CHAPTER VCAPTAIN 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 José 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.
Then this José 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 upquickly, 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 spellscoundrelwith ak?" the Ranger chief fired abruptly at him.
"Nary ak, Captain. I spell itb-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 saycaballoforhorseorsix-shooterforrevolver."
"I see—ortough guyforTexas ranger."
"Ordurn foolforJack 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 moreladinosteers?"
"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 VICLINT 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 wouldyoudo?" 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 jackrabbithell-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 theA 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 theencinalto 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 mancan 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 theskin 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. "Adiós, 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 Mexicocome 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 themalpaistoward 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 VIITHE 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 Mexicanjacals, 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 himselfto 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 courtabout 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,señor," 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 toan 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 amoueof 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,señor, 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 herarms pressed close to her bosom, she turned fiercely on Wadley.
"I hate you, dog of agringo! 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. Haveyou?"
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 therein 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 VIIIRUTHERFORD 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 themen before the cattleman moved over the hill-brow. As the trader rolled up again in hissugun, 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 descendingpath 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 hisrifle. "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,aliasBill 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 Ridleya 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?" Gurleyexploded. "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 IXMURDER 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 Mexicanvaquerocame 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 cupof 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 aneasy 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 distinctprint 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 footprintsto 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 adance 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.