"They lined up just as I expected," muttered the sheriff as he advanced down the room, "and it's a lot of good it's going to do them. Say," he called to Flick and Gallito, "it ain't no use drawing your guns, boys. I guess you two old hands got sense enough to see that. So all you got to do is to hand over the prisoner. We'll tend to the rest of you later."

"I guess you're all right"--Bob Flick's soft voice had a carrying quality which caused his words to be heard all over the hall--"but we all, Gallito and myself here, feel kind of puzzled. Of course, we see right from the first what the game was and that you were after us, but we ain't wise yet."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "There stood the Black Pearl alone."]

"Is that so?" sneered the sheriff. "Well, you soon will be. You step aside from that curtain, and, Bob Flick, my men have orders to wing you and Gallito both the minute you even start to throw your hands back."

Gallito shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands and Flick laughingly waved his in the air.

"I guess you're right there, Bill," he said. "You sure got the argument of numbers. But say, boys, honest, what bug you all got in your heads?

You see in this land of the free you can't subject me and my friend Gallito to such indignities as you're a heaping on us. As far as I can make out, you're only laying up trouble for yourself, and also"--here there rang a peculiarly menacing note through his soft, southern voice--"if I'm correct, you're accusing Miss Pearl Gallito of being a suspicious character, and I'm a.s.suring you now, boys, that either in the desert or here in the mountains that that's the sort of thing you've got to answer for."

"Stop your kidding, Bob," said the sheriff, impatiently. He took a rapid stride forward and with one quick sweep of the arm ripped back the curtain.

Then he fell back staring, dumb with surprise. For there stood the Black Pearl alone, a man's coat b.u.t.toned across her bare chest, and beneath it the froth of her rose-colored silk petticoats. She stood nonchalantly enough, her head thrown back, her hands on her hips, surveying the group of men with a quick, disdainful smile, and then laughed insolently across them at Hanson.

"My Lord!" cried the sheriff, recovering himself, "how did you get here?

Why, you just went out of the door."

"Gee! Jose dressed up in her clothes and made a getaway," called a shrill voice from the rear.

The sheriff swore audibly and violently as he ran to the door. "Here, three of you boys," he ordered, "stay here and hold these prisoners. It ain't ten minutes since the others left and there's no chance on earth for 'em to escape. We'll have 'em before you know it. Come on, the rest of you."

CHAPTER XIII

The morning dawned, but the Sheriff and his aids, their numbers considerably increased by the various masculine inhabitants of Colina who had joyously proffered their a.s.sistance--welcoming anything that promised a little excitement after the wearing monotony of the winter--were still seeking Jose, who seemed to have vanished in some manner only to be explained as miraculous.

Gallito, Bob Flick, Pearl and Hugh, Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas had all been taken to the village hotel and were there under guard, while Seagreave, also under guard, was permitted to remain temporarily, at least, in his cabin.

The reason for this was that the sheriff was beginning to turn over certain rather vexing questions in his mind. Suppose, for instance, Jose should really have made his escape, impossible as that feat appeared, what definite, tangible proof had he that the crop-eared bandit had really been harbored by Gallito? Only some vague statements made by a woman to Hanson, a woman who thought that she had overheard a conversation or several conversations between Gallito and Bob Flick.

There had undoubtedly been some one, some one whose interest it was not to be caught, as the events of the previous night showed, but the explanation they had all given, Flick, Gallito, Hugh, Seagreave and the women, had struck the sheriff as extremely plausible, far more plausible, in fact, than Hanson's story that Crop-eared Jose had been secreted for months at a time in Gallito's cabin.

The explanation which Gallito and all of his group had given was this. A younger brother of Gallito, Pedro by name, had been visiting him for some time. This youth had led a somewhat irregular life both in Spain and in this country, and had become involved in several more or less serious affairs; more, so Gallito averred, from a certain wildness and recklessness of nature than from any criminal instincts. Several of his companions had been arrested and, fearing that he would be also, he had fled to Colina and begged Gallito to shelter him until it was safe for him to go to work in one of the mines.

The night before he had been very anxious to see Pearl dance in public, and, not daring to sit in the audience for fear of being recognized by some chance wayfarer, he had gained Pearl's consent to watch the entertainment from the safe seclusion of her dressing room.

Both Flick and Seagreave, who were in Gallito's confidence, believed that the boy's fears were greatly exaggerated, but when they saw the sheriff and all of his deputies in the hall their curiosity was aroused.

Flick had then gone over to speak to Hanson and Hanson's conversation had convinced him that Pedro was really in danger and would be arrested before the evening was over. They then devised the plan of having him escape in Pearl's dancing dress and long cloak, meaning to drive him up the hill and let him take his chances of eluding his would-be captors in the forest surrounding Gallito's cabin. But he had slipped out of the cart a short distance up the hill. Seagreave believed that there were a pair of snow-shoes in the bottom of the cart, which had disappeared.

That was all any of them could say.

But when Seagreave pointed out to the sheriff that if no one remained in either his or Gallito's cabin, it was extremely likely that both dwellings would be looted before nightfall, also that without the fires made and kept up the provisions would freeze and that with a guard over him, he would be as easy to lay hands on as if he were down at the hotel with the rest, the sheriff gravely considered the matter and was disposed to yield the point. As Seagreave remarked, he certainly had not mastered the art of flying and he knew no other way by which he might escape. "Poor Pedro!" he sighed.

"You bet it's poor Pedro," said the sheriff grimly. "Why, you know as well as I do, Seagreave, that there ain't no way on G.o.d's green earth for that boy to make a getaway. Of course, he's given us a lot of bother, what with that d.a.m.ned snow falling again last night and covering up any tracks he might make, but we're bound to get him. Why, a little army, if it had enough ammunition, could hold Colina against the world.

When you got a camp that's surrounded by canons about a thousand foot deep, how you going to get into it, if the folks inside don't want you?

Now, take that, boy! How's he going to strike the main roads and the bridges in the dead of night, especially when the bridges is all so covered over with drifts that you can't see 'em by day? And, anyway, the crust of the snow won't hold him in lots of places. 'Course he may flounder 'round some, but there's no possible chance for him, and I'm thinking that the coyotes'll get him before we do."

To this Seagreave agreed, and after the sheriff had further relieved his feelings by some vitriolic comments upon Hanson, he granted him permission to look after the two cabins, and indifferently ordered the deputy in charge to go down the hill and get his breakfast at the hotel, remarking with rough humor that he'd leave Seagreave the prisoner of the mountain peaks and he guessed they'd keep him safe all right.

So the two men, their appet.i.tes sharpened by a night spent in searching for the fugitive, took their way down toward the village, and it was not long thereafter that Pearl, having secured permission to go up to the cabin and make some changes in her clothing, wearily climbed the hill.

The lacks in her costume had been temporarily supplied by the inn-keeper's wife, but these makeshifts irked her fastidious spirit.

She had suggested that Mrs. Nitschkan and Mrs. Thomas go with her, but they were too thoroughly enjoying the limelight in which they found themselves to consider trudging up to their isolated cabin. Mrs. Thomas, in a pink glow of excitement, cooed and smiled and fluttered her lashes at half a dozen admirers, while Mrs. Nitschkan recounted to an interested group just where and how she had shot her bears.

"Say, have you took in the sheriff?" Mrs. Thomas found occasion to whisper to Mrs. Nitschkan. "He's an awful good looker, an' I think he got around that hall so stylish last night."

"What eyes he's got ain't for you," answered the gypsy cruelly. "He's kept his lamps steady on Pearl."

"That's all you know about it," returned Mrs. Thomas with some spirit.

"He sat beside me at the table this morning and squeezed my hand twice when I pa.s.sed him the flap-jacks. He's a real man, he is, an' likes a woman to be a woman, an' not a grizzly bear like you or a black panther like that Pearl."

Pearl's progress up the hill was necessarily slow. The wagons had cut the snow into great ruts which made walking difficult, and where it was smoother it was exceedingly slippery. But her weariness soon vanished under the stimulus of the fresh morning air. Even the exertion of dancing the evening before and the night of excitement which followed had left no trace. She was, indeed, a tireless creature and supple as a whalebone. So, after a few moments' exercise in the exhilaratingly pure air, the sparkle returned to her eye, the color to her cheek, and her step had regained its usual light buoyancy.

Although March had come with its thaws, there was no suggestion of spring in the landscape. From the white, monotonous expanse of snow rose bleak, skeleton shapes of trees lifting bare, black boughs to the snow-sodden clouds. Upon either side of the road lay a forest of desolation--varied only by the sad, dull green of the wind-blown pines--which stretched away and away until it became a mere blue shadow as unsubstantial as smoke on the mountain horizon; and yet spring, still invisible and to be denied by the doubting, was in the air, with all its soft intimations of bud and blossom and joyous life; and spring was in Pearl's heart as she hastened up the hill toward Seagreave. It brushed her cheek like a caress, it touched her lips like a song.

When she was about a quarter of a mile up from the village she crossed a little bridge which spanned a deep and narrow creva.s.se, a gash which cleft the great mountain to its foundation. Pearl lingered here a moment to rest, and, leaning her arms on the railing, looked down curiously into the mysterious depths so far below.

The white walls of the sharp, irregular declivity reflected many cold, prismatic lights, and down, far down where the eye could no longer distinguish shapes and outlines, there lay a shadow like steam from some vast, subterranean cauldron, blue, dense, impenetrable. It fascinated Pearl and she stood there trying to pierce the depths with her eye, until at last, recalled to herself by the chill in the wind, she again turned and hastened up the hill. But before seeking Seagreave and asking him to share his breakfast with her, she followed the instincts of her inherent and ineradicable coquetry and, stopping at her father's cabin, made a toilet, slipping into one of her own gowns and rearranging her hair. Then, throwing a long cape about her and adjusting her mantilla, she closed the door behind her and turned into the narrow trail which led at sharp right angles to the road to Saint Harry's cabin. It was, Pearl reflected, almost like walking through the tunnel of a mine; the snow walls on either side of her were as high as her head. Occasionally the green fringes of a pine branch tapped her cheek sharply with their rusty needles. Then the tunnel widened to a little clearing where stood the cabin, picturesque with the lichened bark of the trees on the rough-hewn logs.

Seagreave had evidently seen her coming, for before she lifted her hand to knock he threw open the door. "Ah," he cried, a touch of concern in his voice, "I was just going down to the other cabin to make up the fires before you came. If you stopped there you must have found it cold, and you did stop," his quick eye noting the change she had effected in her costume.

"Yes," she smiled, "they wouldn't let me come up the hill in Jose's coat and my rose petticoats, and I felt like a miner in the clothes they lent me." She had entered the cabin and had taken the chair he had pushed up near the crackling, blazing fire of logs which he had just finished building to his satisfaction. The bond of sympathy between Seagreave and Jose was probably that they both performed all manual tasks with a sort of beautiful precision. Gallito had characterized Harry's cabin as the cell of a monk. It was indeed simple and plain to austerity, and yet it possessed the beauty of a prevailing order and harmony. Shelves his own hands had made lined the rough walls and were filled with books; beside the wide fireplace was an open cupboard, displaying his small and shining store of cooking utensils. For the rest a table or two and a few chairs were all the room contained.

It was the first time Pearl had ever been in the cabin, and, although she maintained the graceful languor of her pose, lying back a little wearily in her chair, yet her narrow, gleaming eyes pierced every corner of the room, with avid eagerness absorbing the whole, and then returning for a closer and more penetrating study of details, as if demanding from this room where he lived and thought a comprehensive revelation of him, a key to that remote, uncharted self which still evaded her.

Seagreave himself, whose visible presence was, for the time, outside the field of her conjecture, was busy preparing her breakfast, and now, after laying the cloth, he placed a chair for her at the table and announced that everything was ready. He seated himself opposite her and Pearl's heart thrilled at the prospect of this intimate _tete-a-tete_, the color rose on her cheek, her lashes trembled and fell.

"Where's Jose?" she said hastily, to cover her slight, unusual embarra.s.sment. "Tell me quick how you managed it. Neither Bob nor Pop could tell me because someone was always with us."

"Ah," he said, "the G.o.ds were with us, but it was a wild chance, I a.s.sure you. Fortunately, it was still snowing. Hugh and Jose were already in the cart and everyone else had hastened home as fast as he or she could go. The boys would not have waited for me if I had not dashed out just when I did, and I was glad enough to escape, for I was afraid they would make some mistake in the road, Hugh not being able to see, and Jose familiar with the village only through our description of it. I wasted no time in jumping into the cart and then drove like Jehu to the Mont d'Or, fortunately on our way up the hill."

"The Mont d'Or!" she interjected in surprise. "But why did you stop there?"

He shrugged his shoulders significantly. "It is Jose's shelter. He had the keys of the engine room. Your father had sent them to him, and with them he let himself in, and then locked the door behind him. We got a fair start, of course, but it was only a few moments after we reached here that three or four of the deputies were on our heels."

"Ah," she cried, "they thought you had driven him here."

"Naturally, and it is unnecessary to say that they spent several hours in searching, not only this cabin, but your father's and Mrs.

Nitschkan's to boot, and also the stable yonder." He pointed to a little shed farther up the hill where he kept his horse and cart. He held out his coffee cup for her to refill and laughed heartily. "I have no doubt that they will return at intervals during the day to see if there isn't some tree-top or ledge of rock that they may have overlooked; but at present they are too busy exploring every nook and cranny of the various mines, especially the Mont d'Or."

She put down the coffee pot with a clatter and threw herself back in her chair with a gesture of intense disappointment. "Then surely they will find Jose!" she cried.

"Oh, you do not know," he exclaimed. "Wait; it was stupid of me not to have explained. Your father is a wonderful man. He overlooks nothing. He foresaw that in spite of all precautions, Jose--and other friends of his," there was a trace of hesitation in his tones in speaking to her of her father's chosen companions, "might be trapped here in the winter time when they could not escape over the one or two secret trails which he knows and which he has shown Jose. So, long ago, working secretly and overtime in the Mont d'Or, he hollowed out a small chamber. It is above one of the unworked stopes and its entrance defies detection."

"But are you sure?" she interjected earnestly. "Have you seen it yourself?"