Part 17 (1/2)
”It's the young lady's property,” hesitated my boss. ”I kind of hate to destroy it unless we have to.”
At this moment the Morgan stallion, which I had not noticed before, was reined back to join our little group. Atop him rode the diminutive form of Artie Brower whom I had thought down and out. He had evidently had his evening's dose of hop and under the excitation of the first effect had joined the party. His derby hat was flattened down to his ears.
Somehow it exasperated me.
”For heaven's sake why don't you get you a decent hat!” I muttered, but to myself. He was carrying that precious black bag.
”Blow a hole in his old walls!” he suggested, cheerfully. ”That old fort was built against Injins. A man could sneak up in the shadow and set her off. It wouldn't take but a dash of soup to stick a hole you could ride through a-horseback.”
”Soup?” echoed Buck.
”Nitroglycerine,” explained Watkins, who had once been a miner.
”Oh, sure!” agreed Buck, sarcastically. ”And where'd we get it?”
”I always carry a little with me just for emergencies,” a.s.serted Brower, calmly, and patted his black bag.
There was a sudden and unanimous edging away.
”For the love of Pete!” I cried. ”Was there some of that stuff in there all the time I've been carrying it around?”
”It's packed good: it can't go off,” Artie rea.s.sured us. ”I know my biz.”
”What in G.o.d's name do you want such stuff for!” cried Judson.
”Oh, just emergencies,” answered Brower, vaguely, but I remembered his uncanny skill in opening the combination of the safe. Possibly that contract between Emory and Hooper had come into his hands through professional activities. However, that did not matter.
”I can make a drop of soup go farther than other men a pint,” boasted Artie. ”I'll show you: and I'll show that old----”
”You'll probably get shot,” observed Buck, watching him closely.
”W'at t'h.e.l.l,” observed Artie with an airy gesture.
”It's the dope he takes,” I told Johnson aside. ”It only lasts about so long. Get him going before it dies on him.”
”I see. Trot right along,” Buck commanded.
Taking this as permission Brower clapped heels to the stallion and shot away like an arrow.
”Hold on! Stop! Oh, d.a.m.n!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the senor. ”He'll gum the whole game!” He spurred forward in pursuit, realized the hopelessness of trying to catch the Morgan, and reined down again to a brisk travelling canter. We surmounted the long, slow rise this side of Hooper's in time to see a man stand out in the brush, evidently for the purpose of challenging the horseman. Artie paid him not the slightest attention, but swept by magnificently, the great stallion leaping high in his restrained vitality. The outpost promptly levelled his rifle. We saw the vivid flash in the half light. Brower reeled in his saddle, half fell, caught himself by the stallion's mane and clung, swinging to and fro.
The horse, freed of control, tossed his head, laid back his ears, and ran straight as an arrow for the great doors of the ranch.
We uttered a simultaneous groan of dismay. Then with one accord we struck spurs and charged at full speed, grimly and silently. Against the gathering hush of evening rose only the drum-roll of our horses' hoofs and the dust cloud of their going. Except that Buck Johnson, rising in his stirrups, let off three shots in the air; and at the signal from all points around the beleagured ranch men arose from the brush and mounted concealed horses, and rode out into the open with rifles poised.
The stallion thundered on; and the little jockey managed to cling to the saddle, though how he did it none of us could tell. In the bottomland near the ranch he ran out of the deeper dusk into a band of the strange, luminous after-glow that follows erratically sunset in wide s.p.a.ces. Then we could see that he was not only holding his seat, but was trying to do something, just what we could not make out. The reins were flying free, so there was no question of regaining control.
A shot flashed at him from the ranch; then a second; after which, as though at command, the firing ceased. Probably the condition of affairs had been recognized.
All this we saw from a distance. The immensity of the Arizona country, especially at dusk when the mountains withdraw behind their veils and mystery flows into the bottomlands, has always a panoramic quality that throws small any human-sized activities. The ranch houses and their attendant trees look like toys; the bands of cattle and the men working them are as though viewed through the reverse lenses of a gla.s.s; and the very details of mesquite or _sacatone_ flats, of alkali shallow or of oak grove are blended into broad washes of tone. But now the distant, galloping horse with its swaying mannikin charging on the ranch seemed to fill our world. The great forces of portent that hover aloof in the dusk of the desert stooped as with a rush of wings. The peaceful, wide s.p.a.ces and the veiled hills and the brooding skies were swept clear.