The Ranchman Part 32

I'm giving you one minute to hit the breeze out of this section. If you're here when that time is up, I down _you_, Keats! Slope!"

Keats flashed one glance around at his men. Some of them already had their horses in motion; others were nervously fingering their bridle-reins. Keats sneered at the rock nest ahead of him.

The intense silence which followed Taylor's warning lasted about ten seconds. Then Keats's face paled; he wheeled his horse and sent it scampering over the back trail, his men following, crowding him hard.

CHAPTER XXVII-BESIEGED

Hemmingway tentatively suggested that a ride through the gorge toward the Kelso Basin might simplify matters for himself and Taylor; it might, he said, even seem to make the defending of their position unnecessary.

But his suggestions met with no enthusiasm from Taylor, who lounged among the rocks of his place of concealment calmly smoking.

Taylor gave some reasons for his disinclination to adopt Hemmingway's suggestions.

"Norton will be back in an hour, with Bothwell and the outfit." And now he grinned as he looked at Bud. "Miss Harlan told me to be careful about my scratches. I take it she don't want no more sieges with a sick man.

And I'm taking her advice. If I'd go to riding my horse like blazes, maybe I _would_ get sick again. And she wouldn't take care of me anymore. And I'd hate like blazes to run from Keats and his bunch of plug-uglies!"

So Hemmingway said no more on that subject.

They smoked and talked and watched the trail for signs of Keats and his men; while the sun, which had been behind the towering hills surrounding the gorge, traveled slowly above them, finally blazing down from a point directly overhead.

It became hot in the gorge; the air was stifling and the heat uncomfortable. Taylor did not seem to mind it, but Bud, with a vigorous appet.i.te, and longings that ran to flapjacks and sirup, grew impatient.

"If a man could eat now," he remarked once, while the sun was directly overhead, "why, it wouldn't be so bad!"

And then, after the sun's blazing rays had begun to diminish in intensity somewhat, Bud looked upward and saw that the s.h.i.+mmering orb had pa.s.sed beyond the crest of a towering hill. He looked sharply at Taylor, who was intently watching the back trail, and said gravely:

"Norton ought to have been back with Bothwell and the bunch, now."

"He's an hour overdue," said Taylor, without looking at Bud.

"I reckon somethin's happened," growled Bud. "Somethin' always happens when a guy's holed up, like this. It wouldn't be so bad if a man could eat a little somethin'-to sort of keep him from thinkin' of it all the time. Or, mebbe, if there was a little excitement-or somethin'. A man could--"

"There'll be plenty of excitement before long," interrupted Taylor.

"Keats and his gang didn't go very far. I just saw one of them sneaking along that rock-k.n.o.b, down the gorge a piece. They're going to stalk us.

If you're thinking of riding to Kelso-why-" He grinned at Bud's resentful scowl.

Lying flat on his stomach, he watched the rock-k.n.o.b he had mentioned.

"Slick as an Indian," he remarked once, while Bud, having ceased his discontented mutterings, kept his gaze on the rock also.

And then suddenly the eery silence of the gorge was broken by the sharp crack of Taylor's rifle, and, simultaneously, by a shriek of pain.

Report and shriek reverberated with weird, echoing cadences between the hills, growing less distinct always and finally the eery silence reigned again.

"They'll know they can't get careless, now," grinned Taylor, working the ejector of his rifle.

Bud did not reply; and for another hour both men intently scanned the hills within range of their vision, straining their eyes to detect signs of movement that would warn them of the whereabouts of Keats and his men.

Anxiously Bud watched the rays of the sun creeping up a precipitous rock wall at a little distance. Slowly the streak of light narrowed, growing always less brilliant, and finally, when it vanished, Bud spoke:

"It's comin' on night, Squint. Somethin's sure happened to Norton." He wriggled impatiently, adding: "If we're here when night comes we'll have a picnic keepin' them guys off of us."

Taylor said nothing until the gorge began to darken with the shadows of twilight. Then he looked at Bud, his face grim.

"My stubbornness," he said shortly. "I should have taken your advice about going to Kelso Basin-when we had a chance. But I felt certain that Norton would have the outfit here before this. Our chance is gone, now. There are some of Keats's men in the hills, around us. I just saw one jump behind that rim rock on the shoulder of that big hill-there."

He indicated the spot. Then he again spoke to Bud.

"There's a chance yet-for you. You take Spotted Tail and make a run for the basin. I'll cover you."

"What about you?" grumbled Bud.

Taylor grinned, and Bud laughed. "You was only funnin' me, I reckon," he said, earnestly. "You knowed I wouldn't slope an' leave you to fight it out alone-now didn't you?"

"But if a man was hungry," said Taylor, "and he knew there was grub with the outfit--"

"I ain't hungry no more," declared Bud; "I've quit thinkin' of flapjacks for more than--"

He stiffened, and the first shadows of the night were split by a long, narrow flame-streak as his rifle crashed. And a man who had been slipping into the shelter of a depression on the side of a hill a hundred yards distant, tumbled grotesquely out and down, and went sliding to the bottom of the gorge.

As though the report of Bud's rifle were a signal, a dozen vivid jets of fire flamed from various points in the surrounding hills, and the silence was rent by the vicious cracking of rifles and the drone and thud of bullets as they sped over the heads of the two men at the bottom of the gorge and flattened themselves against the rocks of their shelter.

That sound, too, died away. And in the heavy, portentous stillness which succeeded it, there came to the ears of the two besieged men the sounds of distant shouting, faint and far.

"It's the outfit!" said Taylor.

And Bud, rolling over and over in an excess of joy over the coming of the Arrow men, hugged an imaginary form and yelled:

"Oh, Bothwell, you old son-of-a-gun! How I love you!"

CHAPTER XXVIII-THE FUGITIVE

One thought dominated Marion Harlan's brain as she packed her belongings into the little handbag in her room at the Arrow-an overpowering, monstrous, hideous conviction that she had accepted charity from the man who was accused of murdering her father! There was no room in her brain for other thoughts or emotions; she was conscious of nothing but the horror of it; of the terrible uncertainty that confronted her-of the dread that Taylor _might_ be guilty! She wanted to believe in him-she _did_ believe in him, she told herself as she packed the bag; she could not accept the word of Keats as final. And yet she could not stay at the Arrow another minute-she could not endure the uncertainty. She must go away somewhere-anywhere, until the charge were proved, or until she could see Taylor, to look into his eyes, there to see his guilt or innocence.

She felt that the charge could not be true; for Taylor had treated her so fairly; he had been so sympathetically friendly; he had seemed to share her grief over her father's death, and he had seemed so sincere in his declaration of his friendliness toward the man. He had even seemed to share her grief; and in the hallowed moments during which he had stood beside her while she had looked into her father's room, he might have been secretly laughing at her!

And into her heart as she stood in the room, now, there crept a mighty shame-and the shadow of her mother's misconduct never came so close as it did now. For she, too, had violated the laws of propriety; and what she was receiving was not more than her just due. And yet, though she could blame herself for coming to the Arrow, she could not excuse Taylor's heinous conduct if he were guilty.

And then, the first fierce pa.s.sion burning itself out, there followed the inevitable reaction-the numbing, staggering, sorrowing realization of loss. This in turn was succeeded by a frenzied desire to go away from the Arrow-from everybody and everything-to some place where none of them would ever see her again.

She started toward the door, and met Parsons-who was looking for her.

He darted forward when he saw her, and grasped her by the shoulders.

"What has happened?" he demanded.