"We'll try it, seh. Y'u know this country better than I do, and I'll give y'u a free hand. Unless there's a slip up in your calculations, you'd ought to be right."
"Good enough, lieutenant. I'm betting on those plans myself," the other answered promptly, and added, as he looked out into the night: "By that notch in the hills, we'd ought to be close to the tank now. She's slowing up. I reckon we can slip out to the vestibule, and get off at the far side of the track without being noticed much."
This they found easy enough. Five minutes later number seven was steaming away into the distant desert. Flatray gave a sharp, shrill whistle; and from behind some sand dunes emerged two men and four horses.
"Anything new?" asked the sheriff as they came nearer.
"Not a thing, cap," answered one of them.
"Boys, shake hands with the famous Lieutenant O'Connor," said Flatray, with a sneer hid by the darkness. "Lieutenant, let me make you acquainted with Jeff Jackson and Buck Lane."
"Much obliged to meet you," grinned Buck as he shook hands.
They mounted and rode toward the notch in the hills that had been pointed out to the ranger. The moon was up; and a cold, silvery light flooded the plain. Seen in this setting, the great, painted desert held more of mystery, of beauty, and less of the dead monotony that glared endlessly from arid, barren reaches. The sky of stars stretched infinitely far, and added to the effect of magnitude.
The miles slipped behind them as they moved forward, hour after hour, their horses holding to the running walk that is the peculiar gait of the cow country. They rode in silence, with the loose seat and straight back of the vaquero. Except the ranger, all were dressed for riding--Flatray in corduroys and half-knee laced boots; his men in overalls, chaps, flannel shirts, and the broad-brimmed sombrero of the Southwest. All four were young men; but there was an odd difference in the expressions of their faces.
Jackson and Lane had the hard-lined faces, with something grim and stony in them, of men who ride far and hard with their lives in their hands. The others were of a higher type. Flatray's dark eyes were keen, bold, and restless. One might have guessed him a man of temperament, capable of any extremes of conduct--often the victim of his own ungovernable whims and passions. Just as he looked a picture of all the passions of youth run to seed, so the ranger seemed to show them in flower. There was something fine and strong and gallant in his debonair manner. His warm smile went out to a world that pleased him mightily.
They rode steadily, untired and untiring. The light of dawn began to flicker from one notched summit to another. Out of the sandy waste they came to a water hole, paused for a drink, and passed on. For the delay of half an hour might mean the escape of their prey.
They came into the country of crumbling mesas and painted cliffs, of hillsides where greasewood and giant cactus struggled from the parched earth. This they traversed until they came to plateaus, terminating in foothills, crevassed by gorges deep and narrow. The caons grew steeper, rock ridges more frequent. Gradually the going became more difficult.
Trails they seldom followed. Washes, with sides like walls, confronted them. The ponies dropped down and clambered up again like mountain goats. Gradually they were ascending into the upper country, which led to the wild stretches where the outlaws lurked. In these watersheds were heavy pine forests, rising from the gulches along the shoulders of the peaks.
A maze of caons, hopelessly lost in the hill tangle into which they had plunged, led deviously to a twisting pass, through which they defiled, to drop into a vista of rolling waves of forest-clad hills. Among these wound countless hidden gulches, known only to those who rode from out them on nefarious night errands.
The ranger noted every landmark, and catalogued in his mind's map every gorge and peak; from what he saw, he guessed much of which he could not be sure. It would be hard to say when his suspicions first became aroused. But as they rode, without stopping, through what he knew must be Powderhorn Pass, as the men about him quietly grouped themselves so as to cut off any escape he might attempt, as they dropped farther and farther into the meshes of that forest-crowned net which he knew to be the Roaring Fork country, he did not need to be told he was in the power of MacQueen's gang.
Yet he gave no sign of what he knew. As daylight came, so that they could see each other distinctly, his face showed no shadow of doubt. It was his cue to be a simple victim of credulity, and he played it to the finish.
Without warning, through a narrow gulch which might have been sought in vain for ten years by a stranger, they passed into the rim of a bowl-shaped valley. Timber covered it from edge to edge, but over to the left a keen eye could see a thinning of the foliage. Toward this they went, following the sidehill and gradually dipping down through heavy underbrush. Before him the officer of rangers saw daylight, and presently a corral, low roofs, and grazing horses.
"Looks like some one lives here," he remarked amiably.
They were already riding into the open. In front of one of the log cabins the man who had called himself Flatray swung from his saddle.
"Better 'light, lieutenant," he suggested carelessly. "We'll eat breakfast here."
"Don't care if we do. I could eat a leather mail sack, I'm that hungry," the ranger answered, as he, too, descended.
His guide was looking at him with an expression of open, malevolent triumph. He could scarce keep it back long enough to get the effect he wanted.
"Yes, we'll eat breakfast here--and dinner, and supper, and breakfast to-morrow, and then about two more breakfasts."
"I reckon we'll be too busy to sit around here," laughed his prisoner.
The other ignored his comment. "And after that, it ain't likely you'll do much more eating."
"I don't quite get the point of that joke."
"You'll get it soon enough! You'd _savez_ it now, if you weren't a muttonhead. As it is, I'll have to explain it. Do you remember capturing Tony Chaves two years ago, lieutenant?"
The ranger nodded, with surprise in his round, innocent eyes.
"What happened to him?" demanded the other. A child could have seen that he was ridden by a leering, savage triumph.
"Killed trying to escape four days later."
"Who killed him?"
"I did. It was necessary. I regretted it."
A sudden spasm of cruelty swept over the face of the man confronting him. "Tony was my partner."
"Your partner?"
"That's right. I've been wanting to say 'How d'ye do?' ever since, Lieutenant O'Connor. I'm right glad to meet you."
"But--I don't understand." He did, however.
"It'll soak through, by and by. Chew on this: You've got just ninety-six hours to live--exactly as long as Tony lived after you caught him! You'll be killed trying to escape. It will be necessary, just as you say it was with him; but I reckon I'll not do any regretting to speak of."
"You would murder me?"
"Well, I ain't particular about the word I use." MacQueen leaned against the side of his horse, his arm thrown across its neck, and laughed in slow maliciousness. "Execute is the word I use, though--if you want to know."
He had made no motion toward his weapon, nor had O'Connor; but the latter knew without looking that he was covered vigilantly by both of the other men.
"And who are you?" the ranger asked, though he was quite sure of the answer.
"Men call me Black MacQueen," drawled the other.
"MacQueen! But you said----"
"That I was Flatray. Yep--I lied."
O'Connor appeared to grope with this in amazement.
"One has to stretch the truth sometimes