CHAPTER XIX—AN ENEMY IN THE RANKS
This particular August evening was destined to be the most eventful one in Lemuel Huntington’s life, for hardly had he recovered from the shock occasioned by Billy Gee’s visit, ere he received a glorious surprise—Dot’s unannounced arrival from San Francisco. She came bounding into the house, followed by Mrs. Liggs, caught her astonished father in an ecstatic embrace, stifled his ejaculations with kisses, and told him breathlessly the reason for her return home. Even Warburton, scowling and furious over the outlaw’s escape, came in for his share of Dot’s effusiveness and forgot for the time the responsibilities of his office.
It appeared that Mrs. Liggs having received a letter from Tinnemaha Pete, containing the disturbing news that Sheriff Warburton was again in the neighborhood, presumably searching for her son, that loyal little mother after consulting with Dot decided on returning to Soapweed Plains and, regardless of Billy Gee’s intentions to see that his old friend obtained ultimate possession of the new gold strike, try to persuade him to leave the country and take up his residence with her in the metropolis. Since the trip would not occupy longer than a week, Dot had made up her mind to go along—so Mrs. Liggs would not be lonesome, she had said. Though the truth was, she felt a consuming desire to meet and talk again with this romantic hero of her girlish dreams, to see how he looked and acted in the full flush of health, to find out if he had forgotten that tragic day of his advent at the ranch. She was curious to know how he would treat her, what he would say to her, and she secretly told herself that, once having met him, she could bring back with her certain happy memories which would do much to make her studies at the university more apparently worth while. Besides, there was the novel she was writing around this knight of Soapweed Plains, without knowing just exactly his character.
But Dot said nothing of all this to her father. According to the agreement she made with Mrs. Liggs, the girl simply told Lemuel that the little old lady had some important business to transact in Geerusalem, and that she, Dot, had taken advantage of the opportunity to pay a visit home. She went on to say that Lemuel must accompany them back to San Francisco. He must see the adorable bungalow where she and Mrs. Liggs lived. Then he would have to spend a day at the University of California, and—— Oh, he must hear what she had written on her novel!
She talked on breathlessly, recounting her adventures, plying him with questions. Lemuel listened, open-mouthed, replying vaguely, his eyes brilliant with admiration. She looked queenly and so thoroughly refined, he thought, and she was prettier and far more vivacious than he had ever seen her before.
Once he leaned over and whispered into Sheriff Warburton’s ear: “Bob, you notice them big words she’s slingin’? Hear ’em? That’s one of ’em—conspicuously. That’s what edjucation does. Listen to that, will you! Rattles ’em off, like nuthin’.”
It was an epochal homecoming. Until after midnight, Dot regaled them with incidents and painted glowing pictures of San Francisco for them. Around one o’clock, Sheriff Warburton suddenly recalled that the unexpected arrival of the two women robbed him of his chances of a bed for the night.
Reluctantly he struck out for his own blankets at Blue Mud Spring, getting a little comfort out of the thought that, although Billy Gee had eluded him, he would be able to grill Tinnemaha Pete on the habits and the probable whereabouts of the bandit the first thing in the morning. None the less gratifying was the fact that Mrs. Liggs was back in the district, where he could reach her when he needed her. Why had she returned, he wondered? Unquestionably, her presence had to do with Billy Gee. But what? Well, no matter. He’d force it out of Tinnemaha Pete. The old fellow would give him a straightforward story, or go to jail. Too bad, but he, Warburton, had to do his duty.
However, when Sheriff Warburton reached Blue Mud Spring, the camp fire was ashes, stone cold, and Tinnemaha Pete and his pair of burros were gone. Warburton looked back undecidedly through the gloom of the cool desert night in the direction of the Huntington ranch. After an interval, he dismounted, unsaddled his mule, spread out his blankets on the ground, and turned in, cursing. Billy Gee had outwitted him a second time. The third time was a charm, he told himself as he dropped off to sleep.
Lex Sangerly, however, was not so fortunate as Warburton. He could not compose himself to rest. Shortly after the sheriff left the ranch, he had driven in from his trip to the railroad construction camp and found Lemuel waiting up for him, entertaining Lennox with a detailed account of Billy Gee’s career of crime. After relating to Lex the stirring events of the night, including the unannounced arrival of Dot and Mrs. Liggs, the rancher concluded with a dissertation on the virtues of education as manifested by the ease with which his daughter handled words, that he proudly declared were “jaw-breakers” of an unusual type.
Just now, Lex lay in Lemuel’s bed and tossed about nervously in the grip of disturbing thoughts. From the parlor lounge across the hall came sonorous evidence of Huntington’s blissful state of mind, rumbling rhythmically through the house. The night was tomblike.
Lex rehearsed again and again the talk he had had that afternoon with Jule Quintell, and on the heels of this there paraded before his mind’s eye the damaging information he had gathered against the broker from confidential sources in Geerusalem. These had substantiated all that he had heard heretofore, and briefly, went to describe Quintell as a tricky, unscrupulous wildcatter, associated with a coterie of other like gentry, polished crooks all, whose sole aim was to fleece the unwary, and who exercised their power in camp by their manipulation of the ruthless “stingaree” element and control of the civil authorities.
This meant to Lex nothing less than that Quintell and his placer-claim partners were banded together to make the Mohave & Southwestern Company pay heavily for the privilege of laying its tracks across their ground. In other words, the broker’s reference to fabulous gold-bearing gravel existing in Geerusalem Gulch was true, but owing to the fact only that the ground had been salted to show the existence of gold. He had heard of many cases where worthless mines had been sold by the employment of such tactics. Why not in this instance? He was suspicious of the whole matter, and had there been another likely approach into the camp, he would have urged abandonment of the gulch route. But there was not.
The Quintell forces held the gates of Geerusalem, as it were. Though his surmise might be correct that they were faking their representations to make his company meet their demands, how could he prove it? How could he find out that they had salted those claims? They had doubtless done it cunningly, secretly, for proof of such an act laid them liable to arrest and prosecution.
Complicating the situation still more was the telegram he had received that same day from his father, directing that negotiations with Quintell be hastened, and details as to terms wired at the earliest possible moment. Quite the contrary, it seemed as if the broker was sparring for time. He had stated that the valuation of the ground to be covered by the right of way must be determined by the content of gold per cubic yard of gravel occupied by the roadbed. This meant assaying the gulch, and assaying took time. And it followed that the richer the ground, the greater would be the price demanded. Lex sensed the scheme and writhed at the realization that he was powerless to frustrate it. The mining laws of California favored the owner who could show mineral in paying quantities.
His gloomy reflections were startlingly interrupted by a violent pounding on the front door. Of a sudden, the silent night roared out with a bedlam of men’s voices. From the rear of the house came the crack of a revolver, the crash of glass from one of the kitchen windows, Lennox’s terrified cry.
Lex sprang out of bed, pulled a curtain aside, and peered into the darkness. The porch was jammed with men. He could hear the hurried tramp of boots on the driveway leading to the barn, the blows of an ax wielded on the barn door, breaking its padlock. The pounding at the front of the house was resumed, accompanied by kicks.
“Huntington, open up or we’ll bust her in!” shouted a man, with an oath.
Lex groped about for matches and lighted a lamp. “Hold on there a minute!” he yelled back. He began hurrying into his clothes. A strange nervousness seized him. Vigilantes—a mob—had crept up and surrounded the place. They had come to exact some tribute, to wreak vengeance, to enforce summary justice. Which, and on whom? He heard Dot’s voice in the hall, vibrant and fearless.
“What do you want?”
“Bust down the door!” chorused the crowd.
“We want the man who’s been befriending Billy Gee,” cried the first speaker. “Are you opening this door or do we break it in?”
At this juncture Lex stepped into the hall. Lemuel stood half dressed, pale with fright, holding a candle in one trembling hand. Dot, clad in a dressing gown, her thick, wavy hair tumbled charmingly over her shoulders, her eyes glinting with a strange fire, was standing before the door, firmly gripping a six-shooter. Huddled up against the wall, some distance back, was Mrs. Liggs wringing her thin hands distractedly.
“The man who tries to come in here, dies! Do you understand that?” called out the girl in harsh tones.
A wild jeer went up. The mob howled for action, and heavy shoulders started heaving against the panels. Dot fired. The bullet tore through the lintel, whined spitefully over the heads of the crowd.
“Atta boy! Now, altogether! Get the back door, Shorty!” bellowed the leader.
The front door bulged and creaked under a second attack, and again Dot fired. A howl of rage broke from one of the men. There was a mad scramble out of range.
“Smoke ’em out! Smoke ’em out!” rose the furious cry.
“Good Lord! They’re goin’ to burn down the house,” wailed Lemuel hysterically.
“Say, men!” shouted Lex. “There’s some mistake. This is Sangerly of the Mohave & Southwestern speaking. I’ll vouch for Mr. Huntington. He’s never had any friendly relations with this outlaw——”
“Is that so, Sangerly?” sneered the leader of the mob. “Well, you’re not such a wise guy as you think you are. Huntington was entertaining Billy Gee here this evening. He’s been hanging out at this ranch right along. Say, Huntington, are you delivering yourself up, or do we burn you out?”
Lennox, listening fearfully from his cot in the little room off the kitchen, recognized the speaker as Big George Rankin, czar of Geerusalem’s underworld.
“Why, that’s ridiculous,” cried Lex. “Mr. Huntington captured Billy Gee and turned him over to the authorities——”
The roar of voices which had ceased during the brief parley, rose again now, violent and menacing.
“It’s a lie! It’s a lie! I ain’t bin friends with the measly skunk,” moaned Lemuel. Mrs. Liggs was staring at him, in a dumb, bewildered way.
Dot still watched the door. Her eyes were glittering dangerously, her whole manner betokening cool, desperate determination. Lex, unused to frontier crises of this kind, had left his revolver in his room. He now ran in to get it and found that the men on the porch were trying the windows. He had barely discovered this fact, when a revolver ripped suddenly down through the panes, showering him with glass. At the same instant, he heard the kitchen door fall in with a crash. Rushing back into the hall, he was just in time to come under a bristling array of leveled guns in the hands of bandanna-masked men, trained on the Huntington household.
In a trice, Dot was disarmed and Lemuel hurled into his room to dress. The place was quickly overrun by the mob, rummaging and ransacking bureaus, closets, trunks. Even the cupboard was swept clean. To Lex, it seemed as if they went about their work with a thoroughness that was almost painstakingly vicious. It was as if they were following out some plan to render the house untenantable, to strip its owner of his belongings.
Rankin, big and burly, his cruel eyes fiery over his red mask, stopped before Dot.
“You be on your way out of the country before morning, kid! Get me?” he growled. “And take this old dame along with you,” indicating the half-fainting Mrs. Liggs whom the girl held in her arms. “Get out and stay out!” He turned to Lex. “As for you, Mr. Sangerly, you’ve got a room in the Miners’ Hotel. See that you occupy it, if you’re not looking for a coat of tar. Outside, gang, and clean up the works!”
The majority of the mob went trooping away in obedience to the command, and presently Lex heard sounds which proclaimed the destruction of the outbuildings, coupled with the frantic clamor of the occupants of coop and sty.
A man hurried in from the kitchen and beckoned Rankin to one side. “Lennox’s layin’ in there with a busted leg,” he whispered.
“Hell he is! Well, you know your orders, Shorty. Bump him off, but wait till we leave, see? Tell Logan to help you. Make a good job of it.”
A number of men dragged Lemuel from his room. He was in a state of collapse. Dot relinquished Mrs. Liggs to Lex, and rushing forward, threw her arms around her father’s neck, begging, pleading hysterically with Rankin, to no purpose. Sangerly began an impassioned appeal also, and received a brutal blow in the face for his interference.
Out through the front door they hustled Lemuel. They bundled him on a horse and set a guard over him, while Rankin rounded up his gang preparatory to departing. At last, with a parting six-shooter volley into the air and a chorus of wild shouts, the mob spurred away. The first faint shafts of light were beginning to silver the eastern sky. Soapweed Plains had never seemed so tragically silent, so filled with woe and frightful foreboding.
Out on the front porch, Lex stood holding Mrs. Liggs. The little old lady was moaning pitifully, clutching Dot’s hand in her own trembling one. The girl was, for the moment, stricken dumb by the suddenness of it all—the destruction of the ranch, the bold abduction of her father, horror over his possible fate at the hands of that lawless crowd. Then she roused herself and darted into the house. The next instant she reappeared, hatted and cloaked, and sped down the steps and along the walk leading to the rear of the premises. Alarmed at her action, Lex helped Mrs. Liggs to a porch chair and hurried after her. He overtook her as she was scrambling through the wire fence into the field.
“Miss Huntington, where are you going?” he panted.
“I’m following them. Please help me catch a horse!” she cried wildly. “Oh, the beasts! The beasts! They’re——” She broke off and listened frantically into the night. “Hear them? They’re taking him toward camp, but there is a trail branching off. They’re going that way. I heard one of them say they intend to set him afoot in Lone Mountain Pass. He’ll die out there. Quick! Mr. Sangerly, I——”
“My car,” he burst out. “If they haven’t destroyed it—tampered with it.” He grasped her arm, and together they raced for the roadster standing to one side of the driveway. “But we ought to run into camp and report the matter to the authorities. We can’t hope to do anything alone, Miss Huntington. It would be madness to oppose them,” he argued, as they sprang into the machine.
By a streak of good fortune—which that arch-plotter Jule Quintell could have easily explained, considering that he felt confident of putting over the right of way deal—the night riders had left the roadster severely alone.
Dot made no reply, and Lex started turning the roadster around in the wide space of yard. At this juncture, two shots rang out inside the house, followed by Mrs. Liggs’ terrified scream from the front porch. A hoarse cry broke from Lex. He brought the car to a sudden halt.
“My God—Lennox! I’d forgotten him. They’ve killed——”
There was a sound of blundering footfalls across the bare kitchen floor. The next instant, a man staggered out of the back door, toppled down the steps, and pitched headlong to the ground, in the full glare of the headlights. Blood was issuing from his mouth.
Then, while Dot and Lex gazed horrified at the prostrate form, a shriveled-up little figure appeared in the kitchen door, clutching a revolver in one bony hand. It was Tinnemaha Pete.
“That you, Spangaree?” he cackled excitedly at the roadster. “Son of a gun! Got ’em both—first pop. They was goin’ to drill Mr. Lummox, an’ I dropped ’em. Poorty as ye please. First pop. Son of a gun! Ain’t killed a man afore, either. That’s one of ’em. First pop, Spangaree. Agatha! Looket, Agatha——” He went trotting through the house, calling to Mrs. Liggs.
Dot, staring at the dead man, shivered.
Lex got the roadster under way. It sped out of the driveway and into the road, gathering speed; plunging and swaying along, the sand rattling like machine-gun fire against the under side of the fenders. The girl, wide-eyed, her face bloodless, drawn with fear, watched in awful suspense for sight of the mob.
“We’d better drive to camp, Miss Huntington, and get out the constable—have him lead a posse after them. It’s the safest course, all around,” said Lex presently.
A sob broke from her. “Oh, what terrible thing are they going to do!” she cried in anguish. “We’ll have to save him. Can’t you see? We can’t leave him. It’ll take time to get help. Oh, Mr. Sangerly——”
“It’s a terrible situation, I know,” he interrupted gently; “but you must understand that these ruffians will hesitate at nothing. When they would plan to murder poor Lennox, lying in bed, unable to defend himself, what consideration would they give us?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know!” she moaned. “Perhaps you’re right. I can’t think clearly. Merciful Father, have pity on——” She broke off, glaring intently ahead. “There they are! There they are!”
As she spoke, the galloping mass of the night riders came into view. The roadster bore down on it rapidly, and the powerful rays of the headlights growing brighter and brighter, startled the horses. Those in the rear began bolting in fright, swerving sharply, unmanageable for the instant. But that instant proved sufficient in which to throw the entire body into confusion. It split, scattering to either side of the road, and Lex, a cold hand clutching his heart, steered the car into the breach, stepping on the gas as he did so.
A deafening roar went up from the cavalcade. A hail of bullets riddled the radiator. Racing alongside, several of the riders thrust their six-shooters down on Lex and the girl, commanding a halt. Dot got a fleeting glimpse of her father, bareheaded, his face ashen with terror. He sat astride a horse, his hands tied behind him. Lex brought the machine to a stop, and the mob surrounded it.
“Out of that buzz wagon, partner!” cried Big George Rankin, spurring forward. “It seems to me you’re itching for that coat of tar I promised you. You can’t monkey with a law-and-order bunch in these parts without getting your feet wet. Kid,” addressing Dot, “you hop out of there, too. I suppose, Mr. Sangerly, you were on your way to spread the alarm, eh? Well, we’ll attend to you before we do anything else. You’re a pretty wise bird—in Los Angeles,” he added significantly.
The whole troop was by now drawn around the roadster—a grim company, surely, what with their grotesque, blood-red handkerchief masks and attitude of lawless abandon. Lex and Dot stood on the ground near the roadster. The girl was weeping audibly, gazing with distracted eyes through the press of horsemen for sight of Lemuel.
“Father!” she cried again and again, her agonized voice rising above the chorus of menacing suggestions as to what should be done with the meddlers of the night’s business. But she got no answer to her passionate cry.
Day was breaking fast, as is usual on the Southwestern deserts. Soapweed Plains lay cold and gray and mysterious to the eye, its vast stretches of brush and sand resembling some gigantic crazy-quilted design. The Geerusalem Hills rose near at hand, looking like a great dab of mixed paint—a vividly mineralized pile of granite and porphyritic rock.
Rankin and two other men were conversing in low animated tones, trying to arrive at some decision concerning the disposal of Dot and Lex. They were not agreeing.
Suddenly a shot rang out from beyond the circle, followed by the gurgling cry of a man. There was a wild scamper of hoofs, then the sharp crack of a quirt across a horse’s withers. A volley screamed over the roadster. The riders clustered around it hesitated an instant. Another volley scattered them like chaff, dropping three of their number. This way and that they dashed madly, every man for himself. Rankin roared out a command, hurling a string of oaths after them.
“If you’re lookin’ for Billy Gee, here he is. Come take him! Come on, you brave wallopers! You—Rankin!” shouted a lone horseman, sitting his mount some distance away. He fired, and the leader’s hat went sailing off his head. Emptying his revolver wildly at the other, Rankin, fuming with rage, swung his horse about and sped after his followers.
A wild thrill swept Dot. She stared in blank amazement at the erect slim figure of their rescuer. Far behind him, racing across the plains like mad, went another rider, her father, and Billy Gee, the outlaw, the hero of her romantic dreams, was covering his retreat, holding in nervous indecision two score ruffians who faltered at the mere mention of that magic name, which stood for open defiance of law! She knew that Billy Gee must have been a member of that mob, that he had joined it with the express purpose of liberating her father at the first opportunity.
While she gazed at him these things flashed through her mind; and into her bosom came an ecstasy, sweeter than any she had ever known. Out there in the cold gray dawn of Soapweed Plains, was the man she loved, alone, dauntlessly challenging a heavily armed cavalcade that had visited its wrath on the Huntington home because of him, a cowardly crew whom he had dispersed with a dozen shots!
On and on, dashed Lemuel, horse and rider growing smaller and smaller in the distance. The enemy, under Rankin’s repeated abuse and threats, had drawn rein a few hundred yards away. It began a cautious approach, firing as it came. Billy Gee waited. Dot, becoming alarmed at his inactivity, now noticed that, besides being out of revolver range, he gripped a rifle. In that he had a decided advantage—one which he proceeded to put to use with demoralizing effect.
He brought up the weapon suddenly. There was a flash, and one of the horsemen slumped in the saddle. Again and again the rifle cracked. The morale of the mob ebbed in the face of that unerring marksmanship. The outlaw reloaded, and with something of that dare-devil spirit which had made him the terror of the region, dug spurs to his horse and charged straight for the nearest group of riders, firing with deadly precision as he rode. The group made to stand its ground, but the very fact that this advancing foe was the dreaded bandit of the Mohave, whose past death-defying exploits had set them agog with awe and wonder, proved too much for their vaunted temerity. They whirled about in a panic, and after them went the remaining members of the band, the rifle bullets whining in their ears.
Billy Gee reined in his horse and watched the rout he had caused. Then the very thing he could have predicted came to pass. The horsemen stopped a quarter of a mile off, congregated to talk over a plan of action. Rankin was not for giving up. Billy could hear him bellowing out commands, urging his fellows with curse and taunt back to the attack and the extermination of the outlaw.