Part 2

Nearly a score of punchers equipped themselves to earn the reward. Some failed even to get trace of the band; others trailed them for days, but never came in sight; Dick, Bob Saunders and Maclovio got within half a mile and with relays of horses applied themselves to capture in a scientific way. They would run those mustangs off their legs. In four days they were back, with their mounts used up and McVey to welcome them.

“That ol’ mule kin smell us a mile,” Dick reported. “He always gives the alarm first. And run? Jim-in-ee, the way that rascal kin run!”

Dave listened and gloomed and finally took a great resolution. He might just as well be honest with himself--the round-up would never be the same without Sam. The cook had been a cowhand in his time and he hadn’t trailed cattle up through the Panhandle for nothing. Therefore he would not match his speed against the wild horses.

“Say, Mister McVey, I want to git a month off.”

“Where’re you going now? This isn’t another trip to Doghole?”

“I hoped you’d done forgot that,” Dave answered severely. “No, sir, I want to go and git Hell-on-Wheels.”

“How could you catch him? I’ve tried; all the boys have tried. And you haven’t ridden in ten years.”

“You let me try and you’ll see.” Dave tried to draw in his waist and appear athletic as the manager ran his eye over his two hundred and fourteen pounds.

“You couldn’t get that mule in a thousand years. Unless”--as an afterthought--“you spread breadpans all over the range and set traps.”

“There’s where you’re wrong, Mister McVey, sir. I ain’t rode much since I took to cookin’, but I’m pretty active. You gimme that month and you’ll see.”

“Go ahead. I’d just as soon pay the reward to you as to anybody else--sooner.”

Sam was the first of the band to sight the enemy trudging through the sand of the plain toward them. Far behind a burro followed, led by another man on foot. This truly was interesting. The mule advanced for a closer inspection and the others awaited his verdict, having implicit confidence in him as a sentinel. Thus it happened that Dave gained to within three hundred yards before Sam flagged his tail and departed. The horses massed swiftly into a compact body and followed, but they did not run as they would have run from mounted men. Instinctively they knew that this thing on two legs could not catch them, so it was at a swinging trot that they breasted a hill.

On its crest the mustangs slowed down; they dropped to a walk and turned to look back at what pursued. There plodded old Dave, apparently paying them no special attention, but nevertheless coming in their direction. Once more Sam waited until the cook came within shouting distance, then, the buckskin raising the alarm, they cantered off.

So it went all the afternoon. Dave made no attempt to get close up with them; he did not conceal his approach; he did not stalk them; and he was especially cautious not to alarm to an extent that would send them fleeing for miles. Instead, he was satisfied merely to keep them in sight. Sometimes he paused to wipe the sweat from his face and neck, but he betrayed no impatience. Far behind a burro followed, led by another man on foot, and when the cook changed his course so did the burro, still maintaining its distance.

Sam was sorely puzzled. That stout figure possessed a peculiar attraction for him. When he had put a considerable tract between himself and it, he could not forbear to stop and watch what it would do. Still it came on--yet it was not threatening. The mule’s sense of danger was lulled. And he was not the only perplexed member of the band: curiosity had the stallion in its grip, too. There was not a horse among the free rovers but would slacken gait to ascertain where the foolish pursuer walked now.

By the time the sun died behind a fringe of hills, Sam and the others were horribly thirsty. They swung around in a wide semicircle and struck for a lake six miles distant. Dave followed. Hardly had they drunk half their fill, standing waist-deep in the cooling water, when the expectant mule warned them of the approach of that shadowing figure. They waded out and made off reluctantly.

The cook arrived two minutes later and stretched out on his back on the edge of the lake and thought with sweet sorrow of the days when he weighed one hundred and sixty. Presently the man with the burro joined him, and they took down their bedding, staked out the tireless pack-animal, built a fire of dried broomweed, and ate.

“They won’t go far from here to-night. It jist happens there ain’t any water nearer than twenty miles. No-oo, I reckon they’ll hang round somewheres near,” Dave observed, rolling a cigarette.

He divined correctly. Sam and his companions discovered that they were hungry, very hungry. While they did not realize it, they had eaten little that afternoon, for no sooner would they shake off the pursuer and fall to nibbling nervously at the dried grass than he would reappear, persistent as their own shadows, and they would continue their flight. Now he followed no more, and they must eat. Eat they did to some extent, but a burning curiosity and a vague uneasiness had seized upon them. They felt irresistibly attracted by the campfire that sparkled in the darkness down by the water they craved; time after time they would near it fearfully. Without turning his head Dave knew that dozens of wondering eyes surveyed him from the outer rim of dark fifty yards away.

Before dawn the cook and his assistant had made fast the burro’s burden with the “diamond hitch,” and hard upon the coming of light Dave started out alone. In an hour he was in sight of the mustangs. Sam shook his head in irritation and the band moved off slowly. Dave followed. Far behind came a burro, led by a man on foot.

He camped at noon in a stretch of alkali, and because there was no water near they partook sparingly of some the cook carried in tins slung over the burro’s load. As for the beast, he must wait till nightfall, which did not worry the burro in the least. Well Dave knew that the mustangs must make for water.

A dozen times in a day the cook would be out of view of the fugitives and a dozen times he would catch up with them, disturbing their intermittent grazing. It is doubtful if he averaged more than twenty miles in twenty-four hours; it is certain that the wild horses covered nearly three times that distance in their outbursts of panic and their doublings back on the pursuer. The chase led in a triangle that took in all the water-holes within a radius of ninety miles, and almost always Dave contrived to arrive before the band had got quite their fill.

Sam had lost at least a hundred pounds by the end of a week and was become gaunt and savage. Several of the colts, only a few months old, gave up the flight and their mothers forsook the band in safety, the pursuers ignoring them. The others kept on. Sam’s contempt for the slow crawling thing behind them was changing to a haunting dread, and he became subject to petty fits of irritation. Why couldn’t the enemy come on boldly? Why couldn’t he match his speed with theirs in one grand rush? But no, there he was, patiently legging it through the sand, through grass, over foothills, up mountain trails, through gorges, down into valleys. A horrible fascination took possession of the mule. Had Dave turned about to retrace his steps, it is probable that Sam would have followed out of curiosity to see where he was going; but Dave still came on.

About this time, too, they got a taste of real summer. From an empty sky the sun smote the land, browning the hills, crisping the grass in the valleys until it crackled into dust. First one mountain stream ceased to run, then another; a creek that used to sweep down in a torrent after the spring rains now dribbled among scorching boulders. Thus came about the beginning of the end.

“They cain’t stand more’n another week of this, Charlie,” Dave remarked, as they camped beside a hatful of water in the foothills.

“I reckon not. Did you notice some of them mares? They’s all in. You got within fifty yards of ’em once to-day, Dave. The burro here has kep’ up well. Ain’t you, you greedy devil? She’s looking fine. I’m giving her corn.”

Never did the mustangs get enough to eat. Another sort of madness than the madness for liberty was laying hold of Sam. His days consisted of timid attempts at grazing, from which he would start at the lightest sound; of enforced pilgrimages from one pasture to another; and it must have been four hundred hours since he had had his fill of water. More than once, in a frenzy of revolt, he put five miles between him and his clinging disturber; but after two hours of uneasy nibbling he would be interrupted once again--and again must move on. What food he got failed to nourish as it should, and the rest he snatched was not rest. In the night, when he might have lost his foe, the mule knew well that he was near, for there in the blackness his fire sent up its sparks and it drew him and his companions like a magnet. No matter where they roamed, the cook managed to spend the dark hours near water, and the band could not tear themselves from the vicinity.

There came a day when Sam’s ribs showed pitifully through his rough coat and he shuffled along in desperate dejection, his ears flopping. A heavy fatigue numbed his limbs, made cruel weights of them, and he was thirsty, deliriously thirsty; but if his plight was bad, that of the mustangs was worse. They stumbled coughing through the dust, too tired to lift their feet. Occasionally one broke into a half-hearted trot which survived only a few steps. The race was run.

Within six hours the band began to break up. First the mares and colts dropped out, careless of what might befall. The mothers went weakly to feeding on the burnt grass, their offspring hovering near in the last stages of exhaustion; but to these Dave paid no attention. He was after Hell-on-Wheels, and he did not intend to inject new life into the jaded survivors by the slaughter of their beaten companions. By his orders Charlie, too, ignored them, though his fingers itched as his mind dwelt on the reward.

Four of the horses lagged, staggered forward a few paces and fell behind, spent, swaying dizzily as they moved aside to let Dave pass. They were oblivious to everything now, insensible to peril, scarcely able to discern objects through their glazed eyes; but Sam and the stallion and some few kept on. Dave followed.

Hot rebellion surged up in the mule more than once, sapping his last ounce of spirit. Up would go his head in defiance and he would increase his lead; but the strength was ebbing from the wonderful muscles of him; he was sick at heart and wanted to lie down. Ahead, perhaps an hour’s walk, he knew there was water. He must reach that. Would this thing that hung to their rear never give them respite?

Dave trudged now only twenty yards back. He was footsore, a fearful weariness was upon him and the heat was awful. Yet no thought of giving up occurred to his mind; his patience was unfailing. Not once did he do a hurried thing to alarm the quarry.

It was the twenty-fourth day. All around them stretched a desert of alkali broken by patches of tree-cactus and clumps of bear-grass, and through the white, chalky dust Sam toiled dispiritedly a dozen yards in front of the stallion. Behind the faltering buckskin limped five skeletons of horses, and ten yards behind the hindermost walked Dave. There was no need that Charlie remain far in rear. The mustangs did not notice him, and he followed close with the burro.

The rovers had drunk deep that morning at a spring on the edge of the desert--this being as Dave would have it--and now all vigor of body and spirit had departed. Sam’s head swung low to the ground, his knees were shaking and he saw nothing of what he passed. To his bloodshot eyes these scorched wastes were a wavering mist, and he knew only that he must go on.

Suddenly, as though by telepathic agreement, the weird procession halted. Sam turned. He faced the cook as he came up without hesitation, rope in hand. Dave slipped the noose about his neck and rubbed the dusty muzzle sunk against his hip.

“You ol’ fool, you!” he mouthed at him. “What you mean by running off this a-way? Didn’t you know that team weren’t no good without you? What did you reckon I was going to do, you pore ol’ son-of-a-gun?”

He ran his eye over the emaciated body; then his glance fell to his own shrunken outline.

“I reckon we’re both some thinner, Sam. And my feet’s awful sore. What you need is corn. Here, Charlie, gimme that ‘morale’!”

Staked out with the nosebag over his head, the mule munched dully on the life-giving grain, while Dave prepared dinner and Charlie moved from point to point on the plain with a rifle, earning half a month’s pay every time he got near a horse. Charlie began to figure he would be a rich cowman some day.

Two hours later the men were smoking in the peace and content of hard work well done, when Sam walked stiffly to the end of his rope. By straining on it he could just reach the edge of the campfire. Dave rose up on his elbow.

“Hi, there! Git your nose out’n that pan, you rascal! I swan, he’s hunting for bread.”

II THE MARAUDER

Six frowsy buzzards sat on a tree and made mock of his hunger. With his bushy tail drooping dismally between his legs, he zigzagged his way up the wide, dry bed of Red River, flitting from cover to cover like an uneasy ghost. Up one steep bank he sidled, to squat on his haunches, whence he surveyed the camp hungrily.

“There’s a big ol’ ki-yote,” said the hoodlum driver. “Git your gun, Dave.”

The cook abandoned the washpan with alacrity and ransacked the chuck-wagon for his weapon. When he rejoined Mac the coyote was still in view, but he seemed farther away.

“He done moved. I cain’t hit him from here,” said the cook.

“I been watching him and he ain’t budged. Yes, he has, too. I’ll swan, I never seen him do it.”

The prairie wolf now sat a good three hundred yards away, his back to the camp, as though indifferent and contemptuous of it. Dave knelt on one heel, took slow, careful aim, and fired. A spurt of sand five yards short of the coyote was the result. The animal half turned his head, the sensitive upper lip quivered and curled over the wicked fangs, for all the world like a sneer, and then he resumed his placid scrutiny of nothing. Mac forcibly removed the rifle from Dave’s grasp, deaf to his picturesque explanation of the miss, adjusted the sight and lay down.

“You had it sighted for a hunderd yards,” he rebuked. “I put her up a few notches.”

“Whee-ee-ee,” whined a snub-nosed leaden pellet. A spurt of sand five yards beyond the coyote was the result. It aroused the animal to instant activity. If he was not beyond range, then the wagon had a better gun than he had ever met with, so he glided away like a shadow.

“There goes two dollars bounty,” sighed the cook regretfully. “That’s just what I done lost to Jack, shootin’ craps last night.”

“Where’s that nester’s ol’ dog that was smelling round the pots this morning?” Mac demanded. “There he goes now. Hi-yi, ol’ feller! Go git him, boy! Go to him!”

A yellow mongrel, half shepherd and a mixture of other breeds, abandoned his slinking tour of the camp and became at once a respectable, alert dog, with a job. He sighted the fleeing coyote, and, giving tongue, followed after.

“He won’t never catch him. Those lil’ ol’ ki-yotes kin outrun a streak of lightning, and stop to sleep a-doing it,” said Mac.

It was evident that the pursuit did not worry the fugitive greatly. He loped along easily, with the dog gaining at every frantic leap until a scant yard separated them, when, still maintaining his careless gait, the coyote veered to the south; and yet the distance between them did not diminish. The dog was blowing and puffing throaty threats, while the wolf watched him out of the corner of one eye. With a mad burst of speed the cur gained a yard, whereupon something happened. Without appearing to strain himself at all, the coyote simply disappeared from view over the next rise. The dog had seen a pepper-and-salt, gray streak flash over the crest, but that was all. He stopped in a dazed sort of way to figure the matter out.

While he was figuring, a foxlike head poked itself over a clump of bear-grass and the coyote yawned in his face. Once more the chase was on, with redoubled fury.

This was an old game to Scartoe. He had raced all sorts of dogs, from collie to fox terrier, and only once, when a greyhound ran him, had he stood in danger. Greatly to his chagrin and alarm on that occasion, he had been forced to switch the lithe pursuer unexpectedly into a barb-wire division-fence, to save his hide. As he ran now he was studying this loud-voiced antagonist of the yellow hair. Whatever he saw, the result was wholly surprising. He increased his lead by ten yards, then whirled about and sat down, at which the dog plowed up the ground for five feet in a panic-stricken effort to put on the brakes, and promptly changed his course. Still growling, he trotted away toward a cactus far to the left, as though suddenly made aware of something extremely interesting to be found there.

The coyote’s lip flickered, and he walked to the sandy sides of a ravine. With a final look back from its top, he descended leisurely; then, once in the creek bed, glided at top speed in an opposite direction. He was bound homeward.

All of which goes to show the delicacy of coyote judgment and the depths of his knowledge of human and canine nature. For there are dogs which will close on a coyote and kill him at the first opportunity and with no hesitation. Pluck does not run exclusively in breeds, and individual dogs of all kinds have been known to go for the prairie thief at sight, and even for the redoubtable lobo; but others there are which will shirk a tussle with this scorned of the wolf tribe, this scavenger and outcast of the wild. And a coyote, being lowest in the ranks of those obsessed of fear, is the readiest to detect cowardice in others; moreover, he has the cunning to profit by it.

Enjoyable as this little breather had been, it had not provided the meal for which he was searching. Rather it had whetted the gnawing demand for it and the prospect of obtaining anything seemed more remote than ever, because he had builded some hopes on scraps from the camp. Scartoe eased to a walk--not the brisk, firm patter of the dog, but a sneaking, apologetic, tortuous gait, that was yet swift and wonderfully noiseless.

Prairie dogs there were none, though he scour the length and breadth of six hundred square miles. Poison had done its work thoroughly and only the empty holes remained, half grown over with grass and weeds, a constant menace to horsemen. Of ground squirrel there were a few, and at certain seasons the sage grouse furnished him succulent meals; but these were trifles, after all, and it took infinite patience and stealth to secure them.

Scartoe crept slantwise up a ridge and took a look around. The sun beat down on a land it had desolated. Where creeks had been were now gorges of baked clay; a long stretch of sage-grass was white with dust and crackling; large fissures dumbly voiced the parched ground’s protests; the bear-grass and cactus showed scrawny and dried; and above this scorched land rose a canopy of jumbled white clouds, magnificent, matchless. A score or two of lean cattle were browsing on the slopes, nibbling the long, yellow bean pods from mesquite trees, but of other signs of life there were none, save the scurrying green and blue and golden-brown lizards, which darted from stone to stone at amazing speed.

And this had been the style of his hunting for weeks, so that he was gaunt and desperate. Nothing in all the world in the shape of meat, except creatures so large and strong he dare not attack. Nothing--his restless eyes became riveted on a bush not fifty yards to his right. Surely something had stirred there. His nose was thrust forward to give his extraordinarily strong sense of smell a chance, and it told him what his eyes were unable wholly to define. There was a calf behind that bush.

His famished stomach drove him forward, while his natural cowardice whispered caution. It was plain to him that the calf was very young. Otherwise he would have wanted the assistance of a brother marauder. Even now, however, those cattle grazing on the slopes haunted him, but a fleeting glance over the immediate vicinity assured him the prey was unguarded. So he stole forward. His advance was a miracle of furtive effort, and such was the beast’s inherited cunning that, quite unconsciously, he took advantage of spots where his color blended so harmoniously with the rough ground that wolf and rock and shrub were indistinguishable.

The gods of little calves must have been wide-awake that day; else what could have prompted the youngster to stir and lift his head? He had heard no sound; no scent had reached his nostrils. The coyote was too old a hand at stalking for that. A pair of round, fear-distended eyes were turned toward the terrible thing that shot through space straight for his neck, and a plaintive bawl was cut short in the middle. That was because the calf got into action--action quicker than any in his life of three weeks. He lurched upward and departed, minus the left ear. The beast snarled and turned to pursue, but a noise diverted him. Like a man waking from a dream, the coyote caught, too late, the rush of hoofs. He shrank aside, but not far enough. The mother’s horns caught him above the shoulder and ripped him to the flank, tossing him five feet into the air. When he came down he tarried not, but, bloody, torn and mad with fear, sought the safety of his cañon retreat.

His wife and five babies were awaiting him. He had been out all night on his prowl for food, and it was now three hours after sunup, the hour when, ordinarily, he would be stretched out on a sunny knoll, taking a nap in the content of a full stomach. A score of yards from the den his nose told him that the family had fed, so he came trotting down the rocky creek-bed, stiffly expectant. The tiny, furry, broad-headed pups were snarling and tugging at the remnants of a meal and, hungry though he was, he paused to watch them with a certain fatherly pride. Then, at a growl from his mate, he slunk forth again on his quest. His wound smarted, but did not cripple him, and hunger was a spur.

He found what his wife had said he would find, the remains of the offal of a heifer which the outfit had killed the previous day for food. Luckier in her search, the mother coyote had come upon the abandoned camp late the previous night, though it was ten miles from home and she disliked such distant hunting; and, having fed, she had carried a huge strip of the entrails to her babies. The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely; and, having gorged, sat down to lick his cut. In a few minutes he moved painfully on the back trail, for his hurts were stiffening.