CHAPTER XXIIIRACING WITH DEATHNone knew better than the rancher and the mountain girl the peril that lay behind that waving, quivering blue haze. The only avenue open to them lay by way of the dark aisles between the pines, for the blue haze, as they quickly discovered, had crept up on either side as well as to the rear of them.“Into the forest!” shouted Bindloss, giving his pony rein, while Judy held in her bucking mount until her companions got under way.The Overland girls were too frightened to start, but their mustangs, taking matters into their own hands, lunged forward and were in amongst the pines a few seconds later, dodging here and there to avoid trees, until their riders were clinging with knees and hands to keep from being unseated.A thin streak of yellow smoke wriggled overhead, followed by a crackling, hissing sound, and the wind whipping in the tree tops carried the smoke on ahead. The fire had overtaken them, had run up the trunks of the trees at the edge of the forest, and was leaping from tree to tree over the heads of the Overland Riders, while here and there to the rear great pines exploded with terrifying sounds.The Overland Riders, despite their torturing fear, were thrilled. The blood beat in their temples and their hearts were pounding. They began to understand what this race meant—it was a race with death, and its long arms were waving above them waiting to swoop down and enfold its victims.“Faster!” Judy’s shrill command was plainly heard above the roar. She turned in her saddle and beckoned to her companions, not certain that they had heard. It was then she saw that the haze was enveloping them and that the outlines of horses and riders were growing fainter. Judy reined in her mount and waited.“Ride faster! Use the spur! Drive ’em! Drive ’em!” she yelled as the girls swept past her, each one now urging on her mount with sharp cries. The riders now plainly felt the heat, the breath of the fire on their cheeks. So did the horses feel it, and they were frantic.The tough little mustangs as they swept on needed no urging. They were giving all that was in them to save their own lives, but it seemed to be an unequal battle. The Overland Riders were not panic-stricken, but a great fear was in their hearts, yet not one gave way to her feelings. Perhaps it was because they had no time to do so, for it required close attention to prevent being unhorsed as their ponies made sudden swerves to avoid fallen trees or low hanging branches. The Overland girls were thus kept fully occupied, and it was plain to Judy Hornby that they were in no danger of losing their heads.Above the noise, she and Bindloss again heard the crack of rifles. It was a scattering fire, but it was fast. Occasionally an interval would occur, during which the firing seemed to cease, to be resumed again a moment later.“They are riding ahead of us. Look out!” shouted the rancher, swerving close to the mountain girl.Judy nodded, and spurred on until she was abreast of the racing pony of Elfreda Briggs, who had lost her hat, and whose hair was whipping in the air behind her.“Something going on ahead! Watch out! Watch me fer orders. Tell the others. I got to git ahead ag’in,” directed Judy.Elfreda shouted the message to Grace, and Grace passed it to the girl nearest to her, which proved to be Emma. Nora was too far to one side to be reached, but her pony could be trusted to follow the others if any radical change of direction were taken.“Ride Faster! Drive ’Em!”Daylight suddenly showed faintly through the haze—the light of an open space. Joe Bindloss uttered a yell, hoping that they might there find rock footing and an end of the fire. Instead, his mustang burst out into a vast brown field, a grazing ground many acres in extent, from which rugged passes branched out in the distance.As the riders emerged close on the heels of the rancher and Judy, a scene met their gaze that thrilled them anew.Two bodies of horsemen, like themselves, were fleeing from the fire, which for some unknown reason had not yet leaped into the brown grass of the grazing range, and as they rode, both bodies of men were shooting.It was a battle, a running battle with rifles.Judy in one quick glance comprehended the situation and she saw more than did any others of her party. She knew the men off there were part of the band of rustlers who for so long had been a thorn in the side of all honest ranchers in the two great grazing valleys of the Cosos. She saw more than that—the verification of suspicions that she had harbored for some time, but that had crystallized only twenty-four hours before.At about the same instant the Overlanders also made a discovery. The party of horsemen directly in front of them were quickly identified.“It’s the boys!” screamed Nora.“Ain’t dead, neither,” cried Joe Bindloss.The Overland Riders pulled down their ponies.“Keep going!” roared Bindloss.“If we do we shall be shot!” wailed Nora.“If you don’t you’ll be roasted!” retorted the old ranchman.It was a difficult choice. To go forward meant that the Overland party would place themselves directly in the line of fire of the mountain ruffians, but to hold back meant that the forest fire in a few moments would be sweeping over the field. They decided to go forward, and in a moment their ponies were racing towards Tom Gray and his companions.The fire was now roaring across the brown meadow. The Overland men saw it and began drawing in on the rustlers, driving at them in an oblique line, firing as they put their ponies at top speed. The girls followed at one side of the line of fire, hoping thereby to escape being hit.A rustler toppled from his saddle. At the same instant Idaho Jones swayed uncertainly in his, but quickly recovered and again began working his rifle. Those who saw his hesitation knew that he had been hit.The rustlers were now in a thick haze, and were giving ground as the ranchmen and Overland men bore down on them, pouring a heavy rifle fire into the closely bunched outlaws. They saw the rustlers whirl about facing their assailants to make a stand, but the firing was too hot for them and they fled. A mighty yell rose from the rustlers as all but two of them suddenly disappeared from sight as if the earth had swallowed them. It was then that the pursuers discovered that their adversaries had gained rocky ground. No forest fire could reach them there.The two men who were still in view pulled their ponies to their haunches and swung about facing each other. The pursuers were amazed to see both men draw their weapons and begin shooting at each other.The Overland men and ranchmen instantly ceased firing, but continued on at full speed, for the flames were rapidly sweeping down on them. They had not yet discovered the presence of Judy and the Overland girls, but Judy had discovered that safety from the fire lay at the far side of the field, so waving a hand for her companions to follow she headed towards the scene of the savage duel.“Oh, it is awful!” cried Emma as her pony streaked past Miss Briggs and Grace.Judy was laying her crop over the flank of her mustang and uttering shrill cries to urge him on, and the first intimation that the ranchmen had of the presence of the Overland girls was when Judy flashed by them towards the duelists.“Kill ’im, Pap!” she yelled.“It’s Mex!” shouted Sam Conifer.At this juncture the Overland girls caught up with the pursuers and dashed to safety on the rocky ground. As they reached it Miss Briggs’ pony went down and Grace’s mustang leaped clear over her and her mount before she could check him. Tom Gray hurried to the rescue of Elfreda.“You here?” he cried.The roar of the fire, as it swept past over the brown meadow, smothered the words.One duelist, at this juncture, was seen to sway in his saddle, and at the same instant the other plunged headlong to the ground. The first man’s pony jumped and he too was unhorsed, then both duelists laboriously raised themselves to their elbows, and the duel was resumed. At the second exchange of shots, one sank back and lay still.Judy jumped her pony forward, and throwing herself from the saddle ran to the living man and pillowed his head in her lap.“Gosh a-mighty!” roared Bindloss.The men of the ranch party were on the scene in a few seconds, but still being ignorant of the cause of the sudden disappearance of the body of rustlers kept their weapons at ready. Some of them now rode cautiously forward to see what had become of the missing men.“Stop!” shouted Two-gun Pete. “I know whar they’ve went to. The gang forgot ’bout the gulch thar, if they knowed ’bout it at all. Leastwise, they didn’t see it in the smoke till it war too late, an’ over they went. They won’t rustle no more steers, I reckons, bad luck to ’em.”The whole party was now gathered about the mountain girl. The dead man, those who now knew him, was identified as Mexican Charlie.“It’s Pap,” said Judy when they peered down into the face of the man whose head lay in her lap. She gazed up at the Overland girls with a pitiful look in her face.Hornby opened his eyes, recognized her and began to speak.“That’s all right, Pap. Don’t say it,” begged Judy.“I got ter talk, Kid. I’m sorry I made ye mad yesterday. I told ye thet them friends of yours war shot at Red Gulch ’cause I knew the rest of their gang would be up heah, an’ we’d git ’em all. I wish we had! I wish we had, but the boys got looney ’cause your friends could shoot better’n they could, and ran over the edge.”“Why did you an’ Mex fight, Pap?” asked Judy.“’Cause he said I’d double-crossed him, an’ sent his gang to death to git rid of ’em, too. Then we fit. He set the fire, but I told him to.”“Oh, Pap! How could you? These folks ain’t never meant you no harm. They ain’t done nothin’ but fight when you made ’em,” protested the mountain girl.“Yes, they did! They come up heah lookin’ fer trouble. They wanted to drive us out er business. I know ’cause I had it from a feller who knowed. An’ ye helped ’em, Judy!” he exclaimed, blazing up into her face with something of the old fire in his eyes.“You bet I did, Pap. My friends is my friends, an’ I’d do it ag’in,” she answered calmly.“I don’t bear ye no grudge fer thet now, Kid, ’cause it’s too late. I got mine this time, an’ I’m goin’ out the way I always reckoned I would, with my boots on an’ facin’ the crack o’ the guns.”As he talked, Hornby’s voice grew halting, and there were pauses of a few seconds between words. It was plain to all that he was weakening fast.“May I try to do something for him, Judy?” begged Miss Briggs gently, as she bent over the wounded rustler.“No!” Hornby put all the strength that he could summon into that one word. “Ye been lookin’ fer the man who war the leader of the rustlers. Heah he is! I’m thet man, and as it’s my dyin’ words, I beat ’em all at the game. Git ba—ack thar!” The rustler groped with uncertain fingers for his weapon, whereupon Judy laid a firm hand on his arm.“No, Pap! You’ve done enough,” rebuked the girl. “You’ve said enough, too, an’ Judy Hornby never again kin hold her head up nor look honest folks in the face. They’ll say her Pap was a rustler an’—an’—”“Judy! Please don’t,” begged Grace. “He is dying!”“I—I reckon you’re right.” Judy fell to stroking the outlaw’s hair. “That’s all right, Pap. You’re my Pap. Miss Gray is right.”“No! I got ter tell ye while I can. Judy, I ain’t yer Pap. Nor yer mother warn’t yer mother. I stole ye when ye war a little thing cause the man who was yer Pap had done me dirt. We raised ye, an’ Judy, we havin’ no children of our own, begun to like ye fer yerself an’ we kept ye, though at first we didn’t reckon on doin’ jest that. We reckoned on gettin rid—”“No—ot my Pap?” stammered the girl. “Who, then—who is my Pap?” cried Judy. “Tell me! Ye got ter tell me! Who is my Pap?” Her voice rose threateningly, then sank almost to a whisper. “Pap, dear! Who is my real Pap?”“He—he—he war—”The voice grew faint, and though the girl bent her ear close to the lips of the dying man, she failed to catch the whispered words, and the secret that Malcolm Hornby had kept for so many years died with him there by the scorched meadows of the Cosos over which, like a shroud, hung a suffocating pall of yellow smoke.Old Joe Bindloss lifted the little mountain girl to her feet, and, with hands on her shoulders, brought her face to face with him.“I ain’t got no Pap now,” she murmured. “I ain’t got no friends, no nothin’ that a girl wants so much.”Grace Harlowe slipped an arm about her.“Yes, you have, Judy. We are your friends, now and always,” said Grace gently. “And I think you have a Pap that you haven’t reckoned on,” she added, nodding towards Joe Bindloss.For a moment the old rancher and the mountain girl stood gazing into each other’s eyes, then he drew her, unresisting, to him and lightly touched her forehead with his lips.“Oh, Pap!” sobbed Judy, her arms slipping about the neck of Old Joe Bindloss as she buried her head on his shoulder.
None knew better than the rancher and the mountain girl the peril that lay behind that waving, quivering blue haze. The only avenue open to them lay by way of the dark aisles between the pines, for the blue haze, as they quickly discovered, had crept up on either side as well as to the rear of them.
“Into the forest!” shouted Bindloss, giving his pony rein, while Judy held in her bucking mount until her companions got under way.
The Overland girls were too frightened to start, but their mustangs, taking matters into their own hands, lunged forward and were in amongst the pines a few seconds later, dodging here and there to avoid trees, until their riders were clinging with knees and hands to keep from being unseated.
A thin streak of yellow smoke wriggled overhead, followed by a crackling, hissing sound, and the wind whipping in the tree tops carried the smoke on ahead. The fire had overtaken them, had run up the trunks of the trees at the edge of the forest, and was leaping from tree to tree over the heads of the Overland Riders, while here and there to the rear great pines exploded with terrifying sounds.
The Overland Riders, despite their torturing fear, were thrilled. The blood beat in their temples and their hearts were pounding. They began to understand what this race meant—it was a race with death, and its long arms were waving above them waiting to swoop down and enfold its victims.
“Faster!” Judy’s shrill command was plainly heard above the roar. She turned in her saddle and beckoned to her companions, not certain that they had heard. It was then she saw that the haze was enveloping them and that the outlines of horses and riders were growing fainter. Judy reined in her mount and waited.
“Ride faster! Use the spur! Drive ’em! Drive ’em!” she yelled as the girls swept past her, each one now urging on her mount with sharp cries. The riders now plainly felt the heat, the breath of the fire on their cheeks. So did the horses feel it, and they were frantic.
The tough little mustangs as they swept on needed no urging. They were giving all that was in them to save their own lives, but it seemed to be an unequal battle. The Overland Riders were not panic-stricken, but a great fear was in their hearts, yet not one gave way to her feelings. Perhaps it was because they had no time to do so, for it required close attention to prevent being unhorsed as their ponies made sudden swerves to avoid fallen trees or low hanging branches. The Overland girls were thus kept fully occupied, and it was plain to Judy Hornby that they were in no danger of losing their heads.
Above the noise, she and Bindloss again heard the crack of rifles. It was a scattering fire, but it was fast. Occasionally an interval would occur, during which the firing seemed to cease, to be resumed again a moment later.
“They are riding ahead of us. Look out!” shouted the rancher, swerving close to the mountain girl.
Judy nodded, and spurred on until she was abreast of the racing pony of Elfreda Briggs, who had lost her hat, and whose hair was whipping in the air behind her.
“Something going on ahead! Watch out! Watch me fer orders. Tell the others. I got to git ahead ag’in,” directed Judy.
Elfreda shouted the message to Grace, and Grace passed it to the girl nearest to her, which proved to be Emma. Nora was too far to one side to be reached, but her pony could be trusted to follow the others if any radical change of direction were taken.
“Ride Faster! Drive ’Em!”
“Ride Faster! Drive ’Em!”
Daylight suddenly showed faintly through the haze—the light of an open space. Joe Bindloss uttered a yell, hoping that they might there find rock footing and an end of the fire. Instead, his mustang burst out into a vast brown field, a grazing ground many acres in extent, from which rugged passes branched out in the distance.
As the riders emerged close on the heels of the rancher and Judy, a scene met their gaze that thrilled them anew.
Two bodies of horsemen, like themselves, were fleeing from the fire, which for some unknown reason had not yet leaped into the brown grass of the grazing range, and as they rode, both bodies of men were shooting.
It was a battle, a running battle with rifles.
Judy in one quick glance comprehended the situation and she saw more than did any others of her party. She knew the men off there were part of the band of rustlers who for so long had been a thorn in the side of all honest ranchers in the two great grazing valleys of the Cosos. She saw more than that—the verification of suspicions that she had harbored for some time, but that had crystallized only twenty-four hours before.
At about the same instant the Overlanders also made a discovery. The party of horsemen directly in front of them were quickly identified.
“It’s the boys!” screamed Nora.
“Ain’t dead, neither,” cried Joe Bindloss.
The Overland Riders pulled down their ponies.
“Keep going!” roared Bindloss.
“If we do we shall be shot!” wailed Nora.
“If you don’t you’ll be roasted!” retorted the old ranchman.
It was a difficult choice. To go forward meant that the Overland party would place themselves directly in the line of fire of the mountain ruffians, but to hold back meant that the forest fire in a few moments would be sweeping over the field. They decided to go forward, and in a moment their ponies were racing towards Tom Gray and his companions.
The fire was now roaring across the brown meadow. The Overland men saw it and began drawing in on the rustlers, driving at them in an oblique line, firing as they put their ponies at top speed. The girls followed at one side of the line of fire, hoping thereby to escape being hit.
A rustler toppled from his saddle. At the same instant Idaho Jones swayed uncertainly in his, but quickly recovered and again began working his rifle. Those who saw his hesitation knew that he had been hit.
The rustlers were now in a thick haze, and were giving ground as the ranchmen and Overland men bore down on them, pouring a heavy rifle fire into the closely bunched outlaws. They saw the rustlers whirl about facing their assailants to make a stand, but the firing was too hot for them and they fled. A mighty yell rose from the rustlers as all but two of them suddenly disappeared from sight as if the earth had swallowed them. It was then that the pursuers discovered that their adversaries had gained rocky ground. No forest fire could reach them there.
The two men who were still in view pulled their ponies to their haunches and swung about facing each other. The pursuers were amazed to see both men draw their weapons and begin shooting at each other.
The Overland men and ranchmen instantly ceased firing, but continued on at full speed, for the flames were rapidly sweeping down on them. They had not yet discovered the presence of Judy and the Overland girls, but Judy had discovered that safety from the fire lay at the far side of the field, so waving a hand for her companions to follow she headed towards the scene of the savage duel.
“Oh, it is awful!” cried Emma as her pony streaked past Miss Briggs and Grace.
Judy was laying her crop over the flank of her mustang and uttering shrill cries to urge him on, and the first intimation that the ranchmen had of the presence of the Overland girls was when Judy flashed by them towards the duelists.
“Kill ’im, Pap!” she yelled.
“It’s Mex!” shouted Sam Conifer.
At this juncture the Overland girls caught up with the pursuers and dashed to safety on the rocky ground. As they reached it Miss Briggs’ pony went down and Grace’s mustang leaped clear over her and her mount before she could check him. Tom Gray hurried to the rescue of Elfreda.
“You here?” he cried.
The roar of the fire, as it swept past over the brown meadow, smothered the words.
One duelist, at this juncture, was seen to sway in his saddle, and at the same instant the other plunged headlong to the ground. The first man’s pony jumped and he too was unhorsed, then both duelists laboriously raised themselves to their elbows, and the duel was resumed. At the second exchange of shots, one sank back and lay still.
Judy jumped her pony forward, and throwing herself from the saddle ran to the living man and pillowed his head in her lap.
“Gosh a-mighty!” roared Bindloss.
The men of the ranch party were on the scene in a few seconds, but still being ignorant of the cause of the sudden disappearance of the body of rustlers kept their weapons at ready. Some of them now rode cautiously forward to see what had become of the missing men.
“Stop!” shouted Two-gun Pete. “I know whar they’ve went to. The gang forgot ’bout the gulch thar, if they knowed ’bout it at all. Leastwise, they didn’t see it in the smoke till it war too late, an’ over they went. They won’t rustle no more steers, I reckons, bad luck to ’em.”
The whole party was now gathered about the mountain girl. The dead man, those who now knew him, was identified as Mexican Charlie.
“It’s Pap,” said Judy when they peered down into the face of the man whose head lay in her lap. She gazed up at the Overland girls with a pitiful look in her face.
Hornby opened his eyes, recognized her and began to speak.
“That’s all right, Pap. Don’t say it,” begged Judy.
“I got ter talk, Kid. I’m sorry I made ye mad yesterday. I told ye thet them friends of yours war shot at Red Gulch ’cause I knew the rest of their gang would be up heah, an’ we’d git ’em all. I wish we had! I wish we had, but the boys got looney ’cause your friends could shoot better’n they could, and ran over the edge.”
“Why did you an’ Mex fight, Pap?” asked Judy.
“’Cause he said I’d double-crossed him, an’ sent his gang to death to git rid of ’em, too. Then we fit. He set the fire, but I told him to.”
“Oh, Pap! How could you? These folks ain’t never meant you no harm. They ain’t done nothin’ but fight when you made ’em,” protested the mountain girl.
“Yes, they did! They come up heah lookin’ fer trouble. They wanted to drive us out er business. I know ’cause I had it from a feller who knowed. An’ ye helped ’em, Judy!” he exclaimed, blazing up into her face with something of the old fire in his eyes.
“You bet I did, Pap. My friends is my friends, an’ I’d do it ag’in,” she answered calmly.
“I don’t bear ye no grudge fer thet now, Kid, ’cause it’s too late. I got mine this time, an’ I’m goin’ out the way I always reckoned I would, with my boots on an’ facin’ the crack o’ the guns.”
As he talked, Hornby’s voice grew halting, and there were pauses of a few seconds between words. It was plain to all that he was weakening fast.
“May I try to do something for him, Judy?” begged Miss Briggs gently, as she bent over the wounded rustler.
“No!” Hornby put all the strength that he could summon into that one word. “Ye been lookin’ fer the man who war the leader of the rustlers. Heah he is! I’m thet man, and as it’s my dyin’ words, I beat ’em all at the game. Git ba—ack thar!” The rustler groped with uncertain fingers for his weapon, whereupon Judy laid a firm hand on his arm.
“No, Pap! You’ve done enough,” rebuked the girl. “You’ve said enough, too, an’ Judy Hornby never again kin hold her head up nor look honest folks in the face. They’ll say her Pap was a rustler an’—an’—”
“Judy! Please don’t,” begged Grace. “He is dying!”
“I—I reckon you’re right.” Judy fell to stroking the outlaw’s hair. “That’s all right, Pap. You’re my Pap. Miss Gray is right.”
“No! I got ter tell ye while I can. Judy, I ain’t yer Pap. Nor yer mother warn’t yer mother. I stole ye when ye war a little thing cause the man who was yer Pap had done me dirt. We raised ye, an’ Judy, we havin’ no children of our own, begun to like ye fer yerself an’ we kept ye, though at first we didn’t reckon on doin’ jest that. We reckoned on gettin rid—”
“No—ot my Pap?” stammered the girl. “Who, then—who is my Pap?” cried Judy. “Tell me! Ye got ter tell me! Who is my Pap?” Her voice rose threateningly, then sank almost to a whisper. “Pap, dear! Who is my real Pap?”
“He—he—he war—”
The voice grew faint, and though the girl bent her ear close to the lips of the dying man, she failed to catch the whispered words, and the secret that Malcolm Hornby had kept for so many years died with him there by the scorched meadows of the Cosos over which, like a shroud, hung a suffocating pall of yellow smoke.
Old Joe Bindloss lifted the little mountain girl to her feet, and, with hands on her shoulders, brought her face to face with him.
“I ain’t got no Pap now,” she murmured. “I ain’t got no friends, no nothin’ that a girl wants so much.”
Grace Harlowe slipped an arm about her.
“Yes, you have, Judy. We are your friends, now and always,” said Grace gently. “And I think you have a Pap that you haven’t reckoned on,” she added, nodding towards Joe Bindloss.
For a moment the old rancher and the mountain girl stood gazing into each other’s eyes, then he drew her, unresisting, to him and lightly touched her forehead with his lips.
“Oh, Pap!” sobbed Judy, her arms slipping about the neck of Old Joe Bindloss as she buried her head on his shoulder.