Helen herself hurried to the telegraph office at the depot. She wrote out a long dispatch and handed it to the operator. "Send this at once please."
He was one of those supercilious young idiots that make the most of such small power as ever drifts down to them. Taking the message, he tossed it on the table. "I"ll send it when I get time."
"You"ll send it now."
"What--what"s that?"
Her steady eyes caught and held his shifting ones. "I say you are going to send it now--this very minute."
"I guess not. The line"s busy," he bluffed.
"If you don"t begin sending that message this minute I"ll make it my business to see that you lose your position," she told him calmly.
He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper from the place where he had tossed it. "Oh, well, if it"s so darned important," he-conceded ungraciously.
She stood quietly above him while he sent the telegram, even though he contrived to make every moment of her stay an unvoiced insult. Her wire was to the wife of the Governor of the State. They had been close friends at school, and the latter had been urging Helen to pay a visit to Cheyenne. The message she sent was as follows:
Battle imminent between outlaws and cattlemen here. Bloodshed certain to-night. My foreman last night killed in self-defense a desperado.
Bannister"s gang, in league with town authorities, mean to lynch him and one of my other friends after dark this evening. Sheriff will do nothing. Can your husband send soldiers immediately? Wire answer.
The operator looked up sullenly after his fingers had finished the last tap. "Well?"
"Just one thing more," Helen told him. "You understand the rules of the company about secrecy. n.o.body you knows I am sending this message. If by any chance it should leak out, I shall know through whom. If you want to hold your position, you will keep quiet."
"I know my business," he growled. Nevertheless, she had spoken in season, for he had had it in his mind to give a tip where he knew it would be understood to hasten the jail delivery and accompanying lynching.
When she returned to the hotel? Helen found Missou waiting for her.
She immediately sent him back to the office, and told him to wait there until the answer was received. "I"ll send one of the boys up to relieve you so that you may come with the telegram as soon as it arrives. I want the operator watched all day. Oh, here"s Jim Henson! Denver has explained the situation to you, I presume. I want you to go up to the telegraph office and stay there all day. Go to lunch with the operator when he goes. Don"t let him talk privately to anybody, not even for a few seconds. I don"t want you to seem to have him under guard before outsiders, but let him know it very plainly. He is not to mention a wire I sent or the answer to it--not to anybody, Jim. Is that plain?"
"Y"u bet! He"s a clam, all right, till the order is countermanded." And the young man departed with a cheerful grin that a.s.sured Helen she had nothing to fear from official leaks.
Nora, from answering a telephone call, came to report to the general in charge. "The doctor says that he has looked after Mr. Bannister, and there is no immediate danger. If he keeps quiet for a few days he ought to do well. Mr. McWilliams sent a message by him to say that we aren"t to worry about him. He said he would--would--rope a heap of cows on the Lazy D yet."
Nora, bursting into tears, flung herself into Helen"s arms. "They are going to kill him. I know they are, and--and "twas only yesterday, ma"am, I told him not to--to get gay, the poor boy. When he tried to--to--" She broke down and sobbed.
Her mistress smiled in spite of herself, though she was bitterly aware that even Nora"s grief was only superficially ludicrous.
"We"re going to save him, Nora, if we can. There"s hope while there"s life. You see, Mac himself is full of courage. HE hasn"t given up. We must keep up our courage, too."
"Yes, ma"am, but this is the first gentleman friend I ever had hanged, and--" She broke off, sobbing, leaving the rest as a guess.
Helen filled it out aloud. "And you were going to say that you care more for him than any of the others. Well, you must stop coquetting and tell him so when we have saved him."
"Yes, ma"am," agreed Nora, very repentant for the moment of the fact that it was her nature to play with the hearts of those of the male persuasion. Immediately she added: "He was THAT kind, ma"am, tender-hearted."
Helen, whose own heart was breaking, continued to soothe her. "Don"t say WAS, child. You are to be brave, and not think of him that way."
"Yes, ma"am. He told me he was going to buy cows with the thousand dollars he won yesterday. I knew he meant--"
"Yes, of course. It"s a cowboy"s way of saying that he means to start housekeeping. Have you the telegram, Missou?" For that young man was standing in the doorway.
He handed her the yellow slip. She ripped open the envelope and read: Company B en route. Railroad connections uncertain Postpone crisis long as possible. May reach Gimlet b.u.t.te by ten-thirty.
Her first thought was of unspeakable relief. The militia was going to take a hand. The boys in khaki would come marching down the street, and everything would be all right. But hard on the heels of her instinctive gladness trod the sober second thought. Ten-thirty at best, and perhaps later! Would they wait that long, or would they do their cowardly work as soon as night fell She must contrive to delay them till the train drew in. She must play for those two lives with all her woman"s wit; must match the outlaw"s sinister cunning and fool him into delay. She knew he would come if she sent for him. But how long could she keep him? As long as he was amused at her agony, as long as his pleasure in tormenting her was greater than his impatience to be at his ruffianly work. Oh, if she ever needed all her power it would be to-night.
Throughout the day she continued to receive hourly reports from Denver, who always brought with him four or five honest cowpunchers from up-country to listen to the strange tale she unfolded to them. It was, of course, in part, the spell of her sweet personality, of that shy appeal she made to the manhood in them; but of those who came, nearly all believed, for the time at least, and aligned themselves on her side in the struggle that was impending. Some of these were swayed from their allegiance in the course of the day, but a few she knew would remain true.
Meanwhile, all through the day, the enemy was busily at work. As Denver had predicted, free liquor was served to all who would drink. The town and its guests were started on a grand debauch that was to end in violence that might shock their sober intelligence. Everywhere poisoned whispers were being flung broadcast against the two men waiting in the jail for what the night would bring forth.
Dusk fell on a town crazed by bad whiskey and evil report. The deeds of Bannister were hashed and rehashed at every bar, and n.o.body related them with more ironic gusto than the man who called himself Jack Holloway.
There were people in town who knew his real name and character, but of these the majority were either in alliance with him or dared not voice their knowledge. Only Miss Messiter and her punchers told the truth, and their words were blown away like chaff.
From the first moment of darkness Helen had the outlaw leader dogged by two of her men. Since neither of these were her own riders this was done without suspicion. At intervals of every quarter of an hour they reported to her in turn. Bannister was beginning to drink heavily, and she did not want to cut short his dissipation by a single minute. Yet she had to make sure of getting his attention before he went too far.
It was close to nine when she sent him a note, not daring to delay a minute longer. For the reports of her men were all to the same effect, that the crisis would not now be long postponed. Bannister, or Holloway, as he chose to call himself, was at the bar with his lieutenants in evil when the note reached him. He read it with a satisfaction he could not conceal. So! He had brought her already to her knees. Before he was through with her she should grovel in the dust before him.
"I"ll be back in a few minutes. Do nothing till I return," he ordered, and went jingling away to the Elk House.
The young woman"s anxiety was pitiable, but she repressed it sternly when she went to meet the man she feared; and never had it been more in evidence than in this hour of her greatest torture. Blithely she came forward to meet him, eye challenging eye gayly. No hint of her anguish escaped into her manner. He read there only coquetry, the eternal s.e.x conflict, the winsome defiance of a woman hitherto the virgin mistress of all a.s.saults upon her heart"s citadel. It was the last thing he had expected to see, but it was infinitely more piquant, more intoxicating, than desperation. She seemed to give the lie to his impression of her love for his cousin; and that, too, delighted his pride.
"You will sit down?"
Carelessly, almost indolently, she put the question, her raised eyebrows indicating a chair with perfunctory hospitality. He had not meant to sit, had expected only to gloat a few minutes over her despair; but this situation called for more deliberation. He had yet to establish the mastery his vanity demanded. Therefore he took a chair.
"This is ce"tainly an unexpected honor. Did y"u send for me to explain some more about that sufficient understanding between us?" he sneered.
It was a great relief to her to see that, though he had been drinking, as she had heard, he was entirely master of himself. Her efforts might still be directed to Philip sober.
"I sent for you to congratulate you," she answered, with a smile. "You are a bigger man than I thought. You have done what you said you would do, and I presume you can very shortly go out of mourning."
He radiated vanity, seemed to visibly expand "Do y"u go in when I go out?" he asked brutally.
She laughed lightly. "Hardly. But it does seem as if I"m unlucky in my foremen. They all seem to have engagements across the divide."
"I"ll get y u another."
"Thank you. I was going to ask as much of you. Can you suggest one now?"
"I"m a right good cattle man myself."
"And--can you stay with me a reasonable time?"
He laughed. "I have no engagements across the Styx, ma"am."
"My other foremen thought they were permanent fixtures here, too."
"We"re all liable to mistakes."