Sawtooth Ranch Part 20

Jack looked up at his master, looked at the cattle and took his place at Swan's heels. Swan shouted and flung his arms, and the cattle ducked, turned and galloped awkwardly away. Swan's trot did not slacken. His rifle swung rhythmically in his right hand, the muzzle tilted downward. Beads of perspiration on his forehead had merged into tiny rivulets on his cheeks and dripped off his clean-lined, square jaw. Still he ran, his breath unlaboured yet coming in whispery aspirations from his great lungs.

The full length of Skyline Meadow he ran, jumping the small beginning of Wilder Creek with one great leap that scarcely interrupted the beautiful rhythm of his stride. At the far end of the clearing, snuggled between two great pines that reached high into the blue, his squatty cabin showed red-brown against the precipitous shoulder of Bear Top peak, covered thick with brush and scraggy timber whipped incessantly by the wind that blew over the mountain's crest.

At the door Swan stopped and examined the crude fastening of the door; made himself certain, by private marks of his own, that none had entered in his absence, and went in with a great sigh of satisfaction.

It was still broad daylight, though the sun's rays slanted in through the window; but Swan lighted a lantern that hung on a nail behind the door, carried it across the neat little room, and set it down on the floor beside the usual pioneer cupboard made simply of clean boxes nailed bottom against the wall. Swan had furnished a few extra frills to his cupboard, for the ends of the boxes were fastened to hewn slabs standing upright and just clearing the floor. Near the upper shelf a row of nails held Swan's coffee cups,--four of them, thick and white, such as cheap restaurants use.

Swan hooked a finger over the nail that held a cracked cup and glanced over his shoulder at Jack, sitting in the doorway with his keen nose to the world.

"You watch out now, Yack. I shall talk to my mother with my thoughts,"

he said, drawing a hand across his forehead and speaking in breathless gasps. "You watch."

For answer Jack thumped his tail on the dirt floor and sniffed the breeze, taking in his overlapping tongue while he did so. He licked his lips, looked over his shoulder at Swan, and draped his pink tongue down over his lower jaw again.

"All right, now I talk," said Swan and pulled upon the nail in his fingers.

The cupboard swung toward him bodily, end slabs and all. He picked up the lantern, stepped over the log sill and pulled the cupboard door into place again.

Inside the dugout Swan set the lantern on a table, dropped wearily upon a rough bench before it and looked at the jars beside him, lifted his hand and opened a compact, but thoroughly efficient field wireless "set." His right fingers dropped to the key, and the whining drone of the wireless rose higher and higher as he tuned up. He reached for his receivers, ducked his head and adjusted them with one hand, and sent a call spitting tiny blue sparks from the key under his fingers.

He waited, repeating the call. His blue eyes clouded with anxiety and he fumbled the adjustments, coaxing the current into perfect action before he called again. Answer came, and Swan bent over the table, listening, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the opposite wall of the dugout. Then, his fingers flexing delicately, swiftly, he sent the message that told how completely his big heart matched the big body:

"Send doctor and trained nurse to Quirt ranch at once. Send men to Bear Top Pa.s.s, intercept man with young woman, or come to rescue if he don't cross. Have three men here with evidence to convict if we can save the girl who is valuable witness. Girl being abducted in fear of what she can tell. They plan to charge her with insanity. Urgent.

Hurry. Come ready to fight.

"S. V."

Swan had a code, but codes require a little time in the composition of a message, and time was the one thing he could not waste. He heard the gist of the message repeated to him, told the man at the other station that lives were at stake, and threw off the current.

CHAPTER XX

KIDNAPPED

Lorraine had once had a nasty fall from riding down hill at a gallop.

She remembered that accident and permitted Snake to descend Granite Ridge at a walk, which was fortunate, since it gave the horse a chance to recover a little from the strain of the terrific pace at which she had ridden him that morning. At first it had been fighting fury that had impelled her to hurry; now it was fear that drove her homeward where Lone was, and Swan, and that stolid, faithful Jim. She felt that Senator Warfield would never dare to carry out his covert threat, once she reached home. Nevertheless, the threat haunted her, made her glance often over her shoulder.

At the Thurman ranch, which she was pa.s.sing with a sickening memory of the night when she and Swan had carried her father there, Al Woodruff rode out suddenly from behind the stable and blocked trail, his six-shooter in his hand, his face stony with determination. Lorraine afterwards decided that he must have seen or heard her coming down the ridge and had waited for her there. He smiled with his lips when she pulled up Snake with a startled look.

"You're in such a hurry this morning that I thought the only way to get a chance to talk to you was to hold you up," he said, in much the same tone he had used that day at the ranch.

"I don't see why you want to talk to me," Lorraine retorted, not in the least frightened at the gun, which was too much like her movie West to impress her much. But her eyes widened at the look in his face, and she tried to edge away from him without seeming to do so.

Al stopped her by the simple method of reaching out his left hand and catching Snake by the cheek-piece of the bridle. "You don't have to see why," he said. "I've been thinking a lot about you lately. I've made up my mind that I've got to have you with me--always. This is kinda sudden, maybe, but that's the way the game runs, sometimes. Now, I want to tell yuh one or two things that's for your own good. One is that I'll have my way, or die getting it. Don't be scared; I won't hurt you. But if you try to break away, I'll shoot you, that's all.

I'm going to marry you, see, first. Then I'll make love to you afterwards. I ain't asking you if you'll marry me. You're going to do it, or I'll kill you."

Lorraine gazed at him fascinated, too astonished to attempt any move toward escape. Al's hand slipped from the bridle down to the reins, and still holding Snake, still holding the gun muzzle toward her, still looking her straight in the eyes, he threw his right leg over the cantle of his saddle and stepped off his horse.

"Put your other hand on the saddle horn," he directed. "I ain't going to hurt you if you're good."

He twitched his neckerchief off--Lorraine saw that it was untied, and that he must have planned all this--and with it tied her wrists to the saddle horn. She gave Snake a kick in the ribs, but Al checked the horse's first start and Snake was too tired to dispute a command to stand still. Al put up his gun, pulled a hunting knife from a little scabbard in his boot, sliced two pairs of saddle strings from Lorraine's saddle, calmly caught and held her foot when she tried to kick him, pushed the foot back into the stirrup and tied it there with one of the leather strings. Just as if he were engaged in an everyday proceeding, he walked around Snake and tied Lorraine's right foot; then, to prevent her from foolishly throwing herself from the horse and getting hurt, he tied the stirrups together under the horse's belly.

"Now, if you'll be a good girl, I'll untie your hands," he said, glancing up into her face. He freed her hands, and Lorraine immediately slapped him in the face and reached for his gun. But Al was too quick for her. He stepped back, picked up Snake's reins and mounted his own horse. He looked back at her appraisingly, saw her glare of hatred and grinned at it, while he touched his horse with the spurs and rode away, leading Snake behind him.

Lorraine said nothing until Al, riding at a lope, pa.s.sed the field at the mouth of Spirit Canyon where the blaze-faced roan still fed with the others. They were feeding along the creek quite close to the fence, and the roan walked toward them. The sight of it stirred Lorraine out of her dumb horror.

"You killed Fred Thurman! I saw you," she cried suddenly.

"Well, you ain't going to holler it all over the country," Al flung back at her over his shoulder. "When you're married to me, you'll come mighty close to keeping your mouth shut about it."

"I'll never marry you! You--you fiend! Do you think I'd marry a cold-blooded murderer like you?"

Al turned in the saddle and looked at her intently. "If I'm all that,"

he told her coolly, "you can figure out about what'll happen to you if you _don't_ marry me. If you saw what I done to Fred Thurman, what do you reckon I'd do to _you_?" He looked at her for a minute, shrugged his shoulders and rode on, crossing the creek and taking a trail which Lorraine did know. Much of the time they travelled in the water, though it slowed their s.p.a.ce. Where the trail was rocky, they took it and made better time.

Snake lagged a little on the upgrades, but he was well trained to lead and gave little trouble. Lorraine thought longingly of Yellowjacket and his stubbornness and tried to devise some way of escape. She could not believe that fate would permit Al Woodruff to carry out such a plan. Lone would overtake them, perhaps,--and then she remembered that Lone would have no means of knowing which way she had gone. If Hawkins and Senator Warfield came after them, her plight would be worse than ever. Still, she decided that she must risk that danger and give Lone a clue.

She dropped a glove beside the trail, where it lay in plain sight of any one following them. But presently Al looked over his shoulder, saw that one of her hands was bare, and tied Snake's reins to his saddle and his own horse to a bush. Then he went back down the trail until he found the glove. He put it into his pocket, came silently up to Lorraine and pulled off her other glove. Without a word he took her wrists in a firm clasp, tied them together again to the saddle horn, pulled off her tie, her hat, the pins from her hair.

"I guess you don't know me yet," he remarked dryly, when he had confiscated every small article which she could let fall as she rode.

"I was trying to treat yuh white, but you don't seem to appreciate it.

Now you can ride hobbled, young lady."

"Oh, I could _kill_ you!" Lorraine whispered between set teeth.

"You mean you'd like to. Well, I ain't going to give you a chance."

His eyes rested on her face with a new expression; an awakening desire for her, an admiration for the spirit that would not let her weep and plead with him.

"Say! you ain't going to be a bit hard to marry," he observed, his eyes lighting with what was probably his nearest approach to tenderness. "I kinda wish you liked me, now I've got you."

He shook her arm and laughed when she turned her face away from him, then remounted his horse, Snake moved reluctantly when Al started on.

Lorraine felt hope slipping from her. With her hands tied, she could do nothing at all save sit there and ride wherever Al Woodruff chose to lead her horse. He seemed to be making for the head of Spirit Canyon, on the side toward Bear Top.

As they climbed higher, she could catch glimpses of the road down which her father had driven almost to his death. She studied Al's back as he rode before her and wondered if he could really be cold-blooded enough to kill without compunction whoever he was told to kill, whether he had any personal quarrel with his victim or not. Certainly he had had no quarrel with her father, or with Frank.

It was long past noon, and she was terribly hungry and very thirsty, but she would not tell Al her wants if she starved. She tried to guess at his plans and at his motive for taking her away like this. He had no camping outfit, a bulkily rolled slicker forming his only burden.

He could not, then, be planning to take her much farther into the wilderness; yet if he did not hide her away, how could he expect to keep her? His motive for marrying her was rather mystifying. He did not seem sufficiently in love with her to warrant an abduction, and he was too cool for such a headlong action, unless driven by necessity.

She wondered what he was thinking about as he rode. Not about her, she guessed, except when some bad place in the trail made it necessary for him to stop, tie Snake to the nearest bush, lead his own horse past the obstruction and come back after her. Several times this was necessary.

Once he took the time to examine the thongs on her ankles, apparently wis.h.i.+ng to make sure that she was not uncomfortable. Once he looked up into her sullenly distressed face and said, "Tired?" in a humanly sympathetic tone that made her blink back the tears. She shook her head and would not look at him. Al regarded her in silence for a minute, led Snake to his own horse, mounted and rode on.

He was a murderer; he had undoubtedly killed many men. He would kill her if she attempted to escape--"and he could not catch me," Lorraine was just enough to add. Yet she felt baffled; cheated of the full horror of being kidnapped.

She had no knowledge of a bad man who was human in spots without being repentant. For love of a girl, she had been taught to believe, the worst outlaw would weep over his past misdeeds, straighten his shoulders, look to heaven for help and become a self-sacrificing hero for whom audiences might be counted upon to shed furtive tears.

Al Woodruff, however, did not love her. His eyes had once or twice softened to friendliness, but love was not there. Neither was repentance there. He seemed quite satisfied with himself, quite ready to commit further crimes for sake of his own safety or desire. He was hard, she decided, but he was not unnecessarily harsh; cruel, without being wantonly brutal. He was, in short, the strangest man she had ever seen.