Tracked to his lair; or, The pursuit of the Midnight Raider

Title: Tracked to his lair; or, The pursuit of the Midnight Raider

Author: Spencer Dair

Release date: January 29, 2024 [eBook #72803]

Language: English

Original publication: Cleveland: Arthur Westbrook Company, 1910

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72803

Credits: Carla Foust, David Edwards and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

BY COLONEL SPENCER DAIR

VOL. I THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY, CLEVELAND, OHIO, U. S. A. NO. 2

Copyright, 1910, by the Arthur Westbrook Company, Cleveland, Ohio.

TRACKED TO HIS LAIR

OR

The Pursuit of the Midnight Raider

By COL. SPENCER DAIR

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS.

The Midnight Raider—A daredevil Indian chief, known as Scalping Louie, who breaks from the Indian reservation and proceeds to steal cattle and burn houses, being finally brought to his well-deserved end by a cowboy who has the assistance of an aged scout.

Sam Bowser—Owner of the Double Cross ranch, in Arizona, who is roused from bed by an eerie cry, finds a spectre hovering over his cattle corral and while he is quieting his cowboys, sees his cattle stampeded by the apparition. Starting in pursuit, he trails one bunch of cattle to a dangerous swamp in which he comes near losing his life by being sucked into a mud hole, then is nearly burned to death in a fire set to drive out the Midnight Raider and finally has the satisfaction of seeing one of his cowpunchers send the miscreant to his doom.

Sarah Bowser—His wife.

Henry Hawks—Owner of the Star and Moon ranch, whose buildings are burned by the renegade Indian chieftain. He joins with Bowser in the trailing of the raider to his lair.

Amy Hawks—His wife.

Deadshot Pete—Cowboy on Double Cross ranch, who fires the bullet that ends the raider’s life.

Sandy—Foreman on Double Cross ranch.

Pinky—Cowboy in the Double Cross outfit.

Ki Yi—Foreman on Star and Moon ranch, who helps Deadshot.

Dude—Cowboy on Star and Moon ranch.

Grouch—Cowboy on Star and Moon ranch.

Slippery Nig—Half-breed scout, with a grievance against Scalping Louie, and is called by Deadshot to run him down.

CHAPTER I.

A MIDNIGHT ALARM.

“O-u-e-e!”

Piercing and shrill, from the tense stillness of the night sounded this eerie wail.

In terrified alarm, Sam Bowser rose in his bed to his elbow.

As he remained thus, trying to decide whether the awesome shriek was a cry of distress from some human being or was an imagining of his mind, his wife awoke.

“What was that?” she gasped, excitedly.

“You heard it, too?”

“I—I thought I heard something. It sounded like the very soul being drawn from some woman. U-ugh! It makes me shiver to think of it.”

“Well, there aren’t any women nearer than thirty miles, except you, so it couldn’t be that.”

“But some one might be carrying a woman off or murdering her. Just because Amy Hawks is the nearest one we know of, doesn’t make it so there mightn’t be some poor creature being killed.”

To this, the man made no response, and together they listened intently for a repetition of the awful wail.

“Guess it must have been some coyote got kicked while he was smelling round the cattle. This is the fi——”

But the words literally stuck in Bowser’s mouth.

[Pg 2]

Again the shriek, bloodcurdling in its gruesomeness, rang out ere he could finish what he purposed to say.

This time there was no mistaking the cry.

It seemed to come from a woman in awful distress and to be close at hand.

“There’s some mischief afoot!” exclaimed the man, as, heedless of his wife’s protests, he leaped from his bed, seized his rifle and rushed to the door.

Yet, when he threw it open, there was nothing to be seen!

The silence and the darkness of the night were overwhelming—as only the silence and darkness of the plains of Arizona can be.

Sam Bowser was the owner of the Double Cross ranch. With no neighbors nearer than thirty miles, he and his wife, Sarah, lived in the home ranch house. This building faced the South. To the right, and some sixty feet distant, was the bunkhouse, where the cowpunchers lived when not on the range. To the North and between the two houses was a horse corral. Directly back of this was a second corral for the cattle, so large that it seemed more like a big pasture enclosed by barbed wire than a yard.

Only the day before had Bowser’s men driven the pick of his herds back to the home ranch in order that they might be shipped away to the great cattle markets of the Middle West.

Scarcely had the ranch owner opened the door than lights blazed in the bunkhouse, followed an instant later by the rush of the cowpunchers, as, guns in their hands, they crept cautiously from their shanty to learn the cause of the alarm.

“Steady, boys! Don’t go to shooting up the country!” warned Bowser, running across the yard to join his men.

“What did you make of it, Sam?” demanded a tall, leathery cowpuncher, who served as foreman.

“You’ve got me, Sandy. The missus ’lows it’s some woman being murdered.”

“But there ain’t any women round here,” protested another of the men, who had been christened “Pinky” by his fellows because of his fondness for decorating his saddle and bridle with anything of the color.

“That’s just what I told her,” declared the ranchman, evidently glad to learn his opinion found support. “But she ’lowed that didn’t make any difference, that one or a dozen could be brought here. I sort of had an idea, it might have been a coyote.”

“Wal, it warn’t no coyote,” drawled the third of the boys attached to the Double Cross outfit, who revelled in the title of Deadshot Pete. “I been on these plains too long not to know every tone and variation of the songs them sneaks sing.”

“Then what was it?” demanded Sandy. “Seems to me, if it was some man or woman being done to death, they’d keep up more of a continuous yelling.”

“Unless it’s too late,” commented Deadshot, significantly.

This suggestion that perhaps the gruesome wails which had roused them all from their sleep might have been the dying protests or appeals for help of some human being caused the men to become silent.

“Don’t see how we can do any good so long as we don’t hear the thing again to give us a definite idea of its direction,” remarked the ranchman, after a period of several minutes peering into the darkness and listening had been productive of neither sight nor sound. “Guess we’d better get back to our bunks and wait till daylight.”

“Reckon you’re right, Sam,” returned his foreman. “It’s either too late, as Deadshot says, or we must hear it again so’s we can get our bearings.”

But neither the owner nor the outfit of the Double Cross was destined to get any more sleep that night!

While talking, the men had been looking toward the South.

Chancing to turn so that he was facing the cattle corral, Pinky suddenly uttered an exclamation of wild fear, then clutched Sandy by the arm, wheeling him about, as he pointed Northward with trembling hand.

Amazed at such action on the part of their bunkmate, the others followed his gaze.

Apparently floating through the air, directly above the cattle corral, was a white spectre!

CHAPTER II.

THE RAID.

“Ghosties!” gasped Sandy, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.

“No wonder we couldn’t place it—but I knew it warn’t no coyote,” asserted Deadshot.

For several minutes the men gazed at the awesome thing as it flitted hither and thither.

“By the blood of my mother! But I’m glad the crittur never took it into its head to visit us on the range,” breathed Pinky.

“Same here,” chorused Sandy and Deadshot.

“It means trouble—you see if it doesn’t,” continued the latter. “The only other time I ever see anything like it was the night before the Piutes dashed down on old man Turner’s ranch and killed all but me and a low-down gambler called Crooked Joe.”

This assertion that the eerie spectre floating before their eyes was not the first one he had seen instantly claimed the ears of his companions, though they kept their gaze riveted on the apparition.

“What was that one like?” breathed Pinky.

“It was all lit up, like fire. The Piutes said it was a curse put out by their Medicine Man.”

“But how’d you manage to get away from the Injuns and escape the massacre?” inquired Sandy, in whom Deadshot’s tales of his experiences always aroused suspicion of their truthfulness.

[Pg 3]

“Me and Crooked Joe sloped as soon as the light in the sky was discovered. Mark my word, man dear, every time you sees anything in the air like ghosties, it means trouble!”

“Well, you aren’t going to get out of it this time by digging out,” broke in the ranch owner, who had been listening with increasing alarm to his cowpuncher’s story, and feared the effect it might have upon the rest of his men. “I need you all to-morrow to get the bunch to the loading station. So don’t think you can sneak off.”

“We can’t eh?” demanded Deadshot. “Who’s a going to stop me if I want to go?”

“I am, with this rifle I’ve got in my hands,” returned the owner of the ranch, calmly. “I don’t want any trouble. But I won’t stand for any of this nonsense about spirits, trouble and running away. If any one of you tries to get a pony from that corral to-night, I’ll put a shell into him. Just keep that in your heads.”

The unexpected turn of affairs had amazed the other cowboys, and, forgetting all about the spectre, they watched the ranchman and his helper.

“You kinder got the drop on me, Sam,” growled the cowpuncher, “so I ’low I’ll do just as you say. Besides, I didn’t mean nothing anyhow.”

“All right, Deadshot. No hard feelings. Let’s go over to the cattle corral and see what this white thing is.”

“What, go chasing a ghostie?” gasped Sandy, the very thought of any man daring to investigate an apparition seeming akin to sacrilege to his superstitious mind.

“Sure. Why not? It won’t eat you.”

“Well, you can go if you like. But I ain’t particular,” returned the foreman. “That ain’t any part of my job.”

The necessity for any one to go, however, was suddenly obviated.

With an abruptness that was in keeping with its coming, the spectre vanished.

“Skulls and crossbones! Did you see that? It just floated away and we looking straight at it!” moaned Sandy.

The uncanniness of the apparition’s disappearance impressed even the ranch owner, and he was wondering as to the course he should pursue to reassure his men, when Pinky whispered:

“Let’s go into the house before the blamed thing lights on us here!”

The thought that the mysterious spectre might appear face to face with them unnerved these men of the plains—men to whom danger in any tangible form was a delight—and they were on the point of dashing into their bunkhouse in utter panic when they were recalled to their normal selves.

Simultaneously with the disappearance of the spectre came a pitching and swaying among the cattle, followed instantly by terrified bellowing and the wildest confusion.

“The ghosties cast a spell on the cattle!” whimpered Sandy.

“Didn’t I say it meant trouble?” demanded Deadshot, exulting at the very evident fulfilment of his prophecy.

“Don’t stand there talking! Get your ponies and come on! We’ve got our work cut out for us! What it means I don’t know. But I do know, if we don’t steady those cattle down lively, they’ll stampede—and then we’ll have a merry time!” declared the ranchman, leading the way to the horse corral.

A moment, fearing that the animals had, indeed, been cursed, held the cowpunchers inactive. Then, their lifelong training on the plains coming to the fore, they followed their employer and were soon racing to the terror-stricken cattle.

Their fear increasing with every moment, the animals were plunging and lowing, the crashing of their horns sounding like the barking of pistols above the dull roar of the pounding of their hoofs.

“There must be wolves in amongst ’em!” yelled Sandy, riding up close to Bowser. “It’s breaking out all over the corral, not in just one place.”

“Well, whatever it is, we’ve got to quiet the cattle, or I won’t have one fit to ship away. Get busy, boys!”

But just as the ranchman finished speaking, Pinky let out a yell.

“Look, right in the middle of the corral! The ghostie again!” he cried.

Turning their eyes in the direction indicated, the horsemen beheld the same white form seemingly floating over the heads of the cattle.

“It must be the Old Nick himself!” moaned Sandy. “There’ll be no quieting them critturs, Sam, with that thing hovering over them.”

Too well did the ranch owner realize this fact—and he also realized that unless he did something to remove the suggestion of the supernatural from the mysterious apparition, he would be unable to control either men or cattle.

Just what the thing was, he did not know. Yet, being a man of an unimaginative mind, he decided to find out.

Without saying a word of his intentions to his assistants, the owner of the Double Cross threw his rifle to his shoulder, took a hurried sight at the spectral form and pulled the trigger.

As the report rang out, the cowpunchers leaned forward in their saddles, watching the form intently.

To shoot at a ghost required more courage—in view of the traditions relating to ill-luck and curses such an act brought down upon the head of one so rash—than they possessed, and the cowboys fully expected some dire punishment to be instantly meted out to their boss.

For an intense moment, there was no apparent result from the bullet sent at the floating form.

Then a mocking laugh rent the air, and the white spectre vanished as completely as before!

“There’s more human than spook to that voice!” exclaimed Bowser.

[Pg 4]

“Skulls and crossbones! I have it! It’s a raid!” cried Sandy.

CHAPTER III.

THE RANCHMAN’S VOW.

The ranchman’s assertion that the spectre was of human invention and their foreman’s declaration that it was but a ruse to cover the raiding of the cattle, produced an instantaneous reaction upon the cowpunchers.

“By my saddle, you’re right!” assented Deadshot. “That’s what the trouble is. Somebody’s trying to lift the cattle. I’ve seen ’em started on a stampede too many times not to recognize the symptoms. And here we’ve been afraid of a spook, giving the thieving cusses just the chance they planned. Say, Sam, I wouldn’t blame you for sacking the whole kit and boodle of us!” he added, his shame and contrition evident in his voice.

“Don’t waste time being sorry, get busy and help calm the cattle!” returned his employer. “You boys ride round ’em, and get ’em to milling, if you can. I want to keep my eyes open for another sight of Mr. Spook.”

Deeply chagrined to think they had allowed such a trick to be played on them, for they realized that when the story got out, the Double Cross outfit would be the laughing stock of all the other cowmen in the region, the cowboys set about their work with a will.

But the job was too big for them!

Even before they had ridden fifty yards along the barbed wire fence, they learned that their efforts would prove fruitless.

With crashing of horns, snorting and bellowing, a bunch of the cattle dashed out onto the plains, the outlines of their bodies just visible as they plunged along.

As though this breaking away from the herd had been prearranged, other bunches raced away into the darkness.

“The fence has been cut! The fence has been cut!” roared Sandy, at the top of his lungs.

“There’s no use trying to hold the critturs. Come on back to Sam and we’ll find out what he wants us to do,” returned Deadshot.

Aware that with the cattle dashing away in all points of the compass, it was an impossible task for them to hope to round them up or even to try to hold the ones that had not already gone, Pinky and Deadshot rode back with their foreman until they came to the ranch owner.

“What’s to do?” asked Pinky, after the fact that the barbed wire fence had been cut in several places had been reported to Bowser.

“Lay for Mr. Spook!” snapped the owner of the Double Cross. “I’ll give any one of you a thousand dollars for his dead body! We’ll each of us take one side of the corral and patrol it.”

“But we haven’t got out rifles, only our six shooters,” interrupted Deadshot.

“Then ride for all your worth to the bunkhouse and get them! While you’re there, just tell the missus what’s up. Then hurry back. And say, bring some torches,” he shouted, as the thought that lights might prove useful came to him, for his man was already racing for the guns.

“That’s some trick,” muttered Sandy, while they waited. “Wonder was there more than one of ’em?”

“Sure,” asserted Pinky. “There was probably three or four of ’em working on the fence, cutting the wires, while the other played ghostie!”

This opinion of the numerical strength of the Midnight Raiders, which found ready acceptance from Bowser and Sandy, was later to be proved false, however!

They were destined to learn that the daredevil cattle thief was a lone man!

“That being the case, aren’t we wasting time trying for a shot at them?” demanded the foreman. “They probably made their getaway along with that first bunch of cattle.”

“Maybe you’re right, Sandy,” assented the ranchman. “But I’ve got a sort of hunch that spook will show himself once more.”

And the owner of the Double Cross was right—though the method chosen by the spectral raider to disclose his whereabouts was different from that which Bowser expected!

Lingering at the houses only long enough to make a hurried report to the ranchman’s wife and then to get the rifles and torches, Deadshot was soon back with his companions.

“Here, everybody take a torch and hurry to your posts,” ordered Bowser, as his man rode up. “Sandy, you go to the West side; Pinky to the North; Deadshot to the East, and I’ll take the South. Keep, your eyes peeled—and remember the thousand dollars!”

Even as he spoke, the ranchman touched a match to his torch and when the flame flared up, it threw the four men into bold relief.

“How long shall we patrol?” asked Deadshot.

“Till I wave my torch in the air. Then ride to the house. We’ll get some grub and pick up the trail as soon as it gets daylight.”

Before any of the quartet could take up the task of patrolling the cut fence, however, the cattle thief made himself known.

Bang! boomed a gun from the North.

In amazement, the cowboys wheeled.

And even as they did, a bullet whistled through the air, carrying the sombrero from Bowser’s head.

“Douse the torches! It gives ’em a line on us!” cried Deadshot in alarm, lest a second shell might find its man.

No urging did the ranch owner or any of his men need to make them obey. The shot had been too well aimed and had come too close to its mark for them to care to make targets of themselves for gunmen who could show such skill at night.

[Pg 5]

But, as they hurled the torches to the ground, the ranchman rose in his stirrups.

“You may have the drop on me now!” he roared, shaking his fist in wrathful impotence in the direction whence the shot had come. “But just wait! Nobody can steal Sam Bowser’s cattle, scare his men, shoot at him and get away with it!

“So long as there is a breath of life in my body, I’ll trail you—and I’ll run you to your lair, mark my word!”

The tone in which the owner of the Double Cross spoke, the dim outline of his tall figure as he swayed in his saddle, his arm beating the air in his fury, as he vowed revenge against the miscreants who had stampeded his cattle and tried to murder him, afforded an effect dramatic in the extreme.

Yet, scarcely had the last words left his lips than again a gun barked and a bullet “pinged” viciously as it sailed over his head!