Bransford of Rainbow Range by Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Author:Eugene Manlove Rhodes [Rhodes, Eugene Manlove]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XI

Table of Contents

THE NETTLE, DANGER

Table of Contents

“Bushel o’ wheat, bushel o’ rye—

All ’at ain’t ready, holler ‘I’!”

—Hide and Seek.

Double Mountain lies lost in the desert, dwarfed by the greatness all about. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south into irregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, once the well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there was precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged. Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert. The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old road lay untrodden in the sun.

Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A traveler followed that lonely road to Double Mountain; and behind, half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him. The traveler’s sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square; the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to the best of Jeff’s knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.

“Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day,” soliloquized Jeff. “Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon. Civilization’s getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double Mountain. If I can’t there’s no sort of use trying to get away on you! I’ll play hide-and-go-seek-’em. That’ll let you out, anyway, so cheer up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I’ll buy you and make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you’ll like it. Get along now!”

Twenty miles to Jeff’s right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an unbroken tangent of ninety miles’ stretch. A southbound passenger train crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date: behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shining straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this vast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sighting beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed the trinomial line.

Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain—whence the name, Hidden, when done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed drowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on the hither rim of Escondido’s sunken valley.

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