CHAPTER XI.
SLIPPERY NIG IDENTIFIES THE MIDNIGHT RAIDER.
As though fearful the same fate from which they had so barely rescued the owner of the Double Cross might Overtake them, the horsemen never paused until they were on solid ground.
With careful hands, they loosed the lariats, the cruelly-torn flesh of the ranchman revealing as nothing else could the terrific force of the sucking mudhole, then bound up his wounds in salve and linen which Deadshot took from his saddlebags.
“Reckon we’ll have to find some other way of routing out the Midnight Raider than trying to follow him through the swamp,” exclaimed Bowser, with a feeble attempt at a smile, after a drink of brandy had revived him.
“No doubt about that!” asserted Hawks. “Even if we could run across him, which we probably couldn’t, he would be able to dispose of us very effectually by luring us into one of those hellholes.”
“Then howdoyou propose to trail him to his lair?” demanded Deadshot.
“That’s up to you and Ki Yi, as leaders, to figure out,” returned the owner of the Star and Moon.
“The only way I can see is to start early in the morning and follow the trail on foot,” suggested Dude.
“And run the additional danger of getting bitten by copperhead and such like deadly snakes,” exclaimed another of his companions, to whom the name of Grouch had been given. “Not for mine, thank you.”
“Isn’t there some one who knows these bottom lands?” asked Hawks. “I should think some of those old Piutes, over by the catacombs, ought to know them. They say the Injuns used them, in olden times, as a prison for their captives.”
“Man dear, but you’ve hit the nail on the head!” ejaculated Deadshot, in delight. “There’s an ornery crittur, part greaser, part Injun and part coon, whom I ran across last summer, they call him ‘Slippery Nig,’ who knows every mudhole and hummock of grass in the swamps.”
“Then he’s the bucko we want,” returned Ki Yi. “The quickest way to get at the Midnight Raider is to track him to his lair and surprise him. He probably knows there isn’t a living white man who could scout through those bottoms for twenty-four hours, so he wouldn’t take any pains to keep a lookout, once he reached his cover.”
“But, suppose we can’t find Slippery Nig, or he won’t come, what then?” inquired Hawks. “Do you think it would do any good to lay for the fellow to pot him when he starts out on another raid?”
“Not unless you had three or four regiments of Uncle Sam’s soldiers,” returned Deadshot. “The Sangammon bottoms cover about ten square miles—and the farther in you go the ornerier they get—so you can figure it out for yourself how many men it would take to throw a cordon round it.”
“Then, as far as I can see, the Nig is our only hope,” declared Dude.
“Providing you can get him,” added Ki Yi. “How about it, Deadshot, will he come, do you think?”
“He will if he’s in this part of the country.”
“Don’t be too sure,” interposed Grouch. “I’ve heard of Slippery Nig before. They say if there’s one thing he hates more than another, that same’s a white man.”
“That being so, what’s the use of wasting time trying to find him?” demanded Bowser.
“Oh, don’t worry about his not coming, if he’s alive—and I haven’t heard of his death,” rejoined Deadshot. “Slippery Nig is under a trifling obligation to me—I saved his life last summer when a couple of Injuns had him cornered—so there’s no danger of his refusing. If he does, I’ll send him where the bucks were going to.”
Realizing that the cowboy would, in consequence, be able to obtain the assistance of the guide, could he be located, Hawks asked, eagerly:
“How long will it take to find him? Where does he hang out?”
“Over by the catacombs. I reckon if I take Ki Yi with me, we can have him back here before sundown.”
“Then get a move on. We’ll wait right where we are,” exclaimed the owner of the Double Cross. “What with stealing my cattle and then causing me to get into that death hole, it seems as though I couldn’t wait much longer to get a shot at that raider.”
No urging, however, did the two cowboys need to make them start on their quest for the old guide, and quickly taking the freshest ponies in the lot, they were soon galloping over the plains.
If ill luck had attended the beginning of the pursuit of the Midnight Raider, it evidently repented of such actions, for, before the cowboys had traversed more than half the distance to the catacombs, they came upon the object of their ride, squatting beside a fire, frying some bacon on an old piece of tin.
At the sound of hoofbeats, the old guide had risen cautiously from his place and scanned the horsemen, though so craftily had he done the trick that neither of the cowpunchers were aware of it. Deciding, however, that they would not prove hostile, he had resumed his cooking and was still engaged at it when the horsemen rode up to him, after discovering the faint wraith of smoke caused by his fire.
“Man, dear, but the sight of you does my eyes good!” exclaimed Deadshot, slipping from his saddle and extending his hand, which the old man accepted rather suspiciously.
“What brings you over this way?” he asked, without expressing either pleasure or surprise at beholding the man to who he owed his life.
“Looking for you.”
“Huh?” And the tone in which he spoke showed that the information was not welcome. “Nig no done nothing. Besides, you told me you was a cowman.”
“So I am,” laughed the member of the Double Cross outfit. “What have you been up to now, you old rascal, that you’re afraid the officers are looking for you?”
But the old guide ignored the question, repeating his own as to the purpose of Deadshot’s search for him.
Briefly the cowboy told him about the lone spectre’s raids and the vain pursuit.
At the tale, Slippery Nig’s eyes sparkled and there came into them a look of vengeance which mystified the cowpunchers.
But only for a minute.
Even before either of them had the chance to ask the cause, the old man spoke.
“You know him raider?” he queried.
“No, do you?” chorused both the cowboys, exchanging significant glances.
“Sure. Only one heap fool alike that.”
“Who is it, then?”
“You remember Injun bucks last summer?” he asked, looking at the man who had rescued him from them.
“You bet I do!” returned Deadshot.
“Fool raider, him one—Scalping Louie.”
“Not really?” cried the cowmen, in amazement, for the name was that of a renegade redskin whose chief delight was to scalp helpless women and children, and for whom there was a reward offered by the Indian agent on the reservation from which he had escaped only a month or so before.
“That him, Scalping Louie,” repeated Nig. “Me just heard day, two day ago, he broke way from reserve again. That why me here.”
These words were uttered with such grim significance that the cowboys realized without the necessity of askingor being told that the old scout was on the trail of the Midnight Raider.
“Then you’ll help us run him down?” inquired Ki Yi, with a wink at his companion.
“Uhuh! Me go.”
“Good boy! Don’t bother to cook that bacon. Get up behind me and we’ll go back to the rest of the bunch and then you can eat all you want to,” exclaimed Deadshot, scarcely able to restrain his delight that the task he had feared might even necessitate a resort to force had been accomplished without the making of any promise or offer of reward.
“All right, me go. No need ride with you, got own pinto.”
This statement that the old scout had a pony with him amazed his hearers, and in surprise they looked about to see where the animal could be.
For a moment, Nig enjoyed the mystification of the cowpunchers, then finally got to his feet.
“Cowmen no know all Injun trick,” he chuckled. “Long ago, Injun had be heap smart. Deadshot could fool paleface. Me show.”
Eagerly the two men followed Nig, wondering whether or not he was playing a joke on them, or leading them into a trap.
But their suspicions of the old scout were quickly allayed.
Scarce a rod had they gone from the fire than the old scout stopped, bent over, swept aside the grass with his hand and beckoned to his companions.
There, stretched flat on its side where it had been deftly, covered with mesquite, lay a flea-bitten pony.
“Man, dear, but that’s some trick!” ejaculated Deadshot, in undisguised admiration of the cleverness with which the animal had been hidden.
“That’s what!” acquiesced Ki Yi. “How do you do it, Nig?”
“Train um pinto.”
“So I suppose. Sounds easy enough, but how in the world do you manage to make the crittur lie so still he won’t even make the grass move unnaturally?”
“Train um pinto. Injun pony no fool.”
“So it seems. But, just the same, I don’t see how you can rig up the grass, even after you’ve taught the pony to lie still,” declared Deadshot.
“Me show—after get Louie.”
Thus recalled to the business in hand, the two cowboys watched Nig as he turned to go back to the campfire, uttering a sharp command in some half-breed lingo which brought the pony to its feet as he did so.
“Say, if you and I knew as much as that old codger, we could get the finest job in Uncle Sam’s Mounted Scouts,” exclaimed Ki Yi, enthusiastically. “I’ll bet he has forgotten more than any other scout on the plains to-day ever knew.”
“No chance for an argument there,” returned the other cowboy. “I wouldn’t be in Scalping Louie’s shoes for all the money in the United States treasury.”
Put in an excellent humor by the praise of the cowpunchers, for he realized the praise of these men of the plains was the appreciation of men who knew, Slippery Nig quickly, and with an agility amazing in one of his years, vaulted onto the back of his pinto and headed toward the South.