Lonesome Town Part 31

Answer to this prayer came with the unexpectedness which all afternoon had been marked-an answer decisive as the bluff-edge ahead. In his head-down rush the excited animal had not seen until too late the precipice that marked trail's end. With a conclusive back flop in midair, he disappeared.

Hot on his hoofs, just out of rope reach, pounded Polkadot. But he, with super-instinct, sensed the drop in time to swerve on the shale of the brink. Frantically he then began a struggle to overcome its s.h.i.+ft.

A lake lapped the bottom of the void-one of the several that add their quiet blues and rippling whites to the color scheme of the park and of a Sunday furnish exercise for as many enthusiastic "crab-catchers" as there are flat-bottomed row boats to rent. Pape saw it from cliff's edge. He did not s.h.i.+ver-time for that if they went down. Flinging from the saddle, he spread his length upon the ground, digging in with toes and elbows to increase the weight of the drag made by his body. As determined to save his equine pal as himself, he threw all the strength of his arms into a steady pull upon the reins.

CHAPTER XXIII-THE MAN BEHIND

Pape's ride down from the height of No-Man's Land was rapid as his advisedly devious course would allow-rapid from his desire to communicate his steer-led discovery to Jane Lauderdale with the least possible delay and devious for two reasons. He did not wish to attract the attention of the treasure blasters until after the girl had looked them over. And he did not wish to fall into the hands of the police who had hauled his run-amuck escutcheon out of the lake and taken him in charge.

On reaching the meadow where he had asked his quondam pursuit pardners to await him, he could sight none of them. He concluded that they had cut for the nearest bridle path to avoid any such accounting to the park authorities as had been exacted after last evening's irregularities.

Stansbury caution advised that he do likewise, but the Pape habit of riding rough-shod by the short-cut trail overruled.

A demand upon him strong as physical force or a voiced cry caused him to turn and peer into the mouth of a sort of gulch into which the green tailed off. There he saw some one gray-clad, dismounted, waiting-Jane, silently calling him.

Spurring to her, he found that the three had thought it advisable to take cover in a small glen, irregularly oval in shape, that would have served excellently as a bull-ring had its granite sides been tiered with seats. Harford and Irene still sat their saddles, the girl holding rein on the horse ridden by Jane, who evidently had reconnoitered that he might not miss them on his promised return.

Pape's heart quickened from appreciation of her fealty. He decided if possible to "cut out" her alone from her undependable "bunch" and show her the discovery to which the beef-brute had led him-the latest operation of the Lauderdale enemy.

"Why Not! So you're safe?" The glad cry was Irene's, as she pressed up to him. "But my pet cow-don't tell me you let him get away?"

"The 'dar-rling' is on the road to the calaboose-pinched for all sorts of crimes," returned Pape unfeelingly. "You'll need a larger crop of bail weeds than you possibly can gather to make good your claim to him."

She, with a voice throb of regret: "That's what I get for not following.

A girl's got to keep on the heels of her live-stock, be he man or cow, _these_ rapid days. Think of me sitting here, losing out as if I'd been born a hundred years ago-_obeying_ a mere male!"

Jane had remounted and now rode up.

"But if the steer is arrested," she asked, "how do you come to be free?

Did you disown him?"

"Didn't have to." Pape's speech was that of a man in a hurry.

"Trail's-end for the red was an air pocket over a toy lake. He made a magnificent splash and started swimming for the other sh.o.r.e. In the water he was about as dangerous as a pollywog. Proved easy pickings for that active little arrester of last night, Pudge O'Shay. Another policeman sat in the stern of his commandeered row-boat, over-working a piece of rope. I wish 'em joy taking my escutcheon in."

He omitted report of his own desperate feat of saving Polkadot and himself a similar high-dive off the bluff edge. More authoritatively he turned back to Irene.

"Likely his fate will make you feel some better over that obey oversight. If you'd like to get the habit, you'd do me a favor by hunting up the village pound and paying the dues put on that s.h.i.+eld rampant o' mine. Here's a roll that ought to be a gent cow's sufficiency. And you'd favor me further by taking the family friend along."

"You mean--"

"_Your_ Harfy. Maybe you can impress him with the desirability of obeying orders. Got to confess I failed."

"You precious puzzle!"-the young lady of to-day. "You aren't-Oh, you are-you _are_!"

"Are I-just what?"

"Jealous, you silly! Haven't I told you that Harfy long ago gave up hopes of me, that he is as naught to me-ab-so-lutely naught more than a friend who--"

"At that, he's more to you than he's shown himself to me," Pape interposed with point.

Harford pulled up his mount's head with something the decisive fling of his own. "I admit that I give orders better than take them. Come, Jane.

Come, Irene. Maybe I can get you out of this mess yet without unpleasant consequences."

"And maybe, Jane, the consequences ain't going to be so plumb unpleasant," Pape contested her attention with something the seriousness he had shown at the foot of the Sturgis' steps. "In a certain some one else's little matter of unfinished business that's demanding my time and attention right now, I have pressing need of one a.s.sistant. Are you-do you feel-well, willing?"

"But, Why Not, why not _me_?" Irene prevented immediate reply from her cousin; spurred her mount close beside the obviously fastidious Polkadot; at last dropped her battered-looking bunch of roses to clasp the Westerner's arm. "You _know_ that I-And I _know_ that you-Don't you, dar-rling-or do you? I am sure that I'm not _ashamed_ of-of-_You_ know.

That is, I ain't if you aren't. Of course Jane is calmer than I, but who wants to be calm nowadays? _I'm_ the one that's willing and then some to tag along with you into difficulty and danger and--"

Harford, heated of face and manner, interrupted.

"No one's going to tag with him into any more difficulty or danger. You girls are going to keep your agreement, aren't you? You're both coming peacefully along with me, now that I've let you wait long enough to see that this person, rightly ent.i.tled 'The Impossible,' is safe."

"Let us wait-_you_ let us?" Irene flared. "A dozen of you couldn't have forced me to desert him, Millsy Harford-not whilst I had _my_ health and strength!"

Despite her ardor, Pape managed to free his arm of her hold. With his eyes he re-asked the question put to Jane. He could see that she was confused, annoyed, justifiably suspicious of the youngster vamp's proprietors.h.i.+p.

"Don't you worry about any unfinished business of Miss Lauderdale,"

Harford added with augmented insolence. "I think she will concede that I am more competent and quite as willing as you to attend any and all such. On my advice she has given up her search for a mythical needle mythically buried in this park haystack. Haven't you, Jane? _Haven't_ you, dear?"

Pape, while listening to the man, looked to the woman; gained her gaze, saw her lips form to an unvoiced "No." Fresh love for her and fresh hate for him-fresh suspicion and the courage thereof possessed him.

"Meantime, I suppose, your hirelings are tumbling up this park haystack according to the directions of that cryptogram you took from Mrs.

Sturgis' wall-safe?"

"You d.a.m.ned blighter, you dare accuse me of theft?"

Pape laughed into the snarled demand. "And why not accuse? I don't like you and I don't trust you. Miss Lauderdale's unfinished business is safer in my hands than yours. You lie when you say that she has transferred it to you. She knows who is the better man. In case you're not sure, I am ready to show."

"No readier than I, you weak fish out of water." Harford's voice shook into higher, harder notes. "You couldn't very well call me a thief and a liar without showing. As I told you this morning you'll have to answer to me if you raise any more of a row around Miss Lauderdale. When will you give me a chance to--"

"Now?" Pape suggested.

"You don't mean here, before the girls, in a public place where the cops are likely--"

"_Why not_?"

So the Queer Questioner's battle-cry!

Lightly though he laughed, he was heavy with hate, again moved by that battleful mania which is the sanity of love. To him specific insults did not matter so much. The importance of the whys, wheres or whences grew all at once negligible. To have it out with the man who contested his claim to his woman-to bring him down just on general principles-to wring him and rend him and trample him, if need be, into acknowledgment of his supreme impertinence-that was his present task.

A thought-flash of the moment before had thrown rays of suspicion several ways through Pape's mind. Mills Harford knew of the Montana Gusher swindle, as indicated by his jibe of that morning about an "oil-stock shark." Being a real-estater of considerable success, he might be a princ.i.p.al in that fraud. Certainly he did not seem the man to have been a victim.

The idea that this "most prominent" suitor of Jane might be the leader of the anti-Lauderdales was suggested by his bold attempt to deter the girl from further investigation. That she herself considered him a friend was in itself significant. He could not better have covered in perpetrating an inimical act toward her than by first having won her confidence with flattery as expertly administered as though he were indeed one of those villainous "perfect lovers" with whom honest heroes have to cope on stage and screen.

As an intimate of the household, Harford probably was in position to know the worth of the late eccentric's buried "bone." He might well have instigated that "inside" safe job at the Sturgis' and been responsible for the trailing of the poke-bonnet lady to the East Sixty-third Street hide-out, this last particularly pointed by his later appearance there with his lawyer. And here in the glen, just as the out-croppings showed plain the way to treasure's lead, he was ready to prevent Jane by force from continuing her park prospecting while the excavations were underway on the heights. All the circ.u.mstantials were suspicious.