“Joyce Melrose—is she here, Doc?” Redding said harshly.
Staring off beyond Redding, Stiles’s eyes spotted the thin spider web of knotted lariats dangling down the face of the cliff, from the rimrock a hundred and fifty feet above, and knew then how Redding had penetrated this outlaw citadel.
“Yes,” Stiles panted. “She got in with Tondro and Teague Darkin not three hours ago.”
“Is she all right?”
“Suffering the aftermath of a nasty concussion, but otherwise unhurt. She and my daughter are in the shaft house. What are you doing here, Redding? Are you committing suicide for that girl’s sake?”
Redding pulled the old man into the shadowy interior of the tunnel mouth. “Listen, Doc,” the detective said, and told the unbelieving oldster of Lennon’s posse, even now coming up the canyon.
“It’ll be sunrise in another ten minutes,” Redding finished up, “and all hell will cut loose when Tondro’s guards spot the posse riding in. I’m here to keep them from vamoosing through this escape tunnel. Is there any chance you can bring the two girls out here—get them somewhere out of range of ricocheting bullets?”
Stiles appeared incapable of speech. For a man so accustomed to living out his span without hope of freedom, Redding’s words were too much for his tired mind to comprehend.
“Snap out of it, Doc!” Redding pleaded. “Time is running out. That posse will give Tondro’s bunch no quarter. I can’t have Joyce and your daughter killed during the fracas—” Redding’s words were cut off by a sudden spate of gunfire coming from a remote distance down the canyon, the sheer rock walls amplifying that shooting until it became an ear-numbing din.
“Sentries have spotted Lennon coming in,” Redding yelled in the old man’s ear. “I shaved this too fine.”
The sound of gunfire tapered off, but close on its heels there sounded a pandemonium of yells from the shaft house, muffled by the waterfall’s unending roar, and Redding groaned his despair of getting Zedra and Joyce to safety as he saw a dozen half-clad Mexicans come tumbling out the shaft-house door, faces turned down the canyon whence the shooting had come.
The holocaust soon to erupt here was out of Redding’s hands now. He heard Blaze Tondro’s voice bawling orders, saw reason return to the panicked vaqueros as they ducked back into the shaft house like ants in a disturbed hill, emerging with rifles and gun belts as they headed toward the horse corral.
A great thunderbolt of sound rolled up the gorge, and Redding felt his scalp prickle as he visualized the hellfire old Val Lennon was leading his column of riders through.
Even as the thought took shape in his mind his pulses leaped to the dramatic spectacle of the Trailfork sheriff hammering into view around the near turn of the canyon trail, his law badge flashing in the first rays of the morning sun.
Empty saddles showed in that oncoming cavalcade of possemen, testimony to the brief and bitter fight which Tondro’s guards had made against this surprise invasion of their fortress. But the posse had breached that blockade of hidden guns and were now carrying the fight into Thunder Rock itself.
A counterfire of guns crashed from the shaft house. Redding, waiting helplessly in the tunnel mouth with Doc Stiles at his side, saw Lennon and his men dive from horseback to take to the shelter of the brush and rocks, escaping the devastating fire which Tondro’s trapped crew was pouring down the canyon.
There was no time now for Tondro’s gang to mount and ride to the defense of their sentries. The shaft-house doors swarmed with yelling men as Tondro sent his force out into the brush to shoot it out with the posse in hand-to-hand combat.
Redding thrust one of his Colt .45s into Doc Stiles’s scraggy fist as the two of them bellied down on the rubbled floor of the escape tunnel. Any moment now, Redding knew Tondro would abandon his bastion and lead his disorganized horde of gunmen toward this tunnel and its escape route under the Navajadas.
The roar of the waterfall was lost under the continuous slam and crash of gunnery, where the pitched battle was raging in the rocks and brush where rustlers and possemen had taken cover. Crisscrossing lead laced the air, ricochets smearing gray streaks on the cliffs, punching holes in the shaft house.
And then, through the drifting gun smoke and the cacophony of battle sounds, Redding saw a blur of movement leaving the side of the shaft house which was out of sight of the battle.
Blaze Tondro and Teague Darkin, united now in the common peril facing this rustler bastion, were racing for the corral gates. An overwhelming urge to run out and head them off surged through Redding, but he held his place, knowing his job was to bar the escape tunnel when Tondro ordered his forces to retreat.
A moment later Tondro and the erstwhile Crowfoot foreman appeared from the horse barn, leading four unsaddled horses toward the side door of the shaft house. Redding knew then that Tondro was going to desert his men while they fought a rear-guard action to cover their leader’s escape.
The shadows were still too thick alongside the near wall of the shaft house for Redding to see what was going on by the door where the horses waited, their reins held by Darkin.
But he had his answer in the next moment, when the four ponies bolted away from the building and headed at a dead run toward the maw of the escape tunnel where he and Doc Stiles were crouched, waiting.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Roster of the Damned
“They got the girls with ’em!”
Stiles’s shout was true. The four horses were thundering abreast like a picture from the Apocalypse. Teague Darkin was on the left flank, leading Joyce Melrose’s mount, her head bandage gleaming in the dawn’s ruddy light Tondro was on the extreme right, Zedra Stiles riding a stallion at his inside stirrup.
As they converged on the mouth of the escape tunnel Redding yelled in Stiles’s ear, “Hold your fire, Doc!”
Redding came to his feet and lunged out into full view of the oncoming fugitives. Tondro at this moment was hipped around for a last glance at the pitched battle raging between his henchmen and Lennon’s posse. But Teague Darkin spotted Redding’s spread-legged figure blocking the entrance to the tunnel, and his frantic yell brought Tondro jerking around.
Darkin pulled his horse back, aiming to put Joyce between him and Redding’s line of fire. With a cold laugh, Redding whipped gunstock to cheek, caught the Crowfoot foreman’s shape in his gun sights, and squeezed off his shot.
He saw Darkin reel to the impact of lead tunneling his midriff and slide off the rump of his horse, freeing Joyce’s lead rope. Joyce screamed something Redding could not hear.
Events were moving too rapidly for Redding to grasp them coherently. He saw Teague Darkin come to his feet, saw the tongues of flame spit from the bores of Darkin’s guns; and this time Redding took his time about aiming, and his second shot caught the outlaw between the ribs and put him out of the fight.
Tondro had reined up, not daring to ride closer to the spot where Redding was jerking the lever of his smoking Winchester. Doc Stiles stood beside him, arms hanging motionless at his sides, seemingly paralyzed by the violent action going on around him.
The rustler chief flung aside the lead rope of Zedra’s horse. Taking advantage of Tondro’s preoccupation, the girl he had held a prisoner to his will through the richest years of her life dived from horseback, was lost in the swirling dust.
With a wild yell, Tondro sent his horse hammering straight at the tunnel mouth, six-guns throwing their barrage of lead at the indomitable figure ahead of him.
Redding felt something like a lance of white-hot fire go through his body. His rifle sights were on Tondro, but the strength to pull trigger fled from his hand. The rifle sagged as another of Tondro’s shots ripped the flesh of his right hip and whirled him half around.
He had a kaleidoscopic glimpse of Joyce Melrose running for the shelter of the cliff wall, having abandoned her horse; dim in the swirling
dust clouds toward the shaft house was a writhing shape, vomiting blood, which was Teague Darkin.
Incredibly, Redding found himself toppling sideways, Doc Stiles grabbing him and going down on one knee with him. Redding fell forward, his chin gouging the flinty earth.
Above him, Doc Stiles snapped out of his torpor at last and triggered a Colt. His bullet struck Tondro’s oncoming horse in the chest, dropping it as if all four legs had been scythed off in one sweep.
Redding pulled his head off the dirt in time to see Tondro hurtling through space as his horse fell, to land at a zigzag run, six-guns blazing alternately, as if the loads in his Colts were inexhaustible.
Stiles was shooting at the oncoming figure of the man he had dreamed for eleven tortured years of killing, but his lead was going wild. Redding heard Doc’s firing-pin click on a spent shell. The old man had failed him in this desperate moment.
Blood from an unfelt wound was trickling over Redding’s face, clogging his eyelashes. Somehow he found the strength to lift his other six-gun from holster and lay his gun sights on the advancing Tondro. His ears did not hear the explosion of his .45, but he felt the recoil of the weapon on the crotch of his hand.
Like a dream in slow motion, he saw Tondro drop, his sombrero falling free to reveal the skunk stripe in his black head. Redding muttered aloud, “That squares your account, Matt.”
Darkness was swirling around him. He saw Doc Stiles run out to where Tondro lay, reaching down to rip the man’s shirt open and claw for the key to the iron gate in the escape tunnel which hung by a thong around Tondro’s neck.
Stiles was screeching, like a crazy man in delirium, “You killed the hombre you called Blackie Fletcher because my daughter loved him, Tondro. Now you can die knowing that Blackie was a range dick the same as his brother, Doug Redding.”
Those howled words were the last Blaze Tondro heard, short of the click of death’s shutter over his senses. A few yards away, they were the last sounds that registered on Doug Redding’s fast-fading intelligence.
* * * *
Hot sunlight burned Redding’s eyelids. Thunder Rock Canyon was strangely quiet; the gunfire and the yelling had ceased. He heard the boom of falling water, felt its coolness on his skin.
Doc Stiles’s voice floated to him as if through some long dark tunnel, but his words were meaningless. “He’s coming around, Miss Melrose. He’ll carry Tondro’s scars as long as he lives, but he’ll be walking before the geese fly north.”
Doug Redding opened his eyes. Joyce’s face seemed to be floating in a pink froth above him. He realized then that his head was pillowed in her lap.
He lowered his glance to see Zedra’s father removing a probe from a mass of bullet-punctured flesh in his leg and wagging his head as he saw the telltale smear of black on the porcelain tip of the instrument which told the medico that his thrusting explorations had touched a bullet and not a fragment of bone.
“It’s all right, Doug.” Joyce’s whisper against his ear made sense for the first time. “The fight’s over, and you’ve got nothing to worry about except getting well again.”
Redding rolled his head to one side. He saw two of the Trailfork possemen, one of them the gambler from the Fandango, lugging a dead man out of the range of his vision. The corpse was that of Teague Darkin. It didn’t seem real, any of this.
Then Sheriff Val Lennon, one arm in a bloody sling, came into the range of his vision and squatted down to wink one rheumy eye at Redding. “Rallied around, eh, son?”
The wounded man managed a grin. “How’d it go, Sheriff?”
“A wipe-out. What few greasers we didn’t leave for buzzard bait, back in the rocks yonder, my boys rounded up and dehorned. We aim to burn down the shaft house and dynamite that escape tunnel before we head back to the Basin, son.”
Redding closed his eyes, feeling the soft swell of Joyce’s breasts as she leaned over him, cradling his head in her arms. It was hard to realize that he had survived this shootout, that peace had come to the Lavarim country, and that Blaze Tondro and Teague Darkin and Joe Curtwright and all the rest were just names on a roster of the damned which Redding, one day, would put in his report to Colonel Regis—the last report he would make to the Protective before he turned in his star for keeps.
He heard Zedra’s voice, and opened his eyes to see the girl his brother Matt had loved kneeling beside him, helping her father remove a twisted blob of lead from his thigh.
The sunlight flashed from the golden lizard ring on Zedra’s finger, the only memento she would have of her lost love.
Redding saw tears glisten in the girl’s eyes as she reached up a hand to where a great rip in his shirt exposed the ring he had carried as a good-luck talisman through this fight.
“I tried to show you—that ring—the night we met at the Fandango, Zedra.” Redding spoke for the first time since he had returned to the land of the living. “I wish Matt—could be here to see those rings—together again.”
Zedra turned the loveliness of her smile upon him and said simply, “Those rings brought us luck, señor. That is how Matt would have wanted it. You—you’ll take me to his grave on Mustang Mesa someday, querido?”
Dizziness swirled through Redding’s head as Doc Stiles worked to stem the flow of blood from his bullet-shattered leg. “It’s a—a promise, Zedra. It’ll be a shrine—for us both.”
He lifted his eyes to meet the love and thanksgiving in Joyce’s eyes.
“This ring—of mine,” he said. “It was my father’s—just like the one Matt gave to Zedra. I’ve always carried it—”
Joyce said, “I know, Doug. I know what it means to you.”
Redding swallowed, suddenly drowsy, but knowing he must say something before the agony of his wounds made him pass out again. “That ring—I want you to have it, Joyce. And me with it.”
He became aware that Joyce’s head had come down to shield his face from the blinding glare of sunlight on the waterfall which made a silhouette of Doc Stiles, busy bandaging his leg now.
“I love you dearly, Doug. That is how it was always meant to be.”
Her lips made a solid pressure on his as Redding surrendered to the ennui that was a gentle anesthesia on his senses; and he carried the warm promise of her kiss into his following dreams.
KILLERS TWO, by Allan K. Echols
(aka Keep Off My Ranch)
Copyright © 1953 by Allan K. Echols.
CHAPTER 1
The Wire and the Guns
On this Spring morning Jim Woodbine felt the tension blanketing Ashfork like a wave of oppressive heat. For a Saturday there were very few rigs and saddle-horses at the hitchracks, and he smiled grimly as he observed this. It was better not to be around if lead started whining, and there were those who expected guns to pop on this day if he brought in the carload of barbed wire as he had planned to do.
Woodbine turned into the Elite Livery and Boarding Stable and slid off his short-coupled bay quarterhorse, a lean man with a face more grave than it should be in a person on the near side of thirty. His corduroy pants hung loosely on his long legs, and the flannel shirt open at the neck showed a touch of shaving powder that hadn’t been wiped off after he had finished with his razor. There was something about him that suggested a pine tree that had passed through more storms than its years warranted, a sober ruggedness that trouble had been unable to destroy.
Old Race Greer took his horse and remarked, “So you’re really gonna start fencing, huh?”
Woodbine looked at him with uncomfortable directness. “That’s what I’d planned. Why shouldn’t I?”
Greer said, “Oh, no reason at all. Man’s got a right to fence his own land if he wants to.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Old Greer led the horse back to a stable, mumbling to himself, Why shouldn’t he? Because Noble Fry says no, that’s why.
Woodbine watched the retreating figure of the liveryman while he rolled a cigarette for himself and speculated on the gossip that must be running through the town and the outlying districts. They were probably laying bets on whether he dared fence his property and Virginia Sterling’s against the opposition of Fry.
He scratched a match and lit his cigarette in his cupped hands, blew the match out carefully and went out of the stable, walking down to Merle Roberson’s Trading Company. In the store he passed down a lane of nail and staple kegs, and kegs of horseshoes with three or four shoes hung on their rims, past a platform stacked high with sacks of flour in dressgoods bags, and came to a railed-in corner where Roberson sat behind a flat-top desk making out checks for bills. He went in through a swing gate and sat down on a straight-back wooden chair beside Roberson’s desk.
Roberson scratched his name on a check, pinned it to a bill and addressed the envelope and shoved the bill and check inside, then carefully licked the envelope and stamped it, all before looking up.
Woodbine picked up an upright tin cigar box with a picture on it of an eagle with a snake in its mouth, and the words, “Mexican Commerce,” printed on it. He took a cigar out of the box, bit off the end and lit it, and thought that Merle Roberson was taking so much time with the envelope so that he could plan what he was going to say.
Then Roberson laid the envelope aside, leaned back in his chair and smiled, and his smile was a little thin and uneasy. “Well, what can I do for you, Jim?”
Woodbine pulled a list out of his pocket and read it aloud.
“I want you to put this stuff out on your back dock for me to pick up when we’re through unloading the car,” he said. “Four pairs of posthole diggers, four of those new kind of fencing pliers, you know, with the cutters and the staple puller built into ’em, and about three kegs of fencing staples.”
Roberson scratched the items down on a sheet of paper silently, then looked up over his glasses. “You sure you’re going on with this, Jim?”
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