30,000 On the Hoof (28 page)

Huett levelled his rifle at the melee and waited for a rider to break through the dust. A horse plunged into view, but it was riderless. As Huett stepped out on the porch, peering low, he saw a burst of red flame from the ledge above the cabin, and then simultaneously with a banging gunshot came a violent shock, a burning blow from a bullet that knocked him back against the wall.

"Get away--from window!" he shouted to the women inside. He raised himself on his elbow. Two riders, guns in hands, yelling like Indians, rode down at breakneck pace, and reaching a level, began to shoot.

Bang-bang-bang! Bullets thudded into the logs of the cabin. As the two turned towards the corrals and galloped by, a stream of red fire burst from the cabin window. Huett dropped flat as Barbara's thirty barked spitefully. The foremost horse broke his fast pace, leaped high with horrid snorts, and plunged down, unseating his rider, but as the horse lunged, the rustler hung on grimly to the pommel. He made a magnificent leap from flying feet and just missed the saddle. The crippled horse, mad with pain and fright, dragged him across the brook and kicked free to race among the bellowing, scattering herd.

Barbara ran out of the cabin, working the lever of her rifle. She fired at the second horseman. He emitted a piercing yell of agony and, sagging in his saddle, managed to guide his horse down the canyon on the left side of the brook.

Huett lurched upright from his knees, staggering, and seized hold of the porch post. Just then Barbara wheeled, her face like ashes, her eyes bright with a brilliant light.

"Dad! You're hurt!" she cried, piercingly, and rushed to support him.

"I don't know... Reckon so," he replied, thickly. His senses were not clear. As she helped him over the high door-jam, Lucinda gave him one horrified look and collapsed on the floor. Logan felt hot blood streaming down his face and neck. Barbara helped him to his big chair, and then dashed back to the door, working the lever of her rifle. She peered out.

"What's doing, Bab?" called Logan, hoarsely.

"Oh, I--can't tell," she panted. "Yes... Cattle on the rim--down canyon... Stampede!... I see riders--scattered... Horses running hard... Oh, Dad! I believe we've driven the rustlers off!"

"I'll bet we have--those that could ride!... Bab, come here... Run your finger in this hole over my ear."

"Dad! I--I can't! Oh, the blood is pouring," cried Barbara, suddenly weak.

"Then I'll have to... Augh! Talk about fire!--Aw, that hombre just creased me!"

"Dad, you're not--bad hurt?" faltered Barbara.

"I'm not hurt at all. Bullet ditched my scalp. Gosh, it burns! I'm bleeding like a stuck pig. Well, if the boys get off this easy we're jake... Lucinda's only fainted, I reckon."

"She's coming to," cried Barbara, gladly. Then she ran to the door, and gazing out she cried: "George! He's crippled. Can't see the other boys... Oh, mercy, if they're only safe!"

Barbara bathed Lucinda's face, brought her back to consciousness and helped her to the bed. Logan averted his bloody face, and stood up with an effort. "Luce, I'm all right." He stamped out on to the porch to encounter George, dragging his leg. The healthy tan was gone from his face. At sight of his father he halted short with a grimace.

"Just nicked over the ear, George," announced Logan. "Aw, that's good.

You sure look a sight to scare one into creeps... I stopped a slug, worse luck."

"Grant?"

"God!... I'm afraid, Dad. I saw him get hit--fall--then jump up. Four or five of those thieves bolted for the road. Grant ran out to hold them back. They were using Colts. With his Winchester, Grant had the best of them. I ran out, too. That's when I got stung, from the other direction.

I ducked behind the corral--had two shots at the other two. Didn't miss, either, but they got away... Dad, I counted eight men altogether."

"Eight?--Yes, so did I. There's Abe. He's holding Grant up. They're coming. If he can walk at all he's not hard hit... Aw, thank God!... I reckoned my lot could be no worse, but it could! George, tell the women we're jake, while I wash off this gore."

Logan took a survey of the canyon. The dust had settled. All down the grassy stretch cattle had begun to graze. In the square before the corrals Logan espied two prone figures, one of which moved. Half-way up the road there lay another. Far down under the west wall he saw a crippled horse dragging its bridle.

Striding to the bench, Huett washed the blood from his head. He felt the hot, stinging furrow over his ear. What a narrow escape! Still, an inch or even less was as good as a mile--the Huetts had weathered another vicissitude of pioneer life. The terrible remorse that had clamped him before the fight came back with new strength, but it could not stand before his exultation at the successful repulse of this rustler raid.

With this gang split and depleted, if merely of its leaders, there would nevertheless be a let-up in rustling for a long time.

Chapter
FOURTEEN
.

It was an evening in fall when the warmth of the Indian summer day and the pervading melancholy stillness of the season lingered long after darkness mantled the canyon.

George and Grant had returned from Flagg bursting with news of the war in Europe, which was now beginning its third year. At first it had hardly touched them, remote in their canyon. But as time went on and America seemed to become more and more involved, they discussed it with quickening interest.

Lucinda could not quite grasp why a war in far-off Europe held such interest for her sons and husband.

"It's because they're men, Barbara," she said to the listening young woman, who stood with great eyes like midnight gulfs fixed upon Abe.

"It's even got Abe fascinated... Men would rather fight than eat."

"But listen, Mother," replied Barbara.

Huett looked up from the newspaper he had spread over his knees. His grey eyes had the old keen flash. Lucinda noted that it was not the front page of the paper which had interested him.

"Cattle, wheat, cotton, corn--all keep going up," he boomed.

"Well, as to that, I'd forgotten," replied George. "Business all over the U. S. has had a tremendous boom. If the war keeps on we'll all get rich."

"Keeps on? Humph, when it started we thought it would last a few months, and now it's in its third year... Cattle at twenty-two dollars! Big price.

What're the Babbitts doing?"

"They're holding on, Dad. Running eighty thousand head."

"That's what I'll do," declared the rancher, ponderingly.

"You'd have to, even if you wanted to sell. Too late this fall, Paw," said George, shortly, as if the matter of cattle was a secondary consideration. "Take a look at the front page of that paper."

"I don't read so well as I used to, son. And the war itself doesn't interest me. I reckon they're all crazy."

Grant interposed earnestly: "But, Dad, it's spreading. It might involve the whole world. Even America!"

"Shucks! That's ridiculous. Let 'em kill each other off over there. But the U. S. must keep out of it."

"Suppose Germany sinks American ships with her submarines?"

That query arrested Huett.

"Tell us more, George," put in Abe, quietly. He showed no excitement, but he was sombre.

"The Germans have got the bit between their teeth," declared George, with pale face and flashing eyes. "And you bet they'll keep coming. It looks bad for France and England."

"Suppose Germany licks France and England. What'll she do then?" asked Abe.

"God only knows. But that outfit would sure be swelled... If they tried to make a clean sweep, and tackled the U. S.----"

"Hell! You boys are loco. That's not conceivable," interrupted Huett.

"There are a lot of brainy men who say it is possible," said Grant.

"Bab, I've a piece of news that will flabbergast you," went on George.

She did not encourage him. Evidently Barbara had come across a thought she could not surmount or get around.

"You know how loco Joe Hardy was over airplanes. First it was: cars and then planes. Joe sure was a rotten horseman. Well, Joe has left for France, where he's going in the air service."

"Doggone!" ejaculated Huett. "I've seen the day I'd have jumped at that.

I was in the army three years."

"I'd want mine on foot," said Abe. "Never savvied what held those airplanes up."

"They don't all stay up, so I read," rejoined George. "Dad, I wish you'd been in town. You'd have found out there are more places in the world than Sycamore. And more things to think about than we ever dreamed of. I declare I felt like a hick. Mr. Little said if Teddy Roosevelt had been President he'd kept Europe from going to war. And the Kaiser warns the United States that if we send contraband goods abroad he'll sink the ships."

"That would be right," spoke up Abe, stoutly.

"Sure! But what if these grafters had power to get their contraband on passenger ships? And the Germans sunk them with Americans on board? What a hell of a mess that would make!"

"Americans should stay home," interposed Huett, with finality.

"Dad, haven't you taken sides yet?" asked Grant.

"No, I haven't. But if you press me I am for England. And France fought for the United States during the Revolution. That shouldn't be forgotten."

Lucinda went back to the neglected housework, but Barbara stood behind Abe; her hand on his shoulder, and listened. It was a new and strange kind of talk in that cabin. It troubled Lucinda. She tried to dismiss the vague unrest with an acceptance of Logan's failure to see aught for them to worry about, but she could not do it. Logan's thoughts revolved around cattle. Her sons were backwoods cowboys, but they had intelligence, education, and intense patriotism. Logan had patriotism, too; Lucinda used to think it the only religion he had. But during the long years of his struggle that had been relegated to oblivion. It would take a shock to wake up Logan. The boys, however, were quick to grasp how a great war, even far beyond the Atlantic shores, must affect all Americans. That was the realization which troubled Lucinda. Her--consciousness refused to face the thought that had darkened Barbara's beautiful eyes. She hoped that with the hunting season nearer, and winter to follow, there would be no more news about war, and her loved ones would forget.

But when this most desirable thing had almost happened, Logan and Abe met a party of hunters just in from town, and they stirred anew the curious fire of interest. Snow fell in early December, assuring a white Christmas. Owing to increased automobile traffic from Flagg and Winslow to Phoenix:--and points south, the road was kept open. Occasionally one of the Huetts ran into travellers to hear more news. There came a respite, however, during the later months of winter and early spring. Lucinda's menfolk heard no more to augment their excitement, and it gradually subsided.

But the nameless something that had troubled Lucinda did not subside. It seemed to be a shadow without substance, a premonition of a vague and undefined trial of the future. She drove it away, but it continually returned. Lucinda feared the years of toil and worry had made her morbid.

She divined, however, that this intangible recurring emotion was not morbidness. It was deep, primitive, mystic--a something inherited from the mother of the race, a whisper from the beyond.

Logan was reluctant to start for Flagg that spring. Lucinda and Barbara backed him up, overcoming the eagerness of the young men. They decided, however, that when they did go George would drive the car with Lucinda and Barbara, while Logan would go in the wagon with Abe and Grant. Logan wanted to finish a stone-walled corral before they left. It had long been his intention to utilize the hundreds of rocks that had rolled down from the bluff on the west side of the canyon. They lay everywhere near the corrals and the shed for horses and cattle to stumble over.

"Dad, it's too big a job," complained George, when they had one wall half laid. "We'll never get it done."

Huett shook his shaggy grey head obstinately. "We've more time now that we don't have to guard the cattle."

One sunny spring day, when the wet slopes Were drying up and the turkeys had begun to gobble, Lucinda went out with Barbara to see the men. Abe had prevailed upon Barbara to coax Lucinda to make Logan leave off the stone-wall work and go to town.

"We'll go," declared Lucinda. "A little more of this uncertain dread will finish me."

"Mother! What uncertain dread?" asked Barbara anxiously.

"I don't know." Lucinda untied her apron and laid it aside.

As she left the cabin with Barbara she saw the sunflowers sprouting green from the brown soil and bladed grass showing along the log wall. How many years had she tended that garden with its homely flowers! Some association full of sweet and pervading melancholy attended the observance.

When they arrived at the scene of Logan's new enterprise, George and Grant were loading a sled with rocks from the slope, and Abe and Logan were working on the wall.

"Look who's here!" boomed Logan, and Abe, after a steady glance at Barbara, slowly laid down the stone he had been about to set in place.

"Logan, we want to start at once for town," announced Lucinda.