The Forfeit Part 10

But the world seemed so still, so entirely peaceful.

The moments pursued for her a sluggish course. The jeweled sky was an added regret. She desired light, light that she might witness the whole drama she hoped--yes, hoped--would be played out down there in the valley. A sort of dementia had taken possession of her. She had no thought of the blood to be poured out at her bidding. She thought nothing of the strong lives to be given up in sacrifice for her well-being. She thought only of herself, and all that the success of that night's affairs would mean to her.

But the dragging minutes extending upward of half an hour wore her fever down. And slowly depression replaced her more tense emotions.

It all seemed so long in happening that failure began to loom, and to become a certainty.

It was too good to hope. Ten thousand dollars! The amount bulked in her mind. It grew greater and greater in its significance as delay thrust hope further and further from her thought. Again impatience grew, hot, angry impatience, and drove depression out. What were they doing down there? Why did they not surround the bluff? There were enough of them. Look! The light was still s.h.i.+ning. It was the camp.

Where that light shone the men lay in hiding. Well--it was simple. To her mind there was no need for----

The sound of a rifle shot split the air with significant abruptness.

The sound banished the last of her half-angry causing. The moment had come. She raised herself up for no other reason than tense drawn suspense.

A second shot. Then a rattle of musketry which suggested general conflict. She drew a deep breath. Far away in the distance it seemed she heard a sharp cry. It was the final shriek of a human creature in the agony of a mortal wound. Then followed the sound of hoa.r.s.e voices shouting.

For some moments nothing in the scene changed. The speck of light shone out twinkling and gleaming like some evil eye. For the rest--there remained the deep twilight marked by the myriads of summer stars.

But the cries of men, the trampling of speeding hoofs held her. The breathlessness of the whole thing was upon her now, making it impossible to detach her regard from the main features.

The rattle of rifles had become almost incessant. And a few moments later a blaze of light shot up from the far side of the bluff. It grew, licking up the great, sun-dried, resinous pine wood with paralyzing rapidity. Another great sheet of flame soared upward further away to the right. Then another to the south. A fire trap had been set at the far side of the great bluff, and only the hither side remained open to those seeking shelter within it.

Effie's gaze was fascinated beyond her control. The Vigilantes had planned their coup deliberately and well. The air she was breathing began to reek with the pungent smell of burning. A light smoke haze began to flood the picture. Now she beheld moving figures in the lurid glow which backed the scene. They were hors.e.m.e.n. But whether or not they were the Vigilantes she could not be certain. They were racing across the open, and the crack of their rifles mingled with the spluttering crackle of the conflagration beyond.

Never for one moment did the woman withdraw her gaze. The spell of it all was almost painful. She knew that life and death were at grips down there in that cauldron of conflict. And though at moments shudders pa.s.sed through her body, they were neither shudders of weakness nor womanish horror. Her only emotion was excitement, and her nerves were ready to respond in physical expression to every vision her eyes communicated to them.

An hour pa.s.sed thus. The bluff was a furnace, roaring, booming. It lit the valley seemingly from end to end. The night shadows had been swept aside, and the scene lay spread out before her eyes. She saw dismounted riders moving about. She beheld one group; a number of men huddled together, held as though they were prisoners.

At last firing altogether ceased and the straggling hors.e.m.e.n began to rea.s.semble in the vicinity of the chief group. Then, as the raging fire ate its way through to the hither side of the bluff, and turned the final barrier into a wall of fire, the whole party moved away down the valley with obvious signs of haste.

Effie gazed after them with widening eyes while the hot breath of the conflagration fanned her cheeks. She was wondering, speculating, and slowly the significance of their movements began to take hold of her.

At first she had thought that the movement was inspired by the overpowering heat of the forest fire. She had warned herself of the danger. The gra.s.s down there. The flying sparks. But almost in the same breath she realized that there was more, far more in that movement. The gra.s.s was far too green in the valley to form any real danger and the bluff was sufficiently isolated. No, there was more in it than the danger of fire.

She s.h.i.+vered, although the night air now possessed something of the temperature of a summer noon. All her excitement had pa.s.sed. She had even forgotten for the time all that the doings of that night meant to her. She was thinking of the deliberate administration of justice as these men understood it. It was crude, deadly, and full of a painful horror, and now, now, in saner moments, she beheld the dawn of emotions which had come all too late. Whither were those men riding? Whither?

And then? Ah--she shuddered, and her shudder was full of realization.

For well she knew that the men she had seen grouped were living prisoners. Living prisoners. How long would they remain so? What would be their end?

CHAPTER VII

OUTLAND JUSTICE

The noon sun sweltered down through the rank vegetation of the narrow defile. The heat was almost too burdensome to endure. It was moist; it was dank with the reek of decaying matter. The way was a seemingly endless battle against odds. But the travelers were buoyed with the knowledge that it was a short cut, calculated to save them many hours and many miles.

Bud Tristram had pointed the way. Furthermore, he had urged Jeff to accept and endure the tortures and shortcomings which he knew they must face in the heart of this remote gulch.

Nor were his warnings unneeded, for Nature had set up no inconsiderable defenses. Here were swarms of over-grown mosquitoes of a peculiarly vicious type, which covered their horses' flanks in a gray horde, almost obliterating their original colors; and a bleeding ma.s.s resulted every time either man raised a hand to the back of his own neck to soothe the fierce irritation of the vicious attacks. Then the way itself. It was a narrow gorge almost completely occupied by the muddy bed and boggy sh.o.r.es of a drying mountain creek.

It was, in Jeff's own words, a "fierce journey." The heat left them drenched in perspiration, and wiltering. The two packhorses fought for their very lives, often hock deep in a sucking mire. While the beasts, who bore the burden of their exacting masters, were driven to battle every inch of the way against a fiercely obstinate rampart of dense grown bush.

Mercifully the gorge was less than three miles in length. A greater distance must have left the nervous equine mind staggered, and helpless, and beaten. As it was nearly three hours of incessant struggle only served to pa.s.s the final barrier.

"Phew!"

Jeff Masters drew off his hat as they emerged upon the wide opening of a great valley. Then he flung himself out of the saddle and began to sweep the blood-inflated mosquitoes from his horse's flanks. Bud, with less haste, proceeded to do the same. Finally, both men walked round the weary beasts and examined the security of the packs on the led horses.

Bud pointed down the valley with one outstretched arm.

"We'll make that way," he said, his deep eyes dwelling almost affectionately upon the wide stretch of blue-tinted gra.s.s. "Guess we'll take the high land an' camp fer food."

Then he turned back to his horse and remounted. Jeff silently followed his example and they rode on.

For many minutes no word pa.s.sed between them. Each was busy with his own particular thoughts. The deep look of friendly affection was still in Bud's eyes. Jeff was far less concerned with the wonderful scene slowly unfolding itself as they proceeded than with the purpose of his journey. He knew they had reached the central point from which they were to radiate their search of the labyrinth of hills. His mind was upon the wealth of possibility before them. The difficulties. Bud, for the time at least, was concerned only with that which his eyes beheld, and the memories of other days far, far back when he had possessed no greater responsibility than the quest of adventure, and his own safe delivery from the fruits of his unwisdom.

It was he who first broke the silence between them.

"Gee!" he exclaimed, with that curious note of appreciation which that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n can a.s.sume. "It's big. Say, Jeff, it's big an' good to look on. Sort of makes you think, too, don't it? Jest get a peek that way. Them slopes." He indicated the western boundary of the valley rising up, up to great pine-crested heights. "A thousand--two thousand feet. And hills beyond. Big hills, with snows you couldn't melt anyhow. Over there, too." One great hand waved in the direction of the east. "Lesser hills. Lesser woods. But--man, it's fine! Then ahead. Miles an' miles of this queer blue gra.s.s which sets fat on cattle inches deep."

His words ceased, but his eyes continued to feast, flooding the simple brain behind them with a joy which no words could describe. Presently he went on:

"Makes you feel A'mighty G.o.d's a pretty big feller, don't it? Guess He jest tumbles things around, an' sets up, an' levels down in a way that wouldn't mean a thing to brains like ours--till He's finished it all, and sort of swep' up tidy. Look at them colors, way up there to the west. Queer? Sure. Every sort o' blamed color in a tangle no earthly painter could set out. Ain't it a pictur'? It's jest a sort o'

pictur' a painter feller's li'ble to spend most of his wholesome nights dreamin' about. An' when he wakes up, why, I don't guess he kin even think like it, an' he sure ain't a h.e.l.l of a chance to paint that way anyhow. Say, d'you make it these things are, or is it jest something He sets in us makes us see 'em that way? He's big--He surely is. I'm glad I come along with you, Jeff, boy. Y' see, a feller sort o' sits around home, an' sees the same gra.s.s, an' brands the same steers, an'

thinks the same thinks. Ther' ain't nothin' he don't know around home.

He gets so life don't seem a thing, an' he jest feels he's running things so as he pleases. He sort o' fergets he's jest a part o' the scenery around. He fergets he's set in that scenery by an A'mighty big Hand, same as them all-fired m'squitters we just found, an' kind o'

guesses he is that A'mighty Hand." He turned his deeply smiling eyes on his companion. "I don't often take on like this, Jeff," he apologized, "but the sight o' this place makes me want to shout an' get right out an' thank the good G.o.d He's seen fit to let me sit around an'

live."

But Jeff had no means of simple expression such as Bud. He could never give verbal expression to the emotions locked away in his heart. Those who knew him regarded it as reserve, even hardness. Perhaps it was only that shyness which the strongest characters are often most p.r.o.ne to.

He ignored the older man's quaintly expressed feelings, and fastened upon the opening he had at last received, and which he had been seeking ever since it had become obvious that Bud's knowledge of the great Cathill range was almost phenomenal.

"You know these parts a heap," he observed.

"Know 'em?" Bud laughed in his deep-throated way, which was only another indication of his buoyant mood. "You'd know 'em, boy, if you'd had a father build up a big pelt trading post right in this valley, an'

fer sixteen years o' your life you'd ridden, an' shot, an' hunted over this blue gra.s.s, and these hills, for nigh a range of fifty mile.

Guess I know this territory same as you know the playgrounds o' the college that handed you your knowledge o' figgers. Know it? Say, you could dump me right down anywhere around here for fifty miles an' more, an' I'd travel straight here same as the birds fly." He laughed again.

"When you said you'd the notion of huntin' out your brother, who was huntin' these hills, you give me the excuse I'd been yearnin' to find in years. I wanted to see these hills again. I wanted it bad. Guess I was jest crazy fer it. It didn't get me figgerin' long, either, to locate wher' we'd likely find that boy you're lookin' fer. Ther' ain't no better huntin' ground than around this valley. It's sort of untouched since my father died, an' I had to quit it and take to punchin' cattle. Then ther's that post he built. A dandy place, with nigh everything a pelt hunter needs fer his comfort. We're making for that post right now, an' when we make it I'm guessin' we ain't goin' to chase much farther to locate that twin brother of yours."

"But you never----"

Bud shook his great head, and stretched his ungainly legs with his stirrups thrust out wide.

"Sure I didn't tell you these things," he nodded, in simple, almost childlike enjoyment.

"I never---- Say, does Nan know you were--raised here?"

"Surely." Then Bud went on with an amused twinkle in his eyes. "But I guess Nan's like me. It ain't our way worryin' other folks with our troubles. You see, most folks ain't a heap o' time to listen to other folks' troubles. Most everybody's jest yearnin' to tell their own."