He looked ahead. The great oak was close, so close that he might have counted the narrow little ridges of red soil beneath; the ridges which he knew were the graves of those who had died before him. The great bough that reached out over the spot where the earth was trampled smooth in horrible significance--the branch from which a noosed rope dangled sinuously in the breeze that came straight off the ocean--swayed with majestic deliberation as if Fate herself were beckoning.

He clasped his hands upon the saddle-horn and, stealthily loosening the dagger-point from the hem of his sleeve, slid the weapon cautiously into his hand. When he felt the handle against his palm, he knew that he had been holding his breath, and that the sigh he gave was an involuntary relief that the others had not glimpsed the blade under his clasped fingers. He would not have to dangle from that swinging rope, at any rate.

"h.e.l.lo, pard!" Dade's voice called thickly from close behind. "Looking for some rope?"

Jack turned his head just as the looped rawhide slithered past him and settled taut over the head of the startled buckskin. Like a lightning gleam slashing through the dark he saw Dade's plan, and played his own part unhesitatingly.

Two movements he made while the buckskin sat back upon his haunches and gathered his muscles for a forward spring. The first was to lean and send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by which Shorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge that drove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunned into momentary inaction by the suddenness of Dade's a.s.sault.

The buckskin gave a mighty leap that caught Shorty unawares and sent him into a crumpled heap in the sand. Dade's riata, tight as a fiddle-string at first, slackened as the buckskin, his breath coming in snorts, surged alongside. Jack leaned again--this time to s.n.a.t.c.h the ivory-handled revolver from the holster on Dade's saddle. As well as he could with his legs held rigid by the rope that tied his ankles, he twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to the spiteful barking of the guns that called upon them to halt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to the spiteful barking of the guns.]

Davis he shot, and saw him sway and fall flat, with a smoking gun in his hand. Another crumpled forward; and Shorty, just getting painfully upon his feet, he sent into the sand again to stay; for his skill with small arms was something uncanny to witness, and his temper was up and turning him into a savage like the rest.

But the range was rapidly growing to rifle-length, and death fell short of his enemies after Shorty went down. When he saw his fourth bullet kick up a harmless little geyser of sand two rods in advance of the agitated crowd, he left off and turned to his friend.

"I thought you were drunk," he observed inanely, as is common to men who have just come through situations for which no words have been coined.

"You ain't the only one who made that mistake," Dade retorted grimly, and looked back. "Good thing those hombres are afoot. We'll get on a little farther and then we'll fix a hackamore so you can do your own riding,"

"I can't stand it to ride any farther--"

"Are you shot?" Dade pulled in a little and looked anxiously into his face.

"It's the rope. They tied it so tight it's torture. I'd never have believed it could hurt so--but they gave me an extra twist or two to show their friendship, I reckon."

Dade rode on beyond a little, wooded knoll before he stopped, lest the crowd, seeing them halt, might think it worth while to follow them afoot.

"They surely didn't intend you to fall off," he said whimsically, when his knife released the strain. But his lips tightened at the outrage; and his eyes, bent upon Jack's left ankle, wore the look of one who could kill without pity.

"They'll never do it to another man," declared Jack, with vindictive relish. "It was Davis and the Captain; I killed 'em both." He rolled stiffly from the saddle, found his feet like dead things and stumbled to a little hillock, where he sat down.

Dade, kneeling awkwardly in his heavy, bearskin chaparejos, picked at the bonds with the point of his knife. "Lucky you had on boots," he remarked. "Even as it is, you're likely to carry creases for a while.

How the deuce did you manage to get into this particular sc.r.a.pe?--if I might ask!"

"I didn't get into it. This particular sc.r.a.pe got me. Say, it's lucky you happened along just when you did."

To this very obvious statement the other made no reply. He cut the last strand of the rope that bound Jack's ankles so mercilessly, and stood up. "You better take off your boots and rub some feeling into your feet while I make a hackamore for that horse. The sooner we get out of this, the better. What's left of the Committee will probably be pretty anxious to see you."

"Oh, d.a.m.n the Committee!--as Bill remarked after the trial." Jack made an attempt to remove one of his boots, found the pain intolerable and desisted with a groan. "I wish they would show up," he declared. "I'd like to give them a taste of this foot-tying business!"

Dade went on tying the hackamore with a haste that might be called anxious. With just two bullets left in the pistol and with no powder upon his person for further reloading, he could not share Jack's eagerness to meet the Committee again. When Surry gave over rolling with his tongue the little wheel in his bit, and with lifted head and eyes alert perked his ears forward towards the hill they had just crossed, he slipped the hackamore hurriedly into place and turned to his friend.

"You climb on to Surry, and we'll pull out," he said shortly. "I wouldn't give two pesos for this buckskin, but we're going to add horse-stealing to our other crimes; and while it's all right to d.a.m.n the Committee, it's just as well to do it at a distance, just now, old man."

The caution fell flat, for Jack was wholly absorbed by the pain in his feet and ankles, as the blood was being forced into the congested veins. Dade led the white horse close, to save him the discomfort of hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle before he vaulted upon the tricky-eyed buckskin. He led the way down into a shallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later, when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar their way, he swung abruptly to the east and south.

"Maybe you won't object so hard to Palo Alto now," he bantered at last, when at dusk he ventured out upon "El Camino Real" (which is pure Spanish for "The King's Highway"), that had linked Mission to Mission all down the fertile length of California when the land was wilderness. "Solitude ought to feel good, after to-day." When he got no answer, Dade looked around at the other.

Jack's face showed vaguely through the night fog creeping in from the clamorous ocean off to the west. His legs were hanging free of the stirrups, and his hands rested upon the high saddle-horn.

"Say, Dade," he asked irrelevantly and with a mystifying earnestness, "which do you think would kill a man quickest--a slash across the throat, or a stab in the heart?"

"I wouldn't call either one healthy. Why?"

"I was just wondering," Jack returned ambiguously. "If you hadn't happened along--say, how did you happen to come? Was that another sample of my fool's luck?" Since the coincidence had not struck him before, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at his elbow when he was most needed.

"Bill Wilson sent word that you were making seven kinds of a fool of yourself--Bill named a few of them--and advised me to get you out of town. I've more respect for Bill's judgment than ever. I took his advice as it stood--and therefore, you're headed for safer territory than you were awhile ago. It ain't heaven," he added, "but it's next thing to it."

"I'm not hankering after heaven, right now," averred Jack. "Most any other place looks good to me; I'm not feeling a hit critical, Dade.

And if I didn't say it before, old man, you're worth a whole regiment to a fellow in a fix."

CHAPTER V

HOSPITALITY

If you would enjoy that fine hospitality which gives gladly to strangers and to friends alike of its poverty or plenty, and for the giving asks nothing in return, you should seek the far frontiers; but if you would see hospitality glorified into something more than a simple virtue, then you should find, if you can, one of the old-time haciendas that were the pride of early California.

Time was when the wild-eyed cattle which bore upon their fat-cushioned haunches the seared crescent that proclaimed them the property of old Don Andres Picardo (who owned, by grant of the king, all the upper half of the valley of Santa Clara) were free to any who hungered. Time was when a traveler might shoot a fat yearling and feast his fill, unquestioned by the don or the don's dark-eyed vaqueros.

Don Andres Picardo was a large-hearted gentleman; and to deny any man meat would bring to his cheeks a blush for his n.i.g.g.ardliness. That was in the beginning, when he reigned in peace over the peninsula. When the vaqueros, jingling indignantly into the patio of his home, first told of carca.s.ses slaughtered wantonly and left to rot upon the range with only the loin and perhaps a juicy haunch missing, their master smiled deprecatingly and waved them back whence they came. There were cattle in plenty. What mattered one steer, or even a fat cow, slain wastefully? Were not thousands left?

But when tales reached him of cattle butchered by the hundred, and of beef that was being sold for an atrocious price in San Francisco, the old Spaniard was shocked into laying aside the traditions and placing some check upon the unmannerly "gringos" who so abused his generosity.

He established a camp just within the northern boundary of his land; and there he stationed his most efficient watch-dog, Manuel Sepulveda, with two vaqueros whose business it was to stop the depredations.

Meat for all who asked for meat, paid they in gold or in grat.i.tude--that was their "patron's" order. But they must ask. And the vaqueros rode diligently from bay to mountain slopes, and each day their hatred of the Americanos grew deeper, as they watched over the herds of their loved patron, that the gringos might not steal that which they might, if they were not wolves, have for the asking.

The firelight in the tule-thatched hut of Manuel Sepulveda winked facetiously at the black fog that peered in at the open door. A night wind from the north crept up, parted the fog like a black curtain and whispered something which set the flames a-dancing as they listened.

The fog swung back jealously to hear what it was, and the wind went away to whisper its wonder-tale to the trees that rustled astonishment and nodded afterward to one another in approval, like the arrant gossips they were. The chill curtain fell straight and heavy again before the door, so that the firelight shone dimly through its folds; but not before Dade, riding at random save for the trust he put in the sure homing instinct of his horse, caught the brief gleam of light and sighed thankfully.

"We'll stop with old Manuel to-night," he announced cheerfully.

"Here's his cabin, just ahead."

"And who's old Manuel?" asked Jack petulantly, because of the pain in his feet and his own unpleasant memories of that day.

"Don Andres Picardo's head vaquero. He camps here to keep an eye on the cattle. Some fellows from town have been butchering them right and left and doing a big business in beef, according to all accounts.

Manuel hates gringos like centipedes, but I happened to get on the good side of him--partly because my Spanish is as good as his own. An Americano who has black hair and can talk Spanish like the don himself isn't an Americano, in Manuel's eyes."

While they were unsaddling under the oak tree, where the vaqueros kept their riding gear in front of the cabin, Manuel himself came to the door and stood squinting into the fog, while he flapped a tortilla dexterously between his brown palms.

"Is it you, Valencia??" he called out in Spanish, giving the tortilla a deft, whirling motion to even its edges.