The White Cheyenne by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2016-12-11T23:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER XXII

I was not alarmed, at first, only excited. The alarm came fast enough, I can assure you. There were seven forms riding in that party, and the rate at which they approached us was a pretty convincing proof that they were not riding horses which were staggeringly tired. As a matter of fact, we learned afterward that they had started out with ten in the party, each man with a led horse. When they sighted that smoke, they sent back the tired nags on which they had been riding all the night, and they went forward on their fresher horses. If Sir Thomas was somewhat recruited by the rest of an hour, they had been rested, too, by a halt about dawn. Now they came up on us hand over hand.

We shot off away from them, and for ten minutes it warmed my heart to see the manner in which Sir Thomas left them behind. That was not a true token of what was to happen. So long as he could raise a gallop he could distance the caravaners, but the strength that he was putting into that long stride of his was plainly killing him. He could not keep it up indefinitely, and presently he was swerving a little. I knew what that meant, and so did Lost Wolf: When I looked across to him, with the perspiration running down my face, he nodded and said: “Get off and walk that horse for a way. I’ll ride back and watch the rest of them!”

I did not understand exactly what he meant at first. In another moment he wheeled the red stallion and went whirling away toward the rear. He had gone to throw himself between me and the seven riders. I turned in the saddle and yelled to him; it made no difference. He rode on all the faster, and then a low gully shut me out from the view of what was happening in the rear.

I got off obediently and walked my horse along, watching the weak trembling of his legs, which showed how far spent he was. No mere moment or two of breathing would give him back his strength. And yonder those fresh horses were sweeping up on us.

Then a rifle began to talk behind me in the silence of the prairie—the rapid talking of a repeater which had never been heard on the plains before the Winchester came out there to amaze men and slaughter man and beast.

That was Lost Wolf at work. When I walked up on the other side of that shallow swale, I saw that Lost Wolf and the seven had disappeared. No, yonder were the last two or three of the seven riding hard to get to the shelter of a gully, into which they now dropped.

By the time they had got back to shelter, Lost Wolf had moved back again out of their effective range. Indeed, by the manner of his shooting, I suppose he convinced them that as far as that strong-shooting rifle would carry was a convenient range for him.

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