AN ELEMENTAL ALLY.
But they did not come. One of them must have seen Lessard fall, for at
the crack of MacRae's gun men and horses, already half-hidden by the
thickening smoke, vanished into the brush. Piegan fired one ineffectual
shot as they flicked out of sight. So far we had seen nothing of Lyn. I
was satisfied she was not in the party, unaccountable as that seemed to
be.
"Darn 'em," Piegan grunted disgustedly. "They're next, now. An' they
don't aim t' run the gantlet till they have t'. We got 'em penned,
anyway; they can't get out uh that patch uh brush without showin'
themselves."
"Oh, Piegan!" MacRae called to us. He lay within easy shouting-distance,
and managed to make himself heard without rising.
"Hello!" Piegan answered.
"Can you fellows keep them from going up the canyon?"
"I reckon we can," Smith called back, "unless this smoke gets so blame
thick we kain't see at all."
"All right. I'm going up on top, and throw it into them from above.
Maybe I can drive them out of the brush."
Piegan slapped me on the shoulder. "Darn our fool hearts," he exclaimed.
"We ought to 'a' thought uh that before. Why, he c'n pick 'em off like
blackbirds on a fence, from up there on the bench!"
We did not see MacRae go, but we knew that he must have crawled through
the sage-brush to the creek channel, where, by stooping, he could gain
the mouth of the canyon unseen. Anyway, our time was fully occupied in
watching the brush-patch that sheltered our plundering friends. They
held close to their concealment, however, nor did they waste any powder
on us--for that matter, I don't think they knew just where we were, and
they were familiar enough with the gentle art of bushwhacking to
realize that the open was a distinctly unhealthy place for either party
to prospect.
It was a long time till we heard from MacRae again, and, lying there
passively, we grew afraid that after all they would give us the slip;
for the smoke was now rolling in black clouds above the gorge. So far
the thickest of it had blown overhead, but any moment a change of wind
might whip it down the canyon bottom like an ocean fog, and that would
mean good-by to Hicks & Co.
"That fire's mighty close, an' comin' on the jump," Piegan remarked,
with an upward glance. "I wish she'd let up long enough for us t' finish
this job. That smoke's as good as they want, once it begins t' settle in
the gorge. What in thunder d'yuh s'pose Mac's doin' all this time. He
ought t' show pretty quick, now."
He showed, as Piegan put it, very shortly. From the top of the opposite
bank he fired a shot or two, and drew for the first time a return from
the enemy. Then he broke off, and when he next gave hint of his
whereabouts, it was to hail us from the nearest point on the canyon rim.
"Quit your hide-out and pull for the mouth of the gorge. Quick! I'll be
there."
"What the hell's up now!" Piegan muttered. "Well, I guess we'll have t'
take a chance. If they don't wing us before we get across this bald
place, we'll be all right. Run like yuh was plumb scairt t' death,
Flood."
We sprinted like a pair of quarter-horses across the thirty yards of
bare ground that spread in front of the rock, a narrow enough space, to
be sure, but barren of cover for a jack-rabbit, much less two
decent-sized men. My heart was pumping double-quick when we threw
ourselves headlong in the welcome sage-brush--they had done their level
best to stop us, and some of those forty-four caliber humming-birds
buzzed their leaden monotone perilously close to our heads. That is one
kind of music for which I have a profound respect.
From there to the creek-channel we crawled on all fours, as MacRae had
done. Stooping, lest our heads furnish a target, we splashed along in
the shallow water till we reached the mouth of the canyon. There we
slipped carefully to higher ground. MacRae was scrambling and sliding
down from above, barely distinguishable against the bank. Far up the
gorge dense clouds of black smoke swooped down from the benchland.
Already the patch of brush in which lay the renegade Policemen was
hidden in the smudge, shut away from our sight. We hailed MacRae when he
reached the foot of the hill, and he came crashing through sage and
buck-brush and threw himself, panting, on the ground.
"The fire," he gasped, "is coming down the gorge. They're cut off at the
other end. They've got to come out here in a little while--or roast. The
smoke would choke a salamander, on top, right now. We can't miss them in
this narrow place, no matter how thick it gets. Look yonder!"
A wavering red line licked its way to the canyon-edge on the east side,
wiped out the grass, and died on the bald rim-rock. Away up the creek a
faint crackling sounded.
"Dry timber," Piegan muttered. "It'll get warm 'round here pretty
directly."
The smoke, blacker now, more dense, hot as a whiff from a baker's oven,
swooped down upon us in choking eddies. It blew out of the canyon-mouth
like a gust from a chimney, rolling over and over in billowy masses. The
banks on either hand were almost invisible. We knew that our time of
waiting was short. The popping of dry, scrubby timber warned us that our
position would soon be untenable. The infernal vapors from the unholy
mixture of green and dry grass, berry bushes, willow scrub, and the
ubiquitous sage, made breathing a misery and brought unwilling tears to
our stinging eyes. And presently, above the subdued but menacing noises
of the fire, the beat of galloping hoofs uprose.
They burst out of the mouth of the canyon, a smoke-wreathed whirlwind,
heading for the protection of the river. The pack-horses, necked
together, galloped in the lead, and behind them Hicks, Gregory, and
Bevans leaned over the necks of their mounts. They knew that we were
waiting for them, but at the worst they had a fighting chance with us,
and none with what came behind. So thick hung the smoky veil that they
were right on top of us before they took tangible shape; and when we
rose to our knees and fired, the crack of their guns mingled with that
of our own. Gregory, so near that I could see every feature of his dark
face, the glittering black eyes, the wide mouth parted over white, even
teeth, wilted in his saddle as they swept by. Bevans and his horse went
down together. But Hicks the wily, a superb horseman, hung in his off
stirrup and swerved away from us, and the smoke closed behind him to the
tune of our guns.
It was done in less time than it has taken to tell of it. There was no
prolonged hand-to-hand struggle with buckets of blood marring the
surrounding scenery, and a beautiful heroine wringing her hands in
despair; merely a rush of horses and men out of the smoke, a brief spasm
of gun-fire--it was begun and ended in five seconds. But there were two
fallen men, and Piegan Smith with a hole through the big muscle of his
right arm, to show that we had fought.
The pack-horses, with no riders at their heels to guide them, had
tangled each other in the connecting-rope and stopped. Hicks was gone,
and likely to keep going. So we turned our attention to Gregory and
Bevans. Gregory was dead as the proverbial door-nail, but Bevans, on
investigation, proved to be very much alive--so much so that if he had
not been partly stunned by the fall, and thereafter pinned to the ground
by a thousand-pound horse, he would have potted one or two of us with a
good heart. As it was, we reached the gentleman in the same moment that
he made a heroic effort to lay hold of the carbine which had
luckily--for us--fallen beyond the length of his arm.
"Yuh lay down there an' be good!" Piegan, out of the fullness of his
heart, emphasized his command with the toe of his boot. "Where's that
girl, yuh swine?"
"Go to hell!" Bevans snarled.
"Here," MacRae broke in hastily, "we've got to move pretty _pronto_,
and get across the river. That fire will be on us in five minutes. Sarge
and I will gather up their horses. You keep an eye on Bevans, Piegan;
he'll answer questions fast enough when I get at him."
While Mac dashed across the creek I captured Gregory's horse, which had
stopped when his rider fell; and as I laid hand on the reins I thought I
heard a shot off beyond the river. But I couldn't be certain. The whine
of the wind that comes with a fire, the crackle of the fire itself, the
manifold sounds that echoed between the canyon walls and the pungent,
suffocating smoke, all conspired against clear thinking or hearing. I
listened a moment, but heard no more. Then, with time at a premium, I
hastened to straighten out the tangle of pack-animals. Mac loomed up in
the general blur with Lessard's body on his horse, as I led the others
back to where Piegan stood guard over Bevans.
"Ain't this hell!" he coughed. "That fire's right on top of us. We got
t' make the river in a hurry."
It was another minute's work to lash Gregory's body on one of the
pack-horses, and release the sullen Bevans from the weight of his dead
mount. As an afterthought, I looked in the pockets on his saddle, and
the first thing I discovered was a wad of paper money big enough to
choke an ox, as Piegan would say. I hadn't the time to investigate
further, so I simply cut the _anqueros_ off his saddle and flung them
across the horn of my own--and even in that swirl of smoke and sparks I
glowed with a sense of gratification, for it seemed that at last I was
about to shake hands with the ten thousand dollars I had mourned as
lost. Then Piegan and I drove Bevans ahead of us and moved the spoils of
war to the river brink, while MacRae hurried to the cottonwood grove
after our own neglected mounts; they had given us too good service to be
abandoned to the holocaust.
MacRae soon joined us with the three horses; out into the stream, wading
till the water gurgled around our waists, we led the bunch. Then we
were compelled to take our hats and slosh water over packs and saddles
till they were soaked--for the fire was ravaging the flat we had just
left, and showers of tiny sparks descended upon and around us. Thus
proof against the fiery baptism, though still half-strangled by the
smoke, our breathing a succession of coughs, we mounted and pushed
across.
The high water had abated and the river was now flowing at its normal
stage, some three hundred yards in width and nowhere swimming-deep on
the ford. We passed beyond spark-range and splashed out on a sand-bar
that jutted from the southern bank. Midway between the lapping water and
the brush that lined the edge of the flat, a dark object became
visualized in the shifting gray vapor. We rode to it and pulled up in
amaze. Patiently awaiting the pleasure of his master, as a good cavalry
horse should, was the bay gelding Hicks had ridden; and Hicks himself
sprawled in the sand at the end of the bridle-reins. I got down and
looked him over. He was not dead; far from it. But a bullet had scored
the side of his head above one ear, and he was down and out for the
time.
We stripped the pistol-belt off him, and a knife. At the same time we
rendered Bevans incapable of hostile movement by anchoring both hands
securely behind his back with a pack-rope. That done, Piegan's bleeding
arm came in for its share of attention. Then we held a council of war.