He put Diablo at the first slope which he reached, leading toward the summit of the cliff upon that side. It was a desperate climb. The Ghost went on ahead, pointing the way in the most effectual manner possible, for he knew intimately the capacities of Diablo when it came to climbing, and he scouted on, exploring every dangerous slope and coming back to show the way up the easiest course. Even then Bull Hunter could not stay in the saddle and hope to make the climb. He had to dismount before they had gone a hundred yards.
A little farther on it was necessary to remove the saddle from Diablo. Bull Hunter toiled and moiled up the wet hill, carrying the heavy saddle, and Diablo struggled valiantly in his wake, with The Ghost as the vanguard.
Finally, as the gray dawn appeared, they reached the crest. Hunter saddled again in frantic haste. It had taken incredibly long to make that short climb; but looking down into the dizzy shadows of the cañon, he wondered how he had made it at all. Perhaps the fugitives would have got out of Culver Pass by this time and were already riding into the comparative safety of the bad lands beyond.
But there was an immediate reward for the climb. The surface of the crest was a long stretch of almost level plateau. It was impossible to ride at more than a walk along the trail by the cañon. Up here a horse could run at full gallop, and Bull put Diablo to his full speed, with the wind turned to a gale in his face by the rush of his flight.
One gesture told The Ghost what his part in the business must be. He rushed on ahead, swinging along the verge of the drop toward the gulch and scanning the trail as it wound along the cliff. With anxiety Bull Hunter noted that the wolf dog still kept running on at full speed, though the end of the pass had almost come. He was beginning to despair when The Ghost changed his lope to a slouching trot, hanging his nose close to the edge of the cliff. The dog had found them, and the heart of Bull Hunter leaped again.
He took Diablo in a wide detour, so that the sound of the galloping might not come to the two on the narrow cliff trail, and swinging in ahead of The Ghost again he flung himself from the saddle, whipped the lariat from its place and ran to a point of vantage.
It was a point where the cliff jagged out in a triangle, and the trail followed that conformation in an elbow bend. There had been more than one tragedy at this point on the trail.
Of this Bull Hunter was ignorant. He only knew that that angling rock would mask, from him who came second, whatever happened to the first rider. He could only pray that the first rider, as he surmised, would be Dunkin. If Pete Reeve came first it would be impossible to make the attack that he had planned. The terrible little gun fighter would be able to wheel in the saddle at the first alarm and end everything with one bullet.
Bull Hunter lay flat on his stomach at the cliff edge and looked down, waiting. The drop to the narrow trailand how precariously narrow it seemedwas a full eighteen feet, and the rocky face to the crest was weatherworn to a glassy smoothness. So much he noted with satisfaction and then drew the rope up beside him and shook out the noose.
Below and beyond stretched a marvelous view of the bad lands, a chopped and broken country, still filled with pools of night. And over them the sky rose in a lovely arch, so near that it seemed to Bull he could stand up and touch the solid blue.
Day was coming fast, and it seemed to him that he could hear inarticulate noises of life awakening, though it was only the first faint morning breeze that was springing up. But now, down the trail, he heard unmistakable sounds of human voices, traveling toward him quickly. They seemed already on him and about to turn the curve, though the figure of The Ghost, slouching along the cliff, assured him that they were still a little distance off.
What they were saying he could not distinguish, for a thousand echoes confused the syllables. But now his attention was fixed on The Ghost, coming slowly closer to the elbow turn. The crisis was at hand. Who rode first, Reeve or Dunkin? Success or failure depended on the approaching figure.
And then he saw a horse’s head, nodding as he came wearily around the turn, and then the level neck, and now the horn of the saddle! Dunkin rode into view!
Bull Hunter cast one swift glance upward, an involuntarily thanksgiving, then his grip settled more firmly on the rope. Dunkin raised his head. Bull’s first emotion was to shrink back, but he remembered that a moving object quickly attracts attention. Dunkin was so far from expecting a human face above him that he probably would not see. And there he came, looking straight up, it seemed, into the eyes of Hunter. But apparently all he noticed was the blueness of the sky.
He dropped his head to curse a stumble of his horse, and at that instant Bull dropped the noose. There was one startled, “What the thunder,” from Dunkin, as the circle dropped about his waist. Then Bull heaved up with all his strength, and the noose, sliding up under the strain, came taut and settled close, just under the arms of the victim. He was wrenched from the saddle at the first heave, and his yell of amazement and terror filled, it seemed to Bull Hunter, the whole width of the cañon.
An answering shout came, but Bull noted gratefully that it came from beyond the elbow turn. In the meantime he settled to his work. Hand over hand he whipped the screaming Dunkin up toward him. A frightened glance upward showed Dunkin that his persecutor stood above in the form of Hunter, and a fresh cry rose from his lips.
Soon the head of Pete Reeve’s horse, nodding quickly from his trot, appeared in view, and then came Pete himself with poised gun. But his eyes were fastened down the trail at his own level; and as he glanced up with a shout of amazement at the spinning form of Dunkin, as the latter swung in mid-air, the victim was swung over the edge of the cliff. One fraction of an instant too late the bullet from Reeve’s gun hummed over the head of the giant.
He gave no heed; neither did he hear the frantic cursing of the little man below, as he vainly strove to climb that glassy surface of the cliff. His attention was too much taken by the struggle with Dunkin.
It was very brief. In one mighty hand he gathered the wrists of the robber behind his back and tied them securely, and when the captive called afresh for help, Bull ground his face into the dirt. One dose of that treatment sufficed. Then Bull, carrying his trussed man over one arm, climbed into the saddle on Diablo. He rode the black close to the cliff.
”Pete!” he called. “Pete Reeve!”
The shouts of the little man, as he strove to climb the rock wall, ceased abruptly.
“Pete,” said Bull, “I had to do it. You dunno how hard it was to go agin’ you, but I had to do it. Will you forgive me?”
“Forgive you?” asked Pete Reeve. “No, curse you, I’ll never forgive you! You’ve sat with Dunkin around the fire. You’ve had chuck with him. And now you grab him for a reward!”
“You’re wrong, Pete,” answered the giant. “I swear I won’t take a cent of the reward, not a cent. That isn’t my reason.”
“You lie,” cried Reeve. “I’ve trusted you like a brother, and here’s my reward. I’ve loved you like a son, but now I give you my word that I’ll never stop off your trail, Bull, till I get you under my gun, and then one of us goes down for keeps!”
“I’ll never fight you,” said Bull solemnly, and he yearned to see the face of the little man below the rock.
“You coward!” retorted Reeve. “Then I’ll tell the whole range you’re yaller to the core!”
“It looks to me,” said Bull mournfully, “like it’s good-by. But I’ll tell you this! Dunkin’s no good. He never was any good; he’s shot men from behind; he’s robbed poor men; he’s cheated with dice and cards. I’ve seen him when he cheated you, Pete, at your own camp fire. In spite of all that, I would never have touched him if it hadn’t been that one person in the world asked me. And then I had to do it. Will you give me a chance and try to understand me? Old man, if you knew that”