CHAPTER XXIV

THE MURDER

RUDABAUGH and his band, early on the following morning, broke camp and crossed the Red River, finding no difficulty in making the ford at the old Whisky Trail. They rode a dozen strong, alcoholically buoyant, defiling the air with their boastful blasphemies.

McMasters had suggested that they keep together and follow the old Arbuckle Trail up the Washita, their course making one side of a triangle whose other leg probably would be covered by the Del Sol herd. The two courses naturally would converge somewhere to the north and west, at some point on the Washita. He pointed out that in no case could they miss the Del Sol men, because certainly they would see the northbound trail if they came to it, and could wait if they did not. The logic of this appealed sufficiently to Rudabaugh.

At the end of their first day’s march they stopped at the edge of a walnut grove through which ran a little stream. All that country was full of game, and Rudabaugh took up his rifle, promising soon to come back with meat for the company. McMasters himself, unobserved, followed not far behind him.

Rudabaugh had been gone perhaps a quarter of an hour or so when his mates heard two reports of his rifle in the direction of the stream. He came in not long after, but without any game.

“Well, Dave,” said one of his men, “did you get your meat?”

“I certainly did,” answered the ruffian.

“You didn’t bring it in?”

“It ain’t that kind of meat.”

They stood looking at him. His smile was distorted. He began to work himself into one of his rages.

“Well, you heard my promise!” he broke out. “Down yonder I told you that I intended to kill the first Indian I saw in the Nations. I don’t bluff and I don’t miss—there’s two Indians laying in there. If you don’t believe it go and look. I told you I’d show those people how to steal my horses.”

A man or two slipped out of the camp, moved over toward the edge of the little stream. Hard men they were, and used to rough deeds; but what they saw made them start back shuddering.

Two Indian women, one young, lay upon the farther bank. Their clothing remained upon the nearer shore. They had been bathing, and hearing the approach of an intruder had started up the farther bank. There they had been overtaken by the aim of the most heartless ruffian that ever crossed even that dark and bloody land. The older woman now lay dead, the younger even yet was struggling to reach the cover of the thicket. Hearing the sound of yet others coming, she fell forward on her face. . . . They both were women, and had the younger woman lived——

McMasters, following close behind Rudabaugh, was not close enough to see him when he fired, but soon he saw what had been done. Horrified, he turned away, leaving the men he met to see for themselves. He picked up the moccasins the women had left on the hither bank.

His step was light as that of a panther when he entered the camp. He crossed the grass to where Rudabaugh now sat, and touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Get up, you damned hound!” he said. “Get up and look a man in the face, you beastly, murdering coward!”

Rudabaugh reached for his weapon before he struggled upright, but stayed his hand in time. The two hands of the younger man were raised above the dark revolver stocks. But he did not fire.

“The man who would do a thing like that is no part of a man at all!” Rudabaugh and all his remaining men heard the words. “I’ll not ride a foot with a murderer like you. Now take my advice—get out of here fast as you can! If these people catch up with you they’ll even things with you—their village can’t be far from here. Those women never harmed you.”

“You all heard my word!” Rudabaugh’s voice broke hoarsely.

“You’ve heard mine! I ought to kill you now, but I am going to leave you.”

“The lousy thieves!” Rudabaugh tried to work up his vanished rage. “You think I’ll let them steal my horses and get away with it? It’s two less of them. Besides, there’s no law in here. Besides, you’re going to break your own word.”

The eye of McMasters narrowed.

“Don’t say that again,” said he. “I am saving you for a later day. Those were Comanches that you killed.”

“They’re not Comanches!” asserted Rudabaugh. “The Comanches don’t range in here. It’s all Chickasaws above here. They were Chickasaws, or maybe Wacos.”

Dan McMasters held up two moccasins before he replaced them in his pocket.

“I know Comanche moccasins when I see them,” said he. “Those women left these when they went into the water.

“There is no use your trying to trail me,” he added, as he backed to the edge of the wood where his horse was tethered. “I tell you, the best thing you can do is to get out of here as fast as you can!”

There was not a man in all that armed band that had courage to reach hand to weapon as he passed. Perhaps a sullen contempt for their leader had come to them. Rudabaugh’s own blasphemies, his sudden recovery of his weapons came too late. McMasters was in saddle and riding, hid by the cover of the wood.

At first they thought he had headed for the north, as they later trailed his horse. But half a mile farther on they saw where he had turned in his tracks and headed directly south.

“I don’t know where he went,” remarked one trailer, “but I wish I did. He’s likely to be mad enough to set the Rangers after us again. I more’n half believe right now that he had a hand in their catching us down at Del Sol. If we’d got away with all that scrip Rudabaugh says there was we’d have been out of this, maybe.”

“The Rangers can’t work anywhere outside the state of Texas,” his associate reminded him.

“No, that’s so; they can’t. But the Comanches can!”