Old Leather hesitated, the inclination strong in him to side the Kid, to backtrack along a trail grown twisted and devious. But with the issue joined and the choice pushed small, he followed habit and Ormsby, and they were away.
Guns boomed drum like across the dark, their flashes like the uneasy flickerings of heat lightning, fiery tongues of trouble. Other raiders were off there, more of No-Brand Burley’s crew, timing their attack with this distraction at the camp. Partly because of the Kid’s revolt, the upset had not been so complete as they had counted on, but it was sufficient for the purpose. Caught between twin-pronged trouble, the herd surged to its feet, milled for a wild moment, and began to run.
With Burley’s riders pressing at heel, it would be a near miracle if they could be either checked or turned. It was the hope of the outlaws to have them a long way gone by daybreak, beyond recovery.
Laredo was cursing and savage, leading his men. However hopeless the task, the job must be attempted. Powder moved with the rest. It wasn’t the cook’s job to ride, but every man was needed.
The others had taken the ready horses. He was delayed in finding a cayuse and getting a saddle from the pile near the chuck wagon, and he became aware that Mary Ellen was working close by with another equally nervous and restive animal. She swung up almost as he was in the saddle, and the distant drumming of hoofs came in an uneasy guide to the herd’s movement.
There would be no hope of overtaking them in a straight run, no chance to turn that maddened mass even if they did. But the uneasy gods of chance ride always on the fringes of a trail herd, ghost riders with a malevolent sense of humor. What might happen was purely in their laps, and you made your luck by being ready to take advantage of any break.
The thundering tempo of hoofs altered. Powder’s ears were ahead of his eyes, but sight supplemented and confirmed it. The herd was swinging—that unpredictable break they’d played for. Only this time it was turning even more sharply against them. The vast sweep of the maddened mass was coming now straight at them.
Powder’s first thought was of Mary Ellen, riding almost beside him. There was no better or more skilled rider with the outfit, but two of them couldn’t hope to stem the tide nor turn it. He shouted, his voice lost to a whisper in the engulfing noise of the herd.
“This way! For our lives!”
And that was literal. Once caught and prisoned among the herd, a stumble could mean destruction. Many a cowboy, trapped by a stampede, had ridden it out and returned in safety. But there were few who had ever made the long journey north who didn’t remember comrades scarce to be recognized when found, men whose horses had been unable to outlast the run.
Whether he was right or wrong he had no way of knowing. Mary Ellen was following his lead, and a lot depended on whether the herd was approaching them like the point of a V, or swinging like an L, a closing gate in a huge, enveloping movement. It was impossible to tell by the sound, and by the time they could see with sureness it would be too late.
In the frantic running of his horse he felt terror, and, now he could see the line of the oncoming herd, spread clear across the horizon—the closing gate. All that was left was to run with them.
Powder wished that he had Blue Devil under him, though this was a good horse. It had need to be, for its own life as well as his own depended on its stamina and sure-footedness. It was Mary Ellen who worried him.
All at once the herd was up and around them, the angle of their swing overcoming the lead of the horses. Powder tried to keep close to Mary Ellen and was pushed relentlessly away as more steers crowded between. Dust came up stifling and bitter. It fogged out the last faint light and left him alone in the heaving press. He shouted, and her voice came faintly, and he drove recklessly toward the sound.
Wind came out of the skies in a welcome gust and tore at the dust, and he saw her again, closer now, just a few jumps ahead. For a while she had been up front, and that could mean that her cayuse was in trouble, dropping back as fast as the press of bodies allowed, its legs faltering.
He glimpsed Mary Ellen’s face, white with strain. There was no doubt left, and this was grief for both of them, but Powder didn’t think of it that way as he worked his horse closer to hers. The way her own was falling back it didn’t take long. He could see its distress as it wobbled, swaying on trembling legs, and started to collapse as he came alongside.
Powder reached, and his fingers grabbed Mary Ellen’s arm. She kicked free of her tumbling steed and jumped, helping as much as she could, then half-flopped across the saddle in front of him. Twisting, she righted herself and fitted into it, and the herd split in a narrow V where her horse had gone down, a gap soon closed.
Mary Ellen in front of him made a tight squeeze, a situation which under other circumstances Powder wouldn’t have disliked. Now all that could be said was that it made a double burden for his horse, which was already hard-pressed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“A bullet, I think,” Mary Ellen answered. “Someone shot.”
That would account for the failure of her horse. Probably a rustler’s bullet, fired from the edge of the herd, the sound swallowed in the thunder of stampede. The gunman would have had no suspicion that he was shooting at a woman.
That single bullet might well kill two horses, two people. He’d seen stampedes before. A bunch of cattle on the rampage was like a mob of men, purely physical, all intelligence left behind. They’d run till sheer exhaustion halted them, with the weaker dropping from time to time, except when they could drift to the edges and fall out. They would still run for hours, and already his horse, double-laden, was in distress, hard put to keep up.
Well, there was a chance, and time to take it.
“Here,” Powder said, and shoved the reins into Mary Ellen’s hand. “He should be able to keep going with just you.”
“What are you going to do?” It was too dark to see her face, but quick dismay crackled in her tones.
“There’s plenty of backs handy,” Powder explained. “I figure on hookin’ me a ride.”
She was set to argue, as he could tell, but the words didn’t come. Maybe it was a gopher hole for a hoof to break through, a rock to turn beneath a foot, something. What it was didn’t matter, only the effect. That was sudden and devastating. The horse wrenched violently, stopping, then going almost heels over head. If there was any good in it, that part lay in tumbling them off ahead, while the downed cayuse made of its body a barrier behind. That checked the sweep of the steers for a vital moment.
Mary Ellen hit the ground, hard. Powder spilled above her and struggled erect. Planting both feet above her he swung about, jerking at his gun. A six-gun was a tool to give a man confidence in a lot of situations. Here it seemed a puny toy, barking in the teeth of disaster. The horse was a crumpled heap now, cattle crunching against it, swerving away. They didn’t consciously trample it, for their instinct was to sidestep. But the tight press of bodies, the unending push from every angle, was too much. They were like these humans, caught, without choice.
His bullets dumped a cow on top of the fallen horse. It was still a thin barrier, like a shovel to scoop back the ocean. There was no time to down another. It was his turn to go down, instead. A shoulder jarred into him, spilling him off his feet. The mass was pressing tighter, squeezing, only partly split by the barrier. His body above Mary Ellen’s, Powder sprawled, trying to protect her.
Hoofs raked him, glancing blows which cut and stung. He had time for just two thoughts, and one of them was funny. He was scared, and knew it. Also he’d heard that at such a time of peril, all a man’s past had a habit of flashing in review. Maybe he just hadn’t formed the habit, for beyond being scared he didn’t have time to think at all.
Something rapped his skull, like the slap of a mule’s kick. A steer’s, maybe. It could have been lightning, only there wasn’t any—that exploding, crimson-starred flash, followed by deeper blackness. Powder slumped limply.
Driving rain awakened him, stinging cold, sharply reviving. He lay for dragging moments between waking and the still-clutching blackness, and memory and an aching head restored themselves in a strange mixture. The stampede was past, or at least there was no sound now but the beat of the rain, the heavy, thick dark. He stirred, and found that he still sprawled half across Mary Ellen. Memory came into focus, and he called her name unsteadily.
She neither stirred nor answered. Fear hit him, but he fought it back, steadied, and touched her. She was warm, and that was a relief. Her pulse was steady, with a strong, even beat. But it was more than sleep which held her. She was unconscious, as he had been.
Probably he hadn’t been out very long. The storm which had come up was slackening, the clouds commencing to break at the earth’s edge, a shimmer of light thrusting against the darkness. Powder stared at a timid rind of moon and shook his head, then clasped it ruefully.
“I’ve got a head like I’d been on a week’s toot,” he groaned. “And only that to show for nothing! F’r heaven’s sake, how do I get into these things?”
He’d learned long ago that there was no adequate answer to that. There was a lump on his noggin which was a poor substitute for his lost hat, he was sore all over and daylight would show a sad ruin of his clothes.
“But while there’s life, there’s hope that I’ll make a bigger fool of myself, mindin’ somebody else’s business,” he sighed, and fell to chafing Mary Ellen’s hands. As though she had been waiting for such a signal, she stirred, sighed, opened her eyes, and sat up. After a moment she sneezed.
“Them’s my sentiments, exactly,” Powder informed her. “Does it make you feel any better?”
This girl had plenty of spirit. She tried to get to her feet, moaned and sank back, biting her lip, but her words were brave.
“I feel awful,” she said. “Awful good that I can feel at all, I mean.”
Her right ankle had twisted under her as she fell, and to bear her weight on it was painful. Otherwise, save for being knocked unconscious for a while, she had come out pretty well.
“We had two kinds of luck tonight, and the last was good,” Powder said soberly. “Put your arm over my shoulder. We’d better hobble along. There’ll be more rain ’fore the night’s over.”
They progressed slowly, heading back in the direction of camp. There was an adequate moon now. The air was fresh-washed and sweet, and under other conditions Powder would have enjoyed such a stroll. Right now it would take more than a moon to make him feel romantic.
A tiny red star on the horizon resolved itself into a camp fire beyond the chuck wagon. Jimmy Dowst was on the job, doing what he could.
“Lucky they didn’t hit the camp,” Powder muttered. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t get a mug of coffee.”
Most of the crew were back ahead of them, hunkered about the fire, a grim, disconsolate group. Laredo swung about and stared through the gloom, then jumped to his feet and came quickly toward them. The quick relief in his face at sight of Mary Ellen was smothered in a tightening anger as he observed how closely they walked, Mary Ellen’s arm across Powder’s shoulder, his own about her waist.
“You hurt?” he asked harshly, and took her almost forcibly from Powder, sweeping her into his arms, carrying her back to the fire. “What happened?”
The recital seemed only to increase his anger. It had been building in him a long time—ever since that first day on the Concho. Now it rolled from him like seething lava spewing from a crater.
“You’d have done better to stay where you belonged, as a hash slinger,” he told Powder. “It takes a man to ride a stampede. All you did was make a fool of yourself, and she followed your lead and nearly lost her life!
“Now we’ve lost the herd to pay for this foolishness,” Laredo went on. “Get what sleep you can, boys. It’ll be a long, tough day tomorrow.”
The last of that was true, but not the first, and Powder’s temper had never been one to do less than fizz at a spark. He swung around. “Mean to say you aim to wait for daylight to start after them?” he demanded. “That’ll be too late!”
Laredo’s sarcasm was heavy. “I suppose you’d have us ride some more now? With more rain comin’, so you can’t see a hand before your face? We’d get a long way, that way.”
“It’ll take a man to follow the herd tonight,” Powder threw back at him. “But you wait for morning and you’ll never get them back!” He swung toward where the remuda was being held close, on the possibility that fresh mounts would be wanted.
“Where you going?” the foreman barked at him.
“After those cattle,” Powder retorted.
“Get back to your cookin’! You’ll do no more ridin’.”
“Go to hell,” Powder returned ungraciously, and picked up a rope.
“If that’s the way you feel, you can ride straight there! You’re fired!”
Mary Ellen cried out in protest. “Laredo! You can’t do that! Pa hired him—you can’t fire him!”
Here was a showdown. Powder sensed it, and turned. McGill, wet and disheveled, a scarecrow of a man before the fire, was twisting his hat uneasily at the appeal. He looked from his daughter to the foreman and away again, a hangdog look in his eyes. Laredo’s laugh was a short bark.
“We might as well have a few things understood now as later,” he gritted. “I’m roddin’ this outfit to get us to Montana. And somethin’ else. The next town we come to, Mary Ellen, you and me are gettin’ married. Ain’t that right, McGill?”
Mary Ellen watched this contest, her face white and strained. McGill’s was equally colorless, a picture of dumb misery, but at the foreman’s look, he nodded uncertainly and turned away. Laredo swung back to Powder, triumph running in harsh overtones through his voice.
“You wanted to ride,” he said. “So saddle your nag and move! And don’t ever show around here again!”
It went against the grain to saddle and ride under such circumstances, particularly with Mary Ellen standing, lost and despondent, like a little girl about to burst into tears. Only there would be no tears—not openly. This had been a tough night already, more than a woman should rightly bear, but hers was the spirit which had made the Lone Star shine. As for his own part, right now there was work to do.
He found Blue Devil, grown fat and saucy with the idleness of the trail, and got his own saddle on him. Blue Devil reached around with upper lip curled back from his teeth and pretended to nip at him in sheer happiness. The light was fading fast as the clouds circled back, smothering the moon, gobbling up the stars. On the face of it Laredo was right; it was folly to ride while such dark gripped the land. But there were degrees of folly, and No-Brand Burley must be laughing in his teeth.
The bunched horses stirred as someone moved among them. A voice called his name. “Powder! Where you at?”
For a wild instant he thought it was Mary Ellen, for the voice was almost a treble. Then it steadied on the last notes, uncertain but grim.
“What you doing here, Jimmy?”
“Saddlin’ a horse,” Dowst returned. “We’re ridin’, ain’t we?”
“I’m ridin’,” Powder corrected. “You got a job to do here, Jimmy. Besides, you’re in no shape for the trail.”
“I’m well enough,” Jimmy insisted. “I’m going with you, Powder. I’d of been dead long since but for you.”
“But what about Mary Ellen?” Powder asked, and this time his voice was gentle.
“I could ask you the same,” the boy said stubbornly. “Where we ridin’?”
“Come on, then, if that’s the way you feel. I don’t even know where we’re going, Jimmy,” he said. “The herd was headin’ southwest last I saw of them. I’ve got a hunch they aren’t, any longer.”
Jimmy’s voice was doubtful. “A stampedin’ bunch generally just runs itself out,” he said.
“If left alone. There weren’t more than half a dozen men who set that herd to runnin’—and they soon left off chasin’ them. But you heard what the Kid said, and Ormsby? I figure this is more of No-Brand Burley’s work.”
“Likely.”
“So where would the rest of Burley’s crew be? Close. Then where but on ahead, to turn the bunch—once they started to slow? Burley’s no fool. He knows he’d have a battle on his hands by the middle of tomorrow if he just let them spread out and then tried to round them up. A hot battle. Even with luck in the gather, he couldn’t move them far or fast enough to get away without a fight. Not in this country. So he’d have some better scheme in mind.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“And why pick tonight for the job? Why not last night, or tomorrow? I figure there was two reasons for the time, though one might have done him. It had to be at the right place—where he thinks he can win. The storm coming up just when it did was an extra dividend.”
“You mean—” Excitement was building in Dowst’s voice. “If he knew the country, and could pick the right place, he’d figure on that to make a big difference?”
“That’s the way I see it.” Powder grinned at the implication of seeing, for it was again so dark that he could not detect his hand before his face, and they rode more by feel for direction than anything else. “We’ve seen the country south and east. We know it. What it’s off west of here we don’t know. But I’m ridin’ a hunch.”
“So was I when I came along with you,” Jimmy retorted.
“What’s Laredo got on McGill?” Powder demanded abruptly.
“Search me. But he’s the first man that ever made McGill eat dirt.”
“I don’t like that,” Powder sighed, and thereafter they rode in silence. The rain had recommenced, and it came with a slashing, driving force, accompanied by wind. There was just one good thing about it. It was out of the northeast, steady and harsh. By keeping it on their right cheeks and the back of the neck, it was possible to hold a reasonably straight course west.
There was always the chance that he had overestimated the rustler boss, that Burley had no such plan in mind. But if he was right, then the elements were working for Burley. By daylight a downpour such as this would have washed away most of the traces of a passing herd.
Bruised and stiff, he found this ride in the rain was doing nothing to ease his aches, but Powder held steadily west. Finally the rain slackened, stopped, and for a second time the stars came out. They dulled to dawn’s grayness, a splash of growing light where the sun pushed for dominion, and suddenly it was day.
That was like rolling back a curtain. Behind, to right and left, was the prairie—not flat, but nearly so, yet rolling enough to shut off sight for more than a mile. An empty land.
Almost immediately in front of them it was broken, a jumble of low hills, of twisting canyons rimmed with slashes of brush. Half a mile into these and they came abruptly on signs of the herd. Yet there was no sound, such as ordinarily betokened closeness to a big trail bunch, not a single lonely bellow in the air.
That was easy to understand. There had been a long day’s drive, followed by a wild, stampeding run, which had been turned as it slowed. The bunch had been kept at a fast pace for several more hours, pushed by a relentless crew. Now, halted at last, they were out of sight, but so weary that not even a lone voice was lifted in a desolate bawl.
Back in here they could rest during the day, while a futile search was conducted off where they should be. With darkness, they’d be hustled along, probably split up into three or four bunches. If one was by chance overtaken, the others would be safely away, past all chance of recovery.
Powder eased around in the saddle and grinned. This was the way he’d figured, and it was pleasant to know that he’d guessed right. Jimmy grinned back.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now we’ll have us a snooze,” Powder said. “This would be a good time to go callin’, while every hard-workin’ rustler is as tuckered as I feel. But it would be a waste of time to get us a bunch of outlaws to stand guard over, for the critters will have to rest a spell before they can stir again. Otherwise, we’d just have trouble on our hands and not know what to do with it.”
Jimmy didn’t question. His face was strained with fatigue, and he knew there would be plenty of work ahead. But he’d developed a hero worship for this man, one which overrode all other factors, even his long-time adoration of Mary Ellen. No need even to bother his head about what to do when the time came. He’d just follow Powder’s lead.
They hobbled their horses in a brushy draw, found a dry spot close up against the slope where the sun shone warmly, and were quickly asleep. Jimmy awoke to the fragrance of food, with the sun high overhead. Powder, squatting above a tiny, smokeless blaze, was roasting a small animal.
“Woodchuck,” he explained. “Young an’ tender, and foolish. I knocked it over with a rock. I plumb forgot to bring along any salt, but I guess we can make out.”
They ate, then rode again, going cautiously. With less than a mile covered, they came upon the herd, just beginning to stir and graze, walking stiff-legged and slow, eyes bleary as if from long dissipation. Here was a hidden draw, a meadow of only a few acres in extent so nicely concealed that a rider could pass close without suspecting its existence. There was a single narrow opening in or out.
One man was posted on watch, sprawled on a sunny slope, half asleep. The others, not far off, were still sleeping, a score of blanket-wrapped figures. Powder studied them, grinned at Jimmy.
“I’m glad you’re along,” he said. “I’ll circle around to tend to them. You work up behind that sentry. If he manages to give an alarm, I’ll be ready to control the situation.”
It was surprisingly easy. Confident that no one would find them here, vigilance was a mere show. Jimmy stuck his gun-muzzle in the guard’s back before the man was aware of danger, and the others were coming stupidly awake to stare into Powder’s leveled gun. One man did a halfhearted grab for a weapon, but a quick bullet beside him changed his mind.
“Take their guns,” Powder instructed, and watched while it was done. Trouble nagged at his mind. This was too easy, even with good generalship. Much too easy. He could see Old Leather, lifting his hand and squinting against the sun, but now that he thought of it, there was no sign of Ormsby—
“If it wasn’t for the noise of it,” No-Brand Burley spoke from the shelter of a point of rock behind and higher up, “I’d shoot you. But the less shootin’ the better. As it is, it’ll be better to hang the pair o’ you. And you can’t rightly complain, since that’s what you’d do to us if you had the chance.” His voice changed, harshly incisive. “Drop that gun!”