them, they gained the shelter of the same trees that had covered Cookie. Belly almost to ground, the black swept over the cropped turf at racing speed, the drum of his hooves like distant thunder, crest high, crimson-satin nostrils flaring, mad at the sting of the red notch in his ear.
Round the elbow of the Hideout, with Brandon's men distanced, into the gorge at the south end. A wild scramble up a steep slope and the way to Spur Rock was clear. Plimsoll smiled grimly. "Damn them, I'll beat them yet!" For a second he was silhouetted against a skyline, then he plunged down. Fresh droppings told him that Reynolds had won clear. He was safe from pursuit. If the wound – he should have cauterized it. But…
He reined in for a moment. The sound of a shout rang in his ears. It was an echo, he fancied, it must be an echo, flung back from the mountain walls ahead. But it could mean nothing else than a view-halloo. Some one had glimpsed him disappearing beyond the ridge.
CHAPTER XX
MOLLY MINE
Sandy, replacing the blanket on Wyatt's face, examined his guns and started climbing up to the big boulder. He could not see the rocks displaced by Brandon's men from below, but he picked up the bloody imprint of Grit's pad, with other smears of blood less distinctly marked. Soon he discovered the narrow opening and proceeded cautiously. The moon was quite bright now and the daylight almost vanished. Only the afterglow still flamed in the eastern sky back of the violet cliffs. The touch of night chill was already threatening, great stars were assembling court about the moon.
To Sandy's right was perpendicular rock, to his left the curve of the blocking boulder with the skeleton tree topping it, withered in the cleft that had first nourished, then denied it nourishment. It gleamed silver gray, attracting his attention. As he gazed his sharp ears caught the tiny crack of a brittle branch. Instantly he dropped to all fours as a spurt of flame showed from the tree and a bullet whined over him, to smack against the rock and fall flattened.
Sandy did not move. He knew that, to the man firing, his fall might have seemed a hit, that he had beaten the missile by the space of a wink. He heard more broken boughs, as if his assailant were clumsily, assuredly, clambering out of ambush, and he shifted silently into position, rifle set down, both guns ready. There came a strange thrashing sound, a groan of mortal anguish, silence. If this was a trick it was a crude one. Sandy waited. That groan, half sigh, half rattle, could not be mistaken. He half circled the boulder, gliding up a flattened traverse, and saw, lying outspread over a low bough of the withered tree, face to the moon, gun away from the curling hand, Butch Parsons.
With ready gun Sandy reached him, bent, turned him on his side. A bullet had ranged through both hips, shattering them. The spine must have been injured. There were puddles of blood that told the injury was some hours old. Butch had lain there paralyzed, passed by Brandon's men as dead, lingering like the traditional snake until sunset to see and recognize Sandy coming through the gap, to use his last remnant of life to pull trigger and so to die, the injured vertebrae giving away to the effort, the spark of life pinched out.
Sandy left him and returned to the gap. He could still read sign, plain as it was on every side. He found the side-gulch, saw the cabin, saw Hahn's saddled horse grazing free, Blaze in the corral, the cabin door open with the moon streaming in. He had pieced out the puzzle to his own satisfaction. Brandon and his men had arrived and, in Hereford, they had run across Wyatt, procuring horses there and saving themselves the trip to the Three Star. Butch's body was evidence that they had not been unsuccessful, Wyatt's that the fight had not been all one-sided, the surprise not perfect. And, if Plimsoll had been warned, what had become of Molly?
He got an answer that made his heart stand still, then pound in a rush of action. On the floor, in the beam of the moon, lay the luck-piece, a few links of gold chain attached to the coin. Stooping for it, he brushed a strand of brown hair. Then he saw Grit's body beneath the table. Fury boiled in him, chilled to icy wrath and determination. He put away the coin and hauled out the dog's body into the moonlight. It was limber and still warm. Sandy rose from his squat and swiftly examined the cabin. He discovered a lantern with oil in it, which he lit. The condition of the fire, corroborating other signs, told him that the fighting was long over with, the issue passed on. He had no fear of interruption. Before very long Sam and the Three Star riders would be along. The sight of Blaze suggested that Molly was not far away. If she had gone, by force, or her own free will, the probability was that her own mount and saddle would have been requisitioned.
Sandy's capacity for reading sign was almost without limit. He was better at it than an Indian because he had equally good observation and better judgment. But, to find Molly, with the ground about the cabin cut by arriving and departing feet and hooves, with Blaze in the corral, was a miracle that called for more than eyesight and deduction. If he could revive Grit…?
He found water warm in a kettle; he had the first-aid kit with its bandages, iodine, lint. And, above all, he had Keith's silver flask, half full. He did not fail to note the empty bottles on the table, the blood marks where Plimsoll's veins had sprinkled and Grit had stained the floor. He found, too, a button of horn with a fragment of black and white check, torn from Molly's riding coat in the struggle. Sandy's anger crystallized into one ambition beyond the finding of Molly, and that was to kill Plimsoll, if possible with his hands. He pictured the struggle between the gambler and the girl, desperate on one side, brutal on the other and, whether the stake had been won or lost, he resolved that Plimsoll should die for that attack.
Now his hope hung on Grit. He squatted on the floor by the lantern, a gun handy in case of need. He took the collie's head on his lap and examined the blow made by the butt of Plimsoll's gun. It had laid bare the bone but he did not think it either splintered or fractured. Grit's tongue lolled out from between his teeth and his muzzle was dry, yet Sandy fancied breath still passed the nostrils and that there was a faint beat of heart beneath the heavy draggled coat, matted with the blood that had drained life from him. Sandy knew that dog or wolf or coyote will lie in a torpor after being badly wounded and often recover slowly, waking from the recuperating sleep revitalized. But, if he could bring Grit back, he must make fresh demands on him.
He washed the wound on the head and poured iodine into it. He did the same with the hole in the leg, cleansing it from the dried blood and hair. It had stopped bleeding. He disinfected it, stitched it, closed it, bound it with adhesive tape and strengthened it with a bandage adjusted as expertly as any surgeon could have done. He pried open the jaws with but little resistance and let the tongue slip back before he poured in a measure of Scotch and water between the canine and incisor teeth. He tilted Grit's limp head, shut off his muzzle, stroked his throat and let the restorative trickle into the gullet. For a moment there was no response, then Grit coughed, choked, swallowed. Sandy repeated the dose with less water. It went down naturally. Almost immediately he felt the heart stroke strengthen. Grit sneezed, opened his eyes and feebly thumped his tail as he licked Sandy's hand.
"Grit, ol' pardner," said Sandy seriously, the dog's head between his hands, "yo're sure mussed up a heap an' I hate to do it, but I got to call on you, son. Mebbe it won't be such a long trick, but I can't git by without yore nose, Grit. It's worth more'n all I've got. An' I know yo're game. I'm goin' to give you some mo' of Keith's special Scotch, which I sure had a hunch w'ud come in handy, an' then we'll try it."
Grit wagged his tail more vigorously and tried to get on his feet, but Sandy prevented him until the third dose was administered. Then he carried the dog outside to save him every foot of unnecessary progress, and set him down. The collie stood up, wabbly on one foot but able to stand, looking eagerly at Sandy, commencing to snuff the air. Sandy let him smell the coin, the strand of hair, the piece of cloth and, with his keenest sense stimulated with the perfume that stood to Grit for love, the dog wrinkled his nose and cast around. But he led direct to Blaze and stood by the horse uncertain while Blaze nosed down at him.
"Carried out of the cabin, son," said Sandy. "We'll guess at Plimsoll. He's got clear of the locality. Blaze knows but he can't tell. We've got to cast about." He picked up the dog again, puzzled, and looked about him in the gulch, suffused with moonlight. "There sh'ud be soft dirt under those asps, let's give a look-see there."
They had not gone five feet into the trees before man and dog made a simultaneous discovery. For Sandy it was a heel-mark left by Plimsoll, treading heavily under his burden, a slight depression enough, but plain to Sandy. Grit began to struggle in his arms. Molly's hair or body must have brushed against lower boughs at the same height that Sandy carried the wounded Grit and the scent still clung.
"They c'udn't go fur in this direction by the looks of the place, Grit," said Sandy. "See what you can make of it." He put him down by the heel-print. Grit uttered a low growl deep back in his throat, his ruff lifted. Hatred replaced love, but the two odors and emotions were inextricably linked for Grit that day. He started off, hobbling along, leading truly over rock or sand, into the cove where the split rock lay, its crevice black, the vine curving down into it like a serpent. Where Plimsoll had laid her down Grit halted and raised his head, his tongue playing in and out of his jaws in his triumphant excitement, his eyes luminous, his tail waving like the plume of a knight. Sandy gently patted him, pressed him down to a crouch.
"Down charge, Grit," he whispered in his ear. "You've got it. You stay here." Sandy had left his rifle at the cabin when he carried Grit out, now he spun the two cylinders of his Colts, lowered himself into the split, holding on to the vine, looking straight into Grit's lambent eyes.
"Stay here, son," he said softly, and Grit licked the face now on a level with his own. "I'll be back."
Sandy doubted whether he would find Plimsoll in this rock hollow, or any one but Molly. There had been the one horse saddled and grazing free, but that might have belonged to the dead man by the withered tree. It made little difference. There was, to him, the certainty that Molly was there and there was no other way of finding out or getting to her. He had adventured more dangerous chances than this.
He felt his legs dangle into space and his hands found a curving loop in the vine trunk that sagged slightly under his weight. Extended at full length, his toes touched bottom. Letting go, he dropped lightly and stood in blackness, the crevice above him showing a strip of azure light. Sandy listened, wishing for Grit. He might be able to get him down, now that he knew the depth of the descent.
There was only the sound of dripping water. He had a vague sense of empty spaces all about him. He ventured a match, holding it at arm's length in his left hand, flicking friction with his nail, an old trick. The match caught and began to blaze instantly in the still air. Low down, and to the right, there showed a stab of flame, the roar of an exploding cartridge, the reek of high-powered gas seemed to fill the cavern. The bullet passed through Sandy's coat sleeve. If he had held the match in front of him he would have been shot through heart or lungs. His right-hand gun barked from his hip, straight for where the flame had showed, then to right of it, to left, above, his left-hand gun joining in the merciless probe. No second shot came in answer.
Sandy lit another match. Its flare showed him a sandy floor, slightly sloping, moist in one place, a charred stick almost at his feet. It was a pine knot, half burned, and he lighted it easily, advancing toward the spot where he had flung the shots he knew had silenced whoever had fired at the first match. He found Hahn, crumpled up, shot through the right arm and a thigh, besides the other wound in his shoulder. There was not much life in him, he had suffered a hemorrhage twice before Sandy came; the shock of the two bullets had brought on another.
Sandy turned him over, brought Keith's flask into play. Hahn looked up at him and essayed a grin.
"Yo're game all right, Hahn," said Sandy. "You ain't the man I was lookin' fo', but you fired first. I see I wasn't the first to plug you. Mebbe I can fix you up a bit?"
Hahn shook his head.
"'Twouldn't be a mite of use," he said huskily. "I'm empty of blood as a prohibition flask. I reckon it will be prohibition for me from now on. They say it's sure dry where I'm going. No grudge against you, Sandy. I thought you one of Brandon's gang. They got Butch and me an' they're chasin' Jim Plimsoll to hell and gone – over Nipple Peaks – if he beats 'em to Spur Rock he'll fool 'em on the black – I couldn't ride – he left me here – with the girl – but the case is empty and the bank's bu'sted – cashing – in – time and no chips."
He was wandering in his mind, speaking without control, but Sandy's mouth tightened at the mention of Nipple Peaks, relaxed again on the word "girl." He gave Hahn the last few drops of whisky.
"Where in hell'd you get that?" asked the dealer weakly, coughed violently, collapsed, shuddered, writhed a little and was still before he could answer Sandy's eager question about Molly.
He found her without much searching, rolled down a little slope beyond the crevice. Under the light of the torch her eyes looked up at him. Her hair was in disorder, her raiment torn, her slender body wound about by the lariat rope, her mouth and chin hidden by the tightly drawn bandanna, but her gaze, reflecting the flare of the pine knot, held so much of welcome, of faith, of pride and courage, all sourced in something deeper, far more wonderful, moving beneath the surface like a well spring, that Sandy's heart swelled with glad emotion, knowing she was unharmed, knowing that his coming was no surprise, however welcome.
He found himself trembling as he untied her bonds and took away the gag from the mouth that lifted to his. She snuggled into his arms and, as the torch sputtered out, leaving them in the darkness, save for the luminous beams that stole down from where Grit whimpered in joyous impatience, her hair showered down over both of them.
"Sandy. I knew you'd come in time!" she whispered.
He held her close and hard for a tense moment that gave all his world to his embrace.
"Molly – girl," he said brokenly, his voice broken with passion.
Her hand crept up and a soft palm cupped about his chin. He kissed the edge of it. He rose easily, still holding her and lifted her high to where she could reach the vine, swinging up after her, Grit dancing a three-legged reel of joy as they came up into the free air and the moonlight.
Blaze greeted them in the corral. Molly mounted, and Sandy set Grit on the saddle in front of her.
"Where's Pronto?" she asked.
He told her.
"I figger Sam an' the boys'll be erlong soon," he said. "They may meet up with Pronto. Anyway, they'll likely bring Goldie fo' me. She's up. An' Pronto'll be too tired fo' what I want him to do ter-night."
She sensed the change in his voice, intuitively guessed but, womanlike, asked:
"What do you mean, Sandy? Aren't you coming home with me to Three Star. If it wasn't so far I'd love to go back just like this, without meeting anybody." She had taken off Sandy's Stetson and she ran fingers through his hair, thrilling him to the intimacy of the caress. But, if there was any plan in her actions, it did not deter him from his.
"Plimsoll's makin' fo' Nipple Peaks an' he's likely to git clear. Me, I aim to head him off an' settle the account."
"Sandy." There was a plea in her voice that plucked at his heart strings. "Don't spoil to-night. Please!"
"That ain't Molly Casey talkin'," said Sandy. "That's somethin' you must have picked up back to Keith's."
"He didn't harm me, Sandy."
"He tried to."
Her hand slipped to his shoulder, touched his cheek. She reined in Blaze. Sandy stood beside her, straight and stern, his eyes implacable.
"He ain't fit to live," he went on. "I w'udn't be fit to go back to Three Star where yore daddy lies an' know he was there in his grave while I let that coyote go loose. I found the luck-piece on the floor of the cabin, Molly, with a lock of yore hair he must have tore out, a button an' a bit of yore dress he nigh tore off you. I was in hell when I thought of you fightin' him off an' if I have to wade through it knee-deep in flamin' sulphur I'm goin' to find that snake an' make sure he quits trailin'. Why, it's my job, Molly. What w'ud you think of me if I let him slide?"
"I know," she answered.
A horse whinnied from down the ravine. Blaze answered.
"That'll be Sam an' the boys, Molly." He cupped hands and sounded a "Yahoo!"
The answer came back clear through the evening, multiplied by the rocks about them.
"I'm afraid," she said.
"Afraid?"
"I know. I never was before. But…" She broke off, leaned swiftly down from the saddle and kissed him.
"Come back to me soon, Sandy," she said.
CHAPTER XXI
THE END OF THE ROPE
Pronto had chosen his own trail and gait back to the Three Star. It was Goldie that Sandy rode under the stars toward Nipple Peaks. He was alone, refusing any company of Sam or the riders. Molly's last kiss had been the key that turned in the lock of his heart and opened up to reality the garden of his dreams where the two of them would walk together, work together all their days. It could have meant nothing else. And she had been afraid – for him. Plimsoll living was a blot upon the fair page of happiness. Though Molly, thank God, had come through unharmed, to Sandy the touch of Plimsoll was a defilement that could only be wiped out by his death.
Nipple Peaks he knew by sight, two high mounds of bare granite above the timber-line, barring the way to a jumbled country of peaks and ravines and cross cañons among which lay Plimsoll's Hideout. Spur Rock he knew only by rumor. That there was a pass between the peaks he did not doubt. And he rode to meet Plimsoll coming down out of it. To have returned to the Hideout and attempted to follow a rock trail by moonlight, despite its brilliance, would have been sheer folly. Plimsoll had from three to four hours' start, he figured. And he calculated that, with luck, with common luck and justice, he would pick him up before he reached the base of the mountain, before he got into the timber. If not, sooner or later he would cut Plimsoll's sign and follow it to the end.
As he rode over the finny ridge of Elk Mountain and saw the Nipple Peaks gleaming above the black pines across the valley, with Elk River gleaming in the middle, he realized that he had said nothing to Molly of Keith, of the shutting down of the mine and his own action in her name. While she had asked nothing of young Donald. For the time it had been as if the rest of the world had been fenced off from them and their own intimate affairs.
He compressed his knees and the mare answered in a lope that stretched into a gallop, fast and faster as she reached the levels and sped toward Elk River. Sandy was not going to waste time looking for a ford. The mare could swim. The moon, sloping down toward the west, still above the range, helped by the big white stars, made the valley bright almost as day. He scanned the mountain toward the peaks, passed over the dark impenetrable pines, surveyed the stretch of gently rising ground between the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not passed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for the cut-off.
The mare took the cold river water about her fetlocks with a little shiver, wading in to the girths, sliding to a deep pool where she had to swim a few strokes before she found gravel under her hoofs and scrambled out. Suddenly, while Sandy hesitated how best to arrange his patrol, a horse came floundering out of the pines less than a quarter of a mile away, a black horse, shining with sweat, tired to its limit, staggering in its stride, the rider hunched in the saddle more like a sack of meal than a man.
Before Sandy could turn the mare toward them three riders burst from the trees like bolts from a crossbow, spurring their mounts, the two in the lead swinging lariats. They divided, one to either side of the foundering black stallion, one at the rear, gaining, angling in. The ropes slithered out, the loops seemed to hang like suspended rings of wire for a second before they settled down, fair and true, about the neck and shoulders of the black's rider. They tightened, the lariats snubbed to the saddle horns, the horses sliding with flattened pasterns. The black lunging on, pitched forward as it was relieved of a sudden weight and its rider jerked hideously from the saddle, hands clawing at the ropes that choked his gullet, wrenching, sinking deep, shutting off air and light with a horrid taste of blood and the noise of thundering waters.
The ropers wheeled their mounts and galloped back toward the woods, the limp body of their victim dragging, bouncing over the ground. The third rode to meet Sandy. It was Brandon. He hailed Sandy with surprise.
"How'd you happen here this time of night, Bourke? Not looking for me?"
"No. I was looking for the man you've just caught. I was about a minute too late."
Brandon glanced curiously at Sandy, caught by the grim note in his voice. But he made no comment.
"Sorry if I spoiled your private vendetta, Bourke. You can have him, what's left of him, if you want. We were going to swing him from a tree with a card on his chest presenting him to Hereford County, with our compliments. As it is, Bourke, I'd be relieved if you'd keep out of this entirely. Even forgetting you'd met us. We're within our rights, but we've done some cleaning up to-night that we might have to explain if we stayed too long in the state. We got the goods on Plimsoll; one of his men whose girl Plimsoll had stolen helped us to pin them on him. We met him at Hereford. I'm going to send the facts and proofs to your authorities. They may not approve of lynch law these days, but they wouldn't act – and we did. I don't fancy they'll bother us any. He wasn't worth the ropes he spoiled. Just as well you kept out of the mix-up."
Sandy said nothing. There was no need to mention Molly's adventure.
"Want to be sure it's him?" asked Brandon. "Let's look at the black first. He gave us a hard chase, but we were too many for him and rounded him up."
They found the black stallion stretched out on the turf with its neck curiously twisted. Tired out, it had fallen clumsily and broken the vertebrae. It was quite dead. Both men looked at it silently, with a mental tribute to a good horse.
The body of Plimsoll lay at the foot of a big pine. The loops were still tight about his neck. One of the ropes had been tossed over a bough. The two men had dismounted. They nodded to Sandy as he came up with Brandon. He had seen them before on their first unsuccessful trip to the Waterline. They were horse-owners, responsible men, who considered they had administered justice, who felt no more qualms concerning the dead man than if his body had been the carcass of a slaughtered steer.
"Waiting for the rest of the boys to come up," said Brandon. "We'll hit the trail home to-night. Bourke wants to identify the body, boys."
Sandy looked down at the contorted, blackened face, and his disappointment at having been forestalled, sedimented down. The gambler's features had not been made placid by death; they still held much of the horror of the last moments of that relentless chase, his horse failing under him, foreknowledge of sudden death and then the whistling ropes, the jerk into eternity…! It was a thing to be forgotten, a nightmare that had nothing to do with the new day ahead.
"It's Plimsoll," said Sandy shortly. "I'm ridin' back to Three Star. I found him hangin' to a tree. Good night, hombres." He left them standing about their quarry and turned the willing mare toward home. Peace settled down on him under the stars that were fading, the moon below the hills when he rode into the home corral.
A figure was perched upon the fence, waiting. It was Molly, and she leaped down almost into his arms as he sprang from the mare. In the gray dawn her face seemed drawn and weary. There were the blue shadows under the eyes that he remembered seeing there the time they had ridden over the Pass of the Goats. She came close to him, her hands up against his chest.
"You're safe, Sandy. Safe!"
"I was too late," he said. "Brandon's men had been ahead of me."
"I'm so glad, Sandy. Your hands are clean of his blood. They are my hands, now, Sandy."
He swept her up to him, kissing her mouth and eyes, the eager pressure of her lips returning all with full measure. A streak of rose glowed in the east behind the amethyst peaks. Her face reflected it like a mirror. The tired lines were gone as he set her down.
"How long have you been waiting, Molly?"
"Ever since I got back. I slipped out of the house when the rest had gone to bed. If you hadn't come back, Sandy, I should have died."
"I don't have to go back east," she said presently. They had left the corral and were under the big cottonwoods by Patrick Casey's grave. "Do I?"
"I don't reckon you can, even if you wanted to," answered Sandy. "I forgot to tell you, Molly, that you're bu'sted, so far's the mine is concerned. Listen."
She laughed when he finished speaking.
"Is that all?" She patted the turf on the green mound. "I'm sorry, Daddy, for you, it didn't pan out bigger. But I guess what you wanted most was my happiness – and I've got that." She turned to Sandy. The big bell of the ranch boomed brassily. Molly put her hand in Sandy's. "It may be most unromantic, Sandy dear," she said, "but I'm hungry. Let's go in to breakfast."