“You tell Hook Lacey,” he said, “that if he ever rustles another head of Slash Seven stock I’ll personally come after him!”
Johnny Lyle swaggered just a little as he walked into the Gold Pan and ordered a meal.
Yet as he was eating he began to get red around the ears. It had been a foolish thing to do, talking like that. Folks would think he was full of hot air.
Then he looked up into a pair of wide blue eyes. “Your order, sir?”
Two days later Chuck Allen rode up to the ranch house and swung down. Bert Ramsey got up hastily from his chair.
“Chuck,” he asked eagerly, “you see him?”
Chuck shook his head. “No,” he said, “I
ain’t seen him, but I seen his trail. You better grab yourself a bronc, Bert, and start fogging it for the border. That kid’s really started something.”
The door opened and Tom West came out. “What’s up?” he demanded. His face was gray with worry. “Confound it, what’s the matter with these hands? Two days now I’ve had you all ridin’ to find that kid, and you can’t turn up a clue! Can’t you blind bats even find a tenderfoot kid?”
Chuck grew a little red around the ears, but his eyes twinkled as he looked at Bert out of the corner of his eyes. “I crossed his trail, boss, and she’s some trail, believe you me!”
West shoved Bert aside. “Don’t stand there like a slab-sided jackass! What happened? Where is he?”
Chuck was taking his time, “Well,” he said, “he .was in Victorio. He rode in there the morning after he left the ranch. He found a couple of Slash Seven hides hanging on Butch Jensen’s fence. They’d been burned over into Seven Seventy-sevens, but he found ‘em, and then Butch Jensen found him.”
“Oh, Lordffwas West paled. “If that big brute hurt that kid, I’ll kill him!”
“You won’t need no war paint,” Chuck said, aggravatingly slow, “because the kid took Butch to a swell three-sided whipping. Folks say Johnny just lit all over him, swinging in every direction. He whipped Butch to a frazzle!”
“Chuck,” Bert burst out, “you’re crazy!
Why, that kid couldn’t whip one side of—“
“But he did,” Chuck interrupted. “He not only beat Butch up, but he made him pay for three head at twenty dollars a head.
He further told him that the next hide he found on Butch’s fence would cost him thirty dollars.”
West swallowed. “And Butch took it?”
“Boss, if you’d seen Butch you’d not ask that
question. Butch took everything the kid could throw, which was plenty. Butch looks like he’d crawled facefirst into a den of wildcats. But that ain’t all.”
They waited, staring at Chuck. He rolled a smoke, taking his time.
“He told everybody who was listening,” he finally said, “and probably three or four of ‘em was friends of Lacey, that if Hook rustled one more head of our stock, he was going to attend to him personal.”
West groaned and Bert Ramsey swallowed.
But Chuck was not through.
“Then the kid goes into the Gold Pan. He ain’t there more’n thirty minutes before he has that little blond peacherino crazy about him. Mary, she’s so crazy about that kid she can’t even get her orders straight.”
“Chuck,” West demanded, “where’s Johnny now? If you know, tell me!”
Chuck Allen grew sober. “That’s the trouble, boss. I don’t know. But when he left Victorio he headed back into the mountains. And that was yesterday afternoon.”
Bert Ramsey’s face was pale. He liked his job on the Slash Seven and knew West was quite capable of firing him as he had promised. Moreover, he was genuinely worried. That he had considered the boss’s nephew a nuisance was true, but anybody who could whip Butch Jensen, and who could collect for stolen cattle, was no tenderfoot, but a man to ride the river with. But to ride into the hills after Hook Lacey, after whipping Jensen, threatening Hook, and then walking off with the girl Hook wanted—t was insanity.
Whipping Jensen was something, but Hook Lacey wouldn’t use his fists. He would use a gun, and he had killed seven men, at least. And he would have plenty of help.
West straightened. “Bert,” he said harshly, “you get Gar Mullins, Monty Reagan, and Bucky McCann and ride after that kid. And don’t come back without him!”
Ramsey nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“I sure will get him.”
“How about me?” Chuck asked. “Can I go, too?”
At the very hour the little cavalcade was leaving the ranch, Johnny Lyle was lying on a ridge looking down into the upper part of the Tierra Blanca Canyon. A thin trail of smoke was lifting from the canyon, and he could see approximately where the camp was. He lay high on the rugged side of Seven Brothers Mountain, with the camp almost fifteen hundred feet below.
“All right, boy,” he told himself, “you’ve made your brags. Now what are you going to do?”
North of the camp the canyon ran due north and south, but just below it took a sharp bend to the west, although a minor canyon trailed off south for a short distance in less rugged country. Their hideout, Johnny could see, was well chosen. There was obviously a spring, judging from the way their camp was located and the looks of the trees and brush, and there was a way out up the canyon to the north.
On the south, they could swing west around the bend. Johnny could see that this trail branched, and the branch beyond also branched. In taking any route they were well covered, with plenty of chance of a getaway unseen, or for defense if they so desired.
Yet if they had to ride north up the canyon there was no way out for several miles. With a posse closing in from the south, one man could stop their escape to the north. Their camp at the spring, however, was so situated that it was nearly impossible for them to be stopped from going south by anything less than a large posse. It was fairly obvious, though, that if they were attacked they would ride south.
The idea that came to him was the wildest kind of a gamble, but he decided to take the chance, for there was a possibility that it might work. To plan ahead was impossible. All he could do was start the ball rolling and take advantage of what opportunity offered.
Mounting his horse, he rode along a bench of Seven Brothers and descended the mountain on the southwest. In the canyon to the west he hastily gathered sticks and built a fire, laying a foundation of crossed dry sticks of some size, gathered from canyon driftwood and arranged in such a way as to burn for some time. The fire was built among rocks and on dry sand so there was no way for it to spread, and no way for it to be seen, though the rising smoke would be visible.
Circling farther south and east, he built three more fires. His hope was that the smoke from all of them would be seen by the outlaws, who would deduce that a posse, having approached during the night, now was preparing breakfast, with every way out blocked. If they decided this, and without a careful scouting expedition, which would consume time, the outlaws would surely retreat up the canyon to the north.
Johnny Lyle worked fast and he worked hard, adding a few sticks of green wood to increase the smoke. When his last fire had been built, he mounted again and rode north on the east side of Stoner Mountain. Now the mountain was between him and the outlaws and he had no idea of what they would do. His gamble was that by riding north, he could hit the canyon of the Tierra Blanca after it swung east, and intercept the escaping outlaws.
He rode swiftly, aware that he could travel faster than they, but with no idea whether or not they had seen his fires and were moving. His first idea was to ride into the bottom of the canyon and meet them face-to-face, but Hook Lacey was a rugged character, as were his men, and the chances were they would elect to fight. He chose the safer way and crawled down among some rocks.
An hour had passed before they appeared. He knew none of them, but rightly guessed the swarthy man with the hook nose was Lacey. He let them get within thirty yards, then yelled:
“All right, boys! Drop your guns and get your hands up! We’ve got you bottled!”
There was an instant of frozen silence, then Lacey’s gun leaped to his hand. He let out a wild yell and the riders charged right up the slope and at Johnny Lyle.
Suddenly panic-stricken, Johnny got off a quick shot that burned the hindquarters of Lacey’s plunging horse and hit the pommel of the rider following him. Glancing off, it ripped the following man’s arm. Then the riders were right at him.