The Best Western Novels of William MacLeod Raine. William MacLeod Raine
time, I’ll sing out and let them know. Better leave me that rifle, though.” He went right on, taking it for granted that she had consented to go: “Slip through those shadows up that draw. You’ll have no trouble with Teddy. Whistle when you’re ready, and your father will make a break up the hill on his hawss. So-long. See you later some time, mebbe.”
She went reluctantly, not convinced, but overborne by the quality of cheerful compulsion that lay in him. He was not a large man, though the pack and symmetry of his muscles promised unusual strength. But the close-gripped jaw, the cool serenity of the gray eyes that looked without excitement upon whatever they saw, the perfect poise of his carriage—all contributed to a personality plainly that of a leader of men.
It was scarce a minute later that the whistle came from the hilltop. The mountaineer instantly swung to the saddle and set his pony to a canter up the draw. Fraser could see him join his daughter in the dim light, for the moon had momentarily gone behind a cloud, but almost at once the darkness swallowed them.
Some one in the sagebrush called to a companion, and the Texan knew that the attackers had heard the sound of the galloping horses. Without waiting an instant, he fired twice in rapid succession.
“That’ll hold them for a minute or two,” he told himself. “They won’t understand it, and they’ll get together and have a powwow.”
He crouched behind the dead horse, his gaze sweeping the wash, the sagebrush, and the distant group of cottonwoods from which he had seen a shot fired. Though he lay absolutely still, without the least visible excitement, he was alert and tense to the finger tips. Not the slightest sound, not the smallest motion of the moonlit underbrush, escaped his unwavering scrutiny.
The problem before him was to hold the attackers long enough for Arlie and her father to make their escape, without killing any of them or getting killed himself. He knew that, once out of the immediate vicinity, the fugitives would leave the road and take to some of the canyons that ran from the foothills into the mountains. If he could secure them a start of fifteen minutes that ought to be enough.
A voice from the wash presently hailed him:
“See here! We’re going to take you back with us, old man. That’s a cinch. We want you for that Squaw Creek raid, and we’re going to have you. You done enough damage. Better surrender peaceable, and we’ll promise to take you back to jail. What say?”
“Gimme five minutes to think it over,” demanded the Texan.
“All right, five minutes. But you want to remember that it’s all off with you if you don’t give up. Billy Faulkner’s dead, and we’ll sure come a-shooting.”
Fraser waited till his five minutes was nearly up, then plunged across the road into the sagebrush growing thick there. A shot or two rang out, without stopping him. Suddenly a man rose out of the sage in front of him, a revolver in his hand.
For a fraction of a second, the two men faced each other before either spoke.
“Who are you?”
Fraser’s answer was to dive for the man’s knees, just as a football tackle does. They went down together, but it was the Texan got up first. A second man was running toward him.
“Hands up, there!” the newcomer ordered.
Fraser’s hand went up, but with his forty-five in it. The man pitched forward into the sage. The Southerner twisted forward again, slid down into the dry creek, and ran along its winding bed for a hundred yards. Then he left it, cutting back toward the spot where he had lain behind the dead horse. Hiding in the sage, he heard the pursuit pouring down the creek, waited till it was past, and quickly recrossed the road. Here, among the cow-backed hills, he knew he was as safe as a needle in a haystack.
“I had to get that anxious guy, but it might have been a whole lot worse. I only plugged his laig for him,” he reflected comfortably. “Wonder why they wanted to collect the old man’s scalp, anyhow? The little girl sure was game. Just like a woman, though, the way she broke down because she hit that fellow.”
Within five minutes he was lost again among the thousand hills that rose like waves of the sea, one after another. It was not till nearly morning that he again struck a road.
He was halted abruptly by a crisp command from behind a bowlder:
“Up with your hands—quick!”
“Who are you, my friend?” the Texan asked mildly.
“Deputy sheriff,” was the prompt response. “Now, reach for the sky, and prompt, too.”
“Just as you say. You’ve ce’tainly got the crawl on me.”
The deputy disarmed his captive, and drove him into town before him. When morning dawned, Fraser found himself behind the bars. He was arrested for the murder of Faulkner.
Chapter II.
A Compact
After the jailer had brought his breakfast, Fraser was honored by a visit from the sheriff, a big, rawboned Westerner, with the creases of fifty outdoor years stamped on his brown, leathery face.
He greeted his prisoner pleasantly enough, and sat down on the bed.
“Treating you right, are they?” he asked, glancing around. “Breakfast up to the mark?”
“I’ve got no kick coming, thank you,” said Fraser.
“Good!”
The sheriff relapsed into sombre silence. There was a troubled look in the keen eyes that the Texan did not understand. Fraser waited for the officer to develop the object of his visit, and it was set down to his credit. A weaker man would have rushed at once into excuses and explanations. But in the prisoner’s quiet, steely eyes, in the close-shut mouth and salient jaw, in the set of his well-knit figure, Sheriff Brandt found small room for weakness. Whoever he was, this man was one who could hold his own in the strenuous game of life.
“My friend,” said the sheriff abruptly, “you and I are up against it. There is going to be trouble in town to-night.”
The level, gray eyes looked questioningly at the sheriff.
“You butted into grief a-plenty when you lined up with the cattlemen in this sheep war. Who do you ride for?”
“I’m not riding for anybody,” responded Fraser. “I just arrived from Texas. Didn’t even know there was a feud on.”
Brandt laughed incredulously. “That will sound good to a jury, if your case ever comes to that stage. How do you expect to explain Billy Faulkner’s death?”
“Is there any proof I killed him?”
“Some. You were recognized by two men last night while you were trying to escape. You carried a rifle that uses the same weight bullet as the one we dug out of Billy. When you attacked Tom Peake you dropped that rifle, and in your getaway hadn’t time to pick it up again. That is evidence enough for a Wyoming jury, in the present state of public opinion.”
“What do you mean by ‘in the present state of public opinion’?”
“I mean that this whole country is pretty nearly solid against the Cedar Mountain cattlemen, since they killed Campeau and Jennings in that raid on their camp. You know what I mean as well as I do.”
Fraser did not argue the point. He remembered now having seen an account of the Squaw Creek raid on a sheep camp, ending in a battle that had resulted in the death of two men and the wounding of three others. He had been sitting in a hotel at San Antonio, Texas, when he had read the story over his after-dinner cigar. The item had not seemed even remotely connected with himself. Now he was in prison at Gimlet Butte, charged with murder, and unless he was very much mistaken the sheriff was hinting at a lynching.