The E. Hoffmann Price Spice Adventure MEGAPACK ™

by Price, E. Hoffmann

  As he plunged out of that venomous cloud, a racking sneeze jerked every fiber of his body. Somehow, he forced his hand to his pistol butt. The effort was wasted. Before the weapon cleared the holster, an attack from his right knocked him from his feet.

  A curved knife, and a blank, yellow face identified Alvarez’s ally. There would be no betraying pistol fire to make the execution conspicuous.

  The blade swept down. But that last inhalation of diluted gas stirred Flint’s muscles to a spasm that no conscious effort could have equaled. The descending point nailed his arm instead of sinking hilt-deep into his chest. The shock of that biting steel prodded his whirling senses.

  The knife rose again—but Flint’s free hand jerked his pistol clear.

  The blast was muffled by the yellow flesh it riddled. The Chinaman jerked back, then slumped forward. His wild thrust stabbed the floor. His dead weight pinioned Flint.

  Flinging aside the now emptied gas tube, Alvarez closed in before Flint could extricate himself or disengage his pistol. The doctor knocked the weapon from his hand, but as they grappled, the concentration of oily fumes thinned into an agonizing mist that leveled off the odds.

  The office became a hazy nightmare. Tear-blinded, sneezing, gasping, racked by coughs and seared by lung-corroding gulps of tainted air, they rolled and kicked and slugged.

  Flint, almost overwhelmed during those first instants, saw red spots dance before his eyes, and steel-bright flashes that became raking cuts. The doctor must have seized the Chinaman’s knife. He was no longer certain, but that warm flood that ran down his ribs and legs must be blood.

  Voice in that murderous maze—Alvarez yelling—and then a droning, dry voice, like pebbles rattling in a gourd.

  “Calling all cars! Miguel Smith—Mexican Mike—wanted for the murder of Ramon Guevara—heading for Telegraph Pass in a blue sedan.…”

  McDonald broadcasting to the prowl cars and highway patrol. Miguel Smith—engineered Valencia’s jailbreak and—

  Another slash. That one didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. He found a man’s throat and hung on. His fingers were weakening. So was Alvarez. Maybe his teeth would do the trick—got to get a look at that Chink’s blank face.

  Then a shriek. A low, tigerish feminine cry vibrant with wrath.

  Some woman was helping Alvarez. But another stab wouldn’t hurt. Let her help—

  He felt Alvarez’s sagging muscles perk taut and become iron. Flint lost his grip. Then he heard a strangled, gurgling cry. As he struggled to regain his hold, the doctor slumped to the floor, still clutching a knife.

  * * * *

  What followed was a hazy confusion seen through streaming eyes. Flint crawled toward the droning radio. A woman was weeping with rage and grief.

  And as Flint gulped in clean air, he saw her lying in a huddled heap on the divan near the radio. A dripping stiletto was clenched in her red hand.

  Valencia.

  Flint slowly began to understand why she had not stabbed him. It wasn’t a mistake, knifing the doctor.

  “Yes. I came to help him, that dirty—” The next few words choked her. “Then I heard that police call. Miguel was one of Alvarez’s crowd. Got me out of jail and brought me here. So I knew that Alvarez had tricked Ramon back across the line to give him the works.”

  “Afraid that Ramon Guevara might be tripped up and spill some beans?”

  “Maybe,” said Valencia. “But mainly jealousy. That rat over there probably told him how Ramon and I stood. I didn’t care for Alvarez. And I don’t care what you do with me. Ramon’s dead.”

  “How’d he fit into things?”

  “He smuggled the stuff across the line to Kane’s place, concealed in loads of vegetables and firewood.”

  The arrangement was characteristic. Guevara, Kane, and Robles ran the risks of actual handling. Alvarez supervised by remote control. And Valencia, when not in Mexico, maintained contact with Yut Lee in San Francisco.

  Then Flint remembered the blank-faced Chinaman. He turned back to the office, flung open a window, and as the lingering fumes thinned, he knelt beside the Asiatic hoodoo. A moment’s intent scrutiny explained the facial immobility—a snugly fitting, lifelike rubber mask.

  He jerked it clear, exposing the face of lean, grizzled Yut Lee—the Silver Dragon, who had come to Yuma to take charge.

  “Who killed Kane?” Flint demanded.

  She gestured toward Alvarez.

  “He’s got forty tins of Silver Dragon. He never kept the stuff in his house before. Figure it out yourself.”

  And that did not take long. Flint remembered the two bowls of chili and began to see their possibilities. He stepped to the telephone and called McDonald.

  “I’ve got it, Mac.” Then, after covering his discovery of the private wire, he continued, “Alvarez killed Kane after Valencia arrived from ’Frisco.… I don’t give a damn about the autopsy. Suppose Alvarez dropped in to see Kane about two A.M. to talk shop and have some coffee and a plate of home-made chili. Then knife Kane.

  “The autopsy would show he died shortly after eating. And with everyone taking it for granted Kane always ate around six, the alibi was holeproof.

  “Why kill Kane? Nobody could be sure Robles died in ’Frisco before he had a chance to mutter anything while coming out of the ether. Knifing Kane and leaving ten cans of hop for us to find would make us think we had cleaned up the mob. And it would have worked if Guevara hadn’t tried to prove he didn’t kill Kane.”

  And then McDonald wondered why Yut Lee had not used his first chance to dispose of Flint.

  “Simple, Mac. Bum play, blotting me out before he had a chance to find out just how much the D.J. really did know. Having Alvarez drop in was like getting a ringside seat.”

  He listened a moment, and as McDonald’s voice burred over the wire, Flint eyed Valencia. Finally he answered: “The girl got away during the riot. We’ve got nothing on her. She was never caught smuggling hop anyway. The Silver Dragon is cold meat.”

  DRINK OR DRAW

  Weariness made Simon Bolivar Grimes’ coffin-shaped face seem longer than ever. Spitting alkali dust, he muttered, “Another dang sign, DRINK RED QUILL BOURBON. Gosh, I wisht I was a hoss, they don’t git thirsty for nothing but water.”

  Mile after mile along the wagon trail to Stinking Springs, Red Quill billboards had tantalized him by suggesting a bar, a free lunch counter, hard likker, and cool beer.

  Some distance ahead, a freight wagon lumbered along. Instinctively, the kid from Georgia had sized up the country, a habit which had often kept him from being bushwhacked, and thus he noted a twinkle in the clump of post oak at the crest of a knoll. It was as though binoculars mirrored the blazing sun. Someone was spying on travelers.

  The Stinking Springs region was the orneriest in Texas. Simon had a poke of gold pieces, the proceeds of the sale of some cow critters. If he were robbed, Uncle Jason would whale him with a wagon spoke; he’d claim that Grimes had spent the money on women and liquor.

  “Dunno what in tunket else a man’d spend money for,” Grimes grumbled as he pulled over to the whiskey sign.

  Though the country was too open for ambush, nevertheless he wanted a look-see, so he peered through a knothole. “Ain’t noticed me, they’re still studying the wagon,” he decided as the flickering continued.

  He had brought Uncle Jason’s binoculars in his saddle bags. Grimes had barely focused the powerful glasses for a bit of counter-espionage when two riders came pelting out of the clump of post oak, their guns blazing.

  The wagon pulled up. The men dismounted. They tore into the tarpaulin at the back, exposing a cargo of barrels. A sharp faced man came toward them from the wagon. He was unarmed, and he made gestures, as if begging them to be reasonable.

  One of the raiders smacked him with a pistol ba
rrel, knocking him down.

  The taller of the pair, who had a brace and bitt, began drilling at the keg. By now Grimes had read the lettering on the head: OLD VICKERY BOURBON, NELSON COUNTY, KENTUCKY.

  Then a girl, apparently having remained on the driver’s seat until indignation overcame her alarm, came racing toward the tail gate. She was blond, golden blond like a palomino filly. She bounded toward the man with the brace and bitt, and caught his arm.

  He spat, grinned, thrust her aside. She recovered and smacked him. The other yanked her away; she tripped, landing asprawl in a puddle of whiskey. Liquor drenched her blouse and skirt.

  Whatever was behind this insane business of letting whiskey run into the dust, Grimes decided that when people began slapping old men and girls, it was time to investigate. He mounted up and raced for the wagon. And then came the final horror: one of the ruffians touched a match to the whiskey, and flames began to lick the tarpaulin.

  At the sound of his approach, the two whirled about, but seeing just one rider, they hooked their thumbs on their belts and waited. And when Grimes dismounted, they began to grin.

  He looked as if he were about to fall over his own feet. Tall, gangling, with a straw colored cowlick reaching down to his china-blue eye, he did not look any too bright.

  “What in tarnation you mean, burning good liquor?” he demanded. “And mauling that there lady?”

  They chuckled tolerantly. The one with the brace and bitt explained, “Ain’t allowed to haul nothing into Stinking Springs but Red Quill, bub. That’s Colonel Delevan’s orders. And we carry them out.”

  The other was rolling a smoke, and his amusement at Grimes was competing with his interest in the blonde, who wept in futile fury as she straightened her drenched garments. The old man, still dazed, was struggling to his feet. And all this was too much for Grimes.

  “Hist ’em!” he commanded and went for his guns.

  The man with the brace and bitt yelled, The other dropped his Durham and slapped leather. He was quick, but his Colt had not half cleared the holster when Grimes drilled him between the eyes.

  Though the man with the brace and bitt made good time, his first shot went wild; and then, shifting, Grimes sprayed him with lead. He jerked one more shot, kicking up rocks. He lurched, fell across his gun.

  The girl’s scream made Grimes whirl: “Oh, they hit dad!”

  The old man was clutching his side. “Ain’t nothing, Melba, never you mind me, you help this young feller put out the fire.”

  Then he sat down.

  * * * *

  So Grimes and Melba got blankets and whipped out the flames. That done, she gave him strips torn from her skirt, so that he could stop the flow of whiskey while he whittled plugs.

  The old freighter said, “I’m mighty grateful, son. I’m Amos Hanford, and this here is my daughter, Melba. Baby, you get the jug for this gent, don’t you fuss with me, I ain’t more’n scratched.”

  Grimes started to protest, but Hanford’s glance silenced him. As the girl hurried to the front of the wagon, the freighter said, “I don’t feel none too spry, but it’s no use scaring her. I can turn around and go back to Cold Deck instead of trying to get to a doctor in Stinking Springs; I’d probably get murdered there.”

  “Not if I go with you,” Grimes countered.

  “Bub, I never seen a draw like yourn and never heard of any like it,” Hanford countered. “Fust one gets it betwixt the eyes, and the second musta had most of his heart shot out with them three slugs. But whilst you’re watching me, who’d watch the whiskey?”

  “Gosh, that’s right,” Grimes agreed.

  Melba came back with the jug. Grimes hoisted a long one. “Is this here what you got in them kegs?”

  “It is. You have jest drunk OLD VICKERY,” Hanford said proudly. “The finest bourbon made at Bourbon Springs, Kentucky, ever since 1833. Drink up, suh!”

  Grimes hoisted another. Melba, who had impulsively put an arm around his shoulders, became more beautiful than ever. Her voice sounded like angels playing harps, and even the landscape was no longer repulsive. “This is sure larruping whiskey,” Grimes said, and wiped his lips. “Anywhere but a downright warped and perverted town, it’d be welcomed with—”

  And then, he saw that Hanford had fooled him as well as Melba. Grimes caught the old man just in time. “Honey, it looks like that chaw of tobacco he stuffed into that wound ain’t plugging it enough.”

  “Oh, why did you have to start shooting?” she cried, panic again gripping her. “I’d rather lose all the liquor in the world—”

  Grimes tipped the jug and gave Hanford a swig.

  “M’am, they was banging away at me, and it is downright unreasonable, blaming me for someone else’s bad shooting. If you can prod them oxen, I’ll make your pappy comfortable and do what I can.”

  “Oh, what can you do?”

  “He’s jest weak, he’ll come outen it. And as soon as your pappy’s took care of, I’m going to run Red Quill and Colonel Delevan out of that ornery town, and when I’m through, they’ll be drinking Old Vickery in every bar in Stinking Springs.”

  “Baby,” Hanford said to his daughter, “I’m all right, and Simon looks like the man that can do it.”

  CHAPTER II

  Recipe 309

  Stinking Springs got its name from the hot sulphur spring which made the air reek with a rotten-egg bouquet; and the town itself, a sprawl of frame shacks and adobes centering about a plaza, looked pretty much like it smelled. Grimes dismounted at the Cozy Corner Saloon, which was between the Eldorado Hotel and Wing Lee’s Restaurant.

  Bellying up to the bar, he called for whiskey. The sour-faced barkeep set out a bottle of Red Quill. The stuff made Grimes choke and cough. “Gosh, this here tastes like soldering acid and sheep dip, ain’t you got any good liquor?”

  “Son,” the professor retorted, “there ain’t no other kind sold in this man’s town. Lookee here, bad liquor makes you shiver like a dog swallering peach seeds; this here just sort of chokes you a bit.”

  The half dozen cowpokes who were watching looked as if this was an old and amusing story to them. One said, “Stranger, it ain’t no use bellyaching about Red Quill. Mrs. Hopkins, she’s a widow-woman, and the daughter of the Injun fighter that saved the hull dang settlement from the Comanches, and all she’s got to live on is dividends from Red Quill shares, and there ain’t a man in town low enough to drink any other kind of likker.”

  This was bad. While one might outpoint Colonel Delevan, the widowed daughter of a local hero was something else. Grimes bought a round for the house and went out, muttering, “Hell, they are all heroes in this town, I’d ruther fight a passel of Comanches than a bottle of that rotgut.” Once on the boardwalk, he decided to head for Wing Lee’s; the only civilized person in Stinking Springs would be the Chinaman. And then he saw that even this ornery town had its good points.

  A redheaded girl was stepping out of Lem Bigg’s General Store with an armful of packages cuddled against her bosom. She was an exquisite creature, slim-legged as a race horse; she wore silk stockings and store clothes. The group of small boys who sat on the curbing playing stud poker and chewing tobacco quit their game and stopped cursing. They chorused, “Evening, Mis’ Hopkins.”

  The smile and voice which acknowledged the greeting were smooth and lovely, and as heartwarming as Old Vickery. For a moment, Grimes forgot that Doreen Hopkins, the Red Quill heiress, was a stumbling block in the pathway of good liquor.

  She tick-tacked along on high heels which flattered her trim ankles, but a knothole in the tricky boardwalk played the devil with her alluring footgear. She snagged a heel. Her stride broke, and her ankle twisted.

  Grimes lunged. Eggs poured from one of the paper bags, but he got an armful of the widow, and managed to keep her clear of the uncooked omelet
te and coffee on the boards.

  Regretfully, he let her slide to her feet as he straightened up. Then, as she clung to him for a moment to steady herself, he asked, “You ain’t sprained your ankle, I hope?”

  “Thanks, no!” After the full impact of dazzling smile and greenish gray eyes, he helped her salvage the groceries and stow them in the rubber-tired buggy. Doreen waved, smiled, drove down the dusty street. No dang wonder that Colonel Delevan was looking out for her interests!

  Grimes stepped into Wing Lee’s restaurant, ordered a steak, six eggs, and a slab of apple pie, and settled down to studying it out. Finally he asked, “Wing, can you get me a couple empty whiskey bottles with the labels washed off?”

  “Catchee quick,” the pigtailed proprietor said, and shuffled to the rear.

  * * * *

  Darkness had fallen. After wiping the egg from his chin, Grimes went to the hitching rack, and got his jug. Then, back in the restaurant, he said, “Look here, folks tell me that all Chinamen are honest fellows.”

  “Thass light, Clistian Chinaman, watchee want now?”

  Grimes stepped into the kitchen. As he filled the bottles, whose Red Quill labels had been soaked off, he said, “You keep what’s left in the jug, don’t tell no one, and I’ll give you five bucks.”

  “My savvee plenty, Missee Glime. Allee-time, lynch whiskey sell-man, allee time thlow blicks in my window. Town no damn good.”

  Wing chuckled gleefully. Grimes demanded, “What in tunket is so funny about getting bricks flung through your window?”

  “I gettee even, I spit in coffee.”

  “Someone oughta spit in their whiskey. Wing, have a drink.”