Judith of Blue Lake Ranch Part 18

"Yes. What is it? Who are you?"

"I'm Burkitt, Tommy Burkitt, you know--Bud Lee's helper. I--I am afraid something has happened. Lee hasn't come in yet; they tried to pick him off once already, you know----"

"Neither has Miss Sanford come in," said Hampton quickly, sensing here at last a fear that was fellow to his own. "They rode toward the Upper End. You know the way, Burkitt?"

He moved on toward the corral; Burkitt turned and came with him.

"Sure I know the trail," muttered Tommy. "You're goin' to see what's wrong with 'em! Miss Judy, too! My G.o.d----"

"Bring out a couple of horses," Hampton commanded crisply. "We've lost time enough already."

"I'll go tell Carson an' the boys----"

"I have already told Carson. He says it's all nonsense. Leave him alone."

Tommy, boy that he was, asked no further questions, but ran ahead and brought out two horses. In a twinkling he had saddled them, and the two riders, each with a rifle across his arm, were hurrying over the mountain trail.

In the blackness which lay along the upper river Hampton gave his horse a free rein and let it follow at Tommy's heels. The roar of the lashing water, the pounding of shod hoofs, the whining creak of saddle-leather were the only sounds coming to them out of the night.

When, finally, they drew rein under the cliffs at the lake's edge all was silent save for the faint distant booming of the river below them.

"Now which way?" whispered Hampton, his voice eloquent of suppressed excitement and eagerness.

Tommy was shaking his head in uncertainty when suddenly from above there came to them the sharp report of a rifle. Then, like a bundle at firecrackers, a volley of half a dozen staccato shots.

"Listen to that, Burkitt," muttered Hampton. "They're at it now--we're on time----"

Tommy slipped from the saddle wordlessly, came to Hampton's side and tugged gently at his leg, whispering for him to get down. Leaving their horses there, they slipped into the utter darkness of the narrow chasm in the rocks which gave access to the plateau above.

"Now," cautioned Tommy guardedly, as they came to the top, "keep close to me if you don't want to take a header about a thousan' feet. Look!"

He nudged Hampton and pointed. "There are two horses across yonder; Bud's an' Miss Judy's, most likely."

Hampton did not see them, did not seek to see them. Something new, vital, big, had swept suddenly into his life. He was at grips first-hand with unmasked, pulsing forces. A tremor went through him and he was not ashamed of it; for it was not the quaking of fear, but the thrill in the blood of a man who, plucked from a round of social artificialities, finds himself with the smell of burnt powder in his nostrils and who feels a swift eagerness for what may lie just yonder waiting for him. "They're at it now!" he whispered to Burkitt.

Men--yes, and a girl--were shooting, not at just wooden and paper targets, but at other men! At men who shot back, and shot to kill.

"Listen," said Burkitt. "Somebody's in the old cabin; somebody's outside. Which is which? We got to be awful careful."

They began a slow, cautious approach, slipping from bush to bush, from tree to tree, standing motionless now and then to frown into the folds of the night's curtains. Abruptly the firing ceased. They made out vaguely the two forms of the attackers, having located them a moment ago by the spurting flames from their guns. Then, "Got enough in there?" came the snarling voice of Quinnion. "If you haven't, I'm going to burn you out an' be d.a.m.ned to you!"

He got an answer he little expected. For Hampton, running out into the open, now that he knew that Bud and Judith must be in the cabin, was firing as he came. Burkitt's rifle spoke with his.

"Run for it, Shorty!" yelled Quinnion. "You know where. We're up against the Blue Lake boys."

"Bud!" shouted Tommy. "Oh, Bud!"

"In the cabin," came Bud's ringing answer. "Give 'em h.e.l.l, Tommy!

Coming!"

With his words came the sound of the door snapping back against the wall, the reports of Tommy's rifle and Hampton's pumping hot lead after two racing forms.

"They'll get away!" shouted Hampton, a sudden red rage upon him.

"Curse it! It's too dark----"

Then Tommy gave over shooting and yelled to Lee to hold his fire. For instead of two there were three flying forms, three fast-racing, blurring, shadowy shapes merging with the night. Pollock Hampton, his rifle clubbed in his hand, was running with a college sprinter's speed after Quinnion and Shorty, calling breathlessly:

"Look out, they'll get away!"

Once Quinnion stopped to shoot back. The hissing lead went wide of the pursuer and he gave over firing and settled down to good, hard running, disappearing from Hampton's staring eyes. But Shorty was still to be seen, running heavily.

"Don't shoot, Bud!" cried Tommy again as two figures ran out of the cabin. "Hampton's out there--the crazy fool----"

"Hampton, come back!" shouted Lee, running after him.

But Hampton was gaining on the heavy-set Shorty and had no thought of coming back. Nor a thought of anything in all the wide world just then but overtaking the flying figure in front of him. Shorty stumbled over a fallen log and rose, cursing and calling:

"Chris! Lend a hand."

That little chance of an uprooted tree saved Hampton's life that night.

Shorty, falling, had dropped his gun and hurt his knee. For a moment he groped wildly for the lost rifle, then ran on without it. Hampton cleared the log, and with a yell rather befitting a victorious savage than the young man whom Mrs. Langworthy hoped to call her son, threw his long arms about Shorty's neck.

"I got him!" shouted Hampton. "By glory----"

Shorty drove a big brutal fist smashing into his captor's face. But Hampton merely lowered his head, hiding it against Shorty's heaving shoulder, and tightened his grip. Shorty struggled to his feet, shaking at him, tearing at him, driving one fist after the other into Hampton's body. But with a grimness of purpose as new to him as was the whole of to-night's adventure Hampton held on.

Judith and Lee and Burkitt came to them as they were falling again.

Now suddenly, with other hard hands upon him, Shorty relaxed, and Hampton, his face b.l.o.o.d.y, his body sore, sank back. He had done a mad thing--but triumph lay in that he had done it.

"A man never can tell," muttered Bud Lee, with less thought of the captive than of the captor--"never can tell."

"I am thinking," said Judith wonderingly, "that I never quite did you justice, Pollock Hampton!"

XIV

SPRINGTIME AND A VISION

Hampton's captive, known to them only as Shorty, a heavy, surly man whose small, close-set eyes burned evilly under his pale brows, rode that night between Hampton and Judith down to the ranch-house. He maintained a stubborn silence after the first outburst of rage. His hands tied behind his back, a rope run round his waist and down on each side through a cinch-ring, he sat idly humped forward, making no protest.

Burkitt and Lee, despite Judith's objections because of Lee's wounded leg, remained at the cabin with Bill Crowdy. Crowdy had lost a deal of blood, and though he complained of little pain, was clearly in sore need of medical attention. Judith, coming to the bunk-side just before she left, a.s.sured him very gently that she would send Doc Tripp to him immediately and, further, that she would telephone into Rocky Bend for a physician. Crowdy, like Shorty, refused to talk.

"Aw, h.e.l.l," he grunted as Lee demanded what influence had brought him with Shorty and Quinnion into this mad project, "let me alone, can't you?"

And Lee let him alone. He and Burkitt sat and smoked and so pa.s.sed the remaining hours of a long night. The folly of seeking Quinnion in this thick darkness was so obvious that they gave no thought to it, impatiently awaiting the dawn and the coming of the men whom Judith would send.

The events of the rest of the night and of the morrow may be briefly told: Shorty's modest request of a gla.s.s of whiskey was granted him.

Then, his hands still bound securely by Carson, he was put in the small grain-house, a windowless, ten-by-ten house of logs. An admirable jail this, with its heavy padlock snapped into a deeply embedded staple and the great hasp in place. The key safely in Judith's possession, Shorty was left to his own thoughts while Judith, and Hampton went to the house.

In answer to Judith's call, Doc Tripp came without delay, left brief, disconcerting word that without the shadow of a doubt the hogs were stricken with cholera, and went on with his little bag to see what his skill could do for Bill Crowdy.