The Rider of Golden Bar Part 10

She never had. The man had repelled her from the moment she first set eyes on him.

It is human nature for one to take an interest in the movement of a person one dislikes. Hazel wondered where Jack Murray was riding so fast. For it was a hot day. Her wonder grew when, twenty minutes after he had pa.s.sed from sight, she perceived by the hoofmarks that he had left the trail and turned into a dry wash. She knew that the wash led nowhere, that it was a blind alley, a cul-de-sac ending in a rock-strewn, unclimbable slope that was the base of Block Mountain.

This wash was a good two miles beyond where the trail entered the grove of pines five miles out of Golden Bar.

Beyond the wash the trail wound up the side of a hill. At the crest of the hill the off mule picked up a stone. Hazel set the brake, tied the reins to the felley of a wheel and jumped to the ground. The stone was in a near fore, and jammed tight. After ten minutes hard hammering and levering with her jackknife she had the stone out.

As she released the foot from between her knees and straightened her back, her gaze swept along the back trail. She saw only sections of trail till it pa.s.sed beyond the grove of pines five miles out of town.

The grove was now three miles behind her. The wash into which Jack Murray had ridden was distant not half a mile. The land on either side of the wash had once been burnt over and had grown up in brush and scraggly jack pine.

Of the pines and spruce that had once covered the ground surrounding the wash, but one tall gray stub remained. The eye of the beholder was naturally drawn to this salient characteristic of the landscape, She saw more than the stub. She saw Jack Murray's horse tied to its bole.

There was something queer about the horse's head. Whereas Jack Murray's horse when it pa.s.sed her on the trail had been a sorrel of a solid color, the head was now whitey-gray.

Hazel was not of an abnormally inquisitive nature, but that a horse's head should change color within the s.p.a.ce of half an hour was enough to make any one ask questions. Ever since she and her uncle had come to realize that some one was rustling their cattle, neither of them ever left home without field gla.s.ses. Hazel pulled her pair from beneath the seat cus.h.i.+on and focused them on the odd-looking horse.

"Why, it's a flour sack over the horse's head!" she exclaimed. "They say a horse won't whinny if you cover his head. I wonder why Jack doesn't want him to whinny. And _where_ is Jack?"

Two minutes later she found Jack. He was lying on his stomach in the brush behind an outcrop. The outcrop overlooked the trail. Jack's rifle was poked out in front of him. It was only too obvious that Jack was also overlooking the trail. Why?

A few minutes later that question was answered by the sudden appearance of a rider at a bend of the trail a mile back. Jack Murray must have glimpsed the rider at the same time, for Hazel saw him snuggle down like a hare in its form, and alter slightly the position of his rifle, although the rider was not yet within accurate shooting range. With a gasp she recognized the rider on the trail by his high-crowned white hat: only one man in Golden Bar wore such a hat and that man was Billy Wingo. Instantly she recalled what folks were saying of Jack Murray since it had become positively known that the party nomination for sheriff had gone to Billy Wingo, that Jack Murray "had it in" for Billy, that he had made threats more or less vague, and that he had taken to brooding over his fancied wrongs. She realized that the threats had crystallized into action, and that this was an ambush.

She knew that Billy would be masked by a certain belt of trees before he traveled another thirty yards, not to emerge into view again till he topped a rise of ground about a thousand yards from the base of the hill on which she stood. It was a certainty that Jack would not risk a shot till his enemy had crossed the rise of ground. If Hazel could only reach the top of the rise first--

Hazel popped up into the seat of the buckboard as Billy reached the belt of trees. It has been shown that Hazel Walton was a good driver, and she needed every atom of her skill to turn the buckboard in the narrow trail without smas.h.i.+ng a wheel against the rocks that some apparently malign agency had seen fit to strew about at that particular spot. The near mule, devil that he was, when he found that he was no longer headed for home, stuck out his lower lip and front legs and balked.

This was unwise of the near mule. He should have chosen a more opportune moment. Hazel had no time to reason with him. She set her teeth, slacked the reins, opened her jack-knife and jabbed an inch and a half of the longer blade into the mule's swelling hip.

It is doubtful whether the recalcitrant mule ever moved faster in his life. The forward spring he gave as the steel perforated his thick hide almost snapped the doubletree. Hazel, her toes hooked under the iron foot-rail, poured the leather into the off mule.

She made no attempt to guide her galloping team. She did not need to.

She barely felt their mouths, but ever she kept her whip going, and the mules laid their bellies to the ground and flew down that hill like frightened jack rabbits. And like a rubber ball the buckboard bounced behind them.

Hazel knew that Jack Murray behind his outcrop must hear the thunder of the racing hoofs, the rattle of the swooping buckboard. Half-way down the hill she lost her hat. Promptly every hairpin she possessed lost its grip and her hair came down. In a dark and rippling cloud it streamed behind her.

"Keep your feet, mules!" she gritted through her locked teeth. "Keep your feet, for G.o.d's sake!"

And they kept their footing among the rolling stones, or rather a merciful Providence kept it for them. For that hill was commonly a hill to be negotiated with careful regard to every b.u.mp and hollow.

Hazel's life was in jeopardy every split second, but so was another life, and it was of this other life she was thinking. Reach that white-hatted rider she must before he came within thousand-yard range of the man behind the outcrop.

Within thousand-yard range, yes. Jack Murray's reputation with the long arm was of territorial proportions. He had made in practice, hunting and open compet.i.tion almost unbelievable scores. Given anything like a fair shot, and it would be hard if he could not hit an object the size of Billy Wingo. All this Hazel Walton knew, and her heart stood still at the thought. But she was of the breed that fights to the last breath and a gasp beyond.

She breathed a little prayer, dropped her right hand on the reins ahead of her left and turned the team around the curve at the foot of the hill as neatly as any stage-driver could have done it. That they swung round on a single wheel did not matter in the least. Beyond the curve one of the front wheels struck a rock that lifted Hazel a foot in the air and shot every single package and the tarpaulin out of the buckboard.

And now the road pa.s.sed the wash and ran straight for more than half a mile till it disappeared over the rise of ground. Throughout the whole distance it was under the sharpshooting rifle of the man behind the outcrop.

As she clung to the pitching buckboard and plied the whip, she speculated on the probability of Jack Murray firing on her. He must realize her purpose. He had been called many things, but fool was not one of them. He might even shoot her. She recalled dim stories of Jack Murray's ruthlessness and grim singleness of purpose.

"Bound to get what he wants, no matter how," men had said of him.

Four hundred yards from the curve where the buckboard had so nearly upset, a Winchester cracked in the rear. The near mule staggered, tried to turn a somersault, and collapsed in a heap of sprawling legs and outthrust neck. The off mule fell on top of his mate, and Hazel catapulted over the dashboard and landed head first on top of the off mule.

The off mule regained his feet with a snort and a lurch, in the process throwing Hazel into a squaw bush. Dizzy and more than a little shaken, that young woman scrambled back into the trail and feverishly set about unhitching the mule.

She heard a yell from the direction of the outcrop above the wash.

Fingers busy with the breast-strap snap, she looked back to see a man hurdle the outcrop and plunge toward her through the brush.

"Wait!" he bawled. "Wait!"

Her reply to this command was to spring to the tail of the mule and shout to him to back. He backed. She twitched both trace c.o.c.keyes out of the singletree hooks (she was using the wagon harness that day) tossed the traces over the mule's back and ran round in front to unbuckle the dead mule's reins.

"Halt or I shoot!"

She giggled hysterically. How could she halt when she had not yet started? She freed the second billet, tore the reins through the terrets, and bunched the reins anyhow in her left hand. He was a tall mule, but she swarmed up his shoulder by means of collar and hames, threw herself across his withers and besought him at the top of her lungs to "Go! Go! Go!"

He went. He went as the saying is, like a bat out of hades. Hazel slipped tailward from the withers, settled herself with knees clinging high, and whanged him over the rump with the ends of the reins. He hardly needed any encouragement. Her initial cry had been more than enough.

The man in the brush stopped. He raised his rifle to his shoulder, looked through the sights at the galloping mule, then lowered the firearm and uttered a heartfelt oath. It had at last been borne in upon his darkened soul that he possibly had made a mistake. Instead of shooting the mule, in the first place, he might better have relinquished his plan of ambush and gone his way in peace. There were other places than Golden Bar, plenty of them, where an enterprising young man could get along and bide his time to square accounts with his enemy.

But the killing of the mule had fairly pushed the bridge over. It was, not to put a nice face on it, an attack on a woman. He might just as well have shot Hazel--better, in fact. She had undoubtedly recognized him. Those Waltons both carried field gla.s.ses, he had heard.

"I'll get the mule anyhow," he muttered. "That'll put a crimp in her."

He dropped on one knee between two bushes, took a quick sight at the mule's barrel six inches behind the girl's leg and pulled trigger.

Over and over rolled the mule, and over and over a short foot in advance of his kicking hoofs rolled Hazel. Luckily she was not stunned and she rolled clear. She scrambled to her feet and set off up the trail as fast as her shaking legs would carry her.

"d.a.m.n her!" cursed Jack Murray, notching up his back sight. "I'd oughta drop her! She's askin' for it, the hussy!"

His itching finger trembled on the trigger, but he did not pull.

Reluctantly, slowly, he lowered the Winchester and set the hammer on safety. The drink was dying out in him. Against his will he rendered the girl the tribute of unwilling admiration. "Whatsa use? She's got too much nerve; but maybe I can get him still."

On her part the girl pelted on up the rise, stumbled at the top and came down heavily, tearing her dress, bruising her knees and thoroughly scratching the palms of her hands. But she scrambled to her feet and went on at a hobbling run, for she saw below her, rising the grade at a sharp trot, the rider of the white hat.

Now she was waving her arms and trying to shout a warning, though her voice stuck in her throat and she was unable to utter more than a low croak.

Billy Wingo pulled up at sight of the wild apparition that was Hazel Walton. But the check was momentary. He clapped home the spurs and hustled his horse into a gallop. He and Hazel came together literally, forty yards below the crest. The girl seized his stirrup to save herself from falling and burst into hysterical tears.

"Lordy, it's the girl that dropped the package!" exclaimed Billy, dismounting in haste.

He had his arm round her waist in time to prevent her falling to the ground. She hung limply against him, and gasped and choked and sobbed away her varied emotions.

"There, there," he said soothingly, patting her back and, it must be said, marveling at the length and thickness and softness and s.h.i.+niness of her midnight hair. "It's all right. You're all right. You're all right. Nothing to worry about--not a-tall. You're safe. Don't cry.

Tell me what's bothering you?"

And after a time, when she could speak coherently, she told him.

It was a disconnected narrative and spotty with gasps and gurgles, but Billy made no difficulty of comprehending her meaning. They who can construct history from hoofmarks in the dust do not require a clear explanation.

When he had heard enough for a working diagram he plumped her down behind a fortuitous stone and adjured her to lie there without moving, which order was superfluous. She did not want to get up again--ever.

Billy stepped to his horse, dragged the Winchester from the scabbard under the near fender and trotted to the top of the rise. Arrived at the crest, he dropped his hat and went forward crouchingly, his rifle at trail. Sheltering his long body behind bushes he dodged zigzaggingly across the top of the ridge to an advantageous position behind a wild currant bush growing beside a jagged boulder.