Brand Blotters Part 45

"It's going to be a good deal of a guess to find our way out of the Cache," Jack explained. "Even in the daytime it would take a 'Pache, but at night--well, here's hoping the luck's good."

They found it not so good as they had hoped. For hours they wandered in mesquit, dragged themselves through cactus, crossed washes, and climbed hills.

"This will never do. We'd better give it up till daylight. We're not getting anywhere," the sheriff suggested.

They did as he advised. As soon as a faint gray sifted into the sky they were on the move again. But whichever way they climbed it was always to come up against steep cliffs too precipitous to be scaled.

The ranger officer pointed to a notch beyond a cowbacked hill. "I wouldn't be sure, but it looks like that was the way they brought me into the Cache. I could tell if I were up there. What's the matter with my going ahead and settling the thing? If I'm right I'll come back and let you know."

Jack looked at West. The railroad man was tired and drawn. He was not used to galloping over the hills all night.

"All right. We'll be here when you come back," Flatray said, and flung himself on the ground.

West followed his example.

It must have been half an hour later that Flatray heard a twig snap under an approaching foot. He had been scanning the valley with his gla.s.ses, having given West instructions to keep a lookout in the rear. He swung his head round sharply, and with it his rifle.

"You're covered, you fool," cried the man who was strutting toward them.

"Stop there. Not another step," Flatray called sharply.

The man stopped, his rifle half raised. "We've got you on every side, man." He lifted his voice. "Jeff--Hank--Steve! Let him know you're alive."

Three guns cracked and kicked up the dust close to the sheriff.

"What do you want with us?" Flatray asked, sparring for time.

"Drop your gun. If you don't we'll riddle you both."

West spoke to Jack promptly. "Do as he says. It's MacQueen."

Flatray hesitated. He could kill MacQueen probably, but almost certainly he and West would pay the penalty. He reluctantly put his rifle down. "All right. It's your call."

"Where's O'Connor?"

The sheriff looked straight at him. "Haven't you enough of us for one gather?"

The outlaws were closing in on them cautiously.

"Not without that smart man hunter. Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"The devil you don't."

"We separated early this morning--thought it would give us a better chance for a getaway." Jack gave a sudden exclamation of surprise. "So it was Black MacQueen himself who posed as O'Connor down at Mesa."

"Guessed it right, my friend. And I'll tell you one thing: you've made the mistake of your life b.u.t.ting into Dead Man's Cache. Your missing friend O'Connor was due to hand in his checks to-day. Since you've taken his place it will be you that crosses the divide, Mr. Sheriff. You'd better tell where he is, for if we don't get Mr. Bucky it will be G.o.d help J.

Flatray."

The dapper little villain exuded a smug, complacent cruelty. It was no use for the sheriff to remind himself that such things weren't done nowadays, that the times of Geronimo and the Apache Kid were past forever. Black MacQueen would go the limit in deviltry if he set his mind to it.

Yet Flatray answered easily, without any perceptible hesitation: "I reckon I'll play my hand and let Bucky play his."

"Suits me if it does you. Jeff, collect that hardware. Now, while you boys beat up the hills for O'Connor, I'll trail back to camp with these two all-night picnickers."

CHAPTER IX

A BARGAIN

Melissy saw the two prisoners brought in, though she could not tell at that distance who they were. Her watch told her that it was four-thirty.

She had slept scarcely at all during the night, but now she lay down on the bed in her clothes.

The next she knew, Rosario was calling her to get up for breakfast. The girl dressed and followed Rosario to the adjoining cabin. MacQueen was not there, and Melissy ate alone. She was given to understand that she might walk up and down in front of the houses for a few minutes after breakfast.

Naturally she made the most of the little liberty allowed her.

The old squaw Sit-in-the-Sun squatted in front of the last hut, her back against the log wall. The man called Buck sat yawning on a rock a few yards away. What struck Melissy as strange was that the squaw was figuring on the back of an old envelope with the stub of a lead pencil.

The young woman walked leisurely past the cabin for perhaps a dozen yards.

"That'll be about far enough. You don't want to tire yourself, Miss Lee,"

Buck Lane called, with a grin.

Melissy stopped, stood looking at the mountains for a few minutes, and turned back. Sit-in-the-Sun looked quickly at her, and at the same moment she tore the paper in two and her fingers opened to release one piece of the envelope upon which she had been writing. A puff of wind carried it almost directly in front of the girl. Lane was still yawning sleepily, his gaze directed toward the spot where he presently expected Rosario to step out and call him to breakfast. Melissy dropped her handkerchief, stooped to pick it up, and gathered at the same time in a crumpled heap into her hand the fragment of an envelope. Without another glance at the squaw, the young woman kept on her way, sauntered to the porch, and lingered there as if in doubt.

"I'm tired," she announced to Rosario, and turned to her rooms.

"_Si, senorita,_" answered her attendant quietly.

Once inside, Melissy lay down on her bed, with her back to the window, and smoothed out the torn envelope. On one side were some disjointed memoranda which she did not understand.

K. C. & T. 93 D. & R. B. 87 Float $10,000,000 Cortes for extension.

That was all, but certainly a strange puzzle for a Navajo squaw to set her.

She turned the paper over, to find the other side close-packed with writing.

Miss Lee:

In the last cabin but one is a prisoner, your friend Sheriff Flatray.

He is to be shot in an hour. I have offered any sum for his life and been refused. For G.o.d's sake save him somehow.

Simon West.

Jack Flatray here, and about to be murdered! The thing was incredible. And yet--and yet---- Was it so impossible, after all? Some one had broken into the Cache and released the prisoners. Who more likely than Jack to have done this? And later they had captured him and condemned him for what he had done.