Nan of Music Mountain
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 Superstition 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 pass it unobserved was to compass 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 Sassoon 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 anticipation 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 butt 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 Sassoon’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 butt of his gun. “Hello, Shike!” he called out in a slightly strained tone of camaraderie, addressing Sassoon 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 glass 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, Sassoon 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?” Sassoon 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.”
Sassoon 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. Sassoon, 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 assurance 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 Sassoon, 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 Sassoon 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 Sassoon 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 Sassoon 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 Sassoon, 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 assured, 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 pass 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 Sassoon, and when she spoke her tone was dry with suspicion.
“Wait a moment, Sassoon. Where are you going?” she demanded. Sassoon 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 Sassoon’s horse in the flank, and the two were passing. Sassoon 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 Sassoon monotonously.
“What is he doing here with you?” persisted Nan.
“He’s a cousin of John Rebstock’s from Williams Cache,” continued Sassoon. The yarn would have sounded decently well in the circumstances for which it was intended, but in the searching gaze of the eyes now confronting and clearly recognizing him, it sounded so grotesque that de Spain would fully as lief have been sitting between his horse’s legs as astride his back.
“That’s not true, Sassoon,” said his relentless questioner. Her tone and the expression of her face boded no friendliness for either of the two she had intercepted.
De Spain had recovered his wits. “You’re right,” he interposed without an instant’s hesitation. “It isn’t true. But that’s not his fault; he is under arrest, and is telling you what I told him to tell you. I came in here this morning to take Sassoon to Sleepy Cat. He is a prisoner, wanted for cutting up one of our stage-guards.”
Nan, coldly sceptical, eyed de Spain. “And do you try to tell me”–she pointed to Sassoon’s unbound hands–“that he is riding out of here, a free man, to go to jail?”
“I do tell you exactly that. He is my prisoner–”
“I don’t believe either of you,” declared Nan scornfully. “You are planning something underhand together.”
De Spain laughed coolly. “We’ve planned that much together, but not, I assure you, with his consent.”
“I don’t believe your stories at all,” she declared firmly.
De Spain flushed. The irritation and the serious danger bore in on him. “If you don’t believe me it’s not my fault,” he retorted. “I’ve told you the truth. Ride on, Sassoon.”
He spoke angrily, but this in no wise daunted Nan. She wheeled her horse directly in front of them. “Don’t you stir, Sassoon,” she commanded, “until I call Uncle Duke.”
De Spain spurred straight at her; their horses collided, and his knee touched hers in the saddle. “I’m going to take this man out of here,” he announced in a tone she never had heard before from a man. “I’ve no time to talk. Go call your uncle if you like. We must pass.”
“You shan’t pass a step!”
With the quick words of defiance the two glared at each other. De Spain was taken aback. He had expected no more than a war of words–a few screams at the most. Nan’s face turned white, but there was no symptom even of a whimper. He noticed her quick breathing, and felt, instinctively, the restrained gesture of her right hand as it started back to her side. The move steadied him. “One question,” he said bluntly, “are you armed?”
She hated even to answer, and met his searching gaze resentfully, but something in his tone and manner wrung a reply. “I can defend myself,” she exclaimed angrily.
De Spain raised his right hand from his thigh to the pommel of his saddle. The slight gesture was eloquent of his surrender of the issue of force. “I can’t go into a shooting-match with you about this cur. If you call your uncle there will be bloodshed–unless you drop me off my horse right here and now before he appears. All I ask you is this: Is this kind of a cutthroat worth that? If you shoot me, my whole posse from Sleepy Cat is right below us in the aspens. Some of your own people will be killed in a general fight. If you want to shoot me, shoot–you can have the match all to yourself. If you don’t, let us go by. And if I’ve told you one word that isn’t true, call me back to this spot any time you like, and I’ll come at your call, and answer for it.”
His words and his manner confounded her for a moment. She could not at once make an answer, for she could not decide what to say. Then, of a sudden, she was robbed of her chance to answer. From down the trail came a yell like a shot. The clatter of hoofs rang out, and men on horses dashed from the entrance of the Gap toward them. De Spain could not make them out distinctly, but he knew Lefever’s yell, and pointed. “There they are,” he exclaimed hurriedly. “There is the whole posse. They are coming!” A shot, followed closely by a second, rang out from below. “Go,” he cried to Nan. “There’ll be shooting here that I can’t stop!” He slapped Sassoon’s pony viciously with his hand, yelled loud in answer to Lefever, and before the startled girl could collect herself, de Spain, crouching in his saddle, as a fusillade cracked from Lefever’s and Scott’s revolvers, urged Sassoon’s horse around Nan’s, kicked it violently, spurred past her himself, and was away. White with consternation and anger, she steadied herself and looked after the fleeing pair. Then whirling in her saddle, she ran her pony back to the ranch-house to give the alarm.
Yelling like half a dozen men, Lefever and Scott, as de Spain and his prisoner dashed toward them, separated, let the pair pass, and spurred in behind to cover the flight and confront any pursuers. None at the moment threatened, but no words were exchanged until the whole party, riding fast, were well past El Capitan and out of the Gap. For some unexpressed reason–so strong is the influence of tradition and reputation–no one of the three coveted a close encounter with the Morgans within its walls.
“It’s the long heels for it now, boys,” cried de Spain. His companions closed up again.
“Save your horses,” cautioned Scott, between strides. “It’s a good ways home.”
“Make for Calabasas,” shouted Lefever.
“No,” yelled Scott. “They would stand us a siege at Calabasas. While the trail is open make for the railroad.”
A great globe of dazzling gold burst into the east above the distant hills. But the glory of the sunrise called forth no admiration from the three men hurrying a fourth urgently along the Sleepy Cat trail. Between breaths de Spain explained his awkward meeting with Nan, and of the strait he was in when Lefever’s strong lungs enabled him to get away unscratched. But for a gunman a narrow squeak is as good as a wide one, and no one found fault with the situation. They had the advantage–the only question was whether they could hold it. And while they continued to cast anxious glances behind, Scott’s Indian eyes first perceived signs on the horizon that marked their pursuit.
“No matter,” declared Lefever. “This is a little fast for a fat man, anyway.” He was not averse, either, to the prospect of a long-range exchange with the fighting mountaineers. All drew rein a little. “Suppose I cover the rear till we see what this is,” suggested Lefever, limbering up as the other two looked back. “Push ahead with Sassoon. These fellows won’t follow far.”
“Don’t be sure about that,” muttered Scott. “Duke and Gale have got the best horses in the mountains, and they’d rather fight than eat. There they come now.”
Dashing across a plain they themselves had just crossed, they could see three horsemen in hot chase. The pursued men rode carefully, and, scanning the ground everywhere ahead and behind, de Spain, Scott, and Lefever awaited the moment when their pursuers should show their hand. Scott was on the west of the line, and nearest the enemy.
“Who are they, Bob?” yelled Lefever.
Scott scrutinized the pursuers carefully. “One,” he called back, “that big fellow on the right, is Deaf Sandusky, sure. Harvey Logan, likely, the middle man. The other I can’t make out. Look!” he exclaimed, pointing to the foot-hills on their distant left. Two men, riding out almost abreast of them, were running their horses for a small canyon through which the trail led two miles ahead. “Some riding,” cried Scott, watching the newcomers. “That farther man must be Gale Morgan. They are trying for the greasewood canyon, to cut us off.”
“We can’t stand for that,” decided de Spain, surveying the ground around them. “There’s not so much as a sage-brush here for cover.”
Lefever pointed to his right; at some distance a dark, weather-beaten cone rose above the yellow desert. “Let’s make a stand in the lava beds,” he cried.
De Spain hesitated. “It takes us the wrong way.” He pointed ahead. “Give them a run for that canyon, boys.”
Urging their horses, the Sleepy Cat men rode at utmost speed to beat the flanking party to the trail gateway. For a few minutes it looked an even break between pursuers and pursued. The two men in the foot-hills now had a long angle to overcome, but they were doing a better pace than those of the Gap party behind, and half-way to the canyon it looked like a neck-and-neck heat for the narrow entrance. Lefever complained of the effort of keeping up, and at length reined in his horse. “Drop me here on the alkali, boys,” he cried to the others. “I’ll hold this end while you get through the canyon.”
“No,” declared de Spain, checking his pace. “If one stays, all stay. This is as good a time as any to find out what these fellows mean.”
“But not a very good place,” commented Scott, as they slowed, looking for a depression.
“It’s as good for us as it is for them,” returned de Spain abruptly. “We’ll try it right here.”
He swung out of his saddle, Lefever and Scott after an instant’s reconnoissance following. Sassoon they dismounted. Scott lashed his wrists together, while de Spain and Lefever unslung their carbines, got their horses down, and, facing the west and south, spread themselves on the ground.
The men behind lost nothing of the defensive movement of the pursued party, and slowed up in turn. For the moment the flankers were out of sight, but they must soon appear on the crest of a rise between them and the canyon. Lefever was first down and first ready with his rifle to cover the men behind. These now spread out and came on, as if for a rush.
Lefever, picking Logan, the foremost, sent a warning shot in front of him. De Spain fired almost at the same moment toward the big man making a détour to the right of the leader. The two bullets puffed in the distant alkali, and the two horsemen, sharply admonished, swerved backward precipitately. After a momentary circling indecision, the three rode closer together for a conference, dismounted, and opened a return fire on the little party lying to.
The strategy of their halt and their firing was not hard to penetrate. The men from the foot-hills were still riding for the canyon. No views were exchanged among Sassoon’s captors, but all understood that this move must be stopped. Lefever and Scott, without words, merely left the problem to de Spain as the leader. He lay on the right of the line as they faced south, and this brought him nearest to the riders out of the foot-hills. Taking advantage of a lull in the firing, he pulled his horse around between himself and the attacking party, and in such a position that he could command with his rifle the fast-moving riders to the west.
Something of a predicament confronted him. He was loath to take a human life in the effort to get a cutthroat jailed, and hated even to cripple a beast for it, but the two men must be stopped. Nor was it easy to pick up the range offhand, but meaning that the Morgans, if they were Morgans, should understand how a rush would be met, he sent one shot after another, short, beyond, and ahead of the horsemen, to check them, and to feel the way for closer shooting if it should be necessary. The two dashed on undaunted. De Spain perceived that warnings were wasted. He lowered his sights, and, waiting his chance as the leader of the foot-hill pursuers rode into a favorable range, he fired for his horse’s head. The beast jumped convulsively and pitched forward, head down in a half somersault, throwing his rider violently to the ground. Scott and Lefever yelled loudly.
Out of the cloud of dust the man scrambled to his feet, looked coolly around, and brushed the alkali disgustedly from his eyes just as a second bullet from de Spain tore up the earth a few feet to one side of him. He jumped like a rabbit at this summons, and did not even make a further pretense at composure. Grabbing his hat from the ground, he ran like mad toward the hills. Meantime his mounted companion had turned about. De Spain sprang to his feet, jerked up his horse and cried: “Now for the canyon!” Pushing Sassoon into the saddle and profiting by the confusion, the railroad men rode hard for their refuge, and reached it without more molestation than an occasional shot from their distant pursuers on the main trail. De Spain and his scouts now felt assured of their escape. The foot-hills contingent was left far behind, and, though their remaining pursuers rode in at times with a show of rushing, the chase was a stern one, and could be checked whenever necessary. Halting at times in this way to breathe their horses, or to hold off the rear pursuit, de Spain with his two companions and their prisoner rode into Sleepy Cat, locked Sassoon up, and went to the Mountain House for breakfast.