The Cowboy Way Page 17

  “The old man’ll have a fit if he finds out we’re runnin’ bear on his place,” Jake said to the hard-breathing boy. “But it’d sure be hard to call the dogs off now.”

  He spurred on after them. The boy followed, his face flushed with excitement. The bear was looking for rough country.

  Finally the sound of the dogs’ barking changed.

  “They got him treed, Tommy,” Jake spoke quickly. “Let’s catch up and get this done before Budge finds out we been here.”

  Flop, Rip, and Little Mutt had put the bear up a big spruce in a canyon not far from a whispering creek. Now the angry bear hunched in the limbs, his wide jaws apart.

  Mouth open and eyes wide, the boy slipped his rifle out and raised it in shaky hands.

  Alarmed, Jake said quickly, “Better steady that gun on a tree limb. You’ve got to make a clean kill.”

  But the boy didn’t heed him. The rifle thundered. With a roar the wounded bear lost his hold. Limbs cracked as he fell. He hit the ground bawling and swinging his big paws. Instantly Little Mutt squatted and ran in at him.

  Jake yelled at the dog, but it did no good. A vicious paw barely missed. The second time it sent the pup rolling, angry red claw streaks showing along his ribs. At the pup’s sudden yelp of pain, the two older dogs started in.

  In his mind Jake could see all three dogs cut to ribbons. He grabbed the rifle from the boy’s hand and rushed in closer. For a moment he had to hold his fire to keep from hitting one of the dogs, which were rolling over and over with the bear. Then he got a clean bead. The recoil of the rifle jarred his shoulder.

  The bear fell limp, and the dogs soon quieted down. Jake handed the rifle to pale, shaken young Tommy and ran to see about Little Mutt. The pup had some savage claw marks in his hide, but they weren’t anything he wouldn’t get over.

  Jake jerked his head up as he heard Tommy yell shrilly, “It’s another bear, Jake. I can see him over yonder.”

  Jake rose to his feet. “I don’t think it’s a bear, Tommy. Wait till we—”

  He never finished. Steadying the rifle on a limb this time, Tommy fired before Jake could stop him. Jake’s heart bobbed as he heard the animal’s short scream.

  “That’s no bear!”

  He sprinted as fast as his high-heeled boots would let him in the rocks. Lying in the brush, kicking out its last breath, he found a brown stallion. The Budge B brand was plain on the horse’s hip—painfully plain.

  * * *

  Old Man Budge took it about as Jake had expected he would. He stormed like an angry bear. Jake couldn’t blame him. The hunter knew he had it coming. Budge wouldn’t even listen when Jake offered to pay for the stallion.

  The old ranchman fetched a shotgun. “You better not let your shirttail touch you till you’re off of my place, Howard. If you ever come back, I’ll use this scattergun on you.

  “And don’t let them dogs come on my ranch again, neither. First thing I’m goin’ to do in the mornin’ is put out some strychnine baits. Bring them dogs again and there won’t be a one of them git out alive!”

  Jake backed away. Colleen tried to speak up for him, but the old man chopped off a few curt words to her and she stopped, her brown eyes full of sympathy for Jake. He gave her a long last glance, knowing that if he ever saw her again, it would have to be in spite of Quincy Budge. Then he got back on his horse and rode off, the hounds at heel.

  * * *

  As if that hadn’t been hard luck enough, the Yellow Devil came back. A couple of mornings later the hounds turned up a fresh kill. It was another good heifer, a yearling this time. In less than a week Jake found where the lion had killed a bull calf and covered up its partially eaten carcass.

  Always any attempt to track the lion was foiled. The Yellow Devil laid such tangled trails that sooner or later the dogs got balled up. Once Flop led the hounds successfully over a series of the lion’s backtracks and kept on the trail. About midday the trail suddenly became hot. The hounds found a spot under a mountainside ledge where the lion apparently had been lying up through the day. Jake guessed the sound of the dogs had scared him into running again.

  But the chase was all for nothing. In a couple of hours the trail led over the deadline and onto Budge’s ranch. Bitterly Jake pulled up and started calling the dogs. It took a good while, but they reluctantly gave up the hot chase and came back.

  Exhausted, Jake threw up his hands in despair and started home.

  * * *

  Winter came, and with it the Yellow Devil seemed hungrier than ever. One after another, Jake turned up fresh kills. Looking at his gradually shrinking herd, he knew he was ruined if he couldn’t stop that lion. But he couldn’t stop him.

  So Jake’s hatred for the Yellow Devil slowly grew stronger and stronger, until finally he worried no more about taking care of the ranch or the cattle. Only one thought rode in his mind—get that lion—one thought, day and night, week after desperate week.

  Then one day it looked as if his luck would change. Following a fresh trail from the carcass of a calf, the hounds scared the Yellow Devil from a ledge so suddenly that the lion was a scant two hundred yards in the lead. As the hounds piled off the ledge, Jake caught a split-second look at the tawny shape before it disappeared in a tangle of brush across the canyon.

  With a yelp of triumph Jake whipped the rifle out of his saddle scabbard and spurred his horse down the easiest way he could find to the canyon floor. By the time he reached bottom the dogs had disappeared into the brush. But their excited barking drifted back to him.

  Shortly the trail went up the other side of the canyon. His mountain-trained horse climbed expertly but slowly. The sound of the dogs was farther away now, but maneuvering of the lion and necessary backtracking by the dogs allowed Jake to catch up. Almost before he realized it, he reached Budge’s deadline.

  He reined up a moment and mulled it over. This was the closest he had ever come to catching the Yellow Devil. If they were let go, the hounds might tree him at any time.

  Jake remembered the old man’s threat to use strychnine. But the sound of the dogs on a hot trail and the momentary glimpse of the hated killer had whipped him into a frenzied heat. Budge or no Budge, he was going to get that lion.

  For an hour the dogs chased their prey across B Ranch land. The big cat was getting more desperate now, Jake knew from the trail. Jake sensed that he had driven the Yellow Devil off his usual range. The killer was on unfamiliar ground.

  Suddenly Jake had a vague feeling something was wrong. He didn’t know exactly what, but he sensed that one of his dogs had stopped barking. Loping up, he saw the reason.

  Little Mutt lay on his side at the fork of a trail, his legs working feverishly, his eyes straining out of their sockets. His teeth were clamped tightly, biting into his tongue.

  With a quick catch of breath, Jake exclaimed, “Strychnine!”

  He could do nothing except stand there in misery and watch the pup die. He kept blowing the old cow horn until the other two dogs finally came trotting in, their tongues lolling out. Their accusing eyes said they could have treed the lion if only he had let them.

  Choking, Jake put leash chains on the two dogs and led them away. Old Flop kept looking up at the dead pup in the saddle and whimpering.

  With a deep bitterness creeping through him, Jake turned his back on the Yellow Devil and headed for the shortest trail off the B Ranch. He blinked his stinging eyes. He berated the lion. He lambasted the ornery old man who would let a killer lion lie up on his range but put out strychnine to poison faithful hounds.

  * * *

  As it turned out, the chase had not been a complete failure. The Yellow Devil did not come back to the Lazy H.

  Jake wondered about this. Then reports started coming in. The lion was killing Quincy Budge’s horses.

  Jake reasoned that the many chases his hounds had given the lion, capped off by the final one that had come so close, had scared the Yellow Devil off his home range. Now the cat had found somethi
ng he liked better—good, tender, easy-to-kill colts.

  Week after week, reports came in. Budge had lost more than half of his last colt crop. The lion seldom returned to old kills now. With horseflesh plentiful, every time he got hungry, he made a new kill.

  Time and again Budge had moved the horses, but always the Yellow Devil followed them. The old man had lain out in the biting cold night after bitter night, hoping to get a shot at the killer. The chance never came. But every time he missed a night, another horse would die.

  Folks said Quincy Budge had aged ten years in the two months the Devil had been working on him. Contrary though he was, he loved those horses. But Jake hadn’t seen the old rancher. A couple of times he got word Budge was coming over to talk to him. He would leave his ranch then and camp out a night or two, until he figured the old man had come and gone.

  But one day Budge caught him unawares. He rode up to the barn while Jake was feeding Flop and Rip and a new pup he was training to take Little Mutt’s place. Looking at the old man, Jake felt a bit sorry for him, though he tried not to. The lines in Budge’s bearded face were carved deeper than ever. His eyes were like those of a whipped dog.

  “Look, Howard,” the old man pleaded, “if that lion works on me much longer, I’m through. I ain’t done nothin’ for two months but hunt for him. I’ve hired men with dogs to try and track him, but their dogs ain’t like yours.”

  Jake kept his voice flat. “I’m surprised you could get anybody to take dogs in there, seein’ as how you’ve put out strychnine.”

  The old man flinched. “I knew where I put them baits, Howard. I went out and took them all up.”

  “All of them?”

  Guilt showed in Budge’s lined face. “All but one. I heard about it, Howard. My wife and daughter jumped me good when the word came about your dog.… I’m tellin’ you, I’m sorry about the pup. It was spite made me do it. I’ve thought it over aplenty since. I’m askin’ you to forgive me, Howard, and help me git that lion.”

  Jake wanted to. He still hated the Yellow Devil as much as he ever had. But there was a stubbornness about him.

  He looked at the sinking sun. “It’ll be dark before you get home if you don’t get started.” He turned his back and walked off.

  “Wait, Howard,” Budge called desperately, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars—two hundred—to catch that cat.”

  Jake hesitated. Two hundred dollars. That would pay for a good many losses. But no, he wouldn’t back down now. He kept walking.

  Next day another rider came. Jake recognized Colleen Budge, and his heart quickened. He knew what she wanted. He was determined to turn her down.

  But that was not easy to do. “Dad’s not a bad man at heart,” she pleaded. “It hurt him when he heard about your pup, knowin’ it was his fault. You can’t imagine what that lion’s done to him. It’s killin’ him. I’m beggin’ you to come track down that lion—for me.”

  He felt his face coloring as he realized he was whipped. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  She kissed him, and the warmth was still with him long after she had gone.

  That night Jake took his dogs, horse, and pack mule over to Budge’s ranch, to be ready to start the hunt at daylight the next morning. Quincy Budge was pacing the kitchen floor, blowing at his steaming coffee cup and raring to go an hour before pink light began to creep over the great wall of the Carmens to the east. Jake had little to say to him.

  Colleen put on a long riding skirt and went along with them. Soon after sunup they were at the site of the latest slaughter. The dogs sniffed around a freshly killed sorrel colt while Budge sat stiffly in his saddle. Jake saw tears in the old man’s eyes.

  As usual, old Flop was the hound that opened and led out. The trail followed a winding course but continued strong. The colt’s blood on the cat’s paws was making him easier for the dogs to track.

  Finally the trail seemed to come to a dead end along a rimrock. Flop patiently worked the back trail, his nose rubbing raw on the rocks.

  Jake looked over the rim and spotted a tall tree not far below. It gave him a hunch. He called Flop and let him sniff around the edge. Surely enough, he picked up the scent just above the tree. The lion had back-tracked, then jumped off into the tree. He wasn’t in it now. He must be down there somewhere in the steep-walled canyon.

  “I’m takin’ the dogs and goin’ down afoot,” he said. “You-all can keep the horses up here on the rim. Just listen for the dogs and follow them.”

  Quincy Budge climbed stiffly out of the saddle. “I’m goin’ with you.”

  Jake warned, “It’s rough goin’ down there afoot. And there’s no tellin’ how far we might have to run him.”

  The old man grunted. “It’s my horses he’s been killin’. Let’s go.”

  It was a tough, dangerous climb down the steep walls. They had to hand the hounds down part of the way. The old man slipped once, bruising his knee against a sharp rock and ripping a hole in his pant leg. But he never seemed to notice it. A grim look had hardened in his eyes.

  The hounds picked up the scent at the bottom of the tree and headed out up the canyon again. Jake fell in behind them in a long trot, his rifle balanced in his hand. He wondered how long Budge would be able to keep up.

  The old man surprised him. He seldom lagged far behind. Occasionally, where sand had blown into ripples, a lion track was visible. That would bring new life into the old man’s steps. But the dogs paid no particular attention to tracks. They kept right on by scent.

  The trail led up onto a ledge. There the scent seemed especially hot. The Yellow Devil had been lying up there, Jake figured, until the sound of the dogs had scared him away. He looked off down the canyon as if he hoped for a glimpse of the fleeing lion. But he saw nothing.

  Even the pup had the scent now. All three dogs were tearing ahead, fast enough to outrun a good horse and far too fast for men afoot to keep up with them. But Jake did his best. He ran until his heart was like a lead weight in him. He glanced back occasionally. Quincy Budge labored heavily along, falling farther and farther back but not quitting.

  Jake’s hatred of the cat returned to him now. The tom’s trail angled over to the canyon wall again. For a minute it was lost. Then Flop tracked back to where the lion had made a long jump up onto a boulder the size of a small shack. Jake boosted the dog to where he could clamber up on the rock. The scent was there, all right. Jake handed the other dogs up.

  The lion had jumped onto another ledge overhead. Again Jake had to lift the dogs up. They seemed heavy as horses now, even the pup, which he put up last. He struggled to pull himself up after them.

  The trail led on and on, across jagged rock ledges, back down to the canyon floor, then up again. Jake’s mouth and throat were dry. His heart hammered dully. His breath came short and painfully. At times he wanted to call the dogs off. But the sound of them ahead of him kept pulling him on. Still, he knew he could not go much farther. It had to end soon now, or the chase was lost.

  The dogs’ voices faded thin. Jake stopped and leaned on a tree to regain his breath. His heart bobbed as he recognized the gliding shape creeping up across the rocks. The Yellow Devil had momentarily thrown the dogs again on a double-back. Now he was trying to sneak out of the canyon.

  In desperation Jake realized the chase was over if the cat did get out. The hunter didn’t have strength left to climb that wall. He raised his rifle and took a long shot. He heard the bullet ricochet off a rock over the lion’s head and whine away. The cat whirled back like a whiplash and leaped once more into the canyon.

  He disappeared into the brush. Jake heaved on after him. This time, he knew, the hunt would be finished. There was no deadline to worry about, no place beyond which he could not go. He would trail the Yellow Devil into Mexico now, if he had to.

  But he wouldn’t have to. A new, excited note came into the dogs’ voices. They had jumped the lion. Fatigue was a lance shoved through Jake’s ribs, but he made himself keep on. He heard the h
ounds bark “treed.”

  Flushed with victory, Jake made his weary legs move a little faster. Most of the pain left his chest. He saw the dogs ahead, one after another rearing up onto the trunk of a tall spruce and barking. High in the branches, a tawny form crouched on a limb.

  The Yellow Devil.

  He was cornered now. He did not stand a chance. But there was a majesty about him as he sat high in the tree, looking down, never taking his eyes off the dogs. His ears were laid back. He spat defiantly at the hounds that had treed him.

  But Jake wasn’t thinking of the majesty of the beast. He remembered dead cattle—his cattle—and goats he had found where the lion left them. He remembered long, weary chases that led always to disappointment. He remembered a brown pup named Little Mutt.

  A choking hatred surged in him, and he raised his rifle. He drew a careful bead on the Yellow Devil. But his hands wavered, and he thought of an old man trudging wearily along the trail back yonder, an old man who had lain out in misery night after night, who had not been able to keep the tears out of his eyes as he looked down at the dead colt.

  He remembered Quincy Budge and the hard lines that had edged into his face. In the last two months the tom had become more than a stock-killing cat to Budge. It had been almost a human enemy, an enemy to be hated and hunted, and if possible destroyed, before he destroyed the old man.

  For months Jake had dreamed of this moment. Now he had the rifle in his hand and the lion in a tree. He told himself he owed Budge nothing.

  But reluctantly he lowered his rifle, the taste of victory sour in his mouth. This shot belonged to Quincy.

  Colleen got there before Quincy did. Leading the horses and mule along the rim of the canyon, she had followed the sound of the dogs. When she heard them bark “treed,” she spurred ahead to a break in the rimrock and came down.

  She found Jake waiting there, rifle in his hands. She was watching when Jake handed Quincy the rifle and turned away.