a glimpse, scarcely more it was, had been given them of mexicali joe's face. and at a considerable distance, at least for the reading of a man's look. but yet they marked how the face was haggard and drawn and furtive. joe had no inkling of their presence. he had not seen their wisp of smoke; there was no wind setting toward him to carry him the smell of cooking trout. plainly he had no desire for company other than his own. he, no less than they, fled from all pursuit. again he was lost to them; he vanished, gone up-stream, beyond the thickets, no faintest sound of his footfalls coming back to them. from him they turned to each other, the same expression from the same flooding thought in their eyes.
"we're on the jump and we'll keep on the jump!" said deveril softly. "and at the same time, lynette brooke, we'll stick as close as the lord'll let us to mexicali joe's coat-tails! don't you worry; he'll go back as sure as shooting to his gold-mine, if only to make certain that no one else has squatted on it. and where he drives a stake, we'll drive ours right alongside!"
"it's funny ... that he hasn't gotten any further ... that he should come this way, too...."
"no telling how long he had to lie still while the pack yelped about his hiding-place; that he came this way means only one thing. and that is that our luck is with us, and we're headed as straight as he is toward his prospect hole. ready? let's follow him!"
she jumped up. but before they started they gathered up, to the last small bit, what was left of their fish;
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deveril made the small bundle, fish enwrapped in leaves, with a handkerchief about the whole.
"if he should hear us?" she whispered. "if he should lie in waiting and see us?"
he chuckled.
"in any case, we'll have it on him! he can't know that we're on the run, too; he got away too fast for that. and even if he should know, what would he do about it? he has no love for taggart, anyway; and he has no wish to get himself into the hands of that mob that he has just ducked away from, like a rabbit dodging a pack of hounds. if he catches us ... why, then, we catch him at the same time! come on."
thus began the second lap of their journey; thus they, fleeing, followed like shadows upon the traces of one who fled. for mexicali joe would obviously keep to the bed of the cañon; if he forsook it in order to climb up either slope to a ridge above, he must of necessity pass through the more sparsely timbered spaces, where he would run constantly into danger of being seen. the only danger to their plans lay with the possibility that he might overhear sounds of their following and might draw a little to one side and hide in some dense copse, and so let them go by. but they had the advantage from the beginning; they knew he was ahead, and he did not know that they followed; so long as they, listening always, did not hear him ahead, there was little danger of him hearing them coming after him. with all the noise of the water, tumbling over falls and splashing along over rocks, singing cheerily to itself at every step, there was small likelihood of any one of the three cautious footfalls being heard....
there were the times, so intent were they following the mexican, when they forgot what was after all the main issue; forgot that they, too, were followed. for the
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newer phase of the game was more zestful just now than the other; they had neither glimpsed nor heard anything since the passing of the two riders last night to hint that any danger of discovery threatened them. they spoke seldom, only now and then, pausing briefly, in lowered voices, as the speculations which had been occupying both minds, demanded expression. thus they were always confronted by some new problem; at first, and for a mile or more, they had full confidence that they had joe straight ahead of them. but presently they approached a fork of the cañon; it became imperative to know if joe had gone up the right or the left ravine. and here, where most they wanted a glimpse of him, they had scant hope of seeing him, so dense was the timber growth; he would keep close to the bed of the stream, at times walking in the water so that the network of branches from the brushy tangle on both banks would make for him a dim alleyway, like a tunnel. they could not hope to hear him; they could not count on finding his tracks, since none would be left upon the rocks and the rushing water held none.
but they were alert, ears critical of the slightest rustling, eyes never keener. and, their good fortune holding firm, when they came to the forking of the ways, that which they had not hoped for, a track upon a hard rock, set them right. for here joe, but a few score yards ahead of them, had slipped, and had crawled up over a boulder, and there was still the wet trace of his passing, a sign to vanish, drying, while they looked on it. joe had gone on into the deeper cañon, headed in the direction which last night they had elected for their own, driving on toward the heart of the wilderness country.
they were no less relieved at finding what was the man's likely general direction than at making sure that they were still almost at his heels. for they had come
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to realize that, to explain joe's presence here, there were two directly opposing possibilities to consider: it was imaginable that joe would be making straight for his gold; and it was just as reasonable that his craft might have suggested to him to head in an opposite direction. now that they might follow him and still be going direct upon their own business, they were for the moment content upon all points.
deveril, for the most part, went ahead; now and then he paused a moment for the girl to come up with him. but never did he have to wait long. he began to wonder at her; they had covered many hard miles last night; more hard miles this morning. how long, he asked himself, as his eyes sought to read hers, could such a slender, altogether feminine, blush-pink girl stand up under such relentless hardship as this flight promised to give them? and always he went on again, reassured and admiring; her eyes remained clear, her regard straight and cool. a girl unafraid; the true daughter of dauntless, hot-blooded parents.
and she, watching his tall, always graceful form leading the way, found ample time to wonder about him. she had seen him last night burst in through a window and take the time coolly, though already the hue and cry was breaking at his contemptuous heels, to rifle a man's pockets. there was an indelible picture: the debonair babe deveril, who had stepped unquestioningly into her fight, going down on his knees before his fallen kinsman ... calmly bent upon robbery. for she had seen the bank-notes in his hand.
the sun rose high and crested all the ridges with glorious light, and poured its golden warmth down into the steep cañons. but, now that shadows began to shrink and the little open spaces lay revealed in detail, fresh labor was added in that they were steadily harder
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driven to keep to cover; all day long, at intervals, they were to have glimpses of the buck valley road, high above upon the mountain flank, and at each view of the road they understood that a man up there might have caught a glimpse of them. ten o'clock came and found them doggedly following along the way which they held the viewless mexicali joe must have taken before them. they paused and stooped to the invitation of the creek, and thereafter ate what was left them of their grilled trout. having eaten, they drank again; and having drunk, they again took up the trail....
"if you can stand the pace?" queried deveril over his shoulder. and she read in the gleam in his eyes that he was set on seeing this thing through; on sticking close to mexicali joe until he came, with joe, upon his secret.
"why, of course!" she told him lightly, though already her body ached.
it was not over an hour later when they set their feet in a trail which they were confident mexicali joe had followed; from the moment they stepped into the trail they watched for some trace of him, but the hard, rain-washed, rocky way which only a mountaineer could have recognized as a trail, was such as to hold scant sign, if the one who travelled it but exercised precaution. babe deveril, with his small knowledge of these mountains, held it the old short-cut trail from timkin's bar, long disused, since timkin's bar itself had a score of years ago died the death of short-lived mining towns. brush grew over it, and again and again it vanished underfoot, and they were hard beset to grope forward to it again. yet trail of a sort it was, and it set them to meditating: timkin's bar, in the late '80's, had created a gold furor, and then, after its short and hectic life, had been abandoned, as an orange, sucked dry by
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a child, is thrown aside. was it possible that among the old diggings mexicali joe had stumbled upon a vein which the old-timers had overlooked?
at any rate, the trail lured them along, winding in their own general direction; and mexicali joe still fled ahead. of this latter fact they had evidence when they came to the unmistakable sign ... to watchful eyes ... of his recent passing: here, on the steep, ill-defined trail he had slipped, and had caught at the branches of a wild cherry. they saw the furrow made by his boot-heel and the scattered leaves and broken twigs.
gradually the trail led them up out of the cañon-bed, snaking along the flank of the mountain. and gradually they were entering the great forest land of yellow pines. if not already in timber-wolf's country, here was the border-line of his monster holdings: few men could draw the line exactly between the wide-reaching acres which were his and those contiguous acres which were a portion of the government reserve. standing himself had quarrelled with the government upon the matter and what was more, after no end of litigation, had won a point or two.
once they diverged from the trail to climb and slide to the bottom of the cañon for a long drink. but this and the sheer ascent took them in their hurry only a few minutes. again they took up the trail. it was high noon and they were tired. but, alike disdainful of fatigue, driven and lured, they pressed on.
suddenly she startled him by catching him by the arm and whispering warningly:
"sh! some one is following us!"
in another moment, drawing back from the trail, they were hidden among the wild cherries in a little side ravine.
"where?" he demanded, his voice hushed like hers,
[pg 105]
as he peered back along the way they had come. "who? how many of them?"
"i didn't see," she answered.
"what did you hear?"
"nothing ... i just know ... i felt that some one was trailing us just as we are trailing mexicali joe! i feel it now; i know!"
"but you had something—something that you saw or heard—to tell you?"
she shook her head. and he saw, wondering at her, that she was very deeply in earnest as she admitted:
"no. nothing! but i know. i tell you, i know. can't you feel that there is some one back there, following us, spying on us, hiding and yet dogging every step we take? can't you feel it?"
she saw him shaken with silent laughter. she understood that he, a man, was convulsed with laughter at the imaginings of her, a maid. and yet, also, since she was quick-minded, she noted how his laughter was silent! he meant her to see that he put no credence in her suspicions; and yet, for all that, he was impressed, and he did take care that no one, who might follow them, should overhear him!
"one doesn't feel things like that," he told her, as though positive. but in the telling he kept his voice low, so that it was scarcely louder than her own whisper.
"one does," she retorted. "and you know it, babe deveril!"
"but," he challenged her, "were you right, and were there a man or several men back there tracking us, why all this caution on their parts? what would they be waiting for, being armed themselves and knowing us unarmed? what better place than this to take us in? why give us a minute's chance to slip away in the brush?"
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"i don't know." she shrugged, and again he marvelled at her; she looked like one who had little vital concern in what any others, pursuing, might or might not do.
despite his cool determination to adhere to calm reason and to discount feminine impressionism, which he held to be fostered by a nervous condition brought about by overexertion, babe deveril began to feel, as she felt, that there was something more than imagination in her contention. how does a man sense things which no one of his five senses can explain to him? he could not see any reason in this abrupt change in both their moods; and yet, none the less, it seemed to him, all of a sudden, as though eyes were spying on him from behind every pine trunk, and from the screen of every thicket.
"joe won't escape us in a hurry," he muttered. "not in this cañon. and we'll see this thing through. let's sit tight and watch."
and so, with that inexplicable sense that here in the wilderness they were not yet free from pursuit, they crouched in the bushes and bent every force of every sense to detect their fancied pursuers. but the forest land, sun-smitten, a playland of light and shadow and tremulous breeze, lay steeped in quiet about them, and they saw nothing moving save the gently stirring leaves and occasional birds; half a dozen sparrows briefly stayed their flight upon a shrub in flower with pale-pink blossoms; a bevy of quail, forty strong, marched away through the narrow roadways under the low, drooping branches, with crested topknots bobbing; the forest land murmured and whispered and sang softly, and seemed empty of any other human presence than their own. and yet they waited, and at the end of their waiting, grown nervous despite themselves, though they had had
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no slightest evidence that pursuit was drawing close upon their heels, they were not able to shake from them that feeling that danger, the danger from which they fled, was become a near-drawn menace. and all the more to be feared in that it approached so silently, covertly, hidden and ready to strike when their guard was down.
"just the same," said deveril, deep in his own musings, "it can't be jim taggart, for that's not taggart's way, having the goods on a man, and, besides, i fancy i put him out of the running." then he looked at her curiously, and added: "and it can't be bruce standing, since you put him down and out and...."
it was the first time that such a reference to the past had been made. now she startled him by the quick vehemence of her denial, saying:
"i didn't shoot bruce standing! i tell you...."
he looked at her steadily, and she broke off, as she saw dawning in his eyes a look which was to be read as readily as were white stones to be glimpsed in the bottom of a clear pool. she had made her statement, and, whether true or false, he held it to be a lie.
"in case they should somehow lay us by the heels," he said dryly, "you would come a lot closer to clearing yourself by saying that you shot him in self-defense than in denying everything. but they haven't got their ropes over our running horns yet!... do you still feel that we are followed?"
his look angered her; his words angered her still further. so to his question she made no reply. he looked at her again curiously. she refused to meet his eyes, coolly ignoring him. a little smile twitched at his lips.
"it's a poor time for good friends to fall out," he said lightly. "i don't care the snap of my fingers who shot him, or why. he ought to have been shot a dozen years
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ago. and now i'll tell you what, i think, explains this business of some one being close behind us, if you are right in it. the big chance is that some one has been trailing mexicali joe all along; and dropped in behind us when we dropped in behind joe. we've been doing a first-class job of sticking to cover; mind you, we haven't caught a second glimpse of joe all this time, and therefore it is as likely as not that the gent whom you feel to be trailing us hasn't caught a glimpse of us. if this is right, we've got a bully chance right now to prove it. we lie close where we are for ten minutes, and see if your hombre doesn't slip on by us, nosing along after joe."
in silence she acquiesced. that sense of the nearness of another unseen human being was insistent upon her. for a long time, as still as the deep-rooted trees about them, they crouched, listening, watching. she heard the watch ticking in babe deveril's pocket. she heard her own breathing and his. she heard the brownie birds threshing among dead leaves. then there was the eternal whispering of the pines and the faint murmurings from the stream far down in the cañon. at last it would have been a relief to straining nerves if a man, or two or three men, had stepped into sight in the trail from which she and deveril had withdrawn. for more certain than ever was lynette brooke, though she could give neither rhyme nor reason for that certainty, that her instincts had not tricked her. therefore, instead of being reassured at seeing or hearing no one, she was depressed and made anxious; the silence became sinister, filled with vague threat; that she saw no one was explicable to her by but the one ominous condition: that person or those persons were watching even now, and knew where she and babe deveril hid, and did not mean to stir until first their quarry stirred.
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why all this caution? she could not explain that to herself; if some one followed, why should that some one hide? why not step out with gun levelled, and put an end to this grim game of hide-and-seek.
"you see," whispered deveril, "there is no one behind us."
they had not moved for a full twenty minutes, and by now he began to convict her of nervous imaginings, fancies of an overwrought girl. but she answered him, saying with unshaken certainty:
"i tell you, i know! some one has been following us, and now is hiding and waiting for us to go on."
"well, you are right or wrong, and in either case i don't fancy this job of sitting so tight i feel as though i were growing roots. if you should happen to be right, we'll know in time, i suppose. let's go!"
to her, in her present mood, anything was better than inaction. they left their hiding-place, found a silent and hidden way a bit farther down the slope, went forward a hundred yards and stepped back into the faint trail. their concern, each said inwardly, was to forge on and to follow joe; thus they pretended within themselves to ignore that nebulous warning that they, like joe, were followed.
and so the day wore on, a day made up of uncertainty and vague threat. how full the silent forest lands were of little sounds! for therein lies the greatest of all forest-land mysteries; that silence in the solitudes may be made audible. uncertainty struck the key-note of their long day. they sought to follow mexicali joe; they did not see him, they did not hear him, they did not know where he was. was he still ahead of them, hastening on? how far ahead? a mile by now, not having paused while they lost time? a hundred yards? or had he turned aside? or had he thrown himself
[pg 110]
down flat somewhere, watching them go by? was he following them, or had he struck out east or west, while they went on north? and was there some one following them? one man? two? more? or none at all? uncertainty. and as they grew tired and hungry, the great silence oppressed them, and most of all this uncertainty of all things began to bite in upon their nerves as acid eats into glass, etching its own sign.
"i'm getting jumpy," muttered deveril, glaring at her, his eyes looking savage and stern. "this nonsense of yours...."
"it's not nonsense!"
"anyway, it's getting on my nerves! there's no sense in this sort of thing. we're scaring ourselves like two kids in the dark. what's more, we are allowing a pace-setter to get us to going too hard and steady a clip; we'll be done in, the first thing we know. and we've got to begin figuring on where the next meal comes from. what i mean is, that we've got enough to do without wasting any more nerve force on what may or may not follow after us."
"joe is still ahead of us," she reminded him; "or, at any rate, we think that he is. he left last night in as big a hurry as we did; and he, too, came away without gun and fishing-tackle, and didn't stop to get young gallup to put him up a lunch. then, on top of all that, joe knows this country better than we do."
"i get you!" he told her quickly. "joe's as ready for food and lodging as we are, and joe, unless we're wrong all along, is hiking ahead of us. who knows but we'll invite ourselves to dine with señor joe before the day's done!... is that it?"
"i don't know how it may work out.... i hadn't gotten that far yet.... but if joe is headed toward his secret, and if he does have a provision cache
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somewhere in the mountains ... a few items in tinned goods and, maybe, even coffee and sugar and canned milk...."
"let's go!" broke in deveril, half in laughter and half in eagerness. "you make my mouth water with your surmisings."
here in these steep-walled narrow gorges the shadows lengthened swiftly after the sun had passed the zenith, and already, when now and then they looked searchingly at what lay ahead, it was difficult to distinguish the shadows from the substance. they must come close to joe if they meant to see him, and, by the same token, if a man followed them, he was confronted by the same difficulty. so they hurried on, walking more freely, keeping in the trail, climbing at times along the ridge flank, frequently dipping down into the lower cañon. babe deveril cut himself a green cudgel from a scrub-oak, trimming off the twigs as he walked on. if it came to argument with mexicali joe, a club like that might bring persuasion. and he fully meant that the mexican should show himself generous, even to the division of a last crust. always buoyed up by optimism, he was counting strongly on joe's provision cache.
when they dropped down into the cañon again, they saw the first star. lynette looked up at it; it trembled in its field of deep blue. she was faint, almost dizzy; her muscles ached; fatigue bore hard upon her spirit; she was footsore. but, most of all, like deveril before her, she was concerned with imaginings of supper. she pictured bacon and a tin of tomatoes and shoe-string potatoes sizzling in the bacon grease ... and coffee. whether with milk or sugar, or without both, no longer mattered. then she sighed wearily, and had no other physical nor mental occupation than that which had to do with the putting of one foot before the other, plodding on and on and on. and all the while the shadows
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deepened and thickened in the cañons, and the stars multiplied, and the little evening breeze sharpened; she began to shiver.
she could mark no trail underfoot; always deveril, before her, was breaking through a tangle, always at his heels, she kept his form in sight; but she began to think that he had lost the way, and a new fear gripped her. instead of dining with joe, they were losing him, and now, with the utter dark already on the way, they would see no sign of him. and in the dark they would not be able to snare a trout or anything else that might be eaten. she got into the habit of breaking off twigs and chewing at them....
and all the while deveril was rushing on, faster and faster. it was hard work keeping up with him.
"we've got him! stay with it, lynette; we've got him!"
it was deveril's whisper, sharp and eager; there was deveril himself just ahead of her, pausing briefly.
"come on. as fast and as quiet as you can."
her heart leaped up; her life fires burned bright and warm again; the pain went out of her. she began to run....
"sh! look! off to the left in that little clearing."
on the mountain slope just ahead of them she marked the clearing and, since there, too, the shadows were darkening, she saw nothing else. she wondered what he saw or thought that he saw. he pointed, and she, with straining eyes, made out a shadow which moved; joe, going up a steep, open trail. and just ahead of joe a dark, square-cornered blot....
"a house ... a cabin...."
"a dirty dugout, most likely, and from the look of it. but, as sure as you're born, there's mexicali joe's mountain headquarters. a clump of bushes, willows,
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you can be sure, not ten feet from his door; that will be his spring. and inside his shack ... a box of grub, lady lynette! and if joe doesn't have company for dinner, i'll eat your hat."
"i haven't any," said lynette. "but we'd probably have to eat our own shoes. come on; let's hurry.... what are you waiting for?"
"i want to whet my appetite by loitering a while.... listen, lynette; after all, there's no great hurry any longer. first thing, a hot supper is what is needed, and joe can make as good a fire as we can. you can gamble that he won't waste any time, and that he'll cook a panful!"
"he might have only one panful ... and he might start in on it cold...."
"and if he has only that limited amount and it belongs to him and he wants it, you don't mean to say that you would seek to take it away from him? that's robbery...."
"we'll play square with him, babe deveril, and give him exactly one-third. and man may call it robbery, but god and nature won't. come...."
"i'll come with you a few steps farther. and then we will possess our souls in patience and will sit down among the bushes and will wait until we smell coffee. and i'll tell you why."
she looked at him, wondering. and then suddenly she guessed somewhat of his thought, though not all of it. she had forgotten her own certainty that some one followed them; it surged back upon her now.
"yes," he said, when she had spoken, "you're on the right track. we are going to wait a few minutes to make sure. if some one was following and wanted you and me, he could have had no object in hanging back, spying on us. but if that same gent were following mexicali joe, he
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would want to hang back, trusting to joe to lead him to something worth coming at. so, out of your feeling i've built my theory: that this gent thinks all the time he's trailing joe, and doesn't know we are here at all; tracks in the rocky trail wouldn't show him whether one or a dozen had gone over it. and i get to this point: how did this gent pick up joe's trail in the dark? and i answer it by saying that he could have known that joe had a dugout up here, and so lay in wait for him. and, that being true, by now he would be sure that joe was going straight to his camp, and so, at almost any moment, he would give up his sneak-thief style of travelling and would come hurrying along. and, if that's right, you and i can get a glimpse of this new hombre before he does of us. it may come in handy, you know," he concluded dryly, "to get the first swing at him if he's an ugly gent with a rifle. at short range, and in the dark, and stepping lively, this club of mine is way up. and, if we can take his rifle from him ... why, then into the wilderness we go, without fear of starving. which is a long speech for the end of a perfect day, but i'm right!"
so insistent was he and so utterly weary she, they drew a few lagging steps out of the trail, and sank down in the shadows. she lay flat; she saw the stars swimming in the deepening purple; her eyes closed; she felt two big tears of exhaustion slip out between the closed lids. there was a faint drumming in her ears; she no longer cared for food.
... "get up!" deveril was saying curtly. "i guess we're both wrong. and i'm going to eat, if the devil drops in to join us."
she didn't think she had been asleep. nor yet that she had fallen prey to swift, all-engulfing unconsciousness. only that she had been in a mood of utter
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indifference to all earthly matters. she tried, when he commanded the second time, to rise. he helped her. she sat up.... she saw a little sprinkling of sparks tossed upward from joe's chimney; stars at first she thought them—stars wavering and blurred and uncertain.
"we've waited long enough," said deveril.
she rose wearily, making no answer. he went ahead, she followed. her whole body cried out for rest; this brief, altogether too brief, lingering had stiffened her and made her sore from head to foot. she saw that deveril was going up the steep trail slowly; he still strove for caution, no doubt planning to burst in unexpectedly upon mexicali joe. for joe might have a gun there in his dugout; and he might have no great stock of provisions and be of no mind to share with others. so she, too, strove for silence.... a strangely familiar odor was afloat on the night air ... coffee! joe's coffee was boiling.
and then, at that moment of moments, jarring upon their nerves as a sudden pistol-shot might have done, there came up to them from the cañon they had just quitted the sharp sound made by a man breaking in the dark through brush. and, with that sound, another; a man's voice, a voice which both knew and yet on the instant were unable to place, crying sharply, unguardedly:
"come ahead, boys. there's his dugout and we got him dead to rights!"
"down!" whispered deveril. "down! there's three or four of them...."
she dropped in her tracks, he at her side. they were in the little clearing; if they went back it would be to run into the arms of the men down there; if they went ahead it was to go straight on to joe's dugout. if they sought to turn to right or left, they must go through the longest arms of the clearing, and must certainly be seen.
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the only shadows into which they might slip were cast by the clump of willows grouped in a span of half a dozen yards, and not over as many steps, from joe's door....
"into the willows!" whispered deveril. "quick! it's our only show."
they crawled, wriggling forward, inching, but inching swiftly. behind them they heard voices, and a sudden running of heavy boots; before them they heard a pot or pan dropped against joe's stove, and then joe's excited muttering and the scuffle of joe's boots. they scrambled on; deveril dragged himself, with a sudden heave, into the fringe of the willow thicket; at his side, so close that elbow brushed elbow, lynette threw herself. they saw joe come running out of his dugout; they saw him pause a second; he could have seen them, surely, had he looked down. but his eyes were for the cañon below, from which the sudden voices had boomed up to him. and now came a voice again, that first voice, shouting threateningly:
"i got you covered, joe! with my rifle. and i'll drop you dead if you move! you know me, joe ... me, jim taggart!"
still joe hesitated ... and was lost. up the steep slope came jim taggart, and behind him young gallup; and after gallup, gallup's man, cliff shipton. and every man of them carried a rifle, held in readiness. joe began to swear in spanish, his voice shaken, quavering with the fear upon him.
deveril put out his hand until it lay upon lynette's arm; his fingers gave her a quick, warning squeeze. taggart and the others were coming on swiftly; it was almost too much to hope that they could pass and not see the two figures outstretched in the willows. still, there was the chance, slim chance as it was....
if only joe, poor stupid fool, as deveril savagely called
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him in his heart, would make a bolt for it! then there'd surely be such a drawing of their eyes to him that they would not see a white elephant tethered at the door! but joe stood as if his feet had grown into the ground. save for his continued mutterings, as joe poured forth his eloquent spanish curses, he would have appeared a man bereft of all volition. and taggart and young gallup and shipton came on at a run. deveril clutched his club; he turned an inch or two to be ready. lynette, lying so close to him, felt his body stiffen and guessed his purpose, and this time it was her hand closing tight upon his forearm, warning him to hold to caution as long as there was hope.
the three came steadily on, hastening all that they could up the steep slope. a moment ago, when first taggart called out, joe might have eluded them had he been lightning-swift and ready to take chances. but now that he had hesitated, it was clear that his most shadowy hope of escape was gone. he stood motionless, cursing them and his luck.
babe deveril's fingers were tight, as tight as rage could weld them about his oak stick. at that moment he could have welcomed the excuse to leap out with the unexpectedness of a cataclysm and the rush of a catapult, to heave his club upward and bring it down, full force, upon taggart's head. for now he had the added rancour in his heart that jim taggart, with his following, had chosen this one moment to come up with them, just as babe deveril was counting in full confidence upon the first square meal in twenty-four hours. taggart, less than threatening his safety, was stealing the supper which he had counted on having from mexicali joe.
jim taggart began to laugh, more in malice than in mirth, and, most of all, in an evil, gloating triumph. he came on, hurrying; he almost trod on lynette's boot. instinctively she jerked away from him; yet only
[pg 118]
because taggart was so gloatingly bent upon his quarry he did not note her movement, or must have supposed that he had set a stone rolling.
"ho!" cried taggart. "joe's a good kid after all, boys! he's waited for us, and he's got us a piping-hot supper! wonder how he guessed we were starved like wildcats?"
"damn him!" lynette heard deveril, and her fingers gripped him with a new agony of warning and supplication for silence.
"what's that?" demanded taggart, thinking that gallup or shipton had spoken.
"you robbers!" cried joe nervously. "already you tryin' rob me, las' night. now you tryin' rob me! i tell you...."
"shut up!" snapped taggart. "back into your dirty den and we'll have a nice little talk with you."
"i tell you...."
taggart was close upon him now and caught him by the shoulder, flinging him about, shoving him through the squat door of his dugout. slight enough was the diversion, but both lynette and deveril were thankful for it, for the two figures drew the eyes of both gallup and shipton and held them. joe reeled across the threshold; taggart, not knowing what weapon joe might have lying on his bunk, sprang nimbly after him. and gallup and shipton, to see everything, drew on close behind him. they passed the willows about the spring and, stooping, went in at joe's door.
lynette and deveril lay very still, hesitating to move hand or foot. for both gallup and shipton stood on joe's threshold, and that threshold was a few steps only from their hiding-place. the snapping of a twig, the crackling of a handful of dead leaves must certainly bring swift, searching eyes upon them.
