Gun Runners

by COLE JACKSON

  A questing beam of moonlight lighted the surface ahead, and rested on what looked like an undulating snake that stretched from the cliff wall to the far bank of the river. Hatfield knew it to be the curve of the stream as it took the last terrible plunge into the underground depths. The current seemed to drag at him with hungry fingers, the river seemed to shimmer exultantly in the moonlight.

  There was a scraping sound of iron on stone. Goldy snorted explosively and gave a wild scramble. The sorrel’s hoofs had touched bottom. He lunged for the shore. Hatfield, gripping the horse’s mane with iron fingers, was dragged after him. An instant later his own boots were scraping on the rocks. Together they floundered through the shoaling water and scrambled up the shelving bank, less than a score of feet distant from the curving plunge of the river.

  For a long time the Ranger lay on the coarse grass of the canyon floor. Goldy stood over him with hanging head. Both were exhausted. Finally, the Ranger summoned strength to wring the water from his clothes, empty his boots and at length swing into the saddle. He rode slowly down the gorge, cutting diagonally to the east. He chuckled grimly as he rode.

  “Well, boy,” he told the sorrel, “about the only thing we found out tonight is that those fellows have got guns that carry as far as ours. There won’t be any more hanging back and picking them off from now on. It’ll be straight fighting, man to man, and there are plenty of them to match up with the vigilante committees being rounded up in this valley. I reckon it’s about time to see what brains will do.”

  His mind drifted back to that dark night on the Tamarra Desert, the stricken little Mexican and the new model rifle.

  “That’s the answer,” he growled. “But how in blazes did they get Government rifles? Well, when I find out how, and who engineered the deal, I’ll have a line on whoever’s back of that outfit. I certainly don’t believe it’s Cartina.”

  And the chuckling Hill Gods warped still another thread into Death and Destiny’s tangled web as Jim Hatfield, all unknowing, rode to meet with the man who was the “brains” of Pedro Cartina’s outfit.

  CHAPTER 10

  HATFIELD rode parallel to the trail until it poured through the notch. There he left it, striking across the canyon to the spot where Ed Shafter lay buried. He paused beside the lonely grave, glanced down and bared his head. High in the tops of the pines, the wind mourned and whispered. The moonlight seeped through the rents in the scurrying clouds and the whole scene was shadowy and unreal. The notch through which the Huachuca Trail entered the canyon took on the semblance of grinning fleshless jaws and the misty trail itself seemed to writhe slowly with torpid life.

  The Ranger rode away from the grave and to the overhanging rock in whose shade the two miners had found the body. For long minutes he sat gazing into the gloom beneath the gnarled overhang. As he gazed he seemed to see a crouching figure there, a figure that fixed eager eyes on the gloomy notch that knifed the canyon wall, a figure tense with waiting, in its pose an expectancy. And instinctively he knew that figure to be Ed Shafter as he had crouched in the shadow of the rock nearly a year before — crouched and waited for something to take form in the dark notch which cramped the Huachuca Trail.

  “Yes, that’s what he was doing up here,” muttered the Lone Wolf. “Ed was on the trail of something — that prospector outfit was a blind.”

  His eyes narrowed as he stared toward the notch and the concentration furrow between his dark brows deepened in perplexity.

  “But how in blazes did he come to have a pocket full of rich silver ore?” he added.

  Back and forth across the moonlit terrain his keen gaze wandered, probing, analyzing, and all the while his fertile brain grouped and catalogued the meager facts as he knew them.

  “That’s why he had his rifle,” he deduced. “He was watching the notch and prepared for long-range shooting. But how did the killer, whoever he was, slip up behind Ed and get the drop on him? Did he know Ed was here? Was it somebody Ed trusted and maybe had working with him? I don’t think anybody could see Ed down there in the dark under the overhang, particularly from the trail. Let’s see, now — ”

  Suddenly his glance paused on the little hilltop where lay the bones of the slain burro. It shifted to the trail and back again. The gray eyes blazed with excitement.

  “That’s it!” he exclaimed. “That’s it, certainly! The burro wandered up onto that hill and was standing there in plain sight. Somebody spotted the burro and come slipping around looking for the man who owned him. He spotted Ed, maybe when he stepped out of the shadow. Spotted him and drilled him dead center.”

  But the perplexity had not left his eyes as he built a tiny fire in a sheltered hollow some distance from the hanging rock and cooked a meal. He was still convinced that the man who had faced Ed Shafter that fatal night was someone the Ranger knew — knew and trusted, or at least someone he credited with no hostile intent, until too late. The cocked rifle was mute evidence that Shafter had realized his error before he died.

  Still pondering, Jim Hatfield rolled into his blankets. In a few moments he was asleep.

  He was up again at dawn and saddling Goldy after a scanty breakfast.

  “Let’s go take a look at the mine,” he said as he swung himself into the saddle.

  The buckets were crashing past when he reached the conveyors, and Goldy did not favor them any more than formerly. He snorted disgustedly as the Ranger turned his nose parallel with the marching line of cables.

  “If we follow this, we can’t help but fetch up at the mine,” Hatfield assured the horse. “I know this isn’t much of a trail, but you’ve made it over worse ones. Stop your kickin’!”

  Deeper and deeper into the hills bored the twin lines of cables. Twice within the hour, Hatfield heard the dull boom and rumble of distant blasts, proof that he was approaching the mines, which were still a considerable distance off, judging from the sound.

  The conveyor line was running past towering cliffs that formed the eastern wall of the gorge. The cliffs, seamed with fissures, mottled with mineral stains, shut out the sun and cast an unnatural gloom over the canyon floor. Goldy shivered in the dank shadow and snorted disapproval. He snorted again as his hoofs crunched on a litter of loose stone.

  Hatfield glancing down, abruptly pulled the sorrel to a halt. The stones were not boulders worn by water and weather. Their edges were sharp and their sides showed a clean line of cleavage from some parent body.

  The Ranger glanced up at the conveyor line. From time to time the loaded and empty buckets clicked past, sliding evenly past the dark loom of the cliffs. There was a curve in the line here, quite slight, but enough to cause the pulleys to whine a bit.

  “Looks like some of the ore gets jostled off here,” he mused as he swung down from the saddle! He watched each loaded bucket as it approached lest there be a recurrence of the spillage — some of the bits of ore were large enough to inflict a painful injury, falling from such a height — but the careen of the loaded conveyors was slight and no fresh stones swelled the scattering at the base of the cliff.

  “Must have been an extra heavy load in one of them,” the Ranger decided as he picked up several fragments of the fallen ore. Stepping back from the line of the cables, he carefully examined the bits of stone, and as he did so, his eyes turned coldly gray and his bronzed face grew bleak. Pulling a small chunk of stone from a side pocket, he compared it with the fragments he had picked up.

  The peculiar zigzag pattern of the blue threads of silver was identical. Without a doubt, the Cibola ore came from the same ledge as had the bits of weather-stained rock he had found in the pocket of Ed Shafter’s mouldering coat!

  For many minutes, Jim Hatfield stood beside the scattered fragments of ore. Overhead the conveyor buckets whined past on their humming cables. A gloomy rift in the cliff face, directly opposite, seemed to leer at him like an eyeless socket. Everything in these grim hills seemed to smack of death and decay and sly treachery. Eyes stern and brooding, the Lone Wolf mo
unted his golden horse and rode up the dark gorge.

  Two miles farther and the hum and clatter of the mine was apparent. Abruptly the cliffs fell back and revealed a wide space flooded with sunshine as golden as the sorrel’s coat. The spot appeared singularly wholesome after the sombrous gorge — like a flower garden reached by way of a narrow passage through a thick wall.

  Here were the mine buildings, the mouth of the shaft which burrowed into the bowels of the earth and the cheerful voices of the workers.

  Not all the voices were carefree and peaceful, however. In front of a building marked “Office” a loud altercation was taking place. Hatfield was surprised to see that one of the disputants was Sheriff Branch Horton. The other was a tall, broadshouldered man with a weatherbeaten face and flashing eyes. His mouth was hard, his jaw lean and prominent.

  The sheriff, whose clothes were powdered with gray dust and who showed other evidence of a long, hard ride, was red-faced and angry. A little to one side, a group of men were watering their horses and glancing from time to time toward the bickering pair. John Chadwick, the tall cattle king, was one of the group and Hatfield recognized Edwards, his foreman, and other men who had entered the Una Golondrina on the night of Amado Capistrano’s argument with Chadwick. Bill Thompson was there, his shoulder bandaged, but apparently little the worse for his encounter with the Ranger. All were grinning and apparently amused.

  They glanced up at the sound of Goldy’s hoofs and their faces hardened. Horton and his adversary were too intent on each other to notice the new arrival.

  “Yuh’d do better spendin’ a little time runnin’ down the men who are robbin’ this mine right and left ‘stead of scootin’ ‘round in the hills chasin’ a bandit who, the chances are, is south of the Rio Grande, all the time,” the tall man boomed as Hatfield came within hearing.

  Sheriff Horton swore a crackling oath.

  “I ain’t a detective, Bowers,” he shouted. “I’m a peace officer and I arrest people I know has committed a crime. I’m plumb shore and sartain it’s some of yore own outfit that’s doin’ the stealin’ up here. You get a line on ‘em — that’d oughta be part of yore bus’ness — and I’ll drap a loop on ‘em quick enough. I know what Cartina and his outfit has done and whenever I get a line on him, I’m gonna foller it.”

  “Yeah, foller, and never ketch up!” snorted the tall Bowers. “Yuh couldn’t ketch cold on a rainy day!”

  Horton opened his mouth to roar an answer, when he caught sight of Jim Hatfield lounging easily in his saddle. He waved a hand in greeting. The Ranger shrewdly surmised he was glad of an opportunity to change the subject and get away from the irate mine superintendent.

  “Strays must be sproutin’ wings, if they’ve took to amblin’ up this high,” he observed jocularly.

  “I had to ride to the west range and took a notion I’d amble up and look the Boss’s mine over before I rode back,” Hatfield explained easily. “Nice section up this way.”

  “Nice for them that likes it!” grunted Horton. “I shore have had enough of it since yest’day aft’noon. Been up in these hills ever since then. Heerd tell Pedro Cartina was snoopin’ ‘round up here and started out with a posse to ride herd on him. Spent mosta the night freezin’ under a cliff way over toward the nawtheast of Chadwick’s range. John’s been losin’ a sight of steers of late and he’s gettin’ almighty tired of it.”

  “Been in the hills all night?” Hatfield asked in sympathetic tones, his glance running over the sheriff’s posse and back to the stocky peace officer.

  “Uh-huh,” Horton grunted, “all night. Well, reckon we’d better be headin’ back for town, now the bronks has filled up. Yuh ridin’ back thataway?”

  “Not just yet,” Hatfield replied. The sheriff nodded.

  “I’ll head up this way in a day or two and see if I can do anythin’ for you, Bowers,” Horton flung at the mine superintendent. Bowers grunted something unintelligible and glanced inquiringly at Hatfield.

  The possemen swung into their saddles. John Chadwick favored the Ranger with a curt nod.

  “That invitation to ride over to my place still holds,” he said, “even though I don’t think much of your choice of outfits to sign up with.”

  “Nobody else offered to sign me up, sir,” Hatfield responded quietly, “and I haven’t seen anything wrong with the one I’m with.”

  “You will, if you stay around long enough,” the cattle king replied. “Come on, Horton,” he called to the sheriff. “Let’s be heading home.”

  From the direction of the gorge suddenly sounded fast hoofs. An instant later a man rode into view. His horse was lathered with sweat and flecked with foam.

  “Hey, sheriff!” he shouted at sight of Horton, “Cartina held up the San Rosita stage this mawnin’. Killed the driver and creased yore deputy. They got away with the Humboldt’s payroll money!”

  CHAPTER 11

  AFTER the posse had departed at a gallop, Hatfield dismounted at Bowers’ invitation.

  “Callate yuh’re the feller what went to work for the Boss,” he commented, running his keen gaze over the Ranger’s tall form. “One of the boys from the ranch rode up here yest’day afternoon and mentioned yuh,” he added by way of explanation. “Figgered it couldn’t be anybody else when I set eyes on yuh, from the way he d’scribed yuh. C’mon inter my shack. I was jest gettin’ ready to have a bit of chuck when that jughaid of a sheriff happened along.”

  The “shack” was a comfortable one-story house. It had two large rooms and a kitchen. An ancient Mexican was laying a cloth on a table in the main room. While Hatfield was washing up in the kitchen, Bowers talked in low tones with the old Mexican cook in the main room. Hatfield could hear the rumble of voices but could not make out what was said. After placing food on the table, the Mexican drifted silently out the back door and vanished in the direction of the mine. A little later, the Ranger heard hoofs click away toward the lower gorge mouth.

  The meal was good and both did ample justice to it. For some minutes there was eloquent silence. Over a final cup of coffee, Bowers became more communicative.

  “That blankety-blank sheriff!” he growled. “He means well, I reckon, but he’s got one of them single-cinch minds and when he gets what he callates is a idea, there ain’t room for nothin’ else till it’s plumb worked out.”

  “He’s been chasin’ Pedro Cartina for more’n a year now and ain’t never come within shootin’ distance of him. I callate Cartina is really responsible for ‘bout one third of what Horton blames him for. If a rooster gets lifted outa a coop or a greaser goes to sleep and wakes up ‘thout his pants, Horton yells ‘Cartina!’ and c’lects a posse and goes ridin’. When Cartina really does figger on pullin’ somethin’, like he did this mawnin’, he arranges for Horton to be gallivantin’ ‘round somewhere else on a tip that’s all made to order.

  “The only time Horton was anyways close to him was t’other evenin’ when the bank was robbed, and then he was as far behind as a cow’s tail. I don’t see what John Chadwick sees in the potbellied galoot. Reckon he figgers ‘cause Horton can get them shoulders of his under a hoss and lift it off the ground, he’s got the makin’s of a peace officer. Anyhow, he got Horton elected and is figgerin’ on runnin’ him for ‘nother term.”

  “Lift a horse off the ground?” repeated the Ranger.

  “Uh-huh, he can do that. Horton’s a bull when it comes to bein’ strong. There ain’t a man in the district can give him a good go in a rassle, ‘less it’s the Boss, Amado Capistrano. There ain’t anythin’ much Capistrano can’t do with them arms of his. Jest the same, bein’ able to straighten hoss shoes, and lift kegs of spikes with yore teeth ain’t all what’s nec’sary to make a good peace officer. Brains sorta comes in handy at times, and Horton was down in the cellar when they was handin’ them out. Oh, well, what can yuh ‘spect of sich a tailend of Creation as this section is!”

  “You don’t like this country?”

  “Who would like it?” growled
Bowers, a bitter light in his stormy eyes. “The only reason I’m here, runnin’ a blankety-blank silver mine is ‘cause I got to be.”

  Hatfield was glancing at the tides of the books that rested on shelves built against the walls.

  “You’re an engineer,” he stated rather than asked.

  The bitter light in Bowers’ eyes grew intense.

  “Was,” he corrected. “Ever hear of the Talmapaso River bridge?”

  Hatfield nodded.

  “Well,” continued Bowers, “you’ll recollect the span went into the river the day after it was completed. Three men were killed. That finished me as an engineer in this country. Was gettin’ ready to starve or go back to punchin’ cows at forty per when Amado Capistrano give me this job.”

  Hatfield was much interested.

  “I remember there was quicksand under the center pier of the Talmapaso Bridge and it shifted,” he commented.

  Bowers gave him a shrewd glance in which was something of an element of surprise, and perhaps some other emotion.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he said, and as he spoke his voice underwent a subtle change, the careless slurring of the cow country sluffing off and final endings taking their proper places.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he repeated. “The consensus of opinion and the verdict of the investigating board was that I did not sink my caissons deep enough, and I was judged accordingly. The truth of the matter was that springs opened up through fissures in the bed rock and changed a perfect foundation of hard packed sand to quicksand. Perhaps you can understand what that means?”

  “I get the idea,” Hatfield replied in his easy drawl.

  Bowers shrugged.

  “But that’s water over the dam,” he added, his tones changing again. “Callate I’m lucky to have this job. It pays well and the work’s sorta int’restin’, partickler since some galoot’s figger’d out a scheme to rustle highgrade ore outa the diggin’s.”