by COLE JACKSON
Men were pouring into the stable, aroused by the terrific tumult. They bellowed questions which nobody could answer, and for a few minutes a fair imitation of bedlam ensued. Hatfield finally restored some semblance of order, and the two bodies were hauled forth and examined.
Both wore the garb of Mexicans. The face of the man who had received the shotgun charge was little more than a bloody smear. That of the one Hatfield had shot was swarthy, slit-mouthed, high of cheekbones and nose bridge.
“Pure-blood Yaqui,” was the verdict of members of the crowd. “Coupla hoss lifters from t’other side the river, that’s what.”
Flintlock Horner’s contention that Hatfield’s splendid sorrel had been the object of the raid was accepted without argument. The Ranger expressed no opinion to the contrary.
Sheriff Horton bustled in a little later and glared at Hatfield.
“ ‘Pears yuh been mixed up in plenty of trouble since yuh hit town,” he growled accusingly.
“Meaning?” the Lone Wolf drawled.
“Meanin’ nothin’, ‘cept watch yore step!” Horton snorted. “This is a law-abidin’ section and we don’t favor quick-draw men hangin’ out here. But don’t yuh be pullin’ out ‘fore the coroner’s inquest this mornin’.”
He stamped out, grumbling under his breath. Flintlock Horner tentatively fingered his swelling nose and grunted.
“Some day, plumb by accident, Horton’s gonna have a sensible thought — and it’ll bust his head wide open!” said Flintlock.
After the room was put in order, Hatfield went to bed again. He could hear Horner swearing about the stable, searching for his shotgun. Hatfield chuckled as he closed his eyes, but the chuckle died and his mouth set in stern lines as he recalled the face and form of the tall man racing across the stable floor.
“Uh-huh, and it was a big, tall, broad-shouldered fellow who pegged me down on that anthill down in Mexico. I wonder, now? Could that be the brains behind Pedro Cartina?”
CHAPTER 9
JIM HATFIELD decided to ride to Capistrano’s A Bar C ranch the following afternoon.
“It’ll be better to have it look like I’m just taking a job of riding with you,” he told the hunchback. “If I go spreading around as a sort of special detective you’ve hired to run down the men making away with your ore, they’ll have the same line on me as they have on the sheriff and his deputies. There’s some mighty shrewd people back of this business, and it wouldn’t be wise to give them any more headway on us than we have to.”
Capistrano agreed with the wisdom of this course.
“I’ll ride to the ranch with you,” he told the Lone Wolf. “I’ll introduce you to Felipe, my foreman, and tell him that you are going to ride the west range and plan winter shelters and get a line on waterholes and feed in the canyons. Then you can cut into the hills whenever you take a notion. My spread covers all that section.
“The Huachuca Trail cuts through the hills within a few miles of the conveyor lines and not a great way west of the mines. My conveyor line is the one farthest west, incidentally, On the east are the lines of the Root Hog, the Lucky Turn, the Humboldt, and others. Yes, it is a big working. Those hills are bursting with silver, something no one ever suspected and which I discovered by merest chance. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“I’d be interested in hearing it,” Hatfield admitted.
Sheriff Horton’s office was also the office of the coroner, a bewhiskered and cantankerous individual known as Ol’ Doc Draper. Doc was a typical cow country physician, shrewd, irascible, efficient. He was close to seventy years of age but had the energy of a man forty years younger. Hatfield immediately placed him as a character, and a likeable and dependable one. His questions were brief and to the point.
“Murdered in performance of his duty by Pedro Cartina or some other outlaw like him,” was his verdict on the death of the bank cashier Elder.
“Cashed in when they had it comin’,” he ruled relative to the bandits Hatfield had shot.
“Yuh shore must have almighty good eyesight to pick out that leadin’ rider as Cartina,” he told Amado Capistrano, a point Jim Hatfield had already noted.
That finished the inquest. Sheriff Horton, however, had a word with Jim Hatfield on his own account.
“Yuh ‘pear to be the right sort,” he told the Ranger, “but yuh seem to be gettin’ into the wrong comp’ny. I’ve been told yuh’ve signed up to ride for Capistrano. I ain’t got nothin’ personal ‘gainst Amado, but he don’t strike me as bein’ jest the right sort. The worst characters in this here district hang out in his place, and he hires mostly greasers for his mine and his spread.
“He hadn’t oughta had that spread in the fust place. Lots of folks figger it was some of his outfit what did for Walt Bloodsoe, who owned A Bar C ‘fore Capistrano got holt of it. He shore was all-fired quick to hustle over and buy the spread offa Walt’s widdy after Walt was cashed in. John Chadwick was gonna take over the outfit, but Amado got there fust. Seems almost like he knowed to make his plans in advance. I’m jest tellin’ yuh.”
Hatfield mentioned the matter to Walsh, the bank president, to whom he had taken a strong liking.
“I don’t know about that,” Walsh said, “but I do know that Amado paid the Widow Bloodsoe more than the ranch was worth; more, I believe, than she could have gotten from anybody else.”
Which gave the Lone Wolf something more to ponder over as he cinched Goldy and rode out to meet his new employer.
Capistrano wore regulation cow country garb, his only concession to his Spanish blood being an ornate sombrero heavy with silver. He wore heavy, double cartridge belts and two guns. One holster, the left, swung much lower than the other. The sheaths were cut high and only the black butts of the guns showed.
“Both regulation.45 frames, or I’m mistaken,” Hatfield decided, after a quick glance. “He’s not a real two-gun man but the sort of fellow who draws one gun first and then draws the other one to back it up. Pulls the left one most of the time and always first. Yes, there’s no doubt about it, he’s really left-handed — doesn’t just write that way.”
They rode in silence for the most part. Capistrano seemed busy with thoughts of his own, and the Ranger, too, had plenty to think about. The hunchback, likeable though he seemed, was occupying a peculiar position in the Ranger’s mind. He was the first man to benefit by the silver strike, a strike that had taken place, as near at Hatfield could ascertain, at about the same time Ed Shafter had vanished into the Tamarra Hills.
The Cibola mine, while located some distance from where the slain Ranger’s body had been found, was in the same general section — in the same wide gorge, to be exact, only farther east and to the north, a district it was quite logical to believe Shafter had passed over to reach the Huachuca Trail.
And Capistrano was left-handed — and the Ranger’s experience had been that it was usually a left-handed man who carried guns of the type that had inflicted the death wounds of both Shafter and young Dick Webb.
Then there was the poor opinion of Capistrano held by Sheriff Horton, who, to all appearances, was an honest if somewhat stupid officer; and by John Chadwick, easily the foremost citizen of the valley, a man who had held positions of trust and was spoken of for positions of still greater honor.
“Well,” mused the Lone Wolf, “a man is innocent till he’s proved guilty. But,” he added, the corners of his firm mouth quirking a trifle, “that doesn’t mean a man can’t keep his eyes open.”
The A Bar C was a comparatively small ranch, but a good one, Hatfield quickly decided. It was well wooded and a little stream flowed through it from northwest to southeast. There were also quite a number of waterholes, while to the south, the silver sheen of the Rio Grande formed its boundary. Curved about the spread, east and north, like a lion around a crouching lamb, was John Chadwick’s great Circle C, the finest and by far the largest outfit in the valley. Still farther east was the Rocking Chair, the Lazy V, the Bowtie, and others.
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br /> Capistrano’s half-dozen riders were young Mexican vaqueros with dark faces and white grins. They were courteous and pleasant. Felipe, the foreman, was jolly and moon-faced and he had an infectious chuckle. They conversed with Hatfield in broken English and many gestures. The Lone Wolf spoke Spanish fluently and understood it equally well but he did not always allow the fact to become common knowledge.
The riders treated Capistrano with great respect, addressing him as Don Amado.
“Their fathers and their fathers’ fathers before them were retainers of my family,” the hunchback explained. “The time was when more than twice a hundred men rode the great hacienda of the Capistranos, which included this entire valley.”
He was silent for a moment gazing with eyes that seemed to dream across the wide expanse of beautiful rangeland to the far distant edge of the grim Tamarra Desert that stretched eastward from the Hueco Mountains, curving north around the Tamarra Hills and then rolling southward to the Rio Grande. The heat-tortured waste of gray alkali and sand enclosed the rich valley and the barren silver hills. The desert was sinister, but here on the green range was sunshine and peace.
“A mighty pretty country,” said the Lone Wolf.
“Yes,” said Amado Capistrano.
Jim Hatfield rode the range the following morning.
“I can find my way about,” he told Felipe, when the foreman courteously offered to place a guide at his disposal.
“Sometimes a fellow just looking around can see what a fellow who knows the country misses,” he added by way of explanation.
Felipe agreed and answered questions relative to general directions. He also offered a word of warning.
“The Huachuca Trail crosses our land near the foot of the hills,” he said. “The señor will do well to beware that trail. The men who use eet are all too often, what you call eet, not nice. They are muy malo, very bad.”
Hatfield thanked the foreman and rode away. All day he probed the canyons and gorges, drifting far to the south, until he reached the shimmering band of the river. Then he turned north by west and rode into the red eye of the setting sun. Dusk was misting over the range before he reached the foothills of the Tamarra.
It was a weird night! A cold, dead moon soared up over the dim crags beyond the desert, shining fitfully through scurrying clouds. A wailing wind swept restlessly through the burr oaks and the sage. There were patches of desert bordering the gaunt slopes of the hills and on them giant chola cactuses brandished grotesque arms that twisted and writhed like malignant devils tortured with pain. The wan moonlight cast strange shadows and all things were distorted and unreal.
Just as distorted and just as unreal was the writhing gray ribbon of the Huachuca Trail. Jim Hatfield had often sensed an intangible something about the trail that differentiated it from others.
There was something brazen about the Huachuca, something sinister, something definitely evil. It did not slip furtively, nor did it march boldly. It writhed — writhed like a bad-tempered snake that knew its power for evil and its ability to destroy.
The Huachuca slid into gloomy canyons as if it belonged there, slid out again, seeming to carry some grim secret that would be well worth the telling but which wouldn’t be told, unless bleached bones could talk.
In the shadow of a grove of burr oaks, Hatfield pulled his big sorrel to a halt. For long minutes he sat gazing at the trail. Suddenly he tensed in the saddle and eyes narrowed.
Sound was drifting up from the south, from the direction of that broad, shallow river that shimmered in the furtive moonlight. At first it was but a whisper, but it grew steadily to a mutter, a faint drumming, a low thunder.
Out of the gray-cloaked dark burst shadowy figures, sweeping north with steady swiftness. Hatfield identified them as mounted men. Leaning forward he clamped his hand gently over the sorrel’s nose. Goldy was usually a silent horse, but he might feel an urge to call out a comradely greeting to one of the horses passing up the trail. And Hatfield much preferred his presence in the grove to remain unnoted. Instinctively he counted the riders as they passed.
He missed some, but more than a hundred had flashed by the grove before the last hoofbeat dimmed away into the distance.
“And every one carrying a rifle!” the Ranger muttered as he urged Goldy onto the trail.
Silent, watchful, he rode up the gray track in the wake of the speeding band. Intent on what was ahead, he did not see the shadowy forms that rode half a mile to his rear. Nor did this second group of riders, apparently hurrying to overtake the first, realize that the Ranger rode between them and their objective. They were a compact body, many less in number than those ahead, and their leader was a tall man whose broad-brimmed hat was drawn low over his eyes.
On through the gloomy gorge burrowed the Huachuca Trail, dipping and rising, snaking along in the shadow of overhanging cliffs, turning sharply to the left at length and climbing along the face of a beetling wall of rock. To the right was a sheer drop into black darkness where water boiled and murmured. A swift stream ran along the base of the cliff, a deep little river that gushed from under a towering cliff at the head of the gorge and thundered into a yawning chasm beneath another cliff a few miles farther to the south. It was a “lost river” of mystery that held its course from darkness to darkness and hugged the canyon wall as if shrinking away from the light.
Jim Hatfield, however, paid scant attention to the bluster of the water as he rode swiftly up the Huachuca Trail. His mind, set at trigger edge, concentrated fully on the grim band of armed men who rode the trail ahead. He was certain that he had, partly by lucky accident, intercepted Pedro Cartina and his raiders as they rode north to rob and murder.
“Maybe I can get a line on what they’re up to and figure out some way to crack down on them before they can get back across the Line,” he muttered, peering through the gray darkness and straining his ears for signs of the quarry.
He knew that the valley was up in arms against the outlaws and that he could swiftly organize a force competent to deal with even a large and well armed band. The recollection of the rear guard fight he and his Rangers had waged against the Cartina outfit came to his mind and he chuckled.
“If I can get a dozen men together, armed with good Winchesters, we’ll hang onto them and head them off from the river,” he declared. “It’ll work out just like it did that time in Mexico, only we’ll round up a different kind of cattle this time.”
The sky was clearing and the moon casting more light.
The trail ahead shimmered wanly as it straightened out and mounted a long rise. Hatfield rode warily, his eyes fixed on the distant crest where the trail seemed to end abruptly. The men he followed were not in sight and he could no longer hear the sound of their horses, but there was the danger that they might be just the other side of the dip. Anxious to catch up with them, but not daring to risk topping the rise and finding himself in their midst, he slowed the sorrel to a walk and halted him a score of paces distant from the crest. He swung to the ground and crept forward on foot, bending low and hugging the cliff wall. A moment later he could see over the rise.
A half mile or so ahead was the band, riding slowly along the winding trail. They were bunched together and it seemed to the Ranger that an air of anticipation hung over the group.
“Looks like they were expecting something or somebody,” he told himself.
He shifted his position slightly, moved away from the cliff in order to get a clearer view.
Cr-r-r-rack! Wham! Whe-e-e-e!
A bullet screamed past, scant inches from his head, slammed against the cliff, screeched off on a wild ricochet and whined away into the darkness. Hatfield ducked instinctively and whirled, guns coming out. The slug had come from behind him!
One swift glance and he was racing for his horse. Down the trail, only a few hundred yards distant, rode a body of men, thundering toward him, yelling and shooting. Hatfield reached Goldy amid a rain of bullets, swung into the saddle and yelled to the
sorrel. Goldy shot forward in a racing gallop, topped the rise and thundered down grade. A few seconds later the pursuing band swooped over the rise and bullets began to whine past the Ranger.
The group ahead had halted. Hatfield, swiftly estimating the distance, felt safe from their guns for a few minutes longer. He was astounded when a bullet from their direction fanned his face and another plucked at his sleeve.
“They’ve got guns that can carry!” he growled.
His predicament was truly desperate. Between two hostile forces, bullets storming about him, one of which would surely find its mark, to his left was an insurmountable wall of rock, to his right a sheer drop into the river. How far it was to the canyon floor Hatfield had no way of knowing. The questing beams of the moonlight did not penetrate the gloom of the gorge and the elusive murmur of the water told him little.
“Have to chance it, though,” he grunted as a slug grazed his cheek. He swerved the sorrel sideways, gripped the reins with steely fingers and braced himself in the saddle.
Goldy did not want to take the jump, and wildly snorted his protest. But he took it, bunching his dainty hoofs and tensing his big body, as he shot over the lip of the cliff.
Down he rushed — down — down, the wind shrieking past in a hurricane, black fangs of rock soaring up to meet him. He grazed a reaching hand of jagged stone, struck the water with a splash and vanished under the inky surface. Hatfield swung from the saddle, gripped the sorrel’s mane and held tight as they slowly rose from the dark depths. Instantly a mighty current seized horse and man and hurled them down-stream — toward the point where the river roared ominously as it dashed into the bottomless chasm beneath the cliff.
On the trail above sounded the angry yells of the raiders and the crackle of their guns as they spattered the unseen water with bullets.
Hatfield paid scant attention to the whining lead. His entire effort was put forth in a desperate struggle to reach the shore before the current hurled him and his horse to certain destruction in the depths under the black cliff. It seemed to him, strong swimmer that he was, that he did not gain an inch toward the bank as they shot downstream.