“If you meet up with those stage hold-ups, tell ’em from me that they don’t need to do any shooting any time they want what I’ve got,” Fraser said. “I’ll hand everything over cheerful.”
He left the road a half a mile from Mammoth and cut into the brush. Before he reached Bob he began to sing a stanza of one of his favorite songs. He did not want his companion to make any mistake about who was approaching. Except that his voice was cracked and that he could not carry a tune, he did very well.
“There’s hard times on old Bitter Creek
That never can be beat.
It was root, hog, or die
Under every wagon sheet.
We cleared up all the Injuns,
Drank all the alkali,
And it’s whack the cattle on, boys,
Root, hog, or die.”
“Glad you’re back,” Webb told him. “I got to worrying for fear you had run into trouble, and when I heard yore foghorn sounding I was afraid you had lost a rich uncle or something.”
Stan dismounted and turned a severe eye on his friend. “So you been at it again soon as I let you out of my sight,” he charged.
“What have I been at?” Bob inquired. He guessed that this opening was a precursor to news.
“Robbing the stage near Oracle, and right after you killed a man at Tucson.”
“Was the Oracle stage held up?”
“Yes, sir. Last night. They claim you did it.”
“Alone?”
“Why, no, I reckon I helped you.” Fraser grinned gaily at his fellow fugitive. “That’s what comes of me keeping bad company.”
“I expected they would say I killed that gunman on the plaza, but it’s a surprise to find I’m a road agent too.”
“You might call it right coincidental that some galoots have to pick the very day we’re traveling that district to rob a stage,” Fraser complained cheerfully. “We have the beatingest luck—killers, horse thieves, stage robbers, all in the same day. And me in my sunset years, with my bones creakin’ and aches in all my joints.” It was quite evident that the old-timer was well pleased with himself.
Yet he agreed with Bob that it might be well for them to put a few more miles between them and the scenes of their crimes. They rode down the valley and camped at dusk on the river. Their intention was to hide out in the Dragoon Mountains for a few days until the first heat of the hunt for them was past.
The sun beating down on their faces woke them. For breakfast they had flapjacks, bacon, and coffee. While the shadows from the east were still long they were on their way. In the early afternoon they stopped at a water hole and rested.
“Dragoon isn’t more than two-three miles from here,” Fraser mentioned. “It’s no great shakes of a place. But we can get tobacco at the store.”
“What’s that up on the hill?” Bob asked. “Looks like a mine.”
“Yep. Abandoned long ago. Fellow called Frenchy worked it for a year or two.
“Let’s go up and take a look at it,” Bob said.
“If you like,” his companion consented.
The shack was falling to pieces and the windlass had already collapsed into the shaft, but on the other side of the hill was an arroyo down which a little stream trickled and watered a small grove of live oaks.
“Why not stay right here a day or two?” Bob wanted to know. “There are water, shade, and no inhabitants. We might do worse.”
“Suits me,” Fraser replied.
They rode down the slope, unloaded, and unsaddled. There was a good growth of alfilaria by the stream. They picketed their mounts and relaxed.
After supper they decided to ride in to Dragoon and renew their tobacco supply. Fraser did not think it quite wise for Bob to go, but after all the chances were ten to one they would not see anybody in the drowsy village who would be any danger to them. Probably no news of the trouble on the plaza at Tucson or of the stage hold-up had reached the place.
23. Wanted — Dead or Alive
THE SUN WAS BACK OF THE WESTERN HILLS WHEN WEBB and Fraser rode down the dusty business street of Dragoon and pulled up at the post office, but darkness had not yet blanketed the country. The storekeeper, Mose Hersey, sat in front of the establishment and drank in the cool breeze that relieved the heat of the day. He was a soft fat man, and he felt a momentary resentment at having to get up and wait on customers so soon after supper. Unfortunately the two brown travel-stained riders tying at the rack were strangers, and he could not very well tell them to wait on themselves and pay when they came out.
Mose heaved himself out of the chair and waddled into the store after them. Apparently all they wanted was tobacco. Since he was a friendly garrulous soul, his annoyance evaporated almost at once. The shiny leather chaps, the worn boots, and the big weathered hats told him they were cowboys. He asked them for what outfit they rode.
“We’re on the loose right now,” Fraser told him. “Know any ranch around here that could use two top riders?”
Just at the present moment Mose did not. The Bar Double X was the biggest spread in the neighborhood, but he had heard they were laying off men.
It was darker in the store than outside but still light enough to read. Webb had stopped in front of a poster tacked to the wall close to the post office cage. It offered a reward of fifteen hundred dollars for his capture dead or alive. Two hundred of this would be paid by the state and the rest by J. Packard. The man wanted was a desperate character, a murderer escaped from the penitentiary who had just killed another man at Tucson, by name Chuck Holloway, and a few hours later had robbed the Oracle stage. There was no photograph shown of the outlaw, but a very accurate description was given of him.
Fraser stowed the tobacco in his pocket and joined Bob.
“This guy is valuable,” he said. “Fifteen hundred is a lot of mazuma. More than I could make in several years chasing cows. This J. Packard, whoever he is, must be real interested.”
“Probably he’s just a good citizen who wants to promote law and justice,” Webb suggested ironically.
“Me, I could pay off the mortgage with fifteen hundred, son,” Frazer mentioned saddly. “But finding this bird would be like lookin’ for a needle in a haystack, and when you find him yore troubles would be just beginning.”
Mose Hersey laughed wisely. “You boys can have him. I don’t want any part of him if he is as tough as they say.”
“I’ll bet he’s a sure enough bad man from the Brazos who would start smokin’ quick,” Fraser said. “The time to get him would be when he is asleep, don’t you reckon?”
“Not interested, asleep or awake.” Mose shook his head. “I like money well as most men, but I’d walk a mile around any desperado when he is on the prod even if the reward was ten times that big.”
“Well, you ain’t liable to meet him . . . You wouldn’t have any mail here for Joseph K. Ward, would you?”
The postmaster knew he had not, but out of politeness he riffled through the five or six letters in the office before answering that he had not.
“I didn’t hardly expect one,” admitted Joseph K. Ward, alias Stanley Fraser. “My wife ran off with a traveling salesman, but I figured maybe they would be outa money by this time and she might of writ home asking me to send her some and the letter could of been forwarded.”
Bob slanted a look at his companion. It said, “You blamed little son-of-a-gun. You’d rather pull a fairy tale any day than tell the truth.”
Mose murmured that he was sorry Mr. Ward’s home had been busted up.
“So is the city slicker sorry by this time,” the alleged bereaved husband commented philosophically. “Mary Jane has the evenest bad temper of anybody in Trinidad, though of course she ain’t there since she lit out with the guy selling the rheumatism cure.”
“Trinidad, Colorado?”
“That’s right. Do you think my son here favors me?”
“Quite a bit,” the storekeeper fabricated, trying to say the right thing. “Course he’s
a whole lot bigger than you, and not so dark complected, and his eyes are a different color, and his head ain’t shaped the same, but outside of that he’s the spittin’ image of you.”
“I got four more boys and two girls,” Fraser went on mendaciously. “The other boys ain’t so puny as this one. Bill here is the runt of the family.”
“He don’t look so puny to me,” Mose said.
“Appearances is deceptive. Cough for the gentleman, Bill.”
Bob said heartily, “You go to blazes.”
“You hadn’t ought to talk thataway to yore pappy,” Stan reproached him mildly. To his audience of one, he explained: “Bill hates folks to know he’s a mite on the sick side.”
Through the door they could see that a rider had stirred up the yellow dust in the street and was heavily dismounting in front of the store. He stopped to exchange greeting with a man lounging outside, after he had glanced at the two horses already tied to the rack.
Fraser took one look at him and dropped his foolery instantly. “I reckon we better be moseyin’ along, son,” he drawled.
The new arrival came into the store. It was darker inside the building than out in the street, and he stood accustoming himself to the change, his bleached blue eyes squinting into the gloom.
“ ’Lo, sheriff,” Mose said.
“ ’Lo, Hersey. My throat’s dry as a lime kiln. Bust me open a can of tomatoes.”
Bob had seen the man before, at the Circle J R ranch. He recognized at once the sunwrinkled face of Sheriff Norlin. The officer was wearing the same old scuffed boots, floppy Stetson hat, and corduroy trousers. If the checked shirt from which many washes had faded the color was not the same it must have been a twin.
Norlin had not identified Webb, who had wandered to the back of the store and was standing in the shadows. Fraser moved forward and stood directly between the sheriff and the convict. He bleated an enthusiastic greeting.
“Well—well, if it ain’t Chad Norlin. You doggoned old vinegaroon, I ain’t seen you for a month of Sundays. The last time was on the round-up at Three Cedars. Or have we met since? Sure is good to meet up with you again.” Fraser caught the officer’s hand and wrung it vigorously. His face beamed delight.
The sheriff was surprised at this burst of affection. It had not occurred to him before that there was any real tie of friendship binding him. He did not know that while Fraser was firmly but unobtrusively crowding him toward the front of the store the little man was desperately hoping there was a back exit from the building by means of which Webb could escape.
“Want to show you something, Chad, though maybe you’ve seen it,” Fraser continued eagerly. “Here’s a fifteen hundred dollars reward offered for a guy escaped from the pen. Yesterday it was two hundred. Now it has jumped into big money.” He put his finger on the poster just below the name of Packard. “Jug is a tight-fisted galoot. Why for is he digging up thirteen hundred bucks to get this fellow?”
Mose had been cutting open a tomato can with the heel of a hatchet. Now he brought it forward to the sheriff.
Norlin brushed the dust from the top of the can before lifting it to his mouth. “I saw that poster at Mammoth, Stan,” he said. “I can tell you something you probably don’t know. ’Most all of one hot day less than two weeks ago I spent in the saddle going to have a look at this fellow. I didn’t know he was Webb, since he was passing as Cape Sloan. The fellow had been accused of being a rustler, and I wanted to check up on him. He was staying at the Circle J R ranch with the Rangers. I satisfied myself he couldn’t be one of the waddies who ran off stock when Spillman was killed, but I had a queer feeling I was missing something. So I was. There was Webb right in my hands, and I let him go.”
“That was certainly hard luck,” Fraser said. “But you can’t blame yoreself. You didn’t know who he was.”
The sheriff tilted the can and began to drink the tomato juice. Out of the corner of an eye Fraser saw that Bob was not only in the store but was coming forward quietly, evidently with the intention of passing unnoticed in the rear of Norlin while he was drinking. As Bob was brushing past, the officer glanced at him carelessly.
Norlin’s eyes froze. But his right hand was holding a tomato can two feet from the butt of his revolver and the barrel of a forty-five was pressing against a rib just over his heart. His shooting iron might just as well have been in New York.
“Go right on and finish yore tomatoes,” Webb advised coldly.
Chad Norlin almost strangled as the liquid went down the wrong way. When he had stopped coughing, the weapon at his side had been removed from the holster.
“Take it easy, sheriff,” Bob warned. “This isn’t your day.”
“I won’t forget this, Stan,” Norlin promised. “You worked me for a sucker.”
“Don’t feel too bad,” Fraser consoled him, with a grin. “You were took by surprise, and if I do say it I put on a good show.”
“Why are you throwing in with this criminal, Fraser?” the sheriff demanded. “It means the penitentiary for you too.”
“You done said it, Chad,” answered Fraser chirpily. “I’m in this up to my neck. If and when Bob killed Chuck Holloway and robbed the stage I was right by his side aiding and abetting. What makes me mad is that they’re offering fifteen hundred for him and not a thin dime for me. Dad-burn it, I want you to spread the word that I’m a bad man from the Guadalupe just as much as he is, and I got a right to a reasonable amount of publicity.”
“This won’t be so funny when you’re breaking rocks with a guard over you,” Norlin told him irritably.
“Change that when to if, Chad,” suggested Stan. “We ain’t either of us going to prison. First off, Bob never killed a man in his life, and that perjured murderer Jug Packard knows it. The same goes for his killer Uhlmann. We’ve declared war on those villains, and we aim to show who belongs in the pen and who doesn’t.”
“Shooting off yore mouth that way won’t get you off,” the sheriff replied angrily. “What stands out like a wooden leg is that this fellow here is an escaped convict and it’s my job to arrest him. He had a fair trial, and a jury said he was guilty. That’s enough for me, and it ought to be enough for you.”
“Well, it ain’t,” the little man snapped. “Not by a jug full. There’s gonna be justice done in this case.”
Bob interrupted. “No use arguing, Stan. Sheriff Norlin is right. It’s his job to arrest me, but this time he doesn’t cut the mustard. The three of us are going to leave here together. He’ll stay with us until we think it’s safe to let him go.”
Norlin did not attempt any protest that he knew would be futile. He walked out of the store with them and mounted as directed. When they rode into the gathering darkness his horse was between those of the others. No attempts to escape would be successful. If he tried it, they would shoot his mount. He knew they were not going to hurt him. At the first safe opportunity they would release him.
24. Governor Andrews Advises Sandra
AFTER TELLING HIS STORY CHANDLER NEWMAN WALKED out of the governor’s office to wait in the outer room. Governor Andrews ran a hand through a shock of fine white hair. He was troubled, and showed it. He shook his head slowly.
“Your evidence misses the point, John,” he said. “I’ll admit that Jug Packard is a crook and probably stole the Johnny B from Mrs. Webb. It looks as if he might have contrived the murder of her husband judging by what Fraser told you he learned from this man String Crews. I hope you get the goods on him. The scoundrel has a record as odorous as a hydrophobia skunk. He’s sly as a weasel and poisonous as a sidewinder. Young Webb had plenty of provocation, but I can’t go outside of the record. The prosecution made out a strong case. Witnesses swore that when he came to Packard’s office he had the manner of one looking for trouble. He pushed his way in without knocking. Through the window two workingmen heard him angrily denouncing Jug and threatening to get him. Uhlmann backed Packard’s story that the boy killed Giles Lemmon. I have read the testimony car
efully. Webb made out a very weak case for himself.”
“Uhlmann had to support Packard, since he had killed Lemmon himself while shooting at Bob Webb,” Ranger pointed out.
The governor thumped a fist down on the desk. He was an honest man, doing his duty as he saw it, and unhappy at the direction in which it drove him. “Bring me some evidence to prove that,” he cried. “Something more than Webb’s unsupported word.”
The low-pitched husky voice of Sandra took up the attack. “Bob says there was a woman in the outer office when he went in to see Packard. When he ran out of the building after the shooting he saw her in the street looking white and scared. She was Mary Gilcrest, a daughter of one of Packard’s miners. What became of her? She was not a witness at the trial, though the defense tried hard to find her. She had disappeared.”
The eyes of Governor Andrews softened as he looked at Sandra. He had been a cattleman himself, from the same neighborhood as the Rangers, and, even before she was born, a friend of the family. He remembered dandling her on his knee when she was less than six months old. The gallant golden youth of the girl warmed his heart. She had a provocative disturbing face, amazingly alive, and courage in her blue eyes carried like a banner.
“Never heard of her,” he answered. “If this woman knew anything of importance she would have come forward at the trial, I reckon.”
“Packard saw to it that she could not be reached,” Sandra retorted quickly. “He sent her away until after the trial. Mr. Lansing, Bob Webb’s attorney, tried to look her up. Her father pretended he did not know where she was and her mother acted as if she was afraid to talk. It was a conspiracy. I’m sure of it.”
“Where is she now?” the governor asked.
“We don’t know. She was married and went away, and soon afterward her father died. The mother moved. We are advertising for Mary now.”
“I hope you find her. We can learn what she has to say, if anything. But I’m afraid you are depending on a frail reed. Probably she won’t have anything of value to tell. And frankly, I must make it plain that I can’t indorse the pardon of any man who has broken prison and is still at large.”
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