Wyoming: A Story of the Outdoor West

by William MacLeod Raine

  CHAPTER 7. THE MAN FROM THE SHOSHONE FASTNESSES

  Though the sharpshooter's rifle cracked twice during his run for thecottonwood, the sheepman reached the tree in safety. He could dodgethrough the brush as elusively as any man in Wyoming. It was a trick hehad learned on the whitewashed football gridiron. For in his buried pastthis man had been the noted half-back of a famous college, and one ofhis specialties had been running the ball back after a catch through abroken field of opponents. The lesson that experience had then thumpedinto him had since saved his life on more than one occasion.

  Having reached the tree, Bannister took immediate advantage of the lieof the ground to snake forward unobserved for another hundred feet.There was a dip from the foot of the tree, down which he rolled into thesage below. He wormed his way through the thick scrub brush to the edgeof a dry creek, into the bed of which he slid. Then swiftly, his bodybent beneath the level of the bank, he ran forward in the sand. He movednoiselessly, eyes and ears alert to aid him, and climbed the bank at apoint where a live oak grew.

  Warily he peeped out from behind its trunk and swept the plain for hisfoe. Nothing was to be seen of him. Slowly and patiently his eyes againwent over the semi-circle before him, for where death may lurk behindevery foot of vegetation, every bump or hillock, the plainsman leavesas little as may be to chance. No faintest movement could escape thesheepman's eyes, no least stir fail to apprise his ears. Yet for manyminutes he waited in vain, and the delay told him that he had to do witha trained hunter rather than a mere reckless cow-puncher. For somewherein the rough country before him his enemy lay motionless, every facultyalive to the least hint of his presence.

  It was the whirring flight of a startled dove that told Bannister thewhereabouts of his foe. Two hundred yards from him the bird rose,and the direction it took showed that the man must have been trailingforward from the opposite quarter. The sheepman slipped back into thedry creek bed, retraced his steps for about a stone-throw, and againcrawled up the bank.

  For a long time he lay face down in the grass, his gaze riveted to thespot where he knew his opponent to be hidden. A faint rustle not bornof the wind stirred the sage. Still Bannister waited. A less experiencedplainsman would have blazed away and exposed his own position. But notthis young man with the steel-wire nerves. Silent as the coming ofdusk, no breaking twig or displaced brush betrayed his self-containedpresence.

  Something in the clump he watched wriggled forward and showedindistinctly through an opening in the underscrub. He whipped his rifleinto position and fired twice. The huddled brown mass lurched forwardand disappeared.

  "Wonder if I got him? Seems to me I couldn't have missed clean," thoughtBannister.

  Silence as before, vast and unbroken.

  A scramble of running feet tearing a path through the brush, a crouchingbody showing darkly for an eyeflash, and then the pounding of a horse'sretreating feet.

  Bannister leaped up, ran lightly across the intervening space, and withhis repeater took a potshot at the galloping horseman.

  "Missed!" he muttered, and at once gave a sharp whistle that brought hispony to him on the trot. He vaulted to the saddle and gave chase. It wasrough going, but nothing in reason can stop a cow-pony. As sure footedas a mountain goat, as good a climber almost as a cat, Buck followed theflying horseman over perilous rock rims and across deep-cut creek beds.Pantherlike he climbed up the steep creek sides without hesitation, forthe round-up had taught him never to falter at stiff going so long ashis rider put him at it.

  It was while he was clambering out of the sheer sides of a wash thatBannister made a discovery. The man he pursued was wounded. Something inthe manner of the fellow's riding had suggested this to him, but a dropof blood splashed on a stone that happened to meet his eye made thesurmise a certainty.

  He was gaining now--not fast, almost imperceptibly, but none the lesssurely. He could see the man looking over his shoulder, once, twice, andthen again, with that hurried, fearful glance that measures the approachof retribution. Barring accidents, the man was his.

  But the unforeseen happened. Buck stepped in the hole of a prairiedog and went down. Over his head flew the rider like a stone from acatapult.

  How long Ned Bannister lay unconscious he never knew. But when he cameto himself it was none too soon. He sat up dizzily and passed his handover his head. Something had happened.

  What was it? Oh, yes, he had been thrown from his horse. A waveof recollection passed over him, and his mind was clear once more.Presently he got to his feet and moved rather uncertainly toward Buck,for the horse was grazing quietly a few yards from him.

  But half way to the pony he stopped. Voices, approaching by way of thebed of Dry Creek, drifted to him.

  "He must 'a' turned and gone back. Mebbe he guessed we was there."

  And a voice that Bannister knew, one that had a strangely penetrant,cruel ring of power through the drawl, made answer: "Judd said beforehe fainted he was sure the man was Ned Bannister. I'd ce'tainly like tomeet up with my beloved cousin right now and even up a few old scores.By God, I'd make him sick before I finished with him!"

  "I'll bet y'u would, Cap," returned the other, admiringly. "Think we'dbetter deploy here and beat up the scenery a few as we go?"

  There are times when the mind works like lightning, flashes its messageson the wings of an electric current. For Bannister this was one of them.The whole situation lighted for him plainly as if it had been explainedfor an hour.

  His cousin had been out with a band of his cut-throats on some errand,and while returning to the fastnesses of the Shoshone Mountains hadstopped to noon at a cow spring three or four miles from the Lazy D.Judd Morgan, whom he knew to be a lieutenant of the notorious bandit,had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity tovent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuingthe renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet's nest, and was inimminent danger of being stung to death. Even now the last speaker wasscrambling up the bank toward him.

  The sheepman had to choose between leaving his rifle and immediateflight. The latter was such a forlorn hope that he gave up Buck for themoment, and ran back to the place where his repeating Winchester hadfallen. Without stopping he scooped the rifle up as he passed. In hisday he had been a famous sprinter, and he scudded now for dear life.It was no longer a question of secrecy. The sound of men breaking theirhurried way through the heavy brush of the creek bank came crisply tohim. A voice behind shouted a warning, and from not a hundred yards infront of him came an answering shout. Hemmed in from the fore and therear, he swung off at a right angle. An open stretch lay before him, buthe had to take his desperate chance without cover. Anything was betterthan to be trapped like a wild beast driven by the beaters to the guns.

  Across the bare, brown mesa he plunged; and before he had taken a dozensteps the first rifle had located its prey and was sniping at him.He had perhaps a hundred yards to cover ere the mesa fell away into ahollow, where he might find temporary protection in the scrub pines.And now a second marksman joined himself to the first. But he was goingfast, already had covered half the distance, and it is no easy thing tobring down a live, dodging target.

  Again the first gun spoke, and scored another miss, whereat a mocking,devilish laugh rang out in the sunshine.

  "Y'u boys splash a heap of useless lead around the horizon. I reckonCousin Ned's my meat. Y'u see, I get him in the flapper without spoilinghim complete." And at the word he flung the rifle to his shoulder andfired with no apparent aim.

  The running man doubled up like a cottontail, but found his feet againin an instant, though one arm hung limp by his side. He was within adozen feet of the hilldrop and momentary safety.

  "Shall I take him, Cap?" cried one of the men.

  "No; he's mine." The rifle smoked once more and again the runner wentdown. But this time he plunged headlong down the slope and out of sight.

  The outlaw chief turned on his heel. "I reckon he'll not run any moreto-day. Bring him into
camp and we'll take him along with us," he saidcarelessly, and walked away to his horse in the creek bed.

  Two of the men started forward, but they stopped half way, as if rootedto the ground. For a galloping horseman suddenly drew up at the verypoint for which they were starting. He leaped to the ground and warnedthem back with his rifle. While he covered them a second man rode up andlifted Bannister to his saddle.

  "Ready, Mac," he gave the word, and both horses disappeared withtheir riders over the brow of the hill. When the surprised desperadoesrecovered themselves and reached that point the rescuers had disappearedin the heavy brush.

  The alarm was at once given, and their captain, cursing them in araucous bellow for their blunder, ordered immediate pursuit. It was somelittle time before the trail of the fugitives was picked up, but oncediscovered they were over hauled rapidly.

  "We're not going to get out without swapping lead," McWilliams admittedanxiously. "I wisht y'u wasn't hampered with that load, but I reckonI'll have to try to stand them off alone."

  "We bucked into a slice of luck when I opened on his bronc maverickingaround alone. Hadn't been for that we could never have made it," saidMissou, who never crossed a bridge until he came to it.

  "We haven't made it yet, old hoss, not by a long mile, and two more ontop o' that. They're beginning to pump lead already. Huh! Got to drapyour pills closer'n that 'fore y'u worry me."

  "I believe he's daid, anyway," said Missou presently, peering down intothe white face of the unconscious man.

  "Got to hang onto the remains, anyhow, for Miss Helen. Those coyotes aretoo much of the wolf breed to leave him with them."

  "Looks like they're gittin' the aim some better," equably remarked theother a minute later, when a spurt of sand flew up in front of him.

  "They're ce'tainly crowding us. I expaict I better send them a'How-de-do?' so as to discourage them a few." He took as careful aim ashe could on the galloping horse, but his bullet went wide.

  "They're gaining like sixty. It's my offhand opinion we better stop atthat bunch of trees and argue some with them. No use buck-jumpin' alongto burn the wind while they drill streaks of light through us."

  "All right. Take the trees. Y'u'll be able to get into the game somethen."

  They debouched from the road to the little grove and slipped from theirhorses.

  "Deader'n hell," murmured Missou, as he lifted the limp body from hishorse. "But I guess we'll pack what's left back to the little lady atthe Lazy D."

  The leader of the pursuers halted his men just out of range and cameforward alone, holding his right hand up in the usual signal of peace.In appearance he was not unlike Ned Bannister. There was the same long,slim, tiger build, with the flowing muscles rippling easily beneath theloose shirt; the same effect of power and dominance, the same clean,springy stride. The pose of the head, too, even the sweep of salientjaw, bore a marked resemblance. But similarity ceased at the expression.For instead of frankness there lurked here that hint of the devil ofstrong passion uncontrolled. He was the victim of his own moods, and inthe space of an hour one might, perhaps, read in that face cold cunning,cruel malignity, leering ribaldry, as well as the hard-bitten virtues ofunflinching courage and implacable purpose.

  "I reckon you're near enough," suggested Mac, when the man hadapproached to within a hundred feet of the tree clump.

  "Y'u're drawing the dead-line," the other acknowledged, indolently."It won't take ten words to tell y'u what I want and mean to have. I'mgiving y'u two minutes to hand me over the body of Ned Bannister. Ify'u don't see it that way I'll come and make a lead mine of your wholeoutfit."

  "Y'u can't come too quick, seh. We're here a-shootin', and don't y'uforget it," was McWilliams's prompt answer.

  The sinister face of the man from the Shoshones darkened. "Y'u've signedyour own death warrants," he let out through set teeth, and at the wordswung on his heel.

  "The ball's about to open. Pardners for a waltz. Have a dust-cutter,Mac, before she grows warm."

  The puncher handed over his flask, and the other held it before his eyeand appraised the contents in approved fashion. "Don't mind if I do.Here's how!"

  "How!" echoed Missou, in turn, and tipped up the bottle till the liquorgurgled down his baked throat.

  "He's fanning out his men so as to, get us both at the front and backdoor. Lucky there ain't but four of them."

  "I guess we better lie back to back," proposed Missou. "If our luck'sgood I reckon they're going to have a gay time rushing this fort."

  A few desultory shots had already been dropped among the cottonwoods,and returned by the defendants when Missou let out a yell of triumph.

  "Glory Hallelujah! Here comes the boys splittin' down the roadhell-for-leather. That lopsided, ring-tailed snorter of a hawss-thiefis gathering his wolves for a hike back to the tall timber. Feed me acigareet, Mac. I plumb want to celebrate."

  It was as the cow-puncher had said. Down the road a cloud of dustwas sweeping toward them, in the centre of which they made out threehardriding cowboys from the ranch. Farther back, in the distance, wasanother dust whirl. The outlaw chief's hard, vigilant gaze swept overthe reinforcements! and decided instantly that the game had gone againsthim for the present. He whistled shrilly twice, and began a slow retreattoward the hills. The miscreants flung a few defiant shots at theadvancing cowmen, and disappeared, swallowed up in the earth swells.

  The homeward march was a slow one, for Bannister had begun to show signsof consciousness and it was necessary to carry him with extreme care.While they were still a mile from the ranch house the pinto and itsrider could be seen loping toward them.

  "Ride forward, Denver, and tell Miss Helen we're coming. Better have herget everything fixed to doctor him soon as we get there. Give him thebest show in the world, and he'll still be sailing awful close to thedivide. I'll bet a hundred plunks he'll cash in, anyway."

  "DONE!"

  The voice came faintly from the improvised litter. Mac turned witha start, for he had not known that Bannister was awake to hissurroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all thelusty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spiritstill triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman lookeda faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: "Still in thering, old man."