CHAPTER XXXIX
A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT
Night fell before the rescue party reached Palo Duro. The canon was atthat time a _terra incognita_ to these cattlemen of the Panhandle. Toattempt to explore it in the darkness would be to court disaster. TheApaches might trap the whole party.
But neither the Ranger nor Wadley could endure the thought of waitingtill morning to push forward. The anxiety that weighed on them bothcould find relief only in action.
Jack made a proposal to Ramona's father. "We've got to throw off andcamp here. No two ways about that. But I'm goin' to ride forward to PaloDuro an' see what I can find out. Want to go along?"
"Boy, I had in mind that very thing. We'll leave Jumbo in charge of thecamp with orders to get started soon as he can see in the mo'nin'."
The two men rode into the darkness. They knew the general direction ofPalo Duro and were both plainsmen enough to follow a straight courseeven in the blackest night. They traveled at a fast road gait, lettingthe horses pick their own way through the mesquite. Presently a starcame out--and another. Banked clouds scudded across the sky insquadrons.
At last, below their feet, lay the great earth rift that made Palo Duro.It stretched before them an impenetrable black gulf of silence.
"No use trying to go down at random," said Jack, peering into itsbottomless deeps. "Even if we didn't break our necks we'd get lost downthere. My notion is for me to follow the bank in one direction an' foryou to take the other. We might hear something."
"Sounds reasonable," agreed Wadley.
The cattleman turned to the left, the Ranger to the right. Roberts rodeat a slow trot, stopping every few minutes to listen for any noise thatmight rise from the gulch.
His mind was full of pictures of the girl, one following anotherinconsequently. They stabbed him poignantly. He had a white dream of hermoving down the street at Tascosa with step elastic, the sun sparklingin her soft, wavy hair. Another memory jumped to the fore of her on thestage, avoiding with shy distress the advances of the salesman he hadjolted into his place. He saw her grave and gay, sweet and candid andsincere, but always just emerging with innocent radiance from thechrysalis of childhood.
Her presence was so near, she was so intimately close, that more thanonce he pulled up under an impression that she was calling him.
It was while he was waiting so, his weight resting easily in the saddle,that out of the night there came to him a faint, far-away cry ofdreadful agony. The sound of it shook Jack to the soul. Cold beads ofperspiration stood out on his forehead. Gooseflesh ran down his spine.His hand trembled. The heart inside his ribs was a heavy weight of ice.Though he had never heard it before, the Ranger knew that awful cry forthe scream of a man in torment. The Apaches were torturing a capturedprisoner.
If Dinsmore had been captured by them the chances were that 'Mona hadbeen taken, too, unless he had given her the horse and remained to holdthe savages back.
Roberts galloped wildly along the edge of the rift. Once again he heardthat long-drawn wail of anguish and pulled up his horse to listen, thewhile he shook like a man with a heavy chill.
Before the sound of it had died away a shot echoed up the canon to him.His heart seemed to give an answering lift of relief. Some one was stillholding the Apaches at bay. He fired at once as a message that help wason the way.
His trained ear told him that the rifle had been fired scarcely ahundred yards below him, apparently from some ledge of the cliff well upfrom the bottom of the gulch. It might have come from the defenders orit might have been a shot fired by an Apache. Jack determined to findout.
He unfastened the _tientos_ of his saddle which held the lariat. A scruboak jutted up from the edge of the cliff and to this he tied securelyone end of the rope. Rifle in hand, he worked over the edge andlowered himself foot by foot. The rope spun round like a thing alive,bumped him against the rock wall, twisted in the other direction, andrubbed his face against the harsh stone. He had no assurance that thelariat would reach to the foot of the cliff, and as he went jerkilydown, hand under hand, he knew that at any moment he might come to theend of it and be dashed against the boulders below.
His foot touched loose rubble, and he could see that the face of theprecipice was rooted here in a slope that led down steeply to anotherwall. The ledge was like a roof pitched at an extremely acute angle. Hehad to get down on hands and knees to keep from sliding to the edge ofthe second precipice. At every movement he started small avalanches ofstone and dirt. He crept forward with the utmost caution, dragging therifle by his side.
A shot rang out scarcely fifty yards from him, fired from the same ledgeupon which he was crawling.
Had that shot been fired by an Apache or by those whom he had come toaid?