He searched for a way to open it, found a concealed catch that let the cover swing back on small brass hinges … and stared down at a box packed solidly with gold dust.

  Frantically he examined others and his blood boiled when he saw a box lying face up. On a paper pasted under the words HOLY BIBLE there was an ink-printed inscription which read:

  From the hoard of Sarah M. Holland.

  Beneath this was a line of Scripture: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”

  Pat’s consternation outstripped his wrath. Not only had the fiend in sheep’s clothing murdered and robbed, but he had actually kept accounts. He had salved his conscience by the Scriptures.

  Quickly turning over other volumes he came upon other names and other scriptures.

  Whirling about, Pat strode into the living room with a portion of his find, his face livid with wrath.

  “There you are, Norton,” he snarled. “Did you happen to know a Mrs. Susan Holland?” He handed the false Bible to the mayor.

  “Of course.” Norton’s face was ashen. “Mrs. Holland … was murdered … about three months ago. Lived in a cabin up near the ledge.”

  “There are other boxes and some more names in that room. The loot that the black-hoods have been stealing for months. That’s how he planned to get the stuff out to Pueblo and to the Denver mint. Inside of Bibles! The psalm-singin’ hypocrite! But he wasn’t satisfied with that. He had to grab my wife and Sutton’s daughter after he’d tortured the old man and he wouldn’t tell where his gold was. He’ll swing for it as sure as my name’s Pat Stevens.”

  He swung savagely on the unmasked leader of the hooded gang. “You got this one chance. Start talkin’ … or else.”

  “I admit everything. That is … I admit stealing the gold … and leading the black-hoods. But we’ve never preyed on women. I never allowed the men to go that far. I did plan to stop your wife and the Sutton girl this morning, but only to search them for gold. I was waiting on the road but they didn’t come along. They must have become frightened and turned off … or took some other road.…” His words tumbled out in a frightened stream as the miserable wretch sought to convince Pat that he was not responsible for the plight of his wife. But Pat would have none of his protestations.

  “There isn’t any other road to Pueblo,” he thundered. “An’ they didn’t turn off of their own accord. I saw tracks where a horse had stopped ’em. Tracks that’ll fit your sorrel, I reckon.”

  He stalked to the door and jerked it open, shouted loudly:

  “Come in an’ get ’im. He’s confessed an’ we’ve found the gold. There’s a rafter here that’s just about the right height to lift ’im to meet them angels he’s always shoutin’ about.”

  Pat drew off to one side grimly as the mob poured through the narrow doorway and quickly surrounded the hapless seller of Bibles.

  Ezra squeezed through and pushed his way to Pat’s side, his single eye gleaming brightly.

  “You gonna let ’em string ’im up, Pat? After all you done said ’bout the law takin’ its due course?”

  “Why not?” Pat’s gray eyes were murky with anger. “He won’t tell what’s become of Sally. Let ’im swing. Maybe he’ll talk when the rope gets tight.”

  Mr. Norton sidled up to Pat and asked, “What about the rest of the gang, Pat? I wish you’d let us swear you in as sheriff and go after the others.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Pat told him. “We’ve already fixed six others so they won’t do any more stealin’ and murderin’.”

  The mayor’s protruding eyes bulged. “That so?” he asked in amazement. “That makes seven, including Bible Jim. We thought there were eight of ’em.”

  Pat’s eyes narrowed on the short, stocky mayor. “Then there’s another one at large?” A deep frown formed between his brows.

  In the meantime eager hands were adjusting the loop about Bible Jim’s long scrawny neck, throwing the other end over one of the rafters near the peaked rough ceiling of the cabin.

  One of the miners jerked his belt off and roughly trussed Bible Jim’s arms tight to his sides, then stepped aside while three men swung their weight on the other end of the rope.

  The incredibly long lean body was jerked upward with ease and his frame dangled beneath the rafter, kicking spasmodically and twisting while his deep-set eyes began to bulge and his mouth gaped open. A swelling purple tongue licked out over his bloodless lips.

  “Wisht I had me a pan o’ hot coals to hold to his feet,” Ezra growled.

  “Leave the devil do thet tuh ’im,” an angry voice replied.

  Pat Stevens sprang forward suddenly and to the complete surprise of every one present shouted, “That’ll be enough. Let the rope go! Let ’im down for a minute or he’ll be choked so he can’t talk. I reckon he’ll tell what he did with the girls now.”

  The men holding the end of the rope reluctantly let go, and Bible Jim’s body slithered to the floor in a grotesque, writhing heap.

  Pat pushed close to him and dropped to his knees beside the figure and loosened the noose around his neck so that the half-choked leader of the black-hoods could get his breath.

  “Now you know how it feels to get close to heaven. Tell me where Sally is an’ I promise I’ll see you locked up safe in jail for trial. But if you don’t talk fast you’ll never see the sun set again.”

  Bible Jim was gurgling and retching. “I can’t,” he choked out. “I tell you I can’t. I swear I don’t know. I waited for them down the road and they didn’t come. I’d tell you if I knew. Why should I refuse … now?”

  Pat rocked back on his heels, his face set in hard lines. “I reckon he’s tellin’ the truth this time. No man that close to hell would waste his last breath lyin’. The party’s over, boys. I was tryin’ to scare him into tellin’ what I wanted to know. None of us want the lynchin’ of this worthless skunk on our conscience. The law’ll hang ’im just as dead as we could.”

  “No!” one of the miners shouted. “We want ’im now. We’ll take care of him. To hell with the law!”

  The cry was taken up by the mob, a blood-curdling howl of atavistic wrath from men determined to mete out frontier justice in the immemorial way.

  “Sorry, boys.” Pat came to his feet lithely and both hands sprouted six-guns. “It was a dirty trick to play on all of you, gettin’ your hopes up for a hangin’, but I had to be sure he was tellin’ the truth … an’ I had to make him believe he was goin’ to hang if he didn’t tell. But you better back out that door slow an’ let me and Mayor Norton lock ’im up. Lynchin’s too good for ’im, anyways. Leave him rot in jail while he meditates on his sins. Back on out! I ain’t foolin’ now. I got no time to waste. Ezra an’ me have got to trail my wife and Martha Sutton.”

  He motioned with his guns, moved forward slowly, and the front rank of the mob backed away from him, pressing the others back. The men came to a semblance of sanity and finally found their good humor. They filed out of the cabin room quietly.

  “Good Lord,” Norton exclaimed. “This is certainly a relief, Pat. I thought you’d lost your mind for a while.”

  “I did,” Pat snapped. “Come on and help pick ’im up and lug ’im over to the jail. You better deputize some of the older men,” he went on to Norton. “Me an’ Ezra can’t stay around here to guard your jail. We got a job of work to do.”

  Within a few minutes they were mounted on fresh horses and galloping away from Tola on the stage road toward Pueblo to pick up the faint trail of the buggy wheels and the horse tracks of the mysterious gunman who had intercepted the girls before they reached the trap laid for them by Bible Jim.

  EIGHTEEN

  “How you makin’ it with them bullet holes in you?” Ezra asked anxiously as they neared the spot where Pat thought he had seen the signs of the girls being intercepted. He noticed that Pat was swaying in the saddle and his face was white, with beads of perspiration standing out on it despite the chilly wind they rode against.

  “I’m all right,” Pat grunted back. “It’s not much farther an’ I can make it. Worst thing,” he went on jerkily, “is all this ridin’ with my belly empty. I haven’t swallowed a bite since that sowbelly an’ biscuits night before last.”

  “You oughta take time out to eat, you dang fool. I stayed behin’ at the Widder Hawkins’ fer a snack after I sent the Doc ridin’ to Sutton’s. She fixed me a mess o’ venison steak with cream gravy an’ …”

  “Shut up,” Pat snapped. “We’re ’most there an’ it ain’t goin to help my gunnin’ any if my belly is tyin’ itself in knots with me thinkin’ about venison and cream gravy.”

  When they reached the beginning of the hairpin curve, Pat pointed out the muddy wheel tracks which led a short distance up the rocky incline where they were shortly lost. Topping the highest point and going down the steep slope Pat said, “Down there by that big boulder is where I saw the hoof-print and just about where the road angles looks like buggy tracks where wheels turned sharp.”

  When they reached the spot Ezra swung from his horse and examined the spot by the boulder. After a few minutes he straightened up and nodded. “That’s the way she reads. A feller waited here on a spirited haws an’ had a time of it keepin’ ’im still … er else his haws had fleas on ’im. See where the stone is nicked up?”

  Pat nodded and they went back to the trail, where Ezra got down on his hands and knees and crawled around. Suddenly he leaped up and said, “Headed up into that side o’ the canyon, I reckon. Lead m’haws ’long while I go on foot so’s not to lose the trail.”

  He started up the slope at a dogtrot, bending forward and searching the ground. Pat caught up the reins of Ezra’s horse and followed slowly, tense and stiff in the saddle, refusing to let his mind consider what he might find at the end of the trail Ezra was following.

  As unerring as a trained bloodhound on a hot scent, Ezra scrambled up the slope toward the twisting gulch. Stopping at a point far up the wall, he examined several trails leading away. When Pat caught up with him, Ezra reached for his horse’s reins, saying:

  “Might’s well both ride from here on. The rider an’ buggy turned up here. Ain’t no signs of the gals gettin’ out ’long the way. Reckon they cain’t be far.”

  Without a word Pat relinquished the reins, then struck spurs to the flanks of his mount. Once in the narrow gulch there was no path leading off, and as Pat dashed away, Ezra shouted:

  “Hey! Wait fer me, you dang lunkhead,” frantically clambering on his horse.

  But Pat Stevens was in no mood to wait for any one. It had been two or three hours since his wife and Martha Sutton had been forced up this small gully by an unknown fiend who had waylaid them, and only God knew what had happened to them during that time.

  He bent low in the saddle to avoid the whipping branches of naked aspens, making no attempt to hide his approach, totally unmindful of the thud of his horse’s hooves which would apprise the girls’ captor of his coming long before he could reach them.

  A cold killing rage had possession of Pat Stevens, and he would have stormed the gates of hell with no more hesitation had he thought Sally was imprisoned there. He had his guns and a few remnants of his splendid strength left, and he was eager to pit them against whatever odds awaited him up the gulch. Ezra was behind him to finish up whatever he started, and Pat drove his horse over the path with the same reckless disregard of his personal safety that had made his exploits legend in the West.

  He saw the path through the spruce long before he reached it, and spurred his horse faster.

  Pulling himself erect in the saddle, a strange madness surged through him to drive away the physical faintness that had recently assailed him. His wounds and the loss of blood were as nothing, now, and the pangs of hunger were forgotten in the rush of hungry emotion that overcame him.

  He came upon the cabin in a serene and isolated spot. Smoke curled lazily from the crooked pipe above the roof. The silence was broken only by the clatter of his own horse’s hooves and those of Ezra’s mount swiftly striking rock behind him.

  A strange new fear welled up in him when he saw that the cabin door was closed. No challenging crack of a rifle sounded and no leaden slugs sang their deadly song about him through the still, serene forest.

  The very silence and seeming desertion of the cabin was evil and frightening, and Pat was cursing hoarsely in his throat when he jerked his horse up in front of the closed door and leaped to the ground.

  He twisted the knob to find the door locked. He heard Sally’s voice crying out to him inside … heard a joyous scream from Martha.

  Painfully, he lurched against the solid door, but it did not give. Then Ezra’s long legs were running toward him. With a powerful lunge of his body, which had not slowed from running, Ezra broke a plank of the door. Lunging again, another splintering crash made an entry way for the two men.

  Long strong arms enfolded Pat in a bear hug as he went through the opening and he caught one brief glance of Sally’s face across the cabin, which was still lighted by the small lamp. Then the robed figure and Pat went to the floor together.

  Ezra had the butt of his gun raised, ready to strike the black-hood as soon as he came on top, but Sally was standing at a strategic point with an iron frypan in her hand. Leaning low, she cracked it against the hooded-man’s head, and he stopped struggling.

  As Pat slowly and painfully raised his injured body, Ezra reached a long arm down and pulled the black hood from the still man’s head. He was lying with his face down.

  Sally ran back to the shelf and brought a tin dipper of water which she dashed over him.

  Slowly the figure rolled over.

  Jack Torrence sat up with a silly smile on his face, ruefully rubbing his head where the frypan had landed.

  Martha and Sally stared at him in amazed silence when he lifted his hand and begged:

  “Don’t let your husband shoot me, Mrs. Stevens. Not until I’ve had a chance to explain everything.”

  Sally looked straight at Pat for the first time and saw his pain-ridden face. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, crying, “Pat … what have they done to you.”

  “Pat don’t need to do no shootin’ aroun’ heah,” Ezra said grimly, raising his gun and leveling it at Torrence’s heart.

  Martha flew at him, caught his arm and dragged it down. “Don’t … shoot … please. He hasn’t harmed us a bit.”

  Pat’s gray eyes were staring at Torrence as Sally gently pushed him backward toward a chair. Slumping into it, Pat grated: “You’d better talk and talk fast. It’ll probably be the last talkin’ you’ll ever do.”

  NINETEEN

  “I was away at college when my grandmother, Mrs. Sarah Holland, was murdered and robbed here in Dusty Canyon. We could never persuade her to leave her cabin after my grandfather died, except to visit us occasionally in Denver. But I determined to come here and avenge her death as soon as the holidays rolled around.”

  Martha Sutton found a chair, drew it a little closer to the handsome young man who still sat cross-legged on the floor, and sat down. Ezra stood menacingly over Torrence, and Sally was standing back of Pat’s chair with her arms around him, holding his head against her.

  “I had heard a great deal about you, Pat Stevens. I came up here to Dusty Canyon before Christmas. My grandmother never let me visit her after I was about six years old, and no one knew me. I managed to get in with the hooded gang, but they never trusted me completely. I think I overdid their method of murdering the English language, and a few times I forgot to use their lingo.”

  Ezra relaxed slightly. Pat closed his eyes for a moment and the room spun around him. He opened them quickly. The fright had gone from Sally’s and Martha’s faces, and Martha bent forward a little, sat with her eyes shining and her lips parted as Torrence continued:

  “It was risky leaving here and going to Powder Valley to take that note to you, but from what I’d heard of you, Mr. Stevens, I thought a threat like that would be a challenge you couldn’t resist. The black-hoods were naturally suspicious of me, and after I returned, my only chance to check up on them was to come up on them with my hood and robe on and try to imitate some of the gang when I spoke.”

  Pat lifted his head from Sally’s diaphragm and stared at Torrence. “So …” he began, but Torrence interrupted:

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come, so I waited in the depot to make sure. When you said you had no intention of going after the gang, I had to do something to force you. When the train pulled into Pueblo I found one of Bible Jim’s gang in town drunk, and persuaded him to help me with the hold-up. I knew you weren’t armed.” He paused and looked at the two six-guns buckled around Pat’s waist. He grinned widely. “At least I didn’t think you were.”

  “So it was you who untied the rope before you left the cabin that night … and you left the horse saddled and the gun in the saddlebag?”

  Torrence nodded. “I didn’t know until last night that Bible Jim was the leader of the gang, though I had tried awfully hard to find out. That was my grandmother’s cabin I took you to, and I didn’t dare go back there again, so I found this deserted shack and equipped it for my own personal hideout.

  Pat let out a sudden whoop of laughter. He raised his head from his wife’s diaphragm and slapped his knees with his palms, then winced with pain and settled back again.

  With her hand on her husband’s forehead, Sally said falteringly, “I hope you’ll forgive me … for the way I tried … to shoot you this morning, Mr. Torrence. I should … have listened to you.”

  “Maybe I wasn’t shivering in my boots!” Torrence returned. “You certainly looked grim, Mrs. Stevens. But I hope you’ll forgive me if you try to shoot that pistol again and find it unloaded. The cartridges are scattered along the road. I emptied it when I grabbed it from you and spurred my horse away for a minute. But I’m surprised that our sleuth, here,” he said, nodding toward Ezra, “didn’t find them when he was trailing you.”