American Indian Weekly
9781465686671
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Piercing and shrill, from the tense stillness of the night sounded this eerie wail. In terrified alarm, Sam Bowser rose in his bed to his elbow. As he remained thus, trying to decide whether the awesome shriek was a cry of distress from some human being or was an imagining of his mind, his wife awoke. “What was that?” she gasped, excitedly. “You heard it, too?” “I—I thought I heard something. It sounded like the very soul being drawn from some woman. U-ugh! It makes me shiver to think of it.” “Well, there aren’t any women nearer than thirty miles, except you, so it couldn’t be that.” “But some one might be carrying a woman off or murdering her. Just because Amy Hawks is the nearest one we know of, doesn’t make it so there mightn’t be some poor creature being killed.” To this, the man made no response, and together they listened intently for a repetition of the awful wail. “Guess it must have been some coyote got kicked while he was smelling round the cattle. This is the fi——” But the words literally stuck in Bowser’s mouth. Again the shriek, bloodcurdling in its gruesomeness, rang out ere he could finish what he purposed to say. This time there was no mistaking the cry. It seemed to come from a woman in awful distress and to be close at hand. “There’s some mischief afoot!” exclaimed the man, as, heedless of his wife’s protests, he leaped from his bed, seized his rifle and rushed to the door. Yet, when he threw it open, there was nothing to be seen! The silence and the darkness of the night were overwhelming—as only the silence and darkness of the plains of Arizona can be. Sam Bowser was the owner of the Double Cross ranch. With no neighbors nearer than thirty miles, he and his wife, Sarah, lived in the home ranch house. This building faced the South. To the right, and some sixty feet distant, was the bunkhouse, where the cowpunchers lived when not on the range. To the North and between the two houses was a horse corral. Directly back of this was a second corral for the cattle, so large that it seemed more like a big pasture enclosed by barbed wire than a yard. Only the day before had Bowser’s men driven the pick of his herds back to the home ranch in order that they might be shipped away to the great cattle markets of the Middle West. Scarcely had the ranch owner opened the door than lights blazed in the bunkhouse, followed an instant later by the rush of the cowpunchers, as, guns in their hands, they crept cautiously from their shanty to learn the cause of the alarm.
