It was very plain that the attackers meant to take their time to finish him in perfect safety. He was surrounded on every side by a cordon of rifles, except where the bare face of the butte hung down behind him. To attempt to scale it would have been to expose himself as a mark for every gun to certain death.
It was now that she heard the man who seemed to be directing the attack call out to another on his right. She was too far to make out the words, but their effect was clear to her. He pointed to the brow of the butte above, and a puncher in white woolen chaps dropped back out of range and swung to the saddle upon one of the ponies bunched in the rear. He cantered round in a wide circle and made for the butte. His purpose was obviously to catch their victim in the unprotected rear, and fire down upon him from above.
The young woman shouted a warning, but her voice failed to carry. For a moment she stood with her hands pressed together in despair, then turned and swiftly scudded to her machine. She sprang in, swept forward, reached the rim of the mesa, and plunged down. Never before had she attempted so precarious a descent in such wild haste. The car fairly leaped into space, and after it struck swayed dizzily as it shot down. The girl hung on, her face white and set, the pulse in her temple beating wildly. She could do nothing, as the machine rocked down, but hope against many chances that instant destruction might be averted.
Utterly beyond her control, the motor-car thundered down, reached the foot of the butte, and swept over a little hill in its wild flight. She rushed by a mounted horseman in the thousandth part of a second. She was still speeding at a tremendous velocity, but a second hill reduced this somewhat. She had not yet recovered control of the machine, but, though her eyes instinctively followed the white road that flashed past, she again had photographed on her brain the scene of the turbid tragedy in which she was intervening.
At the foot of the butte the road circled and dipped into the coulee. She braced herself for the shock, but, though the wheels skidded till her heart was in her throat, the automobile, hanging on the balance of disaster, swept round in safety.
Her horn screamed an instant warning to the trapped man. She could not see him, and for an instant her heart sank with the fear that they had killed him. But she saw then that they were still firing, and she continued her honking invitation as the car leaped forward into the zone of spitting bullets.
By this time she was recovering control of the motor, and she dared not let her attention wander, but out of the corner of her eye she appreciated the situation. Temporarily, out of sheer amaze at this apparition from the blue, the guns ceased their sniping. She became aware that a light curly head, crouched low in the sage-brush, was moving rapidly to meet her at right angles, and in doing so was approaching directly the line of fire. She could see him dodging to and fro as he moved forward, for the rifles were again barking.
She was within two hundred yards of him, still going rapidly, but not with the same headlong rush as before, when the curly head disappeared in the sage-brush. It was up again presently, but she could see that the man came limping, and so uncertainly that twice he pitched forward to the ground. Incautiously one of his assailants ran forward with a shout the second time his head went down. Crack! The unerring rifle rang out, and the impetuous one dropped in his tracks.
As she approached, the young woman slowed without stopping, and as the car swept past Curly Head flung himself in headlong. He picked himself up from her feet, crept past her to the seat beyond, and almost instantly whipped his rifle to his shoulder in prompt defiance of the fire that was now converged on them.
Yet in a few moments the sound died away, for a voice midway in the crescent had shouted an amazed discovery:
“By God, it's a woman!”
The car skimmed forward over the uneven ground toward the end of the semicircle, and passed within fifty yards of the second man from the end, the one she had picked out as the leader of the party. He was a black, swarthy fellow in plain leather chaps and blue shirt. As they passed he took a long, steady aim.
“Duck!” shouted the man beside her, and dragged her down on the seat so that his body covered hers.
A puff of wind fanned the girl's cheek.
“Near thing,” her companion said coolly. He looked back at the swarthy man and laughed softly. “Some day you'll mebbe wish you had sent your pills straighter, Mr. Judd Morgan.”
Yet a few wheel-turns and they had dipped forward out of range among the great land waves that seemed to stretch before them forever. The unexpected had happened, and she had achieved a rescue in the face of the impossible.
“Hurt badly?” the girl inquired briefly, her dark-blue eyes meeting his as frankly as those of a boy.
“No need for an undertaker. I reckon I'll survive, ma'am.”
“Where are you hit?”
“I just got a telegram from my ankle saying there was a cargo of lead arrived there unexpected,” he drawled easily.
“Hurts a good deal, doesn't it?”
“No more than is needful to keep my memory jogged up. It's a sort of a forget-me-not souvenir. For a good boy; compliments of Mr. Jim Henson,” he explained.
Her dark glance swept him searchingly. She disapproved the assurance of his manner even while the youth in her applauded his reckless sufficiency. His gay courage held her unconsenting admiration even while she resented it. He was a trifle too much at his ease for one who had just been snatched from dire peril. Yet even in his insouciance there was something engaging; something almost of distinction.
“What was the trouble?”
Mirth bubbled in his gray eyes. “I gathered, ma'am, that they wanted to collect my scalp.”
“Do what?” she frowned.
“Bump me off—send me across the divide.”
“Oh, I know that. But why?”
He seemed to reproach himself. “Now how could I be so neglectful? I clean forgot to ask.”
“That's ridiculous,” was her sharp verdict.
“Yes, ma'am, plumb ridiculous. My only excuse is that they began scattering lead so sudden I didn't have time to ask many 'Whyfors.' I reckon we'll just have to call it a Wyoming difference of opinion,” he concluded pleasantly.
“Which means, I suppose, that you are not going to tell me.”
“I got so much else to tell y'u that's a heap more important,” he laughed. “Y'u see, I'm enjoyin' my first automobile ride. It was certainly thoughtful of y'u to ask me to go riding with y'u, Miss Messiter.”
“So you know my name. May I ask how?” was her astonished question.
He gave the low laugh that always seemed to suggest a private source of amusement of his own. “I suspicioned that might be your name when I say y'u come a-sailin' down from heaven to gather me up like Enoch.”
“Why?”
“Well, ma'am, I happened to drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. I don't seem to remember having seen one before.”
“I see. You're quite a Sherlock Holmes. Do you know anything more about me?”
“I know y'u have just fallen heir to the Lazy D. They say y'u are a schoolmarm, but I don't believe it.”
“Well, I am.”