Nan of Music Mountain

“No, you’re not a ‘gunman.’”

“A gunman and nothing else. That’s what everybody, friends and enemies, reckon me–a gunman. You put me here to clean out this Calabasas gang, not because of my good looks, but because I’ve been, so far, a fraction of a second quicker on a trigger than these double-damned crooks.

“I don’t get any fun out of standing for ten minutes at a time with a sixty-pound safety-valve dragging on my heart, watching a man’s eye to see whether he is going to pull a gun on me and knock me down with a slug before I can pull one and knock him down. I don’t care for that kind of thing, Jeff. Hell’s delight! I’d rather have a little ranch with a little patch of alfalfa–enough alfalfa to feed a little bunch of cattle, a hundred miles from every living soul. What I would like to do is to own a piece of land under a ten-cent ditch, and watch the wheat sprout out of the desert.”

Jeffries, from behind his pipe, regarded de Spain’s random talk calmly.

“I do feel hard over my father’s death,” he went on moodily. “Who wouldn’t? If God meant me to forget it, why did he put this mark on my face, Jeff? I did talk pretty strong to Nan about it on Music Mountain. She accused me then of being a gunman. It made me hot to be set down for a gunman by her. I guess I did give it back to her too strong. That’s the trouble–my bark is worse than my bite–I’m always putting things too strong. I didn’t know when I was talking to her then that Sandusky and Logan were dead. Of course, she thought I was a butcher. But how could I help it?

“I did feel, for a long time, I’d like to kill with my own hands the man that murdered my father, Jeff. My mother must have realized that her babe, if a man-child, was doomed to a life of bloodshed. I’ve been trying to think most of the night what she’d want me to do now. I don’t know what I can do, or can’t do, when I set eyes on that old scoundrel. He’s got to tell the truth–that’s all I say now. If he lies, after what he made my mother suffer, he ought to die like a dog–no matter who he is.

“I don’t want to break Nan’s heart. What can I do? Hanging him here in Sleepy Cat, if I could do it, wouldn’t help her feelings a whole lot. If I could see the fellow–” de Spain’s hands, spread before him on the table, drew up tight, “if I could get my fingers on his throat, for a minute, and talk to him, tell him what I think of him–I might know what I would want to do–Nan might be there to see and judge between us. I’d be almost willing to leave things to her to settle herself. I only want what’s right. But,” the oath that recorded his closing threat was collected and pitiless, “if any harm comes to that girl now from this wild trip back among those wolves–God pity the men that put it over. I’ll wipe out the whole accursed clan, if I have to swing for it right here in Sleepy Cat!”

John Lefever, Jeffries, Scott in turn took him in hand to hold him during three days, to restrain the fury of his resentment, and keep him from riding to the Gap in a temper that each of them knew would mean only a tragedy worse than what had gone before. Mountain-men who happened in and out of Sleepy Cat during those three days remember how it seemed for that time as if the attention of every man and woman in the whole country was fixed on the new situation that balked de Spain. They knew only that Nan had gone back to her people, not why she had gone back; but the air was eager with surmise and rumor as to what had happened, and in this complete overturning of all de Spain’s hopes, what would happen before the story ended.

Even three days of tactful representation and patient admonition from cool-headed counsellors did not accomplish all they hoped for in de Spain’s attitude. His rage subsided, but only to be followed by a settled gloom that they knew might burst into uncontrollable anger at any moment.

A report reached McAlpin that Gale Morgan was making ready to return to Music Mountain with the remnant of Sandusky’s gang, to make a demand on Duke for certain property and partnership adjustments. This rumor he telephoned to Jeffries. Before talking with de Spain, Jeffries went over the information with Lefever. The two agreed it was right, in the circumstances, that de Spain should be nearer than Sleepy Cat to Nan. Moreover, the period of waiting she had enjoined on him was almost complete.

Without giving de Spain the story fully, the two men talking before him let the discussion drift toward a proposal on his part to go down to Calabasas, where he could more easily keep track of any movement to or from the Gap, and this they approved. De Spain, already chafing under a hardly endured restraint, lost no time in starting for Calabasas, directing Lefever to follow next day.

It added nothing to his peace of mind in the morning to learn definitely from McAlpin that Gale Morgan, within twenty-four hours, had really disappeared from Calabasas. No word of any kind had come from Music Mountain for days. No one at Calabasas was aware even that Nan had gone into the Gap again. Bob Scott was at Thief River. De Spain telephoned to him to come up on the early stage, and turned his attention toward getting information from Music Mountain without violating Nan’s injunction not to frustrate her most delicate effort with her uncle.

As a possible scout to look into her present situation and report on it, McAlpin could point only to Bull Page. Bull was a ready instrument, but his present value as an assistant had become a matter of doubt, since practically every man in the Gap had threatened within the week to blow his head off–though Bull himself felt no scruples against making an attempt to reach Music Mountain and get back again. It was proposed by the canny McAlpin to send him in with a team and light wagon, ostensibly to bring out his trunk, which, if it had not been fed to the horses, was still in Duke’s barn. As soon as a rig could be got up Page started out.

It was late November. A far, clear air drew the snow-capped ranges sharply down to the eye of the desert–as if the speckless sky, lighted by the radiant sun, were but a monster glass rigged to trick the credulous retina. De Spain, in the saddle in front of the barn, his broad hat brim set on the impassive level of the Western horseman, his lips seeming to compress his thoughts, his lines over his forearm, and his hands half-slipped into the pockets of his snug leather coat, watched Page with his light wagon and horses drive away.

Idling around the neighborhood of the barns in the saddle, de Spain saw him gradually recede into the long desert perspective, the perspective which almost alone enabled the watcher to realize as he curtained his eyes behind their long, steady lashes from the blazing sun, that it was a good bit of a way to the foot of the great outpost of the Superstition Range.

De Spain’s restlessness prevented his remaining quietly anywhere for long. As the morning advanced he cantered out on the Music Mountain trail, thinking of and wishing for a sight of Nan. The deadly shock of Pardaloe’s story had been dulled by days and nights of pain. His deep-rooted love and his loneliness had quieted his impulse for vengeance and overborne him with a profound sadness. He realized how different his feelings were now from what they had been when she knelt before him in the darkened room and, not daring to plead for mercy for her uncle, had asked him only for the pity for herself that he had seemed so slow to give. Something reproached him now for his coldness at the moment that he should have thought of her suffering before his own.

The crystal brightness of the day brought no elation to his thoughts. His attention fixed on nothing that did not revert to Nan and his hunger to see her again. If he regarded the majestic mountain before him, it was only to recall the day she had fed him at its foot, long before she loved him–he thought of that truth now–when he lay dying on it. If the black reaches of the lava beds came within view, it was only to remind him that, among those desolate rocks, this simple, blue-eyed girl, frail in his eyes as a cobweb despite her graceful strength, had intrusted all her life and happiness to him, given her fresh lips to his, endured without complaint the headstrong ardor of his caresses and, by the pretty mockery of her averted eyes, provoked his love to new adventure.

Memory seemed that morning as keen as the fickle air–so sharply did it bring back to him the overwhelming pictures of their happiness together. And out of his acute loneliness rose vague questionings and misgivings. He said to himself in bitter self-reproach that she would not have gone if he had been to her all he ought to have been in the crisis of that night. If harm should befall her now! How the thought clutched and dragged at his heart. Forebodings tortured him, and in the penumbra of his thoughts seemed to leave something he could not shake off–a vague, haunting fear, as if of some impending tragedy that should wreck their future.

It was while riding in this way that his eyes, reading mechanically the wagon trail he was aimlessly following–for no reason other than that it brought him, though forbidden, a little closer to her–arrested his attention. He checked his horse. Something, the trail told him, had happened. Page had stopped his horses. Page had met two men on horseback coming from the Gap. After a parley–for the horses had tramped around long enough for one–the wagon had turned completely from the trail and struck out across the desert, north; the two horsemen, or one with a led horse, had started back for the Gap.

All of this de Spain gathered without moving his horse outside a circle of thirty feet. What did it mean? Page might have fallen in with cronies from the Gap, abandoned his job, and started for Sleepy Cat, but this was unlikely. He might have encountered enemies, been pointedly advised to keep away from the Gap, and pretended to start for Sleepy Cat, to avoid trouble with them. Deeming the second the more probable conclusion, de Spain, absorbed in his speculations, continued toward the Gap to see whether he could not pick up the trail of Page’s rig farther on.

Within a mile a further surprise awaited him. The two horsemen, who had headed for the Gap after stopping Page, had left the trail, turned to the south, down a small draw, which would screen them from sight, and set out across the desert.

No trail and no habitation lay in the direction they had taken–and it seemed clearer to de Spain that the second horse was a led horse. There was a story in the incident, but his interest lay in following Page’s movements, and he spurred swiftly forward to see whether his messenger had resumed the Gap trail and gone on with his mission. He followed this quest almost to the mountains, without recovering any trace of Page’s rig. He halted. It was certain now that Page had not gone into the Gap.

Perplexed and annoyed, de Spain, from the high ground on which he sat his horse, cast his eyes far out over the desert. The brilliant sunshine flooded it as far as the eye could reach. He scanned the vast space without detecting a sign of life anywhere, though none better than he knew that any abundance of it might be there. But his gaze caught something of interest on the farthest northern horizon, and on this his scrutiny rested a long time. A soft brown curtain rose just above the earth line against the blue sky. Toward the east it died away and toward the west it was cut off by the Superstition peaks.

De Spain, without giving the weather signs much thought, recognized their import, but his mind was filled with his own anxieties and he rode smartly back toward Calabasas, because he was not at ease over the puzzles in the trail. When he reached the depression where the horsemen had, without any apparent reason, turned south, he halted. Should he follow them or turn north to follow Page’s wanderings? If Page had been scared away from the Gap, for a time, he probably had no information that de Spain wanted, and de Spain knew his cunning and persistence well enough to be confident he would be back on the Gap road, and within the cover of the mountains, before a storm should overtake him. On the north the brown curtain had risen fast and already enveloped the farthest peaks of the range. Letting his horse stretch its neck, he hesitated a moment longer trying to decide whether to follow the men to the south or the wagon to the north. A woman might have done better. But no good angel was there to guide his decision, and in another moment he was riding rapidly to the south with the even, brown, misty cloud behind him rolling higher into the northern sky.

CHAPTER XXXI

DE SPAIN RIDES ALONE

He had ridden the trail but a short time when it led him in a wide angle backward and around toward Calabasas, and he found, presently, that the men he was riding after were apparently heading for the stage barns. In the north the rising curtain had darkened. Toward Sleepy Cat the landscape was already obliterated. In the south the sun shone, but the air had grown suddenly cold, and in the sharp drop de Spain realized what was coming. His first thought was of the southern stages, which must be warned, and as he galloped up to the big barn, with this thought in mind he saw, standing in the doorway, Bull Page.

De Spain regarded him with astonishment. “How did you get here?” was his sharp question.

Page grinned. “Got what I was after, and c’m’ back sooner’n I expected. Half-way over to the Gap, I met Duke and the young gal on horseback, headed for Calabasas. They pulled up. I pulled up. Old Duke looked kind o’ ga’nted, and it seemed like Nan was in a considerable hurry to get to Sleepy Cat with him, and he couldn’t stand the saddle. Anyway, they was heading for Calabasas to get a rig from McAlpin. I knowed McAlpin would never give old Duke a rig, not if he was a-dyin’ in the saddle.”

“They’ve got your rig!” cried de Spain.

“The gal asked me if I’d mind accommodatin’ ’em,” explained Bull deprecatingly, “to save time.”

“They headed north!” exclaimed de Spain. The light from the fast-changing sky fell copper-colored across his horse and figure. McAlpin, followed by a hostler, appeared at the barn door.

Bull nodded to de Spain. “Said they wanted to get there quick. She fig’erd on savin’ a few miles by strikin’ the hill trail in. So I takes their horses and lets on I was headin’ in for the Gap. When they got out of sight, I turned ’round–”

Even as he spoke, the swift-rolling curtain of mist overhead blotted the sun out of the sky.

De Spain sprang from his saddle with a ringing order to McAlpin. “Get up a fresh saddle-horse!”

“A horse!” cried the startled barn boss, whirling on the hostler. “The strongest legs in the stable, and don’t lose a second! Lady Jane; up with her!” he yelled, bellowing his orders into the echoing barn with his hands to his mouth. “Up with her for Mr. de Spain in a second! Marmon! Becker! Lanzon! What in hell are you all doing?” he roared, rushing back with a fusillade of oaths. “Look alive, everybody!”

“Coming!” yelled one voice after another from the depths of the distant stalls.

De Spain ran into the office. Page caught his horse, stripped the rifle from its holster, and hurriedly began uncinching. Hostlers running through the barn called shrilly back and forth, and de Spain springing up the stairs to his room provided what he wanted for his hurried flight. When he dashed down with coats on his arm the hoofs of Lady Jane were clattering down the long gangway. A stable-boy slid from her back on one side as Bull Page threw the saddle across her from the other; hostlers caught at the cinches, while others hurriedly rubbed the legs of the quivering mare. De Spain, his hand on McAlpin’s shoulder, was giving his parting injunctions, and the barn boss, head cocked down, and eyes cast furtively on the scattering snowflakes outside, was listening with an attention that recorded indelibly every uttered syllable.

Once only, he interrupted: “Henry, you’re ridin’ out into this thing alone–don’t do it.”

“I can’t help it,” snapped de Spain impatiently,

“It’s a man killer.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Bob Scott, if he w’s here, ’ud never let you do it. I’ll ride wi’ ye myself, Henry. I worked for your father–”

“You’re too old a man, Jim–”

“Henry–”

“Don’t talk to me! Do as I tell you!” thundered de Spain.

McAlpin bowed his head.

“Ready!” yelled Page, buckling the rifle holster in place. Still talking, and with McAlpin glued to his elbow, de Spain vaulted into the saddle, caught the lines from Bull’s hands, and steadied the Lady as she sidestepped nervously–McAlpin following close and dodging the dancing hoofs as he looked earnestly up to catch the last word. De Spain touched the horse with the lines. She leaped through the doorway and he raised a backward hand to those behind. Running outside the door, they yelled a chorus of cries after the swift-moving horseman and, clustered in an excited group, watched the Lady with a dozen great strides round the Calabasas trail and disappear with her rider into the whirling snow.

She fell at once into an easy reaching step, and de Spain, busy with his reflections, hardly gave thought to what she was doing, and little more to what was going on about him.

No moving figure reflects the impassive more than a horseman of the mountains, on a long ride. Though never so swift-borne, the man, looking neither to the right nor to the left, moving evenly and statue-like against the sky, a part of the wiry beast under him, presents the very picture of indifference to the world around him. The great swift wind spreading over the desert emptied on it snow-laden puffs that whirled and wrapped a cloud of flakes about horse and rider in the symbol of a shroud. De Spain gave no heed to these skirmishing eddies, but he knew what was behind them, and for the wind, he only wished it might keep the snow in the air till he caught sight of Nan.

The even reach of the horse brought him to the point where Nan had changed to the stage wagon. Without a break in her long stride, Lady Jane took the hint of her swerving rider, put her nose into the wind, and headed north. De Spain, alive to the difficulties of his venture, set his hat lower and bent forward to follow the wagon along the sand. With the first of the white flurries passed, he found himself in a snowless pocket, as it were, of the advancing storm. He hoped for nothing from the prospect ahead; but every moment of respite from the blinding whirl was a gain, and with his eyes close on the trail that had carried Nan into danger, he urged the Lady on.

When the snow again closed down about him he calculated from the roughness of the country that he should be within a mile of the road that Nan was trying to reach, from the Gap to Sleepy Cat. But the broken ground straight ahead would prevent her from driving directly to it. He knew she must hold to the right, and her curving track, now becoming difficult to trail, confirmed his conclusion.

A fresh drive of the wind buffeted him as he turned directly north. Only at intervals could he see any trace of the wagon wheels. The driving snow compelled him more than once to dismount and search for the trail. Each time he lost it the effort to regain it was more prolonged. At times he was compelled to ride the desert in wide circles to find the tracks, and this cost time when minutes might mean life. But as long as he could he clung to the struggle to track her exactly. He saw almost where the storm had struck the two wayfarers. Neither, he knew, was insensible to its dangers. What amazed him was that a man like Duke Morgan should be out in it. He found a spot where they had halted and, with a start that checked the beating of his heart, his eyes fell on her footprint not yet obliterated, beside the wagon track.

The sight of it was an electric shock. Throwing himself from his horse, he knelt over it in the storm, oblivious for an instant of everything but that this tracery meant her presence, where he now bent, hardly half an hour before. He swung, after a moment’s keen scrutiny, into his saddle, with fresh resolve. Pressed by the rising fury of the wind, the wayfarers had become from this point, de Spain saw too plainly, hardly more than fugitives. Good ground to the left, where their hope of safety lay, had been overlooked. Their tracks wandered on the open desert like those who, losing courage, lose their course in the confusion and fear of the impending peril.

And with this increasing uncertainty in their direction vanished de Spain’s last hopes of tracking them. The wind swept the desert now as a hurricane sweeps the open sea, snatching the fallen snow from the face of the earth as the sea-gale, flattening the face of the waters, rips the foam from the frantic waves to drive it in wild, scudding fragments across them.

De Spain, urging his horse forward, unbuckled his rifle holster, threw away the scabbard, and holding the weapon up in one hand, fired shot after shot at measured intervals to attract the attention of the two he sought. He exhausted his rifle ammunition without eliciting any answer. The wind drove with a roar against which even a rifle report could hardly carry, and the snow swept down the Sinks in a mad blast. Flakes torn by the fury of the gale were stiffened by the bitter wind into powdered ice that stung horse and rider. Casting away the useless carbine, and pressing his horse to the limit of her strength and endurance, the unyielding pursuer rode in great coiling circles into the storm, to cut in, if possible, ahead of its victims, firing shot upon shot from his revolver, and putting his ear intently against the wind for the faint hope of an answer.

Suddenly the Lady stumbled and, as he cruelly reined her, slid helpless and scrambling along the face of a flat rock. De Spain, leaping from her back, steadied her trembling and looked underfoot. The mare had struck the rock of the upper lava bed. Drawing his revolver, he fired signal shots from where he stood. It could not be far, he knew, from the junction of the two great desert trails–the Calabasas road and the Gap road. He felt sure Nan could not have got much north of this, for he had ridden in desperation to get abreast of or beyond her, and if she were south, where, he asked, in the name of God, could she be?

He climbed again into the saddle–the cold was gripping his limbs–and, watching the rocky landmarks narrowly, tried to circle the dead waste of the half-buried flow. With chilled, awkward fingers he filled the revolver again and rode on, discharging it every minute, and listening–hoping against hope for an answer. It was when he had almost completed, as well as he could compute, the wide circuit he had set out on, that a faint shot answered his continuing signals.

With the sound of that shot and those that followed it his courage all came back. But he had yet to trace through the confusion of the wind and the blinding snow the direction of the answering reports.

Hither and thither he rode, this way and that, testing out the location of the slowly repeated shots, and signalling at intervals in return. Slowly and doggedly he kept on, shooting, listening, wheeling, and advancing until, as he raised his revolver to fire it again, a cry close at hand came out of the storm. It was a woman’s voice borne on the wind. Riding swiftly to the left, a horse’s outline revealed itself at moments in the driving snow ahead.

De Spain cried out, and from behind the furious curtain heard his name, loudly called. He pushed his stumbling horse on. The dim outline of a second horse, the background of a wagon, a storm-beaten man–all this passed his eyes unheeded. They were bent on a girlish figure running toward him as he slid stiffly from the saddle. The next instant Nan was in his arms.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE TRUTH

With the desperation of a joy born of despair she laid her burning cheek hysterically against his cheek. She rained kisses on his ice-crusted brows and snow-beaten eyes. Her arms held him rigidly. He could not move nor speak till she would let him. Transformed, this mountain girl who gave herself so shyly, forgot everything. Her words crowded on his ears. She repeated his name in an ecstasy of welcome, drew down his lips, laughed, rejoiced, knew no shamefacedness and no restraint–she was one freed from the stroke of a descending knife. A moment before she had faced death alone; it was still death she faced–she realized this–but it was death, at least, together, and her joy and tears rose from her heart in one stream.