It was a forbidding night. Moisture-laden clouds, drifting over the Superstition Range, emptied their fulness against the face of the mountains in a downpour and buried the Gap in impenetrable darkness. De Spain, catching Nan’s arm, spoke hurriedly, and they hastened outside toward the kitchen. “We must get away quick,” he said as she buttoned her coat. And, knowing how she suffered in what she was doing, he drew her into the shelter of the porch and caught her close to him. “It had to come, Nan. Don’t shed a tear. I’ll take you straight to Mrs. Jeffries. When you are ready, you’ll marry me; we’ll make our peace with your Uncle Duke together. Great God! What a night! This way, dearie.”

“No, to the stable, Henry! Where’s your horse?”

“Under the pine, and yours, too. I found the pony, but I couldn’t find your saddle, Nan.”

“I know where it’s hidden. Let’s get the horses.”

“Just a minute. I stuck my rifle under this 338 porch.” He stooped and felt below the stringer. Rising in a moment with the weapon on his arm, the two hurried around the end of the house toward the pine-tree. They had almost reached this when a murmur unlike the sounds of the storm made de Spain halt his companion.

“What is it?” she whispered. He listened intently. While they stood still the front door of the house was opened hurriedly. A man ran out along the porch toward the stable. Neither Nan nor de Spain could make out who it was, but de Spain heard again the suspicious sound that had checked him. Without speaking, he took Nan and retreated to the corner of the house. “There is somebody in that pine,” he whispered, “waiting for me to come after the horses. Sassoon may have found them. I’ll try it out, anyway, before I take a chance. Stand back here, Nan.”

He put her behind the corner of the house, threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired as nearly as he could in the darkness toward and just above the pine. Without an instant’s hesitation a pistol-shot answered from the direction in which he had fired, and in another moment a small fusillade followed. “By the Almighty,” muttered de Spain, “we must have our horses, Nan. Stay right here. I’ll try driving those fellows off their perch.”

She caught his arm. “What are you going to do?”

“Run in on them from cover, wherever I can find it, Nan, and push them back. We’ve got to have those horses.”

“Henry, we can get others from the stable.”

“There may be more men waiting there for us.”

“If we could only get away without a fight!”

“This is Sassoon and his gang, Nan. You heard Pardaloe. These are not your people. I’ve got to drive ’em, or we’re gone, Nan.”

“Then I go with you.”

“No.”

“Yes!” Her tone was unmistakable.

“Nan, you can’t do it,” whispered de Spain energetically. “A chance bullet–––”

She spoke with decision: “I go with you. I can use a rifle. Better both of us be killed than one. Help me up on this roof. I’ve climbed it a hundred times. My rifle is in my room. Quick, Henry.”

Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand, caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her second foot on de Spain’s shoulder, gained the sloping roof, and scrambled on her hands and knees up toward the window of her 340 room. The heavy rain and the slippery boards made progress uncertain, but with scarcely any delay, she reached her window and pushed open the casement sash. A far-off peal of thunder echoed down from the mountains. Luckily, no flash had preceded it, and Nan, rifle in hand, slid safely down to the end of the lean-to, where de Spain, waiting, caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine, and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every shot––and not to fire often.

In this way, amid the falling of rain and the uncharted dangers of the darkness, they advanced on the pine-tree. Surprisingly little effort seemed necessary to drive off whoever held it. De Spain made his way slowly but safely to the disputed point and then understood––the horses were gone.

He had hardly rejoined Nan, who waited at a safe distance, and told her the bad news, when a fresh discharge of shots came from two directions––seemingly from the house and the stable. A moment later they heard sharp firing far down the Gap. This was their sole avenue of escape. It was bad enough, under the circumstances, to negotiate 341 the trail on horseback––but to expose Nan, who had but just put herself under his protection, to death from a chance bullet while stumbling along on foot, surrounded by enemies––who could follow the flash of their own shots if they were forced to use their rifles, and close in on them at will––was an undertaking not to be faced.

They withdrew to the shelter of a large rock familiar to Nan even in the dark. While de Spain was debating in his mind how to meet the emergency, she stood at his side, his equal, he knew, in courage, daring, and resource, and answered his rapid questions as to possible gateways of escape. The rain, which had been abating, now ceased, but from every fissure in the mountains came the roar of rushing water, and little openings of rock and waterway that might have offered a chance when dry were now out of the question. In fact, it was Nan’s belief that before morning water would be running over the main trail itself.

“Yet,” said de Spain finally, “before morning we must be a long way from this particular spot, Nan. Lefever is down there––I haven’t the slightest doubt of that. Sassoon has posted men at the neck of the Gap––that’s the first thing he would do. And if John heard my rifle when I first shot, he would be for breaking in here, and his men, if they’ve come up, would bump into 342 Sassoon’s. It would be insane for us to try to get out over the trail with Sassoon holding it against Lefever––we might easily be hit by our friends instead of our enemies. I’ll tell you what, Nan, suppose I scout down that way alone and see what I can find out?”

He put the proposal very lightly, realizing almost as soon as he made it what her answer would be. “Better we go together,” she answered in the steady tone he loved to hear. “If you were killed, what would become of me? I should rather be shot than fall into his hands after this––if there was ever a chance for it before, there’d be no mercy now. Let’s go together.”

He would not consent, and she knew he was right. But what was right for one was right, she told him, for both, and what was wrong for one was wrong for both. “Then, I’ll tell you,” he said suddenly, as when after long uncertainty and anxious doubt one chooses an alternative and hastens to follow it. “Retreat is the thing for us, Nan. Let’s make for Music Mountain and crawl into our cave till morning. Lefever will get in here some time to-morrow. Then we can connect with him.”

They discussed the move a little further, but there seemed no escape from the necessity of it, despite the hardship involved in reaching the 343 refuge; and, realizing that no time was to be lost, they set out on the long journey. Every foot of the troublesome way offered difficulties. Water impeded them continually. It lay in shallow pools underfoot and slipped in running sheets over the sloping rocks that lay in their obscure path. Sometimes de Spain led, sometimes Nan picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.

Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had cut them off their refuge.

“No use, Nan,” said de Spain. “There isn’t any other trail, is there?”

She told him there was no other. “And this will run all night,” she added. “Sometimes it 344 runs like this for days. I ought to have known there would be a flood here. But it all depends on which side of the mountain the heavy rain falls. Henry,” she said, turning to him and as if thinking of a question she wanted to ask, “how did you happen to come to me just to-night when I wanted you so?”

“I came because you sent for me,” he answered, surprised.

“But I didn’t send for you.”

He stopped, dumfounded. “What do you mean, Nan?” he demanded uneasily. “I got your message on the telephone to come at once and take you away.”

“Henry! I didn’t send any message––when did you get one?”

“Last night, in my office in Sleepy Cat, from a man that refused to give his name.”

“I never sent any message to you,” she insisted in growing wonderment. “I have been locked in a room for three days, dearie. The Lord knows I wanted to send you word. Who ever telephoned a message like that? Was it a trap to get you in here?”

He told her the story––of the strenuous efforts he had made to discover the identity of the messenger––and how he had been balked. “No matter,” said Nan, at last. “It couldn’t have been 345 a trap. It must have been a friend, surely, not an enemy.”

“Or,” said de Spain, bending over her as if he were afraid she might escape, and putting his face close to hers, “some mildly curious person, some idle devil, Nan, that wanted to see what two timid men would look like, mixed up in a real fight over the one girl in the mountains both are trying to marry at once.”

“Henry,” every time she repeated his name de Spain cared less for what should happen in the rest of the world, “what are we going to do now? We can’t stay here all night––and take what they will greet us with in the morning.”

He answered her question with another: “What about trying to get out by El Capitan?”

She started in spite of herself. “I mean,” he added, “just to have a look over there, Nan.”

“How could you even have a look a night like this?” she asked, overcome at the thought of the dizzy cliff. “It would be certain death, Henry.”

“I don’t mean at the worst to try to cross it till we get a glimpse of daylight. But it’s quite a way over there. I remember some good hiding-places along that trail. We may find one where I can build a little fire and dry you out. I’m more worried over you being wet all night 346 than the rest of it. The question is, Can we find a trail up to where we want to go?”

“I know two or three,” she answered, “if they are only not flooded.”

The storm seemed to have passed, but the darkness was intense, and from above the northern Superstitions came low mutterings of thunder. Compelled to strike out over the rocks to get up to any of the trails toward El Capitan, Nan, helped by de Spain when he could help, led the ascent toward the first ledge they could hope to follow on their dangerous course.

The point at which the two climbed almost five hundred feet that night up Music Mountain is still pointed out in the Gap. An upturned rock at the foot, a stunted cedar jutting from the ledge at the point they finally gained, marked the beginning and end of their effort. No person, looking at that confused wall, willingly believes it could ever have been scaled in the dead of night. Torn, bruised, and exhausted, Nan, handed up by her lover, threw herself at last prostrate on the ledge at the real beginning of their trail, and from that vantage-point they made their way along the eastern side of Music Mountain for two miles before they stopped again to rest.

It was already well after midnight. A favoring spot was seized on by de Spain for the resting-place 347 he wanted. A dry recess beneath an overhanging wall made a shelter for the fire that he insisted on building to warm Nan in her soaked clothing. He found cedar roots in the dark and soon had a blaze going. It was dangerous, both realized, to start a fire, but they concealed the blaze as best they could and took the chance––a chance that more nearly than any that had gone before, cost them their lives. But what still lay ahead of the two justified in de Spain’s mind what he was doing. He acted deliberately in risking the exposure of their position to unfriendly eyes far distant.