Robert Bennet - Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation

Part of the fore quarters of the animal became visible to his excited gaze through a small gap in the screening bushes. The muzzle of his rifle wobbled all around the mark. Unable to steady it, he caught the sights as they wavered into line, and pulled the trigger.

The report of the shot was followed by a loud bawl and a violent crashing in the thicket. There could be no doubt that the animal had been hit and was seeking to escape. It was running across the top of the ridge towards the cañon. The hunter sprang around the head of his pony and threw up his rifle, which had automatically reloaded itself. As it came to his shoulder, the wounded animal burst out of cover. It was a yearling calf.

But the sportsman knew that he had shot a deer, and a deer was all he saw. He was now fairly shaking with the “fever.” His finger crooked convulsively on the automatic firing lever. Instantly a stream of bullets began to pour from the wildly wavering muzzle, and empty shells whirred up from the ejector like hornets.

Before the hunter could realize what was happening, his magazine was exhausted, the last cartridge fired, and the shell flipped out. But he paid no heed to this. His eyes were on the fleeing calf. His cartridges were smokeless. Through the slight haze above his rifle muzzle he saw the animal pitch forward and fall heavily upon the round of the ridge. It did not move.

Tugging at the bridle to quicken his horse’s pace, he hastened forward to examine his game. He was still so excited that he was almost upon the outstretched carcass before he noticed the odd scar on its side. He bent down and saw that the mark was a cattle brand seared on the hide with a hot iron.

His first impulse was to jump on his pony and ride off. He was about to set his foot in the stirrup when the apprehensive glance with which he was peering around shifted down to the cañon. His gaze traveled back from the near edge of the chasm, up the two hundred yards of slope, and rested on the yearling as though estimating its weight.

It was a fat, thoroughbred Hereford. He could not lift it on his pony, and he had no rope to use as a drag-line. He shook his head. But the pause had given him time to recover from his panic. He shrugged his shoulders, drew a silver-handled hunting knife, and awkwardly set about dressing his kill.

Three riders came galloping along the ridge towards the hunter. At sight of his pony the grizzled cowman in the lead signed to his companions and came to a sudden stop behind a clump of service-berry bushes. The others swerved in beside him, the bowlegged young puncher on the right with his hand at his hip.

“Jumping Jehosaphat!” he exulted. “We shore have got him, Mr. Knowles, the blasted–” His thin lips closed tight to shut in the oath as he turned his gaze on the lovely flushed face of the girl beside him. When his cold gray eyes met hers they lighted with a glow like that of fire through ice.

“You better stay here, Miss Chuckie,” he advised. “We’re going to cure that rustler.”

“But, Kid, what if–No, no! wait!” she cried at sight of his drawn Colt’s. “Daddy, stop him! The man may not be a rustler.”

“You heard the shooting,” answered the cowman.

“Yes, but he may have been after a deer,” answered the girl, lifting her lithe figure tiptoe in the stirrups of her man’s saddle to peer over the bushes.

“Deer?” rejoined the puncher. “Who’d be deer-hunting in July?”

“Then a bear. He fired fast enough,” remarked the girl.

“Not much chance of that round here,” said the cowman. “Still, it might be. At any rate, Kid, this time I want you to wait for me to ask questions before you cut loose.”

“If he don’t try any funny business,” qualified the puncher.

“Course,” assented Knowles. “Chuckie, you best stay back here.”

“Oh, no, Daddy. There’s only one man and between you and Kid–”

“ Sho! Come on, then, if you’re set on it. Kid, you circle to the right.”

The puncher wheeled his horse and rode off around the chaparral. The girl and Knowles, after a short wait, advanced upon the hunter. They were soon within a few yards of him and in plain view. His pony stopped browsing and raised its head to look at them. But the man was stooped over, with his face the other way, and the incessant, reverberating roar of the cañon muffled the tread of their horses on the dusty turf.

The puncher crashed through the corner of the thicket and pulled up on the top of the slope immediately opposite the hunter. The latter sprang to his feet. The puncher instantly covered him with his long-barreled revolver and snapped tersely: “Hands up!”

“My–ante!” gasped the hunter. “A–a road agent!”

But he did not throw up his hands. With the rash bravery of inexperience, he dropped his knife and snatched out his automatic pistol. On the instant the puncher’s big revolver roared. The pistol went spinning out of the hunter’s hand. Through the smoke of the shot the puncher leveled his weapon.

“Put up your hands!–put them up!” screamed the girl, urging her horse forward.

The hunter obeyed, none too soon. For several moments he stood rigid, glaring half dazed at the revolver muzzle and the cool hard face behind it. Then slowly he twisted about to see who it was had warned him. The girl had ridden up within a few feet.

“You–you tenderfoot !” she flung at him. “Are you locoed? Hadn’t you any more sense than to do that? Why, if Daddy hadn’t told Mr. Gowan to wait–”

“You shore would have got yours, you–rustler!” snapped the puncher. “It was you, though, Miss Chuckie–your being here.”

“But he’s not a rustler, Kid,” protested the girl. “Where are your eyes? Look at his riding togs. If they’re not tenderfoot, howling tenderfoot–!”

“Just the same, honey, he’s shot a yearling,” said Knowles, frowning at the culprit. “Suppose you let me do the questioning.”

“Ah–pardon me,” remarked the hunter, rebounding from apprehension to easy assurance at sight of the girl’s smile. “I would prefer to be third-degreed by the young lady. Permit me to salute the Queen of the Outlaws!”

He bent over the fingers of one hand to raise his silver-banded sombrero by its high peak. It left his head–and a bullet left the muzzle of the puncher’s revolver. A hole appeared low down in the side of the sombrero.

“That’ll do, Kid,” ordered the cowman. “No more hazing, even if he is a tenderfoot.”

“Tenderfoot?” replied Gowan, his mouth like a straight gash across his lean jaws. “How about his drawing on me–and how about your yearling? That bullet went just where it ought to ’ve gone with his hat down on his head.”

There was no jesting even of the grimmest quality in the puncher’s look and tone. He was very cool and quiet–and his Colt’s was leveled for another shot.

The hunter thrust up his hands as high as he could reach.

“You–you surely can’t intend to murder me!” he stammered, staring from the puncher to the cowman. “I’ll pay ransom–anything you ask! Don’t let him shoot me! I’m Lafayette Ashton–I’ll pay thousands–anything! My father is George Ashton, the great financier!”

“New York?” queried Knowles.

“No, no, Chicago! He–If only you’ll write to him!”

The girl burst into a ringing laugh. “Oh!” she cried, the moment she could speak, “Oh, Daddy! don’t you see? He really thinks we’re a bunch of wild and woolly bandits!”

The hunter looked uncertainly from her dimpled face to Gowan’s ready revolver. Turning sharply about to the cowman, he caught him in a reluctant grin. With a sudden spring, he placed the girl between himself and the scowling puncher. Behind this barrier of safety he swept off his hat and bowed to the girl with an exaggerated display of politeness that hinted at mockery.