第79章

But first there was a task that it wrung his heart to perform.His horse must be put out of pain.He took off his coat, rolled it over his horse's head, inserted his gun under its folds to deaden the sound and to hide those luminous eyes turned so entreatingly upon him.

"Old boy, you have done your duty, and so must I.Good-by, old chap!" He pulled the fatal trigger and Ginger's work was done.

He took up his coat and set off once more upon the winding sheep trail that he guessed would bring him to the Sun Dance.Dazed, half asleep, numbed with weariness and faint with hunger, he stumbled on, while the stars came out overhead and with their mild radiance lit up his rugged way.

Suddenly he found himself vividly awake.Diagonally across the face of the hill in front of him, a few score yards away and moving nearer, a horse came cantering.Quickly Cameron dropped behind a jutting rock.Easily, daintily, with never a slip or slide came the horse till he became clearly visible in the starlight.There was no mistaking that horse or that rider.No other horse in all the territories could take that slippery, slithery hill with a tread so light and sure, and no other rider in the Western country could handle his horse with such easy, steady grace among the rugged rocks of that treacherous hillside.It was Nighthawk and his master.

"Raven!" breathed Cameron to himself."Raven! Is it possible? By Jove! I would not have believed it.The Superintendent was right after all.He is a villain, a black-hearted villain too.So, HEis the brains behind this thing.I ought to have known it.Fool that I was! He pulled the wool over my eyes all right."The rage that surged up through his heart stimulated his dormant energies into new life.With a deep oath Cameron pulled out both his guns and set off up the hill on the trail of the disappearing horseman.His weariness fell from him like a coat, the spring came back to his muscles, clearness to his brain.He was ready for his best fight and he knew it lay before him.Swiftly, lightly he ran up the hillside.At the top he paused amazed.Before him lay a large Indian encampment with rows upon rows of tents and camp fires with kettles swinging, and everywhere Indians and squaws moving about.Skirting the camp and still keeping to the side of the hill, he came upon a stout new-built fence that ran straight down an incline to a steep cut-bank with a sheer drop of thirty feet or more.Like a flash the meaning of it came upon him.This was to be the end of the drive.Here the cattle were to meet their death.

Here it was that the pemmican was to be made.On the hillside opposite there was doubtless a similar fence and these two would constitute the fatal funnel down which the cattle were to be stampeded over the cut-bank to their destruction.This was the nefarious scheme planned by Raven and his treacherous allies.

Swiftly Cameron turned and followed the fence up the incline some three or four hundred yards from the cut-bank.At its upper end the fence curved outward for some distance upon a wide upland valley, then ceased altogether.Such was the slope of the hill that no living man could turn a herd of cattle once entered upon that steep incline.

Down the hill, across the valley and up the other side ran Cameron, keeping low and carefully picking his way among the loose stones till he came to the other fence which, curving similarly outward, made with its fellow a perfectly completed funnel.Once between the curving lips of this funnel nothing could save the rushing, crowding cattle from the deadly cut-bank below.

"Oh, if I only had my horse," groaned Cameron, "I might have a chance to turn them off just here."At the point at which he stood the slope of the hillside fell somewhat toward the left and away slightly from the mouth of the funnel.A skilled cowboy with sufficient nerve, on a first-class horse, might turn the herd away from the cut-bank into the little coulee that led down from the end of the fence, but for a man on foot the thing was quite impossible.He determined, however, to make the effort.No man can certainly tell how cattle will behave when excited and at night.

As he stood there rapidly planning how to divert the rush of cattle from that deadly funnel, there rose on the still night air a soft rumbling sound like low and distant thunder.That sound Cameron knew only too well.It was the pounding of two hundred steers upon the resounding prairie.He rushed back again to the right side of the fenced runway, and then forward to meet the coming herd.Ahalf moon rising over the round top of the hill revealed the black surging mass of steers, their hoofs pounding like distant artillery, their horns rattling like a continuous crash of riflery.Before them at a distance of a hundred yards or more a mounted Indian rode toward the farther side of the funnel and took his stand at the very spot at which there was some hope of diverting the rushing herd from the cut-bank down the side coulee to safety.

"That man has got to go," said Cameron to himself, drawing his gun.

But before he could level it there shot out from the dim light behind the Indian a man on horseback.Like a lion on its prey the horse leaped with a wicked scream at the Indian pony.Before that furious leap both man and pony went down and rolled over and over in front of the pounding herd.Over the prostrate pony leaped the horse and up the hillside fair in the face of that rushing mass of maddened steers.Straight across their face sped the horse and his rider, galloping lightly, with never a swerve or hesitation, then swiftly wheeling as the steers drew almost level with him he darted furiously on their flank and rode close at their noses."Crack!

Crack!" rang the rider's revolver, and two steers in the far flank dropped to the earth while over them surged the following herd.