CHAPTER XXI
A week had passed since the night of madness in Two Moons. Hilma Ring—marveling at the freedom she had received from the hands of Original Bill, understanding this action not at all nor the man who had punished her with a kiss, then piloted her out of Cattle Kate's country and set her on her own road— Hilma lived on the diminishing store of flour and bacon in her own cabin. She lived adventitiously from hour to hour, without a plan. The soul of the girl drifted without anchorage. Time on time a sense of responsibility to a pledged word urged her return to Two Moons where—having heard no word to the contrary—she believed Zang Whistler to be still in jail. But at every such prompting, the laughing eyes and smiling white teeth of the man called Original Bill arose across the road to town, blocking it for her with a host of fears. Yes, and with something else,—some curious, undefinable menace of mastery for which the girl's mind could not find a word vehicle.
She wished never to meet this man again. She prayed earnestly she might meet him once, she with a rifle in her hands. So the pendulum of her impulses swung, coming never to a rest. She was alternately frightened and furiously angry when she discovered that whenever she thought of Zang Whistler, the wind-roughened features of the outlaw immediately faded and melted into the round, smiling face of this enemy. She could see again just the look of dancing mischief that had filled those eyes; she could feel the touch of his lips
Zang Whistler, after a night's prowling through Two Moons without encountering the man he sought, found no recourse but to return to Teapot Spout. His further presence in the town might embarrass the sheriff. To ride haphazard out to the cattle ranges on a hit-or-miss search for Hilma and Original would be but to court sudden death at the hands of any chance rider. His useless right hand was a handicap not to be overlooked. Before he left town he spread word of Hilma's disappearance among a few,—Uncle Alf, Woolly Annie and half a dozen friends besides them. Their promise to let him know when the girl turned up or whatever might be news of her was little enough comfort to carry him out to his retreat in the foothills of the Broken Horns.
The man was wholly under the spell of the girl's magic beauty. In a vague way he thought because he knew her beauty he knew her soul. Well enough Whistler appreciated that this latter was not yet his to command. But a dogged belief that, given opportunity, he could establish dominion over that soul buoyed him up through all the agony of doubt the thought of Hilma's enforced meeting with Original Bill entailed.
The third figure in this cut-out puzzle of jumbled destinies, Original Bill, was moving upon a serious business these days following the mob sway in town. Not once did he return to town during the perfecting of his plans, for well he knew that spies there always awaited eagerly opportunity to pass the Spout news of his comings and goings. Instead he was careful to do what riding was necessary only by night lest even the most casual wayfarer on the road might by a careless remark in town spoil his carefully upbuilding plans.
So under the stars he rode from home ranch to home ranch of the cattle outfits, recruiting his force for the assault upon the Spout. Here a man and there another, all known to him for their courage from beforetime. Hard riders, dead shots, die-hards; these were the men he culled from among the clan's best. Wherever he went his word to foremen and cow-punchers alike was: "It 's a clean-up now or we all go under."
Grave foremen, knowing the trend of the country's recent events against them and, particularly, the disastrous results of the hotheads' foray against the mob in town, permitted Original his pick of their men; if he cared to stand sponsor for this extra-legal expedient in the face of the law's failure to give protection against the Spout gang, they professed themselves with him to the finish.
So it came about that near midnight one night when the Two Moons' events lay seven days back, a cavalcade of phantoms moved under the stars south from the Circle Y home ranch, place of rendezvous, in the direction of Sioux Pass and Teapot Spout beyond. No road was followed, for Original shunned roads when he was playing his game; smash through the untracked expanse of the divides the way stretched; here a ford to be negotiated; there an almost perpendicular coulee bank up which the two outfit wagons had to be dragged with block and tackle. Though the darkness was pitchy, Original led the way unerringly as a man in his own house.
No makeshift force was his. Twenty-seven horsemen rode with him, and the wranglers among them had charge of two remounts to a man,—a remuda of the swiftest and sturdiest beasts the Big Country possessed. Two heavy outfit wagons carried grub, extra saddles, bedding and auxiliary stores of cartridges for rifle and six-shooter. Not since Job Brazil, famous trail driver of the seventies, had to shoot his way through a buffalo herd to cut a path for the longhorns had the Big Country seen a force such as this bent on extermination of the rustlers.
Dawn was just beginning to smear the east when Original headed the party into Bear Hole, five miles away from the northern reaches of the Spout. A great gash in the bastions of the mountains, this Bear Hole, with perpendicular cliffs grudgingly giving space for Muddy Creek to break through to the plains beyond, mouth of the gorge screened by scrub pines and a thick mantle of pines draped over the tiny flats along both sides of the stream. Here bears—or men—could hide while searchers passed within a few yards of them.
In the deep gloom of the Hole camp was struck, breakfast cooked and the men of the expedition lay down to sleep through the day for the coming night's work. Original alone rode out with the spreading dawn to pursue secret alleys through the mountains known to him only. These devious goat tracks led to heights above the narrow gorge called Teapot Spout; from these heights, as from a seat in a theater gallery, the range rider could survey the stage below, where a drama of swift action was to be played.
From a high ledge of rim rock running like a comb over the summit of a beetling cliff behind the Spout Original made his final reconnoissance. With Tige bridle-tied to a little clump of spruce behind the ledge and he himself flat on his stomach, glass in hand, the general of the little field force concealed in Bear Hole spent hours conning the land below him.
Teapot Spout well deserves its name. It is, in truth, a spout for the bowl of the mountains behind it which carries the creek from headwaters in the Broken Horns out to the rolling country through a twisted bore gashed out of the living rock by glacial chisels. Almost due north to south stretches the gorge, twenty-seven miles in extent. In its northernmost reaches it narrows to a chasm less than three hundred yards from lip to lip of the almost perpendicular bounding cliffs, and with the creek foaming down from the cascades marking its drop over the lava dike that heads the cañon. Beyond this chasm the valley grudgingly widens into green meadows through which the stream loafs in meandering course, but the bounding walls continue rugged almost beyond the power of man or beast to scale until at the southern gate they are drawn aside in a wide pass. Heavy timber throws a screen along the lower reaches of Teapot Spout.
Even to-day, when peaceful ranches dot the floor of the Spout and the shuf-shuf of Tin Lizzies sounds where once the yip-yip of Zang Whistler's men rounded stolen cattle into a trail herd for surreptitious markets in another State, there are but two ways into the mountains' treasure box: The road that comes from the east over a high shoulder of one bounding wall up to the old Bar C Ranch and another passing up from the south where the Tisdale ranch stands and into the valley through the natural gate at the southernmost end. The Bar C Ranch is placed just where the northern gorge broadens into the gentler expanses of meadowland, and thence the road carries along the course of the stream threading the valley.
When the Spout first was made the stronghold of brand burners and train robbers in exile, Bar C Ranch became a nucleus for the outlaw settlement, and at the Spout's gate the lawless inhabitants posted their defi: "No cattle cutting in this valley. Keep out!" From his aerie Original could see the cluster of ranch buildings away down in the vivid green plush of the valley floor: Four log houses and a corral, all foreshortened into the dimensions of children's toys. Thickly scattered moving dots against the green on both sides of the ribbon of water he knew to be cattle,—stolen cattle carrying on their flanks the brands of a dozen different rightful owners. He estimated at rough guess a full thousand of them and judged there would be more concealed by the screen of pines farther down the valley. Now and again the watcher on the heights caught a glimpse of a horseman straddling like a beetle down the ribbon of road.
The taint of unreality hung over the whole scene. To the watcher on the rim rock this colorful bit of landscape, all green and silver streaked where white water spliced the meadows, and set in the deep box of the mountain's granite, was a painting in a shadow box. The rich vein of poetry that ran deep below the surface of Original's nature thrilled to the scene. But the practical problems of the grim business going forward did not permit themselves to be long obscured. When he had completed in every detail his survey of the valley Original turned his glass to the perpendicular wall opposite where he lay and slowly covered every inch of its surface.
There lay a secret of his own discovering and which he had shared with no man. He called it the Ladder. It was a way down into the Spout unguessed by the Spout's unlovely inhabitants. Once before he had used it; now the Ladder played a big part in the strategy of the attack.
As the man's field glass slowly crept across the face of the gray rock, tufted here and there by a stunted pine, the eye behind it was straining to pick up remembered guideposts. Finally the glass came to a halt. Into its circular field had suddenly appeared that which the watcher sought.
A tortuous crack in the solid wall of the gorge it was. Here a sheer apron of granite gave it a pitch downward at a church-spire angle; there the fly track was broken by a series of ledges where bushes found precarious lodgment; the whole descent appeared little less vertical than a parachute drop. But Original knew from his past essay that one with a cool hand and a sturdy mount under him could negotiate that Ladder,—at a risk. It was an old game trail, and a mountain-bred horse will go anywhere a blacktail may lead. The foot of the Ladder found rest in a concealing pine wood not more than two miles from the group of ranch houses.
Near noon Original returned to the hidden camp in Bear Hole and rolled himself in his blankets to sleep until sundown. When he awoke his men had stowed all in the outfit wagons and saddled their horses in readiness for the hike. Original called them about him and explained the plan of attack.
"Timberline Todd and Hank Rogers, you two come with me for a little pasear down into the Spout to-night. Andy Dorson, I want you to take charge of the rest. Make a wide swing round the outside of the valley after dark as far as Tisdale's ranch. Don't show yourselves anywhere close to the ranch, but hide out in a bunch of cottonwoods you 'll find 'long the creek bottom between Tisdale's and the way into the Spout. Soon 's you see the first streak of mornin' saddle up fresh broncs, leavin' two of the boys to keep the string of horses there in the cottonwoods—which we 'll sure need fresh animals when we come larrupin' out of the Spout.
"You boys make into the Spout past Tisdale's so 's to get up to the old Bar C Ranch sometime before sunup. You 'll likely not see anybody below Bar C that 's ready to give you a run, but if you do just tear into 'em an' come a'runnin', because I'm figuring on landing on to the bunch when they 're having their hog an' hominy. You 'll find Timberline an' Hank here an' me hiding out somewhere on the road to Bar C with a friend or two"—here Original grinned—"that is, if we play in luck to-night. I m aimin' to cut Zang Whistler an' maybe one or two of his little playmates out of the herd to-night before the concert begins to-morrow.
"An' remember, boys, we 're not collecting scalps. Don't shoot to kill until you have to. But when it comes to the real skilletin' there 's no call for anybody to be a perfec' lady. Now, Timberline an' Hank, we 'll just mosey along; we got a pretty piece of ridin' to do before it gets dark."
The others gave the three a silent cheer as they rode single file down the aisle of pine trunks to the gateway of Bear Hole and the adventure that lay beyond.
The sun was just down when the three came to the summit of the Spout's eastern wall, where the topmost granite rung of Original's ladder lay. Below them the Spout already was purple with shadows; they floated like filmy weed on the surface of some unruffled pool. Beyond and behind, the high cone of Cloud's Rest was a beacon of cherry red, and the lower country whence they had come showed faint gold for unbroken miles.
"Boys," said Original, "we 're headed for a bit of trick ridin' like you read about in the fairy books. Give your li'l kiote baits their own bit an' just swing with 'em wherever they go. We 're like to hit bottom all in a bunch if anybody gets rollicky an' starts tellin' his beast where to head in."
So saying, Original disappeared over the sheer rim of the precipice as if he had ridden off on to the impalpable scum of shadow floating in the void.
Little Tige, all four feet bunched like a mountain goat's, took the slide down a fifteen-foot granite apron smooth as a watch crystal and came up on a lateral ledge fringing fearsome space. Then he turned to the left and ambled carelessly along a precarious footway to the next swift drop. He even paused to stretch his neck and browse the top off a scrubby bush that clung to nothingness below his hoofs as if to show the following and reluctant horses what a devil of a beast he was when it came to playing tag on church steeples. Nickering their fears, the other two patterned their tactics after Tige's.
Now sliding on their haunches so that their tails dragged behind them, now mincingly picking their steps along a shelf no wider than the breadth of a bandanna, twisting at right-angled turns for a leap across the riven bed of a winter's torrent, fetching up against the prickly spines of a stunted spruce which swayed over space with the impact of their bodies—that ride of the three down the Ladder to Teapot Spout is tradition in the Big Country even to this degenerate day of the rough-riding flivver. The dark had engulfed them before the screening pines on the valley floor marked the end of the descent, and the last hundred yards through a bowlder-strewn chute were made with even the eyes of Chance blindfolded.
"Whew!" Timberline Todd softly breathed as he took off his hat and wiped the sweat of fear from the band. "Answer me true, my son; are you aimin' to go up this greased skid to hell when we finish out this little job of work down here. If so be, just tell the boys back at the Hashknife they can raffle off my gold watch for a keepsake."
"Why, you lily-livered ole backslider," Original reproved with silent laughter. "That 's charlotte rooshing with egg frills on to it compared to what 's ahead of us."
In the dark security of the pines they unsaddled to give their beasts a rest after the muscle-cracking strain of the Ladder's descent. Original, moreover, wished to give Zang Whistler and his gang ample time to settle down for the night before attempting his foray on Bar C Ranch.
It was after nine o'clock by Original's watch when the horses were saddled and the start was made over the deadening carpet of pine needles for the road and the nest of outlaws down the valley. A thin sliver of a moon that hung low over the western rim of the Spout gave the only light. The narrow confines of this gut in the mountains were ghostly with faint stirrings and whisperings from the willow fringe along the stream, from the occasional spruce standing in stiff dignity a watch over the valley's sleeping creatures, clean and unclean equally. As they rode, Original mapped his plan of campaign:
"Boys, I'm aimin' to cut Zang Whistler outa the herd an' run him down the valley to where we 'll meet up with the rest of our outfit in the morning. Besides the little private grudge between me an' Zang, which 's neither here nor there, I figger with him away the rest of his gang won't be so spunky when the big mill starts at sunrise. He 's always been the brains of this outfit of wolves; him gone, you 'll see the rest just chasin' their own tails when our music starts. What's more, we three can get a good lay of the ground to-night so's to make our plans accordin' when the main outfit joins us."
"Where you reckon to find our li'l Zang friend?" Rogers queried. "Do you know which 's his boodwar, as the fambly-fireside paper calls it?"
"Zang 's never asked me to drink a demmytass of chocolate with him in his boo-do-war," Original returned. "Which it 's been mighty unsocial of him an' wounding to the spirit. I reckon we 'll just project round until we find where Zang's bedroom an' bawth happen to be. I don't aim to send in my card by the butler, neither."
A bend in the road showed them, ahead, a dark huddle of buildings, four in all, and the spidery bars of a corral beyond. Three of the low sod-roofed houses stood together in a group; the fourth was a little way apart. From the windows of two of them yellow squares of light cut so many lozenges through the black cloak of the dark.
"That far one would be where Lonny Taylor holes out, him being married," Original ventured a guess. "Zang, I take it, has a house to himself, an' the other two are bunk houses for the gang. Only way we can spot Zang is to ride in an' have a look-see all round. But remember, boys, don't pull a trigger unless it 's a matter of keeping a puncture outa your hide; a butt makes no noise and 's mighty handy for close work."
They rode under a group of alders a hundred yards or so away from the nearest of the houses and tethered their horses. Then, each with his .45 snuggled in the palm of the right hand, they approached the nearest lighted house, half crawling, Indian fashion, with the knuckles of the left hand touching ground. A short run across a patch of ground lighted by two windows brought the three standing back against the logs of the house, around the corner from the door.
That instant the scream of a pony sounded from the alder thicket where they had tethered their beasts.
"Damn that watch-eyed cayuse of mine!" Timberline breathed. "Always plays the goat with his teeth when a stranger hoss is round."
They heard the door open; they could feel, even though they did not see, the presence of a man in the doorway straining to peer through the dark.
"Don't see nothin', Zang," came the voice. "Must be that new hoss we lifted off 'n the Owens ranch gettin' 'nitiated down to the corral. Some fool hoss just put the outlaw brand on to him with his teeth."
The door closed. The three against the wall nudged one another. At least something had come of the minute of peril: Zang Whistler was located.
A tense hour passed in waiting; waiting until Whistler or his companions should leave the house. For the number of them was not known, and it was not part of Original's strategy to make a sally in force which would result in shooting and the rousing of a hornets' nest about his ears. Finally through a crack in the clay chinking by their ears came the noise of a table pushed back, then heavy footfalls on the floor. The door opened.
"Next time you hold up a kicker to your treys an' catch an ace-full, Zang, you just sell me for a sucker!" a voice called back into the cabin. Original recognized as Zang's the voice of the outlaw in answer from the interior. He dared peek around the corner of the house. Five men were stalking away in the direction of the other lighted building. The door was closed, and the sound of a bar dropped in place behind it sent Original's heart down to his boot heels.
Again weary waiting until the quarry should fall into slumber. The lights went out in the cabin across the way. Silence of sea bottom settled down upon the outlaw nest. The whole star-stippled vault of the night seemed to bend low to catch the first crack of crude action impending there in that ghostly rock grave of the mountains.
Then at the end of an eternity came to the ears of the waiting three sounds of snoring through the logs. In two different keys! There were two sleepers in there!
The faces of the three were turned one toward another. Though none could see another's face, each felt the surprise registered there. Here was the unexpected; here a complication not anticipated.
Original drew out his knife and bared the spring blade. He moved under the first window to the front of the house and gently insinuated the knife blade under the sash. Pressure on the handle failed to budge the window; it was bolted from within. He tried two others with similar result. The door he knew without trying to be barred inside.
He was on the point of despairing when Timberline touched him on the arm and pointed to another window, hitherto overlooked. It was up under the peak of the roof, evidently looking out from a loft within. The distance from ground to sill was not more than ten feet. Original measured the distance with a calculating eye, then beckoned his companions to stand beneath the window with arms locked over each other's shoulders.
"I 'll go it alone," he breathed. "If you hear any trouble inside don't try to take on the crowd that will swarm down. Cut for the horses an' make it down toward Tisdale's to meet up with the rest of our outfit. I can stand off this bunch 'til they come."
With this parting injunction the lithe little man swarmed up the bodies of his friends until he stood on their shoulders. Once more the knife blade under a sash. This time the sash rose easily. Original slowly pushed it high, gave a light spring from supporting shoulders and disappeared through the black square in the log wall. The duet of snores remained unbroken.
The instant Original's carefully lowered toes struck flooring beneath the window the whole body of him composed itself into a velvet calm of ordered nerves and muscles prime to leap to the reflexes of thought. Always it was this way with the range inspector when he stood on the threshold of action where the gauge of his life was laid in the scales; a clarity like dawn light swept over his mind, and every spring in his body was at the instant call of necessity. Exaltation would be the word to comprehend all.
He remained by the single window of the loft until his eyes had accustomed themselves to the deeper gloom under the roof. Slowly suggestions of shapes and bulks came to his brain,—the sharp angle of the roof meeting at a ridge-pole, here and there a box. He stooped and his sentient fingers spread before him to feel a way. One step—another. He placed each foot as a stalking cat might. Now a quick look over one shoulder showed the dim square of the window miles away, yet he had moved but two paces.
One groping hand encountered an upright pole. The other hand instantly shot out to find the hoped-for mate of that pole. It was found. Here was the ladder dropping to the room below where the sleepers were. Now, steadying himself against the ladder head, Original removed first one boot, then the other. He looped them over his shoulders with his bandanna tied between their straps, and his stockinged feet groped for the first rung of the ladder. Minutes were consumed by his painstaking descent; each rung was first tested for squeaks with a light pressure of the foot before his whole weight was placed upon it.
He stood, at last, on the floor. The gloom was a little less dense than that above, for three pallid squares against the walls marked windows giving starlight. One source of stertorous uproar in the dark seemed almost within touch of his left hand; the other was somewhere across the room. Guessing at the position of the door between two windows, Original cautiously groped a way thither and was rewarded by finding a heavy beam under his hand. He hesitated to draw it back. Luck had played with him generously so far, but dare he presume once more on fickle favor for the sake of insuring a safe retreat in case of difficulties?
With his shoulder against the door to ease any friction, the little fighter inched back the beam. It seemed to him he had moved full forty feet of the thing before a faint creak from the door warned that it was free to swing inward. More Original dared not attempt; with the door on the jar he could get out on necessity.
Still the chorus of the sleepers carried its leitmotif thunderously.
When he had crawled in the upper window and painfully descended the ladder Original was still lacking any definite plan for the capture of the sleepers. That there should be two instead of the one he wanted was an embarrassment unlooked for. Had he only to reckon with Whistler he would have gone to the man's bunk, thrown himself on the sleeper and throttled him before he could make an outcry. But with two men, on opposite sides of the room this course would invite disaster. The sound of a struggle would bring the second man on his back. True, he might have risked opening the door and summoning his two aides in to help him, but a stiff pride denied this; Original desired to play a lone hand and bring out his man without assistance.
He bethought himself of the card game that had been in progress before Zang's companions departed. That would mean a lamp on the table. With infinite caution he groped until his thigh touched a table edge; swiftly flitting hands searched for and found a lamp, softly lifted the shade from its socket.
Then a match. He struck it with his left hand, fingers curled around to hide the tiny blue flame. His gun was ready in his right. The little stick was an unconscionable time catching the flame. When it did Original touched fire to the lamp's wick. With a single swift move he had set the burning lamp, minus its chimney, on the floor before the table and leaped back into the shadow where the smoky tongue of flame could not search him out.
By the light he saw a blond head he recognized as Whistler's stir in a bunk not five feet away. With a broad sweep of his left arm he sent the lamp chimney crashing on the floor beneath Whistler's bunk.
"Wake up—you!" Original called in a voice that could carry to his aides outside.