"Because three mules stood hyar fer a leetle spell--ye kin see whar they stomped, an' movin' mules don't stomp twice or thrice over ther same spot. Then two of 'em went on gallopin'--and one went on walkin'.

Yes this is whar she got rid of 'em, but I mis...o...b..s ef they lost sight of her."

A little further Bud showed Brent where the two mules had turned aside to the right and, a mile further on, where Alexander had also abandoned the main road and gone to the left.

"She held ter ther highway a mile further then she 'lowed ter," growled Sellers. "Thar's jest one reasonable cause fer thet. She knowed she war bein' spied on, an' she aimed ter shake 'em off. I wonder _did_ she shake 'em off."

When they had almost reached the Gap itself and were proceeding warily they came to a narrow ford at whose edge Bud drew rein.

"Let's pause an' study this hyar proposition out afore we rides on any further," he suggested.

It was a particularly wild and desolate spot where the road bent so sharply that they had turned a corner and come upon the crossing of the water without a previous view. They had been riding toward what had seemed a sheer wall of bluff, and that abrupt angle had brought them to a point where the road dipped sharply down and lost itself in the rapidly running waters of a narrow creek. On the opposite sh.o.r.e the road came out again with a right-angle turn to thread its course along a shelf of higher ground as a narrow cornice might run along a wall.

Below was a drop to the creek; above the perpendicular uplift of the precipice.

"This hyar's ther commencement of Wolf-Pen Gap," Bud Sellers enlightened his companion. "This is just erbout whar they aimed ter lay-way her at. I shouldn't marvel none ef some of 'em's watchin' us from them thickets up on thet bluff right now."

"Then let's hurry across," Brent nervously suggested. "Once we get over the stream the cliff itself will shield us. They can't shoot straight down."

"Oh, I reckon they don't hardly aim ter harm us," rea.s.sured Bud. "An'

anyhow we've got ter tutor this matter jest right. Thet creek's norrer but hit's deep beyond fordin'. We needs must swim our mules acros't."

Brent shuddered at the sight of the chill water but Bud went on inexorably. "Now, ye've got ter start as fur up es ye handily kin--because ther current's swift--an' if hit carries yer beyond thet small bend ye comes out in quicksand. Jest foller me. I'll go fust."

Brent had faced a number of adventures of late, but for this newest one he had little stomach. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and prepared to go ahead and follow his companion's lead, since need left no alternative.

As Bud's mule thrust its fore-feet into the creek's edge the creature balked and the young man kicked him viciously. Brent was waiting with bated breath when abruptly from overhead came the clean, sharp bark of a rifle. Brent's hat went spinning from his head and he felt the light sting of a grazing wound along his scalp. It seemed to be in the same instant that he heard Bud's revolver barking its retort towards the point from which the flash had gleamed. There followed a second report and the zip of a bullet burying itself in wood, and then he heard Bud yelling, "Go on!"

Realizing that once across the narrow stream he would be under shelter, he kicked and belabored his mule to the take-off. There was a downward plunge, a floundering in the icy water, and then an unsteady sensation as the beast struck out to swim. The current had taken its effect so that mule and rider were being carried down channel faster than they were gaining across, but Brent instinctively turned his head to see what had become of his guide.

He saw an unbelievable thing. The mountaineer upon whose coolness and courage he had absolutely relied had not ventured the crossing at all!

He had wheeled after firing and kicked his mount into wild flight, making for the protection of the turn about which they had come. Twice before he gained safety the rifle above spat out venomously, but missed the fleeing target.

Such a confusion seized upon Brent that he never knew how he got across that creek. Ahead had lain quicksand, above a rifle in the laurel and in his own entrails an overpowering nausea of betrayed confidence. His comrade had deserted him--had run away!

Somehow, his own mount had won across and was plodding up to solid roadway once more and there safe, for the moment at least, he halted and looked back.

Hoping against hope, Brent waited for five minutes with a clammy sweat on his forehead, but there was still no sign of a returning Bud Sellers. Then Brent unwillingly admitted that it was a pure and unmitigated case of desertion under fire.

"My G.o.d," he groaned. "He quit me cold--quit like a dog! He simply cut and ran!"

With a sickened heart he rode on. His head ached from the near touch of the a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet. He was not even watching for a second ambuscade, and fortunately for him, there was none. But with dulled observation he pa.s.sed by a place where, close to the road, a shaft ran back into an abandoned coal mine and he followed his dejected course without suspecting that at that moment Alexander was being held a prisoner in the cavern to which that shaft gave access.

CHAPTER XI

The men who had come into town for the purpose of co-operating with Jerry O'Keefe and with Halloway had of course drifted in singly and with no seeming of cohesion. It was vital that they should avoid any manifest community of purpose, yet they were armed, ready and alert, awaiting only a signal to gather out of scattered elements into a close-knit force with heavy striking-power.

As they waited through the day for the call which did not come they began to feel the dispirited gloom of men keyed to action and kept interminably waiting--but none of them dropped away.

It was close to sundown when Brent himself arrived, and since he failed to encounter Jerry O'Keefe on the streets he did not pause to search for him, but went direct to the telegraph office. It had not been disclosed to O'Keefe how close to the heart of the conspiracy was the operator and the young man with the Irish eyes had not been stirred to any deep suspicion in that quarter.

Brent himself had not considered it a reasonable a.s.sumption that to such a powerful fellow as Halloway harm could come in so public a place. Yet Halloway had meant to make that office his headquarters and now Brent made it his first destination.

Through the open door and the smeared window spilled out a yellow and sickly light.

Inside sat two men, but a glance told Brent that neither of them worked the key. The pair were gaunt and sinister of aspect and they were not town folk but creek-dwellers. One was evil-visaged to a point of gargoyle hideousness. The other was little better, and he raised a face to inspect the man in the door which some malignant sculptor might have modeled in pure spite, pinching it viciously here and there into sharp angles of grotesqueness. Yet in the eyes Brent recognized keenness and determination.

The newcomer casually inquired for the station agent and one of the fellows stared at him morosely, making no reply. The other however, supplied the curt information: "He's done gone out ter git him a snack ter eat."

"I'm looking for a man named Halloway," said Brent. "A big upstandin'

fellow. Maybe you men know him?"

To the mountaineers who walk softly and speak low by custom it seemed that the city man spoke with a volume and resonance quite needless in such narrow confines.

"I knows him when I sees him," admitted the man who had answered the first question. The other remained dumb.

"Has he been about here to-day?"

"No."

"I'll wait till the operator gets back," announced Brent with a nonchalance difficult to maintain.

He did not take a seat but stood, studiously appraising the place while he seemed to see little. After the depression attendant upon Bud's desertion had followed an almost electric keenness; every gesture was guarded and every nerve set now against any self-betrayal, for he felt himself fencing in the dark with wily adversaries.

He sauntered idly over near the door to the baggage-room and beyond its panels he could hear the scurry of rats at play among loose piles of boxes and litter.

"Sounds like the rats are having a party in there," he suggested as though laudibly resolved upon making conversation in a taciturn circle.

"Mebby they be." Still only one of the countrymen had spoken a syllable.

"I'd like to put a good rat-dog in there and watch him work," laughed Brent, turning again to face the door as though he found fascination in the thought. Then idly he laid his hand on the k.n.o.b as though to try its opening, but he went no further. Just at the side of the lintel hung a broken and extremely dirty mirror and a quick glance into its revealing surface told him a full story. He saw the man with the pinched features reach swiftly back of him and slide a rifle away from its concealed place against the wall. He saw the other's hand go flash-like under his coat and under his left arm-pit. He caught in both faces a sudden and black malignity which told him, beyond question, that they would not play but would kill.

Of course too he knew why and he made a point of standing there with every evidence of having seen nothing or suspected nothing.

After that first glance he also carefully avoided the mirror which might work revelation to them as well as to himself. Eventually he turned, not directly toward them but toward the other end of the room and carelessly walked its length that he might give emphasis to his unhurried seeming before he came slowly about.

When he did so the two men sat as before. The rifle had already disappeared. The hand that had swept holster-ward had swept out again.

Both faces were blankly unconcerned.

Brent dropped into a chair near the door and listened as the clatter inside increased. The rats scrambled about with a multiplicity of light gnawing sounds and the clicking of some trifles unstably balanced. Then slowly the clicking ceased to be random.

It differed from the other little noises only to the practiced ears of Brent himself. That was not because his ears were keener than the other pairs, but because to others there was no comprehensible connection between a faint tapping and the sequence of raps that spells words in the Morse code.

It was strange that from rats at play should issue the coherent sense of consecutive telegraphy.

Brent had been on the _qui-vive_, steadied against any self-betrayal, yet now he struggled against the impulse to tremble with excitement.

His fingers gripping the chair arms threatened to betray him by their tautness and he could feel cold perspiration dripping down his body.