Nan of Music Mountain

  CHAPTER XIX

  DANGER

  With never such apprehension, never such stealth, never so heavy asecret, so sensible a burning in cheek and eye, as when she tiptoedinto her uncle's room at midnight, Nan's heart beat as the wings of abird beat from the broken door of a cage into a forbidden sky ofhappiness. She had left the room a girl; she came back to it a woman.

  Sleep she did not expect or even ask for; the night was all too shortto think of those tense, fearful moments that had pledged her to herlover. When the anxieties of her situation overwhelmed her, as theywould again and again, she felt herself in the arms of this strange,resolute man whom all her own hated and whom she knew she alreadyloved beyond all power to put away. In her heart, she had tried thismore than once: she knew she could not, would not ever do it, or eventry to do it, again.

  She rejoiced in his love. She trusted. When he spoke she believed thisman whom no one around her would believe; and she, who never hadbelieved what other men avowed, and who detested their avowals,believed de Spain, and secretly, guiltily, glowed in every word of hisdevotion and breathed faint in its every caress.

  Night could hardly come fast enough, after the next long day. Ahundred times during that day she reminded herself, while the slow,majestic sun shone simmering on the hot desert, that she had promisedto steal out into the grounds the minute darkness fell--he would bewaiting. A hundred times in the long afternoon, Nan looked into thecloudless western sky and with puny eager hands would have pushed thelagging orb on its course that she might sooner give herself into thearms where she felt her place so sure, her honor so safe, herhelplessness so protected, herself so loved.

  How her cheeks burned after supper when she asked her uncle for leaveto post a letter down-town! How breathless with apprehension shehalted as de Spain stepped from the shadow of the trees and drew herimportunately beneath them for the kiss that had burned on hertroubled lips all day! How, girl-like, knowing his caresses were allher own--knowing she could at an instant call forth enough to smotherher--she tyrannized his importuning and, like a lovely miser, hoardedher responsiveness under calm eyes and laconic whispers until, whenshe did give back his eagerness, she made his senses reel.

  How dreamily she listened to every word he let fall in his outpouringof devotion; how gravely she put up her hand to restrain his busyintrusion, and asked if he knew that no man in the world, least of allher fierce and burly cousin, had ever touched her lips until hehimself forced a kiss on them the night before: "And now!" She hid herface against his shoulder. "Oh, Henry, how I love you! I'm so ashamed,I couldn't tell you if it weren't night: I'll never look you in theface again in the daytime."

  And when he told her how little he himself had had to do with, and howlittle he knew about girls, even from boyhood, how she feigned not tobelieve, and believed him still! They were two children raised in themagic of an hour to the supreme height of life and dizzy together onits summit.

  "I don't see how you can care for _me_, Henry. Oh, I mean it," sheprotested, holding her head resolutely up. "You know who we are, awayoff there in the mountains. Every one hates us; I suppose they'veplenty of reason to: we hate everybody else. And why shouldn't we?We're at war with every one. You know, better than I do, what goes onin the Gap. I don't want to know; I try not to know; Uncle Duke triesto keep things from me. When you began to act--as if you cared forme--that day on Music--I couldn't believe you meant it at all. Andyet--I'm afraid I liked to try to think you did. When you looked at meI felt as if you could see right through me."

  Confidences never came to an end.

  And diplomacy came into its own almost at once in de Spain's effortsto improve his relations with the implacable Duke. The day came whenNan's uncle could be taken home. De Spain sent to him a soft-spokenemissary, Bob Scott, offering to provide a light stage, with hiscompliments, for the trip. The intractable mountaineer, with hisrefusal to accept the olive-branch, blew Bob out of the room. Nan wascrushed by the result, but de Spain was not to be dismayed.

  Lefever came to him the day after Nan had got her uncle home. "Henry,"he began without any preliminaries, "there is one thing about yourprecipitate ride up Music Mountain that I never got clear in my mind.After the fight, your cartridge-belt was hanging up in the barn atCalabasas for two weeks. You walked in to us that morning with yourbelt buckled on. You told us you put it on before you came up-stairs.What? Oh, yes, I know, Henry. But that belt wasn't hangingdown-stairs with your coat earlier in the evening. No, Henry: itwasn't, not when I looked. Don't tell me such things, because--I don'tknow. Where was the belt when you found it?"

  "Some distance from the coat, John. I admit that. I'll tell you: someone had moved the belt. It was not where I left it. I was hurried themorning I rode in and I can't tell you just where I found it."

  Lefever never batted an eyelash. "I know you can't, Henry. Because youwon't. That Scotch hybrid McAlpin knows a few things, too, that hewon't tell. All I want to say is, you can trust that man too far. He'sgot all my recent salary. Every time Jeffries raises my pay thathairy-pawed horse-doctor reduces it just so much a month. And he doesit with one pack of fifty-two small cards that you could stick intoyour vest pocket."

  "McAlpin has a wife and children to support," suggested de Spain.

  "Don't think for a moment he does it," returned Lefever vehemently. "Isupport his wife and children, myself."

  "You shouldn't play cards, John."

  "It was by playing cards that I located Sassoon, just the same. Alittle game with your friend Bull Page, by the way. And say, that manblew into Calabasas one day here lately with a twenty-dollar bill;it's a fact. Now, where do you suppose he got twenty dollars in onebill? I know _I_ had it two hours after he got there and then infifteen minutes that blamed bull-whacker you pay thirty-two a week totook it away from me. But I got Sassoon spotted. And where do yousuppose Split-lips is this minute?"

  "Morgan's Gap."

  "Quite so--and been there all the time. Now, Bob has the old warrantfor him: the question is, how to get him out."

  De Spain reflected a moment before replying: "John, I'd let him alonejust for the present," he said at length.

  Lefever's eyes bulged: "Let Sassoon alone?"

  "He will keep--for a while, anyway."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't want to stir things up too strong over that way just at theminute, John."

  "Why not?"

  De Spain shuffled a little: "Well, Jeffries thinks we might let thingsrest till Duke Morgan and the others get over some of theirsoreness."

  Lefever, astonished at the indifference of de Spain to the opportunityof nabbing Sassoon, while he could be found, expostulated strongly.When de Spain persisted, Lefever, huffed, confided to Bob Scott thatwhen the general manager got ready he could catch Sassoon himself.

  De Spain wanted for Nan's sake, as well as his own, to see what couldbe done to pacify her uncle and his relatives so that a wedge might bedriven in between them and their notorious henchman, and Sassoonbrought to book with their consent; on this point, however, he was notquite bold-faced enough to take his friends into his confidence.

  De Spain, as fiery a lover as he was a fighter, stayed none of hiscourting because circumstances put Music Mountain between him and hismistress. And Nan, after she had once surrendered, was nothing behindin the chances she unhesitatingly took to arrange her meetings with deSpain. He found in her, once her girlish timidity was overcome and awoman's confidence had replaced it, a disregard of consequences, sofar as their own plans were concerned, that sometimes took away hisbreath.

  The very day after she had got her uncle home, with the aid ofSatterlee Morgan and an antiquated spring wagon, Nan rode, later inthe afternoon, over to Calabasas. The two that would not be restrainedhad made their appointment at the lower lava beds half-way betweenthe Gap and Calabasas. The sun was sinking behind the mountain when deSpain galloped out of the rocks as Nan turned from the trail and rodetoward the black and weather-beaten meeting-place.

>   They could hardly slip from their saddles fast enough to reach eachother's arms--Nan, trim as a model in fresh khaki, trying with ahandkerchief hardly larger than a postage-stamp to wipe the flecks ofdust from her pink cheeks, while de Spain, between dabs, covered themwith importunate greetings. Looking engrossed into each other's eyes,and both, in their eagerness, talking at once, they led their horsesinto hiding and sat down to try to tell all that had happened sincetheir parting. Wars and rumors of wars, feuds and raidings, fights andpursuits were no more to them than to babes in the woods. All thatmattered to them--sitting or pacing together and absorbed, in the pathof the long-cold volcanic stream buried in the shifting sands of thedesert--was that they should clasp each other's clinging hands, listeneach to the other's answering voice, look unrestrained into eachother's questioning eyes.

  They met in both the lava beds--the upper lay between the Gap andtown--more than once. And one day came a scare. They were sitting ona little ledge well up in the rocks where de Spain could overlook thetrail east and west, and were talking about a bungalow some day to bein Sleepy Cat, when they saw men riding from the west towardCalabasas. There were three in the party, one lagging well behind. Thetwo men leading, Nan and de Spain made out to be Gale Morgan and Page.They saw the man coming on behind stop his horse and lean forward, hishead bent over the trail. He was examining the sand and halted quite aminute to study something. Both knew what he was studying--thehoof-prints of Nan's pony heading toward the lava. Nan shrank back andwith de Spain moved a little to where they could watch the intruderwithout being seen. Nan whispered first: "It's Sassoon." De Spainnodded. "What shall we do?" breathed Nan.

  "Nothing yet," returned her lover, watching the horseman, whose eyeswere still fixed on the pony's trail, but who was now less than a halfmile away and riding straight toward them.

  De Spain, his eyes on the danger and his hand laid behind Nan's waist,led the way guardedly down to where their horses stood. Nan, needingno instructions for the emergency, took the lines of the horses, andde Spain, standing beside his own horse, reached his right hand overin front of the pommel and, regarding Sassoon all the while, drew hisrifle slowly from its scabbard. The blood fled Nan's cheeks. She saidnothing. Without looking at her, de Spain drew her own rifle from herhorse's side, passed it into her hand and, moving over in front of thehorses, laid his left hand reassuringly on her waist again. At thatmoment, little knowing what eyes were on him in the black fragmentsahead, Sassoon looked up. Then he rode more slowly forward. The colorreturned to Nan's cheeks: "Do you want me to use this?" she murmured,indicating the rifle.

  "Certainly not. But if the others turn back, I may need it. Stay righthere with the horses. He will lose the trail in a minute now. When hereaches the rock I'll go down and keep him from getting off hishorse--he won't fight from the saddle."

  But with an instinct better than knowledge, Sassoon, like awolf scenting danger, stopped again. He scanned the broken andforbidding hump in front, now less than a quarter of a milefrom him, questioningly. His eyes seemed to rove inquisitivelyover the lava pile as if asking why a Morgan Gap pony had visitedit. In another moment he wheeled his horse and spurred rapidlyafter his companions.

  The two drew a deep breath. De Spain laughed: "What we don't know,never hurts us." He drew Nan to him. Holding the rifle muzzle at arm'slength as the butt rested on the ground, she looked up from theshoulder to which she was drawn: "What should you have done if he hadcome?"

  "Taken you to the Gap and then taken him to Sleepy Cat, where hebelongs."

  "But, Henry, suppose----"

  "There wouldn't have been any 'suppose.'"

  "Suppose the others had come."

  "With one rifle, here, a man could stand off a regiment. Nan, do youknow, you fit into my arm as if you were made for it?"

  His courage was contagious. When he had tired her with freshimportunities he unpinned her felt hat and held it out of reach whilehe kissed and toyed with and disarranged her hair. In revenge, shesnatched from his pocket his little black memorandum-book and someletters and read, or pretended to read them, and seizing heropportunity she broke from him and ran with the utmost fleetness upinto the rocks.

  In two minutes they had forgotten the episode almost as completely asif it never had been. But when they left for home, they agreed theywould not meet there again. They knew that Sassoon, like a jackal,would surely come back, and more than once, until he found out justwhat that trail or any subsequent trail leading into the beds meant.The lovers laughed the jackal's spying to scorn and rode away,bantering, racing, and chasing each other in the saddle, as solelyconcerned in their happiness as if there were nothing else of momentin the whole wide world.