Читать книгу The Flying U Strikes - B.M. Bower - Страница 8

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THE clip-clop of a shod horse trotting amongst scattered rocks came up the canyon, the sound muffled yet magnified in the fog. Seemed close too. Another damned cow thief, Chip thought, and fumbled for his six-shooter. Shaken, still dazed from his fall and the blow that followed it, he leaned against the red bank and waited grimly, teeth set hard together. There'd be no getaway for this one if he could help it—and he thought he could.

The hoofbeats were almost upon him before he could see the rider, a formless gray shape in the suffocating mass of fog. Chip raised his gun as the hammer clicked back.

"I've got the drop," he announced harshly. "Put up your hands, you blinkety-blink, blank-blank-blank! I'd like nothing better than to fill you so full of lead you'd break your horse's back trying to carry yuh. Pile off, damn yuh, and come over here—and make damned sure you don't crook an elbow while you're getting here."

"Well, of all the gall! You put down that gun and stop your swearing at me, or I'm liable to try a little shooting myself!"

"Hunh?" Chip's mouth fell open and hung there in blank amazement.

"You heard me." The rider, a small, slim figure on a chunky brown horse, reined closer. "Don't you try any of your holdup tactics on me or you'll wish you hadn't. What do you want, anyway, yelling and bellowing around the way you've been doing?"

Chip found some sort of a voice to use. "And who the devil may you be?" he wanted to know. "If you haven't any more sense than to be down in here, you can't complain at what you may see or hear." His eyes narrowed, blinking a little at the fog which seemed to be creeping into his brain. "What are you, anyhow? One of these beef butchers?"

The girl kicked her horse, forced it to stand near the fresh carcass and like it. "No, I'm not. And I must say I'm not crazy about your manners. What's going on here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be headed for Denver."

Chip stared. "Denver? You sure have got the advantage of me—"

"Well," she retorted, "I wouldn't brag about it, if I were you. Last Fourth of July you filled my pitcher with coffee a dozen times, there at the picnic at Cow Island. But of course you didn't see anybody but Julie Lang. You're Chip Bennett and I'm nobody at all—but I would like to know why you're down here, pulling a gun on me and swearing like a trooper at me. I never did anything to you, did I?"

"I—you must be Shep Taylor's girl," Chip muttered confusedly. "I didn't—"

"Well, I'm surprised!" The Taylor girl's tone was elaborately sarcastic. "You actually figured that out! Of course, being introduced to me a couple of times at that darned picnic wouldn't give you the least idea—" She stopped abruptly, drawing in her breath. Her eyes darted here and there, quick glances that saw and registered whatever they fell upon. "What's that blood dripping off your hand for?" she demanded sharply. "I didn't hear any shot. What's been taking place here, anyway? You look," she stated judicially, "sort of as if you'd been sent for and couldn't go."

She swung off her horse like a cowboy and came to him, her gloved hands laying hold of him, lifting his left arm to look at it, turning him a little so that she could see where the blood came from.

"Who slashed you like that?" she demanded fiercely. "You've had a fight, it looks like to me. Was it you that hollered, a few minutes ago?"

"No." Chip's voice was dull, unaccountably listless. "That was the other fellow—yelling when I dropped down the bank on him."

She glanced quickly up the bank, gasped at the height of it, which looked more than it really was, because the top was hidden in the fog. "The fellow that was butchering this beef," she said and looked again at the arm she was holding. "He slashed you with his skinning knife, from the looks of things. I heard a yell and in a minute a horse galloping off up the canyon. Well, we've got to do something about this cut. You're bleeding like a stuck pig, do you know that?"

"I—sure I know it."

His blurred tone made her look at him closely. "Where's your horse? No—wait a minute. We've got to stop this bleeding first thing. Sit down—there on the beef—where I can get at you. You're so tall—"

Chip sat down, leaned his head back against the red bank. Dimly he was aware that the Taylor girl was doing things to his shoulder and upper arm, tearing cloth, wrapping and binding. Funny she should be off down here by herself—no, he remembered now; some of the boys were joshing Weary about Polly Taylor last winter. They said he ought to sling his loop on Polly and take up a ranch. He could run a lot of cattle and never hire help, because Polly was as good as four cow-punchers any day. They said she brought in the strays and held things together...So her being here wasn't so strange, maybe. He began wondering vaguely what she might know about all this. . . .

"That'll have to do till you get where it can be washed out with carbolic," she said. "It's a nasty long slice he took, but it isn't very deep, thank goodness." She was pulling up his shirt collar, his coat. . . . "Lucky for you, old boy, you had on that thick sour-dough coat. If you'd been in your shirt sleeves, he'd have just about taken your arm off." She was buttoning him up like a small boy, talking briskly while she worked. "What in the world did you go and jump off that high bank for? It's a wonder you didn't break a leg or something. Why," she asked petulantly, "didn't you shoot him?"

Chip wouldn't tell her then that he fell off the bank. He was afraid she might think that was funny. He didn't see why he had to go weak as a sick cat all at once. It didn't seem as though he had lost enough blood for that. He forgot to consider the shock of that fall added to the knife wound, and it surprised and disgusted him to find himself staggering when he tried to walk. He was like a man drunk.

"What's that you're hanging onto?" Polly Taylor demanded. "Oh. A piece of a coat. I suppose that's your clue," and she smiled unexpectedly up into his face. "Well, keep it, but it probably won't do you much good. Every store in the country sells hand-me-downs of that kind of cloth."

She bullied him into getting on her horse and she insisted upon walking up to where he had left Mike. She wasn't lost, exactly, she declared; she couldn't be, with old Pathfinder there. He'd take her home even in this fog. He'd done it before, when it was dark as a stack of black cats in a cellar. Where was he camped—if it was a fair question? She'd stop by and fix up that cut for him before she went on home.

Chip did not feel much like arguing the point. Sick as he was, lame in every muscle from the fall, he was put to the shameful necessity of riding a girl's horse and letting her walk; though she could have climbed on behind, if she had wanted to. He didn't have much use for girls, anyway. Pretty ones especially. Darned double-crossers, every one of them. This one wasn't pretty—not with those freckles and that red hair in pigtails down her back—but if he let her tag along to camp, she'd go and blab her head off to every one she saw, telling all she knew about him, and then some. Dressed like a man. Pants and boots, chaps and a man's coat and hat—Chip hated to see a girl trying to ape men. She wore a gun too. He could see why the boys joshed Weary.

Rambling, inconsequential thoughts, but they carried him along through the fog, Polly Taylor leading the horse he rode. She didn't have to, he thought irritably. He was holding the horn just because she had kept the reins herself. He didn't have to be treated like a sick calf, but if she wanted to make herself important around there, let her go to it. He couldn't hunt that fellow in the fog, anyway.

As they neared the thicket where he had left his horse, Mike whinnied to let them know he was there. "Thanks. I'm all right now," Chip said apathetically. "You better go on home. And I wish you'd do me the favor not to say anything about me—"

Polly Taylor stood beside Mike's shoulder, looking up at Chip, watching to see if he were going to fall out of the saddle.

"You'll look nice if you get blood-poisoning in that arm," she told him sharply. "Of course, I won't say anything about you. How big a fool do you think I am? You're down here on the quiet, trying to get the goods on whoever's killing Flying U cattle. Well, what do you suppose I'm here for? You must know they're trying to frame the Hobble-O. We've been filling a beef contract with Fort Assiniboine—"

"Not with hind quarters, I hope?"

"Not on your life. Not any more than belongs to the critter. And we've got the hides to show for every beef we've hauled out." Her chin went up with a sidewise tilt of her head. "We may be hard up, but we haven't come down to peddling any meat but our own. So I'm on a still hunt, same as you. Pa and Snuffle have got their hands full, and the boys have all the chores to do, and we can't afford to hire help except in round-up time."

"A girl's got no business prowling down in here—"

"Why not? I'm no Julie Lang." In that gray half-light, her face looked shadowed. "I'm pretty handy with a gun, and that's what all you men bank on for protection, isn't it? And I'd comb hell backwards to help Pa." She glanced around her, an involuntary movement that betrayed her fear. "What I'm afraid of, Mr. Bennett, is that they're trying to frame up a case against him for—the Vigilantes. If they can—"

She broke off abruptly and lifted Chip's rifle to its scabbard. "I picked this up and brought it along. I thought it must be yours," she said and smiled faintly. "And here's something else I found. Belongs to the other fellow, I guess." She swung up into his view a small, blood-stained ax of the kind easily carried behind the cantle, probably wrapped in a gunny sack. A necessary implement, used for splitting down the backbone of a beef and separating the quarters.

"One of the tools of his trade," she said. "You had a taste of the other one. Cheer up, Mr. Bennett. At least, he'll have to hunt himself a new ax."

In his misery Chip took that as a sly dig at his failure to get the man when he had the chance. Had the fellow right there within reach and this was all he had to show for it! Even lost his rifle—and of course it had to be the girl who found it and brought it along—and then gave it back to him with that sarcastic smile on her face. Hell, she was treating him like a tenderfoot!

He came near refusing to tell her where his camp was, but that knife cut was throbbing and burning so badly he thought maybe she was right about blood-poisoning and he had better let her fix it up; it was in such a darned awkward place he couldn't attend to it himself; on the point of his shoulder and running down the back of his arm, like that, he'd have to be a contortionist to get at it. And he cursed the luck that made him need the girl's help.

He resented too the fact that she was not impressed with his hide-out. Oh, yes, she said, she knew about that little basin. The Devil's Dipper, she called it, because of its shape. She didn't know how many knew about it; not many, she guessed. It would do for the present, though the spring in there always dried up along in July, and it was the worst place for snakes she'd ever seen. Safe enough now, though. But if he wanted a real hide-out, she'd show him one that certainly was a dandy. Folks could hunt till they were blind and they'd never find it.

All this when they had wormed their way into the Devil's Dipper. Outside, she hadn't talked more than was absolutely necessary, because you couldn't tell how close some one might be in the fog and it didn't pay to take a chance.

Chip resented her shrewdness. And he hated the unconcerned efficiency she displayed in getting a fire started, boiling water and a flour sack he'd swear was clean as soap and water could make it; boiled a needleful of white thread too, and dried it by the fire, while she washed the cut with carbolic water so hot he could scarcely keep from yelling when it touched the raw flesh. She was very efficient too, in sewing up the wound. At least, he judged she was, she hurt so damnably, sewing over and over and taking as many stitches as she thought were needed, with no apology for the pain.

She had Chip sweating and gritting his teeth with the agony of her ministrations, but all he said was, "I'll bet you're a dandy at doctoring horses." His tone left no doubt whatever of his meaning.

Polly Taylor calmly buttoned his collar and tied another flour sack around his neck for a sling. "Yes. When Pathfinder got cut up in our new barb-wire fence, you should have seen the sewing I had to do. He looked like a crazy quilt when I got through, and he kicked three boards off the stable. But he sure healed up nice."

Darn her, she didn't even crack a smile to show whether she meant it or not.

He had to admit, though, that he felt better after the first pain was over, and that the supper she cooked was the best meal he had eaten since Billings; which was surprising, since Chip privately considered himself the best camp-fire cook in the country. He had also a reluctant appreciation of the way she washed the dishes and tidied camp afterwards, but that did not mean he liked her any better.

He was glad when she finally led up her horse, stuck a very small boot toe into the stirrup and went up with a springy lightness into the saddle. Thanks he gave her, as his mother had taught him to do. She dismissed them with a shrug and a wave of her hand, oddly out of keeping with her rôle as simple ranch girl.

"The unwritten law of the range," she said, with an arresting irony in her voice. "Lie around camp and don't try to use that arm, and don't monkey with the bandage, either. I'll be back in a couple of days to take a look at it."

"Don't put yourself out on my account." Chip hoped that didn't sound like a snub, but he didn't want her fussing around him, and that was the truth. "And don't get lost," he added perfunctorily.

"Oh, Pathfinder will take care of that, all right," she said carelessly, and gave him a long studying glance as she swung her horse out into the smothery blackness of the night.

Well, she was good-hearted, all right, but he was glad she was gone. He must have been. He told himself so at least a dozen times before he slept.