Wildfire and the Heritage of the Desert (70 page)

“Ten miles—fifteen, more maybe,” said Hare. “Mescal will soon be in the village.”

Again hours of travel flew by like winged moments. Thoughts of time, distance, monotony, fatigue, purpose, were shut out from his mind. A rushing kaleidoscopic dance of images filled his consciousness, but they were all of Mescal. Safety for her had unsealed the fountain of happiness.

It was near sundown when he rode Black Bolly into White Sage, and took the back road, and the pasture lane to Bishop Caldwell's cottage. John, one of the Bishop's sons, was in the barn-yard and ran to open the gate.

“Mescal!” cried Hare.

“Safe,” replied the Mormon.

“Have you hidden her?”

“She's in a secret cave, a Mormon hiding-place for women. Only a few men know of its existence. Rest easy, for she's absolutely safe.”

“Thank God!… then that's settled.” Hare drew a long, deep breath.

“Mescal told us what happened, how she got caught at the sand-strip and escaped from Holderness at Silver Cup. Was Dene hurt?”

“Silvermane killed him.”

“Good God! How things come about! I saw you run Dene down that time here in White Sage. It must have been written. Did Holderness shoot Snap Naab?”

“Yes.”

“What of old Naab? Won't he come down here now to lead us Mormons against the rustlers?”

“He called the Navajos across the river. He meant to take the trail alone and kill Holderness, keeping the Indians back a few days. If he failed to return then they were to ride out on the rustlers. But his plan must be changed, for I came ahead of him.”

“For what? Mescal?”

“No. For Holderness.”

“You'll kill him!”

“Yes.”

“He'll be coming soon!— When?”

“To-morrow, possibly by daylight. He wants Mescal. There's a chance Naab may have reached Silver Cup before Holderness left, but I doubt it.”

“May I know your plan?” The Mormon hesitated while his strong brown face flashed with daring inspiration. “I—I've a good reason.”

“Plan?— Yes. Hide Bolly and Silvermane in the little arbor down in the orchard. I'll stay outside tonight, sleep a little—for I'm dead tired—and watch in the morning. Holderness will come here with his men, perhaps not openly at first, to drag Mescal away. He'll mean to use strategy. I'll meet him when he comes—that's all.”

“It's well. I ask you not to mention this to my father. Come in, now. You need food and rest. Later I'll hide Bolly and Silvermane in the arbor.”

Hare met the Bishop and his family with composure, but his arrival following so closely upon Mescal's, increased their alarm. They seemed repelled yet fascinated by his face. Hare ate in silence. John Caldwell did not come in to supper; his brothers mysteriously left the table before finishing the meal. A subdued murmur of voices floated in at the open window.

Darkness found Hare wrapped in a blanket under the trees. He needed sleep that would loose the strange deadlock of his thoughts, clear the blur from his eyes, ease the pain in his head and weariness of limbs—all these weaknesses of which he had suddenly become conscious. Time and again he had almost wooed slumber to him when soft footsteps on the gravel paths, low voices, the gentle closing of the gate, brought him back to the unreal listening wakefulness. The sounds continued late into the night, and when he did fall asleep he dreamed of them. He awoke to a dawn clearer than the light from the noonday sun. In his ears was the ringing of a bell. He could not stand still, and his movements were subtle and swift. His hands took a peculiar, tenacious, hold of everything he chanced to touch. He paced his hidden walk behind the arbor, at every turn glancing sharply up and down the road. Thoughts came to him clearly, yet one was dominant. The morning was curiously quiet, the sons of the Bishop had strangely disappeared—a sense of imminent catastrophe was in the air.

A band of horsemen closely grouped turned into the road and trotted forward. Some of the men wore black masks. Holderness rode at the front, his red-gold beard shining in the sunlight. The steady clip-clop of hoofs and clinking of iron stirrups broke the morning quiet. Holderness, with two of his men, dismounted before the Bishop's gate; the others of the band trotted on down the road. The ring of Holderness's laugh preceded the snap of the gate-latch.

Hare stood calm and cold behind his green covert watching the three men stroll up the garden path. Holderness took a cigarette from his lips as he neared the porch and blew out circles of white smoke. Bishop Caldwell tottered from the cottage rapping the porch-floor with his cane.

“Good-morning, Bishop,” greeted Holderness, blandly, baring his head.

“To you, sir,” quavered the old man, with his wavering blue eyes fixed on the spurred and belted rustler. Holderness stepped out in front of his companions, a superb man, courteous, smiling, entirely at his ease.

“I rode in to—”

Hare leaped from his hiding-place.

“Holderness!”

The rustler pivoted on whirling heels.

“Dene's spy!” he exclaimed, aghast. Swift changes swept his mobile features. Fear flickered in his eyes as he faced his foe; then came wonder, a glint of amusement, dark anger, and the terrible instinct of death impending.

“Naab's trick!” hissed Hare, with his hand held high. The suggestion in his words, the meaning in his look, held the three rustlers transfixed. The surprise was his strength.

In Holderness's amber eyes shone his desperate calculation of chances. Hare's fateful glance, impossible to elude, his strung form slightly crouched, his cold deliberate mention of Naab's trick, and more than all the poise of that quivering hand, filled the rustler with a terror that he could not hide. He had been bidden to draw and he could not summon the force.

“Naab's trick!” repeated Hare, mockingly.

Suddenly Holderness reached for his gun.

Hare's hand leapt like a lightning stroke. Gleam of blue—spurt of red—crash!

Holderness swayed with blond head swinging backward, the amber of his eyes suddenly darkened; the life in them glazed; like a log he fell clutching the weapon he had half drawn.

 

CHAPTER XX

The Rage of the Old Lion

“Take Holderness away—quick!” ordered Hare. A thin curl of blue smoke floated from the muzzle of his raised weapon.

The rustlers started out of their statue-like immobility, and lifting their dead leader dragged him down the garden path with his spurs clinking on the gravel and ploughing little furrows.

“Bishop, go in now. They may return,” said Hare. He hurried up the steps to place his arm round the tottering old man.

“Was that Holderness?”

“Yes,” replied Hare.

“The deeds of the wicked return unto them! God's will!”

Hare led the Bishop indoors. The sitting-room was full of wailing women and crying children. None of the young men were present. Again Hare made note of their inexplicable absence. He spoke soothingly to the frightened family. The little boys and girls yielded readily to his persuasion, but the women took no heed of him.

“Where are your sons?” asked Hare.

“I don't know,” replied the Bishop. “They should be here to stand by you. It's strange. I don't understand. Last night my sons were visited by many men, coming and going in twos and threes till late. They didn't sleep in their beds. I know not what to think.”

Hare remembered John Caldwell's enigmatic face.

“Have the rustlers really come?” asked a young woman, whose eyes were red and cheeks tearstained.

“They have. Nineteen in all. I counted them,” answered Hare.

The young woman burst out weeping afresh, and the wailing of the others answered her. Hare left the cottage. He picked up his rifle and went down through the orchard to the hiding-place of the horses. Silvermane pranced and snorted his gladness at sight of his master. The desert king was fit for a grueling race. Black Bolly quietly cropped the long grass. Hare saddled the stallion to have him in instant readiness, and then returned to the front of the yard.

He heard the sound of a gun down the road, then another, and several shots following in quick succession. A distant angry murmuring and trampling of many feet drew Hare to the gate. Riderless mustangs were galloping down the road; several frightened boys were fleeing across the square; not a man was in sight. Three more shots cracked, and the low murmur and trampling swelled into a hoarse uproar. Hare had heard that sound before; it was the tumult of mob-violence. A black dense throng of men appeared crowding into the main street, and crossing toward the square. The procession had some order; it was led and flanked by mounted men. But the upflinging of many arms, the craning of necks, and the leaping of men on the outskirts of the mass, the pressure inward and the hideous roar, proclaimed its real character.

“By Heaven!” cried Hare. “The Mormons have risen against the rustlers. I understand now. John Caldwell spent last night in secretly rousing his neighbors. They have surprised the rustlers. Now what?”

Hare vaulted the fence and ran down the road. A compact mob of men, a hundred or more, had halted in the village under the wide-spreading cottonwoods. Hare suddenly grasped the terrible significance of those outstretched branches, and out of the thought grew another which made him run at bursting break-neck speed.

“Open up! Let me in!” he yelled to the thickly thronged circle. Right and left he flung men. “Make way!” His piercing voice stilled the angry murmur. Fierce men with weapons held aloft fell back from his face.

“Dene's spy!” they cried.

The circle opened and closed upon him. He saw bound rustlers under armed guard. Four still forms were on the ground. Holderness lay outstretched, a dark-red blot staining his gray shirt. Flinty-faced Mormons, ruthless now as they had once been mild, surrounded the rustlers. John Caldwell stood foremost, with ashen lips breaking bitterly into speech:

“Mormons, this is Dene's spy, the man who killed Holderness!”

The listeners burst into the short stern shout of men proclaiming a leader in war.

“What's the game?” demanded Hare.

“A fair trial for the rustlers, then a rope,” replied John Caldwell. The low ominous murmur swelled through the crowd again.

“There are two men here who have befriended me. I won't see them hanged.”

“Pick them out!” A strange ripple of emotion made a fleeting break in John Caldwell's hard face.

Hare eyed the prisoners.

“Nebraska, step out here,” said he.

“I reckon you're mistaken,” replied the rustler, his blue eyes intently on Hare. “I never seen you before. An' I ain't the kind of a feller to cheat the man you mean.”

“I saw you untie the girl's hands.”

“You did? Well, damn me!”

“Nebraska, if I save your life will you quit rustling cattle? You weren't cut out for a thief.”

“Will I? Damn me! I'll be straight an' decent. I'll take a job ridin' for you, stranger, an' prove it.”

“Cut him loose from the others,” said Hare. He scrutinized the line of rustlers. Several were masked in black. “Take off those masks!”

“No! Those men go to their graves masked.” Again the strange twinge of pain crossed John Caldwell's face.

“Ah! I see,” exclaimed Hare. Then quickly: “I couldn't recognize the other man anyhow; I don't know him. But Mescal can tell. He saved her and I'll save him. But how?”

Every rustler, except the masked ones standing stern and silent, clamored that he was the one to be saved.

“Hurry back home,” said Caldwell in Hare's ear. “Tell them to fetch Mescal. Find out and hurry back. Time presses. The Mormons are wavering. You've got only a few minutes.”

Hare slipped out of the crowd, sped up the road, jumped the fence on the run, and burst in upon the Bishop and his family.

“No danger—don't be alarmed—all's well,” he panted. “The rustlers are captured. I want Mescal. Quick! Where is she? Fetch her, somebody.”

One of the women glided from the room. Hare caught the clicking of a latch, the closing of a door, hollow footfalls descending on stone, and dying away under the cottage. They rose again, ending in swiftly pattering footsteps. Like a whirlwind Mescal came through the hall, black hair flying, dark eyes beaming.

“My darling!” Oblivious of the Mormons he swung her up and held her in his arms. “Mescal! Mescal!” When he raised his face from the tumbling mass of her black hair, the Bishop and his family had left the room.

“Listen, Mescal. Be calm. I'm safe. The rustlers are prisoners. One of them released you from Holderness. Tell me which one?”

“I don't know,” replied Mescal. “I've tried to think. I didn't see his face; I can't remember his voice.”

“Think! Think! He'll be hanged if you don't recall something to identify him. He deserves a chance. Holderness's crowd are thieves, murderers. But two men were not all bad. That showed the night you were at Silver Cup. I saved Nebraska—”

“Were you at Silver Cup? Jack!”

“Hush! don't interrupt me. We must save this man who saved you. Think! Mescal! Think!”

“Oh! I can't. What—how shall I remember?”

“Something about him. Think of his coat, his sleeve. You must remember something. Did you see his hands?”

“Yes, I did—when he was loosing the cords,” said Mescal, eagerly. “Long, strong fingers. I felt them too. He has a sharp rough wart on one hand, I don't know which. He wears a leather wristband.”

“That's enough!” Hare bounded out upon the garden walk and raced back to the crowded square. The uneasy circle stirred and opened for him to enter. He stumbled over a pile of lassoes which had not been there when he left. The stony Mormons waited; the rustlers coughed and shifted their feet. John Caldwell turned a gray face. Hare bent over the three dead rustlers lying with Holderness, and after a moment of anxious scrutiny he rose to confront the line of prisoners.