The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  “I’m not scared of it now even with a busted arm!” Tremaine taunted.

  “You’re brave, you are,” Montana said bitingly. “But it isn’t a question of being scared. It’s a question of sense.”

  “You can stay here till you starve to death if you want to,” Smokey jeered. “I’m going across. You yaller—” He got no farther. In a single bound Montana was beside him.

  “Open your chops again and I’ll beat you to death even if you are crippled!” he warned. “Damn you, I can do it. I wasn’t thinking of myself. I was thinking of this kid.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Little Montana put in gamely. “I won’t be afraid to tackle it.”

  Montana’s teeth clicked grimly.

  “Take the lead,” he threw at Tremaine. “Any time you back the Two Montanas down you’ve got to get up early in the morning, you lobo!”

  “How are we going to work it, pard?” the boy asked, eyeing the boiling water timidly.

  “Kick off your boots,” Montana ordered, as he sat flat down to pull off his own. When the boy had obeyed, Montana undid his cartridge belt, which, with his boots and those of the boy, he tied to the saddle.

  “Now take your time and don’t lose your head,” he directed. “I’ll swim alongside of you in case you get in a mix-up out there.” He led the snorting, wild-eyed horse to the water’s edge and looped the bridle reins over the horn. “See that bunch of brush yonder?” he asked, pointing some two hundred yards below on the opposite bank. “The current will just about carry you that far downstream. Keep your feet out of the stirrups so you won’t get too wet nor tangle up if anything happens. Let the horse have its head. Don’t try to crowd him nor check him. He will follow Tremaine’s horse.”

  Something in the eyes of Smokey, who had roweled up alongside drew his attention. “Don’t you try any funny business,” he warned. “Because there’s always another meeting!”

  Tremaine shrugged, spurred his horse into the churning water and started away.

  “Sure you’re not scared, buddy?” Montana asked anxiously. “If you are we’d better not try it.”

  “Scared, hell!” the boy flung back with a brave show of fearlessness. “The Two Montanas aren’t scared of anything when they’re together!”

  Montana made no comment as he struck the horse on the rump and crowded it into the stream.

  Once out from the bank the muddy water swirled angrily about them, slapped the cantle of the saddle. The motion of the swimming horse was sickening. But Little Montana fought stubbornly to master the fear that was taking hold upon him.

  He glanced ahead. In spite of his crippled arm, Tremaine was proving himself a master in the art of fording rivers. Yet when he turned from time to time, there was a strange, scheming light in his eyes. The boy’s gaze sought Montana. Despite his wounded arm, the puncher was swimming strongly beside him, his face set, his muscles beating back the terrific current.

  “Keep your head!” Montana cautioned, noting the boy’s fright. “We’re almost halfway across. Let the bridle reins alone!” as the pony lurched dangerously and Little Montana clutched for them. “Trust to that horse. He’ll win.”

  Then they were in the center of the stream. A gigantic undertow caught them. For several seconds Montana battled for his life. When finally he had pulled himself from the deadly tentacles that were sucking him down, he looked around for the horse. It had drifted with the current and was several feet below. But now its struggles lacked smoothness. It was wallowing hopelessly. The boy was deathly white and clinging for life.

  A sudden lurch loosed Little Montana’s hold and set him to groping about blindly. His fingers closed over the bridle reins. With all his might he yanked. The fighting animal turned part way over on its side. In three powerful strokes Montana was beside him.

  “For God’s sake hang on to the horn and let go those bridle reins!” he shouted.

  But his warning came too late. Little Montana reeled in the saddle, threw out his arms and pitched over the side of the horse, which once free of his weight, quickly recovered its balance and struck out for the bank.

  Montana barely had time to grasp the boy by the ankle as he was caught up by the rushing current and swept downstream. Seconds dragged by with maddening slowness. He fought doggedly to keep his head above water while he worked himself in below Little Montana. Time and again he went under, only to come back up, gasping for breath, spewing the muddy water from his mouth and clinging grimly to the drowning boy.

  Then finally he managed to stroke abreast and throw an arm about him. Little Montana clutched hold of him frantically. Fighting now to free himself from the deathlike grasp, as well as keep them both above water, his struggles seemed hopeless.

  Of a sudden Little Montana let go his hold on him, tried to push him away.

  “Go ahead, paid!” he gasped. “I can’t make it.”

  “Not by a damned sight I don’t quit a pal,” Montana choked. “Don’t grab me thataway. You can too make it.”

  Choking, panting, fighting stubbornly, he succeeded in dragging the boy from the swift current in the center of the river. Once he felt the sucking tentacles let go he relaxed a little in the battle that was sapping his last ounce of strength. Time and again he was on the point of giving up; the burden too great to bear. Only his fighting heart kept him hanging on; his fighting heart and a determination to save the boy.

  Then he thought of Tremaine. His gaze flew to the opposite shore. Smokey had forded the river and was seated on the bank watching their struggles, but making no effort to lend assistance.

  “Toss your throw rope!” Montana shouted. “Snub it to your saddlehorn!”

  “Go to hell!” Tremaine hurled back. “You got in there now get out!”

  A savage curse sprang to Montana’s lips. But he had not the breath to voice it. He renewed the struggle with a strength born of fury. With a gigantic effort that tore his muscles, he stroked away. Then he caught sight of a landing-place a short distance beyond. Yet in his spent condition it seemed miles. He hung on tenaciously, putting everything that was in him into the fight. With a mighty spurt he reached the bank, groped blindly for something to cling to. There was nothing. The bank dropped away sheer for about three feet. He looked around wildly. Below, it was even higher. Above—Weak as he was, breasting the current was too great a task.

  He got a glimpse of Tremaine leering down at them but still making no move to aid them.

  “Tremaine!” he cried. “There’ll be a reckoning. And when it comes—” A mouthful of roily water checked the threat.

  “You’ve got to get out first,” Smokey taunted. “I’ll help drag the creek for your bodies. Let’s see who’s going to win those rodeo finals now!”

  His taunting laugh goaded Montana to desperation. “Buddy,” he panted. “You’ve got to help for all you’re worth.” He worked himself beneath the boy to raise him up suddenly. “I’ll boost you. Get out!”

  “But you?” Little Montana gasped.

  “Never mind me. Now! Up!”

  He put his last ounce of strength into the effort. The boy felt himself being lifted bodily from the water. Then he was even with the bank. He lunged out, clutched a clump of brush. He clung desperately, pulled himself dripping from the river. He saw Tremaine, just above him, give a violent kick. The hand with which Montana was groping for a hold disappeared. The boy turned just in time to see Montana caught up by the swirling water and washed downstream beside a great log that pitched like a cork on the crest of the flood.

  A scream escaped him. In horrified fascination he watched Montana making a desperate fight to seize the log. Once it seemed he would win. Then the current swept him from sight around a bend.

  “You—” Little Montana cried, wheeling on Tremaine. “You could have saved him.”

  Smokey only grinned.

  “You kicked him!”
the boy accused furiously.

  Tremaine bounded forward, his face livid with rage.

  “Shut up, or I’ll throw you in with him!” he snarled.

  But Little Montana was not to be silenced.

  “Go ahead!” he screamed recklessly. “I’d rather be dead than live without Montana. You drowned him—my pard—Montana—Montana—” Smokey clapped a hand over his mouth to choke the words in his throat. Wrenching himself loose, the boy turned on him with the fury of a tiger’s cub.

  For several seconds Smokey fought to subdue the frenzied boy. But with one arm useless and maddening him with pain he was powerless to quiet Little Montana who squirmed away to come back fighting and shrieking at the top of his voice.

  In desperation Tremaine kicked him viciously and backed off to glance quickly about. The brutal kick stunned the boy. But only for a moment. Again he pitched into Smokey, fighting, clawing, screaming, his frenzied assault on the puncher’s legs threatening to upset him.

  A violent oath left Smokey’s lips. Raising his good arm he brought his clenched fist crashing down on the Little Montana’s head. With a piteous cry, the boy crumpled to the ground!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LOST MEMORY

  With Little Montana prostrate at his feet, Smokey Tremaine backed away, his breath rasping in his throat. He looked about wildly, listening. Only the crash and boom of the river came to his straining ears.

  With the air of a cornered beast he slunk back to the inert figure of the boy. A trace of color in the pallid cheeks showed him that Little Montana still lived. For a time Smokey stood staring down at him. Then a savage gleam shot into his eyes. Stooping quickly he worked his good arm beneath the boy, lifted him onto his hip and lurched drunkenly to the bank of the river.

  A shout from behind brought him whirling about. Dropping the boy, Smokey fell to his knees and began working with him frantically just as the Diamond A crew, headed by Al Cousins, a bandage on his hatless head, galloped into the clearing beside the ford. At sight of the pitifully huddled figure, Cousins swung from his horse to drop beside it.

  “Is—he—dead?” he choked.

  “I don’t think so,” Smokey muttered. “Seems to have color.” To hide the pallor that had blotted the color from his own cheeks, he bent over and laid an ear to the boy’s faintly beating heart.

  “Is—he—alive?” Cousins asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “His heart’s beating,” Smokey announced, lurching to his feet. “I’ve done what I could for him. I’m all in.” Overwhelmed by a sudden weariness that made his knees like tallow, he staggered to his horse to lean weakly against it.

  “Get some water!” Cousins snapped, himself again after the shock of seeing the motionless boy. “What happened?” he demanded of Smokey.

  “We tried to ford the river,” Tremaine jerked out. “The kid got scared. Pulled us both off my hoss. A log hit him in the head. I grabbed him and made shore.”

  “Good work!” cried Kent, who until now had sat his horse in sullen silence. “I always claimed you was a real jasper, Smokey. Why, what’s the matter?” he blurted out as Tremaine’s knees buckled. “Help him, fellows!” He leaped down and ran to Smokey’s side.

  “My—arm,” Tremaine gasped. “It’s broken.”

  “Broken?” Cousins straightened up from bathing the swollen head and face of the boy. “How did that happen?”

  “My horse fell with me on some rocks,” Smokey mumbled.

  Cousins shot him a quick inscrutable glance. There was something in that glance that startled the Diamond A men who were trying awkwardly to help. Some there were among them who knew of Cousins’s dislike for Tremaine. But never until the disappearance of Little Montana and Smokey had they known the depth of that dislike. And now the way Cousins looked at him—mistrust, hatred, suspicion all in a single glance—filled them with apprehension.

  “Did your horse fall on the rocks this side of the ford?” Cousins demanded in a hostile tone.

  “No, the other side.”

  “And you forded that river holding this boy in one arm?” incredulously.

  “Yes!” With the aid of Kent and the punchers, Smokey stayed on his feet, swaying drunkenly.

  “Let up on him,” Kent cried. “He’s hurt. Instead of a bawling out he deserves a reward for what he’s done.”

  “I’m not so damned sure about that,” Cousins shot back. “Who bandaged that arm of yours, Smokey?”

  “I did, of course,” Smokey answered defiantly. “That is—The kid helped me.”

  At that moment Little Montana stirred. Instantly Cousins had dropped back beside him, thrown an arm about him.

  “Feel better, sonny?” he asked anxiously.

  The boy’s lips moved but his muttered words were incoherent, almost inaudible.

  “God!” Cousins blurted out. “He’s—That crack on the head did it. Here, you jaspers. Grab hold of him. Tote him to the ranch. Easy, now. One of you skin out for town. Ride like all hell was after you. Get a doc here as quick as God’ll let you. And get that nurse—what’s her name—the girl whose ma runs the restaurant—Sally Hope.”

  As the cowboys leaped to do his bidding he wheeled on Smokey.

  “Did you see Montana?” he demanded.

  “I saw his horse,” Tremaine answered. “Him—He must have gone down in the high water.”

  “When you come through high water and that jasper goes down somebody is lying, Smokey,” Cousins accused hotly.

  “What do you mean?” Kent blazed before Tremaine could speak.

  “Just what I said,” Cousins shot back. “Things are too fishy around here of late to suit me. I never did believe this lying snake and I’m tell you now I don’t believe his cock and bull story about fording that river with a busted arm and holding that boy.” He went over to plant himself in front of Smokey. “And let me tell you another thing,” he snarled, “if it ever comes out that you’re to blame for this poor little kid’s hurt I’ll kill you myself—and save a lot of fellows who’d like to the trouble.”

  “Hold on there,” Kent roared. “That’s a nice way to treat Smokey after him saving the brat. That kid’s made a fool out of you. You haven’t been yourself since he came. You—”

  “I have been myself since he came!” Cousins snorted. “That’s just what I have been. The little shaver made me my old self again; made me wise to what a bunch of lousy fourflushers have been running my business all these years. But I’m through. Smokey isn’t sitting pretty as foreman anymore.”

  “If he goes, I go, too!” Kent flared.

  “You give me any of your lip and you won’t stay even as long as he does,” Cousins snapped. Whirling, he strode to his horse, mounted and roweled away after the cowboys who were carrying the boy tenderly toward the ranch.

  * * * *

  Days passed; days that plunged the big Diamond A into a melancholy silence. Gone was the laughter and song of the punchers who, whenever they were in the ranch, gathered in knots to talk in lowered voices. Old Al Cousins wandered about aimlessly.

  The blinds of one room in the ranch house ware drawn. From time to time Sally Hope, white-garbed, passed before the door or paused to look out at the mountains which frowned down, grim and cold.

  Behind the house, Cousins, his head sunk on his chest, his hands opening and closing convulsively, paced about, stopping now and then to heave a great sigh, then resuming his never-ending pacing.

  Stretched on a bed inside was Little Montana, his face devoid of color. For days he had lain thus without speaking save when he would toss and babble deliriously. Doctors who had come from every direction upon the urgent summons of Cousins had examined him, consulted among themselves and shaken their heads. Cousins fumed and cursed, pleaded and cajoled, offered anything for aid. But without success.

  Came a day when Little Montana groped out of
the darkness of his coma. The ever-watchful Cousins was beside him instantly, and the one doctor who had stayed on the case, Sally, and Kent, who happened to be present.

  “Where—am—I?” the boy whispered weakly.

  “God, I’m glad you come to!” Cousins breathed fervently. “We were scared you weren’t going to. You’re at the Diamond A, sonny. You—”

  “Don’t excite him,” warned the doctor. “He must be kept absolutely quiet for a time.”

  “But he’s come to!” Cousins cried joyously. “He’ll live—get well—”

  “Quiet,” Sally warned, stroking the lad’s arm tenderly.

  “Regaining consciousness this way is a big part of the fight won, all right,” the doctor admitted. “But he has suffered a concussion of the brain and narrowly escaped a fractured skull. There is always the possibility of—”

  “You—mean—he’ll—be—” Cousins asked in a hollow tone.

  “No, no,” the doctor interrupted hastily, anticipating his unvoiced fear. “Probably nothing more than amnesia. Perhaps not even a complete loss of memory; only a slight impairment.”

  Again Little Montana moved. This time his eyes fluttered open, came to rest on the wrinkled face of Cousins. Then they wandered on to the doctor, to Sally Hope, to Kent. The three watched breathlessly. Cousins could not contain himself.

  “You remember me, sonny?” he pleaded. “Al Cousins? And the Diamond A.” The boy’s eyes came back to him. They were bright and clear but there was no sign of recognition in their depths.

  “He don’t know me,” Cousins groaned. “He’s—he’s—”

  “No, he isn’t,” the doctor said impatiently. “Those eyes are brighter than I had ever hoped to see them. His failure to recognize you may be only a temporary condition which rest and quiet will overcome.”

  “Damn that lousy trail-drifter, Montana,” Kent put in savagely. “He’s the one to blame. If I ever run across him I’ll—”

  “I’d thank you to leave unless you can be quiet, Mister Kent,” Sally said sharply. “I happen to be in charge of this case and I do not propose to have my patient disturbed by your cursing.”