by Matt Rand
On came the horseman. Hatfield on his hilltop, hidden by dense growths of mesquite, watched and waited. Above him a huge condor-vulture sailed and wheeled. Rance noted it absently, his mind intent on the horseman.
“Yeah, that’s his big black stallion, El Rey,” he told the sorrel a little later. “I’d know that cayuse in a million—he’s the—”
Movement birthed in the mesquite back of the Ranger. With a silken swish something coiled snakily from the shadows. A tight loop snugged over his wide shoulders like a noose of golden light. There was a fast little “Zip!” and Hatfield left the saddle as if he had taken unto himself wings. He hit the ground with terrific force and for a moment lay stunned. Around and around him wound the rope, until he was utterly helpless, trussed up like a pig for market.
“What the hell?” he stuttered dazedly to the dark face bending over him.
The face smiled thinly and vanished. For long minutes Hatfield lay silent and motionless, his body slowly numbing as the rope cut into his flesh. His senses were coming back and his brain was alert.
Like distant castanets, the click of hoofs drifted through the hot, still air. Rance strained his ears to listen.
“Jest one hoss,” he muttered; “that’ll be Cavorca, sho as hell! Damn that sidewinder, anyhow! He’s slippery’r than a greased snake on ice; and he allus seems to get all the breaks. S’pose it was one of his sneaky men what hawgtied me.”
The clicking hoofs ragged off to a shamble, ceased. Rance heard Spanish remarks tossed to and fro. He craned his head sideways as footsteps approached.
“Buenos dias, señor,” purred a voice musical as sunlight dropping down a waterfall.
Rance looked up at the man standing over him and was reminded of something he had once heard a traveling preacher read from the Bible:
“…in all Israel there was none to be so much praised for his beauty: from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”
“Jest the same, spite of all his good looks,” muttered the ex-cowboy, “Absolom had his own brother murdered and worried his pore old Dad gray-headed with his hell raisin’! And he didn’t have a damn thing on this horned toad!” Manuel Cavorca smiled a slow, thin smile, revealing teeth that flashed white and even in the sunlight.
“You speak with yourself, señor?” he lisped. “Droll! And most strange you think! You think, ha! To trap Manuel Cavorca, eh? Set your traps on the mountain crests, Señor Ranger! Place your snares in the arms of the morning mists! Weave you a net of the twilight winds and bait it with sunbeams! Ha! Then you will catch Manuel Cavorca, perhaps!” Silently the lean, bronzed American stared into the eyes of the bandit. Manuel Cavorca, tall, lithe, with hair like the sun-gold and eyes as blue as the summer sides, stared back. Stared back until those chill gray eyes seemed to burn holes into his brain. Despite his efforts his gaze wavered. Murderous rage wiped all the marvelous beauty from his face and left it hideous. His perfectly molded lips writhed back from his perfect teeth in a coyote-grimace. The china-whites of his eyes reddened with passion. His musical voice harshed to a vulture-Croak.
“Take him!” he rasped to the dark, silent men who stood at the edge of the mesquite.
Quickly the dark men closed in. They unwound the lariat, jerked Rance to his feet and bound his hands behind him.
“To the top of the cliff,” ordered Cavorca.
With cocked rifles prodding him, Rance stumbled through the mesquite and up a winding trail. On the lip of a dizzy height he was told to stop. He stood quietly gazing down at the black fangs of rock two hundred feet below.
A loop was flung about his shoulders and drawn snug. Cavorca gave him a shove and an instant later he was dangling over the cliff edge with two hundred feet of nothing at all beneath him. The men on the cliff quickly paid out the rope. They fastened the end securely to a jutting knob of stone. Manuel Cavorca leaned over and stared at the man swinging helpless against the cliff.
“Adios, Señor Ranger,” he called. “We shall not meet again. Soon our friends the vultures will pluck out your eyes, so that you will not be able to see them feeding upon your body; but doubtless you will feel them. Adios!”
A peal of silvery, mocking laughter echoed against the canyon walls. Hoofs clicked away into the distance.
“I’d oughta knowed somethin’ was hid in the mesquite—the way that vulture acted,” Rance growled. “Wonder if the damn things will tackle a man while he’s still alive?”
Soon the great condor-vultures came swooping down to investigate more closely the thing that hung nearly motionless against the cliff. Rance wriggled his body convulsively and shouted. The huge birds sheered off, only to return; Rance could feel the wind from their mighty wings.
Again and again he shouted, until his throat was raw and his voice cracking. The rope loop was cutting into his flesh like an eating flame. His body was growing numb. His brain was swimming.
“If I pass out the damn things’ll tackle me,” he kept telling himself. “They’re afraid so long as I keep makin’ a racket, but they know I’m helpless like a steer with a broken leg. They’re jest waitin’!”
The sun was crawling down the western sky, a ball of flaming brass whose fierce rays drank the moisture from the Ranger’s body and set up a terrific thirst. His mouth was like crackled leather, his blackening tongue was pressing against his teeth, his lips were parched and bleeding. Fiery ropes of pain coiled about his body and lashed his brain. He began to mutter incoherently. Waves of color stormed and pulsed before his eyes. The whistling wings of the vultures no longer had power to rouse him.
A great snapping beak, scant inches from his face, brought him back to full consciousness with a jerk. He shouted hoarsely. The vulture swerved sharply away.
It seemed to Rance that the echo was more than usually loud and clear.
“Sounds almost like somebody else hollerin’,” he panted. “It—holy Peter! It is somebody!”
A voice was ringing up to him from below the cliff—a clear, musical voice.
“Hold on a little longer,” it said, “I’m coming up to you.”
Minutes passed, minutes that seemed hours to the almost delirious Ranger. The voice sounded again, above him this time—
“Isn’t there any way you can get your hands loose?”
“No,” Rance called back, his voice a rasping croak, “they’re tied behind me—tight.”
Craning his neck sideways, he stared up the cliff. Leaning over the edge, he could make out the face of a girl framed in a cluster of short dark curls that the strong up-draft from the canyon whipped back from her white forehead and her creamily tanned cheeks. He could see that her eyes were big and dark.
“I’m coming down,” she called.
The face vanished. Two trim little feet in high-heeled boots thrust over the edge. In another instant she was scrambling down the rope.
“Hey!” shouted Rance in frenzied protest, “this rope won’t hold us both! You’ll get yourself killed! Go back!”
She gave no heed to his frantic words. Down she came, her trim little form scraping and bruising against the cliff face. She reached the Ranger, kicked her feet skillfully aside and slid down until she was gripping the rope just above the loop that was drawn tight below his shoulders. Between her white little teeth she held an open knife.
With the greatest care, she braced her feet upon the Ranger’s, let go the rope with one hand and gripped the knife with the other.
“I’m going to cut your hands loose,” she told him.
Setting the knife edge against the tough rawhide thong she sawed away. Barely able to reach his bound wrists, she could put but little pressure on the knife and progress was torturingly slow. Rance could hear her breath coming in choking gasps, could feel her slight body jerk and quiver with strain.
“I’m getting it,” she panted. “Just another cut or two and I’ll have it.”
A great shadow hovered over the pair for an instant, weaved aside and returned,
closer.
“Them damn buzzards are back!” Rance panted.
He shouted as loudly as he could. The shadow tumbled away with a hoarse croak of disappointment. The girl’s hand moved in faltering jerks.
Rance swelled his muscles and strained with all his strength against the thongs. He could feel the blood trickling from where they were cutting into his flesh like red-hot wires. He set his teeth and put forth a final mighty effort.
He felt the rawhide stretch. His hands flew apart. The girl’s feet slipped from his and for a terrible instant she swung dizzily by one hand. Rance gripped her with almost numb fingers and held her until she had secured a better hold.
The Ranger’s hands were free, but his arms, from shoulder to elbow, were still penned to his sides.
“I’ll have to cut the loop,” the girl said. “Can you reach up far enough to grasp the rope?”
Feeling was flowing back into his fingers and he managed to hook them around the strand of rawhide that pressed so tightly against his chest.
“Go ahaid,” he told her, “but be shore you cut in the right place. If you cut above the slip-knot, I’ll be jest like a feller tryin’ to hold hisself up by his boot-straps.”
Swiftly the keen blade ate through the rope. Rance felt the pressure against his arms loosen. An instant later he plunged sickeningly downward.
He brought up with a terrific jerk, clutching and clawing, the rope slipping through his fingers. The fuzzy cut end was in his hand before he checked his horrible slide toward death: Just above his head dangled the girl.
“Climb on up,” Rance told her, “I’ll be right behind you.”
A gasping little cry answered him: “I can’t! My arms aren’t strong enough! All I can do is hold on!”
Rance Hatfield’s mouth set grimly, but his eyes gleamed with admiration.
“Never stopped to think about that when she started down,” he applauded. “That’s nerve for you, feller!”
“Keep right on hangin’ on,” he called cheerily, “I’ll get us both up quicker’n a steer can switch its tail in fly time. Soon as I climb up to you, let go the rope and wrap yore arms round my neck.”
“You can’t climb with me hanging onto you,” protested the girl.
“Don’t arg’fy with me!” barked Rance. “Do as yore told!”
The girl obeyed, winding her slim arms about Iris neck, letting her body hang down over his shoulders.
“Jest keep real still, now,” Rance warned her.
Slowly, painfully, he began to climb the rope. It was less than twenty feet to the lip of the cliff, but to Rance it seemed twenty miles. The girl’s weight, small at first, grew to a terrific burden. The fierce heat of the sun rays beating back from the cliff face sapped his already draining strength. His fingers seemed numb rods of soft lead. His arms were a vast fiery ache. To slide one hand above the other became a task that called for every atom of willpower he possessed.
Inch by crawling inch. Then his gripping hand would slide back and it seemed to him that he had lost all the distance gained. The croaks of the wheeling vultures became hoarse shouts of triumph. Rance gritted his teeth.
“Not yet, you sky-runnin’ coyotes!” he rasped. “I’ll fool you this time!”
The score of feet had shrunk to less than half of that. Rance’s eyes gleamed with hope; then the gleam turned to a wild glare of apprehension.
The cliff edge where the rope swung over was sharp and jagged. The knife-like stone was fraying the line as it jerked back and forth to the Ranger’s progress. His horrified eyes saw the little strands part and curl up like the lips of an angry dog. Another and another, until it seemed only a mere thread supported the heavy burden; and that last thread was swiftly fraying away.
With the strength of despair, Rance surged upward. He flung a madly questing hand over the cliff edge as the rope parted, his fingers closed about a knob of stone and clung desperately.
“Save yoreself, quick!” he gulped to the girl.
Agile as a cat, she clutched the cliff edge and hurled herself sideways and up. Rolling over onto her face she gripped the Ranger’s wrist and held on grimly. Rance got the fingers of his other hand around the knob of stone and drew himself over the edge.
Panting, exhausted, almost unconscious, he lay, sweat pouring from him, trembling in every limb.
“I’ll get water!” exclaimed the girl, whipping up the hat she had dropped when she started down the rope.
She came back with it slopping over the crown in a silvery trickle. Rance drank it to the last drop, renewed strength flowing through his veins with every swallow. He got to his feet unsteadily, working his still numb fingers.
“Ma’am,” he said, “if somebody’d told me last week that angels went ’round dressed in boots and wool shirts and ridin’ pants, I’da called him a liar. Plight now I’d shake hands with him and agree he was plumb observin’.”
The girl dimpled up at him, her white little teeth flashing in a merry smile.
“Well, a set of wings would certainly have come in handy a little while ago,” she laughed. “How did you ever come to be hanging around here that way? A bet or something?”
Rance grinned a trifle ruefully. “Uh-huh, and I lost. A little friend of mine named Manuel Cavorca said I’d stretch a rope ’fore he ever did. Guess he had the right of it, but his time’s comin’!”
The smile had left the girl’s face and she was gazing at the Ranger with troubled eyes.
“You’re not one of Cavorca’s men, are you?” she asked.
“Nope,” Rance assured her, “I sho’ ain’t.”
“But w-why did he do this thing?”
“Well, you see, Ma’am,” Rance hesitated, “I was—was I lookin’ for Cavorca. He—he sorta found me ’stead of me findin’ him.”
“But why were you looking for him?”
Again Rance hesitated. He was not given to discussing official business with strangers, not even strangers as attractive as this one. But, after all, he reasoned, the girl had saved his life. And what harm could come from answering her question?
“Cavorca is a bandit, wanted by the law, and I am Rance Hatfield, an Arizona Ranger detailed to run him down,” he said simply.
He stared in astonishment at the effect his statement had.
The color drained from the girl’s rose-red lips, leaving them grey and drawn. The light went out in her eyes, then suddenly blazed forth like a lightning flash. One trim little hand, hovered over the gun slung at her hip and for an instant Rance thought she was going to draw on him. The hand dropped, she turned and very deliberately walked to the cliff edge and gazed down at the jagged rocks ten-score feet below. Then she turned back to face the Ranger again and spoke, her voice flat and toneless:
“Well, anyhow, I kept the vultures from getting poisoned!”
She began to laugh, wildly, almost hysterically!
“And I risked my life to save Rance Hatfield, the Rangers’ ace killer, their prize gunman! Rance Hatfield!”
Suddenly her slender right hand flashed out. A quirt slashed Rance across the face—a stinging, welt-raising blow.
Before Rance could say a word she fled, blindly, stumbling, down the steep slope toward the mesquite flat. A moment later he heard the click of hoofs dying away in the distance!
CHAPTER 2
Still badly shaken by his terrifying experience, Rance stumbled back to the trail. He eyed the winding white ribbon with distaste. Cowboy-like, he hated to walk; nor were his tight, high-heeled boots suited for batting it through sand and over rocks.
But walk he must. To the south, just beyond a range of low lulls, was the barbed-wire fence that marked the Arizona-Mexico border. To the north were more hills, and the Blanton ranch. Cavorca was headed for the Blanton ranch. A few muttered words overheard while the bandits were binding him had told Hatfield that. He braced his belt and headed north.
The Blanton ranch was a big spread whose southern edge in places lapped the border. Old man Blant
on, it was said, kept money in the ranch-house, a great deal of it. He also kept a number of straight-shooting punchers in his employ.
“And,” growled Rance Hatfield, stumping an aching toe against the hard side of a rock, “if Blanton hadn’t sent most all his men nawth with that big trail herd day-‘fore-yest’day, Cavorca wouldn’t never take a chance at raidin’ the Bar-B. That hellion knows ev’thing what goes on this side the line ’fore it even happens, damn him!”
The sun sank in riotous red and burnished gold. The lovely blue dusk draped the hills in royal robes and marched away cross the sky. The figure of the man trudging along the trail seemed to grow smaller and more lonely. The black hand of night closed upon him and he vanished.
Beyond the hills to the north a red glow beat against the sky. Rance Hatfield saw it and quickened his pace. It grew in intensity, flared up fiercely, sank and then flared again.
“The hellions has set fire to the straw stacks and the stables,” growled the Ranger. “Next’ll be the ranch-house.”
A faint crackling, as of the distant flames, came to his ears. “Blanton and whoever’s with him in the house is puttin’ up a good scrap,” he panted. “Jest listen to them guns go!”
As he topped a final hill, the gunfire roared up to him. The ranch-house stood out starkly in the light of the burning stables, its roof a-smoke in a dozen places.
Flames flashed and spurted in the grove surrounding the building. Other sparky jets answered from the shadowy walls. Rance Hatfield, quivering with excitement, watched the battle from his hilltop.
“Blanton ain’t got more’n two, three men in theah with him,” the Ranger quickly estimated. “Cavorca’s got a dozen, mebbe more. Soon as that roof gets to blazin’ good, the fellers in the house’ll hafta come out. Cavorca’ll mow ’em down like jack-rabbits. I’m gonna try and get closer.”
Cautiously he slipped down the hill. Unarmed, he could afford to take few chances. He reached the edge of the grove and paused, listening intently. Horses were snorting only a few yards distant. On hands and knees, Rance crept toward them, saw them dimly outlined against the light.