Читать книгу The Desert Patrol - Roy J. Snell - Страница 5

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Rising upon one knee, with the butt of his heavy rifle pressed solidly against his shoulder, he waited. So silent was the forest, so ghostly the night, he heard the regular tick-tick of his watch and counted the beats of his own heart. Little drops of perspiration stood out upon the tip of his nose. His knees quivered, but still he sat there motionless.

“The light will flash again and then—” he whispered to himself.

A full moment passed, a moment in which he fancied many things. Now he imagined he caught a movement at his right. Someone was creeping upon him. And now there did come a faint thud from below. Whether this was the stamp of a horse’s hoof or the drop of a raider’s rifle to the ground, he could not tell.

Then, suddenly lighting up the dark, there came a prolonged flash from the electric torch. At the edge of that circle of light appeared a dark face, a face entirely strange to Curlie; the face of some swarthy Mexican. The next instant, with muscles tense, Curlie thrust out a finger for his trigger. At that same instant, as if by prearrangement, the light snapped out. Again all was darkness.

This darkness was not for long. When again the light appeared, it revealed a pair of hands. One hand gripped the light; the other held a pair of wire-cutters. The bars of the corral were wired into position. The man intended cutting those wires. Beyond doubt he had a confederate at the back of the corral who was ready, once the bars were down, to send the whole band of frightened horses thundering down the canyon trail in the night. It was a bold attempt, but these Mexican raiders were bold.

All this flew through Curlie’s mind like a flash. The next instant his finger was on the trigger. There came a sharp crack. The light flared out. Then again, save for the sound of stealthy movements in the dark, there was silence.

Curlie lost not one moment of time. He glided swiftly away to his right. Yet, quick as he had been, someone else was quicker. Suddenly above him there loomed the figure of a man, and in his hand there gleamed a knife. Curlie had shot the torch from the Mexican’s hand and, baffled and enraged, the man had charged up the slope and, fortune being with him, had come directly upon the crouching boy.

For a second Curlie was frozen with fear; the next he was all action. There was not time to grasp his rifle and so defend himself. There was only an instant in which to do a whirling back somersault. As the Mexican lunged forward, his arm came sweeping down. His knife slashed into the pine needles; that was all. The next moment his broad sombrero was knocked down over his eyes; his arm was struck a violent blow that sent his knife whirling through the air. In the twinkle of an eye, Curlie had done all this. Then he turned to flee, but just a second too late. The long arm of the Mexican swung about and, grasping him by his stout coat, sent him crashing to earth with such force as all but drove the senses from him. In the next instant he felt a crushing weight come hurtling down upon him. He lay face down upon the earth; the Mexican was on his back.

For full ten seconds he was unable to regain his senses. When at last he caught a gasping breath and attempted to move, he found that he might as well be buried beneath a mountain as to be held down by that burly Mexican. What was worse, he could feel the Mexican making stealthy movements with his hands. First to right, then to left, they groped about.

“Searching for his knife,” Curlie thought in despair. “If he finds it I’m a goner. He’ll stab me to the heart as though I were a toad.”

The knife, however, appeared to be hard to find. Agonizing moments passed, Curlie frantically revolving plans of escape in his mind. He thought of his own sheath knife. This was out of reach of his hand. To struggle for possession of it would be but to call his assailant’s attention to it and so bring his life to a more sudden end. His rifle, lying there somewhere in the bed of pine needles, was quite as useless. He would have shouted but had no breath for it; besides, this was as likely to bring foe as friend.

Now Curlie, though of slender build, was possessed of great strength of arm. As he lay there searching his mind for some means of escape and fearing every moment that the knife would be found and his life brought to a sudden end, his eyes caught, indistinctly in the space before him, the outline of some object. At first he thought it the hilt of the knife. This sent a thrill through his being. If it were the knife and he were able to grasp it, the victory would be his. This hope faded fast, for, as his eyes studied it, he found it to be but the stout root of a tree. Washed free of needles and earth by some freshet of rain, for a distance of a foot or more it bulged above the surface of the ground.

At once the boy’s mind began to evolve another means of escape. The root was solid and strong; at least, he had reason to hope it was. If only he could grasp it with both his hands, he felt sure that he might drag himself suddenly forward and so overturn his antagonist. But could he reach it? Would not the Mexican detect his movement and stop him? He could but try.

Stealthily he moved his right hand forward. So intent was the Mexican upon retrieving his knife he did not, for the moment, take note of the movement. Slowly, ever so slowly, the hand moved out over the bed of needles. Now it was a foot and a half from the root, now a foot, now six inches. And now the slender fingers grasped it.

A sigh of relief escaped the boy’s nervous lips. The task, however, was but half completed. One hand was not enough. His left hand was partly doubled under him. The Mexican, in contempt of anything the frail boy could do, did not take any note of the slight movement that released the hand.

There was a flash of white as Curlie’s left hand shot forward. The next instant, as if riding a bucking bronco, the Mexican tilted forward to go tumbling back upon his neck. Then, hazarding all upon one stroke, the boy let out a bloodcurdling scream.

This scream was answered from a half dozen points at once. Soon there came breaking through the brush a brown-faced, tough-muscled cowboy, Clyde Hopkins, Curlie’s partner. He was followed quickly by a slender, dark-eyed Mexican type of boy and a little later by three great slouching boys and a man who could not have been mistaken for any other than their father.

“What’s up?” demanded this man. “Looks like you’d queered the game. Gone and drove ’em all off, hain’t you, and us not shot ’em up any? That’s a hot way to do. But what can you expect from a greener? Serves us right fer lettin’ y’in on it.”

Curlie turned white at this speech. He was fearfully angry. A moment before he had barely escaped death by the hand of a Mexican raider’s knife, yet this man, this Pete Modder, who was, Curlie suspected, no better than a rustler himself, blamed him for calling for help.

For ten full seconds he stood there speechless. His mad efforts to control himself at last successful, he turned about, picked up something from the ground and murmured, “Here’s his knife. Some knife, I’d say.”

To himself he was saying all the while: “Pete Modder, the time’s not ripe for action yet. You think me green, do you? Well, in the end you won’t. There’ll be action enough, unless I miss my guess, and a lot of action that you won’t particularly like. Watch me then.”

All this, passing through his mind and not reaching the tip of his tongue, did no harm whatever and did help to soothe his wounded spirits.

“Guess there won’t be anything more doing to-night,” said the dark-eyed youth, who was the person of doubtful character, Ambrosio Chaves. “They know we’re onto them. They won’t come back. I’ll lay out here by the corral. The rest of you might as well get up to camp for a wink of sleep. Remember we’re going after Old Baldie in the morning. And we’ll get him too.”