Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police Part 20

His arms tightened about her again.

"You're all right now," he repeated gently. He was not conscious of the sobbing break in his voice, or of the great, throbbing love that it breathed to her. He tried to speak calmly. "There's nothing wrong--nothing. The heat made you sick. But you're all right now--"

From beyond the hill there came a sound that made him break off with a sudden, quick breath. It was the sharp, stinging report of Billinger's carbine! Once, twice, three times--and then there followed more distant shots!

"He's come up with them!" he cried. The fury of fight, of desire for vengeance, blazed anew in his face. There was pain in the grip of his arm about the girl.

"Do you feel strong--strong enough to ride fast?" he asked. "There's only one man with me, and there are five of them. It's murder to let him fight it alone!"

"Yes--yes--" whispered the girl, her arms tightening round him. "Ride fast--or put me off. I can follow--"

It was the first time that he had heard her voice since that last evening up at Lac Bain, many months before, and the sound of it thrilled him.

"Hold tight!" he breathed.

Like the wind they swept across the prairie and up the slope of the hill. At the top Philip reined in. Three or four hundred yards distant lay a thick clump of poplar trees and a thousand yards beyond that the first black escarpments of the Bad Lands. In the s.p.a.ce between a horseman was galloping fiercely to the west. It was not Billinger. With a quick movement Philip slipped the girl to the ground, and when she sprang a step back, looking up at him in white terror, he had whipped out one of his big service revolvers.

"There's a little lake over there among those trees," he said. "Wait there--until I come back!"

He raced down the slope--not to cut off the flying horseman--but toward the clump of poplars. It was Billinger he was thinking of now. The agent had fired three shots. There had followed other shots, not Billinger's, and after that his carbine had remained silent. Billinger was among the poplars. He was hurt or dead.

A well-worn trail, beaten down by transient rangerss big revolver showing over his horse's ears. A hundred paces and the timber gave place to a sandy dip, in the center of which was the water hole. The dip was not more than an acre in extent. Up to his knees in the hole was Billinger's riderless horse, and a little way up the sand was Billinger, doubled over on his hands and knees beside two black objects that Philip knew were men, stretched out like the dead back at the wreck.

Billinger's yellow-mustached face, pallid and twisted with pain, looked over them as Philip galloped across the open and sprang out of his saddle. With a terrible grimace he raised himself to his knees, antic.i.p.ating the question on Philip's lips.

"Nothing very bad, Steele," he said. "One of the cusses pinked me through the leg, and broke it, I guess. Painful, but not killing. Now look at that!"

He nodded to the two men lying with their faces turned up to the hot glare of the sun. One glance was enough to tell Philip that they were dead, and that it was not Billinger who had killed them. Their bearded faces had stiffened in the first agonies of death. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were soaked with blood and their arms had been drawn down close to their sides. As he looked the gleam of a metal buckle on the belt of the dead man nearest him, caught Philip's eye. He took a step nearer to examine it and then drew back. This bit of metal told the story--it bore the letters R.N.W.M.P.

"I thought so," he muttered with a slight catch in his voice. "You didn't follow my good advice, Bucky Nome, and now you reap the harvest of your folly. You have paid your debt to M'sieur Janette."

Then Philip turned quickly and looked back at Billinger. In his hand the agent held a paper package, which he had torn open. A second and similar package lay in the sand in front of him.

"Currency!" he gasped. "It's a part of the money stolen from the express car. The two hundred thousand was done up in five packages, and here are two of 'em. Those men were dead when I came, and each had a package lying on his breast. The fellow who pinked me was just leaving the dip!"

He dropped the package and began ripping down his trouser leg with a knife. Philip dropped on his knees beside him, but Billinger motioned him back.

"It's not bleeding bad," he said. "I can fix it alone."

"You're certain, Billinger--"

"Sure!" laughed the agent, though he was biting his lips until they were necked with blood. "There's no need of you wasting time."

For a moment Philip clutched the other's hand.

"We can't understand what this all means, old man--the carrying off of--of Isobel--and the money here, but we'll find out soon!"

"Leave that confounded carbine," exclaimed Billinger, as the other rose to mount. "I did rotten work with it, and the other fellow fixed me with a pistol. That's why I'm not bleeding very much."

The outlaw had disappeared in the black edge of the Bad Lands when Philip dashed up out of the dip into the plain. There was only one break ahead of him, and toward this he urged his horse. In the entrance to the break there was another sandy but waterless dip, and across this trailed the hoof-prints of the outlaws' mounts, two at a walk--one at a gallop.

At one time, ages before, the break had been the outlet of a stream pouring itself out between jagged and cavernous walls of rock from the black heart of the upheaved country within. Now the bed of it was strewn with broken trap and ma.s.ses of boulders, cracked and dried by centuries of blistering sun.

Philip's heart beat a little faster as he urged his horse ahead, and not for an instant did his c.o.c.ked revolver drop from its guard over the mare's ears. He knew, if he overtook the outlaws in retreat, that there would be a fight, and that it would be three against one. That was what he hoped for. It was an ambush that he dreaded. He realized that if the outlaws stopped and waited for him he would be at a terrible disadvantage. In open fight he was confident His prairie-bred mount took the rough trail at a swift canter, evading the boulders and knife-edged trap in the same guarded manner that she galloped over prairie-dog and badger holes out upon the plain. Twice in the ten minutes that followed their entrance into the chasm Philip saw movement ahead of him, and each time his revolver leaped to it. Once it was a wolf, again the swiftly moving shadow of an eagle sweeping with spread wings between him and the sun. He watched every concealment as he approached and half swung in his saddle in pa.s.sing, ready to fire.

A quick turn in the creek bed, where the rock walls hugged in close, and his mare planted her forefeet with a suddenness that nearly sent him over her head. Directly in their path, struggling to rise from among the rocks, was a riderless horse. Two hundred yards beyond a man on foot was running swiftly up the chasm, and a pistol shot beyond him two others on horseback had turned and were waiting.

"Lord, if I had Billinger's gun now!" groaned Philip.

At the sound of his voice and the pressure of his heels in her flank the mare vaulted over the animal in their path. The clatter of pursuing hoofs stopped the runner for an instant, and in that same instant Philip halted and rose in his stirrups to fire. As his finger pressed the trigger there came to his ears a thrilling sound from behind him--the sharp galloping beat of steel upon rock! Billinger was coming--Billinger, with his broken leg and his carbine!

He could have shouted for joy as he fired.

Once--twice, and the outlaw was speeding ahead of him again, unhurt. A third shot and the man stumbled among the rocks and disappeared. There was no movement toward retreat on the part of the mounted men, and Philip listened as he slipped in fresh cartridges. His horse was panting; he could hear the excited and joyous tumult of his own heart-but above it all he heard the steady beat, beat, beat of those approaching hoofs! Billinger would be there soon--in time to use his carbine at a deadly rate, while he got into closer quarters with his revolver. G.o.d bless Billinger--and his broken leg!

He was filled with the craze of fight now and it found vent in a yell of defiance as he spurred on toward the outlaws. They were not going to run. They were waiting for him. He caught the gleam of the hot sun on their revolvers, and saw that they meant business as they swung a little apart to divide his fire. At one hundred yards Philip still held his gun at his side; at sixty he pulled in his mare, flattened along her neck like an Indian, his pistol arm swinging free between her ears. It was one of the cleverest fighting tricks of the service, and he made the movement as the guns of the others leaped before their faces. Two shots sang over his head, so close that they would have swept him from the saddle if he had been erect. In another moment the rockbound chasm echoed with the steady roar of the three revolvers. In front of the flaming end of his own gun Philip saw the outlaw on the right pitch forward in his saddle and fall to the ground. He sent his last shot at the man on the left and drew his second gun. Before he could fire again his mare gave a tremendous lunge forward and stumbled upon her knees, and with a gasp of horror Philip felt the saddle-girth slip as he swung to free himself.

In the few terrible seconds that followed Philip was conscious of two things--that death was very near, and that Billinger was a moment too late. Less than ten paces away the outlaw was deliberately taking aim at him, while his own pistol arm was pinned under the weight of his body.

For a breath he ceased to struggle, looking up in frozen calmness at the man whose finger was already crooked to fire.

When a shot suddenly rang out, it pa.s.sed through him in a lightning flash that it was the shot intended for him. But he saw no movement in the outlaw's arm; no smoke from his gun. For a moment the man sat rigid and stiff in his saddle. Then his arm dropped. His revolver fell with a clatter among the stones. He slipped sidewise with a low groan and tumbled limp and lifeless almost at Philip's feet.

"Billinger--Billinger--"

The words came in a sob of joy from Philip's lips. Billinger had come in time--just in time!

He struggled so that he could turn his head and look down the chasm.

Yes, there was Billinger--a hundred yards away, hunched over his saddle.

Billinger, with his broken leg, his magnificent courage, his--

With a wild cry Philip jerked himself free.

Good G.o.d, it was not Billinger! It was Isobel! She had slipped from the saddle--he saw her as she tottered a few steps among the rocks and then sank down among them. With his pistol still in his hand he ran back to where Billinger's horse was standing. The girl was crumpled against the side of a boulder, with her head in her arms--and she was crying. In an instant he was beside her, and all that he had ever dreamed of, all that he had ever hoped for, burst from his lips as he caught her and held her close against his breast. Yet he never could have told what he said.

Only he knew that her arms were clasped about his neck, and that, as she pressed her face against him, she sobbed over and over again something about the old days at Lac Bain--and that she loved him, loved him! Then his eyes turned up the chasm, and what he saw there made him bend low behind the boulder and brought a strange thrill into his voice.

"You will stay here--a little while," he whispered, running his fingers through her s.h.i.+ning hair. There was a tone of gentle command in his words as he placed her against the rock. "I must go back for a few minutes. There is no danger--now."

He stooped and picked up the carbine which had fallen from her hand.

There was one cartridge still in the breech. Replacing his revolver in its holster he rose above the rocks, ready to swing the rifle to his shoulder. Up where the outlaws lay, a man was standing in the trail. He was making no effort to conceal himself, and did not see Philip until he was within fifty paces of him. Even then he did not show surprise.

Apparently he was unarmed, and Philip dropped the muzzle of his carbine.

The man motioned for him to advance, standing with a spread hand resting on either hip. He was hatless and coatless. His hair was long. His face was covered with a scraggly growth of red beard, too short to hide his sunken cheeks. He might have been a man half starved, and yet there was strength in his bony frame and his eyes were as keen as a serpent's.

"Got in just in time to miss the fun after all," he said coolly. "Queer game, wasn't it? I was ahead of you up as far as the water hole. Saw what happened there."

Philip's hand dropped on the b.u.t.t of his revolver.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Me? I'm Blackstone--Jim Blackstone, from over beyond the elbow. I guess everybody for fifty miles round here knows me. And I guess I'm the only one who knows what's happened--and why." He had stepped behind a huge rock that shut out the lower trail from them and Philip followed, his hand still on his revolver.

"They're both dead," added the stranger, signifying with a nod of his head that he meant the outlaws. "One of them was alive when I came up, but I ran my knife between his ribs, and he's dead now."