CHAPTER XV
BALDY’S HOOF POINTS THE WAY
“It’s a bad outlook, but we’re not the kind to give up easily,” said the stockman, grimly.
Bob, who had been much dejected by the news which the cowboy trailer brought, plucked up fresh hope at these words from the rancher.
Frank, too, was able to grasp at little rays of encouragement.
“At the worst,” he said resolutely, “we might hold the fort here, and send for help. Some of the other stockmen, learning that we had Mendoza cooped up, would rush assistance; and in time we might clean out the pass.”
“Bully!” cried Bob, impulsively.
“That’s true,” the Colonel remarked, “but lots of things could happen before that same help arrived, which would mean several days at least. And when dealing with Mendoza, you never can be sure that you can put your finger on him when you think you’ve got him. Perhaps he might manage to slip out of that cabin to-night; and then there would be warm times around here.”
“One thing’s sure,” Scotty declared, with a shake of his head, “they must ’a had a fierce lot of dynamite under that pass. You never did see such a piled-up lot o’ rocks in your born days. I had to rub my eyes, and pinch myself, to believe there ever had been an opening there, through which we came into this here valley, an’ all that stock, too.”
“Mendoza always had a reputation for doing things to the limit,” remarked the stockman. “He knew that it would be useless damaging the pass only a little; so he made the mine a big one. I never heard anything like that detonation before. But we’ll all try and think up some way of beating the rustler at his own game.”
“If we only had the stuff,” remarked Bob, “perhaps we might clean out the pass the same way he filled it!”
“By an explosion, you mean?” said Frank. “Well, I reckon that would only make bad worse, and do no good; for there isn’t any pass there now under the rocks, if what Scotty tells us is true.”
“What the Colonel said goes with me,” remarked the foreman.
“You mean about holding the fort here, and sending for help?” asked the stockman.
“Yep, that’s the idea, sir,” replied Bart. “We might set to work and make prisoners of the rustlers, you see, first of all. And once we got that crowd where they wouldn’t bother us any, we could stay here, and wait till help came.”
“If only there was some other way to get out of this queer little valley!” said Bob, dismally.
“Well, there isn’t, ’cause you see Mendoza would know about it; and he always used the pass that’s been blowed up,” Scotty argued.
“I’m not so sure about that, Scotty!”
All turned and looked at Frank when he said this. Even his father seemed surprised to hear his words. And there was a faint smile on the boy’s face to indicate that some bright thought might be occupying his mind; something with which he may have been wrestling lately, while listening to the conversation around him.
“How’s that, Frank?” Scotty demanded.
“Why, you seemed so positive about there not being any other way for cattle getting out of here, I just had to remark that perhaps you were wrong.”
“As how?” persisted Scotty, who always had to be shown.
“How about Old Baldy?” Frank remarked, quietly.
The Colonel uttered an exclamation.
“The boy may be right,” he remarked, with some little excitement. “It never occurred to me to remember that that smart old chap got out of here some way; and just as like as not he couldn’t get past that little opening, which was kept closed most of the time, I reckon.”
“But he was brought in that way, an’ don’t it stand to reason the critter’d try to get out by the same route?” asked the foreman.
“I suppose he would try,” admitted the stockman; “but finding the cork in the bottle, Old Baldy might take a turn in another direction. And that makes me think of something that happened years ago, when the old fellow disappeared one bad winter, and was gone with a few cows for some months. We gave them up for dead; when early in Spring they turned up on the range, looking sleek and fat, as if they’d wintered where there was plenty of grass. See the point, boys?”
“Well, well, I wouldn’t put it past that Old Baldy to have found his way into this same fine valley, and stayed here till the winter was gone, with its Northers,” Frank declared, with exultation in his voice; for such a happening would add strength to his suggestion, strange as it had at first appeared to the others.
“And if he happened to come in here and go out through some other pass, that even the rustlers never knew a thing about, doesn’t it stand to reason that such a sharp steer would be able to find the way again, even if years had passed?” Colonel Haywood demanded.
Bart looked at Scotty, nodded his head, and observed:
“There never was such a critter as Old Baldy before, and I reckon he’d easy remember that trail. Course, though, it might be he went out through the regular way, for it might ’a been open at the time.”
“Well, let’s look at that closer,” said Frank. “When Bob and I first ran across Old Baldy he was away off a direct line between the mouth of the canyon and Circle Ranch. And, Bart, you must admit, that once he came out of that pass, he would hit a bee-line for home!”
The foreman threw up his hands.
“I pass,” he declared. “When it comes to arguing I’m not in it with you, Frank.”
“But answer my question—wouldn’t Old Baldy be apt to head straight for home?” insisted the boy.
“Sure he would, every time,” admitted Bart.
“And that’s a strong point you’ve made, son,” declared the stockman, with a proud glance at Frank. “The chances are three to one Old Baldy got out of this valley by some other trail than the one we took in entering, and which has just been blocked by the rustlers. Now, the question comes, can we find that other exit, and make use of it to take the herd out this same way?”
He had already sent a messenger back to the camp to tell the two guards of the bunk-house what had happened, so that they might not relax their vigilance, and allow the prisoners a chance to escape during broad daylight.
“And that same is going to tax us some, I opine,” grumbled Bart.
“Not if we can only find the trail of Old Baldy,” said Frank, cheerfully.
“His trail!” echoed Bob, in dismay, as he looked down at the ground, which just at that point had been torn up by scores of hoofs. “Well, I should say that would be a tough old job, just as Bart declared. How can you do it, Frank?”
“Well, stop and think a minute,” replied the other. “Don’t you remember my telling you that Old Baldy has a marked hoof, one so much longer than any other steers, that a tracker could tell it anywhere at a glance?”
“Why, to be sure you did,” cried Bob; “and I remember that we thought perhaps Scotty might be able to follow his tracks back to where he came from; because we believed even then he must have been in the hands of Mendoza’s crowd, since his brand had been burned over.”
“Just what we did,” Frank remarked; “but before anything could be done Mendoza made his raid on our prize herd, and that brought us here on the jump. But if we could follow that marked trail over the plain and up into the mountains, why not do as well here in the valley?”
“Scotty, you hear that?” asked the stockman.
“You bet I do, an’ I’m going to get some busy right off’n the handle. No use lookin’ away up here, is there?” the cowboy observed.
“Well,” the rancher went on to say, “let’s take it for granted that Old Baldy first tried to get out the regular way, and finding the passage blocked by rocks which a man might easily climb over, but a steer never, he turned around sharp, and put for that other exit, which he had never forgotten in all these years. So, Scotty, take a turn around, and see if you can run across that marked hoof print.”
Frank was not the one to linger when anything of this sort was going on. After all, he might chance to find the track himself in the midst of the multitude that scoured the side of the valley.
“Head back toward the camp!” called out the stockman; “and if either one finds the track, give a call to the rest. We’ll keep close by.”
Bob himself could not help getting down every little while to look at the torn turf, where scores of hoofs had cut in, on the passage of cattle back and forth. Each time he had to shake his head, and smile.
“If it depended on me to run Old Baldy down, I just reckon the herd would stay in here till doomsday,” he admitted to the stockman.
“Well, of course, in most spots, the cattle coming after must have crushed out all traces of Old Baldy’s hoof-mark,” declared Colonel Haywood; “but some place or other we hope that a single print may have escaped. That’s all they need to tell the story, you know.”
“And of course,” pursued Bob, wisely, “they can easily settle which way the steer was going at the time, because the mark will be pointing in that direction.”
“Exactly, my boy. These things are all very simple, once you get the cue. To a trailer everything has its meaning. He reads signs as we do print. And I’ve known Scotty there to spin a yarn that made the rest of us think he was joshing, without ever seeing the people ahead; and yet when we came to prove it, everything was just as he had described.”
“It’s a wonderful science, sir, and I hope to master it some day; but seems to me I get on terribly slow,” Bob said, dismally.
“Everything that is worth while takes time,” remarked the stockman, encouragingly; “and tracking can’t be learned in a week, a month, nor yet in a year. Truth to tell, most cowboys never do learn it worth while. It doesn’t run in the blood, you see. They can rope steers, break bucking broncos, and do all such things; but only to a favored few does the trail give up all its wonderful secrets.”
“I hope Frank gets sight of the tracks first,” said Bob, as his eyes followed the stooping figure of his chum longingly.
“That must be a matter of chance,” remarked the other, smiling. “Frank is a pretty fair hand at this business, but of course not in the same class with Scotty. Still, he may be lucky enough to be the one to run across the first track.”
“There he is, stooping down lower now, sir,” exclaimed Bob, with some excitement in his voice; “and he seems to be a heap interested in something. Do you think he will make a strike, sir?”
“He acts like it,” responded the stockman, himself deeply concerned in the actions of his boy. “See, there he turns back this way, and waves his hand. And now he calls, to let Scotty know. You can see him hurrying to Frank’s side; so it looks as if he’d made some sort of find.”
Together the ranch owner and Bob hurried forward, with Bart close at their heels. They found the two trail hunters with their heads close together, evidently examining some track, which Frank had been fortunate enough to run across at a point where the herd had failed to wipe it out.
“What luck, boys?” asked the stockman, as he came up.
“Frank has found Old Baldy’s hoof-mark, all right,” declared Scotty, without the faintest trace of jealousy in his manner; for he was very fond of his employer’s son, as indeed was every one connected with Circle Ranch.
Bob himself pushed in, because he wanted to satisfy his mind with regard to the direction in which the hoofprint pointed.
He had noted the peculiar mark at that other time, when Frank told him about it, and readily recognized it now, plainly indented in the yielding soil, at a spot where, luckily, none of the other cattle had happened to tread, either in coming or going.
And Bob laughed to see how easily that one point was settled. The footprint undoubtedly pointed toward the camp; and it was evident that Old Baldy had been heading in that quarter when the mark was impressed there!