Placing the book on the wagon-seat, he spread a blanket over it, then planted himself, squarely and with emphasis, upon it. "Dere, dey"s safe!" He gathered up the lines; the outfit was in motion when its progress was suddenly arrested by a piercing cry from Ralph:
""Top, "top, Joe! Me"s doin" wiv" "oo, me is!"
The little fellow was standing beside the wagon, his arms upstretched to be taken, and the tears streaming down his cheeks. Joe looked at him, and scratched his head in perplexity. "I"se wisht" yo"d stayed asleep till I"se done got away, honey, chile--I does so!" he muttered, ruefully.
"Me"s doin"!" Ralph insisted, taking advantage of the halt to swarm up over the wheel-hub, and to get his white ap.r.o.n covered with wagon-grease.
"Me is doin"!" he repeated.
"Train up a chile in de way w"at he wants ter go, an" w"en he is ole he won"t depart from it!" Joe quoted, with fatal aptness. "Dat chile cain"t be "lowed fur ter run t"ings dish yer way; he cain"t be "lowed ter go to town, noway; but I tell yo" w"at, honey, yo" might jess slip er clean apern on ter him an" let him ride down ter Wilson"s "long "er me. Dat Mis" Wilson, she always bein" tickled when she see Ralph."
""Ess; me do see Mif" "Ilson," Ralph declared, brightening. It was true that the good ranchman"s wife had always made much of him, and was glad to have him with her, and I had a particular reason for being glad of the temporary freedom that his going over there would give me.
I made haste to change his soiled dress and get him ready. "Tell her,"
I said, as I lifted him into the wagon, "that I"ll come over after him some time this afternoon; it isn"t far, and if I start early enough he can easily walk home with me before night."
"Dat"s right; we"s got dat all fixed," Joe responded cheerfully. He started the team again, while Ralph, his good humor restored, threw me kisses as the wagon rattled away.
I had mentioned it to no one, but I was secretly a good deal worried over the non-appearance of Guard. In the present absorbed interest in other matters, I think none of the family, save myself, had taken note of the fact that the dog had not been seen since his noisy scramble up the hillside in pursuit of some animal, the evening before.
Only hunters, or those who dwell in remote and lonely places, can realize how fully one"s canine followers may become, in certain surroundings, at once comrades and friends. I missed the dog"s s.h.a.ggy black head and attentive eyes as I hurried through with the morning"s milking. He was wont to sit beside me during that operation, and watch proceedings with absorbed and judicial interest. I missed him again as I heard a fluttering and squawking that might mean mischief, near the poultry yard. Above all, in the absence of the other members of the family, I missed his companionship. So, as I hastened with the morning"s tasks, I resolved to take the opportunity afforded by Ralph"s absence, and go in search of him. Disquieting recollections of the wildcat that he and I had dared, and of the wildcat that had dared Mrs. Lloyd, came to my mind. It seemed to me by no means improbable that Guard had treed one of these creatures and was holding it until help came or until the cat should become tired of imprisonment and make a rush for liberty; a rush that, if it came to close quarters, would be pretty certain to result disastrously for Guard. So thinking, I took father"s light rifle--which was always kept loaded--down from its place on the kitchen wall, buckled a belt of cartridges around my waist, and, locking the door behind me, started on my quest.
Guard"s vanishing bark, on the previous evening, had led up the hillside, behind the house. So, up the hillside I went, scanning the ground eagerly for tracks, or for any sign that might indicate which direction to take. The ground was thickly strewn with pine needles and the search for tracks was fruitless; an elephant"s track would not have shown on such ground as that. After a little, though, I did find something that puzzled me. Lying conspicuously near the cattle trail that led upward into the higher hills, was a large piece of fresh beef. Stopping, I turned the meat over cautiously with the toe of my shoe, wondering greatly how it came to be just there. It was cut--not torn--so it could not have been dropped there by any wild beast, but by some person. As I looked attentively at it, some white substance, lying half hidden in a deep cleft in the meat, attracted my attention.
I stood still for a long time, studying that bit of beef. That the white substance was poison I had not a doubt. If some one were anxious to kill a dog--like a flash the recollection of Guard"s indiscreet charge on Mr. Horton"s horse, and of Mr. Horton"s speechless rage thereat, came to my mind. An attempt to poison Guard did not strike me, at the moment, as an act indicating anything more than a determination to be revenged on him for the trouble that he had already given Mr. Horton. Afterward, I understood its full significance. A little beyond the spot where I found the poisoned meat, well out of sight from the house, or of any chance pa.s.sers-by, I came to a tree under which a horse had evidently been recently tethered, and that, too, for a long time. I wondered at this, for, among us, people seldom tether a horse; it is considered an essential part of a cow pony"s training to learn to remain long in one place without being fastened in any way. Still, as I reflected, the matter was not one to cause wonder. The ground was torn and trampled by the impatient, pawing hoofs, and I knew very well what horse it was that, for his recent sins, might have been compelled to do penance in this manner.
Something over half a mile from our house there was a break in the hills--the beginning of a long and dark ravine that, trending southward, led, if one cared to traverse it, in a tolerably straight course to the far lower end of the valley, near where the Hortons lived.
It was an uncanny place--dark at all times, as well as damp, and so uninviting in its wildness, even as a short cut to a brighter place, that it was very seldom entered. As I stood on the hill above it, peering down into its shadows, a great longing took possession of me to know whether Mr. Horton had really gone to town as he threatened.
Besides, if Guard were really standing sentinel over a wildcat, no more promising place to search for him could be found. So thinking, I readjusted my cartridge-belt, swung the rifle muzzle to the front, ready for instant use, should occasion demand it, and, not without some unpleasant, creepy sensations at the roots of my hair, I dropped down into the ravine.
CHAPTER XXIV
HUNTING FOR GUARD
The ravine was a mile or more in length, and I traversed it rapidly without coming upon any traces of Guard or the wildcat.
Sooner than I had expected, despite my anxiety, the ravine widened, the encroaching walls became lower, the light stronger, and, in a moment more, I came out on a wide, park-like opening, back of Mr.
Horton"s house.
I had not met Mrs. Horton since the morning that the wheat crop was destroyed, although I had seen her pa.s.sing the house frequently on her way to and from the store. It was plain that she avoided us, through no fault or desire of her own, but out of very shame because of the brand on the cattle that had ruined our crops. Casting about in my mind for an excuse for calling on her now, I was impelled to go on, even without an excuse. My conscience told me that I had treated her with less kindness on that occasion than she deserved. Striking into the cattle trail that, bordering the park, led to Horton"s corral, I followed it to the corral gate, and was soon after knocking at Horton"s front door. My knock was answered by Mrs. Horton, who exclaimed in astonishment at sight of me:
"Why, I declare! I thought you"d be gone to town to-day, sure. Has Jessie gone?"
"Oh yes; and Ralph is at Mrs. Wilson"s."
"Well, well! Come right in! And so you didn"t go. I don"t see how you managed it, hardly."
"Joe came home in time to drive down, and Mr.--we thought it best not to leave the homestead alone."
Mrs. Horton nodded her head approvingly.
"That was a good thought; you can"t be too careful. I declare, I wish you had brought Ralph over here--the precious! I"ve been feeling as lonesome as an owl this morning. Generally I don"t mind being left alone, not a bit; I"m used to it; but I was feeling disappointed to-day, and so everything goes against the grain, I s"pose."
I must have looked sympathetic, for she presently broke out:
"I don"t feel, Leslie, as if I was an unreasonable or exacting kind of woman, in general, but Jake talked last night as if he thought I was.
You see, I had set my heart on going to town when it came time for you girls to prove up. I"d thought of lots of little things that I was going to mention to the Land Agent, to influence him in your favor, and I guess there aren"t many folks that know better than I do how you"ve tried and tried to fill all the requirements. But Jake--"
She paused, her mouth, with its gentle-looking curves, closing as if she would say no more. But her grievance was too fresh and too bitter to admit of her keeping silence. In answer to my respectful inquiry as to why she didn"t go, she burst out impatiently:
"Jake wouldn"t let me. Said if I did I"d be interfering with what was none of my business--as if I ever interfered with any one else"s business--and, besides, he said it wasn"t convenient to take me. He went on horseback himself."
"Oh, he"s gone, then?"
"Gracious, yes! Gone! He"s been in town nearly all night. He was out somewhere last evening, looking up cattle, he said, and he didn"t get in till almost nine o"clock; then he ate supper and started right off.
I thought it was a rather dark time to be starting for town, but he said the moon would be rising before he got out on to the plains, and he didn"t care for the dark."
"Why was he so anxious to get to town early this morning?" I asked, with what I inwardly felt to be almost insolent persistency. Mr.
Horton"s good wife suspected nothing, however.
"Why, I suppose, to help you folks, if help was needed," she replied, readily. "I"ve felt awfully cut up, Leslie, about the way our cattle destroyed your crops. It just went to my heart to think that it was our cattle that did it"--and the tears in her honest blue eyes attested the sincerity of her words--"I"ve talked to Jake a good deal about it. He hasn"t said straight out that he"d pay damages, but I"ve been thinking maybe he intended to do it in his own way, and his way was to get to town and help you all he could with the Land Agent. As he"s been known to the claim so long, his word ought to have weight.
Don"t you think so?"
"I am afraid--I mean yes, certainly," I stammered. It was not re-a.s.suring to think of the weight that his word might have.
"When do you look for Mr. Horton to return?" I asked, rising from my chair as I spoke.
"Oh, not until your business is all settled; he said he"d stay and see it all through. He said that he"d have a surprise for me when he got back; but I guess he won"t. I imagine that he thought I"d feel surprised to learn that you"d received your papers, but I"d be surprised if you didn"t, after the way you"ve kept the faith, so to speak. Oh, now, sit down! You"re not going yet, are you? And after such a walk as it is from your house here, too!"
"I came down by the trail, Mrs. Horton." And then I told her about Guard, thus accounting for the gun, which I had caught her glancing at, once or twice, rather curiously.
"Young dogs are foolish," was her comment, when she had heard the story. "If he was older, I should tell you not to be a mite worried, but as he"s a young one, it"s different. I"ve known a young dog to get on a hot trail, and follow it until he was completely lost. My father lost a fine deerhound that way once. The dog got on the trail of a buck, and last we ever heard of him he was twenty miles away, and still going. I do hope you won"t have such bad luck with your dog."
I bade good-by to Mrs. Horton, and started homeward, again taking the trail through the ravine. I was not much cheered by her words in regard to Guard, and heavily depressed by the knowledge that Mr.
Horton had, after all, beaten Mr. Wilson and Jessie in his start for town--though what difference it could make, either way, until the Land Office was open in the morning no one could have told. Being troubled, I walked slowly, this time, with my eyes on the ground. Half-way through the ravine I came to a point where a break in the walls let in the sunlight. Through this low, ragged depression the light was streaming in in a long, brilliant shaft as I approached the spot. The warm, bright column of golden light had so strange an effect, lighting up the gray rocks and the moist, reeking pathway, that I paused to admire it. "If it were only a rainbow, now," I thought, "I should look under the end of it, there, for a bag of gold." My eyes absently followed the column of light to the point where it seemed suddenly to end in the darkness of the ravine, and I uttered a startled cry. Under the warm, bright light I saw the distinct impression of a dog"s foot.
It was as clearly defined in the oozy reek as it would have been had some one purposely taken a cast of it, but after the first start, I reflected that it did not necessarily follow that the print was made by Guard. Still, examination showed that it might well be his.
Searching farther, I found more tracks--above the break in the wall, but none in the ravine below it. The footprints had been a good deal marred by my own as I came down the ravine, and, what I thought most singular, supposing the tracks to have been made by Guard, there were also the hoof-marks of a horse--not a range-horse, for this one wore shoes, and, developing Indian lore as I studied the trail, I presently made the important discovery that, while the dog"s tracks occasionally overlaid those of the horse, the horse"s tracks never covered the dog"s. Clearly, then, if those footprints belonged to Guard, as I had a quite unaccountable conviction that they did, he was quietly following some horseman. For an indignant instant I suspected some reckless cowboy of having la.s.soed and stolen him, but a little further study of the footprints spoiled that theory. Guard would have resisted such a seizure, and the footprints would have been blurred and dragging. The clean impressions left by this canine were not those of an unwilling captive. I followed the tracks along the trail to the upper end of the ravine for some time, but learning nothing further in that way, returned again to the break in the wall. Looking attentively at that, I at length discovered a long, fresh mark on the slippery rock. Such a mark as might have been made by the iron-shod hoof of a horse, scrambling up the wall in haste, and slipping dangerously on the insecure foothold. With the recognition of this, I was scrambling up the bank myself. Scarcely had my head reached the level of the bank when a loud, eager whinny broke the silence. Startled, I slipped into a thicket of scrub-oaks, and, from their friendly shelter, made a cautious reconnoissance. Not far away, and standing in clear view, a bay horse was tethered to the over-hanging limb of a pine tree. It did not need a second glance for me to recognize Don, Mr. Horton"s favorite saddle-horse. That the poor creature had had a long and tedious wait, his eager whinnying, and the pawing of his impatient hoof, as he looked over in my direction, plainly told.
I watched him for awhile, breathlessly, and in silence, but he was far too anxious to keep silent himself. His distress was so apparent that I felt sorry for him, and finally decided that I might, at least, venture to approach and speak to him. Leaving my place of concealment I started toward him, but stopped abruptly with my heart in my mouth, before I had taken a dozen steps, as a new sound broke the silence. A new sound, but familiar, and doubly welcome in that wild place. It was the sharp, excited yelping that Guard was wont to make when he had treed game and needed help.
CHAPTER XXV
GUARD"S PRISONER