by Matt Rand
“Jest one man left to watch ’em,” he breathed exultantly. “Now if I get somethin’ like a break—”
The watchman was intent on the battle going on at the edge of the grove. He heard nothing, saw nothing as death leaped at him from the shadows. Fingers like rods of nickel-steel closed about his throat. His head was twisted around. A tremendous blow crashed against his jaw and he went limp.
Rance eased the Mexican to the ground, slipping a tangle of reins from his stiffened fingers. There was’ some snorting from the horses, but the affair had been handled so quickly and with such little fuss that the bronks were not really alarmed. Rance’s soothing whispers quickly quieted them.
“Six,” the Ranger counted. “Another bunch around heah somewheah—t’other side the grove, chances are. Well, this’ll be enough for what I want.”
Up the hill he led the horses. With grim satisfaction he noted that one was Cavorca’s giant black, El Rey—The Lightning Flash. Not a bad trade for his sorrel!
Rance could feel the hard outlines of revolvers in one of El Rey’s saddlebags. Exultantly he drew forth his own belt and Colts. Cavorca had evidently intended them for his own future use.
“You’ll sho’ get the hot end of one if I can jest manage to draw a bead on you, you murderin’ sidewinder!” the Ranger growled as he mounted El Rey.
Guns continued to crack in the grove. The ranch-house roof was burning nicely now. The raiders whooped as the flames leaped up.
“Hi-yi-yi-yi-yi! Give ’em hell, boys! Give ’em hell!”
From somewhere up the hill back of the ranch-house came that wild yell. The crackle of six-shooters dinned through it. And a rousing drum of racing hoofs.
Back through the grove blundered the raiders. Shouts of consternation arose from those who found their horses missing. Their mounted comrades charged toward them and there was a wild tangle of rearing horses and cursing men as the two groups came together. The yelling and shooting still stormed down the hill.
In a mad panic, Cavorca’s bandits fled for the border. Rance Hatfield sent a final fusillade of shots after them. The horses he had driven down the hill in front of him milled about through the grove, snorting and pawing. Old man Blanton poured questions from the ranch-house door. His two sons were busy pouring water on the roof.
Many hours later, Rance Hatfield sat in Ranger headquarters and talked with Captain Morton. Morton, a slender, well-groomed little man with a pleasant face and cold gray eyes, regarded his crack Ranger with the suspicion of a twinkle.
“Well,” he said when Rance had finished his story, “it looks to me like you and Cavorca jest about broke even on this petickler deal. He got yore hoss and you got his. He busted up yore little scheme to grab him off and you busted up his to grab off old man Blanton’s money. What I’d like to know is wheah does that gal fit inter all this? You got any idea?”
Rance shook his head. “Nope,” he replied, touching with a tentative finger the still tender welt across his bronzed cheek, “she’s sho’ got me guessin’. She was all friendly like till I told her I was a Ranger. When I said it was Cavorca what tied me up for buzzard bait, I could see it bothered her a lot; but when I said ‘Ranger’! Mamma mine! Did she go on the prod! Funny!”
“Well, she saved you a trip across to the Big Spread, anyhow,” said Morton. “Touchin’ on Cavorca—we got another tip for you to work on. He’s yore meat and I’m passin’ the job to you. Now listen to this—”
Rance listened intently, and voiced an objection. “But why Crazy Hoss Gulch?” he questioned. “Why not Skull Canyon? Or wheah the Zacara trail runs through that spur of the Tonte Hills jest this side the line?”
Morton shook his head definitely. “I hadda talk with tha bigwigs,” he replied, “and it was ’greed that Crazy Hoss Gulch was the best place. The bullion train’ll hafta go through theah. Cavorca knows it and that’s wheah he’ll wait. The train might go through Skull Canyon, and then again it might take the nawth trail. Cavorca wouldn’t have no way of knowin’ if they decided to change their minds the last minute.”
Rance was not convinced. “That sidewinder knows ev’thin’,” he growled pessimistically, “and doin’ the thing nobody ’spects him to do is what he’s plumb strong on. But yore the boss. Crazy Hoss Gulch she is.”
CHAPTER 3
There are ghosts in Skull Canyon—if you believe in ghosts. Perhaps there are whether you believe in them or not. That eerie wail that floats between the gloomy walls may be the hunting call of a hungry cougar. And it may be the tortured cry of some poor devil’s spirit who met a bloody end there and left his bones to bleach white beneath the fierce Arizona sun.
For thrice a score of years there have been white bones in Skull Canyon. The relics of murderous encounters between outlaws and smugglers. Or of the raids of marauding Apaches who swept down upon lonely prospectors. Geronimo used to pass that way. Curly Bill and John Ringo rode through Skull Canyon at the head of their lawless band. Skull Canyon knew Old Man Clanton and Dick Gray and Billy Lang in their heyday of evil.
Like none of these was the lone horseman who lounged easily in his saddle in the cool shade of the towering rock walls. Lithe and graceful, with clear blue eyes, clean cut features and crisp golden hair, he looked, in his picturesque garb, like a singularly handsome cowboy young in years and young in experience. His magnificent golden sorrel pawed impatiently and arched a graceful neck.
The rider’s slim white hand tightened on the reins. The cruel Mexican bit jerked the horse’s head up viciously. He snorted, reared and then stood trembling. Manuel Cavorca hissed a Spanish oath.
From far down the canyon came the faint click of hoofs. Cavorca straightened tensely in the saddle. A red gleam shot through his eyes. He drew his big pearl-handled sixes from their holsters, glanced at them, twirled the cylinders and dropped them back.
The sorrel moved forward at a walk. Cavorca raised his hand in a swift, furtive gesture.
From the tangled chaparral along the canyon rim a hand gestured in reply. Cavorca rode slowly down the canyon.
Nearer came the click of hoofs. Suddenly loud as the leading mules of the bullion train swung around a bend in the trail.
A man riding slightly in advance of the first mule glimpsed the one horseman. He held up his hand and the train jingled to a halt. The man rode forward, rifle ready.
“Howdy?” called Manuel Cavorca.
“Howdy,” grunted the guard in reply, his eyes suspicious.
Cavorca rode on, open-faced, guileless. The guard relaxed a trifle.
“Wheah you headin’ for, feller?” he asked.
“Huntin’ strays,” Cavorca replied. “I b’long with the L-Bar-W, nawth of heah.” (The guard knew the L-Bar-W was a big outfit that employed a number of men.)
“You notice any ramblin’ beef critters the way you come?” asked Cavorca.
The guard had, he admitted. No, he hadn’t noticed the brands.
Other armed men had ridden up by now, favoring the horseman with keen scrutinies. Cavorca played the part of a harmless cowpoke well. Their suspicions were allayed.
“Get goin’ back theah,” one called to the mule train.
Hoofs clicked. Harness jingled. Cavorca rode along the line of animals each bearing a rawhide aparejo, or pack sack, in which was stored its load of bullion. Heavily armed outriders along the flanks of the train searched rocks and coverts with keen eyes. They were taking no chances. Cavorca had a word of greeting for each, although often his answer was little more than a grunt. The last two nodded pleasantly.
Cavorca rode on a few paces, whirled the sorrel and jerked his guns. Shooting with both hands, he poured bullets into the backs of the men who had greeted him. They tumbled from their saddles and lay still. Cavorca fired at the men next in line.
Like echoes to his guns, rifles roared along the rim of the canyon. Flame spouted from the chaparral. A storm of lead swept the outriders from their saddles. The men riding ahead whirled their horses, and were shot dow
n before they could raise their rifles. Skull Canyon was a shambles.
Back along the train raced Cavorca. He shot three wounded men, leaned from the saddle and clubbed another to death with his pistol barrel. His dark-faced bandits swarmed into the canyon. Working swiftly and expertly, they turned the bullion train and headed it back the way it had come, urging the frantic mules to panic flight. Once out of the canyon, they turned the train at almost right-angles and drove it toward the border.
Manuel Cavorca, his face that of an exultant fiend, dropped to the rear, peering, listening, searching the hilltops and canyon rims for possible pursuit.
Rance Hatfield and his troop of Rangers, waiting in distant Crazy Horse Gulch, straightened in their saddles as a faint crackle, like to the exploding of a pack of firecrackers, drifted to their ears. For a moment they listened intently; then Rance swore a vicious oath.
“I knowed it!” he shouted. “Skull Canyon! The hellions has drygulched the train theah! C’mon, boys, mebbe we’ll be in time to grab ’em ’fore they make the line!”
Out of the Gulch surged the troop, hoofs drumming, horses snorting with excitement. The bronzed, grim-faced Rangers leaned low in their saddles, peering toward where the eastern mouth of Skull Canyon loomed misty and vague in the distance. The troop strung out as the better horses forged to the front.
Rance Hatfield, mounted on El Rey, steadily drew away from his men. The great black was a marvel of speed and endurance—the finest horse Rance had ever ridden. He entered into the spirit of the race as if he knew what it was all about. His hoofs beat back the echoes in a rattling roll of sound. His long black body seemed to fairly pour itself over the ground. Red-eyed, snorting, he slugged his big head above the bit and unreeled the ribbon of miles behind him.
Low in the west, the sun sent level red rays slanting across the prairie. They bathed a distant horseman in blood and fire. Rance Hatfield, peering into the glare, swore exultantly.
“That’s him, hoss,” he shouted to the black. “That’s Cavorca on old Goldy, sho’ as yore a foot high. He’s ridin’ rear guard. C’mon, put me in shootin’ distance of that homed toad!”
El Rey snorted reply. His hoofs drummed faster. Flecks of foam spotted his shining coat. Stride by stride he closed the distance.
A grove, already pm-pled with shadows, loomed ahead. The sorrel vanished in the growth. Rance crouched lower but did not check the black.
“He won’t take a chance on drygulchin’ me theah,” reasoned the Ranger. “He’ll figger the rest of the hoys is dost behind. Go get him, hoss!”
Into the grove swept El Rey, his hoofs flinging back ragged echoes from the tree trunks. Rance loosened a gun in its holster, leaned still lower and searched the shadows. The dark-washed trunks drew closer to the trail.
Crash!
The great black horse turned a complete somersault, flinging his rider from him like a stone from a sling. He landed on his back, rolled over, and scrambled to his feet, snorting and trembling. He whickered querulously, swayed his head from side to side and limped to where Rance Hatfield lay white and silent. The rope, tautly stretched between two tree trunks, that had tripped him still hummed and vibrated; then the dying drum of hoofs fading away into the night.
El Rey’s snorting breath in his ear aroused Rance. The Ranger sat up dizzily, rubbed an egg-sized lump on the side of his head and swore.
“Hoss, that greaser makes me feel like I was a monkey in a side show,” he complained.
Shakily he got to his feet, examined the stallion and found him little the worse for his experience.
“That’s two times for him,” he told the animal, “but next time—”
CHAPTER 4
Manuel Cavorca vanished below the line. The purple mountains of Mexico swallowed him up, and it appeared he intended to stay swallowed. They also swallowed his band of killers and a score of bullion laden mules. As Captain Morton said to Rance Hatfield:
“P’haps, after such a big haul, he decided to quit raidin’ this side the border. Mebbe he’s gonna reform and go straight.”
“Uh-huh?” grunted Hatfield. “When that horned toad stops raisin’ hell will be when he gets a overdose of lead poisonin’ or dances on nothin’ at the end of a rope.”
Captain Morton meditated a moment. “Yore still on the lookout for Cavorca, of co’hse,” he replied at length, “but it ’pears he’s stayin’ under cover for the time bein’. I want you to take a little run over to Coffin. Reports of killin’s and robbin’s and gen’ral hell-raisin’ have been frequent from theah lately. The sheriff of Tonto county has his headquarters theah and they got a town marshal, too, but they don’t seem to be handlin’ the situation much. We gotta tip the jiggers what held up the Silver City stage last week is holed up theah. That’ll be yore assignment; but we want a lineup on things in gen’ral at Coffin.”
Rance found Coffin plenty “salty.” The center of a big new gold strike, the town had mushroomed up in the very shadow of that forbidding region of jumbled hills and canyons known as The Black Hell. El Infierno Negro was a land of black rock and white water. The dark fangs of stone ripped against a hard brassy-blue sky from which poured heat like smoky water gushing from an inverted funnel. Vultures perched on the crags. Wolves slunk through the canyons. Outlaws perched or slunk, as the occasion called for. El Negro Infierno was a badman’s paradise.
La Mesa Encantada, lying south and east of The Black Hell, was fine range land and covered by a number of big spreads.
Coffin, roaring and yammering with lusty life, sat in the borderland between the two regions. As a Lazy-D puncher told Rance:
“Look one way and things is purty as a drunk cowpoke’s dream. Look the other way and she looks jest like that same work dodger feels next mawnin’ when he’s soberin’ up.”
Rance could see very little that might indicate “sobering up” that sun-splashed afternoon as he stabled his horse and proceeded to hunt out a square meal for himself.
A little restaurant presided over by a smiling Chinaman provided steak, huge quantities of fried potatoes, hot biscuits and coffee. The Ranger set to like a man who had known what it was to find good food scarce. Through a window he watched the colorful stream of life flowing up and down the straggling street.
Miners, bearded and brawny, swaggered by, their pockets bulging with sacks of “dust.” Lean, bronzed cowboys high-heeled along, gazing about them with the quick, all-seeing glance of the plainsmen. Gamblers in long-tailed black coats, with expressionless faces, and derringers in their sleeves, eased their silent way through the crowd. Women with vivid lips and diamond-bright eyes that missed nothing that swayed past. Several evinced more than a casual interest in the tall, broad-shouldered Ranger who sat just inside the open window. Rance answered their greetings with a friendly but impersonal nod and smile that caused more than one painted “dance-hall girl” to look a trifle wistful as she left the window behind.
On the street again, Rance was caught up in the swirl and rush of lusty life. His pulses thrilled to the turmoil and excitement all around him. Coffin was a roaring gold-strike town with a pulse set to the tempo of exploding dynamite. Her hands were wet with sweat and blood. Curses and laughter tumbled together from her painted lips. There were no keys to the doors of her saloons, dance halls and gambling hells. Men did not take the trouble to wind their watches. Time was not measured by days and hours but by events. Men talked gold and breathed gun smoke. Days of hard toil blended into nights of harder play. Sleep was looked upon as an unpleasant necessity.
“She’s sho’ a snortin’ pueblo,” Rance Hatfield admired as he stepped into a saloon. “Guess old Tombstone in the silver days didn’t have nothin’ on her. Now if we jest had a couple Doc Hollidays and a Wyatt Earp or two, with some Curly Bills and John Ringos throwed in for good measure!”
Rance had a drink of something that tasted like burning gunpowder and was like swallowing a buzz saw running at high speed.
“Prime whiskey, eh?” said the bar
keep. “That’s our own private stock.”
Rance nodded. “Uh-huh, sorta mild. Give me ’nother one.”
He downed the second drink and headed for the door. Up the street sounded a low thunder of drumming hoofs. Rance stepped out in time to see men scattering wildly, more wagons pulling onto the sidewalks. “What the hells goin’ on?” he wondered.
Down the street galloped six men mounted on splendid horses. Heavy revolvers swung from their cartridge belts. A rifle was thrust into the saddle scabbard of each. They wore a picturesque garb that was a combination of the flashy outfit of the Mexican vaquero and the just as striking but more serviceable “work clothes” of the American puncher.
Across the street from the saloon which Rance had just left they pulled the horses to a dancing halt, hitched them to a nearby rack and headed for the saloon. The Ranger eyed them with interest.
Tall, lithe, somewhat dark of complexion, with black hair and flashing black eyes, they were handsome men. All were young.
Rance Hatfield’s black brows drew together in a perplexed frown as the group crossed the street.
“Ev’ry one of them jiggers looks alike and ev’one of them reminds me of somebody,” he muttered. “I know darn well I ain’t never seen none of them befo’, but they make me feel like I hav’.”
The six strangers entered the saloon. As Rance gazed after diem thoughtfully, he heard a couple of men talking in back of him.
“It’s the Gandara boys,” said one. “They’ll raise hell t’night. They allus does.”
“Brothers?” asked the other men.
“Uh-huh,” replied the first speaker. “Three-of-a-kind, a pair, and one to draw to.”
“What the hell you talkin’ about?” demanded the second man.
“Well,” said the first speaker with a chuckle, “it’s like this. Theah’s Guilermo, the oldest. Then theah’s the twins, Tomaso and Pedro, they come next. Then theah’s the, what you call ’em? Oh, yeah, the triples, Fernando, Angel and Enrique. Theah was another boy in the family, I heard tell, but he left this section long time ago and sorta drifted outa sight.”