He threw a cartridge into his rifle-barrel and spurred ahead of her.

"You stay here, Terry. I----"

"Will I?" Terry retorted with animation. "Not on your life, Steve Packard! If this is the beginning of Blenham's finish-- Well, I'm in on it."

CHAPTER XXV

THE STAMPEDE

Terry had sensed something of the truth. In its way here was the beginning of the end of many things. Before she and Steve Packard, making what haste was possible in the thick dark and with what silence was allowed them, had gone a score of paces deeper into the canon, the crack of a rifle shouted its reverberating message of menace back and forth in the rocky ravine, a spurt of flame showed where the rifleman stood upon a pinnacle of rock almost directly above their heads and there came the further sounds of men's startled voices and the scampering of horses' hoofs, fleeing southward through the pa.s.s.

"They had lookouts all along!" cried Steve over his shoulder, discarding caution and secrecy and throwing his rifle to his shoulder.

"Better hold back, Terry!"

He fired, accepted the precarious chances offered him by an uneven and unknown trail in the dark and raced on deeper and deeper into the long chasm. It seemed to him that he had glimpsed something moving at the top of the cliffs just about the place whence Blenham's men had lowered the steers. He asked no question but threw up his gun-barrel and fired again.

From straight in front of him there came back to his ears the clang and thud of iron horseshoes upon granite, the rattle of rocks along the trail; now and again he saw a spark struck out underfoot. Then, far ahead as the canon widened suddenly and a little thinning of the darkness resulted, he made out dim, running forms, and again he fired from his own leaping horse.

A flying bullet might find a target and it might not; at any rate the sound of the shots volleyed and boomed echoingly between the stone wails imprisoning them, and Barbee or one of Barbee's men should hear.

Steve was estimating hopefully as he dashed on after the fugitives and as Terry dashed on after him, that the men at the top of the cliffs would not try to come down now, not knowing who or how many the attackers were, but would seek escape above.

Then, if his cowboys heard and rode toward the cliffs, it was all in the cards that they might intercept at least a couple of Blenham's tools.

A running form almost at his side drew his attention briefly, and all but drew hot, questing lead after it. Then he made out that it was but one of the stolen steers, abandoned now; he pressed by, firing time after time into the canon ahead of him. And behind him he heard Terry's voice, eager and fearless, crying out:

"Good boy, Steve Packard! We'll get 'em yet!"

A spurt of flame from far ahead and close to the wall of the canon, the crack of another rifle, long drawn out, and the whine of a bullet singing its vicious way overhead, and again Steve fired, answering shot with shot. He heard a man shout and fired in the direction of the voice. And then the only sounds rising from the narrow gorge were those of running horses and the accompanying noises of rattling stones.

Now the way was again tortuous, pitch-black, boulder-strewn. Steve slowed down rather than break his horse's legs or his own neck, not knowing whether to turn to right or left. In a moment of uncertainty he felt and heard Terry push ahead of him. He heard her hurrying on and followed, shouting to her to come back. Ten minutes later, out of the pa.s.s now and upon a low-lying ridge whence he could look across the hills billowing away darkly toward the southland, he came up with her again.

"They got off that way." She pointed south. "Saw one figure and maybe two going down the slope. There's no use following. The way is too open and it's too dark. They've got away after all."

"For to-night," said Steve. "But maybe the fellows at the top of the cliffs----"

"I'll show you the way up," said Terry.

So without delaying they turned back and came presently under Drop Off Cliffs again. Here they left their horses and, Terry showing the way, found the old path up the precipice. Along many a narrow shelf of rock they went, over many a gigantic granite splinter where foothold was precarious enough, up many a steep climb. But in their present mood they would have achieved even a more difficult and more hazardous task with eagerness and a.s.surance. Twenty minutes brought them to the top.

"Who's that?" shouted a sudden voice as Steve's hat came up out of the void. "Hands up!"

"That you, Barbee?" grunted Steve. "Hands up? I'd drop a clean hundred feet if I did a fool trick like that. Did they get away? The men up here?"

He wriggled up to the top, lay on his stomach and gave a hand to Terry, drew her to lie a moment breathless at his side and then again turned to Barbee. There was another man with him and both were looking wonderingly at Steve and Terry.

"I never heard a man say," muttered the astounded Barbee, "that there was stair-steps up here! For a man an' girl to come up----"

"And for our cows to go down!" cried Steve, on his feet now and coming to Barbee's side. "You heard everything, Barbee? You know what has happened?"

"Yes," said Barbee. "A hundred yards over that way--" he pointed along the cliff's edge--"where a twisted cedar-tree stands in a little washout, not hardly to be noticed unless you're on the lookout for it, they had their pulleys. .h.i.tched an' a long steel cable. It was easy shootin', come to think of it. Jus' rope a cow, cinch her up tight with two big straps they had all ready, slip a hook through the belly-band, an' lower away! Pretty smooth, huh?"

"And they all got away?"

"No, they didn't," said Barbee queerly. "I got one of 'em!"

"You did?" Steve swung back toward him eagerly. "Who is he, Barbee?

And where is he? I want a talk with him."

Barbee shook his head and reached for his tobacco and papers. He was young after all, was Barbee, and this was his first man.

"Andy Sprague, it was," said Barbee. "He's dead now."

There fell a heavy, breathless silence upon the three standing there under the stars. Terry shivered as though with cold and drew a step closer to Steve; he felt her hand on his arm. Barbee lighted his cigarette, his hands steady, but his face looking terribly serious in the brief-lived light shed upon it.

"I heard you shootin'," said Barbee. "I rode this way, on the jump. I was only about a mile up the valley; maybe a shade less. He had his horse close an' was on him an' poundin' leather lively to get out. We come pretty close to runnin' into each other. I hollered at him to hold on an' he jus' rode on his spurs an' I shot. Emptied my gun. Got him twice, bein' that lucky, an' him that unlucky. He slid off his cayuse an' clawed aroun' an'--an' he's dead now," ended Barbee briefly.

"Did he tell you anything? Did he say anything that would implicate anybody?"

"Meanin'," said Barbee steadily, "did he squeal on his pals?"

"Just that. Did he mention any names?"

"No," replied Barbee thoughtfully. "He jus' cusses me an' dies game.

But this here was in his pocket."

He pa.s.sed it to his employer. It was a bit of note-paper. Steve and Terry read it together as Steve struck one match after another. Then they looked into each other's faces, grown very tense, while Barbee smoked in silence. The few words were:

BLENHAM: This here Mex don't seem to know what I mean. Next time send a man as can talk English. Anyway I am coming to-night. I don't want no killing if it ain't necessary, but there ain't going to be a hide or hoof left in Drop Off by morning.

And the signature, cramped and stiff, was that of Steve's grandfather.

"So," muttered Steve heavily. "The old man has gone the limit, has he?

He meant it when he said he'd stop at nothing to smash me. And yet I can't believe----"

"Let me see it again," Terry commanded.

She took the paper from his fingers and with it his block of sulphur matches. For even Terry, to whom old man Packard was as relentless and unscrupulous as Satan himself, hesitated to believe that he was hand in glove with Blenham in this.

There might be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other understanding of the baffling situation. Evidently the old man had given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English language to carry word of mouth; the Mex had pa.s.sed it to Sprague.

Steve and Barbee and the man with Barbee--an old Ranch Number Ten hand named Bandy Oliver--had stepped aside quietly. Terry stood with the note in her hand, forgetting it for the moment. So, at the last, matters had come to this: There lay a man over yonder, dead, with Barbee's lead in him.

And old man Packard was coming to-night, now of all times when Steve's heart was hard, when his brain was hot with his fury, when he had just come upon men stealing his stock and had learned that his own grandfather, the old mountain-lion from the north, was one of them.

"If they meet to-night," said Terry, "those two Packards, there are going to be other men killed. Good men and bad men. And, as likely as not, Blenham won't be one of them."