The Cowpuncher Read Online Free

ones, and the clangor of a locomotive’s bell. The string of cars beside them creaked and groaned, there was a clang-jangle of couplings, a rattle of brake rigging. Then, from the far side of the slowly moving train, somebody shouted questioningly.
    “That’ll be his pardner,” the old man whispered hoarsely. “He’ll be comin’ over here lookin’ for him in a minute. C’mon, son, you gotta ketch this rattler with me. It ain’t goin’ the way you wanta head, but you’ll get to Texas a damn sight faster by way of Colorado than by way of the K.C. jailhouse!”
    Up at the head end of the long train the locomotive’s stack belched black smoke and staccato thunder. The creaking of the wheels changed to a steady diapason of monotonous rumble. The boxcars swayed and rocked on their springs.
    For a brief moment more Huck hesitated. All the things he would put behind him if he followed the oldtimer came crowding into his brain. The Bar X ranch, the laughing Chinaman, Ah Sing, his horse Smoke, Sue’s last good-bye. His memory stuck on the last like a burr. He might besaying goodbye to all of them for a long, long time—perhaps forever. Why, maybe he’d never get back there—maybe he’d never see the old sights, the familiar faces—never see Sue again. That thought hurt like an old pain.
    “Come on!” the old man croaked, shambling in unsteady steps beside the moving train. Huck was at his heels.
    An instant later he gripped a grabiron with his bony hands and swung his foot onto the stirrup. He vanished between the cars and Huck followed him, his sinewy body taking the leap with dynamic agility.
    And at that instant a bulky figure floundered over a drawbar a couple of cars further back and thudded solidly to the ground. There was an instant of tingling suspense as Huck scrambled to reach the end-sill of the forward boxcar. Then—
    Bang! bang! bang!
    Huck ducked as the bullets whined past, smacking against the side boards, showering him with splinters. His right hand instinctively dropped to his thigh with effortless ease. He stifled a curse of dismay as his fingers encountered no gun. He peered quickly back along the train, and saw the bulky figure swing onto a grabiron with deceptive agility and come storming up the side of the car. A second later it vanished over the upper edge.
    “He’ll be on top of us in a minute,” the cowboy muttered, “and that’ll be the finish!”
    Instantly Huck went into action, his brain working swiftly. “Outa here!” he barked, shuffling along the sill. “Outa here and up the embankment!”
    “We won’t have a chanct!” wailed the oldster. “That hellion up there’ll see us go and if he don’t plug us fust, he’ll run us down.”
    “He’ll get us for sure if we stay!” Huck shouted back. “C’mon, I tell you!”
    He dropped from the slowly-moving train and the old man, still shrilling protests, followed him. Across the web of tracks Huck darted, reached the embankment and started clambering up it.
    From the moving train sounded a yell of command. Spurts of flame lanced the darkness with orange streaks. The crackling of the gunshots sounded above the rumble of the train. Bullets fell like hail around them, churning through the cinders.
    Huck heard the old man grunt, thought he might have been hit, and called out anxiously.
    “Jest slipped on a rock,” panted the oldtimer.
    In another instant they were over the lip of the embankment. They dived into scrub which fringed the crest, burrowing deep behind the protecting brush. In one last backward glance, Huck had seen the railroad detective clambering down the carside. Lights were bobbing about in the yard; questioning shouts came faintly to their ears.
    “We can’t get away, son,” panted the old man. “They’ll get dogs and run us down in the morning, even if they don’t grab us t’night.”
    The cowboy was intent on watching the converging lights. He heard the bull shout instructions, caught a glimpse of his