A Search For Truth

 

The fissure in the rock was all but invisible from a few yards away. Upon drawing closer, however, one saw that what had appeared to be an uneven line running down the cliff face was actually the edge of a sharp right-angle turn into a narrow passageway between steep rock walls. Jim Reid marveled at the perfection of its natural concealment. He had searched this valley from end to end, and must have passed and re-passed this spot half a dozen times without ever suspecting there was anything but a solid rock wall behind the aspen trees. The height of the cliff was even across the top; none but the birds or perhaps a venturesome mountain lion could know that there was a break in it.

A pure freak of chance had led him to the spot. Finding no clues on the ground after hours of search, he was riding back, scanning the trees as he went, still mechanically searching for something—and his eye had lit upon the sharp stub of a broken branch high in a yellow aspen. Something unusual about it made Jim turn aside to look. He realized upon inspection that if the branch had been broken by the wind or some climbing animal, it would have been caught in the bushes beneath. But there was no sign of it. This branch had broken against the head or shoulder of a passing rider, who had pulled the broken part off and carried it away so the hanging end would not betray their presence. A narrow streak of white on the underside of the branch showed where a strip of the soft bark had peeled away when they tore it off. Somebody had been just a little too careful.

Jim inspected the ground in the narrow passage. They must bring the cattle through here practically in single file, he thought. That was just fine for them, since they’d been taking small bunches at a time—filching them in twos and threes and half-dozens from among the strays and off the edges of the herds. There was more space behind the fringe of aspens than he’d thought. They must have entered behind the trees further down the valley, where the ground was mostly hard gravel that would hide their tracks.

Jim backed his horse out into the brush and turned him around. There was no need for him to see where the passage led. It came out into the valley on the other side of the ridge, and that was enough. His foreman had long suspected that one of the small ranches in the other valley was responsible for the persistent rustling of Sorrel Creek cattle, but had never been able to find out how they got the cattle through the range of high rocky hills that divided the valley from Sorrel Creek range. Every known gap had been watched for weeks, but the rustling continued unabated—they were powerless to stop it so long as there was some undiscovered way through.

And now he had found it! Jim cast a satisfied glance back at the cleft in the rock.

He threaded his way out through the trees and put his long-legged gray gelding into a trot down the wooded glen. The autumn afternoon was quiet and mellow; the sun glimmered through the light but dense curtain of small leaves on the trees. Jim was thinking as he rode, his mind full of this new intelligence. He would get back to Sorrel Creek with the news and they would take immediate action. This would put an end to a months-long nuisance that was just beginning to be a serious problem. All they had to do now was set a guard over the passage, and take the rustlers red-handed the next time they came through.

They would have to do it quietly, though, without letting the news get about. Virgil Thorsden, the Sorrel Creek foreman, had made a point of not sharing much information with the neighbors ever since the rustling began to be noticeable. Of the four small ranches that lay on the near slope of the other valley, and even the two or three on this side of the hills, there wasn’t one he completely trusted. Even if there was only one guilty party, there was no telling who might let news of the trap get around to their ears, deliberately or not. Jim had been too consumed with his efforts to find the hidden way through the hills to think much about who the guilty party might be. The elusive passage had frustrated him to the extent that he had practically demanded of Virgil Thorsden that he be allowed to spend all his time searching until he found it. Virgil had looked more amused than expectant, but he had agreed.

Jim was unaware of a movement in the woods behind him, of something passing among the trees where he had been a moment before. The aspen leaves quivered as they were stirred a second time, but they were too light to give warning, and any other sounds made by the pursuer were kept from Jim’s ears by the thud of his own horse’s hooves. The gray splashed through the thin trickle of a small stream and went up the pebbly bank, and on into the sun-dappled trees.

They emerged from the brush at the top of a gently sloping bank that led down into an open grassy space. Jim ducked his head to avoid some low-hanging branches, and the gray snorted and broke into a lope for a few strides.

The report of a rifle ripped from the brush behind. Jim’s horse leaped under him at the same instant a jarring impact threw him forward and sideways out of the saddle. He struck the ground on his back with a shock that seemed to jar all his senses loose and send them floating up, hovering over him for a moment, and then away and out of his reach.

 

* * *

 

The little glade was as quiet again as it had been before, when muffled hoofbeats sounded in the aspen wood, and a girl rode out into a gap between the bushes.

She reined in her horse quickly as she caught sight of the man sprawled unmoving in the grass. She rose a little in the stirrups and leaned forward for a better view. For an instant she hesitated—her first impulse seemed to be to urge her horse forward, but she glanced about her a little apprehensively. There was no sign of any other presence in the still woods.

The girl bit her lip, and then made up her mind and swiftly dismounted. Letting the reins fall to the ground, she advanced a few cautious steps toward the motionless body. Still cautiously she knelt down beside him. She laid her fingers on his wrist to feel for a pulse. Looking down, she saw that the lower part of his shirt was spattered with blood, and put her other hand to his side to push back his vest.

He gave a muffled groan at the touch, and the girl started back. She turned to look down at his face. He moved his head and opened his eyes, blinking painfully as if the light hurt them.

“Don’t move,” said the girl, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know how bad you’re hurt. What happened?”

“Rustlers,” said Jim thickly, not fully aware of himself yet, “blame rustlers. I found the way through...was on my way back. Somebody tried to stop me getting there, I guess.”

The girl did not answer at once. A close observer would have seen that her lips had parted quickly as if she drew a sudden breath, and her face had gone slightly pale.

She looked intently down into Jim’s face. “You’re from Sorrel Creek, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “My name’s Jim—Jim Reid.” He returned the look with mild, slightly dazed curiosity. “Who’re you, anyway?”

“I’m Callie Lupin.”

“Lupin…Lupin, over on the other side?” He endeavored to get the fact straight in his mind. “Lupin. I forgot he had a girl.”

He tried to smile and made a rather weak attempt at gallantry. “Guess I never saw you up close.”

Callie glanced over her shoulder. She sat back on her heels and looked to left and right in the woods again, as if she was afraid of being observed. “If they come back and find you here—” She bit her lip again and then seemed to make another quick decision. “Can you get up on my horse, if I help you?”

The first part of her speech had passed Jim unnoticed. “I can try, I guess.”

Callie scrambled to her feet and ran back to her horse. She led it over to Jim, then knelt again and slipped her arm beneath his shoulders to help him sit up. He winced at the pain in his side as he did so, but it was only a stinging, annoying sort of pain; perhaps he was not so badly injured as he had thought at first. But as he moved his left leg in preparation to rise he brought up short, a gasp forced from his lips.

“My leg,” he said. His face had gone a shade whiter. “My horse rolled over on it, I think.”

A fleeting expression of distress crossed the girl’s face, but it did not deter her for more than a second. She scrambled around to Jim’s other side and took hold of his left arm. “You can manage just a few steps, can’t you? Lean on me. Hurry,” she added with a strange intensity.

Somehow, she managed to help him up. She struggled for an instant under his weight as Jim leaned heavily on her slim shoulder, but reached for the reins to bring her horse a step closer, and Jim got hold of the saddle horn. His left leg was useless for mounting, so he took a deep breath and threw all his strength into one effort to pull himself up and get his good leg over the horse’s back. The trees and the sunlight whirled in a blurry pattern around his head for a few seconds as he sought for balance in the saddle, but gradually steadied again. Callie took hold of the bridle, and with another quick worried glance over her shoulder, turned the horse about and led him into the brush.

Her steps at first were hurried and uncertain, but after the first moment or two she seemed to know where she was going. She moved quickly, almost pulling the horse along after her, glancing back now and then at Jim or at the woods behind them. Jim paid little attention to what direction they were taking; he was too occupied in keeping his balance on the horse and gritting his teeth against the rivulets of pain that ran up his injured leg at the least jar.

Callie stopped suddenly. A horse snorted somewhere in the brush up ahead, and the muffled sound of hoofbeats came after it. Hastily Callie pulled her horse aside out of the trail, stumbling in the long matted grass beside it, the thin fingers of branches catching at her sleeves and hair, and got him deep into a thick tangle of weeds and bushes, coming to a breathless halt with both hands clutching the bridle just seconds before the other rider came in sight.

He drew rein directly across from the thicket, about ten yards away. From behind the screen of weeds Callie watched him look around—a dark-haired young man with an open, good-looking face. Just now it bore a puzzled, perhaps watchful expression—as if he thought he had heard something. He sat still for a moment, his eyes roving over the tangle of woods opposite him.

Callie was hardly breathing; her lips were parted, her eyes fastened on the young man’s face. She stood with her hand pressed over the horse’s soft muzzle, praying that no sudden stamp of a hoof or swish of the tail would give them away. Jim Reid, both hands gripping the pommel of the saddle, only half understood what was going on, but enough of the situation penetrated his brain to make him endeavor to keep his labored breathing quiet.

It seemed an eternity that the rider sat there with the reins in his hand, looking, his other hand resting on his thigh, and that slightly mistrustful expression…and then at last his face cleared and he gave an almost imperceptible shrug, as if to say he must have been mistaken, touched heels to his horse’s sides and rode off.

As soon as he was gone Callie quickly guided the horse out of the cover and led him on as quickly as she could, deeper into a trail crowded more thickly with brush, as the afternoon turned gradually to gray about them.

 

* * *

 

Jim heard faint noises somewhere near him, and opened his eyes. He saw nothing but blackness, and the atmosphere felt unfamiliar. There was an odd, thin chill in the air, and the quality of the silence was strange as well.

He heard a clatter of wood, like kindling being gathered or piled, and it echoed somewhere far off, but did not seem to touch the larger silence. He made out that he was lying on some kind of a pallet made from folded blankets, and at the same time he saw a small glow of light, which seemed to be coming from the same place as the sounds. He turned his head and looked around. Callie Lupin was kneeling by a small fire, built against some kind of wall that he could not identify, made even stranger-looking by the fire’s faint dancing illumination.

Callie heard him move and looked over her shoulder toward him, then got up and came over.

“That you?” said Jim. “What happened?”

She got down on her knees beside him. “You fainted when I was helping you slide down off the horse—I sure had a time of it dragging you in here.”

Jim looked up into the blackness overhead. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It’s an old mine. I think I’m the only one who even knows about it. Most people have forgotten there ever was a mine around here, and the outside of the hill is so overgrown you’d never guess it had ever been touched.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Jim. “I wonder how many more holes there are in these hills that only one person knows about—or two, now.”

Callie did not answer this. “I bandaged your side as best I could,” she said, leaning over to touch the bandage bound around him under his half-open shirt. “It wasn’t bleeding much. I think the bullet just glanced off your ribs.”

Jim gave a grunt of acknowledgement. “I remember my horse jumped just as the gun went off behind me—must have spoiled his aim some. Otherwise I’d have got it right in the back, I guess. You didn’t see anything of my horse, did you?”

“No…he must have drifted away.”

“What about my leg?” said Jim, lifting his head a little to look down toward it. A fine needle of pain that ran through it at the movement answered his question well enough, and he put his head back with a grimace.

“It must be broken—I don’t know how badly. I didn’t try to do anything besides pulling your boot off—I figured I might as well do that when you couldn’t feel it. I can make a splint for it if you want me to.”

“Better leave it like it is. I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure—there’s no way I’m going to be able to get up again.” He tried to shift his head and shoulders to a more comfortable position on the blankets, and gave a short sigh. He turned to look at Callie. “You’ll have to go down to Sorrel Creek, then. Tell ‘em what’s happened and the boys can come up and get me.”

“All right,” said Callie slowly. Jim was not paying much attention to her at that moment, or he might have seen her biting her lip again, as though trying to come to a decision.

He moved his head again, and swallowed, finding his throat rather dry. “Got any water, by the way?”

“Yes,” said Callie, getting to her feet, and dismissing for the moment whatever thoughts might be in her mind. She stepped into the shadows beyond the fire, and came back with a canteen and another blanket folded under her arm. She knelt down by him again. Jim pushed himself up somewhat painfully onto both elbows, and she held the canteen for him to drink. Then, as he let himself back down with a sigh of relief, she unfolded the blanket and spread it over him, taking care not to disturb his injured leg. “Thanks,” said Jim in an exhausted voice, for the initial strain and excitement which had borne him up for a while had ebbed.

He caught the worried look on the girl’s face as she rose and stood looking down at him for a moment, in the half-light from the fire. “I’ll be all right,” he said. He managed to wink one eye. “You just tell Virg and the boys where I am and they’ll take over. I’ll hang on all right till they come.”

She moved away. As she came to the edge of the light she looked back over her shoulder, a doubtful, troubled look in her dark eyes, and then turned her head away and vanished into the old tunnel. Jim heard her feet on the rocky floor for a few steps, and then silence.

Left alone, with the prospect of some painful hours to endure before help came, his mind reverted to the subject of the cattle rustlers that had gotten him into this situation. The fact that the unknown thief had tried to kill him from ambush strengthened his interest in the question of their identity somewhat. He weighed the suspects in his mind. There was Scully, to the north, and Brearton’s place a little between him and the hills. Brearton was right up against the divide. On the other hand, young Dave Nolan’s place was probably nearest to the mouth of the passage, Jim thought. A small outfit, but growing fast—Nolan must be a good manager. Then Lupin’s just to the south of him.

It could be anybody, he thought restlessly. Which one? Brearton—or Nolan? One of them had followed him, had hidden in the bushes and tried to shoot him in the back with a rifle. Which had the best access to the passage? But that didn’t necessarily mean anything; anybody could snake a few stolen cattle through their nearest neighbors’ range, with a little luck. It might be any of them.

Jim’s mind was beginning to go in circles. He was getting feverish; he could feel it, and that was no time for clear thinking. He gave it up. But that left him with nothing. Callie’s fire had dwindled down until there was almost no light left. The dark was oppressive; it seemed to weigh down upon him the sense of his own solitude and helplessness. He could not move, and he did not know his surroundings—not even the shape of the rock walls or what they looked like. He had the uneasy feeling that if he put an arm out or leaned sideways to feel about him he might fall off the uncomfortable bed into some uncharted space. That was the fever talking, he told himself, and managed to be convincing enough in the telling that after a few minutes he could shut his eyes and rest.

At some point he must have slept. He had a vague consciousness of drifting partly awake, then dropping off again, any number of times. When eventually he found himself lying awake, with a clearer brain and forehead damp with sweat, he was convinced that a significant amount of time had passed. Though the dark inside the mine had not changed, he had the feeling that somewhere outside it was daylight. He wondered why Callie had not come back, and what was taking the Sorrel Creek boys so long to get here.

After he had lain there restlessly a little while longer, fretted by the persistent sharp ache in his leg, he heard a noise in the tunnel. In a moment it resolved into footsteps, echoing a little off the rock walls—and then after a slight pause, the little fire flared up and revealed Callie Lupin’s face as she stirred up the coals. She was carrying a small covered tin pail in one hand, and had a coat folded over her arm. She set them down and glanced toward Jim, who had half lifted his head to regard her in puzzlement.

“Where’s the boys? Aren’t they coming?” he asked.

“I haven’t been to Sorrel Creek yet,” said Callie, piling sticks on the fire. “By the time I got home Pa was wanting his supper and I had to make it for him.” She was putting the pail over the fire as she spoke, on an old rusty hook fixed between some rocks. “I couldn’t slip away afterwards; I had to wait till he went to bed. Then I couldn’t ride all the way down to Sorrel Creek in the dark, but I figured I ought to bring you something to eat.”

Jim stared at her without speaking as she uncovered the pail and stirred it, and pushed another piece of wood into the now brightly glowing fire.

“I may have been a little under the weather,” he said at last, “but there’s no earthly way I’ve only been here a few hours. It can’t be before midnight, not by a long stretch.”

Callie shrugged her shoulders—a little diffidently, he thought, for a girl who had shown such clear-headed decision in the way she had come to his aid. She did not look at him as she spoke. “You must have been feverish, I guess.”

Jim said nothing, for he had just made a discovery. The watch that he usually carried in his vest pocket was gone. He felt about under the blankets and alongside his body in case it had somehow slipped out on its own, but it was not there.

Another fact was borne in upon him. “You didn’t tell your father.”

“No.”

He waited, through an increasingly uncomfortable pause, until it became evident that Callie was not going to speak again. “Why not?”

She spoke quickly, as if trying to give the impression of an offhand manner. “Pa hasn’t got the best judgment of people sometimes. He might tell the wrong person without knowing what he was doing, and if they found out you were still alive they’d come after you.”

“But…if I make it back to Sorrel Creek…” said Jim. Things were beginning to fall into place. “If I get back to Sorrel Creek to tell them about the passage, we’ll have our rustler in the bag.”

Another pause. “Callie, you know who it is!”

“No!” she said, whirling to face him. The pained, despairing look on her face convinced Jim almost against his will that she was telling the truth.

“But you think you know,” he said, slowly following out his train of thought. “Who was it that was at your house last night?”

“Last night—!”

He gestured impatiently toward the fire. “That stew’s good and cold. You’ve been stirring it over the fire for five minutes and I haven’t begun to smell it yet. And don’t tell me it’s because I’m out of my head.”

Callie did not answer, but her eyes were still fixed upon him with anxious dread. Jim was watching closely for the effect of his words. “Who was at your place when you got there, at dinnertime?” he said. “That you didn’t want your father to tell? It was Dave Nolan, wasn’t it?”

It was a chance stab, but he knew as soon as he spoke that it went home. Callie would have reacted with ridicule if he had been wrong, he thought. Instead she did not answer at all. Jim lifted his head from the blankets and fell back at the inevitable twinge of pain, still feeling the little surge of impatient anger that had driven his impulse to move. “So you’re covering for him, is that it? Because you’re—”

“Leave me alone!” flared Callie, flinging the words toward him as if trying to ward off an attack, and she spun round and plunged out of the mine. Jim heard her running feet scratching in the tunnel, and then when they faded away all was silent. He lay back, his mouth folded up tight in irritation, and cast an eye across the space toward the little tin pail, just beginning to give forth the smell of stew and entirely inaccessible to him.

Several minutes had passed, when he heard another slight sound. Callie slipped in like a shadow, and went straight over to the fire and knelt beside it. She took the lid from the stew and stirred it, the spoon scraping against the bottom of the pail, and then replaced the lid.

“It’d be a shame to let it burn,” she said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Jim. There was a pause, and then he ventured with extreme meekness, “May I have my watch back now?”

If he had meant the exaggeration in his tone to lighten the atmosphere between them, he was disappointed, for Callie’s face did not change expression as she stood up and took the watch from the pocket of her riding-skirt. She came over and put it in his hand. “I didn’t intend to keep it,” she said.

“I didn’t think you did.”

Jim was silent a minute, pushing the watch into his hip pocket, and then he said, “Want to tell me about it now?”

“I rode down to Sorrel Creek,” said Callie, slowly, “this morning. I went to see Jennie, to ask her if I could borrow a dress pattern. She told me about how they’re all out looking for you. Your horse came home with blood on the saddle. They knew you were out trying to find the rustlers’ way out of the valley, so they figured you…found it. Jennie said they hoped you were all right, but didn’t think it was likely…”

She said in a quick, uncertain voice, “I didn’t know when I went down there what I was going to do. I just wanted to find out…I almost said something, but I…couldn’t. I just got the pattern from Jennie, and went home.”

Jim twisted his head a little, squinting up at her. She was facing away, so he could just see the outline of her profile against the dimness flung by the tiny fire. It wasn’t every girl who had an eye-catching profile, he thought; most girls looked so ordinary from the side, all of them much like each other. Maybe it was just that he’d been thinking Callie Lupin was a bit of an extraordinary girl herself. But she had her weakness, like anybody, and he thought he knew what it was.

“Well, you’ve got yourself in quite a spot, haven’t you,” he observed after a minute. “Now you’ve gone to all the trouble of saving me, you can’t get rid of me. Unless you were to just shoot me and put me out of my misery—say, you’ve got my gun, too, haven’t you?—but no, I can’t see you doing that. But you don’t want to let me loose. What d’you plan to do, starve me until I promise not to tell a soul about the hole in the rocks?”

Callie turned abruptly as if she had just been reminded of something and went back to the fire, and removed the stew from the flames. Jim watched her. “What did you figure on doing with me when you helped me, out there?” he said.

“I didn’t even know,” said Callie, turning to look full at him for the first time. “I couldn’t leave you there for—anyone to find you; I just needed time to think.”

“Made up your mind yet?”

“No.”

“I suppose you realize you could always tell Nolan that somebody’d found the hole,” remarked Jim to the roof of the mine; “spike our guns if he didn’t use it again.”

Callie shook her head. “I couldn’t do that.”

Jim shook his head too. “No, you couldn’t,” he said. “It wouldn’t be in your book of what’s honest. You’ve got some funny ideas about doing what’s right, you know that?”

“I don’t even know,” said Callie. “Can’t you see that? I don’t know for sure about anything.”

“Why don’t you ask him, then?”

She flashed him a horrified look, as if that was the most frightening idea she could conceive of. “No—I couldn’t—”

Jim said, “Are you engaged to him?”

“No,” said Callie. “I’m not even…I don’t know if he even notices me. He comes around our place a lot, even though Pa doesn’t really like him, but I don’t know if he—”

“But you’ve been kind of hoping he will, one of these days,” said Jim.

Callie had been toying with the spoon she had used to stir the stew, looking down at it as she turned it over in her fingers. Now she picked up a tin plate, took the cover off the pail again and began spooning stew into the plate.

“Is that what you really want?”

“What do you mean?” said Callie without looking up.

“Do you still like him as well as you did before, knowing he might be mixed up in this?”

“I don’t know that that’s any of your business,” said Callie, speaking crisply for once.

“Well, not to make a joke, but now that you’ve dragged me into it I guess it’s become my business,” said Jim with a return of the edge to his voice.

Callie let the spoon drop on the tin plate with a thin clatter. “Would you rather I’d left you lying out there?”

“Oh, quit it!” said Jim, making an impatient gesture with his hand and rolling his head back restlessly on the blankets. He lay there staring up into the darkness while Callie put the plate down and clapped the lid back on the pail, her sharp movements testifying to her mood.

“Look here, Callie,” Jim began again, after a few moments; more calmly, but with an earnestness in his voice that had not been there before. “It’s because of what you did for me that I think you’re a darned fine girl. There’s not many who’d have had that kind of nerve. That’s why I’d hate to see you go that way. You want a man you can believe in—no other kind would suit you for keeps.”

She had risen again and was looking down at him, listening to what he said, though she looked as if she half wanted to shrink from it. He had to force the words and they came bluntly. “Suppose he does notice you one of these days. Say he asks you to marry him. Could you say yes, and go over to his little ranch and live with him, not knowing if your husband’s a thief and a killer—”

“Oh, stop!” cried Callie, turning her back to him. Jim saw her put her hands to her face, and felt a momentary stab of guilt.

He thought rather uneasily of what would happen on his return to Sorrel Creek. What Callie would have to go through, knowing a trap was being laid for the rustlers, waiting to hear who was caught. It was too bad—she oughtn’t to have to bear that, especially for the sake of a man who didn’t even know she cared about him and had even chances of being innocent or guilty. If only she could know now—a clean break, before all the mess of the public disgrace and trial. Maybe it would be easier on her that way.

And then it occurred to him—there was one way to find out. An easy test. It was a risk, but what had risks ever been to him? It was worth trying for the girl’s sake.

He spoke his thoughts aloud: “Why not find out? Now?”

Callie dropped her hands and turned to look at him, her face showing pale in the dimness. Her lower lip twitched between nervously biting teeth again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s an easy way to find out whether Nolan’s guilty or not,” said Jim. “If he’s the one who shot at me, and he were to find out I’m still alive, he wouldn’t want me to get back to Sorrel Creek. He’d try and make sure I wouldn’t.”

“No!” said Callie, taking a half-step toward him.

Jim managed to hitch himself up a little on both elbows, stirred to forgetfulness of pain by the plan he was rapidly conceiving. “You go and find him, and tell him just what happened—you found a man hurt in the woods and you need help. Don’t tell him who I am. Bring him here, and what he says and does when he sees me will tell you all you need to know.”

“Oh, no,” said Callie. “I can’t! Don’t you see that’s what I was trying to stop—part of why I helped you. Whatever else had happened, I—I didn’t want him to be guilty of murder.”

“If a man wants to go wrong, Callie, you can’t stop him—no matter how much you care about him.”

“But you don’t have to put the chance right in his hands!”

“Listen, I’m no more eager to get killed than the next man,” said Jim. “I’m not taking any chances. You give me my gun, and I’ll put it under the blanket here and be covering him quietly the whole time. There won’t be any trouble.”

He leaned forward a little, his eyes holding hers insistently. “The truth can’t hurt an innocent man, Callie. If he’s innocent, you’ve got to know for sure. You know you’ve got to have the truth…”

She stood still, staring not at the rock wall of the mine, but away into some unfathomable distance. Jim let himself back down on the blankets, feeling suddenly weak and overstrained. Callie’s clear-featured young face was white and still, and something in her dark eyes made him look uncomfortably away and study the texture of the wool blanket pulled over him.

“It’s up to you,” he said after a minute or two, not looking at her. “You know there’s only one other way, besides that.”

“I know,” said Callie.

She looked down at him, and for a minute he saw her again as the girl she had been when she first came to his aid—the girl of clear thought and unhesitating action. “All right,” she said in a low voice, but steady. “I’ll bring him.”

Jim nodded, unable to say anything that he felt was appropriate, but hoping she could see how he appreciated what she was nerving herself to do.

Callie glanced back at the fire and the half-forgotten plate of stew on the ground. “You’d better eat first,” she said, bending to pick it up, “and then I’ll go.”

 

* * *

 

Jim shifted his shoulders again on the uncomfortably flattened pallet of blankets, and drew a long but careful sigh. The pain in his leg was worse now, and his back and shoulders were stiff and aching from the uncomfortable position in which he lay. It wouldn’t be much longer, he tried to tell himself. Just as soon as this ordeal with Nolan was through, he’d be able to have somebody get him out of here and have the throbbing leg attended to. He couldn’t lose his grip now.

Callie had given him his gun; it was loaded, and he held it next to his body in his right hand, the blanket covering his arm. He prayed to God he wouldn’t have to use it. Nolan would be a fool to do anything with the girl there, unless he lost his head…Jim didn’t know him well, but Nolan seemed pretty even-tempered, not the kind to be shaken easily.

But was he getting ahead of himself, assuming Nolan was the man they wanted? Were they both off their heads, imagining things? No—he’d been right to suspect—and Callie wasn’t the kind of girl to let her imagination run away with her, especially about someone she wanted so badly to believe was honest.

Callie…Restless doubts assailed him again. Was he doing the right thing? This was going to hurt her—hurt her like heck if Nolan was really guilty. But a good, straight girl like that couldn’t marry a sneaking, back-shooting cattle thief. She’d regret it one day, if she didn’t at once. But what right did he, Jim, have to interfere? He’d forced this on her—but then again, she’d forced it too, by taking advantage of him while he was helpless like this. Oh, it was all a mess.

He had the watch in his pocket now to see how long Callie had been gone if he wanted to, but somehow he couldn’t. Every minute of the time found him keyed up to the same pitch, as if each minute was the one he could expect to hear them coming.

At last it came. He heard the sound of multiple footsteps in the tunnel and a girl’s voice saying something, low, and then more clearly a man’s voice making reply.

“I’ll be darned. I’ve passed this spot a hundred times and never guessed there was anything in here.”

Callie made no answer to this, which Jim, thinking again of the other hidden passage, thought was just as well.

“In here,” she said, ducking through into the mine.

Jim had shut his eyes at their approach, and gave his best imitation of unconsciousness. His only impression of what was happening came through hearing. Callie seemed to have stopped a few feet away, watching her companion from behind as he advanced to bend over the injured man. Jim heard the clink of a spur and the sound of Nolan’s crouching down beside him. He tried to keep his face loose and expressionless, breathing slowly and heavily. Sweat was sticking the palm of his hand to the grip of the Colt under the blanket.

“Why, it’s Jim Reid—one of the Sorrel Creek boys,” said Dave Nolan’s voice. “How bad’s he hurt—d’you know?”

“Well, the gunshot wound didn’t look bad,” said Callie. “But his leg’s broken, I think.” She seemed to swallow and moisten her lips as though her mouth was too dry for speech.

“Where’d you say you found him again?” Jim could tell by the sound of his voice that he was speaking to her over his shoulder.

“About—a mile and a half north of here—in the woods, close to the divide. Just on this side of the creek.”

“Hmm,” said Nolan thoughtfully, but lightly.

He stood up. “I guess I’d better ride down to Sorrel Creek and get help. Better not try to move him with just the two of us, not with his leg like that. Will you be all right staying with him while I go?”

He received no answer. Callie, at the close of this speech, had turned abruptly away from him—almost unsteadily, as if she were faint, with one hand over her mouth.

He looked back at her. “Something wrong?”

Jim Reid blew out a long, slow breath, and opened his eyes. “Kinda glad you came through, Nolan.”

Dave Nolan looked down at him, his hat pushed back on his head, his brown eyes honest but puzzled. “Hey, Jim,” he said. “How do you feel?”

He glanced at Callie, who still stood with her back to him, some strong emotion evident from her bowed head and tense shoulders. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

Jim let his own eyes travel meaningly to Callie, and back to meet the young rancher’s quizzical look. “Why don’t you figure it out.”

Nolan looked at the girl again. “Callie? What’s the matter?”

She half turned toward him, hugging herself as if trying to hold back something that could have been laughter or tears. “I thought it was you,” she cried. “I thought—it was you!”

Dave Nolan stared at her for a minute—and then slowly a light came up in his face, a light that was more than just comprehension. He moved over close to Callie, who had turned her back on him again and was weeping muffled sobs into the palm of her hand.

He put his hands on her arms. “Why’d that bother you so much?” he said gently, but with a half-tender, half-exultant smile trying to show on his face, and creeping a little into his voice. The only answer was another sob. He leaned a little closer. “You don’t have to be shy about telling me…You see, I don’t mind at all…”

Hesitantly, Callie lifted her head—slowly turned it to look over her shoulder, into his eyes—and then spun to face him and hid her face against his shoulder, and he put his arms around her.

Jim Reid directed his eyes up toward the roof of the mine and pursed his lips into a soundless whistle, which he maintained for several verses of an imaginary tune.

Presently a few broken fragments of sentences became audible from Callie: “I thought that—because of the cattle—I was just sick over it. I didn’t want to believe it, but—”

“You poor kid,” said Dave Nolan, who showed no inclination to let her out of his arms anytime soon. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I was too scared. I—oh, I can’t tell you all about it now.”

“That’s all right,” he said affectionately, permitting her to emerge, her hair somewhat crushed and disordered but her wet eyes shining. “Leave it till whenever you want—we’ll have lots of time to talk. Anyway, we’ve got to get Jim looked after.”

“Got to agree with you,” said Jim, and they both started and looked toward him a little guiltily as though they had forgotten his presence. “I didn’t like to mention it, but this leg of mine is gnawing at me like a guilty conscience.”

“We’ll have you out of here in no time,” said Nolan. “Callie, you want to stay with him while I ride down and find Thorsden and his boys?”

Jim, noticing Callie’s slight hesitation, grinned and said, “That’s all right. Go along with him; I’ll be fine by myself. I’m getting so’s this old place feels just like home.”

“I really should be getting home,” said Callie regretfully. “Pa’ll be wondering what’s happened to me, late getting meals two days running.”

“Sure, I understand,” said Dave Nolan before Jim had a chance to speak. “Go ahead. And then—can I come over and see you later?” Their eyes met for a second, and Callie nodded yes.

He grinned suddenly and shyly at her, as if he could not help it, and said—more to Callie than to Jim—”I won’t be long.”

 

* * *

 

The fire had died down, leaving it chillier in the mine, though there was just enough light left from the coals to see by. Jim dozed feverishly from time to time, though the pain in his leg kept him from dropping off to sleep completely. He was more relaxed, though, now that the sense of uncertainty was gone; he was on the last leg of his wait.

An echoing step dragged his eyes open from another half-sleep. He rolled his head to the side and looked around, but there was no one in the mine. For a moment he thought the sound must have come from his own tired brain.

Then he heard it again—the grinding of loose stone under a foot in the tunnel; a sound he had come to know well by this time. It was a slow step, a cautious one, and a man’s.

Jim lifted his head and called out, somewhat confusedly, “Nolan? That you?”

There was no reply, save a pause in the footsteps, and then with the same slow tread the figure of a man moved out from the tunnel, and Jim saw that it was not Dave Nolan. The man was older, heavier. He stood for a second with his face in shadow. Then he moved forward, and with a sudden unexplainable relief Jim recognized the rancher Lupin—Callie’s father.

“Well,” said Jim with a faint laugh. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Anybody else, for that matter. Your girl told me nobody else knew about this place.”

“Yeah, that’s what she told me, too,” said Lupin, slowly. “Told me all about it when she got home. I’d been wondering what she was up to.”

He was a thick-shouldered man, balding on top of his head and at the temples, and wore an old once-green coat with frayed cuffs. His face had a slow, meditative look about it, rather like that worn by a bull, which makes you wonder if the animal is really unconcerned or pondering his next move.

He moved forward a slow, measured step or two, and surveyed Jim’s prostrate form. He gestured toward him with one hand. “Busted your leg, eh?”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “Horse fell on it.”

Lupin was next to him now, and bent to crouch down on one knee the same as Dave Nolan had done. The movement was casual and unhurried. Jim had a sudden instinctive feeling of alarm and moved his hand, but it was already too late. With a rapidity belied by his heavy appearance Lupin flipped back the blanket to expose the gun lying by Jim’s side and his hand closed over it before Jim had time to grip and lift it.

He straightened up, gun in hand, and checked it to see if it was loaded. Jim’s eyes followed him warily, but with full understanding. He knew now.

“You won’t get away with it,” he said.

Lupin shook his head with a faint pitying flicker of a smile, and held out the gun. “Your gun,” he said, “and nothing to link me with it. Or anybody else, even. But Dave Nolan will have a hard time proving that you were alive when he left you here.”

A little surge of anger like a hot needle ran through Jim Reid from his broken leg up through his spine. His jaw tightened. This was the man who had tried to kill him from behind. Things fit in now. He’d disliked young Nolan, didn’t like his hanging around and talking to Callie, because he was afraid that Nolan might eventually stumble on his secret. He’d have no compunction about killing them both with one shot.

But the additional knowledge that Jim possessed almost made him want to laugh aloud. “Nolan’s not the only one. Callie knows everything; I told her all about it, even the hole in the rocks. She’ll know.”

“She’ll do as she’s told,” said Lupin shortly. “She’s my daughter, and she’ll keep quiet about what she needs to.”

Jim shook his head slowly, side to side. “She won’t stand for your putting a rope around Nolan’s neck,” he said softly. “You’re making a big mistake if you’re counting on that.”

“I told you,” said Lupin, “she’s my daughter. She’ll keep her mouth shut about what I tell her to.”

A slight sound over by the tunnel made them both turn. Callie was standing there, leaning forward slightly from having just ducked through the end of the tunnel; one hand touching the rock wall, looking at her father.

Jim Reid would never forget how she looked at that moment. It was not grief, nor anger in her face as she looked at Lupin in the firelight—a face at once that of a child and a woman, with brows bent over her dark eyes in an expression of perplexed, hurt wonder, as though she could not quite believe what she had heard could be true.

Lupin said abruptly, but not as if he were at all affected by the look or her presence, “Callie, what are you doing here?”

She moved forward, slowly, her eyes still on him. “I saw you leave,” she said. “I looked out the window, while I was getting dinner, and I had a funny feeling—I didn’t know where you could be going—after what I’d told you…”

Her father made a short gesture with the hand that held Jim’s gun. “Go on back home now. There’s no need for you to be here. I’ll be along directly.”

Instead she came a step nearer. “Pa, what are you doing?”

“Can’t you guess?” said Jim. He hated the brutal tone of his own voice, but his nerves were raw, and what he was seeing happen to the girl increased his own sense of helplessness.

She not only guessed, she knew; the same as he had done. He saw urgency take the place of disbelief in her face. “You can’t kill him, Pa. You wouldn’t do a thing like that!”

Lupin let out a rasping breath of impatience. “You’re a grown girl, Callie, and you know what stolen cattle means. You ought to know I can’t let this boy talk. What do you suppose we’ve been living on this past year? Or more like two years?”

He moved as he spoke as if to take a step forward, and Callie, pale but determined, slipped rapidly between him and the corner where Jim lay, her hands spread out a little at her sides as if shielding him. “No!” she said. “I won’t let you do it! I won’t keep quiet. I’d tell everything sooner than let you kill someone!”

Lupin’s face darkened, as he seemed to recognize for the first time that she was not behaving as he expected. “You’d sooner turn over your own father?” he said. “Is that all the feeling you’ve got? He’s nothing to you; nothing to either of us, except he’s going to ruin us, that’s what!”

“I don’t care! You don’t understand. It’s not just because of him; it’s for you! Whatever else you’ve done, don’t do murder, Pa! You can’t have something as black as that on your soul. I don’t want you to, any more than I wanted it for—oh, Pa, don’t!”

Lupin’s heavy face was set in expressionless anger. His thumb shifted over the hammer of the Colt, and he motioned with it again. “For the last time, Callie, I’m telling you to go home. Are you going to do as I say, or not?”

“No,” she said, and her voice quivered not with fear but with resolve.

With a harsh muttered oath Lupin stepped toward her and grasped her arm. The hand that held the Colt swung around and Jim saw that he meant to twist the girl aside and fire down around her. But with a cry Callie wrenched free and clutched at his arm with both hands. The gun went off with a deafening explosion in the closeness of the mine. Jim, who had instinctively stiffened himself against the expected shock of the bullet, saw Callie stumble and fall to her knees just beside him, jolting against him and sending an agonizing throb of pain through his bad leg, and at the same time heard the scream of the ricochet off the rock wall just inches above his body. Lupin stood as if turned to stone, staring down at his daughter, the smoking gun held out as if he had stopped in the very middle of the act of firing it. Callie was holding her left wrist tightly with her other hand, and as she rocked back a little, sitting back on her heels, Jim saw a thin dark line of blood trickling down the palm of her left hand.

She lifted her head to look at her father, again with that perplexed, pleading look in her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I was only doing it…for you…”

Then she broke down and began to cry, small helpless sobs like a child. Lupin did not move, or take his eyes from her—it seemed that now, he was the one staring at something he did not understand.

A shout echoed down the tunnel. There was a confused noise outside, and a moment later Dave Nolan burst into the mine. He swung to a stop for just a second to look and then made straight for the crumpled form of the girl on her knees, without a glance for the two men. At his heels came Virgil Thorsden, and two more Sorrel Creek riders pushed in behind him.

Nolan, down on his knees beside Callie, ripped her sleeve at the wrist and exhaled quickly in relief as he saw that it was only a shallow cut and burn the gunshot had scored along the inside of her forearm. He pulled a bandana from his pocket and began to wrap it around her arm, whispering words of comfort to her as her sobs quieted. Thorsden, meanwhile, glanced at Jim Reid and at Lupin, still standing with gun in hand. His lifted eyebrow asked a question.

“There’s your man,” said Jim briefly. He added with an explanatory glance at Thorsden, “Our rustler.”

Virgil Thorsden motioned to one of the men, who stepped forward and disarmed Lupin, taking Jim’s gun from his hand and Lupin’s own from its holster. Lupin relinquished both without protest, not even looking at the Sorrel Creek men. The man who had disarmed him prodded him, indicating the entrance to the tunnel, and Lupin moved to obey. But he stopped for a second by the two kneeling together, and Dave Nolan looked up at him over Callie’s head.

Lupin said, “You’d better take care of her.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nolan quietly, but with a toneless quality that hinted at what he might have said had there not been the girl there between them, “I will.”

Lupin ducked in the tunnel, attended by the other man. When they had gone, Nolan helped Callie to her feet. She leaned close to him, as if seeking strength elsewhere since for the moment she had used up all that was to be found in herself. Jim could not see her face. Nolan put his arm around her shoulders, and guided her out of the mine.

Virgil Thorsden looked after them for a second. Then he turned and stepped over to the corner where Jim Reid lay, and looked down at him. There was the barest suggestion of a twitch at the end of his straight mouth.

“Not a bad couple of days’ work, for being flat on your back,” he said.

Jim grinned up at him, a grin somewhat tempered by the pain and the experiences of said two days. “No,” he said, “not bad at all.”