Considering the matter, he was quite sure that Duck Bale did not know that he had come down the slide into the hideout, and it was very likely it had never been attempted by any of them. If such was the case, he might again get into the canyon without attracting attention. He mopped the sweat from his face and stared into the heat waves. The broken ridges that were the only outward indication of the hideout showed before him, and he skirted them, seeking the juniper tangle where he had found the sloping ground that led him to the slide.
The heat was oppressive, and several times he glanced at the sky, for it reminded him of nothing so much as the Kansas heat that precedes a bad thunderstorm. There was a faint suggestion of grayness over the mountain, but it might be his imagination and nothing more. In any event, his slicker was behind his saddle. He had not worn it since the day of the holdup.
For the first time he remembered the papers taken from the pockets of Thacker.
In the rush of events that followed his discovery of Jesse Lock, he had forgotten about those papers, forgotten them completely!
Pushing steadily on, Hopalong sighted one of the granitic upthrusts that marked the earthquake fault and, riding toward it, saw the junipers above him. Circling and weaving among the boulders, he arrived and swung to the ground above the slide. Taking down his slicker, he thrust his hands into the capacious pockets.
The forgotten wallet was there, several letters, and some money. The first of the letters was addressed to Sim Thacker, Mobeetie, Texas.
Inclosing one hundred dollars. On arrival you will receive four hundred more. The balance of the fifteen hundred dollars will be paid over when the job is completed. Of Clarry Jacks you may have heard. How, where, and when is up to you, but the sooner the better.
H.
That H. could stand for Pony Harper. Obviously he had sent out for a gunman to kill Clarry Jacks. If, as Cassidy believed, Harper was involved in the holdups with Jacks, then he had either decided it was foolish to share the proceeds or had decided Clarry Jacks was too dangerous to have around. The killing of Thacker now made sense. He had been called aside, given his chance, and killed as a demonstration of the futility of hiring anyone to kill Jacks. It also implied then that Jacks knew who had hired Thacker.
Why, then, had he not acted against Harper? There could be only one reason. Because he was using him and wanted him around a bit longer. The next letter was a further explanation.
In answer to your query regarding Clarry Jacks. The name is unfamiliar, but the description tallies with that of Vasco Graham, of the Bald Knob family. If this is the same man, he is wanted here for killing a man some fifteen years ago. I believe that he was involved in a cattle war in the state of Texas and he later worked with Panhandle rustlers. He is known as an out-and-out killer, and fast with a gun. He is also wanted for robberies in Colorado.
There was a circular listing rewards for the capture of Vasco Graham or his killing, and a commission as deputy sheriff. Evidently Sim Thacker had gone to great lengths to give his projected killing the cloak of legality.
There was a letter from Thacker’s wife, from whom he was separated, and into this letter Hopalong put what money there was to forward to her when he again reached a post office.
Vasco Graham was the outlaw who had murdered his partner and leader, Dakota Jack, and stolen his horse for a getaway. It had been a cold-blooded murder as bad as that of Jesse Lock. No wonder Clarry Jacks had known the country!
Picketing Topper among the junipers, Hopalong went to the slide and studied it with care. There was nobody in sight, and careful inspection showed only a thin trail of smoke from the cabin where he had talked with Duck Bale. Going down the slide was a problem, not so much the difficulty as the necessity for quiet. Loose rocks made it virtually impossible, but by keeping to the inner wall it might be done. Checking his guns for the last time, Hopalong hitched up his belt and started down.
* * *
Six miles behind him Shorty Montana was working out Hopalong’s trail through the sagebrush. Ordinarily, as Hopalong had taken no trouble to conceal it, this would not have been difficult, but dust devils had skittered across the desert and wiped out the trail here and there. Montana continued to move and searched the range ahead of him for some sign of Hopalong’s objective.
Mopping his tough brown face, Shorty cursed the heat. He wished it would rain. He would give anything for rain. He rolled a smoke with damp fingers and lit up. Drawing deep, he stared at the wreck of mountains before him. Something, he reflected, had raised hob here. Overhead a buzzard wheeled in lazy ellipses, swinging wide and calmly. The buzzard was in no hurry. In his experience everything eventually came to him.
Shorty spoke to the horse, and it moved on, pleased to be going anywhere that might offer relief from the sun. The range over Seven Pines was topped with cloud. He might get his wish. It might rain.
* * *
The stone house in the amphitheater had been built by some vanished tribe of Indians, and it was snug and cool, shaded from the sun. A bottle was open on the table and Clarry Jacks sat bareheaded before it. Damp brown hair was plastered against his forehead, and he was smiling at Laramie.
“You talk to Duck?” Laramie asked.
“Not me. He’s a nice hombre, but let him get started and he’ll jaw your arm off.”
“You think that Red River Regan was Cassidy?”
“Sure. But how he found this place I’ll never know. Every time I go out I have trouble getting back.”
“You think he’ll come here again?”
“Sure. And when he comes, we’ll bury him. Duck’s watchin’ the entrance, and he’s to let him ride right in.” Jacks looked up, measuring Laramie with his cold eyes. “This here’s the showdown. Harper hired Thacker to kill me. He tried to hire Jesse Lock.”
“Jesse wouldn’t hire out to kill anybody.”
“Pony tried him. I saw ’em talkin’ and braced Jesse about it afterward. He wouldn’t give me any definite answer, but he did ask if we didn’t get along, Harper and I.”
“That was enough?”
“Sure it was. Harper wants all that gold. Every bit of it.”
Laramie shrugged. “I never did trust him.”
“Well, in a short time we’ll be through with Cassidy. Then I’ll settle with Harper. He might have tipped us off to something else that was good if this thing hadn’t busted wide open. We’ll slope out of here, cash our gold in for money, and live high and handsome for a while.”
“Wonder what happened to John Gore?”
“No tellin’. His horse was dead at Corn Patch. Harris and Dusark dead in a gun duel.” Jacks shrugged “Didn’t think Dusark had it in him.”
“No.” Laramie shifted his seat. He stared disconsolately at the bare table and the bottle. Was this all it came to? Hiding, dodging, waiting to trap a good man and shoot him down? “Makes an hombre think,” he said suddenly. “Poker Harris was tough. I’d of said he was one of the ring-tailed terrors, and blam! He’s out like a candle! If he can get it so easy, anybody can.”
They sat silently, and in the distance thunder rumbled. Both men looked up. “Rain! Man, we can sure use it! Cool things off.”
“Lucky, you knowin’ about this place,” Laramie said. “A man couldn’t find it in a year, just lookin’ without knowin’.”
“Dakota Jack found it. He was ridin’ ahead of a posse and ran up this draw. Back there where the stone gate is, there was a lot less opening than now. He dodged in there and the posse lost him. He found the spring and holed up here for a week, eatin’ what grub he had left, a few rabbits, and some prickly pear. There was some maize growin’ wild here then, too, he said.
“We used it from time to time in the next year or so, but after the outfit got shot up there was nobody left but me who knew where it was. I packed in a stock of grub and began usin’ it for a hideout when I was on my lonesome.”
“Wonder what caused it? That sure isn’t washed out by any stream! Those jagged edges look li
ke the ends of a broken bone.”
“Man in El Paso told me it was an earthquake fault. He said the line of fault might run for miles.”
“What happens durin’ a quake?”
“She grinds around some. I’ve never been here when there was one and I don’t think anybody ever was, but there’s been cracks in the floors, and once a whole wall was shaken down.”
The two men smoked in silence, and then Clarry walked back to the fire, stirred it a trifle, added wood, and began to make coffee.
“What’s the deal on Cassidy? We let him come in, you say?” Laramie asked.
“Sure. And we take him from the front, and Bale from behind. He’ll be caught in the open and he won’t have a chance.”
* * *
Hopalong Cassidy was already in the canyon while Duck Bale still watched outside. The afternoon was well along, and the clouds were piling up higher and higher above Seven Pines. In the bottom of the canyon Hopalong neither realized this nor cared. He was intent upon one thing only, to get within shooting distance of the man or men who had been responsible for the murder of Jesse Lock. Whatever else they had done was beside the case in his consideration. To shoot a man already sorely wounded and helpless put the killers beyond the pale.
Close to the wall, partly concealed by an angle of rock, he considered the situation. Smoke was rising now from the house in the amphitheater, and that told him that there were men not only in the outer canyon where his fight with Frazer had taken place but also here in this reconstructed Indian house among the evergreens.
There was cover in plenty here, and he used it, moving carefully around by the rocks and working his way closer and closer to the house. The two men within were men worthy of his guns in every sense. Either might prove his equal; together they might be far superior. In any event, it did not pay to take chances with such men. One mistake was all anyone could expect—and that one would be fatal.
Thunder rumbled again, nearer this time, and Hopalong paused, noting it and carefully considering what it might mean to him. Then he moved on.
* * *
A half mile away, at the mouth of the fault, Duck Bale arose and stared off toward Seven Pines. All was blackness over there, a blackness shot through with vivid streaks of lightning. The front of the storm was rolling down upon him, and he did not like his situation one bit. Any fool could see that he was going to get wet if he stayed where he was, and maybe struck by lightning on that high, exposed knob of stone. He turned, and glancing back toward the canyon, he felt himself start. Someone was creeping along the far wall of the amphitheater!
Instantly realization came to him. Hopalong Cassidy was already inside the canyon!
No sooner had he realized this than he began to scramble down the rock, just a minute too soon to see a rider turn in the mouth of the draw and stare his way. That rider was Shorty Montana. He had finally lost Hopalong’s trail and was hunting for it in that maze of uptilted rock.
Bale hit bottom and broke in a run for the shack in which Laramie waited. Now they had Cassidy! Had him bottled up!
But how had he gotten in here? There was only one alternative, and that was the rockslide, but Bale had examined it, and it had not looked too practical, as a man was sure to make noise descending it. He hurried to the door of the stone building and shoved it open. Laramie was sprawled on a cot, reading a magazine.
“Cassidy’s inside!” Bale gasped out. “How he got in I don’t know, but he’s in! I saw him!”
Laramie got to his feet and belted on his guns. His heart pounded and his mouth was dry. He knew what he was going up against, and despite the odds, he was not comforted.
* * *
Hopalong had reached the back of the hollow and was now near the corrals. The paint horse he had seen in the holdup was still there, and with it now were six other horses. There were no saddled horses in sight. If Clarry Jacks had intended to return to the outfit at Poker Gap, he had changed his mind or left his horse in the outer corral.
The stone building was rectangular and two-storied, although the upper story had not been entirely repaired. Its back was close to the wall of the cliff itself, and the corrals were a short distance away.
Scattered pines and firs completed the picture, and several of these were close around the house, three or four between it and the corral. The cliff wall, a part of the fault, was of sandstone, and projecting layers of it formed a partial roof over the house itself. Sliding carefully around the corral, Hopalong worked his way through the debris that lay between it and the wall. Here there were several niches, which his mind noted and filed away for future reference.
The easiest way into the building appeared to be through a ruined corner on the second floor, but it left open the possibility that they would hear his footsteps below. Yet if this house was like many others, the intervening floor would be of stone, and he might be able to cross it without noise to warn those below.
Clouds were rolling over the canyon now, and someone inside struck a light. He was about to move forward to the wall of the house when he saw the ears of the horses go up sharply. All of them were looking inquisitively toward the entrance, and Hopalong crouched quickly, his right hand on his gun, waiting.
Movement showed suddenly, then vanished, and he knew someone from the outer canyon had slipped in. Someone who moved warily. He had no friends around of whom he knew, unless Ben Lock had found this place, which was improbable. The only alternative was an enemy, and one who knew he was here.
The man before him was Duck Bale, gun in hand, coming around the wall, still some distance away but on Hopalong’s very trail.
Crouched at the corner of the corral, Hopalong considered his position anew. There was a chance he might be able to shoot his way out of the corner he was in and get away safely, yet it was not his nature to turn from a course once planned. At the same time, he did not wish to commit suicide. Long experienced in affairs of the gun, he knew full well that the best way is often straight ahead, and that was the course he chose now. He had planned to face the killer of Jesse Lock, and the man was inside this house. He was going in after him; then he would face things as they came.
Leaving the corral in a quick dive, he reached the corner of the stone house. The space here between the house wall and the sandstone of the canyon was narrow, and the light was not in the back of the house. Pausing only an instant, he gathered himself, then jumped straight up and caught the roof edge in his fingers. He chinned himself, got an arm over the parapet, and then a leg. A moment later he lay flat on his back on the roof.
* * *
Laramie had not seen this movement. Neither had Bale. Both men were looking around the corral. Behind Laramie a boot crunched and he whirled, gun in hand. Already it was nearly dark and he could just make out the face of Bale.
“So where’d he go?”
“Durned if I know! I sure saw him here, honest! Where could he go?”
* * *
Hopalong had already answered that question by two quick steps into the upper room of the house. Here he paused, listening. Outside he could hear whispers of more than one man.
Feeling his way along the wall of the windowless room, he came to a pile of rubble, evidently the remains of an earlier roof. Working around this, he heard a low mutter of voices and then saw a vague light from the floor. He moved nearer and found himself standing over a trap door, but no ladder descended into the darkness. Yet not far from the opening of the trap was a crack in the ceiling of another room below, and through this opening there now came both light and the sound of voices.
Clarry Jacks was speaking. “Not out there?”
“Duck must be nervous … seein’ things.”
“Well, he knows of this place. He’ll come eventually. He’ll be looking for me.”
“Suppose Lock told him anything?” It was Laramie talking.
“I doubt it. From where I was hid I could see them plain. Lock talked some, all right. I could hear his voice. After Hopalong had
the fire goin’ I could see them both, and then when light came, Hopalong took off and I knew I had to get down there fast.”
“Maybe Lock never saw anything?”
“He saw something, all right. He got a good look at me when the lightning flashed, and he’d know me, mask or no mask.”
“You were lucky to run into Harper like you did.”
“Yeah. When I spotted them I swung around a hill so I could ride down on them from behind. They were hurryin’ to catch Harrington then, and I told ’em I’d chased ’em all the way from town, which accounted for my horse being hard-ridden. Harper knew the tally all right, but Doc never suspected.”
Hopalong put his feet through the trap door and lowered himself full length. Then he dropped.
“What was that?” Clarry demanded.
“What?”
“I thought I heard somethin’.”
Laramie rose. “Any way into this place but the door?”
“None I can think of. There’s a hole in the wall of that upper room. If a feller got on the roof—”
Both men turned like cats. Hopalong Cassidy stood in the dark doorway to the inner room, elbows crooked, his big hands poised above the guns that had ended the career of many an outlaw or professed gunman.
Jacks stared at the hard-boned face, the weatherbeaten countenance and blazing eyes, and something turned over within him, something happened that he had never believed could happen to him. His courage seemed to ooze from him. Yet at the height of his terror a thought ran through him, cold and chilling.
He had no choice.
The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle Page 36