The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ to kill me."

      "What's that?" demanded the spokesman.

      Blount repeated his assertion, adding jocularly: "Perhaps you'd better call up headquarters and ask your boss if he wants you to kill the son of his boss."

      At this the gun-holder came around the fire to stand before his prisoner.

      "Say, pal—this ain't my night for kiddin', and it hadn't ort to be your'n," he remarked grimly. "The boss didn't say you was to be rubbed out—they never do. But I reckon it would save a heap o' trouble if you was rubbed out."

      "On the contrary, I'm inclined to think it would make a heap of trouble—for you and your friends, and quite probably for the man or men who sent you to waylay me. But, apart from all that, you've got hold of the wrong man, as I told you a moment ago."

      "No, by grapples! I hain't. I saw you in daylight. If there's been any fumblin' done, I hain't done it. So you see it ain't any o' my funeral."

      "Think not?" said Blount.

      "I know it ain't. Orders is orders, and you don't git over into them woods on Upper Lost Creek with no papers to serve on nobody: see?"

      It was just here that the light of complete understanding dawned upon Blount; and with it came the disconcerting chill of a conviction overthrown. As a theorist he had always scoffed at the idea that a corporation, which is a creature of the law, could afford to be an open law-breaker. But here was a very striking refutation of the charitable assumption. His smoking-room companion of the Pullman car was doubtless one of the timber-pillagers who had been cutting on the public domain. To such a man an agent of the National Forest Service was an enemy to be hoodwinked, if possible, or, in the last resort, to be disposed of as expeditiously as might be, and Blount saw that he had only himself to blame for his present predicament, since he had allowed the man to believe that he was a Government emissary. Having this clew to the mystery, his course was a little easier to steer.

      "I have no papers of the kind you think I have, as you can readily determine by searching me," he said. "My name is Blount, and I am the son of ex-Senator David Blount, of this State. Now what are you going to do with me?"

      "What's that you say?" grated the outlaw.

      "You heard what I said. Go ahead and heave me into the canyon if you are willing to stand for it afterward."

      The hard-faced man turned without replying and went back to the other two at the fire. Blount caught only a word now and again of the low-toned, wrangling argument that followed. But from the overheard word or two he gathered that there were still some leanings toward the sound old maxim which declares that "dead men tell no tales." When the decision was finally reached, he was left to guess its purport. Without any explanation the thongs were taken from his wrists and ankles, and he was helped upon his horse. After his captors were mounted, the new status was defined by the spokesman in curt phrase.

      "You go along quiet with us, and you don't make no bad breaks, see? I more'n half believe you been lyin' to me, but I'm goin' to give you a chance to prove up. If you don't prove up, you pass out—that's all. Now git in line and hike out; and if you're countin' on makin' a break, jest ricollect that a chunk o' lead out of a Winchester kin travel a heap faster thern your cayuse."

      If Blount had not already lost all sense of familiarity with his surroundings, the devious mountain trail taken by his captors would soon have convinced him that the boyhood memories were no longer to be trusted. Up and down, the trail zigzagged and climbed, always penetrating deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountains. At times Blount lost even the sense of direction; lost it so completely that the high-riding moon seemed to be in the wrong quarter of the heavens.

      For the first few miles the trail was so difficult that speed was out of the question; but later, in crossing a high-lying valley, the horses were pushed. Beyond the valley there were more mountains, and half-way through this second range the trail plunged into a deep, cleft-like canyon with a brawling torrent for its pathfinder. Once more Blount lost the sense of direction, and when the canyon trail came out upon broad uplands and became a country road with bordering ranches watered by irrigation canals, into which the mountain torrent was diverted, there were no recognizable landmarks to tell him whither his captors were leading him.

      As he was able to determine by holding his watch, face up, to the moonlight, it was nearly midnight when the silent cavalcade of four turned aside from the main road into an avenue of spreading cottonwood trees. At its head the avenue became a circular driveway; and fronting the driveway a stately house, with a massive Georgian facade and colonnaded portico, flung its shadow across the white gravel of the carriage approach.

      There were lights in one wing of the house, and another appeared behind the fan-light in the entrance-hall when the leader of the three highbinders had tramped up the steps and touched the bell-push. Blount had a fleeting glimpse of a black head with a fringe of snowy wool when the door was opened, but he did not hear what was said. After the negro serving-man disappeared there was a little wait. At the end of the interval the door was opened wide, and Blount had a gruff order to dismount.

      What he saw when he stood on the door-mat beside his captor merely added mystery to mystery. Just within the luxuriously furnished hall, where the light of the softly shaded hall lantern served to heighten the artistic effect of her red housegown, stood a woman—a lady, and evidently the mistress of the Georgian mansion. She was small and dark, with brown eyes that were almost childlike in their winsomeness; a woman who might be twenty, or thirty, or any age between. Beautiful she was not, Blount decided, comparing her instantly, as he did all women, with Patricia Anners; but—He was not given time to add the qualifying phrase or to prepare himself for what was coming.

      "What is it, Barto?" the little lady asked, turning to the man with the gun.

      The reply was direct and straight to the purpose.

      "Excuse me; but I jest wanted to ask if you know this here young feller. He's been allowin' to me th't he is—"

      "Of course," she said quickly, and stepping forward she gave her hand and a welcome to the dazed one. "Please come in; we have been expecting you." Then again to the man with the Winchester: "Thank you so much, Barto, for showing the gentleman the way to Wartrace Hall."

      It was all done so quietly that Blount was still unconsciously holding the hand of welcoming while his late captors were riding away down the cottonwood-shaded avenue. When he realized what he was doing he was as nearly embarrassed as a selfcontained young lawyer could well be. But his impromptu hostess quickly set him at ease.

      "You needn't make any explanations," she hastened to say, smiling up at him and gently disengaging the hand which he was only now remembering that he had forgotten to relinquish. "Naturally, I inferred that you were in trouble, and that your safety depended in some sense upon my answer. Were you in trouble?"

      Blount perceived immediately how utterly impossible it would be to make her, or any one else, understand the boyish impulse which had prompted him to leave his train, or the curious difficulty into which the impulse had precipitated him. So his explanation scarcely explained.

      "I was on my way to a ranch—that is, to the capital—when these men held me up," he stammered. "They—they mistook me for some one else, I think, and for reasons best known to themselves they brought me here. If you could direct me to some place where I can get a night's lodging—"

      "There is nothing like a tavern within twenty miles of here," she broke in; "nor is there any house within that radius which СКАЧАТЬ