_ CHAPTER XXV. LARRY TELLS A BEAR STORY
Keller rode blithely down the piney trail while the sun flung its brilliant good-bye over the crotch of the mountains behind which it was slipping. The western sky was a Turner sublimated to the _nth_ degree, a thing magnificent and indescribable. The young man rode with his crisp curls bared to the light, grateful breeze that came like healing from the great peaks. From the joyous, unquenchable youth in him bubbled snatches of song and friendly smiles scattered broadcast over a world that pleased him mightily.
He was going to see his girl, going down to the Frying Pan to take her in his arms and whirl her into the land of romance to the rhythm of the waltz. He wanted to shout it out to the chipmunks and the quails. Ever and again he broke out with a line or two of a melody he had heard once from a phonograph. No matter if he did not get the words exactly. He was sure of the sentiment. So the hills flung back his lusty:
"I love a lassie,
A bonnie Hieland lassie,
She's as pure as the lily of the dell."
Disaster fell upon him like a bolt out of a June sky. His pony stumbled, went down heavily with its weight on his leg. From the darkness men surged upon him. Rough hands dragged at him. The butt of a weapon crashed down on his hat and stunned him.
He became dimly aware that his leg was free from the horse, that he was struggling blindly to rise against the force that clamped him down. He knew that he reached his feet, that he was lashing out furiously with both hands, that even as he grappled with one assailant a gleam of steel flashed across the moonlight and shot through him with a zigzag pain that blotted out the world.
As his mind swam back to consciousness through troubled waters a far-away voice came out of the fog that surrounded him.
"He's coming to, looks like. I reckon you ain't bust his head, after all, Brad."
Vague, grinning gargoyles mocked him from the haze. Slowly these took form. Features stood out. The masks became faces. They no longer floated detached in space, but belonged definitely to human beings.
"It ain't our fault if you're stove up some, pardner. You're too durned anxious to whip yore weight in wildcats," one of the men grinned.
"Right you are, Tom. He shore hits like a kicking mule," chimed in a third, nursing a cheek that had been cut open to the bone.
A fourth spoke up, a leather-faced vaquero with hard eyes of jade. "No hard feelings, friend. All in the way of business." With which he gave a final tug at the knot that tied the hands of his prisoner.
"I've got Mr. Healy to thank for this, I expect," commented the nester quietly.
"We've got no rope on yore expectations, Mr. Keller; but this outfit doesn't run any information bureau," answered the heavy-set, sullen fellow who had been called Brad.
There were four of them, all masked; but the ranger was sure of one of them, if not two. The first speaker had been Tom Dixon; the last one was Brad Irwin, a rider belonging to the Twin Star outfit.
They helped the bound man to his horse and held a low-voiced consultation. Three of his captors turned their horses toward the south, while Irwin took charge of Keller. With his rifle resting across the horn of his saddle, the man followed his charge up the trail, winding among the summits that stood as sentinels around Gregory's Pass. Through the defile they went, descending into the little-known mountain parks beyond.
This region was the heart of the watershed where Little Goose Creek heads. The peaks rose gaunt above them. Occasionally they glimpsed wide vistas of tangled, wooded canons and hills innumerable as sea billows. Into this maze they plunged ever deeper and deeper. Daylight came, and found them still travelling. The prisoner did not need to be told that this inaccessible country was the lurking place of the rustlers who had preyed so long upon the Malpais district. Nor did he need evidence to connect the sinister figure behind him with the gang of outlaws who rode in and out of these silent places on their nefarious night errands while honest folks kept their beds.
The sun was well up to its meridian before they came through a thick clump of quaking aspens to the mouth of a gulch opening from the end of a little mountain park. On one of the slopes of the gulch a cabin squatted, half hidden by the great boulders and the matting of pine boughs in front. Here Brad swung stiffly from the saddle.
"We'll 'light hyer," he announced.
"Time, too," returned Keller easily. "If anybody asks you, tell them I usually eat breakfast some before ten o'clock."
"You'll do yore eating from now on when I give the word," his guard answered surlily.
He was a big, dark man with a grouch, one who took his duties sourly. Not by any stretch of imagination could he be considered a brilliant conversationalist. What he had to say he growled out audibly enough, but for the rest his opinions had to be cork-screwed out of him in surly monosyllables.
There was a good deal of the cave man about him. The heavy, slouching shoulders, the glare of savagery, the long, hairy arms, all had their primordial suggestion. Given a club and a stone ax, he might have been set back thousands of years with no injustice to his mentality.
The man soon had a fire blazing in the stove, and from it came a breakfast of bacon, black coffee, and biscuits. He freed the hands of the nester and sat opposite him at the table, a revolver by the side of his plate for use in an emergency.
Keller smiled. "This is one of those fashionable dinners where they have extra hardware beside the plates," he suggested.
"Get gay, and I'll blow the top of yore head off!" the cow-puncher swore with gusto.
"Thanks. Under the circumstances, I reckon I'll not get gay. I'm in no hurry to put you in the pen, seh. Plenty of time. I'm going to need the top of my head to testify against you."
Irwin swore violently.
"For two cents I'd pump you full of holes right now," he glared.
Keller laughed, meeting him eye to eye pleasantly.
"Those aren't the orders, friend. I'm to be held here till the boss shows up or gives the signal."
The big jaw of his captor fell from astonishment. "Who told you that?"
The prisoner helped himself to more bacon and laughed again. He had made a guess, but he knew now that he had hit the bull's-eye with his shot in the dark.
"Some things don't need telling. I don't have to be told, for instance, that if things get too hot for Brill Healy he will slide out and leave you to settle the bill with the law."
Irwin's eyes glared angrily at his smiling ones. The unabashed impudence, the unfluttered aplomb, but above all the uncanny prescience of this youth disturbed him because he could not understand them. Moreover, it happened that his suspicious mind had lingered on the chance of a betrayal at the hands of his chief. For which very reason he broke into angry denial.
"That's a lie! Brill ain't that sort. He'd stand pat to a finish." Then, tardily, came the instinct for caution. "And there's nothing to tell, anyways," he finished sulkily.
"Sure. What's a little rustling and a little bank robbing among friends?" Keller wanted to know cheerfully.
For just an instant he thought he had gone too far. The big ruffian opposite choked over his biscuit, the while rage purpled his face. He caught up the revolver, and his fingers itched at the trigger.
His prisoner, leaning back in the chair, held him with quiet, unwavering eyes. "Steady! Steady!" he drawled.
"That will be about enough from you," Irwin let out through set teeth. "You padlock that mouth of yours, mister."
Keller took his advice temporarily, but it was not in him to long repress the spirit of adventure that bubbled in him. The temptation to bait this bear drew him irresistibly. He could not let him alone, the more that he sensed the danger to himself of the prods he sent home through the thick skin.
Lying carelessly on the bed with his head on his arm, or perhaps sitting astride a chair with his hands crossed on the back support, he would smile with childlike innocence and sent his barbs in gayly. And Irwin, murder in his dull brain, would glare at him like a maniac.
"Now would be a good time to blow off the top of my cocoanut," the nester suggested more than once to the infuriated cave man. "I'm allowing, you know, to send you to Yuma as soon as I get out of this. Nothing like grabbing your opportunity by the forelock."
"And when are you expecting to get out of here?" his guard demanded huskily.
Keller waved his hand with airy persiflage. "No exact information obtainable, my friend. Likely to-day. Maybe not till to-morrow. The one dead-sure point is that I'll make my getaway at the right time."
"There's one more dead-sure point--that I'm going to blow holes in you at the right time," retorted the other.
"Like to bet on which of us is a true prophet?"
Brad relapsed into black, sulky silence.
The hours followed each other, and still nobody came to relieve the guard. Keller could not understand the reason for this, any more than he could fathom an adequate one for his abduction. There was of course something behind it--something more potent than mere malice. If the intention had been merely to kill him, the thing could have been done without all this trouble. But though he searched his brain for an explanation, he could not find one that satisfied.
The answer came to him later in the day. In the middle of the afternoon a horse pounded up the draw to the cabin. Irwin went to the door, his eye still on his prisoner, except for a swift glance at the newcomer.
"How's yore five-thousand-dollar beauty, Brad?" inquired a voice that the nester recognized.
"Finer than silk, boss."
The rider swung from the saddle, trailed his rein, and came with jingling spurs into the cabin.
"Good evening, Mr. Keller," he said with derisive respect.
The nester, lying sideways on the bed with his head on his hand, nodded a greeting.
"I didn't know you and Mr. Irwin had doubled up and were bunkies," continued the jubilant voice. "When did you-all patch up the partnership?"
"About eight o'clock last night, Mr. Healy," returned the prisoner, eying him coolly. "And of course I knew it would be a surprise to you when you learned it."
"Expecting to stay long with him?"
"He seems right hospitable, but I don't reckon I'll outstay my welcome."
Healy laughed, with mockery and not amusement. "Brad's such a pressing host there's no telling when he'll let you go."
He was as malevolent as ever, but it was plain to be seen that he was riding high on a wave of triumph. Affairs were plainly going to his liking.
"The way I heard it you were expected down at the Frying Pan last night. Changed yore mind about going, I reckon," he went on insolently.
"I reckon."
"Had business that detained you, maybe."
"You're a good guesser."
"Folks were right anxious down there, according to the say-so that reached me."
Keller's cool eye measured him in silence, at which his enemy laughed contemptuously and turned on his heel.
Healy drew his confederate to one side of the room and held a whispered talk with him. Apparently he did not greatly care whether his foe caught the drift of it or not, for occasionally his voice lifted enough so that scraps of sentences reached the man lounging on the bed.
"--close to two hundred head--by the Mimbres Pass--the boys are ce'tainly pushing the drive--out of danger by midnight--wait for the signal before you turn him loose----"
"So-long, Mr. Keller. I cayn't spare the time to stay longer with you," their owner jeered.
"Just a moment, Mr. Healy. I want to know why you are keeping me here."
The man grinned. "Am I keeping you here, seh? Looks to me like it was Brad that's a-keeping you. Make a break for a getaway, and I'll not do a thing to you. Course I cayn't promise what Brad won't do. He's such a plumb anxious host."
"You're his brains. What you tell him to do he does. I hold you responsible for this!"
"You don't say!"
"And right now I'll add, for all the devilment that has been going on in these parts for years. You've about reached the end of your rope, though."
"I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you reach the end of one inside of forty-eight hours, Mr. Rustler," flashed back Healy.
And with an evil, significant grin he was gone. They heard the sound of retreating hoofs die in the distance.
But his visit had told the prisoner two things. A hurried wholesale drive of rustled cattle was being made across the line into Sonora, and it was being done in such a way as to fasten the suspicion of it upon the nester who had not appeared at the dance and had not been seen since that time. The irony of the thing was superb in its audacity. Healy and his friends would get the profit from the stolen cattle, and they would visit the punishment for the crime upon him. Evidence would be cooked up of course, and the retribution would be so swift that his friends would not be able to save him. This time his enemy would take no chances. He would be wiped out like a troublesome insect. The thing was diabolic in the simplicity of its cleverness.
Keller watched his jailer now like a hawk. He was ready to take the first chance that offered, no matter how slight a one it seemed. But the man was vigilant and wary. He never let his hand wander a foot from the handle of the weapon he carried.
Silently Irwin cooked a second meal. They sat down to it opposite each other, Keller facing the open window. While his jailer plied the knife, his revolver again lay on the oilcloth within reach.
"While I'm your guest and eating at your expense, I want to be properly grateful," the nester told his vis-a-vis. "Some folks might kick because the me-an'-you wasn't more varied, but I ain't that kind. You're doing your best, and nobody could do more."
"The which?" asked Irwin puzzled.
"The me-an'-you. It's French for just plain grub. For breakfast we get bacon and coffee and biscuits. For supper there's a variety. This time it is biscuits and coffee and bacon. To-morrow I reckon----"
Keller stopped halfway in his sentence, but took up his drawling comment again instantly. Only an added sparkle in his eyes betrayed the change that had suddenly wiped out his indolence and left him tense and alert. For while he had been speaking a head had slowly raised itself above the window casement and two eyes had looked in and met his. They belonged to Phil Sanderson.
Never had the brain of the prisoner been more alert. While his garrulous tongue ran aimlessly on, he considered ways and means. The boy held up empty hands to show him that he was unarmed. The nester did not by the flicker of an eyelash betray the presence of a third party to the man at table with him. Nevertheless his chatter became from that moment addressed to two listeners. To one it meant nothing in particular. To the other it was pregnant with meaning.
"No, seh. Some might complain because you ain't better provided with grub and fixings, but what I say is _to make out the best we can with what we've got_," the slow, drawling voice continued. "Some folks cayn't get along unless things are up to the Delmonico standard. That's plumb foolishness. Reminds me of a friend of mine that happened on a grizzly onct while he was cutting trail.
"Not expecting to meet Mr. Bear, he didn't have any gun along. Mr. Bear was surely on the wah-path that day. He made a bee line for my friend to get better acquainted. Nothing like presence of mind. That cow-puncher got his rope coiled in three shakes of a maverick's tail, his pinto bucking for fair to make his getaway. The rope drapped over Mr. Bear's head just as the puncher and the hawss separated company.
"Things were doing right sudden then. My friend grabbed the end of that rope and twisted it round and round a young live oak. Then he remembered an appointment and lit out, Mr. Bear after him on the jump. _Muy pronto_ that grizzly came up awful sudden. The more he jerked the nearer he was to being choked. You better believe Mr. Puncher was hitting that trail right willing in the meanwhile."
"You talk too much with yore mouth," growled Irwin.
"It's a difference of opinion that makes horse races. I was just aiming to show you that _if my friend hadn't happened to have a rope along he would have been in a bad fix_. But, you notice, he used his brains, _and a rope did just as well as a gun_."
The eyes just above the window casing disappeared. Brad attended to the business in hand, which was that of getting away with bacon and biscuits while he kept an eye on the man opposite. His prisoner also did justice to his supper, to his flow of conversation, and to the window behind the unconscious jailer.
In that open window were presently framed again the head and shoulders of young Sanderson. Irwin pushed back his chair to get some more coffee, and the picture in the frame shot instantly down. The guard, his coffee cup, and his revolver went to the stove and returned. Phil reappeared at the window, his rope coiled for action. It slid gracefully forward, dropped over the head of Brad, and was instantly jerked tight.
Keller vaulted across the table, and flung himself upon the struggling man. Brad's arms were entangled in the rope, but one leg shot out and hurled back the nester. But before he could free himself from the taut loop his prisoner was upon him again and had borne him to the ground.
Of the two, Irwin was far the more powerful, Keller the more agile and supple. He knew every trick of the wrestling game, whereas the other was clumsy and muscle-bound. By main strength the older man got to his feet again. Over went the table as they surged against it.
A chair, stamped into kindling, was hurled aside by the force of their impact. The stove rocked, and the bed collapsed as the locked figures crashed down upon it. The ranger, twisting as they fell, landed on top and his fingers instantly found the throat of his foe. Simultaneously Phil came to his assistance.
Even then, taken at an advantage, with two much younger men against him, the big jailer fought to the finish like a bear. Not till he was completely exhausted and they nearly so did he give up and lie quiet. All three of them panted heavily, the allies lying across his chest and legs. The nester managed to draw the loop taut about Irwin's neck and insert his knuckles so that he could use them as a tourniquet if necessary.
"Gather up the other end of the rope, loop it, and tie his feet together," the nester ordered, getting his sentence out in fragmentary jerks.
Phil did so, deftly and expertly, after which, in spite of renewed struggles, they tied the hands of their prisoner behind his back.
"Looks like a cyclone had hit the room," said the boy, glancing at the debris.
Larrabie laughed. "He's the most willing mixer I ever saw."
"What are you going to do with him?"
"We'll leave him tied right where he is. When we get down into the settlement we'll notify his friends, though I reckon they'll find him without any help from us."
In order to make sure they went over the knots again, tightening them here and there. The revolver and the rifle of the bound man they appropriated. The nester's horse was in a little corral back of the house. He saddled, and shortly the two were on the back trail. Phil knew the country as a golfer knows his links. To him Keller put the question in his mind:
"How far is the Mimbres Pass from here, and in what direction?"
The younger man looked at him in surprise. "A dozen miles, I reckon. See that cleft over there? That's the Mimbres."
His friend drew rein and looked with level eyes at him.
"Phil, it's come to a show-down! Are you for Brill Healy or are you for me?"
"I'm through with Brill."
"Dead sure of that?"
"Dead sure. Why?"
"Because you've got to make your choice to-night whether you're going to stand with honest men or thieves. Healy's gang is rustling a bunch of cows gathered at the round-up. They're heading for Mimbres Pass. I'm going to stop them if I can."
"I'm with you, Larry."
"Good! I was sure of you, Phil."
The boy flushed, but his eyes did not waver. "I want to tell you something. That day we most caught you over the dead cow of the C.O. outfit Brill was carrying Phyl's knife. I had lent it to him the night before."
Keller nodded. "I had figured it out that way."
"But that ain't all. Once when I was cutting trail in the hills--must have been about six months before that time--I happened on Brill driving a calf still bleeding from the brand he had put on it.
"I didn't think anything of that, but I noticed he was anxious to have me turn and join him. But I kept on the way I was going, and just by a miracle my pony almost stumbled over a dead cow lying in the brush. That set me thinking. That night I rode over to Healy's and asked an explanation.
"He had one ready. Some one else must have killed the cow. He found the calf wandering about alone, and branded it. Somehow his story didn't quite satisfy me, but I wasn't ready then to think him a coyote. I liked him--always had. And it flattered me that he had picked me out to be his best friend. So I said nothing, and figured it out that he was on the square. Of course I knew he was reckless and wild, but I didn't like him any the less for that. I reckon nobody ever accused him of not being game."
"Hardly," smiled Keller. "He'll stand the acid that way."
"The thing that stuck in my craw was his lying about seeing you on the night of the bank robbery. He said you were riding the roan with white stockings. Later we found out that couldn't be true. Then I knew Jim was telling the truth about you being with him in the hills at the time. It kind of sifted to me by degrees that you were a white man and he was a skunk."
"And then?"
"Then we had it out one day. He had his reason for wanting to stand well with me. I reckon you know what it is."
"I know his reason. No man could have a better. I reckon I've a right to think so, Phil, because she has promised to marry me."
The boy shook hands with him impulsively. "I'm right glad to hear it--and I want to say they don't make girls any better than Phyl."
"That's not news to me. I have known it since the first time I saw her."
Sanderson returned to the order of the day. "Well, Brill and I had had one or two tiffs, mostly about you and Phyl. He saw I was changed toward him, and he wanted to know why. I let him have it straight, and since then we haven't been friends."
"I'm glad of that. It makes plain sailing for me. He's got to be run down and caged, Phil. Healy is at the head of all this rustling that has been troubling the Malpais country. His gang stuck up the Diamond Nugget stage, killed Sheriff Fowler, and robbed the Noches Bank."
"How could he have robbed the bank when he was seen fifty miles from there not two hours afterward?"
Keller briefly explained his theory then pushed on at once to his plans.
"I'm going to make straight for the Mimbres Pass while you go back and rustle help. I'll try to keep them from getting through the Pass until you close in on them behind."
"That don't look good to me. How do I know how long it will be before I can gather the boys together or find Jim and his outfit? You might be massacred before I got back."
"A man has to take his fighting chance."
"Then let me take mine. We'll hold the pass together. I'll bet we can. Don't you reckon?"
"What use would you be without a rifle? No, Phil, you'll have to bring up the reinforcements. That's the best tactics."
Sanderson protested eagerly, but in the end was overborne. They turned their backs upon each other, one headed for the Mimbres and the other for the trail that ran down to the Malpais country. _