Oh-You Tex

by Raine, William MacLeod

  "An' didn't I have to turn down his offer an' hang on to a dollar-a-day job?"

  "Then you saved Miss 'Mona from that bull an' made a friend of her."

  "Yes, an' then I butted in an' kept the Kiowas from mussin' up Art Ridley, who is liable to ask me to stand up with him when he marries Miss Ramona," added the Ranger.

  "Shucks! She'll never marry Ridley so long as you're runnin' around unbranded, son."

  "A lot you know about girls, Jumbo," said Roberts with a rueful grin. "I don't know sic' 'em about the things they like. I'm one chaparral-raised roughneck. That little lady never wasted two thoughts on me. But Art—he knows a lot about books an' style an' New York's four hundred. He's good to look at, clean, knows how to talk, an' makes a sure-enough hit with the girls."

  "He's a sissy boy beside you. No Texas girl would look twice—"

  "Nothin' a-tall to that. Didn't he save Clint Wadley's life? Didn't he stay by Dinsmore when the Kiowas had 'em holed? He fought good enough to get shot up this mo'nin', didn't he? No, sir. You'll find he's got me backed off the map so far as Miss Ramona goes. I know it, old-timer."

  "Where do you get that notion you're a roughneck, Tex?" asked Jumbo. "You've read more books than any man on the range. You don't hell around like most of the boys. You don't drink. Mebbe you ain't exactly pretty, but yore face doesn't scare critters when they see it onexpected. An' when the band begins to play—Gentlemen, watch Tex."

  "If the girls would only let you do the pickin' for 'em, Jumbo," suggested Roberts with his sardonic smile.

  Through rabbit weed and curly mesquite, among the catclaw and the prickly pear, they followed the faint ribbon trail left by the outlaws in their retreat from the scene of the hold-up.

  When it was too late to cut sign any longer, the Ranger gave orders to throw in to a small draw where the grass was good. At daybreak they were on the trail again and came within the hour to the body of Overstreet. They dug a grave in a buffalo run with their knives and buried the body as well as they could before they picked up again the tracks of two horses now traveling much faster.

  "They're headin' for Palo Duro, looks like,'" commented Roberts.

  "Looks like," agreed his friend.

  Early in the afternoon the posse reached the little creek where the outlaws had breakfasted. Old Guadaloupe crisscrossed the ground like a bloodhound as he read what was written there. But before he made any report Roberts himself knew that a third person had joined the fugitives and that this recruit was a woman. The Ranger followed the Apache upstream, guessed by some feathers and some drops of blood that one of the outlaws had shot a prairie-hen, and read some hint of the story of the meeting between the woman and the bandit.

  Was this woman some one who had been living in Palo Duro Cañon with the outlaws? Or was this meeting an accidental one? The odd thing about it was that there was no sign of her horse. She had come on foot, in a country where nobody ever travels that way.

  Roberts told Guadaloupe to find out where the party had gone from the camp. He himself followed into the desert the footsteps of the woman who had come across it toward the creek. He was puzzled and a little disturbed in mind. She had not come from the cañon. What was a woman doing alone and on foot in this desert empty of human life for fifty miles or more?

  He found no answer to his questions and reluctantly returned to the camp-fire. Guadaloupe was ready with his report. One man had started out on foot along the edge of the cañon. The other man and the woman had struck on horseback across the plain.

  "We'll follow those on horseback," decided the Ranger at once. He could not have told why the urgent impulse was on him to do this, nor why he did not split his party and send part of his men in pursuit of the foot traveler. Later he laid it to what Jumbo would have called a hunch.

  He was puzzled by the direction the two riders were taking. It led neither to the A T O nor to Tascosa, and was making no account of the streams where the travelers would have to find water. They seemed to be plunging ignorantly into the desert, but since Gurley or Dinsmore was one of the two this could not be. Either of these men could have traveled the Panhandle blindfolded.

  They followed the tracks for hours. The line of travel was so direct that it told of purpose. Dinsmore—if the man were Dinsmore—evidently knew just what he was doing. Then, abruptly, the tracks pointed to the right, straight for the A T O.

  But not for long. At the summit of a little rise the riders had plainly stopped for a few moments, then had turned and galloped fast for the southwest. The lengthening tracks, the sharpness of them, the carelessness with which the riders took the rougher ground to follow a straight line, all suggested an urgent and imperative reason.

  That reason became plain to Roberts in another minute. A great number of tracks swept in from the left and blotted out those of the two flying riders.

  "Chiricahua Apaches," grunted Guadaloupe. The scout had a feud with that branch of the tribe and was at war with them.

  "How many?" questioned Jack.

  The Indian held up the fingers of both hands, closed them, opened them, and a third time shut and lifted the fingers.

  "Thirty?" asked the Ranger.

  The Apache nodded.

  "Dinsmore 's makin' for Palo Duro," remarked Wilkins as they followed at a canter the plain trail marked for them. "I'll bet he don't throw down on himself none on that race either. He's sure hell-bent on gettin' there."

  One of the riders called to the Rangers. "Look over to the left, Tex. We got company."

  A little group of riders—three, four, five of them—emerged from behind a clump of Spanish bayonet and signaled with a bandana handkerchief. As they rode closer the heart of the Ranger died under his ribs. His stomach muscles tightened, and he felt a prickling of the skin run down his back. For Clint Wadley rode at the head of these men, and like a flash of lightning the truth had seared across the brain of Jack Roberts. His daughter was the woman riding to escape from the savages.

  The face of Wadley confirmed the guess of the Ranger. On the unshaven face of the cattleman dust was caked. His eyes were red and inflamed from the alkali and the tears he had fought back fifty times. The expression of the man was that of one passing through the torments of hell.

  In five broken sentences he told his story. Quint Sullivan, escaping from his pursuers after a thirty-mile run, had reached the ranch in the middle of the night. Clint had gathered together such men as were at hand and started at once. At Crane Lake he had found no trace of her. He could not escape the conviction that the Apaches had captured Ramona and taken her with them.

  On this last point the Ranger offered him comfort, though it was sorry comfort at that. Five hours ago she was still safe, but in terrible danger.

  "Dinsmore's a man—none gamer in Texas, Mr. Wadley. He won't desert her," said Jumbo. "You couldn't 'a' picked a better man to look out for her."

  "How do you know it's Dinsmore? Perhaps it's that yellow wolf Gurley," answered the father out of his tortured heart.

  Jack was riding on the other side of Wadley. He, too, carried with him a private hell of fear in his heart, but he knew that the big cattleman was nearly insane with anxiety.

  "Because the man with Miss Ramona was takin' her back to the ranch when they bumped into the 'Paches. You know Steve Gurley would never have taken her home in the world," replied the Ranger.

  "What can one man do against thirty? He'll do what Quint here did—run to save his own hide."

  Young Sullivan winced. It was the truth. He had run and left the girl to the mercy of these devils. But his one chance of helping her had been to run. He tried to say as much.

  "I know that, Quint. I'm not blamin' you," broke out the father in his agony. "But my little lamb—in the hands of 'Paches—God!" Wadley covered his eyes with his hand and tried to press back from his brain the horrible visions he kept seeing.

  Jumbo stuck to his one valid point. "Bite yore teeth into this, Clint. She's got ridin' beside her as game a man as e
ver threw his leg over leather. He knows this country like you do yore ranch. He'll hole up in Palo Duro where the 'Paches won't find 'em, an' if the devils do he'll sure stand 'em off till we blow in."

  His friend on the other side of the cattleman backed him up strongly, but the heart of the Ranger was heavy with dread.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  DINSMORE TO THE RESCUE

  If 'Mona lives to be eighty the high-lights of that wild ride will never fade from her memory. The mesas rolled in long swells as far as the eye could see. Through the chaparral the galloping horses plunged while the prickly pear and the cholla clutched at their flanks and at the legs of the riders. Into water-gutted arroyos they descended, slid down breakneck shale ridges, climbed like heather cats the banks of dry washes, pounded over white porous malpais on which no vegetation grew.

  Now Dinsmore was in front of her picking out the best way, now he was beside her with cool, easy words of confidence, now he rode between her and the naked Apaches, firing with deliberate and deadly accuracy.

  "Don't look back," he warned her more than once. "My job is to look out for them. Yours is to see yore horse don't throw you or break a leg in a prairie-dog hole. They cayn't outrun us. Don't worry about that."

  The man was so easy in manner, apparently so equal to the occasion, that as the miles slid behind them her panic vanished. She felt for the small revolver in her belt to make sure it was safe. If she should be thrown, or if her horse should be shot, one thing must be done instantly. She must send a bullet crashing into her brain.

  To the right and to the left of her jets of dirt spat up where the shots of the Indians struck the ground. Once or twice she looked back, but the sight of the bareback riders at their heels so unnerved her that she obeyed the orders of her companion and resisted the dreadful fascination of turning in her saddle.

  It had seemed to 'Mona at first with each backward glance that the Indians were gaining fast on them, but after a time she knew this was not true. The sound of their shots became fainter. She no longer saw the spitting of the dust from their bullets and guessed they must be falling short.

  Her eyes flashed a question at the man riding beside her. "We're gaining?"

  "That's whatever. We'll make the cañon all right an' keep goin'. Don't you be scared," he told her cheerfully.

  Even as he spoke, Ramona went plunging over the head of her horse into a bunch of shin-oak. Up in an instant, she ran to remount. The bronco tried to rise from where it lay, but fell back helplessly to its side. One of its fore legs had been broken in a prairie-dog hole.

  Dinsmore swung round his horse and galloped back, disengaging one foot from the stirrup. The girl caught the hand he held down to her and leaped up beside the saddle, the arch of her foot resting lightly on the toe of his boot. Almost with the same motion she swung astride the cow-pony. It jumped to a gallop and Ramona clung to the waist of the man in front of her. She could hear plainly now the yells of the exultant savages.

  The outlaw knew that it would be nip and tuck to reach Palo Duro, close though it was. He abandoned at once his hopes of racing up the cañon until the Apaches dropped the pursuit. It was now solely a question of speed. He must get into the gulch, even though he had to kill his bronco to do it. After that he must trust to luck and hold the redskins off as long as he could. There was always a chance that Ellison's Rangers might be close. Homer Dinsmore knew how slender a thread it was upon which to hang a hope, but it was the only one they had.

  His quirt rose and fell once, though he recognized that his horse was doing its best. But the lash fell in the air and did not burn the flank of the animal. He patted its neck. He murmured encouragement in its ear.

  "Good old Black Jack, I knew you wouldn't throw down on me. Keep a-humpin', old-timer.... You're doin' fine.... Here we are at Palo Duro.... Another half-mile, pal."

  Dinsmore turned to the left after they had dropped down a shale slide into the cañon. The trail wound through a thick growth of young foliage close to the bed of the stream.

  The man slipped down from the back of the laboring horse and followed it up the trail. Once he caught a glimpse of the savages coming down the shale slide and took a shot through the brush.

  "Got one of their horses," he told 'Mona. "That'll keep 'em for a while and give us a few minutes. They'll figure I'll try to hold 'em here."

  'Mona let the horse pick its way up the rapidly ascending trail. Presently the cañon opened a little. Its walls fell back from a small, grassy valley containing two or three acres. The trail led up a ledge of rock jutting out from one of the sheer faces of cliff. Presently it dipped down behind some great boulders that had fallen from above some time in the ages that this great cleft had been in the making.

  A voice hailed them. "That you, Homer?"

  "Yep. The 'Paches are right on our heels, Steve."

  Gurley let out a wailing oath. "Goddlemighty, man, why did you come here?"

  "Driven in. They chased us ten miles. Better 'light, ma'am. We're liable to stay here quite a spell." Dinsmore unsaddled the horse and tied it to a shrub. "You're sure all in, Black Jack. Mebbe you'll never be the same bronc again. I've got this to say, old pal. I never straddled a better hawss than you. That goes without copperin'." He patted its sweat-stained neck, fondled its nose for a moment, then turned briskly to the business in hand. "Get behind that p'int o' rocks, Steve. I'll cover the trail up. Girl, you'll find a kind of cave under that flat boulder. You get in there an' hunt cover."

  'Mona did as she was told. Inside the cave were blankets, a saddle, the remains of an old camp-fire, and a piece of jerked venison hanging from a peg driven between two rocks. There were, too, a rifle leaning against the big boulder and a canvas bag containing ammunition.

  The rifle was a '73. She busied herself loading it. Just as she finished there came to her the crack of Dinsmore's repeater.

  The outlaw gave a little whoop of exultation.

  "Tally one."

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT

  Night fell before the rescue party reached Palo Duro. The cañon was at that time a terra incognita to these cattlemen of the Panhandle. To attempt to explore it in the darkness would be to court disaster. The Apaches might trap the whole party.

  But neither the Ranger nor Wadley could endure the thought of waiting till morning to push forward. The anxiety that weighed on them both could find relief only in action.

  Jack made a proposal to Ramona's father. "We've got to throw off and camp here. No two ways about that. But I'm goin' to ride forward to Palo Duro an' see what I can find out. Want to go along?"

  "Boy, I had in mind that very thing. We'll leave Jumbo in charge of the camp with orders to get started soon as he can see in the mo'nin'."

  The two men rode into the darkness. They knew the general direction of Palo Duro and were both plainsmen enough to follow a straight course even in the blackest night. They traveled at a fast road gait, letting the horses pick their own way through the mesquite. Presently a star came out—and another. Banked clouds scudded across the sky in squadrons.

  At last, below their feet, lay the great earth rift that made Palo Duro. It stretched before them an impenetrable black gulf of silence.

  "No use trying to go down at random," said Jack, peering into its bottomless deeps. "Even if we didn't break our necks we'd get lost down there. My notion is for me to follow the bank in one direction an' for you to take the other. We might hear something."

  "Sounds reasonable," agreed Wadley.

  The cattleman turned to the left, the Ranger to the right. Roberts rode at a slow trot, stopping every few minutes to listen for any noise that might rise from the gulch.

  His mind was full of pictures of the girl, one following another inconsequently. They stabbed him poignantly. He had a white dream of her moving down the street at Tascosa with step elastic, the sun sparkling in her soft, wavy hair. Another memory jumped to the fore of
her on the stage, avoiding with shy distress the advances of the salesman he had jolted into his place. He saw her grave and gay, sweet and candid and sincere, but always just emerging with innocent radiance from the chrysalis of childhood.

  Her presence was so near, she was so intimately close, that more than once he pulled up under an impression that she was calling him.

  It was while he was waiting so, his weight resting easily in the saddle, that out of the night there came to him a faint, far-away cry of dreadful agony. The sound of it shook Jack to the soul. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Gooseflesh ran down his spine. His hand trembled. The heart inside his ribs was a heavy weight of ice. Though he had never heard it before, the Ranger knew that awful cry for the scream of a man in torment. The Apaches were torturing a captured prisoner.

  If Dinsmore had been captured by them the chances were that 'Mona had been taken, too, unless he had given her the horse and remained to hold the savages back.

  Roberts galloped wildly along the edge of the rift. Once again he heard that long-drawn wail of anguish and pulled up his horse to listen, the while he shook like a man with a heavy chill.

  Before the sound of it had died away a shot echoed up the cañon to him. His heart seemed to give an answering lift of relief. Some one was still holding the Apaches at bay. He fired at once as a message that help was on the way.

  His trained ear told him that the rifle had been fired scarcely a hundred yards below him, apparently from some ledge of the cliff well up from the bottom of the gulch. It might have come from the defenders or it might have been a shot fired by an Apache. Jack determined to find out.

  He unfastened the tientos of his saddle which held the lariat. A scrub oak jutted up from the edge of the cliff and to this he tied securely one end of the rope. Rifle in hand, he worked over the edge and lowered himself foot by foot. The rope spun round like a thing alive, bumped him against the rock wall, twisted in the other direction, and rubbed his face against the harsh stone. He had no assurance that the lariat would reach to the foot of the cliff, and as he went jerkily down, hand under hand, he knew that at any moment he might come to the end of it and be dashed against the boulders below.