THE STAMPEDE
Terry had sensed something of the truth. In its way here was the
beginning of the end of many things. Before she and Steve Packard,
making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence
was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the cañon, the
crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and
forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman
stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and
there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the
scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through the pass.
"They had lookouts all along!" cried Steve over his shoulder,
discarding caution and secrecy and throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
"Better hold back, Terry!"
He fired, accepted the precarious chances offered him by an uneven and
unknown trail in the dark and raced on deeper and deeper into the long
chasm. It seemed to him that he had glimpsed something moving at the
top of the cliffs just about the place whence Blenham's men had lowered
the steers. He asked no question but threw up his gun-barrel and fired
again.
From straight in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and
thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the
trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot. Then, far
ahead as the cañon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the
darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired
from his own leaping horse.
A flying bullet might find a target and it might not; at any rate the
sound of the shots volleyed and boomed echoingly between the stone
wails imprisoning them, and Barbee or one of Barbee's men should hear.
Steve was estimating hopefully as he dashed on after the fugitives and
as Terry dashed on after him, that the men at the top of the cliffs
would not try to come down now, not knowing who or how many the
attackers were, but would seek escape above.
Then, if his cowboys heard and rode toward the cliffs, it was all in
the cards that they might intercept at least a couple of Blenham's
tools.
A running form almost at his side drew his attention briefly, and all
but drew hot, questing lead after it. Then he made out that it was but
one of the stolen steers, abandoned now; he pressed by, firing time
after time into the cañon ahead of him. And behind him he heard
Terry's voice, eager and fearless, crying out:
"Good boy, Steve Packard! We'll get 'em yet!"
A spurt of flame from far ahead and close to the wall of the cañon, the
crack of another rifle, long drawn out, and the whine of a bullet
singing its vicious way overhead, and again Steve fired, answering shot
with shot. He heard a man shout and fired in the direction of the
voice. And then the only sounds rising from the narrow gorge were
those of running horses and the accompanying noises of rattling stones.
Now the way was again tortuous, pitch-black, boulder-strewn. Steve
slowed down rather than break his horse's legs or his own neck, not
knowing whether to turn to right or left. In a moment of uncertainty
he felt and heard Terry push ahead of him. He heard her hurrying on
and followed, shouting to her to come back. Ten minutes later, out of
the pass now and upon a low-lying ridge whence he could look across the
hills billowing away darkly toward the southland, he came up with her
again.
"They got off that way." She pointed south. "Saw one figure and maybe
two going down the slope. There's no use following. The way is too
open and it's too dark. They've got away after all."
"For to-night," said Steve. "But maybe the fellows at the top of the
cliffs----"
"I'll show you the way up," said Terry.
So without delaying they turned back and came presently under Drop Off
Cliffs again. Here they left their horses and, Terry showing the way,
found the old path up the precipice. Along many a narrow shelf of rock
they went, over many a gigantic granite splinter where foothold was
precarious enough, up many a steep climb. But in their present mood
they would have achieved even a more difficult and more hazardous task
with eagerness and assurance. Twenty minutes brought them to the top.
"Who's that?" shouted a sudden voice as Steve's hat came up out of the
void. "Hands up!"
"That you, Barbee?" grunted Steve. "Hands up? I'd drop a clean
hundred feet if I did a fool trick like that. Did they get away? The
men up here?"
He wriggled up to the top, lay on his stomach and gave a hand to Terry,
drew her to lie a moment breathless at his side and then again turned
to Barbee. There was another man with him and both were looking
wonderingly at Steve and Terry.
"I never heard a man say," muttered the astounded Barbee, "that there
was stair-steps up here! For a man an' girl to come up----"
"And for our cows to go down!" cried Steve, on his feet now and coming
to Barbee's side. "You heard everything, Barbee? You know what has
happened?"
"Yes," said Barbee. "A hundred yards over that way--" he pointed along
the cliff's edge--"where a twisted cedar-tree stands in a little
washout, not hardly to be noticed unless you're on the lookout for it,
they had their pulleys hitched an' a long steel cable. It was easy
shootin', come to think of it. Jus' rope a cow, cinch her up tight
with two big straps they had all ready, slip a hook through the
belly-band, an' lower away! Pretty smooth, huh?"
"And they all got away?"
"No, they didn't," said Barbee queerly. "I got one of 'em!"
"You did?" Steve swung back toward him eagerly. "Who is he, Barbee?
And where is he? I want a talk with him."
Barbee shook his head and reached for his tobacco and papers. He was
young after all, was Barbee, and this was his first man.
"Andy Sprague, it was," said Barbee. "He's dead now."
There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there
under the stars. Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step
closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm. Barbee lighted his
cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in
the brief-lived light shed upon it.
"I heard you shootin'," said Barbee. "I rode this way, on the jump. I
was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less. He had his
horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out. We
come pretty close to runnin' into each other. I hollered at him to
hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot. Emptied my gun. Got
him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky. He slid off his
cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'--an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly.
"Did he tell you anything? Did he say anything that would implicate
anybody?"
"Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?"
"Just that. Did he mention any names?"
"No," replied Barbee thoughtfully. "He jus' cusses me an' dies game.
But this here was in his pocket."
He passed it to his employer. It was a bit of note-paper. Steve and
Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another. Then
they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee
smoked in silence. The few words were:
BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean. Next time send
a man as can talk English. Anyway I am coming to-night. I don't want
no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or
hoof left in Drop Off by morning.
And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather.
"So," muttered Steve heavily. "The old man has gone the limit, has he?
He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me. And yet I
can't believe----"
"Let me see it again," Terry commanded.
She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur
matches. For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and
unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in
glove with Blenham in this.
There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other
understanding of the baffling situation. Evidently the old man had
given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English
language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had passed it to Sprague.
Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee--an old Ranch Number Ten hand
named Bandy Oliver--had stepped aside quietly. Terry stood with the
note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment. So, at the last,
matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with
Barbee's lead in him.
And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's
heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just
come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own
grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.
"If they meet to-night," said Terry, "those two Packards, there are
going to be other men killed. Good men and bad men. And, as likely as
not, Blenham won't be one of them."
"There was another jasper with Sprague. He got away. That way, I
think. Couldn't say, but there might have been more; what with the
dark an' the cattle scared an' churnin' aroun'."
Steve with Barbee and Bandy Oliver had moved slowly away and toward the
upper end of the plateau. Detached words, fragments of their speech,
floated back to her more and more indistinctly on the night wind that
never sleeps upon these uplands.
Terry turned from them and stood for a little looking down into the
black void of the cañon into which the stolen cattle had been lowered,
from which she and Steve had just climbed. She fancied that the
darkness down there was thinning. The dawn was coming up almost
imperceptibly over the mountain-tops, filtering wanly into the depths
of the cañons. The night had rushed by; it would soon be day.
And old man Packard had not come. Thank God for that. Down in her
heart Terry was conscious of a leaping gladness. She knew, admitted
now, that she had been afraid. A man lay dead over yonder; if Packard
met Packard to-night there would be other men dead. Terry shivered and
drew back from the edge of the precipice.
"It's always colder just before day," she told herself.
"Sunrise already?"
Steve's voice, borne to her ears with startling distinctness. He had
not come nearer; maybe the dawn wind was stiffening, thus bearing his
words to her more clearly. Or it might be that Steve had lifted his
voice suddenly.
Why should a man be startled by a new sunrise? True, the night had
gone quickly, but----
"The sun never rose there!" Steve's voice again, thrilling through her
with its portent. "It's fire--range fire--in a dozen places!"
A bright glow lay across the far, upper end of Drop Off Valley. At
first one might have done as Steve Packard did and wondered what had
happened to the sun. The sky had merely brightened warmly, slowly,
gradually, showing a hint of pink. And then, as the bone-dry grass
here and there had caught, vivid streaks of flame and a veritable
devil's dance of a myriad sparks shot high skyward. And, as Steve had
cried out, not in one place only, but in a dozen spots had the fires
been lighted.
"To herald the wrathful coming of Hell-Fire Packard!"
Such was the thought springing full-fledged into Terry's brain, into
Steve's, into Yellow Barbee's. A chain of fires had been started
across the whole width of the feeding grounds. Now the rising wind
made of it a sudden burning barrier that extended from side to side of
Drop Off Valley, came rushing toward the lower end, threatening to
leave but a black charred devastation of the precious pasturage.
Barbee had run and thrown himself upon his horse. Steve had grasped
the dragging reins of Andy Sprague's mount. Terry saw him and his two
cowboys swing about toward the upper end.
"Terry!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Down the cliffs again; quick!
The fire is coming this way; the herds will stampede!"
There was only the sound of thudding hoofs as the three men rode
furiously to meet the menace the dawn had brought and seek to grapple
with it. Then that sound had gone and its place, for a little taken by
heavy silence, gradually gave way to new sounds. The crack of rifles,
faintly heard--thin voices of men shouting a long way off--a sound like
that of a distant sea, moving restlessly--grown to suggest the coming
of a storm that ever swelled in violence--and then a deep and deepening
rumble, like thunder.
The herd had stampeded.
To Terry there came then, for the first time in her life, the sense of
utter helplessness and hopelessness. At least the others were doing
something, no matter how fruitless it might prove, while she was doing
nothing. Steve was riding full-tilt to meet the herd. She saw him and
his men, strange figures in the uncertain light, looming big against
the dawn sky and the fires' glow. They were shouting, waving their
arms. Then, going down over a swell of earth they were lost to her.
Again and again there came to her the sound of shots and men's voices
shouting, cursing, yelling wild commands, a rising clamor meant to
divert the blind rush of frightened beasts, to turn them to right and
left so that they might scramble out of the valley before they came to
the lower end where Terry stood--where was the yawning chasm down into
which many a great, terror-filled body was doomed to plunge to
annihilation unless the way were found to swing the flood of fear aside
in time.
Barbee and Bandy Oliver and the other boys were obeying Steve's
commands, doing all that they could, seeking frantically to split the
herd and divert it and so save it. But all of the time the wind
strengthened, the fires rose higher and higher against the sky, the
sparks soared to rarer altitudes, were flung further out, new fires
were catching everywhere.
The tall, dry grass was burning in a hundred places. The herd,
sweeping on, was snorting its terror, yielding absolutely to the blind
instinct of flight. And steadily the thunderous murmuring sound from
the hoof-smitten earth rose and swelled. Closer and closer they came.
Terry could distinguish Steve's voice.
In her hand were the matches he had given her in order that she might
read again his grandfather's letter. A little gasp broke from her
lips. The letter fluttered from her hand, no longer of the slightest
importance and on the wings of the wind went outward and then down into
the chasm. She ran forward swiftly, a hundred yards from the
precipice's edge. She struck a match, stopped briefly, set it to the
grass.
The flame caught, leaping up avidly, licking hungrily for more fuel, a
demon for desire, newly born, yearning to rage a giant of destruction.
The girl snatched a handful of the burning grass and ran with it; a
little further forward, then to the side, scattering burning wisps as
she went.
Everywhere that a spark fell it made of itself a blaze. Already, in
twenty seconds, she had created a broad belt of flame that rose swiftly
and spread to right and left.
About her everywhere the air grew stifling, hot, filled with smoke and
ash and cinder so that as she ran her lungs began to hurt her. But she
kept on. Nearer were the herds coming; Steve and his men had not been
able to stem the mad torrent; not yet had they succeeded in turning it.
And in another handful of minutes the black, tight-jammed mass of big
panting bodies would be hurtling out into space. Unless she made her
fire extend from side to side in a wall of leaping, roaring, swirling
menace that would do what no men and horses could accomplish.
Terry was racing as never had Terry run before, her breath coming in
choking sobs, her eyes shining wildly, her body shaken with the effort
she put upon it. She had her burning barrier across the more dangerous
end of the valley, where the cliffs dropped sheerest, she had but
another few yards to go and there would be hope that she would succeed.
But she must not stop yet, not yet.
She ran on toward the nearer rim of the valley, scattering burning
wisps of grass as she went, her heart beating wildly, seeming ready to
burst through her side. She fell, rose, ran on. She stood still a
moment, turning her back to the fires of her own building, looking
toward the upper end whence came the steady roar.
For an instant she stood fascinated. It looked as though the ground
itself, in many a low-lying swell, were racing on to meet her. Then
she saw the hundreds of horns glistening dully in the new light. That
black mass, surging forward, was the herd and she was still in its path.
She cried out and threw down her last torch and ran just as the
frightened steers were running, fear in her heart, racing away from
death, just running for her life. She saw a form ahead of the others,
breaking away from them, sweeping down upon her. She cried out in
terror; then she knew and cried out again and threw up her arms and
turned toward the rider who had remembered her and feared for her and
come for her. And Steve, bending from his saddle, equal to the need of
the moment, swept her up and caught her tight in his arm and rode out
of the way of herd and fire.
From a little crag-crested knoll, standing hand in hand, their forms
blended in silhouette against the dawn, they watched breathlessly the
end of the stampede. The maddened brutes rushed on, straight toward
Terry's barrier of flame. Then those in the van sought suddenly to
alter their headlong courses.
Steve's face was white with anger as he saw the result. A full
half-dozen, perhaps ten, big bodies at the fore passed through the far
end of the flaming line, swept on, sought to swerve only at the last
frantic moment with their fellows crowding them to the brink, and,
struggling wildly, went over and down and out of sight. Terry
shuddered.
The herd, however, broke, divided, swung to right and left and passed
about the burning danger-signal and to the outer rims of the valley,
achieving safety somewhere in the night, scattering, tossing their
gleaming fronts, snorting, and beginning to bellow their rage.
"If it hadn't been for you, Terry Temple--" Steve began, his voice a
little hoarse.
"If it hadn't been for you, Steve Packard,"' laughed Terry a trifle
unsteadily but quite happily, "where would I have been?"
And then, quite as though their destiny wished it made plain that not
yet had the time come for them to devote exclusively to themselves,
Barbee rode down toward them, spurring through the last of the fleeing
herd, shouting:
"There's a dozen men ridin' this way an' ridin' like----! An' the
firelight's shinin' on their guns; every man's totin' one. An' it's
ol' Hell-Fire Packard ridin' at their head."
"I'm glad he has come," muttered Steve heavily.
And then, as though he were uncertain of his return to her, he kissed
Terry's lips that were lifted toward his. In a dull stupor, so much
had she experienced these last few minutes, she watched him swing again
to the back of a horse and ride to meet those who came. The very way
he carried his rifle in front of him bespoke with rare eloquence his
readiness for anything.