Clattering Hoofs

by William MacLeod Raine

  “I don’ want to have no truck with that man a-tall,” the Negro said with finality.

  “He did you a wrong some time, maybe?”

  Sam hesitated. He wanted to play safe, and on the other hand he felt a desire to express to this young woman who did not like Uhlmann his own bitter pent-up hatred. His fingers touched a long deep scar on his forehead.

  “Once when he was drunk he did this—with a stirrup. Out of plumb meanness. Because when he came an hour late for dinner, after everybody else had eaten, I had things cleared off the table. For a month I was awful sick.”

  “He’s a heartless brute,” Sandra said, eyes flashing.

  “Yes’m,” Sam agreed. “Folks say he treats Mrs. Uhlmann terrible. I ain’t ever seen her since she was married. Story is she don’t hardly ever leave home.”

  Rumors about the Uhlmann family life had reached Sandra. Fortunately there were no children. There was a lot of gossip, some of which might not be true. It was said the man beat his wife with a whip.

  Sandra had never met the woman, though the Uhlmanns lived only about ten miles up the valley from the Circle J R. No welcome sign for visitors was hung out at the X Bar. The girl made up her mind to ignore this, for she meant to see Mary Uhlmann and have a talk with her. Of course she must make her call at a time when the husband was not at home. Since he was notoriously absent most of the time, the chance of missing him ought to be good. She might have to try more than once before she succeeded.

  That her father would not approve of such a visit Sandra knew. He felt strongly that anything further done on behalf of Bob Webb must be undertaken by him and not by his daughter. Knowing her father, she was aware that he would think it unfair to work against a man through his wife. On both points she held a different opinion. Anything that could be done for Bob she meant to do, and she had no scruples about using Mary Uhlmann to get justice for him.

  Her father left early next morning to look at a bunch of cows in the Sulphur Springs Valley that were for sale. He did not expect to get back until the evening of the second day. As soon as he was out of sight Sandra gave orders to have her horse saddled. She asked Jim Budd to put up a picnic lunch for her, since she probably would not return till sunset.

  About a mile west of the ranch house she left the road, to follow a trail that ran up through the low hills to a rocky ridge hemming in one side of the valley for a distance of twenty miles. A gulch sown with cactus led her to the flat tops above. A fringe of bushes edged the bluff and screened her from the observation of anybody on the floor below when the path ran close to the precipice.

  Now that she was in action again the girl felt happier than she had been for several days. To sit still and do nothing while Bob might be in peril had been a strain on the nerves. With the sun shining and a light cool breeze ruffling her hair as she rode, the fear of impending disaster lifted from her. In a world like this, so clean and free, the alarms knocking at her heart seemed fanciful.

  Swifts ran across the path and disappeared. A road runner raced in front of her for fifty yards and then veered into the brush. Beside the trail a Gila monster lay inert and sluggish. The call of a dove sounded from an arroyo. All the familiar aspects of this desert land were reassuring.

  So few traveled the rough terrain of the ridge that she was surprised to catch sight of a man on horseback. He rode toward her, and she recognized Stan Fraser. The old-timer lifted his hat and waved it, a smile of pleasure on his face.

  “I’m right pleased to meet you, Miss Sandra,” he said. “But aren’t you off yore home range some?”

  “I’ve heard that travel broadens one,” she answered.

  “And a doctor once told me that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. It joggles up his liver—or something.”

  He shifted his seat in the saddle, resting his weight on one stirrup. “You look blooming as a pink rose. If a doc did that for you, I’d like his address.”

  “You’ve kissed the Blarney Stone, Mr. Fraser,” she accused. “But I’m like all women and eat up flattery.”

  Stan shook his head. “I dassent say half of what I think.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Go on. I won’t breach-of-promise you.”

  “That’s certainly bad news,” he mourned. “You’d ought to have seen me when I first began to tail cows. But that was so long ago the Rincons were still a hole in the ground. I notice the girls’ eyes pass over me and light on that young high-stepper I travel with. Outside of his being thirty years younger and full of pepper and not having a face that turns milk sour, what has that hell-a-miler got that I haven’t?”

  “I like mature men with sense,” Sandra said demurely.

  “That’s me. I’ll be camping on yore doorsteps soon as I am no longer on the dodge.”

  “How nice for me!” She put the question in her mind with obvious carelessness. “And where is the—hell-a-miler? Isn’t that what you called him? I hope he hasn’t gone back to Yuma yet.”

  Fraser waved a hand widely, to include all the territory in the hills. “Back in one of those pockets. He’ll holler his head off when he learns what he missed.”

  “Oh!” she inquired innocently. “Has he missed something?”

  “Bob will think so. I’ll bet he won’t ever stay and clean camp again.” He frowned a question at her, though his words were a statement. “Funny you came away up to this rough prong to take a ride.”

  “Maybe I thought I would like to visit a neighbor.”

  “Meaning a crazy bandit holed up here who is wanted for horse stealing, abduction, stage robbery, and murder?’”

  The color deepened in her cheeks. “No!” she answered sharply. “Not meaning him at all.”

  Fraser was puzzled. The cow trail she was taking led to no settlement, unless it might be the back boundary of Uhlmann’s X Bar spread, and of course she could not be going there. In spite of her swift vigorous denial he was inclined to believe that she was riding the ridge in the hope of meeting Bob Webb.

  “If you are going back now maybe I’d better ride along until you’re off the steep trail,” he offered. “A horse could easily break a leg in all those rocks.”

  “I’m not going back yet. And Beauty is very sure-footed. I won’t need to trouble you.”

  “No trouble at all. A pleasure.”

  “For me too, some other day,” she replied, with a smile that took away the sting of the dismissal.

  But Sandra was still afraid she might have hurt the feelings of the old-timer, and she wouldn’t do that for a good deal. She liked him, and he was a loyal friend of the man she loved. So she stayed to talk for a little longer in order to make sure he was not offended.

  “I heard some news that will interest you and Mr. Webb,” she told him. “That is, if it is news to you. This girl we are trying to find, Mary Gilcrest, is the wife of that villain Uhlmann.”

  It was a complete surprise to Fraser, but he picked up at once the adverse effect this was likely to have on Bob’s chance of getting a pardon.

  “Even if she wanted to she couldn’t testify against Rhino now,” he said. “Bob has the darndest luck. Of all men in the world she has to marry the one fellow she should not have.”

  “That would be a strange coincidence, if it is one,” she replied thoughtfully. “It must have been some more of Packard’s scheming. Well, I’ll say ‘Adios,’ Mr. Fraser.”

  “Don’t forget to look for me on yore doorstep soon as this hunt quits getting hot,” he said with a warm grin. “You saved my life the other day, and I certainly ain’t going to let you throw me over now.”

  “Oh, I’m thinking of being an old maid,” she laughed, turning away.

  A little disturbed in mind, Fraser rode on. He was not sure that he ought not to stay with her until she was safely back in the valley. But she evidently wanted to be left alone.

  A pass cut through the ridge. Sandra moved down into it and up a steep slope to the continuation of the ridge on the other side of the cut. In t
he distance, miles farther up the valley, she could see flashes of light from the sun striking the whirling blades of a windmill at the Uhlmann ranch. The X Bar was a small outfit, and as she drew nearer she saw by her field glasses that the buildings were ramshackle and the fences poorly kept up. The owner of the place paid very little attention to improving it.

  As Sandra topped a small rise she came face to face with another rider. He carried a rifle, and a moment later she saw that the horseman was Uhlmann.

  The rancher pulled up, surprised and disconcerted. His object in traveling along the ridge had been to escape observation. In front of her he jerked his horse roughly to a stop.

  “What you doing here?” he demanded, suspicion in the look he slanted at her.

  Sandra thought quickly. “I came to have a talk with you,” she replied.

  “Then why didn’t you ride by the road?” he wanted to know.

  She had an answer for that. “I thought perhaps you would rather I weren’t seen going to your place, on account of the trouble at Tucson.”

  He digested that, before flinging a harsh question at her. “What do you want with me?”

  “I want to ask you please to let Bob Webb alone. He has never harmed you, Mr. Uhlman. Don’t you think you have hurt him enough already?”

  “How have I ever hurt him?” he growled.

  “You testified at his trial that he killed Giles Lemmon, and you know that wasn’t true,” she said, looking straight into his small beady eyes.

  “That so?” he jeered. “Who did?”

  “Never mind that now. Why do you hate Bob so? Let the officers get him if they can. It’s not your business.”

  “I want that reward.”

  “I shouldn’t think you would want blood money,” she said contemptuously.

  “It will buy just as much.” He added, with sudden anger: “And I won’t be satisfied till that fellow is rubbed out or sent back.”

  “For seven or eight years he has been in that terrible place to serve a sentence for something he did not do. If he is a hard and bitter man now, his enemies made him that. Mr. Uhlmann, I’m only a girl, but I know you can’t do a deliberate wrong to anybody without destroying yourself.”

  “Don’t try to feed me pap,” he broke out violently. “I know what I’m about, and I aim to keep right on doing it. My ideas don’t change just because some fool girl has gone mushy about a killer.”

  She threw up a hand wearily. “If you won’t listen, I can’t help it.”

  He pushed his horse closer, so that his seamed leathery face was close to hers. “You do some listening, Miss High-and-Mighty. I’m dirt under your feet, by your way of it. The only reason you speak to me is because you are crazy about this Webb and are scared of what I’ll do to him. Tell him for me I’ll get him. It’s gonna be him or me. If it’s the last thing I do in this world I’ll be standing up pouring lead into him after he is down.” He finished with a string of scabrous epithets. The savage bitterness of his pent-up venom appalled her.

  She turned her horse aside to pass. He caught the bridle rein.

  “You’ve seen me now,” he jeered. “And fixed up everything nice. There’s nothing to keep you from headin’ for home now.”

  “Let go that rein,” Sandra ordered.

  Uhlmann’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t come to see me at all,” he charged, “but to meet yore fancy Dan.”

  “Turn loose my horse,” she warned, her eyes bright with anger.

  “You know where he’s roostin’ up in these hills, and by cripes! you’re gonna take me to him.”

  She swung her quirt, and the lash cut across the fellow’s cheek. Startled by the unexpected pain, his hand dropped from the rein. Sandra was away like a frightened rabbit, her body low over the neck of her mount. Stung to fury, the man fired at her and missed. Some saving sense in him stopped the second shot. He lowered the rifle and put his horse to a gallop in pursuit. Before he had gone thirty yards he knew his lumbering sorrel could not catch her light wellbred racer. He dragged the horse viciously to a halt and poured curses at the girl disappearing into a dip.

  27. Bob Saddles

  FRASER FOUND BOB LYING ON HIS BACK GAZING UP AT THE thin cloud-skeins drifting across the sky.

  “I’ll bet you are thinking about my girl,” Fraser challenged with a chuckle.

  “Didn’t know you had one,” Bob responded cautiously, aware that there might be a catch in this. There was an air of suppressed excitement about his partner that presaged news.

  “You didn’t know I had a girl!” Fraser exclaimed with a show of indignation. “Shows how much you don’t use yore eyes. Why, I just been out on the bluff having a nice talk with her.

  Webb slanted incredulous but inquiring eyes at him. “You old roué, and I’ve been siding you all this time without suspecting how depraved you are.”

  “Nothing of the kind. I’ve got the most honorable intentions. I told her soon as these sheriffs quit wanting me I would be right there at the Circle J R looking for her.”

  The prostrate man had not moved a muscle, but his gaze still rested on Stan. “So you met Miss Ranger,” he said.

  “You bet I did. On one of the cow trails that run along the prong.”

  “Not alone?”

  “Why, no, there were two of us there—Miss Sandra and me.”

  “She had come alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What for?”

  Fraser abandoned his badinage. “I don’t rightly know why, boy. When I hinted it might be to find you, she put me in my place quick. There was something else in her mind.”

  “What could it be? Nobody lives up here.”

  The older man scratched his head. “She said something about going to see a neighbor.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I couldn’t get it. Say, she told me something I didn’t know. She has found out who married Mary Gilcrest and where she lives.”

  “It must have been that ad Ranger put in the papers. I suppose the woman answered it.”

  “I dunno about that. Give you three guesses as to who the woman married.”

  To get it over with and find out sooner, Bob guessed, “President Cleveland, the Czar of Russia, or John L. Sullivan.”

  “No, sir. A dear friend of yours. She is Mrs. Hans Uhlmann.”

  Bob stared at him. “You sure?”

  “That’s what Miss Sandra told me.”

  “Makes it fine for me, doesn’t it? Even if she wanted to testify what she heard the law wouldn’t let her. You can’t make a wife give evidence against her husband. I reckon they won’t allow her to go on the stand.”

  “Old Jug sure ties up a package nice and neat,” Stan said.

  His friend agreed. “The girl must have heard plenty or Packard wouldn’t have thought it necessary for her to be hogtied by marrying Uhlmann.”

  “By now she is good and tired of that hulking rhinoceros probably. If she knows anything and will talk there must be some way of using her. You better get you a good lawyer.”

  “I don’t know any that lives on this street,” Bob answered. “When I was in town you were hell-bent on getting me out where the neighborhood was more filled with absentees. Now you think——”

  “Ranger will see one for you. I still think country air is more suitable for yore puny corporosity.”

  Bob did not answer that. His half-shuttered eyes were fixed on a stretch of mackerel sky. The consideration of another problem was occupying his mind. What was Sandra doing on this bare ridge ten miles from home? Had she come on the slight chance of meeting Fraser or him to tell them the news about Mary Gilcrest? It did not seem reasonable. She had no way of knowing that they were within fifty miles of the Circle J R, and if she had been aware of it the likelihood of running across the hunted men in these huddled hills slashed by gulches and ravines was not worth counting. Moreover, the information was not important, since there was nothing he could do about it.

  He sat up a
bruptly. The answer to his question had flashed across his mind. She was going to the Uhlmann ranch. That was what she had meant when she told Fraser she was going to see a neighbor. And she meant to slip in to the X Bar by the back way. But why, instead of taking the easy road along the valley? If she wanted to see Uhlmann why make a secret of it? Above all, what could have induced her to go to see this ruffian without being companioned by her father?

  The only reason he could find was that she hoped to see not Uhlmann but his wife. Perhaps she had seen him passing the Circle J R on his way to town and knew that Mary Uhlmann would be alone. Bob did not like the idea at all. This fellow was too dangerous for Sandra to try to trick.

  “I’m saddling,” he said, and walked to his picketed horse.

  “Going where?” Fraser asked.

  “To the X Bar.”

  “Making a friendly call on good old Hans?”

  “I’ll tell you how friendly later—when I know myself.”

  “Think I’ll mosey along to see the fireworks,” Stan said.

  “Hope there won’t be any. Chances are that Uhlmann isn’t home.”

  “But his wife will be—that the idea?”

  “Not exactly. I think we’ll find Sandra Ranger there.”

  Fraser slapped a hand on his chaps. “Right. That’s where she was headed for when I met her. Never thought of that. That girl is bound and determined to help you whether you want her to or not.”

  Bob was worried for fear she might have involved herself in a perilous situation. Uhlmann would show no mercy toward a girl on account of her age and sex if she was making trouble for him.

  “I wish she would mind her own affairs and keep out of mine,” he blurted gruffly. “She’ll get hurt if she doesn’t look out.”

  “Funny you didn’t think to tell her that the other night when she took us in and saved our lives,” Fraser retorted dryly.

  He understood that his friend’s irritation was born of a deep concern for Sandra’s safety. To some extent he shared too in Bob’s apprehension.

  “She’s impulsive,” Webb explained. “Once I helped her when she was in a jam, and she feels she has to keep on helping me.”