_ CHAPTER XXII. BUD'S DISCOVERY
Once it became evident that catching the rustlers was likely to be the work of a long chase on the trail, the whole party of pursuers came to a halt beside the boy ranchers. And after some rapid talk of what might lay beyond their stopping place, in a lonely, wild and desolate section of the defile, the conversation switched to what had surprised Bud and his cousins--the absence of the cattle.
"I s'posed they were driving the steers ahead of 'em all along," admitted North "They drove the animals off our ranch, and I didn't think but what they were hazing 'em along to some place where they could change or blur the brands, and then sell 'em."
"That's what I thought, too," acknowledged Dick.
"Well, I must say I didn't think much about it," confessed Bud. "When I saw Del Pinzo and his gang in there all I wanted to do was to come to hand-grips with 'em. I forgot all about the cattle. But after we'd chased along a bit I did begin to wonder where my animals were--
our animals, I should say," he corrected himself with a glance at his cousins. However, they understood.
"They must have gotten the cattle over to Double Z, or wherever it is they dispose of 'em," suggested Dick.
"They couldn't--not in this short time," declared Slim. "We followed 'em too close. Besides, there isn't a sign of any cattle having been here, nor in that place where we surprised th' head Greaser and his gang. Not a sign of cattle!"
He looked up and down the gorge, as did the other cowboys. But not even the sharpest eye could detect the faintest "sign" of the steers having been driven along the passage.
"They must have them hidden somewhere," said Dick. "We'd better go back to the place where the sign petered out. There must be some opening there out of the main canyon."
"If there is it's so well hid that it takes sharper eyes than I've got to find it," declared Snake, and he was noted for his far-seeing and clear vision.
"Go
back!" exclaimed North impulsively. "We aren't going back, are we, until we get Del Pinzo and his gang?"
"Shoot 'em up--that's what I advise!" cried Yellin' Kid. There was a moment's pause, and Bud spoke.
"We're got two things to do," said the boy rancher. "One is to get our cattle back, and the other is to nab the rustlers. But it's more important to get the cattle, I think.
"If we don't do that our ranch experiment will be a failure," he went on. "But, of course, for the sake of other ranchers, it would be a mighty good thing if we could put Del Pinzo and his rustler crowd out of business."
"Can't we do both?" asked Nort.
"That's what I was coming to," his cousin continued. "If we can get on the trail of the hidden steers--for hidden they are, I'm sure--we can haze them back to the valley. Then we can keep on after this crowd," and he nodded toward the winding trail that led down the narrow defile.
"Then you think we'd better go back!" asked Dick.
"Let's see what Slim says" answered Bud. Naturally he would turn to his father's foreman for advice.
"Oh, you're leavin' it t' me, are you?" asked Slim, as he finished rolling his cigarette, a feat he could accomplish with one hand. Then he lighted it, took a satisfying puff and went on: "If you ask my advice I'd say to go back an' see if you can't locate the cattle. As Bud remarks, they're dollars an' cents. Th' rustlers aren't, though it would be a mighty good stunt t' wipe 'em off th' face of this cow country. But maybe we can attend to
them later."
"Turn back she is!" exclaimed Bud, accepting, as did the others, the advice of Slim as being final. "We'll see if we can find the cattle, and then haze them to a safe place. After that we'll nab Del Pinzo and his bunch--if we can," he added, as a saving clause.
"Suits me!" remarked Yellin' Kid, taking off his hat and looking at the two bullet holes. "That nabbin' part is what I want t' play at," and his grin suggested that when he and the Greaser met there would be some interesting happenings.
It having been thus decided that the pursuit would be abandoned for the time being, a sort of council of war was held to settle on the next course.
"I say grub!" exclaimed Bud, knowing that the suggestion would come with better grace from him than from some of the men who were working for him and his father. "Let's eat!"
There was no debate on this question and when the ponies had been turned loose to graze on what scanty grass they could find, a fire was made and preparations started for feeding the hungry posse. For they were that--both hungry and a posse, bent on the capture of the lawless rustlers. Though, for the time, righteous revenge was given over to the more practical side of the question--getting back the cattle.
Probably you do not need to be told that little time was wasted over the meal, simple as it was. Cowboys, on the trail, or otherwise engaged in their work of the ranch or range, do not spend much time over the pleasures of the appetite. There is a time for feasting, and a time for chasing cattle rustlers, and there was no sense in combining the two. That, evidently, was the thought in the minds of Bud and his friends, for they hurried through their eating, and, having rested the horses, were soon in saddles again.
"Now," remarked Bud, talking the matter over with Slim, "what is the best plan?"
"To get back, as fast as we can, t' th' place where we saw th' last signs of th' cattle," was the foreman's answer. "The unravelin' of th' skein of mystery, t' use a poetical expression, Bud, is there!"
They all agreed with this view of it, and after a short ride down the defile, to see, if by chance, any of the Del Pinzo crowd might be in evidence, or returning, the back trail was taken.
"We aren't going to discover much this day," observed Bud, as he rode slowly along between Nort and Dick.
"Why, did you see a black rabbit?" Nort asked, remembering what had happened when a similar incident occurred, just before the strange events narrated in the chapter preceding this.
"No, I didn't see a black jack," Bud answered. "But it won't be long until dark, for we don't get the full benefit of the afternoon sun down in this gorge. And we can't do anything except by daylight. No use looking for sign in the dark."
"That's right," agreed Nort. "But I was afraid it was a black rabbit you'd seen."
"As if we didn't have enough bad luck without that," commented Dick. "It's as bad, losing your herd as it is not to have enough water to give 'em what they need," and he referred to the time when, by the efforts of this same Del Pinzo, the supply for the reservoir of Happy Valley was cut off.
"Oh, well, it might be worse," observed Bud, with a sort of cheerful, philosophical air, for he was of rather a happy disposition.
"How?" asked Snake, for he was rather "sore" because Del Pinzo and the rustlers had escaped. Perhaps Snake felt that he might have gone in and captured the outlaws single-handed when he was on the lone spying expedition.
"Well, I might never have had any cattle for those fellows to steal," went on Bud. "But say, boys," he went on, as they came to a place where the trail seemed to divide. "Let's take this other road back. It looks a bit easier, and we want to favor the ponies all we can."
"Go ahead," advised Slim, to whom Bud looked for confirmation of his plan. "Anything that makes it easier for th' horses makes it more sure for us. And we may have a long hunt ahead of us."
The care taken by the boy ranchers and their friends of their animals was not exaggerated, nor unusual. In the West so much depends on a man's horse--his comfort and very life, often--that it is a foolish fellow, indeed, who will not bestow at least some thought and care on his horse. The animal becomes a trusted companion and friend to the cowboys and prospectors.
So, in order, as he hoped, to provide an easier means of getting back to the place they wished to reach, Bud led the way along a different trail on the retreat.
It was practically a retreat, though one they had selected for themselves, since the outlaws had distanced them.
It was rather a dejected bunch of boy ranchers and their friends that were now back-trailing. There was not much talk, after the excitement of the attack which had "petered out," and even Bud, gay and cheerful as he usually was, now seemed to have little to say.
It was Dick who startled them all by suddenly exclaiming:
"Look ahead there! Isn't that a man on the trail?" He, with Nort and Bud were in advance of the others. Dick pointed toward the place where he thought he saw something suspicious.
"I don't glimpse anything," observed Nort.
"Nor I," said his cousin.
"He's gone now," Dick stated. "But I did see some one, and I'm almost sure it was a Greaser. Looked just like one of their hats."
"What is it!" called Slim, for he caught snatches of the rather excited talk of the boys.
"Dick thought he saw one of the Del Pinzo gang," answered Bud.
"Maybe he's the fellow I cracked on the head," suggested Snake. For they had lost sight of that individual in the mad rush into the canyon, and had not seen him when they turned back.
"Say, wouldn't it be a good thing to capture him?" asked Bud eagerly. "We could make him tell where the others are, and where our cattle are hidden."
"If we can get him," conceded Slim.
"There he is again!" cried Dick. "Come on, fellows!"
Disregarding, or forgetting the travel-weary horses, the ranch lad urged his own steed ahead at as rapid a pace as the animal could be induced to develop in a spurt.
"Take it easy!" advised Nort to his brother, but he might as well have called to the wind, for Dick was off and away.
"I don't see anything!" cried Bud, and though he had looked eagerly forward at Dick's call he had glimpsed neither hat nor face of any personage who might be suspected of being one of the Del Pinzo gang.
But, even with that, Bud was not going to miss a chance to be in at the finish of whatever was about to happen, so he spurred his animal forward.
"Come on, boys!" cried Slim to his comrades. "We can't let those youngsters tackle this game alone--'specially when if there's one of the rustlers there may be more.
Pronto!"
He galloped forward, as did the others, along the new trail that Bud had suggested taking. But Dick was in the lead, and, in a few seconds, was out of sight beyond an outcropping ledge of rock, which narrowed the trail at this particular point.
"Watch your step there, boys!" cried Snake, as he saw What was likely to prove a bad turning. "I don't see how Dick got around it as he did, taking it at the gallop," he went on.
And, as it happened, Dick had not exactly made it, for when Bud and Nort reached the dangerous turn, slightly after Dick had disappeared abound it, they saw no sight of their companion.
"Pull up!" cried Bud sharply. "There's something wrong!" Nort was beginning to think so himself, and he hauled his steed back with such good will and energy that the animal was almost on its haunches.
"Where in the world did he go?" cried Bud.
Nort asked the same question, for there lay the narrow trail before them, running along a ledge, with a shelving bank of shale and sand on one side and a towering face of rock on the other.
Snake Purdee raced at such speed around the turn, in spite of his own admonition to the boy ranchers, that the cowboy nearly ran down Bud and Nort.
"Where's Dick?" cried Snake, at once aware that the stout lad was not in sight.
"He's vamoosed--somewhere," said Bud. "Maybe he met-up with that Greaser and----"
At that moment, however, there came a cry, unmistakably of distress, seemingly from some distance ahead and down below the high and narrow trail on which the party had come to a halt.
"There's Dick now!" cried Nort, recognizing his brother's voice.
"Where in the world is he?" asked Bud, looking about.
In answer Snake pointed down the sloping bank of shale and sand, and there, at the bottom, was Dick, half buried in the soft material, and his horse, with twisted saddle, was standing near by, looking rather the worse for wear. And if the countenance of the animal had been visible it would doubtless have shown pained surprise.
"What's' the matter? What you doing down there?" called Nort to his brother, as Dick proceeded to extricate himself from the sand and shale that covered him almost to his neck.
"You don't s'pose I'm down here for fun, do you?" floated up the somewhat sarcastic answer. "I came around that turn too fast and the horse just sat down at the edge and slid here. It's lucky I'm not killed!"
"It sure is!" agreed Slim. "You want to take a strange trail easy, boy. Are you hurt--or your horse?"
Dick was about two hundred feet below them at the foot of the slope. He got up and limped over to his animal.
"Guess he's all right," was the reply.
"How about you?" asked Bud, for Dick had followed the real westerner's habit of looking first to his steed.
"Oh, I'm scratched up a bit, and lame," was the rueful reply, "but I guess nothing is busted unless it's one of my girths."
The others watched him, while he straightened his saddle, which had slipped around under the horse. Then Dick called up:
"It's all right. I can ride him, I reckon," which he proved by vaulting into the saddle.
"How am I going to get back up there, though?" he asked. "It's as slippery as an iceberg." "You can't get up," Snake called down. "Don't try it. The trail up here goes along the same direction as the one down there. Keep on it until we join you."
Which Dick did, his pony, fortunately, proving to have suffered no injuries in the unexpected slide down the hill. And thus, by a narrow margin, was an accident diverted. For had the slope down which Dick plunged, because of taking the turn too suddenly, been of rock, both he and the horse might have been badly hurt, if not killed.
"Keep a lookout for that Greaser," called Dick up to his chums above him.
"I don't believe you saw any," retorted Slim. "There aren't any signs of him here."
Nor were there, though the cowboys made careful scrutiny. And afterward Dick admitted that he might have mistaken the fluttering of a bush for the hat of someone he thought a member of Del Pinzo's gang. In a short time the upper path merged into the trail below, and Dick rejoined his friends, exhibiting some scratches sustained in his perilous slide.
Together the posse rode on, making a trail back to the main defile, and out of the one down which the Greaser and his gang had turned, where they had been discovered by Dick. And then Bud's prediction came true. The sun, which never shone directly into the main canyon for any great length of time, began to set, bringing gloom into the defile long before it would make its appearance on the level country up above.
Seeing the gathering darkness, Slim advised calling a halt, and this was done several miles beyond the place where the last trace of the stolen cattle had been observed.
"Shall we camp here!" asked Bud, deferring to the foreman, as was natural under the circumstances.
"We've got grass and water," Slim remarked, indicating a spring toward which, even then, some of the horses were hastening. "Water for the ponies and us, grass for the animals, and there ought to be some grub left."
"There is," said Snake Purdee, who had assumed, or been given (it did not much matter which) the office of commissary. "We brought along plenty."
"And we may need it before we reach the end of the trail," remarked Bud. "I don't believe it's going to be easy to find where those cattle disappeared to."
"There's only two ways, or at th' most three, in which they could be kept away from us," said Slim, as he slid from his saddle.
"What are they?" asked Dick, who, like his brother, was always eager to learn from a true son of the West, such as was the foreman of Diamond X.
"Well," Slim resumed, "they've either been driven down some side passage, or gorge, such like as we found Del Pinzo in, or they were back-tracked to th' open an' driven off there th' same night they was run off."
"That might be," admitted Bud. "I didn't think of a back track."
"Well, I did," Slim said, "but the signs of it was so faint I passed it up."
A back trail, I might explain, is where an animal, or several of them, or even a human, for that matter, turns and retraces the way first traveled. A fox, fleeing before the hounds, will often do this, and as the scent does not indicate the direction in which Reynard is running, the dogs are often deceived.
But in the case of the fox the imprints of the animal's paws are so light that perhaps only with a microscope could it be told when he had "back-tracked." Except, of course, in some place where soft mud might retain the impression of both trails.
In the case of a large body of cattle, also, though the scent would not be relied upon, it would be difficult for the casual, or, in some cases, even the trained observer, to say where the herd had been turned and driven back over the same course originally taken.
Thus pursuers would be baffled. And when to this is added the fact that the floor of the gorge was of rock, in the main, which did not take, or retain, any impressions, the puzzle was all the more difficult to solve.
"Well, we'll see what happens in the morning," observed Bud, as preparations for the camp went on.
The usual watches were set that night, two of the posse being constantly on guard. It was rather nervous work for the boy ranchers, especially Nort and Dick, as they started at every chance sound which seemed to echo so loudly in the darkness. And once Dick, who was taking the tour of duty with Yellin' Kid, suddenly fired at an object he saw moving.
It was only a luckless coyote, as was evidenced by the howl of pain that followed the report of Dick's gun, and then the night was made hideous and sleepless, for the time, by the chorus of weird howls from the other slinking beasts who were hanging about, hoping for something to eat.
However, it was nearly morning when Dick did his shooting, and a little later they all turned out for an early breakfast, the odor of the coffee and sizzling bacon producing an aroma finer than that of the most costly French perfume.
"And now for the day's work!" exclaimed Bud, when they were once more ready to set off on the trail.
"And may we find something!" was the fervent petition of Dick.
Off they started, refreshed by the night's halt and eager for what lay before them.
I shall not weary you by a recital of all the minor incidents of the day, how they found many false trails and leads, several of which at first seemed promising, but all of which led to nothing.
It was Bud who made the real discovery which, eventually, led to the solving of the mystery. Bud had alighted from his pony, when the halt was made for the noonday lunch, and was climbing up the side of the rocky hill which extended for miles and formed one wall of the gorge.
"Looking for gold?" asked Dick, as he saw his cousin pick up and examine several rocks.
"Sure!" was the laughing answer. "Might find the bones of another Triceratops, too!"
Bud reached forward to pick up something else, and a rock slipped from beneath his foot. He had been resting heavily on it, and the sudden lurch threw him backward. To save himself he clutched at the nearest object, which happened to be a bush growing in the side of the hill. For a moment it seemed that this would save the lad from at least sliding down the declivity, but the bush was not deeply rooted and, in another moment pulled out in the ranch boy's hands. He flung up his arms, and almost toppled over backward, but managed to throw himself forward, and then he slid down several feet.
"Hurt!" called up Dick, ready to hasten to his cousin's aid.
"No, but my shoes are full of gravel. Next time I come up a place like this I----"
Bud suddenly ceased speaking, and began to scramble up the side of the shale-covered hill almost as fast as he had slid down. Then, as he reached the place whence the bush had pulled out he seemed to be looking into some crevice or opening.
A moment later he turned, looked down on the party gathered in the defile below him, and shouted:
"I've found 'em! I've found 'em! Here they are, in one of the queerest places you can imagine! Come up here and look!" _