“Burn the wind, boy,” Fraser cried, and he dived into the stairway leading to the private poker rooms in the second story.
Webb took the treads after his friend, racing up them two at a time. The roar of a forty-five from the entrance below filled the well with a noise like the blasting of dynamite. Stan flung open a door of a room where five men in their shirtsleeves sat round a table with chips in front of them and cards in their hands.
The players stared at the two men charging through the room to the small stairway in the far corner.
“What in hell——?” one of them began to protest.
Bob Webb’s arm swept the chimney from the bracket lamp attached to the wall and plunged the room in darkness. He followed his friend up the dark closed way to the trap-door above. Through it they went to the roof.
“Where now?” he asked.
Fraser did not know. He hoped there was another opening to permit descent into an adjoining building. If not, they were out of luck. As they moved forward to look for a road of escape they heard the noisy clamor of many voices below. Men were milling around in the poker room confused by the lack of light.
“Found one,” Fraser called to his companion.
Fortunately the trap-door was not bolted inside. Bob went down into the dark pit after Stan, stopping only to close and latch the heavy framework of the vent. The ladder led them to a store room from which they stepped into a passage with rooms on both sides.
“Must be the Tucson Hotel we’re in,” whispered Fraser.
They had no time to waste. Already they could hear the stamping of feet on the roof and the shouts of the searchers.
“We’ve walked into a rat trap, looks like,” Bob mentioned. “Nothing to do but go on down and fight our way out.”
A gleam of wintry humor lit the little man’s eyes. “We might take a room for the night.”
Bob did not answer in words. But Fraser had given him an idea. There would be small chance now of breaking through below to safety. The gambling houses had emptied into the street to join the chase. Why not invite themselves to share the room of one of the hotel guests? Under compulsion he might be induced to hide them. It would at least give them a breathing space during which they could decide what was best to do.
Very few of the rooms were locked. The habit of the country was to forget keys. Bob opened a door, looked in, and discovered through the darkness two children asleep in a bed. He withdrew and closed the door gently.
“Kids in there,” he told his companion.
They softfooted down the hall and tried again. From the doorway Bob’s glance swept the room. The bed had been slept in but was at the moment unoccupied.
“Filled with absentees,” Webb murmured.
There was a rustle at the window. A shadow bulked close to it from which stood out a white face.
“What do you want?” a woman’s voice asked sharply.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Bob apologized. “Mistake. Wrong room.”
Before he could leave she flung out a protest, her voice fined down almost to a whisper. “Wait. You’re Cape Sloan. They are attacking you.”
Bob would have known that voice among a thousand. Its low throaty cadence set the excitement strumming in his blood. He guessed that Sandra had been wakened and drawn to the window by the sound of the firing.
The shuffling of many feet on the roof above came plainly to them. Somebody was hammering on the trap-door. In another minute searching men would fill the corridor.
“We’re lookin’ for a port in storm,” Fraser said.
“But not this one,” Webb added quickly. “We’ll be on our way, Miss Sandra.”
“No,” the girl objected. “You’re safer here. They won’t come in without knocking, and when they knock I’ll meet them at the door.”
“That will be fine,” Fraser replied. “We’ll stand back out of sight.”
But Webb was not so sure. If it was ever discovered that she had hidden them gossip about her would fill the countryside.
“We’ll find another room,” he insisted.
She was at the door before him, her arms stretched wide across it. “Don’t be foolish. They are on their way down now. It’s all right. Father is in the next room.”
Already boots were clattering down the ladder. It was almost too late to go. If they left, the chance of escape was not one in ten.
“Much obliged, Miss Sandra,” Fraser spoke softly, to make sure of not being heard. “We’re in a tight spot sure enough.”
“Get back of the bed and crouch down,” she ordered. “Hurry, please. They’ll be here in no time.”
A man was knocking on a door farther down the hall demanding admittance. Reluctantly Bob joined his friend back of the bed.
Urgent shouts beat through the wall to them. “They didn’t go downstairs . . . Must be somewhere here if they came down through the trap-door . . . Search the rooms, boys.” And then the angry snarl of Uhlmann: “It was that little cuss Fraser busted me on the head.”
A fist beat on the door panel of the room. “Hey! Open up here. We’re searching the hotel.”
Sandra flung a glance behind her to make sure her guests were concealed. The thumping of her heart was so loud that she was afraid it would be heard. As she opened the door her fingers drew the nightgown closer around her throat.
“W-what do you want?” she quavered.
She was manifestly frightened, and her fear was no disservice. The men in the corridor were rough customers, some of them scoundrels. But they had the frontier respect for good women, at least the outward semblance of it. Sandra recognized one, a man who dealt in cattle, by name Rip Morris.
He lifted his hat. “Sorry, miss. Don’t be scared. We’re lookin’ for an escaped convict. We think he’s in the hotel here somewhere.”
The door was open six or eight inches. She clung to the knob. “You don’t mean—in my room?”
“No need to be afraid, miss,” he assured her. “If he is, we won’t let him hurt you. Point is, he might have slipped in here while you were asleep.”
“But he couldn’t have,” she cried, panic in her voice. “I haven’t been asleep. At the first shots I got up. Nobody could have come in without me seeing him.”
John Ranger came into the room through a connecting door. “What’s all this?” he demanded sternly.
“We’re huntin’ for that escaped murderer Webb,” Morris explained apologetically. “He’s around somewhere —probably in the hotel.”
“Not in my daughter’s room, Rip,” retorted Ranger’s warning voice. “You don’t mean that.”
“He might of slipped in to hide without her noticin’ him,” Uhlmann growled.
“But I told them I was awake and got up when the shooting started,” Sandra explained to her father.
“That’s settled then,” Ranger snapped. “Get going, boys.”
“Sure, Mr. Ranger,” a man in the background said. “Sorry we disturbed the young lady. Might have been an empty room far as we knew. Let’s go, Rip.”
Ranger closed the door without ceremony. He stood there for a long minute listening to the hunters troop down the hall and try the next room. When he turned at last, it was to say in a low voice, “Come out from behind that bed.”
The crouching men stood up.
“We butted in, not knowing this was Miss Sandra’s room,” Fraser mentioned. “They were crowdin’ us, and we had to go somewhere.”
“I made them stay and hide,” Sandra added.
Without glancing at her, Ranger said sharply, “Get back of that bed and put some clothes on.”
Sandra drew back in shocked embarrassment. She had been so entirely concerned with the safety of Bob Webb that she had forgotten she was barefoot and wore only a nightgown over her slender body. From the back of a chair she snatched a garment and held it in front of her.
The intruding fugitives walked to the window and looked out. They heard the rustle of clothes and the stir of swift feet. Presently
a small distressed voice said, “All right.”
Fraser said, gently, “We’re sure obliged to Miss Sandra for helping us out of a mighty hot spot, John.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Webb added. The thought of her young loveliness, startled fear for him stamped so vividly on her face, still quickened the blood in his veins.
“It came so sudden,” the girl explained shyly. “I didn’t think about—clothes.”
Ranger did not discuss that point. The situation explained itself. “You’re a hard man to help, Webb,” he told the convict bluntly. “In your circumstances nobody but a fool would be in Tucson—or in Arizona at all.”
“How often I’ve told him that,” Fraser agreed.
All of them were speaking in voices so low that they were almost whispers.
“We were just leaving when we ran across Uhlmann coming out of the Legal Tender.” Webb attempted no justification. “I know I’m a nuisance. Sorry it has to be that way. Better give up trying to help me. I don’t want to get you into trouble—or Stan either for that matter.”
“It’s you we’re worried about,” Sandra reminded him.
“Better let us carry on, Webb,” the cattleman urged. “We are taking the Newmans to the Circle J R to protect the husband. He will testify that Packard falsified the smelter returns. The superintendent of the smelter must have been in on the deal. I understand he now lives at Phoenix. I am going to check on the thing from that end too. It looks as if we have got something on Jug that might bust him wide open, providing we can drive our wedge in and prove a conspiracy. Frankly, you can’t be of any help in this. The thing for you to do is to get out and hole up until we send for you.”
“I’ll keep out of yore way,” Webb promised. “And I’ll be very grateful for anything you can do to clear me.”
He spoke to John Ranger, but the daughter of the cattleman knew that he was sending her an indirect message of thanks.
Ranger took the hunted men back with him to his room. They had to get out of town before morning. After a time Uhlmann and his companions would get tired of looking for their victims and would either return to their gambling or go to bed. The best chance for a getaway would be just before daybreak. Webb’s enemies of course would check up all the wagon yards and corrals in town to find the horses of Fraser and Webb. But probably they would not succeed in finding them, since Henry Mitchell had moved them to a pasture owned by his brother on the river bottom just out of town.
18. Enter Jug Packard
NIGHT STILL FILLED THE SKY WHEN JOHN RANGER WALKED out of the hotel to make the arrangements for the escape of his friends. He stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking up and down the street. Pete McNulty moved forward from the entrance to the Legal Tender and joined the Circle J R owner.
“Ain’t you up early, John?” he asked.
Ranger looked at him with disfavor. “No earlier than you are, Pete,” he answered coldly.
“I’m kinda on duty,” McNulty explained. “The boys think that fellow Webb is still around. We aim to cook his goose if we find him.”
“Meaning just what?”
“Why, he’s a murderer, escaped from the pen. You know what a desperate character he is. If he’s killed resisting arrest we can’t help it.”
“You a deputy sheriff?”
“Not exactly. You don’t have to be to collect a fellow like this with a reward on his head.”
“Is there a reward offered for the arrest of Cape Sloan?”
“He’s Bob Webb, that’s who he is. Rhino recognized him.”
“I was with Uhlmann several times in the presence of Sloan,” Ranger observed. “He didn’t say anything about Sloan being young Webb. If you make a mistake and kill the wrong man you might find yoreself in prison, Pete. Better go slow.”
“We’d ought to of hanged this bird when we first saw him in the cañon,” McNulty retorted bitterly. “I said so, but you and Russ Hart wouldn’t have it that way.”
Ranger did not think it worth while to answer that complaint. He walked up Congress Street and disappeared in the darkness. The sentry watched him go and then reported to his associates, who were playing poker in a corner of the hall.
In the east a pale promise of light was sifting into the sky when McNulty notified his companions that Ranger had returned and vanished into the hotel.
Uhlmann slammed a hamlike fist on the table and set the chips rattling. “You can’t tell me he doesn’t know where that wolf is holed up. Had him down to his ranch for a while, didn’t he? They don’t just happen to be in town at the same time.”
“Don’t forget there’s a pot on the table that’s practically mine,” Cole Hawkins reminded him, and shoved in a stack of blues. “Kick ’er up five.” He slid a malicious grin at the huge ungainly cattleman. “Might be they are boilin’ up bad medicine for the gent whose testimony sent Webb to the pen.”
“They can’t do a thing to me,” Uhlmann blustered. “Webb is the one headed for trouble.” He ripped out an angry oath. “If I ever get my gun on him they won’t have to bother taking him back to Yuma.”
“If you happened to be the lucky gent and not the one to be measured for a wooden box,” Hawkins retorted. The San Simon valley man was a rustler and bad character generally, but he had, like most hardy ruffians, a sneaking fondness for cool and daring scamps. He had joined the hunt for Webb because of the excitement, yet had hoped they would not find the convict. Whatever of evil Webb might have done, he felt that the young fellow’s faults were venial compared to those of Hans Uhlmann or Jug Packard.
“No if about it,” the big man boasted. “I’ll take that bird on any day of the week.”
“Okay with me,” Hawkins agreed. “Question before the house is, do you call, raise, or fold?”
Uhlmann looked at his cards again and threw them into the discard. “I’m laying down a flush. Any chump could tell you’ve got a full.”
The San Simon rustler flipped his cards over and reached for the pot. He had two small pairs.
A man pushed through the swing doors and came back to the poker table. He was dressed in cheap and soiled clothes a sheepherder would have disdained. His unprepossessing face was seamed with wrinkles. Close-set eyes, small and shifty, slid from one to another of those at the table. The thin-lipped twisted mouth hinted at cruelty.
“ ’Lo, Jug,” Uhlmann grunted. “I sent for you because I thought you’d like to know an old friend of yours is in town tonight.”
“If Webb is here what are you all doing on yore fat behinds instead of hunting him down?” Packard demanded angrily.
The laugh of Hawkins was a taunt. “Dunno about the other boys, Jug, but I haven’t lost this young fellow. Me, I kinda like his nerve. It will suit me fine if he makes a clean getaway.”
Packard turned an ugly look on him. “An escaped murderer, isn’t he—with a price on his head?”
Hawkins looked around the table coolly, his gaze on each of those present in turn. It came to rest at last on the mine owner. “Murder is a nasty word, Jug. I like killer better.” The outlaw’s voice was suave and pleasant. “Just a prejudice I have. Maybe some of these boys share it. If we took a private census of gents now here, I reckon the casualties they have caused would be found to fill quite a few graves. No blame intended, of course. The unfortunates likely asked for it. But I never heard that Giles Lemmon was any plaster saint.”
“Webb had a fair trial and was convicted,” Packard retorted harshly.
“The kid had bad luck. Far as I recollect none of us got as far as a court room.”
Packard brushed aside any discussion of moral values. “I’ll add another two hundred dollars reward for this fellow’s scalp, dead or alive.”
“I’d like that four hundred dollars,” Uhlmann said. “I’ll hold you to that offer, Jug.”
“Where was this fellow seen last?” Packard demanded. “Tell me about it.”
They gave him both facts and surmises.
“You had him corner
ed, and you let him slip away,” Jug accused.
“That’s right,” Hawkins agreed cheerfully. “He said ‘hocus pocus open sesame’ and melted into thin air.”
“He’s right around here somewheres,” McNulty chipped in. “He couldn’t of got away. We’ve got watchers posted in front and back.”
“Ranger knows where he’s at,” Uhlmann supplied venomously. “I’d bet fifty plunks against a dollar Mex.”
“But none of you had the guts to tell him so,” Packard snarled. “You let him bluff you off.”
“Nobody is holding you here, Jug,” Morris said. “You go tell him.”
Packard was sly and mean by nature. He preferred to use others as tools for his villainy. But there was a substratum of cold nerve in him that lay in reserve back of his caution.
“Don’t think I won’t,” he flung back harshly. “Where’s his room at?”
They told him. He turned and walked heavily out of the place.
“The little cuss is going to put it up to Ranger,” Hawkins commented. He was surprised. Packard had the reputation of getting his results less directly.
The mine owner stumped up the stairs of the Tucson Hotel, walked down the corridor, and knocked at the door indicated. A voice said, “Who is it?”
Packard did not answer. He opened the door and walked into the room. The lamp was not lit, but he could see that Ranger was not alone. Two other figures bulked in the darkness. One was standing by the window, another sitting on the bed.
A bracket lamp in the corridor lit the face of the self-invited guest. “What brought you here, Packard?” asked the cattleman.
The intruder’s small eyes peered at the man on the bed, then shifted to the one by the window. Coming day was beginning to lift the darkness. Packard took two or three steps toward the man by the casement.
“Hold it, Jug,” warned the sitting man lightly. He was nursing a forty-five in his lap.
Packard paid no attention. He had not expected to find Bob Webb in the stockman’s room. But he had recognized Fraser and had to certify his conviction that the third man present was Webb. A little near-sighted, he had almost in that dim light to push his wrinkled face against that of the suspect.
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