THE RANCHMAN’S VOW.
The ranchman’s assertion that the spectre was of human invention and
their foreman’s declaration that it was but a ruse to cover the raiding
of the cattle, produced an instantaneous reaction upon the cowpunchers.
“By my saddle, you’re right!” assented Deadshot. “That’s what the
trouble is. Somebody’s trying to lift the cattle. I’ve seen ’em started
on a stampede too many times not to recognize the symptoms. And here
we’ve been afraid of a spook, giving the thieving cusses just the
chance they planned. Say, Sam, I wouldn’t blame you for sacking the
whole kit and boodle of us!” he added, his shame and contrition evident
in his voice.
“Don’t waste time being sorry, get busy and help calm the cattle!”
returned his employer. “You boys ride round ’em, and get ’em to
milling, if you can. I want to keep my eyes open for another sight of
Mr. Spook.”
Deeply chagrined to think they had allowed such a trick to be played
on them, for they realized that when the story got out, the Double
Cross outfit would be the laughing stock of all the other cowmen in the
region, the cowboys set about their work with a will.
But the job was too big for them!
Even before they had ridden fifty yards along the barbed wire fence,
they learned that their efforts would prove fruitless.
With crashing of horns, snorting and bellowing, a bunch of the cattle
dashed out onto the plains, the outlines of their bodies just visible
as they plunged along.
As though this breaking away from the herd had been prearranged, other
bunches raced away into the darkness.
“The fence has been cut! The fence has been cut!” roared Sandy, at the
top of his lungs.
“There’s no use trying to hold the critturs. Come on back to Sam and
we’ll find out what he wants us to do,” returned Deadshot.
Aware that with the cattle dashing away in all points of the compass,
it was an impossible task for them to hope to round them up or even to
try to hold the ones that had not already gone, Pinky and Deadshot rode
back with their foreman until they came to the ranch owner.
“What’s to do?” asked Pinky, after the fact that the barbed wire fence
had been cut in several places had been reported to Bowser.
“Lay for Mr. Spook!” snapped the owner of the Double Cross. “I’ll give
any one of you a thousand dollars for his dead body! We’ll each of us
take one side of the corral and patrol it.”
“But we haven’t got out rifles, only our six shooters,” interrupted
Deadshot.
“Then ride for all your worth to the bunkhouse and get them! While
you’re there, just tell the missus what’s up. Then hurry back. And say,
bring some torches,” he shouted, as the thought that lights might prove
useful came to him, for his man was already racing for the guns.
“That’s some trick,” muttered Sandy, while they waited. “Wonder was
there more than one of ’em?”
“Sure,” asserted Pinky. “There was probably three or four of ’em
working on the fence, cutting the wires, while the other played
ghostie!”
This opinion of the numerical strength of the Midnight Raiders, which
found ready acceptance from Bowser and Sandy, was later to be proved
false, however!
They were destined to learn that the daredevil cattle thief was a lone
man!
“That being the case, aren’t we wasting time trying for a shot at
them?” demanded the foreman. “They probably made their getaway along
with that first bunch of cattle.”
“Maybe you’re right, Sandy,” assented the ranchman. “But I’ve got a
sort of hunch that spook will show himself once more.”
And the owner of the Double Cross was right--though the method chosen
by the spectral raider to disclose his whereabouts was different from
that which Bowser expected!
Lingering at the houses only long enough to make a hurried report to
the ranchman’s wife and then to get the rifles and torches, Deadshot
was soon back with his companions.
“Here, everybody take a torch and hurry to your posts,” ordered Bowser,
as his man rode up. “Sandy, you go to the West side; Pinky to the
North; Deadshot to the East, and I’ll take the South. Keep, your eyes
peeled--and _remember the thousand dollars_!”
Even as he spoke, the ranchman touched a match to his torch and when
the flame flared up, it threw the four men into bold relief.
“How long shall we patrol?” asked Deadshot.
“Till I wave my torch in the air. Then ride to the house. We’ll get
some grub and pick up the trail as soon as it gets daylight.”
Before any of the quartet could take up the task of patrolling the cut
fence, however, the cattle thief made himself known.
Bang! boomed a gun from the North.
In amazement, the cowboys wheeled.
And even as they did, a bullet whistled through the air, carrying the
sombrero from Bowser’s head.
“Douse the torches! It gives ’em a line on us!” cried Deadshot in
alarm, lest a second shell might find its man.
No urging did the ranch owner or any of his men need to make them obey.
The shot had been too well aimed and had come too close to its mark for
them to care to make targets of themselves for gunmen who could show
such skill at night.
But, as they hurled the torches to the ground, the ranchman rose in his
stirrups.
“You may have the drop on me now!” he roared, shaking his fist in
wrathful impotence in the direction whence the shot had come. “But just
wait! _Nobody can steal Sam Bowser’s cattle, scare his men, shoot at
him and get away with it!_
“_So long as there is a breath of life in my body, I’ll trail you--and
I’ll run you to your lair_, mark my word!”
The tone in which the owner of the Double Cross spoke, the dim outline
of his tall figure as he swayed in his saddle, his arm beating the
air in his fury, as he vowed revenge against the miscreants who had
stampeded his cattle and tried to murder him, afforded an effect
dramatic in the extreme.
Yet, scarcely had the last words left his lips than again a gun barked
and a bullet “pinged” viciously as it sailed over his head!
“Man, dear, but this is _too_ much!” hissed the ranchman. “After them,
boys!
“_We’ll hit their trail and stay on it till the last skulking coyote of
’em is furnishing food for the vultures!_”