The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 37
CHAPTER XXXVII
The Up Trail
IT WAS simply an accident," was all the satisfaction Judith would afford Marrophat in return for his insistent expostulations.
But for her, he asserted, the chase would have ended with the pressure of his finger on the trigger.
"I had him covered, I tell you!" he raved. "If you'd minded your horse, we'd be on our way back to your father now with the body of Alan Law!"
"You flatter yourself," she retorted. "What was it we were saying, only last night, about the quality of your marksmanship?"
Mumbling his indignation, the man swung his horse round and trotted off after Hopi Jim, leaving the girl to smile openly at his discomfiture.
But she smiled prematurely, for in the brief interval that elapsed before his return with Hopi Jim, Marrophat contrived to persuade the bandit that Judith had been responsible for their ill luck. As a consequence, the only information as to their purpose that she was able to extract from either man, when the pursuing party turned aside from the main trail, some distance from Mesa, was that Hopi Jim knew a short cut through the range, via what he termed the upper trail, by which they hoped to be able to head the fugitives off before they could gain the desert on the far side of the hills.
And the trail proved rough, narrow, and tortuous, winding along the ridge-pole of an unholy wilderness. Only at long intervals did they draw rein, to permit Hopi Jim to make reconnaissance of the lower trail that threaded the valley on the far side of the ridge-pole.
Toward noon he returned in haste from the last of these surveys, and threw himself upon his horse with the advice:
"We've headed 'em! Can make it now if we ride like all get-out!"
For half an hour more they pushed on at their best speed, and at length drew rein at a point where the trail crossed the ridge and widened out upon a long, broad ledge that overhung the valley of the lower trail, with a clear drop to the latter from the brink of a good two hundred feet.
One hasty look into the valley evoked a grunt of satisfaction from Hopi Jim.
"Just in time," he asseverated. "There they come! Ten minutes more …"
His smile answered Marrophat's with unspeakably cruel significance.
"Texas will sleep better to-night when he knows how I've squared the deal for him!" the bandit declared.
"What are you going to do?" Judith demanded.
A gesture drew her attention to a huge boulder poised on the very lip of the chasm.
"We're going to tip that over on your friends, Miss Judith," Marrophat replied. "Simple, neat, efficient—eh? What more can you ask?"
She answered only with an irrepressible gesture of horror. Marrophat's laugh followed her as she turned away.
For some moments she strained her vision vainly. Then she made out the faintly marked line of the lower trail and caught a glimpse of three figures, mounted, toiling painfully toward the point where death awaited them.
Hastily she glanced over-shoulder. Hopi Jim and Marrophat were straining themselves against the boulder without budging it an inch, for all its apparent nicety of poise. For an instant a wild hope flashed through her mind, it was exorcised when Hopi Jim stepped back and uttered a few words of which only two—"dynamite" and "fuse" reached her ears.
Then he turned and lumbered off to a rude plank cabin which, hidden in the brush nearby, had until that moment escaped Judith's notice. He kicked open the door, entered, and returned bringing a short length of dynamite, a coil of prepared fuse, and a small spade.
Kneeling beside the boulder he dug busily for an instant, then lodged the stick, attached the fuse, and crawling on his belly to the edge of the cliff, looked down, to carefully calculate the length of the fuse by the distance of the party down below from the spot where the rock must fall.
But while he was so engaged, and Marrophat aided him, all eager interest, Judith was taking advantage of their disregard of her.
Love had changed the nature of this woman. A fortnight since she would have applauded the scheme, callous to the hideousness of the end it was designed to compass. To-day … she felt a little faint and sick when she considered what might befall were she unable to give warning.
Unbuttoning her jacket, she slipped a playing-card from her pocket, a Trey of Hearts, and with a pencil scribbled on its face—"Danger! Go back!"
Then finding a bit of rock, she bound the card to it and approached the brink. Hopi Jim was meticulously shortening the fuse, Marrophat absorbed in watching him.
In the cañon below the three were within two minutes of the danger-point. It was no trick at all to drop the stone so that it fell within a dozen feet of the leading horseman. She saw him dismount and pick up the warning.
At the same time Hopi Jim and Marrophat jumped up and ran back, each seizing and holding his horse. Constrained to do likewise, Judith waited with a throbbing heart. …
As the explosion smote dull echoes from the flanks of the Painted Hills, the boulder teetered reluctantly on the brink, then disappeared, followed by a rush of earth and gravel.
Presently, from the cañon below, a dull rumour of galloping hoofs advertised the failure of their attempt.
And then the girl made a surprising little speech to the cruelly chagrined men: "Gentlemen, I've something to say that needs your attention, likewise your respect. It is this: I am parting company with you. I am riding west by this trail. If either of you care to follow me"—the automatic flashed ominously in the sun-glare—"it will be with full knowledge of the consequences. If you are well advised, you will turn back and report your failure to my father."
She nodded curtly and swung her horse round.
"And what shall I tell your father from you?" Marrophat demanded.
"What you please," the girl replied, flashing an impish smile over-shoulder. "I am done with him as well as you."
She thrust heels into her horse's flanks and sped away at a reckless pace.
"Well," Mr. Marrophat admitted confidentially to Mr. Slade, "I'm damned!"
"And that ain't all," Mr. Slade confided in Mr. Marrophat, whipping out his own revolver, "you're being held up, too. I'll take those guns of yourn, friend, and what else you've got about you that's of value, including your hoss—and when you get back to Old Man Trine you can just tell him, with my best compliments, that I've quit the job and lit out after that daughter of hisn. She's a heap sight more attractive than nineteen thousand dollars, and not half so hard to earn."