Sundown Slim Part 22

Before he could pull his gun, Corliss swung the quirt. The blow caught Fadeaway just below the brim of his hat. He wavered and grabbed at the saddle-horn. As Corliss again swung his quirt, the cowboy jerked out his gun and brought it down on the rancher's head. Corliss dropped from the saddle. Fadeaway rode around and covered him. Corliss's hat lay a few feet from where he had fallen. Beneath his head a dark ooze spread a hand's-breadth on the trail. The cowboy dismounted and bent over him. "He's sportin' a dam' good hat," he said, "or that would 'a'

fixed _him_. Guess he'll be good for a spell." Then he reached for his stirrup, mounted, and loped up the trail.

Old Fernando, having excused himself on some pretext when Corliss rode into the camp that morning, returned to find Corliss gone and Nell Loring strangely grave and white. She nodded as he spoke to her and pointed toward the mesa. "Carlos--is out--looking for the sheep," she said, her lips trembling. "He says some one stampeded them--run them into the canon."

Fernando called upon his saints and cursed himself for his negligence in leaving his son with the sheep. Nell Loring spoke to him quietly, a.s.suring him that she understood why he had absented himself. "It's my fault, Fernando, not yours. The patron will want to know why you were away. You will tell him that John Corliss came to your camp; that you thought I wanted to talk with him alone. Then he will know that it was my fault. I'll tell him when I get back to the rancho."

Fernando straightened his wizened frame. "Si! As the Senorita says, I shall do. But first I go to look. Perhaps the patron shall not know that the vaquero Corlees was here this morning. It is that I ask the Senorita to say nothing to the patron until I look. Is it that you will do this?"

"What can you do?" she asked.

"It is yet to know. Adios, Senorita. You will remember the old Fernando, perhaps?"

"But you're coming back! Oh! it was terrible!" she cried. "I rode to the canon and looked down."

Fernando meanwhile had been thinking rapidly. With quaint dignity he excused himself as he departed to catch up one of the burros, which he saddled and rode out to where his son was standing near the canon. The boy shrank from him as he accosted him. Fernando's deep-set eyes blazed forth the anger that his lips imprisoned. He sent the boy back to the camp. Then he picked up the tracks of a horseman on the mesa, followed them to the canon's brink, glanced down, shrugged his shoulders, and again took up the horseman's trail toward the forest.

With the true instinct of the outlander, he reasoned that the horseman had headed for the old trail to the Blue, as the tracks led diagonally toward the south. Finally he realized that he could never overtake the rider by following the tracks, so he dismounted and tied his burro. He struck toward the canon. A mile above him there was a ford. He would wait there and see who came. He made his perilous way down a notch in the cliff, dropped slowly to the level of the stream, and followed it to the ford. He searched for tracks in the sun-baked mud. With a sigh of satisfaction, perhaps of antic.i.p.ation, he stepped to a clump of cottonwoods down the stream and backed within them. Scarcely had he crossed himself and drawn his gun from its weather-blackened holster, when he heard the click of shod hoofs on the trail. He stiffened and his eyes gleamed as though he antic.i.p.ated some pleasant prospect. The creases at the corners of his eyes deepened as he recognized in the rider the vaquero who had set the Concho dog upon his sheep some months before. He had a score to settle with that vaquero for having shot at him. He had another and larger score to settle with him for--no, he would not think of his beloved sheep mangled and dead at the bottom of the canon. That would anger him and make his hand unsteady.

Fadeaway rode his horse into the ford and sat looking downstream as the horse drank. Just as he drew rein, the old herder imitated with perfect intonation the quavering bleat of a lamb calling to its mother.

Fadeaway jerked straight in the saddle. A ball of smoke puffed from the cottonwoods. The cowboy doubled up and slid headforemost into the stream. The horse, startled by the lunge of its rider, leaped to the bank and raced up the trail. A diminishing echo ran along the canon walls and rolled away to distant, faint muttering. Old Fernando had paid his debt of vengeance.

Leisurely he broke a twig from the cottonwoods, tore a strip from his bandanna, and cleaned his gun. Then he retraced his steps to the burro, mounted, and rode directly to his camp. After he had eaten he told his son to pack their few belongings. Then he again mounted the burro and rode toward the hacienda to face the fury of the patron.

He had for a moment left the flock in charge of his son. He had returned to find all but a few of the sheep gone. He had tracked them to the canon brink. Ah! could the patron have seen them, lying mangled upon the rocks! It had been a long hard climb to the bottom of the canon, else he should have reported sooner. Some one had driven the sheep into the chasm. As to the man who did it, he knew nothing.

There were tracks of a horse--that was all. He had come to report and receive his dismissal. Never again should he see the Senora Loring.

He had been the patron's faithful servant for many years. He was disgraced, and would be dismissed for negligence.

So he soliloquized as he rode, yet he was not altogether unhappy. He had avenged insult and the killing of his beloved sheep with one little crook of his finger; a thing that his patron, brave as he was, would not dare do. He would return to New Mexico. It was well!

CHAPTER XV

THEY KILLED THE BOSS!

Sundown, much to his dismay, was lost. With a sack of salt tied across his saddle, he had ridden out that morning to fill one of the salt-logs near a spring where the cattle came to drink. He had found the log, filled it, and had turned to retrace his journey when a flock of wild turkeys strung out across his course. His horse, from which the riders of the Concho had aforetime shot turkeys, broke into a kind of reminiscent lope, which quickened as the turkeys wheeled and ran swiftly through the timberland. Sundown clung to the saddle-horn as the pony took fallen logs at top speed. The turkeys made for a rim of a narrow canon and from it sailed off into s.p.a.ce, leaving Chance a disconsolate spectator and Sundown sitting his horse and thanking the Arizona stars that his steed was not equipped with wings. It was then that he realized that the Concho ranch might be in any one of the four directions he chose to take. He wheeled the horse, slackened rein, and allowed that sagacious but apparently disinterested animal to pick its leisurely way through the forest. Chance trotted sullenly behind. He could have told his master something about hunting turkeys had he been able to speak, and, judging from the dog's dejected stride and expression, speech would have been a relief to his feelings.

The horse, nipping at scant shoots of bunch-gra.s.s and the blue-flowered patches of wild peas, gravitated toward the old trail to the Blue and, once upon it, turned toward home. Chance, refreshing his memory of the old trail, ran ahead, pausing at this fallen log and that fungus-spotted stump to investigate squirrel-holes with much sniffing and circling of the immediate territory. Sundown imagined that Chance was leading the way toward home, though in reality the dog was merely killing time, so to speak, while the pony plodded deliberately down the homeward trail.

Dawdling along in the barred sunshine, at peace with himself and the pleasant solitudes, Sundown relaxed and fell to dreaming of Andalusian castles builded in far forests of the south, and of some Spanish Penelope--possibly not unlike the Senorita Loring--who waited his coming with patient tears and rare fidelity. "Them there true-be-doors," he muttered, "like Billy used to say, sure had the glad job--singin' and wrastlin' out po'try galore! A singin'-man sure gets the ladies. Now if I was to take on a little weight--mebby . . ." His weird soliloquy was broken by a sharp and excited bark. Chance was standing in the trail, and beyond him there was something . . .

Sundown, antic.i.p.ating more turkeys, slid from his horse without delay.

He stalked stealthily toward the quivering dog. Then, dropping the reins, he ran to Corliss, knelt beside him, and lifted his head. He called to him. He ripped the rancher's shirt open and felt over his heart. "They killed me boss! They killed me boss!" he wailed, rising and striding back and forth in impotent excitement and grief. He did not know where to look for water. He did not know what to do. A sudden fury at his helplessness overcame him, and he mounted and rode down the trail at a wild gallop. Fortunately he was headed in the right direction.

Wingle, Bud Shoop, and several of the men were holding a heated conference with old man Loring when Sundown dashed into the Concho.

Trembling with rage and fear he leaped from his horse.

"They killed the boss!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Up there--in the woods."

"Killed who? Where? Slow down and talk easy! Who's killed?" volleyed the group.

"Me boss! Up there on the trail with his head bashed in! Chance and me found him layin' on the trail."

The men swung to their saddles. "Better come along, Loring," said Shoop, riding close to the old sheep-man. "Looks like they was more 'n one side to this deal. And you, too, Sun."

The riders, led by the gesticulating and excited Sundown, swung out to the road and crossed to the forest. Shoop and Hi Wingle spurred ahead while the others questioned Sundown, following easily. When they arrived at the scene of the fight, Corliss was sitting propped against a tree with Shoop and w.a.n.gle on either side of him. Corliss stared stupidly at the men.

"Who done it?" asked Wingle.

"Fadeaway," murmured the rancher.

Loring, in the rear of the group, laughed ironically.

Shoop's gun jumped from its holster and covered the sheep-man. "If one of your lousy herders done this, he'll graze clost to h.e.l.l to-night with the rest of your dam' sheep!" he cried.

"Easy, Bud!" cautioned Wingle. "The boss ain't pa.s.sed over yet. Bill, you help Sinker here get the boss back home. The rest of you boys. .h.i.t the trail for the Blue. Fadeaway is like to be up in that country."

"Ante up, Loring!" said Shoop, mounting his horse. "I'll see your hand if it takes every chip in the stack."

"Here, too!" chorused the riders. "We're all in on this."

They trailed along in single file until they came to the ford. They reined up sharply. One of them dismounted and dragged the body of Fadeaway to the bank. They grouped around gazing at the hole in Fadeaway's shirt.

Shoop turned the body over. "Got it from in front," he said, which was obvious to their experienced eyes.

"And it took a fast gun to get him," a.s.serted Loring.

The men were silent, each visualizing his own theory of the fight on the trail and the killing of Fadeaway.

"Jack was layin' a long way from here," said Wingle.

"When you found him," commented Loring.

"Only one hoss crossed the ford this morning," announced Shoop, wading across the stream.

"And Fade got it from in front," commented a puncher. "His tracks is headed for the Blue."

Again the men were silent. Shoop rolled a cigarette. The splutter of the sulphur-match, as it burned from blue to yellow, startled them.

They relaxed, cursing off their nervous tension in monosyllables.

"Well, Fade's played his stack, and lost. Jack was sure in the game, but how far--I dunno. Reckon that's got anything to do with stampedin'

your sheep?" asked Wingle, turning to Loring.

Loring's deep-set eyes flashed. "Fernando reported that a Concho rider done the job. He didn't say who done it."

"Didn't, eh? And did Fernando say anything about doin' a job himself?"

asked Shoop.