Clattering Hoofs

by William MacLeod Raine

  For a million years rocks had crashed down from the ridge into the small boulder field at the end of this pocket. The terrain was ideal for defense, but not so good if one every ten minutes kept calling the attention of the enemy to his position.

  Fraser fired toward the mouth of the pocket and scuttled through the brush to the shelter of a boulder ten or fifteen yards distant. As he had expected, two explosions sounded so close to each other that the second seemed almost an echo of the first. He settled down in his new place, watching to make sure the enemy were not stalking his cover. He was a cool customer, with nerves and muscles co-ordinated perfectly. Long habit as an outdoor Westerner had trained eyes and ears to catch the slightest stir of movement or rumor of sound. Warfare against the Apaches, terminated only in the past few years, had put a premium on still and vigilant patience.

  A ruse to lessen the risk occurred to him. He picked up a bit of quartz and flung it against the face of a boulder twenty yards from his shelter. The guns of the ambushers sent bullets whistling up the draw in the direction of the sound. The old-timer chuckled. He had lured them into giving the warning without having to do it himself.

  Stan knew he was in a tight spot. His assailants could not wait till morning to get him. He felt sure that they were taking advantage of the cover and of the darkness to move closer to him. But he was less distressed about this than about Bob’s reaction to the warning of the shots. Webb would be alarmed at the danger of his friend and might come charging forward without taking any precautions.

  A rustle in the bushes a stone’s throw distant, so faint that only keen hearing could have detected it, told Stan that one of his enemies at least was working nearer through the brush. Fraser shifted his position back of the rock noiselessly. All he could do was wait until the rifleman was within range of his revolver. If the fellow stealing up on him got an open shot now he could hardly miss. Stan crouched low in the shadow of the boulder back of a clump of cholla.

  His hunter was working very slowly and cautiously to the right. The moon was out again, and soon he would see his prey, a solid bulk back of the cactus, only partially protected by the embedded boulder. Fraser could not wait any longer. He had to take a chance. There was nothing for it but to dash across an open space to the refuge offered by a sunken hole back of a sandstone slab.

  Stan came out on the run. From the darkness a startled voice ripped out an oath. The old-timer was in moonlight bright and clear. He was half-way to the slab when a shot rang out. A blow struck his shoulder but did not stop him. His body plunged down into the sand hole and slid along it. Though bruised and winded, he clambered to his feet and peered around the edge of the rock. A shifting shadow crossed the floor of the arroyo in front of dense shrubbery, the figure throwing the shadow concealed by the foliage. Fraser fired, guessing at the man’s position. A bullet flung an answer, striking the sandstone at an angle and flying off on a ricochet.

  Pain obtruded itself into Stan’s consciousness. He put his hand to his shoulder and found his shirt soggy. Warm blood seeped down his back and arm. Fraser grinned wryly. This was a heck of a note. He hoped the wound was not too bad, since he was too busy just now to go see a doctor.

  With divided attention he gave himself first aid. While he took the bandanna handkerchief from around his neck and tied it about the wound to stop the bleeding, he checked up intermittently on the position of his foes. If they rushed him, he wanted to be ready to give as good as they sent.

  The old frontiersman was a realist. It was a three to one bet, he guessed, that he had come to the end of the trail. His hunters probably thought that the victim they had trapped was Bob Webb. They might not discover their mistake until he was dead, and if they did he would be rubbed out anyway, on the principle that a dead man could not bear witness against them.

  His attackers were taking no unnecessary chances. They were huddled back of cover just as he was. The silence in the arroyo was long, broken only by the sounds of night life peculiar to the desert. In the brush were murmurs of small creeping things, almost too faint to be heard. A more strident note was the sudden clamor of a cicada. On a far-away hill a coyote lifted its mournful howl.

  Still watching for the attack or for any shift in the position of his enemies, Stan put his forty-five on the ground beside him and took from a pocket an old notebook and the stub of a pencil. By the bright moonlight he wrote:

  Son, they’ve got me trapped in the arroyo. Might be trail’s end for me. There are two of the birds. Uhlmann must be one of course. Don’t know who the other is. They shot Jack Pot as I was leaving the cabin and I had to skedaddle without my rifle. One of them sent a pill into my shoulder.

  A bullet whistled past Stan. He put down the pencil and picked up the revolver. Very cautiously he risked a look around the edge of the sandstone slab. He could see nothing like a gunman in the dark masses of shrubbery within his vision, but he knew that one at least of his attackers lay there hugging the ground. For moral effect, to let them know he was still dangerous, he sent a shot into the chaparral.

  Another stretch of silence followed. Stan wrote again.

  Just swapped shots with a gent hidden in the rocks. No damage, I reckon. I’m writing you, son, to tell you—if they send me West—that I’ve had a good go of it since I met you that day at my corral. Unbeknownst to you, boy. I’ve kinda adopted the son of my old friend. I’ve had fun scooting over the hills and watching from a ledge now and then posses hunting us. Made me feel young again.

  Got to quit. One of these Injuns is crawling around to get me on my unprotected side. So long, son. A guy can’t live forever anyhow.

  Stan put the note in his boot leg and picked up the forty-five.

  36. Sandra Turns Nurse

  BOB FOUND THE STIRRUPS AFTER HE HAD FLUNG HIMSELF into the saddle. He wheeled his mount and sent it galloping down the lane. Very likely Stan had left the cabin and was safely in the hills before the arrival of Uhlmann. But the old-timer’s habits were not predictable. He might have decided to sit in the shack reading until Bob returned from the ranch.

  There was a good deal of the Indian about Uhlmann. He liked to do his killing from ambush, and if Fraser was still at the Baxter hut the old man might never know what had hit him. For Bob had no doubt that the outlaw would not hesitate to shoot down Stan, even though the man he really wanted to get was Webb.

  It was Bob’s habit to ride with consideration for his horse, but tonight he plunged ahead as fast as he could drive the animal. When clear of the fence he left the road and cut across a rough uneven flat to the hills shaping shadowlike in the distance. Even when the moon sailed out from behind a cloud the pace was dangerous, for there were gopher holes into which the gelding might stumble and break a leg.

  He was driven by fear that his old friend might fall at the hands of an assassin. Without a moment’s hesitation Stan had joined fortunes with him, refusing to be rebuffed, cheerfully determined to make a gay adventure of their hardships. No man could have asked for a more loyal or faithful companion. He had put up with Bob’s moods and diverted him with light chat when the black devil care rode on Bob’s shoulders. Now the little man might be lying crumpled on the dirt floor of the adobe cabin with a bullet through his heart.

  Faintly there came to him on the night breeze the far-away pop of a rifle. Bob did not slacken the pace, though his stomach muscles collapsed at the sound. A killer had fired the gun, had very likely shot down Stan without warning. A sickness ran through Bob’s lithe body. If the worst had taken place, it was something he could never forget. In him burned a hot fierce rage. He would get the man who had done this, if he had to follow the trail for years. But that would not bring back to life his whimsical and warm-hearted friend.

  There came a second explosion, and a third. Hope quickened in Bob. If the first bullet had destroyed Fraser there would have been no need for more. It might be that Stan was forted in the cabin—fighting back—standing off his enemies until help came.

  Breathi
ng heavily, Bob’s horse pounded forward. The sound of firing came occasionally to Webb, louder as the distance lessened. He could tell now that Stan was not in the cabin. The hammering of the guns came from the arroyo south of the house. Rifles were making most of the noise, but more than once a forty-five blasted out its challenge. Stan must be penned up in the arroyo among the rocks and brush.

  Bob swung to the left and crashed through the cactus. He tore up a rise to the hill crown from which a slope dipped into the arroyo. He flung himself from the saddle, slipped back of a clump of prickly pear, and lifted a yell to encourage the beleagured man.

  A call, weak but undaunted, came back to him.

  “Hi yi, Bob. Look out these devils don’t get you.”

  Bob heard the rustling of somebody scuttling away through the brush. He fired a random shot then ran down the slope toward his friend, blundering among the boulders and the shinnery to find him. Stan spoke again, to localize himself.

  “You all right?” Bob asked as soon as he saw Fraser.

  The old man grinned up at him indomitably. “Not too all right. One of the damned wolves plugged me in the back. Up near the shoulder. Reckon a doc can fix it.”

  They heard a galloping horse taking off into the night, and before the sound had died away the drumming hoofs of a second.

  Bob gave immediate aid as best he could and carried the light body of Fraser to the cabin. The bleeding had not stopped, and the jolting of the trip had done the wounded man no good. As soon as Bob laid him on the bed he fainted. While he was still unconscious Webb washed and dressed the torn shoulder.

  Stan opened his eyes. “I must of fainted. Like a girl.” His smile derided himself. “You’ve sure got a pal who can take it”

  “The best ever a man had.” Bob escaped from emotional ground quickly. “Were there only two of them?”

  “That’s right—two.”

  “They ambushed you?”

  “One of ’em took a crack at me when I came outa the house. I ducked round it, and the other fellow shot my horse. Seeing I couldn’t get at my rifle, I legged it for the arroyo.”

  “Could you tell who either of them was?”

  “I didn’t see but one of the birds, and then only for a moment. That skunk Uhlmann.”

  “The other was Packard,” Bob said.

  They heard a shout and the clop-clop of horses’ feet. Bob moved swiftly to the door, revolver in hand.

  “Circle J R riders,” a voice announced. “That you Fraser?”

  “Stan has been wounded,” Bob answered. “Webb talking. Uhlmann and Packard lit out.”

  A slim figure slid from a saddle and came forward. “Is Stan badly hurt?” Sandra asked.

  “What are you doing here?” Bob asked.

  “I had to come,” she replied in a low voice. “We’ll talk of that later. What about Stan? If he’s hurt, I can nurse him.”

  “Yes,” Bob nodded. “I’m glad you came, though you shouldn’t have. The wound is serious. I don’t know how bad. Come in.”

  He had dressed the wound in the dark, but now he lit a lamp. With four armed Circle J R men on the scene there would be no more shots out of the darkness.

  Sandra sat on the bed and put her fingers on the pulse of the wounded man. She looked up at Bob. “We can’t move him now. Better send one of the boys for Doctor Logan.”

  In Fraser’s tired eyes there was a flicker of laughter. “This is one time I put Bob’s nose outa joint,” he murmured. “I’ll bet he’s sore at me being the whitehaired boy.”

  “Hurry up and get well,” Bob said. “Then we can talk about that.”

  “I don’t aim to hurry a doggoned bit, if Miss Sandra is gonna be my nurse,” Stan announced weakly.

  “As long as you need me I’ll stay with you,” she promised.

  Bob asked Jim Budd to ride for a doctor, and as soon as the colored man had gone drew Sandra to one side.

  “I’m not sure whether the bullet went into Stan’s lung or not,” he said. “But anyhow this is going to be a long sickness. If you can stay here that will be fine. I’ll leave word at the ranch to relieve the boys after a while. Two guards must stay with you all the time.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked in quick alarm.

  “I’ve got a job to do,” he replied grimly.

  She noticed how hard and stern his eyes were. “You mean——?” The question died on her lips. Sandra knew what he was going to do.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he advised. “I’ll be as safe where I am going as you will be here.”

  “You’re going after this villain Uhlmann,” she charged.

  He said: “Stan has given for me these last weeks everything he had. I’m not going to let this fellow get away with this.”

  The girl’s heart died under her ribs. “Do you have to do this, Bob? Can’t you leave it to somebody who isn’t already in trouble?”

  “No. Stan got this wound for me, not for somebody else.”

  She had known what the answer would be before she put her questions. When he made up his mind it was as fixed as the Rock of Gibraltar.

  “I don’t see how you’re going to find him,” she said, and could not keep out of her voice the hope that he would not. “He’ll be hiding in the hills, as you were.”

  In his harsh bony face was the day of judgment. “I’ll find him. Right now he’s riding hard to reach Mexico.”

  “But if he gets across the line.”

  “I’ll go across too.”

  “But he’ll be safe on Mexican soil. You can’t touch him there.”

  “Can’t I?”

  Looking into his bleak cold eyes, Sandra shuddered. This was not the man who had promised to love her till all the seas went dry. He was as relentless as fate, and he would follow the trail until his victim was destroyed. She had to find out one thing more.

  “Are you going to bring him back to Arizona for punishment?”

  “That’s up to him. I’ll give him that chance.”

  “You talk as if you were God,” she cried. “He may lie in wait . . . and shoot you.”

  “It won’t be that way,” he promised.

  With one of the Circle J R riders he looked over the horses and picked the one with most stamina. The cowboy watched Bob fix the stirrups to the right length.

  “Good luck, fellow,” the ranch hand said, rage at Uhlmann surging up in him. “Blast hell out of the Dutchman.”

  Sandra joined them, and the cowboy slipped away into the house. Bob finished tightening the belly-band. She found no comfort in his hard and stony face.

  But when he turned to her his gaze softened. He took her in his arms and held her close without speaking. She thought, despairingly, “I can’t let him go—I can’t.” But she knew it had to be that way. How full of fear her heart was she could not let him know. She said shakily, clinging to him: “The best eating place at Nogales is Dan’s Café.”

  “Take care of Stan,” he said. “Don’t let him die.”

  He kissed her and swung to the saddle. Without looking back he rode away. She watched him until his figure had blurred into the landscape and he was no longer even a shadow in the night.

  37. When Rogues Fall Out

  ON HIS WAY DOWN FROM THE MINE UHLMANN HAD BEEN in a swither of doubt. He was heading for the safety of Mexico, but he could not make up his mind whether to make a short detour and try to get Webb on the way. A man in the hills had given him a straight tip that the convict was at the Baxter cabin. He could ride across the hills below the rock rim and take a look. If he was in luck a shot in the dark would be enough.

  But a new hate was simmering in his warped mind. He did not want to pull any chestnuts out of the fire for Jug Packard, who had just robbed him of five hundred dollars and sent him down the road at the point of a gun. No dependence could be put on Packard’s promise to pay him for getting rid of his enemy.

  The trouble was that the convict was Uhlmann’s enemy too. Perhaps because he had so greatly injured
young Webb he had for him a bitter malevolence, and when he came to the fork in the road that rancor tipped the scales and led him to the Baxter cabin. It would do no harm to blot out Webb if it could be done conveniently. That would be one score settled.

  He drew up on the summit of a rise and looked down at a light gleaming in the darkness. The information given him had been correct. Webb and Fraser were staying there. If he had a break he could get them both.

  The sound of a moving horse behind him sent a stab of fear through the man. He had been drinking a lot and his nerves were jumpy. A man had seen him on the rim rock the day before and shot at him. To be alone against the world, without friends, filled him with a dreadful loneliness.

  Drawing off from the trail, he stood back of his horse with the rifle across the saddle seat. The traveler back of him did not appear. Perhaps he had imagined the sound. More than once in the long nights he had conjured up danger that did not exist.

  He waited, while dragging minutes passed.

  A mocking voice, from the brush behind him, put a jeering question. “On the lookout for a friend, Rhino?”

  The big man swung round, incredibly fast for his size. “Where did you come from?” he demanded.

  Packard gave the tittering tee-hee that passed with him for a laugh. “Thought you might need a little help.”

  The hunted man did not like being dogged in the darkness by the plotter whose tool he had been. Suspicions flitted through his mind, and with them ugly thoughts. He pushed them into the background, to be dragged out later.

  “There’s a light in the cabin,” he said sulkily.

  “I saw it.”

  “Maybe we could let him have it through the window.”

  “And if Fraser is there too?”

  “He’ll have to go with the friend he’s so crazy about.”

  “There’s a back door to the cabin,” Packard said. “I’ll swing round and cover it from the brush. Give me ten minutes before you start the fireworks.”