STILL A-ROLLIN'
Arnold finished his breakfast and, telling Margaret that he was going
to Gunsight to see Johnny and Dave, the hiring of another puncher
being uppermost in his mind, went to the corral and soon was riding
along the trail, gratified by the entire absence of pain in his leg
and with the stimulation which came from the easy motion, the sun, and
the crisp morning air. When Margaret turned back into the house her
brother had slipped out of the front door and had gone, eager to shirk
his few duties and play scout. Since he had found an old, broken rifle
in the deserted and disused bunkhouse it formed the foundation upon
which he based his play. As she called to him, vexation in her voice,
he was wriggling through a clump of brush not far away, this part of
his scouting being earnest and real. Wiping dishes was woman's work, as
he firmly believed, and he detested and scorned it. His pony had been
saddled and picketed in a draw south of the house before breakfast, and
when the opportunity offered he intended to get to it and ride off over
the ranch until hunger forced him to return. Lying quietly in his cover
he kept a keen watch until, the beds made, his sister should begin the
kitchen work and give him a chance to cross the open space between him
and the pony. He was growing more and more impatient when he caught
sight of a horseman riding down the slope of a hill north of the
house, and his anger and curiosity flared up when he saw that it was
Big Tom.
The Bar H foreman rode leisurely past the corral, noting the absence of
Arnold's horse and the pony, and stopped before the door. Swinging from
the saddle he sauntered up to the kitchen door and knocked. Margaret
wondered who it could be, a sudden thought of injury to her father
coming to her, and she hastened to answer it. When she saw who the
visitor was she stopped and recoiled a little.
"How-do-you-do?" she said coldly.
"Glad to see you. Ma'am," came the answer. "I rode over to see yore
father about some mavericks of his that are eatin' up my grass."
"You have just missed him," replied Margaret. "If you return by the way
of Gunsight you can see him there."
"Now, ain't that just my luck?" regretted the foreman, stepping inside.
"Might I have a drink of water, Ma'am? I wasn't aimin' to ride back
that way. Of course there ain't no chance at all of his comin' back
soon?"
"Why, no," answered Margaret, handing him the dipper. "He may not
return until evening. But you can leave a message for him with me."
"It's somethin' we has to talk over," Big Tom replied, giving her the
empty dipper. As her hand touched it he grabbed her to him, her screams
muffled by his hand. Struggle as she would she was helpless against
his bearlike strength and soon was limp with exhaustion and partially
suffocated. Holding her with one arm and hand he took a clothesline
from a peg on the wall and quickly trussed her with it until she was
powerless to move. Gagging her with a towel he carried her to the
corral, caught her horse, and threw her on it and cinched up the
saddle which lay at the gate. Hurrying back to the house he collected
provisions and ran out again, and in another minute he rode rapidly for
the brush and rough ground west of the house, leading her horse. Bound,
gagged, and tied to the saddle she could do nothing, every beat of the
horses' hoofs increasing her terror.
Back at the house Charley wriggled around the corner, his curiosity
overcoming caution, and he stared in amazement as he saw them crossing
the open, his sister bound with rope. Suddenly cursing the useless
rifle in a burst of rage, he dashed for his horse, mounted and rode for
town to tell his father, keeping to the low levels until the hills and
brush formed a screen behind him. The little pony ran at top speed,
shrewdly guided over the rough trail, and the nine miles did not take
long. Dashing up to Dave's, Charley shouted at the top of his lungs and
pulled up at the door.
"Peggy's kidnapped! Dad! Peggy's kidnapped!"
A chair crashed in Dave's and three men jammed in the doorway, Johnny
forcing his two companions back as he fought his way past them. "What's
that?" he demanded.
"Big Tom's stole Peggy, d--n him!" shrilled the boy, tears of helpless
rage in his eyes.
Johnny needed no further proof than the words and Charley's
earnestness. "Where was it? Which way did he go?" he snapped, leaping
to the black horse standing at the tie rail.
"At th' ranch--they went west. Oh, Peggy!" he sobbed. "Oh, Peggy!"
"Come a-runnin'!" shouted Johnny over his shoulder, wheeling his horse.
He spoke to the black thoroughbred and she struck into a gait she could
hold for hours, and one which was deceptive in its smoothness. As he
rocked down the trail three Double X punchers rode in from the south.
"Keep a-goin'!" Dave yelled to them, apoplectic with his emotions.
"Foller _him_! Big Tom's run off with th' Arnold gal!"
Slim's brief remark is better left unrecorded. Three sets of hoofs
rolled out of the town and sent the dust swirling high along the trail.
The punchers overtook and passed Arnold, who cursed the slowness of
his mount, shouted profane reassurance at him and left him their
dust. Dailey led Fanning around the corner of the saloon and aroused
surprised resentment in his horse, which heretofore had regarded him
as a sane being. Fanning's gray felt a touch of its youthful spirits
return; if it had to race, all right; it wasn't much for speed, but it
expected to be better than last at the finish.
Big Tom, having passed the boundaries of the ranch, pulled up long
enough to remove the gag. "If you behave yoreself I'll untie you," he
said. "You can't get away--if you try it you'll learn what a rope feels
like."
Margaret managed to nod and the rope came off of her.
"'Twon't do no good to yell," he told her, "nor to hold back. You won't
be missed till supper time, an' then nobody will do much worryin' till
dark. They'll search th' range first--an' by th' time they finish that
we'll be so far away that they'll never find us. Yo're thinkin' they'll
trail us? Huh! Let 'em, then. Once we get into _my_ country they can
trail an' be d--d! You might as well make th' best of it. I got th'
herd money in my pockets, an' we can have a nice little ranch an' live
like th' story books say--happy ever after. Yo're goin' to live there
with me. If yo're sensible you can do it as my wife. I'm going to give
you that chance. But, yo're goin' to live there with me, just the same."
"You are even more of a beast than I thought," she retorted. "You'll
never reach that ranch; and if you do, I'll kill you while you sleep."
"I'm chancin' th' last," he retorted. "Yo're thinkin' of that Nelson,
huh?" he grinned. "When Big Tom _does_ play his cards it takes more'n
a fool like _him_ to win th' pot. An' I'm sayin' I stacked this deck.
I've been stackin' it for a long time, figgerin' everythin'. He's
cold-decked, Ma'am; beat clean when he'd reckoned he'd won. Thinkin'
they'll trail us, an' get us because we're not pushin' hard?" He
laughed ironically. "Didn't I say I've been plannin' this a long
time? There ain't no use of wearin' horses out when it ain't needed.
With twenty hours, or more, start, ours will be fresh when we need
speed--which we won't. You'd do better to begin practicin' callin'
yoreself Missus Huff--it'll come easy before you know it. I'm givin'
you that chance, an' I'll not bother you till a parson is handy. Then
it will be yore move. You've got three days." Receiving no reply he
looked around the range and thenceforth ignored her.
A black thoroughbred swept across the little SV valley, passed the
corral, and rocked westward along a plain trail. The rider, his
sombrero jammed tightly down on his head to baffle the pull of the
whistling wind, cold with a rage which had turned him into the
personification of vengeance, felt an exultant thrill as the double
trail sped past him, for his quarry had but eighteen miles start,
and he felt sure that it had been cut down by the speed at which
half of it had been covered. There was nothing on hoofs on all that
range that could keep an even lead against Pepper. She flashed past
mesquite, around chaparrals, her great heart beating with a gameness
which excelled even her love for the race; her trim legs swinging
rhythmically, the reaching of her free, beautiful stride eating up
the range and sending it past like the speeding surface of some great
rapids. A Gila monster moved from her course barely in time, and a
rattler coiled and struck too late. Off in the brush a startled coyote
changed its mind about crossing the open and slunk back into cover,
following the black with suspicious gaze. The great muscles writhed
and bunched, rippled and bulged under the satiny skin, the barrel-like
chest rising and falling with a rhythm and smoothness which graphically
told that it was a perfect part of a perfect running machine. Down
the slopes at top speed, up them at a lope, the undulating range
slipped swiftly past. Brush and scattered mesquite, chaparrals and
lone, sentinel cacti; hollows, coulees, draws, and arroyos went behind
in swift procession. Still the double trail lay ahead, now lost as it
crossed hard ground, now plain with small, shallow basins where the
sand had slid back and hidden the outlines of the roofs, and then clear
and sharp and fresh in soils possessing claylike cohesion.
The rider gave no thought to ambush. There was a time for everything,
but hesitation or caution would not claim its turn until the ride was
done. If an ambush lay ahead, what mattered it? Others were coming
along that trail, and only one need survive. The picture which he
carried in his brain was not one from which counselings of safety could
arise. Its message was to ride, ride, ride; and kill, kill, kill;
and it turned the thin-lipped, narrow-lidded rider into an agent of
Death, merciless and untiring. The ages rolled back from around his
soul and stripped it of the last, pulsating film of civilization's
veneer. No gray wolf ever ran a trail, no wolverine hunted in its
northern fastness that was more coldly savage or cruel than this man
whose grim confidence gave no thought of failure. Mile after mile he
rode, motionless in the saddle save for the rhythmic rise and swing of
a saddle poise superb. Neither to right nor left he looked, nor back
where the billowing dust swirled suddenly high to roll spreading over
the drab earth, slowly settling. Straight ahead he set his gaze, to the
fartherest new-made mark on the winding, twisting trail, a trail which
twisted and wound as though vainly seeking a place to hide until that
flying Death were past. A high ridge of limestone poured into view and
the swinging black was pulled to a walk, for a breathing spell wise in
its length, and canny in its shortness. Then up slowly and off again on
her far-reaching stride, the noonday sun blazing down unheeded.
To the west the ribbon-like trail was widening. Behind Johnny it was
bigger by one more strand; behind Slim, a furnace of rage, was another
strand; Tom Wilkes, grimly determined, made another; half a mile behind
him rocked Cimarron, vengeful and silent, and added the sixth. Certain
memories, returning to the _segundo_, caused him to ride off and make
a trail of his own, confident that it would be a chord in a great arc
and lead him past his two ranch mates. There was a certain pass far
to the northeast which he vaguely coupled to the Bar H foreman, and
with three men ahead of him to follow the certainty of the tell-tale
trail, he could afford to gamble. Two hours later Slim became indignant
and wondered if Cimarron's black-and-white had grown wings, for his
_segundo's_ dust did not suit his mouth and eyes.
"He can do it with me," muttered Slim, "but that Pepper hoss won't be
seen by any of us till she stops. I hope Nelson ain't killin' her."
The Pepper horse was neither stopping nor being killed. She skimmed
along with no faltering in her stride as though she remembered a day
in a quicksand. There was a debt to be paid, and if heart held out and
the heaving sides did not prove false to her thoroughbred courage, the
lengthening shadows would see it canceled before they became lost
in the day's deepening twilight. Down a narrow valley she sped, the
hills rolling the tattoo of her drumming hoofs as though they liked
the sound and were reluctant to let it die. Taking a brook at a bound
and scorning her rising thirst, she swirled around a sharp bend, and
twitched her ears suddenly forward, the quick pressure of her rider's
knees telling her that he had seen.
Johnny slipped his Sharp's from its long sheath and, holding it at the
ready, stood up in his stirrups, his horse somewhere finding a reserve
power that fairly hurled her forward, the trim black legs whirring
under her like flashing spokes of jet. The rider's lids narrowed to
thin slits and the tight-pressed lips pressed tighter. Yard after
yard he gained, second after second. The half mile became a quarter,
steadily lessened and then, Pepper pounding over a stretch of rocky
ground where the hammering of her hoofs rang out loudly, there was a
quick turning in the saddles ahead, and a roar from the saddle behind,
a ragged cloud of acrid smoke tearing itself to filmy bits and blending
with the suddenly tenuous dust cloud in the rear.
Big Tom cursed in sudden rage and whirled his horse behind Margaret's,
his rifle spitting past her shoulder. His shelter bolted from in front
of him as a Sharp's Special stung the SV horse, its rider barely able
to keep her seat during the convulsive lunge. Big Tom leaped down
behind his mount and rested the gun across the saddle. Before he could
pull the trigger another Special passed through the animal's abdomen
and, its force spent, struck his belt and doubled him up, gasping for
breath as the agonized animal leaped forward. The cantle of the saddle,
striking the barrel of the Winchester, tore the weapon from its owner's
hands and left him, slowly straightening up, with a Colt for his only
defense.
Coming at him like a skimming swallow sped Pepper, her rider, having
slipped the rifle back into its long sheath, standing erect in the
stirrups, each hand holding a Colt. For a moment they were held aloft
and then as the Bar H foreman drew his six-gun they chopped down and
poured jets of flame and puffs of smoke over Pepper's head. The foreman
twisted, fired aimlessly, lurched, fired again, and plunged forward,
face down on the sand. Johnny slid his guns back into their holsters
and raced for Margaret, who was fighting a pain-crazed horse.
Slim and Cimarron, neck and neck now, jumped the brook, sped along the
little valley, keyed to fighting pitch by the sound of distant shots,
and flashed around the bend, where they pulled up sharply and looked
across the level pasture.
"H--l!" growled Cimarron. "I thought we was ridin' to a lynchin'! This
here looks more like a weddin'. Get back, around that bend, you fool!"
"It shore does," said Slim, grinning. "A weddin', huh? Well, then, I
says he's still a-rollin'."