The Ramblin' Kid Part 9

CHAPTER V

A DUEL OF ENDURANCE

When the storm broke over the Quarter Circle KT the Ramblin' Kid was twenty miles away following the Gold Dust maverick. Old Heck's surmise that he had gone in search of the outlaw filly was but half correct. It was not with the definite purpose of trying for the renegade mare that he had mounted Captain Jack and headed him toward the Narrows at the moment Carolyn June Dixon and Ophelia Cobb arrived at the ranch. Nor was it to escape meeting the women. Their coming meant nothing to the Ramblin' Kid.

He simply wanted to be alone.

The ride with Parker and the boys to the North Springs meant talk. The Ramblin' Kid did not want to talk. He wanted to be with his thoughts, his horse and silence.

Should he happen on to the maverick he might give her a run. Since her first appearance on the Kiowa, the Ramblin' Kid had seen her many times.

More than once, from a distance, he had watched the mare, getting a line on her habits. Sooner or later he expected to test Captain Jack's endurance and skill against the filly's speed and cunning. Without success other riders of the Kiowa had tried to corral the outlaw or get within roping throw of her shapely head. So far she had proved herself faster and more clever than any horse ridden against her. The Ramblin'

Kid believed Captain Jack was master of the beautiful mare, that in a battle of nerve and muscle and wind the roan stallion could run her down. Some day he would prove it.

At the Narrows the trail forked. One branch turned sharply to the right and followed a coulee out on to the divide between the Cimarron and the lower Una de Gata; the other swung toward the river, slipped into it, crossed the stream, and was lost in the sand-hills beyond.

The broncho, of his own will, at the p.r.o.ngs of the road wheeled up the coulee and climbed out on the level bench south of the Cimarron. A half-dozen miles away Sentinel Mountain rose abruptly out of the plain.

Toward the lone b.u.t.te Captain Jack turned. He knew the place. On the north slope there was a tiny spring, fenced with wire to keep the stock from trampling it into a bog; near by was a duster of pinon trees; below the seep in the narrow gorge was a thin strip of willows. It was a favorite rendezvous sought by the Ramblin' Kid when in moods such as now possessed him. Silently he rode to the group of pinons and dismounted.

The Ramblin' Kid stretched himself under the trees while Captain Jack drank at the little water course. Then, with his bridle off, the broncho fed contentedly on the bunch gra.s.s along the hillside. After a time Captain Jack quit feeding and came into the shade of the pinons.

The Ramblin' Kid, flat on his back, stared through the scant foliage of the trees into the sky--overcast now with a dim haze, forerunner of the storm gathering above the Costejo peaks. Thousands of feet in the air a buzzard, merely a black speck, without motion of wings, wheeled in great, lazy, ever-widening circles.

As the sun dropped into the cloud bank in the west a band of mares and colts came from that direction and rounded a spur of Sentinel Mountain.

At their heads was the most beautiful horse ever seen on the Kiowa range.

In color a coppery, almost golden, chestnut sorrel; flaxen mane and tail, verging on creamy white; short-coupled in the back and with withers that marked the runner; belly smooth and round; legs trim and neat as an antelope's and muscled like a panther's; head small, carried proudly erect and eyes full and wonderfully clear and brown.

"Th' filly!" the Ramblin' Kid breathed, "with a bunch of Tony Malush's Anchor Bar mares and colts!"

Captain Jack saw the range horses and lifted his head.

"Psst!" the Ramblin' Kid hissed and the neigh was stopped.

The rangers moved toward the east and over the crest of a ridge a quarter of a mile away. On the flat beyond the rise they stopped, the colts immediately teasing the mares to suck. The filly withdrew a short distance from the herd and stood alert and watchful.

For half an hour the Ramblin' Kid studied the Gold Dust maverick.

He looked at the clouds climbing higher and higher in the west, then long and thoughtfully at Captain Jack.

"Let's get her, Boy!" he murmured; "let's go an' get her!"

His mind made up, the Ramblin' Kid slipped the bridle again on Captain Jack, removed the saddle and with the blanket wiped the sweat from the broncho's back, smoothed the blanket, reset the saddle, carefully tightened front and rear cinches and mounting the little stallion guided him slowly down the ravine in the direction of the horses on the flat. A hundred yards away the mares and colts, alarmed by the sudden half-whinny, half-snort, from the filly, discovered the approaching horse and rider.

Instantly the wild horses crowded closely together and galloped toward the Una de Gata. Captain Jack leaped into a run, rus.h.i.+ng them. The maverick wheeled quickly and dashed away to the south alone.

"Her pet trick!" the Ramblin' Kid muttered as he headed Captain Jack after the nimble creature. "She absod.a.m.nedlutely will not bunch--seems to know a crowd means a corral, a rope and at last a rider on her shapely back!"

For two miles it was a race. The Ramblin' Kid held Captain Jack to a steady run a couple of hundred yards in the rear of the speeding mare.

At last he pulled the stallion down to a trot. The Gold Dust maverick answered by running another fifty yards and then herself settling into the slower stride. "Like I thought," the Ramblin' Kid said to himself, "it's a case of wear her out--a case of seasoned old muscle against speedy young heels!"

It became a duel of endurance between Captain Jack, wiry, toughened and fully matured, with heavier muscles, and the nimble, lighter-footed Gold Dust mare.

At dark they were on the edge of the Arroyo Grande and Captain Jack had closed the distance between them until less than a hundred yards was between the heels of the filly and the head of the stallion behind her.

She turned east along the arroyo, followed it a mile, seeking a crossing, then doubled straight north toward the Cimarron. Captain Jack hung to her trail like a hound. In the blackness that preceded the storm she could not lose him. With almost uncanny sureness he picked her out--following, following, never giving the maverick a moment's rest.

Yet it seemed that the distance she kept ahead was measured, so alert and watchful was she always. Both were dripping with sweat. Try as he would, it seemed impossible for Captain Jack to win those few yards that would put the filly in reach of the rope the Ramblin' Kid held ready to cast until the inky darkness made it impossible to risk a throw.

The mare splashed into the Cimarron.

A dazzling zigzag flash of lightning, the first of the storm, and the Ramblin' Kid saw the filly struggling in the yellow wind-whipped current. A moment later and Captain Jack was swimming close behind her.

On the north side of the river the mare yielded to the drive of the tempest and turned east down the stream. A rocky gorge running at right angles toward the north offered shelter from the las.h.i.+ng wind and rain.

Up the ravine the maverick headed. A rush of muddy water down the canyon sent pursued and pursuer slipping and sliding and climbing for safety high up on the brush-covered, torrent-swept hillside. The constant blaze and tremble of lightning illumined the whole range. A wolf, terrified by the storm, seeking cover, crouched in the shelter of a black rock-cliff.

The Ramblin' Kid saw the creature. His hand instinctively slipped under his slicker and gripped the gun at his hip.

"h.e.l.l! what's th' use of killin' just to kill?" he murmured. His hold on the gun relaxed. A bolt of lightning slivered the rock above the wolf; there was an acrid odor of burning hair. The next flash showed the wolf stretched dead twenty feet below the cliff. "Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" the Ramblin' Kid whispered as he bowed his head before the gale, "that was funny! Guess G.o.d himself figured it was time for that poor cuss to die!"

In the last quarter of the night, at the North Springs, when the storm had spent itself and the white moon looked down on a drenched and flood-washed earth, the 'Ramblin' Kid dropped his rope over the head of the Gold Dust maverick--barely twenty feet ahead of the horse he rode--conquered by the superior nerve, muscle and endurance of Captain Jack, still the greatest outlaw the Kiowa range had ever known!

The touch of the rope fired the filly to a supreme effort; she lunged forward; Captain Jack set himself for the shock--he threw her cold, full length, in the soft mud; instantly the little stallion sprang forward to give the mare slack, she came to her feet, squealing piteously, and plunged desperately ahead--again Captain Jack braced himself for the jar and put her down, "It's h.e.l.l, Little Girl," the Ramblin' Kid said with a catch in his throat; "but you've got to learn!" The third time the maverick tested the rope and the third time Captain Jack threw her in a helpless heap. That time when she got to her feet she stood trembling in every muscle until Captain Jack came up to her side and the Ramblin' Kid reached out and laid his hand on the beautiful mane. She had learned.

Never again would the wonderful creature tighten a rope on her neck.

Trailing the filly, the Ramblin' Kid forced her back toward the Cimarron, into its raging flood, multiplied a hundredfold by the torrential rain of the night; side by side she and Captain Jack swam the stream, and in the gray dawn, while the Quarter Circle KT still slept, he turned the mare and Captain Jack into the circular corral. He removed the saddle from Captain Jack, took the rope from the filly's neck, threw the horses some hay and on the dry ground under the shed by the corral, lay down and went to sleep.

For fourteen hours, without rest, the Ramblin' Kid had ridden.

The sun was up when Sing Pete electrified the Quarter Circle KT into life and action by the jangle of the iron triangle sending out the breakfast call.

Old Heck stepped to the door of the bunk-house and looked out across the valley. The Cimarron roared sullenly beyond the meadow. The lower field was a lake of muddy water, backed up from the gorge below. He glanced toward the circular corral.

"What th'--Who left horses up last night?" he asked of the cowboys dressing sleepily inside the bunk-house.

"n.o.body," Parker answered for the group.

Skinny Rawlins came to the door. "It's Captain Jack," he said, "and--and darned if th' Ramblin' Kid ain't got the filly!"

"Aw, he couldn't have caught her last night," Bert Lilly said.

"Well, she's there," Skinny retorted, "somebody's corraled her--that's certain!"

Hurriedly dressing, the cowboys crowded out of the bunk-house and down to the circular corral. The Gold Dust maverick leaped to the center of the enclosure as the group drew near and stood with head up, eyes flas.h.i.+ng and nostrils quivering, a perfect picture of defiance and fear.

The swim across the river had washed the mud from her mane and sides and she was as clean as if she had been brushed.

"Lord, she's a beauty!" Chuck Slithers exclaimed.

"Sure is--be h.e.l.l to ride, though!" Bert commented. "Wonder where the Ramblin' Kid is--"

"S-h-hh! Yonder he is," Charley Saunders said, observing the figure under the shed, "--asleep. Come on away and let him rest!"