15

SUDDENLY SLADE SAT FORWARD in an attitude of listening. To his keen ears had come a sound, faint but unmistakeable—the beat of horses’ hoofs drawing steadily nearer from the east.

“I want to see who that is,” he said to the girl. Rising, he glided silently through the growth to where he could get a view of the trail. And just as silently, Marie glided behind him.

Back of the final straggle they halted. The sound of hoofs grew louder, and they could hear an occasional mutter of voices. Huge, grotesque in the wan starlight, some eight or ten horsemen loomed. They rode at a slow pace, lounging comfortably in their saddles, advancing slowly but purposefully, as if they had a definite goal in view but were in no hurry to get there. They drifted past the two watchers and continued on into the west. Slade breathed deeply, half turned, hesitated. Marie instantly divined what was in his mind.

“You want to follow those men, don’t you, Walt?” she whispered.

“I’d like to,” he admitted. “I’d sure like to know who they are and where they’re headed, but I can’t take the chance. Can’t leave you here alone.”

“You’re going to take me with you,” she declared resolutely.

“I couldn’t take the chance,” he repeated. “Something might happen. I—”

“Listen,” she broke in, “you believe those men are up to no good, don’t you?”

“I can’t help but feel that way,” he conceded.

“You think they are the outlaw bunch that has been terrorizing the section?”

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly.

All right,” she said. “Then I have a personal interest in the matter. I am a property owner, and my property is not safe with that sort mavericking around. We’re going to find out what they’re up to, and if it isn’t good, we’re going to stop it. Come on, or I’ll ride alone.”

“You’re a blasted problem,” he sighed. “But you are a girl to ride the river with.” She laughed softly, for she had just received the highest compliment the rangeland can pay.

“One thing, though, or we don’t move,” he added. “When I ask you to do something, do it and don’t argue.”

Once again the smile and the dimple. “Well, do you think it’s necessary to bring that up? Compliance has gotten to be a habit. Let’s go!”

Swiftly they tightened the cinches and slipped the bits back into the mouths of the full-fed and rested horses and rode out of the thicket.

“Do you think you can trail them in the dark?” Marie asked doubtfully. “They must be quite a ways ahead of us by now.”

“I think I can,” he answered. “Just west of here is a wide bend, and the trail is brush-flanked on both sides. We can speed up until we round the bend. They’re taking it easy, and by then I figure we should sight them in the starlight. They’re riding in the open, and I doubt if they are paying much attention to their back trail. We’ll keep in the shadow and as far back as possible. Here we go.”

They sent the horses forward at a fast clip and did not slow down until they were close to the far end of the curve. As Slade expected, when they reached a straight stretch which ran for nearly a mile, they could just make out the dim shapes of the quarry, still proceeding at a leisurely pace.

They followed, hugging the edge of the trail, taking advantage of every bit of cover that offered. All along there were straggles of chaparral, so it was not hard to escape observation, especially as the riders ahead never appeared to look back.

The miles flowed under the horses’ irons, the great clock in the sky wheeled westward. The quarry continued to advance steadily. Then, abruptly, the horsemen turned sharply to the right.

“I know where that trail leads to,” Slade told his companion. “Sebastian Hernandez pointed it out to me the other day. It leads to the Telo holding north of Miguel Lopez’. This is getting interesting.”

Approaching the forks cautiously, they again sighted the quarry, a little farther ahead, apparently having speeded up. Another two miles and Slade knew they were on the Telo range.

Again the horsemen swerved, this time onto the open pasture. They slowed their pace. And now Slade had a problem on his hands. To follow across the prairie would be reckless to the point of foolhardiness. If one of the riders chanced to look back, he couldn’t help spotting them.

Then he saw that a little to the north was a long straggle of growth paralleling and only a few hundred yards distant from where the quarry rode.

“We’ll slide in behind that brush,” he told Marie. “Maybe our ears will tell us the course they’re following, or perhaps we can slip along in the edge of the chaparral and keep them in sight.”

When they reached the bristle of growth, he found that they could do just that, at the cost of a few thorn scratches. By careful maneuvering, they were able to keep the group in sight and at the same time remain concealed themselves.

“This is easy,” he whispered to Marie. “That is, if your cayuse doesn’t take a notion to sing a song to the stars. I don’t have to worry about Shadow.”

“Rojo is usually a very quiet horse,” she breathed back.

And then abruptly things were not so easy. The horsemen ahead were veering toward the brush; soon they were at its edge and practically invisible to the two trailers.

“Now what the devil are they up to?” Slade muttered. “Surely they didn’t spot us.”

“Listen,” Marie whispered. “Isn’t that a sheep bleating?”

“It is,” Slade said. “I’m beginning to catch on; they aim to grab off a flock of Telo’s woollies. We can risk riding ahead; they won’t pull up till they’re opposite the flock, I hope. Blast it! I’m worried about you.”

“Save your worry,” she replied. “I’ll be all right. Look, I believe I see the flock, only a few hundred yards from where they must be riding.”

“Yes, that’s the flock, all right,” Slade agreed. “The hellions will be riding out in another minute or two to round them up and start them moving. Then we’ll see.”

“I hope—” Marie began. “Oh, good heavens!”

Directly ahead, all hell had broken loose. From the edge of the growth came a bellow of gunfire. And from the tall grass near the huddled sheep came answering orange flashes.

“Unfork!” Slade snapped. “Lie flat on the ground. The fool herders who were guarding the flock stayed out in the open instead of holing up in the brush. They won’t have a chance. Down flat and cut loose with your rifle. Fire as fast as you can. Doesn’t matter if you don’t score a hit. Just make all the racket you can.”

He flung his own Winchester to his shoulder as he spoke and sprayed the edge of the growth ahead with lead. At the same time his great voice pealed forth in a stentorian roar.

“Let ’em have it, boys, let ’em have it! Don’t let one of the hellions get away! Let ’em have it!”

Marie chimed in, raising her normally soft contralto to a powerful screech. Added to the booming of the two rifles, the uproar was deafening. From the herders in the grass came triumphant whoops, intermingled with yells of pain. And the growth ahead erupted in a veritable pandemonium. Yells, screams, curses made the night hideous. Then there was a prodigious crashing in the brush and a thunder of hoofs as the raiders fled wildly.

“Call to the herders and tell them who we are,” Slade said. Whirling, he raced through the narrow belt of growth, heedless of thorns and trailing branches. But when he reached the far edge, the demoralized rustlers were but blurs on the prairie to the north. He emptied his rifle in their general direction to speed them on their way and returned through the chaparral to find Marie surrounded by half a dozen wildly excited herders, one limping, another cursing under his breath as he cherished a blood-drenched upper arm.

“Got a lantern?” Slade asked, stilling their chatter.

“Sí, Capitán, we have one.”

“Fetch it and light it, and a couple of you scout the brush over there and see if we knocked off any of the hellions. Doubt if we did—it was blind shooting—but take a look, anyhow. Careful—one of that sort wounded is as dangerous as a broken-backed rattler.”

“He won’t be dangerous for long,” came the grim answer.

Slade whistled to Shadow, who trotted out of the brush, snorting his disgust with the whole proceeding. With bandage and salve from the pouches, Slade went to work on the wounded, whose hurts, he decided, were painful but not serious.

The two searchers returned from the growth to report no success in their hunt for possible bodies.

“The next time you’re set to guard a flock, hole up in the brush instead of lying in the grass out in the opening where you’re setting quail,” Slade told the group. “If we hadn’t happened along when we did, you’d have been gone goslings.”

“Sí, it is so,” was answered. “We are indeed of the many who owe life to El Halcón.”

“And don’t forget the little señorita,” Slade reminded them. “She did her share.”

Sombreros swept the ground in salute.

“And now, Capitán, you must ride with the wounded to the hacienda to spend the night,” said the leader of the herders. “The partrón will want to thank you for what you did in his behalf. It is late, and the hacienda is less than five miles distant.”

“Reckon we’ll have to,” Slade conceded. “Let me have the lantern,” he told the herder. “I want to look over the ground where the devils were holed up.”

It was not difficult to locate the spot. The panicked raiders had torn down plenty of brush making their getaway. Slade went over the ground with meticulous care.

“We nicked some of them,” he told the herders when he returned. “I found quite a few blood spots. Some of them were bright and frothy, denoting arterial blood. Looks like somebody got rather hard hit. Anyhow, we threw them completely off balance and they hightailed like the Devil beating tanbark.”

“Think you, Capitán, that they might come back?” the herder asked apprehensively.

“Under the circumstances, would you?” Slade countered. The herder grinned and shook his head.

“Now to the hacienda we must go,” he said.

The ride to the ranchhouse was comparatively short, and although the pace was slow in deference to the wounded herders, they were not long in reaching it. Hammering on the door, they quickly aroused the household. Alfredo Telo, big, portly and jolly, appeared in a long nightshirt and an old-fashioned nightcap. His gratitude was profuse, and he thanked Slade and Marie over and over.

“The loss of the flock I could have put up with,” he said. “But not the loss of my men. Most of them have been with me for years and are looked upon as part of my family. I am deeply in your debt, Mr. Slade. Ha! Here is my wife; she will care for la señorita. But first food and hot coffee. Doubtless you are hungry—the young are always hungry. I am not young, but I have that trait in common with youth.”

Mrs. Telo, plump and motherly, immediately repaired to the kitchen, where the cook, awakened with the rest, was already busy rattling pots and pans. The wounded herders were made as comfortable as possible, and a vaquero was dispatched to town to fetch the doctor.

The Telos, like Lopez and Garcia, were of the best Texas-Mexican stock, and Slade liked them at once. Soon they sat down to a bountiful meal to which all did full justice.

“And now to bed with both of you,” Mrs. Telo told Slade and Marie. “Young people need their rest.”

“Then you also had better get back to bed,” Slade replied gallantly. Mrs. Telo smiled a very youthful smile.

“Our son is older than you,” she said. “Old people don’t need so much rest; they stay up, watching the stars, to which they are soon going.”