The Free Range Part 25

When he arrived, with his prisoner riding ahead on the limping horse, he found that all was over. Two of the rustlers were dead, but the rest were sitting silent on the ground by the side of the cook-wagon. One sheepman had been killed, and another's broken shoulder was being roughly dressed by Sims.

Others of the sheepmen were riding around the herd, quieting it. That there had been no stampede was due to the fact that the shooting had come from all sides at once, and the creatures, bewildered, had turned in upon themselves and crowded together in sheer terror, trampling to death a number in the center of the herd.

Less than half a mile ahead were the banks of the Big Horn and the ford. A mile behind the leaders of the sheep were steadily advancing. There was only one thing to be done.

"Drive the cows across the ford," commanded Bud. Then he told off a detail to guard the prisoners, and the rest of the men got the cattle in motion toward the crossing.

Bud did not join this work. Instead, he pulled from his pocket the bit of paper that Smithy Caldwell had attempted to swallow. By the light of a match he read what it said:

The range is clear. Drive north fast to-nite and travel day and nite.

Meet me to-morrow at Indian Coulee at ten. Burn this. Stelton.

For a minute Bud stared at the incriminating paper, absolutely unable to digest the information it carried. Then with a rush understanding came to him, and he knew that Mike Stelton, the trusted foreman of the Bar T ranch, was really the leader of the rustlers, and was the most active of all of them in robbing old Beef Bissell.

For a long time he sat motionless on his horse, reviewing all the events that had pa.s.sed, which now explained the remarkable activity of the rustlers and their ability to escape pursuit and capture.

"I don't know where Indian Coulee is, Stelton," he said to himself, "but I'll be there at ten if it's within riding distance."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE IMMORTAL TEN

Jimmie Welsh threw his hand into the discard and grinned sheepishly.

"Yuh got me this time," he said.

Billy Speaker, who held a full house, kings up, smiled pleasantly.

"I allow yuh'll have to put yore gun in the next pot if you want to stick along," he said. "An' if yuh do I'll win it off yuh and get away from here."

"No," said Jimmie regretfully, "if it was any other time I might resk it, but not now."

Red Tarken, who had been shuffling the single greasy pack of cards, began to deal. In the game beside these three were two more sheepmen and another cattle-raiser.

The six sat in the shade of a huge bowlder that had broken off and rolled down the side of the red scoria b.u.t.te. The game had been going on for hours, and captors and captives alike played with all the cowboys' fervent love of gambling. Tarken, Speaker, and their companion were free to move as they liked, but were on parole not to try to overpower their guardians.

Others of the eleven owners sat about in the shade of rocks, playing cards, or talking and doing their best to pa.s.s away the time. It was a strange gathering. Only one man remained sitting by himself with bent head and his hands bound behind him. This was Beef Bissell, the cattle-king, who had steadfastly refused to give his word to remain peaceable, and fumed his life away hour after hour with vain threats and recriminations.

At either end of the small inclosure that backed against the b.u.t.te, two men with Winchesters in their hands bestrode motionless horses.

This perpetual guard, kept night and day, though invisible from all but one small point, was the only sign that there was anything but the kindliest relations among all the members of the party.

When the cowmen had found that no personal harm was to be done them, all but Bissell and one other had resigned themselves to making the best of a laughably humiliating situation. It was Billy Speaker himself who had suggested the idea of the paroles, and as Jimmie Welsh knew the word of a Westerner was as good as his bond, the pact was soon consummated.

It was a remarkable formation in a desolate spot that the sheepmen had taken for a prison. It is a common fact that on many of these high b.u.t.tes and mesas the pitiless weather of ages has chiseled figures, faces, and forms which, in their monstrous grotesquery, suggest the discarded clay modelings of a half-witted giant.

This place was a kind of indentation in the side of a precipitous b.u.t.te, above which the cliff (if it may be so called) arched over part way like a canopy. The floor was of rock and lower than the plain, but over it were scattered huge blocks of stone that had fallen from above. Other stones had, in the course of time, made a sort of breastwork about this level flooring so that the retreat was both a refuge and a defense.

Better even than its construction was its situation. This particular spot was a corner of real "bad lands," and lumpy ridges, hogbacks, and barren b.u.t.tes arose on all sides like waves in a sea. So numerous were they that unless riders pa.s.sed directly by the sheepmen's hiding place the chances of discovery were almost nil. At one spot only was it visible, and that was a place where the edges of two hogbacks failed to lap and hide it.

The sheepmen were aware of this, and their two guards were placed out of range of that single opening. The distance to it was almost half a mile.

The game of poker went on. Billy Speaker sat with his back to this opening, and after a while, in the natural progress of things, the sun crept over the top of the rock and smote him. It was a hot sun, although it was declining, and presently Billy gave warning that he was about to take off his coat.

When he did so without an alarming display of hidden weapons, the fancy suspenders he wore came in for considerable attention. Now cowmen or cowboys almost never wore braces; either their trousers were tight enough at the waist to stay up, or they wore a leather strap to hold them.

Suspenders hampered an active man.

But Billy Speaker, who had originally come from Connecticut fifteen years ago, wore these braces and treasured them because his mother had given much light from her aging eyes and many st.i.tches from her faltering needle to the embroidery that traveled up and down both shoulder straps. She had embroidered everything he could wear time and again, and at last had fallen back on the braces as something new.

After free and highly critical comment regarding this particular aid to propriety, the game was permitted to go on. It happened to be Billy Speaker's lucky day, and he had nearly cleaned the entire six of all their money and part of their outfits. In the exhilaration of raking in his gains he moved about really lively, forgetful of the brilliantly polished nickel-plated buckles that decorated his shoulder-blades and denoted the height to which his nether garment had been hoisted.

Out in the bad lands a troop of hors.e.m.e.n moved slowly forward, detached bodies scouring the innumerable hogbacks for signs of their prey. There were a few more than a hundred in this body, and it represented the pick of ten ranches. At the head of it rode a stolid, heavy-faced man, who appeared as though he were in constant need of a shave, and whose features just now were drawn down into a scowl of thought and perplexity.

This man's body remained quite motionless as his horse plodded on with hanging head, but his small black eyes darted from side to side ceaselessly.

It was in one of these quick glances that he experienced a blinding flash upon his retina. A second later it occurred again, and then a third time.

Suspiciously the man drew his horse to a stand, and those behind him did likewise.

Stelton thought for a moment that there must have been an outbreak from the near-by Wind River or Shoshone Reservation, and that the Indians were heliographing to one another. Presently, in an open s.p.a.ce between the edges of two b.u.t.tes he caught the flash close to the ground.

It probably was a tin can left by a herder--they often flashed that way--but he would prove it before he went on. He took from their case the pair of field-gla.s.ses that swung from his shoulder and raised them to his eyes.

What he saw caused him to swear excitedly and order the company to back out of sight.

At the same instant Jimmie Welsh, holding a straight flush, looked up triumphantly at Billy Speaker who had just raised him. He looked over Billy's shoulder and the smile froze on his face. He continued to look, and the cards dropped one by one out of his hand. Then his face became stern and he jumped to his feet.

"No more of this," he ordered. "We're discovered. You fellows get back out of sight," he added to the cowmen. "Here, Harry, Bill, Chuck, search these fellers again an' see they ain't got nothin' in their shoes."

"What ails yuh, Jimmie? Are yuh locoed?" asked a man who had not understood the sudden change in Welsh.

"I plenty wish I was," came the reply, "but I ain't. We've been discovered, an' we've got to fight. I don't know how many there was in the other party, but I 'low we ain't in it noways. Red an' Plug, you take yore horses round the b.u.t.te to where the others are tethered, an' help Jimmie and Newt bring in them casks o' water. They ought to be back from the spring by this time. Tip, Lem, and Jack, help me put our friends here in the most-sheltered places."

In a moment the camp that had been sleepy and placid was bustling with a silent, grim activity. From secret places men produced Winchesters, revolvers, and knives, if they carried them. In half an hour all the food had been brought in, and the casks of water laboriously filled at a brackish pool five miles away.

"That flush excited yuh so you seen a mirage, Jimmie," bantered Speaker, whose ready wit and genial manner had won their way into the sheepman's affection.

"I hope so," was the curt response. But Welsh had seen no mirage, and he was aware of the fact, knowing that a council of war was delaying the action of the other party.

His chief concern was the disposal of his prisoners. Excepting for the first line of breastworks, the only protection in the flat area of the camp was derived from the ma.s.ses of stone that had fallen into it, and behind which one or two men could hide. At last it was decided that the prisoners, unarmed as they were, should lie down behind the wall out of danger's way, while the sheepmen should take their chances behind the rocks. Another reason for this was, that it would never do to have the prisoners behind the men who were doing the fighting, ready to attack from the rear at first chance.

Each man had fifty rounds of ammunition, and was a fairly good shot, not, of course, equaling the cowboys in this respect. The prisoners had hardly been placed when, from behind a neighboring hogback, rode a man waving a white handkerchief.

Welsh stepped out of the camp and drove him back before he could talk, realizing the fellow's clever idea of spying on the defenders' position.