Sam Bass
Author of “Beginnings of Great Cities,” “The Luck of Lombardy Bart,” etc.
A second Robin Hood was the romantic Sam Bass to the cowboys of Texas—butquite another matter was he to the railroad companies and the peace officersfor whom he and his gang made life miserable.
The trace wound through the rollingwooded prairies of “the Nation,” where clearings were carpeted with rustlingdead leaves and dry grass. The light spring wagon bounced over ruts, thoughthe team was wearied by a long day in harness and the wagon’s pace was slow.The driver was a cowboy—just a lean brown cowboy with nothing to set himapart particularly from any of a thousand others in this year of ’77, whenTexas trail herds were moving north and ever north in the great hegira thatwas to stock ranges from the Nation to the Selkirks with Texas longhorns.
The black-haired man on the seat beside the driver was shorter—five fullinches below six feet—and powerfully muscled of shoulder. Twenty-six yearsold, he was, with a face that might have belonged to a boy for all the brownmustache at which he now tugged thoughtfully, as restless dark eyes lookedaround in half a dozen ways at once.
Suddenly the driver, who had been moving restlessly on the box-seat, jerked inthe travel-worn horses so that they fairly sat down upon their haunches.
“I been a-smellin’ smoke for five minutes!” he muttered. “I wonder now if⸺”
One lean brown hand, the left, gripped the lines. The right had curled aboutthe sinister black butt of a long-barreled Frontier Colt.
“I smell it, too!” nodded his companion tensely. “Hell! I see it. Yonder!”
A light film, that was barely detectable against the treetops a hundred yardsahead, showed faintly gray.
“An’ that damn’ axle a-squeakin’ like a dyin’ shote!” snarled the driver.“Reckon they heard us?”
He was furious-faced, glaring at the lacy smoke-film as at sign of an enemy.But the dark, stocky man was on the ground with a snaky wriggle, and he tookwith him the .44 Winchester carbine that had been hanging in its scabbard fromthe wagon-seat. He vanished into the bushes, and with an oath the driverflipped the lines in loops about the brake-handle and leaped down to follow.
He was not so good a woodsman as the other, so his progress, to be noiseless,must be slower. He met the dark-haired man coming back grinning. There wassomething tight-lipped, rather grim, about that smile which showed large,white teeth.
“Soldiers!” he whispered. “They’ve already heard us. We just got to go on andtrust to luck. They’re sneakin’ into the brush right now to look us up.”
They went back to the wagon quickly, mounted to the seat again and drove on.Fifty, seventy-five yards forward; then from the brush on each side of thetrace burst blue-clad men, afoot. A smart, boyish lieutenant stepped up to thefront wheel.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
The driver looked sidelong at his companion, who grinned down at the officer.
“Why,” he drawled, “we’re a couple o’ cowboys a-goin’ home to Santone. Ournames wouldn’t mean nothin’, I reckon. Been—” vaguely he waved his arm toindicate the vast spaces behind him—“up north with a trail herd. CharlieHowell’s trail herd.”
Cavalrymen had edged closer to