by COLE JACKSON
He immediately gave Hatfield a letter to the bank in San Rosita.
“Now you will be able to use their private wire to send your telegrams,” he explained. “Information is much less liable to leak out that way. Men of Cartina’s ilk appear to have an uncanny ability to ferret out what’s going on. I can’t understand how they do it. This ought to help you keep things secret. Hardy, president of the San Rosita bank, is absolutely dependable — I’ll stake my life on that. He’ll do all he can to help you.”
Hatfield was still unable to locate Amado Capistrano. The barkeepers at the saloon knew nothing of his whereabouts. Long John Dyson, Sheriff Horton’s gangling deputy, who happened in a little later with a bandaged head, could supply no information as to the hunchback’s whereabouts. Hatfield liked Long John, who had a weary face, a cast in one eye and a discouraged-looking moustache. An habitual twinkle made one forget the cast, however, and the moustache could not hide the grin wrinkles about his mouth.
Not until Doc Draper bustled in for a double slug of his “fav’rite pizen,” did Hatfield get a line on Capistrano.
“Shore, I know where he is,” grunted Ol’ Doc. “Come along and I’ll take yuh to him.”
He led the way to where the humble cabins of the Mexican laborers crouched in the shadow of the great mills. He entered a dimly lighted hut. Hatfield, bending his tall head, followed.
At first he could make out little of the interior. Then he saw that a man and a woman stood near the table on which a lamp burned. They were young and the woman’s face was beautiful, though tear-stained and tired. Doc nodded briefly and they replied with courteous bows. Hatfield followed the old man’s gaze and saw, in one corner, a blanket spread on the earthen floor. On the blanket lay a wasted little form and beside the blanket crouched Amado Capistrano, his face lined with weariness, but with a light in his blue eyes. He smiled fleetingly at Hatfield and raised his right hand to his lips in a gesture for silence.
His other hand, Hatfield saw, lay on the worn blanket and in it rested the tiny, almost transparent fingers of the little girl who slept so silently on the earthen floor. The fragile fingers clung tightly to the hunchback’s thumb, as if that were their sole hold on the life spirit that threatened momentarily to take wing.
“He’s been settin’ there for nigh onto eighteen hours now,” breathed Doc. “If he moves he’s afraid the kid’ll wake up, and sleep means life to her. She’s been hangin’ in the balance for a week, now, but yest’day she drifted into a nacherel sleep while Amado was holdin’ her hand. That sleep’s gonna make her all right, or I’m much mistaken.”
He nodded to Capistrano and led the Ranger from the cabin. A little distance from the door they paused and glanced back.
“Folks down here think sorta well of Don Amado,” Doc remarked.
Jim Hatfield bared his dark head and looked up at the glowing Texas stars.
“And I guess the folks up there think right well of him, too,” he replied softly.
“Who?” asked Doc, in surprise.
“Those grand old ancestors of his,” Hatfield said. “Those salty old hombres they called the Conquistadores, who came from across the Atlantic and fought the Indians and the deserts and the mountains and did their part to make this country worth living in. Yes, I have a notion they think mighty well of Don Amado, too. Doc, I reckon that when God Almighty sets out to make a man, He concentrates on what He puts inside and doesn’t waste too much time on what He covers it up with!”
CHAPTER 14
HATFIELD slept at the A Bar C bunkhouse that night and mid morning found him riding the range again. As previously, he headed southwest, but once he was well away from the home range, he turned Goldy’s head sharply. An hour later he struck the San Simon Trail, that ran southeast to the county seat, San Rosita.
Arriving at San Rosita, he found the bank president, Hardy, and showed him Burton Walsh’s letter. Hardy cooperated gladly and Hatfield sent several long telegrams in the name of the Rangers. One, directed to an eastern firearms manufacturer, was answered promptly, Hatfield receiving the information he desired before nightfall. It caused him to knit his dark brows and stare long and earnestly across the gleaming river that separated Texas from Mexico. The others were briefly acknowledged and cooperation promised.
Following Hardy’s directions, he strolled about the little town, finally arriving at the poorer quarter, occupied chiefly by Mexicans and a few Indians. Here he had a drink in a dingy little cantina whose dark-faced bartender grinned jovially and was inclined to be loquacious.
“I’ve been looking for a bunky of mine,” Hatfield told him over a glass of fiery tequila. “He headed down this way about a year or so back and I heard he was seen in this town. He was a mining man, a big fellow with brown whiskers sort of dappled. There was gray in his hair, too. Wasn’t very old, though. Name was Shafter, Ed Shafter.”
The bartender listened courteously, nodding his sleek black head from time to time.
“Me, I know not for sure,” he replied when Hatfield had finished. “Many men come thees way and many men drink here. I will ask of others, however, and if the señor should pass this way tomorrow — ”
“Yes, I reckon I’ll be hanging around this section another day or two,” Hatfield told him. “Let’s have another drink. Then I’m goin’ to bed.”
The bartender had learned nothing the following afternoon and Hatfield left town, assuring the drink mixer that he would return in a few days. The young Mexican pocketed the shining gold piece the Ranger had left and redoubled his inquiries.
Hatfield reached the A Bar C bunkhouse after dark. An animated discussion was under way, the subject being a raid on the Bowtie ranch by rustlers. It appeared a herd of several hundred head had been widelooped.
“They figger it was Pedro Cartina did it?” asked the Ranger.
There was a sudden silence and an uncomfortable shuffling of feet. Hatfield glanced inquiringly from one vaquero to another. The jolly Felipe at length broke the silence.
“Eet ees, what you call, sometimes not healthy to speak of certain ones,” he said gravely. Hatfield nodded his understanding.
“Yes, you never know who you can trust and who you can’t,” he agreed.
The next day Hatfield rode across Chadwick’s great Circle C and far east. Everywhere he was struck by the richness of the valley. The ranches were exceptionally fine, with splendid buildings, and fat herds in abundance.
“Yes, it sure is one fine section,” he mused as he rode slowly home under the glowing stars. “No wonder Chadwick and Capistrano both have a hankering to own the whole business. Plenty of room for both of them, too, and no real need for trouble. Seems that when a man has about everything in the world he needs, he should be satisfied and not be taking chances with what he’s got to get something more that he doesn’t really need. Funny folks in this world!”
In the beginning, just prior to the death of a young Ranger by the name of Dick Webb, three men had dreamed of an empire. That is, at least one of them had dreamed of an empire, while the other two had envisioned wealth and power in the Tamarra Hills country.
This dream, this will o’ the wisp which has beckoned men down through the ages to their doom, was now by way of becoming a concrete fact. At the same moment that Ranger Jim Hatfield, the pernicious fly in this particular ointment, was riding east of the Circle C and deliberating on the intricate pieces of this puzzle which were gradually falling into place for him, two of these three men were closeted with a third man in the back room of a saloon in the mining town of Helidoro. The third member of this infamous trio was absent.
The saloon in which this meeting occurred was not the Una Golondrina of Amado Capistrano. Further, not one of the three men in conference was masked. One of them walked the streets of Helidoro whenever he was in town, a respected citizen and officer of the law. Sheriff Branch Horton was cradled in false security, little dreaming that Jim Hatfield had already penetrated that mask of respectability.
/> The second member was, oddly enough, the very man that Sheriff Horton could never lay an official hand upon — Pedro Cartina. He had ridden into town under cover of darkness the previous night for a conference. He sat in his chair now, a vicious scowl on his swarthy face, wincing now and then from pain as he shifted his bandaged right shoulder.
The third man in the room, the one making a worried report, was Jefferson Bowers, superintendent of the Cibola mine.
“I can’t understand how he come outa it in one piece,” Bowers stated in perplexity. “I examined that cut myself, and it’s piled fulla rock and dirt enough to wipe out a regiment. When yuh sent me word, Horton, that he had showed up in town as if nothin’ had happened, I couldn’t believe it.”
“I couldn’t believe it,” snarled the sheriff, and there was nothing slow about his bearing now. “Yuh said yuh could tend to him, before I left for town with my posse, so I didn’t worry any more about him till he showed up life-size. Mebbe your dynamite man can explain things. What did he say?”
“That’s the queerest part of it,” frowned Bowers. “Just before supper I gave Juan definite instructions and sent him on ahead of Amado’s new man. There ain’t no doubt that Juan did the job — nothin’ short of dynamite would of caused that avalanche, and Juan was the best powder man I had at the mine. But Juan has disappeared. Nobody’s seen hair or hide of him since that job.”
“Perhaps Juan failed,” shrugged Cartina, and then cursed at the quick little pain which gnawed at his shoulder. “When he saw he had failed, he vamoosed to Mexico.”
“Juan knew better than to do that,” said Bowers. “He knew yuh’d get him for that, Cartina. It begins to look to me like, somehow, that big fellow got Juan.”
Pedro Cartina smiled, a swarthy grin that split his face wolfishly to expose gleaming white teeth.
“Then, señores,” he said, “it seems that the job must be done by Cartina himself. Do you still think he is a detective from the express company?”
“Must be,” grunted Horton. “He don’t fit in as a driftin’ range tramp like he claimed to be. I wish yuh’d shot him out of his saddle, Pedro, when yuh raided Walsh’s bank that night.”
“It was dark,” said Cartina, “and we just took him for a rider who was in our way.”
“He proved to be that, all right,” said Horton sourly. “The boss was sore over that bobble.”
“He’s not an express detective,” said Bowers positively. “I think he’s a Cattlemen’s Association man. Sancho swears he’s the feller who pulled him out of the desert the night of the storm, but he said that feller could talk Spanish like a Mex, and this man don’t seem to know the lingo. He looked familiar to me, and — ”
“He asked Sancho questions about his gun?” demanded Horton quickly.
“Shore,” nodded Bowers. “And I’m beginnin’ to think that gun-runnin’ idea you fellers had was a mistake. They’re mighty fine shootin’ irons all right, but they might be traced. If they are, we’ll have the U. S. Army in this section.”
“Not so,” said Cartina smoothly. “The guns were shipped to my friend, the captain of the Rurales, and the ordair was from the Department of War, or State, or so it seemed. There is nothing to fear from that source.”
“Well, there’s a lot to fear from this man we can’t kill,” said Bowers in an ugly tone. “Cartina, I tell yuh I recognized — ”
“Everythin’ else is workin’ out fine,” cut in the sheriff, relieved. “The boys are learnin’ to shoot straighter. They know their business. There’s more’n a hundred of ‘em now. They have their orders, and they know what to do. Another week, and we’ll be ready for big clean-ups. As soon as this election is out of the way, we’ll get goin’ right. There might be a few men we ain’t shore of — ”
He paused and glanced at Cartina, who smiled again — like the unsheathing of a knife.
“I am sure of all,” the Mexican said thinly. “Men think twice before they hand to Pedro Cartina the, what you say — doublecross.”
“Yeah,” nodded Sheriff Horton in satisfaction, “I guess they do.”
“Now, for this detective,” went on Cartina, “I, Pedro Cartina, will attend to him without more ado. Me, I am able to dispose of men so they do not come back to life.”
“Yeah?” said Bowers dryly. “Mebbe yuh are. But I’m tryin’ to tell yuh that yuh already had one whack at this man, and yuh made a mess of it.”
“What?” hissed Cartina, his black eyes flashing. “That, amigo, is one damn lie!”
Bowers laughed shortly.
“I told yuh I recognized that Hatfield feller, didn’t It That’s why I’m shore he’s a cattle detective. Do yuh remember that little raid on the Slash K trail herd down on the Rio Grande which didn’t work out because of that tall feller leadin’ them cow hands?”
“You mean the hombre we staked out over the ant hill?” demanded Cartina.
“Him,” nodded Bowers laconically. “This man is him!”
“But — but — ” stuttered the bandit in astonishment, “that is not possible. The ants never fail.”
“They fell down on that job!” said Bowers grimly. “I don’t know how he got loose. Yuh drove them stakes, and I pigged him with the rawhide myself. If he ever finds out it was me with yuh that day, I won’t live till sundown. We ain’t safe a minute while that man runs free. Think he’ll forget that ant hill?”
“That, as I recall it, was your idea, Señor Bowers,” said Cartina in silky politeness. “I preferred to end his career with a rifle then. Now, I must do so. What did you say his name is?”
“Hatfield!” snapped Bowers angrily. “Jim Hatfield, so he says.”
Pedro Cartina forgot his wounded shoulder as he leaped to his feet, his face livid, his eyes almost starting from his head.
“Hatfield?” he ejaculated. “Jeem Hatfield! He ees tall, most tall? And broad? And his eyes, they are gray? Madre de dios! Sangre de cristo! Maldito!”
“Yes, yes,” nodded Bowers, paling slightly in unreasoning panic. “Why?”
“Mother of God!” groaned Cartina. “And to think that I had him under the sights of my rifle and let him get away.”
“What are yuh talkin’ about?” demanded Sheriff Horton savagely.
“Hatfield!” gasped the bandit. “Of all the men in the world I, Pedro Cartina, most hate and fear, it is this man. You wish to know who he is? You think he is express detective, or cattle detective? Ha, ha, I laugh! Señores, this man is called the Lone Wolf. He is a devil. He is a Texas Ranger!”
“Holy smoke!” exclaimed Bowers, utterly startled.
“Hell!” snarled Sheriff Horton. “Ain’t we already killed one Ranger last year — that Webb feller? John Chadwick thinks he can run this country without Texas Rangers nosin’ around here. He depends on me, don’t he? Ain’t he already exerted influence to keep Rangers officially out of Tamarra country? This Hatfield ain’t got no official standin’ here. We’ll treat him like we do everybody who gets in our way.”
“Do yuh think Amado knows he hired a Ranger?” asked Bowers keenly.
“ ‘Course not!” snorted Horton. “Think he’s crazy? His feud is personal with Chadwick.”
“I guess I’d better tell him,” said Bowers. “Yuh’re shore of yore information, Cartina?”
“Am I?” shuddered the bandit. “Hatfield is the one man I have dreaded having set on my trail.”
Sheriff Horton pulled his six-shooter and laid it on the table. His eyes were full of meaning as he looked at both of his companions.
“It wasn’t Lincoln who made men equal,” he chuckled evilly. “It was Sam Colt! Here’s the difference between this Ranger Hatfield and the smallest man who ever forked a hoss.”
Pedro Cartina shook his head dubiously.
“Perhaps,” he hissed. “But my thought of el infierno is this Jeem Hatfield with a pair of guns!”
“He’s human, ain’t he?” Horton snapped viciously. “This Hatfield feller can die, like anybody else. And
he’s got to die — sudden!”
CHAPTER 15
“I WARNED you,” Amado Capistrano told Hatfield. “Not for a moment is your life safe. Twice they have failed, partly by luck, chiefly because of your own vigilance and skill. But it can’t go on this way. The next time they’re liable not to fail. I still think you should leave this district.”
“I think things are going to get interesting around here during the next few days,” the Ranger countered.
Capistrano nodded gravely.
“Yes, the election campaign is drawing to a close,” he said. “Monday night both Horton and I will make speeches here in Helidoro. Then next day is election day.
“Those speeches are important,” he added, “Helidoro will just about swing the election. Chadwick is doing everything he can to defeat me, but there is a large element throughout the valley who will vote for anybody who is against Horton, and I believe most of the mining element is favorable to me. Also I count heavily on the river towns. Most of the voters there are of Mexican extraction, although Texas citizens, and naturally favor one of their blood.”
“Why does Chadwick set such store on this county election?” Hatfield asked. “It doesn’t look so important to me.”
“It’s a test of strength,” Capistrano replied. “This is, and always has been, an independent county. If Chadwick can show the surrounding counties that he can swing Tamarra, it will add tremendously to his prestige. Enough, I feel sure, to gain him the nomination for governor next year.”
Hatfield nodded. He was very thoughtful as he sought his little room over the livery stable.
“And if Chadwick gets to be governor, he’ll run the state like he runs this valley,” the Lone Wolf mused, “and that means goodby to the Rangers, among other things. Goodby to the Rangers, and Chadwick’s riders will be all over the state. Such things just don’t seem possible; but it doesn’t seem possible that a little sore can grow into a cancer that’ll kill a man. Just the same, it happens.