The thunder clap which frightened the herd of cattle also roused
Tuttle and Ellhorn, and through half-awakened consciousness they heard
the noise of the stampede.
"What's that! The cattle?" exclaimed Tuttle, rising on his elbow.
Ellhorn jumped to his feet.
"Tom, there goes ten thousand dollars on the hoof and a-runnin' like
hell!"
"Where are the horses? Come on, Nick! Buck! Buck! Hello, Buck! Whoa!
Here's mine, Nick! Yours is over by the chuck wagon!"
Fumbling in the darkness, they hurried to release and saddle the
hobbled horses, and, calling to the sick cow-boy that when the foreman
should come in the morning he must make haste after them, they jumped
upon the ponies and set out on the gallop through the darkness to
trail the noise of the running cattle. With every flash of lightning
Nick Ellhorn looked about with keen, quick glances, and with
half-blinded eyes located mountain peaks and arroyos, considered the
direction in which they were headed, and the general lay of the land,
and after a time he broke out with a string of oaths:
"Tommy, them cow-brutes are headed straight for Sweetwater Springs,
and the Fillmore outfit's camped there to-night! Jim Halliday is
there, and so is that measly Wellesly, if he hasn't gone back to town.
He was out here two days ago. Emerson and the cattle will sure strike
the Springs just about daylight, if they keep up their gait and
nothing stops 'em!"
Tuttle swore angrily under his breath. "That's just the snap they've
been waitin' for all this time! Their only show to get Emerson, or to
kill him either, is to come down on him half a dozen to one, and they
know it. Well, if they kill him he won't be the first to drop--nor the
last, either," he added with a little break in his voice, as he gave
his sombrero a nervous pull over his forehead.
"I reckon," Ellhorn replied, "they don't want to kill Emerson, as long
as you and me are alive. They know what would happen afterward. Jim
Halliday has got that same old warrant over there, and what they want
to do is to shut him up in jail again."
The first stinging drops of rain dashed in their faces and they
buttoned their coats and galloped on in silence. Tuttle was the first
to speak again:
"What's that scrub Wellesly doing out here?"
"I don't know, unless he came to bring 'em some brains. They need some
bad enough. Wellesly and Colonel Whittaker have been ridin' around
over the range for the last two or three days, though I didn't know
about it till yesterday. I guess they've been so everlastingly beaten
on every proposition that he thought he'd better come out himself and
see if he couldn't save the day for 'em on something."
They hurried on in the trail of the roar from the stampeding herd, but
suddenly Ellhorn's horse struck his fore feet on the slope of a wet
and slippery mound beside a prairie dog's hole. Before the animal
could recover, its feet slid down the bank into the mouth of the hole
with a forward jerk, and it came down with a groaning cry of pain.
Ellhorn rose to his feet in the stirrups, and as the horse struck the
ground he stood astride its body and with a quick leap jumped to one
side unhurt. By the light of a match, which Tuttle sheltered under his
sombrero, standing bareheaded, meanwhile, with the rain running in
streams down his neck, Ellhorn examined the fallen horse.
"He's broke both his forelegs, Tom. There's only one thing to do with
him, now."
Tuttle stroked the beast's nose. "I reckon so, Nick. You-all better do
it." Then he turned away, while Ellhorn put his revolver to the
horse's head and ended its pain.
"Now, Tom, you go on after Emerson as fast as you can and I'll hoof it
back to camp and get Bob's horse."
"No, you-all jump on behind me, Nick, and we'll go on together.
Emerson will need us both in the morning. If that crowd gets after him
maybe he can stand 'em off till we-all get there. But he'll need us by
daylight, Nick."
"I 'low you're right, Tommy, but ain't you on that horse that always
bucks at double?"
"Yes, but I reckon he'll have to pack double, if you and me fork him."
"You bet he will!" and Ellhorn leaped to the horse's back behind
Tuttle. "Whoo-oo-ee-ee!" Two pairs of spurs dug the horse's flank and
a rein as tight as a steel band held its head so high that bucking was
impossible. The horse jumped and danced and stood on its hind legs and
snorted defiance and with stiffened legs did its best to hump its back
and dismount its unwelcome double burden. It might as well have tried
to get rid of its own mane. The riders swayed and bent with its motion
as if they were a part of its own bounding body. Tuttle gave the
animal its head just enough to allow it to work off its disapproval
harmlessly, and for the rest, it did nothing that he did not allow it
to do. Finally it recognized the mastery, and, pretending to be
dreadfully frightened by a sudden vivid flash of lightning, it started
off on a run.
"Hold on there, old man!" said Tuttle. "This won't do with two heavy
weights on top of you. You've got to pack double, but you'd better go
slow about it."
[Illustration: "WITH A WHOOPING YELL, HE DASHED AT THE HEAD OF THE
PLUNGING HERD"--_p. 82_]
Calming the horse down to a quick trot, they hurried on in the wake of
the stampede. They had lost all sound of the herd, and the trail which
the ploughing hoofs had made at the beginning of the storm had been
nearly obliterated by the beating rain. Once they thought they
caught the sound again and must be off the track. They followed it and
found it was the roaring of a high wave coming down an arroyo from a
cloudburst farther up in the mountain. Hurrying back, they kept to the
general direction the cattle had taken until the trail began to show
more plainly in the soaked earth, like a strip of ploughed land across
the hills. When they reached the next arroyo, they found it a torrent
of roaring water. The greater part of the cloudburst had flowed down
this channel, and where Mead and the cattle had to cross merely wet
sand and soaked earth, they would have to swim.
"See here, Tom," said Ellhorn, "two's too much for this beast in the
water. You take care of my belt and gun and I'll swim across."
"That's a mighty swift current, Nick. Don't you think we-all can make
it together?"
"I don't want to take any chances. Buck can get across with you all
right, but if he's got us both on him he might go down and then we'd
have to follow Emerson on foot. We're coverin' ground almighty slow,
anyway. I'm the best swimmer, and you-all can take care of my boots
and gun."
They waited a few moments for a flash of lightning to show them the
banks of the arroyo. By its light they saw a water course thirty feet
wide and probably ten feet deep, bank-full of a muddy, foaming flood,
in which waves two feet high roared after one another, carrying clumps
of bushes, stalks of cactus, bones, and other debris. As they plunged
into the torrent, Ellhorn seized the tail of Tuttle's horse, and,
holding it with one hand and swimming with the other, made good
progress. But in mid-stream a big clump of mesquite struck him in the
side, stunning him for an instant, and he let go his hold upon the
pony's tail. A high wave roared down upon him the next moment, and
carried him his length and more down stream. He fought with all his
strength against the swift current, but, faint and stunned, could
barely hold his own. He shouted to Tuttle, who was just landing, and
Tom threw the end of his lariat far out into the middle of the stream.
Ellhorn felt the rope across his body, grasped it and called to Tuttle
to pull.
"Tommy," he said, when safe on land, "I hope we'll find the whole
Fillmore outfit just a-walkin' all over Emerson. I don't want more'n
half an excuse to get even with 'em for this trip. Sure and I wish I
had 'em all here right now! I'm just in the humor to make sieves of
'em!"