There is one consolation, muttered Lefever, as they held to what each felt to be an almost hopeless search. As long as Henry can stick to a saddle he can shootand the Morgans after yesterday afternoon will think twice before they close in on him, if they find him.
Scott shook his head: That brings us up against another proposition, John. De Spain hasnt got any cartridges.
Lefever turned sharply: What do you mean?
His belt is in the barn at Calabasas, hanging up with his coat.
Why didnt you tell me that before, demanded Lefever indignantly.
Ive been hoping all the time wed find Henry and I wouldnt have to tell you.
In spite of the hope advanced by Lefever that de Spain might by some chance have cartridges in his pocket, Scotts information was disquieting. However, it meant for de Spain, they knew, only the greater need of succor, and when the news of his plight was made known later in the day to Jeffries, efforts to locate him were redoubled.
For a week the search continued day and night, but each day, even each succeeding hour, reduced the expectation of ever seeing the hunted man alive. Spies working at Calabasas, others sent in by Jeffries to Music Mountain among the Morgans, and men from Medicine Bend haunting Sleepy Cat could get no word of de Spain. Fairly accurate reports accounted for Gale Morgan, nursing a wound at home, and for Sassoon, badly wounded and under cover somewhere in the Gap. Beyond this, information halted.
Toward the end of the week a Mexican sheep-herder brought word in to Lefever that he had seen in Duke Morgans stable, Sassoons horsethe one on which de Spain had escaped. He averred he had seen the blood-stained Santa Fe saddle that had been taken off the horse when the horse was found at daybreak of the day following the fight, waiting at Sassoons corral to be cared for. There could be, it was fairly well ascertained, no mistake about the horse: the man knew the animal; but his information threw no light on the fate of its missing rider.
Though Scott had known first of de Spains helpless condition in his desperate flight, as regarded self-defense, the Indian was the last to abandon hope of seeing him alive again. One night, in the midst of a gloomy council at Jeffriess office, he was pressed for an explanation of his confidence. It was always difficult for Scott to explain his reasons for thinking anything. Men with the surest instinct are usually poorest at reasoning a conviction out. But, Bob, cross-examined and harried, managed to give some explanation of the faith that was in him. In the first place, he said, Ive ridden
a good deal with that manpretty much all over the country north of Medicine Bend. He is as full of tricks as a nuts full of meat. Henry de Spain can hide out like an Indian and doctor himself. Then, again, I know something about the way he fights; up here, they dont. If those four fellows had ever seen him in action they never would have expected to get out of a room alive, after a showdown with Henry de Spain. As near as I can make out from all the talk thats floating around, what fooled them was seeing him shoot at a mark here one day in Sleepy Cat.
Jeffries didnt interrupt, but he slapped his knee sharply.
You might just as well try to stand on a box of dynamite, and shoot into it, and expect to live to tell it, continued Scott mildly, as to shoot into that fellow in a room with closed doors and expect to get away with it. The only way the bunch can ever kill that man, without getting killed themselves, is to get him from behind; and at that, John, the man that fires the gun, murmured the scout, ought to be behind a tree.
You say he is hit. I grant it, he concluded. But I knew him once when he was hit to lie out in the bush for a week. He got cut off once from Whispering Smith and Kennedy after a scrimmage outside Williams Cache two years ago.
You dont believe, then, hes dead, Bob? demanded Jeffries impatiently.
Not till I see him dead, persisted Scott unmoved.
CHAPTER XII ON MUSIC MOUNTAIN
The discovery sent a shock through his failing faculties. He could not recollect why he had no belt. Believing his senses tricked him, he felt again and again for it before he would believe it was not buckled somewhere about him. But it was gone, and he stuck back in his waistband his useless revolver. One hope remainedflight, and he spurred his horse cruelly.
Blood running continually into his eyes from the wound in his head made him think his eyes were gone, and direction was a thing quite beyond his power to compass. He made little effort to guide, and his infuriated horse flew along as if winged.
A warm, sticky feeling in his right boot warned him, when he tried to make some mental inventory of his condition, of at least one other wound. But he found he could inventory nothing, recollect next to nothing, and all that he wanted to do was to escape. More than once he tried to look behind, and he dashed his hand across his red forehead. He could not see twenty feet ahead or behind. Even when he hurriedly wiped the cloud from his eyes his vision seemed to have failed, and he could only cling to his horse to put the miles as fast as possible between himself and more of the Morgans.