AT BELL’S CAMP
A boy rode up the street leading two saddled horses. He stopped in front of the Budd house, from which three persons emerged in answer to his shrill whistle. The lookout in the shadow of Schmidt’s blacksmith shop leaned forward to peer into the failing light. First came a huge, shambling man, hairy and bearded, his hands tied together in front of him. At his heels walked a straight lithe figure recognized instantly by the watcher as McClintock. The deputy carried a revolver. A young woman in riding dress brought up the rear.
McClintock handed his revolver to the lady after he had helped her mount. He adjusted the stirrups of all the saddles. To the watcher up the street it seemed that all his movements were hurried and furtive. Plainly the travellers wanted to be gone.
No sooner had they started into the cañon than the lookout was off to make his report. Inside of five minutes a party of four horsemen swung round the bend of the road into the gorge.
Half a mile up the cañon Hugh stopped to free Budd’s hands. This done, he waited a moment to listen. On the night breeze came faintly the ring of a horse’s hoof on granite.
“Our anxious friends aren’t losin’ any time,” he said, grinning.
“You’re damn whistlin’,” agreed Bud. “Beg pardon, ma’am. I done forgot you was here. I meant to say he was doggoned right.”
From the cañon they emerged into a rough country of basaltic rocks twisted and misshapen. Once a rabbit scurried from almost under the feet of Vicky’s horse. The scent of the sage was strong in her nostrils, and the taste of alkali in her throat.
But the girl was happy. This night ride, with her face against the wind and the eternal stars above, made the blood in her body sing. She vibrated with excitement. The rapid motion, the knowledge of the armed pursuit, the touch of peril in the situation, appealed to all the adventure zest in her heart. As they rode knee to knee through the darkness the movements of the horses occasionally pushed her and Hugh into contact. A new delightful thrill flamed through her. Shyly she looked at him and was glad of the night. Her eyes were too bright and her cheeks too hot to be seen even by old dog Tray.
Old dog Tray! She knew the metaphor was inept. Jim Budd, now, was a good old dog Tray, but not this light-stepping young Apollo who somehow contrived to be the partner of all the dramatic moments in her life. She would never forget him as he had faced Sloan and his gang at the mouth of the pit from which he had come with all the anguish of the night written on his face. There had been something indomitable in his gesture, a spark in the sunken eye struck from the soul of a man quite sure of himself. Vicky knew—and knew it with a strange reluctant dread—that her feelings would insist on a retrial of the case of Hugh McClintock at the bar of her judgment. Vaguely she divined that the true romance is not of outward trappings but straight from the heart of life.
The miles of their journey stole the hours. It was far past midnight when Hugh turned to Vicky with a smile not free from anxiety.
“Bell’s Camp just ahead,” he said. “Don’t make any mistake. When we’re ordered to halt, all our hands go straight up in the air.”
He wished now that he had not let the girl come with them. It had been easy to reason in the light of day that she would be quite safe. But Dodson did not know she was in the party. Suppose someone got excited and fired in the darkness. Hugh’s imagination began to conjure disaster.
But the affair worked out quite simply. From behind rocks on both sides of the road men rose suddenly and covered the party with rifles.
“Stick ’em up. Reach for the sky,” a voice ordered curtly.
Six hands went up instantly, almost as though they had been waiting for the cue.
“You may pull yours down, Dutch,” the voice went on.
Hugh spoke suavely: “Must be some mistake, gentlemen. Mr. Dutch isn’t with us.”
“Not with you! What’s the use of lying? Speak up, Dutch.”
“If you’re meanin’ me, my name’s Budd—Jim Budd from Piodie,” spoke up the fat man.
The challenger stepped close and stared up at his face. “Where’s Dutch? What have you done with him?” he demanded.
“Why, we left him at Piodie. The sheriff didn’t want us to bring him,” Budd said with bland innocence, grinning down at his questioner. “Is this here a hold-up, or what?”
“One of ’em’s a girl,” cried another of the armed men in sharp surprise.
“A girl!”
Vicky spoke now. “Isn’t that Mr. Dodson—Mr. Ralph Dodson?” she asked quietly.
“Miss Lowell! What are you doing here?”
“I might ask that about you, Mr. Dodson,” she retorted. “I’m going with Mr. McClintock and Mr. Budd to Carson. Haven’t you heard that two ruffians tried to murder Colonel McClintock?” Her voice rang out like a bell. It accused him, if not of conspiracy to murder, at least of aiding and abetting the escape of the murderer.
After just an instant’s hesitation Dodson spoke gravely. “Yes, I’ve heard, Miss Lowell. Believe me, I have been greatly distressed. If there’s anything I can do——”
“You can help us bring to justice the desperado who escaped,” she cried hotly.
Dodson chose his words with care. He knew they were likely to be reported by some of his men to the gang at Piodie. “If someone got into a quarrel with Colonel McClintock and——”
“They didn’t get into a quarrel with him,” Vicky flung out indignantly. “They crept up behind him and shot him down while he wasn’t looking. Even rattlesnakes give warning. These reptiles didn’t.”
“I really don’t know the facts, Miss Lowell. But if you’re correctly informed certainly——”
“Oh, if—if—if,” exploded the girl. “Just words. The attack on Scot was the most dastardly, cowardly cruel thing I ever heard of. The men who did it and those who had it done are as bad as red Indians.” Her eyes stabbed into him. They were filled with the passionate intolerance of youth.
“Well, I can’t talk about that because I don’t know anything about it,” Dodson said, his surface smile working. “We’re here under orders from the sheriff at Piodie. He sent us word that someone was attempting illegally to abduct Sam Dutch. There seems to be some mistake.”
“So that it remains for you to apologize for having drawn guns on us,” Vicky said tartly. “Then we’ll move on.”
Dodson flushed. “I’m certainly sorry if we alarmed you, Miss Lowell. Under the circumstances it couldn’t be helped. If we had known you were out riding with friends——” He stopped, leaving his sarcastic sentence suspended in air.
“Much obliged, Mr. Dodson,” she answered angrily. “I suppose you felt you had to say that pleasant farewell remark. I wouldn’t be out riding with friends at this time of night, as you would have put it if you had the courage, if your friends hadn’t laid in wait to kill my brother Thursday evening.”
Hugh spoke quietly and evenly. “We’ll say good-night, Mr. Dodson, that is, if you’re quite satisfied we’re not concealing Mr. Dutch about our persons.”
Dodson fell back with a wave of his hand. The rifles were lowered. In a moment the travellers were on their way. The mine owner looked after them with a frown on his brow. He was not satisfied. He believed he had been tricked, but for the life of him he could not tell how.
Budd was the first of the three to speak. “You got us out of that fine, Miss Lowell. Had him busy explainin’ why-for the whole time.”
But Vicky was not willing to leave the case as it stood. She was annoyed at herself. Yet her judgment defended her course.
“I acted like a vixen,” she said. “But I wanted to put him on the defence. The easiest way to meet an attack is to attack first, Scot once told me. So I tried to ride roughshod over him so that he wouldn’t dare take us back to Piodie with him.”
“He couldn’t fight Miss Victoria Lowell,” Hugh told her, smiling. “If it hadn’t been for you he ce’tainly would have taken us to Piodie. But you had him right. He couldn’t do a thing but let us go. We’re much obliged to you.”
Presently, out of the darkness, while Budd was riding a few yards ahead of them, Vicky’s voice came with unwonted humility:
“You were right, Hugh, and I was wrong. I heard something about him the other day. Mrs. Budd told me, and it came direct. No matter what it was, but—I don’t want to be friends with him any more.”
Hugh’s heart lifted, but all he said was, “I’m glad, Vicky.”