He knew that it would be wise to lie low till they were asleep and then slip away from the ranch. Very likely he would be fortunate to escape with a whole skin, but the thought of such a termination of the adventure was not pleasing to him. He had made a gesture before his friends that could justify itself only by success. Unless he took Mullins back with him, he would feel a sense of humiliation. There might still be a slim chance of doing this.
He knew the habits of outdoor men. Each one of these outlaws would come out before turning in for sleep to have a look around and make sure everything seemed safe. Mullins might appear by himself. If there was a poker game there was more likelihood of men drifting alone from the hot room into the cool night.
To take advantage of such an opportunity, Hal had to be nearer the house. He crept forward from the ravine and took a position back of the stable. There was a manure heap beside him, luckily an old one. Though he did not find this pleasant, it might turn out an advantage if he had to crouch down to avoid detection.
His vigil proved a long one. There was a poker game, and hours slipped away before the door opened and Mullins stood in the spot of light thrown out by the lamp behind him. He came into the starlit night, closing the door, and walked to the corral. Presently he lit a cigarette, flung away a match, and turned toward the house.
A figure lounged forward to meet him. 'Damn the game,' a voice drawled. 'I can't win a pot, Ed.'
Mullins was not a quick thinker. He supposed another player had wandered temporarily away from the game. Not until the gun was rammed into his belly did he recognize Stevens.
'Goddlemighty!' gasped Mullins. 'You — again!'
'Right. We're going back to the corral.' Hal tucked an arm under his. 'Easy does it. No noise.'
When they reached the corral, Hal told him to pick up his saddle and bridle. They walked through a gate into the pasture. The horses could be seen, dim shapes in the darkness, feeding at the far end of the five-acre enclosure.
Hal ran a hand over the man's body, found a weapon, and flung it into the brush.
'Look here, Mr. Stevens,' remonstrated Mullins. 'You can't do this. You're crazy. Some of the boys are sure to come out and see you before you get away. The game is about ready to break up. You'd better skedaddle before they know you're here.'
'Exactly my idea,' Hal chuckled. 'We'll both go soon as you have saddled.'
'If I was you I wouldn't wait—'
Hal cut his advice short. 'Get your rope and catch a fresh horse,' his captor ordered.
They cornered the grazing animals. Mullins picked a roan and threw. The loop slid down the shoulder of the horse. He coiled the rope and made a second throw. Caught by the neck, the cowpony gave up at once.
Still protesting, Mullins put on the bridle and cinched the saddle. They walked back to the gate. Light from the lamp in the cabin shone through the open door. A man in the doorway wanted to know profanely where Ed was.
'Tell him you've been looking after a cow ready to calve,' Hal said.
Mullins relayed the message. He shouted as an afterthought that he would be back pretty soon. The inquirer went back into the house and closed the door.
'You're doing fine,' Hal congratulated his prisoner. 'Maybe I can get you out alive.'
He prodded the homesteader to the ravine and tied his feet under the belly of the horse. The loop of his own rope he put around the man's neck.
'An hour from now we'll both be out of here or permanent residents,' Hal told him coolly. 'It's up to you to play on my side just now.'
To reach the ledge road they had to pass within fifty yards of the house. Mullins hung back.
'If anybody opens the door—'
'Then the band will begin to play.' Hal felt the pulse of excitement beating in him that the presence of danger always set drumming. 'And since I am, like Mercutio, the very pink of courtesy, I'll let you lead the way. Undale, compadre!'
Hal's rifle lay across the saddle in front of him. In spite of his blithe manner, the rustler knew he must obey that order to go. The roan moved forward, and before it had taken a dozen steps light streamed out from the opened cabin door.
Frawley's big frame stood in the entrance. He gave a shout of warning. 'What's going on here?'
'We've got to run for it,' Hal cried, and lashed the rump of the roan with his quirt.
The horses raced straight for the house.
'It's Stevens,' Frawley roared, and disappeared from the doorway.
Hal swung his horse against the roan. 'Cut to the right,' he ordered. Mullins did as he was directed. He was as eager to get out of range as his captor. Looking back over his shoulder, the heart died in him. Men were pouring out of the house like seeds squirted from an orange. The crash of revolvers filled the night. A rifle's sharp whine whipped across the park.
The buckskin was hit. Hal could feel the horse begin to go down an instant before its collapse. He threw himself out of the saddle, caught at Mullins's belt, and swung himself behind the man.
'Keep going,' he snapped.
A man ran forward to cut them off from the road. Hal realized later that he could not have been in the house at the time Frawley discovered them. He was a big bull-necked fellow with buck teeth. Without stopping, he fired and missed. Plunging forward, his hand caught the bridle rein. Hal had dropped the rifle when vaulting to the back of the roan, but his revolver was out. Flung off-balance by the impetus of the horse's motion, the rustler lost the fraction of a second that might have saved him. Before he could steady himself, his finger pressed the trigger and sent a bullet flying skyward. The slug from Hal's .38 plowed into his brain. A slack hand fell from the bridle and the big body of the outlaw sank to the ground.
The horse almost went down over the body, but Mullins steadied its head and lifted it to its feet again. He urged the roan into a slow heavy gallop. The fugitives were now out of revolver range. The rifle still pumped at them, but the light was not good enough to make out objects clearly at a distance. They had reached the road, and the weighted cowpony was laboring with difficulty up the hill.
Hal slipped from the back of the roan and ran beside it on the inside of the ledge trail. Apparently a second rifle had joined the first, and both of them were raking the rocky hillside. Only the darkness saved the escaping men from being picked off by the marksmen in the valley.
'They'll get us yet,' Mullins said fretfully.
'Not unless someone makes a lucky shot,' Hal amended.
'Soon as they can saddle, they'll take after us. How can we get away on one horse? If you're smart you'll let me go and ride like the heel flies are after you.'
'I like yore company,' Hal drawled. 'With you here I won't be afraid of the dark. Come to think of it, we have half a world of darkness in which to hide. I reckon we'll make out.'
'You'll push yore fool luck too far some time,' Mullins complained angrily.
'It has stood up fine so far,' Hal mentioned cheerfully.
He had lost a good horse and saddle, but he felt the elation that comes after escape from danger pressing close on one.
CHAPTER 34
Hal Makes a Run for It
HAL knew that as soon as the outlaws could catch and saddle they would come pounding up the ledge road after him. This did not disturb him greatly, for in this rough country scarred with gullies their chance of finding him at night would be slight. The danger would come later, when after daybreak he drew close to the M K. Probably they would be waiting in the brush for him there.
At the summit of the shale ridge bounding the mountain pocket, he left the road and cut into the brush-covered mesa. Hal walked beside the horse, a hand on the stirrup leather. It was likely that they would get lost temporarily in this tiptilted No Man's Land, but eventually they could get down to the valley by bearing south.
A water-gutted arroyo slashed through the mesa. Hal pulled up the horse to listen. On the gentle night breeze there came to them a rumor of drumming hoofs, so faint that only a trained ear could regi
ster the sound.
'Yore anxious friends aren't losing any time,' Hal mentioned to his prisoner.
'What's the sense in taking me with you?' Mullins wanted to know fretfully. 'Why don't you take the horse and let me hoof it back?'
'I wouldn't desert you after all we've been through,' his captor told him with gentle irony. 'Question before the house is, Do we follow this arroyo or keep going straight ahead?'
'We'll get lost, whichever we do,' Mullins prophesied sourly.
'So we may,' Hal agreed. 'But we'll have each other for company. The arroyo wins. Right face.'
The bed of the ravine became a thicket of yucca, mesquite, cholla, and bisnaga. Hal mounted behind the hill man, to protect his legs from the thorns snatching at them.
The pony picked its way along the line of least resistance with the sure instinct of a horse trained in brush country, and after a few minutes came to a cañon with high perpendicular walls. The darkness was almost impenetrable. Far above was a narrow ribbon of star-dotted sky, but the light did not reach the floor of the gorge along which they were feeling their way.
A cleft opened in the left wall, a narrow gulch down which in floodtime water must have poured for thousands of years. Whether it was possible to get out of the gorge by this steep stairway, they could find out only by trying.
Hal cocked an inquiring eye at his companion. 'How would you like to be a human fly, Mr. Mullins?' he asked.
Mullins declined emphatically. 'I'm not going up there. A mountain goat couldn't make it.'
'Now — now, that's not the spirit,' Hal chided. 'In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as can't. Remember how Hannibal crossed the Alps — and Caesar the Rubicon.'
His captive looked at him angrily. 'You're crazy as a hoot owl. I don't want to break my neck, if you do.'
Yet a minute later the cowpony, with Mullins on its back, was scrambling up the defile. Hal led the way on foot, to help with suggestions at the more difficult bits. The gorge was strewn with rubble that offered bad footing and in places big boulders filled the floor. The roan stumbled, slipped, slithered down, found its feet, and pressed forward with catlike sureness.
They came to a trough so steep that Hal hesitated to try it, but just above this the way eased gently to the summit.
'Told you we couldn't make it,' Mullins exulted. 'But of course it had to be your way. Nothing you don't know.'
'We'll have to give the horse some help,' Hal said, after studying the situation. He untied the rope that bound the feet of his prisoner and put the loop around the neck of the roan. 'I'll go ahead with the rope far as that rock outcrop, you come next with the bridle coaxing the horse up the trough.'
Mullins refused bitterly to join in the attempt. 'You're fixing to get us both killed. I'm going back.'
'No,' Hal told him firmly. 'You're going to the top if I have to rope you and drag you up.'
The horse balked, but after a time knifed its front hoofs into the ground and plunged forward. More than once it refused to try the precipitous slope. Mullins petted and soothed the animal till it was ready for another rush. How they got it to the rock outcrop where there was solid ground for standing was a marvel. From there the rise was more gradual. They hauled, encouraged, and bullied the roan to the summit.
Mullins wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve. 'If I ever tell the boys I brought a horse up there, I'll be called a liar for the rest of my life,' he said.
It was lighter on the plateau. While they waited to rest, Hal noticed the ground sloped to the south. A stand of junipers covered the mesa, but there was little small brush. Before they reached the yonder side of the high land, the gray light of dawn was beginning to sift into the sky. In front of them were cowbacked hills with wide draws between. The M K rancher recognized this country.
If they kept going, the coming day would show them the range where his cattle fed. They descended a slope sown with a thin stand of Spanish bayonet and climbed the hill beyond.
'Home soon,' Hal said cheerfully. 'We've earned a first-class breakfast.'
His companion growled resentfully. He guessed that an ordeal was ahead of him. Stevens intended to break his resistance and make him talk.
They dipped into another draw and moved up the opposite incline. Day was breaking clear, and they could see the blades of the M K windmill whirling in the breeze.
Hal gave an exclamation of annoyance. In the valley below them a man stood holding a bunch of saddled horses. One of the dismounted riders was lying back of a clump of bushes watching the ranch house. The outlaws had cut him off from his friends. When he glanced at Mullins, he saw a sly pleased smile vanishing from the man's face.
'Looks like your luck has run out,' the rustler said.
Stevens caught the bridle rein and moved the horse back of the hill crest. 'I'll have to give you a raincheck on that breakfast,' he told his prisoner. 'We're traveling again.'
'Where?' asked Mullins.
'Away from here,' Hal answered.
He knew this part of the country as a teacher does her textbook. In and out among the low hills he took Mullins and brought him at last down Frenchy's Draw to the valley.
'You're headin' for the Seven Up,' the outlaw said.
'Yes.'
'But the boys will see us crossing the pasture.'
'They may. We'll leave the horse in the arroyo and cut across on foot. Maybe they won't notice us.'
'You can't do that to me!' Mullins cried. 'I'm not going.
Of course they would see us — and pick us off with rifles. They wouldn't know me from you.'
Hal said quietly, 'We'll go together.'
There was a cold, hard light in his eyes that chilled the hill man. In his will was a driving force not to be denied. His reckless feet had carried him on many a dangerous trail. Mullins knew that this was one he had to take with him.
When they emerged from the draw, the eyes of both men swept the ridge to the north. No sign of the enemy could be seen there. But before they had covered a hundred yards of the meadow, several horsemen sat in silhouette against the skyline. Mullins gave a yelp of alarm and began to run. He had not gone a dozen steps when the riders started down the hill toward them.
Hal's guess was that they would be caught before they could reach the ranch house. As he ran, he fired twice into the air, in the hope of drawing the attention of somebody at the Seven Up to their predicament. The distance to the hill below the house was probably a mile and a half. The riders would come in through the north gate and cut diagonally across in front of them. He looked over his shoulder and saw that they were already pouring through the opening in the barbed wire fence. Soon bullets would begin to throw up spits of dirt in front of and behind them.
CHAPTER 35
Under Cover of a White Flag
DALE'S restless gaze wandered from the mountain spikes of Rabbit Ear, down the torn hill country to the M K ranch, and swept the valley at her feet. She had risen from a night of wakefulness and troubled dreams due to anxiety on account of Hal Stevens. For nearly three days he had been missing. His friends had hoped that he would return with Sheriff Elbert's posse, but it had come back yesterday afternoon with no news of him and without any of the men wanted by the law.
Casey joined her in front of the house. He knew that she was greatly worried. Since he liked and admired Hal, his mind too was disturbed. But he did not let this doubt reach the surface.
'Stevens will turn up all right,' he assured her. 'He has more lives than a cat. Don't you fret, Miss Dale. That young man will come in grinning when he is ready.'
'He's up there somewhere in the Rabbit Ear country,' she said, her harassed eyes shuttling back to the hills. 'One of his men saw him heading that way.' A pulse of anger leaped into her voice. 'What is he trying to do alone? Hasn't he any sense?'
'The crazy things he does seem always to come out right. It will be that way this time too.'
'There are some men on the valley rim this side of the M K,' t
he girl cried. 'Wait a minute.' She ran into the house and returned with field glasses.
After a long look she handed the glasses to her foreman. The men were on horseback, but were too far away to be identified.
'They are starting down into the valley,' Casey said. 'What for?'
'Look!' Dale pointed across the pasture to the mouth of Frenchy's Draw. Two men had come out of it and were running across the meadow. She snatched the glasses from Casey and with them picked up the two on foot. 'I believe—'
Dale broke off her sentence and gave a sharp order. 'Get that car going and pick me up here.' She ran into the house and was back in time to meet Casey in the sedan. He flung open the door without quite stopping and the girl jumped in beside him. She had a rifle in her hand.
'They are boiling into the pasture to cut those fellows off,' the foreman said. 'How many of them?'
He was busy keeping the car in the road. They were racing downhill as fast as he dared, and he must watch where he was going.
'Five of them,' Dale answered. 'Hal is one of the two.'
Casey slackened for the gate. She jumped out and flung it wide. In another moment she was beside him again.
The horsemen were firing as they galloped, Dale could see the spurts of dust flung up where the bullets struck. Fortunately, none of the riders pulled up to take careful aim. They did not want to lose the chance of cutting off the runners from the ranch house.
It would be a near thing. The car would beat the hill men to their prey, but the pickup would be under the fire of the rifles. Over the grass bumps travel was rough, and at the speed they were making the sedan pitched like a bucking bronco.
Who Wants to Live Forever? Page 17