Few men bear suspense well; de Spain took his turn at it very hard. For the first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a type whose defiance he despised––whose lawlessness he ordinarily warred on without compunction––but himself without the freedom that had always been his to act. Every impulse to take the bit in his teeth was met with the same insurmountable obstacle––Nan’s feelings––and the unpleasant possibility that might involve him in bloodshed with her kinspeople.

“Patience.” He repeated the word to himself a thousand times to deaden his suspense and apprehension. Business affairs took much of his time, but Nan’s situation took most of his thought. For the first time he told John Lefever the story of Nan’s finding him on Music Mountain, of her aid in his escape, and the sequel of their friendship. Lefever gave it to Bob Scott in Jeffries’s office.

“What did I tell you, John?” demanded Bob mildly.

“No matter what you told me,” retorted Lefever. “The question is: What’s he to do to get Nan away from there without shooting up the Morgans?”

De Spain had gone that morning to Medicine Bend. He got back late and, after a supper at the Mountain House, went directly to his room.

The telephone-bell was ringing when he unlocked and threw open his door. Entering the room, he turned on a light, closed the door behind him, and sat down to answer the call.

“Is this Henry de Spain?” came a voice, slowly pronouncing the words over the wire.

“Yes.”

“I have a message for you.”

“What is it?”

“From Music Mountain.”

“Go ahead.”

“The message is like this: ‘Take me away from here as soon as you can.’”

“Whom is that message from?”

“I can’t call any names.”

“Who are you?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. Good-by.”

“Hold on. Where are you talking from?”

“About a block from your office.”

“Do you think it a fair way to treat a man to–––”

“I have to be fair to myself.”

“Give me the message again.”

“‘Take me away from here as soon as you can.’”

“Where does it come from?”

“Music Mountain.”

“If you’re treating me fair––and I believe you mean to––come over to my room a minute.”

“No.”

“Let me come to where you are?”

“No.”

“Let me wait for you––anywhere?”

“No.”

“Do you know me?”

“By sight.”

“How did you know I was in town to-night?”

“I saw you get off the train.”

“You were looking for me, then?”

“To deliver my message.”

“Do you think that message means what it says?”

“I know it does.”

“Do you know what it means for me to undertake?”

“I have a pretty stiff idea.”

“Did you get it direct from the party who sent it?”

“I can’t talk all night. Take it or leave it just where it is.”

De Spain heard him close. He closed his own instrument and began feverishly signalling central. “This is 101. Henry de Spain talking,” he said briskly. “You just called me. Ten dollars for you, operator, if you can locate that call, quick!”

There was a moment of delay at the central office, then the answer: “It came from 234––Tenison’s saloon.”

“Give me your name, operator. Good. Now give me 22 as quick as the Lord will let you, and ring the neck off the bell.”

Lefever answered the call on number 22. The talk was quick and sharp. Messengers were instantly pressed into service from the despatcher’s office. Telephone wires hummed, and every man available on the special agent’s force was brought into action. Livery-stables were covered, the public resorts were put under observation, horsemen clattered up and down the street. Within an incredibly short time the town was rounded up, every outgoing trail watched, and search was under way for any one from Morgan’s Gap, and especially for the sender of the telephone message.

De Spain, after instructing Lefever, hastened 316 to Tenison’s. His rapid questioning of the few habituÉs of the place and the bartender elicited only the information that a man had used the telephone booth within a few minutes. Nobody knew him or, if they did know him, refused to describe him in any but vague terms. He had come in by the front door and slipped out probably by the rear door––at all events, unnoticed by those questioned. By a series of eliminating inquiries, de Spain made out only that the man was not a Morgan. Outside, Bob Scott in the saddle waited with a led horse. The two men rode straight and hard for the river bridge. They roused an old hunter who lived in a near-by hut, on the town side, and asked whether any horseman had crossed the bridge. The hunter admitted gruffly that he had heard a horse’s hoof recently on the bridge. Within how long? The hunter, after taking a full precious minute to decide, said thirty minutes; moreover, he insisted that the horseman he had heard had ridden into town, and not out.

Sceptical of the correctness of the information, Scott and de Spain clattered out on the Sinks. Their horseflesh was good and they felt they could overtake any man not suspecting pursuit. The sky was overcast, and speed was their only resource. After two miles of riding, the pursuers reined up on a ridge, and Scott, springing from the 317 saddle, listened for sounds. He rose from the ground, declaring he could hear the strides of a running horse. Again the two dashed ahead.

The chase was bootless. Whoever rode before them easily eluded pursuit. The next time the scout dropped from his saddle to listen, not the faintest sound rewarded his attention. De Spain was impatient. “He could easily slip us,” Scott explained, “by leaving the trail for a minute while we rode past––if he knows his business––and I guess he does.”

“If the old man was right, that man could have ridden in town and out, too, within half to three-quarters of an hour,” said de Spain. “But how could he have got out without being heard?”

“Maybe,” suggested Scott, “he forded the river.”

“Could he do it?”

“It’s a man’s job,” returned Scott, reflecting, “but it could be done.”

“If a man thought it necessary.”

“If he knew you by sight,” responded Scott unmoved, “he might have thought it necessary.”

Undeterred by his failure to overtake the fugitive, de Spain rode rapidly back to town to look for other clews. Nothing further was found to throw light on the message or messenger. No one had been found anywhere in town from Morgan’s 318 Gap; whoever had taken a chance in delivering the message had escaped undetected.

Even after the search had been abandoned the significance of the incident remained to be weighed. De Spain was much upset. A conference with Scott, whose judgment in any affair was marked by good sense, and with Lefever, who, like a woman, reached by intuition a conclusion at which Scott or de Spain arrived by process of thought, only revealed the fact that all three, as Lefever confessed, were nonplussed.

“It’s one of two things,” declared Lefever, whose eyes were never dulled by late hours. “Either they’ve sent this to lure you into the Gap and ‘get’ you, or else––and that’s a great big ‘or else’––she needs you. Henry, did that message––I mean the way it was worded––sound like Nan Morgan?”

De Spain could hardly answer. “It did, and it didn’t,” he said finally. “But––” his companions saw during the pause by which his lips expressed the resolve he had finally reached that he was not likely to be turned from it––“I am going to act just as if the word came from Nan and she does need me.”

More than one scheme for getting quickly into touch with Nan was proposed and rejected within the next ten minutes. And when Lefever, after 319 conferring with Scott, put up to de Spain a proposal that the three should ride into the Gap together and demand Nan at the hands of Duke Morgan, de Spain had reached another conclusion.

“I know you are willing to take more than your share, John, of any game I play. In the first place it isn’t right to take you and Bob in where I am going on my own personal affair. And I know Nan wouldn’t enjoy the prospect of an all-around fight on her account. Fighting is a horror to that girl. I’ve got her feelings to think about as well as my own. I’ve decided what to do, John. I’m going in alone.”

“You’re going in alone!”

“To-night. Now, I’ll tell you what I’d like you to do if you want to: ride with me and wait till morning, outside El Capitan. If you don’t hear from me by ten o’clock, ride back to Calabasas and notify Jeffries to look for a new manager.”

“On the contrary, if we don’t hear from you by ten o’clock, Henry, we will blaze our way in and drag out your body.” Lefever put up his hand to cut off any rejoinder. “Don’t discuss it. What happens after ten o’clock to-morrow morning, if we don’t hear from you before that, can’t possibly be of any interest to you or make any 320 difference.” He paused, but de Spain saw that he was not done. When he resumed, he spoke in a tone different from that which de Spain usually associated with him. “Henry, when I was a youngster and going to Sunday-school, my old Aunt Lou often told me a story about a pitcher that used to go to the well. And she told me it went many, many times, safe and sound; but my Aunt Lou told me, further, the pitcher got so used to going to the well safe and sound that it finally went once too many times, just once too often, and got smashed all to hell. Aunt Lou didn’t say it exactly in that way––but such was the substance of the moral.

“You’ve pulled a good many tough games in this country, Henry. No man knows better than I that you never pulled one for the looks of the thing or to make people talk––or that you ever took a chance you didn’t feel you had to take. But, it isn’t humanly possible you can keep this up for all time; it can’t go on forever. The pitcher goes to the well once too often, Henry; there comes a time when it doesn’t come back.

“Understand––I’m not saying this to attempt to dissuade you from the worst job you ever started in on. I know your mind is made up. You won’t listen to me; you won’t listen to Scott; and I’m too good an Indian not to know where I 321 get off, or not to do what I’m told. But this is what I have been thinking of a long, long time; and this is what I feel I ought to say, here and now.”

The two men were sitting in de Spain’s room. De Spain was staring through the broad south window at the white-capped peaks of the distant range. He was silent for a time. “I believe you’re right, John,” he said after a while. “I know you are. In this case I am tied up more than I’ve ever been tied before; but I’ve got to see it through as best I can, and take what comes without whining. My mind is made up and, strange as it may sound to you, I feel that I am coming back. Not but what I know it’s due me, John. Not but what I expect to get it sometime. And maybe I’m wrong now; but I don’t feel as if it’s coming till I’ve given all the protection to that girl that a man can give to a woman.”