"Shall we take him to Lone Tree Coulee?" asked one. Another answered disdainfully.

"Don't you know the lone tree's dead? Jest shrivelled up an' died after Bill Atwood was hung onto it. Some augers he worn't guilty. But it's better to play safe, an' string up all the doubtful ones, then yer bound to git the right one onct in a while."

"Swing over into Buffalo Coulee," commanded Tex. "There's a bunch of cottonwoods just above Hansen's old sheep ranch."

"We'll string him up to a cottonwood limb An' dig his grave in under him——"

"Shut up!" ordered Curly, favouring the singer with a scowl. "Any one would think you was joyous-minded, which this here hangin' a man is plumb serious business, even if it hain't only a pilgrim!"

He edged his horse in beside the Texan's. "He don't seem tore up with terror, none. D'you think he's onto the racket?"

Tex shook his head, and with his eyes on the face of the prisoner which showed very white in the moonlight, rode on in silence.

"You mean you think he's jest nach'ly got guts—an' him a pilgrim?"

"How the hell do I know what he's got?" snapped the other. "Can't you wait till we get to Buffalo?"

Curly allowed his horse to fall back a few paces. "First time I ever know'd Tex to pack a grouch," he mused, as his lips drew into a grin. "He's sore 'cause the pilgrim hain't a-snifflin' an' a-carryin'-on an' tryin' to beg off. Gosh! If he turns out to be a reg'lar hand, an' steps up an' takes his medicine like a man, the joke'll be on Tex. The boys never will quit joshin' him—an' he knows it. No wonder he's sore."

The cowboys rode straight across the bench. Song and conversation had ceased and the only sounds were the low clink of bit chains and the soft rustle of horses' feet in the buffalo grass. At the end of an hour the leaders swung into an old grass-grown trail that led by devious windings into a deep, steep-sided coulee along the bottom of which ran the bed of a dried-up creek. Water from recent rains stood in brackish pools. Remnants of fence with rotted posts sagging from rusty wire paralleled their course. A dilapidated cross-fence barred their way, and without dismounting, a cowboy loosened the wire gate and threw it aside.

A deserted log-house, windowless, with one corner rotted away, and the sod roof long since tumbled in, stood upon a treeless bend of the dry creek. Abandoned implements littered the dooryard; a rusted hay rake with one wheel gone, a broken mower with cutter-bar drunkenly erect, and the front trucks of a dilapidated wagon.

The Texan's eyes rested sombrely upon the remnant of a rocking-horse, still hitched by bits of weather-hardened leather to a child's wheelbarrow whose broken wheel had once been the bottom of a wooden pail—and he swore, softly.

Up the creek he could see the cottonwood grove just bursting into leaf and as they rounded the corner of a long sheep-shed, whose soggy straw roof sagged to the ground, a coyote, disturbed in his prowling among the whitening bones of dead sheep, slunk out of sight in a weed-patch.

Entering the grove, the men halted at a point where the branches of three large trees interlaced. It was darker, here. The moonlight filtered through in tiny patches which brought out the faces of the men with grotesque distinctness and plunged them again into blackness.

Gravely the Texan edged his horse to the side of the pilgrim.

"Get off!" he ordered tersely, and Endicott dismounted.

"Tie his hands!" A cowboy caught the man's hands behind him and secured them with a lariat-rope.

The Texan unknotted the silk muffler from about his neck and folded it.

"If it is just the same to you," the pilgrim asked, in a voice that held firm, "will you leave that off?"

Without a word the muffler was returned to its place.

"Throw the rope over that limb—the big one that sticks out this way," ordered the Texan, and a cowpuncher complied.

"The knot had ort to come in under his left ear," suggested one, and proceeded to twist the noose into place.

"All ready!"

A dozen hands grasped the end of the rope.

The Texan surveyed the details critically:

"This here is a disagreeable job," he said. "Have you got anything to say?"

Endicott took a step forward, and as he faced the Texan, his eyes flashed. "Have I got anything to say!" he sneered. "Would you have anything to say if a bunch of half-drunken fools decided to take the law into their own hands and hang you for defending a woman against the brutal attack of a fiend?" He paused and wrenched to free his hands but the rope held firm. "It was a wise precaution you took when you ordered my hands tied—a precaution that fits in well with this whole damned cowardly proceeding. And now you ask me if I have anything to say!" He glanced into the faces of the cowboys who seemed to be enjoying the situation hugely.

"I've got this to say—to you, and to your whole bunch of grinning hyenas: If you expect me to do any begging or whimpering, you are in for a big disappointment. There is one request I am going to make—and that you won't grant. Just untie my hands for ten minutes and stand up to me bare-fisted. I want one chance before I go, to fight you, or any of you, or all of you! Or, if you are afraid to fight that way, give me a pistol—I never fired one until tonight—and let me shoot it out with you. Surely men who swagger around with pistols in their belts, and pride themselves on the use of them, ought not to be afraid to take a chance against a man who has never but once fired one!" There was an awkward pause and the pilgrim laughed harshly: "There isn't an ounce of sporting blood among you! You hunt in packs like the wolves you are—twenty to one—and that one with a rope around his neck and his hands tied!"

"The odds is a little against you," drawled the Texan. "Where might you hail from?"

"From a place where they breed men—not curs."

"Ain't you afraid to die?"

"Just order your hounds to jerk on that rope and I'll show you whether or not I am afraid to die. But let me tell you this, you damned murderer! If any harm comes to that girl—to Miss Marcum—may the curse of God follow every last one of you till you are damned in a fiery hell! You will kill me now, but you won't be rid of me. I'll haunt you every one to your graves. I will follow you night and day till your brains snap and you go howling to hell like maniacs."

Several of the cowboys shuddered and turned away. Very deliberately the Texan rolled a cigarette.

"There is a box in my coat pocket, will you hand me one? Or is it against the rules to smoke?" Without a word the Texan complied, and as he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' come off as per schedule."

Alone in the cottonwood grove, with little patches of moonlight filtering through onto the new-sprung grass, the two men faced each other. Without a word the cowboy freed the prisoner's hands.

"Viewin' it through a lariat-loop, that way, the country looks better to a man than what it really is," he observed, as the other stretched his arms above his head.

"What is the meaning of all this? The lynching would have been an atrocious injustice, but if you did not intend to hang me why should you have taken the trouble to bring me out here?"

"'Twasn't no trouble at all. The main thing was to get you out of Wolf River. The lynchin' part was only a joke, an' that's on us. You bein' a pilgrim, that way, we kind of thought——"

"A what?"

"A pilgrim, or tenderfoot, or greener or chechako, or counter-jumper, owin' to what part of the country you misfit into. We thought you wouldn't have no guts, an' we'd——"

"Any what?"

The Texan regarded the other hopelessly. "Oh hell!" he muttered disgustedly. "Can't you talk no English? Where was you raised?"

The other laughed. "Go on, I will try to follow you."

"I can't chop 'em up no finer than one syllable. But I'll shorten up the dose sufficient for your understandin' to grasp. It's this way: D'you know what a frame-up is?"

Endicott nodded.

"Well, Choteau County politics is in such a condition of onwee that a hangin' would be a reg'lar tonic for the party that's in; which it's kind of bogged down into an old maid's tea party. Felonious takin's-off has be'n common enough, but there hasn't no hangin's resulted, for the reason that in every case the hangee has got friends or relations of votin' influence. Now, along comes you without no votin' connections an' picks off Purdy, which he's classed amongst human bein's, an' is therefore felonious to kill. There ain't nothin' to it. They'd be poundin' away on the scaffold an' testin' the rope while the trial was goin' on. Besides which you'd have to linger in a crummy jail for a couple of months waitin' for the grand jury to set on you. A few of us boys seen how things was framed an' we took the liberty to turn you loose, not because we cared a damn about you, but we'd hate to see even a snake hung fer killin' Purdy which his folks done a wrong to humanity by raisin' him.

"The way the thing is now, if the boys plays the game accordin' to Hoyle, there won't be no posses out huntin' you 'cause folks will all think you was lynched. But even if they is a posse or two, which the chances is there will be, owin' to the loosenin' effect of spiritorious licker on the tongue, which it will be indulged in liberal when that bunch hits town, we can slip down into the bad lands an' lay low for a while, an' then on to the N. P. an' you can get out of the country."

Endicott extended his hand: "I thank you," he said. "It is certainly white of you boys to go out of your way to help a perfect stranger. I have no desire to thrust my neck into a noose to further the ends of politics. One experience of the kind is quite sufficient."

"Never mind oratin' no card of thanks. Just you climb up into the middle of that bronc an' we'll be hittin' the trail. We got quite some ridin' to do before we get to the bad lands—an' quite some after."

Endicott reached for the bridle reins of his horse which was cropping grass a few feet distant.

"But Alice—Miss Marcum!" With the reins in his hand he faced the Texan. "I must let her know I am safe. She will think I have been lynched and——"

"She's goin' along," interrupted the Texan, gruffly.

"Going along!"

"Yes, she was bound to see you through because what you done was on her account. Bat an' her'll be waitin' for us at Snake Creek crossin'."

"Who is Bat?"

"He's a breed."

"A what?"

"Wait an' see!" growled Tex. "Come on; we can't set here 'til you get educated. You'd ought to went to school when you was young."

Endicott reached for a stirrup and the horse leaped sidewise with a snort of fear. Again and again the man tried to insert a foot into the broad wooden stirrup, but always the horse jerked away. Round and round in a circle they went, while the Texan sat in his saddle and rolled a cigarette.

"Might try the other one," he drawled, as he struck a match. "Don't you know no better than to try to climb onto a horse on the right-hand side? You must of be'n brought up on G-Dots."

"What's a G-Dot?"

"There you go again. Do I look like a school-marm? A G-Dot is an Injun horse an' you can get on 'em from both sides or endways. Come on; Snake Creek crossin' is a good fifteen miles from here, an' we better pull out of this coulee while the moon holds."

Endicott managed to mount, and gathering up the reins urged his horse forward. But the animal refused to go and despite the man's utmost efforts, backed farther and farther into the brush.

"Just shove on them bridle reins a little," observed the Texan dryly. "I think he's swallerin' the bit. What you got him all yanked in for? D'you think the head-stall won't hold the bit in? Or ain't his mouth cut back far enough to suit you? These horses is broke to be rode with a loose rein. Give him his head an' he'll foller along."

A half-mile farther up the coulee, the Texan headed up a ravine that led to the level of the bench, and urging his horse into a long swinging trot, started for the mountains. Mile after mile they rode, the cowboy's lips now and then drawing into their peculiar smile as, out of the corner of his eye he watched the vain efforts of his companion to maintain a firm seat in the saddle. "He's game, though," he muttered, grudgingly. "He rides like a busted wind-mill an' it must be just tearin' hell out of him but he never squawks. An' the way he took that hangin'—— If he'd be'n raised right he'd sure made some tough hand. An' pilgrim or no pilgrim, the guts is there."



CHAPTER X

THE FLIGHT

When the Texan had departed Bat Lajune eyed the side-saddle with disgust. "Dat damn t'ing, she ain' no good. A'm git de reg'lar saddle."

Slowly he pushed open the side door of the hotel and paused in the darkened hallway to stare at the crack of yellow light that showed beneath the door of Number 11.

"A'm no lak' dis fool 'roun' wit' 'omen." He made a wry face and knocked gingerly.

Jennie Dodds opened the door, and for a moment eyed the half-breed with frowning disfavour.

"Look a here, Bat Lajune, is this on the level? They say you're the squarest Injun that ever swung a rope. But Injun or white, you're a man, an' I wouldn't trust one as far as I could throw a mule by the tail."

"Mebbe-so you lak' you com' 'long an' see, eh?"

"I got somethin' else to do besides galavantin' 'round the country nights with cowboys an' Injuns."

The half-breed laughed and turned to Alice. "Better you bor' some pants for ride de horse. Me, A'm gon' git nudder saddle. 'Fore you ride little ways you bre'k you back."

"Go over to the livery barn an' tell Ross to put my reg'lar saddle on in place of the side-saddle, an' when you come back she'll be ready." Jennie Dodds slipped from the room as the outer door closed upon the half-breed's departure, and returned a few minutes later with her own riding outfit, which she tossed onto the bed.

"Jest you climb into them, dearie," she said. "Bat's right. Them side-saddles is sure the dickens an' all, if you got any ways to go."

"But," objected Alice, "I can't run off with all your things this way!" She reached for her purse. "I'll tell you, I'll buy them from you, horse and all!"

"No you won't, no such thing!" Jennie Dodds assumed an injured tone. "Pity a body can't loan a friend nuthin' without they're offered to git payed for it. You can send the clothes back when you're through with 'em. An' here's a sack. Jest stick what you need in that. It'll tie on behind your saddle, an' you can leave the rest of your stuff here in your grip an I'll ship it on when you're ready for it. Better leave them night-gowns an' corsets an' such like here. You ain't goin' to find no use for 'em out there amongst the prickly pears an' sage brush. Law me! I don't envy you your trip none! I'd jest like to know what for devilment that Tex Benton's up to. Anyways, you don't need to be afraid of him—like Purdy. But men is men, an' you got to watch 'em."

As the girl chattered on she helped Alice to dress for the trail and when the "war-bag" was packed and tied with a stout cord, the girl crossed to the window and drew back the shade.

"The Injun's back. You better be goin'." The girl slipped a small revolver from her pocket and pressed it into Alice's hand. "There's a pocket for it in the bloomers. Cinnabar Joe give it to me a long time ago. Take care of yourself an' don't be afraid to use it if you have to. An' mind you let me hear jest the minute you git anywheres. I'll be a-dyin' to know what become of you."

Alice promised and as she passed through the door, leaned swiftly and kissed the girl squarely upon the lips.

"Good-bye," she whispered. "I won't forget you," and the next moment she stepped out to join the waiting half-breed, who with a glance of approval at her costume, took the bag from her hand and proceeded to secure it behind the cantle. The girl mounted without assistance, and snubbing the lead-rope of the pack-horse about the horn of his saddle, the half-breed led off into the night.

Hour after hour they rode in silence, following a trail that wound in easy curves about the bases of hillocks and small buttes, and dipped and slanted down the precipitous sides of deep coulees where the horses' feet splashed loudly in the shallow waters of fords. As the moon dipped lower and lower, they rode past the darkened buildings of ranches nestled beside the creeks, and once they passed a band of sheep camped near the trail. The moonlight showed a sea of grey, woolly backs, and on a near-by knoll stood a white-covered camp-wagon, with a tiny lantern burning at the end of the tongue. A pair of hobbled horses left off snipping grass beside the trail and gazed with mild interest as the two passed, and beneath the wagon a dog barked. At length, just as the moon sank from sight behind the long spur of Tiger Butte, the trail slanted into a wide coulee from the bottom of which sounded the tinkle of running water.

"Dis Snake Creek," remarked the Indian; "better you git off now an' stretch you leg. Me, A'm mak' de blanket on de groun' an' you ketch-um little sleep. Mebbe-so dem com' queek—mebbe-so long tam'."

Even as he talked the man spread a pair of new blankets beside the trail and walking a short distance away seated himself upon a rock and lighted a cigarette.

With muscles aching from the unaccustomed strain of hours in the saddle, Alice threw herself upon the blankets and pillowed her head on the slicker that the half-breed had folded for the purpose. Almost immediately she fell asleep only to awake a few moments later with every bone in her body registering an aching protest at the unbearable hardness of her bed. In vain she turned from one side to the other, in an effort to attain a comfortable position. With nerves shrieking at each new attitude, all thought of sleep vanished and the girl's brain raced madly over the events of the past few hours. Yesterday she had sat upon the observation platform of the overland train and complained to Endicott of the humdrum conventionality of her existence! Only yesterday—and it seemed weeks ago. The dizzy whirl of events that had snatched her from the beaten path and deposited her somewhere out upon the rim of the world had come upon her so suddenly and with such stupendous import that it beggared any attempt to forecast its outcome. With a shudder she recalled the moment upon the verge of the bench when in a flash she had realized the true character of Purdy and her own utter helplessness. With a great surge of gratitude—and—was it only gratitude—this admiration and pride in the achievement of the man who had rushed to her rescue? Alone there in the darkness the girl flushed to the roots of her hair as she realized that it was for this man she had unhesitatingly and unquestioningly ridden far into the night in company with an unknown Indian. Realized, also, that above the pain of her tortured muscles, above the uncertainty of her own position, was the anxiety and worry as to the fate of Endicott. Where was he? Had Tex lied when he told her there would be no lynching? Even if he desired could he prevent the cowboys from wreaking their vengeance upon the man who had killed one of their number? She recalled with a shudder the cold cynicism of the smile that habitually curled the lips of the Texan. A man who could smile like that could lie—could do anything to gain an end. And yet—she realized with a puzzled frown that in her heart was no fear of him—no terror such as struck into her very soul at the sudden unmasking of Purdy. "It's his eyes," she murmured; "beneath his cynical exterior lies a man of finer fibre."

Some distance away a match flared in the darkness and went out, and dimly by the little light of the stars Alice made out the form of the half-breed seated upon his rock beside the trail. Motionless as the rock itself the man sat humped over with his arms entwining his knees. A sombre figure, and one that fitted intrinsically into the scene—the dark shapes of the three horses that snipped grass beside the trail, the soft murmur of the waters of the creek as they purled over the stones, the black wall of the coulee, with the mountains rising beyond—all bespoke the wild that since childhood she had pictured, but never before had seen. Under any other circumstances the setting would have appealed, would have thrilled her to the soul. But now—over and over through her brain repeated the question: Where is he?

A horse nickered softly and raising his head, sniffed the night air. The Indian stepped from his rock and stood alert with his eyes on the reach of the back-trail. And then softly, almost inaudibly to the ears of the girl came the sound of horses' hoofs pounding the trail in monotonous rhythm.

Leaping to her feet she rushed forward in time to see Bat catch up the reins of the three horses and slip noiselessly into the shelter of a bunch of scrub willows. In a moment she was at his side and the Indian thrust the reins into her hand.

"Better you wait here," he whispered hurriedly. "Mebbe-so, som'wan else com' 'long. Me, A'm gon' for look." With the words the man blended into the shadows and, clutching the reins, the girl waited with every nerve drawn tense.

Nearer and nearer came the sound of the thudding hoofs. The riders had reached the dip of the trail now and the rhythmic pound of the horses' feet changed to a syncopated shuffle as the animals made the steep descent. At the edge of the creek they paused for a moment and then Alice, could hear the splash of their feet in the water and the deep sucking sound of horses drinking.

A low peculiar whistle cut the air and the next moment a voice which the girl recognized as the Texan's sounded plainly through the dark.

"You got here, did you? Where's the girl?" Alice could not catch the answer but at the next words of the Texan she started forward tugging at the reins of the refractory cayuses.

"Come alive, now, an' get your outfit together. There's prob'ly a big posse out an' we got to scratch gravel some lively to keep ahead of 'em, which little item the future prosperity of all concerned, as the fellow says, depends on—not only the hangee here, but us accessories, the law bein' some specific in outlinin' the disposal of aiders an' abettors of felonious transmigrations."

The half-breed relieved her of the horses and Alice rushed to the side of Endicott who had reined his horse out of the water and dismounted stiffly.

"Oh, Winthrop!" she cried joyfully. "Then they didn't hang you, and——"

Endicott laughed: "No, they didn't hang me but they put a lot of local colour into the preliminaries. I certainly thought my time had come, when friend Tex here gave the word to throw off the rope." The girl flashed a grateful glance into the face of the Texan who sat his horse with the peculiar smile curling his lips.

"Oh, how can I ever thank you?" she cried impulsively. "I think you are just splendid! And I'll never, never distrust you again. I've been a perfect fool and——"

"Yes," answered the man gruffly, and Alice noticed that the smile was gone from his lips. "But you ain't out of the woods yet. Bat's got that horse packed an' as soon as Winthrup, there, can crawl up the side of that bronc we better be hittin' the trail. If we can make the timber at the head of Cow Creek divide by daylight, we can slip down into the bad lands tomorrow night."

Endicott painfully raised a foot to the stirrup, and the Texan turned abruptly to the girl.

"Can you make it?" he asked. She replied with an eager affirmative and the Texan shot her a glance of approval as he watched her mount, for well he knew that she must have fared very little better than Endicott in the matter of aching muscles.

Mile after mile the four rode in silence, Tex in the lead with Bat Lajune close by his side. An occasional backward glance revealed the clumsy efforts of the pilgrim to ease himself in the saddle, and the set look of determination upon the tired face of the girl.

"Winthrup ain't wearin' well," thought the cowboy as his lips twisted into a smile, "but what could you expect with a name like that? I'm afraid Winthrup is goin' to wish I hadn't interfered none with his demise, but he won't squawk, an' neither will she. There's the makin's of a couple of good folks wasted in them two pilgrims," and he frowned darkly at the recollection of the note of genuine relief and gladness with which the girl had greeted Endicott; a frown that deepened at the girl's impulsive words to himself, "I think you are just splendid. I'll never distrust you again." "She's a fool!" he muttered under his breath. At his side the half-breed regarded him shrewdly from under the broad brim of his hat.

"Dat girl she dam' fine 'oman. She got, w'at you call, de nerve."

"It's a good thing it ain't daytime," growled the Texan surlily, "or that there tongue of yourn would get sun-burnt the way you keep it a-goin'."

Upon the crest of a high foothill that is a spur of Tiger Ridge, Tex swerved abruptly from the trail and headed straight for the mountains that loomed out of the darkness. On and on he rode, keeping wherever possible to the higher levels to avoid the fences of the nesters whose fields and pastures followed the windings of the creek bottoms.

Higher and higher they climbed and rougher grew the way. The scrub willows gave place to patches of bull pine and the long stretches of buffalo grass to ugly bare patches of black rock. In and out of the scrub timber they wended, following deep coulees to their sources and crossing steep-pitched divides into other coulees. The fences of the nesters were left far behind and following old game trails, or no trails at all, the Texan pushed unhesitatingly forward. At last, just as the dim outlines of the mountains were beginning to assume definite shape in the first faint hint of the morning grey, he pulled into a more extensive patch of timber than any they had passed and dismounting motioned the others to the ground.

While the Texan prepared breakfast, Bat busied himself with the blankets and when the meal was finished Alice found a tent awaiting her, which the half-breed had constructed by throwing the pack-tarp over a number of light poles whose ends rested upon a fallen tree-trunk. Never in her life, thought the girl, as she sank into the foot-thick mattress of pine boughs that underlay the blankets, had a bed felt so comfortable, so absolutely satisfying. But her conscious enjoyment of its comfort was short-lived for the sounds of men and horses, and the low soughing of the wind in the pine-tops blended into one, and she slept. Endicott, too, fell asleep almost as soon as he touched the blankets which the half-breed had spread for him a short distance back from the fire, notwithstanding the scant padding of pine needles that interposed between him and mother earth.

Beside the fire the half-breed helped Tex wash the dishes, the while he regarded the cowpuncher shrewdly as if to fathom what was passing in his mind.

"Back in Wolf Rivaire, dey t'ink de pilgrim git hang. W'at for dey mak' de posse?" he asked at length. The Texan finished washing the tin plates, dried his hands, and rolled a cigarette, which he lighted deliberately with a brand from the fire.

"Bat," he said with a glance toward the sleeping Endicott, "me an' you has be'n right good friends for quite a spell. You recollect them four bits, back in Las Vegas—" The half-breed interrupted him with a grin and reaching into his shirt front withdrew a silver half-dollar which depended from his neck by a rawhide thong.

"Oui, A'm don' git mooch chance to ferget dat four bit."

"Well, then, you got to help me through with this here, like I helped you through when you stole Fatty's horse." The half-breed nodded and Tex continued: "When that outfit goes up against the Wolf River hooch you can bet someone's going to leak it out that there wasn't no reg'lar bony-fido hangin' bee. That'll start a posse, an' that's why we got to stay cached good an' tight till this kind of blows over an' gives us a chance to slip acrost the Misszoo. Even if it don't leak out, an' any one should happen to spot the pilgrim, that would start a posse, pronto, an' we'd get ours for helpin' him to elope."

"'Spose dey git de pilgrim," persisted the half-breed, "de, w'at you call, de jury, dey say 'turn 'um loose' 'cause he keel dat Purdy for try to——"

Tex hurled his cigarette into the blaze. "You're a damn smart Injun, ain't you? Well, you just listen to me. I'm runnin' this here little outfit, an' there's reasons over an' above what I've orated, why the pilgrim is goin' to be treated to a good lib'ral dose of the rough stuff. If he comes through, he'll stack up pretty close to a top hand, an' if he don't—" The Texan paused and scowled into the fire. "An' if he don't it's his own damn fault, anyhow—an' there you are."

The half-breed nodded, and in the dark eyes the Texan noted a half-humorous, half-ominous gleam; "Dat, w'at you call, 'reason over an' 'bove', she damn fine 'oman. A'm t'ink she lak' de pilgrim more'n you. But mebbe-so you show heem up for w'at you call, de yellow, you git her 'way, but—me, A'm no lak' I see her git harm." With which declaration the half-breed rose abruptly and busied himself with the horses, while the Texan, without bothering to spread his blankets, pulled his hat over his face and stretched out beside the fire.



CHAPTER XI

A RESCUE

When Alice Marcum opened her eyes the timber was in darkness. The moon had not yet topped the divide and through an opening in the trees the girl could see the dim outlines of an endless sea of peaks and ridges that stretched away to the eastward. The voice of the Texan sounded in her ears: "Come alive, now! We got to eat an' pull out of here in an hour's time if we're goin' to fetch the bad lands by daylight."

Peering around the edge of her shelter tent she could see him, coffee-pot in hand, standing beside the tiny flame that licked at the dry pine shavings of a newly kindled fire.

He turned and made his way to the creek that burbled over the rocks a short way down the ravine and Alice drew on her riding-boots and joined Endicott who had made his way painfully toward the fire where he stood gazing ruefully at the begrimed wreck of a white collar which he held in his hand. The Texan returned and placed the coffee-pot close against the tiny blaze.

"When you get through invoicin' yer trooso, Winthrup, it wouldn't delay us none if you'd grasp that there hand-ax an' carve out a little fire-fodder." He glanced up at Alice. "An' if cookin' of any kind has be'n inclooded in your repretwa of accomplishments, you might sizzle up a hunk of that sow-belly, an' keep yer eye on this here pot. An' if Winthrup should happen to recover from his locomotive attacksyou an' hack off a limb or two, you can get a little bigger blaze a-goin' an', just before that water starts to burn, slop in a fistful of java. You'll find some dough-gods an' salve in one of them canvas bags, an' when you're all set, holler. I'll throw the kaks on these cayuses, an' Bat, he can wrastle with the pack."

Alice looked into the Texan's face with a peculiar little puckering of the brows, and laughed: "See here, Mr. Tex," she said, "of course, I know that java must be coffee, but if you will kindly render the rest of your remarks a little less caliginous by calling the grub by its Christian name, maybe I'll get along better with the breakfast."

The Texan was laughing now, a wholesome, hearty laugh in which was no trace of cynicism, and the girl felt that for the first time she had caught a glimpse of the real man, the boyish, whole-hearted man that once or twice before she had suspected existed behind the mask of the sardonic smile. From that moment she liked him and at the breezy whimsicality of his next words she decided that it would be well worth the effort to penetrate the mask.

"The dude, or dictionary, names for the above specified commodities is bacon, biscuits, an' butter. An' referrin' back to your own etymological spasm, the word 'grub' shows a decided improvement over anything you have uttered previous. I had expected 'food' an' wouldn't have hardly batted an' eye at 'viands,' an' the caliginous part of it is good, only, if you aim to obfuscate my convolutions you'll have to dig a little deeper. Entirely irrelevant to syntax an' the allied trades, as the feller says, I'll add that them leggin's of yourn is on the wrong legs, an' here comes Winthrup with a chip."

Turning abruptly, the man made his way toward the horses, and as Endicott approached with an armful of firewood, the contrast between the men was brought sharply to the girl's notice. The Texan, easy and lithe of movement as an animal born to the wild, the very tilt of his soft-brimmed hat and the set of his clothing bespeaking conscious mastery of his environment—a mastery that the girl knew was not confined to the subduing of wild cattle and horses and the following of obscure trails in the nighttime. Never for a moment had the air of self-confidence deserted him. With the same easy assurance that he had flung his loop about the shoulders of the Mayor of Wolf River he had carried off the honours of the tournament, insulted Purdy to his face, dictated to the deputy sheriff, and planned and carried out the release of Endicott from the grip of the law. And what was most surprising of all, never had he shown a trace of the boorish embarrassment or self-consciousness which, up to the moment of his brutal attack upon her, had characterized the attitude of Purdy. And the girl realized that beneath his picturesque slurring and slashing of English, was a familiarity with words that had never been picked up in the cow-country.

Endicott tossed down his wood, and Alice could not help but notice the sorry appearance of the erstwhile faultlessly dressed gentleman who stood collarless and unshaven, the once delicately lined silk shirt filthy with trail dust, and the tailored suit wrinkled and misshapen as the clothing of a tramp. She noted, too, that his movements were awkward and slow with the pain of overtaxed muscles, and that the stiff derby hat he had been forced to jam down almost to the tops of his ears had left a grimy red band across his forehead. She smiled as her eyes swept the dishevelled and uncouth figure.

"I am glad," said Endicott with asperity, as he brushed the dirt and bits of bark from his coat, "that you find the situation so humorous. It must be highly gratifying to know that it is of your own making."

The tone roused the girl's anger and she glanced up as she finished lacing her leggings.

"Yes," she answered, sweetly, "it is—very. And one of the most amusing features is to watch how a man's disposition crabs with the mussing of his clothing. No wonder the men who live out here wear things that won't muss, or there wouldn't be but one left and he'd be just a concentrated chunk of unadulterated venom. Really, Winthrop, you do look horrid, and your disposition is perfectly nasty. But, cheer up, the worst is yet to come, and if you will go down to the creek and wash your hands, you can come back and help me with the grub. You can get busy and dig the dough-gods and salve out of that sack while I sizzle up the sow-belly."

Endicott regarded her with a frown of disapproval: "Why this preposterous and vulgar talk?"

"Adaptability to environment," piped the girl, glibly. "You can't get along by speaking New York in Montana, any easier than you can with English in Cincinnati."

Endicott turned away with a sniff of disgust, and the girl's lips drew into a smile which she meant to be an exact replica of the Texan's as she proceeded to slice strips of bacon into the frying-pan.

The meal was a silent affair, and during its progress the moon rose clear of the divide and hung, a great orange ball, above the high-flung peaks. Almost simultaneously with the rising of the moon, the wind rose, and scuds of cloud-vapour passed, low down, blurring the higher peaks.

"We got to get a move on," opined the Texan, with an eye on the clouds. "Throw them dishes into the pack the way they are, an' we'll clean 'em when we've got more time. There's a storm brewin' west of here an' we want to get as far as we can before she hits."

By the time the others were in the saddle, Bat was throwing the final hitch on his pack outfit, and with the Texan in the lead, the little cavalcade headed southward.

An hour's climb, during which they skirted patches of scrub pine, clattered over the loose rocks of ridges, and followed narrow, brush-choked coulees to their sources, found them on the crest of the Cow Creek divide.

The wind, blowing half a gale from the south-east, whipped about their faces and roared and whistled among the rocks and scrub timber. Alice's eyes followed the Texan's glance toward the west and there, low down on the serried horizon she could see the black mass of a cloud bank.

"You can't tell nothin' about those thunderheads. They might hold off 'til along towards mornin', they might pile up on us in an hour, and they might not break at all," vouchsafed the man, as Alice reined in her horse close beside his.

"But the wind is from the other direction!"

"Yes, it generally is when the thunder-storms get in their work. If we can get past the Johnson fences we can take it easy an' camp most anywhere when the storm hits, but if we get caught on this side without no moonlight to travel by an' have to camp over tomorrow in some coulee, there's no tellin' who'll run onto us. This south slope's infested some plentiful by the riders of three or four outfits." He headed his horse down the steep descent, the others following in single file.

As the coulee widened Alice found herself riding by the Texan's side. "Oh, don't you just love the wild country!" she exclaimed, breaking a long interval of silence. "The plains and the mountains, the woods and the creeks, and the wonderful air——"

"An' the rattlesnakes, an' the alkali, an' the soap-holes, an' the quicksand, an' the cactus, an' the blisterin' sun, an' the lightnin', an' the rain, an' the snow, an' the ice, an' the sleet——"

The girl interrupted him with a laugh: "Were you born a pessimist, or has your pessimism been acquired?"

The Texan did not lift his eyes from the trail: "Earnt, I reckon, would be a better word. An' I don't know as it's pessimism, at that, to look in under the crust of your pie before you bite it. If you'd et flies for blueberries as long as I have, you'd——"

"I'd ask for flies, and then if there were any blueberries the surprise would be a pleasant one."

"Chances are, there wouldn't be enough berries to surprise you none pleasant. Anyhow, that would be kind of forcin' your luck. Follerin' the same line of reasoning a man ort to hunt out a cactus to set on so's he could be surprised pleasant if it turned out to be a Burbank one."

"You're hopeless," laughed the girl. "But look—the moonlight on the peaks! Isn't it wonderful! See how it distorts outlines, and throws a mysterious glamour over the dark patches of timber. Corot would have loved it."

The Texan shook his head: "No. It wouldn't have got to him. He couldn't never have got into the feel of stuff like that. Meakin did, and Remington, but it takes old Charlie Russell to pick it right out of the air an' slop it onto canvas."

Alice regarded the man in wonder. "You do love it!" she said. "Why should you be here if you didn't love it?"

"Bein' a cow-hand, it's easier to make a livin' here than in New York or Boston. I've never be'n there, but I judge that's the case."

"But you are a cow-hand from choice. You have an education and you could——"

"No. All the education I've got you could pile onto a dime, an' it wouldn't kill more'n a dozen men. Me an' the higher education flirted for a couple of years or so, way back yonder in Austin, but owin' to certain an' sundry eccentricities of mine that was frowned on by civilization, I took to the brush an' learnt the cow business. Then after a short but onmonotonous sojourn in Las Vegas, me an' Bat came north for our health. . . . Here's Johnson's horse pasture. We've got to slip through here an' past the home ranch in a quiet an' onobstrusive manner if we aim to preserve the continuity of Winthrup's spinal column."

"Can't we go around?" queried the girl.

"No. The coulee is fenced clean acrost an' way up to where even a goat couldn't edge past. We've got to slip through. Once we get past the big reservoir we're all right. I'll scout on ahead."

The cowboy swung to the ground and threw open the barbed-wire gate. "Keep straight on through, Bat, unless you hear from me. I'll be waitin' by the bunk-house. Chances are, them salamanders will all be poundin' their ear pretty heavy, bein' up all last night to the dance." He galloped away and the others followed at a walk. For an hour no one spoke.

"I thought that fence enclosed a pasture, not a county," growled Endicott, as he clumsily shifted his weight to bear on a spot less sore.

"Oui, dat hoss pasture she 'bout seven mile long. Den we com' by de ranch, an' den de reservoir, an' de hay fences." The half-breed opened a gate and a short distance down the creek Alice made out the dark buildings of the ranch. As they drew nearer the girl felt her heart race madly, and the soft thud of the horse's feet on the sod sounded like the thunder of a cavalry charge. Grim and forbidding loomed the buildings. Not a light showed, and she pictured them peopled with lurking forms that waited to leap out as they passed and throttle the man who had rescued her from the brutish Purdy. She was sorry she had been nasty to Endicott. She wanted to tell him so, but it was too late. She thought of the revolver that Jennie had given her, and slipping her hand into her pocket she grasped it by the butt. At least, she could do for him what he had done for her. She could shoot the first man to lay hands on him.

Suddenly her heart stood still and her lips pressed tight. A rider emerged from the black shadow of the bunk-house.

"Hands up!" The girl's revolver was levelled at the man's head, and the next instant she heard the Texan laugh softly.

"Just point it the other way, please, if it's loaded. A fellow shot me with one of those once an' I had a headache all the rest of the evenin'." His horse nosed in beside hers. "It's just as I thought," he explained. "Everyone around the outfit's dead to the world. Bein' up all night dancin', an' most of the next day trailin' home, you couldn't get 'em up for a poker game—let alone hangin' a pilgrim."

Alice's fear vanished the moment the Texan appeared. His air of absolute self-confidence in his ability to handle a situation compelled the confidence of others.

"Aren't your nerves ever shaken? Aren't you ever afraid?" she asked.

Tex smiled: "Nerve ain't in not bein' afraid," he answered evasively, "but in not lettin' folks know when you're afraid."

Another gate was opened, and as they passed around the scrub-capped spur of a ridge that projected into the widening valley, the girl drew her horse up sharply and pointed ahead.

"Oh! A little lake!" she cried enthusiastically. "See how the moonlight shimmers on the tiny waves."

Heavy and low from the westward came an ominous growl of thunder.

"Yes. An' there'll be somethin' besides moonlight a-shimmerin' around here directly. That ain't exactly a lake. It's Johnson's irrigation reservoir. If we could get about ten miles below here before the storm hits, we can hole up in a rock cave 'til she blows over. The creek valley narrows down to a canyon where it cuts through the last ridge of mountains.

"Hit 'er up a little, Bat. We'll try an' make the canyon!"

A flash of lightning illumined the valley, and glancing upward, Alice saw that the mass of black clouds was almost overhead. The horses were forced into a run as the hills reverberated to the mighty roll of the thunder. They were following a well-defined bridle trail and scarcely slackened their pace as they splashed in and out of the water where the trail crossed and recrossed the creek. One lightning flash succeeded another with such rapidity that the little valley was illuminated almost to the brightness of day, and the thunder reverberated in one continuous roar.

With the buildings of Johnson's ranch left safely behind, Alice's concern for Endicott's well-being cooled perceptibly.

"He needn't to have been so hateful, just because I laughed at him," she thought, and winced at a lightning flash. Her lips pressed tighter. "I hate thunder-storms—to be out in them. I bet we'll all be soaked and—" There was a blinding flash of light, the whole valley seemed filled with a writhing, twisting rope of white fire, and the deafening roar of thunder that came simultaneously with the flash made the ground tremble. It was as though the world had exploded beneath their feet, and directly in the forefront the girl saw a tall dead cottonwood split in half and topple sidewise. And in the same instant she caught a glimpse of Endicott's face. It was very white. "He's afraid," she gritted, and at the thought her own fear vanished, and in its place came a wild spirit of exhilaration. This was life. Life in the raw of which she had read and dreamed but never before experienced. Her horse stopped abruptly. The Texan had dismounted and was pulling at the huge fragment of riven trunk that barred the trail.

"We'll have to lead 'em around through the brush, there. We can't budge this boy."

Scattering rain-drops fell—huge drops that landed with a thud and splashed broadly.

"Get out the slickers, Bat. Quick now, or we're in for a wettin'." As he spoke the man stepped to Alice's side, helped her to the ground, and loosened the pack-strings of her saddle. A moment later he held a huge oilskin of brilliant yellow, into the sleeves of which the girl thrust her arms. There was an odour as of burning sulphur and she sniffed the air as she buttoned the garment about her throat.

The Texan grinned: "Plenty close enough I'll say, when you get a whiff of the hell-fire. Better wait here 'til I find a way through the brush. An' keep out of reach of the horse's heels with that slicker on. You can't never trust a cayuse, 'specially when they can't more'n half see. They're liable to take a crack at you for luck."

Grasping his bridle reins the Texan disappeared and by the lightning flashes she could see him forcing his way through the thicket of willows. The scattering drops changed to a heavy downpour. The moonlight had long since been obliterated and the short intervals between the lightning flashes were spaces of intense blackness. A yellow-clad figure scrambled over the tree trunk and the cowboy took the bridle reins from her hand.

"You slip through here. I'll take your horse around."

On the other side, the cowboy assisted her to mount, and pulling his horse in beside hers, led off down the trail. The rain steadily increased in volume until the flashes of lightning showed only a grey wall of water, and the roar of it blended into the incessant roar of the thunder. The horses splashed into the creek and wallowed to their bellies in the swirling water.

The Texan leaned close and shouted to make himself heard.

"They don't make 'em any worse than this. I've be'n out in some considerable rainstorms, take it first an' last, but I never seen it come down solid before. A fish could swim anywheres through this."

"The creek is rising," answered the girl.

"Yes, an' we ain't goin' to cross it many more times. In the canyon she'll be belly-deep to a giraffe, an' we got to figure a way out of the coulee 'fore we get to it."

Alice was straining her ears to catch his words, when suddenly, above the sound of his voice, above the roar of the rain and the crash and roll of thunder, came another sound—a low, sullen growl—indefinable, ominous, terrible. The Texan, too, heard the sound and, jerking his horse to a standstill, sat listening. The sullen growl deepened into a loud rumble, indescribably horrible. Alice saw that the Texan's face was drawn into a tense, puzzled frown. A sudden fear gripped her heart. She leaned forward and the words fairly shrieked from her lips.

"It's the reservoir!"

The Texan whirled to face the others whose horses had crowded close and stood with drooping heads.

"The reservoir's let go!" he shouted, and pointed into the grey wall of water at right angles to their course. "Ride! Ride like hell an' save yourselves! I'll look after her!" The next instant he whirled his horse against the girl's.

"Ride straight ahead!" he roared. "Give him his head an' hang on! I'll stay at his flank, an' if you go down we'll take a chance together!"

Slipping the quirt from the horn of his saddle the cowboy brought it down across her horse's flank and the animal shot away straight into the opaque grey wall. Alice gave the horse a loose rein, set her lips, and gripped the horn of her saddle as the brute plunged on.

The valley was not wide. They had reached a point where its sides narrowed to form the mouth of the canyon. The pound of the horse's feet was lost in the titanic bombilation of the elements—the incessant crash and rumble of thunder and the ever increasing roar of rushing waters. At every jump the girl expected her frantic horse to go down, yet she was conscious of no feeling of fear. She glanced over her shoulder, but the terrific downpour acted as a curtain through which her eyes could not penetrate with the aid even of the most vivid flashes of lightning. Yet she knew that the Texan rode at her flank and that the others followed—Endicott and Bat, with his pack-horse close-snubbed to his saddle-horn. Suddenly the girl felt her horse labouring. His speed slackened perceptibly. As abruptly as it started the rain stopped; and she saw that water was swirling about his knees. Saw also by the aid of a lightning flash that throughout its width the valley was a black sea of tossing water. Before her the bank was very close and she jerked her horse toward a point where the perpendicular sides of a cutbank gave place to a narrow plane that slanted steeply upward. It seemed to the girl that the steep ascent would be impossible for the horses but it was the only chance. She glanced backward. The Texan was close behind, and following him were the others, their horses wallowing to their bellies. She had reached the hill and so steep was its pitch that her horse seemed perpendicular to the earth's surface. She leaned over the horn and twisted her fingers into his mane as the animal, his feet clear of the water, clawed and scrambled like a cat to gain the top. Another moment and he had pulled himself over the edge and the girl leaped to the ground. The Texan had not followed to the top but had halted his horse at the edge of the water that was mounting steadily higher. Bat swung in with his pack horse and with his quirt Tex forced them up the embankment. Endicott's horse was all but swimming. The water came above the man's knees as the animal fought for footing. The Texan leaned far out and, grasping the bridle, drew him in to the bank and quirted him to the top. Then, as the three watched, he headed his own horse upward. Scarcely had the animal come clear of the water when the eager watchers saw that something was wrong.

"De cinch—she bus'!" cried the half-breed excitedly. "Dat dam' Purdy cut de cinch an' A'm trade Tex mine for ride de outlaw, an' we trade back. Voila!" As the man talked, he jerked the coiled rope from his saddle and rushed to the edge. Alice, too, crowded to the bank, her hands tight clenched as she saw the man, the saddle gone from under him, clinging desperately to the bridle reins, his body awash in the black waters. Saw also that his weight on the horse's head was causing the animal to quit the straight climb and to plunge and turn erratically. It was evident that both horse and rider must be hurled into the flood. The fury of the storm had passed. The rumble of thunder was distant now. The flashes of lightning came at greater intervals, and with a pale glow instead of the dazzling brilliance of the nearer flashes. Through a great rift in the cloud-bank the moon showed, calm and serene above the mad rush of black waters.

For a single instant Alice gazed into the up-turned face of the Texan, and in that instant she saw his lips curve into the familiar cynical smile. Then he calmly let go the reins and slipped silently beneath the black water, as the released horse scrambled to the top. Beside her, Endicott uttered an oath and, tearing at the buttons of his slicker, dashed the garment to the ground. His coat followed, and stooping he tore the shoes from his feet and poised on the very edge of the flood. With a cry she sprang to his side and gripped his arm, but without a word he shook her roughly away, and as a dark form appeared momentarily upon the surface of the flood he plunged in.

Alice and Bat watched as the moonlight showed the man swimming with strong, sure strokes toward the spot where a moment before the dark form had appeared upon the surface. Then he dived, and the swift-rushing water purled and gurgled as it closed over the spot where he had been. Rope in hand, Bat, closely followed by the girl, ran along the edge of the bank, both straining their eyes for the first sign of movement upon the surface of the flood. Would he never come up? The slope up which the horses had scrambled steepened into a perpendicular cut-bank at no great distance below, and if the current bore the two men past that point the girl knew instinctively that rescue would be impossible and they would be swept into the vortex of the canyon.

There was a cry from Bat, and Alice, struggling to keep up, caught a blur of motion upon the surface some distance below. A few steps brought them opposite to the point, where, scarcely thirty feet from the bank, two forms were struggling violently. Suddenly an arm raised high, and a doubled fist crashed squarely against the jaw of a white, upturned face. The half-breed poised an instant and threw his rope. The wide loop fell true and a moment later Endicott succeeded in passing it under the arms of the unconscious Texan. Then the rope drew taut and the halfbreed braced to the pull as the men were forced shoreward by the current.

With a cry of relief, Alice rushed to the aid of the half-breed, and grasping the rope, threw her weight into the pull. But her relief was short-lived, for when the forms in the water touched shore it was to brush against the side of the cut-bank with tea feet of perpendicular wall above them. And worse than, that, unhardened to the wear of water, the bank was caving off in great chunks as the current gnawed at its base. A section weighing tons let go with a roar only a few yards below, and Bat and the girl worked as neither had ever worked before to tow their burden upstream to the sloping bank. But the force of the current and the conformation of the bank, which slanted outward at an angle that diminished the force of the pull by half, rendered their efforts in vain.

"You stan' back!" ordered Bat sharply, as a section of earth gave way almost beneath their feet, but the girl paid no attention, and the two redoubled their efforts.

In the water, Endicott took in the situation at a glance. He realized that the strain of the pull was more than the two could overcome. Realized also that each moment added to the Jeopardy of the half-breed and the girl. There was one chance—and only one. Relieved of his weight, the unresisting form of the Texan could be dragged to safety—and he would take that chance.

"Non! Non!" The words were fairly hurled from the half-breed's lips, as he seemed to divine what was passing in Endicott's mind. But Endicott gave no heed. Deliberately he let go the rope and the next moment was whirled from sight, straight toward the seething vortex of the canyon, where the moonlight revealed dimly in the distance only a wild rush of lashing waters and the thrashing limbs of uprooted trees.



CHAPTER XII

TEX DOES SOME SCOUTING

The moon hung low over the peaks to the westward when the Texan opened his eyes. For some moments he stared about him in bewilderment, his gaze travelling slowly from the slicker-clad form of the girl, who sat close beside him with her face buried in her arms, to the little group of horses that stood huddled dejectedly together. With an effort he struggled to his elbow, and at the movement, the girl raised her head and turned a very white face toward him.

Shivering with cold, the Texan raised himself to a sitting posture. "Where's Bat?" he asked. "An' why ain't he onsaddled those horses, an' built a fire? I'm froze stiff."

"Bat has gone to—to find Winthrop," answered the girl, with a painful catch in her voice. "He wouldn't wait, and I had no matches, and yours were all wet, and I couldn't loosen the cinches."

Tex passed his hand over his forehead, as if trying to remember, and his fingers prodded tenderly at his jaw. "I recollect bein' in the water, an' the pilgrim was there, an' we were scrappin' an' he punched me in the jaw. He carries a whallop up his sleeve like the kick of a mule. But what we was scrappin' about, an' where he is now, an' how I come here, is somethin' I don't savvy."

Step by step the girl detailed what had happened while the Texan listened in silence. "And now," she concluded, "he's gone. Just when—" her voice broke and once more she buried her face in her arms. Tex saw that she was sobbing silently. He felt for his "makings" and drew from his pocket a little sack of soggy tobacco and some wet papers. He returned them to his pocket and rose to his feet.

"You're cold," he said softly. "There's dry matches in the pack. I'll make a fire an' get those wet saddles off the horses."

Alice did not look up and the man busied himself with the pack. A few minutes later she felt his fingers upon her shoulder. He pointed toward a fire that crackled cheerfully from the depths of a bull pine thicket. "I fixed you up a shelter tent and spread your blankets. The tarp kep' 'em tolerable dry. Go over there an' get off those clothes. You must be wet through—nothin' short of a divin' suit would have kep' that rain out!"

"But——"

He forestalled the objection. "There won't be any one to bother you. I'm goin' down the creek."

The girl noticed that his horse, saddled with Endicott's saddle stood close behind her.

"I didn't mean that!" she exclaimed. "But you are cold—chilled to the bone. You need the fire more than I do."

The man shook his head: "I'll be goin' now," he said. "You'd better make you some coffee."

"You're going to—to——"

Tex nodded: "Yes. To find the pilgrim. If he's alive I'll find him. An' if he ain't I'll find him. An' when I do, I'll bring him back to you." He turned abruptly, swung onto his horse, and Alice watched him as he disappeared down the valley, keeping to the higher ground. Not until she was alone did the girl realize how miserably cold and uncomfortable she was. She rose stiffly, and walking slowly to the edge of the bank, looked out over the little valley. The great reservoir had run out in that first wild rush of water and now the last rays of moonlight showed only wide, glistening pools, and the creek subsided to nearly its normal proportions. With a shudder she turned toward the fire. Its warmth felt grateful. She removed the slicker and riding costume and, wrapping herself, squaw-like, in a blanket, sat down in the little shelter tent. She found that the Texan had filled the coffee pot and, throwing in some coffee, she set it to boil.

"He's so thoughtful, and self-reliant, and—and competent," she murmured. "And he's brave, and—and picturesque. Winthrop is brave, too—just as brave as he is, but—he isn't a bit picturesque." She relapsed into silence as she rummaged in the bag for a cup, and the sugar, and a can of milk. The moon sank behind the ridge and the girl replenished her fire from the pile of wood the Texan had left within reach of her hand. She drank her coffee and her eyes sought to penetrate the blackness beyond the firelight. Somewhere out there in the dark—she shuddered as she attempted to visualize what was somewhere out there in the dark. And then a flash of memory brought with it a ray of hope that cheered her immeasurably. "Why, he was a champion swimmer in college," she said aloud. "He was always winning cups and things. And he's strong, and brave—and yet——" Vividly to her mind came the picture of the wildly rushing flood with its burden of tossing trees, and the man being swept straight into the gurge of it. "I'll tell him he's brave—and he'll spoil it all by saying that it was the only practical thing to do." "Oh," she cried aloud, "I could love him if it were not for his deadly practicability—even if I should have to live in Cincinnati." And straightway fell to comparing the two men. "Tex is absurdly unconventional in speech and actions, and he has an adorable disregard for laws and things. He's just a big, irresponsible boy—and yet, he makes you feel as if he always knew exactly what to do and how to do it. And he is brave, too, with a reckless, devil-may-care sort of bravery that takes no thought of cost or consequences. He knew, when he let go his bridle reins, that he couldn't swim a stroke—and he smiled and didn't care. And he's gentle and considerate, too." She remembered the look in his eyes when he said: "You are cold," and blushed furiously.

It seemed hours she sat there staring into the little fire and listening for sounds from the dark. But the only sounds that came to her were the sounds of the feeding horses, and in utter weariness she lay back with her head upon a folded blanket, and slept.

When the Texan swung onto his horse after having made the girl comfortable for her long vigil, a scant half-hour of moonlight was left to him. He gave the horse his head and the animal picked his way among the loose rocks and scrub timber that capped the ridge. When darkness overtook him he dismounted, unsaddled, and groped about for firewood. Despite its recent soaking the resinous bull pine flared up at the touch of a match, and with his back to a rock-wall, the cowboy sat and watched the little flames shoot upward. Once more he felt for his "makings" and with infinite pains dried out his papers and tobacco.

"It's the chance I be'n aimin' to make for myself," he mused, as he drew the grey smoke of a cigarette deep into his lungs, "to get Bat an' the pilgrim away—an' I ride off and leave it." The cigarette was consumed and he rolled another. "Takin' a slant at himself from the inside, a man kind of gets a line on how damned ornery folks can get. Purdy got shot, an' everyone said he got just what was comin' to him—— Me, an' everyone else—an' he did. But when you get down to cases, he wasn't no hell of a lot worse'n me, at that. We was both after the same thing—only his work was coarser." For hours the man sat staring into his fire, the while he rolled and smoked many cigarettes.

"Oh, hell!" he exclaimed, aloud. "I can't turn nester, an' even if I did, she couldn't live out in no mud-roof shack in the bottom of some coulee! Still, she—— There I go again, over the same old trail. This here little girl has sure gone to my head—like a couple of jolts of hundred-proof on an empty stummick. Anyhow, she's a damn sight safer'n ever she was before, an'—I'll bet the old man would let me take that Eagle Creek ranch off his hands, an' stake me to a little bunch of stock besides, if I went at him right. If it wasn't for that damn pilgrim! Bat was right. He holds the edge on me—but he's a man." The cowboy glanced anxiously toward the east where the sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn. He rose, trampled out his fire, and threw the saddle onto his horse. "I've got to find him," he muttered, "if Bat ain't found him already. I don't know much about this swimmin' business but if he could have got holt of a tree or somethin' he might have made her through."

Now riding, now dismounting to lead his horse over some particularly rough outcropping of rocks, or through an almost impenetrable tangle of scrub, the man made his way over the divide and came down into the valley amid a shower of loose rock and gravel, at a point some distance below the lower end of the canyon.

The mountains were behind him. Only an occasional butte reared its head above the sea of low foothills that stretched away into the bad lands to the southward. The sides of the valley flattened and became ill-defined. Low ridges and sage-topped foothills broke up its continuity, so that the little creek that started so bravely from the mountains ended nowhere, its waters being sucked in by the parched and thirsting alkali soil long before it reached the bad lands.

As his horse toiled ankle-deep in the soft whitish mud, Tex's eyes roved over the broadened expanse of the valley. Everywhere were evidences of the destructive force of the flood. Uprooted trees scattered singly and in groups, high-flung masses of brush, hay, and inextricably tangled barbed-wire from which dangled fence-posts marked every bend of the creek bed. And on every hand the bodies of drowned cattle dotted the valley.

"If I was Johnson," he mused, as his eyes swept the valley, "I'd head a right smart of ranch hands down here heeled with a spade an' a sexton's commission. These here late lamented dogies'll cost him somethin' in damages." From force of habit the man read the brands of the dead cattle as he rode slowly down the valley. "D bar C, that's old Dave Cromley's steer. An' there's a T U, an' an I X cow, an' there's one of Charlie Green's, an' a yearlin' of Jerry Keerful's, an' a quarter-circle M,—that belongs over the other side, they don't need to bother with that one, an' there's a——"

Suddenly he drew himself erect, and rising to stand in the stirrups, gazed long and intently toward a spot a quarter of a mile below, where a thin column of smoke curled over the crest of a low ridge. Abruptly he lost interest in the brands of dead cattle and headed his horse at a run toward a coulee, that gave between two sage covered foothills only a short distance from the faint column of smoke. "That might be Bat, an' then again it mightn't," he muttered. "It can't be the pilgrim without Bat's along, 'cause he wouldn't have no dry matches. An' if it's any one else—" he drew up sharply in the shelter of a thicket, dismounted, and made his way on foot to the summit of the ridge. Removing his hat, he thrust his head through a narrow opening between two sage bushes, and peered into the hollow beyond. Beside a little fire sat Bat and the pilgrim, the latter arrayed in a suit of underwear much abbreviated as to arms and legs, while from the branches of a broken tree-top drawn close beside the blaze depended a pair of mud-caked trousers and a disreputably dirty silk shirt. The Texan picked his way down the hill, slipping and sliding in the soft mud.

"Breakfast about ready?" he asked, with a grin.

"Breakfas'! Voila! A'm lak' A'm got som' breakfas', you bet! Me—A'm gon' for cut de chonk of meat out de dead steer but de pilgrim say: 'Non, dat bes' we don' eat de damn drownded cattle—dat better we sta've firs'!"

Tex laughed: "Can't stand for the drownded ones, eh? Well I don't know as I blame you none, they might be some soggy." Reaching into his shirt-front he produced a salt bag which he tossed to Endicott. "Here's some sinkers I fetched along. Divide 'em up. I've et. It ain't no great ways back to camp——"

"How is she—Miss Marcum? Did she suffer from the shock?"

"Nary suffer. I fixed her up a camp last night back in the timber where we all landed, an' then came away."

"She spent the night alone in the timber!" cried Endicott.

The Texan nodded. "Yes. There ain't nothin' will bother her. I judged it to be the best way." Endicott's hand shot out and the cowboy's met it in a firm grip. "I reckon we're fifty-fifty on that," he said gravely. "How's the swimmin'?"

Endicott laughed: "Fine—only I didn't have to do a great deal of it. I staged a little riding contest all my own, part of the way on a dead cow, and the rest of it on this tree-trunk. I didn't mind that part of it—that was fun, but it didn't last over twenty minutes. After the tree grounded, I had to tramp up and down through this ankle-deep mud to keep from freezing. I didn't dare to go any place for fear of getting lost. I thought at first, when the water went down I would follow back up the valley, but I couldn't find the sides and after one or two false starts I gave it up. Then Bat showed up at daylight and we managed to build a fire." Endicott divided the biscuits and proceeded to devour his share.

Tex rolled a cigarette. "Say," he drawled, when he had lighted it with a twig from the fire, "what the hell did you whallop me in the jaw for? I seen it comin' but I couldn't dodge, an' when she hit—it seemed like I was all tucked away in my little crib, an' somewhere, sweet voices was singin'."

"I had to do it," laughed Endicott. "It was that, or both of us going to the bottom. You were grabbing for my arms and legs."

"I ain't holdin' it against you," grinned Tex. "The arms an' legs is yours, an' you're welcome to 'em. Also I'm obliged to you for permittin' me to tarry a spell longer on this mundane spear, as the fellow says, even if I can't chew nothin' harder'n soup."

"Would you mind rolling me a cigarette," grinned Endicott, as he finished the last of the biscuits. "I never tried it, and I am afraid I would bungle the job." Without hesitation the Texan complied, deftly interposing his body so that the pilgrim could not see that the tobacco he poured into the paper was the last in his sack. He extended the little cylinder. "When you get that lit, you better crawl into them clothes of yours an' we'll be hittin' the back-trail. Out here in the open ain't no place for us to be."

Endicott surveyed his sorry outfit with disfavour. "I would rather stick to the B.V.D.'s, if it were practical."

"B.V.D., B.V.D.," repeated the Texan. "There ain't no such brand on this range. Must be some outfit south of here—what did you say about it?"

"I said my B.V.D.'s," he indicated his under-garments; "these would be preferable to those muddy trousers and that shirt."

"Oh, that's the brand of your longerie. Don't wear none myself, except in winter, an' then thick ones. I've scrutinized them kind, though, more or less thorough—hangin' on lines around nesters' places an' home ranches, when I'd be ridin' through. Never noticed none with B.V.D. on 'em, though. The brand most favoured around here has got XXXX FLOUR printed acrost the broad of 'em, an' I've always judged 'em as belongin' to the opposin' sect."

Endicott chuckled as he gingerly arrayed himself in the damp garments and when he was dressed, Tex regarded him quizzically: "Them belongin's of yourn sure do show neglect, Win." Endicott started at the word. It was the first time any one had abbreviated his name, and instantly he remembered the words of Alice Marcum: "If you keep on improving some day somebody is going to call you Win." He smiled grimly. "I must be improving," he muttered, under his breath, "I would pass anywhere for a tramp." From beyond the fire Tex continued his scrutiny, the while he communed with himself: "Everything's fair, et cetry, as the fellow says, an' it's a cinch there ain't no girl goin' to fall no hell of a ways for any one rigged out like a last year's sheepherder. But, damn it! he done me a good turn—an' one that took guts to do. 'Tain't no use in chasin' the devil around the stump—— If I can get that girl I'm a-goin' to get her! If I do I'll wire in some creek an' turn nester or do any other damned thing that's likewise mean an' debasin' that she wants me to—except run sheep. But if the pilgrim's got the edge, accordin' to Bat's surmise, he's got it fair an' square. The cards is on the table. It's him or me for it—but from now on the game's on the level."

Aloud he said: "Hope you don't mind havin' your name took in vain like I done, but it's a habit of mine to get names down to a workin' basis when I've got to use 'em frequent. Bat, there, his folks started him off with a name that sounded like the Nicene Creed, but we bobbed her down for handy reference, an' likewise I ain't be'n called Horatio since the paternal roof-tree quit sproutin' the punitive switch. But, to get down to cases, you fellows have got to hike back to the camp an' hole up 'til dark. There's bound to be someone ridin' this here coulee an' you got to keep out of sight. I'm goin' to do a little scoutin', an' I'll join you later. It ain't only a couple of miles or so an' you better hit for the high ground an' cross the divide. Don't risk goin' through the canyon."

Endicott glanced apprehensively at his mud encased silk socks, the feet of which were already worn through in a dozen places.

"Where's your slippers!" asked Tex, catching the glance.

"My shoes? I threw them away last night before I took to the water."

"It's just as well. They wasn't any good anyhow. The ground's soft with the rain, all you got to watch out for is prickly pears an' rattlesnakes. You'll be close to camp before the rocks get bad an' then Bat can go hunt up your slippers an' fetch 'em out to you." The Texan started for his horse. At the top of the ridge he turned: "I'll stop an' tell her that you'll be along in a little bit," he called, and swinging into the saddle, struck off up the creek.

The habitual cynical smile that curled his lips broadened as he rode. "This here Johnson, now, he likes me like he likes a saddle-galded boil, ever since I maintained that a rider was hired to ride, an' not to moil, an' quit his post-hole-diggin', hay-pitchin', tea-drinkin' outfit, short-handed. I ain't had no chance to aggravate him real good, outside of askin' him how his post-holes was winterin' through, when I'd meet up with him on the trail, an' invitin' him to go over to the Long Horn to have a snort of tea, a time or two, down to Wolf River."

At the up-slanting bank where they had sought refuge from the valley he dismounted, wrenched his own saddle out of the mud, and examined the broken cinch. "If the pilgrim hadn't saved me the trouble, I'd of sure had to get Purdy for that," he muttered, and looked up to encounter the eyes of the girl, who was watching him from the top of the bank. Her face was very white, and the sight stirred a strange discomfort within him. "I bet she wouldn't turn no such colour for me, if I'd be'n drowned for a week," he thought, bitterly.

"You—didn't find him?" The words came with an effort.

The Texan forced a smile: "I wouldn't have be'n here if I hadn't. Or rather Bat did, an' I found the two of 'em. He's all to the mustard an' none the worse for wear, except his clothes—they won't never look quite the same, an' his socks need mendin' in sixty or seventy spots. They'll be along directly. You run along and fix 'em up some breakfast an' keep out of sight. I'm goin' to do a little scoutin' an', maybe, won't be back 'til pretty near dark."

"But you! Surely, you must be nearly starved!" The relief that flashed into her face at the news of Endicott's safety changed to sincere concern.

"I ain't got time, now."

"Please come. The coffee is all ready and it won't take but a minute to fry some bacon."

The Texan smiled up at her. "If you insist," he said. The girl started in surprise at the words, and the man plunged immediately into the vernacular of the cow-country as he followed her into the timber. "Yes. A cup of Java wouldn't go bad, but I won't stop long. I want to kind of circulate along the back-trail a ways to see if we're bein' followed." He took the cup of coffee from her hand and watched as she sliced the bacon and threw it into the frying pan. "Did you ever figure on turnin' nester?" he asked abruptly.

The girl looked at him inquiringly: "Nester?" she asked. "What's a nester?"

Tex smiled: "Nesters is folks that takes up a claim an' fences off a creek somewheres, an' then stays with it 'til, by the grace of God, they either starve to death, or get rich."

Alice laughed: "No, I never thought of being a nester. But it would be loads of fun. That is, if——"

The Texan interrupted her almost rudely: "Yes, an' if they didn't, it would just naturally be hell, wouldn't it?" He gulped down the last of his coffee, and, without waiting for the bacon, strode out of the timber, mounted his horse, and rode away.

At the reservoir site he drew rein and inspected the ruined dirt-and-rock dam. Fresh dirt, brush, and rock had already been dumped into the aperture, and over on the hillside a group of men was busy loading wagons. He let himself into the ranch enclosure, rode past the bunk-house and on toward the big house that sat well back from the other buildings in the centre of a grove of trees. A horse stood saddled beside the porch, and through the open door Tex could hear a man's voice raised in anger: "Why in hell ain't it ready? You might of knowed I'd want it early today, havin' to git out at daylight! You wouldn't give a damn if I never got nothin' to eat!" The door banged viciously cutting off a reply in a woman's voice, and a man strode across the porch, and snatched up the reins of the waiting horse.

"What's the matter, Johnson, your suspenders galdin' you this mornin'?"

The man scowled into the face of the cow-puncher who sat regarding him with an irritating grin.

"What do you want around here? If you want a job go turn your horse into the corral an' git out there an' git to work on that resevoy."

"No, Johnson, I don't want a job. I done had one experience with this outfit, an' I fired you for a boss for keeps."

"Get offen this ranch!" roared the man, shaking a fist, and advancing one threatening step, "or I'll have you throw'd off!"

Tex laughed: "I don't aim to stick around no great while. Fact is, I'm in somethin' of a hurry myself. I just stopped in to give you a chanct to do me a good turn. I happened to be down this way an': 'there's Johnson,' I says to myself, 'he's so free an' open-handed, a man's welcome to anything he's got,' so I stopped in."

The ranchman regarded him with an intent scowl: "'Sth' matter with you, you drunk?"

"Not yet. But I got a friend out here in the hills which he's lost his slippers, an' tore his pants, an' got his shirt all dirty, an' mislaid his hat; an' knowin' you'd be glad to stake him to an outfit I come over, him bein' about your size an' build."

The ranchman's face flushed with anger: "What the hell do I care about you an' your friends. Git offen this ranch, I tell you!"

"Oh, yes, an' while you're gettin' the outfit together just you slip in a cinch, an' a quart or two of hooch, case we might get snake-bit."

Beside himself with rage, the man raised his foot to the stirrup. As if suddenly remembering something he paused, lowered his foot, and regarded the cowboy with an evil leer: "Ah-ha, I've got it now!" he moved a step nearer. "I was at the dance night before last to Wolf River." He waited to note the effect of the words on his hearer.

"Did you have a good time? Or did the dollar you had to shell out for the ticket spoil all the fun?"

"Never mind what kind of a time I had. But they's plenty of us knows you was the head leader of the gang that took an' lynched that pilgrim."

"That's right," smiled the man coolly. "Beats the devil, how things gets spread around, don't it? An' speakin' of news spreading that way—I just came up the creek from down below the canyon. You must have had quite a bit of water in your reservoir when she let go, Johnson, judgin' by results."

"What do you mean?"

"You ain't be'n down the creek, then?"

"No, I ain't. I'm goin' now. I had to git the men to work fixin' the dam."

"What I mean is this! There's about fifty head of cattle, more or less, that's layin' sprinkled around on top of the mud. Amongst which I seen T U brands, and I X, an' D bar C, an' quite a few nester brands. When your reservoir let go she sure raised hell with other folks' property. Of course, bein' away down there where there ain't any folks, if I hadn't happened along it might have been two or three weeks before any one would have rode through, an' you could have run a bunch of ranch hands down an' buried 'em an' no one would have be'n any wiser——"

"You're lyin'!" There was a look of fear in the man's eyes,

Tex shrugged: "You'll only waste a half a day ridin' down to see for yourself," he replied indifferently.

Johnson appeared to consider, then stepped close to the Texan's side: "They say one good turn deserves another. Meanin' that you shet up about them cattle an' I'll shet up about seein' you."

"That way, it wouldn't cost you nothin' would it, Johnson? Well, it's a trade, if you throw in the aforementioned articles of outfit I specified, to boot."

"Not by a damn sight! You got the best end of it the way it is. Lynchin' is murder!"

"So it is," agreed the Texan. "An' likewise, maintainin' weak reservoirs that lets go an' drowns other folks' cattle is a public nuisance, an' a jury's liable to figger up them damages kind of high—'specially again' you, Johnson, bein' ornery an' rotten-hearted, an' tight-fisted, that way, folks don't like you."

"It means hangin' fer you!"

"Yes. But it means catchin' first. I can be a thousan' miles away from here, in a week, but you're different. All they got to do is grab the ranch, it's good for five or six thousan' in damages, all right. Still if you don't want to trade, I'll be goin'." He gathered up his reins.

"Hold on! It's a damned hold-up, but what was it you wanted?"

The Texan checked off the items on his gloved fingers: "One pair of pants, one shirt, one hat, one pair of boots, same size as yourn, one pair of spurs, one silk muffler, that one you've got on'll do, one cinch, half a dozen packages of tobacco, an' one bottle of whiskey. All to be in good order an' delivered right here within ten minutes. An' you might fetch a war-bag to pack 'em in. Hurry up now! 'Cause if you ain't back in ten minutes, I'll be movin' along, an' when I pass the word to the owners of them cattle it's goin' to raise their asperity some obnoxious."

With a growl the man disappeared into the house to return a few minutes later with a sack whose sides bulged.

"Dump 'em out an' we'll look 'em over!" ordered the Texan and the man complied.

"All right. Throw 'em in again an' hand 'em up."

When he had secured the load by means of his pack strings he turned to the rancher.

"So long, Johnson, an' if I was you I wouldn't lose no time in attendin' to the last solemn obsequies of them defunk dogies. I'll never squeal, but you can't tell how soon someone else might come a-ridin' along through the foot-hills."



CHAPTER XIII

A BOTTLE OF "HOOCH"

It was well past the middle of the afternoon when the Texan rode up the steep incline and unsaddled his horse. The occupants of the camp were all asleep, the girl in her little shelter tent, and Bat and Endicott with their blankets spread at some little distance away. Tex carried the outfit he had procured from Johnson into the timber, then crawled cautiously to the pilgrim's side, and awoke him without arousing the others.

"Hey, Win, wake up," he whispered as the man regarded him through a pair of sleepy eyes. "Come on with me. I got somethin' to show you." Tex led the way to the war-bag. "Them clothes of yourn is plum despisable to look at," he imparted, "so I borrowed an outfit offen a friend of mine that's about your size. Just crawl into 'em an' see how they fit."

Five minutes later the cowboy viewed with approval the figure that stood before him, booted and spurred, with his mud-caked garments replaced by corduroy trousers and a shirt of blue flannel against which the red silk muffler made a splotch of vivid colouring.

"You look like a sure enough top hand, now," grinned the Texan. "We'll just take a drink on that." He drew the cork from the bottle and tendered it to Endicott, who shook his head.

"No, thanks. I never use it."

The Texan stared at him in surprise. "Do you mean you've got the regular habit of not drinkin', or is it only a temporary lapse of duty?"