The Coyote Part 26

The mines manager winced and then frowned. "I gave him the money to carry to the mine," he confessed without flinching. "He came back with a story about being held up, and when he saw that I didn't believe him and intended to turn him back to you, he pulled a gun on me and made his get-away. He lit out through town for the road to the hogback and the pa.s.s over the mountains."

Mannix laughed harshly. "You're clever, Sautee; there's no getting away from how clever you are. Now you want me to go chasing up to the hogback to head him off. Well, I'm tellin' you that I don't know where he's gone, an' I ain't starting out after him at any two o'clock in the morning. If you'd have kept your nose out of this he'd still be all safe an' quiet in jail. That's final, so you might as well clear out an' give me a chance to get some sleep."

Sautee merely smiled after this speech from the disgusted deputy.

"Since I intrusted Rathburn with that job I've found out something about him which takes the case out of my hands entirely," he said with a smirk. "I don't care if you don't start after him till day after to-morrow. But if your chief--the sheriff--finds out that you didn't hit the trail to-night he'll likely ask you for your badge!"

"Are you threatening me?" Mannix demanded loudly.

"No, I'm only stating facts," Sautee replied stoutly. "That man who calls himself Rathburn is The Coyote!"

Mannix didn't start. He appeared hardly interested. Only the keen, penetrating quality of the steady gaze he directed at the mines manager betrayed the fact that his faculties were aroused.

"The Coyote hit back for Arizona after that deal he was mixed up in over in Dry Lake, across the range," he said with conviction.

"Oh, he did?" Sautee sneered openly. "Well, you had him in jail last night, and you can probably get him again, if you start right out after him."

"What makes you think this fellow Rathburn is The Coyote?" demanded Mannix.

"Carlisle knows him by sight, and he told me."

"Then why didn't you tell me?" the deputy asked sternly.

"Because Carlisle didn't tell me until after I told him what I'd done," Sautee evaded. "Then I didn't have the--ah--nerve, under the circ.u.mstances, to come to you with the news. At that, I thought he might go through with it."

Mannix swore softly. "Giving a pay-roll messenger's job to a man who's got a price on his head a mile long!" he exclaimed savagely. "Why didn't Carlisle come to me?"

Sautee shrugged. "I'm not responsible for Carlisle. Maybe he didn't feel sure of it, and maybe he's just naturally jealous of The Coyote and wants to bring him in himself. Carlisle is a gunman, as you know, and a good one."

"I know it," snapped out Mannix; "and I know both Carlisle an' you are a pair of bunglers. I guess you wanted to show me up, but you've gone about it in a way that won't get you anything nor hurt me, I'll see to that."

Sautee smiled as the deputy hurried out of the room.

In a few minutes Mannix returned fully dressed and carrying a rifle.

The deputy's face was severe, and his eyes burned with the fire of the man hunt. He signaled impatiently to the mine manager to follow him.

As they walked across the little porch and around to the rear of the house where Mannix kept his car the deputy talked fast.

"I'm goin' up to the hogback. He ain't had start enough to get up there yet on a horse, an' I'll beat him to it. It'll be daylight in about two hours, an' I'll be there till daylight. If you think you can do it, get out some of the men an' cover the trails to the mine on horses. He might try to get over that way. Then you better take your car and go up to the mine by the road as fast as you can to tell 'em to be on the lookout. Watch out on the hogback, for I'll be up there, parked with my lights out."

He had reached his small garage when he finished giving his instructions, and Sautee, with a promise to do as he had been told as quickly as possible, ran down the street toward the Red Feather, where a light still shone.

The news that The Coyote and Rathburn were one and the same, and that he had robbed the mining company that night and was probably responsible for the other holdups, created an immediate sensation among the few gamblers in the resort. Sautee added to the excitement by quoting rewards at random, and the forming of two posses to comb the trails to the mine and beyond was under way at once.

Sautee ran to his office and got out his small car. He stopped at the Red Feather and took one of the men from the mine with him. He stopped again when he reached the Carlisle cabin, pounded on the doors, and looked in the windows. But the place was deserted, and Sautee's features were wreathed in perplexity as he went back to his car.

"That's queer," he said as he climbed into his seat.

"What's that?" asked the man beside him.

But Sautee's answer was drowned in the roar of the motor as he sped up the road toward the hogback and the mine.

CHAPTER XXI

A CAPTURE

When Rathburn rode away from Sautee's quarters he galloped up the street straight for the road which led west out of town. He pulled his horse down to a trot when he reached the Carlisle cabin and made another brief inspection which showed that the place was deserted.

Then he struck into the trail behind the cabin and began the ascent toward the Dixie Queen.

He rode slowly through the timber, depending upon his mount to keep to the dim trail, but in the open stretches in meadows and on the crest of ridges where the timber thinned, he made better time. On this occasion one would not have noted an att.i.tude of uncertainty about his manner or movements. He had paid strict attention to the barn man's description of this trail, and he had determined general directions the day before. Rathburn was not a stranger to the art of following new trails; nor was he the kind to become confused in a locality with which he was not familiar unless he became absolutely lost. In this instance it would be a hard matter to become lost, for the ridges rose steadily upward toward the summits of the high mountains, the town was in the narrow valley below, and the foothills ranged down to the desert in the east.

He was halfway to the mine when he saw the gleam of an automobile's lights in the road far below.

"Sautee got busy right quick," he said aloud. "I 'spect they're hustlin' up to head me off at the hogback. They're figuring I'd try to go back the way I come in."

He smiled grimly in the soft moonlight, and his gaze turned toward the east, where the stars glowed over the shadowy reaches of desert which he could not see, but the very thought of which stirred something in his soul.

Then he pushed on up the trail toward the mine. For more than an hour he rode, and then, when he came to the crest of a ridge just below the Dixie Queen, he saw the lights of an automobile in the road to the right of him.

"Now what?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "They ain't figurin' I'd come up here!"

He sat his horse with features again wreathed in perplexity. He scowled at the approaching gleam of light. In the direction of the hogback he could see nothing. Nor could he see the hors.e.m.e.n already on the trail below him and on the ridge trail to eastward.

The little mine village was directly below him. The few buildings huddled together below the big mine dump were dark. The mine buildings, too, were dark. A faint glow showed in the east--harbinger of the dawn.

The left side of the automobile was toward him when it stopped in the little street below. A man climbed out and walked around in front of the car, and Rathburn grunted in recognition as he made out the familiar form of Sautee, the mine manager.

He saw Sautee and another leave the car and walk toward a building at the lower end of the street. He could see them fairly well in the moonlight and realized that in a comparatively short time it would be daylight. He turned his horse down the slope.

When he reached the rear of the few buildings which formed the mining village, catering to the wants of the Dixie Queen workers, Rathburn edged along to the lower end where he left his horse in the shadow of a building directly across from the one which Sautee and his companion had entered, and in the windows of which a light now shone.

He stole across the street. Peering in one of the windows he saw that the room was an office. Sautee was standing before a desk, talking to another man. Rathburn quickly surmised that this man had accompanied Sautee from the town. Even as he looked, Sautee finished his speech by striking a palm with his fist, and his companion strode toward the door.

Rathburn darted around the side of the building into the shadow as the man came out and hurried up a wide road toward the mine buildings above. Then Rathburn ran around to the front of the building and quietly opened the door.

Sautee had seated himself at the desk, and he swung about in his chair as he heard the door open. He looked again into the black bore of Rathburn's gun. His eyes bulged, and this time they shone with genuine terror.

"It was sure in the pictures for us to meet again, Sautee," said Rathburn easily. "Our business wasn't finished. We ain't through yet."

"There isn't any more money," Sautee gasped out. "There's no money up here at all."

"Oh, yes, there is," said Rathburn with a mirthless smile. "There's twenty-odd thousand dollars in my right-hand coat pocket. Now I wonder what you've got in yours. It don't stand to reason you'd start out this time without a gun. Stand up!"

Sautee rose. His face was ashen. He held his hands high as Rathburn pressed his weapon against his chest and relieved him of the automatic which he carried. Rathburn felt his other pockets and then smiled agreeably. He tossed the automatic on the desk.