In the living room there had grown up a slight suspense.
“What keeps Mary so long?” asked her uncle at length.
“I'll go to find out,” suggested Elizabeth.
And then, to the astonishment of the others, big Jess Dreer was seen to slip from his chair. The fire cast a gigantic shadow behind him against the wall.
“If you don't mind,” he said gently, “I think I'll step out and see.”
But at that moment the front door crashed; there was the metallic ring of the bolt driven home, and then Mary whipped into the room. A beautiful picture. A wisp of hair had blown down across her cheek. Her eyes were alight with excitement. And yet there was something akin to a laugh on her lips.
“Jess Dreer,” she cried, “follow me!”
And before one of the others could so much as rise from a chair, she had raced across the room and out through the farther door with Dreer gliding at her heels; even then he appeared unhurried.
“This way!” commanded the girl, and ran up the brief flight of steps that joined one stretch of the back hall with another at a higher level. They went down the passage at full speed, and then, at the foot of it, she cast open another door and beckoned him into the room. Once inside, she bolted the door behind her.
From the front of the house there was a thunder against the door, and the voice of Morgan Valentine was calling: “Mary, what's this all about?”
Jess Dreer took quick stock of the room. The moonlight struck in a broad shaft through one of the windows, and the rest of the apartment was filled with a dim, dim light. It was a girl's room. That indescribable fragrance lived in it, like a spirit. And there were splashes of bright color made faint by the night.
“They're after you,” cried the girl softly. “Sheriff Clancy and a man named Caswell, who has followed you from the south.”
She was shocked to see him leaning idly against the wall.
“Now, think of that,” murmured Jess Dreer. “I figured that Caswell was a sensible sort of gent, and here he is trying to make a reputation by catching me. Well, well, they ain't any way of judging a man when he starts out to try to get famous.”
“No matter what he is. He may be a fool, but Sheriff Clancy is a dangerous man. He's well known. Too well known.”
“Mighty good of you to let me know about him.”
“Come here. Quick! It isn't far to drop to the ground from this window. You see how the hill slopes away up just underneath?”
“Dear me, now! But they's one great trouble. I have to get out to my hoss and saddle her before I can start on.”
“You'll never ride that horse again. They found her in the corral, and they've saddled her to take you away on her.”
“I knowed Caswell was a terrible considerate man.”
“You see that hill? Strike for that. Just beyond there's broken country. No horse can follow you over it. You have a gun?”
“Lady,” said Jess Dreer, “I'd a pile rather go on Angelina as a prisoner than go on foot a free man.”
There was the unmistakable sound of the splintering of wood.
“Quick!” she pleaded, almost sobbing in her frenzy of excitement.
“They's one or two things that sort of holds me back,” murmured the bandit.
She saw to one side—fifty yards away—two men sitting motionless on their horses.
“I'm squeezed, anyways. And yonder is Angelina, I see.”
And following the direction in which he pointed, she saw another pair of men on their horses, with a spare horse held between them.
“There's no hope? Tell me how to help you!”
“Lady, I sure appreciate all the interest you're showing.”
And with this, he sank down upon a chair and crossed his legs.
She stood back from him at that.
“Are you going to give up without a struggle?”
“I'm going to have a little think,” said the outlaw. “I'd rather start a fight after I've thought it out than I would to have a pardner to help me. Two minutes of getting ready is worth an hour of hard riding sometimes.”
“I see. You don't really care if they do catch you? You haven't done anything very wrong? It doesn't mean that—”
“A busted neck. That's all it means.”
“Most probable it is. Lady, I ain't one of them parlor bad men that wears a bad look and a nervous hand. You got a lot of questions to ask me. Am I a downtrodden man that's tried to right my wrongs and got tangled with the law? No, I ain't. Am I a wild but nacherally noble heart that's persecuted by the miserable world that don't understand me? No, I ain't. I'm plain Jess Dreer. Too lazy to work with my hands and just able to get a good living with my gun. That's all. Now take my advice. Get out of this room and wash your hands of me.”
“I don't care what you are,” cried the girl. “I believe in you. There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man. Jess Dreer, I believe in you. But quick, quick, quick. Do something! There's no time. They've broken in the door.”
“That's what I been waiting for,” said the bandit, and he raised his great length from the chair and stretched himself. “Now that I got part of 'em inside the house, they're divided. That's the way old Napoleon did, I guess.”
“But they're coming. I can do something. Raise a false alarm on the other side—”
He broke out with a strange heartiness: “You're the salt of the earth. No, don't raise your hand. The fools have give me a chance, and I'll take it.”
A heavy rush of feet in the hall. A body smashed against the door and the room quivered.
The surprise had brought a revolver in the hand of Jess Dreer, and even in that dim light the girl saw his face change. But he instantly put up the gun when he saw the door would hold.
“Now wouldn't you think that wise gents like them would look before they leap? However, I won't wait for 'em.”
The door groaned under a new shock, and then Jess Dreer slipped his long body feet-first through the window and dropped to the ground. She looked out. He had sunk into the shadow at the base of the wall and had not yet been seen, and now she heard a brief, shrill whistle, twice repeated.
It was answered by a snort of a horse, and instantly Angelina burst from the men who held her and plunged toward the house with flying bridle reins. Out from the shadow leaped Jess Dreer to meet her. He had covered half the distance before he was seen and before the others could start their horses toward him, he was in the saddle with a catlike bound. The four men converged on him, and straight toward the middle of the gap he sent the flying Angelina.
He lay flat on the back of the mustang; he had not even drawn his revolver, so far as she could see. But the others galloped with naked weapons. One of these flashed, and on the heels of the report there was a shriek from one of the posse who had been closing in on the other side. The bullet had missed the enemy and struck a friend.
It gave Jess Dreer a winking moment of a chance. For the shout of the hurt man and the plunge of his body to the ground threw the rest of the posse into confusion. Three horses were reined in three directions; Angelina rushed through the narrow gap between, and then Mary Valentine saw the fugitive strike out toward the nearest hill with three pursuers laboring behind him.
Each of them had a gun unlimbered; each of them was pumping a hail of bullets after Jess Dreer; but they doubly defeated themselves by that very eagerness. For the racking gallop ruined their chances to shoot true, and, sitting straight to fire, they could not get the best speed out of their horses. And in the meantime Jess Dreer was jockeying the cat-footed Angelina through the rough ground at the base of the hill. She veered and dodged like a dancing will-o'-the-wisp and presently darted around the hill into oblivion.
The fusillade of shots had drawn the two sheriffs from the door of Mary Valentine's room. She heard them plunging through the house, leaving a trail of crackling oaths behind them in lieu of musketry.
Afterward she waited in her room, terrified by what she had done, and, though her aunt and then Elizabeth came and called her, she would not come out.
She was spending that hour in profound thoughtfulness, and her thoughts were turning on that thing she had cried to Jess Dreer in her excitement: “There never was a scoundrel yet that was a truly brave man!”
Had she not spoken the truth by inspiration?
She heard the wounded man groaning as he was carried past her door. That was one result of her work, no doubt. Then she heard the posse returning from a fruitless chase. At this, Mary breathed freely for the first time.
