The Orphan

by Clarence Edward Mulford

“All right, Bill,” replied the foreman, “I’ll go out and look them over. You take another horse and ride to the Star C. Tell Blake to keep watch for Tex Williard, and tell him to hold Tex for me if he sees him. Lively, Bill!”

Bill stared, leaped from his horse, took the saddle from its back and was soon lost to sight in the corral. In a few minutes he galloped past his foreman and Sneed swearing heartily. His quirt arose and fell and soon he was lost to sight over a rise near the ranch-house.

The foreman of the A-Y rode over to Charley: “Charley, in case I don’t get back to-night, you and Lefty keep guard somewhere out here, and shoot any man who don’t halt at your hail. If I return in the dark I’ll whistle Dixie as soon as I see the lights in the bunk house, and I’ll keep it up so you won’t mistake me. So long.”

Sneed and he cantered away together and soon they parted, the former to ride toward his ranch, the latter toward the Cottonwoods near the Limping Water and along the trail left by Bill.

When near the grove The Orphan saw five dead cows and he quickly dismounted to examine them.

“Not dead for long,” he muttered as he examined the blood on them. He leaped into his saddle and galloped through the grove. “Now, by God, somebody pays for them!” he muttered.

Here was a sudden change in things, positions had been reversed, and now he could appreciate the feelings which he had, more than once, aroused in the hearts of numerous foremen. He emerged from the grove and rode rapidly along the trail left by the perpetrator, alert, grim and angry. Soon the trail dipped beneath the waters of the creek and he stopped and thought for a few seconds. If it was Tex, he would not have ridden toward the Cross Bar-8 and the town, and neither would he have ridden south toward the Star C, nor north in the direction of the A-Y. He would seek cover for the day if he was still determined to carry on his game, and would not emerge until night covered his movements. That left him only the west along the creek, and more than that, the creek turned to the south again about five miles farther on and flowed far too close to the ranch-houses of the Star C for safety. He must have left the water at the turn, and toward the turn rode The Orphan, watching intently for the trail to emerge on either bank. His deductions were sound, for when he had rounded the bend of the stream he picked up the trail where it left the water and followed it westward.

The country around the bend was very wild and rough, for ravines between the hills cut seams and gashes in the plain. The underbrush was shoulder high, and he did not know how soon he might become a target. The trail was very fresh in the soft loam of the ravines and the broken branches and trampled leaves were still wet with sap. Soon he hobbled his horse and proceeded on foot, but to one side of and parallel with the trail. He had spent an hour in his advance and had begun to regret having left his horse so early, when he heard the report of a gun near at hand and a bullet hissed viciously over his head as he stooped to go under a low branch.

He threw up his arms, the rifle falling from his hands, pitched forward and rolled down the side of the hill and behind a fallen tree trunk which lay against a thicket. As soon as he had gained this position he glanced in the direction from whence the shot had come and, finding himself screened from sight on that side, quickly jerked off his boots and planted them among the bushes, where they looked as if he had crawled in almost out of sight. That done, he crawled along the ground under the protection of the tree trunk and then squirmed under it, when he pushed himself, feet first, deep into a tangled thicket and waited, Colt in hand, for a sign of his enemy’s approach.

A quarter of an hour had passed in silence when a shot, followed by another, sounded from the hillside. After the lapse of a like interval another shot was fired, this time from the opposite direction. He saw a twig fall by the boots and heard the spat! of the bullet as it hit a stone. Two more shots sounded in rapid succession, and then another long interval of silence. Half an hour passed, but he was not impatient. He most firmly believed that his man would, sooner or later, come out to examine the boots, and time was of no consequence: he wanted the man.