LITMIR.BIZ

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      Chapter 17.

       Hidden Valley

       Table of Contents

      Across the desert into the hills, where the sun was setting in a great splash of crimson in the saddle between two distant peaks, a bunch of cows trailed heavily. Their tongues hung out and they panted for water, stretching their necks piteously to low now and again. For the heat of an Arizona summer was on the baked land and in the air that palpitated above it.

      But the end of the journey was at hand and the cowpuncher in charge of the drive relaxed in the saddle after the easy fashion of the vaquero when he is under no tension. He did not any longer cast swift, anxious glances behind him to make sure no pursuit was in sight. For he had reached safety. He knew the 'Open sesame' to that rock wall which rose sheer in front of him. Straight for it he and his companion took their gather, swinging the cattle adroitly round a great slab which concealed a gateway to the secret canon. Half a mile up this defile lay what was called Hidden Valley, an inaccessible retreat known only to those who frequented it for nefarious purposes.

      It was as the man in charge circled round to head the lead cows in that a faint voice carried to him. He stopped, listening. It came again, a dry, parched call for help that had no hope in it. He wheeled his pony as on a half dollar, and two minutes later caught sight of an exhausted figure leaning against a cottonwood. He needed no second guess to surmise that she was lost and had been wandering over the sandy desert through the hot day. With a shout, he loped toward her, and had his water bottle at her lips before she had recovered from her glad surprise at sight of him.

      “You'll feel better now,” he soothed. “How long you been lost, ma'am?”

      “Since ten this morning. I came with my aunt to gather poppies, and somehow I got separated from her and the rig. These hills look so alike. I must have got turned round and mistaken one for another.”

      “You have to be awful careful here. Some one ought to have told you,” he said indignantly.

      “Oh, they told me, but of course I knew best,” she replied, with quick scorn of her own self-sufficiency.

      “Well, it's all right now,” the cowpuncher told her cheerfully. He would not for a thousand dollars have told her how near it had come to being all wrong, how her life had probably depended upon that faint wafted call of hers.

      He put her on his horse and led it forward to the spot where the cattle waited at the gateway. Not until they came full upon them did he remember that it was dangerous for strange young women to see him with those cattle and at the gateway to the Hidden canon.

      “They are my uncle's cattle. I could tell the brand anywhere. Are you one of his riders? Are we close to the Rocking Chair Ranch?” she cried.

      He flung a quick glance at her. “Not very close. Are you from the Rocking Chair?”

      “Yes. I'm Mr. Mackenzie's niece.”

      “Major Mackenzie's daughter?” demanded the man quickly.

      “Yes.” She said it with a touch of annoyance, for he looked at her as a man does who has heard of her before. She knew that the story had been bruited far and wide of how she had passed through the hands of the train robbers carrying thirty thousand dollars on her person. She had no doubt that it was in this connection her rescuer had heard of her.

      He drew off to one side and called his companion to him.

      “Hardman, you ride up to the ranch and tell Leroy I've just found Miss Mackenzie wandering around on the desert, lost. Ask him whether I'm to bring her up. She's played out and can't travel far, tell him.”

      The showman rode on his errand and the other returned to Helen.

      “You better light, ma'am. We'll have to wait here a few minutes,” he explained.

      He helped her dismount. She did not understand why it was necessary to wait, but that was his business and not hers. Her roving eyes fell upon the cattle again.

      “They ARE my uncle's, aren't they?”

      “They were,” he corrected. “Cattle change hands a good deal in this country,” he added dryly.

      “Then you're not one of his riders?” Her stark eyes passed over him swiftly.

      “No, ma'am.”

      “Are we far from the Rocking Chair?”

      “A right smart distance. You've been traveling, you see, for eight or nine hours.”

      It occurred to her that there was something elusive, something not quite frank, about the replies of this young man. Her glance raked him again and swept up the details of his person. One of them that impressed itself upon her mind was the absence of a finger on his right hand. Another was that he was a walking arsenal. This startled her, though she was not yet afraid. She relapsed into silence, to which he seemed willing to consent. Once and again her glance swept him. He looked a tough, weather-beaten Westerner, certainly not a man whom a woman need be afraid to meet alone on the plains, but the oftener she looked the more certain she became that he was not a casual puncher busy at the legitimate work of his craft.

      “Do you—live near here?” she asked presently.

      “I live under my hat, ma'am,” he told her.

      “Sometimes near here, sometimes not so near.”

      This told her exactly nothing.

      “How far did you say it was to the Rocking Chair?”

      “I didn't say.”

      At the sound of a horses footfall she turned, and she saw that whereas they had been two, now they were three. The newcomer was a slender, graceful man, dark and lithe, with quick, piercing eyes, set deep in the most reckless, sardonic face she had ever seen.

      The man bowed, with a sweep of his hat almost derisive. “Miss Mackenzie, I believe.”

      She met him with level eyes that confessed no fear.

      “Who are you, sir?”

      “They call me Wolf Leroy.”

      Her heart sank. “You and he are the men that held up the Limited.''

      “If we are, you are the young lady that beat us out of thirty thousand dollars. We'll collect now,” he told her, with a silky smile and a glitter of white, even teeth.

      “What do you mean? Do you think I carry money about with me?”

      “I didn't say that. We'll put it up to your father.”

      “My father?”

      “He'll have to raise thirty thousand dollars to redeem his daughter.” He let his bold eyes show their admiration. “And she's worth every cent of it.”

      “Do you mean—” She read the flash of triumph in his ribald eyes and broke off. There was no need to ask him what he meant.

      “That's what I mean exactly, ma'am. You're welcome to the hospitality of Hidden Valley. What's ours is yours. You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but I reckon YOU'RE NOT WELCOME TO GO WHENEVER YOU WANT TO—not till we get that thirty thousand.”

      “You talk as if he were a millionaire,” she told him scornfully.

      “The major's got friends that are. If it's a showdown he'll dig the dough up. I ain't a bit worried about that. His brother, Webb, will come through.”

      “Why should he?” She stood as straight and unbending as a young pine, courage regnant in the very poise of the fine head. “You daren't harm a hair of my head, and he knows it. For your life, you daren't.”

      His eyes glittered. Wolf Leroy was never a safe man to fling a challenge at. “Don't you be too sure of that, my dear. There ain't one thing on this green

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