CHAPTER III.
THE RANCHMAN’S VOW.
The ranchman’s assertion that the spectre was of human invention and their foreman’s declaration that it was but a ruse to cover the raiding of the cattle, produced an instantaneous reaction upon the cowpunchers.
“By my saddle, you’re right!” assented Deadshot. “That’s what the trouble is. Somebody’s trying to lift the cattle. I’ve seen ’em started on a stampede too many times not to recognize the symptoms. And here we’ve been afraid of a spook, giving the thieving cusses just the chance they planned. Say, Sam, I wouldn’t blame you for sacking the whole kit and boodle of us!” he added, his shame and contrition evident in his voice.
“Don’t waste time being sorry, get busy and help calm the cattle!” returned his employer. “You boys ride round ’em, and get ’em to milling, if you can. I want to keep my eyes open for another sight of Mr. Spook.”
Deeply chagrined to think they had allowed such a trick to be played on them, for they realized that when the story got out, the Double Cross outfit would be the laughing stock of all the other cowmen in the region, the cowboys set about their work with a will.
But the job was too big for them!
Even before they had ridden fifty yards along the barbed wire fence, they learned that their efforts would prove fruitless.
With crashing of horns, snorting and bellowing, a bunch of the cattle dashed out onto the plains, the outlines of their bodies just visible as they plunged along.
As though this breaking away from the herd had been prearranged, other bunches raced away into the darkness.
“The fence has been cut! The fence has been cut!” roared Sandy, at the top of his lungs.
“There’s no use trying to hold the critturs. Come on back to Sam and we’ll find out what he wants us to do,” returned Deadshot.
Aware that with the cattle dashing away in all points of the compass, it was an impossible task for them to hope to round them up or even to try to hold the ones that had not already gone, Pinky and Deadshot rode back with their foreman until they came to the ranch owner.
“What’s to do?” asked Pinky, after the fact that the barbed wire fence had been cut in several places had been reported to Bowser.
“Lay for Mr. Spook!” snapped the owner of the Double Cross. “I’ll give any one of you a thousand dollars for his dead body! We’ll each of us take one side of the corral and patrol it.”
“But we haven’t got out rifles, only our six shooters,” interrupted Deadshot.
“Then ride for all your worth to the bunkhouse and get them! While you’re there, just tell the missus what’s up. Then hurry back. And say, bring some torches,” he shouted, as the thought that lights might prove useful came to him, for his man was already racing for the guns.
“That’s some trick,” muttered Sandy, while they waited. “Wonder was there more than one of ’em?”
“Sure,” asserted Pinky. “There was probably three or four of ’em working on the fence, cutting the wires, while the other played ghostie!”
This opinion of the numerical strength of the Midnight Raiders, which found ready acceptance from Bowser and Sandy, was later to be proved false, however!
They were destined to learn that the daredevil cattle thief was a lone man!
“That being the case, aren’t we wasting time trying for a shot at them?” demanded the foreman. “They probably made their getaway along with that first bunch of cattle.”
“Maybe you’re right, Sandy,” assented the ranchman. “But I’ve got a sort of hunch that spook will show himself once more.”
And the owner of the Double Cross was right—though the method chosen by the spectral raider to disclose his whereabouts was different from that which Bowser expected!
Lingering at the houses only long enough to make a hurried report to the ranchman’s wife and then to get the rifles and torches, Deadshot was soon back with his companions.
“Here, everybody take a torch and hurry to your posts,” ordered Bowser, as his man rode up. “Sandy, you go to the West side; Pinky to the North; Deadshot to the East, and I’ll take the South. Keep, your eyes peeled—andremember the thousand dollars!”
Even as he spoke, the ranchman touched a match to his torch and when the flame flared up, it threw the four men into bold relief.
“How long shall we patrol?” asked Deadshot.
“Till I wave my torch in the air. Then ride to the house. We’ll get some grub and pick up the trail as soon as it gets daylight.”
Before any of the quartet could take up the task of patrolling the cut fence, however, the cattle thief made himself known.
Bang! boomed a gun from the North.
In amazement, the cowboys wheeled.
And even as they did, a bullet whistled through the air, carrying the sombrero from Bowser’s head.
“Douse the torches! It gives ’em a line on us!” cried Deadshot in alarm, lest a second shell might find its man.
No urging did the ranch owner or any of his men need to make them obey. The shot had been too well aimed and had come too close to its mark for them to care to make targets of themselves for gunmen who could show such skill at night.
But, as they hurled the torches to the ground, the ranchman rose in his stirrups.
“You may have the drop on me now!” he roared, shaking his fist in wrathful impotence in the direction whence the shot had come. “But just wait!Nobody can steal Sam Bowser’s cattle, scare his men, shoot at him and get away with it!
“So long as there is a breath of life in my body, I’ll trail you—and I’ll run you to your lair, mark my word!”
The tone in which the owner of the Double Cross spoke, the dim outline of his tall figure as he swayed in his saddle, his arm beating the air in his fury, as he vowed revenge against the miscreants who had stampeded his cattle and tried to murder him, afforded an effect dramatic in the extreme.
Yet, scarcely had the last words left his lips than again a gun barked and a bullet “pinged” viciously as it sailed over his head!
“Man, dear, but this istoomuch!” hissed the ranchman. “After them, boys!
“We’ll hit their trail and stay on it till the last skulking coyote of ’em is furnishing food for the vultures!”