Within a mile a further surprise awaited him. The two horsemen, 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 space 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 Superstition 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 horsemen 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 XXXI
DE SPAIN RIDES ALONE
He had ridden the trail but a short time when it led him in a wide angle backward and around toward Calabasas, and he found, presently, that the men he was riding after were apparently heading for the stage barns. In the north the rising curtain had darkened. Toward Sleepy Cat the landscape was already obliterated. In the south the sun shone, but the air had grown suddenly cold, and in the sharp drop de Spain realized what was coming. His first thought was of the southern stages, which must be warned, and as he galloped up to the big barn, with this thought in mind he saw, standing in the doorway, Bull Page.
De Spain regarded him with astonishment. “How did you get here?” was his sharp question.
Page grinned. “Got what I was after, and c’m’ back sooner’n I expected. Half-way over to the Gap, I met Duke and the young gal on horseback, headed for Calabasas. They pulled up. I pulled up. Old Duke looked kind o’ ga’nted, and it seemed like Nan was in a considerable hurry to get to Sleepy Cat with him, and he couldn’t stand the saddle. Anyway, they was heading for Calabasas to get a rig from McAlpin. I knowed McAlpin would never give old Duke a rig, not if he was a-dyin’ in the saddle.”
“They’ve got your rig!” cried de Spain.
“The gal asked me if I’d mind accommodatin’ ’em,” explained Bull deprecatingly, “to save time.”
“They headed north!” exclaimed de Spain. The light from the fast-changing sky fell copper-colored across his horse and figure. McAlpin, followed by a hostler, appeared at the barn door.
Bull nodded to de Spain. “Said they wanted to get there quick. She fig’erd on savin’ a few miles by strikin’ the hill trail in. So I takes their horses and lets on I was headin’ in for the Gap. When they got out of sight, I turned ’round–”
Even as he spoke, the swift-rolling curtain of mist overhead blotted the sun out of the sky.
De Spain sprang from his saddle with a ringing order to McAlpin. “Get up a fresh saddle-horse!”
“A horse!” cried the startled barn boss, whirling on the hostler. “The strongest legs in the stable, and don’t lose a second! Lady Jane; up with her!” he yelled, bellowing his orders into the echoing barn with his hands to his mouth. “Up with her for Mr. de Spain in a second! Marmon! Becker! Lanzon! What in hell are you all doing?” he roared, rushing back with a fusillade of oaths. “Look alive, everybody!”
“Coming!” yelled one voice after another from the depths of the distant stalls.
De Spain ran into the office. Page caught his horse, stripped the rifle from its holster, and hurriedly began uncinching. Hostlers running through the barn called shrilly back and forth, and de Spain springing up the stairs to his room provided what he wanted for his hurried flight. When he dashed down with coats on his arm the hoofs of Lady Jane were clattering down the long gangway. A stable-boy slid from her back on one side as Bull Page threw the saddle across her from the other; hostlers caught at the cinches, while others hurriedly rubbed the legs of the quivering mare. De Spain, his hand on McAlpin’s shoulder, was giving his parting injunctions, and the barn boss, head cocked down, and eyes cast furtively on the scattering snowflakes outside, was listening with an attention that recorded indelibly every uttered syllable.
Once only, he interrupted: “Henry, you’re ridin’ out into this thing alone–don’t do it.”
“I can’t help it,” snapped de Spain impatiently,
“It’s a man killer.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Bob Scott, if he w’s here, ’ud never let you do it. I’ll ride wi’ ye myself, Henry. I worked for your father–”
“You’re too old a man, Jim–”
“Henry–”
“Don’t talk to me! Do as I tell you!” thundered de Spain.
McAlpin bowed his head.
“Ready!” yelled Page, buckling the rifle holster in place. Still talking, and with McAlpin glued to his elbow, de Spain vaulted into the saddle, caught the lines from Bull’s hands, and steadied the Lady as she sidestepped nervously–McAlpin following close and dodging the dancing hoofs as he looked earnestly up to catch the last word. De Spain touched the horse with the lines. She leaped through the doorway and he raised a backward hand to those behind. Running outside the door, they yelled a chorus of cries after the swift-moving horseman and, clustered in an excited group, watched the Lady with a dozen great strides round the Calabasas trail and disappear with her rider into the whirling snow.
She fell at once into an easy reaching step, and de Spain, busy with his reflections, hardly gave thought to what she was doing, and little more to what was going on about him.
No moving figure reflects the impassive more than a horseman of the mountains, on a long ride. Though never so swift-borne, the man, looking neither to the right nor to the left, moving evenly and statue-like against the sky, a part of the wiry beast under him, presents the very picture of indifference to the world around him. The great swift wind spreading over the desert emptied on it snow-laden puffs that whirled and wrapped a cloud of flakes about horse and rider in the symbol of a shroud. De Spain gave no heed to these skirmishing eddies, but he knew what was behind them, and for the wind, he only wished it might keep the snow in the air till he caught sight of Nan.
The even reach of the horse brought him to the point where Nan had changed to the stage wagon. Without a break in her long stride, Lady Jane took the hint of her swerving rider, put her nose into the wind, and headed north. De Spain, alive to the difficulties of his venture, set his hat lower and bent forward to follow the wagon along the sand. With the first of the white flurries passed, he found himself in a snowless pocket, as it were, of the advancing storm. He hoped for nothing from the prospect ahead; but every moment of respite from the blinding whirl was a gain, and with his eyes close on the trail that had carried Nan into danger, he urged the Lady on.
When the snow again closed down about him he calculated from the roughness of the country that he should be within a mile of the road that Nan was trying to reach, from the Gap to Sleepy Cat. But the broken ground straight ahead would prevent her from driving directly to it. He knew she must hold to the right, and her curving track, now becoming difficult to trail, confirmed his conclusion.
A fresh drive of the wind buffeted him as he turned directly north. Only at intervals could he see any trace of the wagon wheels. The driving snow compelled him more than once to dismount and search for the trail. Each time he lost it the effort to regain it was more prolonged. At times he was compelled to ride the desert in wide circles to find the tracks, and this cost time when minutes might mean life. But as long as he could he clung to the struggle to track her exactly. He saw almost where the storm had struck the two wayfarers. Neither, he knew, was insensible to its dangers. What amazed him was that a man like Duke Morgan should be out in it. He found a spot where they had halted and, with a start that checked the beating of his heart, his eyes fell on her footprint not yet obliterated, beside the wagon track.
The sight of it was an electric shock. Throwing himself from his horse, he knelt over it in the storm, oblivious for an instant of everything but that this tracery meant her presence, where he now bent, hardly half an hour before. He swung, after a moment’s keen scrutiny, into his saddle, with fresh resolve. Pressed by the rising fury of the wind, the wayfarers had become from this point, de Spain saw too plainly, hardly more than fugitives. Good ground to the left, where their hope of safety lay, had been overlooked. Their tracks wandered on the open desert like those who, losing courage, lose their course in the confusion and fear of the impending peril.
And with this increasing uncertainty in their direction vanished de Spain’s last hopes of tracking them. The wind swept the desert now as a hurricane sweeps the open sea, snatching the fallen snow from the face of the earth as the sea-gale, flattening the face of the waters, rips the foam from the frantic waves to drive it in wild, scudding fragments across them.
De Spain, urging his horse forward, unbuckled his rifle holster, threw away the scabbard, and holding the weapon up in one hand, fired shot after shot at measured intervals to attract the attention of the two he sought. He exhausted his rifle ammunition without eliciting any answer. The wind drove with a roar against which even a rifle report could hardly carry, and the snow swept down the Sinks in a mad blast. Flakes torn by the fury of the gale were stiffened by the bitter wind into powdered ice that stung horse and rider. Casting away the useless carbine, and pressing his horse to the limit of her strength and endurance, the unyielding pursuer rode in great coiling circles into the storm, to cut in, if possible, ahead of its victims, firing shot upon shot from his revolver, and putting his ear intently against the wind for the faint hope of an answer.
Suddenly the Lady stumbled and, as he cruelly reined her, slid helpless and scrambling along the face of a flat rock. De Spain, leaping from her back, steadied her trembling and looked underfoot. The mare had struck the rock of the upper lava bed. Drawing his revolver, he fired signal shots from where he stood. It could not be far, he knew, from the junction of the two great desert trails–the Calabasas road and the Gap road. He felt sure Nan could not have got much north of this, for he had ridden in desperation to get abreast of or beyond her, and if she were south, where, he asked, in the name of God, could she be?
He climbed again into the saddle–the cold was gripping his limbs–and, watching the rocky landmarks narrowly, tried to circle the dead waste of the half-buried flow. With chilled, awkward fingers he filled the revolver again and rode on, discharging it every minute, and listening–hoping against hope for an answer. It was when he had almost completed, as well as he could compute, the wide circuit he had set out on, that a faint shot answered his continuing signals.
With the sound of that shot and those that followed it his courage all came back. But he had yet to trace through the confusion of the wind and the blinding snow the direction of the answering reports.
Hither and thither he rode, this way and that, testing out the location of the slowly repeated shots, and signalling at intervals in return. Slowly and doggedly he kept on, shooting, listening, wheeling, and advancing until, as he raised his revolver to fire it again, a cry close at hand came out of the storm. It was a woman’s voice borne on the wind. Riding swiftly to the left, a horse’s outline revealed itself at moments in the driving snow ahead.
De Spain cried out, and from behind the furious curtain heard his name, loudly called. He pushed his stumbling horse on. The dim outline of a second horse, the background of a wagon, a storm-beaten man–all this passed his eyes unheeded. They were bent on a girlish figure running toward him as he slid stiffly from the saddle. The next instant Nan was in his arms.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE TRUTH
With the desperation of a joy born of despair she laid her burning cheek hysterically against his cheek. She rained kisses on his ice-crusted brows and snow-beaten eyes. Her arms held him rigidly. He could not move nor speak till she would let him. Transformed, this mountain girl who gave herself so shyly, forgot everything. Her words crowded on his ears. She repeated his name in an ecstasy of welcome, drew down his lips, laughed, rejoiced, knew no shamefacedness and no restraint–she was one freed from the stroke of a descending knife. A moment before she had faced death alone; it was still death she faced–she realized this–but it was death, at least, together, and her joy and tears rose from her heart in one stream.
De Spain comforted her, quieted her, cut away one of the coats from his horse, slipped it over her shoulders, incased her in the heavy fur, and turned his eyes to Duke.
The old man’s set, square face surrendered nothing of implacability to the dangers confronting him. De Spain looked for none of that. He had known the Morgan record too long, and faced the Morgan men too often, to fancy they would flinch at the drum-beat of death.
The two men, in the deadly, driving snow, eyed each other. Out of the old man’s deep-set eyes burned the resistance of a hundred storms faced before. But he was caught now like a wolf in a trap, and he knew he had little to hope for, little to fear. As de Spain regarded him, something like pity may have mixed with his hatred. The old outlaw was thinly clad. His open throat was beaten with snow and, standing beside the wagon, he held the team reins in a bare hand. De Spain cut the other coat from his saddle and held it out. Duke pretended not to see and, when not longer equal to keeping up the pretense, shook his head.
“Take it,” said de Spain curtly.
“No.”
“Take it, I say. You and I will settle our affairs when we get Nan out of this,” he insisted.
“De Spain!” Duke’s voice, as was its wont, cracked like a pistol, “I can say all I’ve got to say to you right here.”
“No.”
“Yes,” cried the old man.
“Listen, Henry,” pleaded Nan, seeking shelter from the furious blast within his arm, “just for a moment, listen!”
“Not now, I tell you!” cried de Spain.
“He was coming, Henry, all the way–and he is sick–just to say it to you. Let him say it here, now.”
“Go on!” cried de Spain roughly. “Say it.”
“I’m not afraid of you, de Spain!” shouted the old man, his neck bared to the flying ice. “Don’t think it! You’re a better man than I am, better than I ever was–don’t think I don’t know that. But I’m not afraid of e’er a man I faced, de Spain; they’ll tell you that when I’m dead. All the trouble that ever come ’tween you and me come by an accident–come before you was born, and come through Dave Sassoon, and he’s held it over me ever since you come up into this country. I was a young fellow. Sassoon worked for my father. The cattle and sheep war was on, north of Medicine Bend. The Peace River sheepmen raided our place–your father was with them. He never did us no harm, but my brother, Bay Morgan, was shot in that raid by a man name of Jennings. My brother was fifteen years old, de Spain. I started out to get the man that shot him. Sassoon trailed him to the Bar M, the old de Spain ranch, working for your father.”
The words fell fast and in a fury. They came as if they had been choked back till they strangled. “Sassoon took me over there. Toward night we got in sight of the ranch-house. We saw a man down at the corral. ‘That’s Jennings,’ Sassoon says. I never laid eyes on him before–I never laid eyes on your father before. Both of us fired. Next day we heard your father was killed, and Jennings had left the country. Sassoon or I, one of us, killed your father, de Spain. If it was I, I did it never knowing who he was, never meaning to touch him. I was after the man that killed my brother. Sassoon didn’t care a damn which it was, never did, then nor never. But he held it over me to make trouble sometime ’twixt you and me. I was a young fellow. I thought I was revenging my brother. And if your father was killed by a patched bullet, his blood is not on me, de Spain, and never was. Sassoon always shot a patched bullet. I never shot one in my life. And I’d never told you this of my own self. Nan said it was the whole truth from me to you, or her life. She’s as much mine as she is yours. I nursed her. I took care of her when there weren’t no other living soul to do it. She got me and herself out into this, this morning. I’d never been caught like this if I’d had my way. I told her ’fore we’d been out an hour we’d never see the end of it. She said she’d rather die in it than you’d think she quit you. I told her I’d go on with her and do as she said–that’s why we’re here, and that’s the whole truth, so help me God!
“I ain’t afraid of you, de Spain. I’ll give you whatever you think’s coming to you with a rifle or a gun any time, anywhere–you’re a better man than I am or ever was, I know that–and that ought to satisfy you. Or, I’ll stand my trial, if you say so, and tell the truth.”
The ice-laden wind, as de Spain stood still, swept past the little group with a sinister roar, insensible alike to its emotions and its deadly peril. Within the shelter of his arm he felt the yielding form of the indomitable girl who, by the power of love, had wrung from the outlaw his reluctant story–the story of the murder that had stained with its red strands the relations of each of their lives to both the others. He felt against his heart the faint trembling of her frail body. So, when a boy, he had held in his hand a fluttering bird and felt the whirring beat of its frightened heart against his strong, cruel fingers.
A sudden aversion to more bloodshed, a sickening of vengeance, swept over him as her heart mutely beat for mercy against his heart. She had done more than any man could do. Now her. In the breathless embrace that drew her closer she read her answer from him. She looked up into his eyes and waited. “There’s more than what’s between you and me, Duke, facing us now,” said de Spain sternly, when he turned. “We’ve got to get Nan out of this–even if we don’t get out ourselves. Where do you figure we are?” he cried.
“I figure we’re two miles north of the lava beds, de Spain,” shouted Morgan.
De Spain shook his head in dissent. “Then where are we?” demanded the older man rudely.
“I ought not to say, against you. But if I’ve got to guess, I say two miles east. Either way, we must try for Sleepy Cat. Is your team all right?”
“Team is all right. We tore a wheel near off getting out of the lava. The wagon’s done for.”
De Spain threw the fur coat at him. “Put it on,” he said. “We’ll look at the wheel.”
They tried together to wrench it into shape, but worked without avail. In the end they lashed it, put Nan on the Lady, and walked behind while the team pushed into the pitiless wind. Morgan wanted to cut the wagon away and take to the horses, but de Spain said, not till they found a trail or the stage road.
So much snow had fallen that in spite of the blizzard, driving with an unrelenting fury, the drifts were deepening, packing, and making all effort increasingly difficult. It was well-nigh impossible to head the horses into the storm, and de Spain looked with ever more anxious eyes at Nan. After half an hour’s superhuman struggle to regain a trail that should restore their bearings, they halted, and de Spain, riding up to the wagon, spoke to Morgan, who was driving: “How long is this going to last?”
“All day and all night.” Nan leaned closely over to hear the curt question and answer. Neither man spoke again for a moment.
“We’ll have to have help,” said de Spain after a pause.
“Help?” echoed Morgan scornfully. “Where’s help coming from?”
De Spain’s answer was not hurried. “One of us must go after it.” Nan looked at him intently.
Duke set his hard jaw against the hurtling stream of ice that showered on the forlorn party. “I’ll go for it,” he snapped.
“No,” returned de Spain. “Better for me to go.”
“Go together,” said Nan.
De Spain shook his head. Duke Morgan, too, said that only one should go; the other must stay. De Spain, while the storm rattled and shook at the two men, told why he should go himself. “It’s not claiming you are not entitled to say who should go, Duke,” he said evenly. “Nor that our men, anywhere you reach, wouldn’t give you the same attention they would me. And it isn’t saying that you’re not the better man for the job–you’ve travelled the Sinks longer than I have. But between you and me, Duke, it’s twenty-eight years against fifty. I ought to hold out a while the longer, that’s all. Let’s work farther to the east.”
Quartering against the mad hurricane, they drove and rode on until the team could hardly be urged to further effort against the infuriated elements–de Spain riding at intervals as far to the right and the left as he dared in vain quest of a landmark. When he halted beside the wagon for the last time he was a mass of snow and ice; horse and rider were frozen to each other. He got down to the ground with a visible effort, and in the singing wind told Duke his plan and purpose.
He had chosen on the open desert a hollow falling somewhat abruptly from the north, and beneath its shoulder, while Morgan loosened the horses, he scooped and kicked away a mass of snow. The wagon had been drawn just above the point of refuge, and the two men, with the aid of the wind, dumped it over sidewise, making of the body a windbreak over the hollow, a sort of roof, around which the snow, driven by the gale, would heap itself in hard waves. Within this shelter the men stowed Nan. The horses were driven down behind it, and from one of them de Spain took the collar, the tugs, and the whiffletree. He stuck a hitching-strap in his pocket, and while Morgan steadied the Lady’s head, de Spain buckled the collar on her, doubled the tugs around the whiffletree, and fastened the roll at her side in front of the saddle.
Nan came out and stood beside him as he worked. When he had finished she put her hand on his sleeve. He held her close, Duke listening, to tell her what he meant to try to do. Each knew it well might be the last moment together. “One thing and another have kept us from marriage vows, Nan,” said de Spain, beckoning at length to Morgan to step closer that he might clearly hear. “Nothing must keep us longer. Will you marry me?”
She looked up into his eyes. “I’ve promised you I would. I will promise every time you ask me. I never could have but one answer to that, Henry–it must always be yes!”
“Then take me, Henry,” he said slowly, “here and now for your wedded husband. Will you do this, Nan?”
Still looking into his eyes, she answered without surprise or fear: “Henry, I do take you.”
“And I, Henry, take you, Nan, here and now for my wedded wife, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, from this day forward, until death us do part.”
They sealed their pact with a silent embrace. De Spain turned to Duke. “You are the witness of this marriage, Duke. You will see, if an accident happens, that anything, everything I have–some personal property–my father’s old ranch north of Medicine Bend–some little money in bank at Sleepy Cat–goes to my wife, Nan Morgan de Spain. Will you see to it?”
“I will. And if it comes to me–you, de Spain, will see to it that what stock I have in the Gap goes to my niece, Nan, your wife.”
She looked from one to the other of the two men. “All that I have,” she said in turn, “the lands in the Gap, everywhere around Music Mountain, go to you two equally together, or whichever survives. And if you both live, and I do not, remember my last message–bury the past in my grave.”
Duke Morgan tested the cinches of the saddle on the Lady once more, unloosed the tugs once more from the horse’s shoulder, examined each buckle of the collar and every inch of the two strips of leather, the reinforced fastenings on the whiffletree, rolled all up again, strapped it, and stood by the head till de Spain swung up into the saddle. He bent down once to whisper a last word of cheer to his wife and, without looking back, headed the Lady into the storm.