Nan of Music Mountain

“I could ride a razorback–why take all that trouble for me?”

“If you don’t start while you have a chance, you undo everything I have tried to do to avoid a fight.”

The wind, stirring softly, set the aspen leaves quivering. The stars, chilled in the thin, clear night air, hung diamond-like in the heavens and the eastern sky across the distant desert paled for the rising moon. The two standing at the horse’s head listened a moment together in the darkness. De Spain, leaning forward, said something in a low, laughing voice. Nan made no answer. Then, bending, he took her hand and, before she could release it, caught it up to his lips.

For a long time after he had gone she stood, listening for a shot–wondering, breathless at moments, whether de Spain could get past the waiting traps. The moon came up, and still lingering, torn with suspense, she watched a drift of fleecy clouds darken it. She scanned anxiously the wrinkled face of the desert which, with a woman’s craft, hides at night the accidents of age. It seemed to Nan as if she could overlook every foot of the motionless sea for miles before her; but she well knew how much it could conceal of ambush and death even when it professed so fairly to reveal all. Strain her ears as she would, the desert gave back no ripple of sound. No shot echoed from its sinister recesses–not even the clatter of retreating hoofs.

De Spain, true to all she had ever heard of his Indian-like stealth, had left her side unabashed and unafraid–living, laughing, paying bold court to her even when she stubbornly refused to be courted–and had made himself in the twinkling of an eye a part of the silence beyond–the silence of the night, the wind, the stars, the waste of sand, and of all the mystery that brooded upon it. She would have welcomed, in her keen suspense, a sound of some kind, some reminder that he yet lived and could yet laugh; none came.

When it seemed as if an hour must have passed Nan felt her way noiselessly home. She regained her room as she had left it, through her east window, and, throwing herself across her bed, fell into a heavy sleep.

Day was breaking when the night boss, standing in the doorway at the Calabasas barns, saw a horseman riding at a leisurely pace up the Thief River road. The barnman scrutinized the approaching stranger closely. There was something strange and something familiar in the outlines of the figure. But when the night-rider had dismounted in front of the barn door, turned his horse loose, and, limping stiffly, walked forward on foot, the man rubbed his eyes hard before he could believe them. Then he uttered an incredulous greeting and led Henry de Spain into the barn office.

“There’s friends of yours in your room up-stairs right now,” he declared, bulging with shock. De Spain, sitting down, forbade the barnman to disturb them, only asking who they were.

When he had asked half a dozen more leisurely questions and avoided answering twice as many, the barnman at de Spain’s request helped him up-stairs. Beside himself with excitement, the night boss turned, grinning, as he laid one hand on the door-knob and the other on de Spain’s shoulder.

“You couldn’t have come,” he whispered loudly, “at a better time.”

The entryway was dark, and from the silence within the room one might have thought its occupants, if there were such, wrapped in slumber. But at intervals a faint clicking sound could be heard. The night man threw open the door. By the light of two stage dash-lamps, one set on the dresser and the other on a window-ledge, four men sat about a rickety table in a life-and-death struggle at cards. No voice broke the tense silence, not even when the door was thrown broadly open.

No one–neither Lefever, Scott, Frank Elpaso, nor McAlpin–looked up when de Spain walked into the room and, with the night man tiptoeing behind, advanced composedly toward the group. Even then his presence would have passed unnoticed, but that Bob Scott’s ear mechanically recorded the limping step and transmitted to his trained intelligence merely notice of something unusual.

Scott, picking up his cards one at a time as Lefever dealt, raised his eyes. Startling as the sight of the man given up for dead must have been, no muscle of Bob Scott’s body moved. His expression of surprise slowly dissolved into a grin that mutely invited the others, as he had found out for himself, to find out for themselves.

Lefever finished his deal, threw down the pack, and picked up his hand. His suspicious eyes never rose above the level of the faces at the table; but when he had thumbed his cards and looked from one to the other of the remaining players to read the weather-signals, he perceived on Scott’s face an unwonted expression, and looked to where the scout’s gaze was turned for an explanation of it. Lefever’s own eyes at the sight of the thinned, familiar face behind Elpaso’s chair, starting, opened like full moons. The big fellow spread one hand out, his cards hidden within it, and with the other hand prudently drew down his pile of chips. “Gentlemen,” he said lightly, “this game is interned.” He rose and put a silent hand across the table over Elpaso’s shoulder. “Henry,” he exclaimed impassively, “one question, if you please–and only one: How in thunder did you do it?”

CHAPTER XVII

STRATEGY

One week went to repairs. To a man of action such a week is longer than ten years of service. But chained to a bed in the Sleepy Cat hospital, de Spain had no escape from one week of thinking, and for that week he thought about Nan Morgan.

He rebelled at the situation that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality of one or another of their following within the Gap afforded a refuge for practically any mountain criminal.

But none of these reflections lightened de Spain’s burden of discontent. One thought alone possessed him–Nan; her comely body, which he worshipped to the tips of her graceful fingers; her alert mind, which he saw reflected in the simplest thought she expressed; her mobile lips, which he followed to the least sound they gave forth! The longer he pictured her, figured as she had appeared to him like a phantom on Music Mountain, the more he longed to be back at the foot of it, wounded again and famished. And the impulse that moved him the first moment he could get out of bed and into a saddle was to spur his way hard and fast to her; to make her, against a score of burly cousins, his own; and never to release her from his sudden arms again.

With de Spain, to think was to do; at least to do something, but not without further careful thinking, and not without anticipating every chance of failure. And his manner was to cast up all difficulties and obstacles in a situation, brush them aside, and have his will if the heavens fell. Such a temperament he had inherited from his father’s fiery heart and his mother’s suffering, close-set lips as he had remembered them in the little pictures of her; and he now set himself, while doing his routine work every day, to do one particular thing–to see, talk to, plead with, struggle with the woman, or girl, rather–child even, to his thoughts, so fragile she was–this girl who had given him back his life against her own marauding relatives.

For many days Nan seemed a match for all the wiles de Spain could use to catch sight of her. He spent his days riding up and down the line on horseback; driving behind his team; on the stages; in and out of the streets of Sleepy Cat–nominally looking for stock, for equipment, for supplies, or frankly for nothing–but always looking for Nan.

His friends saw that something was absorbing him in an unusual, even an extraordinary way, yet none could arrive at a certain conclusion as to what it was. When Scott in secret conference was appealed to by Jeffries, he smiled foolishly, at a loss, and shook his head.

Lefever argued with less reticence. “It stands to reason, Jeffries. A man that went through that ten minutes at Calabasas would naturally think a good deal about what he is getting out of his job, and what his future chances are for being promoted any minute, day or night, by a forty-five.”

“Perhaps his salary had better be raised,” conceded Jeffries reflectively.

“I figure,” pursued Lefever, “that he has already saved the company fifty thousands in depredations during the next year or two. The Calabasas gang is busted for five years–they would eat out of his hand–isn’t that so, Bob?”

“The Calabasas gang, yes; not the Morgans.”

John’s eyes opened on Scott with that solemnity he could assume to bolster a baldly unconvincing statement. “Not now, Bob. Not now, I admit; but they will.”

Scott only smiled. “What do you make out of the way he acts?” persisted Lefever, resenting his companion’s incredulity.

“I can’t make anything of it,” premised Bob, “except that he has something on his mind. If you’ll tell me what happened from the time he jumped through the window at Calabasas till he walked into his room that night at the barn, I’ll tell you what he’s thinking about.”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“Henry left some things out of his story.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard him tell it.”

Jeffries, acting without delay on the suspicion that de Spain was getting ready to resign, raised his salary. To his surprise, de Spain told him that the company was already paying him more than he was worth and declined the raise; yet he took nobody whomsoever into his confidence.

However, the scent of something concealed in de Spain’s story had long before touched Lefever’s own nostrils, and he was stimulated by mere pride to run the secret down. Accordingly, he set himself to find, in a decent way, something in the nature of an explanation.

De Spain, in the interval, made no progress in his endeavor to see Nan. The one man in the country who could have surmised the situation between the two–the barn boss, McAlpin–if he entertained suspicions, was far too pawky to share them with any one.

When two weeks had passed without de Spain’s having seen Nan or having heard of her being seen, the conclusion urged itself on him that she was either ill or in trouble–perhaps in trouble for helping him; a moment later he was laying plans to get into the Gap to find out.

Nothing in the way of a venture could be more foolhardy–this he admitted to himself–nothing, he consoled himself by reflecting, but something stronger than danger could justify it. Of all the motley Morgan following within the mountain fastness he could count on but one man to help him in the slightest degree–this was the derelict, Bull Page. There was no choice but to use him, and he was easily enlisted, for the Calabasas affair had made a heroic figure of de Spain in the barrooms. De Spain, accordingly, lay in wait for the old man and intercepted him one day on the road to Sleepy Cat, walking the twenty miles patiently for his whiskey.

“You must be the only man in the Gap, Bull, that can’t borrow or steal a horse to ride,” remarked de Spain, stopping him near the river bridge.

Page pushed back the broken brim of his hat and looked up. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said, imparting a cheerful confidence, “but ten years ago I had horses to lend to every man ’tween here and Thief River.” He nodded toward Sleepy Cat with a wrecked smile, and by a dramatic chance the broken hat brim fell with the words: “They’ve got ’em all.”

“Your fault, Bull.”

“Say!” Up went the broken brim, and the whiskied face lighted with a shaking smile, “you turned some trick on that Calabasas crew–some fight,” Bull chuckled.

“Bull, is old Duke Morgan a Republican?”

Bull looked surprised at the turn of de Spain’s question, but answered in good faith: “Duke votes ’most any ticket that’s agin the railroad.”

“How about picking a couple of good barnmen over in the Gap, Bull?”

“What kind of a job y’got?”

“See McAlpin the next time you’re over at Calabasas. How about that girl that lives with Duke?”

Bull’s face lighted. “Nan! Say! she’s a little hummer!”

“I hear she’s gone down to Thief River teaching school.”

“Came by Duke’s less’n three hours ago. Seen her in the kitchen makin’ bread.”

“They’re looking for a school-teacher down there, anyway. Much sickness in the Gap lately, Bull?”

“On’y sickness I knowed lately is what you’re responsible for y’self,” retorted Bull with a grin. “Pity y’ left over any chips at all from that Calabasas job, eh?”

“See McAlpin, Bull, next time you’re over Calabasas way. Here”–de Spain drew some currency from his pocket and handed a bill to Page. “Go get your hair cut. Don’t talk too much–wear your whiskers long and your tongue short.”

“Right-o!”

“You understand.”

“Take it from old Bull Page, he’s a world’s wonder of a sucker, but he knows his friends.”

“But remember this–you don’t know me. If anybody knows you for a friend of mine, you are no good to me. See?”

Bull was beyond expressing his comprehension in words alone. He winked, nodded, and screwed his face into a thousand wrinkles. De Spain, wheeling, rode away, the old man blinking first after him, and then at the money in his hand. He didn’t profess to understand everything in the high country, but he could still distinguish the principal figures at the end of a bank-note. When he tramped to Calabasas the next day to interview McAlpin he received more advice, with a strong burr, about keeping his own counsel, and a little expense money to run him until an opening presented itself on the pay-roll.

But long before Bull Page reached Calabasas that day de Spain had acted. When he left Bull at the bridge, he started for Calabasas, took supper there, ordered a saddle-horse for one o’clock in the morning, went to his room, slept soundly and, shortly after he was called, started for Music Mountain. He walked his horse into the Gap and rode straight for Duke Morgan’s fortress. Leaving the horse under a heavy mountain-pine close to the road, de Spain walked carefully but directly around the house to the east side. The sky was cloudy and the darkness almost complete. He made his way as close as he could to Nan’s window, and raised the soft, crooning note of the desert owl.

After a while he was able to distinguish the outline of her casement, and, with much patience and some little skill remaining from the boyhood days, he kept up the faint call. Down at the big barn the chained watch-dog tore himself with a fury of barking at the intruder, but mountain-lions were common in the Gap, and the noisy sentinel gained no credit for his alarm. Indeed, when the dog slackened his fierceness, de Spain threw a stone over his way to encourage a fresh outburst. But neither the guardian nor the intruder was able to arouse any one within the house.

Undeterred by his failure, de Spain held his ground as long as he dared. When daybreak threatened, he withdrew. The following night he was in the Gap earlier, and with renewed determination. He tossed a pebble into Nan’s open window and renewed his soft call. Soon, a light flickered for an instant within the room and died out. In the darkness following this, de Spain thought he discerned a figure outlined at the casement. Some minutes later a door opened and closed. He repeated the cry of the owl, and could hear a footstep; the next moment he whispered her name as she stood before him.

“What is it you want?” she asked, so calmly that it upset him. “Why do you come here?”

Where he stood he was afraid of the sound of her voice, and afraid of his own. “To see you,” he said, collecting himself. “Come over to the pine-tree.”

Under its heavy branches where the darkness was most intense, he told her why he had come–because he could not see her anywhere outside.

“There is nothing to see me about,” she responded, still calm. “I helped you because you were wounded. I was glad to see you get away without fighting–I hate bloodshed.”

“But put yourself in my place a little, won’t you? After what you did for me, isn’t it natural I should want to be sure you are well and not in any trouble on my account?”

“It may be natural, but it isn’t necessary. I am in no trouble. No one here knows I even know you.”

“Excuse me for coming, then. I couldn’t rest, Nan, without knowing something. I was here last night.”

“I know you were.”

He started. “You made no sign.”

“Why should I? I suspected it was you. When you came again to-night I knew I should have to speak to you–at least, to ask you not to come again.”

“But you will be in and out of town sometimes, won’t you, Nan?”

“If I am, it will not be to talk with you.”

The words were spoken deliberately. De Spain was silent for a moment. “Not even to speak to me?” he asked.

“You must know the position I am in,” she answered. “And what a position you place me in if I am seen to speak to you. This is my home. You are the enemy of my people.”

“Not because I want to be.”

“And you can’t expect them not to resent any acquaintance on my part with you.”

He paused before continuing. “Do you count Gale Morgan as one of your people?” he asked evenly.

“I suppose I must.”

“Don’t you think you ought to count all of your friends, your well-wishers, those who would defend you with their lives, among your people?” She made no answer. “Aren’t they the kind of people,” he persisted, “you need when you are in trouble?”

“You needn’t remind me I should be grateful to you–”

“Nan!” he exclaimed.

“For I am,” she continued, unmoved. “But–”

“It’s a shame to accuse me in that way.”

“You were thinking when you spoke of what happened with Gale on Music Mountain.”

“I wish to God you and I were on Music Mountain again! I never lived or did anything worth living for, till you came to me that day on Music Mountain. It’s true I was thinking of what happened when I spoke–but not to remind you you owed anything to me. You don’t; get that out of your head.”

“I do, though.”

“I spoke in the way I did because I wanted to remind you of what might happen some time when I’m not near.”

“I shan’t be caught off my guard again. I know how to defend myself from a drunken man.”

He could not restrain all the bitterness he felt. “That man,” he said deliberately, “is more dangerous sober than drunk.”

“When I can’t defend myself, my uncle will defend me.”

“Ask him to let me help.”

“He doesn’t need any help. And he would never ask you, if he did. I can’t live at home and know you; that is why I ask you not to come again.”

He was silent. “Don’t you think, all things considered,” she hesitated, as if not knowing how easiest to put it, “you ought to be willing to shake hands and say good-by?”

“Why, if you wish it,” he answered, taken aback. And he added more quietly, “yes, if you say so.”

“I mean for good.”

“I–” he returned, pausing, “don’t.”

“You are not willing to be fair.”

“I want to be fair–I don’t want to promise more than human nature will stand for–and then break my word.”

“I am not asking a whole lot.”

“Not a whole lot to you, I know. But do you really mean that you don’t want me ever to speak to you again?”

“If you must put it that way–yes.”

“Well,” he took a long breath, “there is one way to make sure of that. I’ll tell you honestly I don’t want to stand in the way of such a wish, if it’s really yours. As you have said, it isn’t fair, perhaps, for me to go against it. Got your pistol with you, Nan?”

“No.”

“That is the way you take care of yourself, is it?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself not to be. And you don’t even know whom you’ll meet before you can lock the front door again. You promised me never to go out without it. Promise me that once more, will you?” She did as he asked her. “Now, give me your hand, please,” he went on. “Take hold of this.”

“What is it?”

“The butt of my revolver. Don’t be afraid.” She heard the slight click of the hammer with a thrill of strange apprehension. “What are you doing?” she demanded hurriedly.

“Put your finger on the trigger–so. It is cocked. Now pull.”

She caught her breath. “What do you mean?”

He was holding the gun in his two hands, his fingers overlapping hers, the muzzle at the breast of his jacket. “Pull,” he repeated, “that’s all you have to do; I’m steadying it.”

She snatched back her hand. “What do you mean?” she cried. “For me to kill you? Shame!”

“You are too excited–all I asked you was to take the trouble to crook your finger–and I’ll never speak to you again–you’ll have your wish forever.”

“Shame!”

“Why shame?” he retorted. “I mean what I say. If you meant what you said, why don’t you put it out of my power ever to speak to you? Do you want me to pull the trigger?”

“I told you once I’m not an assassin–how dare you ask me to do such a thing?” she cried furiously.

“Call your uncle,” he suggested coolly. “You may hold this meantime so you’ll know he’s in no danger. Take my gun and call your uncle–”

“Shame on you!”

“Call Gale–call any man in the Gap–they’ll jump at the chance.”

“You are a cold-blooded, brutal wretch–I’m sorry I ever helped you–I’m sorry I ever let you help me–I’m sorry I ever saw you!”

She sprang away before he could interpose a word. He stood stunned by the suddenness of her outburst, trying to listen and to breathe at the same time. He heard the front door close, and stood waiting. But no further sound from the house greeted his ears.

“And I thought,” he muttered to himself, “that might calm her down a little. I’m certainly in wrong, now.”

CHAPTER XVIII

HER BAD PENNY

Nan reached her room in a fever of excitement, angry at de Spain, bitterly angry at Gale, angry with the mountains, the world, and resentfully fighting the pillow on which she cried herself to sleep.

In the morning every nerve was on edge. When her Uncle Duke, with his chopping utterance, said something short to her at their very early breakfast he was surprised by an answer equally short. Her uncle retorted sharply. A second curt answer greeted his rebuff, and while he stared at her, Nan left the table and the room.

Duke, taking two of the men, started that morning for Sleepy Cat with a bunch of cattle. He rode a fractious horse, as he always did, and this time the horse, infuriated as his horses frequently were by his brutal treatment, bolted in a moment unguarded by his master, and flung Duke on his back in a strip of lava rocks.

The old man–in the mountains a man is called old after he passes forty–was heavy, and the fall a serious one. He picked himself up while the men were recovering his horse, knocked the horse over with a piece of jagged rock when the frightened beast was brought back, climbed into the saddle again, and rode all the way into town.

But when his business was done, Duke, too, was done. He could neither sit a horse, nor sit in a wagon. Doctor Torpy, after an examination, told him he was booked for the hospital. A stream of profane protest made no difference with his adviser, and, after many threats and hard words, to the hospital the hard-shelled mountaineer was taken. Sleepy Cat was stirred at the news, and that the man who had defied everybody in the mountains for twenty years should have been laid low and sent to the hospital by a mere bronco was the topic of many comments.

The men that had driven the cattle with Duke, having been paid off, were now past getting home, and there were no telephones in the Gap. De Spain, who was at Calabasas, knew Nan would not be alarmed should her uncle not return that night. But early in the morning a messenger from McAlpin rode to her with a note, telling her of the accident.

Whatever his vices, Duke had been a good protector to his dead brother’s child. He had sent her to good schools and tried to revive in her, despite her untoward surroundings, the better traditions of the family as it had once flourished in Kentucky. Nan took the saddle for Sleepy Cat in haste and alarm. When she reached her uncle’s bedside she understood how seriously he had been hurt, and the doctor’s warnings were not needed to convince her he must have care.