Oh, You Tex!
by William MacLeod Raine · English · Gutenberg #22328 · 418,660 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Oh, You Tex!
Author: William MacLeod Raine
Release date: August 15, 2007 [eBook #22328]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22328
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OH, YOU TEX! ***
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BOOKS BY WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
Published By
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
THE SHERIFF'S SON. Illustrated.
THE YUKON TRAIL. Illustrated.
STEVE YEAGER. Illustrated.
A MAN FOUR-SQUARE. With colored frontispiece.
OH, YOU TEX!
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OH, YOU TEX!
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[Illustration: TEXAS]
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OH, YOU TEX!
By
WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
Author of "A Man Four-Square," "The Sheriff's Son,"
"The Yukon Trail," Etc.
Boston and New York
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920
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COPYRIGHT, 1919, by THE STORY-PRESS CORPORATION
COPYRIGHT, 1920, by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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TO
SAM F. DUNN
OF AMARILLO, TEXAS
INSPECTOR OF CATTLE IN THE DAYS
OF THE LONGHORN DRIVES
TO WHOSE EXPERIENCE AND GENEROUS CRITICISM
I AM INDEBTED FOR AID IN THE
PREPARATION OF THIS BOOK
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CONTENTS
I. THE LINE-RIDER 3
II. "I'LL BE SEVENTEEN, COMING GRASS" 12
III. TEX TAKES AN INTEREST 18
IV. TEX GRANDSTANDS 26
V. CAPTAIN ELLISON HIRES A HAND 38
VI. CLINT WADLEY'S MESSENGER 44
VII. THE DANCE 54
VIII. RUTHERFORD MAKES A MISTAKE 62
IX. MURDER IN THE CHAPARRAL 69
X. "A DAMNED POOR APOLOGY FOR A MAN" 75
XI. ONE TO FOUR 79
XII. TEX REARRANGES THE SEATING 89
XIII. "ONLY ONE MOB, AIN'T THERE?" 99
XIV. JACK SERVES NOTICE 108
XV. A CLOSE SHAVE 113
XVI. WADLEY GOES HOME IN A BUCKBOARD 122
XVII. OLD-TIMERS 132
XVIII. A SHOT OUT OF THE NIGHT 138
XIX. TRAPPED 146
XX. KIOWAS ON THE WARPATH 155
XXI. TEX TAKES A LONG WALK 166
XXII. THE TEST 174
XXIII. A SHY YOUNG MAN DINES 179
XXIV. TEX BORROWS A BLACKSNAKE 184
XXV. "THEY'RE RUNNIN' ME OUTA TOWN" 191
XXVI. FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES 199
XXVII. CLINT FREES HIS MIND 203
XXVIII. ON A COLD TRAIL 211
XXIX. BURNT BRANDS 219
XXX. ROGUES DISAGREE 226
XXXI. A PAIR OF DEUCES 237
XXXII. THE HOLD-UP 245
XXXIII. THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW STREAK 251
XXXIV. RAMONA GOES DUCK-HUNTING 258
XXXV. THE DESERT 266
XXXVI. HOMER DINSMORE ESCORTS RAMONA 272
XXXVII. ON A HOT TRAIL 279
XXXVIII. DINSMORE TO THE RESCUE 287
XXXIX. A CRY OUT OF THE NIGHT 292
XL. GURLEY'S GET-AWAY 296
XLI. HOMING HEARTS 302
XLII. A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION 310
XLIII. TEX RESIGNS 319
XLIV. DINSMORE GIVES INFORMATION 328
XLV. RAMONA DESERTS HER FATHER 332
XLVI. LOOSE THREADS 338
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OH, YOU TEX!
CHAPTER I
THE LINE-RIDER
Day was breaking in the Panhandle. The line-rider finished his breakfast
of buffalo-hump, coffee, and biscuits. He had eaten heartily, for it
would be long after sunset before he touched food again.
Cheerfully and tunelessly he warbled a cowboy ditty as he packed his
supplies and prepared to go.
"Oh, it's bacon and beans most every day,
I'd as lief be eatin' prairie hay."
While he washed his dishes in the fine sand and rinsed them in the
current of the creek he announced jocundly to a young world glad with
spring:
"I'll sell my outfit soon as I can,
Won't punch cattle for no damn' man."
The tin cup beat time against the tin plate to accompany a kind of
shuffling dance. Jack Roberts was fifty miles from nowhere, alone on the
desert, but the warm blood of youth set his feet to moving. Why should
he not dance? He was one and twenty, stood five feet eleven in his
socks, and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds of bone, sinew, and
well-packed muscle. A son of blue skies and wide, wind-swept spaces, he
had never been ill in his life. Wherefore the sun-kissed world looked
good to him.
He mounted a horse picketed near the camp and rode out to a _remuda_ of
seven cow-ponies grazing in a draw. Of these he roped one and brought it
back to camp, where he saddled it with deft swiftness.
The line-rider swung to the saddle and put his pony at a jog-trot. He
topped a hill and looked across the sunlit mesas which rolled in long
swells far as the eye could see. The desert flowered gayly with the
purple, pink, and scarlet blossoms of the cacti and with the white,
lilylike buds of the Spanish bayonet. The yucca and the prickly pear
were abloom. He swept the panorama with trained eyes. In the distance a
little bunch of antelope was moving down to water in single file. On a
slope two miles away grazed a small herd of buffalo. No sign of human
habitation was written on that vast solitude of space.
The cowboy swung to the south and held a steady road gait. With an
almost uncanny accuracy he recognized all signs that had to do with
cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of
the hillside, he picked them out unerringly. Brands, at a distance so
great that a tenderfoot could have made of them only a blur, were plain
as a primer to him.
Cows that carried on their flanks the A T O, he turned and started
northward. As he returned, he would gather up these strays and drive
them back to their own range. For in those days, before the barbed wire
had reached Texas and crisscrossed it with boundary lines, the cowboy
was a fence more mobile than the wandering stock.
It was past noon when Roberts dropped into a draw where an immense man
was lying sprawled under a bush. The recumbent man was a mountain of
flesh; how he ever climbed to a saddle was a miracle; how a little
cow-pony carried him was another. Yet there was no better line-rider in
the Panhandle than Jumbo Wilkins.
"'Lo, Texas," the fat man greeted.
The young line-rider had won the nickname of "Texas" in New Mexico a
year or two before by his aggressive championship of his native State.
Somehow the sobriquet had clung to him even after his return to the
Panhandle.
"'Lo, Jumbo," returned the other. "How?"
"Fat like a match. I'm sure losin' flesh. Took up another notch in my
belt yestiddy."
Roberts shifted in the saddle, resting his weight on the horn and the
ball of one foot for ease. He was a slim, brown youth, hard as nails and
tough as whipcord. His eyes were quick and wary. In spite of the imps
of mischief that just now lighted them, one got an impression of
strength. He might or might not be, in the phrase of the country, a "bad
_hombre_," but it was safe to say he was an efficient one.
"Quick consumption, sure," pronounced the younger man promptly. "You
don't look to me like you weigh an ounce over three hundred an' fifty
pounds. Appetite kind o' gone?"
"You're damn whistlin'. I got an ailment, I tell you, Tex. This mo'nin'
I didn't eat but a few slices of bacon an' some lil' steaks an' a pan or
two o' flapjacks an' mebbe nine or ten biscuits. Afterward I felt kind
o' bloated like. I need some sa'saparilla. Now, if I could make out to
get off for a few days--"
"You could get that sarsaparilla across the bar at the Bird Cage,
couldn't you, Jumbo?" the boy grinned.
The whale of a man looked at him reproachfully. "You never seen me
shootin' up no towns or raisin' hell when I was lit up. I can take a
drink or leave it alone."
"That's right too. Nobody lets it alone more than you do when it can't
be got. I've noticed that."
"You cayn't devil me, boy. I was punchin' longhorns when yore mammy was
paddlin' you for stealin' the sugar. Say, that reminds me. I'm plumb out
o' sugar. Can you loan me some till Pedro gits around? I got to have
sugar or I begin to fall off right away," the big man whined.
The line-riders chatted casually of the topics that interest men in the
land of wide, empty frontiers. Of Indians they had something to say, of
their diminishing grub supply more. Jumbo mentioned that he had found an
A T O cow dead by a water-hole. They spoke incidentally of the Dinsmore
gang, a band of rustlers operating in No Man's Land. They had little
news of people, since neither of them had for three weeks seen another
human being except Quint Sullivan, the line-rider who fenced the A T O
cattle to the east of Roberts.
Presently Roberts nodded a good-bye and passed again into the solitude
of empty spaces. The land-waves swallowed him. Once more he followed
draws, crossed washes, climbed cow-backed hills, picking up drift-cattle
as he rode.
It was late afternoon when he saw a thin spiral of smoke from a rise of
ground. Smoke meant that some human being was abroad in the land, and
every man on the range called for investigation. The rider moved forward
to reconnoiter.
He saw a man, a horse, a cow, a calf, and a fire. When these five things
came together, it meant that somebody was branding. The present business
of Roberts was to find out what brand was on the cow and what one was
being run on the flank of the calf. He rode forward at a slow canter.
The man beside the fire straightened. He took off his hat and swept it
in front of him in a semicircle from left to right. The line-rider
understood the sign language of the plains. He was being "waved around."
The man was serving notice upon him to pass in a wide circle. It meant
that the dismounted man did not intend to let himself be recognized. The
easy deduction was that he was a rustler.
The cowboy rode steadily forward. The man beside the fire picked up a
rifle lying at his feet and dropped a bullet a few yards in front of the
advancing man.
Roberts drew to a halt. He was armed with a six-shooter, but a revolver
was of no use at this distance. For a moment he hesitated. Another
bullet lifted a spurt of dust almost at his horse's feet.
The line-rider waited for no more definite warning. He waved a hand
toward the rustler and shouted down the wind: "Some other day." Quickly
he swung his horse to the left and vanished into an arroyo. Then,
without an instant's loss of time, he put his pony swiftly up the draw
toward a "rim-rock" edging a mesa. Over to the right was Box Canon,
which led to the rough lands of a terrain unknown to Roberts. It was a
three-to-one chance that the rustler would disappear into the canon.
The young man rode fast, putting his bronco at the hills with a rush.
He was in a treeless country, covered with polecat brush. Through this
he plunged recklessly, taking breaks in the ground without slackening
speed in the least.
Near the summit of the rise Roberts swung from the saddle and ran
forward through the brush, crouching as he moved. With a minimum of
noise and a maximum of speed he negotiated the thick shrubbery and
reached the gorge.
He crept forward cautiously and looked down. Through the shin-oak which
grew thick on the edge of the bluff he made out a man on horseback
driving a calf. The mount was a sorrel with white stockings and a splash
of white on the nose. The distance was too great for Roberts to make out
the features of the rider clearly, though he could see the fellow was
dark and slender.
The line-rider watched him out of sight, then slithered down the face of
the bluff to the sandy wash. He knelt down and studied intently the
hoofprints written in the soil. They told him that the left hind hoof of
the animal was broken in an odd way.
Jack Roberts clambered up the steep edge of the gulch and returned to
the cow-pony waiting for him with drooping hip and sleepy eyes.
"Oh, you Two Bits, we'll amble along and see where our friend is headin'
for."
He picked a way down into the canon and followed the rustler. At the
head of the gulch the man on the sorrel had turned to the left. The
cowboy turned also in that direction. A sign by the side of the trail
confronted him.
THIS IS PETE DINSMORE'S ROAD--
TAKE ANOTHER
"The plot sure thickens," grinned Jack. "Reckon I won't take Pete's
advice to-day. It don't listen good."
He spoke aloud, to himself or to his horse or to the empty world at
large, as lonely riders often do on the plains or in the hills, but from
the heavens above an answer dropped down to him in a heavy, masterful
voice:
"Git back along that trail _pronto_!"
Roberts looked up. A flat rock topped the bluff above. From the edge of
it the barrel of a rifle projected. Behind it was a face masked by a
bandana handkerchief. The combination was a sinister one.
If the line-rider was dismayed or even surprised, he gave no evidence of
it.
"Just as you say, stranger. I reckon you're callin' this dance," he
admitted.
"You'll be lucky if you don't die of lead-poisonin' inside o' five
minutes. No funny business! Git!"
The cowboy got. He whirled his pony in its tracks and sent it jogging
down the back trail. A tenderfoot would have taken the gulch at
breakneck speed. Most old-timers would have found a canter none too
fast. But Jack Roberts held to a steady road gait. Not once did he look
back--but every foot of the way till he had turned a bend in the canon
there was an ache in the small of his back. It was a purely sympathetic
sensation, for at any moment a bullet might come crashing between the
shoulders.
Once safely out of range the rider mopped a perspiring face.
"Wow! This is your lucky day, Jack. Ain't you got better sense than to
trail rustlers with no weapon but a Sunday-School text? Well, here's
hopin'! Maybe we'll meet again in the sweet by an' by. You never can
always tell."
CHAPTER II
"I'LL BE SEVENTEEN, COMING GRASS"
The camper looked up from the antelope steak he was frying, to watch a
man cross the shallow creek. In the clear morning light of the Southwest
his eyes had picked the rider out of the surrounding landscape nearly an
hour before. For at least one fourth of the time since this discovery he
had been aware that his approaching visitor was Pedro Menendez, of the
A T O ranch.
"Better 'light, son," suggested Roberts.
The Mexican flashed a white-toothed smile at the sizzling steak, took
one whiff of the coffee and slid from the saddle. Eating was one of the
things that Pedro did best.
"The ol' man--he sen' me," the boy explained. "He wan' you at the
ranch."
Further explanation waited till the edge of Pedro's appetite was
blunted. The line-rider lighted a cigarette and casually asked a
question.
"Whyfor does he want me?"
It developed that the Mexican had been sent to relieve Roberts because
the latter was needed to take charge of a trail herd. Not by the flicker
of an eyelash did the line-rider show that this news meant anything to
him. It was promotion--better pay, a better chance for advancement, an
easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune
with the impassive face of a gambler.
"Keep an eye out for rustlers, Pedro," he advised before he left. "You
want to watch Box Canon. Unless I'm 'way off, the Dinsmore gang are
operatin' through it. I 'most caught one red-handed the other day. Lucky
for me I didn't. You an' Jumbo would 'a' had to bury me out on the lone
prairee."
Nearly ten hours later Jack Roberts dismounted in front of the
whitewashed adobe house that was the headquarters of the A T O ranch. On
the porch an old cattleman sat slouched in a chair tilted back against
the wall, a run-down heel of his boot hitched in the rung. The wrinkled
coat he wore hung on him like a sack, and one leg of his trousers had
caught at the top of the high boot. The owner of the A T O was a
heavy-set, powerful man in the early fifties. Just now he was smoking a
corncob pipe.
The keen eyes of the cattleman watched lazily the young line-rider come
up the walk. Most cowboys walked badly; on horseback they might be kings
of the earth, but out of the saddle they rolled like sailors. Clint
Wadley noticed that the legs of this young fellow were straight and that
he trod the ground lightly as a buck in mating-season.
"He'll make a hand," was Wadley's verdict, one he had arrived at after
nearly a year of shrewd observation.
But no evidence of satisfaction in his employee showed itself in the
greeting of the "old man." He grunted what might pass for "Howdy!" if
one were an optimist.
Roberts explained his presence by saying: "You sent for me, Mr. Wadley."
"H'm! That durned fool York done bust his laig. Think you can take a
herd up the trail to Tascosa?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's the way all you brash young colts talk. But how many of 'em will
you lose on the way? How sorry will they look when you deliver the herd?
That's what I'd like to know."
Jack Roberts was paying no attention to the grumbling of his boss--for a
young girl had come out of the house. She was a slim little thing, with
a slender throat that carried the small head like the stem of a rose.
Dark, long-lashed eyes, eager and bubbling with laughter, were fixed on
Wadley. She had slipped out on tiptoe to surprise him. Her soft fingers
covered his eyes.
"Guess who!" she ordered.
"Quit yore foolishness," growled the cattleman. "Don't you-all see I'm
talkin' business?" But the line-rider observed that his arm encircled
the waist of the girl.
With a flash of shy eyes the girl caught sight of Roberts, who had been
half hidden from her behind the honeysuckle foliage.
"Oh! I didn't know," she cried.
The owner of the A T O introduced them. "This is Jack Roberts, one of my
trail foremen. Roberts--my daughter Ramona. I reckon you can see for
yoreself she's plumb spoiled."
A soft laugh welled from the throat of the girl. She knew that for her
at least her father was all bark and no bite.
"It's you that is spoiled, Dad," she said in the slow, sweet voice of
the South. "I've been away too long, but now I'm back I mean to bring
you up right. Now I'll leave you to your business."
The eyes of the girl rested for a moment on those of the line-rider as
she nodded good-bye. Jack had never before seen Ramona Wadley, nor for
that matter had he seen her brother Rutherford. Since he had been in the
neighborhood, both of them had been a good deal of the time in Tennessee
at school, and Jack did not come to the ranch-house once in three
months. It was hard to believe that this dainty child was the daughter
of such a battered hulk as Clint Wadley. He was what the wind and the
sun and the tough Southwest had made him. And she--she was a daughter of
the morning.
But Wadley did not release Ramona. "Since you're here you might as well
go through with it," he said. "What do you want?"
"What does a woman always want?" she asked sweetly, and then answered
her own question. "Clothes--and money to buy them--lots of it. I'm going
to town to-morrow, you know."
"H'm!" His grunt was half a chuckle, half a growl. "Do you call yoreself
a woman--a little bit of a trick like you? Why, I could break you in
two."
She drew herself up very straight. "I'll be seventeen, coming grass. And
it's much more likely, sir, that I'll break you--as you'll find out when
the bills come in after I've been to town."
With that she swung on her heel and vanished inside the house.
The proud, fond eyes of the cattleman followed her. It was an easy guess
that she was the apple of his eye.
But when he turned to business again his manner was gruffer than usual.
He was a trifle crisper to balance the effect of his new foreman having
discovered that he was as putty in the hands of this slip of a girl.
"Well, you know where you're at, Roberts. Deliver that herd without any
loss for strays, fat, an' in good condition, an' you won't need to go
back to line-ridin'. Fall down on the job, an' you'll never get another
chance to drive A T O cows."
"That's all I ask, Mr. Wadley," the cowboy answered. "An' much obliged
for the chance."
"Don't thank me. Thank York's busted laig," snapped his chief. "We'll
make the gather for the drive to-morrow an' Friday."
CHAPTER III
TEX TAKES AN INTEREST
Jack Roberts was in two minds whether to stop at the Longhorn saloon. He
needed a cook in his trail outfit, and the most likely employment agency
in Texas during that decade was the barroom of a gambling-house. Every
man out of a job naturally drifted to the only place of entertainment.
The wandering eye of the foreman decided the matter for him. It fell
upon a horse, and instantly ceased to rove. The cow-pony was tied to a
hitching-rack worn shiny by thousands of reins. On the nose of the
bronco was a splash of white. Stockings of the same color marked its
legs. The left hind hoof was gashed and broken.
The rider communed with himself. "I reckon we'll 'light and take an
interest, Jack. Them that looks for, finds."
He slid from the saddle and rolled a cigarette, after which he made
friends with the sorrel and examined carefully the damaged foot.
"It's a li'l bit of a world after all," he commented. "You never can
tell who you're liable to meet up with." The foreman drew from its
scabbard a revolver and slid it back into place to make sure that it lay
easy in its case. "You can't guess for sure what's likely to happen.
I'd a heap rather be too cautious than have flowers sent me."
He sauntered through the open door into the gambling-house. It was a
large hall, in the front part of which was the saloon. In the back the
side wall to the next building had been ripped out to give more room.
There was a space for dancing, as well as roulette, faro, chuckaluck,
and poker tables. In one corner a raised stand for the musicians had
been built.
The Longhorn was practically deserted. Not even a game of draw was in
progress. The dance-girls were making up for lost sleep, and the patrons
of the place were either at work or still in bed.
Three men were lined up in front of the bar. One was a tall, lank
person, hatchet-faced and sallow. He had a cast in his eye that gave him
a sinister expression. The second was slender and trim, black of hair
and eye and mustache. His clothes were very good and up to date. The one
farthest from the door was a heavy-set, unwieldy man in jeans, slouchy
as to dress and bearing. Perhaps it was the jade eyes of the man that
made Roberts decide instantly he was one tough citizen.
The line-rider ordered a drink.
"Hardware, please," said the bartender curtly.
"Enforcin' that rule, are they?" asked Roberts casually as his eyes
swept over the other men.
"That's whatever. Y'betcha. We don't want no gay cowboys shootin' out
our lights. No reflections, y'understand."
The latest arrival handed over his revolver, and the man behind the bar
hung the scabbard on a nail. Half a dozen others were on a shelf beside
it. For the custom on the frontier was that each rider from the range
should deposit his weapons at the first saloon he entered. They were
returned to him when he called for them just before leaving town. This
tended to lessen the number of sudden deaths.
"Who you ridin' for, young fellow?" asked the sallow man of Roberts.
"For the A T O."
The dark young man turned and looked at the cowboy.
"So? How long have you been riding for Wadley?"
"Nine months."
"Don't think I've seen you before."
"I'm a line-rider--don't often get to the ranch-house."
"What ground do you cover?"
"From Dry Creek to the rim-rock, and south past Box Canon."
Three pair of eyes were focused watchfully on Roberts. The sallow man
squirted tobacco at a knot in the floor and rubbed his bristly chin with
the palm of a hand.
"Kinda lonesome out there, ain't it?" he ventured.
"That's as how you take it. The country _is_ filled with absentees,"
admitted Roberts.
"Reckoned it was. Never been up that way myself. A sort of a bad-lands
proposition, I've heard tell--country creased with arroyos, packed with
rocks an' rattlesnakes mostly."
The heavy-set man broke in harshly. "Anybody else run cattle there
except old man Wadley?"
"Settlers are comin' in on the other side of the rim-rock. Cattle drift
across. I can count half a dozen brands 'most any day."
"But you never see strangers."
"Don't I?"
"I'm askin', do you?" The voice of the older man was heavy and dominant.
It occurred to Roberts that he had heard that voice before.
"Oh!" Unholy imps of mirth lurked in the alert eyes of the line-rider.
"Once in a while I do--last Thursday, for instance."
The graceful, dark young man straightened as does a private called to
attention. "A trapper, maybe?" he said.
The cowboy brought his level gaze back from a barefoot negro washing the
floor. "Not this time. He was a rustler."
"How do you know?" The high voice of the questioner betrayed
excitement.
"I caught him brandin' a calf. He waved me round. I beat him to the Box
Canon and saw him ridin' through."
"You saw him ridin' through? Where were you?" The startled eyes of the
dark young man were fixed on him imperiously.
"From the bluff above."
"You don't say!" The voice of the heavy man cut in with jeering irony.
The gleam of his jade eyes came through narrow-slitted lids. "Well, did
you take him back to the ranch for a necktie party, or did you bury him
in the gulch?"
The dark young man interrupted irritably. "I'm askin' these questions,
Dinsmore. Now you, young fellow--what's your name?"
"Jack Roberts," answered the cowboy meekly.
"About this rustler--would you know him again?"
The line-rider smiled inscrutably. He did not intend to tell all that he
did not know. "He was ridin' a sorrel with a white splash on its nose,
white stockin's, an' a bad hoof, the rear one--"
"You're a damn' liar." The words, flung out from some inner compulsion,
as it were, served both as a confession and a challenge.
There was a moment of silence, tense and ominous. This was fighting
talk.
The lank man leaned forward and whispered some remonstrance in the ear
of the young fellow, but his suggestion was waved aside. "I'm runnin'
this, Gurley."
The rider for the A T O showed neither surprise nor anger. He made a
business announcement without stress or accent. "I expect it's you or me
one for a lickin'. Hop to it, Mr. Rustler!"
Roberts did not wait for an acceptance of his invitation. He knew that
the first two rules of battle are to strike first and to strike hard.
His brown fist moved forward as though it had been shot from a gun. The
other man crashed back against the wall and hung there dazed for a
moment. The knuckles of that lean fist had caught him on the chin.
"Give him hell, Ford. You can curry a li'l' shorthorn like this guy with
no trouble a-tall," urged Dinsmore.
The young man needed no urging. He gathered himself together and plunged
forward. Always he had prided himself on being an athlete. He was the
champion boxer of the small town where he had gone to school. Since he
had returned to the West, he had put on flesh and muscle. But he had
dissipated a good deal too, and no man not in the pink of condition had
any right to stand up to tough Jack Roberts.
While the fight lasted, there was rapid action. Roberts hit harder and
cleaner, but the other was the better boxer. He lunged and sidestepped
cleverly, showing good foot-work and a nice judgment of distance. For
several minutes he peppered the line-rider with neat hits. Jack bored in
for more. He drove a straight left home and closed one of his opponent's
eyes. He smashed through the defense of his foe with a power that would
not be denied.
"Keep a-comin', Ford. You shore have got him goin' south," encouraged
Gurley.
But the man he called Ford knew it was not true. His breath was coming
raggedly. His arms were heavy as though weighted with lead. The science
upon which he had prided himself was of no use against this man of
steel. Already his head was singing so that he saw hazily.
The finish came quickly. The cowboy saw his chance, feinted with his
left and sent a heavy body blow to the heart. The knees of the other
sagged. He sank down and did not try to rise again.
Presently his companions helped him to his feet. "He--he took me by
surprise," explained the beaten man with a faint attempt at bluster.
"I'll bet I did," assented Jack cheerfully. "An' I'm liable to surprise
you again if you call me a liar a second time."
"You've said about enough, my friend," snarled the man who had been
spoken to as Dinsmore. "You get away with this because the fight was on
the square, but don't push yore luck too far."
The three men passed out of the front door. Roberts turned to the
barkeeper.
"I reckon the heavy-set one is Pete Dinsmore. The cock-eyed guy must be
Steve Gurley. But who is the young fellow I had the mixup with?"
The man behind the bar gave information promptly. "He's Rutherford
Wadley--son of the man who signs yore pay-checks. Say, I heard Buck
Nelson needs a mule-skinner, in case you're lookin' for a job."
Jack felt a sudden sinking of the heart. He had as good as told the son
of his boss that he was a rustler, and on top of that he had given him a
first-class lacing. The air-castles he had been building came tumbling
down with a crash. He had already dreamed himself from a trail foreman
to the majordomo of the A T O ranch. Instead of which he was a
line-rider out of a job.
"Where can I find Nelson?" he asked with a grin that found no echo in
his heart. "Lead me to him."
CHAPTER IV
TEX GRANDSTANDS
Clint Wadley, massive and powerful, slouched back in his chair with one
leg thrown over an arm of it. He puffed at a corncob pipe, and through
the smoke watched narrowly with keen eyes from under heavy grizzled
brows a young man standing on the porch steps.
"So now you know what I expect, young fellow," he said brusquely. "Take
it or leave it; but if you take it, go through."
Arthur Ridley smiled. "Thanks, I'll take it."
The boy was not so much at ease as his manner suggested. He knew that
the owner of the A T O was an exacting master. The old cattleman was
game himself. Even now he would fight at the drop of the hat if
necessary. In the phrase which he had just used, he would "go through"
anything he undertook. Men who had bucked blizzards with him in the old
days admitted that Clint would do to take along. But Ridley's awe of him
was due less to his roughness and to the big place he filled in the life
of the Panhandle than to the fact that he was the father of his
daughter. It was essential to Arthur's plans that he stand well with the
old-timer.
Though he did not happen to know it, young Ridley was a favorite of the
cattle king. He had been wished on him by an old friend, but there was
something friendly and genial about the boy that won a place for him.
His smile was modest and disarming, and his frank face was better than
any letter of recommendation.
But though Wadley was prepared to like him, his mind held its
reservations. The boy had come from the East, and the standards of that
section are not those of the West. The East asks of a man good family,
pleasant manners, a decent reputation, and energy enough to carry a man
to success along conventional lines. In those days the frontier West
demanded first that a man be game, and second that he be one to tie to.
He might be good or bad, but whichever he was, he, must be efficient to
make any mark in the turbulent country of the border. Was there a hint
of slackness in the jaw of this good-looking boy? Wadley was not sure,
but he intended to find out.
"You'll start Saturday. I'll meet you at Tascosa two weeks from to-day.
Understand?" The cattleman knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. The
interview was at an end.
Young Ridley nodded. "I'll be there, sir--with the six thousand dollars
safe as if they were in a vault."
"H'm! I see you carry a six-shooter. Can you shoot?" Wadley flung at him
abruptly.
Arthur Ridley had always fancied himself as a shot. He had belonged to a
gun-club at home, and since coming to the Southwest he had practiced a
good deal with the revolver.
"Pretty well, sir."
"Would you--if it was up to you?"
The youngster looked into the steel-gray eyes roofed by the heavy thatch
of brow. "I think so. I never have had to yet. In the East--"
Wadley waved the East back to where it belonged. "Yes, I know. But we're
talkin' about Texas. Still, I reckon you ought not to have any trouble
on this trip. Don't let anybody know why you are at the fort. Don't
gamble or drink. Get the money from Major Ponsford and melt away
inconspicuous into the brush. Hit the trail hard. A day and a night
ought to bring you to Tascosa."
The cattleman was leading the way with long strides into an open space
back of the house. A pile of empty cans, symbol of the arid lands, lay
beside the path. He picked up one and put it on a post. Then he stepped
off fifteen paces.
"Ventilate it," he ordered.
The boy drew his revolver, took a long, steady aim, and fired. The
bullet whistled past across the prairie. His second shot scored a clean
hit. With pardonable pride he turned to the cattleman.
"Set up another can," commanded Wadley.
From the pile of empties the young man picked another and put it on the
post. Wadley, known in Texas as a two-gun man, flashed into sight a pair
of revolvers almost quicker than the eye could follow. Both shots came
instantly and together. The cattleman had fired from the hips. Before
the can had reached the ground the weapons barked again.
Ridley ran forward and picked up the can. It was torn and twisted with
jagged holes, but the evidence was written there that all four bullets
had pierced the tin. The Easterner could hardly believe his eyes. Such
shooting was almost beyond human skill.
The owner of the A T O thrust into place his two forty-fives.
"If you're goin' to wear six-shooters, learn to use 'em, son. If you
don't, some bad-man is liable to bump you off for practice."
As the two men stepped around the corner of the house a girl came down
the steps of the porch. She was dressed in summer white, but she herself
was spring. Slim and lissome, the dew of childhood was still on her
lips, and the mist of it in her eyes. But when she slanted her long
lashes toward Arthur Ridley, it was not the child that peeped shyly and
eagerly out from beneath them. Her heart was answering the world-old
call of youth to youth.
"I'm going downtown, Dad," she announced.
Ridley stepped forward and lifted his hat. "May I walk with you, Miss
Ramona?"
"Stop at the post-office and see if the buckboard driver is in with the
mail, 'Mona," her father said.
The boy and the girl made a couple to catch and hold the eye.
They went down the street together chattering gayly. One of the things
young Ridley knew how to do well was to make himself agreeable to girls.
He could talk nonsense charmingly and could hold his own in the jolly
give-and-take of repartee. His good looks were a help. So too was the
little touch of affectionate deference he used. He had the gift of being
bold without being too bold.
It was a beautiful morning and life sang in the blood of Ramona. It
seemed to her companion that the warm sun caressed the little curls at
her temples as she moved down the street light as a deer. Little jets of
laughter bubbled from her round, birdlike throat. In her freshly
starched white dress, with its broad waistband of red and purple ribbon,
the girl was sweet and lovely and full of mystery to Ridley.
A little man with a goatee, hawk-nosed and hawk-eyed, came down the
street with jingling spurs to meet them. At sight of Ramona his eyes
lighted. From his well-shaped gray head he swept in a bow a jaunty,
broad-brimmed white hat.
The young girl smiled, because there were still a million unspent smiles
in her warm and friendly heart.
"Good-morning, Captain Ellison," she called.
"Don't know you a-tall, ma'am." He shook his head with decision. "Never
met up with you before."
"Good gracious, Captain, and you've fed me candy ever since I was a
sticky little kid."
He burlesqued a business of recognizing her with much astonishment. "You
ain't little 'Mona Wadley. No! Why, you are a young lady all dressed up
in go-to-meet-him clothes. I reckon my little side-partner has gone
forever."
"No, she hasn't, Uncle Jim," the girl cried. "And I want you to know I
still like candy."
He laughed with delight and slapped his thigh with his broad-brimmed
ranger hat. "By dog, you get it, 'Mona, sure as I'm a foot high."
Chuckling, he passed down the street.
"Captain Jim Ellison of the Rangers," explained Ramona to her companion.
"He isn't really my uncle, but I've known him always. He's a good old
thing and we're great friends."
Her soft, smiling eyes met those of Arthur. He thought that it was no
merit in Ellison to be fond of her. How could he help it?
"He's in luck," was all the boy said.
A little flag of color fluttered in her cheek. She liked his
compliments, but they embarrassed her a little.
"Did you fix it all up with Dad?" she asked, by way of changing the
subject.
"Yes. I'm to go to Fort Winston to get the money for the beeves, and if
I fall down on the job I'll never get another from him."
"I believe you're afraid of Dad," she teased.
"Don't you believe it--know it. I sure enough am," he admitted promptly.
"Why? I can twist him round my little finger," she boasted.
"Yes, but I'm not his only daughter and the prettiest thing in West
Texas."
She laughed shyly. "Are you sure you're taking in enough territory?"
"I'll say south of Mason and Dixon's line, if you like."
"Really, he likes you. I can tell when Dad is for any one."
A sound had for some minutes been disturbing the calm peace of the
morning. It was the bawling of thirsty cattle. The young people turned a
corner into the main street of the town. Down it was moving toward them
a cloud of yellow dust stirred up by a bunch of Texas longhorns. The
call of the cattle for drink was insistent. Above it rose an occasional
sharp "Yip yip!" of a cowboy.
Ramona stopped, aghast. The cattle blocked the road, their moving backs
like the waves of a sea. The dust would irreparably soil the clean
frock fresh from the hands of her black mammy. She made as if to turn,
and knew with a flash of horror that it was too late.
Perhaps it was the gleam of scarlet in her sash that caught the eye of
the bull leading the van. It gave a bellow of rage, lowered its head,
and dashed at her.
Ramona gave a horror-stricken little cry of fear and stood motionless.
She could not run. The fascination of terror held her paralyzed. Her
heart died away in her while the great brute thundered toward her.
Out of the dust-cloud came a horse and rider in the wake of the bull.
Frozen in her tracks, Ramona saw with dilated eyes all that followed.
The galloping horse gained, was at the heels of the maddened animal,
drew up side by side. It seemed to the girl that in another moment she
must be trampled underfoot. Nothing but a miracle from God's blue could
save her.
For what registered as time without end to the girl's fear-numbed brain,
horse and bull raced knee to knee. Then the miracle came. The rider
leaned far out from the saddle, loosened his feet from the stirrups, and
launched himself at the crazed half-ton of charging fury.
His hands gripped the horns of the bull. He was dragged from the saddle
into the dust, but his weight deflected the course of the animal. With
every ounce of strength given by his rough life in the open the cowboy
hung on, dragging the head of the bull down with him toward the ground.
Man and beast came to a slithering halt together in a great cloud of
dust not ten feet from Ramona.
Even now terror held her a prisoner. The brute would free itself and
stamp the man to death. A haze gathered before her eyes. She swayed,
then steadied herself. Man and bull were fighting desperately, one with
sheer strength, the other with strength plus brains and skill. The
object of the animal was to free itself. The bull tossed wildly in
frantic rage to shake off this incubus that had fastened itself to its
horns. The man hung on for life. All his power and weight were centered
in an effort to twist the head of the bull sideways and back. Slowly,
inch by inch, by the steady, insistent pressure of muscles as well
packed as any in Texas, the man began to gain. The bull no longer tossed
and flung him at will. The big roan head went down, turned backward,
yielded to the pressure on the neck-muscles that never relaxed.
The man put at the decisive moment his last ounce of strength into one
last twist. The bull collapsed, went down heavily to its side.
A second cowboy rode up, roped the bull, and deftly hogtied it.
The bulldogger rose and limped forward to the girl leaning whitely
against a wall.
"Sorry, Miss Wadley. I hadn't ought to have brought the herd through
town. We was drivin' to water."
"Are you hurt?" Ramona heard her dry, faint voice ask.
"Me!" he said in surprise. "Why, no, ma'am."
He was a tall, lean youth, sunburned and tough, with a face that looked
sardonic. Ramona recognized him now as her father's new foreman, the man
she had been introduced to a few days before. Hard on that memory came
another. It was this same Jack Roberts who had taken her brother by
surprise and beaten him so cruelly only yesterday.
"It threw you around so," she murmured.
"Sho! I reckon I can curry a li'l ol' longhorn when I have it to do,
ma'am," he answered, a bit embarrassed.
"Are--are you hurt?" another voice quavered.
With a pang of pain Ramona remembered Arthur Ridley. Where had he been
when she so desperately needed help?
"No. Mr. Roberts saved me." She did not look at Ridley. A queer feeling
of shame for him made her keep her eyes averted.
"I--went to get help for you," the boy explained feebly.
"Thank you," she said.
The girl was miserably unhappy. For the boy to whom she had given the
largesse of her friendship had fled in panic; the one she hated for
bullying and mistreating her brother had flung himself in the path of
the furious bull to save her.
Captain Ellison came running up. He bristled at the trail foreman like a
bantam. "What do you mean by drivin' these wild critters through town?
Ain't you got a lick o' sense a-tall? If anything had happened to this
little girl--"
The Ranger left his threat suspended in midair. His arms were round
Ramona, who was sobbing into his coat.
The red-headed foreman shifted his weight from one foot to another. He
was acutely uncomfortable at having made this young woman weep. "I ain't
got a word to say, Captain. It was plumb thoughtless of me," he
apologized.
"You come to my office this mo'nin' at twelve o'clock, young fellow.
Hear me? I've got a word to say to you."
"Yes," agreed the bulldogger humbly. "I didn't go for to scare the young
lady. Will you tell her I'm right sorry, Captain?"
"You eat yore own humble pie. You've got a tongue, I reckon," snorted
Ellison, dragging at his goatee fiercely.
The complexion of Roberts matched his hair. "I--I--I'm turrible sorry,
miss. I'd ought to be rode on a rail."
With which the range-rider turned, swung to the saddle of his pony
without touching the stirrups, and fairly bolted down the street after
his retreating herd.
CHAPTER V
CAPTAIN ELLISON HIRES A HAND
Captain Ellison was preparing for the Adjutant-General a report of a
little affair during which one of his men had been obliged to snuff out
the lives of a couple of Mexican horsethieves and seriously damage a
third. Writing was laborious work for the Captain of Rangers, though he
told no varnished tale. His head and shoulders were hunched over the
table and his fingertips were cramped close to the point of the pen.
Each letter as it was set down had its whispered echo from his pursed
lips.
"Doggone these here reports," he commented in exasperation. "Looks like
a man hadn't ought to make out one every time he bumps off a rustler."
He tugged at his goatee and read again what he had just written:
Then this Jose Barela and his gang of skoundrels struck out for the
Brazos with the stolen stock. Ranger Cullom trailed them to Goose
Creek and recovered the cattle. While resisting arrest Barela and
another Mexican were killed and a third wounded. Cullom brought
back the wounded man and the rustled stock.
A short noontime shadow darkened the sunny doorway of the adobe office.
Ellison looked up quickly, his hand falling naturally to the handle of
his forty-five. Among the Rangers the price of life was vigilance. A
tall, lean, young man with a sardonic eye and a sunburned face jingled
up the steps.
"Come in," snapped the Captain. "Sit down. With you in a minute."
The cowboy lounged in, very much at his ease. Roberts had been
embarrassed before Ramona Wadley that morning, but he was not in the
least self-conscious now. In the course of a short and turbid life he
had looked too many tough characters in the eye to let any mere man
disturb his poise.
"Do you spell _scoundrel_ with a _k_?" the Ranger chief fired abruptly
at him.
"Nary a _k_, Captain. I spell it _b-a-d m-a-n_."
"H'mp!" snorted the little man. "Ain't you got no education? A man's got
to use a syllogism oncet in a while, I reckon."
"Mebbeso. What kind of a gun is it?" drawled Jack Roberts.
"A syllogism is a word meanin' the same as another word, like as if I
was to say _caballo_ for _horse_ or _six-shooter_ for _revolver_."
"I see--or _tough guy_ for _Texas ranger_."
"Or _durn fool_ for _Jack Roberts_," countered Ellison promptly.
"Now you're shoutin', Cap. Stomp on me proper. I certainly need to be
curried."
Again the Ranger snorted. "H'mp! Been scarin' any more young ladies to
death?"
"No more this mo'nin', Captain," answered Jack equably.
"Nor grandstandin' with any more _ladino_ steers?"
"I exhibit only once a day."
"By dog, you give a sure-enough good show," exploded Ellison. "You got
yore nerve, boy. Wait around till the prettiest girl in Texas can see
you pull off the big play--run the risk of havin' her trampled to death,
just so's you can grin an' say, 'Pleased to meet you, ma'am.' When I
call you durn fool, I realize it's too weak a name."
"Hop to it, Captain. Use up some real language on me. Spill out a lot of
those syllogisms you got bottled up inside you. I got it comin',"
admitted Roberts genially as he rolled a cigarette.
The Captain had been a mule-skinner once, and for five glorious minutes
he did himself proud while the graceless young cowpuncher beamed on
him.
"You sure go some, Cap," applauded the young fellow. "I'd admire to have
your flow of talk."
Ellison subsided into anticlimax. "Well, don't you ever drive yore wild
hill-critters through town again. Hear me, young fellow?"
"You'll have to speak to Wadley about that. I'm not his trail boss any
longer."
"Since when?"
"Since five o'clock yesterday evenin'. I was turnin' over the herd this
mo'nin' when the little lady showed up an' I had to pull off the
bulldoggin'."
"Wadley fire you?"
"That's whatever."
"Why?"
"Didn't like the way I mussed up son Rutherford, I kind o' gathered."
"Another of yore fool plays. First you beat up Wadley's boy; then you
'most massacree his daughter. Anything more?"
"That's all up to date--except that the old man hinted I was a
brand-burner."
"The deuce he did!"
"I judge that son Rutherford had told him I was one of the Dinsmore
gang. Seems I'm all right except for bein' a rowdy an' a bully an' a
thief an' a bad egg generally."
"H'mp! Said you was a rustler, did he?" The Ranger caressed his goatee
and reflected on this before he pumped a question at the line-rider.
"Are you?"
"No more than Rutherford Wadley."
The Captain shot a swift slant look at this imperturbable young man. Was
there a hidden meaning in that answer?
"What's the matter with Wadley? Does he expect you to let Ford run it
over you? That ain't like Clint."
"He's likely listened to a pack o' lies."
"And you haven't heard from him since?"
"Yes, I have. He sent me my check an' a hundred-dollar bill."
Ellison sat up. "What for?"
"For my fancy bulldoggin'." The hard eyes of the young fellow smouldered
with resentment.
"By dog, did Clint send you money for savin' 'Mona?"
"He didn't say what it was for--so I rolled up the bill an' lit a
cigarette with it."
"You take expensive smokes, young man," chuckled the officer.
"It was on Wadley. I burned only half the bill. He can cash in the other
half, for I sent it back to him. When he got it, he sent for me."
"And you went?"
"You know damn well I didn't. When he wants me, he knows where to find
me."
"Most young hill-billies step when Clint tells 'em to."
"Do they?" asked the range-rider indifferently.
"You bet you. They jump when he whistles. What are you figurin' to do?"
"Haven't made up my mind yet. Mebbe I'll drift along the trail to the
Pecos country."
"What was Clint payin' you?"
"Sixty a month an' found."
"How'd you like to have yore wages lowered?"
"Meanin'--"
"That I'll give you a job."
Young Roberts had a capacity for silence. He asked no questions now, but
waited for Ellison to develop the situation.
"With the Rangers. Dollar a day an' furnish yore own bronc," explained
the Captain.
"The State of Texas is liberal," said the cowboy with dry sarcasm.
"That's as you look at it. If you're a money-grubber, don't join us. But
if you'd like to be one of the finest fightin' force in the world with
somethin' doin' every minute, then you'd better sign up. I'll promise
that you die young an' not in yore bed."
"Sounds right attractive," jeered the red-haired youngster with amiable
irony.
"It is, for men with red blood in 'em," retorted the gray-haired
fire-eater hotly.
"All right. I'll take your word for it, Captain. You've hired a hand."
CHAPTER VI
CLINT WADLEY'S MESSENGER
Outside the door of the commandant's office Arthur Ridley stood for a
moment and glanced nervously up and down the dirt road. In a hog-leather
belt around his waist was six thousand dollars just turned over to him
by Major Ponsford as the last payment for beef steers delivered at the
fort according to contract some weeks earlier.
Arthur had decided not to start on the return journey until next
morning, but he was not sure his judgment had been good. It was still
early afternoon. Before nightfall he might be thirty miles on his way.
The trouble with that was that he would then have to spend two nights
out, and the long hours of darkness with their flickering shadows cast
by the camp-fires would be full of torture for him. On the other hand,
if he should stay till morning, word might leak out from the officers'
quarters that he was carrying a large sum of money.
A drunken man came weaving down the street. He stopped opposite Ridley
and balanced himself with the careful dignity of the inebriate. But the
gray eyes, hard as those of a gunman, showed no trace of intoxication.
Nor did the steady voice.
"Friend, are you Clint Wadley's messenger?"
The startled face of Ridley flew a flag of confession. "Why--what do you
mean?" he stammered. Nobody was to have known that he had come to get
the money for the owner of the A T O.
"None of my business, you mean," flung back the man curtly. "Good
enough! It ain't. What's more, I don't give a damn. But listen: I was at
the Buffalo Hump when two fellows came in. Me, I was most asleep, and
they sat in the booth next to me. I didn't hear all they said, but I got
this--that they're aimin' to hold up some messenger of Clint Wadley
after he leaves town to-morrow. You're the man, I reckon. All right. Look
out for yourself. That's all."
"But--what shall I do?" asked Ridley.
"Do? I don't care. I'm tellin' you--see? Do as you please."
"What would _you_ do?" The danger and the responsibility that had fallen
upon him out of a sky of sunshine paralyzed the young man's initiative.
The deep-set, flinty eyes narrowed to slits. "What I'd do ain't
necessarily what you'd better do. What are you, stranger--high-grade
stuff, or the run o' the pen?"
"I'm no gun-fighter, if that's what you mean."
"Then I'd make my get-away like a jackrabbit hell-poppin' for its hole.
I got one slant at these fellows in the Buffalo Hump. They're bully-puss
kind o' men, if you know what I mean."
"I don't. I'm from the East."
"They'll run it over you, bluff you off the map, take any advantage they
can."
"Will they fight?"
"They'll burn powder quick if they get the drop on you."
"What are they like?"
The Texan considered. "One is a tall, red-headed guy; the other's a
sawed-off, hammered-down little runt--but gunmen, both of 'em, or I'm a
liar."
"They would probably follow me," said the messenger, worried.
"You better believe they will, soon as they hear you've gone."
Arthur kicked a little hole in the ground with the toe of his shoe. What
had he better do? He could stay at the fort, of course, and appeal to
Major Ponsford for help. But if he did, he would probably be late for
his appointment with Wadley. It happened that the cattleman and the army
officer had had a sharp difference of opinion about the merits of the
herd that had been delivered, and it was not at all likely that Ponsford
would give him a military guard to Tascosa. Moreover, he had a feeling
that the owner of the A T O would resent any call to the soldiers for
assistance. Clint Wadley usually played his own hand, and he expected
the same of his men.
But the habit of young Ridley's life had not made for fitness to cope
with a frontier emergency. Nor was he of stiff enough clay to fight free
of his difficulty without help.
"What about you?" he asked the other man. "Can I hire you to ride with
me to Tascosa?"
"As a tenderfoot-wrangler?" sneered the Texan.
Arthur flushed. "I've never been there. I don't know the way."
"You follow a gun-barrel road from the fort. But I'll ride with you--if
the pay is right."
"What do you say to twenty dollars for the trip?"
"You've hired me."
"And if we're attacked?"
"I pack a six-shooter."
The troubled young man looked into the hard, reckless face of this
stranger who had gone out of his way to warn him of the impending
attack. No certificate was necessary to tell him that this man would
fight.
"I don't know your name," said Ridley, still hesitating.
"Any more than I know yours," returned the other. "Call me Bill Moore,
an' I'll be on hand to eat my share of the chuck."
"We'd better leave at once, don't you think?"
"You're the doc. Meet you here in an hour ready for the trail."
The man who called himself Bill Moore went his uncertain way down the
street. To the casual eye he was far gone in drink. Young Ridley went
straight to the corral where he had put up his horse. He watered and fed
the animal, and after an endless half-hour saddled the bronco.
Moore joined him in front of the officers' quarters, and together they
rode out of the post. As the Texan had said, the road to Tascosa ran
straight as a gun-barrel. At first they rode in silence, swiftly,
leaving behind them mile after mile of dusty trail. It was a brown,
level country thickly dotted with yucca. Once Moore shot a wild turkey
running in the grass. Prairie-chicken were abundant, and a flight of
pigeons numbering thousands passed at one time over their heads and
obscured the sky.
"Goin' down to the _encinal_ to roost," explained Moore.
"A man could come pretty near living off his rifle in this country,"
Arthur remarked.
"Outside o' flour an' salt, I've done it many a time. I rode through the
Pecos Valley to Fort Sumner an' on to Denver oncet an' lived off the
land. Time an' again I've done it from the Brazos to the Canadian. If
he gets tired of game, a man can jerk the hind quarters of a beef.
Gimme a young turkey fed on sweet mast an' cooked on a hackberry bush
fire, an' I'll never ask for better chuck," the Texan promised.
In spite of Ridley's manifest desire to push on far into the night,
Moore made an early camp.
"No use gauntin' our broncs when we've got all the time there is before
us. A horse is a man's friend. He don't want to waste it into a
sorry-lookin' shadow. Besides, we're better off here than at Painted
Rock. It's nothin' but a whistlin'-post in the desert."
"Yes, but I'd like to get as far from the fort as we can. I--I'm in a
hurry to reach Tascosa," the younger man urged.
Moore opened a row of worn and stained teeth to smile. "Don't worry,
young fellow. I'm with you now."
After they had made camp and eaten, the two men sat beside the
flickering fire, and Moore told stories of the wild and turbulent life
he had known around Dodge City and in the Lincoln County War that was
still waging in New Mexico. He had freighted to the Panhandle from El
Moro, Colorado, from Wichita Falls, and even from Dodge. The consummate
confidence of the man soothed the unease of the young fellow with the
hogskin belt. This plainsman knew all that the Southwest had to offer of
danger and was equal to any of it.
Presently Arthur Ridley grew drowsy. The last that he remembered before
he fell asleep was seeing Moore light his pipe again with a live coal
from the fire. The Texan was to keep the first watch.
It was well along toward morning when the snapping of a bush awakened
Ridley. He sat upright and reached quickly for the revolver by his side.
"Don't you," called a voice sharply from the brush.
Two men, masked with slitted handkerchiefs, broke through the shin-oak
just as Arthur whipped up his gun. The hammer fell once--twice, but no
explosion followed. With two forty-fives covering him, Ridley, white to
the lips, dropped his harmless weapon.
Moore came to life with sleepy eyes, but he was taken at a disadvantage,
and with a smothered oath handed over his revolver.
"Wha-what do you want?" asked Ridley, his teeth chattering.
The shorter of the two outlaws, a stocky man with deep chest and
extraordinarily broad shoulders, growled an answer.
"We want that money of Clint Wadley's you're packin'."
The camp-fire had died to ashes, and the early-morning air was chill.
Arthur felt himself trembling so that his hands shook. A prickling of
the skin went goose-quilling down his back. In the dim light those
masked figures behind the businesslike guns were sinister with the
threat of mystery and menace.
"I--haven't any money," he quavered.
"You'd better have it, young fellow, me lad!" jeered the tall bandit.
"We're here strictly for business. Dig up."
"I don't reckon he's carryin' any money for Clint," Moore argued mildly.
"Don't look reasonable that an old-timer like Clint, who knocked the
bark off'n this country when I was still a kid, would send a tenderfoot
to pack gold 'cross country for him."
The tall man swung his revolver on Moore. "'Nuff from you," he ordered
grimly.
The heavy-set outlaw did not say a word. He moved forward and pressed
the cold rim of his forty-five against the forehead of the messenger.
The fluttering heart of the young man beat hard against his ribs. His
voice stuck in his throat, but he managed to gasp a surrender.
"It's in my belt. For God's sake, don't shoot."
"Gimme yore belt."
The boy unbuckled the ribbon of hogskin beneath his shirt and passed it
to the man behind the gun. The outlaw noticed that his fingers were cold
and clammy.
"Stand back to back," commanded the heavy man.
Deftly he swung a rope over the heads of his captives, jerked it tight,
wound it about their bodies, knotted it here and there, and finished
with a triple knot where their heels came together.
"That'll hold 'em hitched a few minutes," the lank man approved after he
had tested the rope.
"I'd like to get a lick at you fellows. I will, too, some day,"
mentioned Moore casually.
"When you meet up with us we'll be there," retorted the heavy-weight.
"Let's go, Steve."
The long man nodded. "_Adios_, boys."
"See you later, and when I meet up with you, it'll be me 'n' you to a
finish," the Texan called.
The thud of the retreating, hoofs grew faint and died. Already Moore was
busy with the rope that tied them together.
"What's the matter, kid? You shakin' for the drinks? Didn't you see from
the first we weren't in any danger? If they'd wanted to harm us, they
could have shot us from the brush. How much was in that belt?"
"Six thousand dollars," the boy groaned.
"Well, it doesn't cost you a cent. Cheer up, son."
By this time Moore had both his arms free and was loosening one of the
knots.
"I was in charge of it. I'll never dare face Mr. Wadley."
"Sho! It was his own fault. How in Mexico come he to send a boy to
market for such a big stake?"
"Nobody was to have known what I came for. I don't see how it got out."
"Must 'a' been a leak somewhere. Don't you care. Play the hand that's
dealt you and let the boss worry. Take it from me, you're lucky not to
be even powder-burnt when a shot from the chaparral might have done yore
business."
"If you only hadn't fallen asleep!"
"Reckon I dozed off. I was up 'most all last night." Moore untied the
last knot and stepped out from the loop. "I'm goin' to saddle the
broncs. You ride in to Tascosa and tell Wadley. I'll take up the trail
an' follow it while it's warm. We'll see if a pair of shorthorns can run
a sandy like that on me." He fell suddenly into the violent, pungent
speech of the mule-skinner.
"I'll go with you," announced Ridley. He had no desire to face Clint
Wadley with such a lame tale.
The cold eyes of the Texan drilled into his. "No, you won't. You'll go
to town an' tell the old man what's happened. Tell him to send his posse
across the _malpais_ toward the rim-rock. I'll meet him at Two Buck
Crossin' with any news I've got."
A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of his horse flung back faint
echoes from the distance. The boy collapsed. His head sank into his
hands and his misery found vent in sobs.
CHAPTER VII
THE DANCE
Long since the sun had slid behind the horizon edge and given place to a
desert night of shimmering moonlight and far stars. From the enchanted
mesa Rutherford Wadley descended to a valley draw in which were huddled
a score of Mexican _jacals_, huts built of stakes stuck in a trench,
roofed with sod and floored with mud. Beyond these was a more
pretentious house. Originally it had been a log "hogan," but a large
adobe addition had been constructed for a store. Inside this the dance
was being held.
Light filtered through the chinks in the mud. From door and windows came
the sounds of scraping fiddles and stamping feet. The singsong voice of
the caller and the occasional whoop of a cowboy punctuated the medley of
noises.
A man whose girth would have put Falstaff to shame greeted Rutherford
wheezily. "Fall off and 'light, Ford. She's in full swing and the
bridle's off."
The man was Jumbo Wilkins, line-rider for the A T O.
Young Wadley swung to the ground. He did not trouble to answer his
father's employee. It was in little ways like this that he endeared
himself to those at hand, and it was just this spirit that the
democratic West would not tolerate. While the rider was tying his horse
to the hitch-rack, Jumbo Wilkins, who was a friendly soul, made another
try at conversation.
"Glad you got an invite. Old man Cobb hadn't room for everybody, so he
didn't make his bid wide open."
The young man jingled up the steps. "That so? Well, I didn't get an
invite, as you call it. But I'm here." He contrived to say it so
offensively that Jumbo flushed with anger.
Wadley sauntered into the room and stood for a moment by the door. His
trim, graceful figure and dark good looks made him at once a focus of
eyes. Nonchalantly he sunned himself in the limelight, with that little
touch of swagger that captures the imagination of girls. No man in the
cow-country dressed like Rutherford Wadley. In the kingdom of the blind
the one-eyed are kings, and to these frontier women this young fellow
was a glass of fashion. There was about him, too, a certain dash, a
spice of the devil more desirable in a breaker of hearts than any mere
beauty.
His bold, possessive eyes ranged over the room to claim what they might
desire. He had come to the dance at Tomichi Creek to make love to Tony
Alviro's betrothed sweetheart Bonita.
She was in the far corner with her little court about her. If Bonita
was a flirt, it must be admitted she was a charming one. No girl within
a day's ride was so courted as she. Compact of fire and passion,
brimming with life and health, she drew men to her as the flame the
moth.
Presently the music started. Bonita, in the arms of Tony, floated past
Rutherford, a miracle of supple lightness. A flash of soft eyes darted
at the heir of the A T O ranch. In them was a smile adorable and
provocative.
As soon as the dance was over, Wadley made his way indolently toward
her. He claimed the next waltz.
She had promised it to Tony, the girl said--and the next.
"Tony can't close-herd you," laughed Rutherford. "His title ain't clear
yet--won't be till the priest has said so. You'll dance the second one
with me, Bonita."
"We shall see, _senor_," she mocked.
But the Mexican blood in the girl beat fast. In her soft, liquid eyes
lurked the hunger for sex adventure. And this man was a prince of the
blood--the son of Clint Wadley, the biggest cattleman in West Texas.
There were challenging stars of deviltry in Bonita's eyes when they met
those of Rutherford over the shoulder of Alviro while she danced, but
the color was beating warm through her dark skin. The lift of her round,
brown throat to an indifferent tilt of the chin was mere pretense. The
languorous passion of the South was her inheritance, and excitement
mounted in her while she kept time to the melodious dance.
Alviro was master of ceremonies, and Wadley found his chance while the
young Mexican was of necessity away from Bonita. Rutherford bowed to her
with elaborate mockery.
"Come. Let us walk in the moonlight, sweetheart," he said.
Bonita turned to him with slow grace. The eyes of the man and the woman
met and fought. In hers there was a kind of savage fierceness, in his an
insolent confidence.
"No," she answered.
"Ah! You're afraid of me--afraid to trust yourself with me," he boasted.
She was an untutored child of the desert, and his words were a spur to
her quick pride. She rose at once, her bosom rising and falling fast.
She would never confess that--never.
The girl walked beside him with the fluent grace of youth, beautiful as
a forest fawn. In ten years she would be fat and slovenly like her
Mexican mother, but now she carried her slender body as a queen is
supposed to but does not. Her heel sank into a little patch of mud where
some one had watered a horse. Under the cottonwoods she pulled up her
skirt a trifle and made a _moue_ of disgust at the soiled slipper.
"See what you've done!" Small, even teeth, gleamed in a coquettish smile
from the ripe lips of the little mouth. He understood that he was being
invited to kneel and clean the mud-stained shoe.
"If you're looking for a doormat to wipe your feet on, I'll send for
Tony," he jeered.
The father of Bonita was Anglo-Saxon. She flashed anger at his
presumption.
"Don't you think it. Tony will never be a doormat to anybody. Be warned,
_senor_, and do not try to take what is his."
Again their eyes battled. Neither of them saw a man who had come out
from the house and was watching them from the end of the porch.
"I take what the gods give, my dear, and ask leave of no man," bragged
Wadley.
"Or woman?"
"Ah! That is different. When the woman is Bonita, _muchacha_, I am her
slave."
He dropped to one knee and with his handkerchief wiped the mud from the
heel of her slipper. For a moment his fingers touched lightly the trim
little ankle; then he rose quickly and caught her in his arms.
"Sometime--soon--it's going to be me and you, sweetheart," he whispered.
"Don't," she begged, struggling against herself and him. "If Tony
sees--"
His passion was too keen-edged to take warning. He kissed her lips and
throat and eyes. The eyes of the watcher never wavered. They were
narrowed to shining slits of jet.
"Why do you come and--and follow me?" the girl cried softly. "It is not
that you do not know Tony is jealous. This is not play with him. He
loves me and will fight for me. You are mad."
"For love of you!" he laughed triumphantly.
She knew he lied. The instinct that served her for a conscience had long
since told her as much. But her vanity, and perhaps something deeper,
craved satisfaction. She wanted to believe he meant it. Under his ardent
gaze the long lashes of the girl drooped to her dusky cheeks. It was
Tony she loved, but Tony offered her only happiness and not excitement.
A moment later she gave a startled little cry and pushed herself free.
Her dilated eyes were fixed on something behind the cattleman.
Rutherford, warned by her expression, whirled on his heel.
Tony Alviro, knife in hand, was close upon him. Wadley lashed out hard
with his left and caught the Mexican on the point of the chin.
The blow lifted Tony from his feet and flung him at full length to the
ground. He tried to rise, groaned--rolled over.
Bonita was beside him in an instant. From where she knelt, with Tony's
dark head in her arms pressed close to her bosom, she turned fiercely
on Wadley.
"I hate you, dog of a _gringo_! You are all one big lie through and
through--what they call bad egg--no good!"
Already half a dozen men were charging from the house. Jumbo pinned
Wadley's arms by the elbows to prevent him from drawing a revolver.
"What's the rumpus?" he demanded.
"The fellow tried to knife me in the back," explained Rutherford.
"Jealous, because I took his girl."
"So?" grunted Wilkins. "Well, you'd better light a shuck out o' here.
You came on yore own invite. You can go on mine."
"Why should I go? I'll see you at Tombstone first."
"Why?" Jumbo's voice was no longer amiable and ingratiating. "Because
you gave Tony a raw deal, an' he's got friends here. Have _you_?"
Wadley looked round and saw here and there Mexican faces filled with
sullen resentment. It came to him swiftly that this was no place for his
father's son to linger.
"I don't push my society on any one," he said haughtily. "If I ain't
welcome, I'll go. But I serve notice right here that any one who tries
to pull a knife on me will get cold lead next time."
Jumbo, with his arm tucked under that of Wadley, led the way to the
house. He untied the rein of Rutherford's horse and handed it to the
son of his boss.
"_Vamos!_" he said.
The young man pulled himself to the saddle. "You're a hell of a friend,"
he snarled.
"Who said anything about bein' a friend? I'm particular about when I use
that word," replied Wilkins evenly, with hard eyes.
Wadley's quirt burned the flank of the cow-pony and it leaped for the
road.
When five minutes later some one inquired for Tony he too had
disappeared.
CHAPTER VIII
RUTHERFORD MAKES A MISTAKE
Rutherford Wadley struck across country toward the rim-rock. Anger
burned high in him, and like the bully he was he took it out of his good
horse by roweling its sides savagely. He plunged into the curly
mesquite, driving forward straight as an arrow. Behind him in the
darkness followed a shadow, sinister and silent, out of sight, but
within sound of the horse's footfall. It stopped when Wadley stopped;
when he moved, it moved.
Midnight found young Wadley still moving straight forward, the moon on
his left. Painted Rock was ten miles to the west. Except for the stage
station there, and the settlement he had left, there was no other
habitation for fifty miles. It was a wilderness of silence.
Yet in that waste of empty space Rutherford "jumped up" a camper. The
man was a trader, carrying honey and pecans to Fort Worth. He was
awakened by the sound of a raucous curse, he testified later, and in the
bright moonlight saw the young cattleman beating his horse. Evidently
the young animal had been startled at sight of his white-topped wagon.
An angry sentence or two passed between the men before the cattleman
moved over the hill-brow. As the trader rolled up again in his _sugun_,
there came to him faintly the sound of another horse. He was not able to
explain later why this struck him as ominous, beyond the strangeness of
the fact that two men, not in each other's company, should be traveling
so close together in the desert. At any rate, he rose, crept forward to
a clump of Spanish bayonet, and from behind it saw a young Mexican pass
along the swale. He was close enough almost to have touched him, and in
the rich moonlight saw the boyish face clearly.
By the time Wadley reached the rough country of the cap-rock, the young
day was beginning to awaken. A quail piped its morning greeting from the
brush. A gleam of blue in the dun sky flashed warning of a sun soon to
rise. He had struck the rim-rock a little too far to the right, and
deflected from his course to find the pocket he was seeking. For half a
mile he traveled parallel to the ridge, then turned into a break in the
wall. At the summit of a little rise he gave a whistle.
Presently, from above a big boulder, a head appeared cautiously.
"Hello, out there! Who is it?"
"Ford."
The rider swung to the ground stiffly and led his horse forward down a
sharply descending path to a little draw. A lank, sallow man with a
rifle joined him. With his back to a flat rock, a heavy-set,
broad-shouldered fellow was lounging.
"'Lo, Ford. Didn't expect you to-night," he grumbled.
"Drifted over from the dance at Tomichi Creek. Beat up a young Mexican
and had to get out."
"You're such a sullen brute! Why can't you let folks alone?" Pete
Dinsmore wanted to know.
He was annoyed. Rutherford Wadley was not a partner in the business on
hand to-night, and he would rather the man had been a hundred miles
away.
"He got jealous and tried to knife me," explained the heir of the A T O
sulkily.
"You durn fool! Won't you ever learn sense? Who was it this time?"
"Tony Alviro. His girl's crazy about me."
The keen, hard eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the
handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go
its own way, but he wasted a word of advice.
"I don't guess you want any pearls o' wisdom from me, but I'll onload
some gratis. You let Bonita Menendez alone or Tony will camp on yore
trail till he gits you."
"Sure will," agreed Gurley, setting down his rifle. "Them Mexicans hang
together, too. We need their friendship in our business. Better lay off
them."
"I don't remember askin' your advice, Gurley."
"Well, I'm givin' it. See?"
Another sharp whistle cut the air. Gurley picked up the rifle again and
climbed the lookout rock. Presently he returned with a dismounted
horseman. The man was the one who had introduced himself to Arthur
Ripley a few hours earlier as Bill Moore.
"Howdy, boys. Got the stuff all safe?" he asked cheerfully.
From behind Wadley Pete Dinsmore was making a series of facial
contortions. Unfortunately the new arrival did not happen to be looking
at him, and so missed the warning.
"Never saw anything work prettier," Moore said with a grin as he put
down his saddle on a boulder. "Ridley hadn't ought to be let out without
a nurse. He swallowed my whole yarn--gobbled down bait, sinker an' line.
Where's the gold, Pete?"
"In a sack back of the big rock." Pete was disgusted with his brother
Homer, _alias_ Bill Moore. They would probably have to divide with young
Wadley now, to keep his mouth shut.
Rutherford jumped at the truth. His father had told him that he was
going to give Art Ridley a try-out by sending him to the fort for a
payment of gold. Probably he, Rutherford, had mentioned this to one of
the gang when he was drunk. They had held up the messenger, intending to
freeze him out of any share of the profits. All right--he would show
them whether he was a two-spot.
"Bring out the sack. Let's have a look at it," he ordered.
Gurley handed the sack to Pete Dinsmore, and the men squatted in a
circle tailor-fashion.
"Smooth work, I call it," said Homer Dinsmore. He explained to Wadley
why he was of this opinion. "Steve heard tell of a wagon-train goin' to
Tascosa to-day. If Ridley slept overnight at the fort he would hear of
it an' stay with the freight outfit till he had delivered the gold to
yore dad. We had to get him started right away. So I pulled on him a
story about hearin' the boys intended to hold him up. He hired me as a
guard to help him stand off the bad men. Whilst I was keepin' watch I
fixed up his six-shooter so's it wouldn't do any damage if it went off.
Best blamed piece of work I ever did pull off. I'd ought to get a half
of what we took off'n him instead of a third."
"A third! Who says you get a third?" asked Wadley.
"Three of us did this job, didn't we?" cut in Gurley.
"Sure. You took what belongs to me--or at least to my dad," protested
young Wadley. "Tried to slip one over on me. Guess again, boys. I won't
stand for it."
The jade eyes of the older brother narrowed. "Meanin' just what, Ford?"
"What do you take me for, Pete? Think I'm goin' to let you rob me of my
own money an' never cheep? I'll see you all in blazes first," cried
Wadley wildly.
"Yes, but--just what would you do about it?"
"Do? I'll ride to town an' tell Cap Ellison. I'll bust you up in
business, sure as hell's hot."
There was a moment of chill silence. Three of the four men present knew
that Rutherford Wadley had just passed sentence of death upon himself.
They had doubted him before, vaguely, and without any definite reason.
But after this open threat the fear that he would betray them would
never lift until he was where he could no longer tell tales.
"How much of this money do you think is comin' to you, Ford?" asked Pete
quietly.
"It's all mine, anyhow. You boys know that." Rutherford hesitated; then
his greed dominated. He had them where they had to eat out of his hand.
"Give me two thirds, an' you fellows divide the other third for your
trouble. That's fair."
"Goddlemighty, what's eatin' you?" Gurley exploded. "Think we're plumb
idjits? You 'n' me will mix bullets first, you traitor!"
The Dinsmores exchanged one long, significant look. Then Pete spoke
softly.
"Don't get on the prod, Steve. Ford sure has got us where the wool's
short, but I reckon he aims to be reasonable. Let's say half for you,
Ford, an' the other half divided among the rest of us."
Wadley had refreshed himself out of a bottle several times during the
night. Ordinarily he would have accepted the proposed compromise, but
the sullen and obstinate side of him was uppermost.
"You've heard my terms, Pete. I stand pat."
Again a significant look passed, this time between Pete Dinsmore and
Gurley.
"All right," said Homer Dinsmore shortly. "It's a raw deal you're givin'
us, but I reckon you know yore own business, Wadley."
The money was emptied from the pigskin belt and divided. Rutherford
repacked his two thirds in the belt and put it on next his shirt.
"I don't know what you fellows are goin' to do, but I'm goin' to strike
for town," he said. "I aim to get back in time to join one of the posses
in their hunt for the outlaws."
His jest did not win any smiles. The men grimly watched him saddle and
ride away. A quarter of an hour later they too were in the saddle.
CHAPTER IX
MURDER IN THE CHAPARRAL
To Jack Roberts, engaged at the Delmonico restaurant in the serious
business of demolishing a steak smothered in onions, came Pedro Menendez
with a strange story of a man lying dead in the rim-rock, a bullet-hole
in the back of his head.
The Mexican _vaquero_ came to his news haltingly. He enveloped it in
mystery. There was a dead man lying at the foot of Battle Butte, out in
the rim-rock country, and there was this wound in the back of his head.
That was all. Pedro became vague at once as to detail. He took refuge in
shrugs and a poor memory when the Ranger pressed him in regard to the
source of his information.
Roberts knew the ways of the Mexicans. They would tell what they wanted
to tell and no more. He accepted the news given him and for the moment
did not push his questions home.
For twenty-four hours the Ranger had been in the saddle, and he was
expecting to turn in for a round-the-clock sleep. But Pedro's tale
changed his mind. Captain Ellison was at Austin, Lieutenant Hawley at
Tascosa. Regretfully Roberts gave up his overdue rest and ordered
another cup of strong coffee. Soon he was in the saddle again with a
fresh horse under him.
The Panhandle was at its best. Winter snows and spring rains had set it
blooming. The cacti were a glory of white, yellow, purple, pink, and
scarlet blossoms. The white, lilylike flowers of the Spanish bayonet
flaunted themselves everywhere. Meadowlarks chirruped gayly and
prairie-hens fluttered across the path in front of the rider.
Battle Butte had received its name from an old tradition of an Indian
fight. Here a party of braves had made a last stand against an
overwhelming force of an enemy tribe. It was a flat mesa rising sharply
as a sort of bastion from the rim-rock. The erosions of centuries had
given it an appearance very like a fort.
Jack skirted the base of the butte. At the edge of a clump of prickly
pear he found the evidence of grim tragedy which the circling buzzards
had already warned him to expect. He moved toward it very carefully, in
order not to obliterate any footprints. The body lay face down in a
huddled heap, one hand with outstretched finger reaching forth like a
sign-post. A bullet-hole in the back of the head showed how the man had
come to his death. He had been shot from behind.
The Ranger turned the body and recognized it as that of Rutherford
Wadley. The face was crushed and one of the arms broken. It was an easy
guess that the murder had been done on the butte above and the body
flung down.
Jack, on all fours, began to quarter over the ground like a bloodhound
seeking a trail. Every sense in him seemed to quicken to the hunt. His
alert eyes narrowed in concentration. His fingertips, as he crept
forward, touched the sand soft as velvet. His body was tense as a coiled
spring. No cougar stalking its prey could have been more lithely wary.
For the Ranger had found a faint boot-track, and with amazing pains he
was following this delible record of guilt. Some one had come here and
looked at the dead body. Why? To make sure that the victim was quite
dead? To identify the victim? Roberts did not know why, but he meant to
find out.
The footprint was alone. Apparently none led to it or led from it. On
that one impressionable spot alone had been written the signature of a
man's presence.
But "Tex" Roberts was not an old plainsman for nothing. He knew that if
he were patient enough he would find other marks of betrayal.
He found a second track--a third, and from them determined a course to
follow. It brought him to a stretch of soft ground at the edge of a
wash. The footprints here were sharp and distinct. They led up an arroyo
to the bluff above.
The Ranger knelt dose to the most distinct print and studied it for a
long time. All its details and peculiarities were recorded in his mind.
The broken sole, the worn heel, the beveled edge of the toe-cap--all
these fastened themselves in his memory. With a tape-line he measured
minutely the length of the whole foot, of the sole and of the heel.
These he jotted down in his notebook, together with cross-sections of
width. He duplicated this process with the best print he could find of
the left foot.
His investigation led him next to the summit of the bluff. A little
stain of blood on a rock showed him where Wadley had probably been
standing when he was shot. The murder might have been done by treachery
on the part of one of his companions. If so, probably the bullet had
been fired from a revolver. In that case the man who did it would have
made sure by standing close behind his victim. This would have left
powder-marks, and there had been none around the wound. The chances were
that the shooting had been done from ambush, and if this was a true
guess, it was a fair deduction that the assassin had hidden behind the
point of rocks just back of the bluff. For he could reach that point by
following the rim-rock without being seen by his victim.
Roberts next studied the ground just back of the point of rocks. The
soil here was of disintegrated granite, so that there were no
footprints to betray anybody who might have been hidden there. But Jack
picked up something that was in its way as decisive as what he had been
seeking. It was a cartridge that had been ejected from a '73[1] rifle.
The harmless bit of metal in his hand was the receptacle from which
death had flashed across the open toward Ford Wadley.
At the foot of the rim-rock the Ranger found signs where horses had been
left. He could not at first make sure whether there were three or four.
From that spot he back-tracked for miles along the edge of the rim-rock
till he came to the night-camp where Wadley had met the outlaws. This,
too, he studied for a long time.
He had learned a good deal, but he did not know why Ford Wadley had been
shot. The young fellow had not been in Texas more than six or eight
months, and he could not have made many enemies. If he had nothing about
him worth stealing--and in West Texas men were not in the habit of
carrying valuables--the object could not have been robbery.
He rode back to Battle Butte and carried to town with him the body of
the murdered man. There he heard two bits of news, either of which might
serve as a cause for the murder: Young Wadley had quarreled with Tony
Alviro at a dance and grossly insulted him; Arthur Ridley had been
robbed of six thousand dollars by masked men while on his way to
Tascosa.
Ranger Roberts decided that he would like to have a talk with Tony.
[Footnote 1: The '73 rifle was not a seventy-three-caliber weapon, but
was named from the year it was got out. Its cartridges could be used for
a forty-four revolver.]
CHAPTER X
"A DAMNED POOR APOLOGY FOR A MAN"
The big cattleman from New Mexico who was talking with the owner of the
A T O threw his leg across the arm of the chair. "The grass is good on
the Pecos this year. Up in Mexico[2] the cattle look fine."
"Same here," agreed Wadley. "I'm puttin' ten thousand yearlin's on the
Canadian."
A barefoot negro boy appeared at his elbow with a note. The owner of the
A T O ripped open the envelope and read:
Dear Mr. Wadley:
I was held up last night by masked men and robbed. They took the
gold. I'm too sick to go farther.
Arthur Ridley.
The jaw of the Texas cattleman clamped. He rose abruptly. "I got
business on hand. A messenger of mine has been robbed of six thousand
dollars." He turned to the colored boy. "Where's the man who gave you
this?"
"At the Buffalo Corral, sah."
Wadley strode from the hotel, flung himself on a horse, and galloped
down the street toward the corral.
Young Ridley was lying on a pile of hay when his employer entered. His
heart was sick with fear and worry. For he knew now that his lack of
boldness had led him into a serious mistake. He had by his indecision
put himself in the power of Moore, and the chances were that the man was
in collusion with the gang that had held him up. He had made another
mistake in not going directly to Wadley with the news. The truth was
that he had not the nerve to face his employer. It was quite on the
cards that the old-timer might use a blacksnake whip on him. So he had
taken refuge in a plea of illness.
The cattleman took one look at him and understood. He reached down and
jerked the young fellow from the hay as if he had been a child. The
stomach muscles of the boy contracted with fear and the heart died
within him. Clint Wadley in anger was dangerous. In his youth he had
been a gun-fighter and the habit had never entirely been broken.
"I--I'm ill," the young fellow pleaded.
"You'll be sure enough ill if you don't watch out. I'll gamble on that.
Onload yore tale like shot off'n a shovel. Quit yore whinin'. I got no
time for it."
Arthur told his story. The cattleman fired at him crisp, keen questions.
He dragged from the trembling youth the when, where, and how of the
robbery. What kind of pilgrim was this fellow Moore? Was he tall? Short?
Dark? Bearded? Young? Old? What were the masked men like? Did they use
any names? Did he see their horses? Which way did they go?
The messenger made lame answers. Mostly he could only say, "I don't
know."
"You're a damned poor apology for a man--not worth the powder to blow
you up. You hadn't the sand to fight for the money entrusted to you, nor
the nerve to face me after you had lost it. Get out of here.
_Vamos!_ Don't ever let me hear yore smooth, glib tongue again."
The words of Wadley stung like hail. Arthur was thin-skinned; he wanted
the good opinion of all those with whom he came in contact, and
especially that of this man. Like a whipped cur he crept away and hid
himself in the barn loft, alone with his soul-wounds.
From its window he watched the swift bustle of preparation for the
pursuit. Wadley himself, big and vigorous to the last masculine inch of
him, was the dominant figure. He gave curt orders to the members of the
posse, arranged for supplies to be forwarded to a given point, and
outlined plans of action. In the late afternoon the boy in the loft saw
them ride away, a dozen lean, long-bodied men armed to the limit. With
all his heart the watcher wished he could be like one of them, ready for
any emergency that the rough-and-tumble life of the frontier might
develop.
In every fiber of his jarred being he was sore. He despised himself for
his failure to measure up to the standard of manhood demanded of him by
his environment. Twice now he had failed. The memory of his first
failure still scorched his soul. During ghastly hours of many nights he
had lived over that moment when he had shown the white feather before
Ramona Wadley. He had run for his life and left her alone to face a
charging bull. It was no excuse to plead with himself that he could have
done nothing for her if he had stayed. At least he could have pushed her
to one side and put himself in the path of the enraged animal. The loss
of the money was different. It had been due not wholly to lack of nerve,
but in part at least to bad judgment. Surely there was something to be
said for his inexperience. Wadley ought not to have sent him alone on
such an errand, though of course he had sent him because he was the last
man anybody was likely to suspect of carrying treasure....
Late that night Ridley crept out, bought supplies, saddled his horse,
and slipped into the wilderness. He was still writhing with self-
contempt. There was a futile longing in his soul for oblivion to blot
out his misery.
[Footnote 2: In western Texas when one speaks of Mexico he means New
Mexico. If he refers to the country Mexico, he says Old Mexico.]
CHAPTER XI
ONE TO FOUR
Through the great gray desert with its freakish effects of erosion a
rider had moved steadily in the hours of star-strewn darkness. He had
crossed the boundary of that No Man's Land which ran as a neutral strip
between Texas and its neighbor and was claimed by each. Since the courts
had as yet recognized the rights of neither litigant there was properly
no State jurisdiction here. Therefore those at outs with the law fled to
this strip and claimed immunity.
In the Panhandle itself law was a variable quantity. Its counties had
been laid out and named, but not organized. For judicial purposes they
were attached to Wheeler County. Even the Rangers did not pretend to
police this district. When they wanted a man they went in and got him.
The rider swung at last from his saddle and dropped the bridle reins to
the ground. He crept forward to some long, flat sheep-sheds that bulked
dimly in the night shadows. Farther back, he could just make out the
ghost of a dwelling-hut. Beyond that, he knew, was a Mexican village of
three or four houses. A windmill reared its gaunt frame in the corral. A
long trough was supplied by it with water for the sheep.
The night-rider dipped a bucket of water from the tank that fed the
trough. He carried it to the gate of the corral and poured it slowly
into the fine dust made by the sharp feet of the sheep, mixing the water
and dust to a thick paste with the end of an old branding-iron. He
brought bucket after bucket of water until he had prepared a bed of
smooth mud of the proper consistency.
Before he had quite finished his preparation a dog inside the adobe hut
began to bark violently. The interloper slipped over the fence and
retreated to the darkness of the _barranca_.
From the direction of the hut men poured. The one crouching in the
chaparral heard voices. He made out a snatch or two of talk in Spanish.
The men were explaining to themselves that the dog must have been
barking at a wolf or a coyote. Presently they trooped back into the
house. Silence fell again over the night.
The man in the chaparral once more crept forward and climbed the fence.
He made straight for the entrance of the corral. Carefully he examined
the footprints written in the bed of mud he had prepared. One after
another he studied them. Some had been crossed out or blotted by
subsequent prints, but a few were perfect. One of these he scrutinized
for a long time, measuring its dimensions with a tape-line from toe to
heel, across the ball of the foot, the instep, and the heel. When at
last he straightened up his eyes were shining with satisfaction. He had
found what he wanted.
Once more the dog was uneasy with growlings. The man retreated from the
corral, returned to his horse, and rode away across the mesa. A quarter
of an hour later he unsaddled, hobbled his horse, and rolled up in a
blanket. Immediately he fell into sound sleep.
It was broad day when he wakened. The young morning sun bathed him in
warmth. He lighted a fire of mesquite and boiled coffee. In his frying-
pan he cooked flapjacks, after he had heated the jerked beef which he
carried in his saddlebags. When he had eaten, he washed his pan with
clean, fine sand, repacked his supplies, and rode forward past the
sheep-corral to the village.
In front of a mud-and-log _tendejon_ two Mexicans lounged. They
watched him with silent hostility as he dismounted, tied his horse to a
snubbing-post worn shiny as a razor-strap, and sauntered into the
_tendejon_. This stranger wore the broad-rimmed felt hat and the
buckskin suit of a Ranger, and none of that force was welcome here.
Back of a flimsy counter was a shelf upon which were half a dozen
bottles and some glasses. One could buy here mescal, American whiskey,
and even wine of a sort. The owner of the place, a white man, was
talking to a young Mexican at the time the Ranger entered. The
proprietor looked hard at the Ranger with dislike he did not try to
veil. The Mexican in front of the bar was a slim young man with quick
eyes and an intelligent face. The Ranger recognized him at once as Tony
Alviro.
"_Buenos!_" the Ranger said with the most casual of nods. "I've
come to take you back with me, Tony."
The other two Mexicans had followed the Ranger into the room. The Texan
stood sideways at the end of the bar, quite at his ease, the right
forearm resting on the counter lightly. Not far from his fingers the
butt of a revolver projected from a holster. In his attitude was no
threat whatever, but decidedly a warning.
The four men watched him steadily.
"No, _Senor_ Roberts," answered Alviro. "You can touch me not. I'm
out of Texas."
"Mebbeso, Tony. But till I get further orders, this is Texas for me.
You're goin' back with me."
Rangers and outlaws held different views about this strip of land. To
the latter it was a refuge; law ended at its border; they could not be
touched here by State constabulary. But the Ranger did not split hairs.
He was law in the Panhandle, and if the man he wanted fled to disputed
territory the Ranger went after him.
"Not so," argued Alviro. "If you arrest me in Texas, I say 'Bad luck,'
but I go wiz you. There you are an offizer, an' I am oblige' surrender.
But in thees No Man's Land, we are man to man. I refuse."
The lift of excitement was in the voice of the young Mexican. He knew
the record of the Texas Rangers. They took their men in dead or alive.
This particular member of the force was an unusually tough nut to crack.
In the heart of Tony was the drench of a chill wave. He was no coward,
but he knew he had no such unflawed nerve as this man. Through his mind
there ran a common laconic report handed in by Rangers returning from an
assignment--"Killed while resisting arrest." Alviro did not want Ranger
Roberts to write that about him.
"Better not, Alviro. I have a warrant for your arrest."
The Texan did not raise his voice. He made no movement to draw a gun.
But to Tony, fascinated by his hard, steel-gray eyes, came the certainty
that he must go or fight. They were four to one against the Ranger, but
that would not make the least difference. In the curt alternative of
this clean-jawed young officer was cold finality.
The worried eyes of the fugitive referred to his companions. They had
agreed to stand by him, and he knew that if it came to a fight they
would. But he wanted more than that. His glance was an appeal for one of
them to make his decision for him.
The voice of the _tendejon_-keeper interjected itself smoothly.
"You've played yore hand out, friend. We're four to one. You go back an'
report nothin' doin'."
Roberts looked at the man, and a little shiver ran down the barkeeper's
spine. "There won't be four of you when we get through arguin' this,
_amigo_, if we ever start," the Ranger suggested gently.
The proprietor of the place dropped his hand to the butt of his gun. But
he did not draw. Some deep, wise instinct warned him to go slow. He knew
the others would take their cue from him. If he threw down the gage of
battle the room would instantly become a shambles. How many of them
would again pass alive through the door nobody knew. He was a man who
had fought often, but he could not quite bring himself to such a
decision while those chilled-steel eyes bored into his. Anyhow, the game
was not worth the candle.
"What is it you want Tony for?" he temporized, playing for time and any
chance that might arise.
"For killin' Rutherford Wadley last month."
"A mistake. Tony has been here since the full of the moon."
"Oh, no. He was at the dance on Tomichi Creek. He tried to knife young
Wadley. He left the house right after him."
"I left--_si, senor_--but to come here," cried the accused man.
"To follow Wadley, Tony. You jumped a camper that night an' didn't know
it. He saw you."
"Wadley was a dog, but I did not kill him," Alviro said gloomily.
"That so? You were on the spot. You left tracks. I measured 'em. They
were the same tracks you left out in the corral five hours ago."
Tony's eyes flashed with a sudden discovery. "The mud--you meex it to
get my footprints."
"You're a good guesser."
Alviro threw up his hands. "I was there. It iss true. But I did not kill
the _gringo_ dog. I was too late."
"You can tell me all about that on the way back."
"If I go back they will hang me."
"You'll get a fair trial."
"By a _gringo_ jury before a _gringo_ judge." The tone of
Alviro was more than skeptical. It was bitter with the sense of racial
injustice.
"I can't argue that with you, Tony. My business is to take you to
Tascosa. That's what I'm here for."
The American behind the bar spoke again. "Listens fine! He's a Mexican,
ain't he? They claim he killed a white man. Well, then, the mob would
take him from you an' lynch him sure."
"The Rangers don't give up their prisoners, my friend. They take 'em an'
they keep 'em. You'd ought to know that."
The _tendejon_-keeper flushed. He had been dragged to justice once
by one of the force.
The eyes of the four consulted again. They were still hesitant. The
shame of letting this youth take from them their companion without a
fight was like a burr under a saddle-blanket to a bronco. But after all,
the Ranger stood for law. If they killed him, other Rangers would come
to avenge his death.
When men are in doubt the one who is sure dominates the situation. The
eye of Roberts carried the compulsion of a deadly weapon. His voice was
crisp.
"Come here, Tony," he ordered, and his fingers slipped into the pocket
of his coat.
Alviro looked at him for a long second--swore to himself that he would
not come--and came.
"Hold out yore hands."
The Mexican set his will to refuse. There was still time to elect to
fight. He told himself that was what he was going to do. But he could
not hold his own in that steady battle of the eyes. His hands moved
forward--empty.
A moment, and the Ranger had slipped and fastened the handcuffs on his
wrists.
Roberts had won. Psychologically it was now too late for the others to
resort to arms. The _tendejon_-keeper recognized this with a shrug
that refused responsibility for the outcome. After all, Tony had made
his own decision. He had chosen to take his chances in Tascosa rather
than on the spot with the Ranger.
"Saddle Tony's horse," ordered Roberts, looking at one of the Mexicans.
The man growled something in his native tongue, but none the less he
moved toward the corral.
Within a quarter of an hour the Ranger and his prisoner were on their
way. Two days later Roberts delivered his man to the deputy sheriff who
had charge of the sod-house jail in the little town.
"There's a message here for you from Cap Ellison," the deputy said. "He
wants you to go to Clarendon. Says you were to jog on down soon as you
show up here."
"All right, Snark."
He rode down next day, changed horses at the halfway station, and
reached Clarendon early in the morning. Ellison had been called to
Mobeetie, but left instructions for him to await his return.
The semi-weekly stage brought two days later a letter, to Captain
Ellison from Snark. Jack Roberts, obeying office instructions, opened
the mail. The letter said:
Dere Cap,
They are aiming to lynch that Mexican Roberts brought in. The
Dinsmore outfit is stirring up the town. Send a company of your
Rangers, for God's sake, quick.
Respectably yours
Jim Snark
Jack Roberts was the only Ranger in town. He glanced at the clock. There
was just time to catch the stage to Tascosa. He reached for his guns and
his hat.
CHAPTER XII
TEX REARRANGES THE SEATING
The Tascosa stage was full. Its passengers were "packed like Yanks at
Libby Prison," according to one of them, an ex-Confederate who had
drifted West after the war. They were of the varied types common to the
old Southwest--a drover, a cattle-buyer, a cowpuncher looking for a job,
a smart salesman from St. Louis, and one young woman. Beside the driver
on the box sat a long-bodied man in buckskin with a clean brown jaw and
an alert, sardonic eye.
The salesman, a smooth, good-looking fellow whose eye instinctively
rested on attractive women, made inquiries of Joe Johnson's old trooper.
"Who's the damsel?"
"Which?"
"The girl. She's a pippin." His possessive eye gloated on the young
woman in front. "She didn't learn how to dress in this neck of the
woods, either. Betcha she's from New Orleans or St. Louis."
The old warrior helped himself to a chew of tobacco. "You lose. She's
Clint Wadley's daughter, an' he's an old-timer. Knocked the bark off'n
this country, Clint did. I used to know him when he was takin' the
hides off the buffaloes. Got his start that way, I reckon. Clint's
outfit got six thousand tongues in six months oncet. Pickled the tongues
an' sold 'em for three cents apiece, by gum. Delivered the hides at
Clarendon for one-fifty straight on contract."
"I've heard of Wadley," the salesman said. "What's the kid going to
Tascosa for?"
"Goin' to stay awhile with her aunt, I 'low. Her brother was killed
recent."
"I've heard about that, too. They caught the fellow, didn't they--the
one that did it?"
"They got a Mexican jailed for it. I dunno whether he done it or not.
That young Ranger on the box run him down."
"That kid in buckskin?" sneered the city man.
The ex-Confederate bristled at the tone rather than the words. He
happened to be a friend of the youth mentioned.
"I'll follow Jack's dust any day of the week. He's one hell-poppin'
rooster. No better man rides leather. When I druv a wagon oncet
gatherin' bones--"
"Gathering bones?"
"Sure--buffalo-bones, for fertilizer. Well, that same Jack Roberts
yanked me out o' the Canadian when I was drowndin'. Took a big chance,
too."
"What about this Mexican? Are they going to hang him?"
"I reckon. He's in a soddy up at Tascosa. I done heard they're aimin' to
tear it down and hang him to a wagon-tongue."[3]
The black-haired traveling man caressed his little mustache and watched
the girl boldly. Her face was a little wan, and in the deep eyes was
shadowed a heartache. But it had been impossible even for grief to
submerge the sweet youth in her. There were lights in her soft, wavy
hair, and the line of her exquisite throat would have delighted a
sculptor. The slim figure was exquisitely poised, though just now it
suggested weariness.
When the stage stopped at noon for dinner the salesman made it a point
to sit beside her at the long table. His persistent attentions to the
girl made the delicate color of her cheek deepen. She was too shy, too
unused to the world, to know how to suppress his audacities effectively.
But it was plain to one young man sitting at the opposite end of the
table that the familiarities of the man were unwelcome.
While they were waiting outside for the change-horses to be hitched, the
Ranger made a request of the old soldier.
"Wish you'd swap places with me, Sam."
"Sure. I'd a heap ruther sit outside. Say, that drummer hadn't ought to
worry Miss Ramona. She's not feelin' very peart, anyhow. I reckon she
set the world an' all by that scalawag brother of hers."
"He's not goin' to trouble her any more, Sam."
The ex-Confederate looked at the narrow-flanked young man with an alert
question in his eye. If "Tex" Roberts was going to take a hand, the
salesman was certainly riding for a fall.
The salesman had made up his mind to sit beside Miss Wadley for the rest
of the journey. He emerged from the dining-room at her heels and was
beside her to offer a hand into the stage.
Ramona gave him a look of reproach and entreaty. She was near tears. The
man from St. Louis smiled confidently.
"I know a good thing when I see it," he whispered. "I'll ride beside you
and keep off the rough-necks, Miss Wadley."
A heavy heel smashed down on the toes of his neat shoe and crunched
round. A hard elbow bumped up forcefully against his chin as if by
accident. A muscular hand caught the loose fat of his plump stomach and
tightened like a vise. The dapper salesman opened his mouth in a shriek
of pain.
"Indigestion?" asked the Ranger sympathetically, and his sinewy fingers
twisted in the cushion of flesh they gripped. "I'll get you somethin'
good for it in a minute."
Roberts flung the man back and rearranged the seating inside so that the
drover sat beside Ramona as before dinner. Then he tucked an arm under
that of the St. Louis man and led him back into the stage station. The
salesman jerked along beside him unhappily. His wrist, wrenched by
Roberts in a steady pressure of well-trained muscles, hurt exquisitely.
When at last he was flung helplessly into a chair, tears of pain and
rage filled his eyes. Never in the course of a cushioned and pampered
life had he been so manhandled.
"My God, you brute, you've killed me!" he sobbed.
"Sho! I haven't begun yet. If you take the stage to-day to Tascosa I'm
goin' to sit beside you real friendly, an' we'll play like we been doin'
all the way in to town. It's just my way of bein' neighborly."
"I'll have the law of you for this," the city man howled, uncertain
which of his injuries to nurse first.
"I would," agreed the Texan. "Well, so long, if you ain't comin'."
Roberts moved back with long, easy stride to the stage. He nodded to the
driver.
"All ready, Hank. The drummer ain't feelin' well. He'll stay here
overnight. I reckon I'll keep my own seat outside, Sam." And Roberts
swung himself up.
The old soldier climbed in, chuckling to himself. It had been the
neatest piece of work he had ever seen. The big body of the cowboy had
been between Ramona and her tormentor, so that she did not know what had
taken place. She did know, however, that the woman-killer had been
obliterated swiftly from her path.
"Did you ever see anything like the way he got shet o' that drummer?"
Sam asked his neighbor in a whisper. "I'll bet that doggoned masher will
be hard to find when Jack's on the map. He's some go-getter boy, Jack
Roberts is."
Meanwhile Jack was flagellating himself. It was his bad luck always to
be associated in the mind of Miss Wadley with violence. He had beaten up
the brother whom she was now mourning. He had almost been the cause of
her own death. Now a third time she saw him in the role of a
trouble-maker. To her, of course, he could be nothing but a bully and a
bad lot. The least he could do was to make himself as inconspicuous as
possible for the rest of the journey.
Man may shuffle the pack, but when all is done woman is likely to cut
the cards. The driver stopped at Tin Cup Creek to water the horses. To
Jack, sitting on the box, came the cattle-drover with orders.
"The young lady has somethin' to say to you, Tex. You're to swap seats
with me."
The lean, bronzed young man swung down. He had, when he wished, a
wooden face that told no tales. It said nothing now of a tide of blood
flushing his veins.
By a little gesture the girl indicated the seat beside her. Not till the
creaking of the moving stage drowned her words did she speak. Her eyes
were dilated with excitement.
"I overheard them talking in the back seat," she said. "They think
there's going to be a lynching at Tascosa--that the mob is going to hang
the Mexican who killed my brother. Are you going to let them do it?"
"Not in this year of our Lord, Miss Wadley," he answered evenly.
"Can you stop them?"
"That's what I draw a dollar a day for."
"You mustn't let them do it!" she cried, a little wildly. "Let the law
punish him!"
"Suits me. I'll try to persuade the boys to look at it that way."
"But what can you do? You're only a boy."
With a grim little smile he paraphrased Roy Bean's famous phrase: "I'm
law east of the Pecos right now, Miss Wadley. Don't you worry. The
Dinsmores won't get him if I can help it."
"I might speak to my father," she went on, thinking aloud. "But he's so
bitter I'm afraid he won't do anything."
"He will after I've talked with him."
Her anxious young eyes rested in his clear, steady gaze. There was
something about this youth that compelled confidence. His
broad-shouldered vigor, the virile strength so confidently reposeful,
were expressions of personality rather than accidentals of physique.
The road dipped suddenly into a deep wash that was almost a little
gulch. There was a grinding of brakes, then a sudden lurch that threw
Ramona against the shoulder of the Ranger.
"The brake's done bust," she heard the ex-Confederate say.
Another violent swing flung Ramona outward. The horses were off the
road, and the coach swayed ominously on two wheels. The girl caught at
the Ranger's hand and clung to it. Gently he covered her hand with his
other one, released his fingers, and put a strong arm round her
shoulders.
Hank's whip snaked out across the backs of the wheelers. He flung at his
horses a torrent of abuse. The stage reached the bottom of the wash in a
succession of lurches. Then, as suddenly as the danger had come upon
them, it had passed; the stage was safely climbing the opposite side of
the ravine.
The Ranger's arm slipped from the shoulders of the girl. Her hand crept
from under his. He did not look at her, but he knew that a shell-pink
wave had washed into the wan face.
The slim bosom of the girl rose and fell fast. Already she was
beginning to puzzle over the difficulties of a clear-cut right and
wrong, to discover that no unshaded line of cleavage differentiates them
sometimes. Surely this young fellow could not be all bad. Of course she
did not like him. She was quite sure of that. He was known as a tough
citizen. He had attacked and beaten brutally her brother Rutherford--the
wild brother whose dissipations she had wept and prayed over, and whose
death she was now mourning. Yet Fate kept throwing him in her way to do
her services. He had saved her life. He had adroitly--somehow, she did
not quite know in what way--rid her of an offensive fellow traveler. She
had just asked a favor of him, and there was yet another she must ask.
Ramona put off her request to the last moment. At Tascosa she left her
purse in the stage seat and discovered it after the coach had started to
the barn.
"My purse. I left it in the seat," she cried.
The announcement was made to the world at large, but it was intended for
a particular pair of ears set close to a small head of wavy,
sun-reddened hair. The owner of them ran to the stage and recovered the
purse. By the time he reached Ramona, the rest of the party were inside
the post-office.
She thanked him, then looked at him quickly with an effect of shy
daring.
"You travel a good deal, don't you--about the country?"
"Considerable."
"I--I wonder if--" She took courage from his friendly smile. "I'm
worried about Mr. Ridley--for fear something has happened to him."
"You mean an accident?" he asked gently.
"I don't know." Her cheeks flew color-signals of embarrassment. "My
father was harsh to him. He's very sensitive. I feel--sort of
responsible. He might do something foolish."
"I don't reckon he will. But I'll sure keep an eye out for him."
She gave him her little hand gratefully, then remembered what he had
done to her brother and withdrew it hastily from his grip. In another
moment she had passed into the post-office and left him alone.
[Footnote 3: There was no timber in the Panhandle. The first man ever
hanged in the short-grass country was suspended from a propped-up
wagon-tongue.]
CHAPTER XIII
"ONLY ONE MOB, AIN'T THERE?"
After Miss Wadley had disappeared in the post-office a man touched
Roberts on the shoulder.
"Where are the Rangers I sent for?" he asked.
"Here I am, Snark."
"You didn't come alone?"
"Captain Ellison was out of town. The rest of the force was away on
assignment. I couldn't reach any of 'em."
The deputy sheriff broke out in excited annoyance. "All right! I wash my
hands of it. They can lynch the Mexican soon as they've a mind to. Let
'em go to it. Here I send for a company of Rangers, an' one kid shows
up. What in Mexico can you do alone?"
"I wouldn't say alone. You're here, Snark."
"I'm not goin' to lift a hand--not a hand."
"Sure it's necessary? What makes you think they're goin' to lynch
Alviro?"
"They don't make any bones of it. Everybody knows it. The Dinsmore gang
is in town stirrin' up feelin'. You might as well have stayed away.
There's not a thing you can do."
"I reckon mebbe we can figure a way to save Tony," answered the Ranger
easily.
The deputy voiced his impatience. "Yore talk sounds plumb foolish to
me. Don't you get it? We're not dealin' with one or two men. Half the
town is in this thing."
"I promised Tony there would be nothin' of that sort."
"You can't handle a mob all by yoreself, can you?" asked Snark
sarcastically. "There's only one of you, I reckon."
The little flicker in the Ranger's eye was not wholly amusement.
"There's goin' to be only one mob, too, ain't there?" he drawled.
"You can't slip him out unnoticed, if that's yore idee. They've got
watchers round the jail," the deputy went on.
"I shan't try."
"Then you'll let 'em hang him?"
"Oh, no!"
"What in hell do you mean to do, then?"
Roberts told him, in part. The deputy shook his head vehemently.
"Can't be done. First place, you can't get Wadley to do it. He won't
lift a hand to stop this hangin'. Second place, he couldn't stop it if
he wanted to. Folks in Tascosa ain't a bit gun-shy, an' right now
they've got their necks bowed. An' this Dinsmore gang--they'll eat you
alive if you get in their way."
"Mebbeso. You can't always be sure. I've got one card up my sleeve I
haven't mentioned to you."
"If you want my opinion--"
The Ranger cut him off short. "I don't, Snark. Not right now. I'm too
busy to listen to it. I want to know just one thing of you. Will you
have the horses right where I want 'em when I want 'em?"
"You're the doc," acknowledged the deputy grudgingly. "They'll be there,
but just the same I think it's a fool play. You can't get away with it."
Jack asked a question. "Where am I most likely to find Wadley?"
"At McGuffey's store. It's a block this-a-way and a block that-a-way."
He indicated directions with his hand.
Wadley was not among those who sat on the porch of the general store
known as McGuffey's Emporium. He had just gone to his sister's house to
meet his daughter Ramona, of whose arrival he had received notice by a
boy. Roberts followed him.
In answer to the Ranger's "Hello, the house!" the cattleman came out in
his shirt-sleeves.
Jack cut straight to business.
"I've come to see you about that Mexican Alviro, Mr. Wadley. Is it true
they're goin' to lynch him?"
The hard eyes of the grizzled Texan looked full at Roberts. This young
fellow was the one who had beaten his son and later had had the
impudence to burn as a spill for a cigarette the hundred-dollar bill he
had sent him.
"Whyfor do you ask me about it?" he demanded harshly.
"Because you've got to help me stop this thing."
The cattleman laughed mirthlessly. "They can go as far as they like for
me. Suits me fine. Hangin' is too good for him. That's all I've got to
say."
Already he had refused the pleadings of his daughter, and he had no
intention of letting this young scalawag change his mind.
"Are you sure this Mexican is guilty--sure he's the man who killed yore
son, Mr. Wadley?"
"He's as guilty as hell."
"I don't think it. Hasn't it ever struck you as strange that yore son
was killed an' yore messenger Ridley held up the same night, an' that
the two things happened not many miles from each other?"
"Of course it has. I'm no fool. What of it?"
"I've always thought the same men did both."
"Young fellow, have you ever thought that Ridley never was held up, that
it was a fake robbery pulled off to deceive me? Where is Ridley? He lit
out mighty sudden when he saw how I took it. He couldn't even tell me
where the hold-up happened. I never did hit the trail of the robbers."
"It wasn't a fake. I can prove that."
"I'm here to be shown," said the cattleman skeptically.
"But first about Tony. It looks bad for him on the surface. I'll admit
that. But--"
"Don't talk to me about my boy's murderer, Roberts!" cried Wadley,
flushing angrily. "I'll not do a thing for him. I'll help those that aim
to do justice on him."
"He didn't kill yore son."
"What! Didn't you arrest him yoreself for it?"
"When I arrested him, I didn't believe he had done it. I know it now.
He's my star witness, an' I knew he would skip across the border if I
let him out."
"You can't convince me, but let's hear yore fairy tale. I got to listen,
I reckon."
Jack told his story in few words. He explained what he had found at the
scene of the murder and how he had picked up the trail of the three
horsemen who had followed Rutherford to the place of his death. He had
back-tracked to the camp of the rendezvous at the rim-rock, and he had
found there corroborative evidence of the statement Tony Alviro had made
to him.
"What was it he told you, and what did you find?"
The big cattleman looked at him with a suspicion that was akin to
hostility. His son had been a ne'er-do-well. In his heart Wadley was
not sure he had not been worse. But he was ready to fight at the drop of
the hat any man who dared suggest it. He did not want to listen to any
evidence that would lead him to believe ill of the son who had gone
wrong.
"Tony admits all the evidence against him. He did follow Rutherford
intendin' to kill him. But when he saw yore son strike straight across
country to the cap-rock, he trailed him to see where he was goin'.
Alviro had heard stories."
"You can't tell me anything against my boy. I won't stand for it," broke
out the tortured father.
The Ranger looked straight at him. "I'm goin' to tell you no harm of him
except that he kept bad company," he said gently. "I reckon you know
that already."
"Go on," commanded the father hoarsely.
"Tony followed him to the rim-rock, an' on the way they jumped up the
camper, though Alviro did not know it. At the rim-rock Rutherford met
two men. Presently another man joined them."
"Who were they?"
"Alviro isn't dead sure. He climbed up to a rock bluff back of them, but
it was still dark an' he couldn't make them out. Pretty soon Rutherford
found out they had a sack of gold. He must have found out where they got
it, too."
Underneath the deep tan of his cheeks the old-timer whitened. "So you're
tryin' to tell me that my boy was one of the gang that robbed my
messenger! An' you're askin' me to believe it on the word of a greaser
with a rope around his neck. Is that it?"
"No. They had a quarrel, but yore son bluffed 'em out. They gave the
gold to him. He saddled an' rode away with it. On his way back to town
he was murdered. So he never got a chance to turn it back to you."
The father of the man who had been killed drew a long, sobbing breath of
relief. His clenched fists slowly opened.
"Tony saw all this, did he?"
"Not all of it. Day was comin' on, an' he couldn't follow Rutherford
right away. Before he got goin' the three men saddled. They trailed
along after yore son, an' Tony a mile or so behind 'em. After awhile he
heard a shot. He took his time investigatin', because he didn't want to
stop any bullets himself. At the foot of Battle Butte he found
Rutherford. He had been shot from behind an' flung over the bluff."
The face of the cattleman twitched. "If I can lay my hands on the man or
men that did it--"
"Mebbe you can, if you'll give me time. I checked up Tony's story, an'
everywhere there was evidence to back it. He had no rifle with him, but
I picked up a shell back of some rocks a hundred yards from where yore
son must have been standin' when he was shot. The shell came from a '73.
I back-tracked to the night-camp, an' it was just like Tony had said.
Four men had been there. One left before the others. You could see the
signs where they had trailed him. Once or twice they missed his tracks
an' found 'em again. Same way with the single man followin' them. He had
taken short-cuts too. Sometimes he blotted out the hoofprints of the
three in front, so I know he was not ahead of 'em."
"You think the Dinsmores did this, Jack?"
"I want more evidence before I say so publicly. But Tony didn't. Here's
another point in his favor. If Tony shot him on the bluff an' flung the
body over, why did he have to go down below an' look at it? No need
a-tall of that. No; Tony went down to make sure who it was that had been
killed. Soon as he knew that he guessed he would be accused of it, an'
he lit out for No Man's Land. I found him there three weeks later."
The cattleman apologized after a fashion for some hard things he had
said and thought about his former employee. "I don't spend any of my
time likin' yore style, Roberts. You're too high-heeled for me. But I'll
say this for you: Ellison picked a good man when he got you. You're a
straight-up rider, an' you'll do to take along. What's yore programme?"
He told it. The cattleman looked at him with increased respect. He gave
a short, barking laugh.
"If it was anybody else I'd say it was crazy, but you're such a doggoned
hellion of a go-getter mebbe you can put it over."
"Looks to me like a good bet," said Roberts mildly.
"Well, I an' my friends will be right there if we're needed. I'll see
you through. Can't afford to have my best witness strung up to a
wagon-tongue yet awhile."
They talked over the details; then the Ranger started for the jail, and
the cattleman breezed around to give a little tip to some reliable
friends. Wadley was quite of a mind with Roberts. There was going to be
no lynching at Tascosa if he could help it.
CHAPTER XIV
JACK SERVES NOTICE
Jack Roberts liked to get his information first hand. On his way to the
jail he deflected, passed up the wide, dusty main street, and stopped at
a log "hogan" made of _bois d'arc_ timber and cedar from the brakes.
Across the front of it was printed roughly a sign:
THE SILVER DOLLAR
The Ranger took a little hitch at his guns to make sure they would slide
easily from the holsters in case of need, then strolled into the saloon,
a picture of negligent indifference.
A tall man, lank as a shad, was master of ceremonies. Steve Gurley was
in high feather. He was treating the crowd and was availing himself of
his privilege as host to do the bulk of the talking. His theme was the
righteousness of mob law, with particular application to the case of
Tony Alviro. He talked loudly, as befits one who is a leader of public
opinion.
Some wandering of attention in his audience brought him to a pause. He
turned, to see the Ranger leaning indolently against the door-jamb. Jack
was smiling in the manner of one quietly amused.
"Who invited you here?" demanded Gurley, taken aback, but unwilling to
show it.
"Me, I just dropped in to hear yore big talk. Reminds me of old
Geronimo. Like you, he gets all filled up with words about every so
often and has to steam off. Go ahead, Gurley. Don't let me interrupt
you. Make heap oration."
But Gurley's fluency was gone. His cross-eyed glance slid round the room
to take stock of his backers. Was this fellow Roberts alone, or had he a
dozen Rangers in town with him? He decided to bluff, though with no very
great confidence. For into the picture had walked a man, a personality,
dynamic and forceful. The outlaw had seen him in action once, and he had
been on that occasion as easy to handle as a cageful of panthers.
"Come to see the hangin', have you, Mr. Ranger?"
"Is there goin' to be a hangin'?"
"You betcha--to-night! Git around early, an' you can have a front seat."
Gurley added a word of explanation. "No greaser can git biggity an'
shoot up our friends without hangin' from the end of a wagon-tongue
_pronto_."
"We'll see what a judge an' jury say about it," suggested the Ranger
mildly.
"That so? No brindle-thatched guy in buckskin can interfere without
sleepin' in smoke. Understand?" The long, sallow man nervously stroked
his hair, which was flattened down on his forehead in a semicircle in
the absurd fashion of the day.
"Don't pull on yore picket-pin, Gurley," observed Roberts. "What I say
goes. There's goin' to be no hangin' till the courts say so."
A man had come into the saloon by the back door. He was a heavy-set,
slouchy man in jeans, broad-shouldered and bowlegged. He laughed grimly.
"I don't reckon you can put that over on folks of the short-grass
country, young fellow, me lad. We grow man-size, an' I don't expect
we'll ask yore say-so when we're ready for business."
Pete Dinsmore had the advantage of his colleague. He knew that Roberts
was the only Ranger in town. Also he was of tougher stuff. The leader of
the Dinsmore gang would go through.
Into the gray-blue eye of the young man came a look that chilled.
"Dinsmore, I'm not here to get into a rookus with you. But I'll serve
notice on you right now to keep yore mind off Alviro. He's in the hands
of the Texas Rangers. You know what that means."
Dinsmore met the warning with a sneer. "I was hittin' my heels on this
range when you was knee-high to a duck, kid. Don't make a mistake. Folks
don't make 'em with me twice." He thrust the head on his bull neck
forward and dropped a hand to the gun by his side.
The Ranger shook his head. "Not just now, Pete. You're a bad _hombre_; I
know that. Some day we're liable to tangle. But it will be in the way of
business. While I'm workin' for the State I've got no private feuds."
Jack turned and walked out of the place as casually as he had entered.
He knew now that Snark was right. Tascosa meant to hang the Mexican
within a few hours.
Evidently Tony had heard the news. He looked up with quick apprehension
when Snark opened the door of his cell to admit the Ranger.
"You promise' me fair trial, _senor_. Yet to-day they mean to hang me.
Not so?" he cried. The young Mexican was sweating drops of fear.
"That's why I'm here, Tony," answered Jack cheerfully. "The hangin'
programme won't go through if you do exactly as I say. I'll stand by
you. They'll not get you unless they get me. Is that fair?"
Confidence is born of confidence. Alviro felt himself buttressed by the
quiet strength of this vigorous youth. Broader shoulders than his had
assumed the responsibility.
"What is it that I am to do?" he asked, his liquid eyes filled with the
dumb worship of a dog.
"You're to walk right beside me. No matter how the crowd presses--no
matter what it does--stick right there. If you try to run, you're gone.
I can't save you. Understand?"
"_Si, senor._"
Roberts looked at his watch. "'Most time for the fireworks to begin.
You'll wait here till I come back, Tony. I'm goin' to give a little
exhibition first. Be with you _pronto_."
Little beads of sweat gathered again on the forehead of the prisoner.
The palms of his hands were hot and moist. He glanced nervously out of
the window. Ten minutes before there had been a few lookouts in sight;
now there were a hundred men or more. The mob was beginning to gather
for the storming of the sod-house. Soon the affairs of Tony Alviro would
reach a crisis.
"I--I'll nev' get out alive," said the Mexican in a dry whisper.
The Ranger grinned at him. "Don't worry. If the luck breaks right we'll
camp to-night under the stars. If it doesn't they'll bury us both,
Tony."
In that smile was life for Alviro. It expressed a soul unperturbed,
ready for anything that might come up. With this man beside him Tony
felt courage flowing back into his heart.
CHAPTER XV
A CLOSE SHAVE
The Ranger opened the door of the "soddy," stepped through, and closed
it behind him. Jeers, threats, bits of advice greeted him from those in
front of the jail.
"Better p'int for the hills, Mr. Ranger." ... "A whole passel of
sheriffs can't save the greaser." ... "Don't you-all try an' stop us if
you know what's good for you." ... "Skedaddle while yore skin's whole."
... "It's the Mexican, anyhow; it's him an' you too, if you show fight."
The lean-flanked young Ranger looked them over coolly. Men were coming
in driblets from the main street. Already perhaps there were a hundred
and fifty men and boys in sight. They were the advance guard of the
gathering mob.
Never in his gusty lifetime had Jack Roberts been more master of
himself. He had that rare temperament which warms to danger. He stood
there bareheaded, his crisp, curly bronze hair reflecting the glow of
the setting sun, one hand thrust carelessly into his trousers pocket.
"Give up yore prisoner, an' we won't hurt you. We got nothin' against
you," a voice cried.
Jack did not answer. His left hand came out of the pocket bringing with
it half a dozen silver dollars. Simultaneously the nose of his revolver
flashed into sight. A dollar went up into the air. The revolver cracked.
The coin, struck by the bullet in its descent, was flung aside at an
angle. Dollar after dollar went up and was hurled from its course as the
weapon barked. Out of six shots the Ranger missed only one.
It was marvelous marksmanship, but it did not in the least cow those who
saw the exhibition. They were frontiersmen themselves, many of them
crack shots, and they knew that one man could do nothing against several
hundred. Their taunts followed Roberts as he stepped back into the
sod-house.
Jack reloaded his revolver and joined the Mexican. "All ready, Tony.
We're off soon as I've put the cuffs on you," he said briskly.
"Don' handcuff me, _senor_. Give me a gun an' a chance for my life,"
begged Alviro. He was trembling like an aspen leaf in a summer breeze.
The Ranger shook his head. "No, Tony. If you weren't wearin' cuffs
they'd think I meant to turn you loose. You wouldn't have a chance. I'm
the law, an' you're my prisoner. That's goin' to help pull us through.
Brace up, boy. I've got an ace up my sleeve you don't know about."
A minute later a great yell of triumph rose in the air. The door of the
sod-house had opened, and the Ranger and his prisoner stood in front of
it. The mob pushed closer, uncertain as to what its next move would be.
Had Roberts brought out the Mexican with the intention of making a
merely formal resistance?
Pete Dinsmore, just arrived on the scene at the head of a group from the
saloons, shouldered his way to the front.
"We'll take care of yore prisoner now, Mr. Ranger. Much obliged for
savin' us the trouble of tearin' down the soddy," he called jubilantly.
"You got more sense an' less grit than I figured you had," jeered
Gurley. "Now light a shuck back to Mobeetie an' write a report on it."
Roberts waited, silent and motionless, for the tumult to die. Only his
eyes and his brain were active. Homer Dinsmore was in the crowd, well to
the front. So were Jumbo Wilkins, Clint Wadley, and half a dozen other
line-riders and cowmen, all grouped together to the left. Fifty yards
back of them a group of saddled horses waited.
The shouting spent itself. The motionless figure beside the pallid
Mexican excited curiosity. Did he mean to give up his prisoner without a
fight? That was not the usual habit of the Texas Ranger.
With his left hand Jack drew from a coat-pocket some dark sticks a few
inches long. A second time his six-shooter leaped from its scabbard.
"Look out for his cutter!"[4] yelled Gurley.
The voice of Wadley boomed out harsh and strong, so that every man
present heard what he said. "Gad, he's got dynamite!"
The revolvers of the two Dinsmores were already out. They had moved
forward a step or two, crouching warily, eyes narrowed and steady. If
this brash young Ranger wanted a fight he could have it on the jump. But
at Wadley's shout they stopped abruptly. The owner of the A T O was
right. The fool officer had several sticks of dynamite in his hand tied
together loosely by a string.
The crowd had been edging forward. There was no break in it now, but one
could see a kind of uneasy ripple, almost as though it held its mob
breath tensely and waited to see what was to come.
"He's got no fuse!" screamed Gurley.
"Here's my fuse," retorted the Ranger. He held up his revolver so that
all could see. "I'm goin' to fling this dynamite at the first man who
tries to stop me an' hit it while it's in the air close to his head.
Come on, Tony. We're on our way."
He moved slowly forward. The Dinsmores stood fast, but the crowd sagged.
As the Ranger got closer there was a sudden break. Men began to scramble
for safety.
"Look out, Dinsmore," an excited voice cried. It belonged to Jumbo
Wilkins. "He'll blow you to hell an' back."
Both of the Dinsmores had a reputation for gameness in a country where
the ordinary citizen was of proved courage. With revolvers or rifles
they would have fought against odds, had done it more than once. But
dynamite was a weapon to which they were not used. It carried with it
the terror of an instant death which would leave them no chance to
strike back. Very slowly at first, a step at a time, they gave ground.
Roberts, as he moved with his prisoner, edged toward Wadley and his
group. He knew he had won, that the big cattleman and his friends would
close behind him in apparent slow pursuit, so adroitly as to form a
shield between him and the mob and thus prevent a rifle-shot from
cutting him down. The horses were in sight scarce half a hundred yards
away.
And in the moment of victory he shaved disaster. From the right there
came the pad of light, running feet and the rustle of skirts.
"Goddlemighty, it's 'Mona!" cried Wadley, aghast.
It was. Ramona had known that something was in the air when the Ranger
and her father held their conference in front of the house. Her aunt had
commented on the fact that Clint had taken from the wall a sawed-off
shotgun he sometimes carried by his saddle. The girl had waited,
desperately anxious, until she could stand suspense no longer.
Bareheaded, she had slipped out of the house and hurried toward the
jail in time to see the Ranger facing alone an angry mob. Without
thought of danger to herself she had run forward to join him.
Homer Dinsmore gave a whoop of triumph and rushed forward. The Ranger
could not play with dynamite when the life of Wadley's daughter was at
stake. His brother, Gurley, a dozen others, came close at his heels,
just behind Ramona.
The Ranger dropped the black sticks into his pocket and backed away,
screening his prisoner as he did so. The ex-Confederate who had come up
on the stage was standing beside Wadley. He let out the old yell of his
war days and plunged forward.
The Dinsmores bumped into the surprise of their lives. Somehow the man
upon whom they had almost laid clutches was out of reach. Between him
and them was a line of tough old-timers with drawn guns.
The owner of the A T O handed his sawed-off shotgun to Jumbo Wilkins,
caught Ramona round the shoulders with one arm, and ran her hurriedly
out of the danger-zone.
Joe Johnston's old trooper pushed the end of his rifle urgently against
Homer Dinsmore's ribs. "Doggone it, don't be so rampageous! Keep back
ther! This gun's liable to go off."
"What's ailin' you?" snarled Gurley. "Ain't you goin' to help us string
up the Mexican?"
"No, Steve. Our intentions is otherwise," replied Jumbo with a grin.
"An' don't any of you-all come closeter. This sawed-off shotgun of
Clint's is loaded with buckshot, an' she spatters all over the State of
Texas."
The little posse round the prisoner backed steadily to the left. Not
till they were almost at the horses did Dinsmore's mob guess the
intentions of the Ranger.
Pete gave a howl of rage and let fly a bullet at Alviro. Before the
sound of the shot had died away, the outlaw dropped his revolver with an
oath. The accurate answering fire of Roberts had broken his wrist.
"No use, Pete," growled his brother. "They've got the deadwood on us
to-day. But I reckon there are other days comin'."
Homer Dinsmore was right. The mob had melted away like a small snowbank
in a hot sun. It was one thing to help lynch a defenseless Mexican; it
was quite another to face nine or ten determined men backing the law.
Scarce a score of the vigilantes remained, and most of them were looking
for a chance to save their faces "without starting anything," as Jumbo
put it later.
The lynching-party stood sullenly at a distance and watched the Ranger,
his prisoner, and three other men mount the horses. The rest of the
posse covered the retreat of the horsemen.
Just before the riders left, Jumbo asked a question that had been
disturbing him. "Say, Tex, honest Injun, would you 'a' fired off that
dynamite if it had come to a showdown?"
Roberts laughed. He drew from his pocket the sticks, tossed them into
the air, and took a quick shot with his revolver.
For a moment not a soul in the posse nor one of Dinsmore's watching
vigilantes drew a breath. Not one had time to move in self-defense.
The bullet hit its mark. All present saw the little spasmodic jerk of
the bundle in the air. But there was no explosion. The dynamite fell
harmlessly to the ground.
The old Confederate stepped forward and picked up the bundle. He
examined it curiously, then let out a whoop of joyous mirth.
"Nothin' but painted sticks! Son, you're sure a jim-dandy! Take off yore
hats, boys, to the man that ran a bluff on the Dinsmore outfit an' made
a pair of deuces stick against a royal flush."
He tossed the bits of wood across to Pete Dinsmore, who caught the
bundle and looked down at it with a sinister face of evil. This boy had
out-maneuvered, outgamed, and outshot him. Dinsmore was a terror in the
land, a bad-man known and feared widely. Mothers, when they wanted to
frighten their children, warned them to behave, or the Dinsmore gang
would get them. Law officers let these outlaws alone on one pretext or
another. But lately a company of the Texas Rangers had moved up into
the Panhandle. This young cub had not only thrown down the gauntlet to
him; he had wounded him, thwarted him, laughed at him, and made a fool
of him. The prestige he had built up so carefully was shaken.
The black eyes of the outlaw blazed in their deep sockets. "By God,
young fellow, it's you or me next time we meet. I'll learn you that no
scrub Ranger can cross Pete Dinsmore an' get away with it. This ain't
the first time you've run on the rope with me. I've had more 'n plenty
of you."
The riders were moving away, but Jack Roberts turned in the saddle, one
hand on the rump of the bronco.
"It won't be the last time either, Dinsmore. You look like any other
cheap cow-thief to me. The Rangers are going to bring law to this
country. Tell yore friends they'll live longer if they turn honest men."
The Ranger put spurs to his horse and galloped after his posse.
[Footnote 4: In the early days in Texas a revolver was sometimes called
a "cutter."]
CHAPTER XVI
WADLEY GOES HOME IN A BUCKBOARD
Clint Wadley took his daughter to the end of the street where his sister
lived, blowing her up like a Dutch uncle every foot of the way. The
thing she had done had violated his sense of the proprieties and he did
not hesitate to tell her so. He was the more unrestrained in his
scolding because for a few moments his heart had stood still at the
danger in which she had placed herself.
"If you was just a little younger I'd sure enough paddle you. Haven't
you been brought up a-tall? Did you grow up like Topsy, without any
folks? Don't you know better than to mix up in men's affairs an' git
yoreself talked about?" he spluttered.
Ramona hung her head and accepted his reproaches humbly. It was easy for
her to believe that she had been immodest and forward in her solicitude.
Probably Mr. Roberts--and everybody else, for that matter--thought she
could not be a nice girl, since she had been so silly.
"You go home an' stay there," continued Clint severely. "Don't you poke
yore head outside the door till I come back. I'll not have you traipsing
around this-a-way. Hear me, honey?"
"Yes, Dad," she murmured through the tears that were beginning to come.
"I reckon, when it comes to standin' off a crowd o' hoodlums, I don't
need any help from a half-grown little squab like you. I been too easy
on you. That's what ails you."
Ramona had not a word to say for herself. She crept into the house and
up to her room, flung herself on the bed and burst into a passion of
weeping. Why had she made such an exhibition of herself? She was ashamed
in every fiber of her being. Not only had she disgraced herself, but
also her father and her aunt.
Meanwhile her father was on his way back downtown. In spite of his years
the cattleman was hot-headed. He had something to say to Pete Dinsmore.
If it led to trouble Wadley would be more than content, for he believed
now that the Dinsmore gang--or some one of them acting in behalf of
all--had murdered his son, and he would not rest easy until he had
avenged the boy.
The Dinsmores were not at the Silver Dollar nor at the Bird Cage. A
lounger at the bar of the latter told the owner of the A T O that they
had gone to the corral for their horses. He had heard them say they were
going to leave town.
The cattleman followed them to the corral they frequented. Pete Dinsmore
was saddling his horse in front of the stable. The others were not in
sight, but a stable boy in ragged jeans was working over some harness
near the door.
Dinsmore sulkily watched Wadley approach. He was in a sour and sullen
rage. One of the privileges of a "bad-man" is to see others step softly
and speak humbly in his presence. But to-day a young fellow scarcely out
of his teens had made him look like a fool. Until he had killed Roberts,
the chief of the outlaws would never be satisfied, nor would his
prestige be what it had been. It had been the interference of Wadley and
his crowd that had saved the Ranger from him, and he was ready to vent
his anger on the cattleman if he found a good chance.
The outlaw knew well enough that he could not afford to quarrel with the
owner of the A T O. There was nothing to gain by it and everything to
lose, for even if the cattleman should be killed in a fair fight, the
Rangers would eventually either shoot the Dinsmores or run them out of
the country. But Pete was beyond reason just now. He was like a man with
a toothache who grinds on his sore molar in the intensity of his pain.
"I've come to tell you somethin', Dinsmore," said Wadley harshly.
"Come to apologize for throwin' me down, I reckon. You needn't. I'm
through with you."
"I'm not through with you. What I want to say is that you're a dog. No,
you're worse than any hound I ever knew; you're a yellow wolf."
"What's that?" cried the bad-man, astounded. His uninjured hand crept to
a revolver-butt.
"I believe in my soul that you murdered my boy."
"You're crazy, man--locoed sure enough. The Mexican--"
"Is a witness against you. When you heard that he had followed Ford that
night, you got to worryin'. You didn't know how much he had seen. So you
decided to play safe an' lynch him, you hellhound."
"Where did you dream that stuff, Wadley?" demanded Dinsmore, eyes
narrowed wrathfully.
"I didn't dream it, any more than I dreamed that you followed Ford from
the cap-rock where you hole up, an' shot him from behind at Battle
Butte."
"That's war talk, Wadley. I've just got one word to say to it. You're a
liar. Come a-shootin', soon as you're ready."
"That's now."
The cattleman reached for his forty-five, but before he could draw, a
shot rang out from the corral. Wadley staggered forward a step or two
and collapsed.
Pete did not relax his wariness. He knew that one of the gang had shot
Wadley, but he did not yet know how badly the man was hurt. From his
place behind the horse he took a couple of left-handed shots across the
saddle at the helpless man. The cattleman raised himself on an elbow,
but fell back with a grunt.
The position of Dinsmore was an awkward one to fire from. Without
lifting his gaze from the victim, he edged slowly round the bronco.
There was a shout of terror, a sudden rush of hurried feet. The
stableboy had flung himself down on Wadley in such a way as to protect
the prostrate body with his own.
"Git away from there!" ordered the outlaw, his face distorted with the
lust for blood that comes to the man-killer.
"No. You've done enough harm. Let him alone!" cried the boy wildly.
The young fellow was gaunt and ragged. A thin beard straggled over the
boyish face. The lips were bloodless, and the eyes filled with fear. But
he made no move to scramble for safety. It was plain that in spite of
his paralyzing horror he meant to stick where he was.
Dinsmore's lip curled cruelly. He hesitated. This boy was the only
witness against him. Why not make a clean job of it and wipe him out
too? He fired--and missed; Pete was not an expert left-hand shot.
"Look out, Pete. Men comin' down the road," called the other Dinsmore
from the gate of the corral.
Pete looked and saw two riders approaching. It was too late now to make
sure of Wadley or to silence the wrangler. He shoved his revolver back
into its place and swung to the saddle.
"Was it you shot Wadley?" he asked his brother.
"Yep, an none too soon. He was reachin' for his six-shooter."
"The fool would have it. Come, let's burn the wind out of here before a
crowd gathers."
Gurley and a fourth man joined them. The four galloped down the road and
disappeared in a cloud of white dust.
A moment later Jumbo Wilkins descended heavily from his horse. Quint
Sullivan, another rider for the A T O, was with him.
The big line-rider knelt beside his employer and examined the wound.
"Hit once--in the side," he pronounced.
"Will--will he live?" asked the white-faced stableboy.
"Don't know. But he's a tough nut, Clint is. He's liable to be cussin'
out the boys again in a month or two."
Wadley opened his eyes. "You're damn' whistlin', Jumbo. Get me to my
sister's."
Quint, a black-haired youth of twenty, gave a repressed whoop. "One
li'l' bit of a lead pill can't faze the boss. They took four or five
cracks at him an' didn't hit but once. That's plumb lucky."
"It would 'a' been luckier if they hadn't hit him at all, Quint,"
answered Jumbo dryly. "You fork yore hawss, son, an' go git Doc
Bridgman. An' you--whatever they call you, Mr. Hawss--rustler--harness a
team to that buckboard."
Jumbo, with the expertness of an old-timer who had faced emergencies of
this kind before, bound up the wound temporarily. The stable-rustler
hitched a team, covered the bottom of the buckboard with hay, and helped
Wilkins lift the wounded man to it.
Clint grinned faintly at the white-faced boy beside him. A flicker of
recognition lighted his eyes. "You look like you'd seen a ghost, Ridley.
Close call for both of us, eh? Lucky that Ranger plugged Dinsmore in the
shootin' arm. Pete's no two-gun man. Can't shoot for sour apples with
his left hand. Kicked up dust all around us, an' didn't score once."
"Quit yore talkin', Clint," ordered Jumbo.
"All right, Doc." The cattleman turned to Ridley. "Run ahead, boy, an'
prepare' Mona so's she won't be scared plumb to death. Tell her it's
only a triflin' flesh-wound. Keep her busy fixin' up a bed for me--an'
bandages. Don't let her worry. See?"
Ridley had come to town only two days before. Ever since the robbery he
had kept a lone camp on Turkey Creek. There was plenty of game for the
shooting, and in that vast emptiness of space he could nurse his wounded
self-respect. But he had run out of flour and salt. Because Tascosa was
farther from the A T O ranch than Clarendon he had chosen it as a point
to buy supplies. The owner of the corral had offered him a job, and he
had taken it. He had not supposed that Ramona was within a hundred miles
of the spot. The last thing in the world he wanted was to meet her, but
there was no help for it now.
Her aunt carried to Ramona the word that a man was waiting outside with
a message from her father. When she came down the porch steps, there
were still traces of tear-stains on her cheeks. In the gathering dusk
she did not at first recognize the man at the gate. She moved forward
doubtfully, a slip of a slender-limbed girl, full of the unstudied charm
and grace of youth.
Halfway down the path she stopped, her heart beating a little faster.
Could this wan and ragged man with the unkempt beard be Art Ridley,
always so careful of his clothes and his personal appearance? She was a
child of impulse. Her sympathy went out to him with a rush, and she
streamed down the path to meet him. A strong, warm little hand pressed
his. A flash of soft eyes irradiated him. On her lips was the tender
smile that told him she was still his friend.
"Where in the world have you been?" she cried. "And what have you been
doing to yourself?"
His blood glowed at the sweetness of her generosity.
"I've been--camping."
With the shyness and the boldness of a child she pushed home her
friendliness. "Why don't you ever come to see a fellow any more?"
He did not answer that, but plunged at his mission. "Miss Ramona, I've
got bad news for you. Your father has been hurt--not very badly, I
think. He told me to tell you that the wound was only a slight one."
'Mona went white to the lips. "How?" she whispered.
"The Dinsmores shot him. The men are bringing him here."
He caught her in his arms as she reeled. For a moment her little head
lay against his shoulder and her heart beat against his.
"A trifling flesh-wound, your father called it," went on Ridley. "He
said you were to get a bed ready for him, and fix bandages."
She steadied herself and beat back the wave of weakness that had swept
over her.
"Yes," she said. "I'll tell Aunt. Have they sent for the doctor?"
"Quint Sullivan went."
A wagon creaked. 'Mona flew into the house to tell her aunt, and out
again to meet her father. Her little ankles flashed down the road. Agile
as a boy, she climbed into the back of the buckboard.
"Oh, Dad!" she cried in a broken little voice, and her arms went round
him in a passion of love.
He was hurt worse than he was willing to admit to her.
"It's all right, honeybug. Doc Bridgman will fix me up fine. Yore old
dad is a mighty live sinner yet."
Ridley helped Jumbo carry the cattleman into the house. As he came out,
the doctor passed him going in.
Ridley slipped away in the gathering darkness and disappeared.
CHAPTER XVII
OLD-TIMERS
As soon as Captain Ellison heard of what had happened at Tascosa, he
went over on the stage from Mobeetie to look at the situation himself.
He dropped in at once to see his old friends the Wadleys. Ramona opened
the door to him.
"Uncle Jim!" she cried, and promptly disappeared in his arms for a hug
and a kiss.
The Ranger Captain held her off and examined the lovely flushed face.
"Dog it, you get prettier every day you live. I wisht I was thirty years
younger. I'd make some of these lads get a move on 'em."
"I wish you were," she laughed. "They need some competition to make them
look at me. None of them would have a chance then--even if they wanted
it."
"I believe that. I got to believe it to keep my self-respect. It's all
the consolation we old-timers have got. How's Clint?"
"Better. You should hear him swear under his breath because the doctor
won't let him smoke more than two pipes a day, and because we won't let
him eat whatever he wants to. He's worse than a sore bear," said Ramona
proudly.
"Lead me to him."
A moment later the Ranger and the cattleman were shaking hands. They had
been partners in their youth, had fought side by side in the Civil War,
and had shot plains Indians together at Adobe Walls a few years since.
They were so close to each other that they could quarrel whenever they
chose, which they frequently did.
"How, old-timer!" exclaimed the Ranger Captain.
"Starved to death. They feed me nothin' but slops--soup an' gruel an'
custard an' milk-toast. Fine for a full-grown man, ain't it? Jim, you go
out an' get me a big steak an' cook it in boilin' grease on a camp-fire,
an' I'll give you a deed to the A T O."
"To-morrow, Clint. The Doc says--"
"_Manana!_ That's what they all say. Is this Mexico or God's country?
What I want, I want now."
"You always did--an' you 'most always got it too," said Ellison, his
eyes twinkling reminiscently.
'Mona shook a warning finger at her father. "Well, he won't get it now.
He'll behave, too, or he'll not get his pipe to-night."
The sick man grinned. "See how she bullies a poor old man, Jim. I'm
worse than that Lear fellow in the play--most henpecked father you ever
did see."
"Will she let you talk?"
"He may talk to you, Uncle Jim."
"What did I tell you?" demanded the big cattleman from the bed with the
mock bitterness that was a part of the fun they both enjoyed. "You see,
I got to get her permission. I'm a slave."
"That's what a nurse is for, Clint. You want to be glad you got the
sweetest one in Texas." The Captain patted Ramona affectionately on the
shoulder before he passed to the business of the day. "I want to know
about all these ructions in Tascosa. Tell me the whole story."
They told him. He listened in silence till they had finished, asked a
question or two, and made one comment.
"That boy Roberts of mine is sure some go-getter."
"He'll do," conceded the cattleman. "That lucky shot of his--the one
that busted Dinsmore's arm--certainly saved my life later."
"Lucky shot!" exploded Ellison. "And you just through tellin' me how he
plugged the dollars in the air! Doggone it, I want you to know there was
no darned luck about it! My boys are the best shots in Texas."
"I'll take any one of 'em on soon as I'm out--any time, any place, any
mark," retorted Wadley promptly.
"I'll go you. Roberts is a new man an' hasn't had much experience. I'll
match him with you."
"New man! H'mp! He's the best you've got, an' you know it."
"I don't know whether he is, but he's good enough to make any old-timer
like you look like a plugged nickel."
The cattleman snorted again, disdaining an answer.
"Dad is the best shot in Texas," pronounced Ramona calmly, rallying to
her father's support. For years she had been the umpire between the two.
The Captain threw up his hands. "I give up."
"And Mr. Roberts is just about as good."
"That's settled, then," said Ellison. "But what I came to say is that
I'm goin' to round up the Dinsmore bunch. We can't convict 'em of murder
on the evidence we have, but I'll arrest 'em for shootin' you an' try to
get a confession out of one of 'em. Does that look reasonable, Clint?"
Wadley considered this.
"It's worth a try-out. The Dinsmores are game. They won't squeal. But
I've a sneakin' notion Gurley is yellow. He might come through--or that
other fellow Overstreet might. I don't know him. You want to be careful
how you try to take that outfit, though, Jim. They're dangerous as
rattlesnakes."
"That's the kind of outfit my boys eat up," answered the chipper little
officer as he rose to leave. "Well, so long, Clint. Behave proper, an'
mebbe this young tyrant will give you a nice stick o' candy for a good
boy."
He went out chuckling.
The cattleman snorted. "Beats all how crazy Jim is about those Ranger
boys of his. He thinks the sun rises an' sets by them. I want to tell
you they've got to sleep on the trail a long time an' get up early in
the mo'nin' to catch the Dinsmores in bed. That bird Pete always has one
eye open. What's more, he an' his gang wear their guns low."
"I don't think Uncle Jim ought to send boys like Jack Roberts out
against such desperadoes. It's not fair," Ramona said decisively.
"Oh, ain't it?" Her father promptly switched to the other side. "You
give me a bunch of boys like young Roberts, an' I'd undertake to clean
up this whole country, an' Lincoln County too. He's a dead shot. He's an
A-1 trailer. He can whip his weight in wildcats. He's got savvy. He uses
his brains. An' he's game from the toes up. What more does a man need?"
"I didn't know you liked him," his daughter said innocently.
"Like him? Jumpin' snakes, no! He's too darned fresh to suit me. What's
likin' him got to do with it? I'm just tellin' you that no better
officer ever stood in shoe-leather."
"Oh, I see."
Ramona said no more. She asked herself no questions as to the reason,
but she knew that her father's words of praise were sweet to hear. They
sent a warm glow of pride through her heart. She wanted to think well of
this red-haired Ranger who trod the earth as though he were the heir of
all the ages. In some strange way Fate had linked his life with hers
from that moment when he had literally flung himself in her path to
fight a mad bull for her life.
CHAPTER XVIII
A SHOT OUT OF THE NIGHT
Ramona sat on the porch in the gathering darkness. She had been reading
aloud to her father, but he had fallen asleep beside her in his big
armchair. During these convalescent days he usually took a nap after
dinner and after supper. He called it forty winks, but to an
unprejudiced listener the voice of his slumber sounded like a sawmill in
action.
The gate clicked, and a man walked up the path. He did not know that the
soft eyes of the girl, sitting in the porch shadows, lit with pleasure
at sight of him. Nothing in her voice or in her greeting told him so.
He took off his hat and stood awkwardly with one booted foot on the
lowest step.
"I came to see Mr. Wadley," he presently explained, unaccountably short
of small talk.
She looked at her father and laughed. The saw was ripping through a
series of knots in alternate crescendo and diminuendo. "Shall I wake
him? He likes to sleep after eating. I think it does him good."
"Don't you! I'll come some other time."
"Couldn't you wait a little? He doesn't usually sleep long." The girl
suggested it hospitably. His embarrassment relieved any she might
otherwise have felt.
"I reckon not."
At the end of that simple sentence he stuck, and because of it Jack
Roberts blushed. It was absurd. There was no sense in it, he told
himself. It never troubled him to meet men. He hadn't felt any shyness
when there had been a chance to function in action for her. But now he
was all feet and hands before this slip of a girl. Was it because of
that day when she had come flying between him and the guns of Dinsmore's
lynching-party? He wanted to thank her, to tell her how deeply grateful
he had been for the thought that had inspired her impulse. Instead of
which he was, he did not forget to remind himself later, as expressive
as a bump on a log.
"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ridley?" she asked.
"No, miss. He saved yore father's life from Pete Dinsmore. I reckon you
know that."
"Yes. I saw him for a moment. Poor boy! I think he is worrying himself
sick. If you meet him will you tell him that everything's all right. Dad
would like to see him."
Their voices had dropped a note in order not to waken her father. For
the same reason she had come down the steps and was moving with him
toward the gate.
If Jack had known how to say good-bye they would probably have parted
at the fence, but he was not socially adequate for the business of
turning his back gracefully on a young woman and walking away. As he
backed from her he blurted out what was in his mind.
"I gotta thank you for--for buttin' in the other day, Miss Ramona."
She laughed, quite at her ease now. Why is it that the most
tender-hearted young women like to see big two-fisted men afraid of
them?
"Oh, you thought I was buttin' in," she mocked, tilting a gay challenge
of the eyes at him.
"I roped the wrong word, miss. I--I thought--"
What he thought was never a matter of record. She had followed him along
the fence to complete his discomfiture and to enjoy her power to turn
him from an efficient man into a bashful hobbledehoy.
"Father gave me an awful scolding. He said I didn't act like a lady."
"He's 'way off," differed Jack hotly.
She shook her head. "No. You see I couldn't explain to everybody there
that I did it for--for Rutherford--because I didn't want anything so
dreadful as that poor Mexican's death on his account. Dad said some of
the men might think I did it--oh, just to be showing off," she finished
untruthfully.
"Nobody would think that--nobody but a plumb idjit. I think you did
fine."
Having explained satisfactorily that she had not interfered for his
sake, there was really no occasion for Ramona to linger. But Jack had
found his tongue at last and the minutes slipped away.
A sound in the brush on the far side of the road brought the Ranger to
attention. It was the breaking of a twig. The foot that crushed it might
belong to a cow or a horse. But Roberts took no chances. If some one was
lying in wait, it was probably to get him.
"Turn round an' walk to the house," he ordered the girl crisply. "Sing
'Swanee River' as you go. Quick!"
There was a note in his voice that called for obedience. Ramona turned,
a flurry of fear in her heart. She did not know what there was to be
afraid of, but she was quite sure her companion had his reason. The
words of the old plantation song trembled from her lips into the night.
A dozen yards behind her Jack followed, backing toward the house. His
six-shooter was in his hand, close to his side.
He flashed one look backward. The parlor was lit up and Clint Wadley was
lying on a lounge reading a paper. He was a tempting mark for anybody
with a grudge against him.
Jack took the last twenty yards on the run. He plunged into the parlor
on the heels of Ramona.
Simultaneously came the sound of a shot and of breaking glass. Wadley
jumped up, in time to see the Ranger blow out the lamp. Jack caught
Ramona by the shoulders and thrust her down to her knees in a corner of
the room.
"What in blue blazes--?" Clint began to demand angrily.
"Keep still," interrupted Jack. "Some one's bushwhackin' either you or
me."
He crept to the window and drew down the blind. A small hole showed
where the bullet had gone through the window and left behind it a star
of shattered glass.
Ramona began to whimper. Her father's arm found and encircled her. "It's
all right, honey. He can't git us now."
"I'm goin' out by the back door. Mebbe I can put salt on this bird's
tail," said Jack. "You stay right where you are, Mr. Wadley. They can't
hit either of you in that corner."
"Oh, don't! Please don't go!" wailed the girl.
Her words were a fillip to the Ranger. They sent a glow through his
blood. He knew that at that moment she was not thinking of the danger to
herself.
"Don't you worry. I'll swing round on him wide. Ten to one he's already
hittin' the dust fast to make his get-away."
He slipped out of the room and out of the house. So slowly did he move
that it was more than an hour before he returned to them.
"I guessed right," he told the cattleman. "The fellow hit it up at a
gallop through the brush. He's ten miles from here now."
"Was he after me or you?"
"Probably me. The Rangers ain't popular with some citizens. Looks to me
like Steve Gurley's work."
"I wouldn't be a Ranger if I was you. I'd resign," said Ramona
impulsively.
"Would you?" Jack glanced humorously at Wadley. "I don't expect yore
father would indorse them sentiments, Miss Ramona. He'd tell me to go
through."
Clint nodded. "'Mona said you wanted to see me about somethin'."
The young man showed a little embarrassment. The cattleman guessed the
reason. He turned to his daughter.
"Private business, honey."
Ramona kissed her father good-night and shook hands with Jack. When they
were alone the Ranger mentioned the reason for his call.
"It's goin' around that Pete Dinsmore claims to have somethin' on
Rutherford. The story is that he says you'd better lay off him or he'll
tell what he knows."
The eyes of the cattleman winced. Otherwise he gave no sign of
distress.
"I've got to stand the gaff, Jack. He can't blackmail me, even if the
hound cooks up some infernal story about Ford. I hate it most on 'Mona's
account. It'll hurt the little girl like sixty."
Jack was of that opinion too, but he knew that Wadley's decision not to
throw his influence to shield the Dinsmores was the right one.
"She thought a heap o' Ford, 'Mona did," the cattleman went on. "He was
all she had except me. The boy was wild. Most young colts are. My fault.
I made things too easy for him--gave him too much money to spend. But
outside of bein' wild he was all right. I'd hate to have her hear
anything against him." He sighed. "Well, I reckon what must be must."
"Stories the Dinsmores tell won't count with honest folks. Pete is one
bad _hombre_. Everybody will know why he talks--if he does. That's a big
_if_ too. He knows we've got evidence to tie his gang up with the
killin' of Ford. He doesn't know how much. Consequence is he'll not want
to raise any question about the boy. We might come back at him too
strong."
"Mebbeso." Wadley looked at the Ranger and his gaze appraised Roberts a
man among men. He wished that he had been given a son like this. "Boy,
you kept yore wits fine to-night. That idea of makin' 'Mona walk alone
to the house an' keepin' her singin' so's a bushwhacker couldn't make
any mistake an' think she was a man was a jim-dandy."
The Ranger rose. He had not the same difficulty in parting from Wadley
or any other man that he found in making his adieux to a woman. He
simply reached for his hat, nodded almost imperceptibly, and walked out
of the house.
CHAPTER XIX
TRAPPED
The territory which Captain Ellison had to cover to find the Dinsmore
gang was as large as Maine. Over this country the buffalo-hunter had
come and gone; the cattleman was coming and intended to stay. Large
stretches of it were entirely uninhabited; here and there sod or adobe
houses marked where hardy ranchers had located on the creeks; and in a
few places small settlements dotted the vast prairies.
There were in those days three towns in the Panhandle. If you draw a
line due east from Tascosa, it will pass very close to Mobeetie, a
hundred miles away. Clarendon is farther to the south. In the seventies
Amarillo was only what Jumbo Wilkins would have called "a whistlin'-post
in the desert," a place where team outfits camped because water was
handy. The official capital of the Panhandle was Mobeetie, the seat of
government of Wheeler County, to which were attached for judicial
purposes more than a score of other counties not yet organized or even
peopled.
To the towns of the Panhandle were drifting in cowboys, freighters,
merchants, gamblers, cattle outfits, and a few rustlers from Colorado,
New Mexico, and the more settled parts of Texas. They were the hardier
sons of an adventurous race, for each man had to make good his footing
by his own strength. At first there had been no law except that which
lay in the good-will of men, and the holster by their side. The sheriff
of Wheeler County had neither the deputies nor the financial backing to
carry justice into the mesquite. Game gunmen served as marshals in the
towns, but these had no authority on the plains. Until Captain Ellison
and his little company of Rangers moved into the district there had been
no way of taking law into the chaparral. The coming of these quiet men
in buckskin was notice to the bad-man that murder and robbery were not
merely pleasant pastimes.
Yet it would be easy to overstate the lawlessness of the Panhandle.
There were bad men. Every frontier of civilization has them. But of all
the great cattle country which stretched from Mexico to the Canadian
line none had a finer or more orderly citizenry than this. The country
was notably free of the bloodshed which drenched such places as Dodge
City to the east or Lincoln County, New Mexico, to the west of the
Panhandle.
Ellison wanted the Dinsmores, not because he believed he could yet hang
any serious crime on them but for the moral effect upon them and the
community. Clint Wadley had gone looking for trouble and had been
wounded in consequence. No Texas jury would convict on that count. But
it was not a conviction the fire-eating little Captain wanted just now.
He intended to show that his boys could go out and arrest the Dinsmores
or any other lawbreakers, whenever the occasion called for it. It might
take them a week or a month or six months, but they would bag their game
in the end. The rule of the Texas Rangers was to sleep on a man's trail
until they found him.
The Captain stationed a man at each of the three towns. He sent two on a
scouting-trip through No Man's Land, and two more to search Palo Duro
Canon. He watched the stages as they went and came, questioned
mule-skinners with freight outfits, kept an eye on _tendejons_ and
feed-corrals. And at the end of three weeks he had no results whatever
to show, except a sarcastic note from Pete Dinsmore complimenting him on
his force of Rangers.
The Captain was furious, but not a whit discouraged.
"Dog it, we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," he
told Lieutenant Hawley, his second in command.
To them came Jack Roberts with a proposition. "I've found out that Homer
Dinsmore has a girl in Tascosa. She's a Mexican. I know about her
through Tony Alviro. It seems she's a cousin of Bonita, the girl Tony
is going to marry. About once a week Dinsmore rides into town at night,
ties his horse in the brush back of her house, and goes in to see her.
If you say so, Chief, I'll make it my business to be there when he
comes."
"Need any help, do you reckon?"
"No. I'll have to hide out in the mesquite. One man will be better on
that job than two."
"All right, son. You know yore job. Get him."
That was all the warrant Jack wanted or needed. He returned to Tascosa
and made his preparations.
Every night after dark he slipped out of town by the north road till he
was on the open prairie, then swung round in a semicircle skirting the
lights of the settlement. He had arranged a blind in the brush from
which he could see the back of the Menendez "soddy." Occasionally he
comforted himself with a cautiously smoked cigarette, but mostly he lay
patiently watching the trap that was to lure his prey. At one o'clock
each morning he rose, returned on his beat, went to bed, and fell
instantly asleep.
On the fifth night there was a variation of the programme.
It was between nine and ten o'clock that Jack heard the hoot of an owl.
He sat up instantly, eyes and ears keyed for action.
The back door of the sod-house opened, and through the night stillness
floated the faint strumming of a guitar. Jack did not doubt that it was
the answering signal to show that all was safe.
A man crept forward from the mesquite and disappeared inside the house.
Through the brush the Ranger snaked his way to the point from which the
hooting of the owl had come. A bronco was tethered to a bush. An
examination showed that the horse had been ridden far, but not too fast.
Jack was satisfied the man had come alone.
A faint trail wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus to the
house. Beside this trail, behind a clump of prickly pear, the Ranger sat
down and waited. The hour-hand of his watch crept to ten, to eleven, to
twelve. Roberts rose occasionally, stretched himself to avoid any chance
of cramped muscles, and counted stars by way of entertainment. He had
spent more diverting evenings, but there was a good chance that the fag
end of this one would be lively enough to compensate.
Shortly after midnight a shaft of light reached out from the house into
the desert. The back door had opened. A woman came out, took a few steps
forward, peered about her, and called that all was clear. A man
followed. The two stood talking for a minute in low tones; then the man
kissed her and turned briskly toward the brush. According to the
Ranger's programme the girl should have returned to the house, but
instead she waited in the moonlight to see the last of her lover. When
he waved an arm to her and cried "_Buenos noches, chachita_," she threw
him a kiss across the starlit prairie.
Intent on his good-night, the man missed the ill-defined trail that led
to his horse and zigzagged through the brush at another angle. The
Ranger, light-footed as a cat, moved forward noiselessly to intercept
him, crouching low and taking advantage of all the cover he could find.
Luck was with him. Dinsmore strode within a yard of the kneeling man
without a suspicion of danger.
A powerful forearm slid out from the brush. Sinewy fingers caught the
far ankle of the moving man. One strong pull sent Dinsmore off his
balance. The outlaw clutched wildly at the air and came crashing down.
He fell into a bush of catclaw cactus.
The Ranger was on him like a wildcat. Before his victim could make a
move to defend himself, Jack had the man handcuffed with his arms behind
him.
Dinsmore, his face in the catclaw, gave a smothered cry for help. From
where he was, the Ranger could not see the house, but he heard the
excited voice of the woman, the sound of a commotion, and the beat of
rapid footsteps.
An excited voice called: "_Quien es?_"
The trapped man wanted to explain, but his captor rubbed the face of
the outlaw deeper into the torturing spines of the cactus.
"Don't ask any questions," advised Roberts. "Get back into the house
_pronto_. The Rangers have taken Dinsmore. Unless you're lookin' for
trouble, you'd better _vamos_."
Evidently two or three Mexicans had run out to the rescue. Jack could
hear them discussing the situation in whispers. He had them at a double
disadvantage. They did not know how many Rangers lay in the mesquite;
nor did they want to fall foul of them in any case. The men drew back
slowly, still in excited talk among themselves, and disappeared inside
the house. The woman protested volubly and bitterly till the closing of
the door stifled her voice.
Jack pulled his prisoner to a more comfortable position.
"Sorry you fell into the catclaw, Dinsmore," he said. "If you'll stand
hitched, I'll draw the spine from your face."
The man cursed him savagely.
"All right," said the Ranger amiably. "If you want 'em as souvenirs,
I'll not object. Suits me if it does you. We'll go now."
He tied to the handcuffs the end of the lariat which was attached to the
saddle. The other end he fastened to the pommel.
"I'll not go a step with you," growled Dinsmore.
"Oh, yes, you'd better step along. I'd hate to have to drag you through
this brush. It's some rough."
The Ranger swung to the saddle. The bronco answered the pressure of the
rider's knee and began to move. The lariat jerked tight. Sullenly
Dinsmore yielded.
But his spirit was unbroken. As he stumbled along in front of the horse,
he filled the night with raucous oaths.
"Take these cuffs off'n me and come down from that horse," he stormed.
"Do that, and I'll beat off yore head."
The man on horseback smiled. "You're the laziest fellow I ever did see,
Dinsmore," he drawled. "The last fellow that licked me pulled me from
the saddle."
"Just let me get a lick at you," pleaded the outlaw. "I'll give you that
bronc you're ridin' if you'll stand up to me man to man."
"Can't do it. I'm here for business an' not for pleasure. Sorry."
"You've got no right to arrest me. What's the charge?"
"I've forgot whether it's brand-burning, highway robbery, murder, or
mayhem--any old crime would fit you."
"You've got no evidence."
"Mebbeso, mebbe not," answered the Ranger lightly. "Cap Ellison said
he'd like to have a squint at you, anyhow, so I said I'd fetch you
along. No trouble a-tall to show goods."
The outlaw bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a sudden fury of rage.
"Some day I'll gun you right for this."
The narrow-loined youth with the well-packed shoulders looked down at
him, and the eyes of the officer were hard and steady as steel.
"Dinsmore," he said, "we're goin' to put you an' yore outfit out o'
business in the Panhandle. Your day is done. You've run on the rope long
enough. I'll live to see you hanged--an' soon."
CHAPTER XX
KIOWAS ON THE WARPATH
Jack Roberts did not leave town inconspicuously with his prisoner in the
middle of the night. He made instead a public exit, for Captain Ellison
wanted to show the Panhandle that the law could reach out and get the
Dinsmores just as it could any other criminals. With his handcuffed
captive on a horse beside him, the Ranger rode down to the post-office
just before the stage left. Already the word had spread that one of the
Dinsmores had been taken by an officer. Now the town gathered to see the
notorious "bad-man" and his tamer.
Dinsmore faced the curious crowd with a defiant sneer, but he was
burning with rage and humiliation. He and his crowd had carried things
with a high hand. They were not only outlaws; they were "bad-men" in the
frontier sense of the word. They had shot down turbulent citizens who
disputed their sway. Pete and Homer especially had won reputations as
killers, and game men sidestepped them rather than deny their claims.
Yet twice within a month this smooth-faced boy had crossed their path
and bested them. The pride of Homer Dinsmore was galled to the quick. He
would have given all he had to "get a lick at" the Ranger now before
all these people.
Tascosa watched the young officer and his captive from a distance. The
townsfolk offered no audible comment on the situation, either by way of
approval or disapproval. The fear of the outlaws had been too long over
them. This was not the end of the matter. It was still a good betting
proposition that some one of the gang would "get" this jaunty youth
before he was much older.
But it is certain that the arrest he had made single-handed had its
effect. It is inevitable that a frontier camp shall some day discard its
wild youth and put on the sobriety of a settled community. Was this time
at hand for the Panhandle?
A rider galloped out of town after the horsemen. The Ranger turned to
face him and made sure that the rifle beneath his leg would slip easily
from its scabbard. An attempt at a rescue was always a possibility on
the cards.
The man drew his cow-pony up beside them.
"'Evenin', Mr. Man-in-a-Hurry. Lookin' for anybody in particular?" asked
the red-haired Ranger, his chill eyes fixed on the stranger.
"For you. I want to help guard your prisoner to Mobeetie."
"Much obliged," answered Roberts dryly. "Am I needin' help?"
"You may. You've got to sleep. Let me ride with you."
The brain of Jack Roberts began to register a memory. This young fellow
was in ragged jeans and a butternut shirt. His hair was long and
unkempt. He looked haggard and ill-fed. But he was the same youth the
Ranger had glimpsed for a moment in the bravery of fine clothes and gay
address on the day of the bulldogging. Jack remembered his promise to
Ramona Wadley.
"Fine! Come along. We'll take watch and watch through the night," he
told the boy.
Homer Dinsmore's teeth drew back in a derisive snarl. "Want company
again on the trip so's you won't be robbed, Mr. Ridley?"
The Easterner did not answer, but color flushed his face at the taunt.
Roberts offered a comment on his behalf:
"Ridley was young then. He's gettin' older every day. I notice he didn't
ask for company when he flung himself down over Clint Wadley's body to
protect it from the bullets of a killer."
All afternoon they followed the Canadian River as it wound to the east.
They made camp beside it at night, cooking the coffee on a fire of
buffalo chips. Jerked beef and hardtack, washed down with coffee, was
their fare.
Dinsmore had fallen into a sullen silence, but the other two carried on
desultory talk. The two young fellows were not very comfortable in each
other's society; they did not understand the mental habits of each
other. But Jack maintained a cheerful friendliness to which Arthur
responded gratefully. Behind the curtain of their talk was a girl. The
spell of her was on them both. Each of them could see her in the coals
of the fire, light-footed and slim, with shy eyes tender and shining.
But neither of them drew the curtain to their deeper thoughts.
After they had eaten, the Ranger handcuffed his prisoner and pegged him
down loosely. He put out the fire, for he did not want the location of
the camp to be betrayed by smoke. He gave Ridley the first
watch--because it was the easier of the two. With a saddle for a pillow
and a slicker for a blanket, he lay down beneath the stars and fell
asleep. Once, in his dreams, he thought he heard the sound of beating
drums. When he wakened at the time set, the night was still. The
prisoner was sound asleep, and Ridley, propped against his saddle, was
keeping vigilant watch.
Robert mentioned his fancy about the drums.
Arthur smiled. "Before Dinsmore turned over he was snoring like a
far-away thunder-storm. I expect that's what you heard."
Jack roused the others as soon as the promise of day was in the sky. By
sunup they were ready to travel.
There was a bluff back of the camp that gave an outlook over the
country. The Ranger left his prisoner in the care of Arthur while he
climbed to its summit for a glance up and down the river. He knew that
the Mexican girl would get word to the friends of her sweetheart that he
had been arrested. There was a chance that they might already be close.
Anyhow, it would do no harm to see. If he had not taken that precaution
undoubtedly all three of the party would have been dead inside of half
an hour.
For the first sweeping glance of the Ranger showed him a tragedy. The
valley was filled with Indians. Apparently as yet they did not know that
any white men were in the neighborhood, for the smoke was beginning to
rise from morning fires. In a little pocket, just off from the camp,
their ponies were herded. At the opposite side were a dozen ox-wagons
grouped together in a circle to form a corral. The tongue of the nearest
wagon was propped up by a yoke, and across it was the naked body of a
man who had been crucified and tortured. The other drivers of the
freight outfit were nowhere in sight. Either they were lying dead behind
the wagons, or they had escaped on horseback.
The Ranger drew back at once from the bluff. He knew that probably he
had been seen by the Indian lookouts; if he and his party were going to
get away, it must be done quickly. He ran down the hill to his
companions.
"Indians--Kiowas--hundreds of them," he explained. "They've captured a
freight outfit and killed the drivers. We'll cross the river below their
camp if we can." As he spoke, he was busy unlocking the handcuffs of the
prisoner. To Dinsmore he gave a revolver.
It seemed to Ridley that his heart was pumping water. Death with torture
was the punishment given captives by the plains Indians. He knew he must
be ghastly white, but he said nothing.
The three men rode out of the ravine to the river. Already they could
hear the yelling of the Kiowas a few hundred yards above. A moment later
they caught sight of the savages pouring down the bank. Those in front
were on foot. Others farther back, on the round-bellied Indian ponies,
were galloping to catch up.
Half a mile farther down, there was a break in the river-bank which
offered a better chance for crossing. The stream there broadened, cut in
two by a little island. The three riders gained on their pursuers.
Bullets whistled past them, but they did not stop to exchange shots.
When they reached the place Jack had chosen to cross, they were four or
five hundred yards ahead of the leading Indians.
They splashed into the water. Here it was shallow, but along the edge of
the island the current was running swift. The Kiowas, following the
fugitives down the bank, kept up a scattering fire. The bullets struck
the water on all sides of the three moving targets. Arthur was on the
right, closest to the Indians. A little ahead of him was Dinsmore.
Farther over, the Ranger's horse was already breasting the deep water.
Roberts heard young Ridley cry: "He's hit!"
The Ranger turned his head. His prisoner was sagging in the saddle.
Arthur was riding beside the wounded man and trying to support him.
Jack drew up his horse, holding it strongly against the current, until
the others were abreast of him.
"We've got to swim for it," he called across to Ridley. "I'll get him if
he slips out of the saddle before we reach shore."
The horses swam side by side. Roberts encouraged Dinsmore, riding knee
to knee with him. "Just a little way now. Stick it out.... We're right
close to the bank.... Grab the horn tight."
As Dinsmore slid into the water Jack caught him by the hair of the head.
The swift water, racing fast round the shoulder of the island, tugged
mightily at him. But the body of the Ranger's horse was a barrier to
keep the unconscious man from being swept downstream, and the fingers of
the rider clung to the thick black hair like steel clamps.
They reached shallow water. The Ranger swung from the saddle and carried
Dinsmore up through the thicket that edged the bank. The horses
clambered up without guidance, and Ridley drove them into the big rocks,
where they would be better protected from the shots of the Indians.
The Ranger chose the best cover available near the head of the island
and put the wounded man down gently on the ground. Already the Kiowas
were halfway across the river. Jack counted twenty of them on horseback
in the water.
"Can you shoot?" he asked his companion.
Ridley was behind a rock around which bushes grew thick. "B-better than
I could." He was shaking with excitement.
"You can't miss 'em. We've got 'em right this time."
Jack fired. An Indian plunged headfirst into the water like a stone from
a sling. A moment later his body could be seen swirling in the swift
current. A second shot shook the death scream from the throat of another
brave.
Twice Arthur missed.
"You've got buck-fever. Try for the horses," suggested the Texan. A
moment later he gave a little whoop of encouragement. The naked shining
body of a Kiowa had collapsed on the bare back of a pony. Ridley at last
had scored.
Instantly the nervousness of the Easterner disappeared. His shooting had
not the deadly accuracy of Roberts, but he was a good marksman, and at
this close-range work his forty-five-seventy did clean work.
The Texan did not miss a shot. He picked the leaders and took his time.
A third, a fourth, and a fifth brave went sliding from the backs of the
swimming ponies.
The Kiowas broke under the deadly fire. Those not yet in the deep water
turned and made for the shore from which they had come. The others gave
with the current and drifted past the island, their bodies hanging from
the far side of the ponies.
The whites on the island shot at the horses. More than one redskin,
unable to get out of the current after his pony had been shot, floated
down the river for miles before the body was found by his tribe.
"We got either nine or ten," said the Ranger. "They'll never try another
attack from that bank. Probably they'll surround the island to starve
us."
He put down his rifle and opened the shirt of the wounded man. Dinsmore
had been shot in the back, above the heart. Jack washed out the wound
and bound it up as best he could. The outlaw might live, or he might
not--assuming that the party would escape from the savages.
Jack knew that this was an assumption not likely to be fulfilled. His
guess was that there were four or five hundred of the Kiowas. They
would immediately post a line of guards on both sides of the river.
There was a chance that a man on a fast horse might make a get-away if
he left at once. He proposed to Ridley that he try this.
"Will you go too?" asked Arthur.
The Ranger shook his head. "Got to stay with my prisoner."
"I'll stay too."
"If you were to make it, you could send me help."
"Think I could get away?"
The Westerner pointed to two Indians who were swimming the river below
out of rifle-shot. "I doubt it. You might fight yore way through, but
they'd likely get you."
"I'll stick it out here, then."
In his heart Arthur knew that he was not staying to face the danger with
the Texan. When once he had got over his panic, he had fought coolly
enough under the eye of his companion, but he lacked the stark courage
to face the chances of that long ride alone for help.
"I reckon it's too late, anyhow," agreed Roberts. He shrugged his
shoulders. "It's a toss-up, either way. But we'll sure send a few to
their happy hunting-grounds before we take our long journey."
"You think--" Arthur let his fear-filled eyes finish the question.
The Ranger smiled wryly. "Yore guess is as good as mine. I'll say this:
I've been in tight holes before an' came through O. K. I'll back my luck
to stand up this time too."
Arthur looked into the brown face of this spare, clear-eyed youth and
felt that he would give his hopes of heaven for such gameness. They had
not one chance in ten thousand to escape, but the sheer nerve of the boy
held him as cool and easy as though he were sauntering down the main
street at Clarendon.
CHAPTER XXI
TEX TAKES A LONG WALK
Except for desultory firing the Kiowas left the islanders alone for the
rest of the day. The fever of the wounded man mounted. Most of the time
he was out of his head, and in tossing to and fro was continually
disturbing the cold-water bandages applied by the Texan.
As soon as night had fallen, Roberts put a proposition to his companion.
"One of us has got to go for help. Take yore choice, Ridley. Will you go
or stay?"
The Easterner felt as though his heart had been drenched in ice-water.
"Can't we wait until some one comes?" he asked timidly.
"Who's likely to come? You got any friends on the way? I haven't.
There's another thing: the stage will be along to-morrow. We've got to
get warnin' to it that the Kiowas are on the warpath. If we don't--well,
you know what happened to the freight outfit."
"If one of us goes, how can he get away?"
"I've thought of that. It will be dark for an hour before the moon gets
up. The one that goes will have to drop off the bank an' swim down with
the current for a quarter of a mile or so, then get to the shore, crawl
across the prairie till he's clear of the sentries, an' make a bee-line
for Tascosa."
"I couldn't find my way in the dark," faltered Arthur.
Jack nodded. "I doubt if you could. I'm elected, then."
"Why--why can't we both go?"
"We couldn't take Dinsmore fifty yards. He's too sick a man."
"He's going to die anyhow. If I stay, we'll both die--horribly. It's
every man for himself now."
Jack shook his head. "If you feel that way, you go an' I'll stay."
"I--I can't go alone." He pushed his plea one step farther. "He's a
criminal--a murderer. He'd kill you if he could, and he's already
betrayed me. There's no call for us to wait for certain death on his
account."
The Ranger spoke gently. "None for you, but he's in my hands. I'll see
it out. Mebbe you can get through the lines. Crawl through the grass.
Keep yore nerve an' lie low if you hear 'em comin'. Once you're through,
you'll be all right."
"I tell you I can't go alone. If it has to be that one goes and one
stays, then I'll stay."
"That's how it has to be. It's about an even break, I reckon. They're
liable to get me if I go. They're liable to get you if you stay. Then
again, they're liable to get neither of us if I can get through."
"What if they rush me?"
"Don't lose yore head. You can stand 'em off. They'll never make as
strong an attack as they did this mo'nin'. If they make any real rush,
it will likely be just before daybreak. Indians don't do business at
night."
Jack made his preparations swiftly. He took off his boots and tied them
to his belt. His hat he left behind.
"How will I know whether you get through the sentries?" asked Ridley.
"If you hear any shootin', you'll know I probably didn't. But I'm sure
figurin' on gettin' through. Don't you forget for a minute that every
hour brings help nearer. So long, old man. Best of luck!"
The Ranger grinned cheerfully at the other boy as he crept into the
brush at the edge of the water. Presently Arthur heard a faint _plop_
and knew that the Texan had begun his journey.
The swift current carried the swimmer downstream rapidly. He used his
arms just enough to keep himself up, and let the power of the water do
the rest. As a small boy he had lived on the Brazos. He knew the tricks
of the expert, so that he was able now to swim with only his nose
showing. For it was certain that the Indians had set watchers on the
river to guard against an escape.
The island vanished behind him. Now and then he caught from one bank or
the other the glow of camp-fires. Once he was sure he heard the beating
of a tom-tom.
And once he gave himself up for lost. The rapid current had swept him
close to the right bank. Across his vision flashed a picture of a brave
armed with bow and arrow standing above him on the shore. He dived
instantly. When he came up for air, only a bit of his red topknot
showed. The swimmer heard the twang of an arrow and dived a second time.
He was in the deep shadows of overhanging brush when he shook the water
out of his eyes next time. For a dozen seconds he drew his breath in
fear. But there came no shout of warning to other watchers, no shot or
outcry to shatter the stillness. He guessed that the Kiowa had taken him
for a log drifting downstream and had aimed wantonly to test his
accuracy.
Several hundred yards below the island Jack caught at a bush projecting
into the water. He swung close to the bank and very cautiously drew
himself out of the river.
He listened. Except for the sound of the rushing water the night was
still. Very carefully he wormed his way forward into the prairie. His
progress was slow, for he had to make sure of each foot of his advance.
Under cover of a mesquite-bush he put on his water-soaked boots. He
crept fifty yards--one hundred. To his right a camp-fire was burning. It
seemed to him once or twice that he heard voices.
An old trail worn nearly a foot deep by buffaloes served his need. In
this trench he was partly hidden and could make better progress. He
traveled on all fours, still alert in every sense for danger.
Suddenly he sank full length into the trench. On the other side of a
cactus-bush two Indians were squatting. They sat and talked.
The heart of the Ranger sank. At any moment they might discover his
presence, or they might sit there the whole night and hold him prisoner
in his ditch.
For an hour he lay there, wondering each moment whether the ticking of
his watch might not betray him. Then, in a leisurely way, the sentries
got up and sauntered toward the river. The moon was up now, and he could
see their naked bodies shining in the light.
The two Kiowas stopped a moment on the bank and talked before they
separated. One moved up the river; the other turned and came back
directly toward Roberts. The Ranger lay in the buffalo-trail hoping that
in the darkness he might escape observation. He was helpless. Even if he
had brought a gun with him he dared not shoot, for if the alarm were
given he would be driven out of cover in a few minutes.
The brave came forward to the very edge of the wallow. His moccasin
touched the body of the prostrate man. Some slight shift of his
attitude precipitated the crisis. He turned to listen to some sound,
and his foot pressed upon the leg of the Ranger.
There
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