Brand Blotters Part 44

CHAPTER VIII

AN ESCAPE AND A CAPTURE

Far up in the mountains, in that section where head the Roaring Fork, One Horse Creek, and the Del Oro, is a vast tract of wild, untraveled country known vaguely as the Bad Lands. Somewhere among the thousand and one canons which cleft the huddled hills lay hidden Dead Man's Cache. Here Black MacQueen retreated on those rare occasions when the pursuit grew hot on his tracks. So the current report ran.

Whether the abductors of Simon West were to be found in the Cache or at some other nest in the almost inaccessible ridges Jack Flatray had no means of knowing. His plan was to follow the Roaring Fork almost to its headquarters, and there establish a base for his hunt. It might take him a week to flush his game. It might take a month. He clamped his bulldog jaw to see the thing out to a finish.

Jack did not make the mistake of underestimating his job. He had followed the trail of bad men often enough to know that, in a frontier country, no hunt is so desperate as the man-hunt. Such men are never easily taken, even if they do not have all the advantage in the deadly game of hide and seek that is played in the timber and the pockets of the hills.

And here the odds all lay with the hunted. They knew every ravine and gulch. Day by day their scout looked down from mountain ledges to watch the progress of the posse.

Moreover, Flatray could never tell at what moment his covey might be startled from its run. The greatest vigilance was necessary to make sure his own party would not be ambushed. Yet slowly he combed the arroyos and the ridges, drawing always closer to that net of gulches in which he knew Dead Man's Cache must be located.

During the day the sheriff split his party into couples. Bellamy and Alan McKinstra, Farnum and Charlie Hymer, young Yarnell and the sheriff. So Jack had divided his posse, thus leaving at the head of each detail one old and wise head. Each night the parties met at the rendezvous appointed for the wranglers with the pack horses. From sunrise to sunset often no face was seen other than those of their own outfit. Sometimes a solitary sheep herder was discovered at his post. Always the work was hard, discouraging, and apparently futile. But the young sheriff never thought of quitting.

The provisions gave out. Jack sent back Hal Yarnell and Hegler, the wrangler, to bring in a fresh supply. Meanwhile the young sheriff took a big chance and scouted alone. He parted from the young Arkansan at the head of a gulch which twisted snakelike into the mountains; Yarnell and the pack outfit to ride to Mammoth, Flatray to dive still deeper into the mesh of hills. He had the instinct of the scout to stick to the high places as much as he could. Whenever it was possible he followed ridges, so that no spy could look down upon him as he traveled. Sometimes the contour of the country drove him into the open or down into hollows. But in such places he advanced with the swift stealth of an Indian.

It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and narrow canon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.

Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.

Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in the sand were printed the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.

Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again.

And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.

But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination.

At last he had found his way into Dead Man's Cache.

The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light.

Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it.

After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting close to a settlement of some kind.

Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the valley like a gigantic crooked arm. Already he could make out faintly the outlines of the huddled buildings.

Slipping from his horse, Jack went forward cautiously on foot. He was still a hundred yards from the nearest hut when dogs bayed warning of his approach. He waited, rifle in hand. No sign of human life showed except the two lights shining from as many windows. Flatray counted four other cabins as dark as Egypt.

Very slowly he crept forward, always with one eye to his retreat. Why did n.o.body answer the barking of the dogs? Was he being watched all the time?

But how could he be, since he was completely cloaked in darkness?

So at last he came to the nearest cabin, crept to the window, and looked in. A man lay on a bed. His hands and feet were securely tied and a second rope wound round so as to bind him to the bunk.

Flatray tapped softly on a pane. Instantly the head of the bound man slewed round.

"Friend?"

The prisoner asked it ever so gently, but the sheriff heard.

"Yes."

"The top part of the window is open. You can crawl over, I reckon."

Jack climbed on the sill and from it through the window. Almost before he reached the floor his knife was out and he was slashing at the ropes.

"Better put the light out, pardner," suggested the man he was freeing, and the officer noticed that there was no tremor in the cool, steady voice.

"That's right. We'd make a fine mark through the window."

And the light went out.

"I'm Bucky O'Connor. Who are you?"

"Jack Flatray."

They spoke together in whispers. Though both were keyed to the highest pitch of excitement they were as steady as eight-day clocks. O'Connor stretched his limbs, flexing them this way and that, so that he might have perfect control of them. He worked especially over the forearm and fingers of his right arm.

Flatray handed him a revolver.

"Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant."

"All right. It's the cabin next to this."

They climbed out of the window noiselessly and crept to the next hut. The door was locked, the window closed.

"We've got to smash the window. Nothing else for it," Flatray whispered.

"Looks like it. That means we'll have to shoot our way out."

With the b.u.t.t of his rifle the sheriff shattered the woodwork of the window, driving the whole frame into the room.

"What is it?" a frightened voice demanded.

"Friends, Mr. West. Just a minute."

It took them scarce longer than that to free him and to get him into the open. A Mexican woman came screaming out of an adjoining cabin.

The young men caught each an arm of the capitalist and hurried him forward.

"h.e.l.l'll be popping in a minute," Flatray explained.

But they reached the shelter of the underbrush without a shot having been fired. Nor had a single man appeared to dispute their escape.

"Looks like most of the family is away from home to-night," Bucky hazarded.

"Maybe so, but they're liable to drop in any minute. We'll keep covering ground."

They circled round toward the sheriff's horse. As soon as they reached it West, still stiff from want of circulation in his cramped limbs, was boosted into the saddle.