Part 17 (2/2)

Masterson threw a hurried saddle onto the best horse in Dodge and flashed southward after the Tomcat.

Mr. Masterson was twenty minutes behind the hurrying Tomcat. Laid flat on the ground and measured, those twenty minutes, in the swallow-like instance of Shylock, would mean seven miles. Mr. Masterson cursed as he remembered this and considered how a stern chase is never a short chase.

For all that Mr. Masterson was resolved, dead or alive, to have his man again.

”I'll get him,” said Mr. Masterson, ”if I have to swing and rattle with him from Dodge to the Rio Grande!”

Mr. Masterson had an advantage over the Tomcat. He knew the country as a beggar knows his dish. At the end of the first three miles he struck into a short cut to the left. His design was to outride the Tomcat and cut him off at the ford of the Medicine Lodge.

Once in the side trail Mr. Masterson, like a good rider, disposed himself in the saddle so as to save his horse; the latter-big and rangy-uncoupled into that long, swinging gallop which carries the farthest because it is the easiest of gaits.

”It is the foxy thing to head this party off,” communed Mr. Masterson as he swept along. ”Once I'm in his front he ought to be sure. A flying man never looks ahead.”

The white alkali trail spoke hard and loud beneath the horse's hoof-irons. There was a veil of cloud across the face of the sky. Then the west wind put it aside and the moon and the big stars looked down. A coyote punctuated the stillness with its staccato song. A jackrabbit jumped up and went bustling ahead, never leaving the paper-white streak of trail that seemed to fascinate it. At last, breath gone and wholly pumped, it had just instinctive sense enough to wabble a yard to one side and escape being run down by the galloping horse. A band of antelope brushed across in front like startled shadows. Mr. Masterson was not to be engaged by these earmarks of the hour and place; he must reach the Medicine Lodge in advance of the Tomcat. Lifting his horse to the work Mr. Masterson coaxed it through trail-devouring hours. Then there came an interference.

It was midnight by the s.h.i.+ning word of the moon when a low roaring, distant and m.u.f.fled, like the beat of a million drums, broke on Mr.

Masterson. It was up the wind and from the west.

”What!” exclaimed Mr. Masterson aloud, and he pulled up his horse to listen. ”It's a good ways off as yet,” he continued. ”It must be a hummer to send its word so far.” Then, patting his horse's neck: ”My sympathies will be all with you, old boy, when it reaches us.”

Over in the northwest a cloud came suddenly up with the swiftness of a drawn curtain. One by one it shut out like a screen the stars and the moon. Mr. Masterson was on the ground in the puff of an instant.

”It'll detain him as much as it does me,” thought Mr. Masterson, whose mind ran always on his quarry.

Mr. Masterson took a pair of hopples from the saddle and fastened the fore fetlocks of his horse. Then he stripped off the saddle.

”I'll leave you the blanket,” remarked Mr. Masterson, ”but I'm going to need the saddle for myself.”

Mr. Masterson crouched upon the ground, making the saddle a roof to cover his head, the skirts held tight about his shoulders by the girths.

The roar grew until from a million drums it improved to be a million flails on as many thres.h.i.+ng-floors. Mr. Masterson clawed the saddleskirts tight as with a swish and a swirl the hailstorm was upon him. The round hailstones beat upon the saddle like buckshot. They leaped and bounded along the ground. They showed of a size and hardness to compare with those toys meant for children's games.

Saved by the saddle, Mr. Masterson came through without a mark. His horse, with nothing more defensive than a square of saddle-blanket, had no such luck. Above the drumming of the hailstones Mr. Masterson might hear that unfortunate animal as, torn by mixed emotions of pain, amazement and indignation, it bucked about the scene in a manner that would have done infinite grace to a circus. A best feature of the hailstorm was that it did not last five minutes; it pa.s.sed to the south and east, and its mutterings grew fainter and more faint with every moment.

The storm over, Mr. Masterson caught up his horse, which seemed much subdued of spirit by what it had gone through. As gently as might be-to humour the bruises-he recinched the heavy saddle in its place.

”Better keep you moving now, old boy,” quoth Mr. Masterson, ”it'll take the soreness out. You needn't shout about it,” he concluded, as the sorely battered horse gave a squeal of pain; ”a hailstone isn't a bullet, and it might have been worse, you know.”

Again Mr. Masterson stretched southward, and again the moon and stars came out to light the way. The storm had drawn forth the acrid earth-smells that sleep in the gra.s.s-roots on the plains. To mix with these, it brought a breath from the pine-sown Rockies four hundred miles away. These are the odours which soak into a man and make him forever of the West.

It was broad day when Mr. Masterson rode down to the lonely ford of the Medicine Lodge. He sighed with relief as his hawk-eye showed him how no one had pa.s.sed since the storm.

”I'm in luck!” said he.

Mr. Masterson hoppled his horse and set that tired animal to feed among the fresh green of the bottom. Then he unslung a pair of field-gla.s.ses, which he wore for the good of his office, and sent a backward glance along the trail. Rod by rod he picked it up for miles. There was no one in sight; he had come in ample time.

”I had the best of him ten miles by that cut-off,” ruminated Mr.

Masterson.

Then Mr. Masterson began to wish he had something to eat. He might have found a turkey in the brush-clumps along the Medicine Lodge. He might have risked the noise of a shot, being so far ahead. But Mr. Masterson did not care to eat a turkey raw and he dared not chance a smoke; the Tomcat would have read the sign for miles and crept aside. Mr. Masterson drew his belt tighter by a hole and thought on other things than breakfast. It wouldn't be the first time that he had missed a meal, and with that thought he consoled himself. It is an empty form of consolation, as one who tries may tell.

”If there's anything I despise, it's hunger,” said Mr. Masterson. He was a desperate fork at table.

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