Nan of Music Mountain | Page 9

what I should think if I had to think: Henry de
Spain has never found out rightly who was responsible for the death of
his father. He expects to do it, sometime; and he thinks sometime he's
going to find out right there in Medicine Bend."
While they were talking the train was pulling out for Medicine Bend
with de Spain on board.
It was a tedious ride, and de Spain was much too engaged with his
thoughts to sleep. The Morgans were in his head, and he could not be
rid of them. He recalled having been told that long ago some of these
same Morgans lived on the Peace River above his father's ranch. Every
story he had ever heard of their wild lives, for they were men sudden in
quarrel and reckless of sequel, came back to his mind. He wondered
what sort of a young girl this could be who lived among them who
could live among them and be what she seemed at a glance to be a fawn
among mountain-wolves.
It was late when he reached Medicine Bend, and raining a dismal kind
of a night. Instead of going to his room, just across the street from the
station, he went up-stairs and sat down with the train-despatchers. After

an hour of indecision, marked by alternative fits of making up and
unmaking his mind, he went, instead of going to bed, into the
telegraph-room, where blackhaired Dick Grady sat at a key.
"How about the fight to-night at Sleepy Cat?" Grady asked at once.
"What fight?" demanded de Spain perfunctorily.
"The Calabasas gang got to going again up there to-night. They say one
of the Morgans was in it. Some town, that Sleepy Cat, eh, Henry?"
"What Morgan was in it?"
"Gale Morgan. A lot of stuff came in on it an hour ago. Was there
anything started when you left?"
"I didn't hear of anything," responded de Spain. But his indifference to
the subject was marked.
"What's the matter?" demanded the operator. "Aren't you well
to-night?"
"Perfectly."
"Sleepy?"
De Spain roused himself. "Dick, have you got a Sleepy Cat wire open?"
"What do you want?"
"Tell Jeffries I'll take that Thief River stage job."
CHAPTER III
THE SPANISH SINKS
FROM a car window at Sleepy Cat may be seen, stretching far down
into the southwest a chain of towering peaks, usually snow-clad, that
dominate the desert in every direction for almost a hundred miles. In

two extended groups, separated by a narrow but well-defined break,
they constitute a magnificent rampart, named by Spaniards the
Superstition Mountains, and they stretch beyond the horizon to the
south, along the vast depression known locally as the Spanish Sinks.
The break on the eastern side of the chain comes about twenty miles
southwest of Sleepy Cat, and is marked on the north by the most
striking, and in some respects most majestic peak in the range Music
Mountain; the break itself has taken the name of its earliest white
settlers, and is called Morgan's Gap. No railroad has ever yet penetrated
this southern country, despite the fact that rich mines have been opened
along these mountains, and are still being opened; but it lies to-day in
much of the condition of primitive savagery, and lawlessness, as the
word is conventionally accepted, that obtained when the first rush was
made for the Thief River goldfields.
It is not to be understood that law is an unknown equation between
Calabasas and Thief River, or even between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat.
But as statute law it suffers so many infractions as to be hardly
recognizable in the ordinary sense. Business is done in this country; but
business must halt everywhere with its means of communication, and
in the Music Mountain country it still rests on the facilities of a stage
line. The stage line is a big and vigorous affair, a perfectly organized
railroad adjunct with the best horses, the best wagons, the best
freighting outfits that money can supply.
But this is by no means, in its civilizing effect, a railroad. A railroad
drives lawlessness before it the Music Mountain country still leans on
stage-line law. The bullion wagons still travel the difficult roads. They
look for safety to their armed horsemen; the four and six horse stages
look to the armed guard, the wayfarer must look to his horse and it
should be a good one; the mountain rancher to his rifle, the cattle thief
to the moonless night, the bandit to his wits, the gunman to his holster:
these include practically all of the people that travel the Spanish Sinks,
except the Morgans and the Mormons. The Mormons looked to the
Morgans for safety; the Morgans to themselves.
For many a year the Morgans have been almost overlords of