The Collected Western Classics & Adventures Novels. William MacLeod RaineЧитать онлайн книгу.
and down his master’s coat and how the Texan put him through his little repertoire of tricks and fed him a lump of sugar from his coat pocket, she was glad she had ridden Teddy instead of her own pony to the meeting.
They took the road without loss of time. Arlie Dillon knew exactly how to cross this difficult region. She knew the Cedar Mountain district as a grade teacher knows her arithmetic. In daylight or in darkness, with or without a trail, she could have traveled almost a bee line to the point she wanted. Her life had been spent largely in the saddle—at least that part of it which had been lived outdoors. Wherefore she was able to lead her guest by secret trails that wound in and out among the passes and through unsuspected gorges to hazardous descents possible only to goats and cow ponies. No stranger finding his way in would have stood a chance of getting out again unaided.
Among these peaks lay hidden pockets and caches by hundreds, rock fissures which made the country a very maze to the uninitiated. The ranger, himself one of the best trailers in Texas, doubted whether he could retrace his steps to the Speed place.
After several hours of travel, they emerged from a gulch to a little valley known as Beaver Dam Park. The girl pointed out to her companion a narrow brown ribbon that wound through the park.
“There’s the road again. That’s the last we shall see of it—or it will be when we have crossed it. Once we reach the Twin Buttes that are the gateway to French Cañon you are perfectly safe. You can see the buttes from here. No, farther to the right.”
“I thought I’d ridden some tough trails in my time, but this country ce’tainly takes the cake,” Fraser said admiringly, as his gaze swept the horizon. “It puts it over anything I ever met up with. Ain’t that right, Teddy hawss?”
The girl flushed with pleasure at his praise. She was mountain bred, and she loved the country of the great peaks.
They descended the valley, crossed the road, and in an open grassy spot just beyond, came plump upon four men who had unsaddled to eat lunch.
The meeting came too abruptly for Arlie to avoid it. One glance told her that they were deputies from Gimlet Butte. Without the least hesitation she rode forward and gave them the casual greeting of cattleland. Fraser, riding beside her, nodded coolly, drew to a halt, and lit a cigarette.
“Found him yet, gentlemen?” he asked.
“No, nor we ain’t likely to, if he’s reached this far,” one of the men answered.
“It would be some difficult to collect him here,” the Texan admitted impartially.
“Among his friends,” one of the deputies put in, with a snarl.
Fraser laughed easily. “Oh, well, we ain’t his enemies, though he ain’t very well known in the Cedar Mountain country. What might he be like, pardner?”
“Hasn’t he lived up here long?” asked one of the men, busy with some bacon over a fire.
“They say not.”
“He’s a heavy-set fellow, with reddish hair; not so tall as you, I reckon, and some heavier. Was wearing chaps and gauntlets when he made his getaway. From the description, he looks something like you, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Fraser congratulated himself that he had had the foresight to discard as many as possible of these helps to identification before he was three miles from Gimlet Butte. Now he laughed pleasantly.
“Sure he’s heavier than me, and not so tall.”
“It would be a good joke, Bud, if they took you back to town for this man,” cut in Arlie, troubled at the direction the conversation was taking, but not obviously so.
“I ain’t objecting any, sis. About three days of the joys of town would sure agree with my run-down system,” the Texan answered joyously.
“When you cowpunchers do get in, you surely make Rome howl,” one of the deputies agreed, with a grin. “Been in to the Butte lately?”
The Texan met his grin. “It ain’t been so long.”
“Well, you ain’t liable to get in again for a while,” Arlie said emphatically. “Come on, Bud, we’ve got to be moving.”
“Which way is Dead Cow Creek?” one of the men called after them.
Fraser pointed in the direction from which he had just come.
After they had ridden a hundred yards, the girl laughed aloud her relief at their escape. “If they go the way you pointed for Dead Cow Creek, they will have to go clear round the world to get to it. We’re headed for the creek now.”
“A fellow can’t always guess right,” pleaded the Texan. “If he could, what a fiend he would be at playing the wheel! Shall I go back and tell him I misremembered for a moment where the creek is?”
“No, sir. You had me scared badly enough when you drew their attention to yourself. Why did you do it?”
“It was the surest way to disarm any suspicion they might have had. One of them had just said the man they wanted was like me. Presently, one would have been guessing that it was me.” He looked at her drolly, and added: “You played up to me fine, sis.”
A touch of deeper color beat into her dusky cheeks. “We’ll drop the relationship right now, if you please. I said only what you made me say,” she told him, a little stiffly.
But presently she relaxed to the note of friendliness, even of comradeship, habitual to her. She was a singularly frank creature, having been brought up in a country where women were few and far, and where conventions were of the simplest. Otherwise, she would not have confessed to him with unconscious näiveté, as she now did, how greatly she had been troubled for him before she received the note from Speed.
“It worried me all the time, and it troubled dad, too. I could see that. We had hardly left you before I knew we had done wrong. Dad did it for me, of course; but he felt mighty bad about it. Somehow, I couldn’t think of anything but you there, with all those men shooting at you. Suppose you had waited too long before surrendering! Suppose you had been killed for us!” She looked at him, and felt a shiver run over her in the warm sunlight. “Night before last I was worn out. I slept some, but I kept dreaming they were killing you. Oh, you don’t know how glad I was to get word from Speed that you were alive.” Her soft voice had the gift of expressing feeling, and it was resonant with it now.
“I’m glad you were glad,” he said quietly.
Across Dead Cow Creek they rode, following the stream up French Cañon to what was known as the Narrows. Here the great rock walls, nearly two thousand feet high, came so close together as to leave barely room for a footpath beside the creek which boiled down over great bowlders. Unexpectedly, there opened in the wall a rock fissure, and through this Arlie guided her horse.
The Texan wondered where she could be taking him, for the fissure terminated in a great rock slide some two hundred yards ahead of them. Before reaching this she turned sharply to the left, and began winding in and out among the big bowlders which had fallen from the summit far above.
Presently Fraser observed with astonishment that they were following a path that crept up the very face of the bluff. Up—up—up they went until they reached a rift in the wall, and into this the trail went precipitously. Stones clattered down from the hoofs of the horses as they clambered up like mountain goats. Once the Texan had to throw himself to the ground to keep Teddy from falling backward.
Arlie, working her pony forward with voice and body and knees, so that from her seat in the saddle she seemed literally to lift him up, reached the summit and looked back.
“All right back there?” she asked quietly.
“All right,” came the cheerful answer. “Teddy isn’t used to climbing up a wall, but he’ll make it or know why.”
A minute later, man and horse were beside her.
“Good for Teddy,” she said, fondling his