Robert J. Horton is one of my favorite discoveries from my public domain adventures, both because he wrote excellent westerns, and because he, himself, was very definitely A Character. At least, if you believe Walt Coburn's recollections of the man in Coburn's autobiography. As far as I know, that's the only real source of information on him as a man, since he died in early 1934, less than fifty years old and without any relatives or heirs that outlived him.
As one example, Coburn described how Horton was staying in a boarding house house and found himself without money to pay. He talked up the matron who owned the boarding house, convincing her that he was a well-known author, and to let him stay long enough to write a story to pay what he owed. He pounded out a novella (the title Coburn gives is not one that Horton ever wrote, but he was going off a forty-year old memory long before the internet), sent it off, and rather promptly got a check in the mail. Coburn even describes Horton's parting gift to the woman: a picture of she and Horton, with him holding up a piece of paper saying "Bob Horton, author of [the title of the story he wrote to pay her]."
While I mostly know his novels, this story shows his writing chops. It's a gimmick story (a new gimmick was a sure way to sell a story to the pulps), but even if you ignore the gimmick, you still get a fine western tale with at least two sharply drawn characters.
The Lure
By Robert J. Horton
From the shelter of the cottonwoods along Muddy Creek the man Lemp peered through narrowed lids at the open aspect of the town of Highline and the hitching-rail and front of the general store at the eastern end of the short Main Street.
His gaze was cold and calculating, steadily vigilant, keenly alert, his swarthy features frozen into grim lines which would instantly dispel any illusion on the part of an observer that the man ever smiled. Lemp’s reputation had long since obviated the necessity of the use of his first name to establish his identity. He was in a grim business.
He had been at his post behind the screen of willows and cottonwoods since early dawn, maintaining a rigid vigil on the town and the store. He had seen the horses at the hitching-rail thin out as the afternoon waned, had seen the occasional buckboards and spring wagons leave for the ranches to which they belonged, had seen the few men in the town proper go to supper and had seen the food being carried out to the sheep-shearing sheds, where the shearers were working late to finish up the last bunch of sheep for that season.
He had kept a careful mental record of all who entered and left the store, and now as a woman and small boy came out he felt certain that Samuels, the storekeeper, was alone in his place of business. Indeed at this moment Samuels came out on the low platform in front, mopped his sweaty, fat face and brow, gazed about for a minute with the air of a man whose day’s work is about done, and again retired within.
Lemp galvanized into action. He quickly untied the magnificent black horse which had been tethered close to a cottonwood behind him, swung lightly into the saddle and with a flashing scrutiny of the deserted street from this new vantage-point spurred his mount out of the willows and across the intervening open space to the east side of the store.
Here Lemp dismounted and left his horse with bridle-rein dangling where the animal could not be seen by any chance rider or pedestrian in the other part of the town and stole swiftly around the corner of the store, across the low platform, and flung open the screen door.
As he entered the store Lemp’s gun leaped from the black sheath, low on his right thigh, into his right hand, low flung, and covered the fat storekeeper where he stood by some open sacks of seed wheat and oats in the center of the room.
“Get aroun’ to that safe an’ step lively. I’m Lemp, an’ I’d rather shoot than lose time,” snapped the bandit viciously as the storekeeper raised his hands as high as he could over his head.
Lemp’s mention of his name served his purpose. The blood left the storekeeper’s face instantly, and he hurried without a sound, still holding his hands high, around the counter into the post-office department.
“Open it,” commanded Lemp, indicating the safe with his left forefinger.
“It’s—it’s not locked,” stammered the frightened Samuels. “But—there ain’t nothin’ but—stamps an’ a few bills an’ change—”
“Don’t lie!” Lemp broke in savagely. “If the money to pay off the sheep-shearers an’ shipping expense ain’t there you’ll stop lead. Open it an’ haul out that money. By ——, Samuels, you’re in a tight fix if you think maybe I’m foolin’!”
The storekeeper knew Lemp was in deadly earnest. Such was the reliable and formidable nature of Lemp’s unsavory reputation. He realized, too, that the outlaw was fully aware that the stockmen used his safe in lieu of a bank thereabouts and therefore knew the safe at this time contained a treasure.
Under the cold, unwavering menace of the gun he swung back the door of the safe, and Lemp’s practised eye fell at once upon the sealed package which reposed in a wide compartment on one side—a package too large to be contained in the cash-box.
“Hand it over—hurry! Now just walk outside with me. Keep close to my right side so anybody who should be looking won’t see this gun that I want to keep handy-like; for one yelp out of you an’ I’m goin’ to have to use it.”
Side by side the bandit and his victim walked out of the store and around to Lemp’s horse. Lemp slipped the package of money into a saddle-bag on his saddle and buckled it securely. Then, leading his horse, he compelled Samuels to walk with him to the willow screen by the creek, where he backed the storekeeper up against the trunk of a cottonwood and tied him fast with a rope taken from the horn of the saddle. A bandanna handkerchief skilfully used as a gag completed the operation.
Lemp again swung into the saddle, and, after a hurried glance which showed the diminutive village street still deserted, turned his horse out of the leafy cover and loped easily away toward the southeast in the shadow of the trees, gradually increasing his pace as he left the town behind.
As Lemp disappeared around a bend down-stream a dog trotted out of the store, pushing open the screen door with its muzzle, took up the scent and followed the route taken by Lemp and the store-keeper across the open space to the trees and brush along the creek.
“No, siree, there’s no understanding a sheep-herder—or most of ’em,” Baldy Sims, the liveryman, was saying in the Prickly Pear dining-room to the others at the long table. “I knew one up above Malta that carried a guitar aroun’ with him for years, an’ he couldn’t play it to save his neck. But he used to pick at it nights an’ coax the coyotes near enough to shoot ’em, I’ll say that for him.”
“Animals is naturally curious, that way,” observed Buck Wright, a cowpuncher in for mail for the Circle C.
“An’ so is sheep-herders curious,” declared Sims wdiile the others nodded grinning assent. “An’ some of them’s been in some queer businesses in their day. I knew one who’d been a lawyer an’——”
The sharp staccato of pistol-shots interrupted this discourse. The men rose from the table as of one accord and rushed out into the street.
From the front oh the distant store more shots now sounded, and soon most of the masculine population of the town, outside the shearing-sheds, was grouped about Samuels, the storekeeper, and Freddy Lynch, the small boy who assisted him in waiting on trade. Samuels had fired the gun to attract attention; now he held it, broken, ready to reload as he cried:
“He got the money package—five thousand, almost—held me up—tied me to a tree gagged; but the dog found me an’ barked an’ brought Freddy here when he noticed I was missing from the store. He’s got the shearers’ pay an’ the stockmen’s money—every cent of it!”
Gradually the storekeeper’s excitement abated sufficiently for him to explain how he had been held up by Lemp when the boy had been getting supper; how the dog had trailed him to where he had been tied and was helpless; how the dog had barked so energetically as to attract the boy’s attention when he looked for him to call him to supper, and how the boy had freed him. He had then used the pistol to bring aid quickly.
“He said his name was Lemp, an’ it was him all right,” cried the storekeeper. “I’ve heard him described so many times I’d have recognized him without his mentioning his name. He had ‘killer’ stickin’ out all over him an’ shining in his eyes. Boys, there’s a price on Lemp, you all know that; an’ I’ll just tack five hundred on it for the stock-men for him dead or alive, an’ the return of that money—that goes. Five hundred on the spot!”
“Which way did he go?” asked Buck Wright.
“Started southeast near’s I could tell,” said Samuels.
“Sure! He’s hittin’ for the Missouri an’ the Badlands,” said Buck as he joined the men, who had started on the run for their horses.
In five minutes a posse was formed, and this force divided, half of the men taking the north side of Muddy Creek and the other half taking the south side. This was a precaution in event the bandit should cross the creek and start west instead of keeping on southeast toward the Badlands.
Buck Wright went with the bunch on the north side of the creek. He didn’t believe Lemp would strike west, for the simple reason that he knew the Badlands and knew that wild, tumbled locality would afford the outlaw the cover and security he desired from his pursuers.
It was still light from the fading sunset, with more than an hour of twilight to come, when Buck and another cowpuncher, riding in the lead, shouted in excitement and pointed ahead. On a rise of ground at a distance difficult to estimate accurately in that light a rider was racing southeast. Even as they looked and drove in their spurs the fleeing horseman flashed over the crest of the rise and was gone.
Buck Wright swallowed hard as he thought of the reward offered—five hundred dollars from the storekeeper, and he didn’t know how much more from other sources. The lone rider ahead was Lemp all right. It was a deserted stretch of country and no other man had left town; and what would prompt a law-abiding person to ride so madly in a direction where there were no ranches and no towns? No, it was Lemp protecting the price on his head with the finest piece of horseflesh he had been able to find.
Buck knew there wasn’t a horse in the posse which could catch the outlaw’s superb mount. Lemp was as good as safe at that minute. By nightfall he would be in the Badlands, and there he could twist and turn and double back in the darkness and hide without serious danger of discovery except by chance; and for such an emergency Lemp had his gun, and his speed and accuracy with his weapon was almost a tradition—would be when he was dead and gone.
Buck, like others of the posse, considering himself individually when thinking of the reward money, saw any chance of earning it vanishing with Lemp in the distance.
Twice in the next half-hour they again caught sight of the lone horseman, and each time he had gained in the lead. Soon the purple veil of the deepening twilight shut off the view for any distance ahead. They pushed their horses at top speed, but each man knew in his heart that if they caught up with Lemp it would be by the intervention of chance—and Lemp always had been lucky!
The dark, velvet canopy of the night hung over the prairie; and the first stars were out when the pursuers checked their sweating horses at the edge of the Badlands.
“Boys,” said Sal Ampert, the puncher who had ridden with Buck Wright in the lead, “I don’t know as it’s any use going in there after him—in the night.”
“Not a bit of use, I reckon,” said another member of the posse. “He can give us the slip without half tryin,’ seeing he’s got such a start of us an’ knows the Badlands so well. It’s tough luck.”
Buck remained silent although he knew full well the utter folly of attempting to corner Lemp in the tumbled, gullied, coulee-scarred district along the big river before them.
“Well, boys, don’t get me wrong in this,” said Sal. “I wouldn’t want anybody to think I was too cautious or anything like that; but Lemp knows the Badlands all right, an’ we would have to split up, an’ it would be soft pickings for him to keep clear of us or to pot-shot anybody who got too close. I honestly don’t think we’d get anywhere by going in, but if you boys are for it I’m ready an’ willing.”
There was a growing murmur of dissent.
“Seems tough that Lemp can pull off a stunt like this an’ get away with it,” Sal went on angrily. “If we’d known he was up this way he might have run up against a snag. An’ by time Samuels gets word to the sheriff an’ he gets up here or sends a deputy Lemp’ll be somewhere a long ways away spending his spoils. But he’d be mighty hard to find in there in the night, even if we all knew the lay of the land as well as he does. But it’s up to the bunch. What’s the vote?”
The men debated the matter for a brief interval and in the end agreed that it would be useless for the seven of them to attempt to locate and capture Lemp in the wide area of wild country ahead which stretched for miles and miles along the river. It was a strip of country which all had avoided except for one or two casual excursions to search for stray stock, and none in the party was familiar with it. And it was night.
Buck knew something of the Badlands about ten to fifteen miles down the river, for there it bordered on the Circle C range; and even there he knew it would be largely a matter of luck to catch as cunning and experienced a man as this notorious bandit.
“We can streak out before daylight, us fellers on one side of the river an’ the other bunch on the other side, and maybe get trace of him,” Sal reflected aloud.
It was agreed that this was the best plan.
When the others turned back toward town Buck Wright bade them farewell.
“I’ll be hittin’ back to the ranch. Guess you fellows can operate without me, an’ I’ll keep an eye out on the way down.”
“You’ll have to buy for the bunch if you pull down that reward,” Sal flung at him good-naturedly as they separated.
Buck winced although he replied jokingly as he turned his horse toward the east. The thought of the money irritated him. He could use five hundred dollars or so to very excellent purpose as a certain young schoolteacher in the vicinity of the ranch could have testified. Such an amount would enable them to push forward on the calendar of their anticipations a date to which they attached great importance. It would be a fine thing, he reflected bitterly, if he could win that reward offered by Samuels and any other sums which might be offered for Lemp.
And it would be a real service to the commonwealth, for Lemp was bad—a murderer as well as a thief.
Buck had fifteen miles to ride, for the ranch was some twelve miles down the river and then about three miles north. He had his mail, had put it in a sack and tied it to his saddle as soon as the stage had arrived that afternoon. His horse, sensing that he was now headed for home, struck into a steady gait which Buck knew he would maintain for the fifteen miles they had to travel.
As they rode in the coolness of early night the cowpuncher kept his gaze riveted to the shadow of the sparsely timbered, tumbled ground of the Badlands to his right. It was possible that Lemp would quit the cover and take to the prairie to make better time if he planned to go very far east.
If he did this—well, Buck figured that the big black horse might be inclined to slow up a bit after his long sprint, and his fingers closed hungrily about his pistol butt.
But he saw no sign of the outlaw. Lemp would rest his horse and then cross the river, like as not, and hit for the south. There was an easy fording-place about six miles down the river; but no—Lemp would be wary of any easy ford where pursuers might lie in wait for him. Lemp was crafty.
“It’s a rotten shame, Major,” Buck complained to his horse. “Here we have to work danged hard for our measly forty-five dollars a month an’ board, an’ it don’t seem none square in the scheme o’ things that a greased-gun toter like Lemp should be living on the country.”
The prairie wind which had come up with the twilight now freshened with the night. Buck rolled a cigaret, held his palms close-cupped about the flame of the match as he lighted it, rode on with eyes ever searching the border and depths of that long, black shadow on the right. Overhead the stars hung low—a sign of fair weather.
Suddenly Buck became tense in the saddle and turned his head to the left, listening. He checked his mount, dropped his cigaret. After a short period of listening he spurred his horse to the left up a long, gentle rise of ground. When he reached the crest of the swell he halted.
In a dry basin below him he saw a flock of sheep bedded down for the night in a big white oval against the dark prairie. Near by was a herder’s wagon, with lamp-light shining through its canvas top.
He turned his horse to resume his route eastward and as quickly whirled him about in sudden decision and galloped down the long, gradual declivity toward the sheep camp.
Lemp sneered evilly as he fled swiftly from the scene of the robbery and left the posse behind. But he had not anticipated such speedy pursuit. The details, of the job all had been carefully worked out in his mind, he had thought. He had planned to catch the storekeeper alone—to wait until night and enter his living-quarters in the rear of the store building.
But the quiet aspect of the town had prompted him to yield to his impatience and put through the job when he did. Only—he had not figured on the dog; did not know now that the dog was responsible for the early discovery of Samuels’ predicament. However, though his plans had in some measure been interfered with, he was not worried. He had evaded posses before.
The day preceding he had carefully gone over the ground in the Badlands where he intended to lose his pursuers in event the chase should be close.
When he entered the wild country adjacent to the Missouri ahead of the posse at nightfall he galloped unerringly over a rough, twisting trail to a high piece of ground where he could look back for nearly half the distance he had covered since the robbery.
He saw the posse halt near the edge of the Badlands, saw them finally turn back, all except one man who rode east. He sneeringly surmised the truth about Buck Wright; that he was a cowpuncher starting back to his ranch. And Lemp did not fear one man. The only specter which lurked in the background of his thoughts was the fear of being surrounded.
Satisfied that the pursuit had been abandoned for the night, Lemp guided his horse along a tortuous route southeast until he came to a steep, dry, coulee bed of gravel which led down to the lower bank of the river.
His horse made a great clatter in the gravel as he descended the coulee bed and came out below near an overhanging bank with a steep ledge leading out into the water up-stream and a long, grassy stretch leading down-stream. This grassy stretch was cut off from the higher ground above by sheer banks so that Lemp had but one means of ingress to his retreat to watch—the steep, gravel coulee. He would be warned at the first approach of any one from that direction by the noise certain to be made in the loose gravel and rocks.
The outlaw unsaddled his horse and turned him out to drink and graze. He stood watching the river for a time. Its waters were swollen from the snow melting in the mountains. It had been a backward Spring, and the snow had been late in melting. As a result the river was very much higher than usual for this time of the year.
Back under the overhanging bank Lemp built a fire. He untied the slicker from behind his saddle, unfolded it and brought to light a small parcel of provisions and a small frying-pan. From a niche in the bank he recovered a can left there the day before, and soon he was making coffee and frying thick, juicy slices of bacon over the blaze. This, and bread and a tiny jar of jam, constituted his meal—the first since before dawn that day. After eating he threw earth over the glowing coals, rolled and lighted a cigaret and went up the coulee to stare searchingly into the shadows which filled the wild country about him.
An hour afterward he lay down upon his saddle-blanket under the overhanging bank, placed his gun within easy reach at his side, pulled his slicker over him and slept.
It was yet some time until the dark hour before dawn when Lemp rose and again built his fire. With a hard day of riding—perhaps fighting—ahead of him he proposed to fortify himself with food and strong coffee.
He might have traveled this night; but he needed the rest badly as did his horse. Lemp had not decided upon the Highline job until four days before, and he had then been more than a hundred miles to the eastward. Also, he needed daylight for the fording or swimming of the swollen river, its overflowed banks concealing patches of quicksand.
He breakfasted, folded his frying-pan and supplies in his slicker, tied it on the saddle, and examined his gun.
It was still dark when he rode out of his hiding-place and turned east. On the crest of a ridge he checked his horse to peer into the shadows about him. He started on, then checked his horse again and sat stiff in the saddle, listening.
Borne on the breeze was a sound—a queer sound which caused the bandit to pucker his brows in perplexity. He held his position, continued to listen until he heard the sound again. He strove unsuccessfully to classify in his memory the illusive vibrations which rode on the wind. Then, cursing in disgust, he rode on.
But not for far.
Again he halted as he emerged from the inky blackness of a deep ravine and tensed in the saddle to listen. He heard the mysterious sound again, only now it seemed a bit clearer; and there seemed to be two sounds, close together, almost commingling, then an interval of silence save for the drone of the wind and the subdued roar of the river.
Lemp swore again, not in disgust or anger but from impatience because he could not place the nature of those mysterious sounds in his memory.
He was convinced it was not a coyote or a wolf or any other animal which made such a queer noise; he felt sure it was not a human voice. He lingered on the bit of high ground, listening, wondering, trying to fathom the enigma which the scented prairie wind brought to his ears.
Men who follow the lonely trails are strangely and irresistibly attracted by the unusual in whatever guise it may come. It was so with Lemp. Try as he would he could not shake off the overpowering curiosity which had taken complete possession of him. And after a few minutes of hesitation he urged his horse in the direction, almost northeast, from which the sounds apparently came.
He had to go partly in that direction anyway, he reasoned, to reach the fording-place for which he was headed. And he might not have to go very far out of his way. He cursed himself for a fool, but he kept on, stopping occasionally to listen, always drawn on by that innate curiosity which could be satiated only by the solving of the riddle of the unusual sounds.
Soon a deep, narrow gully cut off his progress northeast and he was compelled to cut around to the north. In so doing he entered a long ravine and for some time could not hear what he was listening for. He rode out of the ravine at last and turned east, and almost immediately he heard the sound, repeated, so close at hand that he was startled. Also he recognized the nature of what he heard with an increasing wonder and curiosity which overcame his native instinct of caution.
Dawn was breaking, and the first gray light of day dispelled the shadows in the Badlands. Lemp pushed on to the east, his curiosity whetted to the point of frenzy. He guided his horse slowly up a low ridge and looked below.
Instantly his gun leaped into his hand and shots shattered the silence. Curses came from Lemp as his hat was torn from his head by a bullet. He whirled his horse and dashed madly for the northern edge of the Badlands, now close at hand, where the open prairie would enable him to take advantage of his horse’s speed. From behind him came crashing sounds of pursuit.
Buck Wright swore, himself, when the sudden appearance of Lemp and his swiftness of action caused his bullets to go wild, just as a similar coincidence resulted in the outlaw’s aim proving faulty also.
But the cowpuncher had whipped his gun into a full bead on the big, black horse as Lemp, leaning low on the farther side, had turned for flight. In that instant Buck could have downed the horse and stopped the bandit; but Buck was range-bred, and he could not press the trigger to send a bullet into the magnificent animal Lemp rode.
Instead he drove the spurs into his qwn mount and dashed in pursuit.
When the outlaw plunged out upon the open prairie he turned east, and then the curses came in a steady, vicious stream from between his lips. Spread out directly in his path was a large band of sheep. He could break through them, of course, but it would slow him up; and he could hear the pounding of hoofs behind him. It was now too late to turn back into the Badlands and take a chance on outwitting the man who was after him.
He spurred his mount northward to round the band of sheep; and then from the upper end of the crescent formed by the close-packed animals came a puff of smoke, and Lemp swore fearfully as he heard the whine of a rifle-bullet. The herder was shooting at him!
He swung back westward as Buck came galloping out of the Badlands.
A mile, and Lemp was sneering with satisfaction. The big black horse was gaining. Another mile, and the sneer died upon the outlaw’s lips, for he caught sight of a number of men riding furiously toward him from the west.
He surmised the truth at once. The men ahead constituted the posse which had been forced to abandon the chase into the Badlands at darkness the night before. Cut off in the west, with an undaunted pursuer and a sheep-herder with a rifle behind to the east, and the open prairie northward with a sure prospect of ranches and fences and travelers, Lemp had but one chance to get away—southward into the wild, rugged country along the river. The bandit’s eyes gleamed with the red fire of battle as he turned his horse into the south.
But Buck had foreseen this move as soon as he caught a glimpse of the posse ahead. He had kept close fo the edge of the outlying bald mounds of earth which marked the northern boundary of the Badlands. He was cutting straight west, spurring his horse to the utmost, to head Lemp off before the outlaw was aware that he had been driven into a trap.
The two riders drove their mounts furiously toward the converging point, and Lemp, seeing that a meeting was inevitable, drew his gun.
Bullets whistled over the cowpuncher; but, leaning far to the offside and hugging his horse’s neck, he held his fire, knowing it would be a matter of luck if his bullets were to stop Lemp without hitting his horse at that distance. Buck Wright had no wish to wound or kill the magnificent animal the outlaw rode.
Lemp was nearly straight ahead and almost within his goal when Buck raised his gun to shoot. In that instant his horse leaped high in the air and eased its pace to a staggering trot. One of Lemp’s bullets had found a mark. Another moment and the animal halted, swaying.
But Lemp, racing southward, found himself confronted by a bluff which he had to go around. The yells of the posse in the west could now be plainly heard. Buck leaped from his stricken mount and ran on foot to head off the bandit, who galloped toward him to round the bluff. Then, standing, a motionless target, he took the one chance that offered and sprayed five bullets at the low-lying form on the big black.
Lemp came erect in the saddle, his horse rearing as the bandit instinctively jerked back on the rein. The outlaw’s right arm dangled and his gun dropped from the useless right hand, shocked by one of the bullets which Buck had fired.
Although he was hit the bandit recovered control of his horse. Buck ran after him.
“Hold on, Lemp,” he shouted. “I’ve a bullet left in this gun, an’ I’ll give it to you some place before I’ll let you get away.”
Lemp looked back with red fury blazing in his eyes while Buck stopped and leveled his gun. Then the outlaw, seeing that his pursuer meant just what he had said, checked his horse.
But even as Buck came running up to him he endeavored to whirl the big black upon him. The horse reared and swerved to keep the man on the ground from under his pounding hoofs.
“Lemp, that horse has better stuff in him than you have,” said Buck as he caught the rein and motioned to the other to get down.
The cowpuncher saw blood dripping from his prisoner’s right hand.
“Better let me look at your arm. No? Well, have it your own way. You’ll save the State some useless expense if you bleed to death.”
Buck looked back to where his horse was lying, straightened out, with blood welling from a wound in its neck. The animal was done for. Lemp himself had not been above killing a horse in his effort to escape.
The posse from town came galloping by. “Buck’s got him!” shouted Sal, the cowpuncher in the lead. “Got him dead to rights on the ground, too.”
It lacked an hour till noon when Buck handed Samuels the package of money Lemp had stolen the day before, recovered from the bandit’s saddlebag. The storekeeper examined it, found it intact and returned it to the safe against the demand of the stockmen, who had sanctioned his offer of the reward. Lemp was being hurried to the county seat in a spring wagon, badly wounded but with a chance to live to stand trial for his many misdeeds.
“But how in the dickens did you come to find him?” Baldy Sims, the liveryman, demanded of Buck.
“I didn’t find him—I brought him to me,” Buck grinned.
“I’d given up all hopes of catching Lemp last night an’ was headed for home when I heard something that made me mighty curious. It was the most peculiar sound I’d ever heard on the range, an’ I turned off up a raise to find out what it was. I learned the sounds came from a herder’s wagon, an’ I made for it.”
He paused, enjoying the breathless manner in which the group of men about him hung on his words.
“As you said yesterday, Baldy, sheepherders is peculiar an’ apt to have strange histories an’ habits. Well, this here sheepherder was no exception. An’ while I was talkin’ to him he happened to mention the river being so high for this time o’ year—something we’d plumb forgot. I felt sure Lemp would hang around till daylight to cross the river. Then I had a bright idea.”
“You might call it a five-hundred-dollar idea,” Sal put in. “Go on, Buck; you’ve got us guessing.”
“Well, it’s so simple it seems almost idiotic,” Buck confessed. “But I figured that the thing what attracted me to that sheep-wagon might make Lemp curious too—if he should hear it. An’ I remembered what you said yesterday, Baldy, ‘bout that sheep-herder calling the coyotes with a guitar, though I only half-believed it. But I knew Lemp was a human coyote just the same, an’ I had been enticed myself; so I borrowed that thing the sheep-herder had been making the noise with, took it into the Badlands an’ went to work on it.
“There never was a sound like it heard in this forsaken country, I guess. Anyway, sure enough, it brought Lemp at daylight. We both missed a few shots, an’ he made for the open where the herder had his sheep scattered out—which was once when Lemp’s luck went back on him. He turned west an’—well, you know the rest.”
“Like thunder we do!” exclaimed Baldy Sims. “What was it you was making the noise with?”
Buck blushed.
“Well now, you fellers may think I’m lying; but I’ve got to go back an’ get the danged thing where I left it hanging to a cottonwood an’ return it to that herder, an’ you can go along if you’ve any doubts.
“You see, in his early days that old herder was a sailor, an’ when he left the sea he brought along a ship’s bell. He keeps it in his wagon an’ strikes the hours on it when he’s around camp. Likes to hear the sound of it. Says it reminds him of the sea.
“He struck eight bells when I came along; an’, boys, it’s sure some queer sound heard a piece away. Never heard a bell with a tone like it in the first place, and in the second place the way it was struck, the two sounds coming so close together an’ mysterious-like—well, it drew me to that sheep- wagon like a magnet.
“Then I got an idea an’ borrowed the bell. I figured it might make Lemp curious if he heard it, an’ anything was worth trying for that reward. It got Lemp’s goat just like it got mine. He just had to find out what it was an’ why it was, an’ rode right into my trap.
“An’ say, Samuels, I’ll just have to give that herder a hundred out of that reward money. When do I get it?”
The storekeeper, who had, fished out a thick red wallet, opened it and began counting out the bills.