Li'l Son-of-a-Gun

by J. Allan Dunn

LI'L SON-OF-A-GUN
A SANDY BOURKE STORY

by J. ALLAN DUNN
Author of “The Gold Lust,” “The Island of the Dead,” etc.

 

"STAN’ still, you Pete, you! Howd’ you-all expec’ me to catch him with you pawin’ an’ raisin’ a dust?”

Pete, favorite mount of Sandy Bourke, foreman of the Curly O, thus admonished, looked at his master with up-pricked ears and luminous, understanding eyes, snorted once in protest of his enforced idleness in a thicket of high-stemmed, leafless “fence-post” cactus, and stood quietly.

Sandy resumed his search for the elusive quarry which had shown itself once and then hidden in some cavity of the weathered trunks.

“You-all had betteh surrendeh, li’l bird,” said Sandy, “for I shore need you as a present fo’ li’l son-of-a-gun. I ain’t goin’ to huht you none. Ah! Got ye.” And his gantleted hand brought forth a protesting, tiny bunch of feathers, biting at the glove and blinking at the sunlight, presently resolving itself into a flustered but resigned birdlet, the dwarf cactus-owl of the dry belt.

Sandy pondered a minute over his capture, then stuffed the bottom of the empty rifle-holster on his saddle with his bandanna neckerchief, deposited the owl in it carefully as in a nest and capped the holster with dried mesquite.

“I don’ know as he can play with you much,” he said, tucking in the brush, “but dolls is awful sca’ce hereabouts an’ yo’re shore an amusin’ li’l cuss, ef it’s only to look at, for the li’l son-of-a-gun.”

The li’l son-of-a-gun was the two-year-old son of Barbara Redding, daughter of Superintendent Barton of the Curly O, now on a visit to the li’l son-of-a-gun’s grandfather and only grandparent, from the Redding standard-cattle ranch at Boville, on the Pecos River, New Mexico.

Sandy, who had been best man at the wedding, was one of John Redding, Junior’s,—full name John Barton Redding—godfathers. This was the first time he had seen his charge since the christening.

The cowboy had thought but lightly of his responsibilities until the baby, a week before, had toddled his way across the ranch-house veranda into Sandy’s heart by way of his forefinger, which the child had confidently clutched, looking into Sandy’s frankly admiring face with a “g-r-r, goo!” that brought forth from his delighted godfather the softly reiterated title, “The li’l son-of-a-gun; the li’l son-of-a-gun!”

Sandy Bourke had broken all of his own records by staying on the Curly O for over three years, most of the time as foreman. Superintendent Barton had begun to hopefully regard him as a fixture, but the touch of his godson’s clinging fingers had roused a yearning in Sandy’s heart-strings which he thought to assuage by his universal panacea for all trouble not physical—moving on.

Sandy, tender-hearted, yet woman-shy, as some dogs dread gunshot despite their instincts, called it the “saddle itch” and styled himself as born with the “roving heel.” In his heart he longed for a hearthside of his own, half conscious that he wanted some one to tend it for him, yet, unless his chivalry conquered his timidity, the threatened propinquity of a girl or the neighborhood of anything approaching sentiment found him hopelessly embarrassed, or, as he called it, “hog-tied an’ helpless.”

He had never been in love with Barbara Barton, but her romance, and its consequent wedding, had taken place under his eyes and in his heart, and found the latter lonesome. The fingers of the li’l son-of-a-gun had fixed his determination to apply his remedy.

He had resolved to put his savings and some well-earned extra sums and windfalls into a ranch in Wyoming, upon which he had long set his teams, a place of open range and sheltered pasturage amid the hills, where a crystal trout-stream ran the year round, willow-set, across open upland or through outcropping prairie.

His two saddle-chums, Mormon Peters and Sodawater Sam Manning, were to go with him as minor partners, as soon as the Spring round-up was over on the Curly O. Close pals were the three, of tested friendship—the only kind worth having—and the triumvirate, known as the “Three Musketeers of the Range,” were looking forward to the pride of self-ownership.

Sandy mounted Pete and jogged out of the cactus thicket ranchward. As he dropped easily down the slope toward the draw at the top of which stood the Curly O headquarters, he saw a horseman riding furiously toward him, and halted Pete for better inspection.

“It’s Mormon,” he muttered, “burnin’ leatheh to beat the band. He ought to be plumb ashamed of hisself with his weight on that li’l hawss. An’ no hat! He must be shore locoed.”

The man, an overstout cowboy—the Porthos of the trio—in blue shirt and leather chaparejos, galloped up, the pony covered with lather, his own bald head smoking with the evaporation of its sweat under the noon sun. He reined up with staring eyes and working lips about a tongue that refused to perform its office.

“What’s eatin’ you?” asked Sandy. “Quit makin’ motions with yore hands. I ain’t a deef-an’-dumb asylum. Hev’ you got a sunstroke? Talk, darn you, talk!”

“The kid!” gasped Mormon.

“Talk!” shouted the exasperated Sandy.

Mormon gulped and moistened his lips.

“Swiped! Kidnaped!” he cried.

“When? Where? Talk as we go.”

Sandy wheeled Pete by the side of Mormon’s panting pony.

“Off’n the verandy, ’bout an hour ago,” said Mormon. “Sam’s gone to Rubio to raise a posse an’ wire Redding. Barton’s prit’ nigh——”

But Pete, urged by unusual spurs, was flying up the draw, drumming the brown turf in great strides, his belly close to the ground.

“Move along there, hawss!” cried Sandy, low in his saddle. “Move along! Kidnaped! The pore li’l son-of-a-gunl”

II

CURLY O headquarters was in confusion. A dozen cowboys stood aimlessly about, watching the ranch-house, their ponies idle by the corral fence. One of them walked over to Sandy as he dismounted.

“We’ve rode all roun’ lookin’ for trail,” he said, “but we can’t find no sign.”

“Then of course they ain’t any,” replied Sandy with a note of sarcasm in his voice that seemed lost on the cow-hand. “Got them yearlings up?”

“Yep.”

“Then brand ’em. You ain’t helpin’ things any, talkin’ about it. Where’s Misteh Barton?”

“In the house.”

Sandy went toward the main house, Pete following, nosing at his shoulder.

“Stan’ there, hawss,” admonished Sandy, dropping the reins over the pony’s neck in the shade of an alamo-tree. “I wish some of them punchers had yore brains. Not one of ’em knows a jack-rabbit track from a woodchuck’s, an’ they’ve rode circus oveh any trail they was.”

He paused before the front veranda, Stetson in hand. A window was open and the sound of a woman’s sobs were plainly audible.

A look of distress came into Sandy’s face and he scratched at his tawny crop of hair in perplexity. Then he set his lean jaw, bringing out the muscle-bosses underneath the temples, and entered the house.

Barbara Redding was kneeling on the floor, her head buried in the lap of a matronly negress who patted her hair, repeating over and over the same sentence.

“Theah now, honey, it’ll all come right, pray de Lawd! Yes indeedy, honey lamb.”

Superintendent Barton, gray-haired, his face overlined with worry, was pacing up and down the room, a little teddy-bear doll swinging aimlessly in his right hand. His eyes lighted as he saw Sandy at the door.

“Ah, Bourke,” he said, “I thought they’d never find you.”

Barbara Redding raised her tear-stained face from the colored woman’s knees.

“Sandy!” she cried. “You’ll find him, Sandy? My baby—my baby!”

“Shore we’ll find him,” assured Sandy. “Don’t you take on so, Miss Bahba’a. How’d it all happen, Misteh Barton?”

“It was all my fault,” declared Barbara Redding. “I’d put baby on the veranda, out of the sun. He was sleepy, but he wanted his teddy-bear.” Her eyes overflowed as she noted the plaything that her harassed father still unconsciously held. “I went in to get it—” she struggled to choke down her sobs—“and mammy was asking me about some of his little things she was going to wash.”

“Theah now, honey, theah now, li’l lamb,” said the negress, as Barbara broke down again.

“You jest git a good grip on yo’self, Miss Bahba’a,” said Sandy. “We’ll find him.”

“Yes, Barbara,” said her father, “be brave.”

“There’s nothing more to tell,” his daughter answered him. “I’m—trying to be brave. When I went out again—in about fifteen minutes—he was gone from his crib. I called father——”

“That’s all there is to it, I think, Sandy,” said Barton. “I ran round the house and there was no one in sight. The men were over at the corral and they rode off to look for sign while Mormon was after you. I was going to send them out on a circuit when you came up.”

“M-mh,” said Sandy. “That won’t do much good, to have them whooping all over the country as if they was on a coyote drive. They’s only one way anybody could have come up an’ got away without bein’ seen, an’ that’s through Salt Cañon an’ by the barns. Got any idea who did it?”

“No, I can’t imagine.”

“I can,” said Sandy. “Remember the nester you ran off the creek-bottomland ’count of his having fresh beef that he didn’t own an’ couldn’t have paid fo’? I found the hide with the brand cut out of it. You let him go, ’count of his having a sick wife?”

“Hammond? Yes.”

“He and his sick wife rode thirty miles into Rubio the nex’ day without seemin’ to huht her none,” said Sandy grimly. “They’re in with a tough crowd now, chummin’ with the Mexicans in Spanishtown. An’ they’s been a heap of talk about gettin’ even with the Curly O. I didn’t pay much attention to what I heard in Rubio. I’ve heard talk before. But I didn’t figgeh on it breakin’ this way.”

Sandy’s face was set and his gray eyes hard and glittering.

“My baby!” moaned Barbara. “He’ll die. They’ll starve him.”

“They ain’t goin’ to huht him any,” said Sandy. “They’ll be scared to, knowin’ they’d have the whole State of Texas after ’em if they huht a hair of his li’l head. I know that brand of skunks. They’ll want a ransom—that’s their game, but they won’t huht the baby.”

“I’ll pay anything they ask,” said Barton distractedly, “anything. I’ve sent Sam to town to notify the sheriff and wire to Redding. But you know that.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Sandy. “Let’s get busy. Don’t you worry none, Miss Bahba’a. We’ll have him back safe and sound in no time.”

Barbara Redding rose to her feet.

“I trust you, Sandy,” she said, holding out her hand. “Boy’s father isn’t here——”

Her voice trembled and she caught her lower lip between her teeth.

Sandy took the nervous little hand in his own strong, lean fingers and smiled at her.

“Shore you can trust me,” he said. “Ain’t I his godfatheh?”

Once outside he drew a deep breath of relief and led the way to the office, the usually brisk and decided superintendent following dejectedly.

“’Pears like I can’t breathe, think or talk when they’s wimmin in trouble,” said Sandy to himself. “All a man can do is to say he’s sorry and make promises.”

He turned to Barton, sitting by his desk.

“The sheriff an’ his bunch can’t get here till afteh dark, Mr. Barton,” he said. “I ain’t overstrong on posses. You can hear or see ’em comin’ for ten miles as if they was a circus parade. Swear in a lot of fellers that mean well an’ ain’t got a lick o’ sense when it comes down to this sort of work. We may need ’em at a pinch, but they’s betteh ways of handlin’ this. You see they ain’t goin’ to be mo’ than two or three of ’em with Hammond in this kidnapin’ proposition, ’count of the split-up. Me an’ Mormon an’ Sam, if he gets back in time, can handle Misteh Hammond an’ his pals very nicely.

“Now they’s two things to do. One fo’ you an’ one fo’ me. I’m goin’ out to try an’ pick up trail. You stay heah an’ cheer up Miss Bahba’a—Mrs. Redding, I mean—an’ wait fo’ somethin’ to break about the ransom. They’ll be some kind of a message comin’ along soon. Mebbe befo’ dark, mebbe after. If you catch sight of the man who brings it, have him followed. Send Peters, he’s got a good hawss an’ some brains. Don’t hold the man—trail him. Don’t let any of the boys scare him off. He may lead Peters to somethin’ we can lay hold of.

“If you think it’s goin’ to ease Miss—Mrs. Redding—any, let the boys go out scoutin’, but I’d advise against it. It’ll worry her sick to have them comin’ in one at a time an’ say they ain’t found anythin’. Besides, if I strike somethin’ I may need all of ’em fresh.”

“I’ll take your advice, Sandy,” said Barton. “I wish I’d taken it about Hammond in the first place.”

“He’ll be in jail anyway ’fore the week’s out,” assured Sandy. “I’m off. You keep yore eyes open for the message. That’s their play—ransom.”

He walked quickly from the office to where Pete awaited him, and sprang into the saddle.

“That’ll give him somethin’ to do and keep him from thinkin’ too much, anyway, Pete,” he said, as he cantered over to the corral. “Oh, Mormon!”

The stout cowboy came over to the fence.

“Ain’t they nothin’ we kin do, Sandy?” he asked. “They don’t seem no sense in goin’ ahead brandin’. The boys don’t know an iron from a rope.”

“If Barton sends ’em out. Mormon, you tell ’em to scatteh an’ keep away from Salt Cañon. Tell ’em to keep clear of the ranch till I come back. You stick aroun’. You an’ Sam an’ me’s goin’ to take a hand in this by our lonesomes, I think. Don’t let any excited idiot take Pete. I’m changin’ to Goldie, an’ I’ll need him fresh later. Get yore hawss rested up good an’ save a mount for Sam. Give ’em all three some grain, I’m goin’ to put Pete in the barn.”

Sandy turned Pete loose in a stall and transferred his saddle to his second-string pony, a bright bay mare.

He passed between the spacious out-buildings and followed a stream that led into a pocket cañon, rapidly narrowing with mounting cliffs till there was barely room to pass dry-shod along the stony borders of the creek.

SANDY set the mare at a swift walk, her hoofs ringing on the rocks. “This thing must have been thought out,” said Sandy, talking half to himself, half to his mount, as was his wont. “Timed it too. ’Leven o’clock with no one about the ranch an’ the kid alone on the verandy. They may have been layin’ round for two or three days for the right minnit. If anybody’d seen ’em—it’s a cinch it wasn’t Hammond—they’d have been lookin’ fo’ work!”

Presently he crossed the stream and dismounted at the foot of a narrow trail that gave the only exit to the rim of the cañon.

“This is the only way out, hawss,” he said as he scrutinized the ground closely for dislodged shale or pebbles.

Suddenly he straightened up with a grunt and remounted.

“Up you go, lady,” he said, setting the mare at the steep cliff.

She went at it like a cat, half scrambling, half leaping up the dim trail with straining haunches.

At the top Sandy halted. A plateau sloped southward, set with clumps of chapparal and tall cactus thickets. To north and West were scattered mesas of upstanding cliff, rapidly assembling into a more solid all, the ramparts of barren mountains. Far to the south some blue hills lifted in Mexico, beyond the Rio Grande,

Sandy set the mare at a fox-trot, following readily the marks of a hurriedly ridden horse, showing plainly to his practised eyes in the loose, shallow soil. Presently he reined in. Two more sets of hoof-marks had come from the maze of a cactus thicket to join the first.

“Pretty open trail?” mused Sandy. “They must have reckoned on a good staht.”

In the distance a faint, yellowish cloud was hovering close to the ground.

Sandy slapped his thigh.

“Dust!” he exclaimed. “They’ve stampeded the cattle. Some one’s got brains in that outfit. I thought that trail was too open to be right.”

He set the willing mare to a gallop in the direction of the cloud. In half an hour it was close upon him, shifting and slowly clearing in the still, hot air. Soon he was riding in a mêlée of tracks in which the ones he was following were indistinguishably intermingled. The mare snorted at the sting of the dust in her open nostrils as they reached the dissipating cloud, and lengthened her stride as they passed from soil on to a stony floor, paved roughly with blocks of chalcedony.

In half an hour more he reached the herd of steers, bearing the brand of the Curly O (“Q”), badly blown, their eyes still staring, slowly drifting back to their home feeding-grounds at the mouth of Salt Creek Cañon.

Sandy groaned.

“That lets us out, Goldie, hawss,” he said. “Goin’ south, they was. If they’ve crossed the Rio it’s goin’ to complicate mattehs. Then, again, it may be a bluff. They may have ridden out anywheres for five mile back, an’ doubled to the mountains.”

He kept on to where the cattle had milled before they started homeward, and rode in a wide arc in the hope of finding patches of softer topsoil that might hold trail. But there were none to be found, and Sandy reluctantly turned ranchward.

“They’s still the ransom to work on, Goldie, hawss,” he said. “That’s the best bet of the layout, anyways. Move along, li’l hawss. I wonder if he’s hungry, the pore li’l son-of-a-gun.”

III

IT WAS getting dusk when Sandy reached the ranch. As he rode round the barns, Barton and Mormon ran toward him.

He leaned from the saddle at the sight of their excited faces.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Come to the office,” said Barton. “Barbara’s lying down. We’ve got a message.

“Mexican Joe brought it,” he went on. “You know him?”

“Man that’s been cuttin’ firewood on the A-bar-A?”

Barton nodded.

“He brought this,” he said. “Claimed a man he didn’t know gave him a dollar to bring it to me.”

“What time?” asked Sandy, taking the square of paper.

“He rode in about an hour ago. The man met him on the road five miles down,” he said. “I gave him another dollar and he left. Peters is trailing him.”

“That’s good,” said Sandy. “He may run on to somethin’, though I doubt it. This thing’s been planned. Probably that Mexican’s mixed up with it. No tellin’. Anyway they ain’t aimin’ to leave open trails. I lost mine in a bunch of our cattle.”

He went to the window for better light, reading the note aloud:

 

Dere sir weve got the kid. If you reckon him worth five thousand dollars you fetch it to Chimney Rock termorrer and leav it on the ledg at the bottom of the rock. Come as soon as you like after sun-up. Not before. Dont bring no one with you neither. If the coast is cleer we git the munney and you git the kid inside of twenty fore hours. Better you let us git clear or you dont git the kid. Over.

 

The other side of the sheet bore eight scrawling words

 

We wont hurt the kid if you hurry.

 

“I haven’t got five hundred dollars on the ranch, much less five thousand,” said Barton. “I can get it in Rubio, I suppose, and get back before sunup.”

Sandy was sitting on the office desk, musing.

“Chimney Rock,” he said. “I knew they was some one with brains in that outfit. They ain’t a spear of coveh fo’ a mile either ways of it. No place between the Chimney an the mountains fo’ anything bigger ’n a horn’ toad to squat. Hm-m——”

He broke off, scratching his head perplexedly.

“I’ll get the money,” said Barton. “I can drive down in three hours, raise it, get a fresh horse and come back with Redding, He’ll be in on the night train.”

“Made up your mind to pay the ransom?” asked Sandy.

Barton, who had recovered much of his poise and decisive action, nodded.

“I’ve got to trust them,” he said. “Barbara would never forgive me, or Redding, if I didn’t take the risk. Five thousand doesn’t mean much, Sandy, in a case like this.”

“No objection if I get it back—an’ the baby?” asked Sandy.

Barton looked at him. The cowboy had lit a cigarette and was watching the smoke as he exhaled it.

“They’s no moon tonight, is they?” asked Sandy.

“Moon! I’d drive through pitch,” said Barton a trifle testily. “What’s the moon got to do with it? Of course I trust you, Sandy, but I’d rather have the money paid, ten times over, than endanger the life of that baby.”

“You know me, Misteh Barton,” said Sandy, quietly walking over to his superintendent and facing him. “I ain’t goin’ to do nothin’ to gum up the cards in this game. The hand’s goin’ to be played out at Chimney Rock. If my scheme don’t work, I’ll know long befo’ mornin’, an’ you can go ahead with the deal.

“You’ll meet the posse on the way. Don’t tell the sheriff about the note from the Mexican unless you have to. Tell Sam to repoht to me. We’ve got to keep them an’ our boys away from Chimney Rock in any case. Long’s you’ve decided to pay the money you’ve got to have that neighbo’hood clear of any one ’cept yourself from the time it’s light till they come fo’ the money.

“Let’s get something to eat. We’ll all need it. Then you hitch up an’ staht fo’ Rubio.”

“My God, Sandy!” exclaimed Barton, grasping his foreman’s hand, his face very old in the afterglow despite the ruddy reflection that poured in through the window “It’s going to be hard to wait. But I promised Barbara I’d pay the ransom. I couldn’t face her if—if——”

“Neither could I,” answered Sandy. “I ain’t got all my plans figgehed out just yet, but I’ve got an idea. I don’t intend to let that li’l son-of-a-gun be kep’ away from his motheh more’n one night.”

IV

A LITTLE after midnight strange sounds issued from the black gullet of the ravine that was the only entrance to the roughly triangular, barren plain in the center of which was the weather-sculptured column of sandstone known as Chimney Rock. A scraping shuffle and the occasional tinkle of steel hoof upon flinty rock proclaimed the passage of horses through the draw.

The stars glittered brightly in the rare air. The cliff walls were vaguely distinguishable. Hugging close to the left-hand wall, three horsemen trotted briskly along until they had reached midway of that side of the triangle, disappearing into a narrow cleft that led back some fifteen feet, then angled sharply for about the same distance.

There was a short pause, then one horse, carrying double, emerged from the cliff. Behind it, attached to the saddle-horn by ropes, dragged a bundle of dried mesquite, obliterating all tracks as it swept the hard plain. The two riders were silent as they headed their mount for the dim loom of the sandstone column, a mile away.

Arrived at it, the horse was led upon the ledge and close to the pillar. One man mounted, kneeling. then standing in the saddle. Clinging like a lizard to the crevices and bosses of the column, he disappeared over the parapet at the summit. A lariat came flickering down, to which the second rider attached a rifle, which was drawn carefully up.

The man at the base of Chimney Rock remounted and rode back cliffward, the brush of dried mesquite still trailing behind the horise.

SUPERINTENDENT BARTON, weary-eyed and saddle-worn, loped his roan across the plain toward Chimney Rock. In his breast was a wallet with five thousand dollars in bills gathered hastily from friends and sympathizers in Rubio.

Back at the Curly O was the sheriff’s posse, strongly disapproving of the payment of the ransom, but persuaded to wait the twenty-four hours before commencing a universal search for the kidnapers, and Redding, endeavoring to comfort his distracted wife, who counted the minutes that must pass before her baby was restored to her in a desperate effort at calmness, based in no small measure on confidence in Sandy Bourke, long since established.

As Barton rode toward the column, the fingers of the rising sun, diffidently touching the summits of the cliffs, crept down until the rose mantle covered the purple vestment of the night. Chimney Rock sent a long shadow westward as he laid the wallet with the money on the ledge that formed the base of the pillar, and, with a sigh, turned back to the ranch.

Out from the cliffs, following the pointer of the column’s shadow, came a man on a calico pony, serape wrapped against the chilly dawn, smoking a cigarette as his dark eyes, beady and glittering as those of a rattlesnake, surveyed the plain.

He smoked out one cigarette and replaced it, dropping his fingers again to the rifle he carried across the pommel of his saddle.

“No signs of trouble,” he muttered to himself in Mexican. “And the gringo fool has left the money. Good!”

“Hands up!”

The astounded Mexican reined in instinctively at the sharp command that seemed to have fallen from the sky.

“Buene diez, hombre,” said a smoothly mocking voice. “Here I am. Hoist yo’ hands!”

Sancho Padilla turned his beady eyes upward to where the muzzle of a Winchester protruded from the parapet of Chimney Rock. It seemed to be targeted between his black brows. The morning light was clear and his eyesight good. He could distinguish the unwavering sight, and, back of it, a pair of eyes that held a menacing gleam.

“Madre de Dios!” he muttered, started to cross himself involuntarily, and stopped the motion with a shudder.

Out from the eastern cliffs raced three horses, two of them mounted, the third following free, its reins behind the saddle-horn.

Padilla’s eyes glanced rapidly from side to side as Mormon and Sam covered him on right and left.

“Git down!” cried the voice from the top of the rock. “Coveh him, Mormon! Sam, come oveh here an’ steady this rope.”

Sandy swiftly descend the column and shook the loop of his lariat from the projection about which he had snubbed it. Then he rolled a cigarette and lit it, inhaling luxuriously, seated on the ledge beside the wallet that Barton had left.

“Didn’t dare to smoke one all night,” he said. “Tie him up good, Sam. Now hombre, you an’ me’s goin’ to hold a li’l conversation.”

Half an hour later, the disgruntled Padilla, his arms tied behind him, rode reluctantly toward the cliffs whence he had come, escorted by the three cowboys, who regaled him with threats of reprisal in case of treachery.

“I’ve seen both of ’em,” summed up Sandy in a casual tone. “Afteh the men had cashed in, but I neveh officiated—yet. I don’t know which lasts the longest. ’Pends on the weather.”

“We might sew him up in a green hide, that depends on the time of day as to how quick it dries up. Or we might find a rattler an’ leash him to a saddle-strip. You see,” he addressed the shuddering Mexican directly, “we buries you, up to the neck, an’ pegs out the rattler just out of reach. At sight of yore ugly face he natcherly gits mad an’ tries to stick his fangs in it. Mebbe a cloudburst comes along an’ soaks the strip. Then it’s oveh in a hurry. If it keeps dry, yo’re apt to be uncomf’t’ble a while longer.

“Mebbe we can think up somethin’ betteh. The point is, if you don’t take us pronto to where Hammond and yore other skunk of a pardner’s hidin’ out with the kid, something’s goin’ to happen to you-all. Sabe?”

“Madre de Dios! Madre de Dios!” repeated Padilla, his face tallow-hued, his teeth chattering. “I show you. Then you let me go?”

Sandy looked at him with open contempt.

“You set a heap mo’ value on yore hide than it’s worth,” he said. “You can vamose afteh we git the kid, but don’t make any mistakes.”

The Mexican shot an evil look at his captor from his narrow-slitted eyes and shrugged his bound shoulders as he answered:

“Bueno. Yo sabe.”

V

THE sun was well up when the three cowboys and their unwilling guide neared the western verge of the big tableland. The ground was hard and rocky with but little vegetation, outcrops of weathered stone forming the only shade. They found a well of slightly bitter water, deepened in its natural basin by long-forgotten tribes, and made good travel of it despite the beat.

As they came close to the edge of the great cliffs, glimpsing the plain beneath, set with mesas, dotted here and there with ranches, rolling down to the Rio Grande, Padilla counseled caution. He apparently thoroughly appreciated his precarious situation and had no desire to run further risk for himself by being discovered by his fellow kidnapers in his present company.

The brink of the tableland was etched deep with cañons and ravines, with side-gulches leading from them, that forced them to occasional detours. In some of these, scrub-pines grew, and here and there they could see the gleam of streams hastening down to swell the Rio Grande.

Padilla surveyed his direction narrowly as they rode. Nodding sullenly toward a cleft that cut into the cliffs in the shape of a long U, he announced that they had arrived.

“In cañon you see cave by trail on either side,” he said. “Hammond there.”

Sandy looked at him keenly, but the Mexican met his glance defiantly.

“All right,” said Sandy. “Git down.”

He left Mormon and Sam to guard their prisoner in the scant shadow of a pile of granite and crossed on foot to the little cañon, rifle in hand, stepping lightly on the balls of his feet, then, prone on his stomach, wriggling like a snake to the edge.

He paused to carefully remove some loose pebbles, and, resting on his elbows, looked down.

The pocket cañon fell steeply for nearly a thousand feet. Below him a narrow trail showed, winding around the curve of the U, and descending gradually on the other side to the bottom of the ravine. In places the trail was broken by landslides, making any exit difficult, if not impossible.

It was very quiet, the air soundless, save for the shrilling of the cicadas. A shadow drifted over the cañon from a buzzard soaring high above him.

Sandy noted where, on his side, the trail joined the rim, not far to his left, and inched closer, searching the track across the cañon for the cave the Mexican had spoken of. Pines and chapparal grew on the less abrupt pitches, throwing shadows that made his task difficult.

He drew back from the edge, planning to shift his position. A little wailing cry floated up to him and he peered down once more.

Up the trail across the cañon toddled a tiny white figure, crying as it ran as fast as it could on uncertain, inadequate, if sturdy, little legs. Out from the tangled shadows of some brush close by, a man darted in pursuit.

“It’s li’I son-of-a-gun!” exclaimed Sandy softly, feeling for his rifle.

Before he could give thought to aim, the man roughly grasped the child by the arm, shaking it as he picked it up in his arms, and retraced his steps.

The neigh of a horse sounded, faint but shrilly clear, back of Sandy. The man with the child turned, showing a heavily bearded face, and stared intently at the cliff where Sandy, cursing under his breath, crouched. Then he ran swiftly down the path and disappeared beneath the shadows into the face of the rock.

“It’s that —— greaser’s hawss,” muttered Sandy, looking from the undercurve of a boulder.

He lay prone a moment longer, making out the narrow fissure in which the man had vanished, partly curtained by the tangle of vines and scrub. Then he edged back and rejoined his chums.

“You find?” asked the Mexican, showing his teeth in a mirthless smile. “Si? Bueno! Now I go.”

“Not yet,” replied Sandy shortly. “And keep your mouth shut.”

Padilla looked at him furtively, a glint of amused triumph in his glance.

Sandy sat with half-closed eyes smoking a thoughtful cigarette.

“It’s Hammond all right,” he announced at length to his patiently waiting chums. “I saw him an’ the kid. He heard that Pinto nicker—” Sandy looked reproachfully at Mormon and Sam—“an’ suspicioned somethin’. But he didn’t see me.”

“Why didn’t you plug him?” asked Sam.

“An’ kill the kid? He was packin’ him. The li’l son-of-a-gun was tryin’ fo’ a git-away on his own account.”

He finished his cigarette in silence and sat in the shadow of the rocks, scratching his head in the hope of stimulating the thoughts within.

“He might have recognized the neigh of that spavined, loud-mouthed cayuse,” he said slowly—“probably did. But he warn’t takin’ any chances. We’ve got ’em pocketed. I don’t believe you can git down that cañon, the way it looks.”

“No, señor,” broke in Padilla. “You can not. The trail is gone. It is old. Once they thought to find quicksilver there. You say truly, they are in a pocket. So then—you let me go to them. I shall say it is all right. We shall come out, and you shall wait where the trail comes up here. Then——”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Thet sounds reasonable, Sandy,” said Mormon. “Ef they started to make any breaks we could round ’em up easy enough. We got ’em covered all the way, ain’t we?”

“Sure,” said Sam. “Sounds good to me. Why not?”

“It sounds all right,” agreed Sandy. “But I shore hate to trust that greaser out of my sight.”

The Mexican shrugged his bound shoulders once more.

“The child will want its mother,” he suggested. “Maybe it is sick. Quien sabe? Only—” his eyelids narrowed—“I must have the money to take with me, or they will not come out.”

Sandy shifted on his haunches to face Padilla.

“Sam,” he said, “you snake oveh to the edge an’ git a bead on that cave. It’s right under a couple of screw-pines an’ some brush. Pritty hard to make out at first. If two of ’em comes out, git busy. Look out for the kid.

“Now then,” he said to Padilla, “you tell me again just what yore scheme is.”

The Mexican, forced to accept the steely challenge of Sandy’s eyes, spoke hesitatingly.

“It is simple, señor. I go to the cave with the money. Everything is bueno, muy bueno. We leave, as we hav’ plan, to take the child to some one, a woman, who will bring it to the ranch tomorrow. Only, you hide, an’ when we come—han’s up! It is easy, they can not get out of the cave Your amigo is there to watch.”

Sandy, staring steadily at Padilla saw the pupils of his eyes dilate and contract in swift movement for the fraction of a second as he uttered the last sentence.

“No!” cried Sandy, springing to his feet. “Yo’re lyin’. I read it plain in yore eyes. They’s a trick somewheres. Git up! Stan’ up against the rock!”

He stood in front of the crestfallen Padilla, who tried to maintain his assurance with scant success, and, slipping one of his Colts from its holster, jabbed it into the Mexican’s stomach. Padilla shrank against the rock, turning his head to one side.

“You look at me,” commanded Sandy, “or this is the end of you. They’s only one answer to this. They’s a way out of that cave.”

The pupils of Padilla’s eyes oscillated despite his effort to control them.

“I thought so,” said Sandy, while Mormon looked on in astonishment. “An’ you wanted we should let you go in there with the money and tell ’em it was muy bueno? When a man double-crosses me, hombre,” he went on ominously, “he does it once. Sabe? Just once.”

He thrust his face with its menacing eyes and set jaw close to the Mexican’s, upon whose gray forehead the sweat was breaking in cold beads.

“Now then,” he snapped, his words sounding like the cracks of a whip, “where’s that cave let-out?”

“Don’t shoot, señor," whined Padilla. “Por l’amor de Dios, don’t shoot.”

“Stan’ up on yore laigs,” said Sandy. “I ain’t goin’ to shoot ye if I can use you.”

“Madre de Dios!” whimpered the Mexican, his knees trembling.

“Talk fast an’ talk American!” commanded Sandy, punctuating his sentences with jabs of the pistol. “This triggeh’s mighty easy an’ I’m gettin’ nervous.”

“The cave,” gasped Padilla, moistening ashen lips, “it open into the next cañon—to the north—beyond this one.”

“Is that the only way out?” demanded Sandy.

Padilla nodded southward to the plain and the distant Rio Grande.

“No other way out, señor,” he said. “Only through the cave to the next cañon, and so to the plain.”

“Come on!” cried Sandy. “Git him on his hawss, Mormon. We’ll cut ’em off. Tie the greaser’s laigs under him. Give him one hand. He’s got to ride some.”

“Thought you said we couldn’t git down thataway,” said Mormon, lashing the Mexican’s ankles.

Sandy, leading Sam’s horse by the bridle, looked at his chum with raised eyebrows.

“We got to,” he said.

VI

THEY hit the trail of the first cañon where it led from the rim close to where Sandy had first located the cave and galloped furiously around the loop of the U.

At the mouth of the cave Sandy halted the little cavalcade.

“You stay here, case they double back, Mormon,” he ordered. “An’ keep that greaser with you. If nothin’ breaks inside a couple of hours, take him back to the ranch.”

“Señor,” protested Padilla, “you said that——”

“I played square with you as long as you did with me,” said Sandy. “That’s all. If they is any trouble stahts, Mormon, shoot him first.”

“I shore hate to miss all the fun,” said Mormon ruefully.

“Some one’s got to stay,” said Sandy. “Yo’re too heavy. Mormon, for the kind of ridin’ we’ve got ahead of us. Come on, Sam.”

The two plunged down the almost-effaced trail, Sandy in the lead, on Pete.

The horses snorted as they scrambled across piles of loose debris and rotten granite that went pounding and crashing into the depths of the ravine, leaping across water-worn fissures with treacherous take-off and recover, led here and there by their masters ’round or above great threatening boulders, sliding a-squat on their haunches, clambering, hurrying, galloping at last to the plain and racing, hard-pressed but game, along the cliffs to the entrance of the next cañon from which the kidnapers must emerge, if the Mexican’s confession was a true one, which Sandy believed it was.

A creek, still full from the Winter supply ran close to one wall of the cañon, fringed by willows and pines that climbed the slope. Between the stream and the opposing cliff, cactus blocked any direct passage from the ravine, and there were no signs of a regular trail.

Sandy dismounted. Pete stood, blown, on wide-planted, trembling legs, his flanks heaving.

“Po’ li’l hawss,” said Sandy, reaching up one hand from where he knelt on the ground, to rub Pete’s nose. “Yo’re some mile-eater an’ cliff-climbeh, Petie.

“Clim’ up a ways, Sam,” he said, “an’ see if you can sight ’em. They haven’t come out yet.”

He set his ear close to the earth. A dull thudding sounded. Sam came hurrying down the sidehill.

“Two of ’em, ridin’ like the devil!” he announced. “One of ’em’s got the kid in his arms.”

“All right,” said Sandy. “We’ll handle ’em as they come out. Take that cactus, Sam. I’ll take this. Betteh mount.”

They took up their places either side of the opening which presented the only outlet from the cañon through the maze of chapparal and cactus. Sandy stood by the side of his horse, taking his lariat from the saddle-strips and uncoiling it.

Pete rubbed his head against his master’s chest and Sandy dropped the rope for a moment to scratch him behind the ears with one hand, while the other caressed the soft muzzle.

“Po’ li’l hawss!” said Sandy. “Prit’ nigh tuckehed out, ain’t ye? An’ it’s a long ways home. I’m jest askin’ you fo’ one mo’ li’l bu’st of speed, Pete. An’ when we git back, they’s goin’ to be pantry-food for you for supper, you ol’ Piute, pie-eatin’ Pete, you!”

“What you-all doing with the rope, Sandy?” called across Sam in a low voice. “Goin’ to stretch it?”

“No,” answered Sandy, carefully overhauling the lariat. “When they come out we’ll throw down the rifles on ’em. If they don’t stop, plug the one without the kid. I’ll handle Hammond.”

He remounted and sat like a statue on Pete while the drumming of flying hoofs sounded closer and closer. In his head the thoughts were swiftly ranging. Hammond, carrying the child, was safe from gunshot. It was a moot question whether he could run him down on Pete, who was still laboring for breath. And there was always the question of what the desperate man might do to the child if hard put to it.

The safety of the baby demanded quick action, and he prepared to take a chance that only his skill rendered possible, a trick that the cowmen sometimes played on each other in their rough play-time frolics.

Twisting and turning among the cactus thickets came two riders, the foremost hugging a child to his breast with one arm, the second quirting viciously at a laboring horse.

“Halt!” cried the two cowboys simultaneously, leveling their rifles.

With an oath the second man felt for his pistol, setting spurs to his stumbling horse. Sam’s Winchester spat and the kidnapper swerved in his saddle, clutching at the horn. A second shot brought the horse crashing to the ground, throwing the rider heavily. Sam dismounted and walked toward him, carrying his rifle at his hip. Sandy fired from the saddle and the reins fell from Hammond’s right hand to his horse’s neck. The outlaw cursed as the bullet pierced his wrist, dropped his quirt and clasped the child in both arms, urging on the animal with knee and spur and voice.

Sandy hesitated a second, his finger on the trigger, half tempted to fire again, reluctant to adopt his last expedient. Then he flung his rifle into the cactus and started in pursuit, sending out his lariat in widening circles as he rode.

Pete, fired with the chase, responded gallantly, gaining leap by leap in the desperate spurt his master called for, racing directly behind the other horse until both were in exact line. Sandy kept him there until both were free of the cactus. Then his lips tightened and his arm shot out.

The rope coils flew ahead, straightened with the loop, rigid as wire, poised for an eye-wink before it fell, settling inexorably, pinioning Hammond’s arms tightly about the child. Sandy snubbed the rope to his horn and Pete stood rigid to the shock as Hammond hurtled from the saddle, dragged squarely over the cantle free of the stirrups landing with a smash upon neck and shoulders on the soft dirt.

There was a cloud of dust into which Sandy, swiftly springing from his saddle, ran, pistol in hand, while Pete maintained the tension of the lariat.

The man lay senseless from the unexpected shock. Sandy hastened to throw off the rope and lift the arms that had involuntarily cushioned the child in safety. He picked up the baby and held it, frightened, whimpering, but unhurt, on his left arm and stood with ready gun surveying Hammond.

“Yore neck wasn’t meant to be broken that way,” he said, as the man moaned and opened his eyes.

“Here, Sam—” as the latter joined him, the second man, shot through the shoulder, walking sullenly ahead of him—“you handle these two. You’ll have to mount ’em on one hawss. Betteh take ’em oveh to the A-bar-A—it’s shorter. I’ll take care of the kid.”

VII

THE sheriff’s posse, swelled by the cowboys of the Curly O under the direction of Mormon who had brought in the Mexican to the ranch, rode swiftly through the gathering dusk.

Fast as they sped, ahead of them galloped Barbara and her husband, closely followed by Barton. As they topped a rise they drew rein for an instant to determine their direction.

“Hush,” said Barbara, her hand on her husband’s arm. “Listen.”

Through the fragrant sage in the twilight, beneath the brightening stars, came a tired horse and its master, who held a little bundle close cuddled in one arm. A deep voice crooned tenderly:

 

“Said the coyote to the ca’f,
‘Yore motheh was a fr’end of mine,’
I loved her like my otheh ha’f
An’ aim to treat ye jes’ as fine.’”

 

“Sandy!” called Barbara Redding, her eager eyes outmatching any of the stars. “Sandy!”

The tired horse pricked up its ears and whinnied.

“Hush up, Pete,” said Sandy. “Here he is, Miss Bahba’a. The li’l son-of-a-gun’s asleep.”