Part 6

"He means," he heard himself say with a fair assumption of serenity; "he means he told me they were on the Reservation." He addressed this to McShay. Then he turned directly to Hal, looked him straight in the eye, and said:

"And the monuments--the landmarks?"

Before Hal replied he saw what the answer would be, saw it in the relentless face, the mocking eye.

"That was _your_ idea, that they had been moved, _not mine_."

Any hesitation the agent may have felt was gone. Irresolution vanished. _He put on his hat_! And he put it on with decision, as if in his opinion the conference was over. Then for the first time he noticed that Wah-na-gi had left her position as custodian of the armory, had mounted the steps of the store, and stood for a moment by the window like a cat waiting to spring, every nerve and muscle tense, and as Cadger raised his gun she stepped in front of him. The trader drew back swiftly and tried to step to one side. She followed him.

"Git out of my light! Can't you see I can't see?"

He executed a rapid movement to push her aside. Again she covered him.

"Git away from my store winder or I'll break your face, you----" and Cadger called her a name not used in good society.

All those present got up and turned at this sudden and untoward disturbance. Hal was the only one who did not look back. He could see what was happening in the agent's face.

"Have Cadger step here a moment, will you?" said Hal to Ladd.

"What for?"

"Bill," said Hal to the cattle-boss who was manoeuvring in the background, greatly puzzled by what was going on at the window. "Ask the Indian trader to step here?"

"Stop," called Ladd to Bill. "Cadger don't want to be mixed up in this. Besides, he can't leave the store."

The agent was conscious that this sounded hurried and feeble, and it seemed not to impress Bill, for he went on directly into the store. Hal reassured the agent--with the suggestion that Bill would look after the store for the trader. Indeed, one per cent. of small boy would have been able to take care of the trade just at that moment.

"Things are coming my way to-day, Mr. Ladd; better let me have my way."

Whether the agent would have consented to this or not, the chief of police had his way, for Bill appeared with Cadger in charge.

In fact, Cadger knew that Bill would bring him bodily, so he thought it more dignified to come of his own accord.

"Just put your weapon with the others, Cadger," said Calthorpe, "and come here."

The little furtive man glanced swiftly at Ladd for guidance and Bill took his gun and rags out of his hands before he could determine on what course he ought to pursue. Bill broke the gun, then glanced curiously over the little man:

"Cleanin' a _loaded_ gun, too! Ain't you careless?"

"Wah-na-gi, come here, please," said Hal, never taking his eyes from Ladd's face.

She had remained in the background as Cadger came down. Now she came to Hal who was standing with the trader in easy reach. Cadger seemed to shrink and get smaller as he blinked feebly. The business of the meeting was forgotten. Again the young man diverted the interest and every one wondered what would happen next.

"Wah-na-gi, Mr. Cadger wants to tell you before these gentlemen that he made a mistake, that he would like to beg your pardon. Mr. Cadger wants to apologize."

"Like hell I do," growled the trader.

"Calthorpe," called out the agent; "you're the one that's making the mistake. You're going too far. I won't stand for this."

"Oh, yes, I think you will," asserted the boy quietly.

The agent gave him a swift look, trying to determine how far he had gone or would go. Something had gone wrong. The machinery had slipped a cog, but how far wrong was it? Could it be repaired? Could it be fixed up? Was it a strike for higher pay? Or was it the eternal woman interfering and putting them at cross purposes? His own interest in the woman, guarded with the greatest care, kept under lock and key, in the dark, had this boy seen a furtive glance, the flash of a hidden desire? He must proceed cautiously until he saw the other's hand and knew his cards. Still, this boy must be taught his place.

"I want you to understand I'm the agent, Calthorpe."

"Yes, that's why you'll protect this woman from insult."

"You leave that to me. This is outside our business, and----"

"As the insult became a part of our proceedings," said McCloud calmly, "it seems right for the apology to be included."

"Parson," exclaimed McShay, delighted; "you're a sport, and I'll back any play you make."

"I think you would facilitate matters, Mr. Ladd," added the preacher, "if you instructed your man to comply with Mr. Calthorpe's request."

"Please don't make him," begged Wah-na-gi timidly.

"Come on, little man," said Hal coaxingly.

"Oh, well, apologize, Cadger, and get it over with. We're wasting time." And Ladd walked away. Hal applied a sharp squeeze to the back of the trader's neck, just under the ears, and he squirmed with pain.

"Oh, hell, I apologize," he blithered.

"She accepts your apology," said Hal graciously, and every one except Cadger breathed a sigh of relief. _That_ was a closed incident.

"Now sit down here where I can see you," and he tossed him lightly on a bale of goods that was leaning against the steps waiting to be unpacked, and he brushed his hands as if they had been soiled. "Now I feel more comfortable in my mind"--and added to himself--"and in my back."

"Now see here, Calthorpe," said Ladd, coming down swiftly and gripping the situation with at least the show of authority. "What do you mean by this? Didn't you tell me these lands were on the Reservation?"

"I did not!"

The issue was joined. For a moment the agent's mind refused to face the situation. His jaw dropped and he looked at the other blankly.

"You, you, you mean to say--" he stammered. Then he gazed into the unrelenting face opposite and fell back and cowered like a whipped dog, white with fear. "You mean to say you didn't tell me? Why, why you're going back on your word, why, you scoundrel, you have, you have----"

"I have your money," said Hal, picking the words out of his mouth and completing the unspoken thought. "That's right, I have. And there it is," and he took some papers from his pocket. "Fifteen thousand dollars' worth of gilt-edged securities in the Asphalt Trust. And here is a receipt for the fifteen thousand dollars I _didn't_ pay for them. I took your money because it was the only way to make you show your hand. Every one knows you're a crook and grafter, but nobody could prove it. It's my sworn duty to catch thieves and everybody knows you're robbing these helpless people, and that you're the paid agent of the Asphalt Trust. I've been camping on your trail, David Ladd, and I'm going to camp on it until I have your official head."

The words cut the tense silence like lightning flashes. No one spoke or moved.

The appearance of the agent was pitiable, but only for a moment. As he realized that the young chief of police had not only caught him "with the goods" but, what was worse, had made him look "easy," he felt the agony of unspeakable hate, and it brought him to himself.

"Why, you rotten traitor--" he screamed and threw himself upon Hal to tear him to pieces. The latter caught his right arm by the wrist and threw his own left across the other's throat, forcing back his head and stopping his wind. Ladd was a quick, muscular, wiry man. The boy drew him close for a second and then he threw him off. As soon as Ladd recovered his balance he made for the pile of guns. Hal blew upon a shrill, sharp whistle that dangled at his wrist. Before the agent could reach the weapons a half-dozen Indian police appeared like magic on the scene. They had been hidden behind the trader's store.

"Shoot any man who moves toward those guns," said their chief to them, pointing. Ladd was phased. He fell back.

"You order my own men to fire on me?"

"Your own orders, Mr. Agent, to preserve the peace."

"Say, Parson," exclaimed McShay; "that gun order of yourn was a inspiration. It sure was a inspiration."

"Calthorpe, you're removed. You're no longer my chief of police." Hal smiled.

"It'll take my men a couple of days to get that through their heads. In the meantime, don't forget that they will act under my orders."

Then he turned to them and said:

"Don't let any one put a finger on those guns until I'm out of sight. You savey me all right. And you, McShay," he said, turning sharply to that exultant citizen; "you and your men must get off my ranch."

"Your ranch? What the hell! Your ranch? What next?"

"My ranch. My name is Effington. The Earl of Kerhill is my father. The Red Butte Ranch is mine. I'm going over now to take possession of it. Better come over and see me do it. Come on, Bill."

As he jumped on "Calico" and rode off on the run, followed by Big Bill, McShay exclaimed:

"Say, Parson, the kid's on the level. He's on the level."

*CHAPTER VIII*

Hal and Bill were well mounted, had an excellent start, and before the members of the peace conference had recovered from their astonishment the two horsemen were out of sight and night had fallen. As they left the Agency behind the heart of Big Bill grew lighter. The fact that Hal had not taken him into his confidence did not worry the simple-minded Bill, but he rejoiced that at last they were on the straight and narrow way and had left behind them the world, the flesh, and the devil, always and everywhere of the female gender. The fact that they had a dangerous job ahead of them did not worry Bill, for it involved nothing more serious than just men. Bill had dealt with men as men and in a straight and fearless way had found himself capable, but where woman was involved, with nothing like the experience to justify it, he had arrived at the conclusion of the wise man who said: "Can a man take fire into his bosom and his clothes not be burned?" Indeed, greater minds than gentle Bill's have felt bewildered by "the way of a man with a maid." In his role of parent and guardian he had several times started to speak to his companion in words of commendation and encouragement, but impenetrable gloom enveloped the boy and the words died unborn. He essayed blithesome song, but even this personal expression degenerated into a whistle and dribbled feebly away, so, finally, the big man shook himself down into his saddle and they rode in silence--a silence that seemed to drip with a chilling mist. So they rode on into the radiant night indifferent to its splendors. They knew that the horses' stride was steady and strong in the clean, cool air that romped down from the snows, laden with the perfume of the pines, and that a matchless moon made it possible for them to leave the road at every opportunity and hit the trails and short cuts, but the poem of the night was not for them, its melody and its mystery.

Wah-na-gi--"the soul when separated from the body!" That was the meaning of her name. The young man had a queer feeling that _his_ body was riding away from his soul into the night, into the unknown, into the far away. All of a sudden it came to him that he had been very happy at the Agency. Why was he riding away? What was this asphalt that made men lie and steal and jump at each other's throats? What was it to him?

What did he care for the Red Butte Ranch, except that his mother was buried there? That it was rich in minerals which could be exchanged for money, wealth, was outside his purposes. It was not the legal but the spiritual ownership which determined him. When we understand more about psychical phenomena we shall know more about our Indians. It wasn't only that the big appeal of the open was here intensified. Half memories, vague instincts, ghostly and subliminal concords met him here, took him by the hand, and said: "Come apart and be at peace." But all this was there, would wait. He never doubted his ultimate possession of the ranch. The Shades who owned it would eventually hand it over to him, their rightful heir. All that was only a matter of time. It could wait. Meantime, what was he doing? He was riding into the future unwillingly. He had left the Agency, and knew it was forever. He knew in a dull way that he had finished a chapter in his life, and that it would never be quite the same again. How did it happen? Ought he to have prevented it?

His thought wandered back over the devious ways he had come. His life seemed so impersonal, his own will and purpose had had so little to do with it. He could only think of a boat swept from its moorings, floating about on the waves of circumstance, driven before this wind, twisted by that current, tossed on the shore to be caught up again in the high tide and taken back to the deeps, back to the wanton winds and waves. He knew it would be useless to turn the horses' heads and try to go back. Always before he had submitted; what did it matter? Now it mattered. When was it he first cared? Swiftly his thought travelled back until it focussed on those two rough men in the library at Portman Square--awkward, shy, fumbling their broad-brimmed hats in their hands, dressed in their "store clothes"; all the more unmistakable for the London setting and for the contrast with his father with whom they were talking! He recalled his own wonder that the high-bred, delicate man with his distinguished face could ever have been tanned and weather-stained like these uncouth men and been their companion on the frontier. He recalled his own surprise at the familiarity of his father with them. The Earl had called them "Andy" and "Shorty," and he was rather punctilious about the forms and ceremonies. It was a revelation of a hitherto unsuspected talent for unbending. How his father had plied them with cigars and liquors, and their astonishing capacity! The amount of neat liquor they had taken at a gulp!

These men, so different from all the types with which he had been familiar, and each so unlike the other! "Andy," an Austrian Jew, was so determined to be conciliatory and ingratiating that he had developed a conservative stutter which, with its saving clauses and roundabout phrases, enabled him to estimate the effect upon his listener even before he had actually committed himself to the proposition in hand. "Shorty," quick, sharp, explosive, going direct to the point and disarming suspicion by a method the reverse of the other! There was something about these men that had interested him from the first, then amused him, then fascinated him. The subject of the talk did not immediately claim his attention. Every one knew that the ranch had been an expensive experience to the Earl, and it was a foregone conclusion that he would jump at the chance to sell it. The negotiations had gone quickly to a conclusion. The Earl had accepted their first offer and a deed had been prepared and was about to be signed. Then the young man interposed for the first time. He had suddenly received an impression, a "hunch," as the cowboys say, that seemed later to be clairvoyant. At first it was only a vague sentiment, too vague to be expressed, too vague to be used as an argument, or to influence practical men, so he only asked that the matter might be postponed until the following morning. His father and the Westerners were annoyed by this freak of eccentricity, but humored him as we humor children, or the irresponsible, for he remembered that he had been drinking, was perhaps drunk, as he often was in those evil days. The following morning a cable came from Big Bill saying: "Don't sell ranch. Have sent letter." The letter which followed explained what we already know, that asphalt had been found, that in Bill's opinion a lot of this valuable mineral was on the ranch, which had been "jumped" by the cowboys, and he strongly advised the Earl to send some one out there to investigate the matter; he suggested that this investigation should be conducted as secretly as possible; that he was himself too well known, and his former affiliations with the Earl were too well known, to permit of his doing this successfully. There was a job open at the Agency, the chief of Indian police, and Bill offered to use his influence to get it for any one the Earl would send out to look after his interests.

Then something in the young man's soul rose up and said: "Here am I." And when he turned his face to the West the winds and the waves beckoned to him and recognized him and led him to his own. Then for the first time he recognized purpose in his life. Ladd had seen in him only the usual adventurer trying to hide away from his past and one likely to be amenable and useful. It would have been difficult to find any one more suitable to the position of chief of police. In a country where men required initiative, self-reliance, and courage he had found conditions suitable to his temperament and abilities. He had felt "at home" and had been a success from the start. About the time that he took charge of the police, Wah-na-gi returned from Carlisle, and every phase of her struggle with her environment and heredity was obvious to him. He saw at once what she did not see, that it was hopeless, but it lent to her the charm of poetry and romance, and she was pretty enough not to require such assistance. For a long time he was very cunning in concealing and disguising his interest in the girl, and he continued to fool himself long after he had ceased to fool any one else. And now he was riding away from everything that made life worth living, and the fact that he had just come successfully through a big fight meant nothing to him. He would have liked to go back, but that was impossible, and he rode in bitterness and rebellion.

The cowboys had found the holding of the asphalt territory rather irksome. At first it had been all hurrah, but as week followed week and month followed month, and no armed conflict took place, they grew very tired. The Trust had entered upon the long siege with bomb-proof galleries and an elaborate system of underground approaches. No isolated fort ever successfully withstood such a siege. The asphalt vein stretched across considerable country and to police it all and hold it by force of arms against an invisible enemy that did not materialize but might at any moment do so, and at some unexpected place, was a nerve-racking job for a time, and then grew monotonous, and with monotony came carelessness. The Red Butte Ranch was their base of supplies and operations, and in possession of this they felt legally and morally secure, having been held up for it by two robbers in the usual and conventional way of the business world.

The majority of their men were therefore, as Hal knew, distributed along the asphalt vein, but he also knew that there were more than enough left at the ranch to put up a winning fight against two men. So it was necessary to exercise caution and strategy, and fight only if cornered and compelled to.

In his capacity of chief of police, Hal had ridden over every foot of the country and knew it as well as Bill. It was therefore greatly to the surprise of the latter when the young man, after crossing a spur of the Bad Lands, left the trail and struck into the hills.

"Where you goin', son?" he asked with obvious disapproval.

"We got to do this on the jump, Bill, or not at all. Time is the important thing, particularly if any of those bandits try to follow us. It's an awful bluff, but we'll get away with it."

"You can't git through that-a-way. You'll just run up against the 'Knife-edge'!"

"That's right. I'm going to cross it."

"Why, you're crazy. You can't do it."

"I've done it."

"Gosh! Honest? I never heard of any one fool enough to try it."

"My Indian police and I have done it."

"But, gosh-a-mighty, not at night!"

"No; but it's almost as light as day. My horse saveys it. Just shut your eyes, leave the reins on your horse's neck, and let him follow me."

"All right, son. I've had my innings. A Big Bill more or less don't matter. Go ahead."

The Knife-edge was a narrow ledge of sandstone that crossed a deep gash in the hills. It was not over one hundred yards in length, but its negotiation was apparently impossible. A single false step meant precipitation into the arid abyss, a thousand feet below. It was wonderful the way these Indian ponies felt their way across, a sort of equine tight-rope performance. Hal was right. The rider had nothing to do with it, except to sit straight and easily, without strain or fear, and let the pony do the rest. It was a test of nerves, and Bill, whose avoirdupois was not adjustable to tight-rope niceties, was in a profuse perspiration when his pony had taken the last careful step that put the Knife-edge into the background of things one would willingly forget. Bill had spent the best days of his life as foreman at the ranch, and could have found his way about blindfold, so when they were about a mile from the ranch Bill took the lead.

After riding a few moments over some bare clay hills they descended into an arroyo and followed its tortuous course unseen and unheard, for the horses' footfalls made no noise on the silent sands. It was necessary to dismount and lead the horses, and it was slow work. Suddenly Bill stopped short and pointed. It was an effulgent night and there against the skyline was limned the figure of a sentry, sitting before a little camp-fire, serenely smoking. He was perched on a little elevation just where the arroyo took a sharp bend, his rifle leaning against some greasewood near at hand. Bill unlimbered his gun, but Hal put his hand out and made a sign to stay him. The young man then uncoiled his lariat from his saddle and, hugging the walls of the dead stream, he crept to within reach of the dark figure and, with a hand that had become more than expert, coiled the deadly loop, then sent it into the silent air, where it poised for a moment like a snake about to strike, then it settled down about the body of its victim with the incredible squeeze of a constrictor. With a swift jerk the figure tumbled into the dry gulch and, before he realized what had happened to him, Hal's knee was on his chest and his gun-barrel at his head. Bill immediately disarmed the prostrate figure, taking his pistol from its holster as Hal said: "Don't speak." Indeed, there was really no need for this injunction. It had happened so quickly and the sentry was so unprepared that he hadn't a sound in him. It took him several valuable seconds to realize just what had happened, and by that time it was obvious that he was a prisoner. Bill took a hitch knot in the lariat and Hal ordered the man to stand up.

"Do as you're told and no harm'll come to you," he said quietly. Then he turned to Bill and said: "Shall we go on or shall we wait for the others? They must have the ranch surrounded by this time."

"I guess you and I can persuade 'em resistance would be useless."

This was to impress the prisoner who was by this time in an impressionable frame of mind.