Читать книгу The Desert Patrol - Roy J. Snell - Страница 4

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Curlie, lying here in hiding on the mountain side, had gone this far in recalling past events which had led up to his present rather strange position, when his keen ears detected some sound. Coming as it seemed from lower down and to the right, it at once set his nerves tingling.

“From the direction of the corral,” he told himself in a tense whisper.

For a moment he lay there silent, motionless, scarcely breathing. It had been but a faint sound, the rustling of a pine branch, perhaps. Not one of his confederates had noticed it, he felt sure of that. Only the keen, radio ears of a born radio detective could have done that. Yet there had been a sound, a movement. There was someone down there, he was quite sure of that.

“Can’t be Ambrosio,” he told himself. “He’s too sharp to give the location of the horses away like that.”

The next instant the boy sat bolt upright and stared. There had come to his waiting ears a familiar sound: the sharp, high-pitched whinny of a pony.

“Canary!” he whispered. “Couldn’t mistake him from a thousand. He’s in danger, too, I’ll be bound. Never heard him say it just that way but once. That time two timber wolves were stalking him.

“No timber wolves this time,” he said grimly as he dropped upon hands and knees and, thrusting his rifle before him, began making his way silently down the hill in the direction from which had come the pony’s call for aid. “No timber wolves,” he repeated; “human wolves, that’s what, and the worst kind at that. Raiders that raid those of their own kind. Well, they sha’n’t have Canary.”

Canary was a small blue mustang. Curlie had picked him up cheap out on the range. He had received many a throw and many a bruise before he had convinced the wiry little beast that he meant well by him and that it was a great deal more fun to have a master riding on his back for company than to be wandering alone and unprotected across the desert. When at last the pony had learned this lesson, he had become an inseparable companion to the boy at his lonely post on the desert. He had proved himself the speediest, pluckiest, toughest little pony in all that broad stretch of mountain and desert. He would follow his master about and only a corral, such as now surrounded him, could keep him from the boy’s side.

He was Curlie’s first horse. Automobiles he had had and had managed well. He knew a little of airplanes, too. But these, he now knew, were mere machines, not in any way to be compared to a companion such as a horse, a creature of flesh and blood that could listen to you and understand as well as any human—sometimes better.

“Yes, yes, old pal,” he whispered, as the pony whinnied again, this time as if he was confident that his call had been heard. “Yes, yes, I’m coming. They won’t get you. They might have the others, though I don’t want that either, but you they shall never have.”

All this time he was gliding silently downward over the pine-needle blanket that was soft and silent as a cover of eiderdown.

After covering ten yards or more he paused to listen. A sound came to him. Closer than had been the other, it startled him. He might have come too close. There might be several of the raiders. He might be in danger of being ambushed.

His eyes circled from right to left and from left to right, like a searchlight. Now he shifted his position ever so slightly. Directly below him were two giant fir trees. Behind these was a mass of green that by the darkness was turned to pitchy black. This black mass was a camouflage to hide the strong poles that made up the horse corral. Behind this were the forty ponies and horses.

“Bars should be just at the right of those twin firs,” he told himself. “No use going closer. Too risky. Stay here. I can see anyone who comes up to those bars. Can’t let the horses out any other way. Let ’em try it; I’ll get ’em first crack.”

Dropping flat upon the soft bed of needles, he cautiously moved his rifle forward to a resting place across the protruding root of a fir tree, then, with eyes and ears alert, waited for something to happen. For full five minutes he remained thus. Not a sound came to him from near or far. The night air grew colder each moment. A breeze creeping up from the lower levels chilled him to the bone.

“Boo!” he breathed. “Wish this night’s watch was over.”

Since it was not over and would not be for some time to come, he settled himself as comfortably as might be and gave himself again to thought. He was conscious of missing something. Somehow he seemed incomplete. It was as if he had come out upon the streets of a city without collar or necktie. As his mind searched for the cause of his sense of incompleteness, he found it at last.

“My head-set,” he said with a smile. “I’ve grown so used to having those old radio things over my ears that I don’t feel dressed without them. Wish I had them now. Wish they were connected up with the air. ’Twouldn’t seem so lonesome and so cold. And I might catch some whisper from her, from the good little Whisperer.”

A wave of lonesomeness swept over him. Suddenly for the first time he realized that the messages of this mysterious Whisperer of the air had come to mean a great deal to him.

Curlie was a boy without a family. If he had any living relatives, he did not know of them. Finding himself lonely at times, he had at last taken the whole world for his family. By the broad sweep of his radio he had brought them together and all very close to him. He meant to be, in so far as was possible, of service to them all. But this Whisperer, in spite of him, had come nearer than any or all the rest of them. Without his head-set by which he might receive any little whispered message that she might send out to him, he became intensely lonely.

It was only natural that, finding himself in this frame of mind, he should turn his thoughts to the last message he had received from her. No, not quite the last, for there had been one later, but at least the most important and longest message he had ever received from her.

“And to think,” he told himself, as his mind took up the thread of it, “when she whispered to me, only thirty miles of desert lay between us, yet I might not see her whom I have never seen; could only listen to her voice.”

He recalled it all now as if it had been but an hour before. He had been waiting for a message, any message, for he had had a feeling that one would come. He had been standing beside his pony with his head-set pressed down over his ears. In another moment he would have gone spinning out across the desert. Then her message had come floating over the air.

His hand had dropped from the pommel of the saddle and he had leaped for the shack door.

“Hello, Curlie! Hello! Are you there?”

His nerves had tingled at the sound; his pulse had quickened at the thought. He had caught in that whisper the old note of suppressed mystery.

“Things doing!” he had murmured as he waited breathlessly for the next sentence.

He had not long to wait. Out of the air it came, a low whisper, but distinct as the loudest shout might have been: “Hello, Curlie! How would you like to take a little vacation? How would you like to go chasing wild horses on the Timber Reservation?”

“Chasing wild horses! What nonsense!” Curlie had exclaimed.

“You make a fine figure of a cowboy on your little blue pony, Curlie. It matches your complexion beautifully!” There had been almost a laugh in the whisper. Curlie did not exactly like it.

“Yes, you do, Curlie; you look fine, you do, and I’m sure they’d take you. Tell you what, Curlie; there’s a regular cowboy down at Bill McKee’s ranch. He just came from Denver. He’s a great rider. I saw him win his saddle and spurs in a contest where there were ten riders of the very best competing against him. Clyde Hopkins is his name. He’s tired of city life and is out for excitement. And believe me, Curlie, he’ll get it up there in the timber running wild horses.” Again for a moment the whisper had ceased.

“Thinking up some more nonsense,” Curlie had grinned.

Curlie had been puzzled at the turn affairs had taken. He had thought the Whisperer had wanted to tell him something of importance, something related to his work. And here she was “joshing” him—or so it seemed to him. Surely she could not be in earnest, suggesting that he go hunting wild horses on the Timber Reservation.

“First time I ever heard of wild horses in the timber,” he had whispered to himself. “Don’t believe there is a one. Plenty of moose and elk, but wild horses—what nonsense!”

Hearing the nicker of his blue pony outside, he had been tempted to hang his head-piece on the wall, lock the door, leap upon his pony and go racing away over the sand.

“Be late, as it is,” he had told himself. He had planned a trip to Mogordo for provisions. It was a long ride, fifteen miles and back.

“And now I think—”

He had meant to say that he thought the Whisperer might go to thunder, for he had more important business than listening to her nonsense, when the whisper had begun again:

“You think I’m joking.”

Curlie had started. It was as if the Whisperer had read his thoughts from afar.

“I knew you would, Curlie.” The tone of the whisper was entirely serious now. “I wasn’t, though. I said that just to get you curious. Thought you might ride away on your blue pony before I was through, if I didn’t get you guessing.

“But, Curlie, the matter’s really serious. There are wild ponies up in the canyons of the Timber Reservation, real little horses, wild as deer. For the most part they don’t belong to anyone. The one who catches them owns them. Sometimes the boys of the prairies go up there and build a trap in a ravine. Then they drive the ponies down through and catch them. They do it more for fun than anything else, as the ponies are small and not worth much.

“But now, Curlie, a man has arrived on the scene who says he proposes to make a serious business of catching these ponies and shipping them east. I don’t think he really intends to do it; he’s using that for a blind. He’s after bigger game than those little yellow ponies. What that game is, Curlie, is your job to find out. You are the Desert Patrol. Your business is to run down men who use the air for illegal purposes. This man has a fellow with him who is an expert radiophone operator. And that man is both crooked and ambitious, Curlie; there’s the danger. His name is Ambrosio Chaves. And the name of the other man is Pete Modder. Modder has four big, lazy boys who are just like himself. They used to live in Texas. They stayed until they were wanted for stealing and fraud. Then they went to Canada. When the Mounties began to look for them, they came back over the border into Washington. When they were wanted in Washington they moved to Idaho. And now they are here. Their game is to get a few horses one way or another, then to move to town and go into business. When they have robbed everyone who trusts them, they move on.

“But, Curlie,” the whisper became more serious still, “Ambrosio Chaves is ambitious. He wants to become a cattle king. He would stop at nothing. He has been suspected of much, but nothing thus far has been proved against him. If you can get him, get him hard and dead to rights, Curlie, you’ll win your western spurs. They’ll be golden spurs with points of platinum; I promise it, Curlie.

“So now, Curlie, you just skip over to the ranch I told you about and ask Clyde Hopkins if he doesn’t want to ride over to the gap in the Big Black Canyon and join in with those men who are going after wild horses. He’ll go, Curlie, for he likes excitement. They’ll let you help them, too, Curlie, for they don’t like work, and it’s real work to build a trap that will catch horses.”

The whisper had ceased. Curlie had sat down unsteadily.

“Huh!” he had breathed softly. “Sounds like something, after all, something really big. And those golden spurs with the platinum points, they sound good to me too. Fine keepsake to take back to old Chicago. I’ll have them, sure. Skin me alive, if I don’t have ’em from the fair lady’s own hand, too.”

Had Curlie known how true these words were to prove to be, and how many strange adventures he would go through before they came true, he might have remained seated thinking longer than he did. As it was, he had hung up his receiver, locked the door and, leaping upon his pony, had ridden away over the moonlit desert.

“And that,” he told himself as he came to that part of his recollections, “is why I am here tonight. That is—”

His reflections cut short, he suddenly gripped his rifle. He had caught a flash of light against the dark green of the fir boughs.

“Flashlight!” he breathed softly. “The raiders are at the bars. Now, Canary, it’s quick action and danger, or you are lost!”