Arizona Guns. William MacLeod Raine

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СКАЧАТЬ reckon yore folks will kill the fatted calf for you,” jeered Hugh Roush. “They tell me you always been mighty high-heeled, ’Lindy Clanton. Mebbe you won’t hold yore head so high now.”

      The girl rode between them down from the hills. Who knows into what an agony of fear and remorse and black despair she fell? She could not go home a cast-off, a soiled creature to be scorned and pointed at. She dared not meet her father. It would be impossible to look her little brother Jimmie in the face. Would they believe the story she told? And if they were convinced of its truth, what difference would that make? She was what she was, no matter how she had become so.

      On the pike they met old Nance Cunningham returning from the mill with a sack of meal. The story of that meeting was one the old gossip told after the tragedy to many an eager circle of listeners.

      “She jes’ lifted her han’ an’ stopped me, an’ if death was ever writ on a human face it shorely wuz stomped on hers. ‘I want you to tell my father I’m sorry,’ she sez. ‘He swore he’d marry me inside of an hour. This man hyer—his brother—made out like he wuz a preacher an’ married us. Tell my father that an’ ask him to forgive me if he can.’ That wuz all she said. Ranse Roush hit her horse with a switch an’ sez, ‘Yo’ kin tell him all that yore own self soon as you git home.’ I reckon I wuz the lastest person she spoke to alive.”

      They left the old woman staring after them with her mouth open. It could have been only a few minutes later that they reached Quicksand Creek.

      ’Lindy pulled up her horse to let the men precede her through the ford. They splashed into the shallows on the other side of the creek and waited for her to join them. Instead, she slipped from the saddle, ran down the bank, and plunged into the quicksand.

      “Goddlemighty!” shrieked Ranse. “She’s a-drowndin’ herself in the sands.”

      They spurred their horses back across the creek and ran to rescue the girl. But she had flung herself forward face down far out of their reach. They dared not venture into the quivering bog after her. While they still stared in a frozen horror, the tragedy was completed. The victim of their revenge had disappeared beneath the surface of the morass.

      CHAPTER I

       “Call Me Jimmie-Go-Get-’Em”

      THE BOY had spent the night at a water-hole in a little draw near the foot of the mesa. He had supped on cold rations and slept in his blanket without the comfort of glowing piñon knots. For yesterday he had cut Indian signs and after dark had seen the shadow of Apache camp-fires reflected in the clouds.

      After eating he swung to the bare back of his pony and climbed to the summit of the butte. His trained eyes searched the plains. A big bunch of antelope was trailing down to water almost within rifle-shot. But he was not looking for game.

      He sniffed the smoke from the pits where the renegades were roasting mescal and judged the distance to the Apache camp at close to ten miles. His gaze swept toward the sunrise horizon and rested upon a cloud of dust. That probably meant a big herd of cattle crossing to the Pecos Valley on the Chisum Trail that led to Fort Stanton. The riders were likely just throwing the beeves from the bed-ground to the trail. The boy waited to make sure of their line of travel.

      Presently he spoke aloud, after the fashion of the plainsman who spends much time alone in the saddle. “Looks like they’ll throw off to-night close to the ’Pache camp. If they do hell’s a-goin’ to pop just before sunup to-morrow. I reckon I’ll ride over and warn the outfit.”

      From a trapper the boy had learned that a band of Mescalero Apaches had left the reservation three weeks before, crossed into Mexico, gone plundering down the Pecos, and was now heading back toward the Staked Plain. Evidently the drover did not know this, since he was moving his cattle directly toward the Indian camp.

      The young fellow let his cowpony pick its way down the steep shale hill to the draw. He saddled without a waste motion, packed his supplies deftly, mounted, and was off. In the way he cut across the desert toward the moving herd was the certainty of the frontiersman. He did not hurry, but he wasted no time. His horse circled in and out among the sand dunes, now topped a hill, now followed a wash. Every foot of the devious trail was the most economical possible.

      At the end of nearly an hour’s travel he pulled up, threw down his bridle reins, and studied the ground carefully. He had cut Indian sign. What he saw would have escaped the notice of a tenderfoot, and if it had been pointed out to him none but an expert trailer would have understood its significance. Yet certain facts were printed here on the desert for this boy as plainly as if they had been stenciled on a guide-post. He knew that within forty-eight hours a band of about twenty Mescalero bucks had returned to camp this way from an antelope hunt and that they carried with them half a dozen pronghorns. It was a safe guess that they were part of the large camp the smoke of which he had seen.

      Long before the young man struck the drive, he knew he was close by the cloud of dust and the bawling of the cattle. His course across country had been so accurate that he hit the herd at the point without deflecting.

      An old Texan drew up, changed his weight on the saddle to rest himself, and hailed the youngster.

      “Goin’ somewheres, kid, or just ridin’?” he asked genially.

      “Just takin’ my hawss out for a jaunt so’s he won’t get hog-fat,” grinned the boy.

      The Texan chewed tobacco placidly and eyed the cowpony. The horse had been ridden so far that he was a bag of bones.

      “Looks some gaunted,” he commented.

      “Four Bits is so thin he won’t throw a shadow,” admitted the boy.

      “Come a right smart distance, I reckon?”

      “You done said it.”

      “Where you headin’ for?”

      “For Deaf Smith County. I got an uncle there. Saw your dust an’ dropped over to tell you that a big bunch of ’Paches are camped just ahead of you.”

      The older man looked at him keenly. “How do you know, son?”

      “Smelt their smoke an’ cut their trail.”

      “Know Injuns, do you?”

      “I trailed with Al Sieber ’most two years.”

      To have served with Sieber for any length of time was a certificate of efficiency. He was the ablest scout in the United States Army. Through his skill and energy Geronimo and his war braves were later forced to give themselves up to the troops.

      “ ’Nuff said. Are these ’Paches liable to make us any trouble?”

      “Yes, sir. I think they are. They’re a bunch of broncos from the reservation an’ they have been across the line stealin’ horses an’ murderin’ settlers. They will sure try to stampede your cattle an’ run off a lot of ’em.”

      “Hmp! You better go back an’ see old man Webb about it. What’s yore name, kid?”

      For just an eye-beat the boy hesitated. “Call me Jim Thursday.”

      A glimmer of a smile rested in the eyes of the Texan. He was willing to bet that СКАЧАТЬ