CHAPTER XIITHE OPENING GUNIn between the high moments of any man’s existence life seems to flow evenly, with a monotonous smoothness, like the placid reaches of a slow stream between foaming rapids. For a time it was like that with Robin. He rose before dawn, performed small tasks, rode abroad more or less perfunctorily during the day. Storms blew up and blew over. Between blizzards the range lay quiescent. Cattle and horses fed on high ground where the sun warmed them. When night came or harsh winds stung too bitterly they sought shelter in canyons, in the sparse timber of the foothills, in the rough tangle of the Bad Lands. Winter for the range herds was a period of endurance, a struggle to survive. In this dumb struggle man had little part. Cattleman and cowboy alike kept to warmed quarters. Their saddle horses munched hay in log stables. The range stock attended by their enemies, the blizzard and the prowling wolf, drifted at will until spring should bring green grass.Probably Tex Matthews and Robin were abroad more than the ordinary business of the range required. They rode partly because old Mayne chafed under an uneasy sense of property rights wantonly violated—partly because they desired of their own accord to overlook nothing. In that wide sweep of plain and rolling hill and endless canyons, wherever that four-legged loot was abroad, there was always the chance of the unexpected, a chance to catch Mark Steele red-handed, to get evidence that would convict him before the law which reflected the dominant material interest of the time and territory, inasmuch as it functioned with greater speed and precision in the matter of stolen stock than it ever did in a mere question of human life.Sometimes Robin, in the kitchen helping Ivy dry the supper dishes or sitting beside her by the rough fireplace in the front room, would wonder if this ugly tangle was quietly unraveling itself—or if this were just a lull.Since the day they clashed in Big Sandy he had not laid eyes on Shining Mark. Except for remaining away from dances in the Bear Paws where Mark was likely to be, he had not deliberately avoided the man. Indeed, from Chase Hill to the mouth of Cow Creek, from Cold Spring to the Missouri he had ridden alert and watchful, eager to come on the man about his nefarious undertakings. He doubted now that he would. Mark would be well aware that he must step more softly than ever since Tex Matthews rode for Mayne. Yet Mark might be abroad with his running iron in spite of everything.About three weeks after Tex joined Robin one of the Davis boys rode into Mayne’s and stopped for a meal.“There’s a dance at the schoolhouse Saturday night,” he announced.“Saturday night?” Robin regarded him intently. “All right. We’ll be there with bells on.”They were all looking at him curiously, young Davis, Tex, Ivy, her father, even the two juveniles. Robin felt that he was under fire.“We’ll be there,” he repeated. “You tell ’em so.”“I won’t go,” Ivy broke out, after the Davis boy had ridden away. “You know what’ll happen. Mark Steele’ll be there. Please, Robin! Let’s not go.”“I’ve said I’d go,” Robin murmured. “An’ I’m sure goin’. I’m not goin’ to winter in my hole like a darned badger. I won’t start no fuss. Ifhedoes——”“We’ll all go,” Tex put in. “Tommy Thatcher’s rangin’ around. Better to show ’em you ain’t afraid.”So in the end they prevailed over Ivy’s fears. And neither Mark Steele nor Tommy Thatcher attended the dance. Whether from discretion or because they had business elsewhere Robin never learned. They danced all night with hearts as light as their heels and rode home in a frosty sunrise. When Robin and Tex drew off their boots in the bunk house to sleep an hour or so Tex said:“I heard Steele an’ Thatcher been down in the Cow Creek line camp over a week. We might take apaseararound that way.”“If they’re down there, we better,” Robin agreed sleepily. “We’ll take a pack outfit and jog down that way to-morrow, maybe.”The morrow found them riding. It might be a fruitless quest but no range man ever caught a cow thief by sitting with his feet to the fire. So they bore away southeast from the Bar M Bar. Noon found them deep in the Bad Lands. Dusk would bring them as near the Block S line camp as they planned to go.For twenty miles or more north of the Big Muddy and eastward nearly to the Dakota line the Bad Lands spread, grim and desolate. Gouged and ripped and distorted in some past glacial period, the confusion heightened by centuries of erosion, it bared itself to the sky in a maze of canyons great and small, fantastic with layers of vari-colored earth, red, brown, gray, ochre, like painted bands on the precipitous earthen walls. Scrub pine timber grew in clumps, thickets, lodge-pole pine made small forests, wherever roots could find hold and sustenance. Many of these deep gashes were flat-bottomed, threaded by streams of bitter alkali-tainted water. On the narrow, winding benches that carried the plains level down to overlook the river bunch grass waved like fields of wheat. In midsummer it was hot, arid, the haunt and breeding ground of rattlesnakes and wolves. In winter, with snow to serve in place of water, the Bad Lands gave grazing and shelter to tens of thousands of cattle.To the stranger fresh from a kindlier land it was a lonely, abhorrent place, wrapped in a sinister silence, a maze in which the unwary traveler could lose himself and leave his bones for the coyotes. Even to the range men who worked it every round-up, riding the Bad Lands was far from plain sailing. A rider could get twisted, he could travel for hours and then find himself in a cul-de-sac. He could find himself within shouting distance of another horseman and be compelled to make a detour of fifteen miles if he wished to shake hands.Yet it was not all desolation. There are oases in the desert, atolls in the widest sea, harbors on the ruggedest coast. So in the Bad Lands the wayfarer came unexpectedly on little valleys, small basins, tiny grassed areas surrounding some cold spring, spots like friendly gardens. Men had dodged the law upon occasion down there, ever since law and order came laggardly behind the cowman and settler. The cow thief, the outlaw, the slayer who held himself justified in his homicide and would not brook arrest had from time to time made the Bad Lands a sanctuary. Riders faring through that wilderness upon legitimate business came now and then upon an abandoned cabin huddled in a gulch, perhaps masked by pine thickets. If it were abandoned to the rats and the weather they looked and rode on. If it showed signs of occupancy they rode on without looking.Robin and Tex headed for one such place which they had found while on circle two seasons earlier, and thought they could locate again. The curse of the Bad Lands is the ghastly similarity; one gulch, one canyon, one winding plateau is fellow to all the rest. There are no peaks, no hills; it is all etched deep in a general level, like a sunken garden planned by a madman. A man needed a keen sense of direction, a most acute sense of location to find his way to any given spot.The two came at last to a point where uncertainty rested on them. Robin knew he was within a couple of miles of that particular cabin. But in the network of broken land he could not be certain. Nor could Tex. It was all gray, brown, dusky pine-green, far as the eye could reach. The chinook wind had stripped the range of snow. The frost held. The ground was like flint. The December wind sighed mournfully about their ears.“The hell of this country is that you never can be sure where you are,” Robin complained. “I thought that old camp was in the mouth of this gulch. Let’s try the next bench.”“Can we follow this one to the river?” Tex wondered when half an hour brought no result.“Yes, but I’d as soon not make camp in the river bottoms,” Robin said.“I don’t suppose it would be good policy,” Matthews agreed. “But say, I’m gettin’ empty. Let’s camp the first water we strike.”Robin nodded. They bore down a ridge that seemed to offer access to low ground, out of that biting wind. The point of this spur ran suddenly out into a circular depression, unsuspected, unseen until they came upon it. It was like a meadow surrounded by a deep fringe of jack pine and lodge-pole. They reined up in the belt of timber and stood to gaze.A round corral stood in the middle of this flat. A long wing ran from one side of the bars—a typical pen for wild stock.“Never sawthisbefore?” Robin lowered his voice.“Don’t know as you better see too much of it right now,” Tex murmured. “Least not till we see if anybody’s around. This here looks like strictly private premises to me. There’ll be a cabin an’ water handy. Maybe likewise some eagle-eyed jasper with a Winchester.”“Let’s look her over anyhow,” Robin suggested.“Do the lookin’ afoot, then,” Tex counseled. “I wish there was snow. Tracks would tell.”They were well hidden by the timber in which they had pulled up. They tied their horses in a thick portion of the grove. Carbines in hand they began to encircle this small basin, moving always under cover. On the farther side where a low place pitched out of the flat toward a gloomy canyon they found a pole cabin by a small clear spring. They stared silently from a thicket of chokecherry. To their right loomed the roof of another shelter. There was no sign of life.“Let’s go clean around and take a look for tracks,” Tex whispered. “Then we can ride up an’ investigate this here secluded dwellin’.”They did so, returned to their horses, satisfied that the flat harbored no life. They mounted, rode across the open, pulled up beside the corral.“She’s been used recent.” Robin pointed to fresh cattle-signs. His roving eye lit on fresh charred wood. “Been some iron work.”Tex nodded. Both were grown silent, wary. That hidden place, the fire-sign, the trampled floor of the corral told a definite story. No range rider needed pictures to illustrate that tale.They rode on to the cabins. By the spring where the earth was moist they found fresh horse tracks, shod horses, leading both in and out. Tex squinted at the ground.“That was yesterday,” he stated with conviction. “Let’s see how the shack is fixed for use.”Looking first into the brush-hidden building they discovered it to be larger than it looked. It was a stable with room for two horses and all the rest of the space in one end packed with hay, bunch grass cut with a sickle. The marks of the haying were plain on the nearby sward. They grinned at each other and walked over to the house.A pile of fresh-cut wood beside a clay and stone fireplace. A single bunk in each of two corners, filled with pine needles pressed to the shape of a man’s body. The earthen floor marked by the pointed heels of riding boots. Otherwise it contained nothing of significance. A rude, bare shelter with cold ashes on the hearth. They went outside.“I wonder what she spells?” Tex murmured.“We might find out. Maybe somehombre’sstartin’ a cow camp, an’ craves privacy,” Robin smiled. “Maybe this is where Mark an’ Thatcher are gettin’ in some good licks on the Block S. I’d sure like to know.”But it was not on the cards that Robin should learn what he wanted to know in the immediate future. They talked a minute or two longer. It was mid-afternoon. They had ridden far. It was a cold day and night would be colder. Finding the cabin they sought in that network of canyons was a slim chance now, would be merely a gracious smile of fortune. Only those who haunted the Bad Lands could say where each spring and meadow and deserted cabin stood. Even they might not always find such spots as they sought.“We might have passed within a hundred yards of this more’n once an’ never seen it,” Tex remarked. “I’d say this building was done last year. Funny none of our riders come on it. The Pool worked this country last spring, too.”“There aren’t ten men in Montana,” Robin said, “that know every hole in the Bad Lands. Likely enough,” he snorted, “Shinin’ Mark would lead a circle right past here, wouldn’t he?”“It’s a right good spot,” Tex drawled. “Central location. You bet. Halfway between Boiler Bottom an’ Cow Island. Yeah—for stuff that was missed in the breaks on round-up——”“There was some missed, I rise to remark,” said Robin. “Between me an’ Mayne I guess we’ve spotted two hundred Block S calves unbranded. Most of ’em range within fifteen miles of this corral. This place was made to order for them that’s draggin’ the long rope.”“Well, do we stay here, or do we make camp in the next likely place we strike?” Tex inquired.“I wouldn’t sleep good if I stayed here,” Robin smiled. “Let’s go down this draw. I don’t want to hang around this place. I’m goin’ to spot it so I can find it again, though. We sure want to cast our gaze on this from time to time to see what goes on.”“You’re shoutin’,” Tex grinned.They rode down the draw from the spring, each striving to fix in his mind the contours of the surrounding landscape. They took bearings on the ragged peaks of the Bear Paws in the northwest, on the Little Rockies that broke the sky line eastward. And they watched closely the lay of the land as they rode so that later they could back track.The draw closed to a narrow gulch. That fell away steeply into a canyon bottom, fairly wide, level-floored, gray with sage stirrup-high. A good many cattle grazed on those flats. This narrow valley came in from the south. They judged that it offered a continuous route to the Missouri, if it was not actually a fork of Cow Creek. They stopped a minute to consider this, to mark the gulch they had come down. Below them the canyon took a sharp turn to the east. Opposite this point a gorge came down from the high benches. Its mouth was cluttered by pine and cottonwoods. There would be shelter there and firewood, probably water. They shook up their horses and discussed the making of a night camp.As they came abreast of the cottonwoods and while yet some three hundred yards distant Matthews, riding knee to knee with Robin, straightened stiffly in his saddle, put one hand to his breast. Robin happened to be looking directly at him—Tex had been speaking. Robin saw the action, the strange look of surprise and pain. At the same moment something plucked sharply at the leather band of Robin’s chaps—and he heard two quick, clear cracks somewhat muffled in the distance.Thought, vision, the registering of an auditory impression—all three were instantaneous. So was action. Being fired upon they did not stand to gape. Their horses spun on shod heels. A hundred yards away the dry bed of the creek was cut ten feet below the surface of the valley floor. Into this they plunged, bullets whining by.Once in the wash Robin threw his horse back on his haunches, jerked the carbine from under his leg, flung out of his saddle. With the bank for a breastwork he meant to fight, not run.A sidelong glance as he turned showed him Tex drooping over his saddle horn. Robin stepped back. His heart sank. He knew the signs.“Ride, kid,” Tex whispered. “Ride like hell. They’ve got me—got me good!”Robin caught him as he slid down, as the horse shied at the falling body. In an agony of sorrow and rage Robin looked once, bent to see the glaze gathering over the Texan’s blue eyes. Then he leaped to the edge of the bank. Lying flat with his rifle cocked and thrust out before him he waited for the assassins to follow up their advantage.
In between the high moments of any man’s existence life seems to flow evenly, with a monotonous smoothness, like the placid reaches of a slow stream between foaming rapids. For a time it was like that with Robin. He rose before dawn, performed small tasks, rode abroad more or less perfunctorily during the day. Storms blew up and blew over. Between blizzards the range lay quiescent. Cattle and horses fed on high ground where the sun warmed them. When night came or harsh winds stung too bitterly they sought shelter in canyons, in the sparse timber of the foothills, in the rough tangle of the Bad Lands. Winter for the range herds was a period of endurance, a struggle to survive. In this dumb struggle man had little part. Cattleman and cowboy alike kept to warmed quarters. Their saddle horses munched hay in log stables. The range stock attended by their enemies, the blizzard and the prowling wolf, drifted at will until spring should bring green grass.
Probably Tex Matthews and Robin were abroad more than the ordinary business of the range required. They rode partly because old Mayne chafed under an uneasy sense of property rights wantonly violated—partly because they desired of their own accord to overlook nothing. In that wide sweep of plain and rolling hill and endless canyons, wherever that four-legged loot was abroad, there was always the chance of the unexpected, a chance to catch Mark Steele red-handed, to get evidence that would convict him before the law which reflected the dominant material interest of the time and territory, inasmuch as it functioned with greater speed and precision in the matter of stolen stock than it ever did in a mere question of human life.
Sometimes Robin, in the kitchen helping Ivy dry the supper dishes or sitting beside her by the rough fireplace in the front room, would wonder if this ugly tangle was quietly unraveling itself—or if this were just a lull.
Since the day they clashed in Big Sandy he had not laid eyes on Shining Mark. Except for remaining away from dances in the Bear Paws where Mark was likely to be, he had not deliberately avoided the man. Indeed, from Chase Hill to the mouth of Cow Creek, from Cold Spring to the Missouri he had ridden alert and watchful, eager to come on the man about his nefarious undertakings. He doubted now that he would. Mark would be well aware that he must step more softly than ever since Tex Matthews rode for Mayne. Yet Mark might be abroad with his running iron in spite of everything.
About three weeks after Tex joined Robin one of the Davis boys rode into Mayne’s and stopped for a meal.
“There’s a dance at the schoolhouse Saturday night,” he announced.
“Saturday night?” Robin regarded him intently. “All right. We’ll be there with bells on.”
They were all looking at him curiously, young Davis, Tex, Ivy, her father, even the two juveniles. Robin felt that he was under fire.
“We’ll be there,” he repeated. “You tell ’em so.”
“I won’t go,” Ivy broke out, after the Davis boy had ridden away. “You know what’ll happen. Mark Steele’ll be there. Please, Robin! Let’s not go.”
“I’ve said I’d go,” Robin murmured. “An’ I’m sure goin’. I’m not goin’ to winter in my hole like a darned badger. I won’t start no fuss. Ifhedoes——”
“We’ll all go,” Tex put in. “Tommy Thatcher’s rangin’ around. Better to show ’em you ain’t afraid.”
So in the end they prevailed over Ivy’s fears. And neither Mark Steele nor Tommy Thatcher attended the dance. Whether from discretion or because they had business elsewhere Robin never learned. They danced all night with hearts as light as their heels and rode home in a frosty sunrise. When Robin and Tex drew off their boots in the bunk house to sleep an hour or so Tex said:
“I heard Steele an’ Thatcher been down in the Cow Creek line camp over a week. We might take apaseararound that way.”
“If they’re down there, we better,” Robin agreed sleepily. “We’ll take a pack outfit and jog down that way to-morrow, maybe.”
The morrow found them riding. It might be a fruitless quest but no range man ever caught a cow thief by sitting with his feet to the fire. So they bore away southeast from the Bar M Bar. Noon found them deep in the Bad Lands. Dusk would bring them as near the Block S line camp as they planned to go.
For twenty miles or more north of the Big Muddy and eastward nearly to the Dakota line the Bad Lands spread, grim and desolate. Gouged and ripped and distorted in some past glacial period, the confusion heightened by centuries of erosion, it bared itself to the sky in a maze of canyons great and small, fantastic with layers of vari-colored earth, red, brown, gray, ochre, like painted bands on the precipitous earthen walls. Scrub pine timber grew in clumps, thickets, lodge-pole pine made small forests, wherever roots could find hold and sustenance. Many of these deep gashes were flat-bottomed, threaded by streams of bitter alkali-tainted water. On the narrow, winding benches that carried the plains level down to overlook the river bunch grass waved like fields of wheat. In midsummer it was hot, arid, the haunt and breeding ground of rattlesnakes and wolves. In winter, with snow to serve in place of water, the Bad Lands gave grazing and shelter to tens of thousands of cattle.
To the stranger fresh from a kindlier land it was a lonely, abhorrent place, wrapped in a sinister silence, a maze in which the unwary traveler could lose himself and leave his bones for the coyotes. Even to the range men who worked it every round-up, riding the Bad Lands was far from plain sailing. A rider could get twisted, he could travel for hours and then find himself in a cul-de-sac. He could find himself within shouting distance of another horseman and be compelled to make a detour of fifteen miles if he wished to shake hands.
Yet it was not all desolation. There are oases in the desert, atolls in the widest sea, harbors on the ruggedest coast. So in the Bad Lands the wayfarer came unexpectedly on little valleys, small basins, tiny grassed areas surrounding some cold spring, spots like friendly gardens. Men had dodged the law upon occasion down there, ever since law and order came laggardly behind the cowman and settler. The cow thief, the outlaw, the slayer who held himself justified in his homicide and would not brook arrest had from time to time made the Bad Lands a sanctuary. Riders faring through that wilderness upon legitimate business came now and then upon an abandoned cabin huddled in a gulch, perhaps masked by pine thickets. If it were abandoned to the rats and the weather they looked and rode on. If it showed signs of occupancy they rode on without looking.
Robin and Tex headed for one such place which they had found while on circle two seasons earlier, and thought they could locate again. The curse of the Bad Lands is the ghastly similarity; one gulch, one canyon, one winding plateau is fellow to all the rest. There are no peaks, no hills; it is all etched deep in a general level, like a sunken garden planned by a madman. A man needed a keen sense of direction, a most acute sense of location to find his way to any given spot.
The two came at last to a point where uncertainty rested on them. Robin knew he was within a couple of miles of that particular cabin. But in the network of broken land he could not be certain. Nor could Tex. It was all gray, brown, dusky pine-green, far as the eye could reach. The chinook wind had stripped the range of snow. The frost held. The ground was like flint. The December wind sighed mournfully about their ears.
“The hell of this country is that you never can be sure where you are,” Robin complained. “I thought that old camp was in the mouth of this gulch. Let’s try the next bench.”
“Can we follow this one to the river?” Tex wondered when half an hour brought no result.
“Yes, but I’d as soon not make camp in the river bottoms,” Robin said.
“I don’t suppose it would be good policy,” Matthews agreed. “But say, I’m gettin’ empty. Let’s camp the first water we strike.”
Robin nodded. They bore down a ridge that seemed to offer access to low ground, out of that biting wind. The point of this spur ran suddenly out into a circular depression, unsuspected, unseen until they came upon it. It was like a meadow surrounded by a deep fringe of jack pine and lodge-pole. They reined up in the belt of timber and stood to gaze.
A round corral stood in the middle of this flat. A long wing ran from one side of the bars—a typical pen for wild stock.
“Never sawthisbefore?” Robin lowered his voice.
“Don’t know as you better see too much of it right now,” Tex murmured. “Least not till we see if anybody’s around. This here looks like strictly private premises to me. There’ll be a cabin an’ water handy. Maybe likewise some eagle-eyed jasper with a Winchester.”
“Let’s look her over anyhow,” Robin suggested.
“Do the lookin’ afoot, then,” Tex counseled. “I wish there was snow. Tracks would tell.”
They were well hidden by the timber in which they had pulled up. They tied their horses in a thick portion of the grove. Carbines in hand they began to encircle this small basin, moving always under cover. On the farther side where a low place pitched out of the flat toward a gloomy canyon they found a pole cabin by a small clear spring. They stared silently from a thicket of chokecherry. To their right loomed the roof of another shelter. There was no sign of life.
“Let’s go clean around and take a look for tracks,” Tex whispered. “Then we can ride up an’ investigate this here secluded dwellin’.”
They did so, returned to their horses, satisfied that the flat harbored no life. They mounted, rode across the open, pulled up beside the corral.
“She’s been used recent.” Robin pointed to fresh cattle-signs. His roving eye lit on fresh charred wood. “Been some iron work.”
Tex nodded. Both were grown silent, wary. That hidden place, the fire-sign, the trampled floor of the corral told a definite story. No range rider needed pictures to illustrate that tale.
They rode on to the cabins. By the spring where the earth was moist they found fresh horse tracks, shod horses, leading both in and out. Tex squinted at the ground.
“That was yesterday,” he stated with conviction. “Let’s see how the shack is fixed for use.”
Looking first into the brush-hidden building they discovered it to be larger than it looked. It was a stable with room for two horses and all the rest of the space in one end packed with hay, bunch grass cut with a sickle. The marks of the haying were plain on the nearby sward. They grinned at each other and walked over to the house.
A pile of fresh-cut wood beside a clay and stone fireplace. A single bunk in each of two corners, filled with pine needles pressed to the shape of a man’s body. The earthen floor marked by the pointed heels of riding boots. Otherwise it contained nothing of significance. A rude, bare shelter with cold ashes on the hearth. They went outside.
“I wonder what she spells?” Tex murmured.
“We might find out. Maybe somehombre’sstartin’ a cow camp, an’ craves privacy,” Robin smiled. “Maybe this is where Mark an’ Thatcher are gettin’ in some good licks on the Block S. I’d sure like to know.”
But it was not on the cards that Robin should learn what he wanted to know in the immediate future. They talked a minute or two longer. It was mid-afternoon. They had ridden far. It was a cold day and night would be colder. Finding the cabin they sought in that network of canyons was a slim chance now, would be merely a gracious smile of fortune. Only those who haunted the Bad Lands could say where each spring and meadow and deserted cabin stood. Even they might not always find such spots as they sought.
“We might have passed within a hundred yards of this more’n once an’ never seen it,” Tex remarked. “I’d say this building was done last year. Funny none of our riders come on it. The Pool worked this country last spring, too.”
“There aren’t ten men in Montana,” Robin said, “that know every hole in the Bad Lands. Likely enough,” he snorted, “Shinin’ Mark would lead a circle right past here, wouldn’t he?”
“It’s a right good spot,” Tex drawled. “Central location. You bet. Halfway between Boiler Bottom an’ Cow Island. Yeah—for stuff that was missed in the breaks on round-up——”
“There was some missed, I rise to remark,” said Robin. “Between me an’ Mayne I guess we’ve spotted two hundred Block S calves unbranded. Most of ’em range within fifteen miles of this corral. This place was made to order for them that’s draggin’ the long rope.”
“Well, do we stay here, or do we make camp in the next likely place we strike?” Tex inquired.
“I wouldn’t sleep good if I stayed here,” Robin smiled. “Let’s go down this draw. I don’t want to hang around this place. I’m goin’ to spot it so I can find it again, though. We sure want to cast our gaze on this from time to time to see what goes on.”
“You’re shoutin’,” Tex grinned.
They rode down the draw from the spring, each striving to fix in his mind the contours of the surrounding landscape. They took bearings on the ragged peaks of the Bear Paws in the northwest, on the Little Rockies that broke the sky line eastward. And they watched closely the lay of the land as they rode so that later they could back track.
The draw closed to a narrow gulch. That fell away steeply into a canyon bottom, fairly wide, level-floored, gray with sage stirrup-high. A good many cattle grazed on those flats. This narrow valley came in from the south. They judged that it offered a continuous route to the Missouri, if it was not actually a fork of Cow Creek. They stopped a minute to consider this, to mark the gulch they had come down. Below them the canyon took a sharp turn to the east. Opposite this point a gorge came down from the high benches. Its mouth was cluttered by pine and cottonwoods. There would be shelter there and firewood, probably water. They shook up their horses and discussed the making of a night camp.
As they came abreast of the cottonwoods and while yet some three hundred yards distant Matthews, riding knee to knee with Robin, straightened stiffly in his saddle, put one hand to his breast. Robin happened to be looking directly at him—Tex had been speaking. Robin saw the action, the strange look of surprise and pain. At the same moment something plucked sharply at the leather band of Robin’s chaps—and he heard two quick, clear cracks somewhat muffled in the distance.
Thought, vision, the registering of an auditory impression—all three were instantaneous. So was action. Being fired upon they did not stand to gape. Their horses spun on shod heels. A hundred yards away the dry bed of the creek was cut ten feet below the surface of the valley floor. Into this they plunged, bullets whining by.
Once in the wash Robin threw his horse back on his haunches, jerked the carbine from under his leg, flung out of his saddle. With the bank for a breastwork he meant to fight, not run.
A sidelong glance as he turned showed him Tex drooping over his saddle horn. Robin stepped back. His heart sank. He knew the signs.
“Ride, kid,” Tex whispered. “Ride like hell. They’ve got me—got me good!”
Robin caught him as he slid down, as the horse shied at the falling body. In an agony of sorrow and rage Robin looked once, bent to see the glaze gathering over the Texan’s blue eyes. Then he leaped to the edge of the bank. Lying flat with his rifle cocked and thrust out before him he waited for the assassins to follow up their advantage.