He's gun-shy anyhow."
From across the river came a scatter of bullets.
"They've got to hit closeter to that before they worry me," Jim called to the two above.
"I don't think they shot to hit. They're tryin' to scare Miss Lee away," called down Billie.
"As if I didn't know dad wouldn't let 'em take any chances with me here," the girl said confidently "If we can hold out till night I can stay here and keep shooting while you two slip away and hide. Before morning your friends ought to arrive."
"If they got yore message."
"Oh, they got it. Jack Goodheart carried it."
The riflemen across the river were silent for a time. When they began sniping again, it was from such an angle that they could aim at the cave without endangering those above. Both Clanton and Prince returned the fire.
Presently Lee touched on the shoulder the man beside her.
"Look!"
She pointed to a cloud of smoke behind them. From it tongues of fire leaped up into the air. Farther to the right a second puff of smoke could be seen, and beyond it another and still a fourth jet.
After a moment of dead silence Prince spoke. "They've fired the prairie.
The wind is blowin' toward us. They mean to smoke us out."
"Yes."
"We'll be driven down into the open bed of the river where they can pick us off."
The girl nodded.
"Now, will you leave us?" Billie turned on her triumphantly. He could at least choose the conditions of the last stand they must make. "They've called our bluff. It's a showdown."
"Now I'll go less than ever," she said quietly.
Chapter XVI
Three Modern Musketeers
The fierce crackling of the flames rolled toward them. The wind served at least the one purpose of lifting the smoke so that it did not stifle those on the river-bank. Clanton crept up from the cave and joined them.
"Looks like we're goin' out with fireworks, Billie," he grinned.
"That's nonsense," said Lee sharply. "There's a way of escape, if only we can find it."
"Blamed if I see it," the young fellow answered. As he looked at her the eyes in his pale face glowed. "But I see one thing. You're the best little pilgrim that ever I met up with."
The heat of the flames came to them in waves.
"You walk out, climb on yore horse, an' ride down the river, Miss Lee. Then we'll make a break for cover. You can't do anything more for us," insisted Prince.
"That's right," agreed the younger man. "We'll play this out alone. You cut yore stick an' drift. If we git through I'll sure come back an' thank you proper some day."
Recently Lee had read "The Three Musketeers." From it there flashed to her a memory of the picture on the cover.
"I know what we'll do," she said, coughing from a swallow of smoke. She stepped between them and tucked an arm under the elbow of each. "All for one, and one for all. Forward march!"
They moved down the embankment side by side to the sand-bed close to the stream, each of the three carrying a rifle tucked close to the side. From the chaparral keen eyes watched them, covering every step they took with ready weapons. Miss Lee's party turned to the right and followed the river-bed in the direction of Los Portales. For the wind was driving the fire down instead of up. Those in the mesquite held a parallel course to cut off any chance of escape.
Some change of wind currents swept the smoke toward them in great billows. It enveloped the fugitives in a dense cloud.
"Get yore head down to the water," Billie called into the ear of the girl.
They lay on the rocks in the shallow water and let the black smoke waves pour over them. Lee felt herself strangling and tried to rise, but a heavy hand on her shoulder held her face down. She sputtered and coughed, fighting desperately for breath. A silk handkerchief was slipped over her face and knotted behind. She felt sick and dizzy. The knowledge flashed across her mind that she could not stand this long. In its wake came another dreadful thought. Was she going to die?
The hand on her shoulder relaxed. Lee felt herself lifted to her feet. She caught at Billie's arm to steady herself, for she was still queer in the head. For a few moments she stood there coughing the smoke out of her lungs. His arm slipped around her shoulder.
"Take yore time," he advised.
A second shift of the breeze had swept the smoke away. This had saved their lives, but it had also given Snaith's men another chance at them A bullet whistled past the head of Clanton, who was for the time a few yards from his friends. Instantly he whipped the rifle up and fired.
"No luck" he grumbled. "My eyes are sore from the smoke. I can't half see."
Lee was not yet quite herself. The experience through which she had just passed had shaken her nerves.
"Let's get out of here quick!" she cried.
"Take yore time. There's no hurry," Prince iterated. "They won't shoot again, now Jim's close to us."
The younger man grinned, as he had a habit of doing when the cards fell against him. "Where'd we go? Look, they've headed us off. We can't travel forward. We can't go back. I expect we'll have to file on the quarter-section where we are," he drawled.
A rider had galloped forward and was dismounting close to the river. He took shelter behind a boulder.
Billie swept with a glance the plain to their right. A group of horsemen was approaching. "More good citizens comin' to be in at the finish of this man hunt. They ought to build a grand stand an' invite the whole town," he said sardonically.
A water-gutted arroyo broke the line of liver-bank. Jim, who was limping heavily, stopped and examined it.
"Let's stay here, Billie, an' fight it out. No use foolin' ourselves.
We're trapped. Might as well call for a showdown here as anywhere."
Prince nodded. "Suits me. We'll make our stand right at the head of the arroyo." He turned abruptly to the girl. "It's got to be good-bye here, Miss Lee."
"That's whatever, littlest pilgrim," agreed Clanton promptly. "If you get a chance send word to Webb an' tell him how it was with us."
Her lip trembled. She knew that in the shadow of the immediate future red tragedy lurked. She had done her best to avert it and had failed. The very men she was trying to save had dismissed her.
"Must I go?" she begged.
"You must, Miss Lee. We're both grateful to you. Don't you ever doubt that!" Billie said, his earnest gaze full in hers.
The girl turned away and went up through the sand, her eyes filmed with tears so that she could not see where she was going. The two men entered the arroyo. Before they reached the head of it she could hear the crack of exploding rifles. One of the men across the river was firing at them and they were throwing bullets back at him. She wondered, shivering, whether it was her father.
It must have been a few seconds later that she heard the joyous "Eee-yip-eee!" of Prince. Almost at the same time a rider came splashing through the shallow water of the river toward her.
The man was her father. He swung down from the saddle and snatched her into his arms. His haggard face showed her how anxious he had been. She began to sob, overcome, perhaps, as much by his emotion as her own.
"I'll blacksnake the condemned fool that set fire to the prairie!" he swore, gulping down a lump in his throat. "Tell me you-all aren't hurt, Bertie Lee…. God! I thought you was swallowed up in that fire."
"Daddie, daddie I couldn't help it. I had to do it," she wept. "And—I thought I would choke to death, but Mr. Prince saved me. He kept my face close to the water and made me breathe through a handkerchief."
"Did he?" The man's face set grimly again. "Well, that won't save him. As for you, miss, you're goin' to yore room to live on bread an' water for a week. I wish you were a boy for about five minutes so's I could wear you to a frazzle with a cowhide."
Snaith's intentions toward Clanton and Prince had to be postponed for the present, the cattleman discovered a few minutes later. When he and Lee emerged from the
river-bed to the bank above, the first thing he saw was a group of cowpunchers shaking hands gayly with the two fugitives. His jaw dropped.
"Where in Mexico did they come from?" he asked himself aloud.
"I expect they're Webb's riders," his daughter answered with a little sob of joy. "I thought they'd never come."
"You thought…. How did you know they were comin'?"
"Oh, I sent for them," The girl's dark eyes met his fearlessly. A flicker of a smile crept into them. "I've had the best of you all round, dad. You'd better make that two weeks on bread and water."
Wallace Snaith gathered his forces and retreated from the field of battle. A man on a spent horse met him at his own gate as he dismounted. He handed the cattleman a note.
On the sheet of dirty paper was written:
The birds you want are nesting in a dugout on the river four miles below town. You got to hurry or they'll be flown.
J.Y.
Snaith read the note, tore it in half, and tossed the pieces away. He turned to the messenger.
"Tell Joe he's just a few hours late. His news isn't news any more."
Chapter XVII
"Peg-Leg" Warren
Webb drove his cattle up the river, the Staked Plains on his right. The herd was a little gaunt from the long journey and he took the last part of the trek in easy stages. Since he had been awarded the contract for beeves at the Fort, by Department orders the old receiving agent had been transferred. The new appointee was a brother-in-law of McRobert and the owner of the Flying V Y did not want to leave any loophole for rejection of the steers.
With the clean blood of sturdy youth in him Clanton recovered rapidly from the shoulder wound. In order to rest him as much as possible, Webb put him in charge of the calf wagon which followed the drag and picked up any wobbly-legged bawlers dropped on the trail. During the trip Jim discovered for himself the truth of what Billie had said, that the settlers with small ranches were lined up as allies of the Snaith-McRobert faction. These men, owners of small bunches of cows, claimed that Webb and the other big drovers rounded up their cattle in the drive, ran the road brand of the traveling outfit on these strays, and sold them as their own. The story of the drovers was different. They charged that these "nesters" were practically rustlers preying upon larger interests passing through the country to the Indian reservations. Year by year the feeling had grown more bitter, That Snaith and McRobert backed the river settlers was an open secret. A night herder had been shot from the mesquite not a month before. The blame had been laid upon a band of bronco Mescaleros, but the story was whispered that a "bad man" in the employ of the Lazy S M people, a man known as "Mysterious Pete Champa," boasted later while drunk that he had fired the shot.
Jim had heard a good deal about this Mysterious Pete. He was a killer of the most deadly kind because he never gave warning of his purpose. The man was said to be a crack shot, quick as chain lightning, without the slightest regard for human life. He moved furtively, spoke little when sober, and had no scruples against assassination from ambush. Nobody in the Southwest was more feared than he.
This man crossed the path of Clanton when the herd was about fifty miles from the Fort.
The beeves had been grazing forward slowly all afternoon and were loose-bedded early for the night. Cowpunchers are as full of larks as schoolboys on a holiday. Now they were deciding a bet as to whether Tim McGrath, a red-headed Irish boy, could ride a vicious gelding that had slipped into the remuda. Billie Prince roped the front feet of the horse and threw him. The animal was blindfolded and saddled.
Doubtful of his own ability to stick to the seat, Tim maneuvered the buckskin over to the heavy sand before he mounted. The gelding went sun-fishing into the air, then got his head between his legs and gave his energy to stiff-legged bucking. He whirled as he plunged forward, went round and round furiously, and unluckily for Tim reached the hard ground. The jolts jerked the rider forward and back like a jack-knife without a spring. He went flying over the head of the bronco to the ground.
The animal, red-eyed with hate, lunged for the helpless puncher. A second time Billie's rope snaked forward. The loop fell true over the head of the gelding, tightened, and swung the outlaw to one side so that his hoofs missed the Irishman. Tim scrambled to his feet and fled for safety.
The cowpunchers whooped joyously. In their lives near-tragedy was too frequent to carry even a warning. Dad Wrayburn hummed a stanza of "Windy Bill" for the benefit of McGrath:
"Bill Garrett was a cowboy, an' he could ride, you bet; He said the bronc he couldn't bust was one he hadn't met. He was the greatest talker that this country ever saw Until his good old rim-fire went a-driftin' down the draw."
Two men had ridden up unnoticed and were watching with no obvious merriment the contest. Now one of them spoke.
"Where can I find Homer Webb?"
Dad turned to the speaker, a lean man with a peg-leg, brown as a Mexican, hard of eye and mouth. The gray bristles on the unshaven face advertised him as well on into middle age. Wrayburn recognized the man as "Peg-Leg" Warren, one of the most troublesome nesters on the river.
"He's around here somewhere." Dad turned to Canton. "Seen anything of the old man, Jim?"
"Here he comes now."
Webb rode up to the group. At sight of Warren and his companion the face of the drover set.
"I've come to demand an inspection of yore herd," broke out the nester harshly.
"Why demand it? Why not just ask for it?" cut back Webb curtly.
"I'm not splittin' words. What I'm sayin' is that if you've got any of my cattle here I want 'em."
"You're welcome to them." Webb turned to his segundo. "Joe, ride through the herd with this man. If there's any stock there with his brand, cut 'em out for him. Bring the bunch up to the chuck wagon an' let me see 'em before he drives 'em away."
The owner of the Flying V Y brand wasted no more words. He swung his cowpony around and rode back to the chuck wagon to superintend the jerking of the hind quarters of a buffalo.
He was still busy at this when the nester returned with half a dozen cattle cut out from the herd. In those days of the big drives many strays drifted by chance into every road outfit passing through the country. It was no reflection on the honesty of a man to ask for an inspection and to find one's cows among the beeves following the trail.
Webb walked over to the little bunch gathered by Warren and looked over each one of the steers.
"That big red with the white stockin's goes with the herd. The rest may be yours," the drover said.
"The roan's mine too. My brand's the Circle Diamond. See here where it's been blotted out."
"I bought that steer from the Circle Lazy H five hundred miles from here.
You'll find a hundred like it in the herd," returned Webb calmly.
Warren turned to his companion. "Pete, you know this steer. Ain't it mine?"
"Sure." The man to whom Warren had turned for confirmation was a slight, trim, gray-eyed man. Sometimes the gray of the eyes turned almost black, but always they were hard as onyx. There was about the man something sinister, something of eternal wariness. His glance had a habit of sweeping swiftly from one person to another as if it questioned what purpose might lie below the unruffled surface.
Homer Webb called to Prince and to Wrayburn. "Billie—Dad, know anything about this big red steer?"
"Know it? We'd ought to," answered Wrayburn promptly. "It's the ladino beef that started the stampede on the Brazos—made us more trouble than any ten critters of the bunch."
"You bought it from the Circle Lazy H," supplemented Billie.
Peg-Leg Warren laughed harshly. "O' course they'll swear to it. You're givin' them their job, ain't you?"
The drover looked at him steadily. "Yes, I'm givin' the boys a job, but I haven't bought 'em body an' soul, Warren."
The eyes of the nester were a barometer of his temper. "That's my beef,
Webb."
"It never was yours an' it nev
er will be."
"Raw work, Webb. I'll not stand for it."
"Don't overplay yore hand," cautioned the owner of the trail herd.
Clanton had ridden up and was talking to the cook. A couple of other punchers had dropped up to the chuck wagon, casually as it were.
Warren glared at them savagely, but swallowed his rage. "It's yore say-so right now, but I'll collect what's comin' to me one of these days. You're liable to find this trail hotter 'n hell with the lid on."
"I'm not lookin' for trouble, but I'm not runnin' away from it," returned
Webb evenly.
"You're sure goin' to find it—a heap more of it than you can ride herd on. That right, Pete?"
The gray-eyed man nodded slightly. Mysterious Pete had the habit of taciturnity. His gaze slid in a searching, sidelong fashion from Webb to Prince, on to Wrayburn, across to Clanton, and back to the drover. No wolf in the encinal could have been warier.
"Cut out the roan," ordered Webb.
The ladino was separated from the bunch of Circle Diamond cattle. Warren and his satellite drove the rest from the camp.
"War, looks like," commented Dad Wrayburn.
"Yes," agreed the drover. "I wish it didn't have to be. But Peg-Leg called for a showdown. He came here to force my hand. As regards the beef, he might have had it an' welcome. But that wouldn't have satisfied him. He'd have taken it for a sign of weakness if I had given way."
"What will he do?" asked young McGrath.
"I don't know. We'll have to keep our eyes open every minute of the day an' night. Are you with me, boys?"
Tim threw his hat into the air and let out a yell. "Surest thing you know."
"Damfidon't sit in an' take a hand," said Wrayburn.
One after another agreed to back the boss.
"But don't think it will be a picnic," urged Webb. "We'll know we've been in a fight before we get through. With a crowd of gunmen like Mysterious Pete against us we'll have hard travelin'. I'd side-step this if I could, but I can't."
A Man Four-Square Page 11
