“What can be keepin’ ’em?” Bill demanded in his growing anxiety. The others were asking themselves the same question. A hundred things could have happened to the two men. One guess was as good as another.
“They may be havin’ some trouble locatin’ old Ben,” Cherokee observed. “I ain’t worryin’—”
“I see yuh ain’t!” Bill snapped at him. He could not help asking himself if the Kid could have stacked the deck against Latch and Scotty.
He was still pacing the floor when Luther and Maverick pulled up their mounts sharply at the door. There was an air of excitement about them.
“Well, they’re keepin’ cases on us!” Luther announced tensely. “We damn near stumbled over a man on the way in.”
Bill’s head went up with a jerk.
“He knows yuh saw him, eh?”
“We pretended not to,” Luther answered. “After comin’ on a way we turned back; he was hittin’ only the high places in his hurry to get away.”
“Say, that’s goin’ to complicate things for us, comin’ right now,” Link remarked. “Latch and Scotty not here yet. We can’t be stallin’ around much longer.”
“We’ll see what mornin’ brings,” Bill said thoughtfully.
Morning dawned, but the two men who had ridden west failed to appear.
“I’ll give ’em till evenin’,” Bill decided. “In the meantime, we’ll take good care not to be jumped. Cherokee and me’ll stay here; the rest of yuh keep movin’ around the Meadows. Yuh can bring our horses in. If yuh see anythin’ that looks queer, fire a shot and head for the shanty.”
At five o’clock that afternoon, Little Bill told them they were going to move.
“Roll your blankets; it ain’t safe to wait no longer.”
A quarter of an hour later they were preparing to ride away when Luther caught a glimpse of four horsemen, off to the south.
“They’re headin’ straight for the shanty,” he exclaimed. “It may be Latch and—”
“It’s them, all right!” Bill interrupted, his voice shrill. “We’ll ride out and meet ’em; I don’t want to linger here another minute!”
Chapter XX
LITTLE BILL was the first to reach the four men.
“Git your broncs turned around and work back into the brush a ways!” he called out as he rode up to them. “The Meadows is gittin’ too warm for us!”
He had never laid eyes on Bitter Root or Flash Moffet. He could not be sure even now that one of the two strangers who rode with Scotty and Latch was Flash, but there was no question in his mind concerning the other, a lean, hatchet-faced man, older even than Latch, whose legs were so long that his pony appeared grotesquely small for him.
In a few minutes they were out of sight of the shanty. Bill gave the signal to pull up.
“Well,” he grinned, “yuh didn’t come none too soon. We’d about given yuh up.” He shifted around in his saddle to face the two strangers. “I don’t have to be told that this is Bitter Root,” he said, “but I’ll have to make a guess that the other one of yuh is Flash Moffet.”
“It’s Flash, sure enough,” Latch laughed. “We had some trouble locatin’ him.”
“You know how that is,” Flash said, with a little chuckle. “There’s times when it’s advisable to make yourself awful scarce …. It didn’t take us long to get here, once we got started …. Bitter Root and me have got some unfinished business in this neighborhood.” His voice was suddenly bitter, even though he continued to smile.
“Now that’s sure a fact,” Bitter Root agreed. “The debt’s bin runnin’ along some time, but we bin keepin’ account of the interest, and we’re hopin’ to collect in full this trip.” His faded blue eyes had been shifting from one to the other, taking them all in. “You boys are all strangers to me, except this one,” he ran on, his glance resting on Cherokee. “I seem to remember you awful well, for some reason.”
“Yeh?” the Kid queried insolently.
“Yeh,” Bitter Root echoed, and all the friendliness was gone from his tone. “You’re the breed that used to rustle stuff along with Cash Beaudry and Little Arkansaw.”
Cherokee’s teeth flashed in a hideous grin. Few men had the temerity to call him a breed to his face. Bill fully expected to see him go for his guns. Certainly that was what the Kid longed to do; it was written all over his face. Something stayed his hand. Possibly it was Bitter Root’s formidable reputation.
“Well, what about it?” he sneered.
“Not a thing,” Bitter Root said quietly. “I’ve rustled a few steers myself in my time, but I was jest wonderin’ if you wa’n’t on the wrong side of the fence, ridin’ with this bunch. All your old friends seem to git along pritty smooth with Smoke.”
“I’m where I want to be,” Cherokee informed him surlily.
“Jest be sure you are,” Bitter Root muttered as he turned away. “It ain’t no time for straddlin’ the fence. Smoke and nigh a dozen men are headin’ this way right now.”
“Yuh mean you saw ’em?” Bill demanded sharply.
“I’ll say we saw ’em!” Latch answered him. “They’re movin’ so cautious that they must have heard you were in the Meadows.”
“That’s fine! Everythin’s workin’ out just right.” Bill’s eyes were glowing. He had to explain the situation to the four men who had just joined them.
“That’s foxin’ ’em!” Bitter Root exclaimed. “We got your rifles and so forth here.”
“I see yuh have,” Bill replied. “Better let us git acquainted with ’em right off. We don’t want to waste no more time here than we have to.”
Just before night fell they reached the hidden spring where Latch and Cherokee had first joined them.
“We’ll cache everythin’ here,” Bill ordered. “We want to ride as light as we can. I reckon it’s safe to make a fire. We’ll have a bite to eat, and later on we can be movin’ along. The moon won’t bother us much tonight.”
He motioned for Bitter Root to follow him and started up the slope.
“We’ll just have a look around,” he said. “Be back in a few minutes.
They were soon out of sight of the camp.
“What about this Injun?” Bitter Root asked abruptly. “I pritty near know he’s a double-crossin’ rat. Latch thinks he’s all right; you seem to think so too.”
“Not for a second,” Bill replied. “I figger he tried to lame my horse just as we were about to ride into Reed City. The other day on the Skull he did his damnedest to tie some trouble on me. So I ain’t foolin’ myself about him. I know him and Beaudry used to pal together. The talk is that they fell out some time back. I didn’t know the two of ’em had ever run with Little Arkansaw.”
“Wal, they did—for nigh on a year. I hear things—mebbe some talk that you don’t. That breed and Beaudry are as thick as they ever was. The only truth in the talk about their fallin’ out came from the fact that Smoke turned his thumbs down on the Cherokee Kid, and he didn’t do that because he knew the skunk would sell out the best man that ever lived …. Smoke’s done a little of that himself.”
“What was his reason?” Bill asked.
“Why, it goes back to Beaudry. That hombre is ambitious.” Bitter Root laughed contemptuously. “You won’t believe it, but he’s bin troubled for a long time with the idear that he’d put Smoke and Grat on the shelf some day and take things over himself—”
“And Cherokee was to be his right-hand man, eh?”
“Why, sure! But Smoke spiked that. No doubt the Injun hates him, but you know how a breed hangs onto an idear when he gits it. Take it from me, he ain’t quit thinkin’ for a minute that him and Cash won’t turn the trick some day.”
“Well, that answers some things that have had me puzzled,” Bill muttered. He shook his head to himself as he began to understand why Cherokee had made no attempt to communicate with the Sontags while he was in the Meadows. He mentioned the matter to Bitter Root.
“He was in sunthin’ of a fix, wa’n’t he
?” Bitter Root chuckled scornfully. “He was dead willin’ to have Smoke and Grat knocked off, but he knew Beaudry was at the Grocery, and he didn’t want anythin’ to come off that might rub Cash out.”
“Well, Beaudry ain’t there now,” said Bill. “It’s a sure bet he’s ridin’ with Smoke. That bein’ so, the Kid may be real anxious to show us the way in.”
“Hunh,” Bitter Root grunted eloquently, “so that’s why you bin puttin’ up with him, eh? I knew there was sunthin’ …. But can you take a chance on anythin’ he says? You know we kin git over our heads in a hurry.”
“I don’t have to take much chance on him,” Bill informed him. “I been pumpin’ Cherokee right along and pickin’ out of his talk the things I could believe. I’ve got the picture pretty well set in my mind, and I don’t know that I could have got the facts any other way. What I ain’t been able to learn is just where Smoke’s got his lookouts posted.”
“Yuh can bet your roll the Injun knows,” Bitter Root remarked with positiveness. “I can’t see what it’ll gain him to deal from the bottom this once. It certainly won’t be good for his own hide.”
“That’s what I’m thinkin’,” Bill observed thoughtfully. “He’s thick about some things, but it’ll occur to him that if he ain’t on the level this once that we’ll git him if the other side don’t. It was his idea, of course, that we wouldn’t git around to this for weeks. Any plans he was makin’ don’t amount to nothin’. It was his brag that he wanted a showdown with Smoke. Well, I’m callin’ his hand now; it’s too late for him to eat his words. He’ll have to play the cards he asked for.”
In the deepening twilight they walked back to the fire. The men sat around, their faces tense. Cherokee had his pack of cards out and was shuffling them absent-mindedly.
“You’re as glum as owls,” Bill chided them. “What’s eatin’ yuh? No time now to let your nerves bother yuh.”
It provoked an answer from only Tonto.
“I guess my nerves is all right,” he grumbled. “I was just thinkin’ the ten of us will hardly be settin’ down to supper together tomorrow night.”
“What do yuh mean!” Bill jeered. “Look at Latch and Bitter Root here! They’ve had the clothes shot off of ’em a dozen times and they still git around pretty chipper!”
“Did you see anythin’?” Cherokee inquired, without bothering to glance up from his cards.
“Nary a thing,” Bill answered him. “I reckon Smoke is at the Meadows by now.” He turned to Maverick. “Let’s have that grub, Maverick. We want to be gettin’ away from here in ten or fifteen minutes.”
As they ate, he tried several times to break the tension that was tightening their mouths and leaving them without a word to say. He failed dismally. If he asked a question it always waited for Latch, Bitter Root or Flash to answer.
“They’ll come out of it,” he told himself, doubly glad, however, that he had Bitter Root and Flash with him. He glanced at the Kid and saw that he had eaten only a mouthful. “What’s the matter, Cherokee, ain’t yuh got no appetite?”
“Naw …. I’m anxious to be movin’—”
“We can be stirrin’ directly. I just want to say a word or two before we pull away.” Bill realized that every eye was focused on him instantly. “I figger we’re about four miles from the Grocery. Is that right, Kid?”
“Just about—”
Bill glanced at his watch in the firelight.
“The moon won’t be up till nearly ten. That gives us about two hours. We ought to be ready to give ’em hell by then.”
“You mean you ain’t waitin’ for daylight?” the Kid asked incredulously.
“I should say not! We don’t know how long that bunch will stall around before they rush the shanty. When they find it deserted they’ll smell a mouse in a hurry.”
“You said it!” Latch exclaimed. “They’ll ride their broncs into the dust in their hurry to git back to the Grocery!”
“Well, let’s go then!” Cherokee growled. He flung himself to his feet and started for his horse.
“Just a minute, Kid!” Bill jerked out. “We can’t ride in there blind. I’m dependin’ on you to show us the way. We can’t afford to bump into one of their lookouts and have a shot tip our play off.”
“Don’t put it up to me,” the Kid flung back at him. “You’re the boss; you lead the way. If I tried to take you in and somethin’ went wrong you’d put it up to me.”
“Why should anythin’ go wrong?” Bill asked, his eyes drilling holes in the Kid.
“Things have a habit of doin’ that, don’t they?” Cherokee snarled. “It would be pretty soft to sneak in and surround the place without them knowin’ what was up. You ought to know the chances are all against it bein’ done.”
“I hope to tell yuh I know it! And I’ll tell yuh some-thin’ else, Kid: we ain’t goin’ to surround the Grocery. We’re goin’ in together—in a bunch—and open up the second we’re close enough to throw lead. I’ll be responsible for what happens, but I don’t want to step on a hornets’ nest if I can help it—not that I’m thinkin’ so much about my own skin.”
His words worked a change in the Kid.
“Don’t try to get through that ridge,” he muttered, his eyes beady.
“I don’t intend to try it,” Bill snapped. “We’ll ride due west from here. When we’re beyond the Grocery we’ll take to the badlands and work back. Is there anythin’ wrong with that?”
Cherokee shook his head pityingly at him.
“That’ll be swell, if yuh don’t mind gettin’ cut to pieces,” he burst out. “When you git in those arroyos a ways you’ll find ’em snarled with barbed wire, and the banks so steep a horse can’t crawl out. If we’re caught there, not a man of us will git out alive. Yuh can do as yuh please, but if it was me, I’d take the old La Junta trail.”
“For what reason?” the red-haired one queried, his tone purposely contemptuous.
“Because it’s out in the open! We won’t have a bit of cover, but if the other fellow sees us we at least can see him!”
Little Bill hesitated for only a moment over his decision. He could not hope to get more out of Cherokee.
“All right, we’ll take the trail!” he jerked out. “Keep your eyes peeled and your head workin’, and don’t bang away at the first thing that moves!”
Chapter XXI
THEY reached the old La Junta cut-off without incident worth mentioning. Danger to themselves began now as they headed north.
“We’ll walk our ponies,” Bill advised. “Don’t want any drummin’ of hoofs to give us away.”
Off to their right half a mile, the ridge began to rise. The trail paralleled it almost to the Kansas line. Cherokee flicked anxious glances at it. He was riding between Bill and old Bitter Root. They sensed his agitation.
“I wouldn’t begin worryin’ yet about anybody jumpin’ us from that direction,” the former remarked. “The night’s still black; if there’s anybody up there they can’t have seen us.”
“I reckon you’re right,” the Kid drawled. “If Smoke’s got us spotted he’ll let us git pretty well into the Grocery before he shows his hand.” He rolled a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. “We’ll be in a bad way if that happens; we’ll have hell front and rear—” He raised his hand to snap a match against his thumb nail.
“Don’t light that match!” Bill rasped. “That goes for the bunch of yuh!”
“Why, we’re still two miles from the Grocery,” Cherokee growled.
“That may be so,” Bill retorted, “but we ain’t strikin’ a light! It might be just as well to end the talkin’ too.”
They went on warily. Twenty minutes later they topped a low rise. Half a mile away yellow daubs of light outlined the windows of Black Grocery. To the east, beyond the ridge, the moon was giving evidence of its coming.
Little Bill got their attention with a whispered word.
“We’ll just go on easy as we have been,” he said. “It’ll be light
enough to see a ways in a few minutes. We can size things up then.”
They had not proceeded a hundred yards when Cherokee flung his rifle to his shoulder and fired instantly at something off in the darkness just ahead.
“Damn your hide!” Bill cursed him. “Didn’t I tell yuh not to bang away like that?”
The Kid fired a second time. Below them they heard a man groan as he fell heavily. A horse dashed away.
“I dropped him,” the Kid muttered. “I knew what I was shootin’ at that time. I wasn’t any too quick.”
It put quite a different face on things. Bill forgot his anger.
“I reckon yuh couldn’t do nothin’ else,” he exclaimed. “No use tryin’ to creep up now. There go the lights! They know what it means!”
They saw that he spoke the truth. Upstairs and down every light had been extinguished. The Grocery and the barns across from it bulged blackly through the darkness. Along the ridge, however, the moon was touching the trees with silver.
“Come on!” Bill cried. “We’ll swing off to the left and come up behind the barns!”
The words were hardly uttered when a rifle spurted flame from a darkened window. As though answering a signal, a gun crashed, high on the ridge. In a second or two there was a savage burst of gunfire from the roof of the Grocery. They were shooting blindly, but they waited only for the moon to bathe the valley in its soft, silvery glow to give them a target.
“Don’t no one pull a trigger!” Bill shouted to his men. “They don’t know where we are and we don’t want ’em to!”
It was growing lighter every second. Even at a driving gallop it seemed to take them forever to get the barns between themselves and the store.
They made it, however. Bill glanced at them. They were all there.
“Scotty, you and Maverick hold these horses!” he barked. “The rest of yuh rip a board off this barn! We got to git through here!”
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