The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 4: Nictzin Dyalhis

by Nictzin Dyalhis

  Inez could both speak and understand English far better than she ever let on, and she had ideas of her own as to how much he would learn, and about whom it would be!

  Maisie tried to be agreeable—she wished to please her dad—and wound up by sitting with one of the old woman’s withered brown paws held gently in one of her own perfectly manicured hands, while the old Pima lady, for Inez was just that, and her father talked and chuckled and grew grave again.

  Finally she interrupted.

  “Dad, you’re mean as dirt! I can’t talk Pima!”

  “All right, kiddie,” he smiled. “Suppose you ask Inez to tell it again.”

  Inez accommodated.

  Amazed, disgusted, sometimes horror-stricken, the softly nurtured daughter of the dominant race listened to a tale told by a wise old woman of the dominated ones.

  Words failed the girl, and openly and without shame, she wept. Inspector Shane did not weep, but his eyes held a hard look and his jaw had a grim set as the words came from the old woman’s lips.

  “Inez,” he said finally, “you make this Kyle out to be a pretty poor stick.”

  “Him bad egg!” she asserted vigorously.

  “I believe you,” he replied, “but what proof can you give?”

  “Proof?” she countered. “Jus’ look at him face! Plenty proof! What more you wan’?”

  “You are right, old friend from other days,” he agreed gravely; “but I must have more than that before I can make trouble for him.”

  * * * *

  That night his daughter had a bright idea. At least, she thought it was, and after submitting same to her father she felt sure of it.

  As a result, the next morning they headed the car west from the agency, and as soon as possible, described an arc which eventually brought them again to the jacal.

  Shane wasted little breath this time in compliments.

  “Inez,” he demanded; “what do you know about this booze-running on the reservation?”

  “Know too much—an’ me know not’in’!” she returned cryptically.

  “Well,” he retorted, “tell me what you do know!”

  “Me know white mans never catch ’em!”

  “Huh!” he grunted. “Why not?”

  “Docs the coyote await the coming of the sheep-dogs?” she asked blandly.

  “—!” he growled. “You’re dead right!”

  Then he added—

  “Can Inez teach me how coyotes may be trapped?”

  “Injun-man—him catch!” she asserted. “Get George Two-Deers back on reservation—him Injun—buy mescal—buy aguardiente—him fin’ out heap—sometime—come sheriff-feller—goo’-by booze-mans! You sabe?”

  Shane took off his hat in a gesture of admiration—twice.

  Once in homage to her reasoning. The other time as tribute to her finesse. He had a shrewd idea she wanted the little Star-gleam to hobnob with, he knew the Indian mind pretty well, for a white man.

  “All right, old lady,” he assured her; “if we can get word to young Two-Deers, I’ll give him the job!”

  Without further parley Inez coolly clambered into the front seat of the car and settled herself comfortably beside him.

  “Were you planning on going any place especially?” he asked a trifle sarcastically.

  “Go get George,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “You run you’ tin bronco that way!” and she pointed straight south with her skinny arm.

  “My Lord!” gasped Shane amazedly to his daughter, who was convulsed with merriment. “Tin bronco—my car! Any one’d think to listen to her, she owned a better one!”

  And for thirty-seven miles as the giant mechanism hurled them onward, he repeated at intervals in an awed tone, “‘Tin Bronco!’ Aw—! What’s the use!”

  Five miles north of the boundary they halted, and from then on, Inez became boss with a large “B.”

  Inspector Shane was imperiously ordered to gather wood—“all same peon”—as he gravely informed his daughter who fairly reveled in the sight.

  Inez herself had more important business. She needed a certain weed, and it took her an hour to find enough of it to suit her.

  Then a fire was kindled and a column of greasy, blackish smoke rose straight toward the stainless blue.

  “Wireless outfit,” chuckled Shane to the deeply interested girl, who had heard and read of such things, but had never expected to see them carried out.

  A small handful of the weed thrown on the fire by the old woman, and the smoke changed to a bright yellow.

  And so, in some code known to Inez and known likewise by some Pima living in the Indian village beyond the border, with alternate puffs of black and yellow smoke, George Two-Deers was summoned to hold conference with Inspector Shane of the Indian Bureau.

  * * * *

  Andrew Kyle sighed with relief. Shane, the inspector, to use Inez’s graphic expression, had “gone went.”

  Kyle was glad to see the last of him, even if it did entail losing sight of the beauteous, sunny-haired divinity known on earth as “Maisie.”

  Kyle had business interests which had suffered neglect by reason of Shane’s presence. Hence the glow of satisfaction which pervaded the virtuous agent as he watched the monster car rapidly vanishing in a cloud of dust.

  To all intents and purposes, life on the reservation resumed its wonted routine.

  * * * *

  The Federal prohibition officer Jed Crockett glanced up impatiently from his desk as the door opened, and a man walked in without stopping to knock. It was nearly dusk, and the light was poor, and Crockett took a second look to make sure he saw straight.

  Before him stood a dirty, frowsy, ragged, and altogether disreputable looking Pima buck—the worst specimen Crockett had ever beheld.

  “Well, Injun!” he snapped. “What do you want in here?”

  “Wan’ ’reenk wheesky, please,” wheedled the apparition.

  “You want—” began Crockett, blankly; then as realization came, he blew up.

  Striding hastily from behind his desk, he laid ungentle hands on the idiotically grinning aborigine.

  “I’ll give you ‘reenk wheesky,’ dang your heart!” he howled wrathfully. “Who the — are you, buttin’ in here lookin’ for a ‘reenk wheesky’? Answer me, you—”

  And the literal reply nearly knocked him flat with astonishment, for the other said in faultless English—

  “I am the Man-who-hunts-booze!”

  “For the love o’—!” whispered Crockett feebly. “The man whom Shane told me to be on the watch for! That’s the password all right! Well, what have you to report?”

  “We can get the men who are at the head of the booze-running into the reservation, tonight, if we are lucky!” the ugly one assured him tersely.

  “Fine, if true!” drawled the official, pessimistically.

  He had reason to be skeptical—not that he doubted the veracity of the informant—Shane had vouched thoroughly for him, but because he knew from past and bitter experience that the old proverb about the “cup and the lip” usually reversed itself in his business.

  The cup and the lip connected frequently and satisfactorily, and the slips wore conspicuous by their rarity!

  “H-m-m-m!” he mused. “How many of them, and how many of us? Also, where? And—”

  “If you will take one other man, a fast car and myself, and start at once—”

  “Fine again!” exclaimed Crockett. “You’re talking business, feller! Keep it up!”

  “One moment,” the other interrupted blandly; “I have not finished! Please telephone Inspector Shane at the address he left with you, and ask him to come at once. He will understand where to meet us. Also, will you kindly provide me with a double-barreled shot-gun and a few buck-shot cartridges?”

  “Buckshot?” repeated Crockett. “Good Lord, man! Do you want to blow somebody into hash? What’s the matter with a rifle or a six-gun?”

  “Not for the ’runners,” assured the Indian
languidly. “Only for their tires.” Crockett grinned.

  “I’m not used to taking orders from any one, let alone an Indian,” he chuckled; “but I like your style! You win your shot-gun, hombre.”

  Crockett himself was a Westerner, and once the Indian had stated that there would be only two men to cope with, he felt certain that himself, one deputy, and the Indian would be plenty. He would have thought shame to his manhood to take an “army.” An hour later they were within a mile of the line.

  Then the Indian spoke for the first time since they set out.

  “Straight to the foot of that butte,” he ordered.

  Arrived, he alighted with a brief—“Come ahead!”

  “And leave the car here?” demanded Crockett.

  “Sure,” was the reply. “The stuff was brought across the line and cached around the corner. They will come from the northwestern angle. From there the car will be unseen. Don’t worry,” he added; “they’ll never get away! You will understand in a moment.”

  Around on the north face the butte was split from top to bottom by a wide crack.

  The guide piloted Crockett and his deputy, Matt Barker, into the crevasse for some seventy feet.

  Just after turning an “elbow” he stopped and slapped the wall with his hand.

  “Here’s the cache!” he declared.

  Crockett’s powerful electric torch revealed nothing but great slabs of rock, standing on end against the main wall.

  The Pima grunted—

  “Behind the slab!”

  And Crockett, after one look, grinned happily.

  At least, that’s how he felt, although his expression more nearly resembled that silent lift of the upper lip which the great lobo wolf gives when his quarry is sighted.

  “Good boy!” he gloated, then added, “Now what?”

  The Pima made an about-face.

  “Back around the bend,” he directed.

  Here the light revealed a number of sizeable boulders.

  Crockett and Barker promptly took cover, and then the Indian, cuddling his shot-gun like a baby, slipped away into the darkness, to take up a position outside and some yards away from the entrance to the crack in the butte.

  An hour and a half passed.

  Two hours.

  Then—

  “Well, we’re here!” in a harsh voice, and a car stopped fairly in front, of the crevasse.

  Two men alighted.

  Evidently, they were familiar with every inch of their ground.

  Leisurely and with certitude they passed into the rift and returned heavily laden.

  Another trip—and as they came out and deposited their loads in their car—

  “Put ’em up, high!”

  Few words and short, but they mean a lot.

  Neither of the ’runners was a quitter. That swiftly became manifest.

  With surprising unanimity they whirled—their hands came up—but each held a blazing, spitting automatic!

  The audacity of it was well-nigh unbelievable! It was a direct violation of the rules promulgated by “Mr. Hoyle,” of revered memory.

  Covered from behind—in the very teeth of “the drop”—only men too desperate to care to live if discovered would have taken the chance.

  Chance? There wasn’t any!

  So, likewise, the gaunt, gray, giant lobo wolf, when the steel jaws of the trap close on the foreleg, takes a “chance.”

  And sometimes, but rarely, the miracle happens.

  It looked that way this time.

  Matt Barker gave a queer yelp, and his body crumpled up and slumped into a shapeless, dark heap. Crockett felt a terrific shock high on the left shoulder, and the gun in his left hand ceased spitting and thudded to the rocky ground.

  One of the dark figures standing beside the car coughed and collapsed. No call to worry about him—when a man goes down in that fashion he simply doesn’t get up, unless some one picks him up.

  For a moment, so badly jarred was Crockett, that he ceased shooting.

  And the surviving booze-runner bounded into the car and pulled her wide open.

  For ten yards she leaped ahead.

  Came then the smashing blasts of the heavy nitro loads from a double-barreled ten-gage—two flashes of flame rent the starlit dark like the winking blaze of sheet-lightning—a slithering smash as the powerful car, both front tires and most of the rims shattered, swerved and hinged into the face of the butte!

  A dark figure hurled itself clear of the wreck and hit the ground, running.

  Another dark figure appeared, yelled—a hideous, blood-curdling screech like that of a demon unleashed—and tore off into the velvety blackness in swift pursuit of the fleeing one.

  Another yell, triumphant, exulting, came to Crockett’s ears.

  Hurrying, despite the agony of his left shoulder, in the direction whence came the shout, he saw a confused mass thrashing and rolling on the earth.

  Crockett was a scrapper himself—he liked it—but this time he had no idea of mixing in.

  Good reason, too, outside the fact of a crippled left wing. He couldn’t tell which was boot-legger and which was Indian!

  Little by little the fracas quieted down.

  One figure lay still, and the other, kneeling astride, joyously and firmly continued choking his victim.

  Crockett lighted a match—he had lost his electric torch long before.

  “All right, Indian,” he laughed shakily, “lay off that jasper or you’ll croak him and I want him alive! Let’s tot up the casualties.”

  Barker was not dead, but he was sitting within the shadows of the grim gate. Just how badly he was shot up remained for closer examination to reveal.

  Crockett, aside from his shattered shoulder, was all right, and the Indian was unwounded—although Crockett fairly howled in hysteric mirth at the spectacle the Pima presented.

  “My gosh!” he gasped. “You look like—no, you don’t! Nothing like you was ever seen before!”

  The Indian’s face split with a painful grin, winch added to his weird aspect, then sobered swiftly.

  “We’d better get our car loaded with the relics of the battle and pull out!” he asserted. “Barker needs help bad! And he’s got to have it sudden! I know an old squaw—she’s good at Indian surgery—we better go to her place first, then to the agency. Inspector Shane will be waiting there for us.”

  Somehow they got things shipshape and started, with poor Barker, the dead bootlegger, and the living prisoner, the last-named shackled securely, wrists and ankles, loaded into the tonneau.

  Inez emerged from her hut at their hail, her eyes as bright as though she had not been sleeping a minute before.

  Very few words sufficed.

  Crockett was amazed at the quiet, efficient manner with which she went over Barker and himself.

  “By—!” he told her, admiringly. “I believe poor old Matt’ll make a live of it now! You’d better come with us to the agency.”

  When they reached their destination they found the house all lighted up. Shane hurried out.

  “Who’s that?” he challenged sharply.

  “Crockett, Barker, a dead man and a prisoner—likewise, two Indians,” replied the Pima, slipping from behind the wheel.

  “— !” said Shane.

  Out of chaos—order.

  Shane was speaking in a voice low but furious.

  “Kyle, you infernal scoundrel! I knew you were inefficient, I was sure you were crooked, and I knew you were a petty tyrant—but I did not dream that even you would so foully betray the trust reposed in you by a too confiding Government.

  “Even Brunson, your dead partner, was not so utterly contemptible as you. He was a trader, but you—selling that filthy slop to the Indians whom you were placed here to protect—”

  Shane choked, then resumed in that same deadly, menacing tone:

  “Kyle, it isn’t in you to comprehend just how low you are in the scale of evolution. Take him out of my sight!”

 
And as harsh hands were laid upon the man who had proven false to his trust, old Inez stepped in front of him, holding out her right hand, palm up.

  “Hol’ on!” she commanded. “’Fore you go, you pay me feefty dolla’! Come ’cross!”

  Kyle stored at her out of smoldering eyes.

  “Whaddo I owe you fifty dollars for, you old she-wolf?” he mumbled sullenly.

  “You say one time—” she jeered—“if George Two-Deers come back on reservation, you pay me feefty dolla’ for tell you—”

  Whirling about, she pointed to the Indian buck who stood half-naked, his face battered and bruised, one eye shut, his clothing nearly dropping off, and his upper lip so swollen that it made a flush surface with the tip of his nose.

  “Me tell now!” she screeched. “Him’s him! You pay me feefty dolla’ ’fore you go jail!”

  George tried to grin at Kyle, but the result was so hideous that even Inez shuddered.

  * * * *

  Two weeks later, Inspector Shane and the newly appointed agent drew up before the jacal of Inez. They had come to confirm George’s allotment.

  Shane nodded to himself as who should say—

  “I knew it!”

  Seated on the ground, face to face, were a very aged Pima lady, and a very young one, holding continuous session of “Mutual Admiration Society, Local No. One!”

  There is an ancient Pima proverb which says—

  “Provoke the rattlesnake, and escape unscathed, but incur not the wrath of the aged!”