Chapter III: Part 3

Busy days followed for Judith Sanford and for every man remaining upon Blue Lake ranch. A score of men, including the milkers, Johnson, the irrigation foreman and his crew of laborers, had quit work, going over openly to Bayne Trevors at the Western Lumber camp. He had work there for every man of them, and Judith was not the only one upon the ranch who came to wonder how much money Trevors--or the lumber company--was prepared to spend in fighting her. From the first day she found the outfit short-handed.

Almost her first answer to Trevors's _coup_ was to telegraph San Francisco for a Firth milking-machine, together with an expert sent out by the Firth Company to install and superintend its working for the first few days. At the same time she hired from one of the Sacramento dairies a man who was to be foreman of her own dairy industry, a capable fellow with an intimate practical knowledge of automatic milkers. He, with a couple of strippers paid overtime wages managed until the dairy crew could be builded up again. Her new foreman from the first took the greater part of this burden off her shoulders.

Mrs. Simpson, the matron from Rocky Bend, arrived, true to her promise and, motherly soul that she was, took a keen interest in Judith's comforts and in caring for the big house, of which she immediately waxed proud with an air of semiproprietorship. José, from the first, bestowed upon the cheerful, bustling woman a black hatred born of his thoroughgoing Latin jealousy. From this or that corner, appearing unexpectedly, glaring darkly at her in a manner which ruffled her placidity and suggested to her lively imagination terrible visions of knives in one's back, he brought an actual thrill into Mrs. Simpson's long days of routine.

Busy days also for Bud Lee, who had already begun the education of a string of colts. Busy days for Doc Tripp who, unhampered, trusted, aided at every turn by his employer, was from dawn until dark among the ranch live stock, all but feeling pulse and taking temperature of horses, cows, colts, calves, hogs, and mules. He stopped the calf sickness; effected cures in every case excepting one. And the rest of the stock he finally gave a clean bill of health.

Busy days for Carson. Painstakingly he estimated, to the head, the number of cattle the pastures should be carrying, counting from long experience upon the hard months to come from August until December; estimating values; appearing at the week's end to suggest the purchase of a herd of calves from the John Peters Dairy Company, to be had now at a very attractive figure. And suggesting, almost insistently, upon buying a certain Shorthorn bull worth twice the twelve hundred dollars asked for him. Busy days for the foremen who had held over from the management of Trevors or who had been taken on since. The first crop of alfalfa, shot through with foxtails, must be cut without delay and fed into the silos before the beards of the interloping growth could harden. Busy days for the short-handed milking crew; busy days of installing the new milking-machines.

Judith and Doc Tripp had sought to find some trace of the man who, Judith insisted, had listened at the door in the hall. They had found nothing. So that episode, as well as Trevors himself, was shoved aside in their minds, in the stress of activity demanding attention everywhere.

With Saturday came Pollock Hampton and his guests. Trevors had misnamed him a fool, sweepingly mistaking youth, business inexperience and a careless way, for lack of brains. Just a breezy young fellow, likable, gay-hearted, keen for the joy of life, scarcely more than a boy after all. One of those rare beings whose attitude toward his fellow mortals was one of generous faith, who sought to see the best in people, who had an outspoken admiration for efficiency in any form. He came to the ranch prepared to like everything and everybody.

"Look here!" he exclaimed to Judith, before she had had time for more than a sweeping appraisal of his friends. "Why didn't you tell me you were up to a thing like this? Great Scott, Judith, you don't know what you are tackling, do you? It's ripping of you; you're a sheer wonder to tie into it; you've got no end of nerve. But running a ranch like this--why, it's a big proposition for a thunderingly big man to swing."

"Is it?" smiled Judith.

Beyond that, the only answer he got from this brief conference was the timely suggestion that his chief concern for the immediate present lay in making his guests comfortable.

Accompanying young Hampton were "Major" Langworthy, a little short, fat, bald gentleman, who, so far as the knowledge of his club members went, had never been connected with any part of the army or navy, unless one counted his congenial brigades of cocktail drinkers; Mrs. Langworthy, his supercilious, uninteresting wife; Marcia, his languidly graceful daughter, in whom Hampton gave certain signs of being considerably interested; Marshal Rogers, the Oakland lawyer, and Frank Farris, the artist. Also Marcia's maid and Hampton's Japanese valet, Fujioki. In due course of time this representative of the Flowery Kingdom grew to be great friends with José, the two forthwith suspected by Mrs. Simpson of all sorts of dark plots and of a racial sympathy which must be watched lest it produce "something terrible."

Pollock Hampton, holding a third of the shares of the big venture, with his legitimate claim upon a third of the income, was of course a factor which must be taken into account. Judith, knowing little of him, sought to know more, watched him when he was talking, got his views upon many matters that came up haphazard, and found that, while she liked him, she would have been more than glad if he had not come to still further complicate matters for her. For it was open and shut that his interest and enthusiasm would demand a voice. She asked frankly how long he planned to stay?

"I'm here for good," he answered cheerfully. His explanation followed with a grin, quite as though he were telling her of some rare good news: "Money's all gone, creditors are nuisances, there's no prospect with you here of having you send me anything. What is left for me but to stay?"

Judith suggested a monthly allowance. Hampton laughed good-humoredly.

"Pay me to keep me out of the way? There's nothing stirring, Judith. Absolutely. I'm here to give a hand."

Judith had hopes, even yet, that a couple or weeks or a month at the most, of life as it runs forty miles from a railroad would dampen and finally extinguish his bright enthusiasm. But swiftly those hopes died. This was his first visit to the mountains, and for a man sick of the city's social round, every inch of the ranch, river and cliffs and rolling hills had its compelling interest. Perhaps the thing which Judith overlooked was the blood of his fathers. For before Pollock Hampton, Sr., had made his money, he and his wife had been, like Luke Sanford, pioneers. Now something in the mountains here called vaguely to the soul of young Hampton and made him restless and stirred his heart. He looked up at the sheer and mighty fall of rock behind the ranchhouse and his face glowed; he leaned over the rail of a rustic bridge and forgot Marcia, who was with him, as he watched the beauty of the foam-flecked water. As he stood stock-still, looking on while Bud Lee rode a bucking bronco, his eyes were bright and eager.

"Glory to be!" he exclaimed to the major, who had been coaxed away from the buffet for a brief half-hour. "Watch that man ride! While I've been learning to dance and play the piano these men have been doing real things."

"Let's go have something," said the major hurriedly. For it did not fit in with his and Mrs. Langworthy's plans to have Hampton risk his neck at such pastimes--at least not yet.

It soon became obvious that long ago Hampton had given freely of his admiration to Bayne Trevors. For Trevors had taken the time, his own purpose in mind, to look in upon Hampton some months ago in San Francisco. Further, he had created the impression which he sought to make. An impression, by the way, not entirely erroneous.

"A great man!" cried Hampton warmly. "The only man I know big enough to swing a job like this."

To himself he said that the chief good he could do at the outset was to work to get Trevors back. With this in his mind and having had no full account of Judith's manner of ejecting the general manager, he went straight to her.

"Trevors is a friend of mine," he said lightly. "I'm going to ask him over to meet my guests. No objection, is there?"

She looked at him keenly.

"Do as you please," was her cool answer. "I imagine he won't care to come."

Launched upon his first business venture, Hampton went to the telephone. That evening at table he surprised Judith not a little when he said casually that Trevors had said he'd run over in a day or so, as soon as he could find time.

"What's that?" he asked, breaking off.

For certainly Judith had started to speak. But now she merely shrugged her shoulders and sat in silent thoughtfulness.

Mrs. Langworthy had no liking to bestow upon such as Judith. The girl, she confided every night to the major, was unladylike, unwomanly, _outré_, horsy, unthinkable, an insult to any woman into whose presence she came. The major agreed monosyllabically or with silent nods for the sake of peace. Personally he was rather inclined to fancy Judith's uncorseted figure, to admire her red-blooded beauty, and he always touched up the ends of his mustaches in her presence.

Judith, having early taken Mrs. Langworthy's measure, found an impish joy in murdering the proprieties for her especial benefit. She said "Damn" upon occasions when Mrs. Langworthy was there to hear; she rode her horse at a gallop into the yard and right up to the veranda when Mrs. Langworthy was there to see, swinging down as her mount jerked to standstill, as "ladylike" about it all as a wild Comanche; at table she talked of prize boars and sick calves and other kindred vulgar matters.

But the major admired her; Marcia, as days went by, proved to be a sweet-tempered, somewhat timid, but highly good-natured, affectionate creature generously offering her good-will; and Rogers, the lawyer, and Farris, the artist, both of the sophisticated, self-sufficient type, were little behind the major in interest.

During the last week of May, a rumor came to Judith's ears of which, at first, she thought little. Carson, coming to her upon a bit of ranch business, remarked dryly before taking his departure, that a report had got around among his men--Poker Face had mentioned it to him--that Blue Lake ranch was on its last legs; that it was even to be doubted, if the men ever saw another pay-day before the whole affair went into a receiver's hands. Judith laughed at him and told him not to worry.

"Me?" said Carson. "I'm not the worrying kind. But idees like that ain't good to have floating around. A man won't do more'n half work when he's wondering all the time if he's going to get his mazuma for it."

But, when again the rumor came, this time telephoned up to her from the Lower End by Doc Tripp, she frowned and wondered. And she was careful, upon the thirtieth of May, to send Charlie Miller, the storekeeper, into Rocky Bend for the monthly pay-roll money. She gave him her check for one thousand dollars which, with what was in Charlie's safe at the store and in her own here, would more than pay the monthly wages. Charlie left for Rocky Bend in the afternoon, spending the night in town to get the customary morning start for the ranch. The men were to be paid at six o'clock.

Upon this same day Pollock Hampton told Judith that Bayne Trevors was coming to the ranch to have dinner, spend the night and the following day. Judith made no reply beyond favoring him with a quick look of question. She had not believed that the man would come. What next?

The last day of May came, and true to his premise, Trevors was a guest at the house from which, so short a time ago, he had been evicted. He dined there that night, cool and self-confident, casually polite to Judith, civil and courteous to the other guests, especially to Major and Mrs. Langworthy and Marcia, leading conversations unobtrusively, making himself liked. He watched a game of billiards, but refused to play, saying carelessly that he had a stiff shoulder. He and Hampton strolled out into the starlight and for some two or three hours walked up and down, talking quietly.

"A gentleman!" cried Mrs. Langworthy with spirit. "It just shows that a person can do out-doors work and not sink back into the barbarian!"

The morning after Trevors's arrival, Judith was up betimes and breakfasted alone. Lunching early, noon found her in the office expecting Charlie Miller. She was at work on the pay-roll book when her telephone rang. It was Doc Tripp and there was suppressed excitement in his voice.

"Bad news, Judy," he began. "It sure looks as though you were getting your share."

"What is it, Doc?" she broke in sharply. "Tell me!"

"It's Charlie Miller. Hurt. No, not bad. Thrown off his horse, back in Squaw Creek cañon. And--robbed."

Quickly he told all that had happened. Miller, hastening back with the wage money, was riding through the narrow gorge when a man had sprung out suddenly in front of him. Miller's horse, shying, swerving unexpectedly, had thrown him. Before he could get to his feet the bag of gold under his coat had been torn off, his revolver wrenched away and the highwayman, his face masked with a red bandana handkerchief, had run into the thick timber.

"Charlie just walked in, reeling like a drunken man," Tripp concluded. "His fall and a rap over the head with a gun-butt have made him pretty sick. I am sending out a posse of men from this end to try and get the stick-up man. You'd better do the same up there."

For a moment Judith sat staring at the telephone dully. Robbed of a thousand dollars, and in broad daylight! A thing like this had not occurred on the Blue Lake for a dozen years.

"Bayne Trevors!" she gasped. For, suddenly, she thought that she understood the significance of the rumor which had twice in a week come to her. Perhaps, as Tripp himself had said, she was getting nerves. Trevors himself was on the ranch right now. . . . Her two fists clinched. Yes, Trevors was here with triple purpose: To curry favor with Hampton against a possible need of it, to establish an alibi for himself, to witness Judith's discomfiture, when at six o'clock she must turn the men away with an excuse.

VIII

RIFLE SHOTS FROM THE CLIFFS

Thank Heaven it was just noon! Judith sprang to her feet, her eyes bright and hard, and ran down to the men's quarters. Coming up from the corral were Carson and Bud Lee.

"Miller with the pay-roll money has been held up and robbed at Squaw Creek," she told them swiftly. "Get some men together, Carson, and try to head the robber off."

The two men, having glanced quickly at each other, stood a moment looking at her curiously.

"That's on the level, is it, Miss Judith?" demanded Carson slowly.

"Of course it's on the level!" she cried impatiently. "Oh, I know what you're thinking. I'm going to phone immediately to the bank at Rocky Bend and have another man sent out with more money. You can count upon getting your pay at six o'clock!"

"I told you, didn't I," muttered Carson, "that I wasn't worrying none personal? But if I was you I'd sure have the money on tap!"

With that he left her, going hastily to round up what men he could find and get them into their saddles. Bud Lee, his eyes still on her, stood where he was.

"Well," demanded the girl, "aren't you going, too?" Suddenly angered by his leisurely air, she added cuttingly: "Not afraid, are you?"

"I was thinking," Lee answered coolly, "that the stick-up gent will most probably figure on a play like that. If he was real wise he'd mosey along toward Rocky Bend and pop off your second man. Two thousand bucks a day would make a real nice little draw."

Judith paused, frowning. There was truth in that. If Trevors really were behind this, he would have chosen his man carefully; he would have planned ahead.

"If you'll do my way," continued Lee thoughtfully, "I'll have just enough time to roll a smoke and saddle little old Climax. He's in the stable now. You're not afraid of my double-crossing you? Even if a smart-headed man had planned the hold-up he wouldn't figure on a play like this. He'd think we'd have a Rocky Bender bring it out or else wait until to-morrow."

"It won't do," she decided quickly. "I want that money here at six o'clock."

"Eighty miles," mused the horse foreman. "Six hours. That's riding right along, but do it my way and I'll gamble you my own string of horses--and they're worth considerable more than a thousand--that I'll be back, heeled, at six."

Judith, quick at decisions, looked him hard in the eye, heard his plan, and three minutes later Bud Lee, a revolver in his shirt, rode away from the ranch-house, headed toward Rocky Bend. Judith already had called up Tripp, and the veterinarian himself, leading the fastest saddle-horse he could get his hands on at brief notice, was also riding toward Rocky Bend, from the Lower End, five miles in advance of Lee at the start. He went at a gentle trot, consulting his watch now and then.

So Bud Lee, riding as once those hard, dare-devil riders rode who carried across the land the mail-bag of the Pony Express, overtook Doc Tripp and changed to a fresh horse at the end of the first fifteen miles. He swung out of his saddle, stretched his long legs, remarked lightly that it was a real fine day, and was gone again upon a fresh mount with twenty-five miles between him and Rocky Bend. The clock at the bank marked forty-three minutes after two as Lee, leaving a sweating horse at the door on Main Street, presented his check at the paying teller's window. The money, in a small canvas bag, was ready.

"Hello, Bud," and "Hello, Dan'l," was the beginning and end of the conversation which ensued. Lee did not stop to count the money. He drew his belt up a hole as he went back to the door, found a fresh horse there fighting its bit and all but lifting the stable-boy off his feet, mounted and sped back along Main Street.

Judith was to send out another man leading still another fresh horse for him so that he could not fail to be back at the ranch-house by six o'clock. As Bud Lee, riding hard but never without thought for the horse which carried him, began the return trip, he drew the heavy caliber revolver from his shirt and thrust it into his belt. When he had left Rocky Bend half a dozen miles behind him and was hurrying on into the outskirts of that country of rolling hills and pine forests, his hand was never six inches from the gun-butt.

The road wound in and out among the pines, always climbing. Lee raced on, his eyes bright and keen, watchful and suspicious of every still shadow or stirring branch. Coming up the two-mile-long Cuesta Grade, he saved his horse a little. From the top of the mountain, before he again followed a winding road back to the river's side, he saw a horseman riding a distant ridge; the glinted upon the rider's rifle.

"Old Carson himself," thought Lee. "Looking for the hold-up man. Shucks! They'll never find him this trip."

Letting his own animal out into its swinging stride as he got down to more level going, he hammered on at his clip of fifteen miles an hour. In the thick shade of the forest, three miles before he came to the line fence of the Blue Lake ranch, he saw another horseman, this one Ed Masters, the "college kid." The young fellow's flushed, eager face passed in a blur as Lee shot by.

Another mile, and Bud Lee was riding through a clearing, with the tall cliffs of Squaw Creek cañon looming high on his left, when suddenly and absolutely without warning, his horse screamed, gathered itself for a wild plunge, staggered, stood a moment trembling terribly, then with a low moan collapsed under him.

Lee swung out and to one side, landing clear as the big brute fell. He did not understand. He had ridden the animal hard but certainly not hard enough for this. And then he saw and his eyes blazed with anger. He had heard no shot, nothing beyond the metallic pounding of the shod hoofs on flinty road, but there from an ugly hole in the neck the saddle-horse was pouring out its blood.

"Smokeless powder and a Maxim silencer!" muttered Lee, his eyes taking note of the ten thousand possible hiding-places on the cliff's.

In his ears there was a little whine as a second bullet sang its way by his head. Again he sought to locate the marksman, again saw nothing but crag and precipice and brushy clump. He took time for that thing which came so hard to him, sent a bullet from his own revolver into his horse's brain, and then slipped out of the clearing into the shelter of the pines.

"Two miles left to the border line," he estimated it. "Afoot."

Stiff from the saddle, he moved on slowly for a little. But as his muscles responded and warmed to the effort, he broke into a trotting run. Only a little now could he keep under cover; if he went on with any degree of speed he must keep to the road and the open. The thought came to him that he might lie under cover until dark. The second thought came to him that he had assured Judith that he would be back on time, and he forged ahead.

For the second time that day he heard the whine of a bullet. He thought that the shot came from the cliffs just at the head of Squaw Creek cañon. But he could not be sure. There was ample protection there for a man hiding, tall brush in a hollow and three or four stunted trees, wind-twisted. He'd make the climb to-morrow and see about it. Now he'd keep right on moving. Little used to travelling save on a horse's back he was shot through with odd little pains when at last he came to the border-line fenced and the waiting horse. Tommy Burkitt held it for him while Lee mounted.

"Somebody up on the cliffs, head of the cañon," panted Lee at Tommy's amazed expression when Lee came running into sight. "Killed my horse. Go after him, Tommy. Tell the other boys." And on he went, pounding out the last fifteen miles, the canvas bag beating safely against his side.

Judith, in the courtyard, watched him ride in. She looked swiftly at him from the watch on her wrist. Her eyes brightened. It lacked seven minutes to six. As Bud dropped the canvas bag into her hands she flashed at him the most wonderful, radiant smile that the long horseman had ever seen. She gripped his lean, brown hand hard in hers.

"Bud, you're a brick!" she cried.

Mrs. Langworthy had just come out with Hampton, Trevors, and the major.

Judith turned from Lee to Trevors but managed to keep half an eye on Mrs. Langworthy.

"You see, it's pay-day with us, Mr. Trevors," she said quietly. "And when pay-day comes we pay our men at six o'clock in spite of hell and high water!"

Bud Lee, leading his horse away, turned for a word. "A man killed a horse for me to-day," he said very gently, and his eyes rested steadily upon Trevors. "If I ever get him, or the man who put him up to it, I'm going to get him right."

IX

THE OLD TRAIL

On the Blue Lake Ranch there was more than one man ready to scoff at the idea of a robbery like this one, frank enough to voice the suspicion: "It's just a stall for time!" So much had last week's rumor done for them, preparing them to expect something that would set aside the customary monthly pay-day. But when they had seen Charlie Miller's bruised head and heard his story; when they had sat on their horses and looked down at the animal which had been shot under Bud Lee, they were silent. And, besides, when long after dark they came in behind Carson from a fruitless quest, their pay was ready for them as formerly, in gold and silver.

Major Langworthy imbibed an unusually large number of cocktails and long before noon of the following day had suggested that the ranch be put immediately under military law, hinting that a military-mustached gentleman be appointed commanding general of the Blue Lake forces, and forming within his own mind the picture of himself in the office, revolver on table, cocktail at elbow, directing the manoeuvres from this point of vantage, not to say safety. Mrs. Langworthy ruffled her feathers and sniffed when Judith's name was mentioned. It was perfectly clear to her that all the ruffians of the West would be quick to take the advantage arising from the ridiculous condition of a rowdy girl assuming men's pantaloons.

"I am rather inclined to think, mama," said Marcia, "that you don't do Judith justice."

Trevors, with little to say to any one, took his departure in the forenoon, extracting from Hampton the promise to ride over and see the lumber-camp some day soon.

Judith, held at the office by a lot of first-of-the-month details, did not get away until close to eleven o'clock that morning. Then she rode swiftly down the river, a purpose of her own in mind. At the store she stopped for a sympathetic word with Charlie Miller who had long ago forgotten his own hurt in his grief and anger that he had lost her thousand dollars for her.

"What's a thousand dollars, Charlie?" she laughed at him. "We'll lose and make many a thousand before the year dies."

Just below the Lower End settlement she came upon Doc Tripp. He was in one of the quarantine hog-corrals, his sleeves rolled up, a puzzled look of worry puckering his boyish face.

"What's up, Doc?" asked Judith.

"Don't know, Judy. That's what gets my mad up. Just performed an autopsy on one of your Poland-China gilts."

"Found it dead?" asked Judith.

"Killed it," grunted Tripp. "Sick. Half dozen more are off their feed and don't look right. A man's always afraid of the cholera. And," stubbornly, "I won't believe it! There's been no chance of infection; why, there's not an infected herd this side of the Bagley ranch, sixty miles the other side of Rocky Bend, a clean hundred miles from here. But, just the same, I'm taking temperatures this morning and having my herders cut out all the dull-looking ones and break the herds up."

"Not getting nerves? Are you, Doc?" And Judith spurred on down the valley.

Before she came to the spot where Bud Lee's horse had been shot she came upon Lee himself. A rifle across his arm, he was looking up at the cliffs of Squaw Creek cañon.

"Well, Lee," she said, "what do you make of it?"

He showed no surprise at seeing her and answered slowly, that far-away look in his eyes as though he were alone still and speaking simply to Bud Lee.

"Using smokeless powder nowadays is a handy thing for a man shooting under cover," he said. "Then rig up your gun with a silencer and get off at fair range, half a mile and up, with a telescope sight, and it's real nice fun picking folks off!"

"All of that spells preparation," suggested Judith.

He nodded. When he offered no further remark but sat staring up at the cliffs, Judith asked:

"What else have you learned by coming back down here? Anything?"

"There were two men, anyway. I'd guess, three. The one who stuck up Charlie and then drifted while the drifting was good. Then the two other jaspers that tried to wing me."

"How do you know that?"

"My horse that was shot," he explained, "got it in the left side of the neck. Now, look at that hole in the little fir-tree yonder."

Judith saw what he meant now. At this point Lee yesterday had heard the second bullet singing dangerously near. It had struck the fir, and plainly had been fired from some point off to the right of the cañon. Her eyes went swiftly, after his up the cliff walls.

"I doped it out while I was running," he went on. "Look at the way the trees grow here. If a man was on the cliffs shooting at me, and coming that close to winging me, why, he'd have to be off to the right. These big pines would shunt him off from the other side. It's open and shut there were two of them. And darn good shots," he added dryly.

Briefly he went on to give her the rest of the results of his two-hour seeking for something definite. If she'd ride on a little she'd come to the spot where his horse had been killed; she would see in the road the signs where, at Tripp's, orders, the carcass had been dragged away. From there, looking off to the left, up the cliffs, she would see the spot which Lee believed had harbored one of the riflemen. High above the cañon rose the rocky pinnacle he had marked yesterday, with brush standing tall in a little depression.

"Indian Head," broke in Judith, gazing upward. "Bud Lee, I'll bet a horse you're right. . . ."

"And," said Lee, swinging from the saddle, "I'm going up there to have a little look around."

In an instant the girl was at his side.

"I am going with you," she said simply.

He looked at her curiously. Then he shrugged his shoulders. An angry flush came to the girl's cheeks, but she went on with him. Not a word passed between them during the entire hour required to climb the steep side of the mountain and come under Indian Head cliffs. Here they stood together upon a narrow ledge panting, resting. Again Judith saw Lee glance at her curiously. He had not sought to accommodate his swift climbing to a girl's gait and yet he had not distanced her in the ascent. But in Lee's glance there was nothing of approval. There were two kinds of women, as he had said, and . . .

"Pretty steep climb from here up," he remarked bluntly.

"For a valley man or a cobble-pounder, maybe," was Judith's curt rejoinder.

Thereafter they did not speak again until, after nearly another hour, they at last came to the crest of Indian Head. And here, in the eagerness of their search, rewarded by the signs which they found, they forgot, both of them, to maintain their reserve.

In the clump of brush, close to the outer fringe, behind a low, broad boulder, a man had lain on his belly no longer ago than yesterday. Broken twigs showed it, a small bush crushed down told of it, the marks of his toes in some of the softer soil proclaimed it eloquently. And, had other signs been required, there they were: two empty brass cartridges where the automatic ejector had thrown them several feet away. Lee picked up one of the shells.

"Latest thing in an up-to-the-minute Savage," he told her. "That gun is good for twice the distance he used it for. I'm in tolerable luck to be mountain-climbing to-day, I guess!"

While Judith visualized just what had occurred, saw the tall man--he must have been tall for his boot toes to scratch the earth yonder while his rifle-barrel lay for support across the boulder in front--resting his gun and firing down into the cañon--Lee was back at her side, saying shortly:

"What do you think? There's a plain trail up here, old as the hills, but tip-top for speedy going."

"And," said Judith without looking up, "it runs down into the next saddle, to the north of that ridge, curves up again and with monuments all along the way, runs straight to the Upper End and comes down from the northeast to the lake."

Lee looked at her, wondering.

"You knew about it all the time, then?"

"If we hadn't been on our high horses," she told him quietly, "I should have told you about it. It's the old Indian Trail. If the man we want turned east, then he went right on to the lake before he stopped putting one foot in front of the other. Unless he hid out all night, which I don't believe."

"What makes you think he went that far?"

"There's no other trail up here that gets anywhere. If he left this one for a short cut he'd know, if he knows anything, that he'd have to take a chance every ten steps of breaking his neck in the dark. Now," and she rose swiftly, confronting him, "the thing for you to do, Bud Lee, is to get back to your horse, take the road, make time getting to the Upper End and see what you can see there!"

Hurrying back to their horses, they rode to the ranch-house where Judith, with no word of adieu, left Lee to go to the house. Lee made a late lunch, saddled another horse, and when the bunk-house clock stood at a quarter of four, started for the Upper End.

"That girl's got the savvy," was his one remark to himself.

X

UNDER FIRE

Blue Lake, while but three miles farther eastward, flashed its jewelled waters into the sun from a plane fully five hundred feet higher than the tall chimneys of the ranch-house. About it stood the most precipitous granite cliffs to be found hereabouts. They rose, sheer and majestic, still another five hundred feet, here and there eight hundred and a thousand. The lake, half a mile in diameter, circular like some polished mirror presented by an ancient giant to his lady-love, was shut in everywhere by these crags and cliffs save at the west, where the overflowing water, going to swell the turbulent river, poured like molten crystal through a wide gorge. The farther cliffs marked the eastern boundary-line of the ranch. Beyond them lay a small plateau rimmed about on three sides by still other steep precipices.

Lee, coming to the water's edge sought to guess where the old Indian Trail came down. And again, startling him for a second time, Judith rode up.

She, too, had a fresh horse; she too now carried a rifle across her arm. Bud Lee frowned.

"What makes you so certain, Bud Lee," was her abrupt word of greeting, "that Bayne Trevors is back of this deal?"

"When did I say that?" he countered.

"Yesterday, when I told you Charlie Miller had been held up, you intimated that a long-headed man had planned the whole thing. That means Trevors, doesn't it?"

"One of us," said Lee calmly, ignoring her question and looking her straight in the eyes, "is going back. Which one?"

"Neither!" she retorted promptly. She even smiled confidently at him. "For I won't. And you won't."

"Do you need to be told," he asked her coolly, "that this is no sort of job for a girl? You'd only be in the way."

"If you want glittering generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a bumptious boor!"

With that she spurred by him, taking the trail which led off to the right and so under the cliffs and to the mouth of a great, ragged chasm. In spite of him, Bud Lee grinned after her. And, seeing that she was not to be turned back, he followed.

They left their horses and followed the old footpath, made their way into the chasm deeper and deeper and little by little climbed upward. The climb was less difficult than it looked, and fifteen minutes brought them to the upland plateau and to the door of an old cabin, made of logs, set back in a tiny grove of cedars.

"I haven't been here for a year," cried the girl, forgetful of the constraint which had held them until now. "It's like getting back home for the first time! I love it."

"So do I," Lee said within himself.

"Look!" exclaimed Judith. "Some one has been repairing the old cabin! He's made a bench yonder under the big tree, too. And he has walled in the spring with rocks, and . . . Who in the world can it be? There's even a little garden of wild flowers!"

Bud Lee, for no reason clear to himself, flushed. He offered no explanation at first. Here he spent many an hour when the time was his for idling, lying on the grass, looking out over the immensity of the wilderness; here he came many a night to sleep under the stars, far from the other boys, when his soul craved solitude; here upon many a Sunday, when work was slack, did he come to smoke alone, loaf alone, read from the few books on the cabin's shelves.

"Maybe," he suggested at last, when it was clear that Judith was going straight to the door, "this is where our stick-up gents hang out. Choice place for a cutthroat to hibernate, huh?"

"I don't believe it," answered Judith positively. "The man who made his hermitage here has a soul!"

Behind her back Lee smiled.

"We've got something to do," he said hastily, "without wasting time poking into old shacks. Where's the Indian Trail you talked about?"

"Shack!" cried Judith indignantly. "You make me sick. Bud Lee! I'd rather own this cabin and live here, than have a palace on Fifth Avenue!"

She knocked at the door, knowing that silence would answer her, but hoping to have a man, calm-eyed, gentle-voiced, a romantic hermit in all of his picturesqueness, come to the door.

"Going in?" asked Lee in well-simulated carelessness.

"No," she told him freezingly. "Why should I? Would you want people poking about into your home just because it was in the heart of the wilderness and you weren't there to drive them out?"

"No," answered Bud gravely. "Now that you ask me, I wouldn't! Let's go find that trail."

"But," continued Judith, "not being a fool, and realizing that one of the men we want might possibly be in hiding in here, I am going to peek in."

"Not being a fool," he repeated after her, adding gently, "and being a girl, which means filled with curiosity."

A disdainful shoulder gave him his answer. The door was unlocked, after immemorial Western custom, and Judith opened it. Lee heard her little gasp of pure delight.

"He's a dear, the man who lives here!" she announced positively. "You can just tell by looking at his home."

Looking in over her shoulder, Bud Lee wondered just what in his one-room shanty had caught her enthusiasm. He was secretly pleased that it had done so, though that "it" was somewhat vague in his masculine mind. There was the rock fireplace with an iron hook protruding from each side for coffee-pot and stew-pot; a bunk with a blanket smoothed over cedar-boughs; a shelf with a dozen books; little else, so far as he could see or remember, to catch at Judith's delight. Yet she, looking through woman's eyes, read in one quick "peek" the character of the dweller in this abode. One who was content with little, who loved a clean, outdoor life, and who was tranquilly above the pettiness of humanity. Judith closed the door softly.

"I'd like to look inside his books!" she confessed. "But I won't."

The lean horse foreman chuckled. Judith sniffed at him.

"You haven't any curiosity about such things as books," she retorted. "To be sure, why should you have?"

Again, leaving the cabin, she went before him. Going straight across the plateau, she showed him where one could clamber up a steep way to the ridge. Once up there, it was but ten minutes until, in a hollow, they found the monument marking a trail, a stone set upon a boulder.

It was after five o'clock. When, following the trail back and forth in its winding along the side of the ridge, they found the signs they sought, it was fast growing dark. But there, in a narrow defile where loose soil had filtered down, were tracks left by a large boot. Lee went down on his hands and knees to study them in the dusk. He got up with a little grunt and moved down the trail. Again he found tracks, this time more clearly defined. So dark was it now that they had lighted several matches.

"Two men," he announced wonderingly. "Fresh tracks, too. Made this morning or last night, I'll bet. One coming east from Indian Head. The other coming west from the plateau behind us. Who's _he_? Where'd he come from?"

"He's the second of the two men who shot at you," said Judith quickly. "Don't I know every trail in this neck of the woods, Bud Lee? He followed another old, worn-out trail on the south side of the ranch. They met here just as I knew they would!"

"What for?" Lee frowned through the darkness at her eager face. "What would they want to get together for? If they had any sense they would scatter and clean out of the country."

"Unless," Judith reminded him, "they don't intend to clean out at all! Unless they mean to stick to the cliffs and try their hands again at their sort of game. They'll figure that we will expect them to be a long way from here by now, won't they? Then where would they be safer than right here in these mountains? Give me a rifle and something to eat and I'll defy an army getting me out there. And think of it: If this is Trevors's work, if he means business, think what two gunmen on these heights could do to us. They could pick off a three-thousand-dollar stallion down in the pens; they could drop more than one prize bull or cow; and," she added sharply, "if they thought about girls as some men think, they could take a chance on scaring Judith Sanford out of the country."

Lee stared at her a long time in silence.

"I wouldn't have said," he offered finally, "that Bayne Trevors would make quite so strong a play as that."

"You wouldn't! Then look him in the eye! And where's his risk, if he's picked the right men, if he sees them through, keeping the back door open when they want to run for it? You just gamble your boots, Bud Lee, that Bayne Trevors . . ."

Without warning, without a sound of explosion came a wiry whine into the still air, a little venomous ping, and a bullet sped by just over their heads. But, through the gloom, they both saw the flash of the gun as it spat fire and lead, and, as though one impulse commanded them, Judith's rifle and Bud Lee's went to their shoulders and two reverberating reports rang out in answer.

"Lie down, damn it!" cried Bud Lee to the girl at his side, as again there came the flash from the cliffs off to the right and as again he answered it with his rifle.

"Lie down yourself!" snapped Judith. And once more her rifle spoke with his.

For one instant, framed against the darkening sky along the cliff edge five hundred yards away to the right, they saw the silhouette of a man, leaping from one boulder to another, a man who looked gigantically big in the uncertain light. They fired; he jumped again and passed out of sight.

"Got his nerve," grunted Lee as he pumped lead at the running figure.

As an answer there came the third flash, the bullet striking the trail in front of them. And then the fourth flash, from a point a hundred yards to the left of the other.

"That's Number Two," muttered Lee. "They've got us in the open, Judith. Let's beat it back to the cabin."

"I'm with you," said Judith, between shots. "It's just foolishness" . . . _bang_! . . . "sticking out here" . . . _bang_! . . . "for them to pop us off." _Bang_! _Bang_!

They ran then, Bud slipping in front of her, his tall body looming darkly between her and the cliffs whence the shots came. He slid along the sharp slope to the plateau, putting out his arms toward her. And as she came down, Bud Lee grunted and cursed under his breath. For there had been another flash out of the thickening night, this one from the refuge toward which they were running. A third man was shooting from the shelter of the cabin walls. And Lee had felt a stinging pain as though a hot iron had scorched its way along the side of his leg.

"Hurt much?" asked Judith quickly. Without waiting for an answer, she pumped two shots at the flash by the cabin.

"No," grunted Lee. "Just scared. And now what? I want to know."

XI

IN THE OLD CABIN

Bud Lee, in the thicker darkness lying along the edge of the plateau, sat with his back against the rocks while he gave swift first aid to his wound. He brought into requisition the knotted handkerchief from about his throat, bound it tightly around the calf of his leg, and said lightly to Judith:

"Just a fool scratch, you know. But I've no hankering to dribble out a lot of blood from it."

Judith made no answer. Lee took up his rifle and turned to the spot where she had been standing a moment ago. She was not there.

"Gone!" he grunted, frowning into the blackness hemming him in. "Now, what do you suppose she's up to? Fainted, most likely."

He got up and moved along the low rock wall, seeking her. A spurt of flame from the east corner of the cabin drew his eyes away from his search and he pumped three quick shots in answer.

"Little chance of hitting anything," he muttered. "Too blamed dark. Just fool's luck that I got mine in the leg."

Again he sought Judith, calling softly. There was no answer. Once more came the spurt of flame from the shelter of the cabin wall. Then fifty yards off to Lee's right, some fifty yards nearer the cabin, another shot.

The first suspicion that one of the men from the cliffs had made his way down to join issue at close quarters, was gone in a clear understanding. That was the bark of Judith's rifle; she had slipped away from him without an instant's delay and was creeping closer and closer to the cabin.

"Damn the girl!" cried Lee angrily. "She'll get her fool self killed!"

But as he ran forward to join her, he realized that she was doing the right thing--the only thing if they did not want to lie out here all night for the men on the cliffs to pick off in the morning light. He knew that she could shoot; it seemed that she could do everything that was a man's work and which a woman should know nothing about.

A fresh thought locked his hand like steel about his gun-stock. Suppose that Judith, in the mad thing she was attempting, should actually succeed in it, that she should bring down the man she was attacking? How would Bud Lee feel about it when the boys came to know? What would Bud Lee answer when they asked what he was doing about that time? "Nursin' a scratched leg? Mos' likely! Huh!" He could hear old Carson's dry cackle.

Frowning into the night, he thought that he could make out the dim blur of Judith's form. The girl was standing erect; shooting, too, for again the duel of red spurts of flame told where she and her quarry stood.

Meantime Lee ran on, changing his original purpose, swerving out from where Judith was moving forward, turning to the left, hopeful to come to close quarters with their assailant before she could go down under that sharp rifle-fire or could bring down the other. For certainly, if she kept on that way, the time would come when some one would stop hot lead.

Lee shifted his rifle to his left hand, taking his revolver into his right. From the cliffs came a shot and he grunted at it contemptuously. It could do nothing but assure those below that there was still some one up there.

"Three of them to our two," he estimated, "counting the two jaspers on the cliff. Two of us to their one, counting what's down here. And that's all that counts right this minute."

A shot from Judith; a shot from the cabin; two shots from the cliffs. The two shots from above brought fresh news; not only were they closer together, but they indicated the men up yonder were coming down. Lee hurried.

Then, at last, his narrowed eyes made out the faint outline of that which he sought. Close to the cabin, low down, evidently upon his knees, was the most important factor to be considered, now. Still Lee was too far away to be certain of a hit and he meant with all of the grim determination in him to hit something at last. He ran on drawing the fire away from Judith. A rifle-ball sang close to his side, another and an other. He lost the dim shape of the kneeling man, who, he thought, had risen from his knees and was standing, his body tight-pressed to the cabin.

"Why the devil doesn't he run for it?" wondered Lee.

But evidently, be the reason what it might, the man had no intention of running. A bullet cut through Lee's sleeve. At last Lee answered. He ran in closer as he fired and, running, emptied his revolver, jammed it into his waistband, clubbed his rifle . . . and realized with something of a shock that there were but the two rifles on the cliffs to take into consideration. That other rifle, at the cabin, was still. Out of ammunition? Or plugged? Or playing 'possum? Which?

"Stop shooting!" he shouted to Judith.

"I'm coming!" she cried back to him.

Almost at the same instant, their two rifles ready, they came to the cabin. Between them on the ground a man lay at the corner, moving helplessly, groping for his fallen gun, falling back.

"Open the door," said Bud. "I'll get him inside and we'll see who he is. Hurry, Judith; those other jaspers are working down this way as fast as they know how."

Judith, taking time to snatch up the fallen rifle, ran around to the door. Lee slipped his hands under the armpits of the wounded man and dragged him in Judith's wake. In the cabin, the door shut, Lee struck a match and went to a little shelf where there was a candle.

"Bill Crowdy!" gasped Judith.

Almost before Lee saw the man's face he saw the canvas bag tied to his belt, a bag identical with the one he himself had brought from the bank at Rocky Bend.

"The man that stuck up Charlie Miller," he said slowly. "And there's your thousand bucks, or I'm a liar. I get something of their play now: those two fellows up there were waiting to meet him and split the swag three ways. And I've got the guess they'll be asking a look-in yet!"

He dropped a heavy bar into its place across the door and then went to the two small windows and fastened the heavy oaken shutters. When he came back to Judith she was bending over the wounded man. Crowdy's eyes were closed; he looked to be on the verge of death. The girl's face was almost as white as Crowdy's.

Lee knelt and with quick fingers sought the wound. There was a hole in Crowdy's chest, high up near the throat, that was bleeding profusely. At first that seemed the only wound. But in a second Lee had found another. This was in the leg, and this, like Lee's, was bound tightly with a handkerchief.