Nan of Music Mountain. Frank H. Spearman
ball-bearing axles––why, man, there is no vehicle in the world built like a Thief River stage.”
“You are some wagon-maker, Jeff,” said de Spain, regarding him ironically.
Jeffries ignored every sarcasm. “This road, as you know, owns the line. And the net from the specie shipments equals the net on an ordinary railroad division. But we must have a man to run that line that can curb the disorders along the route. Calabasas Valley, de Spain, is a bad place.”
“Is it?” de Spain asked as naïvely as if he had never heard of Calabasas, though Jeffries was nervily stating a fact bald and notorious to both.
“There are a lot of bad men there,” Jeffries went on, “who are bad simply because they’ve never had a man to show them.”
“The last ‘general’ manager was killed there, wasn’t he?”
“Not in the valley, no. He was shot at Calabasas Inn.”
“Would that make very much difference in the way he felt about it?”
Jeffries, with an effort, laughed. “That’s all right, Henry! They won’t get you.” Again he extended his finger dogmatically: “If I thought they would, I wouldn’t send you down there.”
13
“Thank you.”
“You are young, ambitious: four thousand a year isn’t hanging from every telegraph-pole; it is almost twice what they are paying me.”
“You’re not getting shot at.”
“No man, Henry, knows the hour of his death. No man in the high country knows when he is to be made a target––that you well understand. Men are shot down in this country that have no more idea of getting killed than I have––or you have.”
“Don’t include me. I have a pretty good idea of getting killed right away––the minute I take this job.”
“We have temporized with this Calabasas outfit long enough,” declared Jeffries, dropping his mask at last. “Deaf Sandusky, Logan, and that squint-eyed thief, Dave Sassoon––all hold-up men, every one of them! Henry, I’m putting you in on that job because you’ve got nerve, because you can shoot, because I don’t think they can get you––and paying you a whaling big salary to straighten things out along the Spanish Sinks. Do you know, Henry––” Jeffries leaned forward and lowered his tone. Master of the art of persuading and convincing, of hammering and pounding, of swaying the doubting and deciding the undecided, the strong-eyed mountain-man looked his best as he held the younger man under his 14 spell. “Do you know,” he repeated, “I suspect that Morgan Gap bunch are really behind and beneath a lot of this deviltry around Calabasas? You take Gale Morgan: why, he trains with Dave Sassoon; take his uncle, Duke: Sassoon never is in trouble but what Duke will help him out.” Jeffries exploded with a slight but forcible expletive. “Was there ever a thief or a robber driven into Morgan’s Gap that didn’t find sympathy and shelter with some of the Morgans? I believe they are in every game pulled on the Thief River stages.”
“As bad as that?”
Jeffries turned to his desk. “Ask John Lefever.”
De Spain had a long talk with John. But John was a poor adviser. He advised no one on any subject. He whistled, he hummed a tune, if his hat was on he took it off, and if it happened to be off, which was unusual, he put it on. He extended his arm, at times, suddenly, as if on the brink of a positive assertion. But he decided nothing, and asserted nothing. If he talked, he talked well and energetically; but the end of a talk usually found him and de Spain about where they began. So it was on this trying day––for Lefever was not able wholly to hide the upsetting of his confidence of victory, and his humiliation 15 at the now more distant yells from the Calabasas and Morgan Gap victors.
But concerning the Morgans and their friends, Lefever, to whom Jeffries had rudely referred the subject at the close of his talk with de Spain, did abandon his habitual reticence. “Rustlers, thieves, robbers, coiners, outlaws!” he exclaimed energetically.
“Is this because they got your money to-day, John?” asked de Spain.
“Never mind my money. I’ve got a new job with nothing to do, and plenty of cash.”
De Spain asked what the job was. “On the stages,” announced Lefever. “I am now general superintendent of the Thief River Line.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I act for the reorganization committee in buying alfalfa for the horses and smokeless pipes for the guards. I am to be your assistant.”
“I’m not going to take that job, John.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Not if I know it. I am going back to Medicine Bend to-night.” Lefever took off his hat and twirled it skilfully on one hand, humming softly the while. “John,” asked de Spain after a pause, “who is that girl that shot against me this afternoon?”
16
“That,” answered Lefever, thinking, shocked, of Jeffries’s words, “was Nan Morgan.”
“Who is she?”
“Just one of the Morgans; lives in the Gap with old Duke Morgan, her uncle; lived there as long as I can remember. Some shot, Henry.”
“How can she live in the Gap,” mused de Spain, “with an outfit like that?”
“Got nowhere else to live, I guess. I believe you’d better change your mind, Henry, and stay with us.”
“No,” returned de Spain meditatively, “I’m not going to stay. I’ve had glory enough out of this town for a while.” He picked up his hat and put it on. Lefever thought it well to make no response. He was charged with the maintenance and operation of the stage-line arsenal at Sleepy Cat, and spent many of his idle moments toying with the firearms. He busied himself now with the mechanism of a huge revolver––one that the stage-driver, Frank Elpaso, had wrecked on the head of a troublesome negro coming in from the mines. De Spain in turn took off his hat, poked the crown discontentedly, and, rising with a loss of amiability in his features and manner, walked out of the room.
The late sun was streaming down the full length of Main Street. The street was still filled with 17 loiterers who had spent the day at the fair, and lingered now in town in the vague hope of seeing a brawl or a fight before sundown––cattlemen and cowboys from the northern ranges, sheepmen from the Spider River country, small ranchers and irrigators from the Bear basin, who picked their steps carefully, and spoke with prudence in the presence of roisterers from the Spanish Sinks, and gunmen and gamblers from Calabasas and Morgan’s Gap. The Morgans themselves and their following were out to the last retainer.
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CHAPTER II
THE THIEF RIVER STAGE LINE
Sleepy Cat has little to distinguish it in its casual appearance from the ordinary mountain railroad town of the western Rockies. The long, handsome railroad station, the eating-house, and the various division-headquarters buildings characteristic of such towns are in Sleepy Cat built of local granite. The yard facilities, shops, and roundhouses are the last word in modern railroad construction, and the division has not infrequently held the medal for safety records.
But more than these things go toward making up the real Sleepy Cat. It is a community with earlier-than-railroad traditions. Sleepy Cat has been more or less of a settlement almost