_ CHAPTER XXIV. MISSING
From all over the Malpais country, from the water-sheds where Bear and Elk and Cow creeks head, from the halfway house far out in the desert where the stage changes horses, men and women dribbled to the Frying Pan for the big dance after the round-up. Great were the preparations. Many cakes and pies and piles of sandwiches had been made ready. Also there was a wash boiler full of coffee and a galvanized tub brimming with lemonade. For the Frying Pan was doing itself proud.
Phil and his sister drove over together. The boy had asked Bess to go with him, but Cuffs had beaten him to it. The distance was only twenty-five miles, a neighborly stroll in that country of wide spaces and desert stretches filled with absentees.
When Phyllis came into the big room where the dancing was in progress, her dark eye swept the room without finding him for whom she looked. There were many there she knew, not more than two or three whom she had never met, but among them all she looked at none who was a magnet for her eyes. Keller had not yet arrived.
Before she had taken her seat she had three engagements to dance. Jim Yeager had waylaid her; so, too, had Slim and Curly. She waltzed first with Phil, and after he had done his duty he left her to the besiegings of half a score of riders for various ranches who came and went and came again. She joked with them, joined the merry banter that went on, laughed at them when they grew sentimental, always with a sprightly devotion to the matter in hand.
Nevertheless, though they did not know it, her mind was full of him who had not yet appeared. Why was he late? Could he have missed the way by any chance? And later--as the hours passed without bringing him--could anything have happened to him? More than once her troubled gaze fell upon Brill Healy with a brooding question in it. The man had received only the day before his party's nomination for sheriff, and he was doing the gracious to all the women and children.
He had many of the qualities that make for popularity, even though he was often overbearing, revengeful, and sullen. When he chose he could be hail fellow well met in a way Malpais found flattering to its vanity. Now he was apparently having the time of his life. Wherever he moved an eddy of laughter and gayety went with him. The eyes of men as well as women admiringly followed his dark, lithe, picturesque figure.
Phyllis had declined to dance with him, giving as an excuse a full programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future than a gloating over some evil already done.
When she could endure them no longer she carried her fears to Jim Yeager. They were dancing, but she made an excuse of fatigue to drop out.
"First time I ever knew you to play out at a dance, Phyl," he rallied her.
"It isn't that. I want to say something to you," she whispered.
He had a guess what it was, for his own mind was not quite easy.
"Do you think anything could have happened, Jim?" she besought pitifully when for a moment they were alone in a corner.
"What _could_ have happened, Phyllie? Do you reckon he fell off his hawss, and him a full-size man?" he scoffed.
"Yes, but--you don't know how Brill looked at me. I'm afraid."
"Oh, Brill!" His voice held an edge of scorn, but none the less it concealed a real fear. He was making as much concession to it as to her when he added lightly: "Tell you what I'll do, Phyl. I'll saddle up and take a look back over the Bear Creek trail. Likely I'll meet him, and we'll come in together."
Her eyes met his, and he needed no other thanks. "You'll lose the dance," was her only comment.
Jim followed the road until it branched off to join the Bear Creek trail. Here he deflected toward the mountains, taking the zigzag path that ran like a winding thread among the rocks as it mounted. Now for the first time there came to him the faint rhythmic sound of a galloping horse's hoofs. He did not stop, and as he picked his way among the rocks he heard for some time no more of it.
"Mr. Hurry-up-like-hell kept the road, I reckon," Jim ruminated aloud, and even as he spoke he caught again the echo of an iron shoe striking a rock.
He stopped and listened. Some one was climbing the trail behind him.
"Mebbe he's a friend, and then mebbe he isn't. We'll let him have the whole road to himself, eh, Keno?"
Yeager guided his pony to the left, and took up a position behind some huge bowlders from whence he could see without being seen. The pursuer toiled into sight, a slim, wiry youth on a buckskin. He came forward out of the shadows into the fretted moonlight.
Yeager gave a glad whoop of recognition. "Hi-yi, Phil!"
"You're there, are you? Did I scare you off the trail, Jim?"
"That's whatever, boy. What are you doing here?"
"Sis sent me. She got worried again, and we figured I'd better join you."
"I reckon there's nothing serious the matter. Still, it ain't like Larry to say he would come and then not show up."
"Brill is back there bragging about it." Phil nodded his head toward the lights of the Frying Pan glimmering far below. "Says he knew the waddy wouldn't show his head. You don't reckon, Jim, he's turned a trick on Keller, do you?"
"That's what we have got to find out, Phil."
"Looks funny he'd be so durned sure when we all know how game Keller is," the boy reflected aloud.
"I don't expect you're armed, Phil?" Jim put the statement as a question.
"Nope. Are you?"
"No, I ain't. Didn't think of it when I started. Oh, well, we'll make out. Like enough there will be no need of guns."
A gray light was sifting into the sky, and still they rode, winding up toward the peaks of the divide. Jim, leading the way, drew rein and pointed to a cactus bush beside the trail. Among its spines lay a gray felt hat. From it his eye wandered to the very evident signs of a struggle that had taken place. Moss and cactus had been trampled down by boot heels. To the cholla hung here and there scraps of cloth. A blood splash stared at them from an outcropping slope of rock.
Jim swung from the saddle and rescued the hat from the spines. Inside the sweat band were the initials L.K. Silently he handed the hat to Phil.
"It's his hat," the boy cried.
"It's his hat," Jim agreed. "They must have laid for him here. He put up a good scrap. Notice how that cholla is cut to ribbons. Point is, what did they do to him?"
They searched the ground thoroughly, and discovered no body hidden in the brush.
"They've taken him away. Likely he's alive," Yeager decided aloud at last.
"Brill couldn't have been in this. He was at the Frying Pan before I was."
"I reckon he ordered it done. If that's correct they will be holding Larry till Brill gets there to give further orders."
Phil entered an objection. "That doesn't look to me like Brill's way. He's not scared of any man that lives. When he squares accounts with Keller he'll be on the job himself."
"That's so, too," admitted Yeager. "Still, I figure this is Healy's work. Maybe he gave out there was to be no killing. He was at the ranch himself, big as coffee, so as to be sure of his alibi."
"What does he care about an alibi? When he gets ready to go gunnin' after Keller he won't care if the whole Malpais sees him. There's something in this I don't _sabe_."
"There sure is. We've got to run the thing down _muy pronto_. No use both of us going ahead without arms, Phil. My notion is this: You burn a shuck back to the Frying Pan and round up some of our friends on the q.t. Don't let Brill get a notion of what's in the air. Better make straight for Gregory's Pass. I'm going to follow this trail we've cut and see what's doing. Once I find out I'll double back to the Pass and meet you. Bring along an extra gun for me."
"I don't reckon I will, Jim. What's the matter with me going on instead of you? I can follow this trail good as you can. I announce right here that I'm not going back. I've got first call on this job. Keller went into the fire after me. I'm going to follow this trail to hell if I have to."
Yeager tried persuasion, argument, appeal. The lad was as fixed as Gibraltar.
"I'm not going to go buttin' in where I'm not wanted any more than you would, Jim. I'll play this hand out with a cool head, but I'm going to play it my ownself."
"All right. It's your say-so. I'll admit you've got a claim. But you want to remember one thing--if anything happens to you I cayn't square it with Phyl. Go slow, boy!"
Without more words they parted, Jim to ride swiftly back for help, and young Sanderson to push on up the trail with his eyes glued to it. Ever since he could swing himself to a saddle he had been a vaquero in the cow country.
He was therefore an expert at reading the signs left by travellers. What would have been invisible to a tenderfoot offered evidence to him as plain as the print on a primer. Mile after mile he covered with a minute scrutiny that never wavered. _