Rimrock Trail, Joseph Allan Dunn [miss read books TXT] 📗

his arms. Weariness and fright, thirst, the changed altitude, had overtoiled his endurance. Sandy strode with him to the car and laid him on the cushions.

"Git some water," he ordered Keith. "We've got no licker on the ranch. Here's one of the times Prohibition an' me don't hitch."

Keith bent, opened a shallow drawer beneath the seat and produced a silver flask. He unscrewed the top and poured some liquor into it. It was Scotch whisky of a pre-war vintage. The aroma of the stuff dissolved in the rare air, vaguely scenting it. The nose of the wooden-faced chauffeur wrinkled. Sandy raised the boy's head and lifted the whisky to his pallid lips, gray as his face where the flesh matched the powdery alkali that covered it.

"Pinch his nose," he said to Keith. "He's breathin' regular. Stroke his throat soon as I git the stuff back of his teeth. So. Now then."

The cordial trickled down and Donald's eyes opened. Almost immediately color came back into his cheeks and lips and he tried to sit up. Sandy helped him.

"Now, sonny," he said. "Tell us about it. How'd this happen an' where? An' when, if you can place that?"

Donald nodded.

"Just a second," he whispered and closed his eyes. They were bright when he raised the lids again.

"Whisky got me going," he said. "I'd have given a whole lot for that flask two or three hours ago, Dad."

"Never mind the whisky, where did you leave Molly?" demanded Sandy.

"I don't know just where. I wasn't noticing just which way we rode. She did the leading. I don't know how I ever got back."

"Didn't she tell you where you were makin' fo'?"

"She didn't name it. It was a little lake in some cañon where Molly said there used to be beavers."

"Beaver Dam Cañon," said Sandy exultantly. "You left here 'bout seven. How fast did you trail?"

"We walked the horses most of the time. It was all up-hill. And I looked at my watch a little before it happened. It was a quarter of eleven. Molly said we'd be there by noon."

"Where were you then? What kind of a place? Near water?"

"We'd just crossed a stream."

"Willer Crick, runs out of Beaver Dam Lake. You c'udn't foller that up, 'count of the falls. Now, jest what happened?"

"We saw some men ahead of us. Molly wondered who they could be. Then they disappeared. We were riding in a pass and two of them showed again, coming out of the trees ahead of us. One of them, on a big black horse, held up his hand."

"Jim Plimsoll!"

"Yes. Molly recognized him and she spoke to him to get out of the trail. It was brush and cactus either side of us and we'd have had to crowd in. Grit was trailing us. Plimsoll wouldn't move. I heard more horses back of us and I turned to look. Two more men were coming up behind. They had rifles. So did the man with Plimsoll. He had a pistol under his vest. We couldn't go back very well and I could see from the way Plimsoll grinned that he was going to be nasty. Molly spurred Blaze on and cut at Plimsoll with her quirt. He grabbed her hand with his left. Grit sprang up at him and he got out his gun from the shoulder sling and shot him."

"Shot the dawg? Hit him?"

"Yes, in the leg. He fired at him again, but Grit got into the brush."

"Jest what were you doin' all the time?" Sandy knew the lad was a tenderfoot, knew he would have been small use on such an occasion, but the thought of Grit rising to the rescue, falling back shot, brought the taunt.

"The two men behind told me to throw up my hands," said young Keith, his face reddening. "What could I do?"

"Nothin', son. You c'udn't have done a thing. Go on."

"Plimsoll twisted Molly's wrist so that the quirt fell to the ground. The man who was with him tossed his rope over her and they twisted it round her arms. I had the muzzle of a rifle poked into my ribs. They made me get off my horse. And they made me walk back along the trail. They fired bullets each side of me and laughed at me when I dodged. They told me if I looked back they'd shoot my damned head off." Donald's eyes were filled with tears of self-pity and the remembrance of his helpless rage. "They kept firing at me until I'd passed the stream. I hid in the willows, but I couldn't see anything. I couldn't even see the men who had been firing at me.

"I didn't know what to do. I couldn't rescue Molly without a horse. I only had a revolver against their rifles and I'm not much of a shot. I tried to get back here but it was hard to find the way. I knew it was east but the sun was high and I wasn't sure which way the shadows lay. I was all in when your man found me."

"All right, my son. Keith, I'm goin' to borrow that flask of yores. Might need it."

He jumped from the car, flask in hand, and ran to the ranch-house. Kate Nicholson met him as he entered. "Has anything happened to Molly?" she gasped.

"That's what I'm goin' to find out," Sandy answered. "Mormon, git me my cartridge belt an' some extry shells fo' my rifle."

"I got to go git me my hawss," demurred Mormon who had followed him in. "Becos' I'm goin' on this trail."

"You can come erlong with Sam when the Brandon outfit shows. Or, if they don't show, you can bring erlong our own boys soon's they come in. But I'm hittin' this alone."

As he spoke he rummaged in a drawer and brought out the first-aid kit he always kept handy.

"You ain't takin' Sam?" asked Mormon, returning with the cartridge belt, Sandy's rifle and a box of shells. "I know you're goin' to ride hard an' fast, Sandy, but you got to go slow after you git tryin' to cut sign. Plimsoll's likely taken her over to the Waterline range country. They got a place over there somewhere they call the Hideout. It's where they hide their hawsses when they want 'em out of sight an' I reckon it's hard to find. I c'ud keep within' sight of you till you start cuttin' sign, Sandy, an' then catch up."

"Sam ain't comin'," said Sandy, filling his rifle magazine and breech, stowing away extra clips. "I'm goin' in alone. Mo'n one 'ud be likely to spoil sign, Mormon, mo'n one is likely to advertise we're comin'. They're liable to leave a lookout. Know we'll miss Molly some time. Figgered young Keith might git back some time. Plimsoll's clearin' out of the country an' I'm trailin' him clean through hell if I have to. Ef he's harmed Molly I'll stake him out with a green hide wrapped round him an' his eyelids sliced off. I'll sit in the shade an' watch him frizzle an' yell when the hide shrinks in the sun. This is my private play, Mormon. You an' Sam can back it up, but I'm handlin' the cards. I'll leave sign plain fo' you to foller from Willer Crick. They must have crossed at the ford below the big bend."

He left the room and they saw him covering the ground in a wolf trot to where Sam, astride his own favorite mount, held Pronto ready saddled. They saw Sam's protest, Sandy's vigorous overruling of it, and then Sandy was up-saddle and away at a brisk lope with Sam gazing after him disconsolately. Keith's car was turning for the trip to Hereford, spurning the dust of the Three Star Ranch forever—and not lamented.

"Ain't it jest plumb hell—beggin' yore pardon, marm—but that's what it is—plain hell!" cried Mormon. Tears of mortification were in his eyes, his voice was high-pitched and his chagrin was so much like that of an overgrown child that Kate Nicholson felt constrained to laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. "Me, I been punchin' cows, ridin' a hawss fo' a livin' fo' nigh thirty years," said Mormon. "I ain't what you'd call sooperannuated yit, if I am bald. I'm healthy as a woodchuck. But I'm so goldarned, hunky-chunky, hawg-fat I can't ride a hawss no mo'—not faster 'n a walk or further than two mile', fo' fear of breakin' his back. So I git left home to sit in a damn rockin' chair! Hell and damnation!"

"You're going to follow him, aren't you?"

"That was jest Sandy's way of lettin' me down easy. Sam'll go, but I'll stay to home. I'm goin' to give away my guns an' learn milkin'. Sandy's got about three hours of daylight. He'll go 'cross lots on the hawss, fur as he reckons the sign shows safe, an' no man can read sign better'n Sandy. Then he'll play snake an' he can beat an Indian at takin' cover. He'll drift over open country 'thout bein' spotted an', up there in the range, they'll never see, smell or hear him till he's on top of 'em an' his guns are doin' the talkin'. You ought to see him in action. I've done it. I've been in action with him, me an' Sam. Now all I'm good fo' is a close quarters ra'r an' tumble. He w'udn't take Sam erlong fo' fear of hurtin' my feelin's though even Sam 'ud be some handicap to Sandy on this trip of scoutin'.

"Sam can't take cover extra good, though he shoots middlin'. Sandy, he shoots like lightnin' fast an' straight."

"But there are four against him, at least."

"Fo' what?" asked Mormon with a look of scorn. "Plimsoll an' three of his cronies. Mebbe one or two mo' chucked in fo' good measure. What of it? Yeller, all of 'em, yeller as the belly of a Gila River pizen lizard. On'y way the odds 'ud be even w'ud be fo' them to git the drop on Sandy an' it can't be done. He's got his fightin' face on an' that means hands an' heart an' eyes an' brain an' every inch of him lined up to win. Sandy fights with his head an' he's got the heart to back it. Hell's bells, marm, beggin' yo' pardon ag'in, I ain't worryin' none erbout Sandy! I ain't seen him lose out yet. I'm cussin' about me—warmin' an armchair an' waddlin' round like a fall hawg."

Mormon slammed his hat on the floor and jumped on it and Miss Nicholson fled, a little reassured by Mormon's eulogy, anxious to talk it over with Sam.

Sandy, his eyes like the mica flakes that show in gray granite, his humorous mouth a stern line, little bunches of muscles at the junction of his jaws, held the pinto to a steady lope that ate up the ground, drifting straight and fast across country for the opening in the mesa that he had marked as the short-cut to the spot described by Donald Keith. Through gray sage and ferny mesquite Pronto moved, elastic of every sinew, springy of pastern, without fret or fuss though he had not been ridden for two days. Even as the man fitted the saddle, counterbalanced every supple movement of his steed, so Sandy's will dominated that of Pronto, making his mood his master's, telling him the occasion was one for best efforts with no place for wasted energy.

"We're goin' to cross a hard country, li'l' hawss," said Sandy. "But I figger we can make it. Got to make it, Pronto. An' we're sure goin' to. Doin' it fo' her."

Every now and then he talked his thoughts aloud, as the lonely rider will and, if the pinto could not understand, he listened with pricked ears.

"Grit must have been hurt pritty bad, I'm afraid. Still