questions with Buck. Good enough. See anything of the boys, Sam? They ought to be showin' up. I told 'em noon."

"On time," announced Sam. The two riders who had last talked with Sandy rode out of a straggling thicket of cactus and skirted the lava flow.

Each led a spare horse, unsaddled.

CHAPTER VII

BOLSA GAP

Sheriff Jordan had a high-powered car purchased, not so much from the fees of his office as with his perquisites, a word covering a wide range of possibilities, all of which the sheriff made the most of. He was proud of his car and proud of his ability to run it anywhere at record-breaking speed. It carried an extra water container that could be mounted on the running board for desert work, an extra gasoline and oil supply, there were always extra tires strapped on, extra spark plugs handy and his batteries were always well charged.

"I aim to make her efficient," said Jordan, "bein' she represents my office. That's me. If I needed me an airyplane, I'd get me one to hunt the outlaws out of cover, an' I'd run it myself, an' run it right.

That's me, Bill Jordan!"

Boaster though he was, there was little doubt as to Jordan's efficiency or his courage. He brought in the criminals he went out to get, some alive, some dead; prosecuted the first with zeal and collected the rewards with alacrity. The trouble was that he did _not_ always go out after certain individuals, who were outside the law, as interpreted by the people, but inside it, as protected by the political ring to which Jordan, with other prominent officials, belonged.

Jordan had taken up his brother-in-law's grievance with the greater zest since he had a half-interest in Plimsoll's Good Luck Pool Parlors, a share that had cost him good money. On top of that had come Sandy's flouting of him on the bridge in front of the sheriff's own followers.

He had to save his face, politically as well as personally.

To secure papers bringing Molly Casey within the jurisdiction of the court was not a difficult matter, but it was not so easy to get them at an early hour, since court was not in session and the judge none too eager to arise of a morning. But Jordan knew nothing of the visit of Miranda Bailey to the Three Star and he pressed matters with no special expedition, though he characteristically wasted no time.

Armed with the necessary warrant, backed by an a.s.surance that, unless some extraordinary howl went up, the girl would be given into the custody of Jim Plimsoll as guardian, by virtue of his claim to partnership with her father, the sheriff, Plimsoll and two others, all three deputized for the occasion, started the car from Hereford at a quarter of twelve, after an early lunch. They pa.s.sed the b.u.t.te where Jim lay p.r.o.ne atop without noticing the flashes he shot into the sky. At a few minutes after twelve they reached Three Star where Buck, seated on the porch, his saddle astride a sawhorse, st.i.tched away at a cinch.

Buck played his part well, allowing Jordan to ferret out information to his own satisfaction. It appeared plain that all three partners had taken flight with the girl in the buckboard. Sandy's pinto and Sam's roan were in the corral. Jordan overlooked one thing, the counting of saddles, though that would not have been an easy determination.

"Some one tipped this thing off," he said sternly to Buck. "Who was it?"

"Meanin' this visit's offishul?" asked Buck. "What's it fo', Sheriff?

Moonshine or hawss stealin'?" He spoke in a jesting note, his weathered face impa.s.sive as the sh.e.l.l of a walnut, but Plimsoll scowled, noting the turn of Buck's bland countenance in his direction for the first time. It was whispered that the brands on Plimsoll's horse ranch were not those usually known in the county, nor even in the counties adjoining. There were rumors, smothered by Plimsoll's stand with the authorities, of bands of horses, driven by strangers, arriving wearied--and always by night--at his corrals.

"It don't matter--to you--what it's for," answered Jordan. "I'll overhaul 'em an' bring 'em back. Crossin' the county line won't do 'em any good with this warrant. Ef they try hide-out tactics or put up a sc.r.a.p, it'll be kidnappin' an' that's a penal offense."

Buck whistled.

"Thought you wasn't goin' to let me know," he said. "It's the gel."

"Who's been here to tip it off?" asked Jordan.

Buck looked at him serenely, took a plug of chewing from his hip pocket, took his knife, opened it deliberately and slowly cut off a corner of the tobacco.

"Search me," he drawled. "Me, I don't stay up to the house."

Jordan, temporarily discomfited but still confident of bringing back his quarry, marked the trail of the buckboard in the alkali soil, noted the hoof-prints of the diverging riders and nodded with the semi-smile and half closed-eyes of conscious superiority. He had already elicited apparently reluctant information from Pedro as to the four pa.s.sengers in the buckboard. Buck had been more reticent. To the sheriff Buck's reticence betokened desire to cover the fugitives. He fancied that Pedro's testimony was the result of Jordan's own cleverness in cross-questioning. Joe resorted to "no sabes."

"You 'tendin' ranch?" Jordan asked Buck, at last.

"Yep. Till I git fresh orders."

"I'll bring you back those orders, also yore bosses, before sun-down."

Buck permitted himself his first grin.

"You'll have to go some," he said. "Goin' to bring 'em back in irons?

Figgerin' on abduction?"

Jordan gave no hint of how Buck's shaft might have targeted his intentions, but climbed into the car and started it. The powerful machine went lunging through the soft dirt, following the blurry trail of the buckboard's iron tires, throwing up dust as a fast launch churns spray.

After leaving the Three Star all semblance of road vanished. The alkaline soil was almost as fine as flour, and deep. This and the fear of losing the trail kept the machine down to a limit that would have been ridiculous on a real road but represented fast work on the desert.

The water boiled in the radiator from the heat of the toiling engine and Jordan stopped, replenished, reoiled. Reaching the lava strip where the buckboard had halted for water and the noon meal, they found the trail skirting the flow toward the south. The main ma.s.s of the mesa, broken up into gorges, gaps, stairway cliffs, marked by purple shadows, scanty in the early afternoon but gradually widening, was about fifteen miles away. Jordan braked his car. He ignored the water in the spring. His spare supply was still ample and was distilled, not alkaline.

He turned to one of his deputies.

"Which way do you figger they're headin', Phil?" he asked. "Is there a cut or a pa.s.s through the mesa?"

"Dam'fino. Mesa's all cut up, but it's sure a G.o.dforsaken country.

Nothin' but rock an' clay an' cactus. No one ever goes there. I reckon I know as much of this country as most an' I sure never explored the dump.

One thing's sure an' certain. Them fellers from the Three Star usually know where they are headin'. Trail's plain."

"Sure is." But Jordan scratched his head a trifle doubtfully. If Sandy Bourke and his chums had been tipped off, this trail was a little too plain to be true. Presently, as the machine plowed on south, they struck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no trace of hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four got out, casting around, expecting that this outcropping had been used as a device to throw off the pursuit. Fairly fresh horse droppings showed that the buckboard had held to its course and, the rock pa.s.sed, the trail showed plain again, curving in toward the broken wall of the mesa, leading toward a cleft that was plainly distinguishable.

"That's Bolsa Boquete," announced the deputy named Phil. "I never went through it."

"What's it mean--the name?"

"Boquete's gap. Bolsa's money--not jest the same as dinero. It's the word they have on the bank winders down in Mexico. Exchange."

"Money Gap? That don't tell us a thing," said Jordan. "But I'll bet my star they've gone through it all right. We ought to be not much more'n an hour behind them."

"They're on about us getting the papers," said Plimsoll. He had not said much on the trip so far. "Too much talk nowadays. You can't whisper in a dugout but what the news is all over the county inside of twenty minutes. Bourke sabes that getting the girl out of the county won't do any good; he aims to get her out of the state and any Arizona court or sheriff jurisdiction. He's the brains of the outfit. We've got to get her, Jordan."

"You ain't tellin' me a thing I don't know, Jim. But there's one thing you _can_ tell me. Is that tip you got about Dynamite a sure one?"

Plimsoll, sitting beside Jordan, flashed him a look of contempt.

"Do you think I'm chasing this girl because I'm stuck on her? One of the party with this eastern crowd dropped into my place and talked. Showed some samples and I had a good look at them. He happened to leave a bit or two behind and I had them a.s.sayed. Here is where I get back the money I put up to grubstake Casey."

Jordan gave him a grin of derision.

"You an' yore grubstake," he jeered.

Plimsoll said nothing more.

As they neared the gap, translated by Phil in the unconsciousness that Bolsa had two meanings in Spanish, Jordan slowed up.

"No shootin' in this deal," he warned. "Come to a show-down, Bourke won't buck the law soon's we show papers. So long's he ain't been notified the court is makin' a ward of the girl they ain't done nothin'

wrong. But--if he resists, that's different."