A TRY OUT
Sleepy Cat is not so large a place that one would ordinarily have much trouble in finding a man in it if one searched well. But Duke Morgan drove into town next morning and had to stay for three days waiting for a chance to meet de Spain. Duke was not a man to talk much when he had anything of moment to put through, and he had left home determined, before he came back, to finish for good with his enemy.
De Spain himself had been putting off for weeks every business that would bear putting off, and had been forced at length to run down to Medicine Bend to buy horses. Nan, after her uncle left home––justly apprehensive of his intentions––made frantic efforts to get word to de Spain of what was impending. She could not telegraph––a publicity that she dreaded would have followed at once. De Spain had expected to be back in two days. Such a letter as she could have sent would not reach him at Medicine Bend.
As it was, a distressing amount of talk did attend Duke’s efforts to get track of de Spain. 273 Sleepy Cat had but one interpretation for his inquiries––and a fight, if one occurred between these men, it was conceded would be historic in the annals of the town. Its anticipation was food for all of the rumors of three days of suspense. For the town they were three days of thrilling expectation; for Nan, isolated, without a confidant, not knowing what to do or which way to turn, they were the three bitterest days of anxiety she had ever known.
Desperate with suspense at the close of the second day––wild for a scrap of news, yet dreading one––she saddled her pony and rode alone into Sleepy Cat after nightfall to meet the train on which de Spain had told her he would return from the east. She rode straight to the hospital, instead of going to the livery-barn, and leaving her horse, got supper and walked by way of unfrequented streets down-town to the station to wait for the train.
Never had she felt so miserable, so helpless, so forsaken, so alone. 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 passenger 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.