Bar-20 Days, Clarence E. Mulford [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

Stevenson, having started the fire for breakfast, took a pail and departed towards the spring; but he got no farther than the corral gate, where he dropped the pail and stared. There was only one horse in the enclosure where the night before there had been four. He wasted no time in surmises, but wheeled and dashed back towards the hotel, and his vigorous shouts brought Old John to the door, sleepy and peevish. Old John’s mouth dropped open as he beheld his habitually indolent host marking off long distances on the sand with each falling foot.

“What’s got inter you?” demanded Old John.

“Our broncs are gone! Our broncs are gone!” yelled Stevenson, shoving Old John roughly to one side as he dashed through the doorway and on into the room he had assigned to the sullen and bibulous stranger. “I knowed it! I knowed it!” he wailed, popping out again as if on springs. “He’s gone, an’ he’s took our broncs with him, the measly, low-down dog! I knowed he wasn’t no good! I could see it in his eye; an’ he wasn’t drunk, not by a darn sight. Go out an’ see for yoreself if they ain’t gone!” he snapped in reply to Old John’s look. “Go on out, while I throw some cold grub on the table—won’t have no time this morning to do no cooking. He’s got five hours’ start on us, an’ it’ll take some right smart riding to get him before dark; but we’ll do it, an’ hang him, too!”

“What’s all this here rumpus?” demanded a sleepy voice from upstairs. “Who’s hanged?” and Charley entered the room, very much interested. His interest increased remarkably when the calamity was made known and he lost no time in joining Old John in the corral to verify the news.

Old John waved his hands over the scene and carefully explained what he had read in the tracks, to his companion’s great irritation, for Charley’s keen eyes and good training had already told him all there was to learn; and his reading did not exactly agree with that of his companion.

“Charley, he’s gone and took our cayuses; an’ that’s the very way he came—‘round the corner of the hotel. He got all tangled up an’ fell over there, an’ here he bumped inter the palisade, an’ dropped his saddle. When he opened the bars he took my roan gelding because it was the best an’ fastest, an’ then he let out the others to mix us up on the tracks. See how he went? Had to hop four times on one foot afore he could get inter the saddle. An’ that proves he was sober, for no drunk could hop four times like that without falling down an’ being drug to death. An’ he left his own critter behind because he knowed it wasn’t no good. It’s all as plain as the nose on your face, Charley,” and Old John proudly rubbed his ear. “Hee, hee, hee! You can’t fool Old John, even if he is getting old. No, sir, b’ gum.”

Charley had just returned from inside the corral, where he had looked at the brand on the far side of the one horse left, and he waited impatiently for his companion to cease talking. He took quick advantage of the first pause Old John made and spoke crisply.

“I don’t care what corner he came ‘round, or what he bumped inter; an’ any fool can see that. An’ if he left that cayuse behind because he thought it wasn’t no good, he was drunk. That’s a Bar-20 cayuse, an’ no hoss-thief ever worked for that ranch. He left it behind because he stole it; that’s why. An’ he didn’t let them others out because he wanted to mix us up, neither. How’d he know if we couldn’t tell the tracks of our own animals? He did that to make us lose time; that’s what he did it for. An’ he couldn’t tell what bronc he took last night—it was too dark. He must ‘a’ struck a match an’ seen where that Bar-20 cayuse was an’ then took the first one nearest that wasn’t it. An’ now you tell me how the devil he knowed yourn was the fastest, which it ain’t,” he finished, sarcastically, gloating over a chance to rub it into the man he had always regarded as a windy old nuisance.

“Well, mebby what you said is—”

“Mebby nothing!” snapped Charley. “If he wanted to mix the tracks would he ‘a’ hopped like that so we couldn’t help telling what cayuse he rode? He knowed we’d pick his trail quick, an’ he knowed that every minute counted; that’s why he hopped—why, yore roan was going like the wind afore he got in the saddle. If you don’t believe it, look at them toe-prints!”

“H’m; reckon yo’re right, Charley. My eyes ain’t nigh as good as they once was. But I heard him say something ‘bout Winchester,” replied Old John, glad to change the subject. “Bet he’s going over there, too. He won’t get through that town on no critter wearing my brand. Everybody knows that roan, an’—”

“Quit guessing!” snapped Charley, beginning to lose some of the tattered remnant of his respect for old age. “He’s a whole lot likely to head for a town on a stolen cayuse, now ain’t he! But we don’t care where he’s heading; we’ll foller the trail.”

“Grub pile!” shouted Stevenson, and the two made haste to obey.

“Charley, gimme a chaw of yore tobacker,” and Old John, biting off a generous chunk, quietly slipped it into his pocket, there to lay until after he had eaten his breakfast.

All talk was tabled while the three men gulped down a cold and uninviting meal. Ten minutes later they had finished and separated to find horses and spread the news; in fifteen more they had them and were riding along the plain trail at top speed, with three other men close at their heels. Three hundred yards from the corral they pounded out of an arroyo, and Charley, who was leading, stood up in his stirrups and looked keenly ahead. Another trail joined the one they were following and ran with and on top of it. This, he reasoned, had been made by one of the strays and would turn away soon. He kept his eyes looking well ahead and soon saw that he was right in his surmise, and without checking the speed of his horse in the slightest degree he went ahead on the trail of the smaller hoof-prints. In a moment Old John spurred forward and gained his side and began to argue hot-headedly.

“Hey! Charley!” he cried. “Why are you follering this track?” he demanded.

“Because it’s his; that’s why.”

“Well, here, wait a minute!” and Old John was getting red from excitement. “How do you know it is? Mebby he took the other!”

“He started out on the cayuse that made these little tracks,” retorted Charley, “an’ I don’t see no reason to think he swapped animules. Don’t you know the prints of yore own cayuse?”

“Lawd, no!” answered Old John. “Why, I don’t hardly ride the same cayuse the second day, straight hand-running. I tell you we ought to foller that other trail. He’s just cute enough to play some trick on us.”

“Well, you better do that for us,” Charley replied, hoping against hope that the old man would chase off on the other and give his companions a rest.

“He ain’t got sand enough to tackle a thing like that single-handed,” laughed Jed White, winking to the others.

Old John wheeled. “Ain’t, hey! I am going to do that same thing an’ prove that you are a pack of fools. I’m too old to be fooled by a common trick like that. An’ I don’t need no help—I’ll ketch him all by myself, an’ hang him, too!” And he wheeled to follow the other trail, angry and outraged. “Young fools,” he muttered. “Why, I was fighting all around these parts afore any of ‘em knowed the difference between day an’ night!”

“Hard-headed old fool,” remarked Charley, frowning, as he led the way again.

“He’s gittin’ old an’ childish,” excused Stevenson. “They say warn’t nobody in these parts could hold a candle to him in his prime.”

Hopalong muttered and stirred and opened his eyes to gaze blankly into those of one of the men who were tugging at his hands, and as he stared he started his stupefied brain sluggishly to work in an endeavor to explain the unusual experience. There were five men around him