other, and the dark eyes dwelt carefully on Montgomery’s face. “If you’ve got any lingerin’ suspicion that there’s something coming from you to me, we’ll jist nacherally step out an’ make our little play where there’s room.”
“Not a thing against you, my friend,” said Montgomery with a sudden heartiness for which Jerry despised him. “You had the drop on me and I guess you had special reasons for wanting that stage.”
The outlaw shrugged his shoulders. “I got to go out agin,” he said, “an’ I’m goin’ to ask you to watch this girl while I’m gone.”
“Glad to,” said Montgomery.
Black Jim turned, paused, and came back.
“If anything happens to her, my friend.” He hesitated significantly. “The boys seemed to be sort of excited when I told them about her bein’ in my cabin,” he explained. “If they-all come up here, don’t let ‘em come in. You got a gun!”
He stepped to the door and was gone. The eyes of Jerry and Montgomery met.
“Quick!” she ordered. “Talk out and tell me what has happened, Freddie, or I’ll go crazy! I’m half out of my head now!”
“It’s Black Jim!” he said heavily.
“I knew that half an hour ago. Your brains are petrified, Freddie. Start where I’m a blank. How’d you come here?”
“He held me up!”
“Black Jim?”
“Yes. I was waiting behind the rock with my mask on. I heard a horse coming up the road from behind and when I turned I was looking into the mouth of a pistol as big as a cannon. I put up my hands. I just stared at him. I couldn’t speak. He said he was sorry he couldn’t leave the job to me. He said there were two things clear to him. He went on thinking them over while his gun covered me. Then he told me that he couldn’t leave me alive near the road. He had to take me up to his camp. Then he came up behind me and tied my hands behind my back. Jerry, I felt that if he hadn’t thought me one of his own sort, he’d have dropped the curtain on my act forever!”
He shuddered slightly at the thought.
“He made me ride before him up here,” he went on, “and he put me in this cabin. As far as I can make out we’re in a little gulch of the mountains. It’s a sort of bandits’ refuge—the sort of thing that paper told about. When we rode over the edge of the hill and dipped down into the valley, I saw some streaks of smoke down the canon. There must be a half dozen places like this one, and some of the outlaws in every one. What’ll we do, Jerry, for God’s sake, what will we do?”
“Shut up!” she said fiercely, and her face was whiter than mere exhaustion could make it. “Lemme think; lemme think!”
Montgomery had no eye for her. He strode up, and down the room with a wild eye. He seemed to think of her as an aftermath.
“What happened to you? Was it Black Jim again?”
“I pulled my gun and shot in the air. He shot the pistol out of my fingers and put my hand on the blink. I fainted. He brought me up here. That’s all.”
Her thoughts were not for her troubles.
“I’m going to make a break for it!” he cried at last. “Maybe I can get free!”
She recognized him without emotion.
“And leave me here?” she asked.
He flushed, stammered, and avoided her eyes.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” he muttered, “I couldn’t find my way out, and maybe they’d take a pot shot at me as I tried to get away. It’s better to die quick than starve in the mountains. But, my God, Jerry, what’ll he do when he finds out that I’m not an outlaw like himself?”
“Stop crying like a baby,” she said. “I’ve got to think.”
“There’s only one thing for you to do,” she said at last, raising her head, “and that’s for you to play your part as he sees it. You can act rough. Go down and mix with them—but be here with me when Black Jim is here. They can only kill you, Freddie, but me—”
Her eyes were roving again.
“Maybe I can do it,” he said rapidly, half to himself. “Pray God I can do it!”
V. THE STAGE MAN
Her upper lip curled. “You’re in a blue funk—a blue funk,” she said. “Freddie, here’s your one chance in a life to play the man.
Do you see my condition? Do you see the little act that’s mapped out ahead for me? It’s as clear as the palm of your hand. He brought me up here because he thought I’d die if he left me in the road. Even his heart was not black enough for that! But once he had me here it wasn’t in his power to send me away again. That’s what he meant when he said he had talked to the ‘boys.’ They wouldn’t let me go because they thought I might be able to find the way back and bring a posse after them. Don’t you see? They have me a prisoner. And you’re all that I have to protect me.”
She stopped and moaned softly.
“Why was I ever born a woman?”
He moistened his lips.
“I’ll do what I can,” he mumbled, “but—did you see that devil’s eye? He isn’t human, Jerry!”
“I might have known,” she murmured to herself, “I might have known he was only a stage man.” She said aloud: “There’s one chance in a thousand left to me, Freddie, but there’s no chance at all unless you’ll help me. Will you?”
“All that I can—in reason,” he stammered miserably.
“It’s this,” she went on, trying to sweep him along with her. “You had your eyes open when you came up here. Maybe you could find the way out again. Freddie, you said on the road today that you loved me. Freddie, I’ll go to hell and slave for you as long as I live, if you’ll fight for me now. Tell me again that you love me and you’ll be a man!”
His lips were so stiff that he could hardly speak in answer.
“I didn’t tell you one thing,” he said. “When we came over the top of the lull, at the edge of the valley, we passed an armed man. They keep a sentry there.”
She pointed with frantic eagerness.
“You have your gun at your belt! That will free us, I tell you. “It is only one man you have to fight.”
He could not answer. His eyes wandered rapidly around the room like a boy already late for school and striving miserably to find his necessary book.
“Then if you won’t do that, cut the rope that holds my feet and I’ll go myself!”
