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“I reckon mebbe that’s correct.” Billings smiled meditatively. “Now, I wasn’t exactly thinkin’ about Jane an’ Sunshine Gap; I was sorta gloatin’ about Riddle. He ain’t a riddle no more, a woman has solved him.”

“Huh!” snorted Scriptus, for he had a sardonic divination that somehow the foreman was striking subtilely at him.

“Clean solved him,” resumed Billings. “An’ I call that remarkable, seein’ as how literchoor wasn’t able to do it. We frame-up—settin’ our best langwige-slinger on him—him getting’ seriouser an’ seriouser, an’ broodin’ an’ mopin’, an’ never crackin’ a smile. We sort of figgers that if our author wasn’t no great shucks at scribblin’ out sensible romances, like The Adventures of a Messenger Boy, or somethin’ heavy, like Lottie’s Lovers an’ such, he’d be sorta certain to write somethin’ which would make the boss laff, that kind of literchoor comin’ natural to our author. An’ what follers? Nothin’. Absolutely nothin’! The boss don’t even turn a hair toward laffin’—even when Scriptus rings in his masterpiece about Algernon Percival’s pants.”

“You’re a liar!” sneered Scriptus; “He done laffed his head off at that!”

“An’ along comes a little woman, who don’t make no claim to bein’ no writer a-tall, an’ makes Riddle grin regular; not with his face alone, but with his talk an’ his movements. Why, in the last few weeks that man’s got to be the champion grinner of the outfit; not even exceptin’ the ‘Mourner’, whose face never gets any rest a-tall, scarcely!”

“You’re right!” yelped that individual, whose perpetual smile had now grown so broad that it threatened to engulf his ears; “I seen, days ago, that I ain’t got no chance with him!”

“Things is lookin’ up,” resumed Billings. “I’m getting’ right proud to be foreman of this here outfit. He’s woke up, complete; he’s got a way to him now that sorta makes a fello’ want to hug the cuss. They ain’t no man got a line on that guy, yet, you mark what I’m tellin’ you! He ain’t never let himself go, yet. He’s been holdin’ in. He’s been lookin’ backward. On the day he starts to look ahead—to rid this country of the damn’ buzzards which is runnin’ Bozzam City, an’ rustlin’ cattle right an’ left—which I’ve heard him grumblin’ about, before now—there’s goin’ to be hell a-poppin’ considerable sudden!”

Which hope the outfit concurred in audibly through the medium of approving grunts and yelps that held their full measure of profanity.

Gawne and Jane were riding through the canyon in which, on a day six years before, Gawne had left his jaded horse while he had climbed the shoulder of the mesa, later to destroy the red marauders who had sought to carry away the girl who was riding beside him. He had pointed out various landmarks to her before, but they reviewed them in mutual silence as they rode, for these places would never lose their interest to either.

They got out of the canyon at last, reaching a break which sloped upward, leading them to a section of broken country, dead, dry, and desolate.

Gawne had noticed, not without a growing pity, that each time they made their pilgrimage to Sunshine Gap the girl’s face grew a little more wistful. And yet she would come, and he could not deny her the doubtful consolation she got out of the visits. Firmly fixed in her memory were the scenes of the wild country surrounding the Gap; each visit revived half-forgotten recollections. She had said nothing to him concerning them, but escorting her to the Gap, standing afar while she entered the old, tumble-down log cabin, watching her roam disconsolately about the dooryard and stand long looking about her at picturesque rock crags, grassy levels, grottoes, miniature hills, timber studded; lava beds, sand stretches—the playground of those days before he had come into her life, it had seemed to him that she had been living those days over again. And those days, hallowed and reverenced by her, should not be shortened by any impatience that he might feel. He had sat for hours upon end, watching her, his face white with sympathy.

Words did not come easily this morning; their conversation was confined to suggestions from Gawne about the trail and answers by Jane. Within an hour after they had left the Diamond Bar they were climbing a precipitous, winding trail that led to a narrow level from which rose a rock ridge that joined the shoulders of two mountains. It took them three-quarters of an hour to reach the level, and gaining it, they halted to breathe their horses while they scanned the surrounding peaks and drank in the virgin wildness of the scene.

The upheaval of nature had not been orderly. The general formation of the range was that of a great, broad, mammoth ridge, flat in spots, sharp and jagged in others. Huge granite caps topped the ridge in places, with great fissures hinting of mighty forces that had been at work. Here and there a monster peak rose dizzily. The level to which they had ascended dropped sheer on the far side; it was part of a gigantic shoulder of a mountain whose peak was so close that it seemed to topple toward them, to threaten them. There was no break in the sheer wall of the shoulder. Peering over its edge they could see a river at the bottom, shimmering in the sunlight that filtered down upon it from a distant gap in the mountains. Listening intently, they could hear the water gurgling over the rocks below.

On the opposite side of the river rose another wall. It sloped back, sharply, and fringing it was a tall, ragged ridge, serrated, bald, desolate of verdure. It was of hard, gray rock. It loomed, dull and toneless from its distance of three or four hundred yards, like a papier-mache creation set against a glowing, artificial horizon.

Gawne led the way over the level to a natural ledge that made a tortuous trail around the tall peak eastward. On the other side of the peak they came upon a flat ridge, and then to a slope that took them downward sharply. Down, ever down, they went, the descent occasionally interrupted by a level or an abrupt rise—and then, presently, they were riding upon a grass level in a valley between two mountains. Eastward and westward were wide breaks in the range through which the sun could stream, unobstructed, and topping a little rise in the valley, near the river which broadened and splashed over a shallow as though in glee over its escape from the constrictions of the gorge, was a log cabin. Gawne saw Jane’s face grow white at sight of the cabin, and he reined in Meteor, sitting silent in the saddle, watching the girl go forward through the tall grass. Memory was to reign here.

Gawne had halted in the lee of a small mound of earth and rock near which grew some bunch grass. He got off Meteor, trailed the reins and strode off to stretch his legs.

He was not more than a hundred feet from the river, and he walked to the edge of it, looking across the stream toward the serrated ridge that he and Jane had seen from the mountain. From that direction had come the Apaches who, six years before, to the day, had murdered Jane’s parents. Beyond the papier-mache ridge was the desert over which, tradition had it, Hame Bozzam and his men trailed their stolen cattle. Another trail, it was said, led over the desert on a long detour, to Bozzam City. Gawne had never ridden it, but the impulse to do so had been in his mind several times. He had been too indifferent to the depredations of Bozzam’s men to concern himself over their movements. If they had stolen his cattle, he might have viewed them differently, but they had left his stock alone, and ranchmen in the vicinity were apparently too terrorized by the outlaws to attempt any organized or individual, resistance.

Gawne, looking toward the featureless waste on the opposite side of the river, was wondering about Watt Hyat. He had lost Hyat; had the man by any chance crossed the desert? He promised himself that one day—when he could safely leave Jane—he would resume his search.

But there would be little chance, now. He stooped, to pick up a small stone that had been worn and polished in the current of the stream. The movement saved his life. For his head had not moved more than three or four inches when he heard the vicious singing of a bullet, so close that he felt the heat of it on his neck below the ear. He dropped, flat, into the grass, and as he fell he saw a faint puff of smoke at the base of the papier-mache ridge; and then the report came to him, dull, reverberating.

He waited, parting the long grass; his gaze fixed on the spot from which the smoke had ballooned upward. He could see nothing. Yet he knew that whoever had done the shooting must be waiting and watching to note the effect of the shot. The distance was more than two hundred yards, Gawne estimated; much too far for effective pistol shooting. He could do nothing except to wait. Yet he knew better than to linger long where he had fallen. He wriggled forward, hugging the ground, until he found himself in a depression several feet distant, and he grinned derisively when he heard several bullets zipping through the grass where he had lain. The rifleman was making certain. On the chance that his first shot had not inflicted a fatal wound he was sending others.

Gawne counted the reports patiently. They followed one another regularly, with just enough of an interval between them to convince Gawne that the would-be assassin was using a repeating rifle.

Gawne was already convinced that the shooter was one of Bozzam’s men, either Connor or Jess Cass—Cass most likely, for he was the more dangerous. Gawne, counting the reports, was waiting for the shooter to empty his magazine, when, looking toward the cabin he saw Jane running toward him. Not wishing to expose the girl to the man’s fire, he leaped to his feet and ran, zigzag fashion, toward the small hill behind which he had left Meteor. He made it, at the expense of a bullet through the left sleeve of his coat.

Jane had halted when she saw him running, and had returned to a corner of the cabin, where she now stood, looking at him.

“We’ve got company!” he called to her, waving a hand. “Stay where you are!” He had pulled his rifle from the saddle holster and was poking it through an aperture between two rocks on the mound. Then he settled himself, his eye along the sights of the weapon, to await the shooter’s next movement.

The movement came after a ten-minute interval of premonitory silence. A bullet thudded against one of the rocks near the muzzle of Gawne’s rifle, and he replied to the smoke streak. The tiny cloud of white at the base of the papier-mache ridge had refracted the light from the desert glow beyond, revealing to Gawne for just an instant a ragged line of rock, forming a barricade, behind which his antagonist was concealed.

Gawne concentrated his gaze upon the line of rock, and presently became aware of a small, black spot on the wall of gray. He watched this spot long—saw it move several times, appearing and disappearing. He wasted a shot, adjusting his rifle sights to the range, aiming at the base of the rock barricade. Then when he saw some dust fleck up near the rocks he smiled crookedly and sought out the black spot again.

He fired when he had definitely fixed the spot, and his smile broadened when the spot vanished.

“Too close for comfort, eh?” He ejected the spent shell and snapped the lever home, keeping his gaze fixed for the reappearance of the black spot.

When movement next came he was so astonished that he neglected to shoot at once. For instead of the reappearance of the black spot a blur of dark color came into view, moving rapidly. It was some time before he could fix the blur clearly in his vision, and then he made it out to be a man on a horse.

The animal made a black, leaping silhouette against the gray background, so far distant and so small that one might have thought the ridge to be made of cardboard, with a smaller bit of cardboard cut out to represent horse and rider, the latter dangling from a string, moved to the whim of the manipulator.

Gawne covered the moving bit with the muzzle of his rifle, the latter wavering as it followed the eccentric movements of the leaping life that was now trying to escape him, and when the horseman, halfway up the steep slope of the ridge, was forced to ride his animal straight for a few steps, Gawne pressed the trigger.

For an instant there was no result. And then the black blot halted and split apart. The horse bolted, moving quickly upward and vanishing over the crest of the ridge, while the rider, falling heavily, slid down the steep side of the gray wall, turning over and over and coming to a halt at last at the very edge of the river.

Gawne waited. But there was no trick here, and the victor ran forward presently, followed by Jane, to a broad shallow where one could cross the river by stepping from rock to rock.

It was Pete Glinn—one of Bozzam’s men. Gawne’s bullet had struck him in the small of the back, just above the waistline, and had torn its way through his stomach. He was suffering horribly, but was conscious and clear-eyed as Gawne bent over him. Gawne told Jane to recross the river, which she did.

“Got me,” said Glinn, wanly. “I reckon I ought to have stayed hid. But I thought me runnin’—an’ the distance—Oh, hell! what’s the use? I was greedy for that thousand, an’ I took a chance. I ain’t holdin’ it ag’in you, if that’ll do you any good.” His face whitened. “My God, how it hurts!”

“I’m sorry, Glinn, but you brought it on yourself. What thousand are you talking about?”

“I forgot you ain’t heard.” He looked at Gawne hostilely for an instant, tightening his lips. Then they wreathed and puckered with bitterness. “What the hell do I care?” he laughed. “Hame Bozzam ain’t never been no regular friend of mine. An’ you—you’ve been an’ up an’ up guy. Say!” he laughed ironically, “you’ve got the Bozzam outfit buffaloed—they all shows yellow when they faces you, clost enough to see your eyes!”

“The thousand?” insisted Gawne.

Glinn groaned. “Bozzam’s offered that to any man that downs you—any style, any time. The bars is down for you!” He was still for a time, his breath wheezing in his throat. He looked pathetically at his conqueror. “I’m goin’. Riddle—a-rushin’—I can feel it. Don’t let me lay here. My cayuse—won’t go far. Ketch him—an’ take me back to Bozzam’s—won’t you?”

“You go back.”

“Thanks. Now ketch my cayuse. It’ll be over when you get back.”

It was. When Gawne returned with the captured horse it was an already stiffening figure that he placed face down over the saddle.

CHAPTER X

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

Hame Bozzam ate supper at dusk. Blanche Le Claire sat opposite him at the table, and did not eat. She spent most of the time toying with a spoon, balancing it on a white, tapered finger and flashing keen glances at Bozzam. She was studying him, and Bozzam did not know it because his thoughts were retrospective. The past was beginning to exact some attention from Bozzam.

The woman was arrayed in the filmy dress that she had worn on the night of the shooting of Cass and Connor, and her white skin gleamed satiny and warm in the mellow lamplight. When, after an interval of attention to the spoon, the woman looked up and caught Bozzam’s gaze on her, she smiled derisively.