Young Carson, skilful as the son of the convict stock-lifter had been trained to be, deftly herded the thundering stampede in the desired direction; and at the end of a galloping mile abruptly gave the shrill yell of command to the two men whom he was piloting. There was a swerve aside out of the pounding melee, a dash for an opening between the swelling foothills, and the ruck of snorting mules swept on in a broad circle that would later make recapture by the night herders a simple matter of gathering up the trailing picket-ropes.

The three riders drew rein in the shelter of the arroyo gulch to breathe their horses, and Ballard gave the boy due credit.

"That was very neatly done, d.i.c.k," he said, when the thunder of the pounding hoofs had died away in the up-river distances. "Is it going to b.u.mp those fellows off of our trail?"

The water-boy was humped over the horn of his saddle as if he had found a stomach-ache in the breathless gallop. But he was merely listening.

"I ain't reskin' any money on it," he qualified. "If them cow-punch's 've caught on to where you're goin', and what you're goin' _fer_----"

Out of the stillness filling the hill-gorge like a black sea of silence came a measured thudding of hoofs and an unmistakable squeaking of saddle leather. Like a flash the boy was afoot and reaching under his bronco's belly for a tripping hold on the horse's forefoot. "Down! and pitch the cayuses!" he quavered stridently; and as the three horses rolled in the dry sand of the arroyo bed with their late riders flattened upon their heads, the inner darkness of the gorge spat fire and there was a fine singing whine of bullets overhead.

XII

THE RUSTLERS

In defiance of all the laws of precedence, it was the guest who first rose to the demands of the spiteful occasion. While Ballard was still struggling with the holster strappings of his rifle, Bigelow had disengaged his weapon and was industriously pumping a rapid-fire volley into the flame-spitting darkness of the gorge.

The effect of the prompt reply in kind was quickly made manifest. The firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, a riderless horse dashed snorting down the bed of the dry arroyo, narrowly missing a stumbling collision with the living obstructions lying in his way, and other gallopings were heard withdrawing into the hill-shadowed obscurities.

It was Ballard who took the water-boy to task when they had waited long enough to be measurably certain that the attackers had left the field.

"You were mistaken, d.i.c.k," he said, breaking the strained silence.

"There were more than two of them."

Young Carson was getting his horse up, and he appeared to be curiously at fault.

"You're plumb right, Cap'n Ballard," he admitted. "But that ain't what's pinchin' me: there's always enough of 'em night-herdin' this end of the range so 'at they could have picked up another hand 'r two. What I cayn't tumble to is how they-all out-rid us."

"To get ahead of us, you mean?"

"That's it. We're in the neck of a little hogback draw that goes on down to the big canyon. The only other trail into the draw is along by the river and up this-a-way--'bout a mile and a half furder 'n the road we come, I reckon."

It was the persistent element of mystery once more thrusting itself into the prosaic field of the industries; but before Ballard could grapple with it, the fighting guest cut in quietly.

"One of their bullets seems to have nipped me in the arm," he said, admitting the fact half reluctantly and as if it were something to be ashamed of. "Will you help me tie it up?"

Ballard came out of the speculative fog with a bound.

"Good heavens, Bigelow! are you hit? Why didn't you say something?" he exclaimed, diving into the pockets of his duck coat for matches and a candle-end.

"It wasn't worth while; it's only a scratch, I guess."

But the lighted candle-end proved it to be something more; a ragged furrow plowed diagonally across the forearm. Ballard dressed it as well as he could, the water-boy holding the candle, and when the rough job of surgery was done, was for sending the Forestry man back to the valley head and Castle 'Cadia with the wound for a sufficient reason. But Bigelow developed a sudden vein of stubbornness. He would neither go back alone, nor would he consent to be escorted.

"A little thing like this is all in the day's work," he protested.

"We'll go on, when you're ready; or, rather, we'll go and hunt for the owner of that horse whose saddle I suppose I must have emptied. I'm just vindictive enough to hope that its rider was the fellow who pinked me."

As it happened, the hope was to be neither confirmed nor positively denied. A little farther up the dry arroyo the candle-end, sputtering to its extinction, showed them a confusion of hoof tramplings in the yielding sand, but nothing more. Dead or wounded, the horse-losing rider had evidently been carried off by his companions.

"Which proves pretty conclusively that there must have been more than two," was Ballard's deduction, when they were again pushing cautiously down the inner valley toward its junction with the great canyon. "But why should two, or a dozen of them, fire on us in the dark? How could they know whether we were friends or enemies?"

Bigelow's quiet laugh had a touch of grimness in it.

"Your Elbow Canyon mysteries have broken bounds," he suggested. "Your staff should include an expert psychologist, Mr. Ballard."

Ballard's reply was belligerent. "If we had one, I'd swap him for a section of mounted police," he declared; and beyond that the narrow trail in the cliff-walled gorge of the Boiling Water forbade conversation.

Three hours farther down the river trail, when the summer dawn was paling the stars in the narrow strip of sky overhead, the perpendicular walls of the great canyon gave back a little, and looking past the water-boy guide, Ballard saw an opening marking the entrance of a small tributary stream from the north; a little green oasis in the vast desert of frowning cliffs and tumbled boulders, with a log cabin and a tiny corral nestling under the portal rock of the smaller stream.

"h.e.l.lo!" said Bigelow, breaking the silence in which they had been riding for the greater part of the three hours, "what's this we are coming to?"

Ballard was about to pa.s.s the query on to the boy when an armed man in the flapped hat and overalls of a range rider stepped from behind a boulder and barred the way. There was a halt, an exchange of words between young Carson and the flap-hatted trail-watcher in tones so low as to be inaudible to the others, and the armed one faced about, rather reluctantly, it seemed, to lead the way to the cabin under the cliff.

At the dismounting before the cabin door, the boy cleared away a little of the mystery.

"This yere is whar I live when I'm at home," he drawled, lapsing by the influence of the propinquity into the Tennessee idiom which was his birthright. "Pap'll get ye your breakfas' while I'm feedin' the bronc's."

Ballard glanced quickly at his guest and met the return glance of complete intelligence in the steady gray eyes of the Forestry man. The cabin and the corral in the secluded canyon were sufficiently accounted for. But one use could be made of a stock enclosure in such an inaccessible mountain fastness. The trail station in the heart of the Boiling Water wilderness was doubtless the headquarters of the "rustlers" who lived by preying upon the King of Arcadia's flocks and herds.

"Your allies in the little war against Colonel Craigmiles," said Bigelow, and there was something like a touch of mild reproach in his low tone when he added: "Misery isn't the only thing that 'acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.'"

"Apparently not," said Ballard; and they went together into the kitchen half of the cabin which was built, in true Tennessee fashion, as "two pens and a pa.s.sage."

The welcome accorded them by the sullen-faced man who was already frying rashers of bacon over the open fire on the hearth was not especially cordial. "Mek' ye an arm and re'ch for yerselves," was his sole phrase of hospitality, when the bacon and pan-bread were smoking on the huge hewn slab which served for a table; and he neither ate with his guests nor waited upon them, save to refill the tin coffee cups as they were emptied.

Neither of the two young men stayed longer than they were obliged to in the dirty, leather-smelling kitchen. There was freedom outside, with the morning world of fresh, zestful immensities for a smoking-room; and when they had eaten, they went to sit on a flat rock by the side of the little stream to fill and light their pipes, Ballard crumbling the cut-plug and stoppering the pipe for his crippled companion.

"How is the bullet-gouge by this time?" he questioned, when the tobacco was alight.

"It's pretty sore, and no mistake," Bigelow acknowledged frankly.

Whereupon Ballard insisted upon taking the bandages off and re-dressing the wound, with the crystal-clear, icy water of the mountain stream for its cleansing.

"It was a sheer piece of idiocy on my part--letting you come on with me after you got this," was his verdict, when he had a daylight sight of the bullet score. "But I don't mean to be idiotic twice in the same day," he went on. "You're going to stay right here and keep quiet until we come along back and pick you up, late this afternoon."

Bigelow made a wry face.

"Nice, cheerful prospect," he commented. "The elder cattle thief isn't precisely one's ideal of the jovial host. By the way, what was the matter with him while we were eating breakfast? He looked and acted as if there were a sick child in some one of the dark corners which he was afraid we might disturb."

Ballard nodded. "I was wondering if you remarked it. Did you hear the sick baby?"

"I heard noises--besides those that Carson was so carefully making with the skillet and the tin plates. The room across the pa.s.sage from us wasn't empty."

"That was my guess," rejoined Ballard, pulling thoughtfully at his short pipe. "I heard voices and tramplings, and, once in a while, something that sounded remarkably like a groan--or an oath."

Bigelow nodded in his turn. "More of the mysteries, you'd say; but this time they don't especially concern us. Have you fully made up your mind to leave me here while you go on down to the railroad? Because if you have, you and the boy will have to compel my welcome from the old robber: I'd never have the face to ask him for a whole day's hospitality."