Desert Conquest - A. M. Chisholm (all ebook reader txt) 📗

up. I ain't no good except on a horse. If I could make a get-away I would. But I can't. You can. There's no sense in both of us bein' wiped out. Also, there's your folks. I ain't got any. And, then, I've lived longer than you, and I've had a heap more fun. I'm plumb satisfied with the deal. If I quit the game now I break better'n even. Shake hands and git out o' here while you can."

"Forget it!" snapped Sandy. "Would you quit me? Not any. D'ye think I could look Casey in the face, or Sheila, or my old dad? Would one of them quit you? You bet they wouldn't. I'll see this through. Here, gimme what rifle cartridges you got, and shut up that line of talk. I won't stand for it, and I won't go."

"'Most every family has one blame fool in it," said McHale. "All right, durn you, stay. If I could chase you out I'd do it. Reach down and pull my belt gun for me. I can shoot left-handed some."

They passed the night miserably, waiting for an attack which did not come. The pain of their wounds was added to the discomfort of the cold. Dawn found them shivering, numbed, weary-eyed, staring through the lifting gloom, their weapons ready. As the light grew they could see their own camp, but no one occupied it. Farther off a column of smoke rose.

"Cookin' breakfast down in a hole," said McHale. "Playin' it plumb safe. They ain't takin' a chance on your shootin'."

"They'd better not," said Sandy. His young face showed grimed and pinched in the growing light, but his eyes were hard and clear. "Do you s'pose I could sneak over and get a stand on them?"

"I wouldn't try. You bet somebody's keeping cases on these rocks."

Half an hour passed, an hour. The sun struck the basin, mottling its green with gold, striking their chilled bodies with grateful warmth.

"Say," asked Sandy, "don't you want a drink of water?"

"Quit foolin'," McHale replied. "I been thinkin' of it for hours. I could drink that there lake dry."

Still nothing happened. The waiting began to get on their nerves.

"What d'you s'pose they're framing up?" Sandy asked.

"Don't know. Durn it! I can't do nothin' unless they run in on us," McHale grumbled. "Wisht I could hold a rifle."

"Let 'em try to run in," said Sandy grimly. He had McHale's rifle in addition to his own. "They've got to come two hundred yards without cover. I'll stop every blamed one of them in one hundred."

Suddenly he lifted his rifle, hesitated, and lay with his cheek to the stock, staring along the sights.

"See somethin'?" McHale asked.

"Over there past those jack pines. Man on a horse. He'll come out again."

Far off among the trees they saw not one mounted man, but several. They could catch glimpses merely. The horsemen appeared to be making for the valley, but not by the way in which they had come.

"By thunder!" cried McHale, "it looks like they're pullin' out."

His further remarks were lost in a rolling fire as Sandy unhooked his entire magazine at the retreating figures. He caught up McHale's rifle and emptied that, too.

"Save some ca'tridges for seed," advised McHale. "What's the use of snapshootin' at that range? You can't hit nothin'."

"You never know what luck you'll have," said Sandy. "I couldn't draw a sight with them moving in the brush. How many did you count?"

"Five—near as I could make it."

"Say, how'd it be if I went after them?"

"It'd be one durn young fool the less," McHale replied. "You want to know when you're well off. Don't stand up yet. There may be some play to this that we don't savvy."

"Rats! They've got a bellyful, I tell you. Five's the bunch, ain't it?—all but that one we got. I ain't going to stay cached here all day. I want some grub."

But McHale persuaded him to wait ten minutes. Then, after exposing a hat and a rolled-up coat as decoys without the least result, they emerged from their fortress.

"Didn't rustle our hosses," said McHale. "That's luck. I wonder what they done with that feller you downed. Let's look at their camp."

Down in the hollow where the besiegers had built their fire they found what they sought. It lay covered by a blanket. Sandy stripped the covering away.

"Dade, by thunder!" he exclaimed. McHale looked down thoughtfully at the dead man.

"I'm sure glad it was him," he observed. "I reckon that settles this feud business. That's why them fellers pulled out. It was his war, and when he got downed they didn't see no sense carryin' it on."

"Well, they might have buried him, anyway," Sandy grumbled.

"Maybe they figured you'd want to peel off his scalp," said McHale, with mild sarcasm. "I'm sure willing to take a little trouble like buryin' Dade."

"So'm I," Sandy admitted, replacing the blanket. "I guess we're pretty lucky. Come on while I rustle some grub. We want to pull out of here. You've got to get to a doctor as soon as you can."

They were eating breakfast when Casey, Farwell, the sheriff, and Simon rode into the basin, causing Sandy to snatch up his rifle under the impression that their assailants were returning. The four had made the best time they could, but had been at a loss to know the exact point until Sandy's farewell fusillade.

"You sure missed a heap of fun, Casey," said McHale.

"Well, some of it didn't miss you," said Casey. "I'm blame sorry about that arm, Tom. It'll be a tough ride for you."

"I'm able for it, I reckon. I wish you'd run into them fellers."

"Never saw hair nor hide of them. Just as well, maybe. Now, Tom, this is Sheriff Dove. He wants you, and I think he wants Sandy. I told him that you both had too much sense to make things hard for him."

"Far's I'm concerned I'm his meat," said McHale. "I'd have to come in, anyway, now. Sandy was a durn fool ever to hide out. I shouldn't have let him. Lucky for me I did, though."

"That's sense," said the sheriff. "You boys will find I'm all right to get on with. I haven't heard you say anything, McCrae?"

"I guess I don't need to say anything," said Sandy. "Casey came along with you, didn't he? That's good enough for me."

"I'm right obliged to him, too," said Dove. "He's sure saved me a lot of trouble. Lemme see that arm of yours, McHale. I savvy a little about them things. Anyway, I'll fix up some splints for it till you can get hold of a regular medicine man."

CHAPTER XXXII

"And so you're going to marry this Casey Dunne," said old Jim Hess. He and Clyde sat on the veranda at Chakchak, and they had been discussing the ranch, its owner, and the events that had led up to his absence.

"Yes, Uncle Jim, I'm going to marry him."

"Well," said the big railway man, "making allowance for your natural partiality, his stock seems to be worth about par. I'll know better when I've had a look at him. I tell you one thing, I'm glad he isn't a foreigner. I never liked those fellows who tagged about after you. This country can produce as good men as you'll find. The others weren't my sort. All right in their way, perhaps, but they seemed to go too much on family and ancestry. That's good enough, too, but it seems to me that the ancestors of some of them must have been a blamed sight better men than they were. After all, a girl doesn't marry the ancestor. Dunne seems to have hoed his own row. That's what I did. I'm prepared to like him. Only I don't want you to make any mistake."

"There's no mistake, Uncle Jim," she said, patting his big hand. "Casey's a man. You will like him. Look away out there where the dust is rising! Aren't those men on horseback? Yes, they are. It must be Casey coming home." Her pleasure was apparent in her voice.

The dust cloud resolved itself into four mounted men and three pack animals. They moved slowly, at a walk almost, the dust puffing up from the hoofs drifting over and enveloping them.

"Which is your Casey Dunne?" asked Hess.

Clyde stared with troubled eyes.

"I—I don't see him. There's Tom McHale, and the sheriff, and Sandy McCrae, and the old Indian. Why, Tom McHale has been hurt. His arm is in a sling. How slowly they ride! It's—it's like a funeral. Surely nothing can have happened. Oh, surely——" She caught her breath sharply, her eyes dilating. "Look!" she cried. "The last pack horse!"

The load on the last horse was a shapeless thing, not compact and built up like a pack, but hanging low on either side, shrouded by a canvas. From under this cover a hand and arm dangled, swinging to and fro with each motion of the animal.

Clyde felt a great fear, cold as the clutch of a dead hand itself, close on her heart, driving the young blood from her cheeks. "It can't be!" she said to herself. "Oh—it can't be."

Hess swore beneath his breath. If it were Casey Dunne lying across that pack horse——He put a huge protective arm around Clyde's shoulders, as if to shield her from the evil they both feared.

But she slipped from beneath his arm and fled down the steps toward the party who would have passed in the direction of the stables without halting. The sheriff, seeing her, pulled up. She caught McHale's hardened paw in both her hands, searching his eyes for the truth. But McHale's face, though weary and lined with pain, and, moreover, rendered decidedly unprepossessing by a growth of stubble, contained no signs of disaster.

"Where's Casey, Tom?"

"Casey?" McHale replied. "Why, he hiked on ahead to git a medicine man to fix up this arm of mine. Arm's done busted. He ought to be here most any time now."

To Clyde it was as if the sun had shot through a lowering, ominous cloud. She was faint with the joy of relief. "Thank God! Thank God!" she murmured.

"You seem to be upset about something, ma'am," said the sheriff gently. "Has anything went wrong?"

Hess answered for her. "What have you got on that last pack horse, sheriff?"

Jim Dove looked around and muttered an oath. "If that ain't plumb careless of me! I thought I had him all covered up. Rope must have slipped. That's Jake Betts, holdup and bad man, that's been callin' himself Dade around here. There's five hundred reward for him, and to collect the money I had to pack him in. I sure didn't allow to scare any women by lettin' an arm hang loose. And the little lady thought it was Dunne? Dunne's all safe and rugged. We thought he'd be here ahead of us."

Hess followed the sheriff to the stable and introduced himself, going directly to the point, as was his custom.

"Sheriff," he said, "I've just come, and naturally I don't know all that has happened, but there are two or three things I want you to know. In the first place, my niece, Miss Burnaby, is going to marry this man Dunne. And, in the second place, I'm now running this irrigation company and the railway that owns it, and so far as any prosecutions are concerned I won't have anything to do with them. Does that make any difference to you?"

"Some," said the sheriff. "It lets young McCrae out, I reckon."

"How about McHale?"

"That's a killin'. You got nothin' to do with that. Anyway, he's got a good defence."

"I'll sign his bail bond to any amount."

"I reckon there won't be no trouble about that," said the sheriff. "I know a man when I see him. McHale's all right. You won't find me makin' things hard for anybody around here, Mr. Hess."

In half an hour Casey rode up, bringing with him a man of medicine in the person of Doctor Billy Swift. And Billy Swift, whose chronic grievance