“What’s the matter?” inquired Bud suddenly. “What yuh scowlin’ that way for?”
“Nothing special,” evaded Buck. “I was just thinking.” After all, there was no use crossing bridges until one came to them. “We’d better get started,” he added briskly. “We’ve found out all we want here, and there’s no sense in taking chances of running up against the gang.”
“What’s the next move?” asked Bud, when they had mounted and started back over their trail.
“Look up Hardenberg and put him wise to what we know,” answered Stratton promptly. “We’ve done about all we can; the rest of it’s up to him.”
“I reckon so,” agreed Jessup. “I never met up with him, but they say he’s a good skate. Perilla’s some little jaunt from here, though. Yuh thinkin’ of riding all the way?”
“Why not? It’ll be quicker in the end than going to Harpswell and taking the train. We’ll likely need the cayuses, too, when we get there. I’ve done forty miles at a stretch plenty of times.”
“So’ve I, but not with a bad ankle and a bunged-up side,” returned Bud dryly. “How yuh feelin’?”
“Fine! I’ve hardly had a twinge all day. That bandage stuff is great dope for keeping a fellow strapped up comfortable.”
“Well, if you’re up to it, I reckon that would be better than the train,” Bud admitted. “For one thing, if we take the trail around south of the Rocking-R we ain’t likely to meet up with anybody who’ll put Lynch wise, an’ I take it that’s important.”
“I’ll say so!” agreed Buck emphatically. “The chances are that even if he got wind of you and me being together, he’d realize the game was up, and probably beat it for the border. As long as we can manage to keep out of the spot-light, he may suspect a lot of things, but considering the size of the stake, he’s likely to take a chance and hang on.”
“Let’s hope he don’t take it into his head to ride up here this morning,” remarked Jessup, glancing apprehensively across the desert wastes toward the south. “That would spill the beans for fair.”
The very possibility made them urge the horses to an even greater speed, and neither of them really breathed freely until they had gained the little sheltered depression in the cliffs, from which the trail led over the shoulder of the mountain.
“I reckon we’re safe enough now,” commented Stratton, drawing rein. “I didn’t see a sign of anybody as we came along.”
Halting for ten minutes to rest the horses, they started up the trail in single file, Bud going first. For a greater part of the distance the rocky spurs shielded them from any save a very limited field of observation. But at the summit there was an almost level stretch of twenty feet or more from which an extended view could be had, not only of a wide sweep of desert country, but of a section of the northern end of middle pasture as well. Reaching this point, Buck glanced back searchingly. An instant later he was out of the saddle and crouching against the rocky wall.
“Lead Pete around the corner,” he urged Jessup sharply. “Get out of sight as quick as you can.”
Bud obeyed without question, and Stratton hastily took out his field-glasses and focused them on the three figures he had glimpsed riding along the northern extremity of the Shoe-Bar pasture. He recognized them instantly, pausing only long enough to make out that they did not seem to be in haste, and that so far as he could tell they were not looking in the direction of the trail. Then he thrust the glasses back into the case, and slipping around the buttress rejoined his companion.
“Lynch, with McCabe and Kreeger,” he explained curtly, gathering up the reins and swinging himself into the saddle.
“Did they see yuh?”
“I don’t think so. They seemed to be taking things easy, and weren’t looking this way at all. I wonder what they’re up to?”
“Couldn’t we stick around here for a while and watch them?” Bud asked eagerly.
Buck hesitated an instant. “I guess we’d better not take a chance,” he replied at length. “Such a whale of a lot depends on his not knowing that I’m alive and kicking; I’d hate like the devil to spoil everything now by his getting a glimpse of me. Besides, for all we know they may be coming through here to meet somebody—the rest of the gang, perhaps, or—”
“That’s right,” interrupted Bud hastily. “Let’s go. Sooner we’re off this here trail the better.”
Without further delay they rode on down the slope, paused for a moment or two at the spring in the hollow to water the horses, and then pushed on again. Passing the entrance to the gulch, Jessup glanced that way curiously.
“Mebbe they’re on their way to dispose of yore corpse, Buck,” he chuckled.
Stratton grinned. “I thought of that, and I rather hope it’s so. They’d be puzzled and suspicious, maybe, but they couldn’t be really sure of anything. It would be a whole lot better than to have them run across our tracks in the sand back there. That would give away the show completely.”
Twenty minutes or so later they reached the gully through which they had come out on the trail. Though there had been no further signs of the Shoe-Bar men, their vigilance did not relax. Pushing on with all possible speed, they covered the distance to the little camp in very much less time than it had taken in the morning.
Here the horses had a brief rest while the two men collected their few belongings and loaded them on the pack-horse, for they had decided to go on at once. Both felt that no time should be lost in finding the sheriff and setting the machinery of the law in motion. Moreover, they were down to the last scrap of food and unless they stirred themselves they were likely to go hungry that night.
An hour later found them riding southward, following the route through the mountains used by the cattle-rustlers. Making the same cautious circuit Buck had taken around the southern end of the Shoe-Bar, they reached Rocking-R land without adventure and pulled up before the door of Red Butte camp about six o’clock.
Gabby Smith was cooking supper and greeted them with his customary lack of enthusiasm. Bud, who had never seen him before, was much diverted by his manner, and during the meal kept up a constant chatter of comment and question for the purpose, as he afterward confessed, of making the taciturn puncher go the limit in the matter of loquacity. His effort, though it could scarcely be termed successful, evidently got on Gabby’s nerves, for afterward he turned both men out of the cabin while he cleared up, a process lasting until nearly bedtime.
It was not until then that Stratton, by a chance remark, learned that three or four days after his departure from the camp two weeks earlier, a stranger had been there making inquiries about him. Gabby’s stenographic brevity made it difficult to extract details, but apparently the fellow had passed himself off as an old friend of Buck’s from Texas, desirous of looking him up. He was a stranger to Gabby, slight, dark, with eyes set rather closely together, and he rode a Shoe-Bar horse. Apparently he had hung around camp until nearly dusk, and then departed only when Gabby got rid of him by suggesting that his man had probably ridden in to spend the night at the Rocking-R ranch-house.
Stratton and Jessup discussed the incident while making brief preparation for bed. So far as Bud knew there had been no stranger on the Shoe-Bar at that time; but it seemed certain that the fellow must have been sent by Lynch to spy around and find out where Buck was.
“I s’pose he went to the ranch-house first and Tenny sent him down here, knowing he wouldn’t get much out of Gabby,” remarked Stratton. “Well, as far as I can see he had his trouble for his pains. Unless he hung around for two or three days he couldn’t very well be certain I wasn’t somewhere on the ranch.”
Save as a matter of curiosity, however, the whole affair lay too far in the past to be of the least importance now, and it was soon dismissed. Having removed boots and outer clothing, and spread their blankets in one of the pair of double-decked bunks, the two men lost no time crawling between them, and fell almost instantly asleep.
* * *
CHAPTER XXV
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THE TRAP
“Yuh out last night?” brusquely inquired Gabby, as they were dressing next morning.
A direct question from the eccentric individual was so novel that Buck paused in buckling on his cartridge-belt, and stared at him in frank surprise.
“Why, no,” he returned promptly. “Were you, Bud?”
“I sure wasn’t. I didn’t budge after my head hit the mattress. What gave yuh the notion, old-timer?”
“Door unlatched,” growled Gabby, continuing his preparations for breakfast.
“Is that all?” shrugged Bud. “Likely nobody thought to close it tight.”
Gabby made no answer, but his expression, as he went silently about his work, failed to show conviction.
“Ain’t he a scream?” inquired Bud an hour later, when they had saddled up and were on their way. “I don’t wonder Tenny can’t get nobody to stay in camp with him. It would be about as cheerful as a morgue.”
“Must have got soured in his youth,” remarked Stratton. “I had to put up a regular fight to get him to look after the pack-horse till somebody can take it back to the ranch-house. Where do we hit this trail you were telling me about?”
“About a mile and a half further on. It ain’t much to boast of, but chances are we won’t meet up with a soul till we run into the main road a mile or so this side of Perilla.”
Bud’s prediction proved accurate. They encountered no one throughout the entire length of the twisting, narrow, little-used trail, and even when they reached the main road early in the afternoon there was very little passing.
“Reckon they’re all taking their siesta,” commented. Bud. “Perilla’s a great place for greasers, yuh know, bein’ so near the border. There’s a heap sight more of ’em than whites.”
Presently they began to pass small, detached adobe huts, some of them the merest hovels. A few dark-faced children were in sight here and there, but the older persons were all evidently comfortably indoors, slumbering through the noonday heat.
Further on the houses were closer together, and at length Bud announced that they were nearing the main street, one end of which crossed the road they were on at right angles.
“That rickety old shack there is just on the corner,” he explained. “It’s a Mexican eating-house, as I remember. Most of the stores an’ decent places are up further.”
“Wonder where Hardenberg hangs out?” remarked Stratton.
“Yuh got me. I never had no professional use for him before. Reckon most anybody can tell us, though. That looks like a cow-man over there. Let’s ask him.”
A moment or two later they stopped before the dingy, weather-beaten building on the corner. Two horses fretted at the hitching-rack, and on the steps lounged a man in regulation cow-boy garb. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth, and as the two halted he glanced up from the newspaper he was reading.
“Hardenberg?” he repeated in answer to the question. “Yuh mean the sheriff? Why, he’s inside there.”
Bud looked surprised and somewhat incredulous. “What the devil’s he doin’ in that greaser eatin’-house?”
The stranger squinted one eye as the cigarette smoke curled up into his face. “Oh, he ain’t patronizin’ the joint,” he explained with a touch of dry amusement. “He’s after old José Maria for sellin’ licker, I reckon. Him an’ one of his deputies rode up about five minutes ago.”
After a momentary hesitation Stratton and Jessup dismounted and tied their horses to the rack. Buck realized that the sheriff might not care to be interrupted while on business of this sort, but their own case was so urgent that he decided to take a chance. At least he could find out when Hardenberg would be at leisure.
Pushing through the swinging door, they found themselves in a single, long room, excessively dingy and rather dark, the only light coming from two unshuttered windows on the north side. To Buck’s surprise at least a score of Mexicans were seated around five or six bare wooden tables eating and drinking. Certainly if a raid was on they were taking it very calmly. The next moment he was struck by two things; the sudden hush which greeted their appearance, and the absence of any one who could possibly be the man they sought.
“Looks like that fellow must have given us the wrong tip,” he said, glancing at Jessup. “I don’t see any one here who—”
He paused as a wizened, middle-aged Mexican got up from the other end of the room and came toward them.
“Yo’ wish zee table, señors?” he inquired. “P’raps like zee chile con carne, or zee—”
“We don’t want anything to eat,” interrupted Stratton. “I understand Sheriff Hardenberg is here. Could I see him a minute?”
“Oh, zee shereef!” shrugged the Mexican, with a characteristic gesture of his hands. “He in zee back room with José Maria. Yo’ please come zis way.”
He turned and walked toward a door at the further end of the long room, the two men following him between the tables. But Buck had not taken more than half a dozen steps before he stopped abruptly. That curious silence seemed to him too long continued to be natural; there was a hint of tension, of suspense in it. And something about the attitude of the seated Mexicans—a vague sense of watchful, stealthy scrutiny, of tense, quivering muscles—confirmed his sudden suspicion.
“Hold up, Bud!” he warned impulsively. “There’s something wrong here.”
As if the words were a signal, the crowd about them surged up suddenly, with the harsh scrape of many chair-legs and an odd, sibilant sound, caused by a multitude of quick-drawn breaths. Like a flash Buck pulled his gun and leveled it on the nearest greaser.
“Get out of the way,” he ordered, taking a step toward the outer door.
The fellow shrank back instinctively, but to Buck’s surprise—the average Mexican is not noted for daredevil bravery—several others behind pushed themselves forward. Suddenly Jessup’s voice rose in shrill warning.
“Look out, Buck! Behind yuh—quick! That guy’s got a knife.”
Stratton whirled swiftly to catch a flashing vision of a tall Mexican creeping toward him, a long, slim knife glittering in his upraised hand. The fellow was so close that another step would bring him within striking distance, and without hesitation Buck’s finger pressed the trigger.
The hammer fell with an ominous, metallic click. Amazed, Buck hastily pulled the trigger twice again without results. As he realized that in some mysterious manner the weapon had been tampered with, his teeth grated, but with no perceptible pause in the swiftness of his action he drew back his arm and hurled the pistol straight into the greaser’s face.
His aim was deadly. The heavy Colt struck the fellow square on the mouth, and with a smothered cry he dropped the knife and staggered back, flinging up both hands to his face. But others leaped forward to take his place, a dozen knives flashing in as many hands. The ring closed swiftly, and from behind him Stratton heard Bud cry out with an oath that his gun was useless.
There was no time for conscious planning. It was instinct alone—that primitive instinct of every man sore pressed to get his back against something solid—that made Buck lunge forward suddenly, seize a Mexican around the waist, and hurl him bodily at one side of the closing circle.
This parted abruptly and two men went sprawling. One of them Buck kicked out of the way, feeling a savage satisfaction at the impact of his boot against soft flesh and at the yell of pain that followed. Catching Jessup by an arm he swept him toward one of the tables, snatched up a chair, and with his back against the heavy piece of furniture he faced the mob. His hat was gone, and as he stood there, big body braced, mouth set, and hair crested above his smoldering eyes, he made a splendid picture of force and strength which seemed for an instant to awe the Mexicans into inactivity.
But the pause was momentary. Urged on by a voice in the rear, they surged forward again, two of the foremost hurling their knives with deadly aim. One Stratton avoided by a swift duck of his head; the other he caught dexterously on the chair-bottom. Then
, over the heads of the crowd, another chair came hurtling with unexpected force and precision. It struck Buck’s crude weapon squarely, splintering the legs and leaving him only the back and precariously wobbling seat.
He flung this at one of the advancing men and floored him. But another, slipping agilely in from the side, rushed at him with upraised knife. He was the same greaser who, weeks before, had played that trick about the letter; and Buck’s lips twitched grimly as he recognized him.
As the knife flashed downward, Stratton squirmed his body sidewise so that the blade merely grazed one shoulder. Grasping the slim wrist, he twisted it with brutal force, and the weapon clattered to the floor. An instant later he had gripped the fellow about the body and, exerting all his strength, hurled him across the table and straight through the near-by window.
The sound of a shrill scream and the crash of shattered glass came simultaneously. In the momentary, dead silence that followed, one could have almost heard a pin drop.
* * *
CHAPTER XXVI
SHERIFF HARDENBERG INTERVENES
During that brief lull Buck found time to wonder why no one had sense enough to use a gun to bring them down. But almost as swiftly the answer came to him; they dared not risk the sound of a shot bringing interference from without. He flashed a glance at Bud, who sagged panting against the table, the fragments of a chair in his hands and a trickle of blood running down his face. Somehow the sight of that blood turned Buck into a raging savage.
“Come on, you damned coyotes!” he snarled. “Come and get yours.”
For a brief space it looked as if no one had nerve enough to accept his challenge, and Buck shot a sudden appraising glance toward the outer door, between which and them their assailants crowded thickest. But before he could plan a way to rush the throng, that same sharp voice sounded from the rear which before had stirred the greasers into action, and six or seven of them began to creep warily forward. Their movements were plainly reluctant, however, and of a sudden Stratton gave a spring which carried him within reaching distance of the two foremost. Gripping each by a collar, he cracked their heads together thrice in swift succession, hurled their limp bodies from him, grabbed another chair from the floor, and was back beside Jessup before any of their startled companions had time to stir.
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