her smooth-flowing gait. Her head went down a little as time passed, but when the dawn came, gray and cold under a rainless sky, it showed her still with an ample reserve of strength, while the grays were well-nigh as fagged as though they had covered all her distance of miles in the past twenty-four hours.
For the sake of Ronicky’s horse, knowing the distance the mare had covered, the Dawns would have stopped the journey for rest, but Ronicky would not hear of it. As he pointed out, Jack Moon could not attempt to pick up the trail until the morning; and then he probably would only be able to locate it by striking out in a great circle with the house as the center of his sweeping radius. If they pushed straight ahead, stopping only when they had put a solid day’s march behind them, they would doubtless pass well beyond the reach of that radius, particularly since the outlaws would be looking for the signs of two horses instead of three. These reasons were so patent that they were accepted, and so the party held on its way.
By midmorning they came in sight of a village among the hills to their left. Ronicky—because he would not be recognized by Moon’s scouts in case they inquired after Dawn in that place—rode down into the town and bought supplies; then he rejoined the group on the trail four miles out from the village, and they pressed on for another hour. The sight of a little ruined shack here proved too strong a temptation for them, and they determined to make their day’s halt. They were too tired to prepare a meal. Canned beans, crackers, and coffee were their portion. They slept wrapped in their blankets.
At four in the afternoon Ronicky wakened to find that Hugh Dawn was already up. He had kindled a fire in the wrecked stove which, without a chimney, stood in one corner of the shack; and now he sat beside it, his hands wrapped about his knees, a big black pipe clenched between his teeth, and his eyes fixed, through the doorway, upon the south trail. The broad shoulders, which could not be pulled forward even by the draw of the arms in this position; the forward thrust of the heavy head and the powerful neck; the solemn and alert expression of the face—all of these things went to convince Ronicky, as he lay unstirring for a moment in his blankets, that his new-found companion was by no means a soft variety of adventurer. The night before he had shown himself in the most unfavorable, and almost a cowardly, light. But no doubt that was explained as a result of a long hounding— explained by the fact that he was returning from safety into a region where his life would constantly be in danger.
Ronicky could not help admiring the quiet with which the man had been able to light the fire and break up wood and handle the noisy plates of the stove without making sufficient disturbance to waken either him—a remarkably light sleeper at all times—or the girl.
She lay in the position she had taken when she first wrapped herself in the blankets, her face turned up and pillowed in the tumbled masses of her hair. But on her lips, strangely enough, there was the smile of complete happiness and joyous dreams. Ronicky saw the face of the father, as it turned for an instant to the girl, soften wonderfully and lose every stern line. Again his heart warmed to the man.
He sat up in his blankets, was greeted by a smile and a silent raising of the hand, and, after folding his blanket, went outside to find water. He discovered a place a hundred yards away, where a little freshet had pooled its waters in a small lake, and that tempted him to a swim. He came back from his bath and shave, and saw that the father had not changed his position. Only iron muscles and a mind wrapped in the profoundest meditations could have kept him in that cramping posture.
At sight of Ronicky he rose, and, crossing the rotted boards of the floor with marvelous softness, considering his bulk, he came out to greet his new friend.
“What I been thinking,” he said, after he had drawn Ronicky far enough away to be out of earshot of the girl, “is that we better get ready for a start and go on, leaving Jerry a note to say that she’s better at the house than she is with us. What do you think of that?”
“Only one thing,” said Ronicky Doone, after a moment of consideration. “Does Jerry know where you’re bound?”
“In a general way she does.”
“Then,” said Ronicky, “if she knows in a general way, she’s apt to follow on and try to find us. Or, if she doesn’t do that, she’ll go back to the big house and die of loneliness, wondering what’s happening to you. And at the house, who knows if Moon won’t drop in on her, and take some means of finding out from her where you’ve gone—eh?”
“It’d take torture to get that out of her.”
“That’s just what I mean.”
Hugh Dawn started.
Ronicky explained: “I only saw his face once. You must know him a pile better than I do. But I got this to say, that if ever I saw a cold-blooded devil in the form of a man, Jack Moon is him. Am I right?”
“A thousand times right!” and Hugh Dawn sighed. “But I’ve been so long away—I’ve looked back on the West as a place where women at least are sacred—that I plumb forgot what a fiend Moon is. Ronicky, you’re correct. We can’t leave the girl. But if we take her with us, won’t she run into the same danger?”
“No, because if she’s with us she’ll not have any information to give Moon—nothing to be browbeaten about or hurt. I take it that if he finds us where we’re going, he’ll know everything.”
“I guess so,” said the older man, knotting his brows anxiously.
“Unless,” suggested Ronicky, “you can afford to send her back and get the protection of the law for her; but I gather that you don’t want to bring yourself to the notice of the law much more than you want to bring yourself to the notice of Jack Moon.”
“Right!” The big man nodded sadly. “That’s just the place I stand in. Poor Jerry! Ronicky, they’s a curse on this treasure we’re after. Maybe Jerry’s right. I was all wrong to bring you in on it. But, playing my lone hand, I was pretty sure I could never beat Moon. With you I figured that we’d all have a chance—of being rich!”
Ronicky nodded.
“And I suppose you want to know something, Ronicky, about me and the treasure and Moon and all?”
“I want to know just as much as comes easy for you to tell me, Dawn.”
“To begin with, what d’you know already?”
“Only bits that I gathered, which round up to something like this: That once you belonged to Moon’s crowd. That you broke away from the crowd ten years ago. That in Moon’s crew the punishment for desertion is death. That you ran out of the country to keep clear of him. That he worked hard to get on your trail all the time. That the minute you got back, he learned about it. That he’s trying to kill you now. That you came back here partly because you wanted to see the girl. That another thing brought you back, which was this treasure you talk about. That’s much as I know, or think I know. Am I right? Mind you, I ain’t asking for a thing that comes hard for you to tell. Every gent has shadowy places in his life. I have ‘em. Everybody has ‘em.” The other man drank in the words hungrily.
“What you’ve said,” he declared eagerly, “makes it plumb easy to talk to you compared with anybody else I’ve ever knowed. I’ve only got this to say, that I’m going to make a clean breast of everything to you. It’ll take time, but we got time. Jerry needs another hour for rest. Girls ain’t like men. They get plumb no-good unless they have their sleep. Speaking of Jerry, I got to say that she don’t know the half of what I’m going to tell you—and I don’t expect her ever to learn anything more from you.”
“Partner,”
