The Flying U's Last Stand

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER 19. HER NAME WAS ROSEMARY

  Andy Green came in from a twenty-hour ride through the Wolf Buttecountry and learned that another disaster had followed on the heels ofthe first; that miss Allen had been missing for thirty-six hours. Whilehe bolted what food was handiest in the camp where old Patsy cooked forthe searchers, and the horse wrangler brought up the saddle-bunch justas though it was a roundup that held here its headquarters, he heard allthat Slim and Cal Emmett could tell him about the disappearance of MissAllen.

  One fact stood significantly in the foreground, and that was that Pinkand the Native Son had been the last to speak with her, so far as anyoneknew. That was it--so far as anyone knew. Andy's lips tightened. Therewere many strangers riding through the country, and where there are manystrangers there is also a certain element of danger. That Miss Allen waslost was not the greatest fear that drove Andy Green forth without sleepand with food enough to last him a day or two.

  First he meant to hunt up Pink and Miguel--which was easy enough, sincethey rode into camp exhausted and disheartened while he was saddlinga fresh horse. From them he learned the direction which Miss Allen hadtaken when she left them, and he rode that way and never stopped untilhe had gone down off the benchland and had left the fringe of couleesand canyons behind. Pink and the Native Son had just come from down inhere, and they had seen no sign of either her or the Kid. Andy intendedto begin where they had left off, and comb the breaks as carefully asit is possible for one man to do. He was beginning to think that theBadlands held the secret of the Kid disappearance, even though they hadseen nothing of him when they came out four days ago. Had he seen Chiphe would have urged him to send all the searchers--and there were twoor three hundred by now--into the Badlands and keep them there until theKid was found. But he did not see Chip and had no time to hunt him up.And having managed to evade the supervision of any captain, and to keepclear of all parties, he meant to go alone and see if he could find aclue, at least.

  It was down in the long canyon which Miss Allen had followed, that Andyfound hoof-prints which he recognized. The horse Miss Allen had riddenwhenever he saw her--one which she had bought somewhere northof town--had one front foot which turned in toward the other."Pigeon-toed," he would have called it. The track it left in soft soilwas unmistakable. Andy's face brightened when he saw it and knew that hewas on her trail. The rest of the way down the canyon he rode alertly,for though he knew she might be miles from there by now, to find theroute she had taken into the Badlands was something gained.

  The flat, which Andy knew very well--having driven the bunch of cattlewhose footprints had so elated Miss Allen--he crossed uneasily. Therewere so many outlets to this rich little valley. He tried several ofthem, which took time; and always when he came to soft earth and saw notrack of the hoof that turned in toward the other, he would go back andride into another gulch. And when you are told that these were many, andthat much of the ground was rocky, and some was covered with a thick matof grass, you will not be surprised that when Andy finally took up hertrail in the canyon farthest to the right, it was well towards noon. Hefollowed her easily enough until he came to the next valley, which heexamined over and over before he found where she had left it to pushdeeper into the Badlands. And it was the same experience repeated whenhe came out of that gulch into another open space.

  He came into a network of gorges that would puzzle almost anyone, andstopped to water his horse and let him feed for an hour or so. A man'shorse meant a good deal to him, down here on such a mission, and evenhis anxiety could not betray him into letting his mount become toofagged.

  After a while he mounted and rode on without having any clue to follow;one must trust to chance, to a certain extent, in a place like this. Hehad not seen any sign of the Kid, either, and the gorges were fillingwith shadows that told How low the sun was sliding down the sky. At thattime he was not more than a mile or so from the canyon up which MissAllen was toiling afoot toward the sun; but Andy had no means of knowingthat. He went on with drooping head and eyes that stared achingly hereand there. That was the worst of his discomfort--his eyes. Lack of sleepand the strain of looking, looking, against wind and sun, had made themred-rimmed and bloodshot. Miss Allen's eyes were like that, and so werethe eyes of all the searchers.

  In spite of himself Andy's eyes closed now. He had not slept for twonights, and he had been riding all that time. Before he realized it hewas asleep in the saddle, and his horse was carrying him into a gulchthat had no outlet--there were so many such!--but came up against a hilland stopped there. The shadows deepened, and the sky above was red andgold.

  Andy woke with a jerk, his horse having stopped because he could go nofarther. But it was not that which woke him. He listened. He would havesworn that he had heard the shrill, anxious whinney of a horse not faraway. He turned and examined the gulch, but it was narrow and grassy andhad no possible place of concealment, and save himself and his own horseit was empty. And it was not his own horse that whinnied--he was sure ofthat. Also, he was sure that he had-not dreamed it. A horse had calledinsistently. Andy knew horses too well not to know that there wasanxiety and rebellion in that call.

  He waited a minute, his heart beating heavily. He turned andstarted back down the gulch, and then stopped suddenly. He heard itagain--shrill, prolonged, a call from somewhere; where, he could notdetermine because of the piled masses of earth and rock that flung thesound riotously here and there and confused him as to direction.

  Then his own horse turned his head and looked toward the left, andanswered the call. From far off the strange horse made shrill reply.Andy got down and began climbing the left-hand ridge on the run, tiredas he was. Not many horses ranged down in here--and he did not believe,anyway, that this was any range horse. It did not sound like Silver,but it might be the pigeon-toed horse of Miss Allen. And if it was, thenMiss Allen would be there. He took a deep breath and went up the laststeep pitch in a spurt of speed that surprised himself.

  At the top he stood panting and searched the canyon below him. Justacross the canyon was the high peak which Miss Allen had climbed afoot.But down below him he saw her horse circling about in a trampled placeunder a young cottonwood.

  You would never accuse Andy Green of being weak, or of having unsteadynerves, I hope.

  But it is the truth that he felt his knees give way while he looked;and it was a minute or two before he had any voice with which to call toher. Then he shouted, and the great hill opposite flung back the echoesmaddeningly.

  He started running down the ridge, and brought up in the canyon's bottomnear the horse. It was growing shadowy now to the top of the lowerridges, although the sun shone faintly on the crest of the peak. Thehorse whinnied and circled restively when Andy came near. Andy needed nomore than a glance to tell him that the horse had stood tied there fortwenty-four hours, at the very least. That meant....

  Andy turned pale. He shouted, and the canyon mocked him with echoes. Helooked for her tracks. At the base of the peak he saw the print of herriding boots; farther along, up the slope he saw the track again. MissAllen, then, must have climbed the peak, and he knew why she had doneso. But why had she not come down again?

  There was only one way to find out, and he took the method in theface of his weariness. He climbed the peak also, with now and then afootprint to guide him. He was not one of these geniuses at trailing whocould tell, by a mere footprint, what had been in Miss Allen's mind whenshe had passed that way; but for all that it seemed logical that she hadgone up there to see if she could not glimpse the kid--or possibly theway home.

  At the top he did not loiter. He saw, before he reached the height,where Miss Allen had come down again--and he saw where she had, to avoida clump of boulders and a broken ledge, gone too far to one side. Hefollowed that way. She had descended at an angle, after that, which tookher away from the canyon.

  In Montana there is more of daylight after the sun has gone than thereis in some other places. Andy, by hurrying, managed to trail Miss Allen
to the bottom of the peak before it grew really dusky. He knew that shehad been completely lost when she reached the bottom, and had probablywandered about at random since then. At any rate, there were no tracksanywhere save her own, so that he felt less anxiety over her safetythan, when he had started out looking for her.

  Andy knew these breaks pretty well. He went over a rocky ridge, whichMiss Allen had not tried to cross because to her it seemed exactly inthe opposite direction from where she had started, and so he came to herhorse again. He untied the poor beast and searched for a possible trailover the ridge to where his own horse waited; and by the time he hadfound one and had forced the horse to climb to the top and then descendinto the gulch, the darkness lay heavy upon the hills.

  He picketed Miss Allen's horse with his rope', and fashioned a hobblefor his own mount. Then he ate a little of the food he carried and satdown to rest and smoke and consider how best he could find Miss Allenor the Kid--or both. He believed Miss Allen to be somewhere not faraway--since she was afoot, and had left her lunch tied to the saddle.She could not travel far without food.

  After a little he climbed back up the ridge to where he had noticed apatch of brush, and there he started a fire. Not a very large one, butlarge enough to be seen for a long distance where the vision was notblocked by intervening hills. Then he sat down beside it and waitedand listened and tended the fire. It was all that he could do forthe present, and it seemed pitifully little. If she saw the fire, hebelieved that she would come; if she did not see it, there was no hopeof his finding her in the dark. Had there been fuel on the high peak,he might have gone up there to start his fire; but that was out of thequestion, since the peak was barren.

  Heavy-eyed, tired in every fibre of his being, Andy dragged up a deadbuck-bush and laid the butt of it across his blaze. Then he lay downnear it--and went to sleep as quickly as if he had been chloroformed.

  It may have been an hour after that--it may have been more. He sat upsuddenly and listened. Through the stupor of his sleep he had heard MissAllen call. At least, he believed he had heard her call, though he knewhe might easily have dreamed it. He knew he had been asleep, because thefire had eaten part of the way to the branches of the bush and had dieddown to smoking embers. He kicked the branch upon the coals and a blazeshot up into the night. He stood up and walked a little distance awayfrom the fire so that he could see better, and stood staring down intothe canyon.

  From below he heard a faint call--he was sure of it. The wonder to himwas that he had heard it at all in his sleep. His anxiety must have beenstrong enough even then to send the signal to his brain and rouse him.

  He shouted, and again he heard a faint call. It seemed to be far downthe canyon. He started running that way.

  The next time he shouted, she answered him more clearly. And fartheralong he distinctly heard and recognized her voice. You may be sure heran, after that!

  After all, it was not so very far, to a man who is running recklesslydown hill. Before he realized how close he was he saw her standingbefore him in the starlight. Andy did not stop. He kept right on runninguntil he could catch her in his arms; and when he had her there he heldher close and then he kissed her. That was not proper, of course--but aman does sometimes do terribly improper things under the stress of bigemotions; Andy had been haunted by the fear that she was dead.

  Well, Miss Allen was just as improper as he was, for that matter. Shedid say "Oh!" in a breathless kind of way, and then she must have knownwho he was. There surely could be no other excuse for the way she clungto him and without the faintest resistance let him kiss her.

  "Oh, I've found him!" she whispered after the first terriblyunconventional greetings were over. "I've found him, Mr. Green. Icouldn't come up to the fire, because he's asleep and I couldn't carryhim, and I wouldn't wake him unless I had to. He's just down here--I wasafraid to go very far, for fear of losing him again. Oh, Mr. Green! I--"

  "My name is Andy," he told her. "What's your name?"

  "Mine? It's--well, it's Rosemary. Never mind now. I should think you'dbe just wild to see that poor little fellow--he's a brick, though."

  "I've been wild," said Andy, "over a good many things--you, for one.Where's the Kid?"

  They went together, hand in hand--terribly silly, wasn't it?--to wherethe Kid lay wrapped in the gray blanket in the shelter of a bank. Andystruck a match and held it so that he could see the Kid face--and MissAllen, looking at the man whose wooing had been so abrupt, saw his mouthtremble and his lashes glisten as he stared down while the match-blazelasted.

  "Poor little tad--he's sure a great Kid," he said huskily when the matchwent out. He stood up and put his arm around Miss Allen just as thoughthat was his habit. "And it was you that found him!" he murmured withhis face against hers. "And I've found you both, thank God."