CHAPTER XXXIITHE HOLD-UP
When Wadley made to Jack Roberts the offer he had spoken of to his daughter, the face of that young man lighted up at once. But without hesitation he refused the chance to manage the A T O ranch.
"Sorry, but I can't work for you, Mr. Wadley."
The big Texan stiffened. "All right," he said huffily. "Just as you please. I'm not goin' to beg you on my knees to take the best job in the Panhandle. Plenty of good men want it."
The frank smile of the Ranger was disarming. "They don't want it any worse than I do, Mr. Wadley. I'm not a fool. Just because we had a difference oncet, I'm not standin' on my dignity. Nothin' like that. You're offerin' me a big chance—the biggest I'm ever likely to get. When you pick me to boss the A T O under yore orders, you pay me a sure-enough compliment, an' I'd be plumb glad to say yes."
"Well, why don't you?"
"Because the Rangers have got an unfinished job before them here, an' I'm not goin' to leave Captain Ellison in the lurch. I'll stick to my dollar a day till we've made a round-up."
The cattleman clapped him on the shoulder. "That's right, boy. That's the way to talk. Make yore clean-up, then come see me. I won't promise to hold this job open, but I want you to talk with me before you sign up with any one else."
But the weeks passed, and the Dinsmores still operated in the land. They worked under cover, less openly than in the old days, but still a storm-center of trouble. It was well known that they set the law at defiance, but no man who could prove it would produce evidence.
Meanwhile spring had made way for summer, and summer was beginning to burn into autumn. The little force of Rangers rode the land and watched for that false move which some day the Dinsmores would make to bring them within reach of the law.
On one of its trips in the early fall, the Clarendon stage left town almost half an hour late. It carried with it a secret, but everybody on board had heard a whisper of it. There was a gold shipment in the box consigned to Tascosa. A smooth-faced Ranger sat beside the driver with a rifle across his knees. He had lately been appointed to the force, and this was one of his first assignments. Perhaps that was why Arthur Ridley was a little conscious of his new buckskin suit and the importance of his job.
The passengers were three. One was a jolly Irish mule-skinner with a picturesque vocabularyand an inimitable brogue. The second wore the black suit and low-crowned hat of a clergyman, and yellow goggles to protect his eyes from the sun. He carried a roll of Scriptural charts such as are used in Sunday-Schools. The third was an angular and spectacled schoolmarm, for Tascosa was going to celebrate by starting a school.
Most of those on board were a trifle nervous. The driver was not quite at his ease; nor was the shotgun messenger. For somehow word had got out a day or two in advance of the gold shipment that it was to be sent on that date. The passengers, too, had faint doubts about the wisdom of going to Tascosa on that particular trip.
The first twenty miles of the journey were safely covered. The stage drew near to the place where now is located the famous Goodnight cattalo ranch.
From the farther side of a cut in the road came a sharp order to the driver. Two men had ridden out from the brush and were moving beside the stage. Each of them carried a rifle.
The driver leaned backward on the reins with a loud "Whoa!" It was an article of faith with him never to argue with a road-agent.
Ridley swung round to fire. From the opposite side of the road a shot rang out. Two more horsemen had appeared. The reins slid from the hands of the driver, and he himself from the seat. His body struck the wheel on the way to the ground.The bullet intended for the armed guard had passed through his head.
In the packed moments that followed, a dozen shots were fired, most of them by the outlaws, two by the man on the box. A bullet struck Arthur in the elbow, and the shock of it for a time paralyzed his arm. The rifle clattered against the singletree in its fall. But the shortest of the outlaws was sagging in his saddle and clutching at the pommel to support himself.
From an unexpected quarter there came a diversion. With one rapid gesture the man in the clergyman's garb had brushed aside his yellow goggles; with another he had stripped the outer cover of charts from his roll and revealed a sawed-off shotgun. As he stepped down to the road, he fired from his hip. The whole force of the load of buckshot took the nearest outlaw in the vitals and lifted him from his horse. Before he struck the ground he was dead.
In the flash of an eye the tide of battle had turned. The surprise of seeing the clergyman galvanized into action tipped the scale. One moment the treasure lay unguarded within reach of the outlaws; the next saw their leader struck down as by a bolt from heaven.
The lank bandit ripped out a sudden oath of alarm from behind the handkerchief he wore as a mask and turned his horse in its tracks. He dug home his spurs and galloped for the brow of thehill. The other unwounded robber backed away more deliberately, covering the retreat of his injured companion. Presently they, too, had passed over the top of the hill and disappeared.
The ex-clergyman turned to the treasure-guard. "How bad is it with you, Art?" he asked gently.
That young man grinned down a little wanly at Jack Roberts. He felt suddenly nauseated and ill. This business of shooting men and being shot at filled him with horror.
"Not so bad. I got it in the arm, Jack. Poor old Hank will never drive again."
The Ranger who had been camouflaged as a clergyman stooped to examine the driver. That old-timer's heart had stopped beating. "He's gone on his last long trip, Art."
"This schoolmarm lady has fainted," announced the mule-skinner.
"She's got every right in the world to faint. In Iowa, where she comes from, folks live in peace. Better sprinkle water on her face, Mike."
Jack moved over to the dead outlaw and lifted the bandana mask from the face. "Pete Dinsmore, just like I thought," he told Ridley. "Well, he had to have it—couldn't learn his lesson any other way."
Roberts drove the stage with its load of dead and wounded back to Clarendon. As quickly as possible he gathered a small posse to follow thebandits. Hampered as the outlaws were with a badly wounded man, there was a good chance of running them to earth at last. Before night he and his deputies were far out on the plains following a trail that led toward Palo Duro Cañon.
CHAPTER XXXIIITHE MAN WITH THE YELLOW STREAK
Night fell on both a dry and fireless camp for the outlaws who had tried to rob the Clarendon-Tascosa stage. They had covered a scant twenty miles instead of the eighty they should have put behind them. For Dave Overstreet had been literally dying in the saddle every step of the way.
He had clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel desperately. Once he had fainted and slid from his seat. But the bandits could not stop and camp, though Dinsmore kept the pace to a walk.
"Once we reach Palo Duro, we'll hole up among the rocks an' fix you up fine, Dave," his companion kept promising.
"Sure, Homer. I'm doin' dandy," the wounded man would answer from white, bloodless lips.
The yellow streak in Gurley was to the fore all day. It evidenced itself in his precipitate retreat from the field of battle—a flight which carried him miles across the desert before he dared wait for his comrades. It showed again in the proposal which he made early in the afternoon to Dinsmore.
The trio of outlaws had been moving very slowly on account of the suffering of the woundedman. Gurley kept looking back nervously every few minutes to see if pursuers were visible. After a time he sidled up to Dinsmore and spoke low.
"They'll get us sure if we don't move livelier, Homer."
"How in Mexico can we move faster when Dave can't stand it?" asked Dinsmore impatiently.
"He's a mighty sick man. He hadn't ought to be on horseback at all. He needs a doctor."
"Will you go an' get him one?" demanded Homer with sour sarcasm.
"What I say is, let's fix him up comfortable, an' after a while mebbe a posse will come along an' pick him up. They can look after him better than we got a chance to do," argued Gurley.
"And mebbe a posse won't find him—what then?" rasped Dinsmore.
"They will. If they don't, he'll die easy. This is sure enough hell for him now."
"All right. Shall we stop right here with him?"
"That wouldn't do any good, Homer. The Rangers would get us too."
"I see. Yore idea is to let Dave die easy while we're savin' our hides. Steve, you've got a streak in you a foot wide."
"Nothin' like that," protested the man with the eyes that didn't track. "I'd stay by him if it was any use. But it ain't. Whyfor should you an' me stretch a rope when we can't help Dave a mite? It ain't reasonable."
Overstreet could not hear what was said, but he guessed the tenor of their talk. "Go ahead, boys, an' leave me. I'm about done anyhow," he said.
"If Gurley has a mind to go, he can. I'll stick," answered Dinsmore gruffly.
But Gurley did not want to go alone. There were possible dangers to be faced that two men could meet a good deal more safely than one. It might be that they would have to stand off a posse. They might meet Indians. The sallow outlaw felt that he could not afford just now to break with his companion. It was not likely that the Rangers would reach them that night, and he guessed craftily that Overstreet would not live till morning. The wound was a very serious one. The man had traveled miles before Dinsmore could stop to give him such slight first aid as was possible, and the jolting of the long horseback ride had made it difficult to stop the bleeding which broke out again and again.
After Dinsmore had eased the wounded man from his horse at dusk and laid him on a blanket with a saddle for a pillow, Overstreet smiled faintly up at him.
"It won't be for long, Homer. You'll be shet of me right soon now," he murmured.
"Don't you talk that-a-way, Dave. I don't want to be shet of you. After a good night's rest you'll feel a new man."
"No, I've got more than I can pack. It won't be long now. I'm right comfortable here. Steve's in a hurry. You go on an' hit the trail with him."
"Where did you get the notion I was yellow, old-timer? I've hunted in couples with you for years. Do you reckon I'm goin' to run like a cur now you've struck a streak o' bad luck?" asked Dinsmore huskily.
The dying man smiled his thanks. "You always was a stubborn son-of-a-gun, Homer. But Steve, he wants—"
"Steve can go to—Hell Creek, if he's so set on travelin' in a hurry. Here, drink some of this water."
The blanket of darkness fell over the land. Stars came out, at first one or two, then by thousands, till the night was full of them. The wounded man dozed and stirred and dozed again. It was plain that the sands of his life were running low. Dinsmore, watching beside him, knew that it was the ebb tide.
A little after midnight Overstreet roused himself, recognized the watcher, and nodded good-bye.
"So long, Homer. I'm hittin' the home trail now."
His hand groped feebly till it found that of his friend. A few minutes later he died, still holding the strong warm hand of the man who was nursing him.
Dinsmore crossed the hands of the dead outlaw and covered him with a blanket.
"Saddle up, Steve," he told Gurley.
While he waited for the horses, he looked down with a blur over his eyes. He had ridden hard and crooked trails all his life, but he had lost that day his brother and his best friend. The three of them had been miscreants. They had broken the laws of society and had fought against it because of the evil in them that had made them a destructive force. But they had always played fair with each other. They had at least been loyal to their own bad code. Now he was alone, for Gurley did not count.
Presently the other man stood at his elbow with the saddled horses. Dinsmore swung to the saddle and rode away. Not once did he look back, but he had no answer for Gurley's cheerful prediction that now they would reach Palo Duro Cañon all right and would hole up there till the pursuit had spent itself, after which they could amble down across the line to Old Mexico or could strike the Pecos and join Billy the Kid. Only one idea was fixed definitely in his mind, that as soon as he could, he would part company with the man riding beside him.
When day came, it found them riding westward in the direction of Deaf Smith County. The Cañon was not far south of them, but there was no need of plunging into it yet. The pursuit mustbe hours behind them, even if their trail had not been lost altogether. They rode easily, prepared to camp at the first stream or water-hole they reached.
"We'll throw off here," Dinsmore decided at the first brook they reached.
They unsaddled and hobbled their horses. While Gurley lighted a fire for the coffee, the other man strolled up the creek to get a shot at any small game he might find. Presently a brace of prairie-chickens rose with a whir of wings. The rifle cracked, and one of them fell fluttering to the ground. Dinsmore moved forward to pick up the bird.
Abruptly he stopped in his stride. He fancied he heard a faint cry. It came again, carried on the light morning breeze. He could have sworn that it was the call of a woman for help.
Dinsmore grew wary. He knew the tricks of the Indians, the wily ways with which they lured men into ambush. There had been rumors for days that the Indians were out again. Yet it was not like Indians to announce their presence before they pounced upon their prey. He moved very slowly forward under cover of the brush along the bed of the stream.
The voice came to him again, closer this time, and in spite of the distance clear as a bell. It was surely that of a white woman in trouble. Still he did not answer as he crept forward up the stream.
Then he caught sight of her—a girl, slim and young, stumbling forward through the grass, exhaustion showing in every line of the body.
She stretched out her hands to him across the space between, with a little despairing cry.
CHAPTER XXXIVRAMONA GOES DUCK-HUNTING
"I'm going duck-hunting, Daddy," announced Ramona one evening at supper. "Quint Sullivan is going with me. We're to get up early in the morning and leave before daybreak."
They had been back at the ranch several weeks, and 'Mona was tired of practicing on the piano and reading Scott's novels after her work about the house was done. She was restless. Her father had noticed it and wondered why. He would have been amazed to learn that the longing to see or hear about a certain brindle-haired former line-rider of his had anything to do with her unrest. Indeed, Ramona did not confess this even to herself. She tried to think that she had been cooped up in the house too long. Hence the duck-hunting as an escape.
"All right, honey. I'll give Quint notice who his boss is to-morrow."
"I've already given him his orders, Dad," his daughter said, with a saucy littlemoueat her father.
Clint chuckled. "'Nough said. When you give orders I take a back seat. Every rider on the place knows that. I'm the most henpecked dad in Texas."
By daybreak Ramona and her escort were several miles from the ranch on their way to the nearest lake. Quint was a black-haired, good-looking youth who rode the range for the A T O outfit. Like most of the unmarried men about her between the ages of fifteen and fifty, he imagined himself in love with the daughter of the boss. He had no expectation whatever of marrying her. He would as soon have thought of asking Wadley to give him a deed to the ranch as he would of mentioning to Ramona the state of his feelings. But that young woman, in spite of her manner of frank innocence, knew quite accurately how matters stood, just as she knew that in due time Quint would transfer his misplaced affections to some more reciprocal object of them.
Her particular reason for selecting Quint as her companion of the day was that he happened to be a devoted admirer of Jack Roberts. All one needed to do was to mention the Ranger to set him off on a string of illustrative anecdotes, and Ramona was hungry for the very sound of his name. One advantage in talking to young Sullivan about his friend was that the ingenuous youth would never guess that the subject of their conversation had been chosen by her rather than by him.
"Did I ever tell you, Miss Ramona, about the time Texas an' me went to Denver? Gentlemen, hush! We ce'tainly had one large time."
"You boys ought not to spend your time in the saloons whenever you go to town. It isn't good for you," reproved the sage young woman who was "going-on seventeen."
She was speaking for a purpose, and Quint very innocently answered the question in her mind.
"No, ma'am. I reckon you're right. But we didn't infest the saloons none that time. Texas, he's one of these here good bad-men. He's one sure-enough tough nut, an' I'd hate to try to crack him, but the queer thing is he don't drink or chew or go hellin' around with the boys. But, say, he's some live lad, lemme tell you. What do you reckon he pulled off on me whilst we was in Denver?"
"Some foolishness, I suppose," said Ramona severely, but she was not missing a word.
"He meets up with a newspaper guy an' gets to fillin' him plumb full o' misinformation about me. To hear him tell it I was the white-haired guy from the Panhandle an' had come to Denver for to hunt a girl to marry. Well, that reporter he goes back an' writes a piece in his paper about how it was the chance of a lifetime for any onmarried fe-male, of even disposition an' pleasin' appearance, between the ages of twenty an' thirty-five, to marry a guaranteed Texas cowpuncher, warranted kind an' sound an' to run easy in double harness. An' would the ladiesplease come early to the St. Peter hotel an' inquire for Mr. Quint Sullivan."
"Did any of them come?" asked Ramona, her eyes dancing.
"Did they? Wow! They swarmed up the stairs an' crowded the elevators, while that doggoned Tex sicked 'em on me. Honest, I didn't know there was so many onmarried ladies in the world."
"How did you escape?" asked the girl, well aware that he was drawing the long bow.
"Ma'am, the fire department rescued me. But I ce'tainly did lie awake the balance of the trip tryin' to get even with Jack Roberts. But it's no manner of use. He lands right-side up every time."
After they had reached Crane Lake the cowpuncher tied the horses while Ramona started around to the far side, following the shore line and keeping her eyes open for ducks. The girl made a half-circuit of the lake without getting a shot. There were ducks enough to be seen, but as yet none of them were within range.
It might have been half an hour after Ramona left Sullivan that there came a shot from the other side of the lake. It was followed almost immediately by a second, a third, and a fourth. 'Mona caught sight of Quint running fast toward the horses. Her heart felt a sudden constriction as of an iron band tightening upon it, for half a dozen mounted Indians were in hot pursuit. She saw the boy reach the nearest bronco, jerk loosethe bridle rein, vault to the saddle, and gallop away, lying low on the back of the horse. The Indians fired from their horses as they rode, but the man flying for his life did not take time to shoot.
For a moment 'Mona stood in plain view by the lake shore. Then she dropped among the rushes, her heart fluttering wildly like that of a forest bird held captive in the hand. She was alone, at the mercy of twoscore of hostile Indians. They would know that the cowboy had a companion because of the second bronco, and as soon as they returned from the pursuit they would begin a search for her. Perhaps they might not even wait till then. 'Mona lay there in despair while one might have counted a hundred. During that time she gave herself up for lost. She could neither move nor think. But presently there flowed back into her heart a faint hope. Perhaps she had not yet been seen. There was a little arroyo farther to the left. If she could reach it, still unnoticed, at least she could then run for her life.
She crept through the rushes on hands and knees, sinking sometimes wrist-deep in water. There was one stretch of perhaps thirty yards at the end of the rushes that had to be taken without cover. She flew across the open, a miracle of supple lightness, reached the safety of the little gulch, and ran as she had never run before. Every moment she expected to hear the crash of the pursuers breaking through the brush.
On the ranch she had lived largely an outdoor life, and in spite of her slenderness was lithe and agile. Beneath her soft flesh hard muscles flowed, for she had known the sting of sleet and the splash of sun. But the rapid climb had set her heart pumping fast. Her speed began to slacken.
Near the summit was a long, uptilted stratum of rock which led to the left and dipped over the ridge. She followed this because no tracks would here betray where she had escaped. For almost a quarter of a mile she descended on the outcropping quartz, flying in an ecstasy of terror from the deadly danger that might at any instant appear on the crest of the divide behind her.
Ramona came to a cleft in the huge boulder, a deep, narrow gash that looked as if it might have been made by a sword stroke of the gods. She peered into the shadowy gulf, but could not see the bottom of the fissure. A pebble dropped by her took so long to strike that she knew the chasm must be deep.
If she could get down into it, perhaps she might hide from the savages. It was her one possible chance of escape. The girl moved along the edge of the precipice trying to find a way down that was not sheer. An arrowweed thicket had struggled up from a jutting spar of rock. Below this was a ridge where her foot might find a support. Beyond was a rock wall that disappearedinto empty space. But 'Mona could not choose. She must take this or nothing.
By means of the arrowweed she lowered herself over the edge while her foot groped for the spar of quartz. Her last look up the hill showed Indians pouring across the ridge in pursuit. Without hesitation she chose the chances of death in the cavern to the certainty of the torture waiting for her outside. Foot by foot she lowered herself, making the most of every irregularity in the rock wall that offered a grip for hand or foot. The distance down seemed interminable. She worked herself into a position where she could move neither up nor down. While her foot was searching for a brace one of her hands slipped and she went the rest of the way with a rush.
For a time she lay there in the darkness, shaken and bruised by the fall, a sharp pain shooting through one of her legs just above the ankle. During those minutes of daze voices came to her from the slit of light above. The painted face of an Apache leaned over the edge of the wall and looked into the gulf.
The girl made not the least movement. She did not stir to relieve the pain of her leg. Scarcely did she dare breathe lest the sound of it might reach those above.
The Apaches began to fire into the fissure. Ramona noiselessly dragged herself close to the overhanging wall. Shot after shot was flung intothe cavern at random. Fortunately for Ramona the strain of the situation relaxed abruptly. A wave of light-headedness seemed to carry her floating into space. She fainted.
When she came to herself no sound reached the girl from above. The Indians had no doubt concluded that their victim was not in the cavern and taken up the pursuit again. But she knew the cunning of the Apache. Probably one or two braves had been left to watch the cleft. She lay quite still and listened. All she could hear was the fearful beating of her heart.
For hours she lay there without making a sound. The patience of the Apache is proverbial. It was possible they knew where she was and were waiting for her to deliver herself to them.
'Mona had one ghastly comfort. The little revolver she had brought along with which to shoot rattlesnakes was still in its scabbard by her side. If they would give her only a moment or two of warning, she would never fall alive into the hands of the redskins.
Time was unmarked for her in the darkness of the cavern. She could not tell whether it was still morning or whether the afternoon was nearing an end. Such a day, so full of dreadful horrors, so long from morning till night, she had never before passed. It seemed to her that a week of hours had come and gone before the light above began to fade.
CHAPTER XXXVTHE DESERT
It was only recently that Clint Wadley had become a man of wealth, and life in the Panhandle was even yet very primitive according to present-day standards. There was no railroad within one hundred and fifty miles of the A T O ranch. Once in two weeks one of the cowboys rode to Clarendon to get the mail and to buy small supplies. Otherwise contact with the world was limited to occasional visits to town.
As a little girl Ramona had lived in a one-room house built of round logs, with a stick-and-mud chimney, a door of clapboards daubed with mud at the chinks, and a dirt floor covered with puncheons. She had slept in a one-legged bedstead fitted into the wall, through the sides and ends of which bed, at intervals of eight inches, holes had been bored to admit of green rawhide strips for slats. She had sat on a home-made three-legged stool at a home-made table in homespun clothes and eaten a dish of cush[8]for her supper. She had watched her aunt make soap out of lye dripping from an ash-hopper. The only cooking utensils in the house had been a Dutch oven, a three-leggedskillet, a dinner-pot, a tea-kettle, a big iron shovel, and a pair of pot-hooks suspended from an iron that hung above the open fire.
But those were memories of her childhood in southern Texas. With the coming of prosperity Clint had sent his children to Tennessee to school, and Ramona had been patiently trained to the feebleness of purpose civilization in those days demanded of women of her class and section. She had been taught to do fancy needlework and to play the piano as a parlor accomplishment. It had been made plain to her that her business in life was to marry and keep the home fires burning, and her schooling had been designed, not to prepare her as a mate for her future husband, but to fit her with the little graces that might entice him into choosing her for a wife.
Upon her return to the ranch Ramona had compromised between her training and her inheritance. She took again to horseback riding and to shooting, even though she read a good deal and paid due attention to her pink-and-white complexion.
So that when she looked up from the cavern in which she was buried and caught a gleam of a star in the slit of blue sky above, she was not so helpless as her schooling had been designed to make her. The girl was compact of supple strength. Endurance and a certain toughness of fiber had come to her from old Clint Wadley.
She began the climb, taking advantage of every bit of roughness, of every projection in the almost sheer wall. A knob of feldspar, a stunted shrub growing from a crevice, a fault in the rock structure, offered here and there toe-or hand-holds. She struggled upward, stopped more than once by the smooth surface against which her soft warm body was pressing. On such occasions she would lower herself again, turn to the right or the left, and work toward another objective.
Ramona knew that the least slip, the slightest failure of any one of her muscles, would send her plunging down to the bottom of the crevasse. The worst of it was that she could not put any dependence upon her injured leg. It might see her through or it might not.
It was within a few feet of the top, just below the arrowweed bush, that she came to animpasse. The cold wall offered no hand-hold by which she could gain the few inches that would bring her within reach of the bunched roots. She undid her belt, threw one end of it over the body of the bush, and worked it carefully down until she could buckle it. By means of this she went up hand over hand till she could reach the arrowweed. Her knee found support in the loop of the belt, and in another moment she had zigzagged herself inch by inch over the edge to the flat surface above.
No sign of the Apaches was to be seen. 'Monarecovered her belt and began to move up the rock spur toward the summit of the hill. A sound stopped her in her tracks. It was the beating of a tom-tom.
She knew the Indians must be camped by the lake. They were probably having a feast and dances. In any case she could not strike direct for home. She must keep on this side of the hill, make a wide circuit, and come in from the west.
Already her leg was paining her a good deal. Since five o'clock in the morning she had eaten nothing. Her throat was parched with thirst. But these were details that must be forgotten. She had to tramp more than twenty miles through the desert regardless of her physical condition.
The girl went at it doggedly. She limped along, getting wearier every mile of the way. But it was not until she discovered that she was lost to all sense of direction that she broke down and wept. The land here was creased by swales, one so like another that in the darkness she had gone astray and did not know north from south.
After tears came renewed resolution. She tried to guide herself by the stars, but though she could hold a straight course there was no assurance in her mind that she was going toward the A T O. Each step might be taking her farther from home. A lime kiln burned in her throat. She was so worn out from lack of food and the tremendous strain under which she had been carryingon that her knees buckled under her weight as she stumbled through the sand. The bad ankle complained continuously.
In this vast solitude there was something weird and eerie that shook her courage. Nor was the danger all fantastic imaginings. The Indians might yet discover her. She might wander far from beaten trails of travel and die of thirst as so many newcomers had done. Possibilities of disaster trooped through her mind.
She was still a child, on the sunny side of seventeen. So it was natural that when she sat down to rest her ankle she presently began to sob again, and that in her exhaustion she cried herself to sleep.
When her eyes opened, the sun was peeping over the desert horizon. She could tell directions now. The A T O ranch must be far to the northeast of where she was. But scarcely a mile from her ran a line of straggling brush. It must be watered by a stream. She hobbled forward painfully to relieve the thirst that was already a torment to her.
She breasted the rise of a little hill and looked down a gentle slope toward the thicket. For a moment her heart lost a beat. A trickle of smoke was rising from a camp-fire and a man was bending over it. He was in the clothes of a white man. Simultaneously there came to her the sound of a shot.
From her parched throat there came a bleating little cry. She hurried forward, and as she went she called again and still again. She was pitifully anxious lest the campers ride away before they should discover her.
A man with a gun in his hand moved toward her from the creek. She gave a little sobbing cry and stumbled toward him.
Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beaten to a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.[8]
Cush is made of old corn bread and biscuits in milk, beaten to a batter and fried in bacon grease with salt.[8]
CHAPTER XXXVIHOMER DINSMORE ESCORTS RAMONA
"I'm lost!" cried Ramona.
"Where from?" asked Dinsmore.
"From the A T O."
"You're Clint Wadley's daughter, then?"
She nodded. "We met Indians. I ... got away."
The girl knelt beside the brook, put her hands on two stones that jutted up from the water, and drank till her thirst was assuaged.
"I'm hungry," she said simply, after she had risen.
He led her back to the camp-fire and on the way picked up the bird he had shot. 'Mona saw that he noticed her limp, though he said nothing about it.
"I had an accident," she explained. "Fell down a rock wall while I was getting away from the 'Paches."
"They're out again, are they—the devils?" He asked another question. "You said 'we.' Who was with you when the Indians took after you?"
"Quint Sullivan. I was on the other side of Crane Lake from him and heard shots. I saw Quint running for the horses with the 'Paches after him."
"Did he get away?"
She shuddered. "He reached the horses. They rode after him. I don't know whether...." Her voice thinned away.
The man at the camp-fire turned, and at sight of them dropped a sudden, startled oath.
Ramona looked at him, then at Dinsmore. A faint tremor passed through her slight body. She knew now who these men were.
"What'sshedoin' here?" demanded Gurley.
"She's lost. The 'Paches are out, Steve."
"Where are they?"
"Up at Crane Lake last night."
"Are they headed this way?"
"Don't know. She"—with a jerk of his thumb toward Ramona—"bumped into 'em an' got away."
"We'd better light a shuck out o' here," said Gurley, visibly disturbed.
"Why? They ain't liable to come this way more than any other. We'll have breakfast an' talk things over. Fix up this bird, Steve. Cook it in the skillet. She's hungry."
Ramona observed that both the men referred to her asshewhenever any reference was made to her.
While they ate breakfast the girl told the story of her experience. Dinsmore watched her with a reluctant admiration. The lines of her figure drooped with weariness, but fatigue could not blot out the grace of her young vitality.
"When can we start for home?" Ramona asked after she had eaten.
"For the A T O?" asked the lank, sallow outlaw brutally. "What's ailin' you? Think we're goin' to take you home with the 'Paches between us an' there? We ain't plumb crazy."
"But I must get home right away. My father—he'll be frightened about me."
"Will he?" jeered Gurley. "If he knew you was in such good company he'd be real easy in his mind." The man flashed a look at her that made the girl burn with shame.
"We could go round an' miss the 'Paches," suggested Ramona timidly.
"Forget that notion," answered Gurley, and there was a flash of cruelty in his eyes. "Mebbe you misremember that I'm obligated to you, miss, for what that condemned Ranger Roberts did to me when I fell over the box in front of the store. We'll settle accounts whilst you're here, I reckon."
The girl appealed to Dinsmore. "You're not going to let him ... mistreat me, are you?"
The pathos of her situation, the slim, helpless, wonderful youth of the girl, touched the not very accessible heart of Dinsmore.
"You bet I'm not. He'll cut out that kind o' talk right now," he said.
The eyes of Ramona met his, and she knew she was safe. This man had the respect for a good woman that was characteristic of the turbulentWest in its most lawless days. He might be a miscreant and a murderer, but he would fight at the drop of a hat in response to the appeal of any woman who was "straight."
"Playin' up to Clint, are you, Homer?" sneered the other man. "You better take her straight home like she wants, since you're so friendly to the family."
"That's exactly what I'm goin' to do," retorted Dinsmore. "Any objections?"
Gurley dropped his sneer instantly. His alarm voiced itself in a wheedling apology. "I didn't go for to rile you, Homer. O' course you cayn't do that. We got to stick together. The Indians is one reason. An' there's another. No need for me to tell you what it is."
"You'll have to wait for me in the cañon till I get back. It's not far from here to you-know-where. I'm goin' to take the horses an' see this girl back to her home."
"You're good," Ramona said simply.
"You're not figurin' on takin' my horse, are you?" Gurley burst out with an oath.
"You've done guessed it, Steve. You'll have to hoof it into the cañon."
"Like hell I will. Take another think, my friend."
The eyes of the men clashed, one pair filled with impotent rage, the other cold and hard as polished steel on a frosty morning.
Gurley yielded sullenly. "It's no square deal, Homer. We didn't bring her here. Why cayn't she go along with us an' hole up till the 'Paches are gone an' till ... things kinda settle down?"
"Because she's got no business with folks like us. Her place is back at the A T O, an' that's where I aim to take her. She's had one hell of a time, if you ask me. What that kid needs is for her home folks to tuck her up in bed an' send her to sleep. She's had about all the trouble a li'l' trick like her can stand, I shouldn't wonder."
"You ain't her nurse," growled Gurley.
"That's why I'm goin' to take her home to those that are. 'Nuff said, Steve. What I say goes."
"You act mighty high-heeled," grumbled the other man.
"Mebbeso," replied Dinsmore curtly. "Saddle the horses, Steve."
"I dunno as I'm yore horse-rustler," mumbled Gurley, smothering his sullen rage. None the less he rose slowly and shuffled away toward the hobbled horses.
'Mona touched Dinsmore on the sleeve. Her soft eyes poured gratitude on him. "I'll remember this as long as I live. No matter what anybody says I'll always know that you're good."
The blood crept up beneath the tan of the outlaw's face. It had been many years since an innocent child had made so naïve a confession offaith in him. He was a bad-man, and he knew it. But at the core of him was a dynamic spark of self-respect that had always remained alight. He had ridden crooked trails through all his gusty lifetime. His hand had been against every man's, but at least he had fought fair and been loyal to his pals. And there had never been a time when a good woman need be afraid to look him in the face.
"Sho! Nothin' to that. I gotta take you home so as you won't be in the way," he told her with a touch of embarrassed annoyance.
No man alive knew this country better than Homer Dinsmore. Every draw was like its neighbor, every rolling rise a replica of the next. But the outlaw rode as straight a course as if his road had been marked out for him by stakes across the plains. He knew that he might be riding directly toward a posse of Rangers headed for Palo Duro to round up the stage robbers. He could not help that. He would have to take his chance of an escape in case they met such a posse.
The sun climbed high in the heavens.
"How far do you think we are now from the ranch?" asked Ramona.
"Most twenty miles. We've been swingin' well to the left. I reckon we can cut in now."
They climbed at a walk a little hill and looked across a wide sweep of country before them. Ramona gave a startled cry and pointed an outstretchedfinger at some riders emerging from a dry wash.
"'Paches!" cried Dinsmore. "Back over the hill, girl."
They turned, but too late. On the breeze there came to them a yell that sent the blood from 'Mona's heart.
CHAPTER XXXVIION A HOT TRAIL
Roberts picked up from the fort a Mescalero Apache famous as a trailer. He reckoned to be rather expert in that line himself, but few white men could boast of such skill as old Guadaloupe had.
Jumbo Wilkins was one of the posse Jack had hastily gathered. "I'm good an' glad I was in town an' not out herdin'vacas, Tex. A fellow kinda needs a little excitement oncet in a while. I got a hunch we're goin' to git these birds this time."
"You're the greatest little optimist I ever did see, Jumbo," answered the Ranger with a smile. "We're goin' to strike a cold trail of men who know every inch of this country an' are ridin' hell-for-leather to make a get-away. We're liable to ride our broncs to shadows an' never see hair or hide of the fellows we want. I'd like to know what license you've got for yore hunch."
"You're such a lucky guy, Tex. If you was lookin' for a needle in a haystack you'd find it in yore mouth when you picked up a straw to chew on."
"Lucky, nothin'. A man makes his own luck, I always did tell you, an' I haven't bumped intoany yet. You don't see any big bunch of fat cows with my brand on 'em, do you? I'm pluggin' along for a dollar a day with a promise from Cap Ellison that I'll probably cash in soon with my boots on. Old Man Luck always hides behind the door when I pass, if there's any such Santa Claus in the business."
"All the way you look at it. Didn't Clint Wadley offer you the job of bossin' the best cow-ranch in the Panhandle?"
"An' didn't I have to turn down his offer an' hang on to a dollar-a-day job?"
"Then you saved Miss 'Mona from that bull an' made a friend of her."
"Yes, an' then I butted in an' kept the Kiowas from mussin' up Art Ridley, who is liable to ask me to stand up with him when he marries Miss Ramona," added the Ranger.
"Shucks! She'll never marry Ridley so long as you're runnin' around unbranded, son."
"A lot you know about girls, Jumbo," said Roberts with a rueful grin. "I don't know sic' 'em about the things they like. I'm one chaparral-raised roughneck. That little lady never wasted two thoughts on me. But Art—he knows a lot about books an' style an' New York's four hundred. He's good to look at, clean, knows how to talk, an' makes a sure-enough hit with the girls."
"He's a sissy boy beside you. No Texas girl would look twice—"
"Nothin' a-tall to that. Didn't he save Clint Wadley's life? Didn't he stay by Dinsmore when the Kiowas had 'em holed? He fought good enough to get shot up this mo'nin', didn't he? No, sir. You'll find he's got me backed off the map so far as Miss Ramona goes. I know it, old-timer."
"Where do you get that notion you're a roughneck, Tex?" asked Jumbo. "You've read more books than any man on the range. You don't hell around like most of the boys. You don't drink. Mebbe you ain't exactly pretty, but yore face doesn't scare critters when they see it onexpected. An' when the band begins to play—Gentlemen, watch Tex."
"If the girls would only let you do the pickin' for 'em, Jumbo," suggested Roberts with his sardonic smile.
Through rabbit weed and curly mesquite, among the catclaw and the prickly pear, they followed the faint ribbon trail left by the outlaws in their retreat from the scene of the hold-up.
When it was too late to cut sign any longer, the Ranger gave orders to throw in to a small draw where the grass was good. At daybreak they were on the trail again and came within the hour to the body of Overstreet. They dug a grave in a buffalo run with their knives and buried the body as well as they could before they picked up again the tracks of two horses now traveling much faster.
"They're headin' for Palo Duro, looks like,'" commented Roberts.
"Looks like," agreed his friend.
Early in the afternoon the posse reached the little creek where the outlaws had breakfasted. Old Guadaloupe crisscrossed the ground like a bloodhound as he read what was written there. But before he made any report Roberts himself knew that a third person had joined the fugitives and that this recruit was a woman. The Ranger followed the Apache upstream, guessed by some feathers and some drops of blood that one of the outlaws had shot a prairie-hen, and read some hint of the story of the meeting between the woman and the bandit.
Was this woman some one who had been living in Palo Duro Cañon with the outlaws? Or was this meeting an accidental one? The odd thing about it was that there was no sign of her horse. She had come on foot, in a country where nobody ever travels that way.
Roberts told Guadaloupe to find out where the party had gone from the camp. He himself followed into the desert the footsteps of the woman who had come across it toward the creek. He was puzzled and a little disturbed in mind. She had not come from the cañon. What was a woman doing alone and on foot in this desert empty of human life for fifty miles or more?
He found no answer to his questions and reluctantlyreturned to the camp-fire. Guadaloupe was ready with his report. One man had started out on foot along the edge of the cañon. The other man and the woman had struck on horseback across the plain.
"We'll follow those on horseback," decided the Ranger at once. He could not have told why the urgent impulse was on him to do this, nor why he did not split his party and send part of his men in pursuit of the foot traveler. Later he laid it to what Jumbo would have called a hunch.
He was puzzled by the direction the two riders were taking. It led neither to the A T O nor to Tascosa, and was making no account of the streams where the travelers would have to find water. They seemed to be plunging ignorantly into the desert, but since Gurley or Dinsmore was one of the two this could not be. Either of these men could have traveled the Panhandle blindfolded.
They followed the tracks for hours. The line of travel was so direct that it told of purpose. Dinsmore—if the man were Dinsmore—evidently knew just what he was doing. Then, abruptly, the tracks pointed to the right, straight for the A T O.
But not for long. At the summit of a little rise the riders had plainly stopped for a few moments, then had turned and galloped fast for the southwest. The lengthening tracks, the sharpness ofthem, the carelessness with which the riders took the rougher ground to follow a straight line, all suggested an urgent and imperative reason.
That reason became plain to Roberts in another minute. A great number of tracks swept in from the left and blotted out those of the two flying riders.
"Chiricahua Apaches," grunted Guadaloupe. The scout had a feud with that branch of the tribe and was at war with them.
"How many?" questioned Jack.
The Indian held up the fingers of both hands, closed them, opened them, and a third time shut and lifted the fingers.
"Thirty?" asked the Ranger.
The Apache nodded.
"Dinsmore 's makin' for Palo Duro," remarked Wilkins as they followed at a canter the plain trail marked for them. "I'll bet he don't throw down on himself none on that race either. He's sure hell-bent on gettin' there."
One of the riders called to the Rangers. "Look over to the left, Tex. We got company."
A little group of riders—three, four, five of them—emerged from behind a clump of Spanish bayonet and signaled with a bandana handkerchief. As they rode closer the heart of the Ranger died under his ribs. His stomach muscles tightened, and he felt a prickling of the skin run down his back. For Clint Wadley rode at the head ofthese men, and like a flash of lightning the truth had seared across the brain of Jack Roberts. His daughter was the woman riding to escape from the savages.
The face of Wadley confirmed the guess of the Ranger. On the unshaven face of the cattleman dust was caked. His eyes were red and inflamed from the alkali and the tears he had fought back fifty times. The expression of the man was that of one passing through the torments of hell.
In five broken sentences he told his story. Quint Sullivan, escaping from his pursuers after a thirty-mile run, had reached the ranch in the middle of the night. Clint had gathered together such men as were at hand and started at once. At Crane Lake he had found no trace of her. He could not escape the conviction that the Apaches had captured Ramona and taken her with them.
On this last point the Ranger offered him comfort, though it was sorry comfort at that. Five hours ago she was still safe, but in terrible danger.
"Dinsmore's a man—none gamer in Texas, Mr. Wadley. He won't desert her," said Jumbo. "You couldn't 'a' picked a better man to look out for her."
"How do you know it's Dinsmore? Perhaps it's that yellow wolf Gurley," answered the father out of his tortured heart.
Jack was riding on the other side of Wadley. He, too, carried with him a private hell of fearin his heart, but he knew that the big cattleman was nearly insane with anxiety.
"Because the man with Miss Ramona was takin' her back to the ranch when they bumped into the 'Paches. You know Steve Gurley would never have taken her home in the world," replied the Ranger.
"What can one man do against thirty? He'll do what Quint here did—run to save his own hide."
Young Sullivan winced. It was the truth. He had run and left the girl to the mercy of these devils. But his one chance of helping her had been to run. He tried to say as much.
"I know that, Quint. I'm not blamin' you," broke out the father in his agony. "But my little lamb—in the hands of 'Paches—God!" Wadley covered his eyes with his hand and tried to press back from his brain the horrible visions he kept seeing.
Jumbo stuck to his one valid point. "Bite yore teeth into this, Clint. She's got ridin' beside her as game a man as ever threw his leg over leather. He knows this country like you do yore ranch. He'll hole up in Palo Duro where the 'Paches won't find 'em, an' if the devils do he'll sure stand 'em off till we blow in."
His friend on the other side of the cattleman backed him up strongly, but the heart of the Ranger was heavy with dread.