Clattering Hoofs. William MacLeod Raine
man’s shoulder she had seen a horseman at the top of the rise from which the buggy had just descended.
For an instant the newcomer sat there, silhouetted against the horizon, a lean long-bodied fellow with a rifle in his hands. His horse jumped to a gallop, and he charged down the slope. Sandra had no time to guess who he was or why he was coming. She was too absorbed to breathe. It was afterward that she likened that headlong rush to the flight of an avenging angel.
2. A Tough Hombre Trapped
OUT OF A GASH IN THE HILLS TWO MEN RODE WARILY TO THE edge of the mesa and searched with their eyes the torn valley below. Seen from above, its floor was as wrinkled as a crumpled sheet of brown wrapping paper. The surface was scarred by lomas, washes, and arroyos running down from the bench back of it.
A brazen sun beat down on baked terrain sown with cactus and greasewood. In this harsh desiccated region the struggle to live was continuous. Vegetation was tough, with clutching claws. Reptiles carried their defensive poison. The animals that at rare moments flitted through the brush were fierce and furtive.
But no more savage than the men whose gaze squinted up and down the basin at their feet. The skin of the cholla was less tough than theirs. When cornered they could strike with the swift deadliness of the sidewinder. Across their saddles rifles lay ready for instant use. The butts of revolvers projected from the pockets attached to the shiny leather chaps they wore. Into every fold and wrinkle of their clothes the dust of long travel had filtered.
“Filled with absentees, looks like,” one of them drawled.
His companion added dryly, “I hope.”
The first speaker, a long dark man with a scar across his left cheek from ear to chin, lifted a hand in signal. Cattle dribbled out of the cut through which they had just come, pushed forward by a heavy-set squat man bringing up the drag. The animals moved wearily. It was plain they had been driven far and hard. The bawling of the beasts for water was almost incessant.
Anxiously the scarfaced man slanted a look at the westering sun. “Come dark we’ll be in the clear—if night ever gets here. Once we reach the pass they’ll never find us.”
“Likely we had a long head start.” The squat man’s glance swept the valley slowly. In the tangled panorama below him he could see no sign of human life. “No use gettin’ goosey, I reckon. Loan me a chaw, Sim.”
Sim was the oldest of the three and the smallest, with a face as seamed as a dried-up winter apple. He drew a plug of tobacco from his hip pocket and threw it across to the other and watched the sharp teeth at work. “You don’t have to eat the whole plug,” he remonstrated. “If I was you, Chunk, I’d buy me two bits worth of chewing some time and see how my own tobacco tasted.”
They turned the leaders into a draw that dropped down to the valley and presently the herd was in motion again. A cloud of fine dust, stirred by the tramping feet, rose into the air and marked their progress. The cattle smelled water and began to hurry. Scarface tried to check them, fearing a stampede, but the cattle pounded past him on a run. They tore down to the creek, which was dry except for half a dozen large pools, and crowded into the water. Those in the rear fought to get forward, while the leaders held stubbornly to the water until they had drunk their fill. The herders had their hands full moving the watered stock out of the way to make place for the thirsty steers.
They were getting the last of the cattle out of the bed of the creek when Chunk looked up and gave a shout of warning. Four armed men had just topped a knoll two hundred yards away and were coming up the valley toward them. The heavy-set man whirled his cowpony and jumped it to a gallop. Scarface took his dust not a dozen yards in the rear. It took Sim a moment to understand what was spurring his companions to flight. He was on the side of the herd nearest the approaching riders, and he lost more time circling the closely packed cattle.
A voice called to him to halt, but Sim had urgent business elsewhere. He stooped low in the saddle, his quirt flogging the buckskin he rode. The crack of a Winchester sounded, then another. The body of the little man sank lower. He clutched at the horn of the saddle. His head slid along the shoulder of his mount toward the ground. As he plunged downward, the fingers of his hand relaxed their grip on the horn.
Three of the pursuers went past him without stopping, the fourth pulled up and swung from the saddle. The body of the little man lay face down in the sand. He turned it over. Though the lips of the rustler were bloodless and his face grey, he was still alive. He recognized John Ranger, the man at his side.
“Who got you into this mess, Sim?” the cattleman asked.
The outlaw shook his head. His voice was low and faint. “You’ve killed me. Ain’t that enough?” he murmured.
They were his last words. He shut his eyes. A moment later his body relaxed and seemed to sink into itself.
Rustlers and cowmen had disappeared over a rise, but to Ranger had come the sound of shots, four or five of them, the last one fainter as the distance increased. He remounted and rode after his friends. The reason why the thieves had fled without a fight was clear to him. They were not so much afraid of a battle as of having their identity discovered. A rustler caught in the act had either to get out of the country or be killed. Since these fellows were not ready to leave they had to avoid recognition.
Near the end of the valley Ranger pulled up, uncertain whether the riders had ridden to the right or the left of the great rock which rose like a giant flatiron to separate the two cañons running out of the flats to the hills beyond. A rifle boomed again, far above him to the left. The explosion told him which gulch to follow. Before he reached the scene of action he heard other shots.
The cañon opened into a small park hemmed in by a rock wall, at the foot of which was a boulder field. In one swift glance Ranger’s eyes picked up his companions. Two of them were crouched behind cottonwoods and the third back of a fallen log, all watching the rock pile lying close to the cliff.
“Got a coon treed, Pete?” Ranger asked.
“Y’betcha. He’s skulking in the rocks.” The voice of the speaker was flat and venomous, his foxlike face sour and bitter. Peter McNulty was his name. He ran a small spread up by Double Fork. “Darned fool hasn’t anything but a six-gun. We’ll smoke him out soon.”
The man behind another cottonwood had a suggestion. “Can’t get at him from here, John. How about you riding up the gully and potting him from the bluff? He’ll have to throw in his hand then.”
“All right, Russ. The fellow you knocked off his horse down below has cashed in. He was old Sim Jones.”
Russell Hart frowned. He was a quiet and responsible cattleman. It gave him no pleasure to know that he had killed a man, and particularly as inoffensive a man as Sim Jones. Wryly, by inference at least, he justified himself. “That’s what bad company does for a man,” he said. “If he hadn’t thrown in with Scarface he would have gone straight enough. Sim was trifling, but there was no harm in him.”
Ranger swung his horse round and guided it into a sunken channel that had been cut by floods from the ridge above to the park. At the summit he dismounted and tied the pony, then moved forward cautiously to the edge of the precipice. The trapped man was kneeling back of a boulder, revolver in hand. Other rocks protected his flanks.
The cattleman took careful aim and fired at the flat plane of one of the rocks. Startled at this attack from the air, the man below looked up. The face turned toward Ranger was bearded but young.
“Throw up your hands and walk out of there,” ordered Ranger.
The man with the revolver knew he was beaten. His forty-five would not carry accurately to any of his foes. Ranger was quite safe on the bluff, but from where he stood he could send bullets tearing into the body of the other.
“What’s all the shooting about?” demanded the stranger. “Why should you fellows jump me when I’m riding peaceably about my business?”
“Don’t talk. Drop that gun and get going.”