Hidden Gold, Wilder Anthony [best fiction books to read TXT] 📗

too small to hold you, Moran. Your fate is settled already, whatever may happen to me."

"Still, I seem to be holding four aces now," Moran grinned back at him. "And the cards are stacked."

Left alone, Wade rolled himself a cigarette from his scant hoard of tobacco. Already he was hungry, for deep shadows in his prison marked the approach of night, and he had the appetite of a healthy man. The knowledge that he was to be denied food made him feel the hungrier, until he resolutely put the thought of eating out of his mind. The water, trickling down the face of the rock, was a God-send, though, and he drank frequently from the little stream.

By habit a heavy smoker, he viewed with dismay the inroads which he had already made on his store of tobacco for that deprivation he felt would be the most real of any that he could suffer. He tried to take shorter puffs upon his cigarette, and between them shielded the fire with his hand, so that the air-draughts in the fissure might not cheat him of any of the smoke. He figured that he had scarcely enough tobacco left for a dozen cigarettes, which was less than his usual daily allowance.

On searching his pockets, in the hope of finding a second sack of Durham, he chanced upon his clasp-knife, and viewed the find with joy. The thought of using it as a weapon did not impress him, for his captors would keep out of reach of such a toy, but he concluded that he might possibly use it to carve some sort of foothold in the rock. The idea of cutting the granite was out of the question, but there might be strata of softer stone which he could dig into. It was a forlorn hope, in a forlorn cause, and it proved futile. At his first effort the knife's single blade snapped off short, and he threw the useless handle away.

Darkness fell some time before the cool night air penetrated the fissure; when it did so the cold seemed likely to be added to his other physical discomforts. In the higher altitudes the nights were distinctly chilly even in mid-summer, and he had on only a light outing shirt, above his waist. As the hour grew late, the cold increased in severity until Wade was forced to walk up and down his narrow prison in the effort to keep warm. He had just turned to retrace his steps, on one such occasion, when his ears caught the soft pat-pat of a footfall on the ground above. He instantly became motionless and tensely alert, wondering which of his enemies was so stealthily returning, and for what reason.

He thought it not unlikely that Moran had altered his purpose and come back to shoot him while he slept. Brave though he was, the idea of being shot down in such a manner made his flesh crawl. Stooping, he picked up a fragment of rock; although he realized the futility of the weapon, it was all he had. Certainly, whoever approached was moving with the utmost stealth, which argued an attack of some kind. Drawing back the hand that held the stone, the cattleman shrank into a corner of the fissure and waited. Against the starlit sky, he had an excellent view of the opening above him, and possibly by a lucky throw the stone would serve against one assailant, at least.

The pat-pat-pat drew nearer and stopped, at last, on the extreme edge of the hole. A low, long-drawn sniff showed that this was no human enemy. If the sound had been louder, Wade would have guessed that it was made by a bear; but as it was he guessed the prowler to be a mountain-lion. He had little fear of such a beast; most of them were notorious cowards unless cornered, and when presently a pair of glowing eyes peered down into the fissure, he hurled the stone at them with all his might. His aim was evidently true, for with a snarl of pain the animal drew back.

But just as amongst the most pacific human races there are some brave spirits, so amongst the American lions there are a few which possess all the courage of their jungle brothers. Actuated by overweening curiosity, or else by a thirst for blood, the big cat returned again and again to the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it would surely leap upon him.

He picked up his broken pocket-knife and waited for this to happen. The shattered blade would be of little use, but it might prove better than his bare hands if he had to defend himself against the brute's teeth and claws.

CHAPTER XVII A WAR OF WITS

"Kidnaped? Gordon Wade?"

At Dorothy's announcement, Mrs. Purnell sank, with a gasp, into her rocking-chair, astonished beyond expression. She listened, with anxiety scarce less than her daughter's, to the girl's account of the event as she had it from Trowbridge. Her mouth opened and shut aimlessly as she picked at her gingham apron. If Wade had been her own son, she could hardly have loved him more. He had been as tender to her as a son, and the news of his disappearance and probable injury was a frightful shock.

Weakly she attempted to relieve her own anxiety by disputing the fact of his danger.

"Oh, I guess nothing's happened to him—nothing like that, anyway. He may have had a fall from his horse. Or maybe it broke away from him and ran off."

"Bill Santry found their trail," Dorothy said, with a gesture so tragic that it wrung her mother's heart strings. "He followed it as far as he could, then lost it." In any other case she would have tried to keep the bad news from her mother, because of her nerves, but just now the girl was too distraught to think of any one but the man she loved. "Oh, if I could only do something myself," she burst out. "It's staying here, helpless, that is killing me. I wish I'd gone with Lem up into the mountains. I would have if he hadn't said I might better stay in town. But how can I help? There's nothing to do here."

"The idea!" Mrs. Purnell exclaimed. "They'll be out all night. How could you have gone with them? I don't believe Gordon has been kidnaped at all. It's a false alarm, I tell you. Who could have done such a thing?"

"Who?" The question broke Dorothy's patience. "Who's done everything that's abominable and contemptible lately here in Crawling Water? That Moran did it, of course, with Senator Rexhill behind him. Oh!"

"Nonsense!" said her mother, indignantly.

"Lem Trowbridge thinks so. Nearly everybody does."

"Then he hasn't as good sense as I thought he had." Mrs. Purnell arose and moved toward the kitchen. "You come on and help me make some waffles for supper. Perhaps that will take such foolishness out of your head. The idea of a Senator of the United States going about kidnaping people."

Dorothy obeyed her mother's wish, but not very ably. Her face was flushed and her eyes hot; ordinarily she was a splendid housekeeper and a dutiful daughter, but there are limits to human endurance. She mixed the batter so clumsily and with such prodigal waste that her mother had to stop her, and she was about to put salt into the sugar bowl when Mrs. Purnell snatched it out of her hands. "Go into the dining-room and sit down, Dorothy," she exclaimed. "You're beside yourself." It is frequently the way with people, who are getting on in years and are sick, to charge their own shortcomings on any one who may be near. Mrs. Purnell was greatly worried.

"What's the matter now?" she demanded, when Dorothy left her supper untasted on her plate.

"I was thinking."

"Well, can't you tell a body what you're thinking about? What are you sitting there that way for?"

"I was wondering," said Dorothy in despair, "if Helen Rexhill knows where Gordon is."

Mrs. Purnell snorted in disdain.

"Land's sakes, child, what put that into your head? Drink your tea. It'll do you good."

"Why shouldn't she know, if her father does?" The girl pushed her tea-cup farther away from her. "She wouldn't have come all the way out here with him—he wouldn't have brought her with him—if they weren't working together. She must know. But I don't see why...."

"Dorothy Purnell, I declare to goodness, I believe you're going crazy." Mrs. Purnell dropped her fork. "All this about Gordon is bad enough without my being worried so...."

"I'd even give him up to her, if she'd tell me that." Dorothy's voice was unsteady, and she seemed to be talking to herself rather than to her mother. "I know she thinks I've come between her and Gordon, but I haven't meant to. He's just seemed to like me better; that's all. But I'd do anything to save him from Moran."

"I should say that you might better wait until he asks you, before you talk of giving him up to somebody." Mrs. Purnell spoke with the primness that was to be expected, but her daughter made no reply. She had never mentioned the night in Moran's office, and her mother knew nothing of Wade's kiss. But to the girl it had meant more than any declaration in words. She had kept her lips inviolate until that moment, and when his kiss had fallen upon them it had fallen upon virgin soil, from out of which had bloomed a white flower of passion. Before then she had looked upon Wade as a warm friend, but since that night he had appeared to her in another guise; that of a lover, who has come into his own. She had met him then, a girl, and had left him a woman, and she felt that what he had established as a fact in the one rare moment of his kiss, belonged to him and her. It seemed so wholly theirs that she had not been able to bring herself to discuss it with her mother. She had won it fairly, and she treasured it. The thought of giving him up to Helen Rexhill, of promising her never to see Wade again, was overwhelming, and was to be considered only as a last resource, but there was no suffering that she would not undertake for his sake.

Mrs. Purnell was as keenly alive as ever to the hope that the young ranch owner might some day incline toward her little girl, but she was sensitive also to the impression which the Rexhills had made upon her. Her life with Mr. Purnell had not brought her many luxuries, and perhaps she over-valued their importance. She thought Miss Rexhill a most imposing young woman and she believed in the impeccability of the well-to-do. Her heart was still warmed by the memory of the courtesy with which she had been treated by the Senator's daughter, and was not without the gratification of feeling that it had been a tribute to her own worth. She had scolded Dorothy afterward for her frank speech to Miss Rexhill at the hotel, and she felt that further slurs on her were uncalled for.

"I'm sure that Miss Rexhill treated us as a lady should," she said tartly. "She acted more like one than you did,