Dale watched them go with some misgivings, though she did not see how their enemies could waylay them before reaching Tucson, since the valley road was the only direct route and they had set out apparently for their home terrain. She followed the Black car as far as the Seven Up and Down. Shortly after dinner the telephone rang. Hal was on the line. They had reached Tucson unmolested and Frank was safe in the hands of the army.
'And whose hands are you safe in?' Dale asked dryly.
'I'm at the Frontera,' he answered cheerfully. 'With Tom Wall. We've just finished a good dinner. Tomorrow we are going to fly back. That level pasture back of your house would make a good landing place — if you are hospitable enough to offer it.'
'Wouldn't it be safer not to wait, but to come tonight?' she asked.
'I don't think so. In a few minutes we are going up to our room. Probably none of the enemy are in Tucson yet, if they come at all. We'll take off fairly early in the morning.'
'I'll be looking for you,' she said quietly, and hung up.
As Hal came out of the booth, Wall warned him. 'Look across the lobby,' Tom said, a grin on his face. 'Over by the drugstore entrance. And see if you see what I do.'
Hal's glance picked up Frawley and Mullins. A moment later, Brick Fenwick came out of the drugstore and joined them. They had not yet seen the two men standing by the telephone booth, but Hal knew it would be impossible to cross either to the elevator or the stairway without being observed. They might as well get credit for facing the situation.
Stevens and Wall were half way across the lobby, moving directly toward the hill men, before Frawley caught sight of them.
'Look!' he cried.
The outlaws were taken by surprise. They had reached Tucson not ten minutes ago, and they had stopped in front of the Frontera to get a drink at the bar. They were looking for Stevens, but they had not wanted to meet him openly. Their idea was to find out where he was stopping and work out the best way to trap him.
'Welcome to Tucson,' Hal called to them. 'If you haven't eaten yet, we can recommend the chef here.'
Frawley called him a vile name angrily.
'I don't believe he likes you, Hal,' Wall said.
'I'm unfortunate,' Hal answered. 'The last three times we have met I have annoyed him. Afraid he's not of a forgiving nature.'
The shallow eyes between Brick Fenwick's narrowed lids were wary and savage. 'You lookin' for trouble again?' he asked, his pitch a low drawl. 'Right here in the hotel?'
'Nothing like that.' Hal's voice was cool and light, his manner casually insolent and at the same time scrupulously amiable. 'My suggestion is no hostilities till you can take me by surprise. You are not so good at open warfare. Or perhaps you are just unlucky.'
'You won't always have a bunch of women to hide behind,' Frawley broke in, hoarse rage in his throat.
'Quite right,' Hal agreed. 'I can't carry one around with me as a bodyguard. If you ever catch me alone, Frawley, you'll likely beat the tar out of me.'
The scar on Frawley's face stood out white against a purple background. He was furious, yet somehow helpless against the smiling derision of the cattleman.
'If you'll come outside—'
He broke off, to finish with a scabrous epithet.
'I stepped out with you once today,' Stevens reminded him. 'It's not fair to ask you to give so much time to my education. Some other day, maybe.'
Mullins was a heavyset short man with thick rounded shoulders. Hard muscles packed the framework of his body, but his mouth was loose and the chin weak. Character etches itself on the faces of men who live on the edge of civilization faced by danger. What Wall and Stevens read in his was that he had to be bolstered by stronger men before he became dangerous.
'I told you the boys would fix you for buttin' in,' he told Wall irritably.
'So you did,' Tom answered. 'I haven't heard them mention it yet.'
'I'll mention it now,' Frawley said, an unpleasant rasp to his voice. 'If you know what's good for you, pull yore freight away from this bird here and light out sudden.'
Wall shook his head. 'I always was an obstinate cuss and never did know what was good for me. Think I'll stick around.'
The two friends turned to go. Fenwick called them back.
'Wait a minute.' A redhot devil of malice glared out of the eyes looking at Stevens. 'Don't figure you've got away with the killing of Hanford. If the law won't fix you, there are those who will.'
Hal nodded. 'If they can,' he said quietly.
He walked across with Wall to the elevator, straight-backed and light-footed, in his poised grace an arrogance born of contempt for his foes. None the less he was glad when the elevator door closed behind them. A bullet in the back is an argument not easily answered.
As the elevator moved upward, Wall asked the operator, 'How many miles is it across the Frontera lobby?'
The boy looked at him, puzzled. 'I don't get you, sir.'
'I'm a crippled old vinegaroon,' Wall explained, 'and I wasn't sure my tottering legs would get me to yore cage.' To Hal he added, after the door of their room had been closed and locked: 'That was no josh. Honest, my knees were wobbling. If you knew how near I came to running that last ten yards!'
His friend laughed. 'If you had ever started, I would have beaten you to the elevator.'
Wall took off his coat and flung it on the bed. 'Where do the three anxious gents downstairs go from here?' he inquired.
'We're going to find that out,' Hal answered. 'They came here to get me, and they won't go home without having a try at it.' He looked steadily at Wall. 'Time you got out of the picture, Tom. Frawley is right. You have done plenty for me today.'
A dull flush burned in Wall's face beneath the tan. 'I'm paying a debt,' he replied stiffly. 'What makes you think I'm a quitter?'
'You've paid it ten times over,' Hal said. 'There was no risk in what I did for you.'
'Hell, this is no time for yore friends to join in a loose-blanket stampede,' Wall said, embarrassed and annoyed. 'A bunch of wolves can't give me orders what I can and can't do. Far as that goes, the brake has done bust already. I'd rather take my chance hanging on than jump into a bed of cactus.'
Hal gave up. 'All right. Have it your own way. I reckon we'll make out.'
It was about fifteen minutes later that a knock came at the door.
'This might be it,' Hal murmured.
Both men moved from in front of the door toward the walls. The knock sounded on the door again. A voice said, 'A bellhop with ice water, gents.'
Neither the words nor the tone sounded right to Hal. He said blithely:' Shove it under the door. I'll leave a dime tip for you at the room clerk's desk, Mullins.'
Half a dozen bullets crashed through the door. Those inside the room heard the sound of hurried feet racing down the corridor. A minute later, an engine started beneath the window. Hal looked out and saw an automobile tearing past the postoffice with gathering speed.
CHAPTER 15
Mr. Black Starts from the Chunk Again
THROUGH the window of the bare room he called his office, Tick Black watched a car roll into the yard and three men descend from it. Before they had taken five steps toward the house, he knew they had no good news to report. Mullins and Frawley moved heavily, with no spring of victory in their gross bodies, and even Brick Fenwick's light, quick-stepping figure seemed to drag.
When they came into the room, Black was sitting at his desk. He was a small lean man past middle life dressed in levis tucked into dusty run-down-at-the-heel boots. His blue shirt was old and patched, and the white Stetson on his head had not been new within the memory of any of his associates. No razor had touched his face for days. He looked as ruthless as an old gray wolf.
His flinty eyes passed from one to another of the men and came to rest on those of Fenwick. The thin lips of the cattleman were tightly closed. Whatever news his gunmen had to tell would be told without any help from him.
'We didn't get either of the
m,' Brick blurted out bluntly.
Tick did not say anything. He had long ago learned the value of silence. The blaze in his bleak eyes was enough.
'They were at the Frontera,' Mullins explained. 'Right after supper they went up to their room. We never saw them again till they were getting in the bus for the flying field, and three or four other guys were going out too.'
'Soon as they reached Tucson, they took the kid out to the camp and left him there,' Frawley contributed. 'We only met Stevens and Wall.'
'Just chinned with them awhile and maybe bellied up to the bar for a drink or two,' Black suggested with bitter sarcasm.
'We couldn't cut loose right in the lobby of the Frontera, could we?' demanded Frawley. 'With a lot of tourists standing around.'
A shutter dropped over the eyes of the ranchman, a film which left them opaque and blank. 'So it comes to this, that I sent a bunch of boys to mill,' he said gently, with biting malice.
Brick took up the challenge instantly. 'Maybe you'd better go yourself next time.'
'Maybe I had.' Black's splenetic laughter had as much mirth as the lash of a whip. 'This Stevens certainly has the Indian sign on the lot of you. He holds you up in a poker game. He whales the stuffing out of Frawley. At Big Bridge he kills Hanford and doesn't get a scratch, though you spill a pint of lead at him. And all you dare do at Tucson is to swap the time of day with him. I wish I had a Mr. Big like that on this ranch.'
'He's a lucky stiff,' Mullins growled.
'He makes his own luck, and he's not a stiff yet. If he were, everything would be nice and dandy.' The little cattleman leaned forward and rapped sharply on the top of the table with his knuckles, an appalling malignity in his eyes. 'Can't you get it into your thick skulls that the fellow knows enough to have you all fried?'
'I don't think so. He's just guessing.' Frawley's big fist made the table jump when it thumped down. 'Tell us what you would have done, Mr. Smart Man. I mean last night — at Tucson.'
'Used my head,' Black flung back. 'I can think of a dozen ways to have got at him. You might have sent a bellhop up with a telegram, been waiting in the corridor, and shot him into a rag doll when he came to the door.'
'We tried that,' Mullins defended. 'Not a telegram, but a jug of ice water. Stevens got on to who we were and was scared to open the door.'
'He's too clever and too tough for you, looks like.'
'We scared the living daylights out of him anyhow,' Frawley boasted. 'Before we left we poured lead through the door.'
Anger leaped into Black's thin high voice. 'You blundering lunkheads, you haven't sense enough to pound sand into a rathole. I send you to do a job. You not only fail to deliver, but you have to advertise to everybody in Arizona what you are trying to pull off.'
'We didn't do any such thing,' denied Frawley. 'Nobody knows who we were. We went down the back stairs and lit out without being seen.'
'That will be enough from you, Mr. Black,' Fenwick warned in a low, even voice. 'I do your dirty work, but no old blister like you can sling names at me.'
Black looked into the hard shallow eyes and swallowed his rage. 'All right. All right. Naturally I am annoyed. But we'll forget the past and start from the chunk again. Did you find out why Stevens was going out to the flying field?'
'Sure,' Mullins said. 'We trailed out after the bus. He and Wall chartered a plane to get back here.'
'Then he's at the M K?'
'We wouldn't know,' Fenwick answered dryly. 'Maybe he went to New York — or Africa. All we know is that he told the company he was going home and that he headed this way.'
'A plane landed in the valley this morning, somewhere near the Seven Up. He and Wall must have been on it.'
'So what do we do?' Mullins asked.
'It will be as easy to stop his clock tomorrow morning as it was today. If he had been at home this morning, Jim would have got him. We're still sitting pretty, boys 'Black's smile was suave and friendly.
'You're electing me to take the risk,' Frawley growled.
'That's history, Jim,' Fenwick reminded him. 'We drew cards for it night before last.'
'Nothing said about me spending my life at it, was there?' Frawley inquired acidly. 'Three times yesterday I tried to get the bird. From the hill opposite his ranch house, and he wasn't home. Again at Big Bridge. And last night at the Frontera.'
'Don't you count the time you beat him up at the Lovell ranch?' Tick asked, a masked barb in his innocent voice.
'By God, you'll go too far sometime,' Frawley warned. 'And what you got to do with it? You didn't draw cards with us. You didn't even put money in the pot like the rest of us.'
'I'll right that now,' Black said. 'I'll match what all three of the other boys put up. Count me in for a hundred and fifty plunks.'
'Fair enough, Jim,' Fenwick said. 'When you get this fellow alone, blast him. Then slip away without being seen. That's all there is to it.'
'That wasn't all there was to it when we had him in front of the restaurant,' the ex-foreman complained.
'We didn't get him alone. His friends poured out to help him. You'll catch him out in the brush some day.'
'Easy as falling off a log — for you fellows who haven't got to do it,' Frawley sneered.
Black passed to new business. 'There's another thing, boys. The Government can't prove that this spy they sent here didn't fall off the cliff accidentally. But even if they are satisfied he did, another man is likely to be sent in his place. I'm a little worried about this tenderfoot who came to work at the M K. If you get a chance to talk with him or with any of the M K riders, find out all you can as to his past and how he spends his time.'
Fenwick agreed that would not be a bad idea. It might be only a coincidence that he and Stevens had met at the Rest Easy, or, on the other hand, they might have come together by appointment. Why not throw a scare into the fellow — tell him he was getting mixed up in a dangerous situation? If he was just a maverick who had drifted in on the lookout for a job, he would pull his freight rather than stay and get into trouble. If he sat tight, they could figure him as possibly a Government man.
That struck Black as a good idea, provided Fenwick was very careful not to tell him anything damaging. The chances were, of course, that the man was what he gave himself out for — an arrested case of tuberculosis sent out to complete a cure in the dry air of Arizona.
But Stevens was in another category. He was a menace to them all. Word had been phoned to Black from Big Bridge that the M K man had gathered evidence of the murder of the spy Watts, had been over the ground where the fellow was killed and checked up tracks. They had to get rid of him, and it had to be done soon.
CHAPTER 16
Dale Is Disturbed
WHEN HAL STEVENS and Tom Wall got out of the plane, they saw Dale coming across the field from the house to meet them. In her light swift tread, each step modeling the long slender thighs beneath the summer dress, was the unconscious pride of undefeated youth. All through the ages, Hal thought, there must have been women like that, free and untrammeled, with a fine animal vigor that showed the warm color blooming under the summer tan.
'You left Frank all right?' she called to them while still a dozen yards away.
Hal drew his heels together and saluted. 'We report Private Lovell in the pink at last report,' he said.
'You don't think they will try to bother him now?'
'They would have to be better than the Japs or the Germans to reach him. He is in camp with a good many thousand others, and I'm told he won't have a chance to get outside the gates for several weeks. I can't see Tick Black's gunmen getting through that interference.'
'No,' she admitted. 'It's a pity the army didn't draft you and Mr. Wall while you were there.'
'My turn is coming in a few weeks,' Wall said.
Hal said nothing. Dale knew he was not over age and wondered why he was not in the service. He could probably have had a commission by going after it. It could hardly be a physical disability
that kept him at home. She would have expected his reckless courage to take him in early. Maybe he would rather stay on the ranch and make a cleaning during the war years. She was aware of a lurking sense of disappointment.
'I don't suppose you saw anything of Black's gang while you were in town,' Dale said as they walked back to the house.
'Yes, we saw them at the Frontera just after I phoned you,' Hal answered. 'We left them in the lobby and went to our rooms.'
'And you didn't see them after that?'
'Twice. Once as they were driving away, and again as we were starting for the air field.'
'But you had no trouble with them?'
Hal smiled. 'We're here. Sound as two silver dollars.'
Dale intercepted the grin Wall flashed at his friend.
'What's the catch?' she asked sharply.
'Might as well tell her, Tom,' Hal said. 'Miss Lovell could drag a secret out of a clam.'
'Only if it's one I'm entitled to know,' she differed.
'Well, they knocked on our room door and said it was a bellhop with ice water,' Wall explained. 'We didn't fall for that one, so they sent their calling cards through the door and then beat it.'
'You mean that they shot through the door?'
'That's right.'
She was astounded at the boldness of their enemies. 'With the hotel full of people? What did the manager say?'
'Plenty. He raised quite some cane. Said that sort of horseplay gives a hotel a bad name. The guests don't like it. Hal told him he ought not to let drunken cowboys cavort around like that, but he promised not to sue the hotel if it didn't happen again.'
'The manager was rather nonplused at that,' Hal mentioned, with a reminiscent smile. 'The drunken cowboy idea struck him as a bit fishy. He had heard a rumor of the Big Bridge incident. We paid for another door, but I doubt if he wants us as guests again.'
Dale did not respond to their humor. This was too serious for jesting. 'I told you to come back last night,' she said shortly. 'But you knew best.'
'So you did.' Hal's cool, amused eyes rested on the girl. 'And of course you are a hundred per cent right, Miss Lovell. I ought to do as teacher tells me.'
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