by Unknown
The outlaw knew that it would be nip and tuck to reach Palo Duro, close though it was. He abandoned at once his hopes of racing up the cañon until the Apaches dropped the pursuit. It was now solely a question of speed. He must get into the gulch, even though he had to kill his bronco to do it. After that he must trust to luck and hold the redskins off as long as he could. There was always a chance that Ellison's Rangers might be close. Homer Dinsmore knew how slender a thread it was upon which to hang a hope, but it was the only one they had.
His quirt rose and fell once, though he recognized that his horse was doing its best. But the lash fell in the air and did not burn the flank of the animal. He patted its neck. He murmured encouragement in its ear.
"Good old Black Jack, I knew you wouldn't throw down on me. Keep a-humpin', old-timer.... You're doin' fine.... Here we are at Palo Duro.... Another half-mile, pal."
Dinsmore turned to the left after they had dropped down a shale slide into the cañon. The trail wound through a thick growth of young foliage close to the bed of the stream.
The man slipped down from the back of the laboring horse and followed it up the trail. Once he caught a glimpse of the savages coming down the shale slide and took a shot through the brush.
"Got one of their horses," he told 'Mona. "That'll keep 'em for a while and give us a few minutes. They'll figure I'll try to hold 'em here."
'Mona let the horse pick its way up the rapidly ascending trail. Presently the cañon opened a little. Its walls fell back from a small, grassy valley containing two or three acres. The trail led up a ledge of rock jutting out from one of the sheer faces of cliff. Presently it dipped down behind some great boulders that had fallen from above some time in the ages that this great cleft had been in the making.
A voice hailed them. "That you, Homer?"
"Yep. The 'Paches are right on our heels, Steve."
Gurley let out a wailing oath. "Goddlemighty, man, why did you come here?"
"Driven in. They chased us ten miles. Better 'light, ma'am. We're liable to stay here quite a spell." Dinsmore unsaddled the horse and tied it to a shrub. "You're sure all in, Black Jack. Mebbe you'll never be the same bronc again. I've got this to say, old pal. I never straddled a better hawss than you. That goes without copperin'." He patted its sweat-stained neck, fondled its nose for a moment, then turned briskly to the business in hand. "Get behind that p'int o' rocks, Steve. I'll cover the trail up. Girl, you'll find a kind of cave under that flat boulder. You get in there an' hunt cover."
'Mona did as she was told. Inside the cave were blankets, a saddle, the remains of an old camp-fire, and a piece of jerked venison hanging from a peg driven between two rocks. There were, too, a rifle leaning against the big boulder and a canvas bag containing ammunition.
The rifle was a '73. She busied herself loading it. Just as she finished there came to her the crack of Dinsmore's repeater.
The outlaw gave a little whoop of exultation.
"Tally one."
CHAPTER XXXIX
A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT
Night fell before the rescue party reached Palo Duro. The cañon was at that time a terra incognita to these cattlemen of the Panhandle. To attempt to explore it in the darkness would be to court disaster. The Apaches might trap the whole party.
But neither the Ranger nor Wadley could endure the thought of waiting till morning to push forward. The anxiety that weighed on them both could find relief only in action.
Jack made a proposal to Ramona's father. "We've got to throw off and camp here. No two ways about that. But I'm goin' to ride forward to Palo Duro an' see what I can find out. Want to go along?"
"Boy, I had in mind that very thing. We'll leave Jumbo in charge of the camp with orders to get started soon as he can see in the mo'nin'."
The two men rode into the darkness. They knew the general direction of Palo Duro and were both plainsmen enough to follow a straight course even in the blackest night. They traveled at a fast road gait, letting the horses pick their own way through the mesquite. Presently a star came out--and another. Banked clouds scudded across the sky in squadrons.
At last, below their feet, lay the great earth rift that made Palo Duro. It stretched before them an impenetrable black gulf of silence.
"No use trying to go down at random," said Jack, peering into its bottomless deeps. "Even if we didn't break our necks we'd get lost down there. My notion is for me to follow the bank in one direction an' for you to take the other. We might hear something."
"Sounds reasonable," agreed Wadley.
The cattleman turned to the left, the Ranger to the right. Roberts rode at a slow trot, stopping every few minutes to listen for any noise that might rise from the gulch.
His mind was full of pictures of the girl, one following another inconsequently. They stabbed him poignantly. He had a white dream of her moving down the street at Tascosa with step elastic, the sun sparkling in her soft, wavy hair. Another memory jumped to the fore of her on the stage, avoiding with shy distress the advances of the salesman he had jolted into his place. He saw her grave and gay, sweet and candid and sincere, but always just emerging with innocent radiance from the chrysalis of childhood.
Her presence was so near, she was so intimately close, that more than once he pulled up under an impression that she was calling him.
It was while he was waiting so, his weight resting easily in the saddle, that out of the night there came to him a faint, far-away cry of dreadful agony. The sound of it shook Jack to the soul. Cold beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Gooseflesh ran down his spine. His hand trembled. The heart inside his ribs was a heavy weight of ice. Though he had never heard it before, the Ranger knew that awful cry for the scream of a man in torment. The Apaches were torturing a captured prisoner.
If Dinsmore had been captured by them the chances were that 'Mona had been taken, too, unless he had given her the horse and remained to hold the savages back.
Roberts galloped wildly along the edge of the rift. Once again he heard that long-drawn wail of anguish and pulled up his horse to listen, the while he shook like a man with a heavy chill.
Before the sound of it had died away a shot echoed up the cañon to him. His heart seemed to give an answering lift of relief. Some one was still holding the Apaches at bay. He fired at once as a message that help was on the way.
His trained ear told him that the rifle had been fired scarcely a hundred yards below him, apparently from some ledge of the cliff well up from the bottom of the gulch. It might have come from the defenders or it might have been a shot fired by an Apache. Jack determined to find out.
He unfastened the tientos of his saddle which held the lariat. A scrub oak jutted up from the edge of the cliff and to this he tied securely one end of the rope. Rifle in hand, he worked over the edge and lowered himself foot by foot. The rope spun round like a thing alive, bumped him against the rock wall, twisted in the other direction, and rubbed his face against the harsh stone. He had no assurance that the lariat would reach to the foot of the cliff, and as he went jerkily down, hand under hand, he knew that at any moment he might come to the end of it and be dashed against the boulders below.
His foot touched loose rubble, and he could see that the face of the precipice was rooted here in a slope that led down steeply to another wall. The ledge was like a roof pitched at an extremely acute angle. He had to get down on hands and knees to keep from sliding to the edge of the second precipice. At every movement he started small avalanches of stone and dirt. He crept forward with the utmost caution, dragging the rifle by his side.
A shot rang out scarcely fifty yards from him, fired from the same ledge upon which he was crawling.
Had that shot been fired by an Apache or by those whom he had come to aid?
CHAPTER XL
GURLEY'S GET-AWAY
The boulder cave to which the Apaches had driven Dinsmore and Ramona had long since been picked out by the outlaws as a defensible position in case of n
eed. The ledge that ran up to it on the right offered no cover for attackers. It was scarcely three feet wide, and above and below it the wall was for practical purposes perpendicular. In anticipation of a day when his gang might be rounded up by a posse, Pete Dinsmore had gone over the path and flung down into the gulch every bit of quartz big enough to shelter a man.
The contour of the rock face back of the big boulders was concave, so that the defenders were protected from sharpshooters at the edge of the precipice above.
Another way led up from the bed of the creek by means of a very rough and broken climb terminating in the loose rubble about the point where the ledge ran out. This Dinsmore had set Gurley to watch, but it was not likely that the Indians would reach here for several hours a point dangerous to the attacked.
Of what happened that day Ramona saw little. She loaded rifles and pushed them out to Dinsmore from the safety of the cave. Once he had shouted out to her or to Gurley news of a second successful shot.
"One more good Indian. Hi-yi-yi!" The last was a taunt to the Apaches hidden below.
There came a time late in the afternoon when the serious attack of the redskins developed. It came from the left, and it was soon plain that a number of Apaches had found cover in the rough boulder bed halfway up from the creek. Ramona took Dinsmore's place as guard over the pathway while he moved across to help Gurley rout the sharpshooters slowly edging forward.
One hour of sharp work did it. Man for man there never was any comparison between the Indians and the early settlers as fighting men. Dinsmore and Gurley, both good shots, better armed and better trained than the Apaches, drove the bucks back from the boulder bed where they were deployed. One certainly was killed, another probably. As quickly as they could with safety disengage themselves the braves drew down into the shelter of the brush below.
But Dinsmore knew that the temporary victory achieved could not affect the end of this one-sided battle. The Apaches would wipe all three of them out--unless by some miracle help reached them from outside. Ramona, too, knew it. So did Gurley.
As the darkness fell the fingers of 'Mona crept often to the little revolver by her side. Sometime soon--perhaps in three hours, perhaps in twelve, perhaps in twenty-four--she must send a bullet into her brain. She decided quite calmly that she would do it at the last possible moment that would admit of certainty. She must not make any mistake, must not wait till it was too late. It would be a horrible thing to do, but--she must not fall alive into the hands of the Apaches.
Crouched behind his boulder in the darkness, Gurley too knew that the party was facing extinction. He could not save the others by staying. Was it possible to save himself by going? He knew that rough climb down through the boulder beds to the cañon below. The night was black as Egypt. Surely it would be possible, if he kept well to the left, to dodge any sentries the Indians might have set.
He moistened his dry lips with his tongue. Furtively he glanced back toward the cave where the girl was hidden. She could not see him. Nor could Dinsmore. They would know nothing about it till long after he had gone. Their stupidity had brought the Apaches upon them. If they had taken his advice the savages would have missed them by ten miles. Why should he let their folly destroy him too? If he escaped he might meet some freight outfit and send help to them.
The man edged out from his rock, crept noiselessly into the night. He crawled along the steep rubble slide, wary and soft-footed as a panther. It took him a long half-hour to reach the boulder bed. Rifle in hand, he lowered himself from rock to rock, taking advantage of every shadow....
An hour later Dinsmore called to 'Mona. "Asleep, girl?"
"No," she answered in a small voice.
"Slip out with these cartridges to Steve and find out if anythin's doin'. Then you'd better try to sleep. 'Paches don't attack at night."
Ramona crept along the ledge back of the big boulders. Gurley had gone--vanished completely. Her heart stood still. There was some vague thought in her mind that the Indians had somehow disposed of him. She called to Dinsmore in a little stifled shout that brought him on the run.
"He's gone!" she gasped.
The eyes of Dinsmore blazed. He knew exactly how to account for the absence of the man. "I might 'a' known it. The yellow coyote! Left us in the lurch to save his own hide!"
"Perhaps he's gone for help," the girl suggested faintly.
"No chance. He's playin' a lone hand--tryin' for a get-away himself," her companion said bitterly. "You'll have to take his place here. If you see anything move, no matter what it is, shoot at it."
"If I call you will you come?" she begged.
"On the jump," he promised. "Don't go to sleep. If they should come it will be up through the boulder bed. I'm leavin' you here because you can watch from cover where you can't possibly be seen. It's different on the other side."
She knew that, but as soon as he had left her the heart of the girl sank. She was alone, lost in a night of howling savages. The horrible things they did to their captives--she recalled a story whispered to her by a girl friend that it had been impossible to shake out of her mind. In the middle of the night she had more than once found herself sitting bolt upright in bed, wakened from terrible dreams of herself as a prisoner of the Apaches.
'Mona prayed, and found some comfort in her prayers. They were the frank, selfish petitions of a little child.
"God, don't let me die. I'm so young, and so frightened. Send Daddy to save me ... or Jack Roberts."
She recited the twenty-third Psalm aloud in a low voice. The fourth verse she went back to, repeating it several times.
"'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.'"
And the last verse:
"'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.'"
Somehow she felt less lonely afterward. God was on her side. He would send her father or Jack Roberts.
Then, into her newborn calm, there came a far cry of agony that shattered it instantly. Her taut nerves gave way like a broken bow-string. Her light body began to shake. She leaned against the cold rock wall in hysterical collapse.
The voice of Dinsmore boomed along the passageway. "It's a cougar, girl. They've got a yell like the scream of lost souls. I've often heard it here."
Ramona knew he was lying, but the sound of his cheerful voice was something. She was not utterly alone.
Again that shriek lifted into the night and echoed up the cañon. The girl covered her ears with her hands and trembled violently. A shot rang out from the other end of the passage.
"Saw one of 'em movin' down below," the outlaw called to her.
But Ramona did not hear him. She had fainted.
CHAPTER XLI
HOMING HEARTS
Jack crept closer, very carefully. He was morally certain that the defenders held the ledge, but it would not do to make a mistake. Lives were at stake--one life much more precious than his own.
He drew his revolver and snaked forward. There was nothing else to do but take a chance. But he meant at least to minimize it, and certainly not to let himself be captured alive.
It was strange that nobody yet had challenged him. He was close enough now to peer into the darkness of the tunnel between the boulders and the wall. There seemed to be no one on guard.
He crept forward to the last boulder, and his boot pressed against something soft lying on the ground. It moved. A white, startled face was lifted to his--a face that held only the darkness of despair.
He knelt, put down his revolver, and slipped an arm around the warm young body.
"Thank God!" he cried softly. He was trembling in every limb. Tears filled his voice. And over and over again he murmured, "Thank God!... Thank God!"
The despair in the white face slowly dissolved. He read there doubt, a growing certainty, and then a swift, soft radiance of joy and tears.
Her arms crept round his neck. He held her close and kissed the sweet lips salt with tears of happiness.
He was ashamed of himself. Not since he had been a little boy had he cried till now. His life had made for stoicism. But tears furrowed down his lean, brown cheeks. The streak in him that was still tender-hearted child had suddenly come to the surface. For he had expected to find her dead at best; instead, her warm, soft body was in his arms, her eyes were telling him an unbelievable story that her tongue as yet could find no words to utter. There flamed in him, like fire in dead tumbleweeds, a surge of glad triumph that inexplicably blended with humble thankfulness.