The Sheriff of Badger Part 21

Indeed, her devotion was so p.r.o.nounced that the entire sentiment of Badger underwent a change. The married ladies came to the tardy conclusion that Miss Ferrier belonged to the sisterhood of good women; none of the males had ever doubted it; the whole town paid tribute to her conduct, and their indignation against the sheriff's a.s.sailant waxed correspondingly.

At the beginning of the first week of convalescence, the Floyds arrived in Badger from the Lazy L. Mrs. Floyd was hampered by no scruples on the score of false modesty; if her husband did not object--if her Tom understood--what mattered it about the rest of the world? So, straight to Lafe's bedside she went.

"Lafe! Dear old Lafe," she exclaimed, when she saw the unnatural pallor of his face.

Hetty was standing at the other side of the bed. She tried bravely not to stiffen towards their visitor when she saw her kneel and take Lafe's hand, but some subtle sense of divination--or perhaps it was that Mrs.

Floyd was so pretty--made her reception frigid. Mrs. Floyd glanced quickly into her face, then seized her impetuously, crying: "Don't. Oh, please don't. Lafe and I were babies together."

Whereupon the amazed patient beheld Hetty clasp the smaller woman in her arms, and the two took to weeping.

This must have been excellent for his complaint, because the sheriff mended rapidly from that date. It was not long before he went about as usual, although a long strip of plaster adorned one ear. His first care was to talk with the proprietor of the Fas.h.i.+on, who said: "The hammer was on the wrong chamber? Why, Lafe, surely you don't think--"

That was exactly what the sheriff thought. It ended in the saloonkeeper leaving town in haste. Then the sheriff set quietly to work to ascertain whither Moffatt had flown for refuge. It would be so warm for him along the Border now, that a haven would be difficult.

"We'd best to wait a mite yet, Hetty," he told his fiancee again.

"Supposing he was to get me? No, no. It's either me or him. So let's just keep the wedding off a while, hon, and then this'll all be straightened out."

"Oh--all right."

"You see, hon, I want to have a clean slate," he went on rather lamely.

"Don't you understand? Before we get married, I aim to throw up this job of sheriff and take to running cattle with ol' Horne."

"Huh-huh."

"Don't look that way, hon. Steve, he's the last. I'll go get him and then I'll have done what they put me in for."

"Oh, of course, if you think more of the people who elected you than you do of me," said Hetty.

For a moment he seemed taken aback. Then his face cleared and he swept Hetty into his arms.

He did not have long to wait for news of the outlaw. A telegram came from Floyd of the Lazy L.

Steve Moffatt in Lost Springs mountains. Heading for the Jug.

Killed Pablo Jiminez to-day while running off bunch of horses.

Horne and I offer five hundred reward for him.

It was because of this wire that the sheriff rode up a canon in Lost Springs on a cool October afternoon. The wind played through the live-oaks and scrub-cedar and went whistling upward to be lost among the solemn peaks. Some cattle were watering at a shallow hole. A ground squirrel scurried across his front. From all about came the soft, mournful cooing of wild doves.

All morning he had been climbing. Sometimes he traveled three miles to gain a mile of distance; winding upward to high mesas, skirting them and descending into another canon nearer the summits toward which Moffatt was heading.

Presently he was confronted by a wall of rock. It was a sheer thirty feet in height and water oozed down its face into a small pool. There seemed no way out and Lafe scanned the cliffs in search of the trail.

While he lolled thus in the saddle, there came a shot from above his head and his horse winced. Without hesitation he fell to the ground and scrambled on hands and knees to the shelter of a tree.

"I near got you that time, Johnson," a clear voice called to him.

It came from behind the crags above the pool. Then he thought he heard the ring of a horse's shoe on stone, but he was too cautious to expose himself at once. For fully an hour he waited, listening for evidence of his enemy and occasionally sighting along the barrel of his 30-30. Then, persuaded Moffatt had seized the chance to increase his lead, he remounted and continued the pursuit. A wale along his mount's shoulder was the only injury.

"He's scared, or he could have got me then," said Lafe, examining this with much satisfaction.

In late afternoon he threaded a broad canon and entered on a stretch of brakes, perhaps six miles in length and one in width. The top of its numberless bald hills overlooked the canon's sides. The track he followed ran along a narrow plateau. At intervals, chalky cliffs dropped sheer away on his right hand to a depth of two hundred feet, and there were gaping cavities into which a mountain could have been dumped, resembling in their formation the craters of extinct volcanoes. Giant fissures showed in the mounds of salmon-colored clay, and, close beside him, a yawning void threatened, whence a hundred thousand tons of shale had slid. Of vegetation there was none here, save a tangle of p.r.i.c.kly-pear at the mouth of a gulch.

"There he goes now," said the sheriff, p.r.i.c.king his horse.

Moffatt was nearly a mile ahead and moving leisurely, as though he had no fear. He topped a rise and waved his hand at Johnson before dipping out of sight.

This confidence was partially explained when the sheriff eased his horse down the declivity that had shut him from view and discovered a break in the trail. At this point it ended at a huge rock, and split. One part ran along the base of the rock and then turned back in the direction he had come. At least it so looked, but he could not see its ultimate destination because of the broken nature of the country. The other path made a slight detour and went on, past the rock.

"Huh-huh," said Johnson, pulling up. "Sure. He's back of me again, the rascal."

In spite of an effort by Moffatt to disguise his imprint at the junction, the trail lay plain to Lafe. It was too old a game for him to be deceived; had he not once, on a previous hunt, detected Moffatt's ruse in changing his horse's shoes so that the corks were in front?

Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and got down in the dust on his hands and knees. There was a second trail, and it was following Moffatt's.

It came from beyond the rock, and then changed direction and now overlapped the outlaw's. Had the two met? It was probable that Moffatt had come upon a confederate, for this was the region of the Jug, the rendezvous for fugitives. But why, then, had the two not come to meet him?

"That ain't Steve's way," Johnson reflected. "It's like they're laying for me up the trail a piece."

Neither did this solution satisfy him. One thing alone about the look of the two tracks seemed to make the notion of two confederates riding peacefully in single file untenable. The last rider was going faster than the other. Then he must be in pursuit.

Debating these possibilities, the sheriff advanced with caution.

Limestone cliffs soon hemmed him in. He came upon a steer as he crossed a tiny mountain stream. The animal dashed away, wild as an antelope.

Just before he made the next turn, Johnson glanced back. The steer had stopped to gaze after him. It would not willingly leave the vicinity of the water it had come six miles to get.

The going became so rough that his horse faltered and the sheriff feared that he might maim himself any moment on the rocks. The way was nothing but a succession of narrow gorges, leading one into the other and cluttered with bowlders; ever ascending, the light became more subdued as the canon's walls grew steeper and higher. He calculated that he must be nearing the summits of Lost Springs.

A shot reverberated among the cliffs in front of him; then another. The echoes rolled and multiplied. The abrupt detonations startled his mount, which sprang under the quick, nervous grasp of the knee. A stone gave under foot, and down came horse and rider with a jolt like a trunk being dumped from a baggage car.

The sheriff instantly cheeked his horse, holding his head down by main strength lest the beast rise and trample him. His foot hung in the stirrup and the spur was caught in the blanket. There was no need for this precaution. The poor brute lay where he fell, nostrils quivering and his breath coming in tearing gasps. Instantly realizing that he was seriously hurt, Lafe began to extricate himself. He slowly drew his leg from the boot; free, leaped upward and pinned the horse's head with his knee. One look at the right foreleg was sufficient. Johnson stuck his gun to the white star on its forehead and pulled the trigger.

He was now thoroughly angry.

"Doggone that scoundrel. I'll go get him if I have to walk barefoot from here to the Jug," he declared wrathfully.

A good horse gone, and Moffatt still ahead! Yet he had much to be thankful for. He was unhurt except for a severe shaking, and a bruise to his ankle. The sheriff wasted no time on his predicament, but removed saddle, bridle and blanket from the body and hid them in a hole high up among rocks.

The boot came with the saddle, and having tied his handkerchief about the injured ankle, he went forward again, carrying the rifle in one hand, the boot in the other.

He entered a wider gorge, well wooded with post-oak. The ground rose steeply and the canon narrowed half a mile ahead to an oval opening between cliffs. Beyond this towered a solid peak. This was the Jug, the fastness to which the Border bandits retreated in times of stress. Lafe peered hard up the canon and halted to spy out surroundings. From behind that opening, one determined man could hold off a regiment.

"I swan," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

A dead horse, saddled, lay near a fallen tree not twenty yards distant.

It was still bleeding from a wound in the neck. The trappings were old and patched and repaired with rope, after the fas.h.i.+on of the natives.

This, then, accounted for one of the shots. The sheriff gazed, and stepped hastily behind a post-oak.

Something had risen from the ground about a hundred yards beyond.

Peeping round his shelter, he saw that it was another horse, whose forequarters flopped helplessly as it strove to rise. Instantly he recognized the markings of the "paint" on which Moffatt had fled.

"Somebody has beaten me to him," he muttered; then sprang from behind his tree with ready gun and yelled: "Hi!"