AMBUSH
The night was filled with the drumming of horses' feet and the rush and
challenge of the hounds. They gathered by the gate and bayed and barked
continuously, racing far out across the open plain; and when at dawn
the Bassetts looked out, the Basin was stripped bare of stock. Not a
cow or horse was left for Grimes to wreak his vengeance on if his sheep
were shot up and scattered--the stage was cleared and set for the play,
which promised to be a tragedy. The Bassetts peered out warily, using
their glasses through the portholes as they scanned the neighboring
hills for gunmen; then the old squaw ventured out, to bring in wood and
water and cook their bread and coffee on the hearth. As the sun rose
higher the oak door was thrown open, giving an unobstructed view of the
plain; and at last the Bassetts stepped out into the open, for the hour
for ambushing had passed.
There are crimes that stalk by noonday, and others that fear the light;
but the men who shoot from ambush creep up in the night-time and kill
at the first peep of day. Or, failing of their victim, they skulk off
through the brush, before they, too, are marked down for revenge. All
this the Bassetts knew, as well as that strange crotchet which keeps
murderers from shooting down women; and so they stayed close till the
hour for "tapping" had passed, sending their woman out instead. She
plodded about stoically, apparently busy with her duties, but every
possible hiding place was carefully scrutinized before she consented to
let her men-folks come out.
They stood now in the sun, rolling a smoke and looking northward for
the first of the four bands of sheep; and as the clamor of their
bleating came faintly down the wind, old Susie, the Indian woman, came
out. First she glanced at Bill and Winchester, who were talking and
laughing together, and then at sullen-faced Sharps; and then she, too,
looked away to the north where the sheep were beginning to move.
"No good!" she exclaimed, stamping her foot and turning to Henry;
and while the other looked on she harangued him in Indian, pointing
repeatedly at her sons and the sheep. But Henry Bassett was not the man
to listen to a woman when it was a question of peace or war, and after
a few words he dismissed her impatiently and joined his grinning "cubs."
"She don't like that man Grimes," he explained shamefacedly, "but it's
too late now for sech talk. All the same, boys, this sheep-war ain't
no concern of ours so we'll stay right close to the house. I'm shore
sorry now that I said what I did; because if he wins, boys, he'll
sheep us out, too. But it was that or knuckle down to them dastardly
Scarboroughs, and I shore can't stummick that!"
He maundered on, arguing it over with himself, seeking vainly to
justify his acts; and all the while the braying of the sheep grew
louder as the herds drifted down through the pass. For weeks they had
been struggling through scrub oaks and pines, and dense thickets of
manzanita and buckthorn; and when at last they burst into the open
the leaders advanced on the run. The first band was made up of big,
sturdy wethers, their fleeces torn and tattered from trailing through
the brush, but strong and active as bucks. They came on in a line
which quickly spread out like the front of an advancing flood, and as
the last of the herd came clear of the creek-bed the clangor of their
baaing ceased. They fed along slowly, the leaders lingering to eat, the
drag drifting past them to the front; and in the silence that followed
a Mexican herder stepped out and looked down across the waving plain.
The grass was knee high and still green from winter rains, and it
flowed away before them like a billowing field, for the sheep had never
been there before. Yet this silence, this emptiness, this absence of
man or beast, had its sinister side as well; and, after a long look,
the herder disappeared and came out further down the creek. He kept
under the bank, only showing among the shadows as he kept cover beneath
the towering cottonwoods; but as his sheep drifted away towards the
grassy western hills he rushed out and turned them back with his dogs.
Still the silence, the great emptiness, and as other herders came up
they stepped out boldly into the open. Each man carried a gun and had
his face to the hills, but no gun roared out its loud challenge. They
drifted on slowly, down the broadening valley yet keeping close in to
the creek, and at noon they had edged away from the menacing western
ridges and gained the open Basin at last.
But now the fat wethers had eaten their full, and as the heat came on
they took shelter in the river-bottom, drowsing peacefully in the shade
of the willows. The camp-rustlers came up with their burros and kyacks,
a fire was soon going at their camp; and as his burros, and Mexicans
took their afternoon siesta Dave Grimes ambled over to the house. He
rode up on a black mule, gaudy with martingale and fancy trimmings, and
greeted the Bassetts at the gate.
"Well," he challenged, "didn't I tell ye I could do it? They see my
men was armed--and I had others to do the flanking--and nobody fired a
shot. Now I'm out in the open, where they can't sneak up on me; and I
can fight 'em man to man!"
"They may not fight you that way," suggested Winchester amiably, but
the rest of the Bassetts said nothing. The sight of the sheep actually
cropping off the grass which they had depended upon to pasture their
horses, had brought up a sober second thought, and Sharps and Bill were
furious.
"What d'ye think you're going to do?" demanded Bill rebelliously, "bed
your sheep down right in front of the door? We'd like a little feed
where we can stake out our horses, without walking plumb over to the
Scarboroughs."
"Oh, you would, hey?" returned Grimes, but there he stopped and
swallowed his scathing retort. "Well, I'll speak to my herders," he
said at last. "We've got to be neighborly, of course. But when I git
through with 'em you can walk to the Scarboroughs' without dodging
any forty-five ninetys. I see they've gathered all their cattle and
drove 'em off west--and their gunmen are over there, too--but the
first danged man that takes a shot at my sheep will find I've got a
forty-five, too. I've seen that tried before--riding out at my herders
and jumping my sheep off some bluff--but I've got a way to stop it
that's never failed yet, I jest give 'em a taste of this!"
He patted the stock of a forty-five ninety rifle that stuck up from
under his knee and Sharps broke his day-long silence.
"You're bad, ain't ye?" he rumbled, and Grimes saw that his new
partners had already repented of their bargain.
"Yes, I'm _bad_," he said, "and I don't care who knows it. Anything
more you'd like to say?"
"Nope," answered Sharps, and regarded him morosely at which Grimes
wheeled his mule to go.
"Well, so long," he said, "can't be chatting here all day. But if
you think you're so _bravo_, why didn't you clean them Scarboroughs
yourself, without calling for help on _me_?"
He flashed his eyes at Sharps and galloped over to his camp, leaving
the Bassetts with something more to think about.
Why indeed had they brought in this barbarian, with his Mexicans and
his sheep, when with a little more nerve they could have taken on
the Scarboroughs and run them out of the country themselves? But it
was too late now to ask that question, for Grimes and his sheep were
there; and on the other hand it was too early to give way to despair,
for the battle had just begun. The Scarboroughs might be cowards but,
even then, they were cowmen; and a cowardly cowman will rise up and
fight sheep when he would never fight anything else. No, the battle
was not over, it had not yet begun; and before he had finished the
self-satisfied Mr. Grimes might find himself hollering for help. But
help he would never get, not from the Bassetts and their clan, for they
had seen his raw work and he had tipped his own hand--he was there to
sheep them all out!
They waited in sullen silence as the sheep began to move and the
herders followed after them from the bedding ground; for that was the
way these besotted sheepmen worked, they made themselves the slaves
of their sheep. And the memory of that grass, so rich and sweet, had
roused the sheep up early from their dreams; they set off in single
file, each group behind its leader, and the leaders all heading for
the plain. A single herder followed, his gun across his arm, his eyes
on the distant hills; and from a knoll near their camp the extra
herders watched him, for they knew he took his life in his hands. What
they feared they could not say, more than the treachery of the cowmen
who had disappeared so mysteriously into the hills, but they watched
him nevertheless, and as they followed his squat form suddenly he
staggered and dropped down in the grass. And then the answer came, a
single shot in the silence, and the sheep broke into a run.
There was a volley then, from the rolling plain in front of them; and
from a thin line of willows which marked the course of a dry stream the
smoke rose up in white puffs. The sheep, which had rushed one way, now
turned and rushed another; and as they went down in sudden rows the
survivors stampeded, running frantically away from the smoke. The heavy
_bang_ of cowmen's rifles, shooting ninety grains of powder, added
the final touch of panic to their flight, and as they scooted across
the plain the big, forty-five caliber bullets plowed through them
until they dropped by scores. It was the vengeance of the Scarboroughs
for the invading of their range, but the Bassetts did not rush for
their guns. They looked on in stony silence, for it was no quarrel of
theirs--and Grimes had tipped his hand too soon.