The Free Range Part 12

The stranger in the mask and the man he had rescued were now alone, but their thoughts were fully occupied. The sound of the distant stampede had become a veritable rumbling roar that told of its nearing proximity. Aside from this drumming of many feet, there was no sound, for the animals of the range when in the grip of panic are silent.

With glazed eyes and muscles strained to the utmost they thundered into the dark, unconscious and heedless of the sure destruction in their path.

It was as though thousands of creatures, with their brains removed, had been turned loose to run at will.

"To the river!" cried the masked man, suddenly panic-stricken, spurring his horse in the direction of the stream.

But Larkin was at his heels, and in a moment had seized the other's bridle and thrown the horse back on his haunches.

"No!" bawled he at the top of his voice. "The bank here is twenty feet high, and at the bottom are rocks."

"Better a jump and a chance than sure death in the stampede," yelled the stranger, but Bud would not yield and drew the horse back.

"We can divide the herd," he cried. "Come, we haven't a moment to lose!"

They wheeled as one and dashed out of the brush into the open of the range. The earth was now trembling beneath them and the pounding feet sounded a low, steady note, ominous with warning. Occasionally there was a revolver shot, but this was the only other sound.

Straight toward the oncoming living avalanche the two men rode until they had left an open s.p.a.ce a hundred yards wide behind them. Then they pulled up short and dismounted.

Now out of the threatening thunder sounded a single individual note, the rapid beating of a horse's feet--some horse that was bearing a desperate rider ahead of the stampede but powerless to avoid it.

Instantly Larkin saw the picture of the yawning precipice toward which the frantic rider was hurrying at breakneck speed. He raised his revolver and fired into the air. The signal was instantly acted on, for in another moment a lathering, heaving pony dashed up to them, and the rider leaped to the ground.

"Oh, what shall I do? h.e.l.lo! Who are you?" cried a female voice, and Larkin's heart leaped as though it had turned over in its place.

"Juliet!" he cried, seizing the girl with one arm and drawing her close.

"Bud!" For an instant she clung to him.

"Lead the horses together and shoot them!" he ordered, although the others could scarcely hear him.

Every instant was priceless now, for dimly at the edge of their vision the front wave of the living, leaping tide could be seen.

Larkin swung the girl's horse alongside Pinte, and without a thought or a pang shot them both. They fell one on top of the other. Then the stranger in the mask led his animal in front of the two that had fallen and put a bullet through its brain. All now leaped behind this still throbbing barricade.

"Got a gun, Julie?" demanded Bud.

"Yes."

"Give it to me and load mine from your belt." They exchanged weapons and the girl with practiced hand slipped the cartridges into their chambers.

The unknown had drawn two guns from some place in his equipment, and now the three peered over their shelter.

The advance line of animals was scarcely twenty-five yards away, and, with a clutch of horror at his heart, Bud recognized that they were not cattle as he had supposed, but sheep--his own two thousand.

In the instant that remained he remembered the shots and shouting of a quarter-hour before, and realized that the animals had been stampeded deliberately.

"Let 'er go," he screamed above the tumult, "and yell like blazes!"

On the word yellow fire streamed out from the four guns and, accompanying it, a perfect bedlam of shrieks and cries. The sheep were now upon them, and the hail of bullets dropped some in their headlong career, piling them up against the horses and adding to the barricade. But it could not stop all, and a stream of the animals made its way over the bodies up to the very mouths of the spitting guns.

Now others stumbled and fell, to be instantly engulfed by the swirling flood behind; small, sharp feet were caught between the limbs of the struggling ma.s.s that eddied about the dead horses. Still the yellow fire stabbed out into the faces of the middlers--for now the leaders were already piling up mangled and dying in the rocky river-bed--but, past each side of this island of expiring creatures, thundered a vast, heaving stream, turbulent, silent, irrevocable.

The man in the mask with a revolver in each hand was firing steadily, and Larkin, thrilled at the sight of his apparent coolness, turned to look at him.

To his amazement he found that the mask had fallen or been s.n.a.t.c.hed away.

Again the man fired, and Bud Larkin's jaw fell as he gazed on the queer, unmistakable features of the man who had saved his life that night.

It was Smithy Caldwell.

The sheep mind has the power of tenacity, but not that of change. There was scarcely a shot left in the guns, and still the fear-blinded animals battered at the growing wall of dead and dying that divided them. But at last they began to push to each side, and gradually the idea of splitting took full hold.

Then the prisoners behind the dead horses sank down in almost hysterical relief, for there was no danger that any more would attempt to mount the barricade. In fact, had the obstacle to their progress been suddenly removed, the stampeded herds would have continued to split for an indefinite period.

Now, listening, Larkin could hear the crash of the animals through the underbrush and the horrid, sickening sounds of the writhing, half-dead ma.s.s in the river-bed as more and more, following their predecessors blindly, took the leap.

At last the stream on each side thinned, the rumbling thunder of pounding feet grew less, and the tail of the flock pa.s.sed, leaving behind it a sudden, deathly silence. In the distance a faint murmur was heard, and Larkin found later that this was made by the two or three hundred which escaped death in the river.

As a matter of fact, the great number of the animals had filled the narrow gully, and the last few charged across the bodies of their fallen comrades to solid ground and safety beyond.

Now that the danger had pa.s.sed, Larkin felt a certain miserable nausea in the pit of his stomach, and fought it down with all his might. Caldwell was not so successful, however, and stumbled from the shelter and his companions, furiously sick. Juliet began to weep softly, the tears of nervous reaction coming freely when neither pain nor fear could have brought them.

Bud pa.s.sed his arm gently about her shoulders, and patted her with soft encouragement and praise for her bravery. Nor did the girl resent his action. Rather it seemed to steady her, and after a few minutes she looked up with an unsteady laugh.

"Isn't it funny for that other man to get seasick out here where we can't get enough water to drink?" she asked, with a sudden tangent of humor that made Bud laugh uproariously, and seemed to relieve the strain that oppressed them.

"Brave little girl!" he said, getting up. "That reminds me. I wonder where our friend is?"

He walked out in the direction Caldwell had taken and expected to find the other recovering from his attack. But he could see or hear nothing to indicate that the man was within a dozen miles. He called, and his voice sounded puny and hollow against the vastness of the sky. He heard no hails in answer, except the long, shrill one which the coyotes gave from a neighboring rise of ground.

Smithy Caldwell had disappeared.

Larkin returned to Juliet Bissell perplexed, mystified, and disturbed.

What possible reason could there be for the quixotic actions of the man he hated more than any other in the world? How did he happen to be received and at perfect ease among a band of desperate rustlers?

How and why? Caldwell presented so many variations on those two themes that Larkin's head fairly swam, and he turned gladly to relieve the situation in which Juliet Bissell now found herself.

CHAPTER X

WAR WITHOUT QUARTER

He found her where he had left her, but now she was standing and looking out over the silent prairies, as though searching for someone.

"What are you trying to see?" Bud asked.

"I thought father and some of the cowboys would probably follow the sheep once they had started them. Oh, what have I said?"