Brand Blotters Part 12

"Throw down that box."

Alan lowered his hands and did as directed.

"Now reach for the stars again."

McKinstra's arms went skyward. Without his weapon, he was helpless to do otherwise. The young man had an odd sense of unreality about the affair, a feeling that it was not in earnest. The timbre of the fresh young voice that came from the bushes struck a chord in his memory, though for the life of him he could not place its owner.

"Drive on, Jose. Burn the wind and keep a-rollin' south."

The Mexican's whip coiled over the head of the leaders and the broncos sprang forward with a jump. It was the summit of a long hill, on the edge of which wound the road. Until the stage reached the foot of it there would be no opportunity to turn back. Round a bend of the road it swung at a gallop, and the instant it disappeared Melissy leaped from the bushes, lifted the heavy box, and carried it to the edge of the ditch. She flew down the sandy bottom to the place where the rig stood, drove swiftly back again, and, though it took the last ounce of strength in her, managed to tumble the box into the trap.

Back to the road she went, and from the place where the box had fallen made long strides back to the bushes where she had been standing at the moment of the hold-up. These tracks she purposely made deep and large, returning in her first ones to the same point, but from the marks where the falling treasure box had struck into the road she carefully obliterated with her hand the foot-marks leading to the irrigation ditch, sifting the sand in carefully so as to leave no impression. This took scarcely a minute. She was soon back in her runabout, driving homeward fast as whip and voice could urge the horse.

She thought she could reason out what McKinstra and the stage-driver would do. Mesa was twenty-five miles distant, the "Monte Cristo" mine seventeen.

Nearer than these points there was no telephone station except the one at the Lee ranch. Their first thought would be to communicate with Morse, with the officers at Mammoth, and with the sheriff of Mesa County. To do this as soon as possible they would turn aside and drive to the ranch after they reached the bottom of the hill and could make the turn. It was a long, steep hill, and Melissy estimated that this would give her a start of nearly twenty minutes. She would save about half a mile by following the ditch instead of the road, but at best she knew she was drawing it very fine.

She never afterward liked to think of that drive home. It seemed to her that Bob crawled and that the heavy sand was interminable. Feverishly she plied the whip, and when at length she drew out of the ditch she sent her horse furiously round the big corral. Though she had planned everything to the last detail, she knew that any one of a hundred contingencies might spoil her plan. A cowpuncher lounging about the place would have ruined everything, or at best interfered greatly. But the windmill clicked over sunlit silence, empty of life. No stir or movement showed the presence of any human being.

Melissy drove round to the side door, dumped out the treasure-box, ran into the house, and quickly returned with a hammer and some tacks, then fell swiftly to ripping the oilcloth that covered the box which stood against the wall to serve as a handy wash-stand for use by dusty travellers before dining. The two boxes were of the same size and shape, and she draped the treasure chest with the cloth, tacked it in place, restored to the top of it the tin basin, and tossed the former wash-stand among a pile of old boxes from the store, that were to be used for kindling. After this she ran upstairs, scudded softly along the corridor, and silently unlocked the cook's door, dropping the key on the floor to make it appear as if something had shaken it from the keyhole. Presently she was in her brother's room, doffing his clothes and dressing herself in her own.

A glance out of the window sapped the color from her cheek, for she saw the stage breasting the hill scarce two hundred yards from the house. She hurried downstairs, pinning her belt as she ran, and flashed into the store, where Jim sat munching peanuts.

"The stage is coming, Jim. Remember, you're not to know anything about it at all. If they ask for Dad, say he's out cutting trail of a bunch of hill cows. Tell them I started after the wild flowers about fifteen minutes ago. Don't talk much about it, though. I'll be back inside of an hour."

With that she was gone, back to her trap, which she swung along a trail back of the house till it met the road a quarter of a mile above. Her actions must have surprised steady old Bob, for he certainly never before had seen his mistress in such a desperate hurry as she had been this day and still was. Nearly a mile above, a less well defined track deflected from the main road. Into this she turned, following it until she came to the head-gates of the lateral which ran through their place. The main ca.n.a.l was full of water, and after some effort she succeeded in opening the head-gates so as to let the water go pouring through.

Returning to the runabout, the girl drove across a kind of natural meadow to a hillside not far distant, gathered a double handful of wild flowers, and turned homeward again. The stage was still there when she came in sight of the group of buildings at the ranch.

As she drew up and dismounted with her armful of flowers, Alan McKinstra stepped from the store to the porch and came forward to a.s.sist her.

"The Fort Allison stage has been robbed," he blurted out.

"What nonsense! Who would want to rob it?" she retorted.

"Morse had a gold s.h.i.+pment aboard," he explained in a low voice, and added in bitter self-condemnation: "He sent me along to guard it, and I never even fired a shot to save it."

"But--do you mean that somebody held up the stage?" she gasped.

"Yes. But whoever it was can't escape. I've 'phoned to Jack Flatray and to Morse. They'll be right out here. The sheriff of Mesa County has already started with a posse. They'll track him down. That's a cinch. He can't get away with the box without a rig. If he busts the box, he's got to carry it on a horse and a horse leaves tracks."

"But who do you think it was?"

"Don't know. One of the Roaring Fork bunch of bad men, likely. But I don't know."

The young man was plainly very much excited and disturbed. He walked nervously up and down, jerking his sentences out piecemeal as he thought of them.

"Was there only one man? And did you see him?" Melissy asked breathlessly.

He scarcely noticed her excitement, or if he did, it seemed to him only natural under the circ.u.mstances.

"I expect there were more, but we saw only one. Didn't see much of him. He was screened by the bushes and wore a black mask. So long as the stage was in sight he never moved from that place; just stood there and kept us covered."

"But how could he rob you if he didn't come out?" she asked in wide-eyed innocence.

"He didn't rob _us_ any. He must 'a' heard of the s.h.i.+pment of gold, and that's what he was after. After he'd got us to rights he made me throw the box down in the road. That's where it was when he ordered us to move on and keep agoing."

"And you went?"

"Jose handled the lines, but 't would 'a' been the same if I'd held them.

That gun of his was a right powerful persuader." He stopped to shake a fist in impotent fury in the air. "I wish to G.o.d I could meet up with him some day when he didn't have the drop on me."

"Maybe you will some time," she told him soothingly. "I don't think you're a bit to blame, Alan. n.o.body could think so. Ever so many times I've heard Dad say that when a man gets the drop on you there's nothing to do but throw up your hands."

"Do you honest think so, Melissy? Or are you just saying it to take the sting away? Looks like I ought to 'a' done something mor'n sit there like a b.u.mp on a log while he walked off with the gold."

His cheerful self-satisfaction was under eclipse. The boyish pride of him was wounded. He had not "made good." All over Cattleland the news would be wafted on the wings of the wind that Alan McKinstra, while acting as shotgun messenger to a gold s.h.i.+pment, had let a road agent hold him up for the treasure he was guarding.

"Very likely they'll catch him and get the gold back," she suggested.

"That won't do me any good," he returned gloomily. "The only thing that can help me now is for me to git the fellow myself, and I might just as well look for a needle in a haystack."

"You can't tell. The robber may be right round here now." Her eyes, s.h.i.+ning with excitement, pa.s.sed the crowd moving in and out of the store, for already the news of the hold-up had brought riders and ranchmen jogging in to learn the truth of the wild tale that had reached them.

"More likely he's twenty miles away. But whoever he is, he knows this county. He made a slip and called Jose by his name."

Melissy's gaze was turned to the dust whirl that advanced up the road that ran round the corral. "That doesn't prove anything, Alan. Everybody knows Jose. He's lived all over Arizona--at Tucson and Tombstone and Douglas."

"That's right too," the lad admitted.

The riders in advance of the dust cloud resolved themselves into the persons of her father and Norris. Her incautious admission was already troubling her.

"But I'm sure you're right. No hold-up with any sense would stay around here and wait to be caught. He's probably gone up into the Galiuros to hide."

"Unless he's cached the gold and is trying to throw off suspicion."

The girl had moved forward to the end of the house with Alan to meet her father. At that instant, by the ironic humor of chance, her glance fell upon a certain improvised wash-stand covered with oilcloth. She shook her head decisively. "No, he won't risk waiting to do that. He'll make sure of his escape first."

"I reckon."

"Have you heard, Daddy?" Melissy called out eagerly. She knew she must play the part expected of her, that of a young girl much interested in this adventure which had occurred in the community.

He nodded grimly, swinging from the saddle. She observed with surprise that his eye did not meet hers. This was not like him.

"What do you think?"

His gaze met that of Norris before he answered, and there was in it some hint of a great fear. "Beats me, 'Lissy."

He had told the simple truth, but not the whole truth. The men had waited at the entrance to the Box Canon for nearly two hours without the arrival of the stage. Deciding that something must have happened, they started back, and presently met a Mexican who stopped to tell them the news. To say that they were dazed is to put it mildly. To expect them to believe that somebody else had heard of the secret s.h.i.+pment and had held up the stage two miles from the place they had chosen, was to ask a credulity too simple. Yet this was the fact that confronted them.