Part 21 (1/2)

”Where are the cowmen?” asked Sims.

”All in the bunk-house, and the punchers are sleeping out near the corral.”

”Yes, I seen 'em. Now you go back to bed an' wait till I hiss through the window. Then we'll have yuh out o' here in a jiffy.”

The herder's form vanished in the darkness, and Larkin, his heart beating high with hope and excitement, returned to his bed. Before lying down, however, he dressed himself completely and strapped on the cartridge belt and gun.

The minutes pa.s.sed like hours. Listening with every nerve fiber on the alert, Bud found the night peopled with a mult.i.tude of sounds that on an ordinary occasion would have pa.s.sed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting under the night coolness seemed to him almost like a pistol shot.

When at last it appeared that Sims must have failed and that dawn would surely begin to break, he heard a heavy sound in the dining-room and sat bolt upright. It was merely the cow-puncher there preparing to go out and waken his successor. Although the man made as little noise as possible, it seemed to Bud that his footsteps must wake everybody in the house.

The man went out of the dining-room into the mess-room of the cowboys, closing the door behind him softly, and after that what occurred was out of the prisoner's ken.

After a while, however, Bud's ears caught the faintest breath of a hiss at the window, and he rolled softly out of bed on to the floor in his stocking feet. Sims was there and another man with him, and both were prying at the bars of the window with instruments m.u.f.fled in cloth.

”Did you get him?” asked Bud.

”Sh.o.r.e! He won't wake up for a week, that feller,” answered Sims placidly.

For a quarter of an hour the two worked at the clumsy bars, a.s.sisted by Bud from the inside. At the end of that time two of them came loose at the lower ends and were bent upward. Then the combined efforts of the three men were centered on the third bar, which gave way in a few minutes.

Handing his boots out first, Larkin crawled headforemost out of the window and put his arms around the shoulders of his rescuers, resting most of his weight upon their bent backs. Then they walked slowly away from the house and Bud's feet and legs came out noiselessly. Still in the shadow of the walls they set him down and he drew on his boots.

It was not until then that Sims's a.s.sistant made himself known.

”h.e.l.lo, boss,” he said and took off his broad hat so that Larkin could see his face.

”Jimmie Welsh, by George!” whispered Bud joyfully, wringing his hand. ”Did you bring many of the boys down with you?”

”Fifty,” replied the other.

”Bully for you! I don't know what would become of me if it weren't for you and Hard-winter.”

As they talked they were moving off toward the little river that wound past the Bar T house.

”Got a horse for me?” asked Bud.

”Yes,” said Sims, ”over here in the bottoms where the rest of the boys are.”

”What do you plan to do now?”

Sims told him and Bud grinned delightedly at the same time that his face hardened with the triumph of a revenge about to be accomplished.

”Let's get at it,” he said.

”Wait here and I'll get the rest of the bunch.”

Hard-winter left them, and in a few minutes returned with a dozen brawny sheepmen, mostly recruited from Larkin's own ranch in Montana. When greetings had been exchanged they moved off quietly toward the ranch-house.

The corral of the Bar T was about fifty yards back of the cook's shanty and as you faced it had a barn on the right-hand side, where the family saddle horses were kept in winter, as well as the small amount of hay that Bissell put up every year.