There are times when the mind works like lightning, flashes its messages on the wings of an electric current. For Bannister this was one of them.
The whole situation lighted for him plainly as if it had been explained for an hour.
His cousin had been out with a band of his cut-throats on some errand, and while returning to the fastnesses of the Shoshone Mountains had stopped to noon at a cow spring three or four miles from the Lazy D.
Judd Morgan, whom he knew to be a lieutenant of the notorious bandit, had ridden toward the ranch in the hope of getting an opportunity to vent his anger against its mistress or some of her men. While pursuing the renegade Bannister had stumbled into a hornet"s nest, and was in imminent danger of being stung to death. Even now the last speaker was scrambling up the bank toward him.
The sheepman had to choose between leaving his rifle and immediate flight. The latter was such a forlorn hope that he gave up Buck for the moment, and ran back to the place where his repeating Winchester had fallen. Without stopping he scooped the rifle up as he pa.s.sed. In his day he had been a famous sprinter, and he scudded now for dear life.
It was no longer a question of secrecy. The sound of men breaking their hurried way through the heavy brush of the creek bank came crisply to him. A voice behind shouted a warning, and from not a hundred yards in front of him came an answering shout. Hemmed in from the fore and the rear, he swung off at a right angle. An open stretch lay before him, but he had to take his desperate chance without cover. Anything was better than to be trapped like a wild beast driven by the beaters to the guns.
Across the bare, brown mesa he plunged; and before he had taken a dozen steps the first rifle had located its prey and was sniping at him.
He had perhaps a hundred yards to cover ere the mesa fell away into a hollow, where he might find temporary protection in the scrub pines.
And now a second marksman joined himself to the first. But he was going fast, already had covered half the distance, and it is no easy thing to bring down a live, dodging target.
Again the first gun spoke, and scored another miss, whereat a mocking, devilish laugh rang out in the sunshine.
"Y"u boys splash a heap of useless lead around the horizon. I reckon Cousin Ned"s my meat. Y"u see, I get him in the flapper without spoiling him complete." And at the word he flung the rifle to his shoulder and fired with no apparent aim.
The running man doubled up like a cottontail, but found his feet again in an instant, though one arm hung limp by his side. He was within a dozen feet of the hilldrop and momentary safety.
"Shall I take him, Cap?" cried one of the men.
"No; he"s mine." The rifle smoked once more and again the runner went down. But this time he plunged headlong down the slope and out of sight.
The outlaw chief turned on his heel. "I reckon he"ll not run any more to-day. Bring him into camp and we"ll take him along with us," he said carelessly, and walked away to his horse in the creek bed.
Two of the men started forward, but they stopped half way, as if rooted to the ground. For a galloping horseman suddenly drew up at the very point for which they were starting. He leaped to the ground and warned them back with his rifle. While he covered them a second man rode up and lifted Bannister to his saddle.
"Ready, Mac," he gave the word, and both horses disappeared with their riders over the brow of the hill. When the surprised desperadoes recovered themselves and reached that point the rescuers had disappeared in the heavy brush.
The alarm was at once given, and their captain, cursing them in a raucous bellow for their blunder, ordered immediate pursuit. It was some little time before the trail of the fugitives was picked up, but once discovered they were over hauled rapidly.
"We"re not going to get out without swapping lead," McWilliams admitted anxiously. "I wisht y"u wasn"t hampered with that load, but I reckon I"ll have to try to stand them off alone."
"We bucked into a slice of luck when I opened on his bronc mavericking around alone. Hadn"t been for that we could never have made it," said Missou, who never crossed a bridge until he came to it.
"We haven"t made it yet, old hoss, not by a long mile, and two more on top o" that. They"re beginning to pump lead already. Huh! Got to drap your pills closer"n that "fore y"u worry me."
"I believe he"s daid, anyway," said Missou presently, peering down into the white face of the unconscious man.
"Got to hang onto the remains, anyhow, for Miss Helen. Those coyotes are too much of the wolf breed to leave him with them."
"Looks like they"re gittin" the aim some better," equably remarked the other a minute later, when a spurt of sand flew up in front of him.
"They"re ce"tainly crowding us. I expaict I better send them a "How-de-do?" so as to discourage them a few." He took as careful aim as he could on the galloping horse, but his bullet went wide.
"They"re gaining like sixty. It"s my offhand opinion we better stop at that bunch of trees and argue some with them. No use buck-jumpin" along to burn the wind while they drill streaks of light through us."
"All right. Take the trees. Y"u"ll be able to get into the game some then."
They debouched from the road to the little grove and slipped from their horses.
"Deader"n h.e.l.l," murmured Missou, as he lifted the limp body from his horse. "But I guess we"ll pack what"s left back to the little lady at the Lazy D."
The leader of the pursuers halted his men just out of range and came forward alone, holding his right hand up in the usual signal of peace.
In appearance he was not unlike Ned Bannister. There was the same long, slim, tiger build, with the flowing muscles rippling easily beneath the loose shirt; the same effect of power and dominance, the same clean, springy stride. The pose of the head, too, even the sweep of salient jaw, bore a marked resemblance. But similarity ceased at the expression.
For instead of frankness there lurked here that hint of the devil of strong pa.s.sion uncontrolled. He was the victim of his own moods, and in the s.p.a.ce of an hour one might, perhaps, read in that face cold cunning, cruel malignity, leering ribaldry, as well as the hard-bitten virtues of unflinching courage and implacable purpose.
"I reckon you"re near enough," suggested Mac, when the man had approached to within a hundred feet of the tree clump.
"Y"u"re drawing the dead-line," the other acknowledged, indolently.
"It won"t take ten words to tell y"u what I want and mean to have. I"m giving y"u two minutes to hand me over the body of Ned Bannister. If y"u don"t see it that way I"ll come and make a lead mine of your whole outfit."
"Y"u can"t come too quick, seh. We"re here a-shootin", and don"t y"u forget it," was McWilliams"s prompt answer.
The sinister face of the man from the Shoshones darkened. "Y"u"ve signed your own death warrants," he let out through set teeth, and at the word swung on his heel.
"The ball"s about to open. Pardners for a waltz. Have a dust-cutter, Mac, before she grows warm."
The puncher handed over his flask, and the other held it before his eye and appraised the contents in approved fashion. "Don"t mind if I do.
Here"s how!"
"How!" echoed Missou, in turn, and tipped up the bottle till the liquor gurgled down his baked throat.
"He"s fanning out his men so as to, get us both at the front and back door. Lucky there ain"t but four of them."
"I guess we better lie back to back," proposed Missou. "If our luck"s good I reckon they"re going to have a gay time rushing this fort."
A few desultory shots had already been dropped among the cottonwoods, and returned by the defendants when Missou let out a yell of triumph.
"Glory Hallelujah! Here comes the boys splittin" down the road h.e.l.l-for-leather. That lopsided, ring-tailed snorter of a hawss-thief is gathering his wolves for a hike back to the tall timber. Feed me a cigareet, Mac. I plumb want to celebrate."
It was as the cow-puncher had said. Down the road a cloud of dust was sweeping toward them, in the centre of which they made out three hardriding cowboys from the ranch. Farther back, in the distance, was another dust whirl. The outlaw chief"s hard, vigilant gaze swept over the reinforcements! and decided instantly that the game had gone against him for the present. He whistled shrilly twice, and began a slow retreat toward the hills. The miscreants flung a few defiant shots at the advancing cowmen, and disappeared, swallowed up in the earth swells.
The homeward march was a slow one, for Bannister had begun to show signs of consciousness and it was necessary to carry him with extreme care.
While they were still a mile from the ranch house the pinto and its rider could be seen loping toward them.
"Ride forward, Denver, and tell Miss Helen we"re coming. Better have her get everything fixed to doctor him soon as we get there. Give him the best show in the world, and he"ll still be sailing awful close to the divide. I"ll bet a hundred plunks he"ll cash in, anyway."
"DONE!"
The voice came faintly from the improvised litter. Mac turned with a start, for he had not known that Bannister was awake to his surroundings. The man appeared the picture of helplessness, all the l.u.s.ty power and vigor stricken out of him; but his indomitable spirit still triumphed over the physical collapse, for as the foreman looked a faint smile touched the ashen lips. It seemed to say: "Still in the ring, old man."
CHAPTER 8. IN THE LAZY D HOSPITAL
Helen"s first swift glance showed that the wounded man was Bannister.
She turned in crisp command to her foreman.