§ I.
RED GHALLINAN was a gunman. Not a trade to be proud of, perhaps, but Red was proud of it. Proud of his skill with a gun, proud of the notches on the long blue barrels of his heavy .45′s. Red was a wiry, medium sized man with a cruel, thin lipped mouth and close-set, shifty eyes. He was bow-legged from much riding, and, with his slouching walk and hard face he was, indeed, an unprepossessing figure. Red’s mind and soul were as warped as his exterior. His sinister reputation caused men to strive to avoid offending him but at the same time it cut him off from the fellowship of people. No man, good or bad, cares to chum with a killer. Even the outlaws hated him and feared him too much to admit him to their gang, so he was a lone wolf. But a lone wolf may sometimes be more feared than the whole pack.
Let us not blame Red too much. He was born and reared in an environment of evil. His father and his father’s father had been rustlers and gunfighters. Until he was a grown man, Red knew nothing but crime as a legitimate way of making a living and by the time he learned that a man may earn a sufficient livelihood and still remain within the law he was too set in his ways to change. So it was not altogether his fault that he was a gunfighter. Rather, it was the fault of those unscrupulous politicians and mine- owners who hired him to kill their enemies. For that was the way Red lived. He was born a gun-fighter. The killer instinct burned strongly in him—the heritage of Cain. He had never seen the man who surpassed him or even equalled him in the speed of the draw or in swift, straight shooting. These qualities, together with the cold nerve and reckless bravery that goes with red hair, made him much in demand with rich men who had enemies. So he did a large business.
But the fore-van of the law began to come into Idaho and Red saw with hate the first sign of that organization which had driven him out of Texas a few years before—the vigilantes. Red’s jobs became fewer and fewer for he feared to kill unless he could make it appear self-defense.
At last it reached a point where Red was faced with the alternative of moving on or going to work. So he rode over to a miner’s cabin and announced his intention of buying the miner’s claim. The miner, after one skittish glance at Red’s guns, sold his claim for fifty dollars, signed the deed, and left the country precipitately.
Red worked the claim for a few days and then quit in disgust. He had not gotten one ounce of gold dust. This was due, partly, to his distaste for work, partly to his ignorance of placer mining, and mostly to the poorness of the claim.
He was standing in the front door of the saloon of the little mining town when the stage-coach drove in and a passenger alit.
He was a well built, frank-appearing young fellow and Red hated him instinctively. Hated him for his cleanness, for his open, honest, pleasant face, because he was everything Red was not.
The newcomer was very friendly and very soon the whole town knew his antecedents. His name was Hal Sharon, a tenderfoot from the east, who had come to Idaho with high hopes of striking a bonanza and going home wealthy. Of course there was a girl in the case, though Hal said little on that point. He had a few hundred dollars and wanted to buy a good claim. At this Red took a new interest in the young man.
Red bought drinks and lauded his claim. Sharon proved singularly trustful. He did not ask to see the claim but took Red’s word for it. A trustfulness that would have touched a less hardened man than Red.
One or two men, angered at the deliberate swindle, tried to warn Hal but a cold glance from Red caused them to change their minds. Hal bought Red’s claim for five hundred dollars.
He toiled unceasingly all fall and early winter, barely making enough to keep him in food and clothes, while Red lived in the little town and sneered at his uncomplaining efforts.
Christmas was in the air. Everywhere the miners stopped work and came to town to live there until the snow should have melted and the ground thawed out in the spring. Only Hal Sharon stayed at his claim, working on in the cold and snow, spurred on by the thought of riches—and a girl.
It was a little over three weeks until Christmas, when, one cold night, Red Ghallinan sat by the stove in the saloon and listened to the blizzard outside. He thought of Sharon doubtless shivering in his cabin up on the slopes and he sneered. He listened idly to the talk of the miners and cowpunchers who were discussing the coming festivals, a dance and so on.
Christmas meant nothing to Red. Though the one bright spot in his life had been one Christmas years ago when Red was a ragged waif, shivering on the snow covered streets of Kansas City.
He had passed a great church and, attracted by the warmth, had entered timidly. The people had sung “Hark the Herald Angels Sing!” and when the congregation passed out, an old, white-haired woman had seen the boy and had taken him home and fed him and clothed him. Red had lived in her home as one of the family until spring but when the wild geese began to fly north and the trees began to bud, the wanderlust got into the boy’s blood and he ran away and came back to his native Texas prairies. But that was years ago and Red never thought of it now.
The door flew open and a furred and muffled figure strode in. It was Sharon—his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets.
Instantly Red was on his feet, hand twisting just above a gun. But Hal took no notice of him. He pushed his way to the bar.
“Boys,” he said, “I named my claim the Golden Hope, and it was a true name! Boys, I’ve struck it rich!”
And he threw a double handful of nuggets and gold-dust on the bar.
On Christmas Eve Red stood in the door of an eating house and watched Sharon coming down the slope, whistling merrily. He had a right to be merry. He was already worth twelve thousand dollars and had not exhausted his claim by half. Red watched with hate in his eyes. Ever since the night Sharon had thrown his first gold on the bar, his hatred of the man had grown. Hal’s fortune seemed a personal injury to Red. Had he not worked like a slave on that claim without getting a pound of gold? And here this stranger had come and gotten rich off that same claim! Thousands to him, a measly five hundred to Red. To Red’s warped mind this assumed monstrous proportions—an outrage. He hated Sharon as he had never hated a man before. And, since with him to hate was to kill, he determined to kill Hal Sharon. With a curse he reached for a gun when a thought stayed his hand. The Vigilantes! They would get him sure if he killed Sharon openly. A cunning light came to his eyes and he turned and strode away toward the unpretentious boarding-house where he stayed.
Hal Sharon walked into the saloon.
“Seen Ghallinan lately?” he asked.
The bar-tender shook his head.
Hal tossed a bulging buck-skin sack on the bar.
“Give that to him when you see him. It’s got about a thousand dollars worth of gold dust in it.”
The bar-tender gasped. “What! You giving Red a thousand bucks after he tried to swindle you? Yes, it is safe here. Ain’t a galoot in camp would touch anything belonging to that gun-fighter. But say—”
“Well,” answered Hal, “I don’t think he got enough for his claim; he practically gave it to me. And anyway,” he laughed over his shoulder, “it’s Christmas!”
§ II
MORNING in the mountains. The highest peaks touched with a delicate pink. The stars paling as the darkness grew grey. Light on the peaks, shadow still in the valleys, as if the paint brush of the Master had but passed lightly over the land, coloring only the highest places, the places nearest to Him. Now the light-legions began to invade the valleys, driving before them the darkness; the light on the peaks grew stronger, the snow beginning to cast back the light. But as yet no sun. The King had sent his couriers before him but he himself had not appeared.
In a certain valley, smoke curled from the chimney of a rude log cabin. High on the hillside, a man gave a grunt of satisfaction. The man lay in a hollow, from which he had scraped the drifted snow. Ever since the first hint of dawn, he had lain there, watching the cabin. A heavy rifle lay beneath his arm.
Down in the valley, the cabin door swung wide and a man stepped out. The watcher on the hill saw that it was the man he had come to kill.
Hal Sharon threw his arms wide and laughed aloud in the sheer joy of living. Up on the hill, Red Ghallinan watched the man over the sights of a Sharps .50 rifle. For the first time he noticed what a magnificent figure the young man was. Tall, strong, handsome, with the glow of health on his cheek.
For some reason Red was not getting the enjoyment he thought he would. He shook his shoulders impatiently. His finger tightened on the trigger—suddenly Hal broke into song; the words floated clearly to Red.
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing!”
Where had he heard that song before? Then suddenly a mist floated across Red Ghallinan’s eyes; the rifle slipped unnoticed from his hands. He drew his hand across his eyes and looked toward the east. There, alone, hung one great star and as he looked, over the shoulder of a great mountain came the great sun.
“Gawd!” gulped Red, “why—it is Christmas!”
1. THE WANDERER
“Now, come all you punchers, and listen to my tale,
“When I tell you of troubles on the Chisholm Trail!”
STEVE HARMER was riding Texas-fashion, slow and easy, one knee hooked over the saddle horn, hat pulled over his brows to shade his face. His lean body swayed rhythmically to the easy gait of his horse.
The trail he was following sloped gradually upward, growing steeper as he continued. Cedars flanked the narrow path, with occasional pinons and junipers. Higher up, these gave place to pines.
Looking back, Steve could see the broad level country he had left, deeply grassed and sparsely treed. Beyond and above, the timbered slopes of the mountains frowned. Peak beyond peak, pinnacle beyond pinnacle they rose, with great undulating slopes between, as if piled by giants.
Suddenly behind the lone rider came the clatter of hoofs. Steve pulled aside to let the horsemen by, but they came to a halt beside him. Steve swept off his broad-brimmed hat.
There were two of the strangers, and one was a girl. To Steve she seemed strangely out of place, somehow, in this primitive setting. She sat her horse in an unfamiliar manner and her whole air was not of the West. She wore an Eastern riding habit—and then Steve forgot her clothes as he looked at her face. A vagrant curl, glinting gold in the sun, fell over her white forehead and from beneath this two soft grey eyes looked at him. Her full lips were half parted—
“Say, you!” a rough voice jarred Steve out of his daydreams.
The girl’s companion was as characteristically Western as she was not. He was a heavily built man of middle life, thickly bearded and roughly clad. His features were dark and coarse, and Steve noted the heavy revolver which hung at his hip.
This man spoke in a harsh, abrupt manner.
“Who’re you and where do you reckon you’re goin’?”
Steve stiffened at the tone. He shot a glance at the girl, who seemed rather pale and frightened.
“My name’s Harmer,” said he, shortly. “I’m just passin’ through.”
“Yeah?” the bearded lips parted in a wolfish grin. “I reckon, stranger, you done lost your way—you shoulda took that trail back yonder a ways that branched off to the south.”
“I ain’t said where I was goin’,” Steve responded, nettled. “Maybe I have reason for goin’ this way.”
“That’s what I’m thinkin’,” the bearded man answered, and Steve sensed the menacing note in his voice. “But you may have reason for takin’ the other trail yet. Nobody lives in these hills, and they don’t like strangers! Be warned, young feller, and don’t git into somethin’ you don’t know nothin’ about.”
And while Steve gaped at him, not understanding, the man flung a curt order to the girl, and they both sped off up the trail, their horses laboring under the stress of quirt and spur. Steve watched in amazement.
“By golly, they don’t care how they run their broncs uphill. What do you reckon all that rigamarole meant? Maybe I oughta taken the other trail, at that—golly, that was a pretty girl!”
The riders disappeared on the thickly timbered slope and Steve, after some musing, nudged his steed with his knee and started on.
“I’m a goin’ West and punch Texas cattle!
“Ten dollar horse and forty dollar saddle.”
Crack! A sharp report cut through the melody of his lazy song. A flash of fire stabbed from among trees further up the slope. Steve’s hat flew from his head, his horse snorted and reared, nearly unseating his rider.
Steve whirled his steed, dropping off on the far side. His gun was in his hand as he peered cautiously across his saddle in the direction from which the shot had come. Silence hovered over the tree-masked mountain side and no motion among the intertwining branches betrayed the presence of the hidden foe.
At last Steve cautiously stepped from behind his horse. Nothing happened. He sheathed his gun, stepped forward and recovered his hat, swearing as he noted the neat hole through the crown.
“Now did that whiskered galoot stop up there some place and sneak back for a crack at me?” he wondered. “Or did he tell somebody else to—or did that somebody else do it on their own idea? And what is the idea? What’s up in them hills that they don’t want seen? And was this sharpshooter tryin’ to kill me or just warn me?”
He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“Anyway,” he meditated as he mounted, “I reckon that south trail is the best road, after all.”
* * * * *
THE south branch, he found, led down instead of up, skirting the base of the incline. He sighted several droves of sheep, and as the sun sank westward, he came upon a small cabin built near a running stream of clear water.
“Hi yah! Git down and set!” greeted the man who came to the door.
He was a small, wizened old fellow, remarkably bald, and he seemed delighted at the opportunity for conversation which Steve’s coming afforded. But Steve eyed him with a suspicious glance before he dismounted.
“My name is Steve Harmer,” said Steve abruptly. “I’m from Texas and I’m just passin’ through. If you hone for me to ride on, just say so and they won’t be no need for slingin’ lead at me.”
“Heh, heh!” laughed the old fellow. “Son, I kin read yore brand! You done fell in with my neighbors of the Sunset Mountains!”
“A tough lookin’ hombre and a nice lookin’ girl,” admitted Steve. “And some fellow who didn’t give his name, but just ruined my best hat.”
“Light!” commanded the old man. “Light and hobble yore bronc. This ain’t no hotel, but maybe you can struggle along with the accommodations. My name is ... ‘Hard Luck Harper,’ and I aim to live up to that handle. You ain’t by no chance got no corn juice in them saddle bags?”
“No, I ain’t,” answered Steve, dismounting.
“I was afeard not,” sighed the old man. “Hard Luck I be to the end—come in—I smell that deer meat a- burnin’.”
After a supper of venison, sourdough bread and coffee, the two sat on the cabin stoop and watched the stars blink out as they talked. The sound of Steve’s horse, cropping the luxuriant grass, came to them, and a night breeze wafted the spicy scents of the forest.
“This country is sure different from Texas,” said Steve. “I kinda like these mountains, though. I was figurin’ on campin’ up among ‘em tonight, that’s why I took that west trail. She goes on to Rifle Pass, don’t she?”
“She don’t,” replied the old man. “Rifle Pass is some south of here and this is the trail to that small but thrivin’ metropolis. That trail you was followin’ meanders up in them hills and where she goes, nobody knows.”
“Why don’t they?”
“Fer two reasons. The first is, they’s no earthly reason fer a man in his right mind to go up there, and I’ll refer you to yore hat fer the second.”
“What right has this bird got to bar people from these mountains?”
“I think it must be a thirty-thirty caliber,” grinned the old man. “That feller you met was Gila Murken, who lays out to own them mountains, like, and the gal was his niece, I reckon, what come from New York.
“I dunno what Gila’s up to. I’ve knowed him, off and on, fer twenty years, and never knowed nothin’ good. I’m his nearest neighbor, now, but I ain’t got the slightest idee where his cabin is—up there somewhere.” He indicated the gigantic brooding bulk of the Sunset Mountains, black in the starlight.
“Gila’s got a couple fellers with him, and now this gal. Nobody else ever goes up that hill trail. The men come up here a year ago.”
Steve mused. “An’ what do you reckon is his idee for discouragin’ visitors?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Son, I’ve wondered myself. He and his pards lives up in them mountains and regular once a week one of ‘em rides to Rifle Pass or maybe clean to Stirrup, east. They have nothin’ to do with me or anybody else. I’ve wondered, but, gosh, they ain’t a chance!”
“Ain’t a chance of what?”
“Steve,” said Hard Luck, his lean hand indicating the black vastness of the hills, “somewhere up there amongst them canyons and gorges and cliffs, is a fortune! And sometimes I wonder if Gila Murken ain’t found it.
“It’s forty year ago that me and Bill Hansen come through this country—first white men in it, so far as I know. I was nothin’ but a kid then an’ we was buffalo hunters, kinda strayed from the regular course.
“We went up into them hills, Sunset Mountains, the Indians call ‘em, and away back somewheres we come into a range of cliffs. Now, it don’t look like it’d be that way, lookin’ from here, but in among the mountains they’s long chains of cliffs, straight up and down, maybe four hundred feet high, clay and rock—mighty treacherous stuff. They’s maybe seventeen sets of these cliffs, Ramparts, we call ‘em, and they look just alike. Trees along the edge, thick timber at the base. The edges is always crumblin’ and startin’ landslides and avalanches.
“Me and Bill Hansen come to the front of one of these Ramparts and Bill was lookin’ at where the earth of the cliff face had kinda shelved away when he let out a whoop!
“Gold! Reef gold—the blamedest vein I ever see, just lying there right at the surface ready for somebody to work out the ore and cart it off! We dropped our guns and laid into the cliff with our fingernails, diggin’ the dirt away. And the vein looked like she went clear to China! Get that, son, reef gold and quartz in the open cliff face.
“ ‘Bill,’ says I, ‘we’re milyunaires!’
“And just as I said it, somethin’ came whistlin’ by my cheek and Bill gave one yell and went down on his face with a steel-pointed arrow through him. And before I could move a rifle cracked and somethin’ that felt like a red hot hammer hit me in the chest and knocked me flat.
“A war party—they’d stole up on us while we was diggin’. Cheyennes they was, from the north, and they come out and chanted their scalp songs over us. Bill was dead and I lay still, all bloody but conscious, purtendin’ I was a stiff, too.
“They scalped Bill and they scalped me—”
Steve gave an exclamation of horror.
“Oh, yes,” said Hard Luck tranquilly. “It hurt considerable—fact is, I don’t know many things that hurt wuss. But somehow I managed to lie still and not let on like I was alive, though a couple of times I thought I was goin’ to let out a whoop in spite of myself.”
“Did they scalp you plumb down to the temples?” asked Steve morbidly.
“Naw—the Cheyennes never scalped that way.” Hard Luck ran his hand contemplatively over his glistening skull. “They just cut a piece out of the top—purty good sized piece, though—and the rest of the ha’r kinda got discouraged and faded away, after a few years.
“Anyway, they danced and yelled fer awhile an’ then they left an’ I began to take invoice to see if I was still livin’. I was shot through the chest but by some miracle the ball had gone on through without hitting anything important. I thought, though, I was goin’ to bleed to death. But I stuffed the wound with leaves and the webs these large white spiders spin on the low branches of trees. I crawled to a spring which wasn’t far away and lay there like a dead man till night, when I came to and lay there thinkin’ about my dead friend, and my wounds and the gold I’d never enjoy.
“Then, I got out of my right mind and went crawlin’ away through the forest, not knowin’ why I did it. I was just like a man that’s drunk: I knowed what I was doin’ but I didn’t know why I was doin’ it. I crawled and I crawled and how long I kept on crawlin’ I don’t know fer I passed clean out, finally, and some buffalo hunters found me out in the level country, miles and miles from where I was wounded. I was ravin’ and gibberin’ and nearly dead.
“They tended to me and after a long time my wounds healed and I come back to my right mind. And when I did, I thought about the gold and got up a prospectin’ party and went back. But seems like I couldn’t remember what all happened just before I got laid out. Everything was vague and I couldn’t remember what way Bill and me had taken to get to the cliff, and I couldn’t remember how it looked. They’d been a lot of landslides, too, and likely everything was changed in looks.
“Anyway, I couldn’t find the lost mine of Sunset Mountain, and though I been comin’ every so often and explorin’ again, for forty years me nor no other livin’ man has ever laid eyes on that gold ledge. Some landslide done covered it up, I reckon. Or maybe I just ain’t never found the right cliff. I don’t know.
“I done give it up. I’m gettin’ old. Now I’m runnin’ a few sheep and am purty contented. But you know now why they call me Hard Luck.”
“And you think that maybe this Murken has found your mine and is workin’ it on the sly?”
“Naw, really I don’t. T’wouldn’t be like Gila Murken to try to conceal the fact—he’d just come out and claim it and dare me to take it away from him. Anyway,” the old man continued with a touch of vanity, “no dub like Gila Murken could find somethin’ that a old prospector like me has looked fer, fer forty year without findin’, nohow.”
Silence fell. Steve was aware that the night wind, whispering down from the mountains, carried a strange dim throbbing—a measured, even cadence, haunting and illusive.
“Drums,” said Hard Luck, as if divining his thought. “Indian drums; tribe’s away back up in the mountains. Nothin’ like them that took my scalp. Navajoes, these is, a low class gang that wandered up from the south. The government give ‘em a kind of reservation back in the Sunset Mountains. Friendly, I reckon—trade with the whites a little.
“Them drums is been goin’ a heap the last few weeks. Still nights you can hear ‘em easy; sound travels a long way in this land.”
His voice trailed off into silence. Steve gazed westward where the monstrous shadowy peaks rose black against the stars. The night breeze whispered a lonely melody through the cedars and pines. The scent of fresh grass and forest trees was in his nostrils. White stars twinkled above the dark mountains and the memory of a pretty, wistful face floated across Steve’s vision. As he grew drowsy, the face seemed nearer and clearer, and always through the mists of his dreams throbbed faintly the Sunset drums.
2. MYSTERY
STEVE drained his coffee cup and set it down on the rough- hewn table.
“I reckon,” said he, “for a young fellow you’re a pretty good cook—Hard Luck, I been thinkin’.”
“Don’t strain yoreself, son. It ain’t a good idee startin’ in on new things, at this time of yore life—what you been thinkin’ about?”
“That mine of yours. I believe, instead of goin’ on to Rifle Pass like I was thinkin’ of doin’, I’ll lay over a few days and look for that lost gold ledge.”
“Considerin’ as I spent the best part of my life huntin’ it,” said Hard Luck testily, “it’s very likely you’ll stub yore toes on it the first thing. The Lord knows, I’d like to have you stay here as long as you want. I don’t see many people. But they ain’t one chance in a hundred of you findin’ that mine, and I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t healthy to ramble around in the Sunsets now, with Gila Murken hatchin’ out the Devil only knows what, up there.”
“Murken owes me a new hat,” said Steve moodily. “And furthermore and besides it’s time somebody showed him he ain’t runnin’ this country. I crave to hunt for that mine. I dreamed about it last night.”
“You better forgit that mountain-business and work with me here on my ranch,” advised Hard Luck. “I’ll give you a job of herdin’ sheep.”
“Don’t get insultin’,” said Steve reprovingly. “How far up in them hills can a horse go?”
“You can navigate most of ‘em on yore bronc if you take yore time an’ let him pick his way. But you better not.”
In spite of Hard Luck’s warning, Steve rode up the first of the great slopes before the sun had risen high enough for him to feel its heat. It was a beautiful morning; the early sunlight glistened on the leaves of the trees and on the dew on the grass. Above and beyond him rose the slopes, dark green, deepening into purple in the distance. Snow glimmered on some of the higher peaks.
Steve felt a warmth of comfort and good cheer. The fragrance of Hard Luck’s coffee and flapjacks was still on his palate, and the resilience of youth sang through his veins. Somewhere up there in the mysterious tree-clad valleys and ridges adventure awaited him, and as Steve rode, the lost mine of the Sunsets was least in his thoughts.
No trail led up the way he took, but his horse picked his route between boulders and cedars, climbing steep slopes as nimbly as a mountain goat. The cedars gave way to pines and occasionally Steve looked down into some small valley, heavily grassed and thickly wooded. The sun was slanting toward the west when he finally pulled up his horse on the crest of a steep incline and looked down.
A wilder and more broken country he had never seen. From his feet the earth sloped steeply down, covered with pines which seemed to cling precariously, to debouch into a sort of plateau. On three sides of this plateau rose the slanting sides of the mountains. The fourth or east side fell away abruptly into cliffs which seemed hundreds of feet high. But what drew Steve’s gaze was the plateau itself.
Near the eastern cliffs stood two log cabins. Smoke curled from one, and as Steve watched, a man came out of the door. Even at that distance Steve recognized the fellow whom Hard Luck had designated as Gila Murken.
Steve slipped from the saddle, led his horse back into the pines a short distance and flung the reins over a tree limb. Then he stole back to the crest of the slope. He did not think Murken could see him, hidden as he was among the trees, but he did not care to take any chances. Another man had joined Murken and the two seemed to be engaged in conversation. After awhile they turned and went into the second cabin.
Time passed but they did not emerge. Suddenly Steve’s heart leaped strangely. A slim girlish form had come from the cabin out of which the men had come, and the sunshine glinted on golden hair. Steve leaned forward eagerly, wondering why the mere sight of a girl should cause his breath to come quicker.
She walked slowly toward the cliffs and Steve perceived that there was what seemed to be a deep gorge, presumably leading downward. Into this the girl disappeared. Steve now found that the mysterious cabins had lost much of their interest, and presently he went back to his horse, mounted and rode southward, keeping close to the crest of the slopes. At last he attained a position where he could look back at the plateau and get a partial view of the cliffs. He decided that they were some of the Ramparts, spoken of by Hard Luck. They rose steep and bare for four hundred feet, deeply weathered and serrated. Gorges cut deep into them and promontories stood out over the abysses beneath. Great boulders lined the edge of the precipices and the whole face of the cliffs looked unstable and treacherous.
At the foot, tall forest trees masked a rough and broken country. And as he looked Steve saw the girl, a tiny figure in the distance, come out into a clearing. He watched her until she vanished among the trees, and then turned his steed and rode back in the direction from which he had come, though not following the same route. He took his time, riding leisurely.
The sun slanted westward as he came to the lower slopes and looked back to see the rim of the Ramparts jutting below the heights he had left. He had made a vast semicircle and now the cliffs were behind and above him, instead of in front and below.
He went his leisurely way and suddenly he was aware of voices among the cedars in front of him. He slipped from his saddle, dropped the reins to the horse’s feet and stole forward. Hidden among the undergrowth, he looked into a small glade where stood two figures—the girl of the cliffs and a tall lanky man.
“No! No!” the girl was saying. “I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Go away and let me alone or I’ll tell my uncle.”
“Haw! Haw!” The man’s laugh was loud but mirthless. “Yore uncle and me is too close connected in a business way for him to rile me! I’m tellin’ you, this ain’t no place for you and you better let me take you away to whar there’s people and towns and the like.”
“I don’t trust you,” she answered sullenly.
“Aw, now don’t you? Come on—admit you done come down here just to meet me!”
“That’s a lie!” the girl cried, stung. “You know I just went for a stroll; I didn’t know you were here.”
“These mountains ain’t no place for a ‘stroll.’ “
“My uncle won’t let me have a horse and ride, unless he’s with me. He’s afraid I’ll run away.”
“And wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t anywhere to go. But I’d about as soon die as stay here much longer.”
“Then let me take you away! I’ll marry you, if you say so. They’s many a gal would jump to take Mark Edwards up on that deal.”
“Oh, let me alone! I don’t want to marry you, I don’t want to go away with you, I don’t even want to look at you! If you really want to make a hit with me, go somewhere and shoot yourself!”
Edwards’ brow darkened.
“Oh ho, so I ain’t good enough for you, my fine lady. Reckon I’ll just take a kiss anyhow.”
His grimed hands shot and closed on her shoulders. Instantly she clenched a small fist and struck him in the mouth, so that blood trickled from his lips. The blow roused all the slumbering demon in the man.
“Yore a spit-fire,” he grunted. “But I ‘low I’ll tame you.”
He pinioned her arms, cursed soulfully as she kicked him on the shins, and crushed her slim form to him. His unshaven lips were seeking hers when Steve impulsively went into action.
He bounded from his covert, gripped the man’s shoulder with steely fingers and swung him around, smashing him in the face with his left hand as he did so. Edwards gaped in astonishment, then roared and rushed in blindly, fingers spread to gouge and tear. Steve was not inclined to clinch rough-and- tumble fashion. He dropped his right fist nearly to his ankle and then brought it up in a long sweeping arc that stopped at Edwards’s chin. That worthy’s head went back as if it were hinged and his body, following the motion, crashed to the leaf-covered earth. He lay as if in slumber, his limbs tossed about in a careless and nonchalant manner. Steve caressed his sore knuckles and glanced at the girl.
“Is—is—is he dead?” she gasped, wide eyed.
“Naw, miss, I’m afraid he ain’t,” Steve answered regretfully. “He’s just listenin’ to the cuckoo birds. Shall I tie him up?”
“What for?” she asked reasonably enough. “No, let’s go before he comes to.”
And she started away hurriedly. Steve got his horse and followed her, overtaking her within a few rods. He walked beside her, leading his steed, his eyes admiringly taking in the proud, erect carriage of her slim figure, and the faint delicate rose-leaf tint of her complection.
“I hope you won’t think I’m intrudin’ where I got no business,” said the Texan apologetically. “But I’m a seein’ you to wherever you’re goin’. That bird might follow you or you might meet another one like him.”
“Thank you,” she answered in a rather subdued voice. “You were very kind to help me, Mr. Harmer.”
“How’d you know my name?”
“You told my uncle who you were yesterday, don’t you remember?”
“Seems like I recollect, now,” replied Steve, experiencing a foolish warm thrill that she should remember his name. “But I don’t recall you saying what your name was.”
“My name is Joan Farrel. I’m staying here with my uncle, Mr. Murken, the man with whom you saw me yesterday.”
“And was it him,” asked Steve bluntly, “that shot a hole in my hat?”
Her eyes widened; a frightened look was evident in her face.
“No! No!” she whispered. “It couldn’t have been him! He and I rode right up on to the cabin after we passed you. I heard the shot but I had no idea anyone was shooting at you.”
Steve laughed, rather ashamed of having mentioned it to the girl.
“Aw, it wasn’t nothin’. Likely somebody done it for a joke. But right after you-all went on, somebody cracked down on me from the trees up the trail a ways and plumb ruint my hat.”
“It must have been Edwards,” she said in a frightened voice. “We met him coming down the trail on foot after we’d gotten out of sight of you, and Uncle stopped and said something to him I couldn’t hear, before we went on.”
“And who is Edwards?”
“He’s connected with my uncle’s business in some way; I don’t know just how. He and a man named Allison camp up there close to our cabin.”
“What is your uncle’s business?” asked Steve with cool assumption.
She did not seem offended at the question.
“I don’t know. He never tells me anything. I’m afraid of him and he don’t love me.”
Her face was shadowed as if by worry or secret fear. Something was haunting her, Steve thought. Nothing more was said until they had reached the base of the cliffs. Steve glanced up, awed. The great walls hung threateningly over them, starkly and somberly. To his eye the cliffs seemed unstable, ready to crash down upon the forest below at the slightest jar. Great boulders jutted out, half embedded in the clay. The brow of the cliff, fringed with trees, hung out over the concave walls.
From where he stood Steve could see a deep gorge, cut far into the face of the precipice and leading steeply upward. He caught his breath. He had never imagined such a natural stairway. The incline was so precipitous that it seemed it would tax the most sure-footed horse. Boulders rested along the trail that led through it, as if hovering there temporarily, and the high walls on each side darkened the way, looming like a sinister threat.
“My gosh!” said he sincerely. “Do you have to go up that gulch every time you leave your cabin?”
“Yes—or else climb the slopes back of the plateau and make a wide circle, leaving the plateau to the north and coming down the southern ridges. We always go this way. I’m used to climbing it now.”
“Must have took a long time for the water to wash that out,” said Steve. “I’m new to this mountain country, but it looks to me like if somebody stubbed their toe on a rock, it would start a landslide that would bring the whole thing right down in that canyon.”
“I think of that, too,” she answered with a slight shudder. “I thank you for what you’ve done for me. But you mustn’t go any further. My uncle is always furious if anyone comes into these mountains.”
“What about Edwards?”
“I’ll tell my uncle and he’ll make him leave me alone.” She started to go, then hesitated.
“Listen,” said Steve, his heart beating wildly, “I’d like to know you better—will—will you meet me tomorrow somewhere?”
“Yes!” she spoke low and swiftly, then turned and ran lightly up the slope. Steve stood, looking after her, hat in hand.
* * * * *
NIGHT had fallen as Steve Harmer rode back to the ranch of Hard Luck Harper.
“Clouds in the west and a-lookin’ like rain,
“And my blamed old slicker’s in the wagon again!”
he declaimed to the dark blue bowl of the star-flecked sky.
The crisp sharp scent of cedar was in the air and the wind fanned his cheek. He felt his soul grow and expand in the silence and the majesty of the night.
“Woke up one mornin’ on the Chisholm Trail—
“Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail!”
He drew rein at the cabin stoop and hailed his host hilariously. Old Hard Luck stood in the door and the starlight glinted on the steel in his hand.
“Huh,” grunted he suspiciously. “You done finally come back, ain’t you? I’d ‘bout decided you done met up with Gila Murken and was layin’ in a draw somewheres with a thirty-thirty slug through yore innards. Come in and git yore hoofs under the table—I done cooked a couple of steers in hopes of stayin’ yore appetite a little.”
Steve tended to his horse and then entered the cabin, glancing at the long rifle which the old man had stood up against the cabin wall.
“That was a antique when they fought the Revolution,” said Steve. “What’s the idea? Are you afraid of Murken?”
“Afeard of Murken? That dub? I got no call to be afeard of him. And don’t go slingin’ mud at a gun that’s dropped more Indians than you ever see. That’s a Sharps .50 caliber and when I was younger I could shave a mosquito at two hundred yards with it.
“Naw, it ain’t Murken I’m studyin’. Listen!”
Again Steve caught the faint pulsing of the mountain drums.
“Every night they get louder,” said Hard Luck. “They say them redskins is plumb peaceful but you can’t tell me—the only peaceful Indian I ever see had at least two bullets through his skull. Them drums talks and whispers and they ain’t no white man knows what’s hatchin’ back up in them hills where nobody seldom ever goes. Indian magic! That’s what’s goin’ on, and red magic means red doin’s. I’ve fought ‘em from Sonora to the Bad Lands and I know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Your nerves is gettin’ all euchered up,” said Steve, diving into food set before him. “I kinda like to listen to them drums.”
“Maybe you’d like to hear ‘em when they was dancin’ over yore scalp,” answered Hard Luck gloomily. “Thar’s a town about forty mile northwest of here whar them red devils comes to trade sometimes, ‘steader goin’ to Rifle Pass, and a fellow come through today from thar and says they must be some strange goin’s on up in the Sunsets.
“ ‘How come?’ says I.
“ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘them reservation Navajoes has been cartin’ down greenbacks to buy their tobaccer and calico and the other day the storekeepers done found the stuff is all counterfeit. They done stopped sellin’ to the Indians and sent for a Indian agent to come and investigate. Moreover,’ says he, ‘somebody is sellin’ them redskins liquor too.’ “
Hard Luck devoted his attention to eating for a few moments and then began again.
“How come them Indians gets any kind of money up in the mountains, much less counterfeit? Reckon they’re makin’ it theirselves? And who’s slippin’ them booze? One thing’s shore, Hell’s to pay when redskins git drunk and the first scalp they’ll likely take is the feller’s who sold them the booze.”
“Yeah?” returned Steve absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere.