Author of “Beginners’ Luck,” “The Hermit of Tigerhead Butte,” etc.
A bullet six inches from his head warned Ware’s Kid that he was “warmer” in his search for the killer of Eph Carson, but even then he did not suspect how soon he was to reach the surprising end of the long trail.
Ware’s Kid jogged into Dallas, coming from Austin pursuant to special orders of the adjutant general, which covered the proposed capture or burial of one Dell Spreen, who was charged with murder and robbery down El Paso way.
Horsemen passed him; farmers in wagons with their families about them. All gave the smallish figure on the black stallion a more than usually curious glance. He was dressed like a Mexican dandy--a huge black sombrero, heavy with silver bullion, shading a lean brown face and sun-narrowed gray-green eyes; a waist-length jumper of soft tanned goatskin, fringed from shoulder to elbow and with a bouquet of scarlet roses embroidered upon the back; pantalones of blue, with rows of twinkling silver buttons on each side of the crimson insert in the outer seam. Some of those who passed him would have instantly recognized his name. For he had wiped out Black Alec Rawles’s gang two years before and so had marked his entry into the Rangers. The tale was a classic over a wide land.
But the crowd passed on unwittingly. For his white-handled Colt hung awkwardly high upon his belt and the canny readiness of sleek, brown Winchester stock to his hand was not readily apparent. Too, he was obviously no more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
On the main street Ware’s Kid pulled up, this time to stare broodingly up the shallow canyon of brick and wooden buildings, almost as if he expected to see Dell Spreen--a small, deadly figure of smooth, fierce brown face and murderous black eyes--step from a doorway.
A drowsy idler upon a saloon porch, leaning comfortably against a post with feet in the dust of the street, promised information. Ware’s Kid spurred over and at sound of the stallion’s feet the lank one opened his eyes lazily.
“Sher’ff’s office?” inquired Ware’s Kid politely.
“Git to hell out o’ here an’ find out, if you-all’s so cur’us!” snarled the loafer.
“Sher’ff’s office?” repeated Ware’s Kid.
Finding icy greenish eyes boring into his face, eyes lit by an uncanny electric sparkling, the loafer sat suddenly stiff-backed.
“’Scuse me!” he cried shakily. “But I--I shore thought you-all was a greaser! Yo’ clothes an’ yo’--yo’----”
Ware’s Kid ignored the profuse flow of apologies. Having received his directions, he rode on. The lounger mopped damp brow with a sleeve and peered after the tall black and its small rider.
“Gawd! He’s a mean n’, I bet you!” he said. “Gent what packs a six-shooter, but reaches fer his carbeen when he’s riled--I bet you he’s a wolf!”
Ware’s Kid swung down before the sheriff’s office and hitched the stallion to a splintered post. With carbine cuddled in his arm, he crossed to stand in the doorway of the office. His roving eyes made out, in the duskiest corner, a small figure squatting against the wall.
Ware’s Kid went inside. The squatting one was a boy of fifteen, barefooted, in faded overalls, gingham shirt, and ragged hat upon towy hair. His round eyes were of the palest blue and he had neither brows nor lashes, so that his gaze seemed unwinking, like a snake’s.
“Sher’ff?” grunted Ware’s Kid.
The boy jerked his head toward the street door and shrugged silently. Ware’s Kid, after a long stare, lounged over to another corner and himself squatted upon his heels.
Presently he forgot the boy in the opposite corner. Slowly he produced Durham and brown papers and methodically built a cigarette. This he laid upon the floor before him and rolled another, then a third, fourth, fifth, sixth. They laid in a neat row. He picked up one from the end of the row and lit it.
He wondered if he were really to find Dell Spreen here in Dallas. He had not been in Carwell with Sergeant Ames, on the day three months past, when Simeon Rutter and two O-Bar riders had spurred into the tiny, sleepy village, with the word of the murder and robbery of Eph Carson, Rutter’s partner.
But the sour-faced ranger sergeant had told him of the crime and of his investigations at El Castillo, the long, low rock wall from behind which Eph Carson had been shot.
Piecing together the testimony of Rutter and the punchers and adding the result of his own observation, Ames had made a fairly complete story. Carson had been on his way back to the O-Bar with about seven thousand dollars of his and Rutter’s money. During his absence, up Crow Point way, this gunman Spreen had ridden up to the O-Bar and asked for Carson. Told that he was absent, Spreen had said grimly that he would wait.
But shortly after breakfast on the day of the murder, while the ranch house was deserted except for two Mex’ cooks, Spreen had disappeared. None had since seen him. Spreen knew that Carson was to return with a large sum of money. The whole ranch had known it.
Evidently, said Ames, Spreen had ridden up the Crow Point trail to ambush him where it ran along the rock wall in the desert--El Castillo. He had not waited long--there were but two cigarette stubs in the trampled sand. Eph Carson had come squarely into range of the steadied rifle. Then--two shots and the wizened little cowman had side-slipped from the saddle to sprawl face downward, dead. Having robbed the body, Spreen had vanished as if the ground had swallowed him.
Ware’s Kid went over the details of his own investigation. He had located the niche in the wall which had held the murderer’s .44 rifle. He had re-created the murder; had interviewed Rutter and the O-Bar boys.
The dark, bitter-tongued rancher had told how he had ridden with the punchers up the trail toward Crow Point, when Carson’s failure to return had alarmed him. Told how they had found Carson sprawled upon the sand, found his horse a quarter-mile away with bridle reins caught in the ocotillos.
Two weeks after the murder a peremptory summons had come to Ware’s Kid from headquarters in Austin. He had found the adjutant general determined to stamp out the wave of crime then sweeping the border country. He wanted this Spreen killed or taken. Preferably the latter, that he might be hanged upon the scene of his crime.
“You wiped out Black Alec’s gang,” the adjutant general had said to Ware’s Kid. “So I’m giving you this commission: get Dell Spreen! I don’t care where you have to go to get him, either!”
Ware’s Kid, who was now smoking the fifth cigarette from his layout, was aroused from his thoughts by footsteps. A stocky man clumped inside the office and sat down at the battered desk.
“Mawnin’,” nodded the stocky man. The rigidity of his angular face was broken up by curiosity, as with, alert brown eyes roved over the Mexican finery. “Somethin’?”
“Do’ know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid.
He noted that the man wore a deputy sheriff’s badge upon his open vest. He was, perhaps, twenty-nine or thirty, though dark mustache and tiny goatee made him seem older. He was dusty as from long riding. Now he reached down stiffly and took off his spurs.
“Do’ know,” repeated Ware’s Kid. “Sher’ff?”
“Sher’ff’s up to Austin, a-powwowin’ with the gov’nor. Art Willeke--Art’s chief dep’ty--he’s ramblin’ ’round the ellum-bottoms, Denton way, huntin’ Sam Bass.”
Mention of the notorious outlaw, who was just then keeping Rangers and peace officers frantic, solved a part of Ware’s Kid’s puzzle. He had been wondering whether or not to take the local officers into his confidence; tell them frankly whom he sought.
He decided to forego any help these easterners could give in locating Spreen--an East Texas man and, perhaps, one known to them--to gain the greater advantage of working without danger of warning being passed to Spreen by some friend.
“Kind o’ interested in Bass,” he told the deputy, thoughtfully. “Ranger. Headquarters Troop. Name’s Ware.”
“Ware?” cried the deputy, staring hard and somewhat unbelievingly. “Heerd about you-all! Glad to meet you!”
He shook hands and sat down again, still eyeing Ware’s Kid doubtfully. Then the boy in the corner came silently to the desk. The deputy nodded to him, hesitated and turned to Ware’s Kid.
“Mind if I talk to him, private?” he asked apologetically.
Ware’s Kid went outside to lean against the wall. He could hear the boy’s excited whispering; an occasional explosive grunt from the deputy. Then he was called inside. The boy was gone.
The deputy sat scowling down at the desk, tap-tapping the curving black butt of the long-barreled Colt at his hip. He glanced up at Ware’s Kid with the odd, appraising stare he had given the small figure at first mention of his name.
“My name’s Bos’ Johnson,” he remarked abruptly. “You-all make yo’se’f to home, here. I’ll be back, right soon.”
He was gone fifteen or twenty minutes and when he came in again, his face wore that expression of grim rigidity which Ware’s Kid had marked upon him when first he had come into the office.
“A’right,” he grunted. “Le’s git yo’ hawse to the stable. Then I’ll buy you-all a drink.”
They saw to the stallion’s stabling, then crossed the street to a low, brick saloon. There were not many in it--a cowboy or two, a knot of farmers standing together far down the bar. But, drinking alone, was a huge man with sullen, red face and close-set black eyes. He turned at the pair’s entrance, staring.
“Whisky,” said Bos’ Johnson, tonelessly. Ware’s Kid nodded agreement.
The big man watched, tugging at long mustaches and snorting loudly as if at his private thoughts. He watched belligerently while the bartender poured the drinks for Ware’s Kid and Bos’ Johnson.
“Bartender!” he bellowed suddenly and crashed a huge fist upon the polished bar.
“Yes, sir!” replied the bartender. His pasty face was gray-hued. “Yes, sir!”
“You-all know who I am, bartender? I ask you-all--don’ you-all know what I am, huh?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Branch. Course I do. Everybody knows Bull Branch! So’ do!”
Bull Branch continued to glare menacingly at him.
“Bartender!” he growled. “Since when is Mexicans ’lowed to come a-shovin’ in yere a-drinkin’ with white men? You-all git down there an’ take that-’ere drink away from that Mex’! Then you-all chase him out’n here ’fore I git mad.”
Slowly the bartender inched toward Ware’s Kid--who had not yet seemed even to glance in Bull Branch’s direction. When he was still six feet away, the Ranger turned his head a trifle--and regarded the bartender. The unhappy man stopped instantly, shrinking back before the uncanny electric sparkling in the gray-green eyes. Slowly, then, Ware’s Kid wheeled to face Bull Branch.
“Where I come from--” thus the Ranger in a soft drawl--“ever’ gent kills his own snakes.”
“What?” roared Bull Branch, lowering big head on bull neck and glaring ferociously. “Whut?”
“Pop yo’ whip, fella!” Ware’s Kid invited him, still in the bored drawl.
Bull Branch gaped amazedly. Deliberately, he pushed back his coat flaps and put huge hands upon his hips. The pearl-gripped butts of two Colts showed, almost under his fingers. Then he bore slowly down upon the Ranger, who stood sideway to the bar with left elbow resting on its edge. Bos’ Johnson moved unobtrusively away from the bar and out of possible line of fire. But Bull Branch made no move to draw his guns: merely came on ponderously.
What followed was blurred like the action of a rattler’s head as it strikes. The left hand of Ware’s Kid moved--so rapidly that none there actually saw it move. It caught up the whisky glass from the bar and flipped the stinging liquor squarely into Bull Branch’s face.
As the huge figure reeled, hands going to tortured eyes, Ware’s Kid shot forward. He twitched Branch’s Colts from their holsters and hurled them into a corner. He rained blows upon Bull Branch’s face --leaping clear off the floor to reach that height.
It was cat-and-mastiff. Blindly, Bull Branch tried to push him off, but those hard fists, landing with force terrifically out of proportion to the small body behind them, cut his face to ribbons, closed his eyes to puffy-lidded slits, drove sickeningly into his mid-section. He staggered about the barroom, grunting, whining, helpless. At last some instinct seemed to show him the door. He broke for it at a staggering run and Ware’s Kid, with a Comanche yell, leaped upon his back and spurred him through it, catching hold of the lintel and swinging down to the floor as Bull Branch lurched through and fell sprawling upon the veranda floor outside.
When he came back, the bartender was half-crouched against the back-bar, with eyes bulging. Bos’ Johnson and the other patrons were clinging to the bar, some whooping feebly, others too weak to do more than shed happy tears. Bos’ Johnson waggled a hand at the bartender.
“Set ’em up, bartender!” he gasped. “This ’n’s on the house. Ware! Mebbe they won’t neveh hi’st no monument to you-all here, but Bull Branch--he’ll re-membeh you-all plenty!”
Back in the sheriff’s office, Johnson turned suddenly serious again. He sat staring at the wall, his harsh face rigid as if set in bronze. “I got you-all into that trouble with Bull Branch,” Johnson said suddenly. “Done it a-purpose.”
Ware’s Kid merely waited, brown face, gray-green eyes, revealing nothing of his thoughts.
“Wondered if you-all really was Ware an’, if you was, how much o’ the talk was so. Because--I shore do need some help!”
“Fer what?”
“To go out with me tonight an’ stand up to Sam Bass’s gang!”
Ware’s Kid studied the grimly earnest face. From the beginning he had sensed something unusual about him. He thought that Johnson was usually a happy-go-lucky cowpuncher and a man efficient with either hands or weapons. He was used to judging men quickly and he began to like this stocky deputy.
“A’ right!” he grunted curtly.
“You-all willin’?” cried Johnson. “Then here’s the layout. They’re goin’ to stick up the east-bound T & P ag’in at Eagle Ford. Figger folks won’t be expectin’ lightnin’ to hit twict in the same place. Me ’n’ you, we’ll be in the weeds ’long the track.”
“How-come just us two?”
“I could raise a posse,” Johnson admitted. “But--how’m I goin’ to know the fellas I line up ain’t in with Bass? No! I’m goin’ to line my sights on Simp Dunbar an’ before I let some dam’ spy carry word, I’ll go it by myse’f!”
“Simp Dunbar? Who’s he?”
“He’s the skunk that killed my cousin, Billy Tucker! Two weeks ago, oveh in Tarrant. Man! I’d give a black land farm to git me Simp Dunbar oveh my front sight. An’ I shore will! ’T was like this. Bass’s outfit loped up to a saloon on the aidge o’ Fort Worth, where Billy, he was havin’ a drink. The’ was some kind o’ wranglin’, Billy bein’ the kind as won’t back down fer no man livin’. Simp Dunbar--I’ve knowed him all my life fer a useless cus an’ Billy knowed him, too--he shot from off to one side. Billy an’ me, we helled around togetheh when we was kids. Punched cows togetheh, out Menard-way. I--I thought a heap o’ Billy----”
Ware’s Kid nodded silently. Here was a man he understood. Understood his vindictiveness, for it was in his own fierce Texan blood; understood his willingness to take a hundred-to-one chance to face his enemy. More and more, he liked Bos’ Johnson.
“A’ right. We’ll hunt ’em up,” he grunted. “How-come yuh know they’re goin’ to be at Eagle Ford?”
“My spy told me. Had him a-watchin’ fer ’em last two weeks. That boy.”
Ware’s Kid stared silently at Johnson.
“What’s name that other little station--east o’ here?” he asked.
“Mesquite?”
“Didn’t even know there was one,” shrugged Ware’s Kid, with a ghost of a grin. “Johnson, we’ll be at Mesquite, not Eagle Ford, tonight. Boy’s lyin’. In with Bass, likely. Feelin’ I got, an’ mostly my feelin’s is right.”
Johnson was won over to acceptance of the altered plan, if but half-willingly. He admitted that he knew nothing much of the boy, who had appeared in the office a month before offering to spy upon the Bass gang.
“In with Bass!” repeated the Ranger. “Hell! He could’ve brought yuh lots o’ news, ’fore this.”
They waited until nearly dark, then ate at a Chinese restaurant. It was pitch-dark when they went swiftly to the stable where Johnson’s horse, with the big stallion, had been fed an hour before. They saddled, talking a little for the benefit of any ears that might be stretched toward them, of the western road; that toward Eagle Ford.
For a couple of miles they rode swiftly eastward, then turned south on the road to Mesquite. They were close to the railroad always, riding through woodland. Johnson led, because of his knowledge of the country. Soon he checked his mount and jerked the Winchester from its scabbard. Ware’s Kid already cuddled his carbine in the crook of his arm. They rode on again, slower, now.
Suddenly, not fifty yards ahead, a man scratched a match. The Ranger jerked his carbine up. Gently he kneed the stallion around, feeling, rather than seeing, that Johnson was doing likewise. There was no alarm while they moved back a hundred yards and slipped off their animals.
“Let’s hitch the hawses an’ sneak up!” whispered Johnson.
They returned to the point from which they had seen the flare of that match, the stocky deputy making no more sound than a shadow--than the Ranger himself. Then they halted, squatting on their heels, to listen. There was the sound of men moving, of horses, the hum of low-voiced, jerky conversation.
“Late again!” a boyish voice complained. “Hell! You’d think we were passengers, Sam, way the dam’ railroad’s treating us!”
“Don’t ye fret, Bub,” a harsh voice answered the youngster. “She’ll be a-ramblin’ along right soon. Ingineer, he’ll see that log an’ he’ll jerk her back onto her tail right suddent!”
“Ever’body lined up?” inquired a pleasant voice--Bass’s, Ware’s Kid surmised. “Yuh-all know where yuh work?”
As the voices answered in affirmative grunts, the Ranger began moving soundlessly to circle them to get nearer to the point where the train would stop. Johnson followed until they were squatting in a little open perhaps fifty feet from the track, sheltered by a fallen tree.
“You-all was shore right!” breathed Johnson. “Wouldn’t be nowheres else in the world!”
Minutes ticked off, then there was the sound of the train, far away. The rails before them began to hum. The train was upon robbers and officers with a roar. Came a frantic squealing of brakes and the scream of the whistle.
The train had barely halted when there was a rattle of shots along the track. It was so dark that there was no clue to the robbers’ positions save the orange flames that stab-stabbed the night. Ware’s Kid was conscious that Johnson was gone from beside him. He wasted no time thinking of that, but ran crouched over up to the track, where he could fire at the robbers’ shot-flashes. From here he went into action with coldly precise fire from the carbine.
“Who’s that dam’ jughead?” someone roared. Evidently, thought Ware’s Kid, he was believed to be some misguided member of the gang, firing into his own people.
From between the cars came shots to answer the gang, now. It was pandemonium, there in the pitchy night, with the heavy roar of Colts and the sharp, whiplike reports of rifles. A man could but guess, by the relative positions of the flashes, at whom he shot.
The Ranger hardly expected to do much execution--his position made that a matter of chance. But he was worrying the Bass men.
Suddenly a high, clear voice rang out, crying a name over and over again, penetrating even the staccato din of the firing. “Simp Dunbar! Where you-all? Simp Dunbar----”
A voice answered, but there was no diminution in the firing. Ware’s Kid crawled down the track, having reloaded his carbine. With his first shot a man cried out shrilly. He pumped the lever and--his carbine jammed. He spat a bitter curse. He knew instantly what had happened--he had slipped a .45 pistol cartridge into a .44 carbine.
A huge shape hurled itself at him. Mechanically, he threw up his carbine and the oncoming man ran into it. Then Ware’s Kid, tugging at the butt of his seldom-used Colt, leaped aside. A roar sounded, almost in his ear. Then a hand caught his shoulder. Instinctively he stepped close to his assailant, turned like a flash when a pistol brushed him; dropped his Colt and caught the fellow’s gunhand with both of his and hung on grimly.
“Somethin’s wrong, boys! Let’s git out o’ yere!” a cool, half-laughing voice was shouting, down the track--not the voice which had called Simp Dunbar’s name.
The fellow with whom Ware’s Kid grappled was swinging terrific blows at his lighter opponent. But the Ranger’s head was against his chest; the big fellow’s fists but grazed their mark. But he was tiring with his bulldog grip on the other’s gunhand. Suddenly he released his hold and tried to leap backward. A heel caught on a bunch of grass and he stumbled. A flash and roar from in front of him; a stinging pain across his head. He crashed flat.
He came to, conscious of a dull headache and, next, of a dim light over his head. After a moment of blinking, he perceived that he was sitting in a chair of a railway coach. Next he realized that the train was moving.
“How d’ you-all feel, now?” inquired an anxious voice.
Painfully he turned his head and saw Bos’ Johnson’s worried face opposite him.
“Right puny!” he grunted truthfully.
Johnson grinned widely, relief in his brown eyes.
“What happened?” demanded Ware’s Kid.
“Bullet creased you-all. You-all been pickin’ daisies might’ nigh a hour.”
“The hell! Where we goin’? Gang git away?”
“Goin’ into Dallas. Yeh, gang high-tailed it--all but Simp Dunbar,” said Johnson. “Reckon they’ll most all be a-lickin’ some sore spots, though. Me ’n’ you-all did right smart o’ shootin’! I hollered fer Simp an’ like a dam’ jughead, he spoke right up. I snuck up onto him an’ told him who I was.”
He lifted his arm and in the loose flannel of his shirt beneath it, showed a great hole with charred edges.
“Might’ nigh got me, first crack! But I worked buttonholes up an’ down his front ’fore he could shoot ag’in!”
“How-come yuh found me?”
“By lookin’ around,” shrugged Johnson affectionately. “You dam’ red-eyed li’l runt! You-all think I’d hike out an’ leave you-all out there, some’r’s, fer the gang, mebbe, to find? I come runnin’ up about the time you-all tumbled; see that hairpin right on top me--an’ me with an empty gun! I yelled like a Comanche an’ damned if he neveh broke an’ run.”
Ware’s Kid eyed him steadily. He knew that only Johnson’s arrival had kept his assailant from putting another bullet into him as he lay unconscious.
He leaned back wearily in the seat. Johnson stretched his bowed legs comfortably and took off his Stetson.
“Wisht I had a chaw,” he grumbled.
“Got the makin’s.” Ware’s Kid fumbled in his jumper pocket.
“Don’t use her thet-a-way. I neveh could learn to smoke, some way.”
He threw his head back and closed his eyes. And the Ranger, watching him, turned suddenly cold all over. For upon the brown, sinewy neck that had been always hidden heretofore by the silken neckerchief, shone a long white scar that stretched evenly three quarters of the way around it.
A stocky, dark-faced, dark-eyed man, with a white scar circling evenly around his neck--so Simeon Rutter and the O-Bar hands had described Dell Spreen. True, they had seen him clean-shaven, and, believing him guilty of murder, they remembered his features and eyes as murderous. But there was no doubt about it--Dell Spreen sat there across from him with closed eyes. And to Dell Spreen he owed his life that night!
“Dell Spreen!” he called in a low voice.
Bos’ Johnson moved like a cat, to half-draw his Colt. Then he saw the derringer that covered him with twin barrels. For an instant he hesitated, then shoved the Colt back into its holster and slumped.
“So you-all come afteh me,” he said. “I been lookin’ fer somebody to show up. That’s why I got me a job as dep’ty. Figgered whoever come’d spill his tale in the office an’, seein’ me wearin’ a badge, wouldn’t suspicion me. Specially since I neveh used my own name in the O-Bar country. But you-all shore fooled me.”
“Hate like hell to do it!” Ware’s Kid wriggled miserably. “But I’m a Ranger. Do anything I can to help yuh, Johnson. Much as I’d do fer my own blood kin. But I got to take yuh back.”
“I ain’t blamin’ you-all. But--might’s well shoot me right now as to put me up ’fore a jury in that country. Ever’thing’s ag’inst me--specially bein’ a strangeh. That’s why I high-tailed it, soon’s I heerd he’d been found.
“I ain’t denyin’ I went to the O-Bar fig-gerin’ I’d mebbe have to kill Carson. I was goin’ to git back the money he stole off’n my brotheh an’ sisteh. Goin’ to git it back or try the case before Jedge Colt. But if I’d killed him, it’d been from the front. He’d have been give a chanct to fill his hand.”
“Yuh--yuh mean yuh never killed him?” cried Ware’s Kid.
Then the old surge of hope died. Of course Johnson would say that.
“D’ you-all figger me that-a-way? Knowin’ no more about me than you do?” Johnson asked.
Slowly, the Ranger shook his head.
“Looky yere!” argued the deputy. “Eph’ Carson an’ my brotheh. Sam, they was ranchin’ it oveh on the Brazos. Carson’s a tough hombre, remember. He’s gamblin’ a lot. Well, he sells ever’ last head o’ stuff on the place while Sam’s down in Fort Worth. Time Sam gits back with my kid-sisteh that’s got a share in the ranch, Carson’s done gambled away the money. The’s a row, o’ course. Sam, he’s got more guts than gun-sense. Carson nigh kills him.
“Time I come into it, Carson’s rattled his hocks. Two years afteh, I’m ridin’ down in the El Paso country. Hear about Eph’ Carson o’ the O-Bar. I go high-tailin’ it oveh an’ hang around four-five days, but Carson don’t come. Then I start out fer Crow Point a-huntin’ him.
“Then, hell bent, comes the Mex’ cooks’ helper-boy. I kept a cowboy from beatin’ him to death, one day. Says Carson’s killed an’ robbed an’ ever’body says I must’ve killed him! Well, whut do I do? Try to tell them red-eyed O-Bar boys as how I was intendin’ to kill Eph’ Carson, mebbe, but neveh got no chanct? Like hell! I figger the job I come to do is done. I leave that-’ere country in a mile-high cloud o’ dust.”
Ware’s Kid slumped lower in the seat, going over and over his mental picture of the scene of the crime.
Bos’ Johnson rose to cup his hands against the window glass and peer out into the night. Missing no slightest movement of his prisoner, the Ranger studied again the wide, powerful shoulders, the handy legs of the man who has ridden almost since birth. Johnson turned slowly.
“Dallas! Be in soon,” he said. “Then--I ain’t blamin’ you-all none, Ware. But just--well sort o’ between us. I wisht I could make you believe I never done it. I sort o’ took to you-all from the beginnin’ an----”
“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” interrupted Ware’s Kid.
A tiny smile was born far back in the gray-green eyes; seemed to spread over the habitually blank brown face and come finally to rest upon the thin-lipped mouth.
“’T ain’t a bit o’ use,” he repeated. “’Cause--I know yuh never done it!”
Ostentatiously he returned the derringer to his jumper pocket.
“’S all right, Bos’. Yuh got to go down to Austin with me. Got to exhibit yuh some to the adj’tant gin’ral, to make him sabe. But that’ll be all. Listen: I went snoopin’ around some myself, down at Carwell. Found where the fella that killed Eph’ Carson had waited. Point one: there was two brown cigarette stubs on the ground. Yuh-all say yuh don’t smoke, an’ the’s no stain on yo’ fingers.
“I found where this fella’s stood with his rifle in a sort o’ notch. His foot-prints was still pretty plain. Well, yo’ feet, Bos’ point in, like a pigeon’s. This fella’s showed in the soft dirt under the rock overhang, a-pointin’ out!
“But point three’s the big ’n’: I stand five foot seven, an’ that notch he rested his Winchester in was level with my eyes. Short as yuh-all are, it’d be mighty near over yo’ head! Now, he never stood on nothin’, ’cause the’ ain’t nothin’ the’ to stand on. An’ he never fired from no saddle. ’Cause I found where his hawse’d been tied back in the brush.”
“Man, but you-all shore wiped some cold sweat off’n me!” cried Bos’ Johnson. “I knowed I neveh done it, but provin’ it, the way you-all just done, neveh would’ve come to me. I reckon.”
“Took a bigger man than ary one of us. That’s what we’re goin’ to show the adj’tant gin’ral. Then I’m goin’ to ask him to let me go back to Carwell to find the fella that really done the killin’. He’ll let me go. An’----”
“If he does,” cried Bos’ Johnson very earnestly, “man! The’s shore some six-footehs down in that Carwell country as’ll be up in the air two ways to onct!”
Up out of the glaring yellow sand, the long, low, narrow barrier of black rock jutted abruptly. “El Castillo”--the Castle, the Mexicans had named it, long ago. The name such names fitted as well as such names usually do. Actually it more resembled a stone fence fifty yards long, which, in height, varied from three to ten feet and, in thickness, from a foot to four, even five, feet. The top was jagged--sharp saw teeth of slick, inky rock. A sinister pile, even in the white sunlight of a desert forenoon.
Ware’s Kid squatted on spurred heels at the Castle’s western end, where the trail forked to run on either side of the wall. Not much of a trail, this--the deep, loose, perpetually-drifting sand soon effaced impressions; but generations of travel had made a lane between walls of greasewood and cat-claw and cactus.
It was near the Ranger’s position, on this dimly-marked track, that Eph Carson had died--shot from the saddle without a chance to return the murderer’s fire.
Having left Dell Spreen in the care of the adjutant general in Austin and returned swiftly to Carwell, Ware’s Kid had come without being observed to the scene of the murder. Now that he knew Spreen had not committed the killing, he must decide who did.
“Satisfied the adj’tant gin’ral Spreen neveh done it,” reflected the Ranger. “But I got to figure out who did. Spreen’s too little. Good-size hombre plugged Eph Carson.”
He got up and the great, black stallion, which had stood behind him as he squatted, now followed like a dog to the spot where Eph Carson’s murderer had lain in wait. Ware’s Kid knew the place well.
“Fella leaned up agin’st the rock, right here,” he re-enacted the scene mentally. “Lined his sights on Carson. Carson was comin’ up t’ other side from over Crow Point way. Fella drilled him plumb center. Went out an’ took seven thousand out o’ Carson’s saddle bags. Stood right here. Standin’ on the ground. No hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder. Good-size’ fella. Had to be, to rest his rifle in that crotch.”
Mechanically he studied the rock wall and the sand that swept away from its foot. Something bright in the sand, in the very spot where they had found the murderer’s tracks. He stooped. But it was only a glassy bit of rock. He held it, staring absently, his mind upon the mystery. From the little sand dunes behind him, to northward, came the flat, vicious report of a rifle. A bullet slapped the rock wall almost in his face. It had passed within six inches of his head. Instantly, another followed.
Ware’s Kid moved like a rattler striking. He moved automatically, but with a precision, an economy, of movement that could not have been bettered by rehearsals times without number. He was sheltered from the bullets within two steps, standing behind his stallion’s bulk. His hand slapped the saddle horn; he was in the saddle without touching stirrups and lying flat upon the black’s neck. The great rowels dug the stallion’s flanks; he surged forward magnificently; within two strides he was galloping. The Ranger, chased by bullets that buzzed spitefully about his ears, swung the black around the end of the Castle.
Half-way down the length of the stone wall he slid the stallion to a halt. Here was a place where he could peer across the top between two teeth of rock. His great sombrero hung down his back by the chinstrap; from the scabbard beneath the left fender had leaped a sleek Winchester carbine. He cuddled the carbine in the crook of his arm as, with green-gray eyes squinting coldly, he studied the sand dunes behind which his antagonist lay hidden.
A thin smoke-cloud was drifting upward above the dunes. Ware’s Kid rested the carbine in the crotch of the wall-top. He sighted carefully and drove three .44’s to dust along the crest of the dunes, some fifteen inches apart. Instantly the other rifleman replied with a rolling quartette of bullets that bunched most efficiently beneath the Ranger’s carbine-muzzle.
He watched narrowly without replying in kind. At last he shrugged and whirled the stallion, to ride off south and east toward the O-Bar ranch-house.
He could have stalked the sand dunes from which the unknown bushwhacker had fired. There was cover of a sort up to the very base of the dunes. But the ambusher’s fire had been entirely too craftsmanlike, too nearly deadly, to make the prospect of scaling the low slope before him seem anything but the brief preliminary to a funeral. Ware’s Kid preferred to ride off with a whole skin and calculate upon another meeting under conditions more equal. They said of him, in the Rangers, that for a youngster no more than nineteen he had a mighty level head.
A half-mile, perhaps, he galloped without turning. Then, reaching for the field glasses, he checked the stallion. Far behind him, a horseman streaked it eastward. The Ranger studied rider and brown horse through the glasses.
“Mebbe he’s tall,” he grunted at last. “But--mebbe he’s just a-forkin’ a little pony.”
For ten miles he kept the stallion at a mile-eating running walk. He had never been at the O-Bar house, but he knew its location from hearsay, and so, when the black began climbing a steady incline, studded by boulders and covered with taller-than-ordinary mesquite, he nodded to himself. This was the way, all right.
The stallion made the incline’s top and paused for a moment, expelling its breath in a great snort. At the sound, the flaxen-haired girl on the lookout rock turned sharply. She and Ware’s Kid stared, one at another, her great, dark eyes meeting his narrowed gaze levelly.
“Howdy!” he drawled, after a--to him--long and uncomfortable silence. He was always ill at ease with women. They usually wanted a man to make some sort of damned fool of himself to suit a feminine whim.
“Good morning,” she replied, still examining him calmly.
“Trail to the O-Bar?” he grunted awkwardly, after another silence.
“Yes. The house is a mile away. But there’s nobody there except the cook and his helper. Do you want to see my father, Sim Rutter?”
Ware’s Kid stared. He recalled nothing about a daughter on the O-Bar. And that Simeon Rutter, huge, gaunt, black-haired, black-eyed, black-bearded, grim and taciturn, should have such a daughter as this slim, fair-skinned creature seemed somehow unbelievable. She seemed to read his thoughts.
“I’ve been away at school--Las Cruces--convent, you know,” she enlightened. “But I’m not going back--I hope.”
“Stay here, huh?”
“I hope not! This is just as bad. Oh, I hate this bare, desolate country! Don’t you?”
“Don’t know,” shrugged Ware’s Kid. He had never thought about the matter, one way or the other. “Don’t know--as I do.”
“I want to go back East! To New York--Philadelphia--Boston--oh, all the places I’ve read about. Europe, too. I’m trying to get my father to sell the ranch and go traveling with me. All over the world. I’ve been trying to persuade him for two years. But I think he’ll do it now--maybe. His partner was killed, you know. He’s all broken up over that. He doesn’t say much, but it was an awful blow just the same. I think he’ll sell out.”
“Got to be goin’,” grunted Ware’s Kid. All this talk of travel was over his head. Nor had it anything to do with his particular business--the capture of Eph Carson’s murderer.
“I’ll ride with you. Will you get my horse? He’s tied to a cat-claw over yonder.”
The Ranger got the pony and brought it back. He sat his stallion, holding her animal’s reins. She waited for an instant, but he was blind to her expectation that he would help her into the saddle. So she swung up unaided and jerked the reins from his hand.
As they rode almost stirrup-to-stirrup toward the ranch-house, Ware’s Kid studied her covertly from beneath half-lowered sombrero brim. It dawned upon him suddenly that not yet had he seen her smile. The large, blue eyes were somber, always; she seemed to brood upon something. They rode in silence until, a half-mile or so ahead, the clutter of buildings which constituted the O-Bar holding showed against the desert shrubbery.
“I hate it!” she burst out. “Oh, how I hate it!”
Then they rode on silently again, the creak of saddle-leather, the scuffing of the animals’ hoofs, the only sound, until they dismounted in the ranch yard.
There was but one horse in the cottonwood-log corral, a black gelding as large as the mount of Ware’s Kid. The girl glanced at it, then toward the house.
“My father’s home,” she said tonelessly.
“Come in.”
They went around the house and, upon the rough veranda that shaded its front, found Simeon Rutter with feet cocked upon the rail, big, shaggy head upon his chest. He looked up at the sound of their footsteps and sun-narrowed black eyes softened amazingly as he saw his daughter.
“Hello, Baby!” he rumbled. “Wonderin’ where yuh was.” Then, to Ware’s Kid, “Howdy, Kid. What’re yuh doin’ down here ag’in? Thought they sent yuh up to Austin, or some’r’s.”
“Did. But sent me back. I got Dell Spreen.”
“Yuh did! That’s shore good hearin’, Kid!” He came swiftly to his feet, with great hands hard-clenched.
The girl had gone indoors and bitterly, yet with a certain grim repression, Simeon Rutter cursed Dell Spreen.
“Where’s Spreen, now?” he demanded, breaking off suddenly. “Carwell? El Paso?”
“Austin. Lookin’ up more evidence.”
Simeon Rutter cursed the law’s dawdling ways; its coddling of an assassin. Ware’s Kid but half-listened. He was thinking of the efficient rifleman of the morning, who had bushwhacked him from the sand dunes.
“How many big men in this country?” he asked abruptly. “Big men?”
Rutter stopped short to stare at him. Then he considered the question, eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“Don’t know. Me, o’ course. An’ Curly Gonzales over Crow Point way. Lamson--that crazy puncher on the D-5--an’ Slim Nichols on the Flyin’ A. All I think of. Why?”
The Ranger hesitated. Knowing Rutter’s bitterness toward Dell Spreen, he wondered if the dour ranchman could be made to believe his own theory: that Spreen had not, could not have, committed the murder. Wondered, too, if Rutter would be silent about the theory.
“Spreen says he never killed Carson,” he said slowly.
“Yeh. An’ what?”
“An’ if he did--well, I don’t know how he done it!”
“What’re yuh drivin’ at? Yuh got the name o’ bein’ level-headed, Kid, but--what’re yuh drivin’ at?”
“How could a little fella--littler’n me--shoot Carson, restin’ his gun in a crotch near as high as he could reach?”
Scowling, Simeon Rutter considered this problem.
“That was a high crotch--one that we found his tracks under,” he admitted. “But, hell! He was sittin’ on a hawss, or else standin’ on somethin’. Not good enough, Kid! By God, not half good enough to make me believe Dell Spreen never shot old Eph Carson from hidin’. O’ course he denies it! ’Spect him to own right up?”
“Yeh. Course, he’d say he never. But I been thinkin’. Wasn’t no hawss-tracks under the crotch. Nothin’ to stand on. Nothin’ we could see, anyhow. So’ wondered who’d be tall enough to shoot out o’ that crotch, standin’ on the sand. An’ too----”
He hesitated for an instant before he decided to tell of the morning.
“An’, too, somebody bushwhacked me, out at the Castle, today!”
“Bushwhacked yuh! What for? Who’d be a-bushwhackin’ yuh?”
“Don’t know. Fella on a dun. Good shot, too. Purty good, that is.”
“Here!” cried Rutter suddenly. “Too much funny business about this. I want to see that place ag’in. Git yo’ hawss, Kid. Let’s take a pasear out to the Castle an’ look around.”
He went swiftly down to the corral and got the lariat from his saddle. The black gelding retreated to a corner, snorting, whirling. Rutter sent the loop spinning over its head and hauled the animal to him by sheer brute force.
“So dam’ many hawsses none gits rid enough!” he rumbled irritably. “Wilder’n antelope, all of ’em.”
He saddled swiftly and swung up. Ware’s Kid was already mounted. They turned past the front veranda and Rutter waved to his daughter, who had come outside again. He seemed another person when near her. The grim shell of him cracked and a tenderness odd in a man so apparently harsh-grained showed for a moment.
“Goin’ out to El Castillo!” he shouted at the girl. “Back when I git back, Baby.”
They rode silently for miles. Rutter was one after the Ranger’s own heart, taciturn, efficient in his business. Staring at his companion’s broad back, Ware’s Kid nodded approval. He thought of what the girl had said--of her father’s repressed sorrow over his partner’s death. He could understand Rutter’s vengefulness toward Dell Spreen, but he hoped, before the day’s end, to show the O-Bar owner his error, to prove that Spreen could not have murdered Eph Carson.
“If yuh’re right about this height business,” Rutter growled suddenly, “I don’t know what we’re goin’ to do about it. Too long ago, now. Not that I’m admittin’ yuh’re right! But just in case yuh are, how can we find out where these fellas--Curly Gonzales an’ Lamson an’ Nichols--was that day? Fella don’t always recollect just what he was doin’ three months ago. By George!”
He whirled sideway in the saddle.
“That mornin’, me an’ August Koenig--one o’ my hands--was ridin’ nawth o’ the house nine-ten mile. An’ we met Lamson headin’ for Elizario! Recollect, now. August an’ Lamson come near mixin’ it, ’count August he was askin’ about some widder that lives in Elizario an’ Lamson flew off the handle! By George!”
“Oh, same’s most. Gits kind o’ crazy spells. Been kicked on the head a long time ago by a bronc’ an’ once in a while he flies up. But he’s a good puncher an’ I don’t know why anybody’ll think he’d shoot Eph Carson. Lamson’s seen trouble--seen it fair an’ square, through the smoke. No-o, I wouldn’t put him down for that kind o’ killer.”
“Yuh found Carson right after noon, didn’t yuh?”
“Yeh. I got fidgety, him not comin’ in the day I figgered. So when me an’ August got back to the house, an’ Eph hadn’t come in yet, I took August an’ Yavapai Wiggins an’ we rode out. Found Eph ’long about two o’clock, lyin’ in the trail. Seven thousand, about, he was packin’. All gone.”
“Mostly yo’s, they say.”
“’Bout four thousand,” Rutter nodded gloomily. “But ’t wasn’t the money riled me so. Old Eph, he never knowed what hit him. Never had a chanct. Nary chanct to git his six-shooter out. Like I told yuh then, right after it happened. I figgered Dell Spreen ’cause he’d hung around the ranch three days, waitin’ for Eph. Wouldn’t tell nobody what he wanted. Just looked mean. An’ packed his cantinas an’ hightailed it that very mawnin’. I gethered yuh never found the money on him?”
“Fo’ dollars, ’bout,” shrugged Ware’s Kid.
They came to the Castle and reined in the animals on the spot where the murderer of Eph Carson had waited. Silently, Simeon Rutter stared at the crotch in the rock wall in which the assassin had rested his rifle-barrel. Slowly, as unwilling even now to concede weight to the theory the Ranger had advanced tentatively, he nodded.
“The’ wasn’t no hawss-tracks closer’n that cat-claw yonder,” he admitted.
He swung down and pulled his Winchester from its scabbard, then moved over to the crotch in the wall. Even for one of his height it was a strain to level the barrel with butt at shoulder. He nodded again and set the rifle down. From a shirt pocket he brought Durham and papers and shook tobacco onto the brown leaf, somber black eyes roving.
Ware’s Kid slipped from the saddle and came swiftly over to where Rutter stood. He stopped and dug into the sand at the rancher’s feet, then straightened.
“What’s it?” asked Rutter.
It was a large, pearl-handled pocketknife, tarnished from much carrying, with four good blades and one broken blade stump. Rutter licked his cigarette, jambed it into his mouth and took the knife from the Ranger’s hand, staring thoughtfully.
“See it before?” asked Ware’s Kid. Rutter shook his head.
“Umm--no, reckon not. Not many like that carried in this country. But somebody ought to know it. We’ll ride into Carwell pretty soon. See. But right now I want to ride Eph Carson’s back-trail. Got a idee. Mebbe she won’t pan out.”
They could only guess that Eph Carson had come along the regular trail and follow through the dim lane between the greasewood and cacti. They rode silently, with eyes roving from trail to skyline and back again. The afternoon wore on; evening came. To westward, up-thrusting hulls, jagged, fantastic, drew nearer.
“Huecos!” grunted Rutter, and Ware’s Kid nodded. He knew this ancient watering place of the desert people red and brown and white. A good many times, with a Ranger detachment from Ysleta, hunting Apache sign, he had camped there.
“Guess we better hole up there t’night,” Rutter grunted, staring across the flat to the beginning of that welter of arroyo-cut hillocks. “Mawnin’ we can head back to Carwell an’ see ’bout that frogsticker. Or, we can look over some more trail.”
“Yo’ idee?” queried Ware’s Kid. “Yuh said yuh had one.”
“Tell yuh about it come mawnin’,” said Rutter. Far back in the grim black eyes lurked a shadowy amusement. “Ain’t quite ready to back her up clean to the tailgate. Got anything to eat?”
“Dried beef, tortillas, coffee, can o’ plums.”
“Dried beef an’ tortillas is a meal,” grinned Rutter. “Le’s head for the Tanks an’ camp.”
“Better hole up in the old Butterfield station,” counseled Ware’s Kid. “Healthier’n sleepin’ ’longside the main tinaja (Tank). Apaches don’t stick no closer to the reservation than ever, I reckon.”
“Not so close, by God!” swore Rutter. “Yuh’re right, Kid. Them dam’ feather dusters stops here or at Crow Springs or the Comudas, reg’lar, comin’ from Mescalero to Chihuahua. Stage station she is. We’ll make it.”
They nodded mutual agreement and spurred the horses on through the dark. At the deserted stage station--a rude dwelling made by walling in the mouth of a natural cavern--they swung down. The Ranger sniffed like a hunting dog.
“Some seep water up the canyon a piece,” he muttered. “Good enough for the hawsses. But I’ll take the canteen an’ git some real water at the Tank, for us.”
He unsaddled the black stallion and swiftly Rutter followed his example. Rutter got out the food and coffee pot from the Ranger’s saddle bags while the latter, bearing a canteen, started up the canyon to the main “tank.”
Ware’s Kid moved silently, for all his high-heeled boots. The canyon floor was of hard-packed earth, but studded with loose stones and he placed his feet carefully. One never knew who might be using the Tanks. From time immemorial it had been one of the favorite watering places of this region. Wild animals and wild men, red and brown and white, came there furtively.
He passed close along the left-hand wall, decorated with Indian pictographs and the names of pioneers, and so came to the low cavern in which was the spring-fed well, or “tank.” More cautiously than ever he moved now. The rock apron before the cavern was pitted with metate-holes, where prehistoric tribes had ground their corn; rude mortars still used by the Apaches who camped there. It was tricky footing and trickier still inside, where one approached the well-lip over a stone floor worn slick as glass by countless feet.
Inside the cavern mouth he squatted for a moment and listened. He heard nothing from without or within and slid his feet carefully forward, balancing himself with left hand upon a rounded slab that divided the cavern in two sections.
So he was awkwardly balanced when a sinewy arm shot around his throat from behind and a hough sounded in his ear.
A smallish, rather insignificant-seeming figure was Ware’s Kid. But “all whalebone and whang-leather,” as the Rangers who had wrestled with him remarked amazedly; a hundred and ten pounds of wiry, dashingly quick, steel-strong body.
Now he moved automatically, fairly shouting, “Indians!” Sideways he whirled, and so the Apache’s knife went wide in its downward drive. Back shot the Ranger’s head, to smash into the Indian’s face. It broke his strangling hold and Ware’s Kid, turning half in air, his feet were sliding so, shot a vicious fist into the Apache’s midriff, then had the buck by the throat and was gripping him about the body with legs closing like scissor-blades and fending off flailing arms with elbows spread.
The Apache was powerful, but before he had much opportunity to struggle Ware’s Kid had banged his back-head against the rock. He managed a long, loud, gasping groan. Feebly his knifehand rose. The Ranger loosed the throat for an instant and fumbled for the weapon. It sliced his palm. Then he seized it and buried it in the Indian’s body.
When the Apache was limp--wise men made very sure that Apaches were really dead--the Ranger stood up shakily and groped for the entrance. A stone slid down into the canyon and he hurled himself forward out of the cavern. As he gained the middle of the canyon, running like a quarter-horse, there was thud after thud of feet dropping from the rocks to the hard ground.
He ran on his toes, hoping that he could make camp sufficiently ahead of these fleet Indians to warn Rutter; hoping, too, that Rutter had the horses together, had not taken them out onto the flat to graze. He ran as he never had run in his life.
At last he sensed the camp just ahead. And from it came a rifle-shot, then another. The bullets sang past him perilously close.
“It’s--Ware’s Kid!” he gasped. “Injuns--comin’!”
“Thought yuh was one of ’em!” grunted Rutter, with no particular alarm evident in his heavy voice. “How close?”
“Right behind! No time to saddle! Fork ’em bareback!”
He paused only to snatch his precious carbine from its scabbard on the saddle, then scooped up the bight of the lariat with which the stallion was picketed. He vaulted upon the stallion’s back. Muffled sound in the darkness nearby told that Rutter was following his example.
Up the canyon the darkness was suddenly punctuated in a half-dozen places by orange flames. Bullets thudded into the ground, into rock walls, around the white men. The firing was a continuous roll, its rumbling multiplied by the canyon walls. As usual the Apaches had rifles as good as any in that country, better than those of the Army. Rutter swore venomously.
Ware’s Kid had slashed the lariat with his belt knife. Rutter, apparently, had done the same. For when the black stallion surged ahead, toward the safety of the open land, Rutter was close behind. They galloped furiously for perhaps half an hour. The moon came out and flooded the desert with a white light that reminded the Ranger of Billy Conant’s New Fashion Saloon in El Paso when the electric lights were turned on.
Being lighter and, perhaps, the better rider, Ware’s Kid led. He had lost a hundred-dollar saddle, but he was phlegmatic about that. It was all in the game. They were lucky--he especially--to be riding away with their hair. A sudden groan from Rutter aroused him from his thoughts and he looked backward under his arm in time to see the big man slide sideways off his gelding and roll over upon his side.
Mechanically Ware’s Kid whirled the stallion and glared half-a-dozen ways at once in search of the assassin. But the broad expanse of greasewood and cacti lay quiet in the incandescent moonlight. So he rode back to Rutter and slid to the sand.
“Got me!” Rutter gasped. “Back yonder. Thought I--could make it--back to the ranch--see--my girl--but----”
“Let’s see,” grunted Ware’s Kid practically.
He explored the blood-caked shirt-front and lifted a shoulder-point in a little gesture of fatalistic resignation. There was a .44 hole in Rutter’s chest. How he had ridden this far was the marvel! The Ranger squatted there broodingly, watching mechanically along the back-trail, in case the Indians appeared.
“Want me to--sign a paper?”
At the painful whisper, Ware’s Kid looked down curiously into Rutter’s grim-lined face.
“Shore,” he nodded, after a moment, thinking to humor a delirious man. “If it’ll ease yuh.”
“Knowed yuh--had the deadwood on me--when yuh--found my knife! But I --wasn’t goin’ to--let yuh see Carwell ag’in--ever! Yuh tried to--make out yuh never--suspicioned. But I knowed! I’d’ve got yuh--’fore mawnin’. Dam’ near got yuh--yeste’day mawnin’--at the Castle. Seen yuh--pokin’ round--pick up somethin’--skeered me an’--I whanged away. Hadn’t missed--wouldn’t be here. ’Twas on the--cards--I reckon.”
He stopped wearily, breathing in labored wheezes. Ware’s Kid squatted beside him, staring down with expressionless face. Suddenly Rutter’s wheezes became louder, quicker. After a moment the Ranger understood that it was horrible laughter.
“Reckon my gal--will do her travelin’--now. Always after me--to sell out. I done for Eph Carson--’count o’ that. None o’ that--money was mine. All his’n. I wanted it. I----”
His voice trailed off into incoherent mumbling. Ware’s Kid bethought himself suddenly of what Rutter had said about signing a paper. He fumbled in his jumper pocket and found a letter of the adjutant general, the letter which had summoned him to Austin three months ago and so had brought him, indirectly, to sit here tonight. A stub of pencil was there, too.
“A’ right!” he snapped. “Sign the paper!”
He supported the murderer’s head and shoulders and crooked his knee so that Rutter could lay the paper upon it. It was slow, painful work, but at last he held the curt scrawl up in the moonlight and painfully spelled it out:
Dell spreen never killed eph Carson I done it and robbed him--Simeon Rutter.
Presently Rutter died--without pain, apparently. Ware’s Kid rolled a cigarette and lit it, staring blankly straight ahead.
“He shore fooled me!” he grunted admiringly. “He shore did! An’ like to killed me twict! At the Castle an’ tonight. He never took me for no Injun. He was aimin’ to down me. Just fools’ luck I’m here, alive an’ kickin’, an’ with this-here paper.”
He got up, thinking to ride for Carwell and tell his story: show the confession. Suddenly he thought of the girl, the wistful-eyed, sad-faced girl at the O-Bar ranch-house. He squatted again and made another cigarette.
Slowly but surely, he mulled the business over. It came to him finally that there were really but two persons to be considered--Dell Spreen, sitting around the adjutant general’s office up at Austin, and that girl of Rutter’s. Absolute vindication of Spreen was easy; the means lay in his hand, here. But that would mean a blow at a girl who had had no part in her father’s cold-blooded deed. He pondered the problem. At last, he nodded.
He would ride back to Carwell, but the paper would remain in his jumper pocket. He would tell of Rutter’s death; lead a posse after the Apaches. He would also show the townsfolk the spot from which Eph Carson had been shot and explain the impossibility of Dell Spreen--a man shorter, even, than himself--committing the murder. This might not clear up the mystery to everyone’s satisfaction, but Dell Spreen had no intention of coming back to this part of the country anyway. When the adjutant general saw the confession it would clear Spreen officially.
Then the girl would not be branded--openly, at least--as the daughter of a brutal, callous murderer. She would have no ordeal to face while the O-Bar was being sold. She would carry away no bitter memories to mark her in after-years.
Something like this Ware’s Kid thought out. He got up again and snapped his fingers to the black stallion, caught the trailing lariat and again threw a hackamore around the black’s nose, then vaulted upon it with carbine across his arm.
“Reckon she’s poor law--this way,” he reflected. “But she’s shore as hell good Rangerin’!”
