Range Ghost

by Bradford Scott

  “Guess two of ’em got sorta ‘hurt,’ and I’ve a notion another one ain’t feeling any too good about now,” the sheriff observed dryly. “A Winchester slug sorta discommodes you no matter where it nicks you. Much obliged, Swivel-eye. Yep, I can stand another one.”

  While they were eating, Neale Ditmar came in accompanied by three of his hands, one hobbling along with the aid of a makeshift crutch. Sheriff Carter stared at him.

  “Where do you figure you hit that sidewinder the other night?” he asked Slade.

  “Now don’t go jumping to conclusions,” the Ranger cautioned. “Lots of ways a man can hurt his leg.”

  “Uh-huh, lots of ways,” grunted Carter, biting savagely on a hunk of steak.

  After they finished their meal and a smoke, Slade said, “Suppose we pay Doc Beard a visit?”

  “Okay by me,” replied the sheriff, giving him a curious glance but asking no questions.

  They found the doctor in his office cleaning some instruments. He waved them to chairs.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Carter seein’ snakes again? The last time it was centipedes with chilblains.” Slade countered with a question of his own, “Treated any gunshot wounds lately, Doc?”

  “Yep,” Beard replied. “That’s why I’m cleaning things up. Just a little while ago I worked on one of Neale Ditmar’s hands. Young hellion said he was cleaning his gun and it went off; drilled a slice through his left thigh.”

  Sheriff Carter gave a derisive snort, and glanced significantly at Slade. El Halcon asked another question, “Did you happen to note what course the bullet took?”

  “Yep,” Beard repeated, “it slanted sorta down, as was to be expected.” Carter shot Slade a puzzled look.

  “Why the devil did you ask that?” he said.

  “Because,” Slade replied, “you will recall that the other night I was standing on the ground, while the man I shot was mounted on a horse. Under such circumstances, the muzzle of my rifle would be tilted up a mite and it is rather unlikely that a bullet from it would take a downward course.”

  “I see,” nodded Carter. “So that lets the jigger out, eh?”

  “Not necessarily,” Slade replied. “A bullet can be deflected, say by a concha on a pair of chaps, or a holstered gun, and its course changed.”

  “Dadblast it!” wailed the sheriff, “you’ve got me all mixed up. “First you make it look like Ditmar and his bunch are in the clear, then you make it look like maybe they ain’t. Come clean, now, do you suspect Ditmar?”

  “Brian,” Slade answered, “circumstances being what they are in this section, everybody is suspect. In a court of law, a person is adjudged innocent until proven guilty. With a Ranger trying to solve a case, the reverse obtains. I have formed no conclusion relative to Neale Ditmar or anybody else, and I can’t until I have what I consider conclusive evidence of somebody’s guilt. Yes, right now everybody is suspect, even you and Doc.”

  “I can speak for myself, but I’d rather not say about him,” Doc said cheerfully, regarding the sheriff with a disapproving eye. “Oh, I reckon you can rule him out; he’s too spavined and weighted down with years to pull a widelooping. Chances are he’d go to sleep and fall out of the hull.”

  “I’ll watch a goose walk across your grave, you darned old decrepit fossil,” retorted the sheriff.

  Having mutually affronted each other, they had a drink from a bottle Doc produced, while Slade settled for a cup of coffee—Doc always having a pot steaming on his stove.

  “Well, it ’pears we didn’t learn much,” Carter remarked as they headed back to the office.

  “Nothing definite,” Slade agreed, “but no angle should be overlooked, nor anything that might possibly provide a lead.”

  “That’s right,” said the sheriff. “So I guess we’d better open up for a while in case some more folks want to take a look at those carcasses. Just a waste of time, the chances are, but as you say, we mustn’t miss any bets.”

  “Yes, it’s just possible that somebody might recall seeing them and with whom they were associating,” Slade agreed.

  A few people wandered in after Carter opened the office, not many, and he was about ready to close up shop and call it a night when a man entered who Slade thought had a vaguely familiar look. He studied the bodies on the floor, then turned to El Halcon.

  “Do you remember me, Mr. Slade?” he asked. “I served you a drink the other night in the Deuces Up, down by the lake.”

  “Yes, now I do,” Slade replied.

  “It was the night you had the ruckus with those three hellions who, I figure, came in with a killing in mind. Well, the big one there was one of ’em, the one you punched in the jaw.”

  “Yes, I recognized him,” Slade admitted. “Do you know him?”

  The bartender shook his head. “Nope, didn’t know either of them,” he said. “Well, they were in the place a while before you came in. I remembered them because somehow I didn’t like their looks. Behaved themselves, all right, stood drinking and talking together and sorta watching the door. Another feller came in and had a drink with them and talked to them for a minute or so.”

  “Did you know him?” Slade asked abruptly, much interested.

  The barkeep again shook his head. “Didn’t remember ever seeing him before,” he answered.

  “Remember what he looked like?” the Ranger asked.

  “Didn’t pay much attention to him, was real busy at the time,” said the drink juggler. “Just remember he was a tall feller and sort of wide in the shoulders. He was better dressed than the other three; I figured him to be a ranch owner. Didn’t pay him much mind for, as I said, I was busy. He had one drink, said something or other to those fellers and went out. When I happened to look that way again, the other three were gone. A little later you came in and you know what happened next.”

  “Remember anything more about them?” Slade queried.

  “Nothing much,” the bartender said. “The boss had a swamper throw some water over them and they got their senses back—don’t think they were much hurt—and then he shoved ’em out. I wouldn’t have paid the whole business much mind—we ever now and then have a ruckus in the place—but as I said, I just didn’t like their looks.”

  “And do you think you’d recognize the man who came in and talked to them, if you saw him again?”

  Once more the bartender shook his head. “I doubt it,” he replied. “As I said, I was sorta busy at the time and just glanced at him as I poured his drink. I might, though, if he came in and ordered a drink the same way; can’t tell.”

  “You say he was dressed like a ranch owner?” interpolated the sheriff.

  “Sorta, I’d say,” the bartender agreed.

  “And he was big and tall?”

  “That’s the way I remember him. Uh-huh, I’m sure he was a sorta tall feller. Not as tall as Mr. Slade, but not short, either.”

  “Hmmm!” said the sheriff. Slade smiled at the bartender.

  “You may have been a big help,” he said. “Thank you, very much, for coming in.”

  “I was just sorta curious,” said the other. “We get some purty rough characters in the Deuces Up every now and then, and I was just wondering if I’d seen these fellers in there. Well, got to get on the job. Be seeing you.”

  “What do you think?” the sheriff asked Slade after the drink juggler had departed.

  “I don’t know,” the Ranger admitted frankly. “There are a number of ranch owners in the section, and some of them are tall. Quite a few would answer to that vague description.”

  “I can think of one it fits sorta well,” the sheriff remarked pointedly.

  “Yes, but no positive identification, so take it easy,” Slade advised. The sheriff subsided to mutterings.

  “Well, guess that was all,” he said, glancing around the empty room. “Suppose we amble over to the Trail End and then call it a day. I’m feeling a mite tuckered.”

  Chapter Eight

  Again it
was Slade’s amazingly keen hearing that saved them. It was but the faintest whisper of metallic sound, a key turning slowly in the lock of the back door, but it was a thunderclap warning to El Halcon’s ears. His arm shot out and hurled Sheriff, chair, and lamp to the floor. Black darkness fell like a thrown blanket even as Slade went half way across the room in a sideways leap, both guns blazing as the back door banged open. Answering shots flamed the darkness. Slugs whizzed past, thudded into the wall. One grazed the back of his left hand.

  Then he heard a queer gurgling cry followed by the thud of something falling. He fired twice at the sound, shifting position as he pulled trigger. There were no answering reports. He hesitated a moment, straining his ears, then glided forward, guns ready for action. Outside was a clatter of hoofs, fading into the distance.

  The sheriff was roaring profanity and surging to his feet. “Get a light going,” Slade called to him, his gaze riveted on a shadowy shape lying just inside the door. Carter started to obey, fell over the smashed chair and swore weirdly. Again he scrambled to his feet and a moment later a second lamp flared, its glow falling on a dead man on the floor, blood still pulsing from his bullet-slashed throat.

  Slade reloaded his guns before addressing the raving sheriff. “Guess we’d better send word to the bartender,” he said, peering at the corpse’s contorted face. “This is another of the three who braced me in the Deuces Up.”

  “You sure?” demanded Carter.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Slade replied.

  “Well, that’s just fine!” said the sheriff. “Now if you can just get a chance to line sights with the other sidewinder! How in blazes did you catch on so fast?”

  “Heard the key turning in the lock,” Slade explained. “Where’d they get a key? No trouble to make one for these old locks, perhaps from a wax impression, if you know how, and evidently they know how.” He dragged the body to where the others lay, placed it beside them, removed the key from the outside of the door and closed and locked it.

  “Can hold an inquest over him tomorrow with the other two,” he said. “Let’s see what’s in his pockets.”

  “Just another pretty good haul for the county treasury,” he observed a little later. Nothing else of significance.” Turning the pockets inside out, he carefully examined the seams.

  “Thought so,” he said. “This hellion has been out on the desert—alkali dust in the pocket seams. One of the widelooping bunch, all right, and added confirmation that they do run the cows across the desert.”

  “Is there anything you don’t notice!” marveled the sheriff.

  “Plenty,” Slade answered, “but this was fairly obvious.”

  “Dadblast it, looks like no place is safe anymore!” snorted Carter.

  “And it might be a good notion for you to sort of avoid my company,” Slade said. “I don’t think they are after you personally, but as you told Jerry Norman, flying lead plays no favorites.”

  “Like the blankety-blank so-and-so I will!” the sheriff bawled indignantly. “Only next time give me a chance to get in on the fun, instead of hoggin’ it all yourself.”

  “Didn’t have time to notify you,” Slade replied cheerfully. “Figured you were better on the floor with the light out.”

  “Like to busted my neck over that blankety-blank chair,” Carter growled, giving the remains a kick.

  Voices sounded outside, then a tentative knock on the front door. Standing to one side, Slade opened to admit two men, both of whom the sheriff called by name.

  “Did you hear it, Sheriff?” asked the one addressed as Bruff. “We thought we heard shootin’ over this way.”

  “Guess you did,” replied Carter, “A gent ambled in the back door without an invite and caught himself a dose of lead pizening.”

  The two men stared. “You mean he tried to gun the sheriff’s office?” he asked incredulously.

  “Sure ’peared that way,” said Carter. “Anyhow him and one or two more sure burned a heap of powder. Look at the wall over there, and there’s blood on Slade’s hand. Take a look at that devil, maybe you’ve seen him before.”

  The pair studied the body, then shook their heads. “Never saw him before, or the other two hellions either,” said Bruff.

  “Now I am going to call it a night,” declared the sheriff. “And I need two snorts, not just one. Outside! Outside! And let’s head for the Trail End.”

  When they reached the saloon, Slade and the sheriff occupied a table, the latter ordering a double snort, Slade a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Bruff and his companion hustled to the bar and began talking excitedly to associates there. Soon the table was surrounded by the curious demanding details. The sheriff supplied them.

  High indignation was expressed over the attempt at snake-blooded murder, and Slade warmly praised for frustrating it.

  “And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if one of those blabbermouths was the hellion who ordered it done,” Carter observed cynically when they were alone. “Blast it! I’m looking sideways at everybody!”

  “We are sort of in the same corral,” Slade replied, with a smile. “I don’t know which way to look; appears I’m getting exactly nowhere.”

  “Oh, you’re doing all right,” Carter said. “You’re thinning ’em out, and that helps. Just a matter of time till you have the whole nest of scorpions on the run.”

  Slade hoped the sheriff was right, but personally he was not inclined to view the matter in so thoroughly an optimistic light; he felt that he had made but little real progress. His plan to bring the outlaws to him had worked out, to an extent, but so far he had only been able to knock off a few rather incompetent hired hands. The main problem still confronted him, for he had not the slightest idea of who was the brains of the outfit; the hellion was keeping well in the background. And until his identity was definitely established and he was eliminated, the problem remained unsolved.

  Getting John Fletcher and Clyde Brent together was something, and so was the frustrating of the widelooping try, but only incidental to his paramount objective. Well, maybe he’d get a break, they usually seemed to come, sooner or later, and he was firmly convinced that right would triumph in the end. He went to bed and slept soundly.

  The inquest on the three dead outlaws was held the following afternoon, Doc Beard, the coroner, presiding. The jury’s verdict was laconic and typically cow country. Slade was complimented on doing a good chore but advised not to let any of the varmints escape, next time. Sheriff Carter bought the Court and the jury a drink.

  “Now what?” asked Carter, glancing expectantly at the Ranger.

  “Now,” Slade replied, “I’m going to wander about town a bit and see if I can learn anything. Somebody might drop a word that would be significant.”

  “Or do something significant,” Carter grunted. “Watch your step.”

  Promising to do so, Slade began his amble. He visited place after place of various sorts, listened to scraps of conversation, studied faces, talked with acquaintances and learned—nothing. Finally he leaned against a convenient post, rolled a cigarette and stood gazing across the sheet of water now known as Amarillo Lake.

  Amarillo, then called Ragtown, had its beginning in a collection of buffalo-hide huts that were occupied by buffalo hunters, bone pickers, and railroad builders. Lumber was costly and had to be brought from a distance. Buffalo-hides were plentiful, convenient, and cheap. Even the hotel had walls, partitions, and a roof made of buffalo-hides. They were somewhat odoriferous and as they aged, they became quite transparent, so that lights inside revealed some startling secrets; there was little privacy in Ragtown, which did not particularly bother the rambunctious inhabitants. Only the saloons were decently domiciled of lumber freighted from a distance.

  Then a well-heeled and ambitious gentleman by the name of Sanborn had an idea and proceeded to put it into effect. He had faith in the settlement’s future and exercised that faith by laying out a town site southeast of Ragtown, at a point where the railroad tracks curved aroun
d the body of water then known as Wild Horse Lake. Apparently with a poetic leaning, Mr. Sanborn named his town Oneida, an Indian dialect word meaning star. However, it would seem the stars were not favorable to Mr. Sanborn’s project. The rains came, the lake scrambled over its banks, and Mr. Sanborn found his stock yards, railroad station, and other buildings placidly standing in four feet of water.

  Mr. Sanborn said things that were not nice and moved his town away from there, farther from the blankety-blank lake. It was rumored that he first contemplated renaming his settlement Jinx Town, but somebody happened to mention the yellow amaryllis flowers that blanket the prairie with gold in the springtime. Mr. Sanborn, still poetic, was intrigued and renamed his town Amarillo.

  It would appear the flowers were more friendly than the stars and the new town prospered. Out of gratitude to the flowery cups of gold, Mr. Sanborn painted his buildings a bright yellow.

  Mr. Sanborn’s faith in his town was soon justified. Amarillo was a going concern, and going stronger all the time.

  Surveying the terrain, Walt Slade concluded that while Mr. Sanborn was without doubt an excellent promoter, planner, and builder, he was no great shakes as a geologist. Even a rudimentary knowledge of that science would have told him that where he first laid out his town, the lake had been before and would assuredly pay a return visit. Perhaps some oldtimers like Colonel Goodnight might have forewarned him, but the oldtimers did not particularly favor the erection of the town, so they held their peace. Let Mr. Sanborn learn the hard way.

  Slade was slightly inclined to envy Mr. Sanborn, who had successfully solved his problem, for the moment at least, and, so to speak, was riding the crest of the wave. Oh, well, what one could do, so could another. He was humming gaily under his breath as he headed for the Trail End and something to eat.

  However, he was in a more serious mood when, several hours later—slightly after full dark, to be exact, he got the rig on Shadow and rode west by north.

  Well out of Amarillo, he drew rein and for some time studied the back trail. Satisfied that he was not being followed, he rode on. Nearing the Canadian Valley, he turned due west and rode steadily hour after hour. He crossed Keith Norman’s XT range and knew he was on Tobar Shaw’s holding, the Bradded H.