The Settling of the Sage Part 11

"I'll look this one over myself," Harris decided. "There's only two more gulches to work. Each one of you boys take one."

The girl followed him as he turned down the first steep pitch. They pulled up their horses and sat looking at the cow. A trickle of blood oozed out of a hole between her eyes. Harris rode in a circle round the spot.

"He downed her from some point above," he said. "Not a sign anywhere close at hand." He surveyed the ridges that flanked either side of the draw and the little saddle-like depression at the head of it from which they had just descended. From beyond this gap came the shrill nicker of a horse, the sound chopped short as if a man had clamped his hand on the animal's nostrils to silence it. Harris turned swiftly to the girl.

"It's a plant," he said. "Ride--hard!"

He suited his action to the words and jumped his horse off down the bottoms. He waved her over to one side.

"Keep well away from me!" he ordered. "They don't want you."

They hung their spurs into their mounts and the horses plunged down the steeply-pitching bottoms, vaulting sage clumps and bounding along the cow trails that threaded the brush. Two hundred yards below the cow the draw made an elbow bend. The girl rounded it and as Harris followed a jump behind he felt a jarring tug at the cantle of his saddle and the thin, sharp crack of a rifle reached him. The gulch made a reverse bend and as they swept around it Harris swung sidewise in the saddle and looked back. They were entirely sheltered from any point on the divide six hundred yards behind them. He pulled his horse to a swinging trot and they rode down the sloping meadow that led straight to the main valley.

"It was certainly stupid of me not to know right off that it was a decoy," he said. "A man just out to act spiteful would have piled up a dozen cows at one stand and left. He's downed one every day--in plain sight of the divide we'd follow on the circle, knowing that I'd soon ride down to look one over myself. All he had to do was to cache himself on the far side, watch for me to ride down, wait until the rest had gone on and climb to the divide and pot me. And it would have been so dead easy to turn the tables and bushwhack him," he added regretfully. "If only I'd have used my head in time."

A sick chill swept the girl as she thought of an enemy with the patience to kill a cow every day, use it for a decoy and wait for a chance at his human prey.

The cows that grazed on the meadow raced off ahead of them. A bunch of wild range horses swept up the broken slopes and wheeled to watch them pa.s.s.

"We didn't get started any too soon," Harris said. "His horse wasn't more than a hundred feet beyond the notch when he blew off and warned us--not time for me to get cached and drop him as he topped the ridge."

The girl's eyes suddenly riveted on a small round hole in the cantle of his saddle where the ball had entered. On the inside and far to the left extremity of the cantle a ragged gash showed where if had pa.s.sed out. The shot had been fired as he wheeled round the sharp bend, quartering away from the man above, but even then the ball had not missed his left hip to exceed an inch.

She started her horse so suddenly that before he realized her purpose she was well in the lead and going at a dead run toward the mouth of the gulch where it opened out into the main bottoms two hundred yards beyond.

From the opposite slope riders were hazing cows out of their respective draws; some had reached the wagon; others were coming down from above.

The running horse caught every man's eye as the girl careened out into the center of the valley, rose in her stirrups and waved an arm in a circle above her head. In five seconds riders were whirling in behind her from all directions as she headed for the wagon.

She waved those already on the spot toward the rope corral.

"Change horses!" she called, and as each man rode in he caught up a fresh horse.

"Scatter out; some of you below where we came down, some above," she said. "Five hundred to the man that brings Morrow in."

"It's no use, Billie," Harris counseled mildly. "He's plum out of the country by now. It'll be dark in three hours--and it's right choppy country over there."

Waddles interposed and seconded her move.

"Let 'em rip," he said. "There's just a chance."

Bangs was the first to change mounts. The boy's physical qualifications were as sound as his mental ability was limited and it was his pride to have a string of mounts that included the worst horses in the lot. He rode from the corral on Blue, holding the big roan steady, and headed up the ridge a mile below where Harris and the girl had come down. Rile Foster chose the next; five riders were but a few jumps behind. Harris did not change horses but searched hastily in his war bag and slipped the strap of a binocular case across his shoulders and rode off with the girl as she finished cinching her saddle on a fresh horse.

In less than five minutes from the time she had reached the wagon the last Three Bar man had mounted and gone. Harris rode with her up a long ridge that led up to the divide; they followed another into the next bottoms and ascended the second divide. This was sharp and rocky, its crest a maze of ragged pinnacles. He chose the highest of these and dismounted to sweep the range with his gla.s.ses. The low country beyond them was broken and choppy, a succession of tiny box canyons and rough coulees. Off to the right he made out Rile Foster working through the tangle. Somewhere beyond him Bangs would be doing the same. Riders came into view off to the left, crossing some ridge, only to disappear once more. The high point afforded a view of every ridge for miles. After perhaps half an hour Harris caught five hors.e.m.e.n in the field of his gla.s.ses. They were riding in a knot.

"They've picked up his trail," he said. "But he'll have too long a lead. He'll be fanning right along and they'll have to work out a track. In less than two hours it will be dark--and by morning he'll be forty miles from here and up on a fresh horse."

He rested his elbows on the ground to steady the gla.s.ses as he trained them off in the direction the five men had gone. Twice he saw them cross over ridges. Then a tiny, swift-moving speck came into his field of view, traveling up the slope of a distant divide. The ant-like rider dipped over the crest of it and was gone.

"He's more than five miles in the lead of them," he said. "Across rough country too. There was just a chance that he would work back through these breaks below us instead of making a ride for it, and we could have spotted him from up here. We might as well be going."

They mounted and headed to the right along the divide.

"If Rile is in sight we can wait for him," he said. "And see if he's picked up any tracks."

A half-mile along the ridge they saw Foster off through the breaks and he was working back their way.

"Thanks, Billie," Harris said. "For losing a circle trying to run him down."

"I'd have done as much for any Three Bar man," she returned.

"Of course," he said. "I'd have expected that. But all the same I'd hardly looked to see you show much concern over what happened to me."

"I don't want to see even you shot in the back," she said. "Is that answer enough?"

"It shows that I'm progressing," he smiled. "Maybe my good qualities will grow on you until you get to thinking right well of me."

They waited till Foster joined them on the ridge.

"Bangs crossed over a mile below," Rile said. "We might pick him up."

"Any sign?" Harris asked as they moved down the divide.

"A bunch of shod horses went down through there a few days back," Rile said. "Three or four men likely, with a few pack horses along. There was a fresh track, made this morning, going up-country alone. He likely stayed at their camp all night, wherever it is. I worked across, thinking he might go back to it; but there was no down trail.

He's pulled out."

"I saw him," Harris said. "He's gone."

They stopped in the saddle of the ridge where a fresh track showed the spot Bangs had crossed.

The girl was looking at Harris and saw a sudden pallor travel up under his tan and as she turned to see what had occasioned it he crowded his horse against her own.

"Don't look!" he ordered, and forced her horse over the far side of the ridge. "You'd better ride on back to the wagon," he urged. "There's been some sort of doings over across. Rile and I will ride down and look into it." Without a word she turned her horse toward the wagon.

"It's G.o.d's mercy she didn't see," Harris said, as the two crossed back over the ridge. "Isn't that a h.e.l.l of a way for a man to die?"

But the girl had seen. Her one brief look had revealed a horse coming round a bend in a little box canyon below. A shapeless thing dragged from one stirrup and at every third or fourth jump the big blue horse side-slashed the limp bundle with his heels.

As the two men reached the bottoms the frenzied horse had stopped and was fighting to free himself of the thing that followed him. He moved away from it in a circle but it was always with him. He squealed and kicked it, then dashed off in a fresh panic, side-swiping his pursuer.

Harris's rope tightened on his neck and threw him. As he rolled over Foster's noose snared both hind feet and he was held stretched and helpless between two trained cow horses while the men disengaged the bundle that had once been Bangs. One boot heel was missing and his foot was jammed through the stirrup, evidence that the horse had pitched with him and the loosened heel had come off, allowing his foot to slip through as he was thrown.

Harris pointed to a burnt red streak across the right side of Bangs's neck. He unb.u.t.toned his shirt and revealed a similar streak under his left armpit.

Old Rile cursed horribly and his face seemed to have aged ten years.

"They learned that from the albino," he said. "It's an old trick that always works. They dropped a rope on him and jerked him, pried off his heel, shoved his boot through and laid the quirt on his horse. Blue did the rest."

Both men knew well how it had happened. Bangs had run across the camp of some of the wild bunch, men he had known for long, and the slow-thinking youth had suspected no more danger from riding on up to them at this time than at any other. He had told them of the shot fired at Harris and they had known that some other Three Bar man would find the trail leading from the direction of their camp. And Bangs would mention having found them there, linking them with the bushwhacker.