With Hoops of Steel Part 8

"I don't want to take any chances. Buck can get across with you all right, but if he's got us both on him he might go down and then we'd have to follow Emerson on foot. We're coverin' ground almighty slow, anyway. I'm the best swimmer, and you-all can take care of my boots and gun."

They waited a few moments for a flash of lightning to show them the banks of the arroyo. By its light they saw a water course thirty feet wide and probably ten feet deep, bank-full of a muddy, foaming flood, in which waves two feet high roared after one another, carrying clumps of bushes, stalks of cactus, bones, and other debris. As they plunged into the torrent, Ellhorn seized the tail of Tuttle's horse, and, holding it with one hand and swimming with the other, made good progress. But in mid-stream a big clump of mesquite struck him in the side, stunning him for an instant, and he let go his hold upon the pony's tail. A high wave roared down upon him the next moment, and carried him his length and more down stream. He fought with all his strength against the swift current, but, faint and stunned, could barely hold his own. He shouted to Tuttle, who was just landing, and Tom threw the end of his lariat far out into the middle of the stream.

Ellhorn felt the rope across his body, grasped it and called to Tuttle to pull.

"Tommy," he said, when safe on land, "I hope we'll find the whole Fillmore outfit just a-walkin' all over Emerson. I don't want more'n half an excuse to get even with 'em for this trip. Sure and I wish I had 'em all here right now! I'm just in the humor to make sieves of 'em!"

CHAPTER X

Emerson Mead waited until the four hors.e.m.e.n were within two hundred yards of him, and then he called out a good-natured "h.e.l.lo." The others checked their horses to a slow walk, and after a moment one of them hastily shouted an answering salutation. Mead instantly called in reply:

"I reckon you'd better stay where you are, boys. We can talk this way just as well as any other." The others halted and he went on: "Suppose you say, right now, whether you want anything particular."

They looked at one another, apparently surprised by this speech, and presently the foreman said:

"We thought you must be having trouble with your cattle. Stampede on you?"

"They're all right now. They're 'milling,' and won't give me any more trouble. But I reckon you didn't ride up here to ask me if my cattle had stampeded. You better talk straight just what you do want."

They hesitated again, looking at one another as if their plans had miscarried. "They expected I'd begin poppin' at 'em and give 'em an excuse to open out on me all at once," Mead thought. Then he called out:

"Jim, you out here to buy some cattle? Can I sell you some of mine?"

"You know I don't want to buy cattle," Halliday replied, sulkily.

"No? Then maybe you've come to ask me if it's goin' to rain?" Mead smilingly replied.

"I reckon you know what I want, Emerson Mead," Halliday said angrily, as if nettled by Mead's a.s.sured, good-natured tone and manner. "You know you're a fugitive from justice, and that it's my duty to take you back to jail."

"Oh, then you want me!" said Mead, as if greatly surprised.

"That's what, old man!" Halliday's voice and manner suddenly became genial. He thought Mead was going to surrender, as he had done before.

He had no desire for a battle, even four to one, with the man who had the reputation of being the best and coolest shot in the southwest, for he knew that he would be the first target for that unerring aim, and he was accordingly much relieved by the absence of defiance and anger in Mead's manner.

"You want me, do you?" said Mead, his voice suddenly becoming sarcastic. "Is that what you've been waitin' around the Fillmore ranch the last three weeks for? Why didn't you come straight over to my house and say so, like a man who wasn't afraid? You want me, do you?

Well, now, what are you goin' to do about it?" There was a taunt in Mead's tone that stirred the others to anger. Mead knew perfectly well what his reputation was, and he knew, too, that they were afraid of him.

"You won't surrender?"

"Whenever you've got any evidence for a warrant to stand on I'll give myself up. I let you take me in before to stop trouble, but I won't do it again, and you, and all your outfit, had better let me alone. I'm not goin' to be run in on any fool charge fixed up to help the Fillmore Company do me up. That's all there is about it, and you-all had better turn tail and go back to camp."

While he was speaking the foreman said something to Antone Colorow, and the man left the group and trotted away toward Mead's left as if he were going back to camp. Without seeming to notice his departure, Mead watched the cow-boy's actions from a corner of his eye while he listened to Jim Halliday:

"Now, Emerson, be reasonable about this matter and give yourself up.

You know I've got to take you in, and I don't want to have any gun-fight over it. The best thing you can do is to stand trial, and clear yourself, if you can. That'll end the whole business."

Antone Colorow turned and came galloping back, his lariat in his hand.

Mead's revolver was still untouched in his holster, and his horse, standing with drooping mane and tail, faced Halliday and the others.

The cow-boy came galloping through the rain from Mead's left, and so far behind him that he could barely see the man from the corner of his eye. He was apparently unconscious of Antone's approach as he quietly replied to Halliday, but his fingers tightened on the bridle, and the horse, answering a closer pressure of heel and knee, suddenly lifted its head and stiffened its lax muscles into alertness.

"I'd hate to make you lose your job, Jim," said Mead, smiling, "but you can't expect a fellow to let himself be arrested for nothing, just so you can keep a soft snap as deputy sheriff. You get some evidence against me, and then I'll go with you as quiet as any maverick you ever saw."

As Mead spoke he was listening intently. He heard Antone's horse stop a little way behind him, and, as the last word left his lips, the hiss of the rope through the air. With a dig of the spurs and a sharp jerk of the bridle the horse reared. The noose fell over Mead's head, but his revolver was already in his hand, and with a turn as quick as a lightning flash he swung the horse round on its hind legs in a quarter circle and before the astounded Mexican could tighten the loop there were two flashing reports and a bullet had crashed through each wrist.

Antone's arms dropped on his saddle, and through the shrill din of the mingled Spanish and English curses he shrieked at Mead came the sharp cracking of three revolvers. Emerson Mead felt one bullet whistle through his sleeve and one through the rim of his sombrero, as, with the rope still on his shoulders, he whirled his horse round again with his smoking revolver leveled at Halliday.

"Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee!" Ellhorn's long-drawn-out yell came floating down from the top of the hill and close on its heels the report of a pistol.

"That was a very pretty trick, Emerson," said the foreman, in a voice which tried hard to sound unconcerned, "even if it was my man you played it on."

"It will be played on you if you make another break," Mead replied in an even tone, with his revolver still leveled at Halliday. He turned his horse slightly so that a sidewise glance up the hill showed Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn, guns in hand, both astride one horse, coming toward them on a gallop. Tuttle's deep-lunged voice bellowed down the slope:

"We're a-comin', Emerson! Hold 'em off! We're a-comin'!" and another pistol ball sung through the rain and dropped beside Halliday's horse.

Mead flung the rope from his shoulders and grinned at Halliday and his party.

"Well, what are you going to do now? Do you want to fight?"

Halliday put his gun in its holster: "I don't want any pitched battle over this business. We'll call the game off for this morning."

"It's all right, boys," Mead yelled to his friends. "Don't shoot any more."

"You're a fool, Emerson," Halliday went on, "or you'd give yourself up, go down to Plumas and clear yourself,--if you can--and have this thing over with. For we're goin' to get you yet, somehow."

Antone Colorow spurred his horse close to Mead and with all the varied and virulent execration of which the cow-boy is capable shouted at him:

"Yes, and if they don't get you, I will! I come after you till I get you, and I come a-smoking every time! You won't need a trial after I get through with you! You've done me up, but I'll get even and more too!"

Mead listened quietly, looking the man in the eye. "Look here," he said, "what did you reckon would happen to any man who tried to rope me? Did you think I'd let you-all drag me into camp at your horse's tail? I'm sorry I had to do that, but I didn't want to kill you. Here, Jim, you fellows better tie up Antone's wrists." Mead offered his own handkerchief to help out the bandages, and, suddenly remembering the whisky flask in his breast pocket, took it out and told the wounded man to finish its contents.

While this was going on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with a smile.

"It's all right, boys. Jim says the game's off for this morning."

Nick and Tom turned black and scowling looks on Halliday and his party, and the deputy sheriff, manifestly nervous, rode toward them with an exaggeratedly genial greeting:

"Howdy, boys! Put up your guns! We ain't goin' to have any gun-fight this morning."

"How do you know we ain't?" growled Tom.

"Well, Emerson says so," he replied, with an apprehensive glance at Mead.

"Well," said Nick, "if Emerson says so it's all right. But we've had a devil of a ride, and we'd like to get square somehow!"

Mead laughed. "You can tally up with Jim, who's going to lose his job because I'm too mean to let him run me in."

Tuttle and Ellhorn turned grimly joyous faces toward Halliday. "If you want to arrest Emerson this morning," said Ellhorn, "just begin right now! We're three to three! Come on now and try it!"