Bucky O'Connor Part 45

"And you think?" suggested Leroy gently.

"I don't know what to think yet. You're either a fool or a traitor. I ain't quite made up my mind. When I find out you'll ce'tainly hear from me straight. Come on, boys." And Neil vanished through the door.

An hour later there came a knock at Leroy's door. Neil answered his permission to enter, followed by the other trio of flushed beauties. To the outlaw chief it was at once apparent with what Dutch courage they had been fortifying themselves to some resolve. It was characteristic of him, though he knew on how precarious a thread his life was hanging, that disgust at the foul breaths with which they were polluting the atmosphere was his first dominant emotion.

"I wish, Lieutenant Chaves, next time you emigrate you'd bring another brand of poison out to the boys. I can't go this stuff. Just remember that, will you?"

The outlaw chief's hard eye ran over the rebels and read them like a primer They had come to depose him certainly, to kill him perhaps.

Though this last he doubted. It wouldn't be like Neil to plan his murder, and it wouldn't be like the others to give him warning and meet him in the open. Warily he stood behind the table, watching their awkward embarra.s.sment with easy a.s.surance. Carefully he placed face downward on the table the Villon he had been reading, but he did it without lifting his eyes from them.

"You have business with me, I presume."

"That's what we have," cried Reilly valiantly, from the rear.

"Then suppose we come to it and get the room aired as soon as possible,"

Leroy said tartly.

"You're such a slap-up dude you'd ought to be a hotel clerk, cap. You're sure wasted out here. So we boys got together and held a little election. Consequence is, we--fact is, we--"

Neil stuck, but Reilly came to his rescue.

"We elected York captain of this outfit."

"To fill the vacancy created by my resignation. Poor York! You're the sacrifice, are you? On the whole, I think you fellows have made a wise choice. York's game, and he won't squeal on you, which is more than I could say of Reilly, or the play actor, or the gentlemen from Chihuahua.

But you want to watch out for a knife in the dark, York. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' you know."

"We didn't come here to listen to a speech, cap, but to notify you we was dissatisfied, and wouldn't have you run the outfit any longer,"

explained Neil.

"In that event, having heard the report of the committee, if there's no further new business, I declare this meeting adjourned sine die. Kindly remove the perfume tubs, Captain Neil, at your earliest convenience."

The quartette retreated ignominiously. They had come prepared to gloat over Leroy's discomfiture, and he had mocked them with that insolent ease of his that set their teeth in helpless rage.

But the deposed chief knew they had not struck their last blow.

Throughout the night he could hear the low-voiced murmur of their plottings, and he knew that if the liquor held out long enough there would be sudden death at Hidden Valley before twenty-four hours were up. He looked carefully to his rifle and his revolvers, testing several sh.e.l.ls to make sure they had not been tampered with in his absence.

After he had made all necessary preparations, he drew the blinds of his window and moved his easy-chair from its customary place beside the fire. Also he was careful not to sit where an shadow would betray his position. Then back he went to his Villon, a revolver lying on the table within reach.

But the night pa.s.sed without mishap, and with morning he ventured forth to his meeting with the sheriff. He might have slipped out from the back door of his cabin and gained the canyon, by circling un.o.bserved, up the draw and over the hogback, but he would not show by these precautions any fear of the cutthroats with whom he had to deal. As was his scrupulous custom, he shaved and took his morning bath before appearing outdoors. In all Arizona no trimmer, more graceful figure of jaunty recklessness could be seen than this one stepping lightly forth to knock at the bunk-house door behind which he suspected were at least two men determined on his death by treachery.

Neil came to the door in answer to his knock and within he could see the villainous faces at bloodshot eyes of two of the others peering at him.

"Good mo'ning, Captain Neil. I'm on my way to keep that appointment I mentioned last night I'd ce'tainly be glad to have you go along. Nothing like being on the spot to prevent double-crossing."

"I'm with you in the fling of a cow's tail. Come on, boys."

"I think not. You and I will go alone."

"Just as you say. Reilly, I guess you better saddle Two-step and the Lazy B roan."

"I ain't saddling ponies for Mr. Leroy," returned Reilly, with thick defiance.

Neil was across the room in two strides. "When I tell you to do a thing, jump! Get a move on and saddle those broncs."

"I don't know as--"

"Vamos!"

Reilly sullenly slouched out.

"I see you made them jump," commented the former captain audibly, seating himself comfortably on a rock. "It's the only way you'll get along with them. See that they come to time or pump lead into them.

You'll find there's no middle way."

Neil and Leroy had hardly pa.s.sed beyond the rock-slide before the others, suspicion awake in their sodden brains, dodged after them on foot. For three miles they followed the broncos as the latter picked their way up the steep trail that led to the Dalriada Mine.

"If Mr. Collins is here, he's lying almighty low," exclaimed Neil, as he swung from his pony at the foot of the bluff from the brow of which the gray dump of the mine straggled down like a t.i.tan's beard.

"Right you are, Mr. Neil."

York whirled, revolver in hand, but the man who had risen from behind the big boulder beside the trail was resting both hands on the rock before him.

"You're alone, are you?" demanded York.

"I am."

Neil's revolver slid back into its holster. "Mornin', Val. What's new down at Tucson?" he said amiably.

"I understood I was to meet you alone, Mr. Leroy," said the sheriff quickly, his blue-gray eyes on the former chief.

"That was the agreement, Mr. Collins, but it seems the boys are on the anxious seat about these little socials of ours. They've embraced the notion that I'm selling them. I hated to have them hara.s.sed with doubts, so I invited the new majordomo of the ranch to come with me. Of cou'se, if you object--"

"I don't object in the least, but I want him to understand the agreement. I've got a posse waiting at Eldorado Springs, and as soon as I get back there we take the trail after you. Bucky O'Connor is at the head of the posse."

York grinned. "We'll be in Sonora then, Val. Think I'm going to wait and let you shoot off my other fingers?"

Collins fished from his vest pocket the papers he had taken from Scott hat and from Webster. "I think I'll be jogging along back to the springs. I reckon these are what you want."

Leroy took them from him and handed them to Neil. "Don't let us detain you any longer, Mr. Collins. I know you're awful busy these days."

The sheriff nodded a good day, cut down the hill on the slant, and disappeared in a mesquit thicket, from the other side of which he presently emerged astride a bay horse.

The two outlaws retraced their way to the foot of the hill and remounted their broncos.

"I want to say, cap, that I'm eating humble-pie in big chunks right this minute," said Neil shamefacedly, scratching his curly poll and looking apologetically at his former chief. "I might 'a' knowed you was straight as a string, all I've seen of you these last two years. If those coyotes say another word, cap--"

An exploding echo seemed to shake the mountain, and then another. Leroy swayed in the saddle, clutching at his side. He pitched forward, his arms round the horse's neck, and slid slowly to the ground.

Neil was off his horse in an instant, kneeling beside him. He lifted him in his arms and carried him behind a great outcropping boulder.

"It's that hound Collins," he muttered, as he propped the wounded man's head on his arm. "By G.o.d, I didn't think it of Val."