Part 20 (1/2)

His arms tightened about her again.

”You're all right now,” he repeated gently. He was not conscious of the sobbing break in his voice, or of the great, throbbing love that it breathed to her. He tried to speak calmly. ”There's nothing wrong--nothing. The heat made you sick. But you're all right now--”

From beyond the hill there came a sound that made him break off with a sudden, quick breath. It was the sharp, stinging report of Billinger's carbine! Once, twice, three times--and then there followed more distant shots!

”He's come up with them!” he cried. The fury of fight, of desire for vengeance, blazed anew in his face. There was pain in the grip of his arm about the girl.

”Do you feel strong--strong enough to ride fast?” he asked. ”There's only one man with me, and there are five of them. It's murder to let him fight it alone!”

”Yes--yes--” whispered the girl, her arms tightening round him. ”Ride fast--or put me off. I can follow--”

It was the first time that he had heard her voice since that last evening up at Lac Bain, many months before, and the sound of it thrilled him.

”Hold tight!” he breathed.

Like the wind they swept across the prairie and up the slope of the hill. At the top Philip reined in. Three or four hundred yards distant lay a thick clump of poplar trees and a thousand yards beyond that the first black escarpments of the Bad Lands. In the s.p.a.ce between a horseman was galloping fiercely to the west. It was not Billinger. With a quick movement Philip slipped the girl to the ground, and when she sprang a step back, looking up at him in white terror, he had whipped out one of his big service revolvers.

”There's a little lake over there among those trees,” he said. ”Wait there--until I come back!”

He raced down the slope--not to cut off the flying horseman--but toward the clump of poplars. It was Billinger he was thinking of now. The agent had fired three shots. There had followed other shots, not Billinger's, and after that his carbine had remained silent. Billinger was among the poplars. He was hurt or dead.

A well-worn trail, beaten down by transient rangerss big revolver showing over his horse's ears. A hundred paces and the timber gave place to a sandy dip, in the center of which was the water hole. The dip was not more than an acre in extent. Up to his knees in the hole was Billinger's riderless horse, and a little way up the sand was Billinger, doubled over on his hands and knees beside two black objects that Philip knew were men, stretched out like the dead back at the wreck.

Billinger's yellow-mustached face, pallid and twisted with pain, looked over them as Philip galloped across the open and sprang out of his saddle. With a terrible grimace he raised himself to his knees, antic.i.p.ating the question on Philip's lips.

”Nothing very bad, Steele,” he said. ”One of the cusses pinked me through the leg, and broke it, I guess. Painful, but not killing. Now look at that!”

He nodded to the two men lying with their faces turned up to the hot glare of the sun. One glance was enough to tell Philip that they were dead, and that it was not Billinger who had killed them. Their bearded faces had stiffened in the first agonies of death. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were soaked with blood and their arms had been drawn down close to their sides. As he looked the gleam of a metal buckle on the belt of the dead man nearest him, caught Philip's eye. He took a step nearer to examine it and then drew back. This bit of metal told the story--it bore the letters R.N.W.M.P.

”I thought so,” he muttered with a slight catch in his voice. ”You didn't follow my good advice, Bucky Nome, and now you reap the harvest of your folly. You have paid your debt to M'sieur Janette.”

Then Philip turned quickly and looked back at Billinger. In his hand the agent held a paper package, which he had torn open. A second and similar package lay in the sand in front of him.

”Currency!” he gasped. ”It's a part of the money stolen from the express car. The two hundred thousand was done up in five packages, and here are two of 'em. Those men were dead when I came, and each had a package lying on his breast. The fellow who pinked me was just leaving the dip!”

He dropped the package and began ripping down his trouser leg with a knife. Philip dropped on his knees beside him, but Billinger motioned him back.

”It's not bleeding bad,” he said. ”I can fix it alone.”

”You're certain, Billinger--”

”Sure!” laughed the agent, though he was biting his lips until they were necked with blood. ”There's no need of you wasting time.”

For a moment Philip clutched the other's hand.

”We can't understand what this all means, old man--the carrying off of--of Isobel--and the money here, but we'll find out soon!”

”Leave that confounded carbine,” exclaimed Billinger, as the other rose to mount. ”I did rotten work with it, and the other fellow fixed me with a pistol. That's why I'm not bleeding very much.”

The outlaw had disappeared in the black edge of the Bad Lands when Philip dashed up out of the dip into the plain. There was only one break ahead of him, and toward this he urged his horse. In the entrance to the break there was another sandy but waterless dip, and across this trailed the hoof-prints of the outlaws' mounts, two at a walk--one at a gallop.

At one time, ages before, the break had been the outlet of a stream pouring itself out between jagged and cavernous walls of rock from the black heart of the upheaved country within. Now the bed of it was strewn with broken trap and ma.s.ses of boulders, cracked and dried by centuries of blistering sun.

Philip's heart beat a little faster as he urged his horse ahead, and not for an instant did his c.o.c.ked revolver drop from its guard over the mare's ears. He knew, if he overtook the outlaws in retreat, that there would be a fight, and that it would be three against one. That was what he hoped for. It was an ambush that he dreaded. He realized that if the outlaws stopped and waited for him he would be at a terrible disadvantage. In open fight he was confident His prairie-bred mount took the rough trail at a swift canter, evading the boulders and knife-edged trap in the same guarded manner that she galloped over prairie-dog and badger holes out upon the plain. Twice in the ten minutes that followed their entrance into the chasm Philip saw movement ahead of him, and each time his revolver leaped to it. Once it was a wolf, again the swiftly moving shadow of an eagle sweeping with spread wings between him and the sun. He watched every concealment as he approached and half swung in his saddle in pa.s.sing, ready to fire.