第78章

"One hour more, Ginger, that is all--one hour only."As he spoke he leapt from his saddle to ease his horse in climbing a long and lofty hill.As he surmounted the hill he stopped and swiftly backed his horse down the hill.Upon the distant skyline his eye had detected what he judged to be a horseman.His horse safely disposed of, he once more crawled to the top of the hill.

"An Indian, by Jove!" he cried."I wonder if he has seen me."Carefully his eye swept the intervening valley and the hillside beyond, but only this solitary figure could he see.As his eye rested on him the Indian began to move toward the west.Cameron lay watching him for some minutes.From his movements it was evident that the Indian's pace was being determined by some one on the other side of the hill, for he advanced now swiftly, now slowly.At times he halted and turned back upon his track, then went forward again.

"What the deuce is he doing?" said Cameron to himself."By Jove!

I have got it! The drive is begun.I am too late."Swiftly he considered the whole situation.He was too late now to be of any service at his ranch.The raid had already swept past it.He wrung his hands in agony to think of what might have happened.He was torn with anxiety for his family--and yet here was the raid passing onward before his eyes.One hour would bring him to the ranch, but if this were the outside edge of the big cattle raid the loss of an hour would mean the loss of everything.

"Oh, my God! What shall I do?" he cried.

With his eyes still upon the Indian he forced himself to think more quietly.The secrecy with which the raid was planned made it altogether likely that the homes of the settlers would not at this time be interfered with.This consideration finally determined him.At all costs he must do what he could to head off the raid or to break the herd in some way.But that meant in the first place a ride of twenty or twenty-five miles over rough country.Could Ginger do it?

He crawled back to his horse and found him with his head close to the ground and trembling in every limb.

"If he goes this twenty miles," he said, "he will go no more.But it looks like our only hope, old boy.We must make for our old beat, the Sun Dance Trail."He mounted his horse and set off toward the west, taking care never to appear above the skyline and riding as rapidly as the uncertain footing of the untrodden prairie would allow.At short intervals he would dismount and crawl to the top of the hill in order to keep in touch with the Indian, who was heading in pretty much the same direction as himself.A little further on his screening hill began to flatten itself out and finally it ran down into a wide valley which crossed his direction at right angles.He made his horse lie down, still in the shelter of the hill, and with most painful care he crawled on hands and knees out to the open and secured a point of vantage from which he could command the valley which ran southward for some miles till it, in turn, was shut in by a further range of hills.

He was rewarded for his patience and care.Far down before him at the bottom of the valley a line of cattle was visible and hurrying them along a couple of Indian horsemen.As he lay watching these Indians he observed that a little farther on this line was augmented by a similar line from the east driven by the Indian he had first observed, and by two others who emerged from a cross valley still further on.Prone upon his face he lay, with his eyes on that double line of cattle and its hustling drivers.The raid was surely on.What could one man do to check it? Similar lines of cattle were coming down the different valleys and would all mass upon the old Porcupine Trail and finally pour into the Sun Dance with its many caves and canyons.There was much that was mysterious in this movement still to Cameron.What could these Indians do with this herd of cattle? The mere killing of them was in itself a vast undertaking.He was perfectly familiar with the Indian's method of turning buffalo meat, and later beef, into pemmican, but the killing, and the dressing, and the rendering of the fat, and the preparing of the bags, all this was an elaborate and laborious process.But one thing was clear to his mind.At all costs he must get around the head of these converging lines.

He waited there till the valley was clear of cattle and Indians, then, mounting his horse, he pushed hard across the valley and struck a parallel trail upon the farther side of the hills.

Pursuing this trail for some miles, he crossed still another range of hills farther to the west and so proceeded till he came within touch of the broken country that marks the division between the Foothills and the Mountains.He had not many miles before him now, but his horse was failing fast and he himself was half dazed with weariness and exhaustion.Night, too, was falling and the going was rough and even dangerous; for now hillsides suddenly broke off into sharp cut-banks, twenty, thirty, forty feet high.

It was one of these cut-banks that was his undoing, for in the dim light he failed to note that the sheep track he was following ended thus abruptly till it was too late.Had his horse been fresh he could easily have recovered himself, but, spent as he was, Ginger stumbled, slid and finally rolled headlong down the steep hillside and over the bank on to the rocks below.Cameron had just strength to throw himself from the saddle and, scrambling on his knees, to keep himself from following his horse.Around the cut-bank he painfully made his way to where his horse lay with his leg broken, groaning like a human being in his pain.

"Poor old boy! You are done at last," he said.

But there was no time to indulge regrets.Those lines of cattle were swiftly and steadily converging upon the Sun Dance.He had before him an almost impossible achievement.Well he knew that a man on foot could do little with the wild range cattle.They would speedily trample him into the ground.But he must go on.He must make the attempt.