[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The Running W hands sent lead whining after the fleeing raiders until the uproar died away.Brant lowered his smoking Colt.“We got a couple of ’em,” he exulted.“I heard ’em hit the ground.Let’s have a look-see.Careful, now, they’re fangin’ sidewinders and deadly as a back-busted rattler.Don’t take a chance of leaning against a passing slug.Take it easy.”Cautiously, guns ready, the cowboys crept out of the shadows.On the ground at the mouth of the canyon lay what looked like two bundles of old clothes.Neither moved as the punchers approached.Brant took a chance and scratched a match.The tiny flare of light showed the two owl-hoots satisfactorily dead.“This one is shot to pieces,” he said, bending over the dead man.“The other’s drilled plumb center, too.Say, this hellion looks familiar to me.”“Boss,” exclaimed one of the hands, “it’s that jigger you had the wring with back at the Dead-fall, the feller Phil Doran called Porter.”“Darned if it isn’t,” Brant agreed, scratching another match “And I’ll bet a hatful of pesos he’s the hellion I spotted riding herd on us all day yesterday over here in the brush.Well, he horned into one game too many!”Dawn was breaking by the time the cowboys combed the wide-looped cows out of the canyon and started them back to the camp.When they got there, they found that the rest of the herd had been rounded up and was grazing quietly near the bedding ground.The night hawks had obeyed Brant’s order and skalleyhooted at the first sign of danger.Nobody had been hurt, but Brant grimly surveyed the bullet holes in the bedrolls beside the rekindled fire.“Snake-blooded bunch of hellions,” he told Webb.The old cowman removed his wide hat and mopped his face with a handkerchief.“Gives me the creeps to think of what would have happened if we’d been bedded down here instead of on that upper bench,” he said.“Son, you sure did a good chore and we all owe you a heap.How in blazes did you figger it out?”“Yesterday,” Brant explained, “I spotted a jigger over in the edge of the brush riding herd on us.He kept it up all day, and I had a hunch he wasn’t doing all that riding just to exercise his horse.I figured he was there to find out just where we were going to bed down for the night and to get the lay of the land.Then he would hightail to a meeting place with the rest of his bunch and give them the lowdown.Chances were they were riding higher up in the hills, out of sight.When we did make camp, the thing was a perfect natural from their viewpoint.That canyon mouth is only about a mile distant from our camp.A plumb dark night.They could cut out a nice bunch of cows, slide them into that canyon and make an easy getaway.They figured we would be too busy rounding up the rest of the herd to trail after them, and even if we did, everything would be in their favor.So I decided the only thing to do was outsmart those gents.I gambled on their heading for the canyon with the bunch they cut out.Not that it was much of a gamble—the canyon was about the only place they could go.I also had a notion their sort wouldn’t stop at a little thing like a cold-blooded killing or two.That’s why I shifted the camp to the upper bench and left the bedrolls down on the lower bench as a come-on.They fell for it, all right.”“Outsmarted ’em is right!” growled Webb.“They’re smartin’ right now, I betcha, what’s left of ’em.Figger you winged any more beside the two you downed?”“There was some tall yelling when we cut down on them,” Brant replied.“I’ve got a pretty good notion there was a punctured hide or two among the bunch that got away.”“Hope the hellions starve to death from leakin’ their vittles out the holes,” said Webb.“Well, mebbe we can make Dodge, now, without any more rukuses.”“Hope so,” agreed Brant.“We should make it before dark, if things go right.”Chapter FourSomebody once said, “The only difference between Dodge City and Hell is that you don’t have to worry about anybody runnin’ you outa Hell!”Which wasn’t much of an exaggeration when the Running W Trail herd rolled up to town.The “Cowboy Capital” was at the height of its prosperity [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]