The Orphan by Clarence E. Mulford (best books to read now .txt) 📖

I can’t very well hide you and the cayuses–I ain’t no graveyard,” he said, stepping back to look at his work. He felt no remorse, for that was a sensation not yet awakened in his consciousness. He was elated at his success, joyous in catering to his love for fighting, for he would rather die fighting than live the round of years heavily monotonous with peace, and his only regret was having won by ambush. But in this, he told himself, there was need, for his hatred ordered him to kill as many as he could, and in any way possible. Knowing that he was, single-handed, attempting to outwit wily chiefs and that he had before him a carnival of fighting, he would not have hesitated to make use of traps if they were at hand and could be used. Perhaps it was old Geronimo whose plans he was defeating and, if so, no precautions nor means were unjustifiable and too mean to make use of, for Geronimo was half-brother to the devil and a genius for warfare and slaughter, with a ferocity and cruelty cold-blooded and consummate.

He had yet time to escape from his perilous position and meet the sheriff, if that worthy had eluded the first war party. But his elation had the upper hand and his brute courage was now blind to caution. He savagely decided that his matter with the sheriff could wait and that he would take care of the war parties first, since there was more honor in fighting against odds. The two Winchesters and his own Sharps, not to consider the four Colt’s, gave him many shots without having to waste time in reloading, and he drew assurance from the past that he placed his shots quickly and with precision. He could put up a magnificent fight in the chaparral, shifting his position after each shot, and he could hug the ground where the trunks of the vegetation were thickest and would prove an effective barrier against random shots. His wits were keen, his legs nimble, his eyesight and accuracy above doubt, and he had no cause to believe that his strategy was inferior to that of his foes. There would be no moon for two nights, and he could escape in the darkness if hunger and thirst should drive him out. Here he had struck, and here he would strike again and again, and, if he fell, he would leave behind him such a tale of fighting as had seldom been known before; and it pleased his vanity to think of the amazement the story would call forth as it was recounted around the campfires and across the bars of a country larger than Europe. He did not realize that such a tale would die if he died and would never be known. His was the joy of a master of the game, a virile, fearless fighting machine, a man who had never failed in the playing of the many hands he had held in desperate games with death. He was not going to die; he was going to win and leave dying for others.

CHAPTER III
THE SHERIFF FINDS THE ORPHAN

THE day dragged wearily along for the man in the chaparral, and when the sun showed that it was still two hours from the meridian he leaped to his feet, rifle in hand, and peered intently to the west, where he had seen a fast-riding horseman flit between two chaparrals which stood far down on the western end of the Cimarron Trail. Without pausing, he made his way out of cover and ran rapidly along the edge of the thicket until he had gained its northwestern extremity, where he plunged into it, unmindful of the cuts and slashes from the interlocked thorns. Using the rifle as a club, he hammered and pushed until he was screened from the view of any one passing along the trail, but where he could see all who approached. As he turned and faced the west he saw the horseman suddenly emerge from the shelter of the last chaparral in his course and ride straight for the intersection of the trails, his horse flattened to the earth by the speed it was making. Waiting until the rider was within fifty yards of him, he pushed his way out to the trail, the rifle leaping to his shoulder as he stepped into the open. The newcomer was looking back at half a dozen Apaches who had burst into view by the chaparral he had just quitted, and when he turned he was stopped by a hail and the sight of an unwavering rifle held by the man on foot.

“A truce!” shouted The Orphan from behind the sights, having an idea and wishing to share it.

“Hell, yes!” cried the astonished sheriff in reply, slowing down and mechanically following the already running outlaw to the place where the latter had spent the last few hours.

By keeping close to the edge of the chaparral, which receded from the trail, The Orphan had not been seen by the Apaches, and as he turned into his hiding place a yell reached his ears. His trophies on the bowlder were not to be unmourned.

As he wormed his way into the thicket, closely followed by the sheriff, he tersely explained the situation, and Shields, feeling somewhat under obligation to the man who had refrained from killing him, nodded and smiled in good nature. The sheriff thought it was a fine joke and enthusiastically slapped his enemy on the back to show his appreciation, for the time forgetting that they very probably would try to kill each other later on, after the Apaches had been taken care of.

As they reached a point which gave them a clear view of the bowlder, The Orphan kicked his companion on the shin, pointing to the Apaches grouped around their dead.

“It’s a little over three hundred, Sheriff,” he said. “You shoot first and I’ll follow you, so they’ll think you shot twice–there’s no use letting them think that there’s two of us, that is, not yet.”

“Good idea,” replied the sheriff, nodding and throwing his rifle to his shoulder. “Right end for me,” he said, calling his shot so as to be sure that the same brave would not receive all the attention. As he fired his companion covered the second warrior, using one of his captured Winchesters, and a second later the rifle spun flame. Both warriors dropped and the remaining four hastily postponed their mourning and tumbled helter skelter behind the bowlder, the sheriff’s second shot becoming a part of the last one to find cover.

“Fine!” exulted the sheriff, delighted at the score. “Best game I ever took a hand in, d––-d if it ain’t! We’ll have them guessing so hard that they’ll get brain fever.”

“Three shots in as many seconds will make them think that they are facing a Winchester in the hands of a crack shot,” remarked The Orphan, smiling with pleasure at the sheriff’s appreciation. “They’ll think that if they can back off from the bowlder and keep it between them and you that they can get out of range in a few hundred yards more. That is where I come in again. You sling a little lead to let them know that you haven’t moved a whole lot, but stop in a couple of minutes, while I go down the line a ways. The chaparral sweeps to the north quite a little, and mebby I can drop a slug behind their fort from down there. That’ll make them think you are a jack rabbit at covering ground and will bother them. If they rush, which they won’t after tasting that kind of shooting, you whistle good and loud and we’ll make them plumb disgusted. I’ll take a Winchester along with me, so they won’t have any cause to suspect that you are an arsenal. So long.”

The sheriff glanced up as his companion departed and was pleased at the outlaw’s command of the situation. He had a good chance to wipe out the man, but that he would not do, for The Orphan trusted him, and Shields was one who respected a thing like that.

The outlaw finally stopped about a hundred yards down the trail and looked out, using his glasses. A brown shoulder showed under the overhanging side of the bowlder and he smiled, readjusting the sights on the Winchester as he waited. Soon the shoulder raised from the ground and pushed out farther into sight. Then a poll of black hair showed itself and slowly raised. The Orphan took deliberate aim and pulled the trigger. The head dropped to the sand and the shoulder heaved convulsively once or twice and then lay quiet. Leaping up, the marksman hastened back to the side of the sheriff, who did not trouble himself to look up.

“I got him, Sheriff,” he said. “Work up to the other end and I’ll go back to where I came from. They have got all the fighting they have any use for and will be backing away purty soon now. The range from the point where I held you is some closer than it is from here, so you ought to get in a shot when they get far enough back.”

“All right,” pleasantly responded Shields, vigorously attacking the thorns as he began his journey to the western end of the thicket. “Ouch!” he exclaimed as he felt the pricks. Then he stopped and slowly turned and saw The Orphan smiling at him, and grinned:

“Say,” he began, “why can’t I go around?” he asked, indicating with a sweep of his arm the southern edge of the chaparral, and intimating that it would be far more pleasant to skirt the thorns than to buck against them. “These d––––d thorns ain’t no joke!” he added emphatically.

The outlaw’s smile enlarged and he glanced quickly at the bowlder to see that all was as it should be.

“You can go around in one day afoot,” he replied. “By that time they”–pointing to the Apaches–“will have made a day’s journey on cayuses. And we simply mustn’t let them get the best of us that way.”

Shields grinned and turned half-way around again: “It’s a whole lot dry out here,” he said, “and my canteen is on my cayuse.”

“Here, pardner,” replied The Orphan, holding out his canteen and watching the effect of the familiarity. “Seven swallows is the dose.”

The sheriff faced him, took the vessel, counted seven swallows and returned it.

“I’m some moist now,” he remarked, as he returned to the thorns. “It’s too d––––n bad you’re bad,” he grumbled. “You’d make a blamed good cow-puncher.”

The Orphan, still smiling, placed his hands on hips and watched the rapidly disappearing arm of the law.

“He’s all right–too bad he’ll make me shoot him,” he soliloquized, turning toward his post. As he crawled through a particularly badly matted bit of chaparral he stopped to release himself and laughed outright. “How in thunder did he get so far west? My trail was as plain as day, too.” When he had reached his destination and had settled down to watch the bowlder he laughed again and muttered: “Mebby he figured it out that I was doubling back and was laying for me to show up. And that’s just the way I would have gone, too. He ain’t any fool, all right.”

He thought of the sheriff at the far end of the chaparral and of the repeater he carried, and an inexplicable impulse of generosity surged over him. The sheriff would be pleased to do the rest himself, he thought, and the thought was father to the act. He picked up the Winchester he had brought with him and fired at the