The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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that both were eager to turn back. Giant boulders, carved to grotesque and ghostly shapes by a million years' wind and water, reared themselves aloft and threw shadows in the moonlight. The wind, caught in the gulch, rose and fell in unearthly, sibilant sounds. If ever fiends from below walk the earth, this time and place was a fitting one for them. Jack curved a hand around his mouth, and emitted a strange, mournful, low cry, which might have been the scream of a lost soul.
Jeff clutched at the arm of his companion. "Did you hear that, Buck?"
"What--what do you reckon it was, Jeff?"
Again Jack let his cry curdle the night.
The outlaws took counsel of their terror. They were hardy, desperate men, afraid of nothing mortal under the sun. But the dormant superstition in them rose to their throats. Fearfully they wheeled and gave their horses the spur. Flatray could hear them crashing through the brush.
He listened while the rapid hoofbeats died away, until even the echoes fell silent. "We'll be moving," he announced to his prisoner.
For a couple of hours they followed substantially the same way that Jack had taken, descending gradually toward the foothills and the plains. The stars went out, and the moon slid behind banked clouds, so that the darkness grew with the passing hours. At length Flatray had to call a halt.
"We'll camp here till morning," he announced when they reached a grassy park.
The horses were hobbled, and the men sat down opposite each other in the darkness. Presently the prisoner relaxed and fell asleep. But there was no sleep for his captor. The cattleman leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood and smoked his pipe. The night grew chill, but he dared not light a fire. At last the first streaks of gray dawn lightened the sky. A quarter of an hour later he shook his captive from slumber.
"Time to hit the trail."
The outlaw murmured sleepily, "How's that, Dunc? Twenty-five thousand apiece!"
"Wake up! We've got to vamose out of here."
Slowly the fellow shook the sleep from his brain. He looked at Flatray sullenly, without answering. But he climbed into the saddle which Jack had cinched for him. Dogged and wolfish as he was, the man knew his master, and was cowed.
CHAPTER III
THE TABLES TURNED
From the local eastbound a man swung to the station platform at Mesa. He was a dark, slim, little man, wiry and supple, with restless black eyes which pierced one like bullets.
The depot loungers made him a focus of inquiring looks. But, in spite of his careless ease, a shrewd observer would have read anxiety in his bearing. It was as if behind the veil of his indifference there rested a perpetual vigilance. The wariness of a beast of prey lay close to the surface.
"Mornin', gentlemen," he drawled, sweeping the group with his eyes.
"Mornin'," responded one of the loafers.
"I presume some of you gentlemen can direct me to the house of Mayor Lee."
"The mayor ain't to home," volunteered a lank, unshaven native in butternut jeans and boots.
"I think it was his house I inquired for," suggested the stranger.
"Fust house off the square on the yon side of the postoffice--a big two-story brick, with a gallery and po'ches all round it."
Having thanked his informant, the stranger passed down the street. The curious saw him pass in at the mayor's gate and knock at the door. It opened presently, and disclosed a flash of white, which they knew to be the skirt of a girl.
"I reckon that's Miss 'Lissie," the others were informed by the unshaven one. "She's let him in and shet the door."
Inevitably there followed speculation as to who the arrival might be. That his coming had something to do with the affair of the West kidnapping, all were disposed to agree; but just what it might have to do with it, none of them could do more than guess. If they could have heard what passed between Melissy and the stranger, their curiosity would have been gratified.
"Good mornin', miss. Is Mayor Lee at home?"
"No--he isn't. He hasn't got back yet. Is there anything I can do for you?"
Two rows of even white teeth flashed in a smile. "I thought maybe there was something I could do for you. You are Miss Lee, I take it?"
"Yes. But I don't quite understand--unless you have news."
"I have no news--yet."
"You mean----" Her eager glance swept over him. The brown eyes, which had been full of questioning, flashed to understanding. "You are not Lieutenant O'Connor?"
"Am I not?" he smiled.
"I mean--are you?"
"At your service, Miss Lee."
She had heard for years of this lieutenant of rangers, who was the terror of all Arizona "bad men." Her father, Jack Flatray, the range riders whom she knew--game men all--hailed Bucky O'Connor as a wonder. For coolness under fire, for acumen, for sheer, unflawed nerve, and for his skill in that deadly game he played of hunting down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes.
"Come in," the girl invited. "Father said, if you came, I was to keep you here until he got back or sent a messenger for you. He's hunting for the criminals in the Roaring Fork country. Of course, he didn't know when you would get here. At the time he left we hadn't been able to catch you on the wire. I signed Mr. Flatray's name at his suggestion, because he was in correspondence with you once about the Roaring Fork outlaws. He is out in the hills, too. He started half an hour after the kidnappers. But he isn't armed. I'm troubled about him."
Again the young man's white-toothed smile flashed. "You'd better be. Anybody that goes hunting Black MacQueen unarmed ought to be right well insured."
She nodded, a shadow in her eyes. "Yes--but he would go. He doesn't mean them to see him, if he can help it."
"Black sees a heap he isn't expected to see. He has got eyes all over the hills, and they see by night as well as by day."
"Yes--I know he has spies everywhere; and he has the hill people terrorized, they say. You think this is his work?"
"It's a big thing--the kind of job he likes to tackle. Who else would dare do such a thing?"
"That's what father thinks. If he had stolen the President of the United States, it wouldn't have stirred up a bigger fuss. Newspaper men and detectives are hurrying here from all directions. They are sure to catch him."
"Are they?"
She noticed a curious, derisive contempt in the man's voice, and laid it to his vanity. "I don't mean that _they_ are. I mean that _you_ are sure to get him," she hastened to add. "Father thinks you are wonderful."
"I'm much obliged to him," said the man, with almost a sneer.
He seemed to have so good an opinion of himself that he was above praise even. Melissy was coming to the decision that she did not like him--which was disappointing, since she had expected to like him immensely.
"I didn't look for you till night. You wired you would be on number seven," she said. "I understood that was the earliest you could get here."
His explanation of the change was brief, and invited no further discussion. "I found I could make an earlier train."
"I'm glad you could. Father says it is always well to start on the trail while it is fresh."
"Have you ever seen this MacQueen, Miss Lee?" he asked.
"Not unless he was there when Mr. West was kidnapped."
"Did you know any of the men?"
She hesitated. "I thought one was Duncan Boone."