[Illustration:
AMERICAN
INDIAN
WEEKLY
]
BY COLONEL SPENCER DAIR
VOL. I THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY, CLEVELAND, OHIO, U. S. A. NO. 2
Copyright, 1910, by the Arthur Westbrook Company, Cleveland, Ohio.
TRACKED TO HIS LAIR
OR
The Pursuit of the Midnight Raider
By COL. SPENCER DAIR
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS.
THE MIDNIGHT RAIDER--A daredevil Indian chief, known as Scalping
Louie, who breaks from the Indian reservation and proceeds to steal
cattle and burn houses, being finally brought to his well-deserved end
by a cowboy who has the assistance of an aged scout.
SAM BOWSER--Owner of the Double Cross ranch, in Arizona, who is roused
from bed by an eerie cry, finds a spectre hovering over his cattle
corral and while he is quieting his cowboys, sees his cattle stampeded
by the apparition. Starting in pursuit, he trails one bunch of cattle
to a dangerous swamp in which he comes near losing his life by being
sucked into a mud hole, then is nearly burned to death in a fire set
to drive out the Midnight Raider and finally has the satisfaction of
seeing one of his cowpunchers send the miscreant to his doom.
SARAH BOWSER--His wife.
HENRY HAWKS--Owner of the Star and Moon ranch, whose buildings are
burned by the renegade Indian chieftain. He joins with Bowser in the
trailing of the raider to his lair.
AMY HAWKS--His wife.
DEADSHOT PETE--Cowboy on Double Cross ranch, who fires the bullet that
ends the raider’s life.
SANDY--Foreman on Double Cross ranch.
PINKY--Cowboy in the Double Cross outfit.
KI YI--Foreman on Star and Moon ranch, who helps Deadshot.
DUDE--Cowboy on Star and Moon ranch.
GROUCH--Cowboy on Star and Moon ranch.
SLIPPERY NIG--Half-breed scout, with a grievance against Scalping
Louie, and is called by Deadshot to run him down.
CHAPTER I.
A MIDNIGHT ALARM.
“O-u-e-e!”
Piercing and shrill, from the tense stillness of the night sounded this
eerie wail.
In terrified alarm, Sam Bowser rose in his bed to his elbow.
As he remained thus, trying to decide whether the awesome shriek was a
cry of distress from some human being or was an imagining of his mind,
his wife awoke.
“What was that?” she gasped, excitedly.
“You heard it, too?”
“I--I thought I heard something. It sounded like the very soul being
drawn from some woman. U-ugh! It makes me shiver to think of it.”
“Well, there aren’t any women nearer than thirty miles, except you, so
it couldn’t be that.”
“But some one might be carrying a woman off or murdering her. Just
because Amy Hawks is the nearest one we know of, doesn’t make it so
there mightn’t be some poor creature being killed.”
To this, the man made no response, and together they listened intently
for a repetition of the awful wail.
“Guess it must have been some coyote got kicked while he was smelling
round the cattle. This is the fi----”
But the words literally stuck in Bowser’s mouth.
Again the shriek, bloodcurdling in its gruesomeness, rang out ere he
could finish what he purposed to say.
This time there was no mistaking the cry.
It seemed to come from a woman in awful distress and to be close at
hand.
“There’s some mischief afoot!” exclaimed the man, as, heedless of his
wife’s protests, he leaped from his bed, seized his rifle and rushed to
the door.
Yet, when he threw it open, there was nothing to be seen!
The silence and the darkness of the night were overwhelming--as only
the silence and darkness of the plains of Arizona can be.
Sam Bowser was the owner of the Double Cross ranch. With no neighbors
nearer than thirty miles, he and his wife, Sarah, lived in the home
ranch house. This building faced the South. To the right, and some
sixty feet distant, was the bunkhouse, where the cowpunchers lived when
not on the range. To the North and between the two houses was a horse
corral. Directly back of this was a second corral for the cattle, so
large that it seemed more like a big pasture enclosed by barbed wire
than a yard.
Only the day before had Bowser’s men driven the pick of his herds back
to the home ranch in order that they might be shipped away to the great
cattle markets of the Middle West.
Scarcely had the ranch owner opened the door than lights blazed in the
bunkhouse, followed an instant later by the rush of the cowpunchers,
as, guns in their hands, they crept cautiously from their shanty to
learn the cause of the alarm.
“Steady, boys! Don’t go to shooting up the country!” warned Bowser,
running across the yard to join his men.
“What did you make of it, Sam?” demanded a tall, leathery cowpuncher,
who served as foreman.
“You’ve got me, Sandy. The missus ’lows it’s some woman being murdered.”
“But there ain’t any women round here,” protested another of the men,
who had been christened “Pinky” by his fellows because of his fondness
for decorating his saddle and bridle with anything of the color.
“That’s just what I told her,” declared the ranchman, evidently glad to
learn his opinion found support. “But she ’lowed that didn’t make any
difference, that one or a dozen could be brought here. I sort of had an
idea, it might have been a coyote.”
“Wal, it warn’t no coyote,” drawled the third of the boys attached to
the Double Cross outfit, who revelled in the title of Deadshot Pete. “I
been on these plains too long not to know every tone and variation of
the songs them sneaks sing.”
“Then what was it?” demanded Sandy. “Seems to me, if it was some man
or woman being done to death, they’d keep up more of a continuous
yelling.”
“Unless it’s too late,” commented Deadshot, significantly.
This suggestion that perhaps the gruesome wails which had roused them
all from their sleep might have been the dying protests or appeals for
help of some human being caused the men to become silent.
“Don’t see how we can do any good so long as we don’t hear the thing
again to give us a definite idea of its direction,” remarked the
ranchman, after a period of several minutes peering into the darkness
and listening had been productive of neither sight nor sound. “Guess
we’d better get back to our bunks and wait till daylight.”
“Reckon you’re right, Sam,” returned his foreman. “It’s either too
late, as Deadshot says, or we must hear it again so’s we can get our
bearings.”
But neither the owner nor the outfit of the Double Cross was destined
to get any more sleep that night!
While talking, the men had been looking toward the South.
Chancing to turn so that he was facing the cattle corral, Pinky
suddenly uttered an exclamation of wild fear, then clutched Sandy by
the arm, wheeling him about, as he pointed Northward with trembling
hand.
Amazed at such action on the part of their bunkmate, the others
followed his gaze.
_Apparently floating through the air, directly above the cattle corral,
was a white spectre!_