CHAPTER IV
THE REAL BUCKY AND THE FALSE
Number seven was churning its way furiously through brown Arizona. The dayhad been hot, with a palpitating heat which shimmered over the desertwaste. Defiantly the sun had gone down beyond the horizon, a great ball offire, leaving behind a brilliant splash of bold colors. Now this, too, haddisappeared. Velvet night had transformed the land. Over the distantmountains had settled a smoke-blue film, which left them vague andindefinite.
Only three passengers rode in the Pullman car. One was a commercialtraveler, busy making up his weekly statement to the firm. Another was aBoston lady, in gold-rimmed glasses and a costume that helped the generaleffect of frigidity. The third looked out of the open window at thedistant hills. He was a slender young fellow, tanned almost to a coffeebrown, with eyes of Irish blue which sometimes bubbled with fun andsometimes were hard as chisel steel. Wide-shouldered and lean-flanked hewas, with well-packed muscles, which rippled like those of a tiger.
At Chiquita the train stopped, but took up again almost instantly itschant of the rail. Meanwhile, a man had swung himself to the platform ofthe smoker. He passed through that car, the two day coaches, and on to thesleeper; his keen, restless eyes inspected every passenger in the courseof his transit. Opposite the young man in the Pullman he stopped.
"May I ask if you are Lieutenant O'Connor?"
"My name, seh."
The young man in the seat had slewed his head around sharply, and madeanswer with a crisp, businesslike directness.
The new-comer smiled. "I'll have to introduce myself, lieutenant. My nameis Flatray. I've come to meet you."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Flatray. I hope that together we can work thisthing out right. MacQueen has gathered a bunch that ought to be cleanedout, and I reckon now's the time to do it. I've been reading about him fora year. I've got a notion he's about the ablest thing in bad men thisTerritory has seen for a good many years."
Flatray sat down on the seat opposite O'Connor. A smile flicked across hisface, and vanished. "I'm of that opinion myself, lieutenant."
"Tell me all about this affair of the West kidnapping," the rangersuggested.
The other man told the story while O'Connor listened, alert to catch everypoint of the narrative.
The face of the lieutenant of rangers was a boyish one--eager, genial, andfrank; yet, none the less, strength lay in the close-gripped jaw and inthe steady, watchful eye. His lithe, tense body was like a coiled spring;and that, too, though he seemed to be very much at ease.
With every sentence that the other spoke, O'Connor was judging Flatray,appraising him for a fine specimen of a hard-bitten breed--a vigilantfrontiersman, competent to the finger tips. Yet he was conscious that, inspite of the man's graceful ease and friendly smile, he did not likeFlatray. He would not ask for a better man beside him in a tight pinch;but he could not deny that something sinister which breathed from hissardonic, devil-may-care face.
"So that's how the land lies," the sheriff concluded. "My deputies havegot the pass to the south blocked; Lee is closing in through Elkhorn; andFox, with a strong posse, is combing the hills beyond Dead Man's Cache.There's only one way out for him, and that is over Powderhorn Pass. Wordhas just reached us that MacQueen is moving in that direction. He isevidently figuring to slip out over the hills during the night. I'vearranged for us to be met at Barker's Tank by a couple of the boys, withhorses. We'll drop off the train quietly when it slows up to water, sothat none of his spies can get word of our movements to him. By hardriding we'd ought to reach Powderhorn in time to head him off."
The ranger asked incisive questions, had the topography of the countryexplained to him with much detail, and decided at last that Flatray wasright. If MacQueen were trying to slip out, they might trap him at thepass; if not, by closing it they would put the cork in the bottle thatheld him.
"We'll try it, seh. Y'u know this country better than I do, and I'll givey'u a free hand. Unless there's a slip up in your calculations, you'dought to be right."
"Good enough, lieutenant. I'm betting on those plans myself," the otheranswered promptly, and added, as he looked out into the night: "By thatnotch in the hills, we'd ought to be close to the tank now. She's slowingup. I reckon we can slip out to the vestibule, and get off at the far sideof the track without being noticed much."
This they found easy enough. Five minutes later number seven was steamingaway into the distant desert. Flatray gave a sharp, shrill whistle; andfrom behind some sand dunes emerged two men and four horses.
"Anything new?" asked the sheriff as they came nearer.
"Not a thing, cap," answered one of them.
"Boys, shake hands with the famous Lieutenant O'Connor," said Flatray,with a sneer hid by the darkness. "Lieutenant, let me make you acquaintedwith Jeff Jackson and Buck Lane."
"Much obliged to meet you," grinned Buck as he shook hands.
They mounted and rode toward the notch in the hills that had been pointedout to the ranger. The moon was up; and a cold, silvery light flooded theplain. Seen in this setting, the great, painted desert held more ofmystery, of beauty, and less of the dead monotony that glared endlesslyfrom arid, barren reaches. The sky of stars stretched infinitely far, andadded to the effect of magnitude.
The miles slipped behind them as they moved forward, hour after hour,their horses holding to the running walk that is the peculiar gait of thecow country. They rode in silence, with the loose seat and straight backof the vaquero. Except the ranger, all were dressed for riding--Flatray incorduroys and half-knee laced boots; his men in overalls, chaps, flannelshirts, and the broad-brimmed sombrero of the Southwest. All four wereyoung men; but there was an odd difference in the expressions of theirfaces.
Jackson and Lane had the hard-lined faces, with something grim and stonyin them, of men who ride far and hard with their lives in their hands. Theothers were of a higher type. Flatray's dark eyes were keen, bold, andrestless. One might have guessed him a man of temperament, capable of anyextremes of conduct--often the victim of his own ungovernable whims andpassions. Just as he looked a picture of all the passions of youth run toseed, so the ranger seemed to show them in flower. There was somethingfine and strong and gallant in his debonair manner. His warm smile wentout to a world that pleased him mightily.
They rode steadily, untired and untiring. The light of dawn began toflicker from one notched summit to another. Out of the sandy waste theycame to a water hole, paused for a drink, and passed on. For the delay ofhalf an hour might mean the escape of their prey.
They came into the country of crumbling mesas and painted cliffs, ofhillsides where greasewood and giant cactus struggled from the parchedearth. This they traversed until they came to plateaus, terminating infoothills, crevassed by gorges deep and narrow. The canyons grew steeper,rock ridges more frequent. Gradually the going became more difficult.
Trails they seldom followed. Washes, with sides like walls, confrontedthem. The ponies dropped down and clambered up again like mountain goats.Gradually they were ascending into the upper country, which led to thewild stretches where the outlaws lurked. In these watersheds were heavypine forests, rising from the gulches along the shoulders of the peaks.
A maze of canyons, hopelessly lost in the hill tangle into which they hadplunged, led deviously to a twisting pass, through which they defiled, todrop into a vista of rolling waves of forest-clad hills. Among these woundcountless hidden gulches, known only to those who rode from out them onnefarious night errands.
The ranger noted every landmark, and catalogued in his mind's map everygorge and peak; from what he saw, he guessed much of which he could not besure. It would be hard to say when his suspicions first became aroused.But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must bePowderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as tocut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and fartherinto the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the RoaringFork country, he did not need to be t
old he was in the power of MacQueen'sgang.
Yet he gave no sign of what he knew. As daylight came, so that they couldsee each other distinctly, his face showed no shadow of doubt. It was hiscue to be a simple victim of credulity, and he played it to the finish.
Without warning, through a narrow gulch which might have been sought invain for ten years by a stranger, they passed into the rim of abowl-shaped valley. Timber covered it from edge to edge, but over to theleft a keen eye could see a thinning of the foliage. Toward this theywent, following the sidehill and gradually dipping down through heavyunderbrush. Before him the officer of rangers saw daylight, and presentlya corral, low roofs, and grazing horses.
"Looks like some one lives here," he remarked amiably.
They were already riding into the open. In front of one of the log cabinsthe man who had called himself Flatray swung from his saddle.
"Better 'light, lieutenant," he suggested carelessly. "We'll eat breakfasthere."
"Don't care if we do. I could eat a leather mail sack, I'm that hungry,"the ranger answered, as he, too, descended.
His guide was looking at him with an expression of open, malevolenttriumph. He could scarce keep it back long enough to get the effect hewanted.
"Yes, we'll eat breakfast here--and dinner, and supper, and breakfastto-morrow, and then about two more breakfasts."
"I reckon we'll be too busy to sit around here," laughed his prisoner.
The other ignored his comment. "And after that, it ain't likely you'll domuch more eating."
"I don't quite get the point of that joke."
"You'll get it soon enough! You'd _savez_ it now, if you weren't amuttonhead. As it is, I'll have to explain it. Do you remember capturingTony Chaves two years ago, lieutenant?"
The ranger nodded, with surprise in his round, innocent eyes.
"What happened to him?" demanded the other. A child could have seen thathe was ridden by a leering, savage triumph.
"Killed trying to escape four days later."
"Who killed him?"
"I did. It was necessary. I regretted it."
A sudden spasm of cruelty swept over the face of the man confronting him."Tony was my partner."
"Your partner?"
"That's right. I've been wanting to say 'How d'ye do?' ever since,Lieutenant O'Connor. I'm right glad to meet you."
"But--I don't understand." He did, however.
"It'll soak through, by and by. Chew on this: You've got just ninety-sixhours to live--exactly as long as Tony lived after you caught him! You'llbe killed trying to escape. It will be necessary, just as you say it waswith him; but I reckon I'll not do any regretting to speak of."
"You would murder me?"
"Well, I ain't particular about the word I use." MacQueen leaned againstthe side of his horse, his arm thrown across its neck, and laughed in slowmaliciousness. "Execute is the word I use, though--if you want to know."
He had made no motion toward his weapon, nor had O'Connor; but the latterknew without looking that he was covered vigilantly by both of the othermen.
"And who are you?" the ranger asked, though he was quite sure of theanswer.
"Men call me Black MacQueen," drawled the other.
"MacQueen! But you said----"
"That I was Flatray. Yep--I lied."
O'Connor appeared to grope with this in amazement.
"One has to stretch the truth sometimes in my profession," went on theoutlaw smoothly. "It may interest you to know that yesterday I passed asLieutenant O'Connor. When I was O'Connor I arrested Flatray; and now thatI am Flatray I have arrested O'Connor. Turn about is fair play, youknow."
"Interesting, if true," O'Connor retorted easily.
"You can bank on its truth, my friend."
"And you're actually going to kill me in cold blood."
The black eyes narrowed. "Just as I would a dog," said the outlaw, withsavage emphasis.
"I don't believe it. I've done you no harm."
MacQueen glanced at him contemptuously. The famous Bucky O'Connor lookedabout as competent as a boy in the pimply age.
"I thought you had better sense. Do you think I would have brought you toDead Man's Cache if I had intended you to go away alive? I'm afraid,Lieutenant Bucky O'Connor, that you're a much overrated man. Yourreputation sure would have blown up, if you had lived. You ought to thankme for preserving it."
"Preserving it--how?"
"By bumping you off before you've lost it."
"Sho! You wouldn't do that," the ranger murmured ineffectively.
"We'll see. Jeff, I put him in your charge. Search him, and take him toHank's cabin. I hold you responsible for him. Bring me any papers you findon him. When I find time, I'll drop around and see that you're keeping himsafe."
Bucky was searched, and his weapons and papers removed. After beinghandcuffed, he was chained to a heavy staple, which had been driven intoone of the log walls. He was left alone, and the door was locked; but hecould hear Jeff moving about outside.
With the closing of the door the vacuous look slipped from his face like amask. The loose-lipped, lost-dog expression was gone. He looked once morealert, competent, fit for the emergency. It had been his cue to let hisadversary underestimate him. During the long night ride he had had chancesto escape, had he desired to do so. But this had been the last thing hewanted.
The outlaws had chosen to take him to their fastness in the hills. Hewould back himself to use the knowledge they were thrusting upon him, tobring about their undoing. Only one factor in the case had come upon himas a surprise. He had not reckoned that they would have a personal grudgeagainst him. And this was a factor that might upset all his calculations.
It meant that he was playing against time, with the chances of the gameall against him. He had forty-eight hours in which to escape--and he washandcuffed, chained, locked up, and guarded. Truly, the outlook was notradiant.