"Ho! ho!" thought Ben, "you prefer to do yer dirty work on foot, Mr Buck! Well, you"re not far wrong in such a place."
Advancing now with great caution, the scout left the track and moved through the woods more like a visible ghost than a man, for he was well versed in all the arts and wiles of the Indian, and his moccasined feet made no sound whatever. Climbing up the pa.s.s at some height above the level of the road, so that he might be able to see all that took place below, he at last lay down at full length, and drew himself in snake fashion to the edge of the thicket that concealed him. Pushing aside the bushes gently he looked down, and there, to his satisfaction, beheld the man he was in search of, not thirty yards off.
Buck Tom was crouching behind a large ma.s.s of rock close to the track, and so lost in the dark shadow of it that no ordinary man could have seen him; but nothing could escape the keen and practised eye of Hunky Ben. He could not indeed make out the highwayman"s form, but he knew that he was there and that was enough. Laying his rifle on a rock before him in a handy position he silently watched the watcher.
During all this time the Englishman--whom the reader has doubtless recognised as Charlie Brooke--was pushing on as fast as he could in the hope of overtaking the man who could guide him to Traitor"s Trap.
At last he came to the Blue Forks, and rode into the pa.s.s with the confidence of one who suspects no evil. He drew rein, however, as he advanced, and picked his way carefully along the enc.u.mbered path.
He had barely reached the middle of it, where a clear s.p.a.ce permitted the moonbeams to fall brightly on the ground, when a stern voice suddenly broke the stillness of the night with the words--
"Hands up!"
Charlie Brooke seemed either to be ignorant of the ways of the country and of the fact that disobedience to the command involved sudden death, or he had grown unaccountably reckless, for instead of raising his arms and submitting to be searched by the robber who covered him with a revolver, he merely reined up and took off his hat, allowing the moon to shine full on his countenance.
The effect on Buck Tom was singular. Standing with his back to the moon, his expression could not be seen, but his arm dropped to his side as if it had been paralysed, and the revolver fell to the ground.
Never had Buck Tom been nearer to his end than at that moment, for Hunky Ben, seeing clearly what would be the consequence of the Englishman"s non-compliance with the command, was already pressing the trigger that would have sent a bullet into Buck Tom"s brain, but the Englishman"s strange conduct induced him to pause, and the effect on the robber caused him to raise his head and open wide his eyes--also his ears!
"Ah! Ralph Ritson, has it come to this?" said Charlie, in a voice that told only of pity and surprise.
For some moments Ralph did not speak. He was evidently stunned.
Presently he recovered, and, pa.s.sing his hand over his brow, but never taking his eyes off the handsome face of his former friend, he said in a low tone--
"I--I--don"t feel very sure whether you"re flesh and blood, Brooke, or a spirit--but--but--"
"I"m real enough to be able to shake hands, Ritson," returned our hero, dismounting, and going up to his former friend, who suffered him to grasp the hand that had been on the point of taking his life. "But can it be true, that I really find you a--"
"It is true, Charlie Brooke; quite true--but while you see the result, you do not see, and cannot easily understand, the hard grinding injustice that has brought me to this. The last and worst blow I received this very night. I have urgent need of money--not for myself, believe me--and I came down to David"s store, at some personal risk, I may add, to receive payment of a sum due me for acting as a cow-boy for many months. The company, instead of paying me--"
"Yes, I know; I heard it all," said Charlie.
"You were only shamming sleep, then?"
"Yes; I knew you at once."
"Well, then," continued Buck Tom (as we shall still continue to style him), "the disappointment made me so desperate that I determined to rob you--little thinking who you were--in order to help poor Shank Leather--"
"Does Shank stand in urgent need of help?" asked Charlie, interrupting.
"He does indeed. He has been very ill. We have run out of funds, and he needs food and physic of a kind that the mountains don"t furnish."
"Does he belong to your band, Ritson?"
"Well--nearly; not quite!"
"That is a strange answer. How far is it to where he lies just now?"
"Six miles, about."
"Come, then, I will go to him if you will show me the way," returned Charlie, preparing to remount. "I have plenty of that which poor Shank stands so much in need of. In fact I have come here for the express purpose of hunting him and you up. Would it not be well, by the way, to ride back to the store for some supplies?"
"No need," answered Buck Tom, stooping to pick up his revolver.
"There"s another store not far from this, to which we can send to-morrow. We can get what we want there."
"But what have you done with your horse?" asked Charlie; "I heard you start on one."
"It is not far off. I"ll go fetch it."
So saying the robber entered the bushes and disappeared. A few minutes later the clattering of hoofs was heard, and in another moment he rode up to the spot where our hero awaited him.
"Follow me," he said; "the road becomes better half a mile further on."
During all this time Hunky Ben had stood with his rifle ready, listening with the feelings of a man in a dream. He watched the robber and his victim ride quietly away until they were out of sight. Then he stood up, tilted his cap on one side, and scratched his head in great perplexity.
"Well, now," he said at length, "this is about the queerest affair I"ve comed across since I was raised. It"s a marcy I was born with a quiet spirit, for another chip off the small end of a moment an" Buck Tom would have bin with his fathers in their happy, or otherwise, huntin"
grounds! It"s quite clear that them two have bin friends, mayhap pards, in the old country. An" Buck Tom (that"s Ritson, I think he called him) has bin driven to it by injustice, has he? Ah! Buck, if all the world that suffers injustice was to take to robbery it"s not many respectable folk would be left to rob. Well, well, my comin" off in such a splittin" hurry to take care o" this Britisher is a wild-goose chase arter all! It"s not the first one you"ve bin led into anyhow, an" it"s time you was lookin" arter yer own business, Hunky Ben."
While giving vent to these remarks in low muttering tones, the scout was quickly retracing his steps to the place where he had tied up Black Polly. Mounting her he returned to the main track, proceeded along it until he reached the place beyond the pa.s.s where the roads forked; then, selecting that which diverged to the left, he set off at a hard gallop in the direction of Quester Creek.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
THE HAUNT OF THE OUTLAWS.
After riding through the Blue Fork Charlie and Buck Tom came to a stretch of open ground of considerable extent, where they could ride abreast, and here the latter gave the former some account of the condition of Shank Leather.
"Tell me, Ritson," said Charlie, "what you mean by Shank `nearly" and `not quite" belonging to your band."
The outlaw was silent for some time. Then he seemed to make up his mind to speak out.
"Brooke," he said, "it did, till this night, seem to me that all the better feelings of my nature--whatever they were--had been blotted out of existence, for since I came to this part of the world the cruelty and injustice that I have witnessed and suffered have driven me to desperation, and I candidly confess to you that I have come to hate pretty nigh the whole human race. The grip of your hand and tone of your voice, however, have told me that I have not yet sunk to the lowest possible depths. But that is not what I mean to enlarge on. What I wish you to understand is, that after Shank and I had gone to the dogs, and were reduced to beggary, I made up my mind to join a band of men who lived chiefly by their wits, and sometimes by their personal courage.
Of course I won"t say who they are, because we still hang together, and there is no need to say what we are. The profession is variously named, and not highly respected.
"Shank refused to join me, so we parted. He remained for some time in New York doing odd jobs for a living. Then he joined a small party of emigrants, and journeyed west. Strange to say, although the country is wide, he and I again met accidentally. My fellows wanted to overhaul the goods of the emigrants with whom he travelled. They objected. A fight followed in which there was no bloodshed, for the emigrants fled at the first war-whoop. A shot from one of them, however, wounded one of our men, and one of theirs was so drunk at the time of the flight that he fell off his horse and was captured. That man was Shank. I recognised him when I rode up to see what some of my boys were quarrelling over, and found that it was the wounded man wanting to shove his knife into Shank.
"The moment I saw his face I claimed him as an old chum, and had him carried up to our headquarters in Traitor"s Trap. There he has remained ever since, in a very shaky condition, for the fall seems to have injured him internally, besides almost breaking his neck. Indeed I think his spine is damaged,--he recovers so slowly. We have tried to persuade him to say that he will become one of us when he gets well, but up to this time he has steadily refused. I am not sorry; for, to say truth, I don"t want to force any one into such a line of life--and he does not look as if he"d be fit for it, or anything else, for many a day to come."
"But how does it happen that you are in such straits just now?" asked Charlie, seeing that Buck paused, and seemed unwilling to make further explanations.
"Well, the fact is, we have not been successful of late; no chances have come in our way, and two of our best men have taken their departure--one to gold-digging in California, the other to the happy hunting grounds of the Redskin, or elsewhere. Luck, in short, seems to have forsaken us.
Pious folk," he added, with something of a sneer, "would say, no doubt, that G.o.d had forsaken us."
"I think pious people would not say so, and they would be wrong if they did," returned Charlie. "In my opinion G.o.d never forsakes any one; but when His creatures forsake him He thwarts them. It cannot be otherwise if His laws are to be vindicated."
"It may be so. But what have I done," said Buck Tom fiercely, "to merit the bad treatment and insufferable injustice which I have received since I came to this accursed land? I cannot stand injustice. It makes my blood boil, and so, since it is rampant here, and everybody has been unjust to me, I have made up my mind to pay them back in their own coin.
There seems to me even a spice of justice in that."