The "Wild West" Collection. William MacLeod Raine
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"Thought so. Well, he's square. I rigged it up on him about the rustling. I was the man you liked to 'a' caught that day years ago."
"You!"
"Yep." He broke off abruptly. "I'm going, girl.... It's gittin' black. Hold my hand till--till----"
He gave a shudder and seemed to fall together. He was dead.
Melissy heard the sound of rubble slipping. Some one was lowering himself cautiously down the side of the caon. A man dropped to the wash and strutted toward her. He kept his eyes fixed on the lifeless form, rifle ready for action at an instant's notice. When he reached his victim he pushed the body with his foot, made sure of no trap, and relaxed his alertness.
"Dead as a hammer."
The man was MacQueen. He turned to Melissy and nodded jauntily.
"Good evening, my dear. Just taking a little stroll?" he asked ironically.
The girl leaned against the cold wall and covered her face with her arm. She was sobbing hysterically.
The outlaw seized her by the shoulders and swung her round. "Cut that out, girl," he ordered roughly.
Melissy caught at her sobs and tried to check them.
"He got what was coming to him, what he's been playing for a long time. I warned him, but the fool wouldn't see it."
"How did you know?" she asked, getting out her question a word at a time.
"Knew it all the time. Rosario brought his note to me. I told her to take it to you and keep her mouth shut."
"You planned his death."
"If you like to put it that way. Now we'll go home and forget this foolishness. Jeff, bring the horses round to the mouth of the gulch."
Melissy felt suddenly very, very tired and old. Her feet dragged like those of an Indian squaw following her master. It was as though heavy irons weighted her ankles.
MacQueen helped her to one of the horses Jackson brought to the lip of the gulch. Weariness rode on her shoulders all the way back. The soul of her was crushed beneath the misfortunes that oppressed her.
Long before they reached the ranch houses Rosario came running to meet them. Plainly she was in great excitement.
"The prisoners have escaped," she cried to MacQueen.
"Escaped. How?" demanded Black.
"Some one must have helped them. I heard a window smash and ran out. The young ranger and another man were coming out of the last cabin with the old man. I could do nothing. They ran."
They had been talking in her own language. MacQueen jabbed another question at her.
"Which way?"
"Toward the Pass."
The outlaw ripped out an oath. "We've got 'em. They can't reach it without horses as quick as we can with them." He whirled upon Melissy. "March into the house, girl. Don't you dare make a move. I'm leaving Buck here to watch you." Sharply he swung to the man Lane. "Buck, if she makes a break to get away, riddle her full of holes. You hear me."
A minute later, from the place where she lay face down on the bed, Melissy heard him and his men gallop away.
CHAPTER VIII
AN ESCAPE AND A CAPTURE
Far up in the mountains, in that section where head the Roaring Fork, One Horse Creek, and the Del Oro, is a vast tract of wild, untraveled country known vaguely as the Bad Lands. Somewhere among the thousand and one caons which cleft the huddled hills lay hidden Dead Man's Cache. Here Black MacQueen retreated on those rare occasions when the pursuit grew hot on his tracks. So the current report ran.
Whether the abductors of Simon West were to be found in the Cache or at some other nest in the almost inaccessible ridges Jack Flatray had no means of knowing. His plan was to follow the Roaring Fork almost to its headquarters, and there establish a base for his hunt. It might take him a week to flush his game. It might take a month. He clamped his bulldog jaw to see the thing out to a finish.
Jack did not make the mistake of underestimating his job. He had followed the trail of bad men often enough to know that, in a frontier country, no hunt is so desperate as the man-hunt. Such men are never easily taken, even if they do not have all the advantage in the deadly game of hide and seek that is played in the timber and the pockets of the hills.
And here the odds all lay with the hunted. They knew every ravine and gulch. Day by day their scout looked down from mountain ledges to watch the progress of the posse.
Moreover, Flatray could never tell at what moment his covey might be startled from its run. The greatest vigilance was necessary to make sure his own party would not be ambushed. Yet slowly he combed the arroyos and the ridges, drawing always closer to that net of gulches in which he knew Dead Man's Cache must be located.
During the day the sheriff split his party into couples. Bellamy and Alan McKinstra, Farnum and Charlie Hymer, young Yarnell and the sheriff. So Jack had divided his posse, thus leaving at the head of each detail one old and wise head. Each night the parties met at the rendezvous appointed for the wranglers with the pack horses. From sunrise to sunset often no face was seen other than those of their own outfit. Sometimes a solitary sheep herder was discovered at his post. Always the work was hard, discouraging, and apparently futile. But the young sheriff never thought of quitting.
The provisions gave out. Jack sent back Hal Yarnell and Hegler, the wrangler, to bring in a fresh supply. Meanwhile the young sheriff took a big chance and scouted alone. He parted from the young Arkansan at the head of a gulch which twisted snakelike into the mountains; Yarnell and the pack outfit to ride to Mammoth, Flatray to dive still deeper into the mesh of hills. He had the instinct of the scout to stick to the high places as much as he could. Whenever it was possible he followed ridges, so that no spy could look down upon him as he traveled. Sometimes the contour of the country drove him into the open or down into hollows. But in such places he advanced with the swift stealth of an Indian.
It was on one of these occasions, when he had been driven into a dark and narrow caon, that he came to a sudden halt. He was looking at an empty tomato can. Swinging down from his saddle, he picked it up without dismounting. A little juice dripped from the can to the ground.
Flatray needed no explanation. In Arizona men on the range often carry a can of tomatoes instead of a water canteen. Nothing alleviates thirst like the juice of this acid fruit. Some one had opened this can within two hours. Otherwise the sun would have dried the moisture.
Jack took his rifle from its place beneath his legs and set it across the saddle in front of him. Very carefully he continued on his way, watching every rock and bush ahead of him. Here and there in the sand were printed the signs of a horse going in the same direction as his.
Up and down, in and out of a maze of crooked paths, working by ever so devious a way higher into the chain of mountains, Jack followed his leader. Now he would lose the hoofmarks; now he would pick them up again. And, at the last, they brought him to the rim of a basin, a bowl of wooded ravines, of twisted ridges, of bleak spurs jutting into late pastures almost green. It was now past sunset. Dusk was filtering down from the blue peaks. As he looked a star peeped out low on the horizon.
But was it a star? He glimpsed it between trees. The conviction grew on him that what he saw was the light of a lamp. A tangle of rough country lay between him and that beacon, but there before him lay his destination. At last he had found his way into Dead Man's Cache.
The sheriff lost no time, for he knew that if he should get lost in the darkness on one of these forest slopes he might wander all night. A rough trail led him down into the basin. Now he would lose sight of the light. Half an hour later, pushing to the summit of a hill, he might find it. After a time there twinkled a second beside the first. He was getting close to a settlement of some kind.
Below him in the darkness lay a stretch of open meadow rising to the wooded foothills. Behind these a wall of rugged mountains encircled the