Boy's Cinema (1939-40)

18 pursuers discerned th«l t-Yveir intended yictlms had parted company they at once split up— Breed and about a dozen of the warrior band jfiving- cliase to Jctf. five or six of the braves sverviijg after Idaho Ike and three sticking 'o the track of Dcadwood Hawkins. With the i;iain body of the foe singling him out for attention, Jetf pressed on in a -outherly direction at the best pace his bronc could [tuike. But though his mount was as h'lc a po:'.y as had ever raised tlie^ dust of the western tin-'ls, the animal was by no means iresh and could not shake off the mustangs of the enemv. True, (hose mustangs did not gain on the frontiersman's steed. Xeither did they lose ground, however, and their riders were able CO kee;i Jeff under fire. Luckily for him the marksmanship of Breed and tiie Redskins was none too sure, and they wasted a considerable amount of ammunition on the enii^ty air. .Jeff, on the other hand, accounted for two of the Shoshones as he twisted round in the saddle to blaze back at the pursuing troop. He was approaching a steep declivity as he picked off those two Indians, and a few seconds after he had laid them low his horse was struggling valiantly up the slope. But even as the bronc carried him to the crest of the promontory Jeff reined in abruptly, dis- covering to his dismay that his escape wag birred. Before him the hillside declined sharjily to- wards a crystal-clear river fifty or sixty feet below the point where he had halted. Littered with big stones, it was a river of no great width, but insurmountable bluffs rose from the far edge of it. Moreover, its measured flow was broken up about a hundred yards down- stream by a turbulent waterfall—a cataract which Jeff estimated to be of in-odigious depth. Oliviously the river was impassable, and he reflected that if he turned to right or left along the summit of the hill his pursuers would be bound to head him off. Silhouetted there against the blue skyline, with leaden slugs zipping about fiim as Breed and the Shoshones came up the slope behind liim with guns belching flame and metal, Jeff thought for a moment that he was doomed to certain death. Indeed, he was in the act of facing rouiid—with the object of giving battle lo his foes until they overwhelmed him by foroo of numbers—when suddenly an idea occurred io him. It was an idea that seemed to offer him a slender prospect of saving his scalp, and. quick to carry the plan into effect, he flung up his arms as if he had been hit by one of his enemies' bullets, pitched himself from his mount and plunged down the hill. He went rolling towards the river in a smother of dirt, and, finishing up in the water, struck out for a b'.mch of roclvs midway across it. Ileaching these, ho swam into the thick of them and crouched down in their midst, and had barely concealed himself when Breed and Ills associate-s" arrived on the crown of the hill. ICeefiing low. but peering throiigh a narrow gap between two of the boulders that sheltered linn, Jeff watched the band of horsemen as they scainted the river. Then after an interval of a minute or so ho heard the voice of Breed, dingy son of a renegade wlvite man and a Red- skin squaw. " We have seen the last of the Paleface scout." the half-blood announced to his coin- paniotis in the Shoshone tongue. The Indians grunted an aflirmative response, and, t.urning, tlioy and Breed rode back in the direction whence they had come and dis- ap[)eared from view. Thoy took Jeff's horse with them, a circum- stance that caused the frontiersman to grit his teeth in chagrin. Nevertheless he was com- pelled to allow that )>e was lucky to have come out of the affair with his life, and was con- gratulating himself on that .score when all at once an outburst of gunplay reached his ears. It catne from somewhere beyond the hill over which Breed and his party had vanished, and, frowning, Jeff i.ssued from his covert and niado for dry land. Ho gained the foot of the hill down which ho had rolled, and at a scrambling run he iiscetided the slope; and as he arrived at the lop of the incline he beheld a s[)ectacle that afforded him the keenest satisfaction, rclini.iry ITtli, 1910. BOY'S CINEMA To the north-east Breed and his companions had abandoned Jeff's bronc and were fleeing helter-skelter from a troop of white men who were streaking across the prairie at full gal- lop. And, led by an officer whom Jeft' in- stantly identified, those white men were with one exception U.S. Dragoons—the exception being none other than Deadwood Hawkins. The latter descrying Jeff', he pointed him out to the soldiery, and at a signal from the officer in cliarge of the detail the whole troop altered cour.se and spurred for the hill on which the drenched frontiersman stood. Jeff hurried down to meet them, and greeted the officers in connnand of the cavalry detach- ment warmly as the newcomers pulled up be- fore him. "Colonel Custer!" he declared. "Am I glad to see you !" " I'm mighty glad to see you for that matter, Jeff," was the reply. "We ran into Deadwood a mile or two from here, and when he told us you were in trouble we headed across country as hard as we could go. But we sure thought those skunks had finished you when we saw 'em riding off' with your horse." Jeff glanced at Deadwood, and as he did so he noticed that three feathered head-dresses were hanging from his saddle-bow. "Looks like you've been doing a little hunt- ing, pardner," he remarked.. "Huh, the last I saw of you I got the idea you were the quarry." Deadwood's face, customarily solemn, seemed to expand in a grin. "Shucks, no," he rejoined. "You'll never see me runnin' from three Injuns. As soon as I spotted I'd only three o' the varmints to deal with I struck off an' decoyed 'em into a wood. Then I blew daylight clear through 'em. The colonel an' his sojers showed up a minute or so afterwards. They'd heerd the shootin'." ^'What about Idaho?" Jeff asked earnestly. "Some of those coyotes took up his trail. D'you think he had any chance of outstrip- ping them ?" " I'd say he had every chance of outstrippin' them," Deadwood answered. "I got a squint of him high-tailin' it into a bunch o' hills in the north, an' he sure looked like he was sliowin' them Redskins a clean pair o' heels."' Jeft" now turned his attention again on the receding figures of Breed and his party, and caught a last glimpse of them as they were dipping beyond a rise in the prairie—their course indicating that they were making for the cabin wherein Bull Bragg and those other two Shoshones had been ensconced. "Colonel," Jeff' said to Custer, "we'd better get after that half-blood and his gang of Indian cut-throats. I'll share the saddle of one of-your men until we draw abreast of that stallion of mine." THROUGH THE HILLS SOME twenty minutes after quilting the vicinity of the river in which they believed Jeff Scott had met his doom. Breed and his band of Shoshone allies reached the tumble- down abode where Bull Bragg had been located. Bragg and the two Redskins who had been with him had not joined in the pursuit of Jeff, Deadwood and Idaho, but had remained at the cabin. They were standing outside it when the half-blood and his party put in an appearance, and the renegade white man directed an eager question at Breed as the latter reined up. "Well, did you get Scott an' his pals?" he demanded. "We got Jeff Scott all right," Breed answered tersel.y. "He won't bother us no more." He spoke with emphatic conviction. In their fliorht from the ncighbouihood of the river he and his associates had not cast so much as a glance behind them, and had therefore failed to witness the encounter between Jeff, Dead- wood and the dragoons. "We took Scott's horse in tow," Breed went on. "I figured it would satisfy tlie Boss that Mister Jeff Scott had been accotmted for if I could show him that cream-coloured stallion. But a troop o' soldiers came on the scene", an' we let the critter go and rode for our lives." "Soldiers?" Bragg echoed, his ugly face blanching'. Every Tuesday "That's what I said, Bull, an' we'd better get outa here aiul get out fast, or thev're liable to catch up with us. What about them fura you aimed to hold back from the Boss?" "I've cached 'em in.side the shack," came the response. "They oughta be safe enough there, an' we'll sell 'em for our own profit the first chance we get. Meantime, we'll head for the main hide-out, pay off the Shoshones for the help they've given us, then sneak into Clearwater and hand over the no-account pelts to Morgan—like v.e planned." A moment later Bragg was hastening round to the s'dc of the cabin with the two Indians who h;'d remained at the dwellinn; with him, and pre?entlv they reappeared on horseback, Bleed observing then that the renegade was clutching a black sombrero in one hand. "What's that you got there?" the half-blood interrogated. "Scott's hat," Bragg informed him, "an' his initials are on the'inside of it. I picked it up just now. It musta fell off o' his liead when he divi^d oiita the cabin. Reckon if we tote it along wi h us it might help to persuade the Boss that tii3re ain't no doubt about Scott havin' Ijecn rubbed out." Breed nodded approvingly, and without ex- chiintring another word he and Bull Bragg set off along the valley at a gallop, the pack of Shoshoties streaming after them. Nor did they take long to clear the defile, and the drumming of their ponies' feet had died out of earshot when a company of riders entered the hollow from the west. They weri' Jeff, Deadwood, Colonel Custer and the dragoons, and, proceeding towards the cabin that nestled in the valley, they halted outside it and dismounted. Attended by Custer and Deadwood, Jeff passed into the shack, and was glancing around its grim.v, cobwebbed interior cuisorily when his cvjs came to rest on a floor-board which, unlike the other planks, was comparatively free from dust. "Say, take a look at that,"- he announced, motioninu' to the floor-board in question. "It strikes me that plank has been prised up re- cently, judgin.g bv the dirt that's fallen off it." He lost no time in making an investigation, and, lifting that floor-board out of position, dis- closed a quantity of valuable furs that had been hidden under it. "Well, here's a find, colonel," he said to Custer. "These pelts belonged to two trappers who we-e murdered by Breed, Bull Bragg and their Shoshone confederates to-day. Idaho Ike had an interest in the fins, and so did John Ma.'On—of the Mason wagon-train." He contempla;3d the pelts for a spell, then turned and strode from the cabin, and as Custer and Deadwood joined him outside the habitation he pointed to a inunber of imprints in front of the abode—imprints made by the hoofs of about a dozen horses which had been ridden in an easterly direction. "There are the tracks of the killers we're after," Jeff stated, "and we'd better start fol- lowing them while the trail's still hot." He looked at Custer sombrely. "For we've just jjot to run those coyotes to earth, colonel," he went on. "You know as well as I do that a powerful organisation is trying to prevent the settling of Ore.gon—an organi.sation that has already wrecked many a wagon-train—an organisation that's likely to wreck the Mason cohmm and many another outfit unless we can clamp down on it. "Bull Bragg and Breed are in the pay of that organisation," he added, "and if we can lay hands on them maybe we can force them to talk—and tell us who's back of the war that's beino' waged against the immigrants." The colonel pursed his lips. "Jeff," he said, "I'm as anxious as you are to pick up this fellow Bragg and his half-blood cron.v. But those tracks ma,v lead to the village of Spotted Elk, head-chief of the Shoshones, and I can't risk the lives of mv detac'lnnent by taking oi. a whole tribe of Indians. I'll teil you what Til do, though. I'll ride to Fort Wallace with my patrol and collect reinforce- ments." "All riglit," Jeff assented. "Meanwhile, Deadwood atid I W'ill follow these tracks and see whether they do lead to the Shoshone en- campment. In any case, you can depend on it thiit where\cr they lead we'll find a way of