The Second Western Megapack

by Various Writers

  “He’s right,” put in Vince, in a resigned voice. “They ain’t no use puttin’ off the signin’ o’ that paper. Might as well do it an’ git it done with.”

  Penny’s jaw was firm. “I won’t do anything until I talk to Uncle Bryant.”

  Sawtell nodded slowly. “All right then, we’ll have to bring Jeb down here.” He called curt orders up the stairs, and in a moment Jeb, struggling between Lonergan and Lombard, was practically carried down the stairs. His eyes were wide and staring, and his lean face white with terror.

  “Do what they want,” he cried to the girl. “No matter what it is, you sign it like what I done. If yuh don’t they’ll brand me with a poker.”

  “Take him to the fireplace,” ordered Sawtell, “put some ropes around him, then come back for Vince. This girl will do what Bryant says, or she’ll see slow murder, with a lot of pain.”

  “No, no,” cried Vince, “not me!”

  As if by magic a gun appeared in Sawtell’s hand.

  “You,” he said, “as well as Jeb.”

  Penny watched the wide-eyed Jeb and the cringing, wincing Vince being dragged, howling, to the fireplace, where Lombard and Lonergan tossed ropes about them. The two were jerked off their feet and stretched on the floor, and more ropes looped about their ankles made them helpless. Sawtell, gun still in hand, watched the procedure, unmoved and expressionless. Lonergan’s black eyes reflected the leaping flames when he faced Sawtell. His black mustache, so carefully brushed and tapered, seemed to twitch with his eagerness to make the next move.

  Sawtell nodded, and the former gambler grabbed the poker in lean fingers and shoved it deep among the red-hot coals. Stark terror from their souls showed in the eyes of the captured men. Vince drooled supplications for mercy, begging Penny to sign Bryant’s agreement and save him from the torture of the heated iron. Jeb wailed conglomerate quotations, misquoted, from the Scriptures.

  Sawtell approached Penelope. “You have a few minutes to think it over,” he said, “while the iron gets red-hot. Have you ever heard a man scream with the pain of being branded”—he paused, lowered his voice, and added “—in the eyes?”

  CHAPTER XVI

  One-Eye Sees Death

  The Lone Ranger stood close to his horse at the edge of the Basin where thick foliage marked the beginning of the rise of Thunder Mountain. He strained his eyes and ears to detect what he could in the Basin. Motionless and tense, the masked man waited like a hunter that tried to catch a scent from a wind that held its breath. He heard the usual night sounds of cattle, katydids, and frogs. There was an occasional call from a creature of the forest that rose behind him. Nothing more.

  On the downward path, the masked man had met no one. He had dismounted on several occasions to examine the trail by matchlight, and near the bottom, where it was overgrown with weeds, he had lighted a candle to inspect it further. He found that many head of cattle had traveled where the path was smooth, but the beef had been fanned out in many directions near the bottom of the mountain and driven into the Basin at several points. He decided that this had been done so that a path would not be seen from the Basin itself.

  The Lone Ranger guided Silver back among the trees where the white coat wouldn’t be so obvious if someone rode near. He whispered softly, then left the horse untethered.

  He paused to make sure that his mask was snugly in place. It had become so much a part of him that he couldn’t be sure of its presence unless he felt it with his hand. When Tonto had, at first, suggested wearing the mask all the time, he had thought it a bit dramatic, perhaps even silly, but consideration made him realize that he already was hampered by the determination not to shoot to kill, by great odds, and by the weakness of his wounds and recent fever. He might have to fight, to rope and shoot, and the mask must be no handicap. He checked his guns, making sure that they were fully loaded by replacing the shell that had been used to disarm Rangoon. Then he was ready.

  An experienced black cat stalking a nervous bird could be no more quiet than was the Lone Ranger as he moved across the Basin. His clothing had no flapping superfluities; he wore no jingling spurs; his guns were tied down so that the holsters could not slap his legs. Boots oiled to preclude the slightest possibility of any squeaking leather, he moved swiftly and surely toward the buildings of the ranch. He saw the house and, not far from it, the row of lighted squares that marked the bunkhouse.

  Halfway to the buildings, the Lone Ranger froze. He wondered if his eyes were playing tricks, or if he actually had seen someone, or something, move at one end of the bunkhouse. Now he saw a moving figure in the beam of light that slanted from a rear window. In an instant, whatever he saw was obscured by the darkness. He glanced over his shoulder. Silver was well out of sight. His own dark clothing would be barely visible unless someone were quite close to him.

  Then he heard the sound of hoofs. A horse and rider appeared as a vague shadow against the lighted bunkhouse windows. The masked man dropped flat on his stomach, hugging the ground as closely as possible. The rider was coming straight toward him.

  He drew a pistol, holding it in readiness if he should be seen. He knew that his hat was light, and might attract attention, but he dared not move it. He felt the ground tremble with the beat of hoofs. He heard the crack of a quirt, cruelly applied, and a man’s husky voice. Now the rider was almost upon him, without slackening his speed. The racing horse looked tremendous as it passed within twenty feet of the Lone Ranger. It was impossible to tell who was in the saddle. All details were shrouded by the darkness, but whoever that horseman was, he was in a hurry. He swept across the Basin toward the foot of Thunder Mountain, and the last the masked man saw was the barely perceptible shadow breaking through the underbrush that hid the uphill trail.

  The Lone Ranger presently rose to his feet, waited several seconds, and then moved ahead again. This time his destination was the bunkhouse. He could call on Bryant and Penelope later. First, he would investigate to learn, if possible, the reason for the unknown rider’s sudden departure.

  There was no sound from within the bunkhouse. The masked man advanced toward the side of the long and rather narrow one-story building. The rear, from which the unknown rider had started, was on his right, the front of the building on his left. He could see that a door which opened out was wide, but from his point of view the Lone Ranger couldn’t see the inside of the place.

  He could hear something going on inside the ranch house, a couple of hundred feet away, but couldn’t distinguish the sounds clearly enough to know what they might mean. “Go there,” he muttered, “later on.”

  With increasing caution, he approached the objective until his back was pressed close to the slab side of the bunkhouse at the corner between the lighted windows and the open door. Still there was no sound inside. His gun in readiness, he rounded the corner and looked in the door. He saw a well-lighted room. Double-deck bunks lined each of the side walls, divided by a narrow aisle. In the front part of the room there was one large table, and several chairs. At least twenty men slept here, but now there was no one in sight.

  The table had held a poker game which seemed to have been interrupted suddenly. Freshly dealt cards lay face down on the table as they had fallen, before the chairs of the players. The room was littered with battered pictures, extra boots, blanket rolls, and other paraphernalia that would naturally be accumulated by those who slept there. The Lone Ranger stepped inside and drew the door shut behind him.

  At the poker table he paused and examined a few of the cards. Riffling through them he came across two aces. He held these cards close to a coal-oil lamp and studied their backs. In one corner, he found a barely discernible indentation that might have been made by a fingernail. He nodded slowly.

  “Looks like it might be Slick Lonergan,” he mused. Slick hadn’t been seen in any of his familiar haunts since the time he had disappeared before a trial in which he was to be questioned about a murder. The Lone Ranger knew Lonergan’s entire background; a crook
ed gambler, a crafty lawyer, and a shrewd schemer, who should have been jailed long ago, but who had repeatedly found loopholes that served as ratholes for him to slip through and remain free.

  Leaving the table, the Lone Ranger began a quick but systematic search of the building. He moved down the aisle, studying the possessions near each bunk. He found a handbill that had Rangoon’s picture on it, but the name at the time of its printing was Abe Larkin. Larkin apparently hadn’t taken any pains to hide the fact that he was wanted by the law.

  Once he thought he heard a faint, low moan from somewhere close at hand. He stood attentive, but the sound was not repeated. He continued in his search, oppressed by a somewhat guilty feeling as a prowler and an unexplainable sensation that there was someone else in the bunkhouse with him.

  He studied two more bunks and then heard the moan again. This time it was unmistakable. The Lone Ranger hurried to the far end of the bunkhouse, and there, in the lower bunk on his right, he found a man unconscious. The window over the head of the still form was open. It was outside this window that the unknown rider had been first seen.

  The unconscious man—the Lone Ranger could see in the dim light that he was old—was shadowed by the shelf-like bunk of the second tier. The Lone Ranger unhooked a lamp that swung from the ceiling and placed it so that the light fell across the bald head, which lay in a widening pool of red. He jerked his bandanna from a pocket and soused it in a near-by water pitcher; then he bathed the old fellow’s face. A tremulous soft sob broke through the white mustache. The eyes of the wounded man fluttered slightly, then stared up. There was an empty socket where the left eye should have been, but the other eye was bright with pain.

  “Take it easy,” the Lone Ranger whispered. “I’m going to have a look at that wound and see what we can do for you. Don’t try to speak just yet—wait a little.”

  He turned the old man gently to his side and saw the handle of a knife protruding from high up on one shoulder. The blade was out of sight. He didn’t touch the knife—there was no use. The wound was fatal; Gimlet at best had only a few minutes.

  He applied more water to the old man’s face and forehead. “Tell me, if you can, who did this?” he said.

  Gimlet’s lips moved feebly, but no words came.

  “Do you know who stabbed you?” asked the Lone Ranger. “One word, just the name of the man, can you tell me that?”

  Gimlet lifted one hand very feebly, and pointed toward the open window.

  The Lone Ranger nodded. “I know, he stabbed you through that window. Tell me who it was.”

  The dying man seemed to be gathering himself for one supreme effort. He swallowed hard; his eyelids closed, then opened.

  “Tried,” he said, then coughed and started again. “I—I tried tuh—get Yuma—His bunk here—” More coughing choked the words. Blood drooled from the side of the old man’s mouth and stained his white mustache. The Lone Ranger pressed water from his handkerchief against Gimlet’s lips.

  “I heard you,” he said softly, “I heard what you said. You tried to get Yuma. Yuma is a man who works here?”

  Gimlet nodded.

  “You said this was his bunk?”

  Again the slowly moving head went down and up.

  “Tell me some more. What about Yuma?”

  “Felt o’ his bunk…lookin’ tuh see.…” Gimlet had to pause for a fit of coughing so violent that it hardly seemed his fast-ebbing strength could stand it. When he finished, his breath came in short and painful gasps. “The…the house,” he managed to say. He struggled hard, fighting the Grim Specter every step of its advancing way. There was more he wanted desperately to tell. The old man was upon that borderline between the living and the dead. From his position, he seemed to see things in their true light. He looked beyond the mask and saw a man he knew could be trusted. His gnarled, blue-veined hand clutched that of the Lone Ranger while he fought hard to make a last statement. The masked man leaned close to him, to catch the dying words if they were uttered. But whatever Gimlet was about to say went with him across the last threshold. His hand clutched convulsively and then relaxed. He coughed once, and brought a flood of his life’s blood to his mouth, and then lay back.

  The masked man felt and found no pulse. He closed the old man’s fingers and laid them across the bony chest.

  “Yuma,” he muttered. “This was Yuma’s bunk. I wonder who Yuma is and where I’ll find him?”

  His thoughts came to a lurching halt when a sharp voice snarled a curse with cataclysmic violence.

  “Yuh damned murderin’ skunk, I’ll kill yuh fer this!” It was Yuma who shouted from the doorway.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Penelope Signs Her Name

  Yuma swept the poker table aside and sent it clattering and crashing against the wall. The Lone Ranger had no chance to deny the accusation the man from Arizona hurled. Anything he said would have fallen on unhearing ears. Yuma ignored his guns and, lowering his head, charged like an infuriated bull, sweeping down the aisle between the bunks and gathering power and speed as he advanced.

  The masked man had no chance to dodge, no place to dodge to. He was trapped between the bunks on each side of the narrow space down which the cowboy rushed. His gun half-drawn, he dropped it back in leather. Nothing but a death slug would stop Yuma. He was blind to any threat of shooting.

  Then Yuma struck with the force of a battering ram. The Lone Ranger staggered back from the terrific impact of the heavy shoulder flush against his chest. Intense pain stabbed his own bandaged shoulder, and brilliant lights seemed to dance before his eyes. He barely saw the huge, balled fist that Yuma swung to follow up his charge. Almost without thought, the Lone Ranger turned his head quickly to roll it with the punch and take a glancing blow instead of one that might have smashed his jaw. He fell back several paces, fighting to stay on his feet until his reeling senses could function coherently.

  Yuma’s face was livid. He swung again, bringing his left up almost from the floor, but this time the masked man dodged the blow, then set himself for defense. He could barely move his left arm. He thought the wound must have been reopened by the awful onslaught. Yuma was reaching out with both hands, trying to wrap his heavy arms around the lithe Lone Ranger and crush him to the floor. The space was far too limited for such maneuvering, so the masked man let his knees collapse and dropped like a plummet while the adversary clutched at empty air. Then the Lone Ranger shot up from his crouch as if his legs were coiled steel springs. He brought his right fist up with the full whipcorded strength of his good arm, augmented by the muscles of the legs. His aim was perfect and his timing likewise. He felt his hard fist crash against the point of Yuma’s chin and saw the cowboy’s head snap back.

  Pain and fury made Yuma careless and too eager. While still off balance from the blow that hurt, he tried to swing a roundhouse left. The Lone Ranger stepped inside the arc of that tremendous swing and jabbed another right to Yuma’s nose, then chopped a hard blow to the unprotected jaw.

  Yuma, it appeared, could take terrific punishment. Those blows of the Lone Ranger were short, but they were hard. Strong men had often dropped before those jabs, but Yuma kept on fighting. His fists swung wildly while he kept up a continual string of cursing threats.

  The Lone Ranger’s strength was nearly gone. He admired the ability of Yuma to stand up beneath his rain of rights. He dared not use his left and tear that shoulder wound still further.

  “How long,” he wondered, “in the name of Mercy, how long can he keep this up?” He knew that any one of the wild blows, if it landed true, would knock him out. Then his campaign would end before it got well started.

  Again, and still again, he drove his right fist flush against the big man’s face. Blood streamed from Yuma’s nose, and a cut was opened over his right eye. He gave ground now, backing toward the door of the bunkhouse, while the Lone Ranger advanced.

  How long it might have gone on is hard to say, but Yuma backed against the upturned table, lost his
balance, and went over backward. His head smacked hard against the floor. For an instant Yuma tried to rise; though totally unconscious, his stout fighter’s heart fighting on. Then his eyes rolled up and he went limp.

  Breathing hard, almost gasping, the Lone Ranger crouched beside his fallen enemy. He found that Yuma, though bumped hard, was probably not seriously injured. He opened the door and sucked deep, satisfying drinks of the cool night air until his breathing was more nearly normal and his throbbing head stopped spinning. Then he turned once more to the unconscious man.

  “What a fighter,” he thought admiringly. “What a man!”

  But he must not linger here too long. There was still the all-important business at the ranch house.

  He saw a horse standing just outside the bunkhouse. There was a blanket roll strapped behind the saddle, and saddlebags that bulged. He glanced toward the ranch house, but saw no sign that anyone had heard the fight.

  “Even if this isn’t that man’s horse,” he decided, “it will have to do for the time being.”

  He dragged the heavy form of the unconscious man to the side of the horse and then, sparing his throbbing left arm as much as possible, hoisted Yuma across the saddle in a highly uncomfortable position. Yuma’s head, shoulders, and arms drooped on one side, as the cowboy’s belly rested on the saddle and his legs balanced him on the other side. The masked man used Yuma’s own rope to tie him securely in place. The man was going to prove something of a problem, but the Lone Ranger wanted to keep him to question him at length when he recovered consciousness.

  Already the masked man had been widely side-tracked in his plan to call on Bryant and Penny for a conference, but one of the qualities that contributed to his later greatness was his ability to revise his plans continually to suit changing conditions, or to reject plans altogether and replace them by new ones.

  He wanted Silver near him now, but the stallion was far across the level stretch, concealed at the foot of the mountain.