Part 2
Clouds are piling up over the mountain; it’s getting cold and feels like winter coming on. I builds me a small Injun fire, cooks me up a bait, and rolling a smoke, stretches out.
“Some girl,” I caught myself saying as I throwed my dead cigarette away.... The little horse rolled out a snort the same as to say, “All is well,” and pretty soon I’m not of the world no more.
* * * * *
It’s daylight when a daggone magpie hollers out and makes me set up, and I wonders as I stirs up the coffee what’s on the program for today. My horse acts real docile as I saddles him up; he remembers when I gives his neck a rub that it pays to be good.
I crosses on one side of a mountain pass and on over a couple of ridges and down into another valley of white sage and hardpan. I don’t feel it safe to come out in the open and cross that valley, so I keeps to the edge close to the foothills and junipers.
My horse, picking his way on the rocky trail, jars a boulder loose and starts it down to another bigger boulder that’s just waiting for that much of an excuse to start rolling down to the bottom of the cañon; a good many more joins in, and a noise echoes up that can be heard a long ways.
As the noise of the slide dies down, I hears a horse nicker, and it sounds not over five hundred yards away. I didn’t give my horse a chance to answer, and a hunch makes me spur up out of the cañon and over the ridge. I was afraid of the dust I’d made in getting over the ridge.
I’m splitting the breeze down a draw; and looking back over my shoulder, I’m just in time to get the surprise of my life. A whole string of riders are topping the ridge I’d just went over, and here they come heading down on me hell-bent for election. I know it’s them, and I know they seen my dust; and worse yet, I know they’re on fresh horses.
“Now,” I asks the scenery, “how in Sam Hill do you reckon for them to be in this perticular country, and so quick?” And the only answer I could make out was that when I struck the mustangs and put too many tracks in front of ’em for ’em to follow, they just trusted to luck and cut acrost to where they thought I’d be heading.
My only way out is speed, and my pony is giving me all he can of that; but it’s beginning to tell on him, and I don’t like the way he hits the other side of the washouts we come across.
A bullet creases the bark off a piñon not far to my right; another raises the dust closer, and even though I sure hated to, I had to start using the spurs. The little horse does his final best, and I begins to notice that the bullets are falling short, and it ain’t long when I’m out of range of ’em.
“Old-timer,” I says to my tired horse as we’re drifting along, “if you only had a few hours’ rest, we’d sure make them _hombres_ back of us wonder how thin air could swallow us so quick.”
We tops a rise in the foothills, and ahead of us is a bunch of mustangs. They evaporate quick, leaving a big cloud of dust. They can’t do me any good this time; my horse is too far gone; but I thinks of another way and proceeds to act.
I reaches over, takes the hackamore off my horse’s head and begins to loosen the latigo. My pony’d took heart to keep up the speed awhile longer, on account of them wild ones ahead and wanted to catch up with ’em.
* * * * *
My saddle cinch is loose and a-flapping to one side; my chance comes as we go through a thick patch of buckbrush, and I takes advantage of it. I slides off my horse and takes my saddle with me; the old pony has nothing on him but the sweat where my saddle’d been. There’s mustangs ahead, and with a snort and a shake of his tail he bids me good-by and disappears.
About that time me and my “riggin’” ain’t to be seen no more, and when the posse rides by on the trail my horse’d left, there was a big granite boulder and plenty of buckbrush to keep me hid, and looking straight ahead for a dust, the sheriff and his three men kept right on a-going.
But I figgered they’d be back, sometime, and thinks I’d better be a-moving. I hangs my saddle up a piñon tree, leaves most of the grub with it, and, tearing up the gunnysack that was around it, proceeds to pad up my feet so they’d leave as little track as possible. Then I picks up my rifle and heads up towards a high point on the mountain where I could get the lay of the country.
I’m on what seems to be a high rocky ledge, and looking around for some shelter in it from the cold wind, and where I can hole up for the night, I comes to the edge of _nothing_--and stops short!
Another step, and I’d went down about three hundred feet; a fire at the bottom of it showed me how deep it was, and by that fire was two men; maybe they’re deerhunters, I thinks. I keeps a-sizing up the outfit, and then I spots three hobbled ponies feeding to one side a ways, and there amongst ’em was my good old buckskin. I’d recognize his two white front feet and his bald face anywheres.
I’m doing some tall figgering by then, and I has a hunch that before daybreak I’ll be well mounted again and on my own horse. Seeing that my rifle was in good working order, I slides down off my perch to where going down is easier and surer of a foothold. I’m down about halfways, and peeking through a buckbrush, I gets a better look at them two _hombres_ by the fire. The more I size ’em up, the surer I gets of my suspicions.
I’m close enough to see that one of the men is about my build, and not only that, but it looks like he had on my clothes. The other man I couldn’t make much out of--he was laying down on his face as though he was asleep; but I could see he was some stouter and shorter.
* * * * *
Well, all appearances looked a safe bet to me, and beating my own shadow for being noiseless, I gets to within a hundred feet of ’em.
“Stick ’em up,” I says quiet and steady for fear of their nerves being on edge and stampeding with ’em. One of ’em flinches some but finally reaches for the sky, the other that’s laying down don’t move, and I warns him that playing ’possum don’t go with me; but threatening didn’t do no good there. I’m told that he’s wounded and out of his head--I remember the sheriff saying that one of the men had been wounded, which altogether tallied up fine as these being the men _me_ and the sheriff wanted.
“Take his hands away from his belt and stretch ’em out where I can see ’em then,” I says, not wanting to take the chance. That done, I walks over toward ’em and stops, keeping the fire between. I notice that the man laying has no gun on or near him; the other feller with his arms still up is packing two of ’em, and I makes him shed them by telling him to unbuckle his cartridge-belt.
I backs him off at the point of my rifle and goes to reaching for the dropped belt and six-guns, when from behind and too close for comfort somebody sings out for me to drop my rifle and reach for the clouds. I does that plenty quick, and looking straight ahead like I’m told to, I sees a grin spreading all over the face of the man I’d just held up a minute ago.
“Where does this third party come in?” thinks I. My six-shooter is jerked out of my belt as I try to figger a way out, and is throwed out of reach along with my rifle; and then of a sudden the light of the fire in front of me was snuffed out, and with a sinking feeling all went dark....
When I come to again, I hear somebody groaning, and I tries to get my think-tank working; my head feels about the size of a wash-tub, and sore. Whatever that _hombre_ hit me with sure wasn’t no feather pillow. I tries to raise a hand and finds they’re both tied; so is my feet, and about all I can move is my eyelashes. Things come back to me gradual, and star-gazing at the sky I notice it’s getting daybreak.
Hearing another groan, I manages to turn my head enough to see the same _hombre_ that’d been laying there that night and in the same position. I hears the other two talking, off a ways. It sounds by the squeak of saddle-leather that they’re getting ready to move, and that sure wakes me up to action.
I know I can’t afford to let ’em get away, and I sure won’t. Raising up far as I can, I hollers for one of ’em to come over a minute. There’s some cussing heard, but soon enough here comes the tallest one, and he don’t no more than come near me when I asks him to give me a chance to loosen up my right boot, that my sprained ankle was bothering me terrible.
“You needn’t think you can pull anything over on me,” he says sarcastic. He sizes my boot up awhile and then remarks: “But I’ll let you pull ’em both off. I need a new pair.”
My arms and feet are free, but awful stiff; he’s standing off a few feet, and with rifle ready for action is watching me like a hawk while I’m fidgeting around with my right boot; I gets my right hand inside of it as though to feel my ankle, but what I was feeling for mostly was a gun I’d strapped in there.
(When I started out on the trail of my buckskin I figgered on getting him; I also figgered on running acrost somebody riding him that’d be a gunman, and I’d prepared to compete with all the tricks of the gun-toter. This gun in my boot was what I called _my hole card_.)
My foot is up and toward him, and I’m putting on a lot of acting while getting hold of the handle and pulling back the hammer, but I manages that easy enough and squeezing my finger towards the trigger, I pulls.
* * * * *
That shot paralyzed him, and down he come. He’d no more than hit the ground when I falls on the rifle he’d dropped, and I starts pumping lead the direction of the other feller. His left arm was bandaged and tied up, but he was sure using his right so that our shots was passing one another halfways and regular.... Then I felt a pain in my left shoulder. I begins to get groggy--and pretty soon all is quiet once more.
I must of been disconnected from my thoughts for quite a spell, ’cause when I come to, this time the sun is way high. I straightens up to look around and recollect things, and it all came back some as I gets a glimpse of my buckskin feeding off a ways.
My shoulder’s stiff and sore, but feeling around for the harm the bullet has done, I finds I’d just been creased, and being weak on account of not having anything under my belt either in the line of grub or moisture for the last twenty-four hours, that bullet was enough to knock me out.
I’m hankering for a drink right bad and starts looking for it on all fours, when in my rambling, I comes across a shadow, and looking right hard I can make out horse’s hoofs, then his legs and on up to a party sitting on top of him and looking down at me. The warm sun had made me weak again, and I quits right there.
Somebody’s pouring cool water down me, and when I opens my eyes again, I feels better control of ’em. I’m asked when I et last and I can’t seem to remember; then I gets a vision of a pot of coffee, and flapjacks, smells frying bacon, and the dream that I’m eating evaporates with the last bite.
“Well, I see you found your buckskin,” says a voice right close, and recognizing that voice makes me take notice of things. It was the sheriff’s; the posse’d rode in on me.
“And by the signs around here,” the same voice goes on, “it looks like you just got here in time and had to do a heap of shooting in order to get him, but I’m sure glad to see you did, ’cause along with that horse you got the two men we wanted for the robbery, which makes you free to go. No mistake this time.”
That last remark brought real life to me, and interested again, I takes a look around. The two men was setting against a rock looking mighty weak and shot up. I looks for the third, and I’m told that he was being took in to the nearest ranch for care he was needing mighty bad.
“How does he come to be with these _hombres_?” I asks.
“He’s a Government service man out after these two outlaws,” says the sheriff, “and your dropping in when you did is all that saved him--if we hadn’t heard your shot, we’d never found this hole, and he’d been left to feed the buzzards.”
“Not wanting to hog all the credit,” I says, “I’ve sure got to hand it to you too--for camping on a feller’s trail the way you do; it wasn’t at all comfortable.”
“Neither is a piggin’ string around a feller’s neck,” comes back the sheriff, smiling.
* * * * *
It’s after sundown as I tops a ridge and stops my buckskin. Out across a big sage and hardpan flat is a dust stirred up by the posse and their prisoners. I watches it a spell, and starting down the other side of the ridge, I remarks: “Buck, old horse, I’m glad you and me are naturally peaceable, ’cause being that way not only saves us from a lot of hard traveling, but it’s a heap easier on a feller’s think-tank.”
The evening star looks near as big as the moon as I glances up to keep my bearings straight; I finds myself gazing at it, and then comes a time when my vision is plumb past it, a vision of two brown eyes and a hint of a smile.
Then the buckskin shook himself and at the same time shook me back to realizing that I was on a horse.
“Some day soon we’re going visiting, Buck,” I says, coming to; and untangling the knots out of my pony’s mane as I rides, I heads him up the trail back to the cow-camp on Arrow Springs.
[Transcriber’s Notes: 1. This story appeared in the January 1930 issue of Redbook Magazine. 2. The cover image was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.]