“No more offensive than your news,” said Sunset wearily. He got up and tried to give her the tea again but she would have none of it. He crossed the room and threw some wood on the fire and then sat on his heels before the blaze, pulling a frying pan disconsolately toward him. She heard him mutter, “If that don’t beat hell …”
Now that his presence was more remote, she sank back on the pillow he had made from a buffalo robe and looked steadily at him from the protecting darkness of the bunk.
She was very afraid, as she had every right to be. Everything about this country had filled her with uneasy awe and she had begun to understand how little she knew about the world.
The dizziness passed slowly from her and she began to consider her problem. She thought of escape but knew instantly that she was somewhere far from any habitations or towns. The way must be far and the trails alive with danger.
She wondered how much harm she could expect from this tall bandit and fell to studying his profile against the now-leaping flames.
He was young, probably in his early twenties. His face was lean and hard but there was a reckless strength to it which might have been fascinating to her in other circumstances, so different was it from the weak, white visages of the men she had danced with so lately.
His costume was strange to her. She had never seen a man dressed wholly in soft white leather before. His spurs were bright and she decided they were silver. Two pendants hung from each and clinked together, making music as he moved at his work.
Bat had called him “Sunset” and she decided that it must be because of his auburn hair.
There was a certain grace to his movements, a freedom of carriage which was suggestive of the wide free world in which he dwelt. He smelled of clean woodsmoke and pines and sage, and the effect of all this combined lulled her fears which became more subdued as her interest grew.
At last her glance strayed about the cabin. Wild animal skins were nailed on the walls. Two rifles hung from pegs over the door. Buffalo robes covered the floor. A saddle and a small bundle of clothing seemed to be Sunset’s only possessions outside of his guns and frying pan.
She glimpsed the messenger box under the table and suddenly she was angry again.
She looked further and beheld two other boxes, identical to the first. Three checks she had sent to a certain bank at her father’s direction. These three boxes must contain seventy-five thousand dollars—half of her mother’s fortune.
When Sunset finished his cooking he approached her bunk once more. The smell of the savory steak was almost too much for her to bear.
Sunset shrugged and set the plate down on the stool beside her. He filled the cup with fresh tea and then, without a glance at her, buckled on his guns and went outside.
After he had closed the door she stared at it for a long time. She had led a very closely guarded life up to now. Her emotions had been limited to joy and sorrow. But now she was amazed at the depths of anger and disappointment and fear which she found in herself.
She tried to keep the upper hand of control. But a traitor within her disclosed the fact that his disregard of her had added as much to her rage as the messenger boxes.
She lay back and became quiet. The steak beside her sent its appealing aroma over the edge of the bunk. She was hungry but she refused to eat. And then in sudden panic she was afraid the steak would get cold and sat up instantly.
In vain she looked for a fork or spoon. Only a harsh-looking bowie knife was there. She picked it up gingerly and turned it over, wondering what to do with it.
Baffled, she looked longingly at the steak. Not even as a child had she eaten with her fingers. Her well-served table had always been graced with a multitude of bright spoons and forks.
Again she remembered that the steak would get cold. Almost in tears she cautiously extended a small white hand to touch the warm, moist meat. She sat up and propped the pillow back of her.
She ate.
And when she had finished she looked helplessly about her for a napkin and, finding none, was forced to use her outraged Bostonian tongue to clean her fingertips.
She had no more than finished when she heard a far-off shot. She sat up in wide-eyed terror, wanting to go to the window but afraid to move.
Tensely she waited. The fire died down. The rag in the cup spluttered out. A beam of moonlight fell bluely to the rough floor.
Would he never come back?
She moved off the bunk hesitantly at last and crept to the window to look out. The hillside above the cabin was dotted with shaggy pines, silver green by moonlight. A stream tinkled nearby and a slow wind sighed mysteriously through the trees at hand.
Far off, thin in distance, a coyote yip-yapped at the moon and ended with a high, gradually sinking howl more awful than death itself. Another coyote answered and then the two sent their mournful voices together across the shivery night. A wolf’s bass threat moaned down the scale and the coyotes howled no more.
The pines soughed softly in a cold rush of wind. The brook made its light sound against the somber breeze.
The hillside was filled with mysteriously moving shadows. Two limbs creaked dolefully together, chilling Betsy until she could not move away from the spot where she stood.
Would he never come back?
She heard a thump at the back of the cabin. Slow footfalls sounded. Metal clinked and the door flew open.
She whirled, pressing herself back against the logs, trembling.
It was Sunset. He looked at her strangely for a moment and then carelessly walked to the fire and began to load a pipe. He hooked a glowing coal toward him and turned part way toward her.
“Mind if I smoke?”
“No,” she whispered.
He puffed thoughtfully for a moment and then began to lay limbs on the coals and fan them into a blaze. The light was warm and the strength of the man kneeling there was reassuring. Gradually the cold went away from her heart and she moved slowly sideways to sit down on the edge of the bunk.
“Got a deer at a pool below here,” said Sunset carelessly. “Hung him up on a peg behind the cabin. He ought to make good eating.”
For the first time in her life it occurred to her that the meat she ate had once been alive. It came as a shock.
Unreasonably then, she was once more angry with him. “How long do you expect to keep me here?”
“Until I can send you to Puma Pass, I reckon,” said Sunset, watching the fire. “Of course it’s taking a chance to let you go and I hadn’t ought to do it. They’ll spot this place when you tell them and it’s been a safe retreat until now.”
“I’m sure,” she said bitterly, “that I am a great deal of trouble to you.”
“You sure are,” said Sunset.
She glared at his fire-outlined profile.
“What about my reputation?” she said. “Have you thought of that?”
“What’s the matter with it?” said Sunset.
With cool contempt she said, “Do you expect me to sleep in the same room with you?”
“Oh,” said Sunset in a way which told her he was hurt.
He got up deliberately and knocked the ashes from his pipe. He went to the door and jerked a buffalo robe from the wall.
Suddenly she remembered the howling coyotes, the wolf, the soughing pines and the awful loneliness of the moonlight. “No! Don’t leave me!”
“Make up your mind,” said Sunset. “Do I stay or do I go?”
Meekly, but amazed at her meekness, she whispered, “You’d better stay. I’m … I’m afraid.”
Compassion was deep in his light blue eyes. He almost moved toward her. Instead he tossed the robe on the floor and sat down upon it, facing the fire.
She climbed into the bunk and turned her face to the wall, crying silently.
CHAPTER THREE
Gun-Smoke
Baptism
AT four the following afternoon, when shadows grew long and blue in the pine-scented canyon, a stone rolled sharply down the slope to land in the brook with a small splash.
Sunset had been sitting against the wall, legs crossed Indian fashion, cleaning his already burnished Colts. He sat forward, looking up and ahead, eyes alight with the awareness of danger. Mechanically his hands swung the cylinders back into place.
Betsy had not heard the stone but she could not mistake Sunset’s tenseness. She sat very still on the bunk, watching, holding her breath.
With two quick strides Sunset carefully stepped to the window and peered out. Apparently the canyon was deserted. And then a blue jay began to scold high in a sighing pine. A squirrel took it up in another quarter. A magpie’s black-and-white body swooped up the creek as it shrilled indignation.
“They’ve come for you,” said Sunset. “Get down.”
Betsy’s words came spontaneously and at the moment she did not realize their meaning. “They’ll kill you!”
“They can only attack from the front if they want to keep their cover. Lie down on the floor. A bullet might plow through that chinking.”
The word bullet was hard reality. With an awed glance at Sunset who was still erect by the window, Betsy crouched on the floor.
Sunset took a rifle down and checked its load. He pulled the other to him and worked the lever once. She saw the bright yellow glint of the cartridge as it slid out of the magazine into the chamber. She did not miss the hardness which had come into his face or the way he stood forward on the balls of his feet, listening intently.
Then, so swiftly she could not follow the motion, he threw the rifle to his shoulder, aimed through the window and fired. The thunder of the .44 deafened her. The acrid white fumes of black powder were shredded by the wind as they blew back into the room.
Another rock rolled on the hill. Or was it a rock? It started slowly, gathered speed and sound. Metal clinked and slithered over granite and then there was a thump and splash in the creek.
Sunset casually levered the Winchester and the black-barreled empty tinkled as it hit the floor to roll smokily across the rough boards within an inch of her hand. She drew her fingers back swiftly as though they had touched the hot metal.
Looking up again at Sunset, her small face was drawn with the pain of knowledge.
He had killed a man with that bullet.
Suddenly all thought was lost in the blasting eruption of hammering guns outside. Lead smacked into the cabin walls, ricocheted from the open window to scream through the room with the sound of a broken banjo string.
She hugged the floor. The louder concussions came from Sunset’s .44 Winchester. She was choked with the biting smoke, dizzy with the intensity of the noise. A bullet whacked into the bunk just above her head and a splinter of wood twitched at her yellow hair. She felt very small, very vulnerable as she pressed her face against the floor.
The sudden, savage brutality of this battle had left her dazed. There had been no prelude. Men were striving to kill men in the quickest possible time. There would be no quarter here.
Sunset stabbed slugs into the pall of smoke which drifted above the ridge of the canyon. As he changed rifles he caught a glimpse of the girl and for an instant his expression softened.
“Poor kid,” he muttered.
And then, as he fired, he found himself assailed by the strange impossibility of his position. Trotwood was up there on the ridge trying to kill him. He was shooting at Trotwood, this girl’s father, hoping that any slug might find a home in Double-Deck Trotwood’s heart.
He thought he heard a hail and stopped firing. In an instant all was silent in the canyon, and Sunset, looking across the creek, out of which two upturned boots protruded, felt the insecurity of his position. He could not kill Trotwood as long as she thought her father was worthy.
“Maloney!” came Trotwood’s voice, thin in the distance. “Send her out or we’ll come down and get her ourselves!”
Sunset turned. “That’s your father talking, ma’am.”
She lifted her blanched countenance to his. “What would they do if I went?”
“Keep hammering at me. You’d better go.”
As he watched her throw her jacket about her shoulders, he felt empty and heartsick. He had no claim upon her and she was going to leave him without speaking again.
What would Trotwood do to her?
His voice sounded flat and dry. “Are you responsible for sending this money into Puma Pass?”
She was almost to the door. She stopped. “Yes.”
“Then he’s bleeding you for what you’ve got. Don’t let him have any more. Wait. You don’t know what might happen to you, ma’am. He’s a skunk. You don’t know him. You’ve never …”
“Please.”
Sunset shrugged. He should not let her go. He ought to hold her as a hostage, use her to trap Trotwood.
But he couldn’t.
She had the door half open as she turned again. She saw he was not watching her. He was staring up at the ridge and his knuckles were white as he gripped the hot Winchester.
Her voice was small, “Goodbye.”
He did not face her again or answer her. He heard the door close, saw her walk across the clearing, saw her recoil from the boots which stuck up out of the creek, watched her as she balanced herself over the log bridge. She vanished into the pines. Twice after that he glimpsed her bright, full skirt as she ascended the windy slope. Then she disappeared over the rim.
A moment later, guns started up on the ridge.
Sunset sighted a dark hat and hoped as he pulled the trigger. A man in a red shirt sprang backwards into view and began to roll downward, starting a small avalanche. It was not Trotwood.
He had watched for a moment, exposed to view. A jagged stab of lightning ripped through his shoulder. His hand let go the Winchester stock and he could not lift his arm. He looked down at the bright gush of blood which stained the buckskin of his shirt. Again he tried to lift his arm and could not.
Up above they must have realized something of this.
Sunset sat down on her wicker trunk. He picked up a petticoat with his good left hand. He started to tear it and then stopped. He laid it carefully back and walked painfully to the small package of his own clothes. He took out a scarlet headsilk and began to wind it around his shoulder, tightly, so that the artery would be stopped.
He looked up through the window. Two men were coming carefully down the slope, guns ready, walking crouched, eyes beady under the flat brims of their wide hats.
Betsy watched them go down. Trotwood had not given orders. He had merely nodded and Simpson and another man had started. And then Trotwood had watched. Something in the blackness of his eyes had chilled her.
He had said no word of greeting. He had not asked her if she was all right. He had merely nodded and the two men had started down.
“They’ll kill him,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“Yes,” said Trotwood.
“Won’t … won’t he have a trial?”
Trotwood faced her, amused. “A trial? Oh, well, I suppose I was as green as you when I first came out. There’s neither judge nor policeman within half a thousand miles. I say, you aren’t sympathizing with him, are you? After all, my dear, he’s a bandit, a murderer, and you’re lucky to get away from him so easily. He has almost put a stop to my operations here, using some silly pretext or other. He has seventy-five thousand dollars of your money down there. We must get it back, you know.”
“Do you have to kill him?” she said.
Trotwood’s scrutiny of her was more puzzled than before. But he was too wise to press her for her reasons. It worried him, a little, the way she looked down at the cabin from between the cleft in the rocks. She was an uncommonly beautiful young woman, blond as her moth
er and quite as charming. Strange to see her against this setting of pines and gun smoke. Why had the little fool come?
Simpson and the other had reached the creek and Trotwood was eagerly giving them all his attention. He was glad to let them do this work for him. It was not a matter of bravery with Trotwood, but of authority. He had made a reputation already in other parts of the West as an excellent shot and a fast draw from a shoulder holster.
No shots came from the cabin and Betsy felt the dread within her increase until it lay like lead upon her heart. She could not understand why she felt this way; she did not try to understand.
Simpson started over the bridge.
Suddenly a bullet geysered in the stream under his feet. He hurriedly scuttled back into the shelter of the pines. His companion looked wonderingly at the cabin.
“It didn’t come from there,” said Simpson.
“It’s a trap!”
Simpson tried to stifle the growing desire to run. He did not know where the next one would strike. They might even have their backs to this unseen marksman.
Another shot showered Simpson with bark.
He ducked and glanced up to see powder smoke hanging on the opposite canyon rim.
An instant later three rapid shots blasted straight from rim to rim. Two more ripped into the depths of the canyon.
The targets ducked hastily. He raised himself now to peer across the canyon. He could not see the sniper nor could he understand why the sniper was there. A bullet snapped viciously overhead and Trotwood’s hat went sailing up and back. He ducked anew.
A loud, rough voice from nowhere bellowed, “C’mon, Sunset! I’ll keep the lobos down!”
Bat laid down another barrage from the vantage point of the rim. He kept his Winchester hot as he churned the earth and wood around Simpson and his companion, the stone and dust about Trotwood and the other man above.
Nobody saw Sunset leave the cabin.
When the firing stopped, Sunset’s horse was gone and only a scattered pile of empties marked the spot where Bat had lain.
Disgusted and out of temper, Trotwood loaded the three messenger boxes, the unwanted girl and his two dead men, and started back to Puma Pass.