him easily enough and shook her head.
'Not yet, amigo, I am only half won,' she smiled. 'The Chief will be missing you. Come again--if you wish.'
Greatly to her relief, he went docilely enough; the reminder that his dreaded master might be waiting somewhat sobered him. When his lurching, tipsy figure had disappeared, she sank down on a stool.
'God, what a weapon to have to use,' she muttered, and fell to thinking. Had she found a way of striking at the man who had flogged her lover to death and humiliated her? It seemed so, but she could see little hope of using her information.
'That brute has no brain, and fears his keeper,' she decided.
Alone, she was impotent. She must find a man wo was not afraid of the bandit chief, and where, in Hell City, was he to be found? With knitted brow, she puzzled over the problem, and then the strange cowboy who had buried her dead occurred to her. He appeared to be on good terms with the Red Mask, and yet ..
'At least, he would not betray me,' she told herself.
* Sudden's survey of the scene of the hold-up produced little. The ambushing party, he reported, consisted of four riders--he had doubled the number--and having obtained the money, they had taken the northern trail. The latter was true, but he omitted to mention that after a couple of miles, they had swung south in the direction of the Twin Diamond. The Chief received the particulars with indifference.
'It is, after all, a small matter,' he said. 'I was annoyed at the time because I do not like my plans to miscarry, but ...'
Sudden, suspecting something behind this attitude, spent the next two days in the town. He would have liked to see Frosty or Merry but it was too dangerous; he had more than a dim suspicion that if he rode out, he would be followed.
It was on the second evening, as he was returning to the saloon, that a whispered invitation from the darkness took him into Anita's dwelling. A guttering candle served only to show the discomfort of the place.
'I gotta thank yu for the word about Butch,' he said. 'It was real useful.'
'I couldn't let you be tricked,' she replied quietly.
It was a different woman to the one who had cajoled Silver. Anita divined that her present guest was not one to allow his senses to be deadened by drink or snared by desire; he would be more likely to appreciate frankness.
'What are you to this mountebank who hides behind a mask?' she asked.
'Just one of his men,' was the reply. 'Holm' up, like the rest of 'em.' - Her gestute showed that she was dissatisfied with the answer. 'You may have reasons for hiding, but you are lifferent,' she said. 'Why does Satan want you killed?'
Sudden was silent for a moment. This woman had rendered him a service, but she might be playing a part, and his position in this den of desperadoes was too precarious for further risk.
'News to me,' he said stolidly.
'Butch was sent for on purpose,' she stated. 'You don't :rust me, and I cannot blame you, but I am going to put my cards on the table. Odd as it may seem, I cared for Pedro--he was my one friend, and yet, it was because of me he died. I have vowed to avenge him and am ready to run any hazard.'
In the frail light of the flickering candle he saw her sombre eyes gleam and realized that she was in earnest. But what could a mere woman do against one who was all-powerful? She read something of his thought.
'You are thinking I am mad,' she went on. 'That a weak creature like myself cannot injure him. But I have already dealt a blow, for you are alive, and I know of another and greater one that will wound him far more deeply than the loss of his stolen steers, or the plunder from Bosville.'
'How do you know these things?'
She laughed contemptuously. 'Men drink--and talk. If Satan wants his secrets kept, he should ban liquor and women from Hell City.'
'Why are yu tellin' me?'
'It is something I cannot do myself, and you do not like the beast any better than I do.' She raised her head as she spoke, looking him squarely in the face, but learned nothing. 'You should win at any card game. Listen.' She gave him the gist of her interview with Silver, ending, 'Who is this man, and why is he buried alive?'
'I reckon we'll have to ask him that, ma'am,' Sudden said. Instantly her face lit up with a fierce joy. 'you'll help me?' she cried. 'Then we shall succeed.'
'I'm obliged for yore good opinion, ma'am,' the puncher said a trifle ironically. 'All we gotta do is steal the key from Silver or his master, get 'em both out'n the road ...'
'Hopeless,' she decided, and sat, her face cupped in her hands, thinking. 'Silver said there was no other way save for a bird,' she mused. 'What did that mean?'
'Plain enough,' was the reply. 'All these caverns have holes for light an' air.'
'That will be it,' Anita said eagerly. 'Could a man clever with a rope climb up?'
'In the daylight, mebbe, but at night he'd need the eyes an' claws of a cat,' Sudden told her. 'Allasame, it seems to be the on'y chance. That big ape might win out--he's built for it.'
'He fears the whip and would turn traitor,' she said.
'I'll look it over in the mornin',' the puncher promised.
In the seclusion of his room at the saloon, he dwelt again on the strange story. The mysterious prisoner could not be one of Bleke's men; the body of the first had been returned, and Sudden himself had accounted for the second. Satan's 'ace in the hole'--the phrase recurred to him; if indeed the unknown was a winning card in the bandit's crooked game, he must be spirited away, and hidden--where?
'The Double K? No, Steve would talk,' he muttered. 'I guess Merry could use another band.'
Having settled this point, he turned in and slept as though Hell City and its problems did not exist.
Chapter XVIII
'Nigger, it's goin' to be dead easy--to break my fool neck.'
At sunrise, Sudden had slipped out of the town by the ' western exit, followed the beaten track for over a mile and then struck north until he reached an open strip of sand and scrub. Crossing this, he hid in the bushes and waite Presently, satisfied that his movements were not being spied upon, he circled round and was now at the foot of the precipice on the brink of which stood Hell City. He had no fear of discovery here, for the trees and undergrowth afforded complete cover even for a horseman, Before him rose the vertical cliff, bare save for occasional clumps of cactus, coarse grass, and, here and there, a shrunken shrub, mesquite or sage, fighting tenaciously for life against the inhospitable surroundings. At a first glance, the task of scaling the height appeared an impossibility, but the puncher knew what to look for. One by one, his experienced eye picked out tiny crevices and ledges which might serve as hand or footholds. He noted too that, twenty feet up, the wall was a little less abrupt and more broken.
Moving backwards, he could see the great, jagged rampart of rock which formed one side of the bandit settlement, pitted with its primitive windows. Remembering that he had buried the Mexican almost immediately below Anita's, enabled him to locate Satan's quarters with some certainty. Twenty feet below, and a little to the right, was another opening.
'That'll be where he had Dolver,' he reflected. 'Didn't notice any trap-door but there was plenty else to look at.' A third hole, lower, and still further away, attracted his attention. 'Reckon that's it,' he said, and mentally measured the distance. 'She's a seventy-foot climb, an' I'm admittin' a little moonlight'll be welcome.'
For a long time he remained, selecting a route up the rock, studying each step and fixing them in his mind. There could be no margin for error; one slip and ... At length, satisfied he had done all that was possible, he retraced his way to the town. The saloon-keeper had news for him.
'Silver's bin twice,' he said. 'Dunno what he wanted.'
'The Chief is anxious 'bout my health, I expect,' Sudden smiled. 'I'll go an' set his mind at rest.'
Satan appeared to be in a frlendly mood, which put the puncher on his guard. To a careless question as to what he had been doing he replied, 'Givin' my hoss a li'l run--idleness don't suit neither of us.'
'Then you'll be glad to hear I have some work for you. The stage from the East should reach Red Rock before sundown to-night. It will carry forty thousand dollars in gold consigned to the bank. About five miles short of the town the road dips and then rises quickly where it passes through a tract of timber. There is excellent cover; in fact,
