It was well along toward midnight of the same day when two horsemen, after having ridden circumspectly around the outbuildings and corrals, dismounted from their horses at some little distance from the door of the Calabasas Inn. They shook out their legs as men do after a long turn in the saddle and faced each other in a whispered colloquy. An overcast sky, darkening the night, concealed the alkali crusting the riders and their horses; but the hard breathing of the latter in the darkness told of a pace forced for some hours.

“Find your feet before you go in, Pardaloe,” suggested the heavier of the two men guardedly to the taller one.

“Does this man know you?” muttered the man addressed as Pardaloe, stamping in the soft dust and shifting slightly a gun harness on his breast.

“Pedro knows me,” returned Lefever, the other man, “but McAlpin says there is a new man here, a half-wit. They all belong to the same gang––coiners, I believe, every one of them. They work here and push in Texas.”

“Can you spot the room when you get up-stairs, where we saw that streak of light a minute ago?” demanded Pardaloe, gazing at the black front of the building.

“I can spot every foot of the place, up-stairs and down, in the dark,” declared Lefever, peering through the inky night at the ruinous pile.

Instead of meeting de Spain, as appointed, Lefever had come in from the Thief River stage with Scott three hours late only to learn of the fight at the Inn and de Spain’s disappearance. Jeffries had already sent a party, of whom Pardaloe, a man of Farrell Kennedy’s from Medicine Bend, had been picked up as one, down from Sleepy Cat, to look for the missing man, and for hours the search had gone forward.

“Suppose you go back to the barn,” suggested Pardaloe, “and wait there while I go in and have a little talk with the landlord.”

“Why, yes, Pardaloe. That’s an idea,” assented Lefever feebly. Then he laid the first two fingers of his fat right hand on the lapel of his companion’s coat: “Where should you like your body sent?” he asked in feigned confidence. “Concerning these little details, it’s just as well to know your wishes now.”

“You don’t suppose this boob will try to fight, do you, when he knows Jeffries will burn the 139 shack over his head if another railroad man is attacked in it?” demanded Pardaloe.

“The most ruinous habit I have had in life––and first and last I have contracted many––has been, trusting other people,” observed Lefever. “A man shouldn’t trust anybody––not even himself. We can burn the boob’s shack down––of course: but if you go in there alone the ensuing blaze would be of no particular interest to you.”

“All right. We go in together.”

“Not exactly that, either. You go first. Few of these forty-four bullets will go through two men at once.”

Ignoring Lefever’s pleasantry, Pardaloe, pulling his hat brim through force of habit well over his eyes, shook himself loose and, like a big cat walking in water, stepped toward the door. He could move his tall, bony frame, seemingly covered only with muscles and sinews, so silently that in the dark he made no more sound than a spectre. But once before the door, with Lefever close at hand, he pounded the cracked panels till the windows shook. Some time elapsed before there was any response. The pounding continued till a flickering light appeared at a window. There was an ill-natured colloquy, a delay, more impatience, and at length the landlord reluctantly opened the door.

He held in his hand an oil-lamp. The chimney had been smoked in such a way that the light of the flame was thrown forward and not back. Lefever in the background, nothing disturbed, threw a flash-light back at the half-dressed innkeeper. His hair was tumbled sleepily across his forehead and his eyes––one showing a white scar across the pupil––set deep in retreating orbits, blinked under heavy brows. “What do you want?” he demanded. Pardaloe, without answering, pushed through the half-open door into the room.

“We’re staying here to-night,” announced Pardaloe, as simply as possible. Lefever had already edged into the doorway, pushing the stubborn innkeeper aside by sheer bulk of weight and size.

The sleepy man gave ground stubbornly. “I’ve got no beds,” he growled surlily. “You can’t stay here.”

Lefever at once assumed the case for the intruders. “I could sleep this minute standing on my head,” he declared. “And as for staying here, I can’t stay anywhere else. What’s your name, son?” he demanded, buttonholing in his off-hand way the protesting man.

“My name is Philippi,” answered the one-eyed defiantly.

“Regards to Brutus, my dear fellow,” retorted 141 Lefever, seizing the man’s hand as if happily surprised.

“You can’t crowd in here, so you might as well move on,” declared Philippi gruffly. “This is no hotel.”

Lefever laughed. “No offense, Philippi, but would it be indiscreet to ask which side of your face hurts the most when you smile?”

“If you’ve got no beds, we won’t bother you long,” interposed Pardaloe.

“I’d like a pitcher of ice-water, anyway,” persisted Lefever. “Sit down, noble Greek; we’ll talk this over.”

“Who are you fellows?” demanded Philippi, looking from one to the other.

“I am a prospector from the Purgatoire,” answered Pardaloe.

Philippi turned his keen eye on Lefever. “You a railroad man?”

“No, sir,” declared Lefever, dusting the alkali vigorously from his coat sleeve.

“What are you?”

John looked as modest as it was possible for him to look. “Few people ask me that, but in matter of fact I am an objet d’art.”

“What’s that?”

“Different things at different times to different men, Philippi,” answered Lefever simply, exploring, 142 while he spoke, different corners of the room with his flash-light. “At this moment––” he stopped suddenly, then resumed reassuringly––“I want a drink.”

“Nothing doing,” muttered the landlord sulkily.

Lefever’s flash-light focussed on a United States license hanging back of the bar. “Is that a mere frame-up, Philippi?” he demanded, walking significantly toward the vender’s authority.

“Nothing in the house to-night.”

“Then,” announced Lefever calmly, “I arrest you.”

Philippi started. “Arrest me?”

“For obtaining a thirst under false pretenses. Come, now, before we slip the irons on, get us something to eat. I’ll go up-stairs and pick out a room to sleep in.”

“I tell you,” insisted Philippi profanely, “there are no rooms for you to sleep in up-stairs.”

“And I,” retorted Lefever, “tell you there are. Anyway, I left a sewing-machine up-stairs here three years ago, and promised to keep it oiled for the lady. This is a good time to begin.”

With Lefever making the old steps creak, ahead, and Pardaloe, with his long, soft, pigeon-toed tread close behind, the unwilling landlord was taken up the stairs, and the two men thoroughly searched the house. Lefever lowered his 143 voice when the hunt began through the bedrooms––few of which contained even a bed––but he kept up a running fire of talk that gave Philippi no respite from anxiety.

Outside the kitchen quarters, which likewise were rigorously searched, not a soul could be found in the house. One room only, over the kitchen, gave hope of uncovering something. The party reached the door of this room through a narrow, tortuous passageway along an attic gable. The door was locked. Philippi told them it belonged to a sheep-herder who did not use it often. He protested he had no key. Pardaloe knocked and, getting no response, tried unsuccessfully to force the lock. Lefever motioned him aside and, after knocking loudly on the door himself, laid his shoulder against it. The door creaked and sprung in crazy protest. The panels cracked, the stubborn frame gave, and with a violent crash Lefever pushed completely through the locked barrier and threw his flash-light inside. Pardaloe, urging the unwilling Philippi ahead, followed.

The room, unfinished under the rafters, was destitute of furnishings, and bore traces of long disuse. Stretched on the floor toward the middle of it, and side by side, lay two men. One of them was very large, the other not more than half his 144 companion’s size. Lefever kneeling over the man nearest the door listened for signs of breathing, and laid his head to the man’s heart. Having completed his examination, he went around to the other––Pardaloe and Philippi silently watching––and looked him over with equal care. When he had done, he examined, superficially, the wounds of each man. Rising, he turned toward Philippi. “Were these men dead when you brought them up here?”

“I didn’t bring ’em up,” growled Philippi.

“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 Sassoon?”

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

“Where were they hit?”

“Morgan was hit in the shoulder, as far as I heard. Sassoon was hit 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?”

“Sassoon said he was hit in the head.”

“Yet he got away on horseback!”

“I’m telling you what Sassoon 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 nobody saw hide nor hair of him, so far 146 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 hit––and everybody claims he was hit. 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 hit, 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 dÉtour across easy-riding country 147 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 shells 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 Sassoon’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 148 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 Sassoon’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 149 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 150 accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, 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, Sassoon’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 Sassoon’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 151 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 hit. I grant it,” he concluded. “But I knew him once when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a 152 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.