Part 13 (2/2)
We got off and waited for them, wondering what the change of horses might portend. They swung down to us on a run, and it needed no second glance at the features of Piegan Smith to know that he brought with him a fresh supply of trouble. His scraggly beard was thrust forward aggressively, and his deep-set eyes fairly blazed between narrowed lids.
”Slap your saddles on them fresh hosses,” he grated harshly from the back of a deep-chested, lean-flanked gray. ”Let the others go--to h.e.l.l if they want to!”
”What's up?” I asked sharply, and MacRae flung the same query over one shoulder as he fumbled at the tight-drawn latigo-knot.
Piegan rose in his stirrups and raised a clenched fist; the seamed face of him grew purple under its tan, and the words came out like the challenge of a range-bull.
”Them--them ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- has got your girl!” he roared.
The latigo dropped from MacRae's hand. ”What?” he turned on Piegan savagely, incredulously.
”I said it--I said it! Yuh heard me, didn't yuh!” Piegan shouted. ”This mornin' about sunrise. That Hicks--the d.a.m.ned ---- ---- ---- he come t'
Baker's as they hooked up t' leave the Spring. He had a note for her, an' she dropped everything an' jumped on a hoss he'd brought an' rode away with him, cryin' when she left. He told Horner you'd bin shot resistin' arrest, an' wanted t' see her afore yuh cashed in. They ain't seen hide nor hair uh her since. Aw, don't stand starin' at me thataway.
Hurry up! They ain't got twelve hours' start--an' by G.o.d I'll smell 'em out in the dark for this!”
It was like a knife-thrust in the back; such a devilish and unexpected turn of affairs that for half a second I had the same shuddery feeling that came to me the night I stooped over Hans Rutter and gasped at sight of what the fiends had done. MacRae whitened, but the full import of Piegan's words stunned him to silence. The bare possibility of Lyn Rowan being at the dubious mercy of those ruthless brutes was something that called for more than mere words. He hesitated only a moment, nervously twisting the saddle-strings with one hand, then straightened up and tore loose the cinch fastening.
After that outburst of Piegan's no one spoke. While Mac and I transferred our saddles to the Baker horses, Piegan swung down from his gray and, opening the pack on the horse we had been leading, took out a little bundle of flour and bacon and coffee and tied it behind the cantle of his saddle. A frying-pan and coffee-pot he tossed to me. Then we mounted and took to the trail again, stripped down to fighting-trim, unhampered by a pack-horse.
Of daylight there yet remained a scant two hours in which we could hope to distinguish a hoof-mark. Piegan leaned over his saddle-horn and took hills and hollows, wherever the trail led, with a rush that unrolled the miles behind us at a marvelous rate. For an hour we galloped silently, matching the speed of fresh, wiry horses against the dying day, no sound arising in that wilderness of brown coulee banks and dun-colored prairie but the steady beat of hoofs, and the purr of a rising breeze from the east. Then I became aware that Piegan, watching the ground through half-closed eyelids, was speaking to us. From riding a little behind, to give him room to trail, we urged our horses alongside.
”Them fellers at Baker's camp,” he said, without looking up, ”would 'a'
come in a holy minute if there'd been hosses for 'em t' ride. But they only had enough saddle-stock along t' wrangle the bulls--an' I took three uh the best they had. Three of us is enough, anyhow. We kain't ride up on them fellers now an' go t' shootin'. They're all together again. I seen, back a ways, where them two hoss-tracks angled back from the spring. They must 'a' laid up at that camp we pa.s.sed till sometime before daylight--seein' that d.a.m.ned Hicks come t' Baker's early this mornin'. An' if they didn't travel very fast t'-day--which ain't likely, 'cause they probably figure they're dead safe, and their track don't show a fast gait--there's just a chance that we'll hit 'em by dark if we burn the earth. We're good for thirty miles before night covers up their track. Don't yuh worry none, old boy,” he bellowed at MacRae. ”Old Injun Smith'll see yuh through. G.o.d! I could 'a' cried m'self when I hit that camp an' the old n.i.g.g.e.r woman went t' bawlin' when I told her yuh was both out on the bench, sound as a new dollar. That was the first they suspicioned anythin' was wrong. Them dirty, low-lived ---- ---- ----!”
Piegan lapsed into a string of curses. MacRae, apparently unmoved, nodded comprehension. But I knew what he was thinking, and I knew that when once we got within striking distance of Hicks, Gregory & Co., there would be new faces in h.e.l.l without delay.
We slowed our horses to a walk to ascend an abrupt ridge. When we gained the top a vast stretch of the Northwest spread away to the east and north. Piegan lifted his eyes from the trail for an instant.
”Great Lord!” he said. ”Look at the buffalo. It'll be good-by t' these tracks before long.”
As far as the eye could reach the prairie was speckled with the herds, speckled with groups of buffalo as the sky is dotted with cl.u.s.ters of bright stars on a clear night. They moved, drifting slowly, in a southerly direction, here in sharply defined groups, there in long lines, farther in indistinct ma.s.ses. But they moved; and the air that filled our nostrils was freighted with the tang of smoke.
We did not halt on the ridge. There was no need. We knew without speculating what the buffalo-drift and the smoke-tinged air presaged; and it bade us make haste before the tracks were quite obliterated.
So with the hill behind us, and each of us keeping his thoughts to himself--none of them wholly pleasant, judging by my own--we galloped down the long slope, a red sunset at our backs and in our faces a gale of dry, warm wind, tainted with the smell of burning gra.s.s. And at the bottom of the slope, in the depths of a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among the gloom of the trees.
CHAPTER XVIII.
HONOR AMONG THIEVES.
We knew, even as our fingers instinctively closed on the handles of our six-shooters, that we had not come upon the men we wanted; in such a case there would have been an exchange of leaden courtesies long before we managed to get in their immediate vicinity. It was unlikely that they would cease to exercise the cunning and watchfulness that had, so far, carried their infernal schemes through with flying colors. And a second look showed us that the scarlet coat belonged to a man who half-sat, half-lay on the ground, his shoulders braced against the trunk of a fallen tree. We got off our horses and went cautiously up to him.
”Be not afraid; it is only I!” Goodell raised his head with an effort and greeted us mockingly. ”I am, as you can see, hors de combat. What is your pleasure, gentlemen?”
The weakness of his tone and the pallid features of him vouched for the truth of his statement. Stepping nearer, we saw that the light-colored s.h.i.+rt showing between the open lapels of his jacket was stained a tell-tale crimson. The hand he held against his breast was dabbled and streaked with the blood that oozed from beneath the pressing fingers; the leaf-mold under him was saturated with it.
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