"There is only one boss in this State," he countered coolly. "And I am very sure he hasn't given you orders to kill me."

"What's that?" demanded the spokesman.

Blount repeated his a.s.sertion, adding jocularly: "Perhaps you'd better call up headquarters and ask your boss if he wants you to kill the son of his boss."

At this the gun-holder came around the fire to stand before his prisoner.

"Say, pal--this ain't my night for kiddin', and it hadn't ort to be your'n," he remarked grimly. "The boss didn't say you was to be rubbed out--they never do. But I reckon it would save a heap o' trouble if you _was_ rubbed out."

"On the contrary, I'm inclined to think it would make a heap of trouble--for you and your friends, and quite probably for the man or men who sent you to waylay me. But, apart from all that, you've got hold of the wrong man, as I told you a moment ago."

"No, by grapples! I hain't. I saw you in daylight. If there's been any fumblin' done, I hain't done it. So you see it ain't any o' my funeral."

"Think not?" said Blount.

"I know it ain't. Orders is orders, and you don't git over into them woods on Upper Lost Creek with no papers to serve on n.o.body: see?"

It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable a.s.sumption. His smoking-room companion of the Pullman car was doubtless one of the timber-pillagers who had been cutting on the public domain.

To such a man an agent of the National Forest Service was an enemy to be hoodwinked, if possible, or, in the last resort, to be disposed of as expeditiously as might be, and Blount saw that he had only himself to blame for his present predicament, since he had allowed the man to believe that he was a Government emissary. Having this clew to the mystery, his course was a little easier to steer.

"I have no papers of the kind you think I have, as you can readily determine by searching me," he said. "My name is Blount, and I am the son of ex-Senator David Blount, of this State. Now what are you going to do with me?"

"What's that you say?" grated the outlaw.

"You heard what I said. Go ahead and heave me into the canyon if you are willing to stand for it afterward."

The hard-faced man turned without replying and went back to the other two at the fire. Blount caught only a word now and again of the low-toned, wrangling argument that followed. But from the overheard word or two he gathered that there were still some leanings toward the sound old maxim which declares that "dead men tell no tales." When the decision was finally reached, he was left to guess its purport. Without any explanation the thongs were taken from his wrists and ankles, and he was helped upon his horse. After his captors were mounted, the new status was defined by the spokesman in curt phrase.

"You go along quiet with us, and you don't make no bad breaks, see? I more'n half believe you been lyin' to me, but I'm goin' to give you a chance to prove up. If you don't prove up, you pa.s.s out--that's all. Now git in line and hike out; and if you're countin' on makin' a break, jest ricollect that a chunk o' lead out of a Winchester kin travel a heap faster thern your cayuse."

If Blount had not already lost all sense of familiarity with his surroundings, the devious mountain trail taken by his captors would soon have convinced him that the boyhood memories were no longer to be trusted. Up and down, the trail zigzagged and climbed, always penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains. At times Blount lost even the sense of direction; lost it so completely that the high-riding moon seemed to be in the wrong quarter of the heavens.

For the first few miles the trail was so difficult that speed was out of the question; but later, in crossing a high-lying valley, the horses were pushed. Beyond the valley there were more mountains, and half-way through this second range the trail plunged into a deep, cleft-like canyon with a brawling torrent for its pathfinder. Once more Blount lost the sense of direction, and when the canyon trail came out upon broad uplands and became a country road with bordering ranches watered by irrigation ca.n.a.ls, into which the mountain torrent was diverted, there were no recognizable landmarks to tell him whither his captors were leading him.

As he was able to determine by holding his watch, face up, to the moonlight, it was nearly midnight when the silent cavalcade of four turned aside from the main road into an avenue of spreading cottonwood trees. At its head the avenue became a circular driveway; and fronting the driveway a stately house, with a ma.s.sive Georgian facade and colonnaded portico, flung its shadow across the white gravel of the carriage approach.

There were lights in one wing of the house, and another appeared behind the fan-light in the entrance-hall when the leader of the three highbinders had tramped up the steps and touched the bell-push. Blount had a fleeting glimpse of a black head with a fringe of snowy wool when the door was opened, but he did not hear what was said. After the negro serving-man disappeared there was a little wait. At the end of the interval the door was opened wide, and Blount had a gruff order to dismount.

What he saw when he stood on the door-mat beside his captor merely added mystery to mystery. Just within the luxuriously furnished hall, where the light of the softly shaded hall lantern served to heighten the artistic effect of her red house-gown, stood a woman--a lady, and evidently the mistress of the Georgian mansion. She was small and dark, with brown eyes that were almost childlike in their winsomeness; a woman who might be twenty, or thirty, or any age between. Beautiful she was not, Blount decided, comparing her instantly, as he did all women, with Patricia Anners; but--He was not given time to add the qualifying phrase or to prepare himself for what was coming.

"What is it, Barto?" the little lady asked, turning to the man with the gun.

The reply was direct and straight to the purpose.

"Excuse _me_; but I jest wanted to ask if you know this here young feller. He's been allowin' to me th't he is--"

"Of course," she said quickly, and stepping forward she gave her hand and a welcome to the dazed one. "Please come in; we have been expecting you." Then again to the man with the Winchester: "Thank you so much, Barto, for showing the gentleman the way to Wartrace Hall."

It was all done so quietly that Blount was still unconsciously holding the hand of welcoming while his late captors were riding away down the cottonwood-shaded avenue. When he realized what he was doing he was as nearly embarra.s.sed as a self-contained young lawyer could well be. But his impromptu hostess quickly set him at ease.

"You needn't make any explanations," she hastened to say, smiling up at him and gently disengaging the hand which he was only now remembering that he had forgotten to relinquish. "Naturally, I inferred that you were in trouble, and that your safety depended in some sense upon my answer. Were you in trouble?"

Blount perceived immediately how utterly impossible it would be to make her, or any one else, understand the boyish impulse which had prompted him to leave his train, or the curious difficulty into which the impulse had precipitated him. So his explanation scarcely explained.

"I was on my way to a ranch--that is, to the capital--when these men held me up," he stammered. "They--they mistook me for some one else, I think, and for reasons best known to themselves they brought me here. If you could direct me to some place where I can get a night's lodging--"

"There is nothing like a tavern within twenty miles of here," she broke in; "nor is there any house within that radius which would refuse you a night's shelter, Mr.--"

Blount made a quick dive for his card-case, found it, and hastened to introduce himself by name. She took the bit of pasteboard, and, since she scarcely glanced at the engraved line on it, he found himself wholly unable to interpret her smile.

"The card is hardly necessary," she said; and then, to his complete bewilderment: "You are very much like your father, Mr. Blount."

"You know my father?" he exclaimed.

She laughed softly. "Every one knows the senator," she returned, "and I can a.s.sure you that his son is heartily welcome under this roof. Uncle Barnabas"--to the ancient serving-man who was still hovering in the background--"have Mr. Blount's horse put up and the blue room made ready."

Blount followed his still unnamed hostess obediently when she led the way to the lighted library in the wing of the great house.

"Uncle Barnabas will come for you in a little while," she told him, playing the part of the gracious lady to the line and letter. "In the meantime you must let me make you a cup of tea. I am sure you must be needing it after having ridden so far. Take the easy-chair, and we can talk comfortably while the kettle is boiling. Are you new to the West, Mr. Blount, or is this only a return to your own? The senator is always talking about you, you know; but he is so inordinately proud of you that he forgets to tell us all the really interesting things that we want to know."

The serving-man took his own time about coming back; so long a time that Blount forgot that it was past midnight, that he was a guest in a strange house, and that he still had not learned the name of his entertainer. For all this forgetfulness the little lady with the dark-brown eyes was directly responsible. Almost before he realized it, Blount found himself chatting with her as if he had always known her, making rapid strides on the way to confidence and finding her alertly responsive in whatever field the talk happened to fall. Apparently she knew the world--his world--better than he knew it himself: she had summered on the North Sh.o.r.e and wintered in Washington. She knew Paris, and when the conversation touched upon the Italian art-galleries he was led to wonder if he had gone through Italy with his eyes shut. At the next turn of the talk he was forced to admit that not even Patricia herself could speak more intelligently of the English social problem; and when it came to the vital questions of the American moment he gasped again and wondered if he were awake--if it could be possible that this out-of-place Georgian mansion and its charming mistress could be part and parcel of the West which had so far outgrown the boyhood memories.

Since all things mundane must have an end, the old butler with the white-fringed head came at last to show him the way to his luxurious lodgings on the second floor of the mansion. With a touch of hospitality which carried Blount back to his one winter in the South, the hostess went with him as far as the stair-foot, and her "Good-night" was still ringing musically in his ears when the old negro lighted the candles in the guest-room, put another stick of wood on the small fire that was crackling and snapping cheerfully on the hearth, and bobbed and bowed his way to the door. Blount saw his last chance for better information vanishing for the night, and once more broke with the traditions.

"Uncle Barnabas, before you go, suppose you tell me where I am," he suggested. "Whose house is this?"

The old man stopped on the threshold, chuckling gleefully. "A-ain't you know dat, sah?--a-ain't de mistis done tell you dat? You's at Wa'trace Hall--Mahsteh Majah's new country-house; yes, sah; dat's whah you is--kee-hee!"

"And who is 'Master Major'?" pressed Blount, whose bewilderment grew with every fresh attempt to dispel it.

"A-ain't she tell you dat?--kee-hee! Ev'body knows Mahsteh Majah; yes, sah. If de mistis ain't tell you, ol' Barnabas ain't gwine to--no, sah.

Ah'll bring yo'-all's coffee in de mawnin'; yes, sah--good-night, sah--kee-hee!" And the door closed silently upon the wrinkled old face and the bobbing head.

Having nothing else to do, Blount went to bed, but sleep came reluctantly. Life is said to be full of paper walls thinly dividing the commonplace from the amazing; and he decided that he had surely burst through one of them when he had given place to the vagrant impulse prompting him to go horseback-riding when he should have gone comfortably to bed in his sleeper to wait for the track-clearing.

Whither had a curiously bizarre fate led him? Where was "Wartrace Hall,"

and who was "Mahsteh Majah"? Who was the winsome little lady who looked as if she might be twenty, and had all the wit and wisdom of the ages at her tongue's end--who had held him so nearly spellbound over the teacups that he had entirely lost sight of everything but his hospitable welcome?

These and kindred speculations kept him awake for a long time after the door had closed behind the ancient negro; and he was just dropping off into his first loss of consciousness when the familiar purring of a motor-car aroused him. There was a window at his bed's head, and he reached over and drew the curtain. The view gave upon the avenue of cottonwoods and the circular carriage approach. A touring-car, with its powerful head-lights paling the white radiance of the moon, was drawn up at the steps, and he had a glimpse of a big man, swathed from head to heel in a dust-coat, descending from the tonneau.

"I suppose that will be 'Mahsteh Majah,'" he mused sleepily. "That's why the little lady was sitting up so late--she was waiting for him."

Then to the thronging queries threatening to return and keep him awake: "Scat!--go away! call it a pipe-dream and let me go to sleep!"

V

AT WARTRACE HALL