The Heart of the Range Part 69

"You ain't gonna walk across the log," he told her with a broad grin.

"I'll carry you pickaback. C'mon, Molly, slide off. That's right. Now when I stoop put yore arms round my neck. I'll stick my arms under yore legs. See, like this. Now yo're all right. Don't worry. I won't drop you. Close yore eyes and sit still, and you'll never know what's happening. Close 'em now while I walk round with you a li'l bit so's to get the hang of carryin' you."

She closed her eyes, and he began to walk about carrying her. At least she thought he was walking about. But when he stopped and she opened her eyes, she discovered that the horse was standing on the other side of the cleft. At first she did not understand.

"How on earth did the horse get over?" she asked in wonder.

"He didn't," Racey said, quietly, setting her down, "but we did. I carried you across while you had yore eyes shut. I told you you'd never know what was happenin'."

She sat down limply on the ground. Racey started back across the stringer to get the horse. He hurried, too. That posse they had seen in the valley! There was no telling where it was. It might be four miles away, or four hundred yards.

"C'mon, feller," said Racey, picking up the reins of the tired horse.

"And for Gawd's sake pick up yore feet! If you don't that dynamite is gonna make one awful mess at the bottom of the canon."

Dynamite! Mess! There was an idea. Although in order to spare Molly an extra worry for the time being, he had told her they would push on together, it had been his intention to hold the bridge with his rifle while Molly rode alone to the Cross-in-a-box for help. But those six sticks of dynamite would simplify the complex situation without difficulty.

He did not hurry the horse. He merely walked in front holding the bridle slackly. The horse followed him as good as gold--and picked up his feet at nearly every spike. Once or twice a hind hoof grazed a spike-head with a rasping sound that sent Racey's heart bouncing up into his throat. Lord, so much depended on a safe pa.s.sage!

For the first time in his eventful life Racey Dawson realized that he possessed a full and working set of nerves.

When they reached firm ground Racey flung the reins to Molly.

"Unpack the dynamite," he cried. "It's in the slicker."

With his bowie he began furiously to dig under the end of the stringer where it lay embedded in the earth. Within ten minutes he had a hole large enough and long enough to thrust in the whole of his arm. He made it a little longer and a little wider, and at the end he drove an offset. This last that there might be no risk of the charge blowing out through the hole.

When the hole was to his liking, he sat back on his haunches and grabbed the dynamite sticks Molly held out to him. With strings cut from his saddle, he tied the sticks into a bundle. Then he prepared his fuse and cap. In one of the sticks he made a hole. In this hole he firmly inserted the copper cap. Above the cap he tied the fuse to the bundle with several lappings of a saddle-string.

"There!" he exclaimed. "I guess that cap will stay put. You and the hoss get out of here, Molly. Go along the trail a couple of hundred yards or so. G'on. Get a move on. I'll be with you in a minute. Better leave my rifle."

Molly laid the Winchester on the gra.s.s beside him, mounted the horse, and departed reluctantly. She did not like to leave Racey now. She had burned out her "mad". She rode away chin on shoulder. The cedars swallowed her up.

Racey with careful caution stuffed the dynamite down the hole and into the offset. Then he shovelled in the earth with his hands and tamped it down with a rock.

Was that the clack of a hoof on stone? Faint and far away another hoof clacked. He reached up to his hatband for a match. There were no matches in his hatband. Feverishly he searched his pockets. Not a match--not a match anywhere!

He whipped out his sixshooter, held the muzzle close to the end of the fuse and fired. He had to fire three times before the fuse began to sparkle and spit.

Clearly it came to his ears, the unmistakable thudding of galloping hoofs on turf. The posse was riding for the bridge full tilt. He picked up his rifle and dodged in among the trees along the trail.

Forty yards from the mined stringer he met Molly riding back with a scared face.

"What is it?" she cried to him. "I heard shots! Oh, what is it?"

"Go back! Go back!" he bawled. "I only cut that fuse for three minutes."

Molly wheeled the horse and fled. Racey ran to where a windfall lay near the edge of the cleft and some forty yards from the stringer.

Behind the windfall he lay down, levered a cartridge into the chamber, and trained his rifle on the bridge head.

The galloping hors.e.m.e.n were not a hundred paces from the stringer when the dynamite let go with a soul-satisfying roar. Rocks, earth, chunks and splinters of wood flew up in advance of a rolling cloud of smoke that obscured the cleft from rim to rim.

A crash at the bottom of the narrow canon told Racey what had happened to that part of the stringer the dynamite had not destroyed.

Racey lowered the hammer of his rifle to the safety notch just as the posse began to approach the spot where the bridge had been. It approached on foot by ones and twos and from tree to tree. Racey could not see any one, but he could see the tree branches move here and there.

"I guess," muttered Racey, as he crawfished away from the windfall, "I guess that settles the cat-hop."

The sun was near its rising the following day when Racey and Molly, their one horse staggering with fatigue, reached the Cross-in-a-box.

Racey had walked all the distance he was humanly able to walk, but even so the horse had carried double the better part of twenty miles.

It had earned a rest.

So had Racey's feet.

"My Gawd, what a relief!" Racey muttered, and sat back and gingerly wiggled his toes.

"d.a.m.n shame you had to cut 'em up thataway," said Jack Richie, glancing at Racey's slit boots. "They look like new boots."

"It is and they are, but I couldn't get 'em off any other way, and I'll bet I won't be able to get another pair on inside a month. Lordy, man, did you ever think natural-born feet would swell like that?"

"You better soak them awhile," said Jack Richie. "C'mon out to the kitchen."

"Sh.o.r.e feels good," said Racey, when his swelled feet were immersed in a dishpan half full of tepid water. "Lookit, Jack, let Miss Dale have her sleep out, and to-morrow sometime send a couple of boys with her over to Moccasin Spring."

"Whatsa matter with you and one of the boys doing it?"

"Because I have to go to Piegan City."

"Huh?"

"Yep--Piegan City. I'm coming back, though, so you needn't worry about losing the hoss yo're gonna lend me."

"That's good. But--"

"And if any gents on hossback _should_ drop in on you and ask questions just remember that what they dunno won't hurt 'em."

Jack Richie nodded understandingly. "Trust me," he said. "As I see it, Miss Dale and you come in from the north, and--"

"Only me--you ain't seen any Miss Dale--and I only stopped long enough to borrow a fresh hoss and then rode away south."

"I know it all by heart," nodded Jack Richie.

"In about a week or ten days, maybe less," said Racey Dawson, "you'll know more than that. And so will a good many other folks."

CHAPTER x.x.x