Longhorn Empire (11 page)

When John Webb returned from the North drive, Brant had a serious conversation with the Running W owner.

“We’re being robbed blind,” he told Webb. “We didn’t tally anything like the number of calves we should have at roundup, and
we’re losing steers and beefs off the range every day. I’ve got men riding line all the time, but still it goes on. Somebody
is almighty slick about it.”

“Them hellions from New Mexico!” growled Webb.

“Mebbe,” Brant admitted, “but I’m beginning to wonder. I posted men where they’d have a mighty good chance to intercept any
cows run in that direction, and so far they haven’t seen a thing.”

“How about them darn nesters down to the south, the little hellions you run water to after Kane fenced ’em out?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Brant admitted, “but if it’s them, they’re sure covering up.”

“Trust ’em to do that,” grunted Webb, with the big owner’s habitual distrust of the little feller.

“Well, whoever is responsible, it’s getting worse,” Brant declared. “Never before have we lost so many cows as during the
past few months.”

It was not strange that Webb should ascribe most of his troubles to the New Mexico faction. In the shadow of the flat-topped
mountains roamed bands of the most notorious killers and outlaws the West ever knew. They were made up of such men as William
H. Boney (Billy the Kid), Frank McNab, Doc Skurlock, Charley Bowdre, Fred Waite, Tom O’Folliard, and other desperadoes. From
all the frontier states and territories, particularly from Texas, outlaws, stage robbers, cow thieves, paid killers and other
owlhoots had gathered to take part in the carnival of crime highlighted by such sanguinary episodes as the Lincoln County
War. The well stocked ranches of the Panhandle offered rich pickings for those gentlemen of easy conscience and quick trigger
finger. What Webb believed was equally believed by honest ranches all over the section. Even such a reputable cattleman as
John Chisum was looked upon with suspicion by the Texas owners, because he happened to originate in New Mexico.

This condition furnished opportunity for home-grown wideloopers. With the blame for any outrage almost automatically placed
upon the New Mexico owlhoots, the shrewd rustler of the Pan-handle could get away with a lot and never be suspected. Many
took advantage of this opportunity to fatten their herds with other men’s cattle.

Austin Brant knew this, and while he did not discount the probability that the New Mexico owl-hoots were doing the widelooping
on the Running W, he did not overlook the possibility that the depredations might be credited to somebody closer to home.

Norman Kane was also having his troubles.
Several times within a two weeks period his wire was cut and his cows drifted out onto the Running W range. His hands, with
the assistance of the Running W riders, herded them together and drove them back home.

“Chances are some more will still be maverickin’ around,” Kane told Brant. “I reckon you’ll run onto ’em sooner or later.”

Which proved to be the case. Quite a few more Flying V cows were encountered by the Running W cowboys and delivered to their
proper owner.

“And each time my wire was cut, I lost quite a few head,” Kane declared to John Webb. “Sure it’s the New Mexico bunch. Who
else? If I can just line sights with the hellions some time!”

Brant was thoughtful as he and Webb rode back to the ranch house.

“Funny, isn’t it?” he remarked to the Boss. “They always cut Kane’s east fence. Looks like they’d cut it on the west side,
if it is the New Mexico owlhoots doing the widelooping.”

“Can’t never tell what an owlhoot is liable to do,” Webb grunted. “And then again, mebbe it’s them damn nesters down to the
south what are responsible. They would cut the wire over to the east.”

“The south wire would be even more convenient for them,” commented Brant.

“Mebbe the cows were bunched better and closer over to the east,” returned Webb.

The subject was dropped, but Brant still remained thoughtful.

Brant continually patrolled the Running W range, but without tangible results. The same applied to his line riders. And still
the spread
continued to lose cattle. Brant took to riding far to the west, near and past the borders of the Running W holdings. One day
found him near where spurs of the craggy hills of New Mexico encroached on the level plains of the Panhandle. He was riding
slowly, his keen eyes sweeping the terrain on all sides, when he noticed a group of moving blobs appear from a bristle of
thicket to the north. He quickly identified them as half a dozen riders forging steadily in his direction. He watched them
for a moment, then glanced around. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a second group of riders to the south and somewhat behind
him. The direction of their progress, if maintained, would meet them with the group from the north at approximately the spot
where he himself sat his tall moros.

His black brows drawing together, he spoke to Smoke and sent him forward at a fast clip. Instantly the two groups altered
direction slightly. As he progressed, he still remained the focal point of the converging horse men.

“Thought so,” he muttered, speaking to Smoke again. “Looks like those gents sort of want to be sociable. A mite too sociable,
the chances are.”

His diagnosis was confirmed a moment later. A puff of whitish smoke mushroomed up from the group to the north. Before the crack
of the distant rifle reached his ears, a slug whined past in front of him.

“Gettin’ playful, eh?” he exclaimed. “Reckon I’m in for some fun. Trail, Smoke, trail!”

Instantly the great moros shot forward, his speed increasing at each beat of his irons. Brant, cooly watching the hard riding
horse men on
either side, saw other puffs rise from their ranks. Bullets whined past.

Brant was not particularly concerned. The distance was too great for anything like accurate shooting. Barring the chance of
a freak shot, there was little danger of the slugs reaching their mark. And he was confident that Smoke’s great speed and endurance
would soon put him beyond reach of the pursuit. He glanced ahead. The hills were close now, the track he was following leading
up their lower slopes to a dark notch into which it flowed. It was nothing more than a game trail, Brant decided, but the going
was good.

“Won’t take us long to lose those
amigos
in the rocks up there,” he assured the moros. “Then we’ll circle south and get back to our range. Lucky there’s a way up
the hill. If they got us hemmed in along the base of those sags, they’d corner us in a hurry. Reckon that’s what they figured
on doing. Must have been keeping an eye on us for quite a spell. Good things we wern’t farther to the south. That crack up
there looks to be about the only way out.”

Smoke was slowly drawing away from the pursuers. Breathing easily he mounted the long slope and flashed into the notch. The
game trail had petered out, but the going between the frowning cliffs was still good. Soon the cliffs to the north fell away.
Brant found himself riding on a narrow shelf that ran west with a southward veering. On his right was a sheer drop of hundreds
of feet. To the left was a steep brush grown slope that extended for perhaps a hundred yards, ending at the base of a granite
wall that fanged upward into the blue. The southward trend of the shelf tended to a constant
curving. At no place could he see more than a few hundred feet in advance.

The shelf became broken and uneven, also littered with loose boulders. Brant was forced to slacken Smoke’s pace. He kept glancing
over his shoulder.

“Don’t want those hellions to get within good shooting range of us,” he muttered, “that is if they’re still on our tail.”

The shelf straightened out. For nearly a quarter of a mile it ran directly westward, until a bulge of cliff, around which
it curved, obscured its continuation. Brant had covered perhaps two thirds of the distance to the bend when, on glancing back,
he saw a string of horse men bulge around the last curve behind him and come thundering down the straight-away.

“Gained some on us,” he told himself. “Well, they can’t make any better going here than we can, and they’re still too far
back to have much luck throwing lead.”

He reached the bend, sending Smoke careening around the bulge. Again the shelf straightened out for a short distance. From
Brant’s lips burst an exasperated oath.

What had been a rather exhilarating race suddenly became something deadly serious. Directly ahead, less than two hundred yards
distant, a crack in the cliff wall cut across the shelf. A gulf of unknown depth yawned between where the shelf ended and
where it resumed on the far side. And the gulf was better than twenty feet in width!

Automatically, Brant’s grip tightened on the reins. But he instantly realized that to pull up would be as fatal as to plunge
into the chasm
ahead. His brain worked at lightning speed. On one side was the sheer drop into nothingness. On the other, above the slope,
the cliffs shot up sheer. There was no place to go but ahead. And ahead yawned that pitiless gulf.

Brant made his decision. His voice rang out; urgent, compelling—

“Trail, Smoke, trail! Sift sand, you jughead, it isn’t a very good take-off, but you’d ought to be able to make it.”

He breathed a sigh of thanksgiving that he was riding the moros today, instead of some other critter from his string. A lesser
horse would never be able to clear the gap and land safely on the continuation of the narrow shelf, which he realized now
was several feet lower than the point of take-off.

Smoke snorted protest, but he laid his ears back, extended himself and drummed the rock with flying irons. Straight for the
lip of the chasm he charged, pouring his long body over the ground. He squealed with apprehension as he gathered himself together
and launched out over space. Brant had a hair raising glimpse of the tops of pine trees below, like to waving feathers in
the depths. Then Smoke’s front irons clanged on the cracked and fissured rock beyond the gap. He lurched wildly as one hind
foot failed to find solid ground beneath it, scrambled, lunged, keeping his balance by a miracle of agility. Brant eased off
on the reins, abruptly realizing that sweat was pouring down his face and that his pulses were pounding.

“That one was close!” he gasped as Smoke flashed down a straight stretch that continued for
some hundreds of yards. He whirled in the saddle as shots clanged behind him.

The pursuit, driving their foaming horses at top speed, has rounded the bend above the gap. Their yells came to Brant’s ears.
In a fleeting glimpse he noted that the riders were masked. Another moment and Smoke was swerving around a bend and out of
sight. The whoops of the pursuers grew faint as the wall of rock shut them off.

But there was something disquieting about those shouts. It seemed to Brant they held a note of triumph, of mocking derision.

“What in blazes they got to holler about?” he asked himself. “I’m willing to bet a hatful of pesos not one of those hellions
will chance taking that jump. And with a horse that hasn’t got what it takes like Smoke has, a jigger would be plumb loco
to try it.”

Smoke rounded the bend ahead and Brant abruptly understood. He pulled the moros to a halt, staring ahead.

“No wonder those hellions were whooping it up!” he exclaimed. “I’m trapped!”

Hooking one leg over the saddle horn, he rolled a cigarette and considered his predicament. The shelf continued for something
like a hundred yards, gradually narrowing until it petered out altogether. On one side was a gorge hundreds of feet in depth.
On the other, above the narrow slope, sheer cliffs shot upward for other hundreds of feet. Ahead was dizzy nothingness. It
would be impossible for Smoke to negotiate the gap behind, with the going up hill and taking-off point considerably lower
than the far edge of the gulf more than twenty feet distant.

Brant’s gaze roamed about. Smoke, he decided, could make out very well for a while. The slope from the shelf to the base of
the cliffs was grass grown. In several places he had noted trickles of water. But Brant could not subsist on grass, like Nebuchadnezzar.
He faced either a quick death by hurling himself into the gorge, or a slow one by starvation. He pinched out the butt of his
cigarette, turned Smoke and rode slowly back toward the gap, eyeing the slope on his right the while. He rounded the final
turn with caution, although he had little fear that the owlhoots would be waiting for him.

“They wouldn’t hang around,” he told Smoke. “Wouldn’t figure they had to, and they’d want to get in the clear as quickly as
possible. Chances are they headed us through the notch in the hills on purpose—had it all figured out and knew that if we didn’t
go down that crack when you tried to jump it, they’d have us hogtied just the same. Uh-huh, either I would pull up at the
gap in the ledge and shoot it out, or would try to make you jump it. They didn’t care whether you made the jump or not. Well,
this will take a mite of thinking out.”

The owlhoots were nowhere in sight as Brant approached the gap. He rather wished they were holed up around the turn on the
far side and loosened his Winchester in anticipation. They would have to show themselves to take a shot at him, and he grimly
decided if they did, at least one or two would remain on the shelf to keep him company. But the ledge lay silent and deserted.

Brant leaned over and peered into the gorge. It was fully as deep as the canyon on his left. The walls were sheer, impossible
to descend. He shook his head, studying the ground at his feet. The shelf was seamed and cracked, with deep crevices several
inches in width scoring its surface.

“Mighty lucky you didn’t stick a foot into one of those cracks when you landed,” he told Smoke. “You’d have gotten a busted
leg sure as shooting.”

He measured the distance across the gap with his eye, shaking his head. He had already considered the possibility of dropping
some sort of a bridge over the fissure, but his survey told him there were no trees growing there above twenty-or twenty-five
feet. No trunk that would bear his weight was available. He fingered the rope slung
to his saddle. It was sixty feet in length, twice the length needed to span the fissure, but there was nothing on the far side
over which to drop a loop. The situation appeared more hopeless the longer he considered it. He rolled a cigarette and smoked
thoughtfully, racking his brain for some solution to the problem. Absently he unlooped the rope and swung it back and forth
in his hand. Abruptly he uttered an exclamation. A leaping light glowed in his eyes.

“Feller,” he told Smoke, “I believe I’ve got a notion, and I believe it will work. If it doesn’t, there’s nothing lost.”

He studied the crevices in the surface of the shelf, deciding on two that he figured would suit his purpose. Then he turned
the moros and rode slowly back along the shelf, scanning the slope above.

“Those are a couple right up there that had ought to do,” he told Smoke, measuring two stout saplings with his glance. The
little trees coasted trunks that ran straight and fairly thick for better than twenty feet.

“Cut ’em down, lop off a few branches, and I figure they’ll do,” he decided.

Dismounting, he clambered up the slope to where the saplings stood. Surveying the trunks, he drew his heavy pocket knife and
opened the blade. Then he shook his head.

“It would take a week to gnaw ’em down with this sticker,” he muttered. “Calc’late I know a better way.”

He pocketed the knife, stepped back and drew his gun. He emptied all six chambers at the trunk, spacing the bullets across
its thickness. The heavy
slugs did not quite dust both sides of the tree, but Brant knew they came pretty near to doing so. He reloaded, emptying the
gun again. Stepping around the tree, he repeated the operation from the other side. As he continued to fire, the tree shook
and swayed and began to lean slightly down the slope. Brant holstered his gun, reached up as high as he could and caught the
trunk with both hands, swaying down with all his weight. The weakened tree leaned more and more. With a sharp snapping sound,
the trunk broke off where it had been almost severed by the bullets from Brant’s Colt.

“One!” he exclaimed, and went to work on the second sapling. With both trees lying on the slope, he carefully trimmed away
the branches, leaving a short length of a stout limb near the upper end of each trunk. Then he tumbled the logs down the slope
and dragged them to the edge of the gap. He took his rope and tied one end to the stub of the limb he had left near the smaller
end of the sapling. He performed a like ser vice with the other end of the rope on the second trunk. Then, with considerable
difficulty, he raised one of the saplings to a vertical position and wedged the end securely in a crevice near the lip of the
gap, securing it with small boulders jammed and hammered into the crevice. The second sapling went into position in a second
crevice some three feet to the right of the first. Brant stood back and eyed his handiwork with satisfaction.

The two trunks stood straight and firm. Dangling between them was a swing formed by the loop of the rope secured to the stubs
near the tops of the two uprights.

Brant got the rig off Smoke and piled it at the base of the slope. “Well, feller, here we go,” he told the moros. “If I make
it, I’ll come back and get you pronto. If I don’t, well I’ll wait for you on the ‘other side’ of the Big Jump.”

He drew the looped rope back and stepped into the loop, thrusting out strongly with one foot as he drew it up. The swing swayed
out over the gap.

Brant began to pump as a boy does in a swing when he has no one to push him. Back and forth he swung, gaining height and distance
with each sway of the noosed rope. Finally he was covering more than half the space across the gap at each outward swing.
The saplings creaked and groaned, swaying and bending under his weight. With a cold finality, Brant realized what would happen
if one should break or become dislodged. Far beneath, the feathery tops of the pines swayed in the draft that soughed down
the crevice, revealing the black fangs of stone between which they grew.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Brant realized that he was reaching the apex of the inverted arc and was as near the far edge
as he could hope to be. He measured the distance to the lip as it rushed toward him, set his teeth, tensed his muscles, and
leaped forward with all his strength.

As he rushed through the air with hundreds of feet of nothingness beneath him, for one horrible instant he was sure he had
jumped short. Then his boots thudded on the very crumbling lip of the bench. Frantically he hurled himself forward. He hit
the stone with a shock that knocked the breath from his body. For a moment he lay half stunned, waves of blackness sweeping
over him.
Then, gasping and panting, he sat up, shaking in every limb, his body bathed in a cold sweat, but with a wild exhilaration
pounding his pulses. He staggered to his feet, waving a hand to the watching horse. His voice rang out in triumph—

“Made it, feller! Made it! You take it easy. I’ll be back for you.”

He chuckled as he started on the long trudge to the ranch house. “Somebody is sure going to be sold!” he told himself exultantly.

Brant had little doubt as to who was responsible for the attempt on his life. He immediately discounted the New Mexico outlaws.

“Those hellions wouldn’t have taken the trouble to wear masks,” he reasoned. “Every jigger of them already has a price on
his head and the noosed end of a rope waiting for him. Being implicated in another killing wouldn’t bother them. Nope, I reckon
my
amigos
, Doran and Hansen, were out to even up the score. But I’ve a prime notion they wouldn’t be taking such a chance just to pay
me off for bustin’ up Doran there in the Deadfall. Nope, there’s more to it than that. Those sidewinders have something to
cover up—something they’re afraid I’ll catch onto if I’m left maverickin’ around. But in the name of blazes, what?”

Dawn of the following day was breaking when Brant, footsore and deathly weary, limped up to the Running W casa. Without arousing
anybody, he tumbled into bed and within a few minutes was sound asleep. When he awakened, around toward noon, he felt little
the worse for his harrowing experience. His first thought was the rescue of his horse from the bench.

This was accomplished with little difficulty. A light wagon loaded with long and stout planks toiled up the slope and rumbled
through the notch in the hills. Riding attendance were Brant and half a dozen punchers. The planks were dropped over the crevice
and Smoke was led across, lifting his hoofs gingerly and snorting as the boards swayed and bent beneath his weight.

“You better stop ridin’ around by yourself,” John Webb cautioned his foreman. “Always have some of the boys with you. The
hellions are out to get you, and they won’t stop. Luck was with you this time, but next time they may do a better job of stackin’
the cards.”

Brant, however, chose to disregard the well-meant advice. He felt he had a much better chance of running a brand on the wide-loopers
if he played a lone hand. He continued to ride the range. But now he employed a different method. Instead of searching the
brakes and the thickets and scanning the prairie from vantage points, he continually swept the sky with his keen gaze. Finally,
one crystal-clear afternoon, he spotted what he had been searching for. Rising from behind a straggling grove was a thin streamer
of smoke.

Brant cleared the distance between him and the grove at a gallop. He raced around the edge of the growth, sliding his Winchester
from the saddle boot. As he cleared the last fringe of brush, he viewed what he had expected to see. Crouched beside a small
fire were two men. A cow lay on the ground nearby, roped and tied.

The men sprang erect as the low thunder of
Smoke’s irons smote their ears. One waved his hat in a circle. The other held a rifle in his hands.

Without slackening speed, Brant charged toward them. The man threw the rifle to his shoulder. At the same time, Brant cuddled
his cheek against the stock of his Winchester.

The two shots rang out almost as one. A bullet fanned Brant’s face. The rifle wielder hurtled backward as if struck by a giant
fist, and fell. His companion, crouched behind the body of the prostrate cow, was shooting with both hands. A slug nicked Brant’s
shoulder. A second burned the skin of his neck. His own gun boomed sullenly. The cow jerked and twitched, stiffened out. Brant
shifted his aim the merest trifle and squeezed the stock. The brand blotter slumped sideways. When Smoke foamed up to the fire,
he was as motionless and as satisfactorily dead as was his companion.

Brant dismounted. He peered closely at the faces of the two men and shook his head. Both were hard featured characters, and
both were unfamiliar to him. He turned his attention to the cow. It also was dead, drilled squarely between the eyes. Brant
uttered an exclamation as his glance fell upon the brand.

“Hell!” he muttered, “it isn’t a Running W critter. It’s one of Norman Kane’s Flying V’s!”

The stench of scorched hair and flesh assailed his nostrils. He bent over the brand, touched the seared flesh with a tentative
forefinger. Suddenly his eyes widened. He bent closer. A moment later he whistled softly through his teeth. He rocked back
on his heels, staring.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” he muttered at length.
He straightened up, swept the surrounding terrain with a searching glance.

“Got to make sure about this,” he muttered. “If I’m right—well—”

He left the sentence uncompleted, turned and examined the nearby growth with his eyes. He picked up one of the dead brand
blotters and carried the body into the thick growth. Returning, he performed a like office for the second man. Then he turned
his attention to the two well-trained horses that, despite the shooting, still tautened the ropes noosing the dead cow. Taking
their rigs off Brant turned them loose. Each bore an almost undecipherable brand, more like a skillet of snakes than anything
else.

“Mexican burn,” Brant muttered. “Practically impossible to tie up with anything.”

He concealed the rigs in the brush, then noosed the cow’s neck hard and fast to his pommel.

“All right, feller,” he told Smoke. “You got a chore to do.”

With little difficulty, the powerful moros dragged the body into the grove. Brant drew his knife and went to work. With care,
he cut out the section of hide upon whch the brand was burned. He ripped it loose, turned it over and examined the inner side.
Again he whistled, his eyes glowing.

“I was right,” he muttered, “plumb right. Now I understand where our cows have been going. Of all the slick schemes, this
is the limit! Darn nigh foolproof, too. If the hellions hadn’t gotten so nervy and took to doing their blotting in broad daylight,
the chances are we never would have caught on. Now to get the evidence on that hellion. This isn’t enough. He’d like as not
win out
in a court fight. Well, I reckon it’s up to me. Got to play a lone hand. Isn’t right to ask anybody else to take chances.”

Brant left the dead cow and went to work cutting brush. He piled the cut branches over the body of the cow and the bodies
of the dead brand blotters. Nor did he neglect the two rigs he removed from the horses. Within an hour he had all the evidence
of the recent happening thoroughly concealed. He uprooted boulders and weighted down the heap of brush, against the chance
of coyotes rooting out the bodies. He speculated the two horses that were quietly grazing nearby.