Bruce of the Circle A Part 32

"You've stolen my horse!" he said aloud, and evenly, as though he were dispa.s.sionately charging some one before him with the misdeed. "You stole my horse, but she ... was your woman!"

He straightened and lifted his head, moving it quickly from side to side as he strove to identify a moving object far below him that had risen suddenly into sight on one of the valley swells and disappeared again in a wash. It was a horse, he knew, but whether it was a roamer of the range or a beast bearing a rider, he could not tell. He waited anxiously for its reappearance, again hoping and fearing.

"Huh! You're carryin' n.o.body," he muttered aloud as the speck again came into view. "An' you sure are goin' some particular place!"

The animal was too far distant to be readily identified but about its swing was a familiar something and, inspired by an idea, Bayard returned to the house, emerged with a field gla.s.s and focused it on the approaching horse. The animal was his sorrel stallion.

"Come on, Abe," he said aloud, putting down the binoculars with a hand that trembled. "They've sent you on home, or you've got away.... But how about th' party you carried off?"

He walked to the gate and stood uneasily awaiting the arrival of the animal. As the sorrel came into sight from the nearest wash into which he had disappeared he was moving at a deliberate trot, but when he made out the figure of his waiting master he strode swifter, finally breaking into a gallop and approaching at great speed, whinnering from time to time.

The bridle reins were knotted securely about the horn. He had not escaped; Abe had been sent home. He stopped before Bruce and nuzzled the man's hands as they caressed his hot, soft nose.

"It looks as if they had trouble before they left, from th' way my room is," the man said to the horse as he stroked his nose, "but I know right well he'd never got you out of that corral alone an' never got you off in that direction unless somebody'd helped him; she might make you mind 'cause she rode you once. If it wasn't for that ... I'd think she'd been forced ... 'cause they must have had a racket...."

He led the horse through the gate and into the corral. There, he slipped the bridle off, uncinched and dragged the saddle toward him. As the polished, darkened seat turned to the bright sunlight, he saw that the leather had been defaced and, indignation mounting, he leaned over to inspect it. The resentment departed, a mingling of fear and triumph and rage rose within him, for on the saddle had been scratched in hasty, crude characters:

BOUND FOR MI NE HELP

No need to speculate as to the author of that message on the saddle.

That Ann had been forced by circ.u.mstances to do the work furtively was as evident. And the combination of facts which rode uppermost in his confused mentality was this. Ann Lytton was being taken to the Sunset mine against her will; she had appealed to him for aid and, because of that, he knew that she had chosen between the two, between her husband and her honorable lover!

For a moment, mad, hot triumph filled him. He had done his best with the ruin of a man he had set out to reconstruct; he had groomed him well, conscientiously, giving him thorough care, great consideration, just to satisfy his own moral sense; he had given him back to Ann at the cost of intense suffering ... and it had not been enough for her; she was not satisfied. Beside her husband, bound for her husband's mountain home, she had found herself in her hour of need and had cried out to him for help!

Bruce calculated swiftly as he stood there. Lytton's trail from the ranch led straight eastward, toward the Sunset group. They had not ridden the whole forty-five miles at one stretch. He was satisfied of that. Obviously, they had stopped for the night and out in that country toward which they had started was only one ranch that would not take them miles out of their course. That was the home of Hi Boyd, a dozen miles straight east, six miles south and east from Yavapai, thirty-three miles from the Sunset group. By now they were making on, they could finish their journey before night....

And then recurred a thought that Bruce had overlooked in those moments of speculation, of quick thinking:

"Good G.o.d, Benny Lynch's waitin' for him ... with murder in his heart!"

he cried aloud, the horror at the remembrance so sharp, the meaning of this new factor in the situation so portentous, that the words came from his lips unconsciously. He stood beside the horse, staring down at the message on the saddle again, bewildered, a feeling of helplessness coming over him.

"I can't let that happen, Abe, I can't!" he said. "I drove him there....

He must have gone because ... He's found out she was here all along ...

he's blamed it on me.... He's crazy mad an' he's ridin' straight to his end!... It would free her, but I can't let it happen ... not that way ...

"It's up to you to get me to town," he cried as he reached for the bridle. "Just to Yavapai ... that's all.... You're th' best horse in th'

southwest, but they've got too much of a start on you. We'll try automobiles this once, Pardner!"

In an incredibly short time the saddle was on, cinch tight. He gathered the reins, called to the sorrel and Abe, infected with his excitement, wheeled for the gate, the man running by his side. As the animal rounded into the road, Bruce vaulted into the saddle, pawed with his right foot for the flopping stirrup and leaning low on Abe's neck, shouted into his ears for speed.

Merely minutes transpired in that eight-mile race to Yavapai. Bayard's idea was to hire the one automobile of which the town boasted, start down the valley road that Lytton and Ann must follow to reach the mine, overtake and turn them back, somehow, on some pretext. He could arrange the device later; he could think of the significance of Ann's appeal to him when the man between them was free from the danger of which Bayard was aware; his whole thought now was to beat time, to reach town with the least possible waste of seconds. The steel sinews, the leather lungs, the great heart of the beast under him responded n.o.bly to this need. They stormed along the wagon tracks when they held straight, thundered through the unmarked gra.s.s and over rocks when the highway turned and twisted. Once, when they ran through a shallow wash and Abe climbed the far side with a scramble, fire shot from his shoes and Bruce cried,

"You're th' stallion shod with fire, boy!"

It was a splendid, unfaltering run, and, when the rider swung down before the little corrugated iron building that housed Yavapai's motor car, the stallion was black with water and his breath came and went with the gasps of fatigue and nervous tension.

Bruce turned from his horse and stepped toward the open door of the garage. A man was there, behind the car, looking dolefully down at an array of grease covered parts that littered the floor.

"Jimmy, I want you to take me out on th' Valley road this mornin'. How soon can we get away?"

"It won't be this mornin' or this afternoon, Bruce," the man said, with a shake of his head. "I've got a busted differential."

"Can't it be fixed?"--misgiving in his voice.

"Not here. I have to send to Prescott for a new one. I'll be laid up a couple of days anyhow."

Bayard did not answer. Just stood trying to face the situation calmly, trying to figure his handicap.

"Is it awful important, Bruce?" the man asked, struck by the cowman's att.i.tude.

"I guess th' end of th' world's more important,"--as he turned away, "but to me, an' compared to this, it's a small sized accident."

He walked slowly out into the street and paused to look calculatingly at Abe. Then, turning abruptly, struck by a new possibility, he ran across to the Manzanita House, entered the door, strode into the office, took down the telephone receiver and rattled the hook impatiently.

"I want Hi Boyd's ranch," he said to the operator. Then, after a wait in which he s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot and swore under his breath: "h.e.l.lo ... Boyd's? Is this Hi Boyd? It is? ... Well Hi, this is Bruce Bayard an' I've got to have a horse from you this mornin'...."

"A horse!" came the thin, distant exclamation over the wire. "Everybody wants horses off me today...."

"But I've _got_ to have one, Hi! It's mighty important. Yours is th'

only ranch that's on my way--"

"... an' we let one get away this mornin'," the voice went on, not pausing for Bruce's insistence, "'fore daylight an' left a lady who spent th' night with us a foot. We had to go catch up another for 'em an' Lytton--Ned Lytton, was th' man--only got on two hours ago ... three hours late! No, they ain't a horse on th' place that'll ride."

"Can't you catch one for me?" Bruce persisted.

"How? Run him down on foot? If I was a young man like you, I might, but now...."

Bayard slammed up the receiver and turned away, staring at the floor. He walked into the street again, looking about almost wildly. One by one the agencies that might prevent the impending catastrophe out yonder had been rendered helpless. The automobile, the chance of getting a change horse, his haste in riding to Yavapai and its consequent inroads made upon Abe's strength.

"I'm playin' with a stacked deck!" he muttered, as he approached the stallion. "There ain't another horse in this country equal to you even after your mornin's work," he said, looking at the breathing, sweat darkened creature. "I wouldn't ask you to do it for anybody else, Boy.

But ... won't you do it for her? She sent for me. Will you take me back?

It'll mean a lot to her, let alone what it means to me ... if I don't stop him.

"It's thirty-five miles for us to make while they're doin' little more 'n twenty, for they've been traveling since dawn. Maybe it'll be your last run ... It may break your heart.... How about it?"

In his desperation, something boyish came into his tone, his manner, and he appealed to his horse as he would have pleaded with another human being. The sorrel looked at him inquiringly, great intelligent eyes unblinking, ears forward with attentiveness and, after a moment, the white patch on his nose twitched and he moved closer against his master as he gave a low little nicker.

"Is that your answer, Abe? Are you sayin' yes?" Bayard asked, and unbuckled his chap belt. "Is it, old timer? You're ... it's all up to you!" He kicked out of his chaps, flung them to the hotel porch, mounted, reined the stallion about and high in the stirrups, a live, flexible weight, rode out of town at a slow trot, holding the horse to the gait that the wind which blew in from the big expanse of country might cool him.

CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF THE VIGIL

Benny Lynch was at work in the face of the Sunset's lower tunnel. He swung his singlejack swiftly, surely, regularly, and each time it struck the drill, his breath whistled through his lips in the manner of mine workers. His candle, its stick secure in a crack above him, lighted the small chamber and under its uncertain, inefficient rays, his face seemed drawn and hard and old.