“Bluffed, but not beaten,” he said, with a fierce oath which did the Scot’s heart good. “We’re not beaten,” he reiterated, “if only Jason will leave us alone, and trust us further. I’ve got to convince him. I’ve got to tell him all that’s happened, and I’ve got to persuade him to leave us here. We’ve got to go on. He can recommend my resignation, he can do what he damn well pleases, so long as he leaves me here to finish this work. I tell you, I’ve got to break up this gang of hoodlums.”
McBain’s eyes glittered.
“That’s how I feel, sir.”
“Feel? We’ve just got to do it – or clear out of the country. Man, I’d give a thousand dollars to know how they got possession of our signals. Those shots, that bluffed us, were fired by some of the gang. How did they learn it? It’s been done by spying, but – say, get on back to camp, and prepare the report of last night. Hold it up for me, and I’ll enclose a private letter to Mr. Jason. I’ll be along later.”
McBain nodded.
“You fix it, sir, so we don’t get transferred back. We need another chance badly. Maybe they won’t bluff us next time.”
He swung himself into the saddle and rode away, while Fyles, linking his arm through the faithful Peter’s reins, strolled leisurely on down the track toward the group which included Kate Seton.
As he drew near they ceased talking, and watched his approach. Their attitude was such that Fyles could not refrain from a half-bitter, half-laughing comment as he came up.
“It doesn’t take much guessing to locate the subject of your talk, Miss Kate,” he cried.
Kate’s dark eyes had no smile in them as she replied to his challenge.
“How’s that?” she inquired, while Bill and Helen watched his face.
Fyles shrugged.
“You stopped talking when you saw I was coming your way.” He laughed. “However, I guess it’s only to be expected. The boys bluffed us all right last night. It was a smartish trick. Still,” he added thoughtfully, “it’s given us an elegant lever – when the time comes.”
Kate made no answer. She was studying the man’s face, and there was a certain regret and even pity in the depths of her regard. Bill and Helen had no such feelings for him. They were frankly rejoiced at his failure.
Helen replied. “That’s so, Mr. Fyles,” she said, almost tartly, “but I guess that lever needs to help them into your traps to do any real good.”
The officer’s smile was quite good-humored, in spite of the sharpness of the girl’s reminder. What he really felt he was not likely to display here.
“Sure,” he said. “The spider weaves his web and it’s not worth a cent if the flies aren’t foolish enough to make mistakes. The spider is a student of winged insect nature, and he lays his plans accordingly. The flies always come to him – in the end.”
Bill laughed good-humoredly.
“That’s dandy,” he cried. “There’s always fool flies around. But sometimes that spider’s web gets all mussed up and broken. I’ve broke ’em myself – rather than see the fool things caught.”
Kate’s eyes were turned on the great bulk of Charlie’s brother. Even Helen looked up with bright admiration for her lover.
Fyles’s gaze was leveled directly into the innocent looking blue eyes laughing into his.
“Yes, I dare say you and other folks have broken those things up, often – but the spiders thrive and multiply. You see, when one net is busted they – make another. They don’t seem to starve ever, do they? Ever seen a spider dead of starvation?”
“Can’t say I have.” Bill shook his great head. “But maybe they’d get a bad time if they set their traps for any special flies – or fly.”
Fyles raised his powerful shoulders coldly.
“Guess the spider business doesn’t go far enough,” he said, talking directly at Big Brother Bill. “When I spoke of that lever just now, maybe you didn’t get my meaning quite clearly. That gang, who ran the liquor in last night, put themselves further up against the law than maybe they think. It was an armed attack on the police, which is quite a different thing to just simple whisky-running. Get me? The police are always glad when crooks do that. It pays them better – when the time comes.”
Bill had no reply. He suddenly experienced the chill of the cold steel of police methods. A series of painful pictures rose up before his mind’s eye, which held his tongue silent. Helen quickly came to his rescue.
“But who’s to say who did it?” she demanded.
Fyles smiled down into her pretty face.
“Those who want to save their skins – when the time comes.”
It was Helen’s turn to realize something of the irresistible nature of the work of the police. Somehow she felt that the defeat of the police last night was but a shadowy success after all, for those concerned in the whisky-running. Her thought flew at once to Charlie, and she shuddered at the suggested possibilities in Fyles’s words.
She turned away.
“Well, all I can say is, I – I hate it all, and wish it was all over and done with. Everybody’s talking, everybody’s gloating, and – and it just makes me feel scared to death.” Then she turned again to Bill. “Let’s go on,” she cried, a little desperately. “We’ll finish our shopping, and – and get away from it all. It just makes me real ill.”
She waved a farewell to Kate and moved away, and Bill, like some faithful watchdog, followed at her heels. Fyles looked after them both with serious, earnest eyes. Kate watched them smiling.
Presently Fyles turned back to her.
“Well?” he demanded.
Kate’s eyes were slowly raised to his.
“Well?” she echoed. “So – ”
She broke off. Her generous nature checked her in time. She had been about to twit him with his defeat. She sympathized with his feelings at the thought of his broken hopes.
“Better say it,” said Fyles, with a smile, in which chagrin and tenderness struggled for place. “You were going to say I have been defeated, as you told me I should be defeated.”
“I s’pose I was.” Kate glanced quickly up into his face, but the feeling she beheld there made her turn her eyes away so that they followed Bill and Helen moving down the trail. “Women are usually ungenerous to – an adversary.” Then her whole manner changed to one of kindly frankness. “Do you know my feelings are sort of mixed about your – defeat – ”
“Not defeat,” put in Fyles. “Check.”
Kate smiled.
“Well, then, ‘check.’ I am glad – delighted – since you direct all your suspicions against Charlie. Then I am full of regret for you, because – because I know the rigor of police discipline. In the eyes of the authorities you have failed – twice. Oh, if you would only attack this thing with an open mind, and not start prejudiced against Charlie. I wish you had never listened to local gossip. If that were so I could be on your side, and – and with true sportsmanship, wish you well. Besides that, I might be able to tell you things. You see, I learn many things in the village that others do not – hear.”
Fyles was studying the woman’s face closely as she spoke. And something he beheld there robbed his defeat of a good deal of its sting. Her words were the words of partisanship, and her partisanship was for another as well as himself. Had this not been so, had her partisanship been for him alone, he could well have abandoned himself to an open mind, as she desired. As it was, she drove him to a dogged pursuit of the man he was convinced was the real culprit.
“Don’t let us reopen the old subject,” he said, with a shade of irritability. “I have evidence you know nothing of, and I should be mad indeed if I changed my objective at your desire, for the sake of the unsupported belief and regard you have for this man. Let us be content to be adversaries, each working out our little campaign as we think best. Don’t waste regrets at my failures. I know the price I have to pay for them – only too well. I know, and I tell you frankly, but only you, that my career in the police may terminate in consequence. That’s all right. The prestige of the force cannot be maintained by – failures. The prestige of the force is very dear to me. If you have anything to tell me that may lead me in the direction of the real culprit, then tell me. If not – why let us be friends until – until my work has made that impossible. I – I want your friendship very much.”
Kate’s eyes were turned from him. The deep light in them was very soft.
“Do you?” she smiled. “Well – perhaps you have it, in spite of our temporary antagonism. Oh, dear – it’s all so absurd.”
Fyles laughed.
“Isn’t it? But, then, anything out of the ordinary is generally absurd, until we get used to it. Somehow, it doesn’t seem absurd that I want your – friendship. At least, not to me.”
Kate smiled up into his face.
“And yet it is – absurd.”
The man’s eyes suddenly became serious.
“Why?”
Kate shrugged.
“That’s surely explained. We are – antagonists.”
Again that look of impatience crossed the man’s keen features. As he offered no reply, Kate went on.
“About the armed attack on the police. You said it made all the difference. What is the difference?”
“Anything between twelve months in the penitentiary and twenty years – when the gang is landed.”
“Twenty years!” The woman gave a slight gasp.
The man nodded.
“And do you know the logical consequence of it all?” he inquired.
“No.” Kate’s eyes were horrified.
“Why, when next we come into conflict there will be shooting if these people are pressed. They will have to shoot to save themselves. Then there may be murder added to their list of – delinquencies. These things follow in sequence. It is the normal progress of those who put themselves on the side of crime.”
CHAPTER XXVII
AT THE HIDDEN CORRAL
Charlie Bryant urged his horse at a dangerous pace along the narrow, winding cattle tracks which threaded the upper reaches of the valley. He gave no heed to anything – the lacerating thorns, the great, knotty roots, with which the paths were studded, the overhanging boughs. His sole object seemed to be a desperate desire to reach his destination.
His horse often floundered and tripped, the man’s own clothes were frequently ripped by the thorns, and the bleeding flesh beneath laid bare, while it seemed a miracle that he successfully dodged the threatening boughs overhead.
There was a hunted look in his dark eyes, too. It was a look of concern, almost of terror. His gaze was alert and roving. Now, he was looking ahead, straining with anxiety, now he was turning this way and that in response to the mysterious woodland sounds which greeted his ears. Again, with a nervous jerk, he would rein in his horse and sit listening, with eyes staring back over the way he had come, as though fearing pursuit.
Once he thrust a hand into an inside pocket as though to reassure himself that something was there which he valued and feared to lose, and with every movement, every look of his eyes, every turn of the head, he displayed an unusual nervousness and apprehension.
At last his horse swept into the clearing of the hidden corral, and he reined it up with a jerk, and leaped from the saddle. Then he stood listening, and the apprehension in his eyes deepened. But presently it lessened, and he moved forward, and flung his reins over one of the corral fence posts. Every woodland sound, every discordant note from the heart of the valley was accounted for in his mind, so he hurried toward the flat-roofed hut, that mysterious relic of a bygone age.
He thrust the creaking door open and waited while the flight of birds swarmed past him. Then he made his way within. Once inside he paused again with that painful look of expectancy and fear in his eyes. Again this passed, and he went on quickly to the far corner of the room, and laid his hands upon the wooden lining of the wall. Then he abruptly seemed to change his mind. He removed his hands, and withdrew a largish, morocco pocketbook from an inner pocket.
It was a rather fine case, bound in embossed silver, and ornamented with a silver monogram. For some moments he looked at it as though in doubt. He seemed to be definitely making up his mind, and his whole attitude suggested his desire for its safety.
While he was still gazing at it a startled look leaped into his eyes, and his head turned as though at some suspicious sound. A moment later he reached out and slid the wooden lining of the wall up, revealing the cavity behind it, which still contained its odd assortment of garments. Without hesitation he reached up to a dark jacket and thrust the pocketbook into an inner pocket. Then, with a swift movement, he replaced the paneling and turned about.
It was the work of a moment, and as he turned about his right hand was gripping the butt of a revolver, ready and pointing at the door.
“Charlie!”
The revolver was slipped back into the man’s pocket, and Charlie Bryant’s furious face was turned toward the window opening, which now framed the features of his great blundering brother.
“You, Bill?” he cried angrily. “What in hell are you doing here?”
But Bill ignored the challenge, he ignored the tone of it. His big eyes were full of excitement.
“Come out of there – quick!” he cried sharply.
Charlie’s dark eyes had lost some of their anger in the inquiry now replacing it.
“Why?” But he moved toward the doorway.
“Why? Because Fyles is behind me. I’ve seen him in the distance.”
Charlie came around the corner of the building with the door firmly closed behind him. Bill left the window and moved across to his horse, which was standing beside that of his brother. Charlie followed him.
Neither spoke again until the horses were reached, and Bill had unhitched his reins from the corral fence. Then he turned his great blue eyes, so full of trouble, upon the small figure beside him, and he answered the other’s half-angry, half-curious challenge with a question.
“What’s this place?” he demanded. Then he added, “And what’s that cupboard in there?” He jerked his head in the direction of the hut, “I saw you close it.”
Charlie seemed to have recovered from the apprehension which had caused him to obey his brother unquestioningly. There was an angry sparkle in his eyes as he gazed steadily into Bill’s face.
“That’s none of your damn business,” he said, in a low tone of surly truculence. “I’m not here to answer any questions till you tell me the reason why you’ve had the impertinence to hunt me down. How did you know where to find me?”
Just for one moment a hot retort leaped to the other’s lips. But he checked his rising temper. His journey in pursuit of his brother had been taken after deep reflection and consultation with Helen. But the mystery of that hut, that cupboard, did more to keep him calm than anything else. His curiosity was aroused. Not mere idle curiosity, but these things, this place, were a big link in the chain of evidence that had been forged about his brother, and he felt he was on the verge of a discovery. Then there was Fyles somewhere nearby in the neighborhood. This last thought, and all it portended, destroyed his feelings of resentment.
“I s’pose you think I followed you for sheer curiosity. Guess I might well enough do so, seeing we bear the same name, and that name’s liable to stink – through you. But I didn’t, anyway. I came out here to tell you something I heard this morning, and it’s about – last night. Fyles says that the result of last night is that the gang, their leader, is now wanted for an armed attack on the police, and that the penalty is – anything up to twenty years in the penitentiary.”
Charlie’s intense regard never wavered for one moment.
“Who told you I was here?” he demanded angrily.
“No one.”
There was a sting in the sharpness of Bill’s reply. The big blue eyes were growing hot again.
“Then how did you know where to find me?” Charlie’s deep voice was full of suppressed fury.
“I didn’t know just where to find you,” Bill protested, with rising heat. “The kid told me you’d gone up the valley, but didn’t say where. I set out blindly and stumbled on your horse’s tracks. I chanced those tracks, and they led me here. Will that satisfy you?”
Charlie’s eyes were still glittering.
“Not quite. I’ll ask you to get out of my ranch. And remember this, you’ve seen me at this shack, and you’ve seen that cupboard. If you’d been anybody but my brother I’d have shot you down in your tracks. Fyles – anybody. That cupboard is my secret, and if anyone learns of it through you – well, I’ll forget you’re my brother and treat you as though you were – Fyles.”
A sudden blaze of wrath flared up in the bigger man’s eyes. But, almost as it kindled, it died out and he laughed. However, when he spoke there was no mirth in his voice.
“My God, Charlie,” he cried, holding out his big hands, “I could almost take you in these two hands and – and wring your foolish, obstinate, wicked neck. You stand there talking blasted melodrama like a born actor on the one-night stands. Your fool talk don’t scare me a little. What in the name of all that’s sacred do you think I want to send you to the penitentiary for? Haven’t I come here to warn you? Man, the rye whisky’s turned you crazy. I’m here to help, help, do you understand? Just four letters, ‘help,’ a verb which means ‘support,’ not ‘destroy.’”
Charlie’s cold regard never wavered.
“When will you clear out of – my ranch?”
Bill started. The brothers’ eyes met in a long and desperate exchange of regard. Then the big man brought his fist down upon the high cantle of his saddle with startling force.
“When I choose, not before,” he cried fiercely. “Do you understand? Here, you foolish man. I know what I’m up against. I know what you’re up against, and I tell you right here that if Fyles is going to hunt you into the penitentiary he can hunt me, too. I’m not smart, like you, on these crook games, but I’m determined that the man who lags you will get it good and plenty. I sort of hate you, you foolish man. I hate you and like you. You’ve got grit, and, by God, I like you for it, and I don’t stand to see you go down for any twenty years – alone. If Fyles gets you that way, you’re the last man he ever will get. Damn you!”
Charlie drew a deep breath. It was a sigh of pent feeling. He averted his gaze, and it wandered over the old corral inside which the wagon with its hay-rack was still standing, though its position was changed slightly. His eyes rested upon it, and passed on to the hut, about which the birds were once more gathering. They paused for some silent moments in this direction. Then they came back to the angry, waiting brother.
“I wish you weren’t such a blunderer, Bill,” he said, and his manner had become peevishly gentle. “Can’t you see I’ve got to play my own game in my own way? You don’t know all that’s back of my head. You don’t know a thing. All you know is that Fyles wants to send me down, by way of cleaning up this valley. I want him to – if he can. But he can’t. Not as long as the grass grows. He’s beaten – beaten before he starts. I don’t want help. I don’t want help from anybody. Now, for God’s sake, can’t you leave me alone?”
The tension between the two was relaxed. Bill gave an exclamation of impatience.
“You want him to – send you down?”
The warp of this man was too much for his common sense.
“If he can.”
Charlie smiled now. It was a smile of perfect confidence. Bill threw up his hands.
“Well, you’ve got me beat to a rag. I – ”
“The same as I have Fyles. But say – ”
Charlie broke off, and his smile vanished.
“Maybe I’m a crook. Maybe I’m anything you, or anybody else likes to call me. There’s one thing I’m not. I’m no bluff. You know of that cupboard in that shack. The thought’s poison to me. If any other man had found it, he wouldn’t be alive now to listen to me. Do you understand me? Forget it. Forget you ever saw it. If you dream of it, fancy it’s a nightmare and – turn over. Bill, I solemnly swear that I’ll shoot the man dead, on sight, who gives that away, or dares to look inside it. Now, we’ll get away from here.”
He sprang into the saddle and waited while his brother mounted. Then he held out his hand.
“Do you get me?” he asked.
Bill nodded, and took the outstretched hand in solemn compact.
“What you say goes,” he said easily. “But your threat of shooting doesn’t worry me a little bit.”
He gathered up his reins and the two men rode out of the clearing.
The last sound of speeding hoofs died away, and the clearing settled once more to its mysterious quiet. Only the twittering of the swarming birds on the thatched roof of the hut disturbed the silence, but, somehow, even their chattering voices seemed really to intensify it.
Thus a few minutes passed.
Then a breaking of bush and rustling of leaves gave warning of a fresh approach. A man’s head and shoulders were thrust forward, out from amid the boughs of a wild cherry bush.
His dark face peered cautiously around, and his keen eyes took in a comprehensive survey of both corral and hut. A moment later he stood clear of the bush altogether.
Stanley Fyles swiftly crossed the intervening space and entered the corral. He strode up to the wagon and examined it closely, studying its position and the wheel tracks, with a minuteness that left him in possession of every available fact. Having satisfied himself in this direction, he passed out of the corral and went over to the hut.
The screaming birds promptly protested, and flew once more from their nesting quarters in panicky dudgeon. Fyles watched them go with thoughtful eyes. Then he passed around to the door of the building and thrust it open. Another rush of birds swept past him, and he passed within. Again his searching eyes were brought into play. Not a detail of that interior escaped him. But ten minutes later he left the half-lit room for the broad light of day outside – disappointed.
For a long time he moved around the building, examining the walls, their bases and foundations. His disappointment remained, however, and, finally, with strong discontent in his expression, and an unmistakable shrug of his shoulders, he moved away.
Finally, he paused and gave a long, low whistle. He repeated it at intervals, three times, and, after awhile, for answer, the wise face of Peter appeared from among the bushes. The creature solemnly contemplated the scene. It was almost as if he were assuring himself of the safety of revealing himself. Then, with measured gait, he made his way slowly toward his master.