Buch lesen: «Rimrock Trail», Seite 5

Next morning, breakfast over before the sun was well above the peaks, while desert birds were still rising, twittering shrill welcome to the dawn, Sandy went about humming snatches of cowboy songs just above his breath as he oversaw the arrangements for the exodus that was to be; not so much a flight, as a deliberately calculated laying of a trail for the pursuit. So might an old dog fox, sure of his speed and wisdom, trot leisurely across a field in full sight of the pack. Sandy had no intention of waiting until the lawhounds arrived, he needed a start against the handicap of high-powered cars. He was in high humor as the buckboard was greased, a team of buckskins given a special feed and a rub-down, and various articles gathered for transportation. Among these were a spool of barbed wire and a dozen fence posts.

 
"I'm a rollickin', rovin' son of a gun
Of a roamin' gambolier;"
 

sang Sandy, lights dancing in his gray eyes. Sandy was not old – a little short of thirty – but he was generally mature, suggesting deliberation of mind if not of action. This morning youth was his, rollicking, devil-may-care youth that showed in his walk, the set of his shoulders, his smile.

His spirit was infectious. Four riders, jumping to his orders, tossed badinage among one another like a ball. Mormon and Sam, seated on the top rail of the corral fence, openly admired their partner.

"Like old times, Mormon?" suggested Sam.

"Sure is. I reckon we'll have some fun 'fore the day's out. Sandy can cert'nly scheme out the scenarios."

"The what?"

"The scenarios," repeated Mormon loftily. "I got that out of a moving pitcher magazine down to Hereford. It's the word fo' the plot of the story. Sabe?"

"Huh! I reckon them movin' pitcher shooters 'ud have to move some to git all that's movin' this trip. Got yore gun oiled up, Mormon? Here's Molly."

Molly came out on the porch carrying a small grip packed with her few belongings, Grit beside her. Sandy nodded to her, busy giving instructions to two riders. Mormon and Sam waved and she went over to them, swinging up to the rail beside them.

"Jim," said Sandy, "I want you should ride out to'ards Hereford an' hide out atop of Bald Butte. You don't need to stay there any later than noon. Take a flash-glass with you. If any of the sheriff's crowd comes erlong, any one who looks like he might be servin' papers, sabe, you flash in a message. Make it a five-flash fo' anything suspicious, a three-flash fo' any one shackin' this way, even if you figger they're plumb harmless."

"Seguro, Miguel." With the slang phrase, Jim, an upstanding young chap, despite his horse-bowed legs, walked over to the bunk-house for flash-mirror and gun, came back to his already caught-up and saddled horse, turned stirrup and set foot in it, caught hold of mane and horn, beat the quick swirl of his pony sidewise with the fling of leg over cantle and went streaming off for the Bald Butte in a cloud of dust. Sandy called to Buck Perches, oldest of his riders, whose exposed skin matched the leather of his saddle.

"Buck, ef any visitors arrives while we're gone, you entertain 'em same as I w'ud. I w'udn't be surprised but what Jim Plimsoll 'ud be moseyin' erlong, with Sheriff Jordan an' mebbe one or two mo'. Mo' the merrier. They'll be lookin' fo' me an' Miss Molly with some readin' matter that's got a seal to the bottom of it. We won't be to home. You'll be the only one to home 'cept Pedro an' Joe. They've got their instructions to know nothin'. They ain't supposed to know nothin'. You – you've stayed to the ranch to do some fixin' of yore saddle. Started, but come back when yore cinch bu'sted. Sabe? All the rest of the riders is on the range 'tendin' business. When they left, an' when you left with 'em, me an' Mormon an' Sam, with Miss Molly, was all here. So you supposed. Don't let 'em think yo're planted to feed 'em info'mation."

Buck nodded, solemn as an image, his dark eyes twinkling a little.

"I'm real pleasant to the sheriff an' sort of indifferent to this here Plimsoll person?" he suggested.

"Let 'em size up the thing fo' themselves. They'll find Pronto in the corral, also Sam's roan, which they know is our usual mounts. If they don't sabe the buckboard's gone, which they probably will, knowin' this outfit fairly well, an' the sheriff not bein' a dumbhead; lead up to it. Then you might horn it out of Pedro that he thinks we started erbout ten o'clock an' leave it to them to foller trail. It'll be plain enough. We'll take care of the rest. Up to you, Buck, to act natcherul."

"I'll sure do that. I sabe the play."

"Then we'll light out soon's we're packed. Mormon, git the grub an' water aboard. Sam, help me with the rest of the truck. Got yore war-bag, Molly?"

"I haven't said good-by to Dad, or Grit," she said.

Sandy nodded. "Reckon you'd like to do that alone. Suppose you take Grit with you to the spring an' then leave him up in yore room."

"He knows I'm goin'. I told him last night, but he knew it 'thout that." Molly spoke in a monotone. She was pale and her eyes showed lack of sleep but she had fought the thing out with herself and she was going to be game. She gave Sandy her grip and walked off toward the cottonwoods. Grit nosed along in her shadow, his muzzle touching her skirt.

It was a big load for the buckboard with Mormon and Sam in the back seat crowded by the piled-up baggage, with Sandy driving and Molly beside him, flushed a little with growing excitement. But the buckskins were sinewed with whalebone and used to desert work. They surged forward at the word, tightening the tugs in an eager leap and settled down to a fast trot, out across the prairie. The riders, with the exception of Buck, and Jim, who was already close to the butte, which was midway between the ranch and Hereford, loped off, two and two, to their work, not to return until sun-down.

It was still cool, the dust rose about them in eddies as they crossed the slowly descending slope of the sink that presently mounted again toward the far-off range. There was no apparent road, but Sandy chose a compass course between the sage for the first few miles, then skirted the mesquite. Sam leaned forward once when the buckskins had been pulled down to a walk and spoke to Molly.

"See that notch in the range?" he asked, "oveh to the no'th, where the shadder's blue. That's Paso Cabras, the Pass of the Goats. Some says it's named 'cause the cliffs is fair lousy with goats, some 'cause on'y a goat can make the climb. County line's five mile' out on the plain beyond the pass. Railroad two mo', at Caroca."

"Are we goin' through the pass?" she asked Sandy.

"Well, I'll tell you this much, Molly. If we sh'ud decide to go that way an' strike the pass afore the sheriff catches up with us, he'll have to foller afoot or go clean round the mesa. The Goat's Pass ain't no place fo' an automobeel, nor an airyplane neither. Don't believe there's a level spot wider'n five foot or bigger than that much square."

Either Mormon or Sam sat always with neck twisted, watching for a flash-signal from the butte that stood up clearly in the crystal atmosphere, sometimes distorted, changing hue from chocolate to indigo, never seeming to get any farther away, just as the mesa range never seemed to get any closer. Sometimes Molly relieved them as lookout, but hour after hour passed without sign.

Close to noon they reached a watering hole, with water none too cool or sweet, but still welcome. There the buckskins were unhitched, rubbed down and, after they had cooled off, given water and grain. Save for sweat marks, they showed little sign of the grueling trip through the soft dirt. A strip of lava, half a mile of ancient flow, lay between them and the long up-slope of the desert to the mesa. As they ate lunch in the shadow of some barrel cactus, Sandy suddenly gave a grunt of satisfaction, pointing with outstretched forefinger to the butte. Five flashes had flickered up. They were repeated. Jim had signaled a suspicious party on their way to Three Star. The sheriff was out with his papers.

"We got five hours' staht," said Sandy. "Made close to thirty mile'. They've got thirty-five to make. Take 'em mo'n two hours, countin' questions with Buck. Good enough. See anything of the boys, Sam? They ought to be showin' up. I told 'em noon."

"On time," announced Sam. The two riders who had last talked with Sandy rode out of a straggling thicket of cactus and skirted the lava flow. Each led a spare horse, unsaddled.

CHAPTER VII
BOLSA GAP

Sheriff Jordan had a high-powered car purchased, not so much from the fees of his office as with his perquisites, a word covering a wide range of possibilities, all of which the sheriff made the most of. He was proud of his car and proud of his ability to run it anywhere at record-breaking speed. It carried an extra water container that could be mounted on the running board for desert work, an extra gasoline and oil supply, there were always extra tires strapped on, extra spark plugs handy and his batteries were always well charged.

"I aim to make her efficient," said Jordan, "bein' she represents my office. That's me. If I needed me an airyplane, I'd get me one to hunt the outlaws out of cover, an' I'd run it myself, an' run it right. That's me, Bill Jordan!"

Boaster though he was, there was little doubt as to Jordan's efficiency or his courage. He brought in the criminals he went out to get, some alive, some dead; prosecuted the first with zeal and collected the rewards with alacrity. The trouble was that he did not always go out after certain individuals, who were outside the law, as interpreted by the people, but inside it, as protected by the political ring to which Jordan, with other prominent officials, belonged.

Jordan had taken up his brother-in-law's grievance with the greater zest since he had a half-interest in Plimsoll's Good Luck Pool Parlors, a share that had cost him good money. On top of that had come Sandy's flouting of him on the bridge in front of the sheriff's own followers. He had to save his face, politically as well as personally.

To secure papers bringing Molly Casey within the jurisdiction of the court was not a difficult matter, but it was not so easy to get them at an early hour, since court was not in session and the judge none too eager to arise of a morning. But Jordan knew nothing of the visit of Miranda Bailey to the Three Star and he pressed matters with no special expedition, though he characteristically wasted no time.

Armed with the necessary warrant, backed by an assurance that, unless some extraordinary howl went up, the girl would be given into the custody of Jim Plimsoll as guardian, by virtue of his claim to partnership with her father, the sheriff, Plimsoll and two others, all three deputized for the occasion, started the car from Hereford at a quarter of twelve, after an early lunch. They passed the butte where Jim lay prone atop without noticing the flashes he shot into the sky. At a few minutes after twelve they reached Three Star where Buck, seated on the porch, his saddle astride a sawhorse, stitched away at a cinch.

Buck played his part well, allowing Jordan to ferret out information to his own satisfaction. It appeared plain that all three partners had taken flight with the girl in the buckboard. Sandy's pinto and Sam's roan were in the corral. Jordan overlooked one thing, the counting of saddles, though that would not have been an easy determination.

"Some one tipped this thing off," he said sternly to Buck. "Who was it?"

"Meanin' this visit's offishul?" asked Buck. "What's it fo', Sheriff? Moonshine or hawss stealin'?" He spoke in a jesting note, his weathered face impassive as the shell of a walnut, but Plimsoll scowled, noting the turn of Buck's bland countenance in his direction for the first time. It was whispered that the brands on Plimsoll's horse ranch were not those usually known in the county, nor even in the counties adjoining. There were rumors, smothered by Plimsoll's stand with the authorities, of bands of horses, driven by strangers, arriving wearied – and always by night – at his corrals.

"It don't matter – to you – what it's for," answered Jordan. "I'll overhaul 'em an' bring 'em back. Crossin' the county line won't do 'em any good with this warrant. Ef they try hide-out tactics or put up a scrap, it'll be kidnappin' an' that's a penal offense."

Buck whistled.

"Thought you wasn't goin' to let me know," he said. "It's the gel."

"Who's been here to tip it off?" asked Jordan.

Buck looked at him serenely, took a plug of chewing from his hip pocket, took his knife, opened it deliberately and slowly cut off a corner of the tobacco.

"Search me," he drawled. "Me, I don't stay up to the house."

Jordan, temporarily discomfited but still confident of bringing back his quarry, marked the trail of the buckboard in the alkali soil, noted the hoof-prints of the diverging riders and nodded with the semi-smile and half closed-eyes of conscious superiority. He had already elicited apparently reluctant information from Pedro as to the four passengers in the buckboard. Buck had been more reticent. To the sheriff Buck's reticence betokened desire to cover the fugitives. He fancied that Pedro's testimony was the result of Jordan's own cleverness in cross-questioning. Joe resorted to "no sabes."

"You 'tendin' ranch?" Jordan asked Buck, at last.

"Yep. Till I git fresh orders."

"I'll bring you back those orders, also yore bosses, before sun-down."

Buck permitted himself his first grin.

"You'll have to go some," he said. "Goin' to bring 'em back in irons? Figgerin' on abduction?"

Jordan gave no hint of how Buck's shaft might have targeted his intentions, but climbed into the car and started it. The powerful machine went lunging through the soft dirt, following the blurry trail of the buckboard's iron tires, throwing up dust as a fast launch churns spray.

After leaving the Three Star all semblance of road vanished. The alkaline soil was almost as fine as flour, and deep. This and the fear of losing the trail kept the machine down to a limit that would have been ridiculous on a real road but represented fast work on the desert. The water boiled in the radiator from the heat of the toiling engine and Jordan stopped, replenished, reoiled. Reaching the lava strip where the buckboard had halted for water and the noon meal, they found the trail skirting the flow toward the south. The main mass of the mesa, broken up into gorges, gaps, stairway cliffs, marked by purple shadows, scanty in the early afternoon but gradually widening, was about fifteen miles away. Jordan braked his car. He ignored the water in the spring. His spare supply was still ample and was distilled, not alkaline.

He turned to one of his deputies.

"Which way do you figger they're headin', Phil?" he asked. "Is there a cut or a pass through the mesa?"

"Dam'fino. Mesa's all cut up, but it's sure a Godforsaken country. Nothin' but rock an' clay an' cactus. No one ever goes there. I reckon I know as much of this country as most an' I sure never explored the dump. One thing's sure an' certain. Them fellers from the Three Star usually know where they are headin'. Trail's plain."

"Sure is." But Jordan scratched his head a trifle doubtfully. If Sandy Bourke and his chums had been tipped off, this trail was a little too plain to be true. Presently, as the machine plowed on south, they struck a patch of desert where the rock surfaced out and showed no trace of hoof or tire. Jordan stopped the car and the four got out, casting around, expecting that this outcropping had been used as a device to throw off the pursuit. Fairly fresh horse droppings showed that the buckboard had held to its course and, the rock passed, the trail showed plain again, curving in toward the broken wall of the mesa, leading toward a cleft that was plainly distinguishable.

"That's Bolsa Boquete," announced the deputy named Phil. "I never went through it."

"What's it mean – the name?"

"Boquete's gap. Bolsa's money – not jest the same as dinero. It's the word they have on the bank winders down in Mexico. Exchange."

"Money Gap? That don't tell us a thing," said Jordan. "But I'll bet my star they've gone through it all right. We ought to be not much more'n an hour behind them."

"They're on about us getting the papers," said Plimsoll. He had not said much on the trip so far. "Too much talk nowadays. You can't whisper in a dugout but what the news is all over the county inside of twenty minutes. Bourke sabes that getting the girl out of the county won't do any good; he aims to get her out of the state and any Arizona court or sheriff jurisdiction. He's the brains of the outfit. We've got to get her, Jordan."

"You ain't tellin' me a thing I don't know, Jim. But there's one thing you can tell me. Is that tip you got about Dynamite a sure one?"

Plimsoll, sitting beside Jordan, flashed him a look of contempt.

"Do you think I'm chasing this girl because I'm stuck on her? One of the party with this eastern crowd dropped into my place and talked. Showed some samples and I had a good look at them. He happened to leave a bit or two behind and I had them assayed. Here is where I get back the money I put up to grubstake Casey."

Jordan gave him a grin of derision.

"You an' yore grubstake," he jeered.

Plimsoll said nothing more.

As they neared the gap, translated by Phil in the unconsciousness that Bolsa had two meanings in Spanish, Jordan slowed up.

"No shootin' in this deal," he warned. "Come to a show-down, Bourke won't buck the law soon's we show papers. So long's he ain't been notified the court is makin' a ward of the girl they ain't done nothin' wrong. But – if he resists, that's different."

"I ain't goin' to be awful anxious to start shootin'," said Phil. "They done some pretty shootin' at the bridge that time. Sandy Bourke's a two-handed lead flinger an' Soda-Water Sam's no slouch. Neither's Mormon. Me, I'll be peaceable 'less it's forced on me otherwise."

They entered the split in the mesa. The cliffs shimmered in the heat, their outlines fuzzy. Branched and pillared cactus showed in gray-green reptilian growths. The soft earth, through which here and there the volcanic cores of the range were thrust, seemed as if it could supply the paint shops of a nation with almost any hue desired, ready for mixing with oil or water. Waves of heat beat between the walls of the cleft. The floor was fairly smooth, swept clean by occasional cloud-bursts, save for the skeleton of a tree and another of a too-far wandering steer, both blanched white as the alkali-crusted boulders. It was nearly level going and the car pounded along, all the occupants looking for trail sign. The mesa corridor, nowhere more than thirty feet wide, twisted and snaked, three hundred feet of sheer wall on either side topped by sloping cliffs mounting far higher toward the actual top of the mesa.

"Keep an eye peeled for rain, Phil," said Jordan, "I'd sure hate to get caught in here with a cloud-burst."

"Right," answered Phil. "I c'ud see better if I had a drink. Plimsoll, you got somethin' on the hip, ain't you?"

Plimsoll produced a bottle and the four of them drank the fiery unrectified, unstamped liquor. Ahead was an abrupt turn. Jordan slowed. Making the curve, a fence stretched across the gorge, reaching from wall to wall, a four-strand barrier of barbed-wire, strung on patent steel posts. Jordan braked with emergency. The sight of such a fence in such a place was as unexpected as the sun-dried carcass of a steer would be on Broadway. Plimsoll and Jordan cursed, the former in pure anger, the latter with some appreciation of the stratagem for delay.

"We can tear it down quicker'n they fixed it," he said. "I've got a pair of nippers in the tool kit. They can't have driven in those posts deep. Come on."

A voice floated down to them.

"You leave that fence alone, gents. If you please. I went to a heap of trouble puttin' up that fence. It's my fence."

They looked up, to see Mormon seated on the top of a great boulder that had land-slipped from the cliff into the gorge. From thirty feet above them he looked down, amiably enough, though there was a glint of blued metal in his right hand.

"Hello, Jim Plimsoll," he went on. "I ain't seen you-all fo' quite a while. You fellers out fo' a picnic?"

Jordan advanced to the foot of the rock, producing his papers.

"I have a bench warrant here to bring into court for the appointment of a proper guardian, the child Molly Casey, she being a minor and without natural or legal protectors. I've got yore name on these papers, Mormon Peters, as one of the three parties with whom the girl is now domiciled. I warn you that you are obstructing the process of the law by yore actions. You put up that gun an' come down here an' help to pull down this fence, illegally erected on property not yore own. Otherwise you're subject to arrest."

"That is sure an awful long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably. "But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to begin with. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of the law by settin' up a fence in a mesa cañon to round up broom-tails."

One of the deputies snickered.

"Broom-tails?" cried Jordan. "That's too thin. There's no mustangs hangin' round a mesa like this, 'thout feed or water." He flushed angrily. He was short-tempered and he was certain the fence was a ruse to gain time, with Mormon left behind to parley. It all seemed to point to Sandy Bourke making for the railroad.

"You never kin tell about wild hawsses, or even branded ones," said Mormon pleasantly. "Ask Plimsoll. He picks 'em up in all sorts of places."

Plimsoll cursed. Mormon still held his gun conspicuously, and he restrained his own impulse to draw. Jordan wheeled on the gambler.

"You keep out o' this, Jim Plimsoll," he said. "I'm runnin' this end of it. He's talkin' against time. You come down an' help remove this fence," he shouted up at the smiling Mormon, "or I'll start something. It ain't on yore property and it's hindering the carrying out of my warrant."

"It ain't on a public highway neither," retorted Mormon. "But I'll come down. Don't you go to clippin' those wires an' destroyin' what is my property." He slid down the rock and commenced to unbend the metal straps that held the wire in place. Jordan and one of his men followed suit with pliers from the motor kit. The job took several minutes.

"You'll come along with us," said Jordan. "You lied about the girl comin' this way. I've a notion to take you in for that. But I reckon you can go back in the buckboard with yore partners."

"Reckon I'll travel in the buckboard, when you catch up with it," said Mormon. "But I'll come erlong with you fo' a spell – of my own free will. I don't see no harm in takin' the gel visitin' anyway," he concluded as he took an extra seat in the tonneau.

Jordan made no answer but started the engine. The gorge began to narrow perceptibly, its floor slanted upward and the machine labored with a mixture that constantly needed more air. The way zigzagged for half a mile and then they came to a second fence. No buckboard was in sight. Beyond the wire the pitch of the ravine showed steeper yet, as it mounted to a sharp turn. Leaning against a post stood Soda-Water Sam, smoking a cigarette, his gun holster hitched forward, the butt of the weapon close to one hand. Jordan and his men leaped out as the car stopped, Mormon following more slowly.

"Afternoon, hombres all," said Sam. "Joy-ridin'?"

Jordan wasted no more explanations.

"You take down this fence," he fairly shouted.

"What fo'?"

"Ask yore partner."

"Sheriff claims we're cumberin' the landscape with our li'l' corral, Sam," said Mormon. "He's got a paper that gives him right of way, he says. Seen anything of Molly Casey?"

"Not for quite a spell. Go easy with them wires, Sheriff. Price of wire's riz considerable."

The second barrier down and the car through, Jordan ordered Sam to get in the car.

"Jump, or I'll put the cuffs on you," he said.

"Not this trip," replied Sam coolly. "No sense in my climbin' in there. Me an' Mormon's through with our li'l' job. We'll go back in the buckboard. It's round the bend. I was jest goin' to hitch up."

Jordan glared unbelievingly, yet Sam's words carried conviction.

"Yo're sure goin' to have trouble turnin' yore car right here," Sam went on imperturbably. "Kind of mean to back down, too. It's worse higher up. Matter of fac' the gap peters out jest round the turn. This is Bolsa Boquete. Bolsa means purse, Sheriff, one of them knitted purse nets. Good name for it. Look for yo'self, if you don't believe me."

Jordan and Plimsoll strode on up the pitch. Mormon followed, Sam stayed with the two deputies. Around the bend stood the buckboard with the buckskins in a patch of shadow under a scoop in the ending wall that turned the so-called pass to a box cañon.

"I told you the gel warn't erlong," said Mormon. "She and Sandy was with us fo' a spell. But they're goin' visitin' an' they shifted to saddle way back, out there by the spring beside the lava strip."

Mormon's bland smile masked a sterner intent than showed in his eyes. Jordan, furious at being outwitted, dared not provoke open combat. He had nothing on which to make arrest of the two Three Star partners and he was far from sure of his ability to do so under any circumstances. Mormon hitched up the buckskins, but followed the sheriff and the scowling, silent Plimsoll back to the car.

"See that notch, way over to the no'th?" said Mormon, bent on exploiting the situation to the full. "I reckon Sandy and the gel's shackin' through there about now. Hawss trail only. 'Fraid you won't catch him, Sheriff. They aim to ketch the seven o'clock train at Caroca. It's the on'y pass over the mesa. If Sandy had knowed you wanted him he might have waited. Why didn't you phone? Ninety mile' around the mesa, nearest way, an' it must be all of five o'clock now, by the sun."

He stopped, puzzled by the change in the sheriff's face. Chagrin had given place to exultation.

"Catch the seven o'clock train at Caroca?" said Jordan. "Thanks for the information, Mormon. That schedule was changed last week when they pulled off two trains on the main line. The train leaves at nine-thirty an', if I can't make ninety miles in four hours an' a half, I'll make you a present of my car. Stand back, both of you. No monkey business with my tires. Cover 'em, boys. The law's on my side, you two gabbing word-shooters."

He handled the car wonderfully, backing and turning her, and, while Mormon and Sam stood powerless, the former crestfallen, the latter sardonically gazing at his partner, the machine went tilting, snorting down the gorge.

"You sure spilled the beans, Mormon," said Sam finally. "I'd have thought them three wives of yores 'ud have taught you the vally of silence."

"I ain't got a damned word to say, Sam. But I'd be obliged if you'd kick me – good. Use yore heels, I see you got yore spurs on."