The Heart of the Range Part 68

"Are we all right?" she persisted. "Look down there."

At this he turned his head and craned his neck.

"I guess," he said, stepping out, "we'd better boil this kettle a li'l faster."

She made no comment, but always she looked down the mountain side and watched, when the stubs gave her the opportunity, that ominous string of dots. She had never been hunted before.

They crossed the top of the mountain, keeping to the ridge of rock, and started down the northern slope. Here they pa.s.sed out of the burned-over area of underbrush and stubs and scuffed through brushless groves of fir and spruce where no gra.s.s grew and not a ray of suns.h.i.+ne struck the ground and the wind soughed always mournfully.

But here and there were comparatively open s.p.a.ces, gra.s.sy, drenched with suns.h.i.+ne, and spa.r.s.ely sprinkled with lovely mountain maples and solitary yellow pines. In the wider open s.p.a.ces they could see over the tops of the trees below them and catch glimpses of the way they must go.

A deep notch, almost a canon, grown up in spruce divided the mountain they were descending from the next one to the north. This next one thrust a rocky shoulder easterly. The valley where the hors.e.m.e.n rode bent round this shoulder in a curve measured in miles. They could not see the riders now.

"There's a trail just over the hill," said Racey, nodding toward the mountain across the notch. "It ain't been regularly used since the Daisy petered out in '73, but I guess the bridge is all right."

"And suppose it ain't all right?"

"We'll have to grow wings in a hurry," he said, soberly, thinking of the deep cleft spanned by the bridge. "Does this trail lead to Farewell?"

"Same thing--it'll take us to the Farewell trail if we wanted to go there, but we don't. We ain't got time. We'll stick to this trail till we get out of the Frying-Pans and then we'll head northeast for the Cross-in-a-box. That's the nearest place where I got friends. And I don't mind saying we'll be needing friends bad, me and you both."

"Suppose that posse reaches the trail and the bridge before we do?"

"Oh, I guess they won't. They have to go alla way round and we go straight mostly. Don't you worry. We'll make the riffle yet."

His voice was more confident than his brain. It was touch and go whether they would reach the trail and the bridge first. The posse in the valley--that was what would stack the cards against them. And if they should pa.s.s the bridge first, what then? It was at least thirty miles from the bridge to the Cross-in-a-box ranch-house. And there was only one horse. Indeed, the close squeak was still squeaking.

"Racey, you're limping!"

"Not me," he lied. "Stubbed my toe, tha.s.sall."

"Nothing of the kind. It's those tight boots. Here, you ride, and let me walk." So saying, she slipped to the ground.

As was natural the horse stopped with a jerk. So did Racey.

"You get into that saddle," he directed, sternly. "We ain't got time for any foolishness."

Foolishness! And she was only trying to be thoughtful. Foolishness!

She turned and climbed back into the saddle, and sat up straight, her backbone as stiff as a ramrod, and looked over his head and far away.

For the moment she was so hopping mad she forgot the danger they were in. They made their way down into the heavy growth of Engelmann spruce that filled the notch, crossed the floor of the notch, and began again to climb.

An hour later they crossed the top of the second mountain and saw far below them a long saddle back split in the middle by a narrow cleft.

At that distance it looked very narrow. In reality, it was forty feet wide. Racey stopped and swept with squinting eyes the place where he knew the bridge to be.

"See," he said, suddenly, pointing for Molly's benefit. "There's the Daisy trail. I can see her plain--to the left of that arrowhead bunch of trees. And the bridge is behind the trees."

"But I don't see any trail."

"Grown up in gra.s.s. That's why. It's behind the trees mostly, anyhow.

But she's there, the trail is. You can bet on it."

"I don't want to bet on it." Shortly. She was still mad at him. He had saved her life, he had succeeded in saving the family ranch, he had put her under eternal obligations, but he had called her thought for him foolishness. It was too much.

Yet all the time she was ashamed of herself. She knew that she was small and mean and narrow and deserved a spanking if any girl did. She wanted to cuff Racey, cuff him till his ears turned red and his head rang. For that is the way a woman feels when she loves a man and he has hurt her feelings. But she feels almost precisely the same way when she hates one who has. Truth it is that Love and Hate are close akin.

Down, down they dropped two thousand feet, and when they came out upon the fairly level top of the saddle back Racey mounted behind Molly.

"He'll have to carry double now," he explained. "She's two mile to the bridge, and my wind ain't good enough to run me two mile."

It was not his wind that was weak, it was his feet--his tortured, blistered feet that were two flaming aches. Later they would become numb. He wished they were numb now, and cursed silently the man who first invented cowboy boots. Every jog of the trotting horse whose back he bestrode was a twitching torture.

"We'll be at the bridge in another mile," he told her.

"Thank Heaven!"

Silent and gra.s.s-grown lay the Daisy trail when they came out upon it winding through a meagre plantation of cedars.

"No one's come along yet," vouchsafed Racey, turning into the trail after a swift glance at its trackless, undisturbed surface.

He tickled the horse with both spurs and stirred him into a gallop.

There was not much spring in that gallop. Racey weighed fully one hundred and seventy pounds without his clothes, Molly a hundred and twenty with all of hers, and the saddle, blanket, sack, rifle, and cartridges weighed a good sixty. On top of this weight pile many weary miles the horse had travelled since its last meal and you have what it was carrying. No wonder the gallop lacked spring.

"Bridge is just beyond those trees," said Racey in Molly's ear.

"The horse is nearly run out," was her comment.

"He ain't dead yet."

They rocked around the arrowhead grove of trees and saw the bridge before them--one stringer. There had been two stringers and adequate flooring when Racey had seen it last. The snows of the previous winter must have been heavy in the Frying-Pan Mountains.

Molly s.h.i.+vered at the sight of that lone stringer.

"The horse is done, and so are we," she muttered.

"Nothing like that," he told her, cheerfully. "There's one stringer left. Good enough for a squirrel, let alone two white folks."

"I--I couldn't," shuddered Molly.

They had stopped at the bridge head, Racey had dismounted, and she, was looking down into the dark mouth of the cleft with frightened eyes.

"It must be five hundred feet to the bottom," she whispered, her chin wobbling.

"Not more than four hundred," he said, rea.s.suringly. "And that log is a good strong four-foot log, and she's been shaved off with the broadaxe for layin' the flooring so we got a nice smooth path almost two feet wide."

In reality, that smooth path retained not a few of the spikes that had once held the flooring and it was no more than eighteen inches wide.

Racey gabbled on regardless. If chatter would do it, he'd get her mind off that four-hundred-foot drop.

"I cue-can't!" breathed Molly. "I cue-can't walk across on that lul-log! I'd fall off! I know I would!"