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CHAPTER I
FRONTIER DAY
Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet–his feet were encased in tight, high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen’s boots–usually rested on the floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air. This idiosyncrasy his companion, de Spain, had learned to tolerate.
But Lefever’s subdued whistle, which seemed meditative, always irritated de Spain more or less, despite his endeavor not to be irritated. It was like the low singing of a tea-kettle, which, however unobtrusive, indicates steam within. In fact, John Lefever, who was built not unlike a kettle, and whose high, shiny forehead was topped by a pompadour shock of very yellow hair, never whistled except when there was some pressure on his sensibilities.
The warm sun streaming through the windows of the private office of the division superintendent at Sleepy Cat, a railroad town lying almost within gunshot of the great continental divide, would easily have accounted for the cordial perspiration that illumined Lefever’s forehead. Not that a perspiration is easily achieved in the high country; it isn’t. None, indeed, but a physical giant, which Lefever was, could maintain so constant and visible a nervous moisture in the face of the extraordinary atmospheric evaporation of the mountain plateaus. And to de Spain, on this occasion, even the glistening beads on his companion’s forehead were annoying, for he knew that he himself was properly responsible for their presence.
De Spain, tilted back in the superintendent’s chair, sat near Lefever–Jeffries had the mountain division then–his elbows resting on the arms of the revolving-chair, and with his hands he gripped rather defiantly the spindles supporting them; his feet were crossed on the walnut rim of the shabby, cloth-topped table. In this attitude his chin lay on his soft, open collar and tie, his sunburnt lips were shut tight, and above and between his nervous brown eyes were two little, vertical furrows of perplexity and regret. He was looking at the dull-finish barrel of a new rifle, that lay across Lefever’s lap. At intervals Lefever took the rifle up and, whistling softly, examined with care a fracture of the lever, the broken thumb-piece of which lay on the table between the two men.
From the Main Street side of the large room came the hooting and clattering of a Frontier Day celebration, and these noises seemed not to allay the discomfort apparent on the faces of the two men.
“It certainly is warm,” observed Lefever, apropos of nothing at all.
“Why don’t you get out of the sun?” suggested de Spain shortly.
Lefever made a face. “I am trying to keep away from that noise.”
“Hang it, John,” blurted out de Spain peevishly, “what possessed you to send for me to do the shooting, anyway?”
His companion answered gently–Lefever’s patience was noted even among contained men–“Henry,” he remonstrated, “I sent for you because I thought you could shoot.”
De Spain’s expression did not change under the reproach. His bronzed face was naturally amiable, and his mental attitude toward ill luck, usually one of indifference, was rarely more than one of perplexity. His features were so regular as to contribute to this undisturbed expression, and his face would not ordinarily attract attention but for his extremely bright and alive eyes–the frequent mark of an out-of-door mountain life–and especially for a red birthmark, low on his left cheek, disappearing under the turn of the jaw. It was merely a strawberry, so-called, but an ineradicable stamp, and perhaps to a less preoccupied man a misfortune. Henry de Spain, however, even at twenty-eight, was too absorbed in many things to give thought to this often, and after knowing him, one forgot about the birthmark in the man that carried it. Lefever’s reproach was naturally provocative. “I hope now,” retorted de Spain, but without any show of resentment, “you understand I can’t.”
“No,” persisted Lefever good-naturedly, “I only realize, Henry, that this wasn’t your day for the job.”
The door of the outer office opened and Jeffries, the superintendent, walked into the room; he had just come from Medicine Bend in his car. The two men rose to greet him. He asked about the noise in the street.
“That noise, William, comes from all Calabasas and all Morgan’s Gap,” explained Lefever, still fondling the rifle. “The Morgans are celebrating our defeat. They put it all over us. We were challenged yesterday,” he continued in response to the abrupt questions of Jeffries. “The Morgans offered to shoot us offhand, two hundred yards, bull’s-eye count. The boys here–Bob Scott and some of the stage-guards–put it up to me. I thought we could trim them by running in a real gunman. I wired to Medicine Bend for Henry. Henry comes up last night with a brand-new rifle, presented, I imagine, by the Medicine Bend Black Hand Local, No. 13. This is the gun,” explained Lefever feebly, holding forth the exhibit. “The lever,” he added with a patient expletive, “broke.”
“Give me the gun, John,” interposed de Spain resignedly. “I’ll lay it on the track to-night for a train to run over.”
“It was a time limit, you understand, William,” persisted Lefever, continuing to stick pins calmly into de Spain. “Henry got to shooting too fast.”
“That wasn’t what beat me,” exclaimed de Spain curtly. And taking up the offending rifle he walked out of the room.
“Nor was it the most humiliating feature of his defeat,” murmured Lefever, as the door closed behind his discomfited champion. “What do you think, William?” he grumbled on. “The Morgans ran in a girl to shoot against us–true as there’s a God in heaven. They put up Nan Morgan, old Duke Morgan’s little niece. And what do you think? She shot the fingers clean off our well-known Black Hand scout. I never before in my life saw Henry so fussed. The little Music Mountain skirt simply put it all over him. She had five bull’s-eyes to Henry’s three when the lever snapped. He forfeited.”
“Some shooting,” commented Jeffries, rapidly signing letters.
“We expected some when Henry unslung his gun,” Lefever went on without respecting Jeffries’s preoccupation. “As it is, those fellows have cleaned up every dollar loose in Sleepy Cat, and then some. Money? They could start a bank this minute.”
Sounds of revelry continued to pour in through the street window. The Morgans were celebrating uncommonly. “Rubbing it in, eh, John?” suggested Jeffries.
“Think of it,” gasped Lefever, “to be beaten by an eighteen-year-old girl.”
“Now that,” declared Jeffries, waking up as if for the first time interested, “is exactly where you made your mistake, John. Henry is young and excitable–”
“Excitable!” echoed Lefever, taken aback.
“Yes, excitable–when a girl is in the ring–why not? Especially a trim, all-alive, up-and-coming, blue-eyed hussy like that girl of Duke Morgan’s. She would upset any young fellow, John.”
“A girl from Morgan’s Gap?”
“Morgan’s Gap, nothing!” responded Jeffries scornfully. “What’s that got to do with it? Does that change the fire in the girl’s eye, the curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, John, or the color of her cheek?” Lefever only stared. “De Spain got to thinking about the girl,” persisted Jeffries, “her eyes and neck and pink cheeks rattled him. Against a girl you should have put up an old, one-eyed scout like yourself, or me, or Bob Scott.
“There’s another thing you forget, John,” continued Jeffries, signing even more rapidly. “A gunman shoots his best when there’s somebody shooting at him–otherwise he wouldn’t be a gunman–he would be just an ordinary, every-day marksman, with a Schuetzenverein medal and a rooster feather in his hat. That’s why you shoot well, John–because you’re a gunman, and not a marksman.”
“That boy can shoot all around me, Jeff.”
“For instance,” continued Jeffries, tossing off signatures now with a rubber stamp, and developing his incontestable theory at the same time, “if you had put Gale Morgan up against Henry at, say five hundred yards, and told them to shoot at each other, instead of against each other, you’d have got bull’s-eyes to burn from de Spain. And the Calabasas crowd wouldn’t have your money. John, if you want to win money, you must study the psychological.”
There was abundance of raillery in Lefever’s retort: “That’s why you are rich, Jeff?”
“No, I am poor because I failed to study it. That is why I am at Sleepy Cat holding down a division. But now that you’ve brought Henry up here, we’ll keep him.”
“What do you mean, keep him?” demanded Lefever, starting in protest.
“What do I mean?” thundered Jeffries, who frequently thundered even when it didn’t rain in the office. “I mean I need him. I mean the time to shoot a bear is when you see him. John, what kind of a fellow is de Spain?” demanded the superintendent, as if he had never heard of him.
“Henry de Spain?” asked Lefever, sparring innocently for time.
“No, Commodore George Washington, General Jackson, Isaac Watts de Spain,” retorted Jeffries peevishly. “Don’t you know the man we’re talking about?”
“Known him for ten years.”
“Then why say ‘Henry’ de Spain, as if there were a dozen of him? He’s the only de Spain in these parts, isn’t he? What kind of a fellow is he?”
Lefever was ready; and as he sat in a chair sidewise at the table, one arm flung across the green baize, he looked every inch his devil-may-care part. Regarding Jeffries keenly, he exclaimed with emphasis: “Why, if you want him short and sharp, he’s a man with a soft eye and a snap-turtle jaw, a man of close squeaks and short-arm shots, always getting into trouble, always getting out; a man that can wheedle more out of a horse than anybody but an Indian; coax more shots out of a gun than anybody else can put into it–if you want him flat, that’s Henry, as I size him.”
Jeffries resumed his mildest tone: “Tell him to come in a minute, John.”
De Spain himself expressed contemptuous impatience when Lefever told him the superintendent wanted him to go to work at Sleepy Cat. He declared he had always hated the town; and Lefever readily understood why he should especially detest it just now. Every horseman’s yell that rang on the sunny afternoon air through the open windows–and from up the street and down there were still a good many–was one of derision at de Spain’s galling defeat. When he at length consented to talk with Jeffries about coming to Sleepy Cat, the interview was of a positive sort on the one side and an obstinate sort on the other. De Spain raised one objection after another to leaving Medicine Bend, and Jeffries finally summoned a show of impatience.
“You are looking for promotion, aren’t you?” he demanded threateningly.
“Yes, but not for motion without the ‘pro,’” objected de Spain. “I want to stick to the railroad business. You want to get me into the stage business.”
“Temporarily, yes. But I’ve told you when you come back to the division proper, you come as my assistant, if you make good running the Thief River stages. Think of the salary.”
“I have no immediate heirs.”
“This is not a matter for joking, de Spain.”
“I know that, too. How many men have been shot on the stages in the last six months?”
“Why, now and again the stages are held up, yes,” admitted Jeffries brusquely; “that is to be expected where the specie shipments are large. The Thief River mines are rotten with gold just now. But you don’t have to drive a stage. We supply you with good men for that, and good guards–men willing to take any kind of a chance if the pay is right. And the pay is right, and yours as general manager will be right.”
“I have never as yet generally managed any stage line,” remarked de Spain, poking ridicule at the title, “no matter how modest an outfit.”
“You will never learn younger. There is a fascination,” declared Jeffries, ignoring the fling, and tilting his chair eloquently back to give ease and conviction to his words, “about running a good stage line that no railroad business can ever touch. There is, of course, nothing in the Rocky Mountains, for that matter in the United States–nothing, I guess, in the world–that approaches the Thief River line in its opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by the Studebaker people.” Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. “You’ve seen them! You know what they are.”
De Spain, bullied, haltingly nodded acquiescence.
“Second-growth hickory in the gears,” continued Jeffries encouragingly, “ash tongues and boxes–”
“Some of those old buses look like ash-boxes,” interposed de Spain irreverently.
But Jeffries was not to be stopped: “Timkin springs, ball-bearing axles–why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief River stage.”
“You are some wagon-maker, Jeff,” said de Spain, regarding him ironically.
Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. “This road, as you know, owns the line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de Spain, is a bad place.”
“Is it?” de Spain asked as naïvely as if he had never heard of Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and notorious to both.
“There are a lot of bad men there,” Jeffries went on, “who are bad simply because they’ve never had a man to show them.”
“The last ‘general’ manager was killed there, wasn’t he?”
“Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn.”
“Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?”
Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. “That’s all right, Henry! They won’t get you.” Again he extended his finger dogmatically: “If I thought they would, I wouldn’t send you down there.”
“Thank you.”
“You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn’t hanging from every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me.”
“You’re not getting shot at.”
“No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high country knows when he is to be made a target–that you well understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea of getting killed than I have–or you have.”
“Don’t include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right away–the minute I take this job.”
“We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough,” declared Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. “Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon–all hold-up men, every one of them! Henry, I’m putting you in on that job because you’ve got nerve, because you can shoot, because I don’t think they can get you–and paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry–” Jeffries leaned forward and lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the younger man under his spell. “Do you know,” he repeated, “I suspect that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind and beneath a lot of this deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but what Duke will help him out.” Jeffries exploded with a slight but forcible expletive. “Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into Morgan’s Gap that didn’t find sympathy and shelter with some of the Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River stages.”
“As bad as that?”
Jeffries turned to his desk. “Ask John Lefever.”
De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they began. So it was on this trying day–for Lefever was not able wholly to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his humiliation at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and Morgan Gap victors.
But concerning the Morgans and their friends, Lefever, to whom Jeffries had rudely referred the subject at the close of his talk with de Spain, did abandon his habitual reticence. “Rustlers, thieves, robbers, coiners, outlaws!” he exclaimed energetically.
“Is this because they got your money to-day, John?” asked de Spain.
“Never mind my money. I’ve got a new job with nothing to do, and plenty of cash.”
De Spain asked what the job was. “On the stages,” announced Lefever. “I am now general superintendent of the Thief River Line.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I act for the reorganization committee in buying alfalfa for the horses and smokeless pipes for the guards. I am to be your assistant.”
“I’m not going to take that job, John.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not if I know it. I am going back to Medicine Bend to-night.” Lefever took off his hat and twirled it skilfully on one hand, humming softly the while. “John,” asked de Spain after a pause, “who is that girl that shot against me this afternoon?”
“That,” answered Lefever, thinking, shocked, of Jeffries’s words, “was Nan Morgan.”
“Who is she?”
“Just one of the Morgans; lives in the Gap with old Duke Morgan, her uncle; lived there as long as I can remember. Some shot, Henry.”
“How can she live in the Gap,” mused de Spain, “with an outfit like that?”
“Got nowhere else to live, I guess. I believe you’d better change your mind, Henry, and stay with us.”
“No,” returned de Spain meditatively, “I’m not going to stay. I’ve had glory enough out of this town for a while.” He picked up his hat and put it on. Lefever thought it well to make no response. He was charged with the maintenance and operation of the stage-line arsenal at Sleepy Cat, and spent many of his idle moments toying with the firearms. He busied himself now with the mechanism of a huge revolver–one that the stage-driver, Frank Elpaso, had wrecked on the head of a troublesome negro coming in from the mines. De Spain in turn took off his hat, poked the crown discontentedly, and, rising with a loss of amiability in his features and manner, walked out of the room.
The late sun was streaming down the full length of Main Street. The street was still filled with loiterers who had spent the day at the fair, and lingered now in town in the vague hope of seeing a brawl or a fight before sundown–cattlemen and cowboys from the northern ranges, sheepmen from the Spider River country, small ranchers and irrigators from the Bear basin, who picked their steps carefully, and spoke with prudence in the presence of roisterers from the Spanish Sinks, and gunmen and gamblers from Calabasas and Morgan’s Gap. The Morgans themselves and their following were out to the last retainer.
CHAPTER II
THE THIEF RIVER STAGE LINE
Sleepy Cat has little to distinguish it in its casual appearance from the ordinary mountain railroad town of the western Rockies. The long, handsome railroad station, the eating-house, and the various division-headquarters buildings characteristic of such towns are in Sleepy Cat built of local granite. The yard facilities, shops, and roundhouses are the last word in modern railroad construction, and the division has not infrequently held the medal for safety records.
But more than these things go toward making up the real Sleepy Cat. It is a community with earlier-than-railroad traditions. Sleepy Cat has been more or less of a settlement almost since the day of Jim Bridger, and its isolated position in the midst of a country of vast deserts, far mountain ranges, and widely separated watercourses has made it from the earliest Western days a rendezvous for hunters, trappers, emigrants, prospectors, and adventurers–and these have all, in some measure, left their impress on the town.
Sleepy Cat lies prettily on a high plateau north and east of the railroad, which makes a détour here to the north to round the Superstition Range; it is a county-seat, and this, where counties are as large as ordinary Eastern States, gives it some political distinction.
The principal street lies just north of the railroad, and parallels it. A modern and substantial hotel has for some years filled the corner above the station. The hotel was built by Harry Tenison soon after the opening of the Thief River gold-fields. Along Main Street to the west are strung the usual mountain-town stores and saloons, but to the north a pretty residence district has been built up about the court-house square. And a good water-supply, pumped from Rat River, a brawling mountain stream that flows just south of the town, has encouraged the care of lawns and trees.
Before de Spain had walked far he heard music from the open-air dancing-pavilion in Grant Street. Stirred by an idle curiosity, he turned the corner and stopped to watch the crowded couples whirling up and down the raised platform under paper lanterns and red streamers to the music of an automatic piano. He took his place in a fringe of onlookers that filled the sidewalk. But he was thinking as he stood, not of the boisterous dancing or the clumsy dancers, but of the broken lever and the defeat at the fair-grounds. It still rankled in his mind. While he stood thinking the music ceased.
A man, who appeared to be in authority, walked to the centre of the dancing-floor and made an announcement that de Spain failed to catch. The manager apparently repeated it to those of his patrons that crowded around him, and more than once to individual inquirers who had not caught the purport of what had been said. These late comers he pushed back, and when the floor had been well cleared he nodded to the boy operating the piano, and looked toward a young couple standing in an attitude of waiting at the head of the hall.
All eyes being turned their way, de Spain’s attention as well was drawn toward them. The man was powerful in stature, and rather too heavy, but straight as an Indian. His small, reddish face was tanned by the sun and wind, and his manner as he stood with arms akimbo, his hands resting on his belt, facing his partner and talking to her, had the confidence of a man at ease with women. From the handsome hat which, as he turned to his partner for the dance, he sent spinning toward a table beside the piano, the soft brown shirt and flowing tie, down to the small, high-heeled and spurred boots, he wore the distinctive cowboy rig of the mountains, even to the heavy hip-holster, in which his revolver was slung. He was, in fact, rather too smartly dressed, too confident in manner to please de Spain, who was in no mood to be pleased anyway, and who could conceive a dislike for a man the instant he set eyes on him–and a liking as quickly. He seemed to recall, too, that this particular fellow had crowed the loudest when he himself forfeited the shooting-match earlier in the day.
But de Spain, unamiable as he now was, looked with unconcealed interest at the man’s dancing partner. She, too, was browned by the mountain sun and air–a slight, erect girl, her head well set, and a delicate waist-line above a belted brown skirt, which just reached the tops of her small, high, tan riding-boots. She wore a soft, French-gray Stetson hat. Her dark-brown hair was deftly hidden under it, but troublesome ringlets strayed about her ears as if she had not seen a glass for hours, and these, standing first with one hand and then the other laid against her leather belt, she put up into place, and as if not wholly at ease with her surroundings. Instead of looking at her partner, who talked to her while waiting, her eyes, noticeably pretty, wandered about the platform, resting at moments on the closely drawn lines of spectators. They reflected in their unrest the dissatisfied expression of her face. A talkative woman standing just in front of de Spain, told a companion that the man was Gale Morgan, a nephew of Satterlee, laziest of the Morgans. De Spain, who never had to look twice at any woman, at once recognized in the dancing partner the little Music Mountain girl who had been his undoing at the target; the woman added that Nan was, in some hazy degree, Gale’s cousin.