As he rode over the finny ridge of Elk Mountain and saw the Nipple Peaks gleaming above the black pines across the valley, with Elk River gleaming in the middle, he realized that he had said nothing to Molly of Keith, of the shutting down of the mine and his own action in her name.

While she had asked nothing of young Donald. For the time it had been as if the rest of the world had been fenced off from them and their own intimate affairs.

He compressed his knees and the mare answered in a lope that stretched into a gallop, fast and faster as she reached the levels and sped toward Elk River. Sandy was not going to waste time looking for a ford. The mare could swim. The moon, sloping down toward the west, still above the range, helped by the big white stars, made the valley bright almost as day. He scanned the mountain toward the peaks, pa.s.sed over the dark impenetrable pines, surveyed the stretch of gently rising ground between the Elk and the trees and shifted his guns in their scabbards. His rifle he had left with Sam. Either Plimsoll had not pa.s.sed the peaks, was in the woods, or he had come and gone. Something told Sandy this last had not occurred. Travel beyond the peaks must have been hard and slow and roundabout for Plimsoll while he had tangented fast for the cut-off.

The mare took the cold river water about her fetlocks with a little shiver, wading in to the girths, sliding to a deep pool where she had to swim a few strokes before she found gravel under her hoofs and scrambled out. Suddenly, while Sandy hesitated how best to arrange his patrol, a horse came floundering out of the pines less than a quarter of a mile away, a black horse, shining with sweat, tired to its limit, staggering in its stride, the rider hunched in the saddle more like a sack of meal than a man.

Before Sandy could turn the mare toward them three riders burst from the trees like bolts from a crossbow, spurring their mounts, the two in the lead swinging lariats. They divided, one to either side of the foundering black stallion, one at the rear, gaining, angling in. The ropes slithered out, the loops seemed to hang like suspended rings of wire for a second before they settled down, fair and true, about the neck and shoulders of the black's rider. They tightened, the lariats snubbed to the saddle horns, the horses sliding with flattened pasterns.

The black lunging on, pitched forward as it was relieved of a sudden weight and its rider jerked hideously from the saddle, hands clawing at the ropes that choked his gullet, wrenching, sinking deep, shutting off air and light with a horrid taste of blood and the noise of thundering waters.

The ropers wheeled their mounts and galloped back toward the woods, the limp body of their victim dragging, bouncing over the ground. The third rode to meet Sandy. It was Brandon. He hailed Sandy with surprise.

"How'd you happen here this time of night, Bourke? Not looking for me?"

"No. I was looking for the man you've just caught. I was about a minute too late."

Brandon glanced curiously at Sandy, caught by the grim note in his voice. But he made no comment.

"Sorry if I spoiled your private vendetta, Bourke. You can have him, what's left of him, if you want. We were going to swing him from a tree with a card on his chest presenting him to Hereford County, with our compliments. As it is, Bourke, I'd be relieved if you'd keep out of this entirely. Even forgetting you'd met us. We're within our rights, but we've done some cleaning up to-night that we might have to explain if we stayed too long in the state. We got the goods on Plimsoll; one of his men whose girl Plimsoll had stolen helped us to pin them on him. We met him at Hereford. I'm going to send the facts and proofs to your authorities. They may not approve of lynch law these days, but they wouldn't act--and we did. I don't fancy they'll bother us any. He wasn't worth the ropes he spoiled. Just as well you kept out of the mix-up."

Sandy said nothing. There was no need to mention Molly's adventure.

"Want to be sure it's him?" asked Brandon. "Let's look at the black first. He gave us a hard chase, but we were too many for him and rounded him up."

They found the black stallion stretched out on the turf with its neck curiously twisted. Tired out, it had fallen clumsily and broken the vertebrae. It was quite dead. Both men looked at it silently, with a mental tribute to a good horse.

The body of Plimsoll lay at the foot of a big pine. The loops were still tight about his neck. One of the ropes had been tossed over a bough. The two men had dismounted. They nodded to Sandy as he came up with Brandon.

He had seen them before on their first unsuccessful trip to the Waterline. They were horse-owners, responsible men, who considered they had administered justice, who felt no more qualms concerning the dead man than if his body had been the carca.s.s of a slaughtered steer.

"Waiting for the rest of the boys to come up," said Brandon. "We'll hit the trail home to-night. Bourke wants to identify the body, boys."

Sandy looked down at the contorted, blackened face, and his disappointment at having been forestalled, sedimented down. The gambler's features had not been made placid by death; they still held much of the horror of the last moments of that relentless chase, his horse failing under him, foreknowledge of sudden death and then the whistling ropes, the jerk into eternity...! It was a thing to be forgotten, a nightmare that had nothing to do with the new day ahead.

"It's Plimsoll," said Sandy shortly. "I'm ridin' back to Three Star. I found him hangin' to a tree. Good night, hombres." He left them standing about their quarry and turned the willing mare toward home. Peace settled down on him under the stars that were fading, the moon below the hills when he rode into the home corral.

A figure was perched upon the fence, waiting. It was Molly, and she leaped down almost into his arms as he sprang from the mare. In the gray dawn her face seemed drawn and weary. There were the blue shadows under the eyes that he remembered seeing there the time they had ridden over the Pa.s.s of the Goats. She came close to him, her hands up against his chest.

"You're safe, Sandy. Safe!"

"I was too late," he said. "Brandon's men had been ahead of me."

"I'm so glad, Sandy. Your hands are clean of his blood. They are my hands, now, Sandy."

He swept her up to him, kissing her mouth and eyes, the eager pressure of her lips returning all with full measure. A streak of rose glowed in the east behind the amethyst peaks. Her face reflected it like a mirror.

The tired lines were gone as he set her down.

"How long have you been waiting, Molly?"

"Ever since I got back. I slipped out of the house when the rest had gone to bed. If you hadn't come back, Sandy, I should have died."

"I don't have to go back east," she said presently. They had left the corral and were under the big cottonwoods by Patrick Casey's grave. "Do I?"

"I don't reckon you can, even if you wanted to," answered Sandy. "I forgot to tell you, Molly, that you're bu'sted, so far's the mine is concerned. Listen."

She laughed when he finished speaking.

"Is that all?" She patted the turf on the green mound. "I'm sorry, Daddy, for you, it didn't pan out bigger. But I guess what you wanted most was my happiness--and I've got that." She turned to Sandy. The big bell of the ranch boomed bra.s.sily. Molly put her hand in Sandy's. "It may be most unromantic, Sandy dear," she said, "but I'm hungry. Let's go in to breakfast."

CHAPTER XXII

THE VERY END

There was a council held later that day, that was almost a council of war. Sandy was in the chair, Mormon and Sam present, Molly the indignant speaker-in-chief.

"I'm very much ashamed of all of you," she said. "An agreement is an agreement, and we were to share as we arranged. We shook hands upon it.

I've had three times as much as any one of you, as it is. I haven't spent all of it, Sandy tells me.

"I've got to accept Sandy's share of it, I suppose, because it goes with Sandy. As for you, Sam Manning, you'll need your third when you marry Kate Nicholson."

Soda-Water Sam gasped.

"Marry Miss Nicholson?"

"Certainly. She expects you to."

"She--Molly, it ain't no jokin' matter with me. She wouldn't look at a rough-hided cuss like me."

"You ask her, Sammy. Mormon, I suppose you'll have to hang fire until you find out about that third wife. I hope the fourth time will be the charm. It will if you marry Miranda Bailey."

"You're sure talkin' like a matrimonial boorow, Molly," said Mormon. "I sure think a sight of Mirandy. She's different from my first three. They all married me, fo' me to look out fo' them. If Mirandy can be persuaded to take me it's becos she is willin' to look after me. She 'lows I need it," he added sheepishly. Then he chuckled.

"I've knowed the whereabouts of my third fo' some time back," he said.

"She got a divorce six years ago. I've kept the matter secret as a so't of insurance policy. I've allus been sort of unbalanced in my leanin's to'ards the s.e.x, you see. An' it sure acted as a prop an' a defense so fur."

"Then the meeting is closed," said Molly. "I accept your apologies and you keep your money."

Mormon and Sam rose. With a glance at each other that ended in a wink, they left the room. Molly turned to Sandy.

"You didn't give me back my luck-piece, Sandy."

"What does a mascot want with a luck-piece?"

"She would like it made into an engagement ring, Sandy."

"Why not a weddin' ring, Molly, Molly mine?"