“I fancy you’ll have your work cut out for you, you damned meddler!” he sneered as he went in swiftly, with a right and left, aimed at Randerson’s face.
The blows landed, but seemingly had no effect, for Randerson merely gritted his teeth and pressed forward. In his mind was a picture of a girl whom he had “dawdled” on his knee—a “kid” that he had played with, as a brother might have played with a younger sister.
CHAPTER XII
THE RUSTLERS
At about the time Randerson was crossing the river near the point where the path leading to Catherson’s shack joined the Lazette trail, Ruth Harkness was loping her pony rapidly toward him. They passed each other within a mile, but both were unconscious of this fact, for Randerson was riding in the section of timber that he had entered immediately after crossing the river, and Ruth was concealed from his view by a stretch of intervening brush and trees.
Ruth had been worried more than she would have been willing to admit, over the presence of Chavis and his two men in the vicinity, and that morning after she had questioned a puncher about the former Flying W foreman, she had determined to ride down the river for the purpose of making a long distance observation of the “shack” the puncher and Randerson had mentioned as being inhabited by Chavis. That determination had not been acted upon until after dinner, however, and it was nearly two o’clock when she reached the ford where she had passed Randerson.
The puncher had told her that Chavis’ shack was about fifteen miles distant from the Flying W ranchhouse, and situated in a little basin near the river, which could be approached only by riding down a rock-strewn and dangerous declivity. She had no intention of risking the descent; she merely wanted to view the place from afar, and she judged that from the edge of a plateau, which the puncher had described to her, she would be able to see very well.
When she passed the ford near the Lazette trail, she felt a sudden qualm of misgiving, for she had never ridden quite that far alone—the ford was about ten miles from the ranchhouse—but she smiled at the sensation, conquering it, and continued on her way, absorbed in the panoramic view of the landscape.
At a distance of perhaps a mile beyond the ford she halted the pony on the crest of a low hill and looked about her. The country at this point was broken and rocky; there was much sand; the line of hills, of which the one on which her pony stood was a part, were barren and uninviting. There was much cactus. She made a grimace of abhorrence at a clump that grew near her in an arid stretch, and then looked beyond it at a stretch of green. Far away on a gentle slope she saw some cattle, and looking longer, she observed a man on a horse. One of the Flying W men, of course, she assured herself, and felt more secure.
She rode on again, following a ridge, the pony stepping gingerly. Another half mile and she urged the pony down into a slight depression where the footing was better. The animal made good progress here, and after a while they struck a level, splotched with dry bunch-grass, which rustled noisily under the tread of the pony’s hoofs.
It was exhilarating here, for presently the level became a slope, and the slope merged into another level which paralleled the buttes along the river, and she could see for miles on the other side of the stream, a vista of plain and hills and mountains and forest so alluring in its virgin wildness; so vast, big, and silent a section that it awed her.
When she saw the sun swimming just above the peaks of some mountains in the dim distance, she began to have some doubts of the wisdom of making the trip, but she pressed on, promising herself that she would have a brief look at the shack and the basin, and then immediately return. She had expected to make much better time than she had made. Also, she had not anticipated that a fifteen-mile ride would tire her so. But she believed that it was not the ride so far, but the prospect of another fifteen-mile ride to return, that appalled her—for she had ridden much since her coming to the Flying W, and was rather hardened to it. In one of his letters to her, her uncle had stated that his men often rode sixty miles in a day, and that he remembered one ride of ninety miles, which a cowpuncher had made with the same pony in twenty-two hours of straight riding. He had told her that the tough little plains pony could go any distance that its rider was able to “fork” it. She believed that, for the little animal under her had never looked tired when she had ridden him to the ranchhouse at the end of a hard day.
But these recollections did not console her, and she urged the pony on, into a gallop that took her over the ground rapidly.
At last, as she was swept around a bend in the plateau, she saw spreading beneath her a little valley, green-carpeted, beautiful. A wood rose near the river, and at its edge she saw what she had come to see—Chavis’ shack.
And now she realized that for all the knowledge that a look at Chavis’ shack would give her, she might as well have stayed at the Flying W. She didn’t know just what she had expected to see when she got here, but what she did see was merely the building, a small affair with a flat roof, the spreading valley itself, and several steers grazing in it.
There were no other signs of life. She got off the pony and walked to the edge of the plateau, discovering that the valley was much shallower than she thought it would be, and that at her side, to the left, was the declivity that the puncher had told her about. She leaned over the edge and looked at it.
It was not so steep as she had expected when listening to the puncher’s description of it. But she thought it looked dangerous. At the point from which she viewed it, it was not more than fifteen or twenty feet below her. It cut into the plateau, running far back and doubling around toward her, and the stretch below her, that was within range of her eyes, was almost level. The wall of the cut on which she stood was ragged and uneven, with some scraggly brush thrusting out between the crevices of rocks, and about ten feet down was a flat rock, like a ledge, that projected several feet out over the level below.
She was about to turn, for she had seen all she cared to see, when an impulse of curiosity urged her to crane her neck to attempt to peer around a shoulder of the cut where it doubled back. She started and turned pale, not so much from fright as with surprise, for she saw a horse’s head projecting around the shoulder of the cut, and the animal was looking directly at her. As she drew back, her breath coming fast, the animal whinnied gently.
Almost instantly, she heard a man’s voice:
“My cayuse is gettin’ tired of loafin’, I reckon.” Ruth held her breath. The voice seemed to come from beneath her feet—she judged that it really had come from beneath the rock that projected from the wall of the cut below her. And it was Chavis’ voice!
Of course, he would not be talking to himself, and therefore there must be another man with him. At the risk of detection, and filled with an overwhelming curiosity to hear more she kneeled at the edge of the cut and listened intently, first making sure that the horse she had seen could not see her.
“I reckon Linton didn’t pull it off—or them Flyin’ W guys are stickin’ close to the herd,” said another voice. “He ought to have been here an hour ago.”
“Linton ain’t no rusher,” said Chavis. “We’ll wait.”
There was a silence. Then Chavis spoke again:
“Flyin’ W stock is particular easy to run off. Did I tell you? B—— told me”—Ruth did not catch the name, she thought it might have been Bennet, or Ben—“that the girl had give orders that anyone ketched runnin’ off Flyin’ W stock wasn’t to be hung!” Ruth heard him chuckle. “Easy boss, eh, Kester?” He sneered. “Ketch that damned Flyin’ W outfit hangin’ anybody!”
Kester was one of the men who had quit the day that Ruth had met Randerson, when the latter had been riding in for the money due them. It did not surprise Ruth to discover that Kester was with Chavis, for Randerson had told her what might be expected of him. Linton was the other man.
Nor did it surprise Ruth to hear Chavis talking of stealing the Flying W stock. But it angered her to discover that her humane principles were being ridic
uled; she was so incensed at Chavis that she felt she could remain to hear him no longer, and she got up, her face red, her eyes flashing, to go to her pony.
But the pony was nowhere in sight. She remembered now, her heart sinking with a sudden, vague fear, that she had neglected to trail the reins over the animal’s head, as she had been instructed to do by the puncher who had gentled the pony for her; he had told her that no western horse, broken by an experienced rider, would stray with a dragging rein.
She gave a quick, frightened glance around. She could see clearly to the broken section of country through which she had passed some time before, and her glance went to the open miles of grass land that stretched south of her. The pony had not gone that way, either. Trembling from a sudden weakness, but driven by the urge of stern necessity, she advanced cautiously to the edge of the cut again and looked over.
Her pony was standing on the level below her, almost in front of the rock under which had been Chavis and Kester! It had evidently just gone down there, for at the instant she looked over the edge of the cut she saw Chavis and Kester running toward it, muttering with surprise.
For one wild, awful instant, Ruth felt that she would faint, for the world reeled around her in dizzying circles. A cold dread that seized her senses helped her to regain control of herself presently, however, and scarcely breathing she stole behind some dense weeds at the edge of the cut, murmuring a prayer of thankfulness for their presence.
What Chavis and Kester had said upon seeing the pony, she had not heard. But now she saw crafty smiles on their faces; Chavis’ was transfigured by an expression that almost drew a cry of horror from her. Through the weeds she could see their forms, and even hear the subdued exclamation from Chavis:
“It’s the girl’s cayuse, sure. I’d know it if I saw it in the Cannibal islands. I reckon she’s been snoopin’ around here somewheres, an’ it’s sloped! Why, Kester!” he cried, standing erect and drawing great, long breaths, his eyes blazing with passion as for an instant she saw them as they swept along the edge of the cut, “I’d swing for a kiss from them lips of hers!”
“You’re a fool!” declared Kester. “Let the women alone! I never knowed a man to monkey with one yet, that he didn’t get the worst of it.”
Chavis paid no attention to this remonstrance. He seized Ruth’s pony by the bridle and began to lead it up the slope toward the plateau. Kester laid a restraining hand on his arm. He spoke rapidly; he seemed to have become, in a measure, imbued with the same passion that had taken possession of Chavis.
“Leave the cayuse here; she’ll be huntin’ for it, directly; she’ll come right down here. Give her time.”
Chavis, however, while he obeyed the suggestion about leaving the pony where it was, did not follow Kester’s suggestion about waiting, but began to run up the slope toward the plateau, scrambling and muttering. And Kester, after a short instant of silent contemplation, followed him.
Ruth no longer trembled. She knew that if she was to escape from the two men she would have to depend entirely upon her own wit and courage, and in this crisis she was cool and self-possessed. She waited until she saw the two men vanish behind the shoulder of the cut where she had seen the horse’s head, and then she clambered over the edge of the wall, grasping some gnarled branches, and letting herself slide quickly down. In an instant she felt her feet come in contact with the flat rock under which the men had been when she had first heard them talking. It seemed a great distance to the ground from the rock, but she took the jump bravely, not even shutting her eyes. She landed on all fours and pitched headlong, face down, in the dust, but was up instantly and running toward her pony.
Seizing the bridle, she looped it through her arm, and then, pulling at the animal, she ran to where the horses of the two men stood, watching her, and snorting with astonishment and fright. With hands that trembled more than a little, she threw the reins over their heads, so that they might not drag, and then, using the quirt, dangling from her wrist by a rawhide thong, she turned their heads toward the declivity and lashed them furiously. She watched them as they went helter-skelter, down into the valley, and then with a smile that might have been grim if it had not been so quavering, she mounted her own animal and rode it cautiously up the slope toward the plateau.
As she reached the plateau, her head rising above its edge, she saw that Chavis and Kester were a good quarter of a mile from her and running toward some timber a few hundred yards beyond them.
With a laugh that was almost derisive, Ruth whipped her pony and sent it flying over the plateau at an angle that took her almost directly away from the running men. She had been riding only a minute or two, however, when she heard a shout, and saw that the men had stopped and were facing in her direction, waving their hands at her. They looked grotesque—like jumping jacks—in the sudden twilight that had fallen, and she could not withhold a smile of triumph. It did not last long, for she saw the men begin to run again, this time toward the cut, and she urged her pony to additional effort, fearful that the men might gain their ponies and overtake her.
And now that the men were behind her, she squared her pony toward the trail over which she had ridden to come here, determined to follow it, for she felt that she knew it better than any other.
The pony ran well, covering the ground with long, agile jumps. For about two miles she held it to its rapid pace, and then, looking backward for the first time she saw the plateau, vast, dark and vacant, behind her, and she drew the pony down, for she had come to the stretch of broken country and realized that she must be careful.
She shuddered as she looked at the darkening world in front of her. Never had it seemed so dismal, so empty, and at the same time so full of lurking danger. The time which precedes the onrush of darkness is always a solemn one; it was doubly solemn to Ruth, alone, miles from home, with a known danger behind her and unknown dangers awaiting her.
Fifteen miles! She drew a long breath as the pony scampered along; anxiously she scanned the plains to the south and in front of her for signs of Flying W cattle or men. The cattle and horseman that she had previously seen, far over on the slope, had vanished, and it looked so dismal and empty over there that she turned her head and shivered.
There seemed to be nothing in front of her but space and darkness. She wondered, gulping, whether Uncle Jepson and Aunt Martha were worried about her. They would be, of course, for she had never stayed like this before. But, she thought, with a pulse of joy, they would be lighting the lamps presently, and when she got to the big level beyond the ford, she would be able to see the lights, and the sight of them would make her feel better. She had never realized before how companionable a horse felt, and as her pony ran on, she began to give some attention to his work, noting how his muscles rippled and contracted, how his sides heaved, with what regularity his legs moved. Involuntarily, she felt of his shoulder—it was moist, and the muscles under the smooth hair writhed like living things. She laughed, almost hysterically, for the touch made her feel that she was not alone—she was with the most faithful of man’s friends, and she knew that the little animal under her would do his best for her—would run himself to death in her service, if she insisted.
She had a glorious start over her pursuers. They would never catch her. Twice, after she entered the broken stretch she looked back, but could see no sign of them. She did not know that at that moment Chavis and Kester, enraged and disgusted over the trick she had played on them, were riding slowly through the valley toward their shack.
She was almost through the broken stretch when the pony stumbled. She pulled quickly on the reins, and the pony straightened. But instantly she felt its forelegs stiffen, felt it slide; the thought came to her that it must have slid on a flat rock or a treacherous stretch of lava. It struggled like a cat, to recover its balance, grunting and heaving with the effort, but went down, finally, sideways, throwing her out of the saddle.
She had anticipated the fall and had got her feet out of the stirrups, and she
alighted standing, braced for the shock. Her left foot struck the top of a jagged rock, slipped, doubled under her, and she felt a sharp, agonizing pain in the ankle. For a moment she paid no attention to it, however, being more concerned for the pony, but when she noted that the animal had got up, seemingly none the worse for the fall, she suddenly realized that the ankle pained her terribly, and she hopped over to a flat rock and sat on it, to examine the injury. She worked the ankle rapidly back and forth, each movement bringing tears to her eyes. She had almost forgotten about her pursuers, and when she thought of them she got up and limped toward the pony, which had wandered a little away from where it had fallen.
And now the pony, which had performed so nobly for her during the miles she had ridden to reach this spot, suddenly seemed determined to undo all his service by yielding to a whim to avoid capture.
She tried threats, flattery, cajolery. Twice more she hobbled painfully near him, and each time he unconcernedly walked away. The third time, he allowed her to come very close, and just when she felt that success was very near, he snorted with pretended fright, wheeled, and slashed out with both hoofs at her and galloped off a full quarter of a mile. She could see him standing and looking at her, his ears erect, before the darkness blotted him from view altogether.
She tried again, groping her way painfully over rocks, slipping, stumbling, holding her breath from fear of snakes—but she could not find the pony. And then, white, shaking, clammy from her dread of the darkness, the awesome silence, and the possibility of Chavis and Kester finding her here, she groped blindly until she found a big rock rising high above its fellows, and after a struggle during which she tore the skin from her hands and knees, she climbed to its top and crouched on it, shuddering and crying. And she thought of Randerson; of his seriousness and his earnestness when he had said:
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