With Hoops of Steel. Kelly Florence Finch
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So she locked up in her heart her belief in Mead’s innocence, saying nothing about the matter to any one, till after a little that belief came to be like a secret treasure, hidden away from all other eyes, but in her own thought held most dear.
CHAPTER VI
The jail at Las Plumas was a spreading, one-story adobe building, with a large, high-walled court at the back. This wall was also of adobe, some ten feet high and three feet thick, without an opening, and crowned with a luxuriant growth of prickly-pear cactus. At certain hours of the day the prisoners were allowed the freedom of this court, while a guard kept on them an occasional eye. Behind the court, and coming up to its very walls, was a small tract of land planted with vegetables, flowers and fruit trees and worked by an old Mexican who lived alone in a tiny hut at the farther end of the enclosure.
For two days after the night of Emerson Mead’s arrest his friends tried every device known to the law to get him free of the prison walls. But each attempt was cleverly met and defeated by the opposing party, and he was still behind the bars. Then Nick Ellhorn and Thomson Tuttle held a conference, and agreed that Mead must get back to his ranch at once in order to save his affairs from further injury.
“That’s what they are doin’ this thing for,” said Nick, “so they can get a good chance to steal all his cattle. And what they don’t steal they’ll scatter over the plains till it will be more than they’re worth to get ’em together again. They think they can just everlastingly do him up by keepin’ him in jail for a month.”
Tuttle broke out with an indignant oath. “It’s the meanest, low-downest, dirtiest, measliest trick they’ve ever tried to do, and that’s sayin’ a whole heap! But they’ll find out they’ve got more to buck against than they’re a-lookin’ for now!”
“You bet they will! They’ve got to travel mighty fast if they keep up with this procession! Talk about measly tricks! Tom, that Fillmore outfit’s the biggest cattle thief in the southwest. It’s just plum’ ridiculous to hear them talk about Emerson stealin’ their cattle! Why, if he’d stayed up nights to steal from them he couldn’t have got even for what they’ve taken from him.”
They talked over the plan Ellhorn had proposed and when it was all arranged Tuttle asked, “Shall we tell the judge?”
“Tell nothin’ to nobody!” Nick exclaimed. “The judge will find it out soon enough, and if we don’t tell him he won’t bother us with advice to give it up. We’ve got some horse sense, Tommy, and I reckon we-all can run this here excursion without help from any darn fool lawyer in the territory. If they’d left it to us in the first place, we’d have had Emerson at home long before this.”
“I guess we-all can play our part of this game if Emerson can play his.”
“Don’t you worry about Emerson. He’s ready to ride the devil through hell to get back to his round-up.”
The next morning Nick Ellhorn hunted up the Mexican who worked the garden behind the jail and talked through the enclosure with the old man, who was crippled and half blind. Ellhorn talked with him about the garden and finally said he would like to eat some onions. The Mexican pulled a bunch of young green ones for him, and he sat down on a bench under a peach tree near the wall of the jail-court to eat them. He sent the Mexican back to his hut for some salt, and at once began whistling loudly the air of “Bonnie Dundee.” Presently he broke into the words of the song and woke the echoes round about, as he and Emerson Mead had done on many a night around the camp-fire on the range:
“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle my horse and call out my men.”
There he stopped and waited, and in a moment a baritone voice on the other side of the wall took up the song:
“Come ope the west port and let us go free
To follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
Ellhorn went on singing as he threw one of his onions, then another, over the wall. One of them came sailing back and fell beside the peach tree. Then he took a slip of folded paper from his pocket, tied it to another onion and sent it over the cactus-crowned adobe. The Mexican returned with the salt and they sat down together under the tree, chatting sociably. Presently Mead’s voice came floating out from behind the wall in the stirring first lines of the old Scotch ballad:
“To the lords of convention, ’twas Claverhouse spoke:
‘If there are heads to be crowned, there are heads to be broke!’”
Nick chuckled, winked at the old Mexican, and hurried off to find Tuttle.
That evening, soon after the full darkness of night had mantled the earth, Nick Ellhorn and Tommy Tuttle rode toward the jail, leading an extra horse. Ellhorn gave Tuttle a lariat.
“You’d better manage this part,” he said in a low tone. “My arm’s not strong enough yet to be depended on in such ticklish matters. I tried it to-day with my gun, and it’s mighty near as steady as ever for shooting, but I won’t risk it on this.”
They rode into the Mexican’s garden and Ellhorn stood with the extra horse under the drooping branches of the peach tree. They listened and heard the sound of a soft whistling in the patio, as if some one were idly walking to and fro.
“That’s him!” Ellhorn whispered excitedly. “That’s what I told him to be doing at just this time! He’s listening for us!” Ellhorn whistled softly several bars of the same air, which were at once repeated from within. Tuttle rode beside the wall and threw over it the end of his lariat. He waited until the whistling ceased, and then, winding the rope around the pommel, he struck home the spurs and the horse leaped forward, straining to the work. It was a trained cow-pony, Mead’s own favorite “cutting-out” horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle’s spurs. With a soft “f-s-s-t” the rope wore over the top of the wall and Mead’s tall form stood dimly outlined behind the battlement of cactus. He untied the rope from his waist, threw it to the ground, and with foot and fist thrust aside the bristling, sharp-spined masses, dropped over the outer edge, hung at full length by his hands for an instant, and landed in the soft earth at the bottom.
They heard his name called inside the patio. It was the guard, who had just missed him. As they quickly mounted there came over the wall the sound of hurrying feet and the rapid conference of excited voices. Mead shot his revolver into the air and Ellhorn, lifting his voice to its loudest and fullest, sang:
“Come ope the west port and let us go free
To follow the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!”
“Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee!”
Spur met with flank and the three horses bounded forward, over the fence of the Mexican’s garden, and up the street at a breakneck gallop. They clattered across the acequia bridge and past Delarue’s place, where Mead, eagerly sweeping the house with a sidewise glance, had a brief glimpse of a brightly lighted room. Instantly his memory went back, as it had done a thousand times, to that day, more than a year before, when he had stood at the door of that room and had first seen Marguerite Delarue. As they galloped up the street the vision of the room and of the girl came vividly back – the inviting, homelike room, with its easy-chairs, its pictures and shaded lamps, its tables with their tidy litter of papers and fancy work, its pillowed lounges, and deep cushioned window-seats, and the tall, anxious-eyed girl with the sick child in her arms, held close to her breast. Unconsciously he turned his head, possessed for the moment by the vision, and looked back at the dark mass of the house and trees, lighted by the