Part 62

“I think you know better than that.”

“Have you got any plan?”

“Plan? No. They've got every outlet closed, haven't they? Do you know where he is?”

“I know where he isn't, or they'd have him by now. And I know Jud Clark. He'd take to the mountains, same as he did before. He's got a good horse.”

“A horse!”

“Listen. I haven't told this, and I don't mean to. They'll learn it in a couple of hours, anyhow. He got out by a back fire-escape--they know that. But they don't know he took Ed Rickett's black mare. They think he's on foot. I've been down there now, and she's gone. Ed's shut up in a room on the top floor, playing poker. They won't break up until about three o'clock and he'll miss his horse then. That's two hours yet.”

Bassett tried to see her face in the shadow of the hood. He was puzzled and suspicious at her change of front, more than half afraid of a trap.

“How do I know you are not working with Wilkins?” he demanded. “You could have saved the situation to-night by saying you weren't sure.”

“I was upset. I've had time to think since.”

He was forced to trust her, eventually, although the sense of some hidden motive, some urge greater than compassion, persisted in him.

“You've got some sort of plan for me, then? I can't follow him haphazard into the mountains at night, and expect to find him.”

“Yes. He was delirious when he left. That thing about the sheriff being after him--he wasn't after him then. Not until I gave the alarm. He's delirious, and he thinks he's back to the night he--you know. Wouldn't he do the same thing again, and make for the mountains and the cabin? He went to the cabin before.”

Bassett looked at his watch. It was half past twelve.

“Even if I could get a horse I couldn't get out of the town.”

“You might, on foot. They'll be trailing Rickett's horse by dawn. And if you can get out of town I can get you a horse. I can get you out, too, I think. I know every foot of the place.”

A feeling of theatrical unreality was Bassett's chief emotion during the trying time that followed. The cloaked and shrouded figure of the woman ahead, the passage through two dark and empty rooms by pass key to an unguarded corridor in the rear, the descent of the fire-escape, where they stood flattened against the wall while a man, possibly one of the posse, rode in, tied his horse and stamped in high heeled boots into the building, and always just ahead the sure movement and silent tread of the woman, kept his nerves taut and increased his feeling of the unreal.

At the foot of the fire-escape the woman slid out of sight noiselessly, but under Bassett's feet a tin can rolled and clattered. Then a horse snorted close to his shoulder, and he was frozen with fright. After that she gave him her hand, and led him through an empty outbuilding and another yard into a street.

At two o'clock that morning Bassett, waiting in a lonely road near what he judged to be the camp of a drilling crew, heard a horse coming toward him and snorting nervously as it came and drew back into the shadows until he recognized the shrouded silhouette leading him.

“It belongs to my son,” she said. “I'll fix it with him to-morrow. But if you're caught you'll have to say you came out and took him, or you'll get us all in trouble.”

She gave him careful instructions as to how to find the trail, and urged him to haste.

“If you get him,” she advised, “better keep right on over the range.”

He paused, with his foot in the stirrup.

“You seem pretty certain he's taken to the mountains.”

“It's your only chance. They'll get him anywhere else.”

He mounted and prepared to ride off. He would have shaken hands with her, but the horse was still terrified at her shrouded figure and veered and snorted when she approached. “However it turns out,” he said, “you've done your best, and I'm grateful.”

The horse moved off and left her standing there, her cowl drawn forward and her hands crossed on her breast. She stood for a moment, facing toward the mountains, oddly monkish in outline and posture. Then she turned back toward the town.

XXVIII

Dick had picked up life again where he had left it off so long before. Gone was David's house built on the sands of forgetfulness. Gone was David himself, and Lucy. Gone not even born into his consciousness was Elizabeth. The war, his work, his new place in the world, were all obliterated, drowned in the flood of memories revived by the shock of Bassett's revelations.