Читать книгу Rancho Del Muerto, and Other Stories of Adventure by Various Authors, from "Outing" - Charles King - Страница 13

HAT off mule of the paymaster's ambulance been a quadruped of wonderful recuperative powers. She had gone nearly dead lame all the previous day, and now at 5 o'clock on this breezy morning was trotting along as though she had never known a twinge in her life. Mr. Staines was apparently nonplussed. Acting on his advice, the paymaster had decided to break camp soon after 2 o'clock, make coffee, and then start for Rawlins' camp at once. He confidently expected to have to drag along at a slow walk, and his idea was to get well through the Canyon del Muerto before the heat of the day. The unexpected recovery of Jenny, however, enabled them to go bowling ahead over the level flat, and at sunrise they were already in sight of the northern entrance to the gorge. It was odd how early Mr. Staines began to develop lively interest in the condition of that mule. First he suggested to the driver that he was going too fast, and would bring on that lameness again; but the driver replied that it was Jenny herself who was doing most of the pulling. Then Staines became fearful lest the cavalry escort should get exhausted by such steady trotting, and ventured to say to Major Sherrick that they ought to rein up on their account. Sherrick was eager to push ahead, and, like most other men not to the manner born, never for a moment thought of such a thing as a horse's getting used up by simply carrying a man-at-arms six hours at ceaseless trot or lope. However, he knew that Staines was far more experienced in such matters than he, and so could not disregard his advice.

“How is it, sergeant, are we going too fast for you?” he asked.

“Not a bit of it, sir,” was the cheery answer.

“We're glad enough to go lively now and rest all day in the shade.”

“You see how it is, Staines; they don't want to slack up speed. We'll get to Rawlins' in time for breakfast at this rate,” and again Staines was silent. Presently the team began the ascent of a rolling wave of foothill, around which the roadway twisted as only Arizona roadways can, and at the crest the driver reined in to give his mules a “breather.” Staines leaped from the ambulance for a stretch. The troopers promptly dismounted and loosened saddle girths.

“Yonder is the mouth of the Canyon, sir,” said the sergeant, pointing to a rift in the range to the south, now gorgeously lighted up by the morning sunshine.

“How long is the defile, sergeant?”

“Not more than four miles, sir—that is, the Canyon itself—but it is crooked as a ram's horn, and the approach on the other side is a long, winding valley.”

“When were you there last?” asked Staines.

“About six months ago, just after Dins-more was murdered.”

Staines turned quickly away and strolled back a few yards along the road.

“You knew Dinsmore, then?” asked the paymaster.

“I knew him well, sir. We had served together during the war. They said he fell in love with a pretty Mexican girl at Tucson, and she would not listen to him. Some of the men heard that she was a daughter of old Pedro who keeps that ranch, and that it was hoping to see her that he went there.”

“I know. I remember hearing about it all then,” said the paymaster. “Did you ever see anything of the man who was said to have killed him?”

“Sonora Bill? No, sir; and I don't know anyone who ever did. He was always spoken of as the chief of a gang of cutthroats and stage robbers down around Tucson. They used to masquerade as Apaches sometimes—that's the way they were never caught. The time they robbed Colonel Wood and killed his clerk 'I' troop was scouting not ten miles away, and blessed if some of the very gang didn't gallop to Lieutenant Breese and swear the Apaches had attacked their camp here in Canyon del Muerto, so that when the lieutenant was wanted to chase the thieves his troop couldn't be found anywhere—he was 'way up here hunting for Apaches in the Maricopa range. The queer thing about that gang was that they always knew just when a paymaster's outfit or a Government officer with funds would be along. It was those fellows that robbed Major Rounds, the quartermaster, and jumped the stage when Lieutenant Spaulding and his wife were aboard. She had beautiful diamonds that they were after, but the lieutenant fooled them—he had them sent by express two days afterward.”

Mr. Staines came back toward the ambulance at this moment, took a field glass from its case, and retraced his steps along the road some twenty yards. Here he adjusted the glass and looked long toward the northeast.

“All ready to start, sir,” said the driver.

The major swung himself up to his seat; the troopers quietly “sinched” their saddles and mounted, and still the clerk stood there absorbed.

“Come, Staines!” shouted the paymaster, impatiently, “we're waiting for you.” And still he did not move. The sergeant whirled his horse about and clattered back to where he stood.

“Come, sir, the major's waiting.” Staines turned abruptly and, silent as ever, hurried to the wagon.

“What were you staring at so long?” said the paymaster, pettishly, as his assistant clambered in. “I shouted two or three times.”

Staines' face was pale, yet there were drops of sweat upon his brow.

“I thought I saw a party of horsemen out there on the flats.”

“The devil!” said the paymaster, with sudden interest. “Where? Let me look.”

“You can't see now, sir. Even the dust cloud is gone. They are behind that low ridge some eight or ten miles out there in the valley.”

“Go on, driver, it's only cattle from the ranch or something of that kind. I didn't know, by the way you looked and spoke, but that it might be some of Sonora Bill's gang.”

“Hardly, sir; they haven't been heard of for a year, and once away from Pedro's we are safe enough anyhow.”

Half an hour later the four-mule team was winding slowly up a rocky path. On both sides the heights were steep, covered with a thick undergrowth of scrub oak and juniper. Here and there rocky cliffs jutted out from the hillside and stood like sentinels along the way. The sergeant, with one trooper, rode some distance ahead, their carbines “advanced” and ready for use, for Edwards was an old campaigner, and, though he thought it far from probable that any outlaws would be fools enough to attempt to “get away with” a paymaster's bank when he and his five men were the guardians and Captain Rawlins with his whole troop was but a short distance away, he had learned the lesson of precaution. Major Sherrick, with his iron safe under his own seat, grasped a rifle in both hands. The driver was whistling softly to himself and glancing attentively ahead, for there was a continuous outcrop of boulders all along the road. The remaining troopers, four in number, rode close behind or alongside the wagon.

Presently they reached a point where, after turning a precipitous ledge of rock, glistening in the morning sunshine, they saw before them a somewhat steep incline. Here, without a word, Staines swung lightly from the vehicle and trudged for a moment alongside; then he stooped to adjust his boot lace, and when Sherrick looked back the clerk was coming jauntily after them, only a dozen paces in rear. In this order they pushed ahead perhaps a hundred yards farther, moving slowly up the defile, and Staines could easily have regained his distance, but for some reason failed to do so. Suddenly, and for no apparent cause, Jenny and her mate shied violently, swerved completely around and were tangled up with the wheel team before the driver could use the lash. Even his ready blasphemy failed to straighten things out.

“Look out for those rocks up there on the right!” he shouted. “Grab their heads, Billy!”

Even as he spoke the rocky walls of the Canyon resounded with the crash of a score of firearms. The driver, with a convulsive gasp, toppled forward out of his seat, his hand still clinching the reins. One of the troopers clapped his hand to his forehead, his reins falling useless upon his horse's neck, and reeled in the saddle as his charger whirled about and rushed, snorting with fright, down the narrow road. At the instant of the firing the sound of a dozen “spats” told where the leaden missiles had torn through the stiff canvas cover of the ambulance; and Sherrick, with blanched face, leaped from the riddled vehicle and plunged heavily forward upon his hands and knees. Two of the troopers sprang from their saddles, and, crouching behind a boulder across the road, opened fire up the opposite hillside. The sergeant and his comrade, bending low over their horses' necks, came thundering back down the Canyon, just in time to see the mules whirl about so suddenly as to throw the ambulance on its side. The iron safe was hurled into the shallow ditch; the wagon bed dragged across the prostrate form of the paymaster, rolling him over and over half a dozen times, and then, with a wreck of canvas, splinters, chains and traces clattering at their heels, the four mules went rattling away down the gorge.