The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 36

by Louis Joseph Vance

 

CHAPTER XXXVI
The Painted Hills

IN THE first rush of golden day the party came quietly into the town of Mesa, riding slowly in order that the noise of their approach might not warn the fugitives, whom Hopi asserted confidently would still be sound asleep in the accommodations offered by the town's one hotel.

It was to be termed a town only in courtesy, this Mesa: a straggling street of shacks, the halfway station between the railroad and the mining-camps secreted in the fastnesses of the Painted Hills, camps now abandoned, their very names faded out of the memory of mankind.

Midway in this string of edifices the hotel stood, an unpainted wooden edifice, mainly veranda and barroom as to its lower floor. Judith watched the windows of the second floor, and she alone of the four detected the face at one of them that showed for one brief instant and then was gone. It was the face of Alan Law.

Alighting with every precaution to avoid noise, the party left its horses "hitched to the ground" and

 

SHE HELD THE "DEATH SIGN" IN HER HAND.

 

 

ALAN AND ROSE TAKE A DESPERATE CHANCE TO ESCAPE.

 

entered the hotel. Two sentences exchanged between Hopi Jim and a blear-eyed fellow behind the bar sealed their confidence with conviction: the three fugitives were guests of the house, occupying two of the three rooms that composed its upper story.

In the rush that followed up the narrow stairway Judith led with such spirit that not even Marrophat suspected her revolver was poised solely with intent to shoot his own from his hand the instant he levelled it at a human target.

Closed and locked doors confronted them, and their summons educed no response; while the first door, when broken in, discovered nothing more satisfactory than an unoccupied room, its empty bed bearing the imprint of a woman's body. From the one window, looking down the side of the house, Texas announced that the woman had not escaped by jumping out.

So it seemed that the three must have had warning of their arrival, after all, and presumably were now herded together in the adjoining room, which looked out over the veranda roof, waiting in fear and trembling for the assault that soon came.

But it met with more stubborn resistance than had been anticipated. The door had been barricaded from within. Four minutes and the united efforts of four men (including the bleary loafer of the barroom) were required to overcome its inert resistance. Even when it was down, the room was found to be as empty as the first. But the fingers of two hands gripping the edge of the veranda roof showed the way the fugitives had flown, and these vanished instantly as the room was invaded.

Followed a swift rush of hoofs down the dusty street and a chorus of blasphemy in the hotel hallway, for Judith had headed the rush for the staircase and contrived to block it for a full half-minute by pretending to stumble and twist her ankle. In spite of that alleged injury, she never limped, and wasn't a yard behind the first who broke from the hotel, nor yet appreciably behind in vaulting to saddle.

Well up the road a cloud of dust half obscured the shapes of three who rode for their lives. The pursuit was off in a twinkling and well bunched, Marrophat's mount leading by a nose, Judith second, Hopi Jim and Texas but little in the rear. Then that happened which brought Judith's heart into her mouth. The foremost of the horses ridden by the three in flight stumbled and fell in such wise that its rider must have been crushed but for miraculous luck and agility.

Just then a puff of wind whipped the curtain of dust aside and showed the figure of a woman standing in the roadway a few feet distant from the fallen horse—Rose, who had somehow managed to fall upon her feet, waiting with a bright face of confidence for Alan to overtake her. And Alan, who had been riding well to the rear, was abreast her in a flash.

Leaning out as he swept up, without drawing rein, the man wrapped an arm round the woman and lifted her lightly from the ground, setting her in the saddle before him in the flutter of a heartbeat. As if the added weight were but a stimulant, his horse let out its stride.

At this, Judith heard an oath muttered beside her and saw Marrophat jerking a revolver from its holster. The weapon swept up and to a level, but as the hammer fell Judith's horse cannoned heavily against the other, deflecting the bullet hopelessly. The shock of collision was so great that Marrophat kept his seat with difficulty. He turned toward Judith a face livid with rage.

Simultaneously, Judith saw Alan lean back over his horse's rump and open fire. An instant later his companion, Barcus, imitated his example.

In immediate consequence, Texas dropped reins, slumped forward over the pommel, then, losing the stirrups, pitched headlong to the ground, while Hopi Jim's horse stopped short, precipitating his rider over his head, and dropped dead.