Nan of Music Mountain Part 13

"You know them, Pardaloe?" asked Lefever. Pardaloe answered that he did. Lefever turned sharply on Philippi. "Where were you when this fight was going on?"

"Down at the stage barn."

"Getting your alibi ready. But, of course, you know that won't let you out, Philippi. Your best chance is to tell the truth. There were two others with this pair--where are Gale Morgan and Sa.s.soon?"

"Satt Morgan was here with hay to-day. He took them over this evening to Music Mountain."

"Where were they hit?"

"Morgan was. .h.i.t in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sa.s.soon was. .h.i.t in the side, and in the neck."

"Where is de Spain?"

"Dead, I reckon, by this time."

"Where's his body?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you think he is dead?"

"Sa.s.soon said he was. .h.i.t in the head."

"Yet he got away on horseback!"

"I'm telling you what Sa.s.soon said; I didn't see him."

Lefever and Pardaloe rode back to the stage barn. "Certainly looks blue for Henry," muttered Lefever, after he had gone over with Pardaloe and McAlpin all of the scant information that could be gathered. "Bob Scott," he added gloomily, "may find him somewhere on the Sinks."

At Sleepy Cat, Jeffries, wild with impatience, was on the telephone.

Lefever, with McAlpin and Pardaloe standing at his side, reported to the superintendent all he could learn. "He rode away--without help, of course," explained Lefever to Jeffries in conclusion. "What shape he is in, it's pretty hard to say, Jeffries. Three more of the bunch, Vance Morgan, Bull Page, and a lame man that works for Bill Morgan, were waiting in the saddle at the head of the draw between the barn and the hotel for him if he should get away from the inn. Somehow, he went the other way and n.o.body saw hide nor hair of him, so far as I can learn. If he was able to make it, Jeff, he would naturally try for Sleepy Cat. But that's a pretty fair ride for a sound man, let alone a man that's. .h.i.t--and everybody claims he was. .h.i.t. If he wasn't hit he should have been in Sleepy Cat long before this. You say you've had men out across the river?"

"Since dark," responded Jeffries. "But, John," he asked, "could a man hit in the way de Spain was. .h.i.t, climb into a saddle and make a get-away?"

"Henry might," answered Lefever laconically.

Scott, with two men who had been helping him, rode in at two o'clock after a fruitless search to wait for light. At daybreak they picked up the trail. Studying carefully the room in which the fight had taken place, they followed de Spain's jump through the broken sash into the patio. Blood that had been roughly cleaned up marked the spot where he had mounted the horse and dashed through an open corral gate down the south trail toward Music Mountain. There was speculation as to why he should have chosen a route leading directly into the enemy's country, but there was no gainsaying the trail--occasional flecks of blood blazed the direction of the fleeing hoofs. These led--not as the trailers hoped they would, in a wide detour across easy-riding country toward the north and the Sleepy Cat stage road--but farther and farther south and west into extremely rough country, a no man's land, where there was no forage, no water, and no habitation. Not this alone disquieted his pursuers; the trail as they pursued it showed the unsteady riding of a man badly wounded.

Lefever, walking his horse along the side of a ridge, shook his head as he leaned over the pony's shoulder. Pardaloe and Scott rode abreast of him. "It would take some hit, Bob, to bring de Spain to this kind of riding."

Beyond the ridge they found where he had dismounted for the first time. Here Scott picked up five empty sh.e.l.ls ejected from de Spain's revolver. They saw more than trace enough of how he had tried to stanch the persistent flow from his wounds. He seemed to have worked a long time with these and with some success, for his trail thereafter was less marked by blood. It was, however, increasingly unsteady, and after a time it reached a condition that led Scott to declare de Spain was no longer guiding Sa.s.soon's pony; it was wandering at will.

Confirmation, if it were needed, of the declaration could soon be read in the trail by all of them. The horse, unrestrained by its rider, had come almost completely about and headed again for Music Mountain.

Within a few miles of the snow-covered peak the hoof-prints ran directly into the road from Calabasas to Morgan's Gap and were practically lost in the dust of the wagon road.

"Here's a go," muttered Pardaloe at fault, after riding back and forth for a mile in an effort to pick the horse up again.

"Remember," interposed Scott mildly, "he is riding Sa.s.soon's horse--the brute is naturally heading for home."

"Follow him home, then," said Lefever unhesitatingly.

Scott looked at his companion in surprise: "Near home, you mean, John," he suggested inoffensively. "For three of us to ride into the Gap this morning would be some excitement for the Morgans. I don't think the excitement would last long--for us."

The three were agreed, however, to follow up to the mouth of the Gap itself and did follow. Finding no trace of de Spain's movements in this quest, they rode separately in wide circles to the north and south, but without picking up a hoof-print that led anywhere or gave them any clew to the whereabouts of the missing man.

"There is one consolation," muttered Lefever, as they held to what each felt to be an almost hopeless search. "As long as Henry can stick to a saddle he can shoot--and the Morgans after yesterday afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find him."

Scott shook his head: "That brings us up against another proposition, John. De Spain hasn't got any cartridges."

Lefever turned sharply: "What do you mean?"

"His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat."

"Why didn't you tell me that before," demanded Lefever indignantly.

"I've been hoping all the time we'd find Henry and I wouldn't have to tell you."

In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scott's information was disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.

For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sa.s.soon, badly wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information halted.

Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgan's stable, Sa.s.soon's horse--the one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight, waiting at Sa.s.soon's corral to be cared for. There could be, it was fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing rider.

Though Scott had known first of de Spain's helpless condition in his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the midst of a gloomy council at Jeffries's office, he was pressed for an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But, Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation of the faith that was in him. "In the first place," he said, "I've ridden a good deal with that man--pretty much all over the country north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nut's full of meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself.

Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here, they don't. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk that's floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a mark here one day in Sleepy Cat."

Jeffries didn't interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.

"You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot into it, and expect to live to tell it," continued Scott mildly, "as to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man, without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at that, John, the man that fires the gun," murmured the scout, "ought to be behind a tree.

"You say he is. .h.i.t. I grant it," he concluded. "But I knew him once when he was. .h.i.t to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a scrimmage outside Williams Cache two years ago."

"You don't believe, then, he's dead, Bob?" demanded Jeffries impatiently.

"Not till I see him dead," persisted Scott unmoved.

CHAPTER XII

ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN

De Spain, when he climbed into Sa.s.soon's saddle, was losing sight and consciousness. He knew he could no longer defend himself, and was so faint that only the determination of putting distance between him and any pursuers held him to the horse after he spurred away. With the instinct of the hunted, he fumbled with his right hand for his means of defense, and was relieved to find his revolver, after his panicky dash for safety, safe in its place. He put his hand to his belt for fresh cartridges. The belt was gone.

The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his waistband his useless revolver. One hope remained--flight, and he spurred his horse cruelly.

Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite beyond his power to compa.s.s. He made little effort to guide, and his infuriated horse flew along as if winged.