Nan of Music Mountain Part 27

With the thought of her nearest relative, the man who had been a father to her and provided a home for her as long as she could remember, seeking to kill him whose devotion had given her all the happiness she had ever known, and whose safety meant her only pledge of happiness for the future--her heart sank.

When the big train drew slowly, almost noiselessly, in, Nan took her place where no incoming pa.s.senger could escape her gaze and waited for de Spain. Scanning eagerly the figures of the men that walked up the long platform and approached the station exit, the fear that she should not see him battled with the hope that he would still appear.

But when all the arrivals had been accounted for, he had not come.

She turned, heavy-hearted, to walk back uptown, trying to think of whom she might seek some information concerning de Spain's whereabouts, when her eye fell on a man standing not ten feet away at the door of the baggage-room. He was alone and seemed to be watching the changing of the engines, but Nan thought she knew him by sight. The rather long, straight, black hair under the broad-brimmed Stetson hat marked the man known and hated in the Gap as "the Indian." Here, she said to herself, was a chance. De Spain, she recalled, spoke of no one oftener than this man. He seemed wholly disengaged.

Repressing her nervous timidity, Nan walked over to him. "Aren't you Mr. Scott?" she asked abruptly.

Scott, turning to her, touched his hat as if quite unaware until that moment of her existence. "Did Mr. de Spain get off this train?" she asked, as Scott acknowledged his ident.i.ty.

"I didn't see him. I guess he didn't come to-night." Nan noticed the impa.s.sive manner of his speaking and the low, even tones. "I was kind of looking for him myself."

"Is there another train to-night he could come on?"

"I don't think he will be back now before to-morrow night."

Nan, much disappointed, looked up the line and down. "I rode in this afternoon from Music Mountain especially to see him." Scott, without commenting, smiled with understanding and encouragement, and Nan was so filled with anxiety that she welcomed a chance to talk to somebody.

"I've often heard him speak of you," she ventured, searching the dark eyes, and watching the open, kindly smile characteristic of the man.

Scott put his right hand out at his side. "I've ridden with that boy since he was so high."

"I know he thinks everything of you."

"I think a lot of him."

"You don't know me?" she said tentatively.

His answer concealed all that was necessary. "Not to speak to, no."

"I am Nan Morgan."

"I know your name pretty well," he explained; nothing seemed to disturb his smile.

"And I came in--because I was worried over something and wanted to see Mr. de Spain."

"He is buying horses north of Medicine Bend. The rain-storm yesterday likely kept him back some. I don't think you need worry much over anything though."

"I don't mean I am worrying about Mr. de Spain at Medicine Bend,"

disclaimed Nan with a trace of embarra.s.sment.

"I know what you mean," smiled Bob Scott. She regarded him questioningly.

He returned her gaze rea.s.suringly as if he was confident of his ground.

"Did your pony come along all right after you left the foot-hills this afternoon?"

Nan opened her eyes. "How did you know I came through the foot-hills?"

"I was over that way to-day." Something in the continuous smile enlightened her more than the word. "I noticed your pony went lame.

You stopped to look at his foot."

"You were behind me," exclaimed Nan.

"I didn't see you," he countered prudently.

She seemed to fathom something from the expression of his face. "You couldn't have known I was coming in," she said quickly.

"No." He paused. Her eyes seemed to invite a further confidence. "But after you started it would be a pity if any harm came to you on the road."

"You knew Uncle Duke was in town?" Scott nodded. "Do you know why I came?"

"I made a guess at it. I don't think you need worry over anything."

"Has Uncle Duke been talking?"

"Your Uncle Duke doesn't talk much, you know. But he had to ask questions."

"Did you follow me down from the hospital to-night?"

"I was coming from my house after supper. I only kept close enough to you to be handy."

"Oh, I understand. And you are very kind. I don't know what to do now."

"Go back to the hospital for the night. I will send Henry de Spain up there just as soon as he comes to town."

"Suppose Uncle Duke sees him first."

"I'll see that he doesn't see him first."

"Where is Uncle Duke to-night, do you know?"

"Lefever says he is up-street somewhere."

"That means Tenison's," said Nan. "You need not be afraid to speak plainly, as I must. Uncle Duke is very angry--I am deathly afraid of their meeting."

Even de Spain himself, when he came back the next night, seemed hardly able to rea.s.sure her. Nan, who had stayed at the hospital, awaited him there, whither Scott had directed him, with her burden of anxiety still upon her. When she had told all her story, de Spain laughed at her fears. "I'll bring that man around, Nan, don't worry.

Don't believe we shall ever fight. I may not be able to bring him around to-morrow, or next week, but I'll do it. It takes two to quarrel, you know."

"But you don't know how unreasoning Uncle Duke is when he is angry,"

said Nan mournfully. "He won't listen to _any_body. He always would listen to me until now. Now, he says, I have gone back on him, and he doesn't care what happens. Think, Henry, where it would put me if either of you should kill the other. Henry, I've been thinking it all over for three days now. I see what must come. It will break both our hearts, I know, but they will be broken anyway. There is no way out, Henry--none."

"Nan, what do you mean?"

"You must give me up."

They were sitting in the hospital garden, he at her side on the bench that he called their bench. It was here he had made his unrebuked avowal--here, he had afterward told her, that he began to live. "Give you up," he echoed with gentleness. "How could I do that? You're like the morning for me, Nan. Without you there's no day; you're the kiss of the mountain wind and the light of the stars to me. Without the thought of you I'd sicken and faint in the saddle, I'd lose my way in the hills; without you there would be no to-morrow. No matter where I am, no matter how I feel, if I think of you strength wells into my heart like a spring. I never could give you up."

He told her all would be well because it must be well; that she _must_ trust him; that he would bring her safe through every danger and every storm, if she would only stick to him. And Nan, sobbing her fears one by one out on his breast, put her arms around his neck and whispered that for life or death, she _would_ stick.

It was not hard for de Spain next morning to find Duke Morgan. He was anxious on Nan's account to meet him early. The difficulty was to meet him without the mob of hangers-on whose appet.i.te had been whetted with the prospect of a death, and perhaps more than one, in the meeting of men whose supremacy with the gun had never been successfully disputed.

It required all the diplomacy of Lefever to "pull off" a conference between the two which should not from the start be hopeless, because of a crowd of Duke's partisans whose presence would egg him on, in spite of everything, to a combat. But toward eleven o'clock in the morning, de Spain having been concealed like a circus performer every minute earlier, Duke Morgan was found, alone, in a barber's hands in the Mountain House. At the moment Duke left the revolving-chair and walked to the cigar stand to pay his check, de Spain entered the shop through the rear door opening from the hotel office.