CHAPTER XX

HILDA AND THE BLUE ROAN

The first four miles were covered at terrific speed, though three times Creeping Mose stopped with a plunge and declared his intention of fighting it out then and there. But Hilda was aflame. Fear was wiped out. Between the level plain and burning sky, she knew only Creeping Mose and herself—herself with neither flesh nor bones, nor anything but a blind determination to force him to her will.

She clung like a limpet. When the horse bucked most fiercely, she swung the quirt and let him have it with all the strength of her arm. Her black hair was shaken out of its plait and blew behind her, a waving banner; her face was crimson with the heat and exertion. On heaving chest and shoulders the shirt-waist clung, soaked. At every jump sweat flew from the horse and spattered on the dry, hot earth. At last Mose flung himself obliquely into the air in a whirling buck. She set her teeth for what she’d seen the boys do, and brought the head of her quirt down in a thump between his ears. She hated to do that, but it seemed to be what Mose needed; with a snort, he gathered himself; then, as though he decided that what he had on his back was boss of the expedition, stretched out his neck and broke away in a dead run that was a revelation to Hilda of horse speed.

No captive of old Rome ever drove his chariot race down the great hippodrome in a finer ecstasy of rashness than that which thrilled through Hilda as the long levels streamed back beneath those flying hoofs. This wasn’t the Hilda of the cyclone cellar who needed to dress up and make believe for her romance.

Her whole thought had been to rush the thing through and get back to the trail where it cut the road to El Capitan, where she would meet Pearse; but this—this was real daring and adventure. It was the sort of thing any one of the boys would have done, taking it all as a part of the day’s work. She, too, let her whole self go in the action, like one of them, like a soldier on a battlefield. She’d taken Creeping Mose against Uncle Hank’s orders. But she knew the rules of the range: if she made good—and she would—she was all right. At the end of four breathless, flashing miles, the horse was still running strongly.

Four miles and a half; he was coming down to a steady, swinging lope. Five miles; the fierce sun stung her bare head and face, the wind roared in her ears, continuous, browbeating, and her horse was almost at the end of wind and strength.

As the blue roan ceased to fight her, Hilda’s thoughts had a chance to clear a bit, she had breath and attention to admire him. She leaned forward and patted him on the neck—and the sweat fumed up around her hand like suds. A year—Uncle Hank had thought he might be fit for her in a year—and here she was riding him within three days!

What was happening back there on the Three Sorrows? That outfit were rustlers. Uncle Hank thought so, or he’d never have sent her on such an errand as this. She couldn’t get away from the belief that the young fellow with them was Fayte Marchbanks. And the cattle belonged to Fayte’s father. Well—that didn’t make any difference—they were rustlers just the same.

Nobody but a rustler would have been as careless as that man was about the count. People didn’t feel that way about their own cattle. That look in his eye, when he praised her and called her “little lady”—she wasn’t exactly sure where and how it offended her so much, yet she knew that it did offend. Rustler! That’s what he was.

Far off on that open plain the three pines that stood above the spring began to show like tiny weeds. With her breath coming in gasps, scarce able to feel the saddle beneath her or the rein she clutched in her hands, she yet brought her heels sharply against Mose’s dripping sides, and he answered with a spurt. Taller and taller the pines loomed; finally, she could make out beneath them a hooded chuck-wagon, hobbled ponies, and men lying or sitting about.

No need of the quirt now; Creeping Mose obeyed her hand or voice humbly. As she used both to encourage him, he gave a sort of convulsive cat-hop and, shaking his head, plunged forward at a jolting, uneven run, which, exhausted, as she was, came near to unseating her. She could hardly see the camp as she swept in to it, hardly hear the shouts of the men, who jumped up and ran toward her, one of them catching the bit, bringing the horse to a standstill, another lifting her down as she rolled from the saddle.

She heard some one call: “Colonel Marchbanks—come here!” And then another voice, saying:

“Whoa, Buck!”

“Hold up, sister! Steady, steady, young lady! Had a runaway?”

“Whoa, Buck—whoa!” roared the cowpuncher who had seized Creeping Mose, revolving with him, kicking up a great dust. “You old fool—don’t you know when you’re done?” Abruptly the horse halted, he dropped at once into exhaustion, a sweat-soaked miserable spectacle. The man who held Hilda called over his shoulder:

“Tarpy, fetch a pan of water, quick!” and when the squat little cook hurried up with the basin, he dipped his handkerchief in it and laved Hilda’s face and hands. “Plucky young ’un,” he said softly to Tarpy. “She isn’t going to faint. Hey, you boys—Slim and Charley! Pull that bedding roll over here.”

In those first moments, as Hilda lay there in a sort of daze, she entirely forgot the errand that had brought her out here in such a fury of eagerness. All she could see was Pearse, going past the Sorrows gate—missing her. Oh—why had she come? Somebody was lifting her into a more comfortable position against the bedding roll. The big man drew the dripping handkerchief again and again across her face; then dipped hands and wrists into the basin itself.

“You’re all right now,” he repeated. “You’re not hurt.”

Her eyes opened in a quick look about her and fixed upon his face.

“Colonel Marchbanks?”

“Yes, that’s my name,” he said. “Were you looking for me? What’s the matter?”

Hilda’s gasping had moderated. She drew in as much breath as she was able and spoke clearly:

“An outfit came in this morning after your cattle—”

“What outfit?”

“I don’t know. They came in this morning. They cut our fence and made Uncle Hank begin work right away.”

Marchbanks bent forward sharply, Tarpy, the cook, beside him. The two boys who had brought the bedding roll leaned frankly over the others’ shoulders.

“Uncle Hank—they didn’t act right—he sent me here. We thought, when they wouldn’t road-brand—”

“You’re a good girl,” said the colonel; “I’ll thank you later.”

Then he stood up, ordering:

“Get the hobbles off the best horses. Every man saddle his own. All come with me but Tarpy and Slim. Tarpy,” he spoke in a lower tone to the cook, “you stay with the little girl. If she gets able to go back home and wants to [Hilda tried to say, ‘I do,’ but no sound came], have Slim put her saddle on my sorrel, and ride over, easy, with her.” Then he turned to question her again:

“How big an outfit is it? What do they look like?”

Hilda answered in little, broken sentences:

“Six of them—and a chuck-wagon. But they had so many guns. He’s very young—almost a boy.”

The colonel was buckling his cartridge belt; he whirled and looked at her, demanding:

“Which one is that you’re speaking of?”

“The one that rode right beside the man that called himself Colonel Marchbanks. He looked like— We all took him for—”

The real Colonel Marchbanks glanced to where his men were getting on their ponies. He waved to them to ride on, and they whirled away in a cloud of dust. Then, bracing hands on knees, he bent down and prompted:

“You took him for—?”

“Your son.”

The colonel straightened up without a word, ran to his pony, flung himself upon it, and was off after the others.

She rested, with closed eyes, glad to be let alone. Presently she heard Slim’s voice, in guarded tones:

“Ye took notice what the little girl said. That’s Fayte, all right.”

There was silence for a few minutes, then Slim spoke again:

“Sort of sorry for the colonel.”

“Yeah,” assented Tarpy. “G’wan an’ round up them horses, Slim, and have ’em all saddled an’ ready time she’s had this coffee. She’s game; you’ll git over, mebbe, in time to git a look-in at the festivities—or the funeral—after all.”

Slim hesitated, looking doubtfully at Hilda. She sat up as Tarpy came toward her with a steaming tin cup, declared herself all right and, to prove it, drank the strong coffee. Tarpy stood looking, and then stated, respectfully:

“Slim’ll be ready, Miss, whenever you want to ride over. That sorrel of the colonel’s is as easy as a rocking chair.”

“Mebbe we hadn’t ought to hurry the young lady,” Slim put in, wistfully. “She’s had an awful trip, an’—”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Hilda, gathering up her hair, beginning to braid it with hands that shook. “I must go—I’ve got to!”

“Sure, I know how you feel, ma’am,” sympathized Tarpy. “Fetch up the sorrel, Slim.”

Slim responded promptly this time. Hilda turned again to look where Creeping Mose stood motionless, his feet braced wide, his head hanging, the streaming sweat drying on his blue-gray coat in rough cakes. She got to her feet and stumbled over to him. She laid a hand on his neck—there was no snorting and tossing up of his head now. Creeping Mose never even flinched—he had all he could do to just stand on those four wide-braced feet. Hilda choked a little.

“I feel the same way myself, Mose,” she muttered, a bit thickly, in his drooping ear. “I ache all over, too. If I licked you, you certainly hammered me. I wouldn’t have done it—if I hadn’t just had to.”

“He’ll be all right in the morning, ma’am,” Slim assured her. “Tarpy’ll take good care of him, and they’ll lead him in with the outfit when it follers us. Here’s the sorrel for you.”

Hilda crawled wincingly into the saddle, with his help. At first every movement of the easy-gaited creature she rode was pain to her, and Slim watched anxiously. But soon she swung into the motion and her bruised, wearied body was forgotten in that fierce eagerness to “get there.” Slim, on a wiry, glass-eyed mustang, set the pace, and a stiff one it grew to be. There were scarcely two dozen words spoken as they put the miles behind them; both leaned forward eagerly in their saddles, Slim’s eyes always straight ahead, Hilda’s continually sweeping the levels about them. Long before they covered the distance, they saw a vast cloud of dust hanging on the horizon.

“Stand it any faster?” Slim inquired.

Hilda nodded, and they spurred up. The big dust cloud grew bigger and more palpable.

“Looks like they’s a-havin’ a kind of a time,” commented Slim. “We mebbe could get a finger in the pie yet, if we shove ahead.” The glass-eyed mustang shot forward, Hilda and the sorrel hanging close at its quarter.

“Oh, look!” said Hilda. A flurry of dust approached them, out of which emerged several head of Flying M cattle, running staggeringly. Two or three showed long, bloody scratches on head and breast or shoulders.

“Bust through the bob-wire!” Slim rose in his stirrups and swung his quirt, whooping shrilly. He and Hilda, between them, turned the animals and headed them back. Presently they met two more small bunches, which they turned in like manner and took with them. When they got within sight of the pasture where the Flying M stock had been worked that morning, they saw that the herd was in a pretty well-established mill, the main bulk of the cattle sweeping in a great, brown, living, sweating circle. An occasional Three S man, or one of the Flying M hands, came galloping around on the edge of the surge. As Slim and Hilda rode gingerly across the prostrate fence, they heard a shot fired off to the right, toward the Ojo Bravo trail; another, then three in quick succession. Slim stopped like a pointer dog and threw his nose up, sighting in that direction.

“Well, the colonel got there in time, that’s sure,” was his comment.

Just then Burch came in sight, loping with the swing of the cattle.

“Hello, Hilda!” he cried. “You made it all right.”

They put their horses in alongside him and moved with him while he told them, in a few quick sentences:

“Uncle Hank stampeded the cattle—only thing he could do—shook a blanket. We weren’t fixed to open fight—not a gun amongst us—them all armed. The cattle commenced to run, and everybody flew in to turn ’em and mill ’em. While we were at it, Uncle Hank rode up to me and hollered that the Flying M men were coming—and there was Marchbanks and the whole outfit. The rustlers cut and run for it.”

“What shooting was that we just heard, d’you reckon?”

“The colonel and two of his men went after the rustlers—out yonder. They must have overhauled ’em.”

Burch rode on with the milling cattle, while Slim and Hilda pulled out. Presently Uncle Hank came to her and told her to go to the house and rest.

“Oh, I couldn’t, Uncle Hank!” she declared. “Let me stay.”