_That_ was a single rifle-shot, followed by two others, the last almost as one.

"h.e.l.l!" cried Plimsoll, "they've got us this end. It's Wyatt. Just my d.a.m.ned luck for him to meet up with Brandon."

"Butch says it was the deal with that chap from Phoenix. He allus spotted him for a crooked one. They've planted hawsses on us to prove up. And Wyatt has been in touch with Brandon ever sense you took his gel away from him. Come on, I'm goin'."

He ran outside and Plimsoll followed to the door, lethargy leaving him in the face of disaster though he could not think fast or clearly. Hahn came clattering over the rocks on his horse, his face chalky white. He was reeling in his saddle, the horse spraddling, wild-eyed, almost out of control. Cookie jumped for its bridle as Hahn slumped sidewise in the saddle, clutched for the horn, missed it and was falling when Plimsoll caught him and helped him to the wall of the cabin where he leaned weakly. A blotch of blood showed on his left shoulder.

"Go get him a slug of whisky," Plimsoll ordered Cookie.

But Cookie, his face twitching with fright, jumped for his own mount and went galloping down the valley to the south.

Plimsoll sent curses after him, reaching for his own pistol before he remembered it was inside, dragging Hahn's half out of its holster and then quitting as the fleeing cook tangented and disappeared behind some timber.

The handkerchief about Plimsoll's wounded wrist was now a sodden rag, but the loss of blood had cleared his brain. He set his left arm about Hahn and helped him into the cabin. Molly was stirring and Plimsoll scowled blackly at her. He gave Hahn a drink.

"Brace up," he said, "what happened? I know about Reynolds. I mean at the lookout."

Hahn finished his gla.s.s, pushed it out for another, gulped that.

"Got to make our getaway," he said. "Butch is done for. They got me here under the collar-bone. I reckon they touched the lung. I never saw such shooting. But Butch got Wyatt."

"Tell it straight," demanded Plimsoll. "How many of 'em? What did they do?"

"We no more than made the lookout," said Hahn, "before six men came riding along, heeled for trouble. One of them was the black-bearded guy from California who was here with that Brandon, first time they came nosing around. And another was Wyatt, G.o.d blast his rotten soul in h.e.l.l for a twisting hound! Wyatt was just starting to point 'em out the entrance when Butch lets him have it. Hits him smack in the forehead.

Before he could show 'em the way in. He may have told 'em about it on the way up. But Blackbeard must have caught the shine of Butch's barrel.

He fires back--they all had their rifles handy cross the pommel--the bullet goes plumb through the tree and knocks Butch down. Went through both hips. He falls against me and I show in the open, sliding on that d.a.m.ned slippery boulder, sliding inside and out of range, but they got me.

"They'll be through any minute, Plim. They'll go careful until they find there's no one firing back at them, then it won't take 'em long to figure out the way in. You can't tell how much Wyatt told 'em on the way up. They've got me. I can't ride. My lungs are filling up. Butch is paralyzed--if he ain't dead. A h.e.l.l of a wind-up! You can make it out the way Reynolds did. None of the gang that left with Wyatt knows about the side-trail by Spur Rock. But you'd better beat it. Me, I've turned my last card. The case is empty!"

His head fell forward on to his arms. A trickle of scarlet came from the corner of his mouth. Plimsoll looked at him calculatingly. Hahn could not ride. But he wouldn't die for a while. To leave him here where the raiders would find him might mean a confession wrung from him that would tell of the getaway trail by Spur Rock and Nipple Peaks. He shook Hahn by the sound shoulder.

"Brace up," he said. "You can hide in Split Rock Cave. I'm going to put the girl in there. Take another drink. Pick up some grub. There's water in the cave. You can come out soon's the coast is clear."

"I'll not be coming out," said Hahn huskily. "But it's a good move." He weakly collected the bottle, some sc.r.a.ps of food.

Plimsoll stooped over Molly, coming out of her faint, and gagged her with her own scarf as her eyes opened and looked at him. He took off her belt and strapped her arms behind her back. Then, despite his wounded wrist, he lifted her easily enough and strode with her out of the door, Hahn following.

Hahn's horse was standing there obediently with pendent reins anchoring it! Blaze and Plimsoll's black were nipping gra.s.s in the little corral where they had been placed. Blaze whinnied at the sight, or the scent, of his mistress. Plimsoll pa.s.sed the corral and went through a grove of quaking asps close to the wall of the side-gulch, keeping to the rock as much as possible. He turned into a cleft, stopping at a rock whose almost flat surface was level with his feet, a great ma.s.s of granite that some freak of weathering or convulsion of earthquake had split almost in half. Into the crevice a wild grape-vine had twined, and died.

"Can you make it, Hahn?" he asked.

The dealer nodded and knelt, using his sound arm to aid himself by the tough fibers, bracing with his knees. Down some ten feet in the crack he looked up, his ghastly face pallid in the shadow, with an attempt at a grin.

"Good-by, Plim," he said. "Good luck! What do I do with the girl?"

"Keep her from calling out. She's gagged but she might try it. Make her nurse you. Do anything you d.a.m.n please with her!"

Hahn dropped out of sight. Plimsoll did not wait but picked Molly up from where he had deposited her, a helpless bundle, on the rock.

"The bottom's soft down there," he said. "Sand. It ain't more than fifteen feet. Down you go, you h.e.l.lcat! They'll have a fine time locating you. And you've got a dying man for company. He'll be a dead one before morning."

He lowered her, feet down, released her and watched her disappear. He swung about and ran back to the corral, his hurt arm throbbing with his exertion. He had entertained a brief thought of hiding in the cave himself, but the fear of madness from the bite had not left him, the suggestion of it coming on in an underground cavern sickened him with horror. He craved the open. He flung himself into the saddle of the black horse, once leader of a slick-ear herd of wild mustangs, magnificent for speed and symmetry, worthy a better master, and galloped out of the corral, out of the side-ravine, into the open park. The rough towel about his arm was becoming soaked. Every jump of the black horse seemed to increase the bleeding. The spurt of fict.i.tious energy that had carried him through since the arrival of Cookie was dying away. But he was on a mount that none could match, he was going on a trail that was hard to follow, practically unknown. Unless he was headed off, he could break through. At Nipple Peaks he could rest, attend to his wound.

A shout, a bullet whistling past that nicked the stallion's ear and sent him plunging and bucking, warned him that his enemies had found the way in and were after him. He did not look back, but bent forward in his saddle and sunk the spurs into the black's flanks. The half-tamed mustang's indignant bounds spoiled the aim of the marksmen, and, though the steel-nosed missiles hummed like bees about them, they gained the shelter of the same trees that had covered Cookie. Belly almost to ground, the black swept over the cropped turf at racing speed, the drum of his hooves like distant thunder, crest high, crimson-satin nostrils flaring, mad at the sting of the red notch in his ear.

Round the elbow of the Hideout, with Brandon's men distanced, into the gorge at the south end. A wild scramble up a steep slope and the way to Spur Rock was clear. Plimsoll smiled grimly. "d.a.m.n them, I'll beat them yet!" For a second he was silhouetted against a skyline, then he plunged down. Fresh droppings told him that Reynolds had won clear. He was safe from pursuit. If the wound--he should have cauterized it. But....

He reined in for a moment. The sound of a shout rang in his ears. It was an echo, he fancied, it must be an echo, flung back from the mountain walls ahead. But it could mean nothing else than a view-halloo. Some one had glimpsed him disappearing beyond the ridge.

CHAPTER XX

MOLLY MINE

Sandy, replacing the blanket on Wyatt's face, examined his guns and started climbing up to the big boulder. He could not see the rocks displaced by Brandon's men from below, but he picked up the b.l.o.o.d.y imprint of Grit's pad, with other smears of blood less distinctly marked. Soon he discovered the narrow opening and proceeded cautiously.

The moon was quite bright now and the daylight almost vanished. Only the afterglow still flamed in the eastern sky back of the violet cliffs. The touch of night chill was already threatening, great stars were a.s.sembling court about the moon.

To Sandy's right was perpendicular rock, to his left the curve of the blocking boulder with the skeleton tree topping it, withered in the cleft that had first nourished, then denied it nourishment. It gleamed silver gray, attracting his attention. As he gazed his sharp ears caught the tiny crack of a brittle branch. Instantly he dropped to all fours as a spurt of flame showed from the tree and a bullet whined over him, to smack against the rock and fall flattened.

Sandy did not move. He knew that, to the man firing, his fall might have seemed a hit, that he had beaten the missile by the s.p.a.ce of a wink. He heard more broken boughs, as if his a.s.sailant were clumsily, a.s.suredly, clambering out of ambush, and he shifted silently into position, rifle set down, both guns ready. There came a strange thrashing sound, a groan of mortal anguish, silence. If this was a trick it was a crude one.

Sandy waited. That groan, half sigh, half rattle, could not be mistaken.

He half circled the boulder, gliding up a flattened traverse, and saw, lying outspread over a low bough of the withered tree, face to the moon, gun away from the curling hand, Butch Parsons.

With ready gun Sandy reached him, bent, turned him on his side. A bullet had ranged through both hips, shattering them. The spine must have been injured. There were puddles of blood that told the injury was some hours old. Butch had lain there paralyzed, pa.s.sed by Brandon's men as dead, lingering like the traditional snake until sunset to see and recognize Sandy coming through the gap, to use his last remnant of life to pull trigger and so to die, the injured vertebrae giving away to the effort, the spark of life pinched out.

Sandy left him and returned to the gap. He could still read sign, plain as it was on every side. He found the side-gulch, saw the cabin, saw Hahn's saddled horse grazing free, Blaze in the corral, the cabin door open with the moon streaming in. He had pieced out the puzzle to his own satisfaction. Brandon and his men had arrived and, in Hereford, they had run across Wyatt, procuring horses there and saving themselves the trip to the Three Star. Butch's body was evidence that they had not been unsuccessful, Wyatt's that the fight had not been all one-sided, the surprise not perfect. And, if Plimsoll had been warned, what had become of Molly?

He got an answer that made his heart stand still, then pound in a rush of action. On the floor, in the beam of the moon, lay the luck-piece, a few links of gold chain attached to the coin. Stooping for it, he brushed a strand of brown hair. Then he saw Grit's body beneath the table. Fury boiled in him, chilled to icy wrath and determination. He put away the coin and hauled out the dog's body into the moonlight. It was limber and still warm. Sandy rose from his squat and swiftly examined the cabin. He discovered a lantern with oil in it, which he lit. The condition of the fire, corroborating other signs, told him that the fighting was long over with, the issue pa.s.sed on. He had no fear of interruption. Before very long Sam and the Three Star riders would be along. The sight of Blaze suggested that Molly was not far away. If she had gone, by force, or her own free will, the probability was that her own mount and saddle would have been requisitioned.

Sandy's capacity for reading sign was almost without limit. He was better at it than an Indian because he had equally good observation and better judgment. But, to find Molly, with the ground about the cabin cut by arriving and departing feet and hooves, with Blaze in the corral, was a miracle that called for more than eyesight and deduction. If he could revive Grit...?

He found water warm in a kettle; he had the first-aid kit with its bandages, iodine, lint. And, above all, he had Keith's silver flask, half full. He did not fail to note the empty bottles on the table, the blood marks where Plimsoll's veins had sprinkled and Grit had stained the floor. He found, too, a b.u.t.ton of horn with a fragment of black and white check, torn from Molly's riding coat in the struggle. Sandy's anger crystallized into one ambition beyond the finding of Molly, and that was to kill Plimsoll, if possible with his hands. He pictured the struggle between the gambler and the girl, desperate on one side, brutal on the other and, whether the stake had been won or lost, he resolved that Plimsoll should die for that attack.

Now his hope hung on Grit. He squatted on the floor by the lantern, a gun handy in case of need. He took the collie's head on his lap and examined the blow made by the b.u.t.t of Plimsoll's gun. It had laid bare the bone but he did not think it either splintered or fractured. Grit's tongue lolled out from between his teeth and his muzzle was dry, yet Sandy fancied breath still pa.s.sed the nostrils and that there was a faint beat of heart beneath the heavy draggled coat, matted with the blood that had drained life from him. Sandy knew that dog or wolf or coyote will lie in a torpor after being badly wounded and often recover slowly, waking from the recuperating sleep revitalized. But, if he could bring Grit back, he must make fresh demands on him.

He washed the wound on the head and poured iodine into it. He did the same with the hole in the leg, cleansing it from the dried blood and hair. It had stopped bleeding. He disinfected it, st.i.tched it, closed it, bound it with adhesive tape and strengthened it with a bandage adjusted as expertly as any surgeon could have done. He pried open the jaws with but little resistance and let the tongue slip back before he poured in a measure of Scotch and water between the canine and incisor teeth. He tilted Grit's limp head, shut off his muzzle, stroked his throat and let the restorative trickle into the gullet. For a moment there was no response, then Grit coughed, choked, swallowed. Sandy repeated the dose with less water. It went down naturally. Almost immediately he felt the heart stroke strengthen. Grit sneezed, opened his eyes and feebly thumped his tail as he licked Sandy's hand.

"Grit, ol' pardner," said Sandy seriously, the dog's head between his hands, "yo're sure mussed up a heap an' I hate to do it, but I got to call on you, son. Mebbe it won't be such a long trick, but I can't git by without yore nose, Grit. It's worth more'n all I've got. An' I know yo're game. I'm goin' to give you some mo' of Keith's special Scotch, which I sure had a hunch w'ud come in handy, an' then we'll try it."

Grit wagged his tail more vigorously and tried to get on his feet, but Sandy prevented him until the third dose was administered. Then he carried the dog outside to save him every foot of unnecessary progress, and set him down. The collie stood up, wabbly on one foot but able to stand, looking eagerly at Sandy, commencing to snuff the air. Sandy let him smell the coin, the strand of hair, the piece of cloth and, with his keenest sense stimulated with the perfume that stood to Grit for love, the dog wrinkled his nose and cast around. But he led direct to Blaze and stood by the horse uncertain while Blaze nosed down at him.

"Carried out of the cabin, son," said Sandy. "We'll guess at Plimsoll.

He's got clear of the locality. Blaze knows but he can't tell. We've got to cast about." He picked up the dog again, puzzled, and looked about him in the gulch, suffused with moonlight. "There sh'ud be soft dirt under those asps, let's give a look-see there."

They had not gone five feet into the trees before man and dog made a simultaneous discovery. For Sandy it was a heel-mark left by Plimsoll, treading heavily under his burden, a slight depression enough, but plain to Sandy. Grit began to struggle in his arms. Molly's hair or body must have brushed against lower boughs at the same height that Sandy carried the wounded Grit and the scent still clung.