Judith of Blue Lake Ranch Part 13

"How do you know that?"

"My horse that was shot," he explained, "got it in the left side of the neck. Now, look at that hole in the little fir-tree yonder."

Judith saw what he meant now. At this point Lee yesterday had heard the second bullet singing dangerously near. It had struck the fir, and plainly had been fired from some point off to the right of the canon.

Her eyes went swiftly, after his up the cliff walls.

"I doped it out while I was running," he went on. "Look at the way the trees grow here. If a man was on the cliffs shooting at me, and coming that close to winging me, why, he'd have to be off to the right. These big pines would shunt him off from the other side. It's open and shut there were two of them. And darn good shots," he added dryly.

Briefly he went on to give her the rest of the results of his two-hour seeking for something definite. If she'd ride on a little she'd come to the spot where his horse had been killed; she would see in the road the signs where, at Tripp's, orders, the carca.s.s had been dragged away.

From there, looking off to the left, up the cliffs, she would see the spot which Lee believed had harbored one of the riflemen. High above the canon rose the rocky pinnacle he had marked yesterday, with brush standing tall in a little depression.

"Indian Head," broke in Judith, gazing upward. "Bud Lee, I'll bet a horse you're right. . . ."

"And," said Lee, swinging from the saddle, "I'm going up there to have a little look around."

In an instant the girl was at his side.

"I am going with you," she said simply.

He looked at her curiously. Then he shrugged his shoulders. An angry flush came to the girl's cheeks, but she went on with him. Not a word pa.s.sed between them during the entire hour required to climb the steep side of the mountain and come under Indian Head cliffs. Here they stood together upon a narrow ledge panting, resting. Again Judith saw Lee glance at her curiously. He had not sought to accommodate his swift climbing to a girl's gait and yet he had not distanced her in the ascent. But in Lee's glance there was nothing of approval. There were two kinds of women, as he had said, and . . .

"Pretty steep climb from here up," he remarked bluntly.

"For a valley man or a cobble-pounder, maybe," was Judith's curt rejoinder.

Thereafter they did not speak again until, after nearly another hour, they at last came to the crest of Indian Head. And here, in the eagerness of their search, rewarded by the signs which they found, they forgot, both of them, to maintain their reserve.

In the clump of brush, close to the outer fringe, behind a low, broad boulder, a man had lain on his belly no longer ago than yesterday.

Broken twigs showed it, a small bush crushed down told of it, the marks of his toes in some of the softer soil proclaimed it eloquently. And, had other signs been required, there they were: two empty bra.s.s cartridges where the automatic ejector had thrown them several feet away. Lee picked up one of the sh.e.l.ls.

"Latest thing in an up-to-the-minute Savage," he told her. "That gun is good for twice the distance he used it for. I'm in tolerable luck to be mountain-climbing to-day, I guess!"

While Judith visualized just what had occurred, saw the tall man--he must have been tall for his boot toes to scratch the earth yonder while his rifle-barrel lay for support across the boulder in front--resting his gun and firing down into the canon--Lee was back at her side, saying shortly:

"What do you think? There's a plain trail up here, old as the hills, but tip-top for speedy going."

"And," said Judith without looking up, "it runs down into the next saddle, to the north of that ridge, curves up again and with monuments all along the way, runs straight to the Upper End and comes down from the northeast to the lake."

Lee looked at her, wondering.

"You knew about it all the time, then?"

"If we hadn't been on our high horses," she told him quietly, "I should have told you about it. It's the old Indian Trail. If the man we want turned east, then he went right on to the lake before he stopped putting one foot in front of the other. Unless he hid out all night, which I don't believe."

"What makes you think he went that far?"

"There's no other trail up here that gets anywhere. If he left this one for a short cut he'd know, if he knows anything, that he'd have to take a chance every ten steps of breaking his neck in the dark. Now,"

and she rose swiftly, confronting him, "the thing for you to do, Bud Lee, is to get back to your horse, take the road, make time getting to the Upper End and see what you can see there!"

Hurrying back to their horses, they rode to the ranch-house where Judith, with no word of adieu, left Lee to go to the house. Lee made a late lunch, saddled another horse, and when the bunk-house clock stood at a quarter of four, started for the Upper End.

"That girl's got the savvy," was his one remark to himself.

X

UNDER FIRE

Blue Lake, while but three miles farther eastward, flashed its jewelled waters into the sun from a plane fully five hundred feet higher than the tall chimneys of the ranch-house. About it stood the most precipitous granite cliffs to be found hereabouts. They rose, sheer and majestic, still another five hundred feet, here and there eight hundred and a thousand. The lake, half a mile in diameter, circular like some polished mirror presented by an ancient giant to his lady-love, was shut in everywhere by these crags and cliffs save at the west, where the overflowing water, going to swell the turbulent river, poured like molten crystal through a wide gorge. The farther cliffs marked the eastern boundary-line of the ranch. Beyond them lay a small plateau rimmed about on three sides by still other steep precipices.

Lee, coming to the water's edge sought to guess where the old Indian Trail came down. And again, startling him for a second time, Judith rode up.

She, too, had a fresh horse; she too now carried a rifle across her arm.

Bud Lee frowned.

"What makes you so certain, Bud Lee," was her abrupt word of greeting, "that Bayne Trevors is back of this deal?"

"When did I say that?" he countered.

"Yesterday, when I told you Charlie Miller had been held up, you intimated that a long-headed man had planned the whole thing. That means Trevors, doesn't it?"

"One of us," said Lee calmly, ignoring her question and looking her straight in the eyes, "is going back. Which one?"

"Neither!" she retorted promptly. She even smiled confidently at him.

"For I won't. And you won't."

"Do you need to be told," he asked her coolly, "that this is no sort of job for a girl? You'd only be in the way."

"If you want glittering generalities," she jeered at him, "then listen to this: A man's job, first, last, and all the time, is to be chivalrous to a woman! And not a b.u.mptious boor!"

With that she spurred by him, taking the trail which led off to the right and so under the cliffs and to the mouth of a great, ragged chasm. In spite of him, Bud Lee grinned after her. And, seeing that she was not to be turned back, he followed.

They left their horses and followed the old footpath, made their way into the chasm deeper and deeper and little by little climbed upward. The climb was less difficult than it looked, and fifteen minutes brought them to the upland plateau and to the door of an old cabin, made of logs, set back in a tiny grove of cedars.

"I haven't been here for a year," cried the girl, forgetful of the constraint which had held them until now. "It's like getting back home for the first time! I love it."

"So do I," Lee said within himself.

"Look!" exclaimed Judith. "Some one has been repairing the old cabin!

He's made a bench yonder under the big tree, too. And he has walled in the spring with rocks, and . . . Who in the world can it be? There's even a little garden of wild flowers!"

Bud Lee, for no reason clear to himself, flushed. He offered no explanation at first. Here he spent many an hour when the time was his for idling, lying on the gra.s.s, looking out over the immensity of the wilderness; here he came many a night to sleep under the stars, far from the other boys, when his soul craved solitude; here upon many a Sunday, when work was slack, did he come to smoke alone, loaf alone, read from the few books on the cabin's shelves.

"Maybe," he suggested at last, when it was clear that Judith was going straight to the door, "this is where our stick-up gents hang out. Choice place for a cutthroat to hibernate, huh?"

"I don't believe it," answered Judith positively. "The man who made his hermitage here has a soul!"