The Range Detectives

by William W. Johnstone

  The man stopped short as he spotted the two figures standing at the bottom of the steps. Dan saw him lift something, then recognized the double barrels of a shotgun. He started to push Laura behind him, just in case.

  She stepped past him, though, and said, “Henry, it’s Laura Dempsey.”

  “Laura!” exclaimed Henry Stafford. “What in blazes are you doin’ here in the middle of the night? Who’s that with you?”

  “It’s Dan Hartford,” Laura said.

  “Hartford!” Stafford had started to lower the shotgun, but now it came up again in a hurry. “Don’t move, you bushwhacking son of a—”

  “Henry, no! It’s all right.” Laura moved up onto the first step and raised her hand. “Please listen to me. Dan didn’t kill Abel. He’s innocent.”

  “Innocent, hell!” snorted Stafford. “Sheriff Olsen rode out here to tell us what happened and warn us to be on the lookout for Hartford. There’s a rope waitin’ for you, you no-good—”

  From behind the rancher, a woman’s voice interrupted him, saying, “Henry, what is it? Who’s out there? What—” The questions stopped abruptly as Jessica Stafford, wrapped in a silk dressing gown, came out onto the porch. Instead she exclaimed, “Laura! My God!”

  Laura went the rest of the way up the steps. Stafford didn’t try to stop her as she and his wife embraced. He continued to scowl at Dan, though, and hold the shotgun pointed in the young cowboy’s general direction.

  “I want to know what’s goin’ on here,” Stafford declared in a rumbling voice.

  Laura turned to him and said, “We need your help, Henry, yours and Jessica’s.”

  “You know if there’s anything we can do for you, dear, we will,” said Jessica.

  “I ain’t so sure about that,” said Stafford, “if it includes helpin’ Dan Hartford.”

  Laura ignored that and said to Jessica, “I know you’ve been told that Dan murdered Abel, but it’s not true.”

  “I know you want to believe that . . .” Jessica began.

  “I know it for a fact,” said Laura. “I know it because. . . Dan was with me when Abel was shot.”

  Stafford said, “Hmmph.” Like a lot of rugged frontiersman, he was fine with battling against outlaws or savages or wild animals or the elements, but any hint of scandal or impropriety made him uncomfortable.

  “Please,” Laura went on, “if you’d just hear us out . . . We need a place to stay while some . . . some friends of ours are trying to uncover the truth of what really happened.”

  “What friends?” Jessica asked, but before Laura could answer, she went on, “Never mind about that now. Both of you come in. Of course we’ll listen to what you have to say. Won’t we, Henry?”

  For a couple of long seconds, Stafford didn’t answer. Then he said, “I reckon since you and Jess are such good friends, we can listen. But I got to warn you . . . I’m gonna take a heap of convincin’ before I’ll believe that this young varmint didn’t bushwhack my friend Abel Dempsey!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Stovepipe and Wilbur waited in the box canyon while Hamp Evans and Charley Bartlett headed back to the line shack. Hamp and Charley understood that they needed to carry on as they normally would have, except for the fact that they would be even more alert for any signs of trouble.

  While the two drifters waited for morning, they carried out the unpleasant task of dragging the dead men to the far end of the canyon. Neither Stovepipe nor Wilbur felt like digging graves, especially in such hard, rocky ground, for hombres who had tried to kill them not once but twice, but they laid the corpses against the canyon wall and piled rocks on them to protect the bodies from scavengers.

  For one thing, Stovepipe didn’t want buzzards circling overhead and drawing attention to the canyon. It might be better, at least for the time being, if the disappearance of the three gunmen remained a mystery.

  “As soon as it gets light enough to see to follow those three hosses, we’ll turn ’em loose,” Stovepipe declared. “By then, they’ll probably be gettin’ anxious to head home.”

  “Are we gonna just leave the saddles on ’em?” Wilbur wanted to know.

  Stovepipe considered that question for a moment and then nodded.

  “Might as well,” he said. “The rest of that bunch is gonna be plumb puzzled either way when they show up at the hideout without their riders.”

  “Assuming that they go back to the hideout.”

  “Turn a horse loose and nine times outta ten, he heads for whatever place he thinks of as home.”

  “With our luck, this is probably that tenth time. Those nags will probably lead us straight to a posse that wants to string us up.”

  Stovepipe grinned and said, “No need to be pes-timistic, Wilbur. Maybe I’m right and they’ll lead us to a bunch of rustlers who’d rather fill us full o’ lead.”

  “Yeah,” Wilbur responded dryly, “I sure wouldn’t want to be a pestimist.”

  Since they had been on the move, riding and shooting and fighting, for what seemed like forever and it appeared that that trend might continue for a while, these few hours gave them their best chance to get some rest. Stovepipe flipped a silver dollar to see who would get some shut-eye first. Wilbur called tails and the dollar came up heads.

  “Give me a couple of hours,” Stovepipe said as he sat down with his back against a rock and stretched his long legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. He tipped his black hat down over his eyes, although he didn’t really need the shade at night like this, and was soon snoring softly.

  It seemed like he had just dozed off when Wilbur kicked his foot to wake him. Stovepipe stood up, yawned mightily, rolled his shoulders, swung his arms in circles, and arched his back to get the kinks out of it. A glance at the stars told him it would start getting light in a couple of hours.

  “Everything quiet?” he asked Wilbur.

  “Yeah,” replied the redhead. “Now, hush up your usual jabbering. I’m sleepy.”

  “Go ahead and turn in, then. Shoot, you make it sound like I don’t never do nothin’ except flap my jaws.”

  Wilbur grunted, then sprawled on his belly, rested his head on his folded arms, and closed his eyes.

  “I’ll just walk over yonder to the canyon mouth and keep an eye out,” Stovepipe told him.

  “Go ahead,” growled Wilbur without raising his head. “Go on before I take my hat and start swatting you with it, you dang blabbermouth.”

  Stovepipe chuckled and ambled over to the opening that looked out on the vast sweep of the Tonto Basin. Shadows cloaked the basin right now, but Stovepipe knew he would see movement if anyone headed in their direction.

  In truth, two hours of sleep hadn’t been anywhere near enough to refresh him. His eyes felt gritty and his muscles were still weary. But the rest had been better than nothing and all he was likely to get for a while. What he really would have liked was a fire and a pot of hot coffee, but that wasn’t going to happen. A fire would announce their presence to anybody who was looking for them.

  He hunkered on his heels as he stood guard, and as usual any time he had a spare moment, the wheels of his brain began to revolve, clicking faster and faster.

  He couldn’t remember when he had discovered that he liked to solve mysteries and was good at it. He had been poking into things that assorted schemers regarded as none of his business for a long time now, from the Mississippi to the Pacific and the Rio Grande to the Milk River. As Wilbur liked to complain, getting into trouble seemed to be as natural as breathing for the two of them, but Stovepipe knew that in truth, his old friend wouldn’t have it any other way.

  At the moment, Stovepipe considered the ruction that had the basin in an uproar. Ranchers dying under mysterious circumstances, a young cowboy framed for a killing he hadn’t committed, rustlers looting the area’s herds at an ever-increasing pace . . . all those things were tied together—Stovepipe was sure of that. And if he could find the thread that held them together and pulled on it, likel
y the whole thing would come unraveled . . .

  Thread.

  Stovepipe smiled in the darkness.

  * * *

  The eastern sky had started to turn a faint shade of gray when Stovepipe kicked the sole of Wilbur’s right boot, just as Wilbur had done to wake him earlier, and said in cheerful tones, “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.”

  Wilbur groaned, lifted his head, and peered around.

  “Dang it, Stovepipe, I just closed my eyes ten seconds ago,” he complained.

  “More like seventy-two hunnerd seconds ago, if I did the cipherin’ right in my head,” said Stovepipe. “You been asleep for two whole hours.”

  “That’s not possible.” Wilbur pushed himself up to a sitting position, scrubbed both hands over his face, and raked fingers through his red hair. He looked up at the sky and sighed. “Reckon it is getting on toward morning, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. Come on. Let’s haze those horses outta here and see where they go.”

  Before doing that, they saddled the Appaloosa and the dun, then let them drink water that Stovepipe poured from a canteen into his hat. After resting most of the night, the horses were a little frisky this morning and ready to go. Stovepipe and Wilbur were ready to go, too, but bedraggled described them a lot better than frisky did.

  Breakfast was a strip of jerky and no coffee. They were still gnawing on the tough strips of meat when they swung up into their saddles and started pushing the gunmen’s mounts toward the canyon mouth. Stovepipe took off his hat, leaned over to slap it against the rump of one of the animals, and called, “Hyahhh!”

  The horses took off at a fast trot.

  Stovepipe and Wilbur followed. The sky was light enough now that the stars were getting harder and harder to see. It was as if, one by one, they all went out overhead. A small strip of rosy sky appeared along the eastern horizon.

  The horses had grazed in the canyon, so they weren’t particularly hungry. Still, they stopped from time to time to crop at the grass. Stovepipe and Wilbur let the animals proceed at their own pace, knowing the horses would be more likely to head back to what they considered home that way.

  This strained the patience of both men as they followed at a good distance, close enough to keep the horses in sight but unlikely to be spotted themselves if anybody came along and found the animals. That was possible, because they were on Box D range and some of the ranch’s punchers were liable to be out and about. In fact, it was likely that they were, so Stovepipe and Wilbur had to keep their eyes open for that potential danger and stay out of sight as much as they could, too.

  The sun still wasn’t up when the outlaws’ horses reached Apache Bluff. Stovepipe and Wilbur hadn’t seen anyone else, which Stovepipe thought was a stroke of luck and Wilbur regarded as a sign that the odds against them were rising.

  “When things go along too smooth-like, you know life’s just getting ready to smack you a good one right in the mush,” the redhead commented.

  “I swear, Wilbur, if a good-looking gal came up to you and offered you a whole pile o’ money and told you she came along with the deal, you’d find somethin’ to complain about,” said Stovepipe.

  “Beautiful women are always trouble,” Wilbur said. “You ever know a man who was married to a beautiful woman who wasn’t worried all the time that some smooth-talking fella was gonna come along and steal her away from him? Same thing with money. We’ve run into plenty of rich hombres in our time, Stovepipe, and I don’t recall a single one of them who was truly happy. No, sir. When a man’s got something, he has to spend all his time worrying that he’s going to lose it.”

  “Well, then, you and me ought to be downright giddy, old son, ’cause other than our hosses and saddles and guns, we ain’t got a blasted thing.”

  “And that’s just the way I like it,” said Wilbur.

  By now the horses they were following had found a way down the bluff and entered the area of rugged terrain just below. Stovepipe and Wilbur were still on their trail, and the two drifters had to increase their pace a little in order to keep their quarry in sight. The horses were trotting along a dry wash that twisted and turned among the ridges. There wasn’t a straight stretch more than a hundred yards long. If there were any other washes branching off from this one, Stovepipe and Wilbur might not be able to tell which way they had gone.

  Because of that, they probably weren’t watching their surroundings quite as closely as they normally would have been. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been so surprised when a man suddenly dived off the top of a rock they were riding past, crashed into Stovepipe, and drove him out of the saddle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Stovepipe’s hat flew off as he fell. He hit the ground hard with his attacker on top of him, but his wiry body was tough as whang leather so he didn’t think the crash did any real damage.

  That situation might not last, because the man who had tackled him clamped both hands around Stovepipe’s throat and proceeded to bang the lanky cowboy’s head against the ground.

  Stovepipe’s brain seemed to be jolting around inside his skull with each impact. Blindly, he shot a punch upward and felt his bony fist collide with something hard. The man on top of him grunted in pain and slewed to the side, knocked that way by Stovepipe’s blow smashing into his jaw. Stovepipe heaved his body from the ground and threw the man the rest of the way off.

  Stovepipe was short of breath from being choked, but he forced his muscles to work and rolled after the man who had jumped him. He planted his right fist in the man’s midsection, then bounced a left off the hombre’s chin with enough force to make the man crack the back of his head against the ground. He proved less resilient than Stovepipe had. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he passed out.

  Stovepipe looked up and saw Wilbur sitting on the dun a few yards away. The redhead held his Winchester ready, but he hadn’t been able to use it because if he had fired, he would have risked hitting Stovepipe.

  Wilbur’s back was turned toward the rock from which Stovepipe’s attacker had leaped. Another man appeared there now with a revolver in his hand. As the gun barrel rose toward Wilbur’s back, Stovepipe yelled to his friend, “Behind you!”

  Wilbur twisted in the saddle and drove his heels into the dun’s flanks, making the horse leap aside. Flame geysered from the muzzle of the gunman’s Colt, but Wilbur’s swift reaction caused the shot to miss. The Winchester in his hands cracked as he fired instinctively without aiming.

  The man standing on top of the rock doubled over as the bullet punched into his guts. He dropped his gun and clutched at his belly, then toppled forward to land in a sprawled heap in front of the boulder.

  Wilbur covered the man, although it appeared he was no longer a threat, while Stovepipe scrambled to his feet and pulled his Winchester from the sheath strapped to the Appaloosa’s saddle. Only when Stovepipe was armed did he pick up his hat and clap it back on his head.

  “You think these two are more of that gang of wide-loopers?” asked Wilbur.

  Stovepipe looked at the coarse, beard-stubbled features of the two men and said, “I don’t see how they could be anything else. They sure don’t look like the townsmen from Hat Creek who volunteered for one of Sheriff Olsen’s posses.”

  “That one’s not dead, is he?” Wilbur asked as he nodded toward the man who had tackled Stovepipe.

  “Nope, just knocked silly for a few minutes. I reckon he’ll be comin’ around soon. Better check on the other one while I got the chance.”

  Stovepipe stepped over to the man Wilbur had shot, hooked a boot toe under his shoulder, and rolled him onto his back. The man’s shirt was soaked with blood, and his eyes were already starting to turn glassy.

  “This hombre’s done for,” announced Stovepipe.

  Wilbur grunted. Stovepipe knew that his partner didn’t like taking lives, even those of outlaws, but sometimes the varmints just didn’t give a fella any choice.

  Stovepipe went back over to the man he had knocked out, rested
the Winchester’s muzzle against his shoulder, and prodded him.

  “Wake up, mister,” he said. “You got some talkin’ to do.”

  The man’s eyelids fluttered for a few seconds before opening and staying open. Blearily, he peered up at Stovepipe for a moment, not seeming to know where he was or what was going on.

  Then understanding settled in and the man’s face twisted in a hate-filled scowl that only became darker as Stovepipe backed off a few steps and said, “All right, fella, get on your feet.”

  The man sat up, shook his head groggily, and then said, “Go to hell, mister.”

  “You’d better listen to him, friend,” Wilbur advised. “You put a dent in Stovepipe’s hat when you knocked him off his horse, and he sets a heap of store by that hat.”

  “I got a dent in my hat?” exclaimed Stovepipe. “Cover the polecat, Wilbur.”

  He took the high-crowned black Stetson off, gently brushed some dust from it, and then carefully poked it back into acceptable shape. His rugged face was grim as he put the hat back on his head.

  “Now I got even less patience than I did,” he told the prisoner. “I know you’re one of those rustlers who’ve been raisin’ so much hell around here. You might as well admit it.”

  “I’m not gonna admit anything,” the man said stubbornly.

  “Then how come you tackled me the way you did? How come your pard tried to gun my pard?”

  The prisoner glared at Stovepipe in stony silence.

  “Are you the one who bushwhacked Abel Dempsey,” asked Stovepipe, “or was it somebody else from your bunch?”

  This time he saw a flicker of something in the man’s watery eyes. It wasn’t denial so much as it was confusion, thought Stovepipe. He wouldn’t have bet money on it, but he had a hunch this fella didn’t actually know who had killed Dempsey.

  And that was puzzling, since Stovepipe was convinced the gang was responsible for that killing.

  “Not to rush you, Stovepipe,” said Wilbur, “but if there are any more of those varmints close by, they must’ve heard those shots. They’re probably on their way here now to find out what happened. They’ll really be curious if these two fellas don’t report in.”