De Spain, as fiery a lover as he was a fighter, stayed none of his courting because circumstances put Music Mountain between him and his mistress. And Nan, after she had once surrendered, was nothing behind in the chances she unhesitatingly took to arrange her meetings with de Spain. He found in her, once her girlish timidity was overcome and a woman’s confidence had replaced it, a disregard of consequences, so far as their own plans were concerned, that sometimes took away his breath.
The very day after she had got her uncle home, with the aid of Satterlee Morgan and an antiquated spring wagon, Nan rode, later in the afternoon, over to Calabasas. The two that would not be restrained had made their appointment 256 at the lower lava beds half-way between the Gap and Calabasas. The sun was sinking behind the mountain when de Spain galloped out of the rocks as Nan turned from the trail and rode toward the black and weather-beaten meeting-place.
They could hardly slip from their saddles fast enough to reach each other’s arms––Nan, trim as a model in fresh khaki, trying with a handkerchief hardly larger than a postage-stamp to wipe the flecks of dust from her pink cheeks, while de Spain, between dabs, covered them with importunate greetings. Looking engrossed into each other’s eyes, and both, in their eagerness, talking at once, they led their horses into hiding and sat down to try to tell all that had happened since their parting. Wars and rumors of wars, feuds and raidings, fights and pursuits were no more to them than to babes in the woods. All that mattered to them––sitting or pacing together and absorbed, in the path of the long-cold volcanic stream buried in the shifting sands of the desert––was that they should clasp each other’s clinging hands, listen each to the other’s answering voice, look unrestrained into each other’s questioning eyes.
They met in both the lava beds––the upper lay between the Gap and town––more than once. 257 And one day came a scare. They were sitting on a little ledge well up in the rocks where de Spain could overlook the trail east and west, and were talking about a bungalow some day to be in Sleepy Cat, when they saw men riding from the west toward Calabasas. There were three in the party, one lagging well behind. The two men leading, Nan and de Spain made out to be Gale Morgan and Page. They saw the man coming on behind stop his horse and lean forward, his head bent over the trail. He was examining the sand and halted quite a minute to study something. Both knew what he was studying––the hoof-prints of Nan’s pony heading toward the lava. Nan shrank back and with de Spain moved a little to where they could watch the intruder without being seen. Nan whispered first: “It’s Sassoon.” De Spain nodded. “What shall we do?” breathed Nan.
“Nothing yet,” returned her lover, watching the horseman, whose eyes were still fixed on the pony’s trail, but who was now less than a half mile away and riding straight toward them.
De Spain, his eyes on the danger and his hand laid behind Nan’s waist, led the way guardedly down to where their horses stood. Nan, needing no instructions for the emergency, took the lines of the horses, and de Spain, standing beside his 258 own horse, reached his right hand over in front of the pommel and, regarding Sassoon all the while, drew his rifle slowly from its scabbard. The blood fled Nan’s cheeks. She said nothing. Without looking at her, de Spain drew her own rifle from her horse’s side, passed it into her hand and, moving over in front of the horses, laid his left hand reassuringly on her waist again. At that moment, little knowing what eyes were on him in the black fragments ahead, Sassoon looked up. Then he rode more slowly forward. The color returned to Nan’s cheeks: “Do you want me to use this?” she murmured, indicating the rifle.
“Certainly not. But if the others turn back, I may need it. Stay right here with the horses. He will lose the trail in a minute now. When he reaches the rock I’ll go down and keep him from getting off his horse––he won’t fight from the saddle.”
But with an instinct better than knowledge, Sassoon, like a wolf scenting danger, stopped again. He scanned the broken and forbidding hump in front, now less than a quarter of a mile from him, questioningly. His eyes seemed to rove inquisitively over the lava pile as if asking why a Morgan Gap pony had visited it. In another moment he wheeled his horse and spurred rapidly after his companions.
The two drew a deep breath. De Spain laughed: “What we don’t know, never hurts us.” He drew Nan to him. Holding the rifle muzzle at arm’s length as the butt rested on the ground, she looked up from the shoulder to which she was drawn: “What should you have done if he had come?”