AMBUSH
The night was filled with the drumming of horses' feet and the rush and challenge of the hounds. They gathered by the gate and bayed and barked continuously, racing far out across the open plain; and when at dawn the Bassetts looked out, the Basin was stripped bare of stock. Not a cow or horse was left for Grimes to wreak his vengeance on if his sheep were shot up and scattered—the stage was cleared and set for the play, which promised to be a tragedy. The Bassetts peered out warily, using their glasses through the portholes as they scanned the neighboring hills for gunmen; then the old squaw ventured out, to bring in wood and water and cook their bread and coffee on the hearth. As the sun rose higher the oak door was thrown open, giving an unobstructed view of the plain; and at last the Bassetts stepped out into the open, for the hour for ambushing had passed.
There are crimes that stalk by noonday, and others that fear the light; but the men who shoot from ambush creep up in the night-time and kill at the first peep of day. Or, failing of their victim, they skulk off through the brush, before they, too, are marked down for revenge. All this the Bassetts knew, as well as that strange crotchet which keeps murderers from shooting down women; and so they stayed close till the hour for "tapping" had passed, sending their woman out instead. She plodded about stoically, apparently busy with her duties, but every possible hiding place was carefully scrutinized before she consented to let her men-folks come out.
They stood now in the sun, rolling a smoke and looking northward for the first of the four bands of sheep; and as the clamor of their bleating came faintly down the wind, old Susie, the Indian woman, came out. First she glanced at Bill and Winchester, who were talking and laughing together, and then at sullen-faced Sharps; and then she, too, looked away to the north where the sheep were beginning to move.
"No good!" she exclaimed, stamping her foot and turning to Henry; and while the other looked on she harangued him in Indian, pointing repeatedly at her sons and the sheep. But Henry Bassett was not the man to listen to a woman when it was a question of peace or war, and after a few words he dismissed her impatiently and joined his grinning "cubs."
"She don't like that man Grimes," he explained shamefacedly, "but it's too late now for sech talk. All the same, boys, this sheep-war ain't no concern of ours so we'll stay right close to the house. I'm shore sorry now that I said what I did; because if he wins, boys, he'll sheep us out, too. But it was that or knuckle down to them dastardly Scarboroughs, and I shore can't stummick that!"
He maundered on, arguing it over with himself, seeking vainly to justify his acts; and all the while the braying of the sheep grew louder as the herds drifted down through the pass. For weeks they had been struggling through scrub oaks and pines, and dense thickets of manzanita and buckthorn; and when at last they burst into the open the leaders advanced on the run. The first band was made up of big, sturdy wethers, their fleeces torn and tattered from trailing through the brush, but strong and active as bucks. They came on in a line which quickly spread out like the front of an advancing flood, and as the last of the herd came clear of the creek-bed the clangor of their baaing ceased. They fed along slowly, the leaders lingering to eat, the drag drifting past them to the front; and in the silence that followed a Mexican herder stepped out and looked down across the waving plain.
The grass was knee high and still green from winter rains, and it flowed away before them like a billowing field, for the sheep had never been there before. Yet this silence, this emptiness, this absence of man or beast, had its sinister side as well; and, after a long look, the herder disappeared and came out further down the creek. He kept under the bank, only showing among the shadows as he kept cover beneath the towering cottonwoods; but as his sheep drifted away towards the grassy western hills he rushed out and turned them back with his dogs. Still the silence, the great emptiness, and as other herders came up they stepped out boldly into the open. Each man carried a gun and had his face to the hills, but no gun roared out its loud challenge. They drifted on slowly, down the broadening valley yet keeping close in to the creek, and at noon they had edged away from the menacing western ridges and gained the open Basin at last.
But now the fat wethers had eaten their full, and as the heat came on they took shelter in the river-bottom, drowsing peacefully in the shade of the willows. The camp-rustlers came up with their burros and kyacks, a fire was soon going at their camp; and as his burros, and Mexicans took their afternoon siesta Dave Grimes ambled over to the house. He rode up on a black mule, gaudy with martingale and fancy trimmings, and greeted the Bassetts at the gate.