The Settling of the Sage Part 23

The third morning out from the home ranch broke stormy. Gray, leaden skies and low scudding, drab clouds drifted over the foothills and obscured the view of the peaks. A nasty drizzle dampened the face of the world and laid its clammy touch on all living things. This condition prevailed all through the day and shortly after the cows had been milled and bedded for the night the drizzle turned to rain, now falling straight and soft, again in fierce squalls whipped by varying shifts of wind. A saddled night horse was picketed for every man. The wagon stood close under a hill while the herd was bedded on a broad flat at the mouth of a valley.

The men lay in the open, their bed-tarps folded to shed as much moisture as possible. The soggy patter of the rain on her teepee lulled the girl to sleep but she was frequently roused. A dull muttering materialized suddenly into a sharp thunderstorm and the canvas walls of her teepee were almost continuously illuminated by successive flashes. The picketed horses fretted and stamped. Between peals she heard the voices of the night guards singing to soothe their restless charges on the bed ground. One of the men shifted his bed roll from a gathering puddle to some higher point of ground.

She dropped to sleep again but was roused by voices outside as the guards changed shifts and she estimated that it must be near morning, the fourth change of guards.

The sounds ceased as the men who had just been relieved turned in for their sleep. A horse neighed shrilly within a few yards of her teepee.

Another took it up and an answer sounded from the flats. There was a crash of pistol shots, a rumble of hoofs and the instant command of Harris.

"Roll out! Roll out!" he called. "Saddles! On your horses."

Even as he shouted there came the swish of wet canvas as the men tumbled from their bed rolls, the imprecations of the suddenly awakened. Billie thrust her head from the teepee flap, the water cascading down her neck. The successive flashes showed the men tugging desperately at boots and chaps, their grotesque, froglike leaps for their tethered mounts. She saw Harris, buckling his belt as he ran, and the next flash showed him vaulting to Calico's back.

The thunder of hoofs drew her eyes to the bed ground where a black ma.s.s surged, then bore off up the valley. A scattered line of riders bore down on the herd, two ghostly apparitions among them throwing the cows into a panic of fear. She knew these for riders flapping yellow slickers in the wind. As the light faded she saw three horizontal red streaks cut the obscurity and knew that one of her guards was in the midst of the rustlers, doing his single-handed best. The red splashes of answering shots showed on all sides of him. She tugged on her chaps and boots, slipped Papoose's picket rope and vaulted to his back.

The scene was once more illuminated as she rode from the wagon. A big pinto horse was strung out and running his best, the other Three Bar men pounding after him. A riderless horse circled in the flat, a dark shape sprawled near him, and she wondered which one of her men had gone down. A knot of hors.e.m.e.n were turning up an opening gulch on the far side of the valley. A half-dozen Three Bar riders veered their horses for the spot. Harris turned in his saddle and his voice reached her above the tumult.

"Let 'em go!" he shouted. "Let 'em go! Hold the herd!"

Far off on the opposite side she made out a lone horseman riding at a full run along the sidehill above the cows as he made a supreme effort to reach the head of the run. The Three Bar men split and streamed up both sides of the bottoms. The flashes had ceased except for brief, quivering plays of less than a second's duration. She hung her spurs into Papoose and trusted to his footwork. The swift little horse pa.s.sed one rider, then another. There were only the rumble of hoofs and the crazed bawling of cows to guide her as she drew near the rear of the herd. A half-flare showed the pinto a bare twenty yards ahead, with Harris putting him at the slope to pa.s.s the cows. She swung her own horse after him and she felt the frequent skid of his feet on the treacherous sidehill. Papoose braced on his haunches and slid down a precipitous bank, buckled up the far side and down again, then swooped across a long flat bench. Three times she felt the heaving plunge and jar as the little horse skimmed over cut-bank coulees and washes which her own eyes could not see in the dripping velvet black.

From the sounds below she knew they were well up on the flanks of the run and nearing the peak. The stampede seemed slowing. A long, wavering flash revealed Harris a dozen jumps ahead. Papoose followed the paint-horse as Harris put Calico down the slippery sidehill and lifted him round the point of the herd. In the same flash Billie had seen two slickers out before the peaks of the run, flapping weirdly in the faces of the foremost cows. This accounted for the slowing-up she had sensed. Two of her men were before them and she wondered how this had come to pa.s.s.

The lightning-play broke forth once more. She saw two riders swinging round the opposite point. The two slickers were working in the center.

Harris's gun flashed six times. She jerked her own and rolled it. The two riders who had just rounded the far point joined in. Cows in the front ranks held back from this fearsome commotion out in front.

Others, driven by the pressure behind, forged past them, only to hold back in their turn as the guns flashed before their eyes.

The storm ceased as suddenly as it had begun and for two miles she rode in inky darkness. The last mile was slower. It was showing gray in the east and the night run had spent its force. The herd stopped and the cows gazed stupidly about, standing with drooping heads and heaving sides. Three Bar men showed on both flanks and in the rear. They had held the drove intact and prevented its splitting up in detachments and scattering through the night.

Horne and Moore rode over to them and for the first time the girl noticed that the two men who had wielded slickers out in front of the run were nowhere to be seen.

"Who was the pair out ahead?" Moore asked. "And what swallowed 'em up?"

Harris shook his head.

"Billie and I were the first to make the front," he said.

"Not any," Moore stated positively. "I saw 'em five minutes before you two swung round the point. I was wondering who had outrode the paint-horse and Billie's little nag."

Moore's left side was plastered with mud, as was the left side of his mount.

"I was on guard and halfway up the far side," he said. "Split Ear took a header with me and delayed me some."

He pointed to the mud crusted on his clothes. Billie knew that he was the lone rider she had seen on the flanks of the herd as she rode away from the wagon. The fall accounted for their Founding the point ahead of him. Moore was looking off across the country.

"Do you mean to tell me you didn't see those two slickers flapping out in front?" he demanded.

"I confess I didn't observe any," Harris said. "You're getting spooky, Moore. A couple of white cows, likely, out ahead of the rest."

Moore regarded him curiously.

"Maybe that's so," he said. "Waving their tails in the air, sort of."

He grinned and turned his horse to head back a bunch that had drifted out of the herd.

"The boys made a nice ride," Harris said to Horne. "You float round from one to the next and tell 'em we'll soon have a feed. I'll ride back and send the wagon up."

Billie rode with him as he skirted the herd and started on the return trip. Her mind was occupied with the two riders who had slowed the run and disappeared. There had been something familiar about them, for every man has his individual way of sitting a saddle as he has an individuality of gait when on foot. As she had viewed them in the lightning's flash they had closely resembled Bentley and Carp. But she decided that this resemblance had been but a fancied one, suggested by the fact that the two men had been much on her mind of late.

"We're not hurt bad," Harris said. "The boys held them bunched in good shape. Maybe forty or so head down with broken legs--and ten pounds of fat apiece run off the rest."

A hatred of Slade was growing within her. Here, too, was a case where no other would benefit by the senseless stampede. If the beef herd could be broken up it would cause a delay to round it up in a strange range with the certainty of many cows being missed,--a case of weakening the Three Bar.

She had been so absorbed in learning the details of the new work, so elated at its progress, that she had come to believe in its ultimate success. And they had been unmolested for so long a time. Then had come the wanton slaughter of Three Bar bulls and now the stampede of the trail herd. It was conclusive proof that Slade had abandoned his former wearing-down process as too slow and was out to crush the Three Bar in the speediest possible way and through any available means.

There rose in her a flare of resentment against her neighbors, the Brandons of the V L and the McVeys of the Halfmoon D. Both had taken out papers on the best land in their respective localities as soon as forewarned of her intended move. Ostensibly this was done merely as a protection against outsiders but in reality they were hoping that she would win out, in which case they would go through with their filings and prove up. But neither outfit would come out in the open and give her their support, preferring to hold aloof and benefit by her success if it so transpired and lose nothing themselves if she should fail--part of the policy of every man for himself--in the meantime letting her brand bear the brunt of the fight.

Harris, too, was pondering over Slade's change of tactics. He felt a.s.sured that Slade's own men had not partic.i.p.ated in starting the run.

Slade would not let any considerable number of his boys know that much about him. Some of Lang's men had undoubtedly been hired to stampede the Three Bar herd.

"The very fact that Slade is so bald with it is proof that he sees the necessity of crowding us fast," Harris said. "If we get too big a start he's blown up--and he hasn't had anything to work on but plowed ground. He's out now to worry us at odd ends. We can expect a steady run of mishaps now, for he'll work fast--but we'll win out in the end."

She nodded a little wearily for she knew that with Slade throwing all his forces against her the Three Bar would be hard pressed. In addition to this worry her mind was concerned with the riderless horse she had seen as she rode away from the wagon, the huddled figure sprawled in the flat. Every Three Bar rider was a friend and she hesitated to hear which one of her men had gone down in the raid.

"Who was it?" she asked at last, and Harris divined that she was harking back to the fallen night guard who had tried to head the raiders alone.

"I've been trying not to think about that," he said. "Lanky was a good pal of mine. I saw him go down, but I couldn't stop right then."

Evans occupied a place in her regard that was perhaps a notch higher than that of any other of the crew.

"Can't we prove anything on Slade--do anything to stop him?" she demanded. "If they've killed Lanky, I'll perjure myself if it's the only way. I'll have Alden pick him up and I'll swear I saw him do the thing himself. He's as guilty as if he actually had."

"I've a bait or two out for Slade," Harris said. "But that way may prove too slow. If Lanky's gone under, I expect I'll have to pick a quarrel with Slade and hurry things along."

"Don't you!" she objected. For all of her confidence in Harris's efficiency in most respects, her implicit belief in his courage, she could not forget the awkward swing of his gun and she had a swift vision of him facing Slade without a chance.

A crash of wagon wheels and the voice of Waddles admonishing the horses interrupted her. The chuck wagon rolled round a bend as the big cook followed the trail of the night run. Every bed had been rolled and loaded to eliminate the necessity of a return. The remuda trailed behind the wagon under the combined supervision of the nighthawk and the wrangler.

"How is Lanky?" was Harris's first query.

Waddles jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Evans, shot once through the arm and a second time through the shoulder, reclined on the triple-thickness bed roll the cook had spread for him on the floor of the wagon.

"Only nicked--clean holes and no bones," Lanky said. "I'll be all right as soon as Waddles will let me out of this chariot and I get to riding comfortable on a horse."

"He'll come round fine in a few days if we can keep him offen a horse and riding comfortable in the wagon," Waddles countered. "I've give him orders to that effect."

Evans groaned.

"He drives over places I wouldn't cross afoot," he complained. "Did you hold the run?"