Nan of Music Mountain, page 10
He held in his hand an oil-lamp. The chimney had been smoked in such a way that the light of the flame was thrown forward and not back. Lefever in the background, nothing disturbed, threw a flash-light back at the half-dressed innkeeper. His hair was tumbled sleepily across his forehead and his eyes––one showing a white scar across the pupil––set deep in retreating orbits, blinked under heavy brows. “What do you want?” he demanded. Pardaloe, without answering, pushed through the half-open door into the room.
“We’re staying here to-night,” announced Pardaloe, as simply as possible. Lefever had already edged into the doorway, pushing the stubborn innkeeper aside by sheer bulk of weight and size.
The sleepy man gave ground stubbornly. “I’ve got no beds,” he growled surlily. “You can’t stay here.”
Lefever at once assumed the case for the intruders. “I could sleep this minute standing on my head,” he declared. “And as for staying here, I can’t stay anywhere else. What’s your name, son?” he demanded, buttonholing in his off-hand way the protesting man.
“My name is Philippi,” answered the one-eyed defiantly.
“Regards to Brutus, my dear fellow,” retorted Lefever, seizing the man’s hand as if happily surprised.
“You can’t crowd in here, so you might as well move on,” declared Philippi gruffly. “This is no hotel.”
Lefever laughed. “No offense, Philippi, but would it be indiscreet to ask which side of your face hurts the most when you smile?”
“If you’ve got no beds, we won’t bother you long,” interposed Pardaloe.
“I’d like a pitcher of ice-water, anyway,” persisted Lefever. “Sit down, noble Greek; we’ll talk this over.”
“Who are you fellows?” demanded Philippi, looking from one to the other.
“I am a prospector from the Purgatoire,” answered Pardaloe.
Philippi turned his keen eye on Lefever. “You a railroad man?”
“No, sir,” declared Lefever, dusting the alkali vigorously from his coat sleeve.
“What are you?”
John looked as modest as it was possible for him to look. “Few people ask me that, but in matter of fact I am an objet d’art.”
“What’s that?”
“Different things at different times to different men, Philippi,” answered Lefever simply, exploring, while he spoke, different corners of the room with his flash-light. “At this moment––” he stopped suddenly, then resumed reassuringly––“I want a drink.”
“Nothing doing,” muttered the landlord sulkily.
Lefever’s flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. “Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?” he demanded, walking significantly toward the vender’s authority.
“Nothing in the house to-night.”
“Then,” announced Lefever calmly, “I arrest you.”
Philippi started. “Arrest me?”
“For obtaining a thirst under false pretenses. Come, now, before we slip the irons on, get us something to eat. I’ll go up-stairs and pick out a room to sleep in.”
“I tell you,” insisted Philippi profanely, “there are no rooms for you to sleep in up-stairs.”
“And I,” retorted Lefever, “tell you there are. Anyway, I left a sewing-machine up-stairs here three years ago, and promised to keep it oiled for the lady. This is a good time to begin.”
With Lefever making the old steps creak, ahead, and Pardaloe, with his long, soft, pigeon-toed tread close behind, the unwilling landlord was taken up the stairs, and the two men thoroughly searched the house. Lefever lowered his voice when the hunt began through the bedrooms––few of which contained even a bed––but he kept up a running fire of talk that gave Philippi no respite from anxiety.
Outside the kitchen quarters, which likewise were rigorously searched, not a soul could be found in the house. One room only, over the kitchen, gave hope of uncovering something. The party reached the door of this room through a narrow, tortuous passageway along an attic gable. The door was locked. Philippi told them it belonged to a sheep-herder who did not use it often. He protested he had no key. Pardaloe knocked and, getting no response, tried unsuccessfully to force the lock. Lefever motioned him aside and, after knocking loudly on the door himself, laid his shoulder against it. The door creaked and sprung in crazy protest. The panels cracked, the stubborn frame gave, and with a violent crash Lefever pushed completely through the locked barrier and threw his flash-light inside. Pardaloe, urging the unwilling Philippi ahead, followed.
The room, unfinished under the rafters, was destitute of furnishings, and bore traces of long disuse. Stretched on the floor toward the middle of it, and side by side, lay two men. One of them was very large, the other not more than half his companion’s size. Lefever kneeling over the man nearest the door listened for signs of breathing, and laid his head to the man’s heart. Having completed his examination, he went around to the other––Pardaloe and Philippi silently watching––and looked him over with equal care. When he had done, he examined, superficially, the wounds of each man. Rising, he turned toward Philippi. “Were these men dead when you brought them up here?”
“I didn’t bring ’em up,” growled Philippi.
“You know them, Pardaloe?” asked Lefever. Pardaloe answered that he did. Lefever turned sharply on Philippi. “Where were you when this fight was going on?”
“Down at the stage barn.”
“Getting your alibi ready. But, of course, you know that won’t let you out, Philippi. Your best chance is to tell the truth. There were two others with this pair––where are Gale Morgan and Sassoon?”
“Satt Morgan was here with hay to-day. He took them over this evening to Music Mountain.”
“Where were they hit?”
“Morgan was hit in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sassoon was hit in the side, and in the neck.”
“Where is de Spain?”
“Dead, I reckon, by this time.”
“Where’s his body?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why do you think he is dead?”
“Sassoon said he was hit in the head.”
“Yet he got away on horseback!”
“I’m telling you what Sassoon said; I didn’t see him.”
Lefever and Pardaloe rode back to the stage barn. “Certainly looks blue for Henry,” muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. “Bob Scott,” he added gloomily, “may find him somewhere on the Sinks.”
At Sleepy Cat, Jeffries, wild with impatience, was on the telephone. Lefever, with McAlpin and Pardaloe standing at his side, reported to the superintendent all he could learn. “He rode away––without help, of course,” explained Lefever to Jeffries in conclusion. “What shape he is in, it’s pretty hard to say, Jeffries. Three more of the bunch, Vance Morgan, Bull Page, and a lame man that works for Bill Morgan, were waiting in the saddle at the head of the draw between the barn and the hotel for him if he should get away from the inn. Somehow, he went the other way and nobody saw hide nor hair of him, so far as I can learn. If he was able to make it, Jeff, he would naturally try for Sleepy Cat. But that’s a pretty fair ride for a sound man, let alone a man that’s hit––and everybody claims he was hit. If he wasn’t hit he should have been in Sleepy Cat long before this. You say you’ve had men out across the river?”
“Since dark,” responded Jeffries. “But, John,” he asked, “could a man hit in the way de Spain was hit, climb into a saddle and make a get-away?”
“Henry might,” answered Lefever laconically.
Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o’clock after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken place, they followed de Spain’s jump through the broken sash into the patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy’s country, but there was no gainsaying the trail––occasional flecks of blood blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led––not as the trailers hoped they would, in a wide détour across easy-riding country toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road––but farther and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man’s land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.
Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head as he leaned over the pony’s shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast of him. “It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind of riding.”
Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first time. Here Scott picked up five empty shells ejected from de Spain’s revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain was no longer guiding Sassoon’s pony; it was wandering at will.
Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had come almost completely about and headed again for Music Mountain. Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan’s Gap and were practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.
“Here’s a go,” muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.
“Remember,” interposed Scott mildly, “he is riding Sassoon’s horse––the brute is naturally heading for home.”
“Follow him home, then,” said Lefever unhesitatingly.
Scott looked at his companion in surprise: “Near home, you mean, John,” he suggested inoffensively. “For three of us to ride into the Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don’t think the excitement would last long––for us.”
The three were agreed, however, to follow up to the mouth of the Gap itself and did follow. Finding no trace of de Spain’s movements in this quest, they rode separately in wide circles to the north and south, but without picking up a hoof-print that led anywhere or gave them any clew to the whereabouts of the missing man.
“There is one consolation,” muttered Lefever, as they held to what each felt to be an almost hopeless search. “As long as Henry can stick to a saddle he can shoot––and the Morgans after yesterday afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find him.”
Scott shook his head: “That brings us up against another proposition, John. De Spain hasn’t got any cartridges.”
Lefever turned sharply: “What do you mean?”
“His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before,” demanded Lefever indignantly.
“I’ve been hoping all the time we’d find Henry and I wouldn’t have to tell you.”
In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scott’s information was disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.
For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, badly wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information halted.
Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgan’s stable, Sassoon’s horse––the one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight, waiting at Sassoon’s corral to be cared for. There could be, it was fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing rider.
Though Scott had known first of de Spain’s helpless condition in his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the midst of a gloomy council at Jeffries’s office, he was pressed for an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But, Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation of the faith that was in him. “In the first place,” he said, “I’ve ridden a good deal with that man––pretty much all over the country north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nut’s full of meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself. Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here, they don’t. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk that’s floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a mark here one day in Sleepy Cat.”
Jeffries didn’t interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.
“You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot into it, and expect to live to tell it,” continued Scott mildly, “as to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man, without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at that, John, the man that fires the gun,” murmured the scout, “ought to be behind a tree.
“You say he is hit. I grant it,” he concluded. “But I knew him once when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a scrimmage outside Williams Cache two years ago.”
“You don’t believe, then, he’s dead, Bob?” demanded Jeffries impatiently.
“Not till I see him dead,” persisted Scott unmoved.
* * *
CHAPTER XII
ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN
De Spain, when he climbed into Sassoon’s saddle, was losing sight and consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.
The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained––flight, and he spurred his horse cruelly.
Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite beyond his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his infuriated horse flew along as if winged.
A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead. He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible between himself and more of the Morgans.
A perceptible weakness presently forced him to realize he must look to his wounded foot. This he did without slackening speed. The sight of it and the feeling inside his torn and blood-soaked boot was not reassuring, but he rode on, sparing neither his horse nor his exhaustion. It was only when spells of dizziness, recurring with frequency, warned him he could not keep the saddle much longer, that he attempted to dismount to stanch the drip of blood from his stirrup.
Before he slackened speed he tried to look behind to reconnoitre. With relief he perceived his sight to be a trifle better, and in scanning the horizon he could discover no pursuers. Choosing a secluded spot, he dismounted, cut open his boot, and found that a bullet, passing downward, had torn an artery under the arch of the foot. Making a rude tourniquet, he succeeded in checking pretty well the spurting flow that was sapping his strength. After he had adjusted the bandage he stood up and looked at it. Then he drew his revolver again and broke it. He found five empty shells in the chambers and threw them away. The last cartridge had not been fired. He could not even figure out how he had happened to have six cartridges in the cylinder, for he rarely loaded more than five. Indeed, it was his fixed habit––to avoid accidents––never to carry a cartridge under the hammer of his gun––yet now there had been one. Without trying to explain the circumstance, he took fresh stock of his chances and began to wonder whether he might yet escape and live.
He climbed again into the saddle, and, riding to a ridge, looked carefully over the desert. It was with an effort that he could steady himself, and the extent of his weakness surprised him. What further perplexed him as he crossed a long divide, got another good view and saw no pursuit threatening in any direction, was to identify the country he was in. The only landmark anywhere in sight that he could recognize was Music Mountain. This now lay to the northwest, and he knew he must be a long way from any country he was familiar with. But there was no gainsaying, even in his confused condition, Music Mountain. After looking at it a long time he headed with some hesitation cautiously toward it, with intent to intercept the first trail to the northeast. This would take him toward Sleepy Cat.
