Unchallenged.

BY KATHERINE MORROW.

The moonlight fell through the climbing roses over the wide piazza of a country house where some people were sitting. It was midsummer in the foot-hills of the California Sierras, and the insects, the dogs, and the water in the ditch had their voices in the air with the people.

The talk, uninfluenced by the beauty of the night, had been mostly of murders and scenes of blood. Then a girl shook it off quickly.

“Alice and I sleep outside now. Also Ned, the restless, takes to a hammock. It’s glorious.”

There had been too many tales of an abnormal nature for the equilibrium of the timid ones. A voice came from the corner:—

“It isn’t safe.”

Ned Carter laughed with his sisters.

“I’ve a little revolver—a beauty,” he said, “and nothing could come within half a mile! Besides, there are the dogs.”

“Yes,” the three admitted in chorus, “we’re too much on the alert for impressions. We’re too anxious to waken for anything to escape.”

“Oh,” said a girl from the steps, “I’ve heard this sort of thing before. I’ll venture you snore profoundly all night.”

“I advise you not to test us in disguise,” they retorted. Ned added with vigor: “I’d bet my twelve-mule threshing machine that neither man, woman, child, nor animal could pass our front gate at any hour of the night unchallenged.” He laughed: “Ah, the gleam on my pistol in the moonlight!”

At eleven that night two who had been guests of Ned and his sisters sat together, scheming.

“We’ll do it,” they said as they separated.

The next afternoon two girls in a cart drove a fat mare over hot stretches of brown meadows and along dusty roads that lay over the hills. They darted into stray coverts, and drove among the stones of dry creek-beds. As they rattled home in the twilight a collection of bleached cattle bones lay at their feet.

Under the awnings of a little gray cottage a woman waited.

“You’re late,” she said as they came up. “But here’s Joe.”

“Bring up the riding-horses to-night, Joe, and put on men’s saddles,” called his young mistress as she went in the house.

“And now, mother, may we have tea? We want to be ready by midnight.”

As the clock struck twelve Mrs. Head laughed her apprehension and her sense of the effect of light opera. The girls were in men’s canvas suits and summer sombreros. Bulky bundles were tied to their saddle strings and they supported others on their shoulders.

“But we’ve really no sign of defense,” they suddenly exclaimed, looking at each other.

In a moment Mrs. Head had produced two huge leather pistol cases. When they were strapped on, no belligerent cow-boy or primitive desperado could have hit a more happy effect of emphasizing independence.

The girls strode out to their horses and, tightening the girths, took their mounts quickly.

“We’ll stay out on the haystack when we come back, remember; so please go to sleep and forget us.”

The moon was full in the heavens and the unwooded part of their hilly road lay bright before them. The horses felt their bits resentfully,—kept to a walk along the crest of the hill and down the rocky, pine-dotted slope of the flat. Everything but the soft brilliance of the night seemed to fall away. The soul of summer hovered.

“Let’s give the horses their heads the first two miles. We’ll creep the last half—near the house.”

The beasts went forward at a bound. A level road shut in by the hills lay before them. There was a strange specter sense of being at one with power as the horses raced neck and neck through the silence. The caressing radiance was an intoxicant.

Finally they reached the stony hill which lay between them and the main road. The heated horses took it slowly, climbing through the shadow and rousing the uncanny wail of a wandering coyote and the hoot of a curious owl.

They reined up as they swung into the stage road, and gave the horses a mouthful of water from a tiny spring.

If there was anybody to meet, this would be the place.

The horses’ ears were in constant motion, though there seemed nothing but the easy pace of their own hoofs to give attention to. Suddenly, from an obscure bridle-path, three horsemen came into the road, and toward them. There was no time to arrange concerted action. The beating of their hearts made suffocation an experience, until one was visited by an inspiration.

“Answer anything in Mexican,” she gasped; “that will pass us.”

It suddenly dawned upon their consciousness that under the shadow of this very oak, on this awkward turn of the winding grade, the mail stage had been held up and robbed, just a month before. There had been shooting, and a wounded driver and passenger dripping blood over the wheels into the dust.

But the men had reined up before them.

The instant of silence compassed eons of apprehension before one of the men spoke.

“How far to Mokelumne Hill, partners?”

Promptly it came, though burdened with an unnatural guttural inflection:—

“Quien sabe!”

Daring to risk no more, the girls pulled out and, passing the horsemen, rode quietly down the road.

The men watched them disappear, ignoring an impulse to follow, before they continued on their journey.

“A couple of suspicious-looking greasers up to no good,” said one, as they trotted ahead through the night.

The outbuildings of the Carter ranch appeared ahead. The girls grasped each other’s hands.

“The pistol cases,” they whispered. “They saved our lives!”

At a little weather-beaten cabin used as a smithy the girls dismounted. It was as if they pledged themselves in epic measure, standing there, silent, in the spirit of the adventure.

Tying their horses, they loaded themselves with the bundles, and walked cautiously, slowly, towards the gulch they must cross before they reached the road lying in front of the house. They crept through its thick, uncertain shadows with the animal stealth of the forest, and found themselves up in the high light of the roadway. Forty yards lay between them and the gate which shut in people, and dogs, and a little revolver that was pretty in the moonlight.

Their watch showed one o’clock.

Step by step they accomplished with almost suspended breath. Of a sudden a dried fig leaf under foot filled the air with a sharp crackling. Transfixed with a horror that raised their hair, one balanced on the ends of her toes, the other crouched low on her knees.

But the moments returned no echoes of an alarm.

Nearer they moved and almost imperceptibly nearer. The breath from their lungs seemed a thousand voices. At last they stood together at the gate, looking up at the white house spreading its piazza over three who were in slumber.

With motion so fraught with care it seemed motionless, they managed to arrange a series of things on its fence pickets. Then they salaamed low in a burlesque of social mockery, and waved their hands in a pantomimic farewell.

Little by little, they moved up the road again, through the gulch, and on to their horses. Not a note from the throats of the dogs followed them.

Mounting, they walked the half mile to the spring before they even dared express their elation.

“It’s too good to go to sleep on,” said one.

“Let’s ride on it,” said the other.

They chose the black depths of the twisting stage road, and, leaving the moon-bathed open, took four miles of wooded riding. The farm dogs below in the valley barked greeting, but no one else seemed abroad in the land. The spirit of the night was wholly theirs.

At three o’clock they were home. They stabled the horses and walked back to a lonely haystack. Ginger beer, crackers, and blankets had been stowed there, so they made festive toasts to their success before they settled to sleep with the dews of the morning.

The sun was hurrying on toward the breakfast hour when a girl at the Carter farm wakened her companions.

“Horrors!” she cried aloud.

All three sat up in their hammocks. Visions of Ku Klux, White Caps, and midnight assassins ran riot in their minds. A certain terror stiffened their very joints.

Facing them from the inside of the gate hung a long white placard, printed in letters of flaming red:—

“We are Iron-Jawed Hyenas of the West and our food is Gore.”

Two red hand-marks decorated each end. Underneath hung a calf’s skull and cross-bones, livid with fiery symbols. Along the fence were rows of bones bearing the same ghastly stamp, and on another post hung another placard:—

“Thirty years have we been on your track and at last we have found you!”

In a moment a contagion of laughter reached even the kitchen. The truth had dawned! As they swayed in the clutches of a mild hysteria, a mounted messenger appeared with a note addressed to Mr. Edward Carter.

The young man read it aloud to his sisters:—

“Mr. Carter will please deliver to the bearer his twelve-mule threshing machine.

“Merciless Ben, the Hairlifter “Tomahawk Tom, of Toyone.”