“Not if ten like me were with you,” answered the imperturbable Reeve. “He’s cached himself away in some shack near the town, and he’s watching the trails from there. But there’s one way we might give him the slip. He probably doesn’t expect us to move away from town for a couple of days. If we make a jump in the middle of to-night we might take him by surprise and get by.”
Dunkin glanced twice at his friend to make sure that he was serious. The idea of Pete Reeve stealing away by night from any man alive was not in the books, but there was no doubting the seriousness of the little man.
“You know this gent a pile better than I do,” said Dunkin at last. “So you run the party, and I’ll do what you say.”
Accordingly they went to sleep early, with orders to be awakened a little after midnight. At that hour they were up and in the saddle. There could not have been a better night for a secret escape; there could not have been a worse night for travel. A chill wind was coming down from the higher northern mountains, carrying a piercing drizzle of rain, and, though their slickers turned the force of it, it found crevices here and there, and the sharp wind drove the rain to the skin.
Dunkin steadily cursed the weather and Bull Hunter, and twice he begged the little man to turn back with him to the hotel and bid defiance to the giant, but Reeve was inflexible in his purpose.
“If we get over the trail of the Culver Pass,” said he, “we’ll be in country that Hunter doesn’t know, and he’ll be at sea. Keep that hoss moving!”
So they plodded steadily over the road which the rain was quickly turning to slush. They drifted down the main street to the outer limits of the town, unseen and unheard, for the drum of rain on the roofs covered all minor sounds.
In the open country the rain was merely a swishing sound on the sand and dead grass. The air was filled with the scent of the arid soil, as it greedily drank up the moisture, and there were steady, whispering noises like promises of the green life that was to come. By the road, just outside the village, they passed some low clumps of shrubbery.
“Suppose he were lying out in there?” suggested Pete Reeve. “If he was he’d see us pass quick enough.”
“Too low to cover a man as big as him,” said Dunkin confidently. “Besides, nobody but a crazy man would lie out in this rain. Pete, you’re all wrong about this. We don’t need to hurry. Bull Hunter is asleep and snoring. We’re just fading out, and he’ll never find us beyond the Culver Pass.”
“I’ll believe that when we’re safely over,” answered Pete with unshaken gloom.
Indeed, at that very moment there was a watcher in the shrubbery who heard their voices. Not a man, but a great wolf dog crouched under a bush that formed an almost perfect tent above him to shed the rain. As the two horsemen passed he glided across the road to the leeward side and skulked swiftly from bush to bush, taking the scent.
Presently he appeared to be satisfied and shot back toward the town. The town itself was not his goal, however, but skirting around behind it, with the sand scuffing up behind him from his hurrying paws, he came to a wretched group of trees on the far side of the village and close to the trail where it entered the town. Among these trees he plunged and came presently on the great bulk of Hunter, sitting with his back against a tree, wrapped in a capacious slicker. All night he had kept patient watch, and now the cold nose of the wolf dog touched his hand.
As he turned his head, The Ghost retreated, looking back over his shoulder. At that the master rose hastily, flung a saddle on Diablo, and was instantly under way.
His stratagem had been simple enough. In the shed behind the hotel he had taken the wolf to the horses of Reeve and Dunkin to freshen their scent in his nose. Then at dark he posted the big animal on the far side of the town. He himself guarded the only other way of entering or leaving the town. He could trust The Ghost to report. Many a time before he had used the cunning hunting instincts of the loafer wolf and taught him to play his very game of tag with Pete Reeve. Now it stood him in good stead.
They went at a mild trot through the village, but as soon as they hit the open trail beyond he gave a short whistle that sent The Ghost bounding away in the lead, to disappear instantly behind the thick curtain of night and the rain; he himself let Diablo take his head for a burst of strong running, until a figure shot into view again. It was The Ghost returning to apprise his master that he had located the fugitives and was keeping in touch with them.
As he returned, The Ghost gamboled about the rider, leaping high and snapping in pretended ferocity at the nose of Diablo, for this game of hunting was the greatest joy in The Ghost’s life with his master. Playing it, he had a faint taste of the old free days when he was king of the mountains, and there was almost an added joy in playing it with Bull Hunter, for when he ran a quarry to the ground, were it grizzly or mountain lion, the rifle of the master was always sure to make the kill. Odds ceased to exist, and, with the master in sight, The Ghost would have attacked at command a whole host of lions.
His task this night was far simpler; it was ridiculously easy for him. As the connecting link he raced back and forth, coming just within hearing of the splash of water and mud under the feet of the horses of the fugitives, and then loping back to communicate news of his industry. One word was all the reward he wanted.
Sometimes he stopped to touch noses with Diablo; sometimes he took a brief vacation, and racing through some neighboring field or wood, he made short detours along the scents of wet trails, not yet drowned, then back to play the game for his master.
Of course it was invaluable to Bull Hunter to have this assistant spy. He himself could linger far behind entirely out of danger of being heard or seen by the men he trailed. As he rode along, secure on the back of Diablo, even when the trail became most treacherous, he tried to order some plan of attack.
It was by no means simple. To attack Dunkin alone would have been nothing; to attack him and try to take him alive was a thousand times more difficult and necessitated a surprise. But to surprise him while Pete Reeve rode in his company was practically impossible.
The rain ceased while he was in the midst of these reflections. The northern wind, which had blown the storm upon them, was succeeded by a brisk western breeze which whipped the sky clean of clouds in a few moments and left the big mountains and the stars and the blue-black depths of the sky above him, while all around there was a crinkling sound of the thirsty earth, drinking. It also meant that Bull Hunter could see his surroundings more clearly.
They were rapidly climbing toward the heart of that narrow defile known as the Culver Pass. The trail that wound through it sometimes climbed along the side of the cliff, with barely enough room for one horseman. The cliffs themselves dropped down to the bed of the swift torrent which had cut the gulch. Ordinarily a trail would have been made on the bank of the stream itself. But it was impossible to travel over the enormous boulders which were strewn on either side of the water, and the trail was forced to follow a very precarious course.
It would be impossible to attack the two who rode in front on such a trail, for they were probably in single file, with the redoubtable Pete Reeve himself in the rear, to guard against precisely such an attack. Yet it was very necessary to stop the two before they got out of the pass and reached the broken country beyond, a bad stretch through which pursuit would be very difficult, if not impossible.
Bull Hunter reviewed his means of attack. There was the rifle slung in the holster; there was the heavy revolver at his hip. But neither was really available if he hoped to take Dunkin alive. There was also the lariat, and that, in a way, was a weapon of another sort and precisely adapted to such a capture. With that thought the idea came to Bull Hunter.