The Buckaroo of Blue Wells/Chapter 13

T WOULD have been difficult for any of Jimmy’s friends to have recognized him, unless they examined him closely. His face was plastered with gore, one eye swelled shut and his lip cut. He had no hat, one sleeve of his shirt flapped behind him, like a streamer tied to his shoulder. He had no saddle. In the crook of one elbow he carried the heavy, double-barrel shotgun. That was the extent of his armament. It was the first time he had ever ridden a bareback horse, and he was having plenty of difficulty in staying on the animal’s back.

Jimmy was still in a daze—but a very determined sort of a daze. All night long he had stayed awake, guarding the ranch-house. Dawn was in sight when he dozed, only to be awakened by a knock on the back door.

“Is that you, Hashknife?” he had asked, and it seemed to him that an affirmative reply had been given. At any rate he had opened the door, only to find himself confronted by three masked men. And before he had time to move, one of the men struck him across the head with a gun barrel, knocking him down. But the blow was a glancing one, and did not knock him out.

Badly dazed he got to his feet, trying to fight, and one of the men drove several smashing blows to his head and face, knocking him out. He had little idea of what happened after that, until returning consciousness gave him a blurred vision of these men taking Marion out of the house. He had tried to get up, but his limbs refused to function.

He saw Nanah crawl to a window, where she managed to look out, before she crumpled to the floor. It seemed years to him before he could get to the window, but his vision had cleared sufficiently to enable him to see the riders going away.

Summoning up every bit of his courage, he secured the shotgun, and managed to stagger to the stable, where he bridled a horse, crawled on its back, and followed them. He was like a man riding through a fog. He had no idea of direction. With his right hand he tried to wipe the blood out of his eyes, but gave it up.

He remembered that there were three men. But that did not matter. He had two cartridges in that shotgun, and he could use the gun as a club, after those shots were gone, he decided. He was no longer the smiling James Eaton Legg, but Jimmy Legg—cowboy. The bookkeeper was gone entirely, and in his place was a bloody-faced young man, who wanted to kill somebody with a shotgun.

Jimmy did not know how long he had ridden. The sun was shining, and his head ached badly. He wanted to stop and lie down, but he kept on going, laughing grimly to himself. The horse stopped, and Jimmy realized that it was standing on the edge of a cañon. He did not know that this was Broken Cañon. Names meant nothing to him. The horse turned to the right and followed the cañon rim. At times they swung far to the right, passing around the head of tributary cañons, but always coming back to the main cañon rim.

Jimmy’s reason was coming back to him now, but it only made the incidents more vivid in his mind. He realized that he had left his six-shooter at the ranch, and that the two cartridges in his gun were all he had.

The horse picked its way among a piled-up mass of big rocks and tangled brush, and came out on sort of mesa. The cañon widened here, its depths purple and gold in the rising sun. On the far side of the cañon were sandstone minarets, gleaming gold-like at the top, banded with red, fading into a deep purple below the sun-line.

But Jimmy had no eyes for the beauties of the sunrise. He could see several people near the cañon rim, a quarter of a mile away, their horses etched in relief against the gray of a huge upthrust slap of gray stone. Then he saw two of the riders turn and ride directly away from the cañon, going at a swift gallop.

He saw the others ride out of sight, as if going down into the cañon. Jimmy felt sure that the first two were men, and if Marion was one of the party, she must have been one of those to go into the cañon. He spurred his horse down through the tangle of brush, heading for that huge gray slab, regardless of mesquite, cactus and other thorny things that tore at his legs.

He reached the spot, and found that a trail led down into the cañon, partly masked by the granite cliff. He could see where it disappeared around a sharp corner, and he wondered how any one could ride down there without being scraped off. But he knew there was only one thing to do—and that was to head down the trail. Clutching the mane of the horse in one hand, and holding his precious shotgun close to his body, he spurred the horse down the narrow trail, leaning away from the cañon depth, but letting the horse take its own gait.

Jimmy had little time to do any observation work. In fact, he had almost forgotten that he was following any one, as his mind was wholly taken up in fear of this rough trail. Suddenly he realized that he was almost at the bottom. He could see the piled-up boulders in the bottom, the glint of a small stream.

His horse slipped, and its pawing hoofs sent a shower of stones off the trail, crashing down through the dry foliage, rattling off the rocks at the bottom. Jimmy had slipped to its rump, but managed to claw his way back. He had dropped his reins, but was not making any effort to recover them for fear of frightening the horse.

Suddenly he felt a tug at his leg, and the horse seemed to fairly fall from under him, while the crash of a shot echoed back and forth from the sides of the cañon. Jimmy sprawled above the horse, falling across his shotgun. For several moments he did not move. Then he drew up his left leg. The bullet had scored him slightly just above the knee-cap, doing little damage.

He tried to crawl away, but the bank was too steep. He turned over on his back, twisting sideways, trying to see below him, but could see nobody. Ignorantly inviting another shot, he crawled to his feet and stepped down past the horse, which was so badly hurt that it scarcely moved. Another shot crashed out, the bullet passing so close to Jimmy that he wasn’t sure it did not hit him. Instinctively jerking aside, his feet flew from under him, and he cascaded down to the bottom of the cañon, taking a conglomeration of brush and rocks with him, which slowed up his progress enough to enable him to reach the bottom, uninjured, except for numerous cuts and bruises and the sacrifice of a goodly portion of his raiment.

But he clung to his shotgun. Nothing short of general cataclysm would make Jimmy Legg let loose of that gun. It was his one hope. He landed in a clump of huge boulders, while over him poured more gravel and rubbish, which had followed in his wake.

In fact, he was so covered with débris that the masked man, holding a ready rifle, who came looking for a dead man, did not see him for a few moments. This man stepped cautiously up on a ledge of rock, about a hundred feet from the sand and brush that covered Jimmy, who lifted the shotgun, pointed it in his general direction and pulled the trigger.

The big shotgun roared like a cannon, kicked Jimmy so hard that it fairly dusted him off. He got to his feet, panting the breath back into his tortured lungs, as he surged forward, looking for concealment. The man dropped off the rock, with a yelp of amazement, possibly tinged with injury. A dozen buckshot are not to be faced lightly.

Jimmy landed behind a boulder, rubbed his shoulder, which was numb from the recoil of the shotgun, and began crawling ahead. He peered over a boulder, and a bullet filled his eyes with rock-dust.

“I guess I didn’t kill him,” observed Jimmy, and angled his way to another boulder. He had only one shot left now. Another boulder seemed to beckon him, and a bullet struck just short of him, cutting his right cheek with flying gravel. Jimmy curled up behind the boulder and took stock of himself.

“This won’t do,” he decided. “I’m doing all the moving. If I could only get to that boulder, I could crawl up the other side and be on a level with him.”

It was a long chance, but Jimmy took it, and he sprawled in behind the cover of brush and rocks, while a ricocheting bullet hummed away up the cañon, like an angry bee. The heavy screen of brush enabled him to crawl up out of the watercourse, and it seemed that this was just what the other man did not want, because he sent bullet after bullet through the brush, picking spots at intervals of a few feet.

But in spite of his bombardment, Jimmy reached the top of the washout, where he sprawled on his face, panting heavily. The man put a few more bullets through the brush, which proved to Jimmy that the shooter did not know that he had reached the top.

Jimmy’s face was bleeding badly, and his mouth was salty from sweat and gore. He found that his leg wound was also bleeding considerably, but gave him little pain. He took time to wrap his handkerchief around it to keep out the dirt.

Then he began crawling again, snaking his way through the brush, trying to see the man who wanted to kill him. He came to the fringe of the brush, and peered out. He could see the man now; that is, he could see his head and shoulders and rifle. He was still watching the place where Jimmy had dropped behind the boulder, before climbing out of the washout.

Farther down the cañon he could see the two horses, and on one was the figure of a girl, evidently roped tightly, because she was having difficulty in looking back toward the scene of conflict.

Jimmy studied the man, and tried to map out a plan of attack. He was about a hundred feet away, but Jimmy thought the target too small to take a chance on his remaining shot. He saw the man look back toward the horses. He was evidently getting impatient. Brush grew fairly heavy along the slope, and Jimmy pondered the chances he might have to work his way to the horses without being seen. It would be a dangerous move, he decided. Anyway, he liked the cover of the boulder-strewn brush, and as long as the man was willing to wait, he would, too.

He saw the man take off his hat and lift it above the top of the rock. It rather puzzled Jimmy. He jerked it down quickly. Then he exposed it in another place. It suddenly struck Jimmy that this man was trying to draw his fire, and his blood-caked features cracked into a grin.

An insane desire to yell at this man gripped at him. He wanted to laugh, to joke this man. But his better judgment bade him be still. He saw the man move forward to another boulder, where he repeated the cap-lifting. Jimmy realized that this man was getting impatient to have the fight finished.

The man kept moving ahead, until he was masked from Jimmy, who crawled out of the brush and headed for the rim of the washout again, trading sides with the other man. For about thirty feet Jimmy crawled swiftly, dropped behind some cover and waited.

It was about five minutes later that he saw the man again. He had moved farther up the cañon, possibly thinking that Jimmy had made his escape. By standing up, Jimmy could get a good look at this man, who was too far away for Jimmy to take a chance with the shotgun; so Jimmy dropped back into the washout, bent down low and headed in the general direction of the horses.

But he had not escaped detection. A bullet sang past his ear, and he stumbled over a boulder, falling sidewise into a cut on the left-hand side of the washout. To the shooter, it possibly appeared as if he had been struck. Jimmy was half-standing, half-lying in the cut, when he heard the drumming of footsteps, as the man hurried forward. There was no chance of concealment there.

It seemed as if the man were almost over him, when he raised up, shoving the shotgun barrel over the rim of the washout. The man jerked to a stop, only fifty feet away, firing his rifle from his hip, just as Jimmy pressed the trigger. The bullet struck just in front of Jimmy’s face, filling his nose, eyes and mouth with dirt, and the kick of the shotgun sent him running backward down the short slope, where he hooked his heel on a rock, and sprawled on his back.

It was several moments before he could get up. He felt weak, nauseated, as he spat out the dirt, blinked tearfully and climbed to the top of the washout. Out there on the flat ground was the man, sprawling on his face, his rifle flung aside.

Jimmy did not go near him. He sighed heavily and headed for the horses, where Marion’s white face and astonished eyes drove every other thought from his mind. Neither of them spoke as he cut the ropes which bound her, and she got stiffly from the saddle, clinging to him.

“You—you came, didn’t you, Jimmy?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Yea-a-ah, I sure did.” Jimmy grinned on one side of his face, because the other was glued tightly with gore. “It was quite a trip. This has been a tough season, Marion.”

It was rather inane conversation, but under the circumstances it was excusable.

The man was trying to sit up, and Marion pointed to him breathlessly. Jimmy went staggering out to him, a loose-jointed young man, who had been hurt so many times that he was numb all over. He picked up the rifle and stepped back, tottering on his feet.

“You better stay where you are,” he told the masked man. “You ain’t so awful tough.”

Jimmy had heard Johnny Grant use that expression, and it seemed to fit the occasion. He turned his head and called to Marion.

“Can you lead the horses up here, Marion? We’ve got to pack this lead-filled person to a doctor, or he won’t live to be hung.”