SLIPPERY NIG IDENTIFIES THE MIDNIGHT RAIDER.
As though fearful the same fate from which they had so barely rescued
the owner of the Double Cross might Overtake them, the horsemen never
paused until they were on solid ground.
With careful hands, they loosed the lariats, the cruelly-torn flesh
of the ranchman revealing as nothing else could the terrific force of
the sucking mudhole, then bound up his wounds in salve and linen which
Deadshot took from his saddlebags.
“Reckon we’ll have to find some other way of routing out the Midnight
Raider than trying to follow him through the swamp,” exclaimed Bowser,
with a feeble attempt at a smile, after a drink of brandy had revived
him.
“No doubt about that!” asserted Hawks. “Even if we could run across
him, which we probably couldn’t, he would be able to dispose of us very
effectually by luring us into one of those hellholes.”
“Then how _do_ you propose to trail him to his lair?” demanded Deadshot.
“That’s up to you and Ki Yi, as leaders, to figure out,” returned the
owner of the Star and Moon.
“The only way I can see is to start early in the morning and follow the
trail on foot,” suggested Dude.
“And run the additional danger of getting bitten by copperhead and such
like deadly snakes,” exclaimed another of his companions, to whom the
name of Grouch had been given. “Not for mine, thank you.”
“Isn’t there some one who knows these bottom lands?” asked Hawks. “I
should think some of those old Piutes, over by the catacombs, ought to
know them. They say the Injuns used them, in olden times, as a prison
for their captives.”
“Man dear, but you’ve hit the nail on the head!” ejaculated Deadshot,
in delight. “There’s an ornery crittur, part greaser, part Injun and
part coon, whom I ran across last summer, they call him ‘Slippery Nig,’
who knows every mudhole and hummock of grass in the swamps.”
“Then he’s the bucko we want,” returned Ki Yi. “The quickest way to get
at the Midnight Raider is to track him to his lair and surprise him. He
probably knows there isn’t a living white man who could scout through
those bottoms for twenty-four hours, so he wouldn’t take any pains to
keep a lookout, once he reached his cover.”
“But, suppose we can’t find Slippery Nig, or he won’t come, what then?”
inquired Hawks. “Do you think it would do any good to lay for the
fellow to pot him when he starts out on another raid?”
“Not unless you had three or four regiments of Uncle Sam’s soldiers,”
returned Deadshot. “The Sangammon bottoms cover about ten square
miles--and the farther in you go the ornerier they get--so you can
figure it out for yourself how many men it would take to throw a cordon
round it.”
“Then, as far as I can see, the Nig is our only hope,” declared Dude.
“Providing you can get him,” added Ki Yi. “How about it, Deadshot, will
he come, do you think?”
“He will if he’s in this part of the country.”
“Don’t be too sure,” interposed Grouch. “I’ve heard of Slippery Nig
before. They say if there’s one thing he hates more than another, that
same’s a white man.”
“That being so, what’s the use of wasting time trying to find him?”
demanded Bowser.
“Oh, don’t worry about his not coming, if he’s alive--and I haven’t
heard of his death,” rejoined Deadshot. “Slippery Nig is under a
trifling obligation to me--I saved his life last summer when a couple
of Injuns had him cornered--so there’s no danger of his refusing. If he
does, I’ll send him where the bucks were going to.”
Realizing that the cowboy would, in consequence, be able to obtain the
assistance of the guide, could he be located, Hawks asked, eagerly:
“How long will it take to find him? Where does he hang out?”
“Over by the catacombs. I reckon if I take Ki Yi with me, we can have
him back here before sundown.”
“Then get a move on. We’ll wait right where we are,” exclaimed the
owner of the Double Cross. “What with stealing my cattle and then
causing me to get into that death hole, it seems as though I couldn’t
wait much longer to get a shot at that raider.”
No urging, however, did the two cowboys need to make them start on
their quest for the old guide, and quickly taking the freshest ponies
in the lot, they were soon galloping over the plains.
If ill luck had attended the beginning of the pursuit of the Midnight
Raider, it evidently repented of such actions, for, before the cowboys
had traversed more than half the distance to the catacombs, they came
upon the object of their ride, squatting beside a fire, frying some
bacon on an old piece of tin.
At the sound of hoofbeats, the old guide had risen cautiously from
his place and scanned the horsemen, though so craftily had he done
the trick that neither of the cowpunchers were aware of it. Deciding,
however, that they would not prove hostile, he had resumed his cooking
and was still engaged at it when the horsemen rode up to him, after
discovering the faint wraith of smoke caused by his fire.
“Man, dear, but the sight of you does my eyes good!” exclaimed
Deadshot, slipping from his saddle and extending his hand, which the
old man accepted rather suspiciously.
“What brings you over this way?” he asked, without expressing either
pleasure or surprise at beholding the man to who he owed his life.
“Looking for you.”
“Huh?” And the tone in which he spoke showed that the information was
not welcome. “Nig no done nothing. Besides, you told me you was a
cowman.”
“So I am,” laughed the member of the Double Cross outfit. “What have
you been up to now, you old rascal, that you’re afraid the officers are
looking for you?”
But the old guide ignored the question, repeating his own as to the
purpose of Deadshot’s search for him.
Briefly the cowboy told him about the lone spectre’s raids and the vain
pursuit.
At the tale, Slippery Nig’s eyes sparkled and there came into them a
look of vengeance which mystified the cowpunchers.
But only for a minute.
Even before either of them had the chance to ask the cause, the old man
spoke.
“You know him raider?” he queried.
“No, do you?” chorused both the cowboys, exchanging significant glances.
“Sure. Only one heap fool alike that.”
“Who is it, then?”
“You remember Injun bucks last summer?” he asked, looking at the man
who had rescued him from them.
“You bet I do!” returned Deadshot.
“Fool raider, him one--Scalping Louie.”
“Not really?” cried the cowmen, in amazement, for the name was that of
a renegade redskin whose chief delight was to scalp helpless women and
children, and for whom there was a reward offered by the Indian agent
on the reservation from which he had escaped only a month or so before.
“That him, Scalping Louie,” repeated Nig. “Me just heard day, two day
ago, he broke way from reserve again. That why me here.”
These words were uttered with such grim significance that the cowboys
realized without the necessity of asking or being told that the old
scout was on the trail of the Midnight Raider.
“Then you’ll help us run him down?” inquired Ki Yi, with a wink at his
companion.
“Uhuh! Me go.”
“Good boy! Don’t bother to cook that bacon. Get up behind me and we’ll
go back to the rest of the bunch and then you can eat all you want to,”
exclaimed Deadshot, scarcely able to restrain his delight that the
task he had feared might even necessitate a resort to force had been
accomplished without the making of any promise or offer of reward.
“All right, me go. No need ride with you, got own pinto.”
This statement that the old scout had a pony with him amazed his
hearers, and in surprise they looked about to see where the animal
could be.
For a moment, Nig enjoyed the mystification of the cowpunchers, then
finally got to his feet.
“Cowmen no know all Injun trick,” he chuckled. “Long ago, Injun had be
heap smart. Deadshot could fool paleface. Me show.”
Eagerly the two men followed Nig, wondering whether or not he was
playing a joke on them, or leading them into a trap.
But their suspicions of the old scout were quickly allayed.
Scarce a rod had they gone from the fire than the old scout stopped,
bent over, swept aside the grass with his hand and beckoned to his
companions.
There, stretched flat on its side where it had been deftly, covered
with mesquite, lay a flea-bitten pony.
“Man, dear, but that’s some trick!” ejaculated Deadshot, in undisguised
admiration of the cleverness with which the animal had been hidden.
“That’s what!” acquiesced Ki Yi. “How do you do it, Nig?”
“Train um pinto.”
“So I suppose. Sounds easy enough, but how in the world do you manage
to make the crittur lie so still he won’t even make the grass move
unnaturally?”
“Train um pinto. Injun pony no fool.”
“So it seems. But, just the same, I don’t see how you can rig up the
grass, even after you’ve taught the pony to lie still,” declared
Deadshot.
“Me show--after get Louie.”
Thus recalled to the business in hand, the two cowboys watched Nig as
he turned to go back to the campfire, uttering a sharp command in some
half-breed lingo which brought the pony to its feet as he did so.
“Say, if you and I knew as much as that old codger, we could get
the finest job in Uncle Sam’s Mounted Scouts,” exclaimed Ki Yi,
enthusiastically. “I’ll bet he has forgotten more than any other scout
on the plains to-day ever knew.”
“No chance for an argument there,” returned the other cowboy. “I
wouldn’t be in Scalping Louie’s shoes for all the money in the United
States treasury.”
Put in an excellent humor by the praise of the cowpunchers, for he
realized the praise of these men of the plains was the appreciation of
men who knew, Slippery Nig quickly, and with an agility amazing in one
of his years, vaulted onto the back of his pinto and headed toward the
South.