Nan of Music Mountain

The two drew a deep breath. De Spain laughed: “What we don’t know, never hurts us.” He drew Nan to him. Holding the rifle muzzle at arm’s length as the butt rested on the ground, she looked up from the shoulder to which she was drawn: “What should you have done if he had come?”

“Taken you to the Gap and then taken him to Sleepy Cat, where he belongs.”

“But, Henry, suppose–”

“There wouldn’t have been any ‘suppose.’”

“Suppose the others had come.”

“With one rifle, here, a man could stand off a regiment. Nan, do you know, you fit into my arm as if you were made for it?”

His courage was contagious. When he had tired her with fresh importunities he unpinned her felt hat and held it out of reach while he kissed and toyed with and disarranged her hair. In revenge, she snatched from his pocket his little black memorandum-book and some letters and read, or pretended to read them, and seizing her opportunity she broke from him and ran with the utmost fleetness up into the rocks.

In two minutes they had forgotten the episode almost as completely as if it never had been. But when they left for home, they agreed they would not meet there again. They knew that Sassoon, like a jackal, would surely come back, and more than once, until he found out just what that trail or any subsequent trail leading into the beds meant. The lovers laughed the jackal’s spying to scorn and rode away, bantering, racing, and chasing each other in the saddle, as solely concerned in their happiness as if there were nothing else of moment in the whole wide world.

CHAPTER XX

FACING THE MUSIC

They had not underestimated the danger from Sassoon’s suspicious malevolence. He returned next morning to read what further he could among the rocks. It was little, but it spelled a meeting of two people–Nan and another–and he was stimulated to keep his eyes and ears open for further discoveries. Moreover, continuing ease in seeing each other, undetected by hostile eyes, gradually rendered the lovers less cautious in their arrangements. The one thing that possessed their energies was to be together.

De Spain, naturally reckless, had won in Nan a girl hardly more concerned. Self-reliant, both of them, and instinctively vigilant, they spent so much time together that Scott and Lefever, who, before a fortnight had passed after Duke’s return home, surmised that de Spain must be carrying on some sort of a clandestine affair hinting toward the Gap, only questioned how long it would be before something happened, and only hoped it would not be, in their own word, unpleasant. It was not theirs in any case to admonish de Spain, nor to dog the movements of so capable a friend even when his safety was concerned, so long as he preferred to keep his own counsel–there are limits within which no man welcomes uninvited assistance. And de Spain, in his long and frequent rides, his protracted absences, indifference to the details of business and careless humor, had evidently passed within these limits.

What was stage traffic to him compared to the sunshine on Nan’s hair; what attraction had schedules to offer against a moment of her eyes; what pleasing connection could there be between bad-order wheels and her low laugh?

The two felt they must meet to discuss their constant perplexities and the problems of their difficult situation; but when they reached their trysting-places, there was more of gayety than gravity, more of nonchalance than concern, more of looking into each other’s hearts than looking into the troublesome future. And there was hardly an inviting spot within miles of Music Mountain that one or the other of the two had not waited near.

There were, of course, disappointments, but there were only a few failures in their arrangements. The difficulties of these fell chiefly on Nan. How she overcame them was a source of surprise to de Spain, who marvelled at her innocent resource in escaping the demands at home and making her way, despite an array of obstacles, to his distant impatience.

Midway between Music Mountain and Sleepy Cat a low-lying wall of lava rock, in part sand-covered and in part exposed, parallels and sometimes crosses the principal trail. This undulating ridge was a favorite with de Spain and Nan, because they could ride in and out of hiding-places without more than just leaving the trail itself. To the west of this ridge, and commanding it, rose rather more than a mile away the cone called Black Cap.

“Suppose,” said Nan one afternoon, looking from de Spain’s side toward the mountains, “some one should be spying on us from Black Cap?” She pointed to the solitary rock.

“If any one has been, Nan, with a good glass he must have seen exchanges of confidence over here that would make him gnash his teeth. I know if I ever saw anything like it I’d go hang. But the country around there is too rough for a horse. Nobody even hides around Black Cap, except some tramp hold-up man that’s crowded in his get-away. Bob Scott says there are dozens of mountain-lions over there.”

But Sassoon had the unpleasant patience of a mountain-lion and its dogged persistence, and, hiding himself on Black Cap, he made certain one day of what he had long been convinced–that Nan was meeting de Spain.

The day after she had mentioned Black Cap to her lover, Nan rode over to Calabasas to get a bridle mended. Galloping back, she encountered Sassoon just inside the Gap. Nan so detested him that she never spoke when she could avoid it. On his part he pretended not to see her as she passed. When she reached home she found her Uncle Duke and Gale standing in front of the fireplace in the living-room. The two appeared from their manner to have been in a heated discussion, one that had stopped suddenly on her appearance. Both looked at Nan. The expression on their faces forewarned her. She threw her quirt on the table, drew off her riding-gloves, and began to unpin her hat; but she knew a storm was impending.

Gale had been made for a long time to know that he was an unwelcome visitor, and Nan’s greeting of him was the merest contemptuous nod. “Well, uncle,” she said, glancing at Duke, “I’m late again. Have you had supper?”

Duke always spoke curtly; to-night his heavy voice was as sharp as an axe. “Been late a good deal lately.”

Nan laid her hat on the table and, glancing composedly from one suspicious face to the other, put her hands up to rearrange her hair. “I’m going to try to do better. I’ll go out and get my supper if you’ve had yours.” She started toward the dining-room.

“Hold on!” Nan paused at her uncle’s ferocious command. She looked at him either really or feignedly surprised, her expression changing to one of indignation, and waited for him to speak. Since he did no more than glare angrily at her, Nan lifted her brows a little. “What do you want, uncle?”

“Where did you go this afternoon?”

“Over to Calabasas,” she answered innocently.

“Who’d you meet there?” Duke’s tone snapped with anger. He was working himself into a fury, but Nan saw it must be faced. “The same people I usually meet–why?”

“Did you meet Henry de Spain there this afternoon?”

Nan looked squarely at her cousin and returned his triumphant expression defiantly before she turned her eyes on her uncle. “No,” she said collectedly. “Why?”

“Do you deny it?” he thundered.

“Yes, I deny it. Why?”

“Did you see de Spain at Calabasas this afternoon?”

“No.”

“See him anywhere else?”

“No, I did not. What do you mean? What,” demanded his niece with spirit, “do you want to know? What are you trying to find out?”

Duke turned in his rage on Gale. “There! You hear that–what have you got to say now?” he demanded with an abusive oath.

Gale, who had been hardly able to refrain from breaking in, answered fast. “What have I got to say?” he roared. “I say I know what I’m talking about. I say she’s lying, Duke.”

Nan’s face turned white with anger. Before she could speak her uncle took up the words. “Hold on,” he shouted. “Don’t tell me she lies.” He launched another hot expletive. “I know she doesn’t lie!”

Gale jumped forward, his finger pointed at Nan. “Look here, do you deny you are meeting Henry de Spain all over the desert?”

Nan’s anger supported her without a tremor. “Who are you to ask me whom I meet or don’t meet?”

“You’ve been meeting de Spain right along, haven’t you? You met him down the Sleepy Cat trail near Black Cap, didn’t you?”

Nan stood with her back against the end of the table where her uncle’s first words had stopped her, and she looked sidewise toward her cousin. In her answer he heard as much contempt as a girl’s voice could carry to a rejected lover. “So you’ve turned sneak!”

Gale roared a string of bad words.

“You hire that coyote, Sassoon, to spy for you, do you?” demanded Nan coolly. “Aren’t you proud of your manly relation, uncle?” Duke was choking with rage. He tried to speak to her, but he could not form his words. “What is it you want to know, uncle? Whether it is true that I meet Henry de Spain? It is. I do meet him, and we’re engaged to be married when you give us permission, Uncle Duke–and not till then.”

“There you have it,” cried Gale. “There’s the story. I told you so. I’ve known it for a week, I tell you.” Nan’s face set. “Not only,” continued her cousin jeeringly, “meeting that–”

Almost before the vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. “You coward,” she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. “If you ever dare use that word before me again, I’ll horsewhip you. Go to Henry de Spain’s face, you skulker, and say that if you dare.”

“Put down that quirt, Nan,” yelled her uncle.

“I won’t put it down,” she exclaimed defiantly. “And he will get a good lashing with it if he says one more word about Henry de Spain.”

“Put down that quirt, I tell you,” thundered her uncle.

She whirled. “I won’t put it down. This hulking bully! I know him better than you do.” She pointed a quivering finger at her cousin. “He insulted me as vilely as he could only a few months ago on Music Mountain. And if this very same Henry de Spain hadn’t happened to be there to protect me, you would have found me dead next morning by my own hand. Do you understand?” she cried, panting and furious. “That’s what he is!”

Her uncle tried to break in. “Stop!” she exclaimed, pointing at Gale. “He never told you that, did he?”

“No; nor you neither,” snapped Duke hoarsely.

“I didn’t tell you,” retorted Nan, “because I’ve been trying to live with you here in peace among these thieves and cutthroats, and not keep you stirred up all the time. And Henry de Spain faced this big coward and protected me from him with an empty revolver! What business of yours is it whom I meet, or where I go?” she demanded, raining her words with flaming eyes on her belligerent cousin. “I will never marry you to save you from the hangman. Now leave this house.” She stamped her foot. “Leave this house, and never come into it again!”

Gale, beside himself with rage, stood his ground. He poured all that he safely could of abuse on Nan’s own head. She had appeased her wrath and made no attempt to retort, only looking at him with white face and burning eyes as she breathed defiance. Duke interfered. “Get out!” he said to Gale harshly. “I’ll talk to her. Go home!”

Not ceasing to mutter threats, Gale picked up his hat and stamped out of the house, slamming the doors. Duke, exhausted by the quarrel, sat down, eying his niece. “Now what does this mean?” he demanded hoarsely.

She tried to tell him honestly and frankly all that her acquaintance with de Spain did mean–dwelling no more than was necessary on its beginning, but concealing nothing of its development and consequences, nothing of her love for de Spain, nor of his for her. But no part of what she could say on any point she urged softened her uncle’s face. His square hard jaw from beginning to end looked like stone.

“So he’s your lover?” he said harshly when she had done.

“He wants to be your friend,” returned Nan, determined not to give up.

Duke looked at her uncompromisingly: “That man can’t ever be any friend of mine–understand that! He can’t ever marry you. If he ever tries to, so help me God, I’ll kill him if I hang for it. I know his game. I know what he wants. He doesn’t care a pinch of snuff about you. He thinks he can hit me a blow by getting you away from me.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” exclaimed Nan hopelessly.

Duke struck the table a smashing blow with his fist. “I’ll show Mr. de Spain and his friends where they get off.”

“Uncle Duke, if you won’t listen to reason, you must listen to sense. Think of what a position you put me in. I love you for all your care of me. I love him for his affection for me and consideration of me–because he knows how to treat a woman. I know he wouldn’t harm a hair on your head, for my sake, yet you talk now of bloodshed between you two. I know what your words mean–that one of you, or both of you are to be killed for a senseless feud. He will not stand up and let any man shoot him down without resistance. If you lay your blood on his head, you know it would put a stain between him and me that never could be washed out as long as we lived. If you kill him I could never stay here with you. His blood would cry out every day and night against you.”

Duke’s violent finger shot out at her. “And you’re the gal I took from your mammy and promised I’d bring up a decent woman. You’ve got none o’ her blood in you–not a drop. You’re the brat of that damned, mincing brother of mine, that was always riding horseback and showing off in town while I was weeding the tobacco-beds.”

Nan clasped her hands. “Don’t blame me because I’m your brother’s child. Blame me because I’m a woman, because I have a heart, because I want to live and see you live, and to see you live in peace instead of what we do live in–suspicion, distrust, feuds, alarms, and worse. I’m not ungrateful, as you plainly say I am. I want you to get out of what you are in here–I want to be out of it. I’d rather be dead now than to live and die in it. And what is this anger all for? Nothing. He offers you his friendship–” She could speak no further. Her uncle with a curse left her alone. When she arose in the early morning he had already gone away.

CHAPTER XXI

A TRY OUT

Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.

De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home–justly apprehensive of his intentions–made frantic efforts to get word to de Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph–a publicity that she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach him at Medicine Bend.

As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke’s efforts to get track of de Spain. Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his inquiries–and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its anticipation was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated, without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.

Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day–wild for a scrap of news, yet dreading one–she saddled her pony and rode alone into Sleepy Cat after nightfall to meet the train on which de Spain had told her he would return from the east. She rode straight to the hospital, instead of going to the livery-barn, and leaving her horse, got supper and walked by way of unfrequented streets down-town to the station to wait for the train.

Never had she felt so miserable, so helpless, so forsaken, so alone. With the thought of her nearest relative, the man who had been a father to her and provided a home for her as long as she could remember, seeking to kill him whose devotion had given her all the happiness she had ever known, and whose safety meant her only pledge of happiness for the future–her heart sank.

When the big train drew slowly, almost noiselessly, in, Nan took her place where no incoming passenger could escape her gaze and waited for de Spain. Scanning eagerly the figures of the men that walked up the long platform and approached the station exit, the fear that she should not see him battled with the hope that he would still appear. But when all the arrivals had been accounted for, he had not come.

She turned, heavy-hearted, to walk back uptown, trying to think of whom she might seek some information concerning de Spain’s whereabouts, when her eye fell on a man standing not ten feet away at the door of the baggage-room. He was alone and seemed to be watching the changing of the engines, but Nan thought she knew him by sight. The rather long, straight, black hair under the broad-brimmed Stetson hat marked the man known and hated in the Gap as “the Indian.” Here, she said to herself, was a chance. De Spain, she recalled, spoke of no one oftener than this man. He seemed wholly disengaged.

Repressing her nervous timidity, Nan walked over to him. “Aren’t you Mr. Scott?” she asked abruptly.

Scott, turning to her, touched his hat as if quite unaware until that moment of her existence. “Did Mr. de Spain get off this train?” she asked, as Scott acknowledged his identity.

“I didn’t see him. I guess he didn’t come to-night.” Nan noticed the impassive manner of his speaking and the low, even tones. “I was kind of looking for him myself.”

“Is there another train to-night he could come on?”

“I don’t think he will be back now before to-morrow night.”

Nan, much disappointed, looked up the line and down. “I rode in this afternoon from Music Mountain especially to see him.” Scott, without commenting, smiled with understanding and encouragement, and Nan was so filled with anxiety that she welcomed a chance to talk to somebody. “I’ve often heard him speak of you,” she ventured, searching the dark eyes, and watching the open, kindly smile characteristic of the man. Scott put his right hand out at his side. “I’ve ridden with that boy since he was so high.”

“I know he thinks everything of you.”

“I think a lot of him.”

“You don’t know me?” she said tentatively.

His answer concealed all that was necessary. “Not to speak to, no.”

“I am Nan Morgan.”

“I know your name pretty well,” he explained; nothing seemed to disturb his smile.

“And I came in–because I was worried over something and wanted to see Mr. de Spain.”

“He is buying horses north of Medicine Bend. The rain-storm yesterday likely kept him back some. I don’t think you need worry much over anything though.”

“I don’t mean I am worrying about Mr. de Spain at Medicine Bend,” disclaimed Nan with a trace of embarrassment.

“I know what you mean,” smiled Bob Scott. She regarded him questioningly. He returned her gaze reassuringly as if he was confident of his ground. “Did your pony come along all right after you left the foot-hills this afternoon?”

Nan opened her eyes. “How did you know I came through the foot-hills?”

“I was over that way to-day.” Something in the continuous smile enlightened her more than the word. “I noticed your pony went lame. You stopped to look at his foot.”

“You were behind me,” exclaimed Nan.

“I didn’t see you,” he countered prudently.

She seemed to fathom something from the expression of his face. “You couldn’t have known I was coming in,” she said quickly.

“No.” He paused. Her eyes seemed to invite a further confidence. “But after you started it would be a pity if any harm came to you on the road.”

“You knew Uncle Duke was in town?” Scott nodded. “Do you know why I came?”

“I made a guess at it. I don’t think you need worry over anything.”

“Has Uncle Duke been talking?”

“Your Uncle Duke doesn’t talk much, you know. But he had to ask questions.”

“Did you follow me down from the hospital to-night?”

“I was coming from my house after supper. I only kept close enough to you to be handy.”

“Oh, I understand. And you are very kind. I don’t know what to do now.”

“Go back to the hospital for the night. I will send Henry de Spain up there just as soon as he comes to town.”

“Suppose Uncle Duke sees him first.”

“I’ll see that he doesn’t see him first.”

“Where is Uncle Duke to-night, do you know?”

“Lefever says he is up-street somewhere.”

“That means Tenison’s,” said Nan. “You need not be afraid to speak plainly, as I must. Uncle Duke is very angry–I am deathly afraid of their meeting.”

Even de Spain himself, when he came back the next night, seemed hardly able to reassure her. Nan, who had stayed at the hospital, awaited him there, whither Scott had directed him, with her burden of anxiety still upon her. When she had told all her story, de Spain laughed at her fears. “I’ll bring that man around, Nan, don’t worry. Don’t believe we shall ever fight. I may not be able to bring him around to-morrow, or next week, but I’ll do it. It takes two to quarrel, you know.”

“But you don’t know how unreasoning Uncle Duke is when he is angry,” said Nan mournfully. “He won’t listen to anybody. He always would listen to me until now. Now, he says, I have gone back on him, and he doesn’t care what happens. Think, Henry, where it would put me if either of you should kill the other. Henry, I’ve been thinking it all over for three days now. I see what must come. It will break both our hearts, I know, but they will be broken anyway. There is no way out, Henry–none.”

“Nan, what do you mean?”

“You must give me up.”

They were sitting in the hospital garden, he at her side on the bench that he called their bench. It was here he had made his unrebuked avowal–here, he had afterward told her, that he began to live. “Give you up,” he echoed with gentleness. “How could I do that? You’re like the morning for me, Nan. Without you there’s no day; you’re the kiss of the mountain wind and the light of the stars to me. Without the thought of you I’d sicken and faint in the saddle, I’d lose my way in the hills; without you there would be no to-morrow. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, if I think of you strength wells into my heart like a spring. I never could give you up.”

He told her all would be well because it must be well; that she must trust him; that he would bring her safe through every danger and every storm, if she would only stick to him. And Nan, sobbing her fears one by one out on his breast, put her arms around his neck and whispered that for life or death, she would stick.

It was not hard for de Spain next morning to find Duke Morgan. He was anxious on Nan’s account to meet him early. The difficulty was to meet him without the mob of hangers-on whose appetite had been whetted with the prospect of a death, and perhaps more than one, in the meeting of men whose supremacy with the gun had never been successfully disputed. It required all the diplomacy of Lefever to “pull off” a conference between the two which should not from the start be hopeless, because of a crowd of Duke’s partisans whose presence would egg him on, in spite of everything, to a combat. But toward eleven o’clock in the morning, de Spain having been concealed like a circus performer every minute earlier, Duke Morgan was found, alone, in a barber’s hands in the Mountain House. At the moment Duke left the revolving-chair and walked to the cigar stand to pay his check, de Spain entered the shop through the rear door opening from the hotel office.

Passing with an easy step the row of barbers lined up in waiting beside their chairs, de Spain walked straight down the open aisle, behind Morgan’s back. While Duke bent over the case to select a cigar, de Spain, passing, placed himself at the mountain-man’s side and between him and the street sunshine. It was taking an advantage, de Spain was well aware, but under the circumstances he thought himself entitled to a good light on Duke’s eye.