CHAPTER XI.

DID HE DARE?

Childress had chosen to search the east side of the butte because he thought that the avenue of escape most likely to be followed by the heartless skinner, whether he be an Indian, as Flame seemed confident, or one of the white renegades who infested the timber region south of the international line. He wasted no time seeking a hoof-print trail, but kept Silver at speed, using his eyes for an intensive search ahead and to either side. There was no reward while he skimmed the prairie, but he pushed on regardless of the fact that he must have crossed the boundary. So incensed was he over the outrage and so intent on bringing the perpetrator back to the Gallegher girl that he was willing for once to write his own extradition ticket.

Almost had he given up hope when, through a rift in the scraggly forest, he saw a mounted figure ahead of him. Silver always had speed in reserve and now was called upon to expend it. They were gaining rapidly when chance or caution caused the quarry to turn in his saddle. Proof of guilt came whistling back in a rifle bullet so hastily fired that it did no harm. At the distance, the sergeant could not tell whether his assailant was red or white, but that no longer mattered. The silver horse was urged to greater speed and at no small risk, for the going had become rocky and was anything but a race track.

Noisily his horse rounded a bend in the trail and just in time to show the man ahead spring from his saddle and disappear into the thick cover of trail-side brush. Marking with his eye the spot of digression, Childress pushed on to it and pulled his own mount.

The growth he found there--a patch of vicious-looking devil's-clubs--would have convinced him that something was wrong even if no warning shot had been fired. No sane man, unless pressed for concealment, would submit himself to such a crown and robe of thorns. A branch slashed from the outermost stalk told the sergeant two more things: He had not mistaken the point of disappearance, and his quarry, so anxious to avoid inspection, was equipped either with an ax or a skinning knife, probably the latter, in view of that horror back on the ranch.

He glanced at the abandoned cayuse, a scrawny, flea-bitten gray, who stood a few yards down the trail, cropping contentedly at some brush that evidently was not thorned. Its saddle was a cheap one and its cantle carried no pack. The skinner must have found some way of disposing of the hide farther back on the trail after the pursuit was under way.

Several dangers presented themselves in connection with the situation. A shot from ambush was the likeliest one, but that was dismissed with a shrug. The possibility of his passing the other in some brushy hiding place and of the man's backtracking to his mount was another. But Childress decided to take the chance. Dismounting, he fastened the reins to the pommel of the saddle. The well trained Silver would wait, he knew, a reasonable time for his master's return and if, for any cause, the master did not come back would return to the Open A. It was no country for the beast to be hampered with the dropped rein of an ordinary alighting. Slipping his "blazer"--a short-handled, sharp-bitted instrument--from its loop on his riding leather, he plunged into the jungle-like patch.

The fact that an energetic wood-chopper had just passed made the sergeant's progress somewhat easier, but did not render him immune from the inflictions of the small thorns, barbed and poisonous. The spreading leaves of the woody stem had a way of concealing all sorts of viciousness, then forcing it upon him in many a wound. He was ready to agree with the popular verdict that the jaggers were "the very devil" when they got into one's skin. But he did not compliment them by the thought that they could stop him, and at last hacked his way through, but only into another difficulty.

The thorny cover behind, a precipitous, thickly brushed ascent of the ridge began. Higher than his head was the undergrowth, despite the rock-strewn surface. No longer had a trail been left by the quarry, but that Childress was not going amiss in attempting the ridge was proved to him by certain sounds which drifted back--the smashing of rotten logs as they broke under the fleeing man's weight, the rattle of rocks dislodged by his feet, and once the sound of a fall, as of a heavy body tripped and thrown.

So evident were the causes of these noises that the sergeant knew he had gained ground in the first lap of the chase. Probably his quarry had halted after cutting into the devil's-clubs in the hope that, not having seen his actual dismounting, the other would ride past. Childress' noisy entrance must have started him on further flight.

Soon there came encouragement in another glimpse of the pursued--just a hunched up back in a checker-board shirt under one of the black felt hats so generally worn in the region. No sight of features was possible, no estimate as to height or the color of hair beneath the slouched headgear. Although Childress had been fired upon and was thus absolved from that never-fire-first rule of the Mounted, he did not care to chance a shot on suspicion.

The encouragement of this glimpse was soon spoiled by the discovery that he, as pursuer, was in a crisscrossed windfall, while the pursued had gained a deer run which quartered to the crest of the ridge. As the unknown, now called an enemy, disappeared over the comparatively easy course he had won, rage possessed Childress--the lust to overtake and overcome at any cost to himself.

For several minutes he disregarded the saner advices of his woodcraft, and "fought brush," slipping, sliding, butting into it, crawling on all fours. A fall that shook him to the marrow reduced him to calmer methods. With comparative deliberation, he began picking his way out of the seemingly impregnable, wind-made fortification. In time he, too, gained the deer run.

No one was in sight when he reached the crest and paused for a moment to recover breath lost on the laborious ascent. But the hobnailed boots of the fugitive had left their trace in the loose shale. Evidently the man ahead had decided that the ridge, after all, was an unsatisfactory refuge and at once had undertaken the down path on the south side, where a series of ledges gave upon a thickly timbered area of normal level.

This particular region was strange to Childress, and he did not like the looks of this descent, but decided that where another had gone he could follow. A jump landed him on the first ledge below, almost in his quarry's boot tracks, and he raced across to a second brink. Upon a ledge still further down, he could see that this jump also had been negotiated with safety, and he went over with like success.

The extent of the drop to the third ledge might have halted him had he been permitted any choice in the matter, but, as he stood estimating the distance, decision was taken out of his hands. The shelf edge crumbled beneath his feet. Before he could realize what had happened, he was painfully trying to arise from another flat some thirty feet below.

Throwing off the shock of the impact, satisfying himself that no bones were broken, he gained his feet and stared about. The tops of Douglas firs, growing straight from the normal forest level, were on a line with the rock shelf upon which he stood, indicating that a really formidable precipice had been reached, one of a height too problematical for the most foolhardy jumper. Hope that the man in the checkerboard flannel must be somewhere on the ledge started Childress' search without delay.

But again disappointment was his portion. Although there could be no doubt that the fugitive had landed there, as attested by the disturbed shale, no sign of him could be found upon the ledge--one of less extent than the others and, with the exception of a lone hemlock, absolutely devoid of cover. In some way the other must have made this last leap.

Guarding against a second precipitation without consent, Childress flattened himself upon the rock and crawled to the edge. Peering over, his eyes soon solved the mystery of the disappearance.

Upon the rocks full fifty feet below lay a ladder improvised by the nailing of slats upon a slender cut-tree. By means of this the unknown doubtless had descended with ease and safety; then shut off further pursuit by throwing down the cliff's scaling device.

Although the sergeant could see no one below, his deductions were corroborated by a burst of laughter--raucous in its defiance, almost demoniacal--which cut the air upward from the forest cover. Having met defeat before, Childress had thought himself schooled to it, but this taunt was a heavy drain upon his sincerity. There seemed, however, no counter irritant. The height was too great for another jump; the sheer wall offered no hold for fingers and toes by which he might lower himself. Having done his best, he would have to give up the chase, ascend the series of ledges, and get back to his horse by way of the deer run. Just possibly he could discover where the culprit--of whose guilt he no longer had any doubt--had thrown the down-to-mud-line hide and have that much to carry back to Flame Gallegher.

This decided he drew back from the brink, regained his feet, and looked about for the easiest start. It was several minutes before he realized that he was caught in a trap. Although shrubs to furnish climbing holds had grown on the ledges higher up, this one, which he first must scale, was as bald as an eagle. Not until he had searched the flinty surface at close range for crevices and projections and tried out to futility the cutting of steps with his ax, did he appreciate his recent temerity.

The more he studied the situation, the more serious it looked. He would not be missed at the Gallegher Ranch. Even if Flame cared to mention their chance meeting and his aid with the bogged-down cow, she doubtless would consider his failure to return as proof that the general suspicion against him was well founded. Silver, he believed, would be able to find his way back to the Open A, but might be hours doing it. The arrival of the horse, riderless, would alarm Mahaffy, but how would the constable know where to look for his missing chief?

Scarcely could he reassure himself by thinking that the human fox, in the timber below, would do anything in the way of directing a rescue party. Doubtless, he soon would be on his way to recover his cayuse and the discarded loot. Even Silver might be in danger, although the sergeant had hope that the sagacious animal would effectively resist being taken in by a stranger.

Childress measured with his eyes the distance to the nearest treetop, calculating the chance of a leap into its branches and the uncertainty of being able to hold on. This he decided was too dubious for attempt, except as a last resort, driven by hunger and thirst. The lone hemlock next became the object of his conjecture, but proved too short by several feet to give access to the ledge above. He expended three shots from his revolver in broadcasting for help, but not so much in hope of answer as that he should leave nothing undone.

There came response, however, from some forest cover. A bullet clipped past his ear and flattened against the rock wall behind him. A second shot went just over his head. His triumphant enemy evidently was willing to shoot him off the shelf. Before stepping back out of range, he emptied his gun hit-miss into the brush below. He was tempted to risk the running jump toward the nearest treetop, but in time he checked himself, not yet ready to risk the hundredth chance. There must be some safer way down. His eyes lifted to the cerulean panoply overhead, then eased down to the line of the granite floor and swept the feathery tops of green. They sought inspiration and they found it. With sure strokes of his ax he attacked the lone hemlock.

The trapped sergeant's "big idea" was one which required the preliminary of labor. His eyes were trained to accuracy and he trusted their measurement of the space between the top of the sturdy Scotch conifer and the trunk of the rock-rooted young hemlock. Attacking with his short-handled ax, he soon had the chips flying, with a pause now and then to calculate the exact direction of the tree's drop. His chief anxiety was not over his ability as an axman, but as to whether the umbrellalike branches of the fir would afford lodgment sufficiently strong to support the combined weight of the hemlock and himself.

With the small crackle of a bunch of penny firecrackers, the tree soon broke away from its stump. His ax-aim proved true. But to the sergeant the seconds seemed minutes during that period in which it was decided whether the falling tree would remain in the embrace of its half-sister of the pine family or would veer to one side for a plunge to the rocks below, there to mock him. A gasp of relief escaped his lips when, quivering throughout its length, it settled definitely into the very crotch for which he had aimed.

No time did he waste testing its strength and security. Either it would hold or it would not--either he would escape the trap into which the bog skinner had led him or meet his end in a plunge without cost or ceremony. As always before in his grown-up life, when the issue demanded he dared.